by Bruno, Joe
After a strenuous bout of lovemaking, Ruth blurted out triumphantly, “We'll be okay for money,” she said. “I've just tricked Albert into taking out some hefty life insurance. He thinks it's only for $1,000, but it's really for $96,000, if he dies by accident. I put three different policies in front of him and only let him see the space where you sign. I told him it was a thousand buck policy in triplicate. He's covered for $1,000, $5,000, and $45,000, with a double indemnity clause, in case of an accidental death.”
Even after Ruth Snyder had told Judd Gray that she was intent on killing her husband for the life insurance settlements, Gray still had his doubts. While the two love birds continued carrying on their torrid affair, Albert Snyder was nearly killed in three more “accidents.”
In July 1926, Albert fell asleep on his living room couch and almost died because someone had accidentally left on the gas jets in the kitchen. In January 1927, Albert had a violent case of the hiccups. Ruth said she had the perfect cure for pickups, and she handed her husband a glass of bichloride of mercury. Albert guzzled down the drink, and he immediately became violently ill. Yet, Albert did not die. The very next month Albert Snyder again fell asleep on his living room couch, and he almost expired, because someone had inadvertently left on the gas tap in the living room.
After trying to kill her husband six times, Ruth Snyder knew she needed help if she were to be successful. She told Judd Gray, “My husband has turned into a brute! He's even bought a gun and says he'll shoot me with it!”
In February 1927, Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray were trysting in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in midtown Manhattan. Ruth was firmly in charge, and after giving Gray a nice roll in the hay, she ordered Gray to go to Kingston, New York, to purchase chloroform, a window sash weight, and picture wire. She told him, that way “we have three means of killing him. One of them must surely work.”
Gray protested, but Ruth was not to be deterred. She said, “If you don't do as I say, that's the end of us in bed. You can find yourself another Momsie to sleep with. Only nobody else would have you but me.”
Gray whined that he was not the type to commit murder, but Ruth kept on applying the pressure. One night, when Albert and their daughter Lorraine were not at home, Ruth brazenly brought Gray to her Queens Village house. They went upstairs to her daughter's room, and they had passionate sex. Gray at this point, absolutely terrified that he would not be able to enjoy Ruth's mad lovemaking anymore, reluctantly agreed to participate in the murder of Albert Snyder.
From that point on, Ruth did all the planning, and Gray did what she told him to do. They had several clandestine meetings, where Ruth laid out the step-by-step procedure on how they would kill her husband. One such meeting took place at Henry's Swedish Restaurant, with Ruth's daughter Lorraine sitting at the same table with them, but not truly understanding what they were talking about: that her father was in imminent danger of being murdered.
In the early morning hours of March 20, 1927, Gray, fortified by more than a few sips of whiskey from a pint bottle, boarded a bus from downtown Manhattan to the Snyder house in Queens. The house was empty, because Ruth and Albert Snyder, along with their daughter Lorraine, were at a bridge party at the home of one of their neighbors, a Mrs. Milton Fidgeon. Ruth had left the side door unlocked, allowing Gray to enter the house. Gray hid himself in an empty bedroom upstairs. Gray even brought an Italian newspaper to plant later as a red herring for the police.
At around 2 a.m., the Snyder family returned home. By this time Albert Snyder was quite drunk. He immediately went to bed and fell asleep in an alcohol-induced stupor. Ruth put Lorraine to bed, and then she slipped down the hall to the extra bedroom where Gray was hiding. Ruth was wearing just a slip and a negligee.
She kissed Gray, and then said, “Have you found the sash weight?” Gray told her he had. Ruth said, “Keep quiet then. I'll be back as quickly as I can.”
A few minutes later, Ruth left the master bedroom and entered the bedroom where Gray was waiting. They finished the last of the whiskey Gray had brought with him, then she grabbed Gray by the hand and said, “Okay, this is it.”
Ruth led Gray to the master bedroom. Gray was wearing rubber gloves so he wouldn't leave any fingerprints. Ruth was carrying the window sash weight, the chloroform, and the piano wire.
When they opened the bedroom door, Gray saw Albert Snyder for the first time. After they closed the bedroom door behind them, Gray raised the sash weight, brought it over his head, and smashed it feebly down on Albert Snyder's head. It was such an inconsequential blow, Albert Snyder sat up in bed and tried to defend himself.
Gray brought the sash down on Albert Snyder's head a second time, this time drawing a little blood. Albert Snyder, now enraged, clutched Gray's necktie and began to strangle him with it.
Gray screamed like a little girl, “Help Momsie! For God's sake, help!”
Ruth grabbed the fallen sash weight, swung it over her head, and with all her considerable might, she smashed it down onto her husband's head. It was a debilitating blow, but Albert Snyder, now semi-conscious, was still alive. With her manlike strength, Ruth Snyder pinned her twitching husband's body down, and she stuffed cotton, laced with chloroform, into his nostrils and into his mouth. As Gray stood dumbfounded, Ruth tied her husband's hands and feet, and then she strangled her husband to death with the piano wire.
With Albert Snyder now quite dead, Ruth and Gray got busy washing the blood from their clothes. Having done so, Gray put on a clean blue shirt that belonged to Albert.
To make it look like a robbery gone awry, Ruth hid all her jewelry and furs, and also the sash that had been one of the murder weapons. Then they went downstairs to the living room and messed up all the pillows and furniture, to make it look like robbers had overturned everything looking for valuables. That done, Gray loosely tied up Ruth, gagged her with cheesecloth, and left her in the empty bedroom with the Italian newspaper next to her.
Gray was scheduled to travel to the Onondaga Hotel in Syracuse, New York to resume selling corsets. But before he left, he looked back at Ruth and said, “It may be two months, it may be a year, and maybe never before you see me again.”
Right after dawn, Lorraine Snyder was awakened by a loud tapping sound that seemed to come from the hallway. She called out to both her parents, but she got no reply. Lorraine ran out into the hallway, and she spotted her mother bound and gagged on the floor. Lorraine untied her mother and took the gag out of her mother's mouth.
Ruth jumped to her feet, and she ran from the house screaming, waking her neighbors Harriet and Louis Mulhauser.
Ruth told them, crying, “It was dreadful, just dreadful! I was attacked by a prowler. He tied me up. He must have been after my jewels.” Then she paused, “Is Albert all right?”
Louis Mulhauser ran into the Snyder house, up the stairs and into the master bedroom. He found Albert Snyder bound and dead, with two massive head wounds.
The police were called in immediately, and they were soon suspicious about the way the living room had been tossed. The police interrogated Ruth Snyder as if she were the perpetrator of a husband's demise. Nevertheless, Ruth stuck to her outlandish story.
She insisted to the police, “I was attacked by a big, rough-looking guy of about 35 with a black mustache. He was a foreigner, I guess some kind of Eyetalian.”
Dr. Harry Hansen was called in by the police to examine Albert Snyder's body and to examine Ruth Snyder for any sign that she had been assaulted. After examining Albert's body, and Ruth too, Dr. Hansen was convinced that Ruth Snyder's story was a complete fabrication. He gave his findings to Police Commissioner George McLaughlin, and the police commissioner agreed with Dr. Hansen's conclusions. McLaughlin immediately sent 60 policemen to surround the Snyder residence, whereby Ruth was immediately arrested for questioning.
While Ruth was being grilled at the station house, the police searched the Snyder residence. They found Ruth's rings and necklaces under a mattress, and a fur coat hanging in a c
loset. That convinced the police that Ruth had made up the entire episode and was most likely responsible for her husband's death.
The police also found an address book, with the names of 28 different men in it, including the name of Judd Gray. They also found a canceled check made out to Gray by Ruth Snyder for $200. Now the police knew that Ruth Snyder had had an accomplice.
Armed with this information, the police applied the screws to Ruth Snyder. They hoodwinked her into making a loose confession, by telling her that Judd Gray had already been arrested and had named her as the killer of her husband. Ruth, incensed that her lover would rat her out so quickly, finally admitted that she had indeed taken part in the plan to kill her husband, but she pinned everything on the shy corset salesman.
“But I didn't aim a single blow on Albert,” Ruth told the police. “That was all Judd's doing. At the last moment, I tried to stop him, but it was too late!”
Realizing she had been tricked, Ruth Snyder then told police where they could find Judd Gray. The police cornered Gray in a Syracuse hotel and arrested him. Immediately, the usually quiet Gray began talking nonstop. He admitted everything, exactly as it happened, naming Ruth Snyder as the instigator of the whole sordid affair.
“I would have never killed Snyder, but for her,” Gray said. “She had this power over me. She just told me what to do, and I did it.”
The New York City newspapers played up the trial as “The Granite Woman,” versus the “Man of Putty.” The trial, which started on April 18, 1927, lasted 18 days. During the trial, Ruth Snyder was dressed entirely in black (obviously in mourning for her dearly-departed husband). She wore a crucifix on a chain around her neck, and she continuously fiddled with rosary beads which were clutched in both hands on her lap. Judd Gray, dressed in a double-breasted, blue pinstriped suit, with fastidiously pressed trousers, sat impassively, as if he was resigned to his fate.
Celebrities from around the country attended the trial, with the thought of writing books and possibly making movies about the murder. Those people included mystery writer Mary Roberts Rinehart, director D. W. Griffith, author Will Durant, actress Nora Bayes, and evangelists Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson.
One of the New York City's top crime reporters, Peggy Hopkins Joyce, wrote in the New York Daily Mirror. “Poor Judd Gray! He hasn't IT! He hasn't anything. He's just a sap who kissed and was told on. This 'Putty Man' was wonderful modeling material for the Swedish-Norwegian vampire. She was passionate, and she was cold-blooded. Her passion was for Gray; her cold-bloodedness was for her husband. You know women can do things to men that make men crazy. I mean, they can exert their influence over them in such a way that men will do almost anything for them. And I guess that is what Ruth did to Judd.”
The trial itself was a three-ring circus, in which each defendant blamed the other for the murder of Albert Snyder. Ruth Snyder said on the witness stand that it was Judd Gray who had dragged her to illegal speakeasies and nightclubs. And it was he who drank until he got drunk. Ruth said she didn't drink herself, and certainly never smoked.
Then she told the Big Lie.
Ruth said under oath that it was Judd Gray who had insisted that she take out an expensive life insurance policy on husband's life.
Ruth told the court, “Once, he even sent me poison and told me to give it to my husband.”
When Judd Gray took the stand, he was a much more believable witness than Ruth Snyder had been. Gray told the court that Ruth Snyder had tried to kill her husband several times previously, but had been unsuccessful every time.
Gray said under oath, “I told her she was crazy, when she told me that she had given her husband poison as a cure for hiccups. I said to her that it was a hell of a way to cure hiccups.”
The entire time Gray was on the witness stand, Ruth Snyder sat with her head bowed, crying incessantly and fingering her rosary beads. Ruth's outbursts of sorrow were so loud, the judge glowered at her and told her to control herself.
With a brilliant summation to the jury, Gray's attorney tried to save his client from the electric chair.
Gray's attorney told the jury that his client was, “The most tragic story that has ever gripped the human heart.” He said Judd Gray was a, “law-abiding citizen who had been duped and dominated by a designing, deadly conscienceless, abnormal woman, a human serpent, a human fiend in a disguise of a woman.” Gray's attorney also said that Judd Gray had been “drawn into this hopeless chasm when reason was gone, mind was gone, manhood was gone, and when his mind was weakened by lust and passion.”
On May 9, after the jury deliberated only 98 minutes, Ruth Brown Snyder and Judd Gray were both found guilty of first-degree premeditated murder. The judge immediately sentenced both of them to die in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison. As a display of the public irrationality over the sensational case, in her prison cell while she awaited execution, Ruth Snyder received 164 marriage proposals.
On January 12, 1928, Judd Gray sat in the electric chair first. After telling the Warden that he had received a letter from his wife forgiving him, he told the Warden that, “He was ready to go and had nothing to fear.”
Four minutes after Gray received the juice, Ruth Snyder sat down and was blindfolded in the electric chair. An enterprising reporter from the New York Daily News somehow slipped into the execution room with a tiny camera strapped to his ankle. At the instant the electric shock jolted Ruth Snyder's body, the reporter snapped Ruth Snyder's picture. That death picture appeared on the front page of the New York Daily News the following day.
In 1944, the highly successful and critically acclaimed movie Double Indemnity, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, was released. The plot was based on the Ruth Brown Snyder and Judd Gray murder case. In 2007, the American Film Institute listed Double Indemnity as the 29th best movie on their list of the top 100 American movies of all-time.
Thaw, Harry Kendall
This story would be a tragic one if it didn’t involve two men who were undoubtedly creeps. Illustrious creeps, but creeps nevertheless.
One was a world-famous architect, and the other a rich scion from an even richer family. There are no nice guys here and the girl in the middle, although she was considered the most beautiful woman of her time and one of artist Charles Dana Gibson’s famous “Gibson Girls,” was no lily-white lassie herself.
So why do we care? Simply because it was the most deliciously decadent murder story of the early 20th Century.
On June 25, 1906, it was high society’s night out. It was the opening of the new musical Mamzelle Champagne, on the outdoor roof garden of Madison Square Garden, which at the time was bounded by Fifth and Madison Avenues, and 26th and 27th Streets. The structure, which included an amphitheater on the ground floor, was designed by world-famed architect Stanford White. In fact, White had a front-row table that night, where he sat by himself to enjoy the show, which was not going over too well with the crowd, since people were milling about from table to table, kibitzing, instead of paying attention to the festivities.
Suddenly, the audience heard three loud shots. At first, they thought it was a part of the show. But when they saw White topple to the floor, his head encased in a pool of blood, they knew this scene was for real.
Harry Kendall Thaw, a spoiled, rich punk, had casually walked over to White, pulled out a pistol from beneath his long black coat, and plugged White three times, twice in the shoulder and once through his brain.
After he fired his final shot, Thaw screamed at White, “You deserved this! You ruined my wife!”
Seeming to not be in any particular hurry, Thaw casually pointed the gun up over his head, and he strode to the elevator. Thaw took the elevator down and joined his wife, the beautiful actress Evelyn Nesbit, in the lobby by the elevator.
Because Mamzelle Champagn was quite unentertaining, Thaw and Nesbit had left with another couple moments before the shooting. Nesbit did not realize her husband did not ride down the elevator with her. Nesbit hear
d the shots, and a few seconds later, when her husband strode out of the elevator holding a smoking gun, she screamed, “Good God Harry, what have you done?”
Back on the rooftop garden, the stage manager was trying to sort out exactly what had transpired. He jumped on a table and shouted to the orchestra, “Keep on playing! And bring out the chorus!”
The musicians, actors, and actresses, dumbfounded over a real-life murder being perpetrated right in front of their eyes, sat or stood dumbfounded. A doctor who was in attendance rushed to White’s body. White’s face had been disfigured from the powder burns, and the doctor announced with great certainty that White was indeed dead.
Down in the lobby, a fireman in attendance wrestled the gun away from Thaw, who did not offer much resistance. Moments later, a policeman arrived, and he immediately arrested Thaw. The policeman brought Thaw to the nearest police station, which was located in the Tenderloin District, an area known for its gambling, prostitution, and various other crimes, both violent and non-violent. When Thaw arrived at the police station, he identified himself as John Smith, a student at 18 Lafayette Square in Philadelphia.
The desk sergeant asked Thaw, “Why did you do this?”
Thaw seemed disinterested. “I can’t say why,” he said.
By this time, several news reporters, who were familiar with Thaw, had followed him to the police station, and they identified him to the police by his real name. Thaw immediately clammed up, and he refused to say another word unless he was represented by an attorney.
The following day, the killing of Stanford White was on the front page of every newspaper in New York City. The New York Times, usually staid and proper, ran this blaring headline:
THAW MURDERS STANFORD WHITE!
Shoots him on the Madison Square Garden rooftop
ABOUT EVELYN NESBIT
“You ruined my wife,” he cries and fires.