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Document 251594 HARRY K. THAW Killer of prominent architect Stanford White. Partly Printed Check filled out and signed: "H.K. Thaw", 7¾x2¾. Washington, D.C., 1903 May 8. Drawn on The Riggs National Bank, payable to Andrew Wells for $20. Someone else has penned the payee's name. Endorsed on verso: "Andrew Wells" and "Luke J. Kearney". Harry Kendall Thaw was heir to $40 million in Pennsylvania Railroad bonds. His father died in 1888 when he was 18 and he soon attracted attention as a playboy. In New York City in 1901, he became infatuated with Evelyn Nesbit, a chorus girl who had posed for magazine illustrator Charles Dana Gibson. Nesbit had also formed an attachment with prominent architect Stanford White, then in his fifties. Thaw and Nesbit were married on April 4, 1905. On the evening of June 25, 1906, Thaw and his wife encountered White sitting alone at a table on the roof garden of the old Madison Square Garden, which Thaw had designed. With no warning, Thaw drew a pistol and shot White dead. In two murder trials (the first ended in a hung jury), Thaw described his rage at his wife's stories of her earlier relationship with White. In the second trial concluded in 1908, Thaw was found innocent by reason of temporary insanity and was committed to a state hospital for the criminally insane. He escaped to Canada in 1913 and was brought to trial in New York in 1915 on the escape charge. At the trial, he was declared sane by a jury and was released. Thaw divorced Nesbit in 1916, attempted suicide in 1917 and spent the next seven years in institutions for the insane in Pennsylvania. Light show through from bank stamp on verso. Cancellation holes, not near signature. Fine condition. SEE IF DOCUMENT 251594 IS FOR SALE RIGHT NOW!!
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