Robert George Irwin (August 5, 1907 – 1975) was an American artist, sculptor, and recurring mental hospital patient who pleaded guilty to killing three people on Easter weekend in 1937 in the Beekman Hill area of New York City's Turtle Bay neighborhood.
One of his victims, Veronica "Ronnie" Gedeon, was a model who often appeared in seductive pulp magazine pictures. The crime, its investigation, Irwin's arrest, and the resulting court proceedings were heavily media publicized, often with eye-catching photos of Gedeon and headlines describing Irwin as the "mad sculptor.""'Mad Sculptor' Awaits Trial for his Triple Murder Easter Morn," Cumberland (MD) Times, October 16, 1938 at p. 3. Veronica Gedeon left behind a portfolio of sexy photos that in retrospect, had no relevance to the crime, its cause, or Irwin's responsibility for it. However, that coincidence kept the story on front pages of newspapers around the country for months, and that publicity ultimately helped to bring Irwin into custody.
Irwin's prosecution, which ended through a plea bargain that kept him incarcerated for life, renewed debate about the use and scope of New York State's version of the insanity defense.Curtis Gathje, "A Model Crime: A True Fiction" (Donald I. Fine: 1995) ."Irwin May Be Termed 'Insanity Faker' by Lunacy Commission," Lowell Sun, March 24, 1938 at p. 1.Editorial, "Upsetting an Insanity Plea," Syracuse Herald, March 26, 1938 at p. 2. Once sentenced, Irwin was deemed "definitely insane" by state psychiatrists."Doctors Declare Irwin 'Definitely Insane,'" The Daily Messenger, Canandaigua (NY), December 10, 1938 at p. 1. He spent the rest of his life in secure mental institutions.
Harold Schechter's 2014 book The Mad Sculptor tells Irwin's life story.
Personal background The son of evangelist parents, Irwin was reportedly born in a tent on an old-fashioned camp meeting ground in Portland, Oregon."Triple Slaying at Beekman Hill Reported Solved," Joplin (MO) Globe, April 6, 1937 at p. 1. However, he was actually born in the Arroyo Seco Park near Pasadena, California on August 5, 1907. He was named for the nearby river (as was the park) and one of his father's favorite theologians, François Fénelon. Hence, he entered life as Fenelon Arroyo Seco Irwin. He later changed his name, much to the horror of his devout mother, to honor his philosophical idol the agnostic Robert G. Ingersoll.Harold Schechter. The Mad Sculptor. Boston and New York: New Harvest, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014, pp. 61, 80. His father was Reverend Benjamin Hardin Irwin, a nationally known figure in the Holiness movement who had founded a racially-integrated radical Holiness denomination in 1898 at a national convention in legally-segregated Anderson, South Carolina. He denounced as sinful everything from Coca-Cola to wearing ties. (The body that Irwin founded is now known as the International Pentecostal Holiness Church.) In 1900, a sexual scandal ended his career with the Fire-Baptized Holiness Church and the senior Irwin went solo. In Canada, sometime during 1902, he married Robert's mother, Mary Lee Jordan of Texas, without divorcing his first wife.Schechter pp. 53, 56-60. His father deserted the family before Robert was three years old, which left them impoverished.Manford Lepofsky, alias Manfred Bennington Lee, alias Ellery Queen, "The Case of the Mad Sculptor," The American Weekly, March 10, 1957 at p. 11. When a family court judge noted that Robert could learn a trade at a state reformatory, he volunteered and spent 15 months there, where he first learned to sculpt. He soon idolized Lorado Taft, one of the leading American sculptors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and later moved in with Taft's family. Then, working for a waxworks studio in Los Angeles,Jennifer Jane Marshall, "Clean Cuts: Procter & Gamble's Depression-era Soap Carving Contests," Winterthur Portfolio, Spring 2008. he carved commercial busts of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and other public figures.
Descent into madness Irwin was considered "brilliant if erratic and at times violent.""Triple Slayer Works Out Fantastic Scheme for Cheating Electric Chair," Joplin (MO) Globe, October 16, 1938 at p. 2. He tried to emasculate himself, using a razor."Press: Murder for Easter," Time Magazine, April 12, 1937. He then consented to be committed to a state mental hospital, where he initially stayed for a year. After his discharge, he moved into a New York City rooming house owned by Mary Gedeon. There, Irwin had become infatuated with her daughter Ethel, but his love for her was not returned. He received further treatment for mental illness for two more years at Rockland State Hospital in Orangeburg, New York, and was released in the summer of 1936."Crime: Easter Killer," Time Magazine, July 5, 1937. By then, Ethel Gedeon had married Joseph Kudner. Irwin then made a sculpture of Ethel with a cobra coiled around her neck.
He enrolled as a student at the Theological School of St. Lawrence University at Canton, New York. However, he was expelled on March 18, 1937, ten days before Easter, for "instability." He then rented (for a single day) a $2.50 ($44.11 in 2018)-a-week room in a house on 52nd Street in New York City, several blocks from Mary Gedeon's rooming house at 316 E. 50th Street. After considering and rejecting the idea of drowning himself in the East River, he instead walked to the Gedeon rooming house.
Easter Weekend murders On March 28, 1937 (Easter Sunday), relatives arriving at the Gedeons' flat for dinner discovered the partially clothed bodies of Mary Gedeon and her younger daughter Veronica, in Veronica's bedroom."Girl, Mother, Roomer Slain in Apartment," Portsmouth (OH) Times, March 29, 1937 at p. 1. Mrs. Gedeon and Veronica had been strangled, and Mrs. Gedeon had been stabbed as well. In a nearby room was the body of Frank Byrnes, a deaf English waiter, who had been stabbed many times.
The ensuing police investigation revealed that shortly after 2 a.m., Charles Robinson, an upstairs neighbor, had noticed that the door to the Gedeons' flat had been partially open and so closed it. Around 3 a.m., Veronica returned intoxicated from a date."Life on the American Newsfront: The Case of the Murdered Model," Life Magazine, April 12, 1937 at p. 31. Detectives concluded the assailant had entered the apartment before Veronica arrived and then had waited for her. They also concluded Byrnes had likely been killed while he slept.
Police suspicion focused initially on a driver and then turned to Mary Gedeon's ex-husband, Joseph Gedeon. By April 5, however, their attention had shifted toward Irwin,"Sculptor Hunted as Triple Slayer; Linked to Weapon," New York Times, April 6, 1937. in part because a sculpture carefully carved in ordinary bath soap was discovered at the crime scene. A nationwide manhunt for Irwin followed."N.Y. Police in Feverish Hunt for Gedeon Slayer," Lowell Sun, April 6, 1937 at p. 1. Ethel Gedeon and Irwin's psychiatrist expressed doubt that Irwin was capable of committing the murders, but State Inspector John Lyons said, "It makes no difference whether he committed three hundred murders, so far as the State is concerned. His psychopathic background shows he is insane."Quentin Reynolds, "Courtroom: The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz," 119-23 (Macmillan: 1999), .
Hunt for Irwin and surrender In late June 1937, a pantry maid in Cleveland's Statler Hotel saw a picture of Irwin in a pulp magazine and noticed a resemblance to a bar boy, who been working at the hotel for less than two months, under the name of Bob Murray. He cleaned out his locker and disappeared soon after she asked him about his last name and whether he knew about Robert Irwin."Fugitive Robert Irwin Flees Ohio Hotel When Recognized As Suspect In Triple Murder," Charleston (WV) Daily Mail, June 26, 1937 at p. 1. Once again, the search for Irwin became the lead story on the front pages of daily newspapers nationwide."Cross Trail of Triple Slayer," Mason City Globe-Gazette, June 26, 1937 at p. 1.
The next day, the Chicago Tribune received a call from someone claiming to be Irwin and offering to surrender for a price, but the Tribune dismissed the call as a prank. The Chicago Herald-Examiner, however, received a similar call but took it seriously. It made an arrangement under which Irwin would be paid $5,000 for an exclusive story and then surrender. After Irwin came to the newspaper's offices, its city editor, John W. Dienhart,"Economist Editor John Dienhart in Retirement," Suburbanite Economist, October 1, 1972 at p. S3. and the reporters G. Duncan Bauman"Duncan Bauman was one of the Reporters Guarding Killer Irwin," Humboldt Republican, July 2, 1937 at p. 1. and Austin O'Malley kept Irwin in a room in the Morrison Hotel in Chicago, worked on the terms of a confession to the Beekman Hill murders the newspaper would publish as an exclusive, and briefly shielded him from police. The Hearst companies then flew him to New York City, where he was turned over to police. At that point, the famous New York criminal defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz, who had represented the Scottsboro Boys in Alabama and was reported to have saved 123 murder defendants from the death penalty, appeared as Irwin's attorney."'They'll Undoubtedly Find Me Crazy,' Declares Irwin," Lowell Sun, June 28, 1937 at p. 1.
In his published confession, Irwin he stated he originally intended to kill Ethel Gedeon Kudner because "she was the dearest object in the world" to him, but he "accidentally" killed the others instead."Widely Sought Murder Suspect in Hands of Law," Ada (OK) Evening News, June 27, 1937 at p. 1. He explained he went to the Gedeons' flat, expecting to find Ethel. He first struck then strangled Mary Gedeon, after she had asked him to leave. After her daughter Veronica arrived, he terrorized her but strangled her only after she called him by name, which showed that she recognized him. Afraid to leave alive a possible witness but unaware of Byrnes's deafness, Irwin entered Byrnes' room and stabbed him to death in his bed. In his confession to New York detectives, Irwin compared himself to a radio by explaining: Bob Irwin is nothing. I am only a receiving set. An extremely imperfect one, which can indistinctly tune in the divine mind. You have heard a radio that isn't working well. You turn the dials and get a squawking. Only once in a while can we get the pure clear music. My whole idea in life was to perfect myself so 'the receiving set' could always get the divine music at its best."Irwin Likens Himself to Radio Set," Lowell Sun, June 28, 1937 at p. 3.
Prosecution, plea, and sentencing