The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation by Harold Schechter

Author:Harold Schechter
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: New Harvest
Published: 2014-02-18T00:00:00+00:00

Tabloid publishers weren’t the only ones to indulge in the crass exploitation of the Beekman Hill tragedy. On the same day that Patterson’s editorial appeared, city newspapers began running an advertisement by the Segal Lock and Hardware Company. Beneath the bold-type warning “IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU!,” the ad showed a picture of the lock maker’s patented “jimmy-proof” dead bolt and a newspaper clipping headlined “TRIPLE MURDER IN GEDEON FLAT.”

That the perpetrator of the Easter Sunday Massacre was no homicidal intruder but (as authorities had made clear from the start) an acquaintance of the Gedeons made no difference. Throughout the city—but particularly in Beekman Place and adjacent neighborhoods—locksmiths reported doing a “land-office business.” In a single day, Charles Negroponte, who ran a shop at 204 East 50th Street and whose “normal sales averaged six or so daily,” sold “seventy-five new locks.” His merchandise was moving even faster than it had a year earlier, after the neighborhood’s previous atrocity. “When Mrs. Titterton was killed, things got good,” said Negroponte. “We never expected to see days like that again.” Compared to the “swell business” he was doing now, however, Negroponte viewed the “post-Titterton rush as a mere flurry.”5

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