11
" The same photograph of Bob, with a trim little moustache airbrushed onto his face, was used to draw a parallel between the Mad Sculptor and one of the country’s most notorious criminals. Juxtaposing this doctored photo with a strikingly similar portrait of America’s former Public Enemy No. 1, the Daily News ran a piece describing Irwin as the “crime-twin of John Dillinger”—“a Dillinger of Sex.” This time, the paper’s go-to expert was Dr. William Moulton Marston, a noted psychologist who, a few years later, would enter into pop culture lore as the creator of the comic book character Wonder Woman. According to Dr. Marston, the two killers were “similar in almost every external respect. Both have the same bulging foreheads, distended nostrils, heavy-lobed ears, and thinning hair.” His “microscopic study” of the two faces showed conclusively that “Irwin’s murders for sex” were “the twin of Dillinger’s murders for money.”6 "
― Harold Schechter , The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation
14
" 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
15
" 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
16
" 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
19
" 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
