“‘I am Harry Kendall Thaw of Pittsburg. I want to tell you of a man who has betrayed more young girls than any other man in New York. He is particularly given to pursuing the young girls of the stage. It is a debt which society owes to itself to halt him now, before he brings shame and sorrow to any more victims.’
“That in effect was his statement,” continued Mr. Comstock, “although of course I asked him a great deal more of the matter. He left after securing my promise to investigate. He agreed to pay the cost of looking into the case. He at once mailed me a check of sufficient size to defray the necessary expenses, and subsequently wrote me several times upon the subject of White, asking each time what progress we were making.
“Our investigation confirmed to a great degree what Thaw had told me. Our detectives were astounded at what they discovered. We worked hard and I learned a great deal, but of all cases these are the hardest to prove under the rules of evidence, and before risking an arrest I determined to catch White.
“I learned that his rooms in the tower were as Mrs. Evelyn Thaw had described them in the trial. Two of our detectives endeavored to hire rooms in the same tower in order to watch his goings and comings. The deal was almost completed when one of the detectives made a bungle. Something which he said or did gave the alarm to the janitor, and, although we were on the waiting list for a long time, and although several times apartments in the tower were vacant, we were never able to secure a suite or a single room.
“We were still vainly trying to arrange a trap for White from which there would be no escape when he dismantled his room in the tower.
“I learned positively of one case of White’s conduct to a girl only 15 years old almost identically as Mrs. Evelyn Thaw describes her own case, but the girl was in the chorus of a road company, and we could not reach her and make a witness of her. We got evidence of other things—things that convince me that what Harry Thaw’s wife now swears is true. I believe in her story and base that belief upon what I know of the man.
“The last time I saw Harry Thaw was only two or three weeks before he shot White. He appeared to be in a desperate state—like a man who is well-nigh frantic. He said to me wildly: ‘You must keep on, you must stop this man, he must be stopped now—at once.”
The defense, on the same day that it secured the Rev. Mr. Comstock’s statement, made another sensational discovery. It obtained proof that the day after the shooting of White, the police searched the studio of White and discovered evidence that showed that Evelyn Nesbit was not the only young girl who had been lured into the Madison Square Garden mirrored-room within a few months.
In the room “with mirrors to left and to right, in the ceiling and on the floor,” in securely locked drawers built into the walls, the police found this evidence. That such a den of vice could have existed in the very heart of the great metropolis seems well nigh incredible. That such practices could have been known by men of social standing, and without protest, is past belief.
Speaking after this discovery, Attorney Delmas was confident of the acquittal of Thaw.