The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars (49 page)

I am especially grateful to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; the generous support of a Guggenheim Fellowship was vital in the creation of this book.

My many thanks as well to my agent, Michelle Tessler, and my editor, John Glusman; their wise guidance in the book’s early stages led to my pursuing New York’s newspaper wars as a key part of this story.

Finally, this book is deeply indebted to many librarians. My particular thanks go to the staffs of the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, Portland State University, and the Multnomah County Library. The soul of this book is probably in room 100 of the NYPL, where I found many of the thousands of newspaper articles I used from the case, and where many more stories slumber and wait to be found. When I first stopped by to see the famed NYPL “Librarian to the Stars,” David Smith, he had a surprise for me: “You just got me in time,” he said. “I’m retiring in a couple of days.” And so he was. I suppose I was his last new author and new book in a four-decade career of assisting everyone from Jimmy Breslin to Colson Whitehead. I hope that this book does his old library proud, and that he gets some good beach weather for reading it.

col2.1
Is Any One You Know Missing?:
NYJ
, June 29, 1897. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

p1.1
: Body diagram:
NYJ
, June 28, 1897. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

p2.1
: Martin Thorn and Anna Held:
NYW
, November 12, 1897. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

p3.1
: “Mrs. Nack, Murderess!”:
NYEJ
, June 30, 1897. Reproduced by permission of the New York Public Library.

15.1
: Mrs. Nack’s letter:
NYJA
, October 6, 1897. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

15.2
: Thorn’s letter:
NYJA
, October 7, 1897. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

p4.1
: “Thorn Denies That He Shot Guldensuppe”:
NYJ
, November 30, 1897. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

p5.1
: “Interior View of the Woodside Cottage”:
NYEJ
, November 30, 1897. Reproduced by permission of the New York Public Library.

bm1.1
: “Mrs. Nack Tells Her Own Story of the Amazing Guldensuppe Tragedy”:
NYEJ
, July 20, 1907. Reproduced by permission of the New York Public Library.

Paul Collins
is an assistant professor of English at Portland State University and the author of six previous books. His work has also appeared in the
New York Times, New Scientist
, and
Slate
. He edits the Collins Library imprint of McSweeney’s Books and appears regularly on NPR’s
Weekend Edition
as the show’s resident literary detective.