Author: admin

“Even the most baffled detective may take heart from Sherlock Holmes’s sage pronouncement in “The Adventure of the Red-Headed League” (1891): “As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be.” The 1937 triple homicide of Veronica Gedeon, an attractive model who posed for artists and crime magazines; her mother; and an English boarder at their Beekman Place apartment on Manhattan’s East Side luridly demonstrates Holmes’s wisdom. Despite, of necessity, taking the culprit’s identity for granted, Harold Schechter’s account of the crime, “The Mad Sculptor,” is as gripping as the cleverest Golden Age mystery…. Mr. Schechter’s rediscovery of this long-neglected tale merits gratitude.”

“This history revives a tabloid sensation of 1937, when a mother and daughter were found strangled in their Manhattan apartment. The fact that the daughter was a twenty-year-old nude model who left behind a “seemingly endless stream of boyfriends” made the case, as Schechter writes, a “perfect storm of prurience.” The killer turned out to be sculptor, taxidermist, and failed seminarian who had spent his adult life in and out of mental institutions. The book delves deeply into his biography–calling special attention to his odd ideas about visualization and time travel–but is most engaging when it stick to the particualrs, prurient or otherwise, of the crime and its investigations.”

“Schechter (American literature, City University New York) shares another rigorously researched true crime story in the latest in his series that delves into American serial killers (e.g., Fatal; Fiend; Bestial; et al.). Dusty court records and archived newspaper articles serve as the cornerstone for a disturbing retelling of three gruesome murders that occurred in Manhattan’s ritzy Beekman Place over Easter weekend in 1937 and the subsequent cross-country manhunt, arrest, and trial of Robert Irwin, a twisted artistic genius whose homicidal rampage was predicted years before by forensic scientist and psychiatrist Fredric Wertham. Front-page coverage of the deaths of “art beauty” ­Veronica Gedeon, her mother, and a boarder in their home by a “sex fiend killer” gripped the nation as Irwin evaded arrest until his surrender to journalists from the same newspaper made famous in the play The Front Page.

VERDICT Resurrecting a huge national tabloid sensation covered by the likes of Walter Winchell, this fascinating tale of a charismatic and savvy madman will thrill historical true crime fans”

“To become a true tabloid sensation,” Mr. Schechter writes, “a murder has to offer more than morbid titillation. It needs a pair of outsized characters — diabolical villain and defenseless, preferably female, victim — a dramatic story line, and the kind of lurid goings-on that speak to the secret dreams and dangerous desires of the public.”

“Examining the life and surroundings of Irwin, who perpetrated a triple homicide on Easter Sunday 1937, veteran true-crime writer Schechter (American Literature and Culture/Queens Coll.; Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of, 2012) also offers tales of other grisly murders, particularly the two murders that took place over an 18-month period in exclusive Manhattan’s Beekman Place. They are connected only by geography and the fact that the tabloids embellished the stories with any salacious material they could dig up or create. Schechter delivers a solid indictment of the journalism practices of the 1920s and ’30s. It was a time of trial by newspaper, with everyone, including Walter Winchell, having a go at the latest suspect.”

“In large part because it sold newspapers, exceptionally lurid reporting of murders often “shook the nation,” especially in post-Depression America. The tabloids sold well if they got the scoop, and if they invented much of it, few cared. So the case of the Mad Sculptor was one in a string of “read-all-about-it” crimes, this one made more newsworthy because the primary victim, Veronica Gedeon, had modeled for several true-crime pulps, so in addition to the details the newsmen and -women whipped up, they also published photos of her posing, cowering and scantily clad, “a half-naked beauty in mortal distress.” The murderer, Robert Irwin, was not only a burgeoning sculptor but also under the psychological wing of Fredric Wertham, most notorious today, perhaps, for his best-seller,Seduction of the Innocent (1954), which fingered comic books for making criminals of children. To top off the case, Irwin’s attorney was Samuel Leibowitz, who later won great renown for freeing the Scottsboro Boys. Schechter (Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of, 2012) adds another page-turner to his stable of atmospheric, highly readable true-crime works.”