Valentine Democrat

THAW TRIAL BEGINS.
MILLIONAIRE
CHARGED
WITH
MURDERING WHITE.
One of the Most Remarkable Trials in the Criminal History of New York—Result Watched by Notables in Two Continents.
The great Thaw trial is on in New York. The fight to save Harry Kendall Thaw from death in the electric chair for the slaying of Architect Stanford White began Wednesday morning before Justice Fitzgerald. The drawing of the jury to try the young Pittsburgh millionaire began with the opening of court.
Long before the hour set for the trial, crowds flocked to the Criminal Court's building and filled the rotunda. An hour before the trial began the crowd was driven into the street and every entrance guarded by police. Only talesmen and reporters were allowed to enter the courtroom. The trial overshadowed the Molineaux and Patrick trials. Over 200 newspaper men made application for admission to report the trial. No spectators were allowed in the trial room. There were correspondents from Paris, London and Berlin and on the lower floor of the building cable and telegraph offices were installed.
Outside, crowds waited to get a glimpse of the prisoner as he passed over the bridge of sighs. It was only a fleeting glimpse of a shadow outlined on an opaque sheet of glass, but the curious had waited hours to see that shadow and they were satisfied.
Thaw came to his trial for the murder of Stanford White on the roof of Madison Square Garden on the night of June 25 last year. The millionaire prisoner believed that White was seeking to separate him from his wife, the beautiful Evelyn Nesbit Thaw, the artist model. Emotional insanity is the defense offered to save the young Pittsburgh youth from the electric chair.
When Justice Fitzgerald took his seat in court and Harry Thaw had been brought from the prisoners' pen to his seat beside the counsel table, a trial was begun that will remain perhaps forever on the pages of criminal history in New York without a parallel. All the elements of a tragedy are woven in the warp and woof of his case. All the characters of the stage world and of the gay Bohemia of a great city; a titled sister, a countess; a beautiful model known all over the world: a famous architect whose love of youth and beauty brought him violent death, and a youthful spendthrift millionaire play leading parts in this tragedy that had for its ending the shooting of Stanford White by Harry Thaw on the crowded and gaily-lighted roof of Madison Square Garden. No mystery veils this remarkable case.
In the foreground is shown D. M. Delmas, the lawyer engaged to save the life of Stanford White's slayer: sitting facing him is District Attorney Jerome: to the rear of Mr. Delmas and a little to his left is the defendant: back of him sits his mother: at her left is her daughter, the Countess of Yarmouth, who came from England to aid her brother; on her right is Evelyn Nesbit Thaw, wife of the defendant, whose beauty incited the enmity of the two men that led to the shooting in Madison Square Garden.
HARRY K. THAW.