“Almost within earshot of his wife he asked Smith—this knight of old asked:
“Would you like to meet a nice, buxom brunette? Are you much married? I am going abroad and I can put you next.
“Every element, gentlemen, in this case is simply an ordinary, mere, vulgar, every-day, Tenderloin, low, sordid murder.
“If this rich young man instead of being Harry Thaw, the son of a millionaire of Pittsburg, had been a poor Italian and his victim, instead of a man of artistic temperament, a maker of plaster casts, and a girl whom they quarreled about was a chorus girl in the London Theater, how long would brainstorms and paranoia have prevailed?
“Simply a mere, ordinary Tenderloin homicide. Because she has a pretty face and a child-like manner, she is coming here to tell a tissue of lies to prevent you gentlemen from putting a deliberate, cold-blooded murderer under ground.
“Will you gentlemen acquit a cold-blooded, cowardly, deliberate murderer on the ground of ‘dementia Americana’?
“Thaw himself, the girl swore, accused her of having resumed relations with White after she returned from Paris. Where does this man’s conduct show aught that he did not know the quality and nature of his act? We have the letters A to I. The girl says that at times in 1903 Thaw was drinking heavily.”
Jerome argued that neither Thaw’s letters nor his will indicated insanity, but rather showed that he possessed a knowledge of legal limitations. His letters he described as “erratic and vulgar, the product of a rich illiterate.” Jerome continued:
“He knew enough to automobile through Europe with this girl. He knew enough to warn Longfellow to be on the lookout for legal actions, and yet he did not know that when he shot White he was doing wrong. Even the codicil drawn in his own language runs in the legal way.
“Everything shows a sane mind. There is not a thing to indicate a crazy mind. There is evidence here that he consulted Roger O’Mara before he carried a revolver. He was afraid of the Monk Eastman gang.