The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation Author: Harold Schechter | Language: English | ISBN:
B00E3E4XMU | Format: PDF
The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation Description
Beekman Place, once one of the most exclusive addresses in Manhattan, had a curious way of making it into the tabloids in the 1930s: “SKYSCRAPER SLAYER,” “BEAUTY SLAIN IN BATHTUB” read the headlines. On Easter Sunday in 1937, the discovery of a grisly triple homicide at Beekman Place would rock the neighborhood yet again—and enthrall the nation. The young man who committed the murders would come to be known in the annals of American crime as the Mad Sculptor.
Caught up in the Easter Sunday slayings was a bizarre and sensationalistic cast of characters, seemingly cooked up in a tabloid editor’s overheated imagination. The charismatic perpetrator, Robert Irwin, was a brilliant young sculptor who had studied with some of the masters of the era. But with his genius also came a deeply disturbed psyche; Irwin was obsessed with sexual self-mutilation and was frequently overcome by outbursts of violent rage.
Irwin’s primary victim, Veronica Gedeon, was a figure from the world of pulp fantasy—a stunning photographer’s model whose scandalous seminude pinups would titillate the public for weeks after her death. Irwin’s defense attorney, Samuel Leibowitz, was a courtroom celebrity with an unmatched record of acquittals and clients ranging from Al Capone to the Scottsboro Boys. And Dr. Fredric Wertham, psychiatrist and forensic scientist, befriended Irwin years before the murders and had predicted them in a public lecture months before the crime.
Based on extensive research and archival records, The Mad Sculptor recounts the chilling story of the Easter Sunday murders—a case that sparked a nationwide manhunt and endures as one of the most engrossing American crime dramas of the twentieth century. Harold Schechter’s masterful prose evokes the faded glory of post-Depression New York and the singular madness of a brilliant mind turned against itself. It will keep you riveted until the very last page.
- File Size: 20429 KB
- Print Length: 368 pages
- Publisher: Amazon Publishing (February 18, 2014)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00E3E4XMU
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,240 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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On Easter Sunday in 1937, police were called to the scene of a triple homicide at an apartment in a fashionable Manhattan neighborhood. The victims were Veronica "Ronnie" Gedeon, a pretty young model who'd earned her living posing, often in dishabille or even nude, for the popular detective magazines of the day; Mary Gedeon, Veronica's mother, who was separated from her husband; and their boarder, an Englishman by the name of Frank Byrnes. The two women had been strangled to death, their lodger beaten and stabbed in the back of the head, and while the police questioned an array of possible perps, they really had no solid suspects. Until, that is, a close examination of Veronica's diary pointed them to Robert Irwin, a handsome young sculptor who had once dated Veronica's sister, Ethel. Irwin, an talented young artist who had trained under two of America's most prominent and successful commercial sculptors, was known for his off-the-wall ideas about art, metaphysics and religion, and life in general. Not only that, he was known to have a violent and uncontrollable temper, and there was reason to believe that he held a grudge against the family for encouraging Ethel to break off her relationship with him. How police tie Irwin to the murders and the efforts to bring him to justice form the focus of Harold Schechter's THE MAD SCULPTOR: THE MANIAC, THE MODEL, AND THE MURDER THAT SHOOK THE NATION, a true-crime book that far outranks most others of the genre in terms of both quality and readability.
One thing that makes THE MAD SCULPTOR the cream of the true-crime crop is that author Schechter, a professor of American literature and culture at Queens College in New York, did extensive scholarly research to ensure that the facts of the case are accurate.
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