Page:The Great Harry Thaw Case.djvu/268

 CHAPTER XXIII.

"Thou Shalt Not Kill"—Jerome.

PROSECUTOR IN TERRIFIC DENUNCIATION OF HARRY THAW AS A COLD-BLOODED MURDERER—ATTACKS CHARACTER OF EVELYN, THE "ANGEL CHILD WHO WAS ALWAYS READY TO GO TO THE HUMAN OGRE" WHOM THAW KILLED—SNEERS AT THE YOUNG WIFE—WARNS JURY AGAINST "DEMENTIA AMERICANA," PLEA—"NOTHING TO SHOW DEFENDANT WAS INSANE; EVERYTHING TO SHOW HE WAS SANE.

In his supreme effort to send Harry Thaw to the electric chair, District Attorney Jerome in his closing speech savagely lashed the defendant as a deliberate, cold-blooded murderer. He bitterly attacked the characters of Thaw and his wife, referring to Evelyn as "the angel child," who was "always ready to go to the human ogre who stripped her of her virtue," and declared her story of her ruin by White was absolutely false.

Mr. Jerome lost no opportunity to sneer at the little wife's tragic story and at the chivalry of her husband. and he paid his respects to Delmas' sensational "Dementia Americana," or unwritten law plea, by asking if it was the higher law under which a man may flaunt the woman through the capitals of Europe for two years as his mistress—and then kill.