The Mad Sculptor Quotes

“disobedience, refusal to work, refusal to answer when spoken to, and a determination not to succeed.”
― Harold Schechter, The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation

“Nelles explained that its inmates “could be divided into three groups”: “those who are feeble-minded,” those “of sound mind whose delinquency is associated with some form of misunderstanding or neglect,” and “those who wrong-doing has become habitual and who are intentionally, deliberately, and willfully guilty of misconduct.”
― Harold Schechter, The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation

“It’s cold here; I have a sparrow in a box with his foot frozen off; I’m afraid I’m going to have to kill him as I cannot keep him in that box & he can’t possibly live if I turn him loose. This is a tough world for lots of people, including sparrows.10”
― Harold Schechter, The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation

“The Sex Criminal by Dr. Bertram Pollens, senior psychologist of the New York City penitentiary on Rikers Island and head of its clinic for sex offenders.3”
― Harold Schechter, The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation

“When Halliburton expressed curiosity about this “inconceivable power,” Bob took him into his room, showed him his “immense file of pictures,” and gave him a lecture on visualization. Far from being impressed, Halliburton became convinced that “Irwin had no pre-imagination, none whatsoever. That was his whole problem. He could imitate things. He couldn’t create things.”
― Harold Schechter, The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation

“the Weeping Willow love slayer,”
― Harold Schechter, The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation

“Why do so many—not all, but many—run to see a crashed plane, or a train, or two autos with numerous dead about? Why? What is it? Weariness of humdrum and commonplace? Love of change? Horror of the same thing happening to themselves? Or is it something evil in them? In us? Do we like to see other people suffer when we ourselves are safe and don’t suffer? Are we really just evil or a mixture of good and evil, whether we want to be or not?”
― Harold Schechter, The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation

“Well, I think there is always a conflict between the sexes. Women want to dominate men, but men shouldn’t let them do that.”
― Harold Schechter, The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation

“On Sunday, April 4, exactly one week after the Easter morning slaughter, Robert Irwin boards a train to Philadelphia.”
― Harold Schechter, The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation

“The blue-ribbon panel of 150 potential jurors selected for the Irwin trial, however, consisted entirely of men. When Leibowitz protested, he was informed by Frederick H. Cahoon, Acting Commissioner of Jurors, that, while women now had the option to serve on juries, they were “barred from membership on special panels of talesmen for murder trials.” Leibowitz immediately declared that “the procedure was not legal” and that “if Irwin were found guilty of first-degree murder, he would make the exclusion of women talesmen the main contention for a reversal.”15”
― Harold Schechter, The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation

“Owing, among other factors, to the exceedingly slow working of the lunacy commission, Bob’s trial was postponed until the fall of 1938. By then the city had a new district attorney: Thomas E. Dewey, the fearless young “gangbuster” whose relentless crusade against racketeers like Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano would propel him to the governor’s mansion in Albany and two runs for the White House as the Republican presidential candidate in 1944 and 1948.”
― Harold Schechter, The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation

“Their extended examinations of the prisoner led Hinsie and Glueck to the same conclusion. Irwin’s “fantastic delusional system” conformed completely to a personality pattern encountered “in patients whose diagnosis is unqualifiedly that of the schizophrenia-hebephrenia form. The murders were committed with the delusion that the accomplishment of this act would bring to the patient control of the universe which he had planned for so many years. Under the stress of these delusions and hallucinations, normal intellectual processes played no essential role. Therefore, Irwin at the time of the murders could not know the nature and quality of his act.” As the two eminent psychiatrists were now prepared to attest on the witness stand, Robert Irwin was “both medically and legally insane.”6”
― Harold Schechter, The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation

“In spite of the well-documented deficiencies and abuses associated with the system, lunacy examinations continued to be ordered at a profligate rate. Between 1930 and 1938, one Brooklyn judge alone appointed 1,212 lunacy commissions, doling out the lucrative positions to relatives, friends, and political cronies. Increasingly viewed as nothing more than a flagrant “patronage racket,” the system was finally ended by the New York State Legislature in 1939. At the time of its abolition, the case of Robert Irwin, still fresh in the minds of lawmakers, was cited as a glaring example of everything wrong with lunacy commissions.12”
― Harold Schechter, The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation

“Beginning in the late 1800s, New York Criminal Court judges could, at their discretion, appoint a lunacy commission to evaluate the sanity of a defendant charged with homicide. Each commission consisted of three “disinterested men”: an attorney, a physician, and a layman, almost always a businessman. After conducting a lengthy investigation, the members would offer an opinion as to whether the defendant was mentally fit to stand trial. In later years, the commissioners were also expected to assess the defendant’s state of mind while committing the crime. The role of the commission was strictly advisory—the court was at liberty to approve or dismiss its findings.10”
― Harold Schechter, The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation

“One of his first steps was to invite Fredric Wertham to his office for an interview that lasted from 5:00 p.m. until midnight. It wasn’t long before Leibowitz—imagining himself as a jury member listening to “the erudite doctor”—concluded that twelve ordinary men would be utterly “bewildered by the technical terminology of the psychiatrist” and view the concept of “catathymic crisis” as “nothing but psychiatric double talk.” Indeed, just a few years earlier, Wertham’s testimony as an expert witness had failed to save the life of Albert Fish, a man so extravagantly deranged that even some jurors who voted for his conviction believed he was insane. By the time their lengthy conference was over, Leibowitz, despite his high regard for “the sincere and capable doctor,” had eliminated him as a possible defense witness.2”
― Harold Schechter, The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation

“The solution presented itself in a flash of inspiration. He would sacrifice Ethel. The internal pressure generated by her murder would be so intense that he “would be liberated from all the bonds of mortality and would arrive at the stage of Redeemer.”15”
― Harold Schechter, The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation

“Less than two weeks after his departure from Canton, Bob Irwin would go from utter obscurity to nationwide notoriety. Izzy Demsky would always remember that tumultuous time in the life of the normally sleepy little college town. Twenty years later—long after he had changed his name to Kirk Douglas and achieved his own, far greater renown as one of Hollywood’s biggest stars—he would conjure up memories of his old college friend while making Lust for Life, the biopic of Vincent van Gogh that earned Douglas one of his three Best Actor Oscar nominations. “I felt sorry for him, a talented artist at the mercy of incomprehensible forces,” Douglas would write. “When I thought of Van Gogh, I thought of Bob Irwin.”7”
― Harold Schechter, The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation

“A handsome, cosmopolitan forty-three-year-old, Gebhardt had been a decorated World War I flying ace, serving in the squadron of Manfred von Richthofen, the legendary “Red Baron.” Following the war, he had earned his doctorate degree in political economy from Frankfurt University with a dissertation on “The International Trade in Machinery.” After a brief teaching stint, he had gone into business, earning a fortune in the automobile and locomotive industries before establishing a highly successful import-export firm that specialized in “exchanging German raw material for American commodities.” Charming, cultured, fluent in several languages, he also harbored political ambitions and had hopes of being named German ambassador to the United States—a fair expectation, given his close friendship with high Nazi officials, particularly Hermann Göring, a fellow Richthofen pilot during the Great War.9”
― Harold Schechter, The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation