Heir to a multimillion-dollar fortune, he is most notable for murdering the renowned architect Stanford White in front of hundreds of witnesses at the rooftop theatre of New York City's Madison Square Garden on June 25, 1906.

Plagued by mental illness throughout his life (evident even in childhood), Thaw spent lavishly to fund his obsessive partying, drug addiction, abusive behavior, and sexual gratification.

[6] In childhood, Thaw was subject to bouts of insomnia, temper tantrums, incoherent babbling and baby talk, a form of expression which he retained in adulthood.

A teacher at the Wooster Prep School described the 16-year-old Thaw as having an "erratic kind of zig-zag" walk, "which seemed to involuntarily mimic his brain patterns."

He reportedly lit cigars with hundred-dollar bills, went on long drinking binges, attended cockfights, and spent much of his time romancing young women.

[1] Upon the death of her husband, Thaw's mother increased his monthly allowance to $8,000 (equivalent to $280,000 in 2024), enabling him to indulge his every whim and gratify his sadistic sexual impulses.

[10] With an enormous amount of cash at his disposal, and reserves of energy to match, Thaw repeatedly tore through Europe at a frenetic pace, frequenting bordellos where his pleasure involved restraining his partners with handcuffs and other devices of bondage.

[11] Exhibiting the classic characteristics of a skilled, manipulative sociopath, Thaw kept the more sinister side of his personality in check when it suited his purposes and advanced his agenda.

This was the first identifiable incident in a long line of perceived indignities heaped on Thaw, who maintained the unshakable certainty that his victimization was all orchestrated by White.

A disgruntled showgirl whom Thaw had publicly insulted reaped revenge when she sabotaged a lavish party he had planned by hijacking all the female invitees and transplanting the festivities to White's infamous Tower Room at Madison Square Garden.

Thaw's usual hectic mode of travel escalated into a non-stop itinerary, calculated to weaken Nesbit's emotional resilience, compound her physical frailty, and unnerve and exhaust her mother.

What transpired next, according to Nesbit, was a marathon session of inquisition, during which time Thaw managed to extract every detail of that night: how—when plied with champagne—Nesbit lay intoxicated and unconscious, and White raped her.

[23] Envisioning a life of travel and entertainment, Nesbit was rudely awakened to a reality markedly different; a household ruled over by the sanctimonious propriety of "Mother Thaw".

It was at this time that Thaw instituted a zealous campaign to expose White, corresponding with the reformer Anthony Comstock, an infamous crusader for moral probity and the expulsion of vice.

[26] Thaw had purchased tickets for himself, his wife and two of his male friends for the show Mam'zelle Champagne, playing on the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden.

Despite suffocating heat, which did not abate as night fell, Thaw inappropriately wore over his tuxedo a long black overcoat, which he refused to take off throughout the evening.

During the finale, "I Could Love a Million Girls", Thaw produced a pistol and, standing some two feet from his target, fired three shots at White, killing him instantly.

[2][29] Thaw remained standing over White's body, displaying the gun aloft in the air, resoundingly proclaiming, according to witness reports, "I did it because he ruined my wife!

A newspaper photo shows Thaw in The Tombs prison seated at a formal table setting, dining on a meal catered for him by Delmonico's restaurant.

[31] In his jail cell, it was reported that Thaw heard the heavenly voices of young girls calling to him, which he interpreted as a sign of divine approval.

[33] The hard-boiled news reporters were bolstered by a contingent of counterparts, christened "Sob Sisters", whose stock-in-trade was the human interest piece, heavy on sentimental tropes and melodrama, crafted to pull on the emotions and punch them up to fever pitch.

The rampant interest in the White murder and its key players were used by both the defense and prosecution to feed malleable reporters any "scoops" that would give their respective sides an advantage in the public forum.

The district attorney's office took on the services of a Pittsburgh public relations firm, McChesney and Carson, backing a print smear campaign aimed at discrediting Thaw and Nesbit.

At the outset, the formidable District Attorney, William Travers Jerome, preferred not to take the case to trial by having Thaw declared legally insane.

The approach would save time and money, and of equal if not greater consideration, it would avoid the unfavorable publicity that would no doubt be generated from disclosures made during testimony on the witness stand—revelations that threatened to discredit many of high social standing.

Thaw's first defense attorney, Lewis Delafield, concurred with the prosecutorial position, seeing that an insanity plea was the only way to avoid a death sentence for their client.

Newspaper reports speculated on an item brought into evidence by Merrill, a "jeweled whip" which graphically suggested the scenarios played out in Thaw's rooms.

Madison House in Gorham, New Hampshire, for the summer and kept under the watch of Sheriff Holman Drew, but in December 1914 he was extradited to New York and was able to secure a trial to establish whether he should still be considered insane.

"[54] After Thaw's escape from Matteawan, Nesbit had expressed her own feelings about her husband's most recent imbroglio: "He hid behind my skirts through two trials and I won't stand for it again.

Thaw had enticed Gump to come to New York under the pretense of underwriting the teenager's enrollment at Carnegie Institute, and reserved rooms for him at the Hotel McAlpin.