by Simon Baatz
Mary Thaw, listening to the judge’s decision, blamed Evelyn Nesbit for this latest defeat. No one could have heard Evelyn describe her husband without concluding that Harry was a violent psychopath, and Keogh’s verdict seemed certain to condemn Harry to spend the remainder of his days in the asylum. There had never been any possibility of a reconciliation between the Thaw family and Evelyn Nesbit; and the events of that year—Evelyn’s claim that Harry had fathered her child; Evelyn’s testimony against Harry in the courtroom—had strengthened Mary Thaw’s resolve to cast her daughter-in-law out of the family circle as soon as possible. But that task would come later. For the moment she was too preoccupied with securing Harry’s release to bother about Evelyn.
Mary Thaw had finally, after great effort, succeeded in removing Robert Lamb from his position as the superintendent of the Matteawan asylum, and John Russell, a graduate of the Albany Medical College, had been appointed in January 1912 in his place. She had already made cautious inquiries, and she had been pleased to learn that the new superintendent would be considerably more receptive to her pleas than his predecessor.
John Russell sat waiting in an easy chair in the hotel lobby, idly watching the bustle of guests at the entrance. The Astor House, built in 1836 in the Greek Revival style, had once been the most fashionable hotel in New York, but its reputation had declined in tandem with the deterioration of the neighborhood near City Hall. The hotel still retained the features that had once given it distinction—the courtyard enclosed by a glass dome; the curving mahogany bar, almost fifty feet long; the half-dozen private dining rooms—but the area west of the hotel, a warren of narrow streets, had become disreputable, notorious for its brothels and saloons.
Russell, the superintendent of the Matteawan asylum, frequently visited New York, usually staying uptown at the Savoy Hotel on Fifty-ninth Street. He had chosen the Astor House for the rendezvous that day because it offered anonymity. Few New Yorkers, not even the clerks working in the financial district nearby, took their meals in the hotel’s ornate dining room, and most patrons were out-of-towners—traveling salesmen and businessmen.
He had waited only ten minutes when he saw John Anhut appear at the Broadway entrance. Anhut, wearing a light gray suit and a four-in-hand purple tie, looked impossibly young, no older than twenty, but he appeared self-confident beyond his years. His youthful appearance was slightly misleading—Anhut was then twenty-nine—but already he had amassed a wealth of political experience in his home state, Michigan, winning election in 1909 to the state senate. He had recently moved to New York, intending to practice law in the city, and somehow, immediately upon his arrival, he had become enmeshed in the scheme to free Harry Thaw.55
The two men exchanged greetings in the lobby, and Russell escorted Anhut upstairs to a private dining room overlooking Barclay Street. Anhut spoke first, telling Russell that he had met with Mary Thaw two days before. She was prepared to reward the superintendent if he would only sign a certificate of recovery for her son. There would be no need for Russell to obtain the consent of the psychiatrists or any of the medical staff, Anhut claimed: Russell could sign the certificate on his own authority, and Harry Thaw would be free to leave the asylum.
“How much did Thaw give you?” Russell suddenly interrupted, his voice betraying his impatience.
He had received $25,000, Anhut replied. One of Thaw’s sisters, Margaret, had endorsed stock certificates in the Consolidated Gas Company to the value of $20,000, and Mary Thaw had provided $5,000 in cash. But the full payment, Anhut added, would be made only if Russell released Thaw by the end of the year. One half of the amount would be forfeited if Thaw remained in the asylum after January 1, 1913, and further delay into the summer was unacceptable. “All this money,” Anhut warned, “goes back if I don’t get Thaw out.”
Russell hesitated. He would risk his position at Matteawan by releasing Thaw. It would stir up tremendous controversy, and inevitably there would be an inquiry into the matter.
“I will give you twenty thousand if you discharge Thaw,” Anhut said, adding that he, Anhut, would receive $5,000 for his part in the scheme.
“I wouldn’t do it for a cent less than $20,000,” Russell replied, speaking with indignation, as if even that amount was far less than he had expected. What would he do if there was an outcry against Thaw’s release and he, Russell, was forced to resign his position as superintendent? He had made his career within the state system of asylums, and there was little likelihood that he would ever again obtain a comparable post.
“If you lose your position,” Anhut said reassuringly, “Thaw will pay you $10,000 a year until you are established.”
It was a generous proposal; still Russell hesitated, saying only that he needed time to consider the offer. But later that month, a few days before Christmas 1912, Russell mentioned the scheme to a colleague, William Clark, asking for his advice. It all ended predictably: Clark confided his knowledge of the proposal to some close friends; and soon the New York journalists had caught wind of the scheme, hinting in their reports at the rumor that Thaw might soon leave the asylum.
Anhut’s attempt to bribe the superintendent was revealed publicly two months later, after a new administration had taken office in the state capital. The governor, William Sulzer, had won election the previous November with the support of the Democratic Party machine, but he quickly proclaimed his independence, declaring at his inauguration that he would end corruption in New York. He was true to his word, removing Tammany officeholders and appointing several commissions to investigate graft in state politics.56
A committee of inquiry into the state prisons held hearings in February 1913. John Russell appeared as a witness, testifying that John Anhut had attempted to bribe him to release Harry Thaw. Russell denied that he had ever accepted any money, but he did admit that he had not informed Joseph Scott, the state superintendent of prisons, about the bribery attempt.
Mary Thaw had pinned all her hopes on Russell in a final effort to win her son’s freedom, but her scheme had collapsed in spectacular fashion, and soon all the protagonists in the affair had lost their positions. Russell, unable to explain why he had neglected to tell his superior officer about the bribe, resigned his post as the Matteawan superintendent on February 28. Joseph Scott left office two weeks later, on March 13, after the committee of inquiry determined that he had failed to exercise oversight over his department, allowing theft from the state prisons to go unchecked. Scott had never held his staff to account, and thus, according to the committee of inquiry, he had been at least partially responsible for the Thaw debacle.57
John Anhut appeared in court in May 1913 on an indictment charging him with bribery. Anhut denied the accusation, saying that Russell had initiated the bribe, but the jury found him guilty of the charge, and the judge, Samuel Seabury, sentenced him to a term of four years in Sing Sing Prison.58
It seemed ironic that Harry Thaw should entirely escape punishment; but how could the state prosecute an individual who was confined to the Matteawan asylum because of his insanity? An insane man could not knowingly commit a crime, and the attorney general, Thomas Carmody, was unlikely to seek an indictment. But Thaw had, nevertheless, suffered a defeat that now seemed to end forever any possibility that he would leave the asylum.
Harry had always rejected the suggestion that he might attempt to escape. In 1908, at the end of the second trial, his brother Josiah had planned for gangsters to overpower the guards on the train journey to Matteawan. Harry could then have escaped across the state line before his arrival at the asylum. But Harry had refused the offer, telling Josiah that he would eventually win his freedom by legal means in the courts. Why should he live the life of a fugitive, Harry asked, when he was a sane man?59
But now, five years after he had first entered the asylum, there seemed little possibility that he would ever leave Matteawan. The courts had repeatedly rejected his writs of habeas corpus, saying that he still posed a danger, and no superintendent of th
e asylum was ever likely now to sign a certificate of recovery. It seemed impossible for Harry to imagine that he might spend the rest of his days as a prisoner, locked away in the asylum. He must leave; but how?
8
ESCAPE
August 17, 1913–September 11, 1913
HARRY THAW, HIS HANDS IN HIS POCKETS, HIS BACK AGAINST THE wall, stood inconspicuously in the shade, watching the guard hut on the far side of the courtyard. It was still early, seven thirty in the morning, but some other patients had started to appear after breakfast, and they stood chatting together in small groups at the rear of the asylum. There had been no rain since June, and Harry noticed that the patches of grass in the yard had started to wither and die in the summer heat. The ground was sandy brown, baked by the sun, and now almost indistinguishable from the weathered redbrick walls of the asylum that enclosed the courtyard on three sides. A stockade fence, twelve feet high, constructed from rough lumber pilings, with a heavy wooden gate at the center, completed the enclosure.
A bell sounded by the gate to signal the milk delivery, and Harry waited as a guard, a large metal key in his right hand, emerged from his hut, walking in the sunlight along a path toward the fence. Harry also began to step cautiously in the direction of the gate, moving almost parallel to the guard as both men, separated by a distance of almost ten yards, advanced toward the fence.
The guard, Howard Barnum, turned his key in the metal lock and slid back a heavy iron bolt, slowly pulling the gate inward on its metal rollers. The dairyman, Bill Hickey, urged his horse forward, guiding the milk cart between two large pillars, one on either side of the gate, maneuvering the cart through the narrow space into the yard.1
At that moment, as Hickey edged his cart forward, Harry Thaw squeezed his body into the gap between the cart and the gatepost. The space seemed impossibly narrow, less than three feet, but Harry made his way through, catching his jacket on a hook at the rear of the cart before breaking free.
A black six-cylinder Packard touring car, its engine running, stood twenty yards ahead, at the bottom of an incline that led from the gate of the asylum to the road. Two men waiting by the car sprang to their feet, watching Thaw as he ran across the grass toward them. Thaw, winded by his quick sprint, jumped into the rear seat and the car roared to life, accelerating in an easterly direction, turning south at Stormville, crossing a bridge over Fishkill Creek, and heading directly toward the Connecticut state line twenty-seven miles away.2
There was nothing to indicate the boundary between New York and the neighboring state of Connecticut, no sign to tell travelers when they had left New York, but thirty minutes later, when the car reached Danbury, in Connecticut, Harry Thaw knew that he was safe. The jurisdiction of the New York authorities ended at the state line, and no one, not even the governor of the state, could now take him back to New York without first submitting a request for his extradition.
Richard Butler, sitting in the front passenger seat, introduced himself, telling Thaw that they would drive north through Massachusetts and New Hampshire, entering Vermont close to the northern border before crossing into Canada. Butler, a member of the Gophers, one of the gangs from the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood on the west side of Manhattan, was well known in the city as a fixer with influence among the labor unions. Ten years before he had won election on the Democratic ticket to the state assembly; but he had soon abandoned politics, preferring to spend his time with friends in the Hell’s Kitchen saloons.3
The Gophers had received part of their payment, Butler reminded Thaw, and they expected the remainder, according to the agreement with the family, once they crossed the border into Canada. The driver, Roger Thompson, said nothing, his eyes fixed on the road ahead, his attention focused on the signposts that indicated the route north; but a third man, Michael O’Keefe, seated next to Thaw in the rear, occasionally interrupted, prompting Butler to include those details of their itinerary that he had forgotten.4
Soon they had left Connecticut, driving north through Massachusetts. They stopped at Lenox, pausing for lunch, before continuing on to Pittsfield, entering New Hampshire close to the Connecticut River.
Richard Butler had chosen their route with care, intending to cross into Canada from the northeastern corner of Vermont in a remote, sparsely populated area west of the White Mountains. Neither the United States nor Canada had installed border controls in that region, allowing unrestricted travel between the state of Vermont and the province of Quebec, and there was consequently no requirement to show any identification to pass from one country to the other.
But their limousine, a Packard Dominant Six luxury model, would attract a great deal of attention in the villages and hamlets of rural Vermont and New Hampshire. It would be impossible, Butler decided, to drive such a car without being noticed. They would instead travel the remainder of their journey by train, taking the Grand Trunk Railway on the line that connected Portland, Maine, to Montreal.
That afternoon, shortly after four o’clock, they abandoned the car in Rochester, a town in eastern New Hampshire, to take a train on the Boston & Maine line as far as Littleton to connect to the Grand Trunk Railway. They had made good progress since leaving Matteawan, traveling unnoticed through four states, and very soon, in less than two hours, they would be in Canada. Harry Thaw, watching the passing countryside through the train window, could not have been more satisfied. His companions were in the smoking car, playing cards, and he sat alone, daydreaming, as the train hurried on its way across New Hampshire.
A large heavyset man, around forty years old, boarded the train at Lancaster, making his way down the center aisle of the carriage, searching for an empty seat. Burleigh Kelsea, the deputy sheriff of Coos County, had spent the day in Lancaster, the county seat, and now he was on his way home to Colebrook. He nodded a greeting as he sat down opposite Harry Thaw. but neither man said anything and Kelsea started to read his newspaper. He glanced up as the conductor came through the carriage, checking the tickets, and he looked again, more closely, at Thaw, seated opposite him.
“I know who you are,” Kelsea said suddenly. “You are Harry Thaw. I feel pretty sure you are Harry Thaw. Aren’t you?”
Thaw hesitated, reluctant to confirm his identity, but then he started to talk.
“You’re right,” he confessed, “but I am a perfectly free man here.”
He had left New York, he explained, and there were no grounds for his extradition from New Hampshire. The jury at his trial had acquitted him of the murder of Stanford White, he said, and he had not, therefore, been convicted of any crime.
“Nobody can hold me,” he added, a note of defiance in his voice, “for they haven’t anything on me. I was acquitted of that murder, and they can’t extradite me.”
“No, I guess not,” Kelsea replied.
“How did you recognize me?” Thaw asked.
Kelsea pointed to his paper. “From the picture in the newspaper which I am now reading,” he said. There, on the front page, was a photograph of Thaw along with an account of his escape from Matteawan.
“Where are you going?” Kelsea asked.
“I’m on my way to take a boat at Montreal for England,” Thaw replied, saying that his sister lived in London and that he expected to stay there for some time.5
The train started to slow down as it approached Colebrook. Kelsea rose from his seat, collecting his belongings, saying that he had arrived at his destination, and wishing Thaw a pleasant journey.
He had thought about arresting Thaw on the spot—but on what charge? Harry Thaw was correct in saying that the jury had acquitted him, and it was true that, in the eyes of the law, he had not committed a crime. He had walked away from the Matteawan asylum, but it was not evident that he had thereby broken the law. And anyway, did Kelsea have the authority to detain Thaw? He had no warrant for Thaw’s arrest, and Thaw had committed no crime in New Hampshire.
Thaw had indicated, during their conversation, that he believed he was traveling on the thro
ugh train from Portland into Canada as far as Montreal. But he was mistaken: only two trains each day made the journey into Canada, and Kelsea knew that this train would end at Beecher Falls, a small town just inside the United States, about eight miles from the border. There would be no more trains traveling that night into Canada, and Thaw would be stranded, unable to complete his journey. Kelsea planned to drive to Beecher Falls from Colebrook, notify the local police, and surprise Thaw before he could cross into Canada.
But Kelsea was too late. Thaw and his companions, alighting from the train at its terminus, had realized their mistake and hired a driver and his car at Beecher Falls. No one saw them enter Canada—the border crossing was unmanned—and later that night, they reached Saint-Herménégilde, a small village in the province of Quebec.
Mary Thaw was gleeful that her son had finally escaped. “I thank God he has gone!” she exclaimed. “It is time the travesty was ended. My boy ought never to have been sent to Matteawan in the first place.” Some newspapers speculated that the family had arranged his flight, paying gangsters to spirit him away, but she denied the accusation. “None of the members of the family had anything to do with his getting away,” she protested, “but I am glad that he is out.” She had had no inkling that Harry was planning his escape. She had arranged to visit Harry at the asylum on Monday, August 18, and his departure caught her by surprise.6
Evelyn Nesbit was horrified that Thaw had escaped. He had threatened to kill her, and she had no doubt that he was capable of carrying out his threat. She had recently begun a vaudeville engagement at the Victoria Theatre, and she would perform, she informed the manager, Willie Hammerstein, only if he provided her with a police escort. “You know Harry’s history,” she exclaimed to the reporter from the New York Herald. “One drink of liquor and he is as mad as ever…. So long as Harry Thaw is alive and free I shall never close my eyes in peace.”7