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Beekman Place, once one of the most exclusive addresses in Manhattan, possessed 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 breakthrough of the grisly triple homicide at Beekman Place would rock and roll the neighborhood just as before - and enthrall the nation. The son who devoted these murders would become known in the annals of American crime as the Mad Sculptor. Caught up in the Easter Sunday slayings was a bizarre and sensationalistic ensemble of characters, apparently cooked up in a tabloid editor's overheated creativity. The charismatic perpetrator, Robert Irwin, was an excellent young sculptor who possessed studied with some of the masters of the period. But along with his genius also emerged a deeply disturbed psyche; Irwin was enthusiastic about erotic self-mutilation and was frequently overcome by outbursts of violent trend. Irwin's primary sufferer, Veronica Gedeon, was a amount from the world of pulp dream - a sensational photographer's model whose scandalous seminude pinups would titillate the public for weeks after her death. Irwin's defense attorney at law, Samuel Leibowitz, was a courtroom movie star with an unmatched record of acquittals and clients ranging from Al Capone to the Scottsboro Guys. And Dr. Fredric Wertham, psychiatrist and forensic scientist, befriended Irwin years prior to the murders and possessed expected them in a general public lecture months prior to the crime. Predicated on considerable research and archival details, The Mad Sculptor recounts the chilling report of the Easter Sunday murders - an instance that sparked a countrywide manhunt and endures among the most engrossing American crime dramas of the 20th century. Harold Schechter's masterly prose evokes the faded glory of post-Depression NY and the singular madness of an excellent mind changed against itself. It'll keep you riveted before very end.
