The Flaming Corsage

The Love Nest, October 17, 1908

WHEN THE HUSBAND made his surprise entrance into the Manhattan hotel suite, his wife was leaning against a table, clad in a floor-length, forest-green velvet cloak, and wearing a small eye mask of the same color, her black hair loose to below her shoulders.

The second woman, her light-brown hair upswept into a fuss of soft curls that bespoke an energetic nature, and wearing a floor-length, peach-colored evening gown embroidered with glass pearls, was in conversation with the man who had rented this suite months earlier, and who at this moment was wearing a frock coat, evening trousers, wing collar, gray ascot and pearl stickpin, the two dressed as if for a social evening. They were standing near the window that gave a view at dusk of the falling leaves and barren branches of the elms and maples of lower Fifth Avenue.

The husband’s entrance to the suite was made with a key. How he came into possession of the key has not been discovered. The husband spoke first to his wife, saying, according to one witness, “You Babylonian whore, everything is undone”; or, according to the other witness, “Babylon, regina peccatorum, you are gone.” Turning then to both the man in the wing collar and the second woman, the husband spoke of “traitors” and “vixen,” his exact phrase unclear to both witnesses. The husband then opened his coat, drew a.45-caliber Colt revolver from his waistband, parted his wife’s cloak with its barrel, placed the barrel against her left breast, and shot her precisely through the heart. The position in which she fell onto the carpet revealed that she wore nothing beneath the cloak.

The husband turned to the man by the window and fired two shots at him, hitting him with one, the force of which propelled him backward into the windowpane, which shattered. The second woman screamed, ran into the bedroom, and locked its door. The wounded man watched the husband staring at his pistol and heard him mumble, “Confido et conquiesco,” which translates from the Latin as: I trust and am at peace. After saying this, the husband put the revolver barrel under his chin, pulled the trigger, and fell dead beside his exposed wife.