Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will bring a day of showers and a high of forty-five.
On 4.17.1936, a single horsehair uncovers a murderer:
After a week of tracking down every conceivable lead, police finally find the evidence they need in order to break the case of Nancy Titterton’s rape-murder in New York City. Titterton, a novelist and the wife of NBC executive Lewis Titterton, was raped and strangled in her upscale home on Beekman Place on the morning of April 10, 1936. The only clues left behind were a foot-long piece of cord that had been used to tie Titterton’s hands and a single horsehair found on her bedspread.
These small traces of evidence proved to be enough to find the killer. The detective in charge of the investigation had ordered his team to trace the source of the cord. After a full week of combing every rope and twine manufacturer in the Northeast, the cord was finally found to have come from Hanover Cordage Company in York, Pennsylvania. Company records showed that some of the distinctive cord had been sold to Theodore Kruger’s upholstery shop in New York City.
Since the investigation of the horsehair had already led police to suspect John Fiorenza, an assistant at Kruger’s shop, this new evidence only solidified their suspicion. Fiorenza and Kruger were the first to discover Titterton’s body, when they arrived to return a repaired couch (which had been stuffed with horsehair that matched the one found at the crime scene) on the afternoon of April 10. However, they both denied entering the bedroom that day.
When investigators learned that Fiorenza had been at the Titterton house on April 9 and had been late for work the morning of the murder, they looked deeper into his background. Fiorenza had four prior arrests for theft and had been diagnosed as delusional by a prison psychiatrist. Detectives first gained Fiorenza’s trust by pretending to need his help in solving the crime and then sprang the cord evidence on him.
Caught by surprise, Fiorenza confessed to the brutal crime but claimed that he was temporarily insane. This defense didn’t hold up too well at trial, and Fiorenza was executed on January 22, 1937.
On 4.17.1897, a famous Madisonian playwright in born:
1897 – Thornton Wilder Born
On this date Thornton Wilder was born in Madison. A renowned author and playwright, he taught at the University of Chicago from 1930 to 1937. His plays Our Town (1938) and The Skin of our Teeth (1942) won Pulitzer Prizes and have been performed countless times by school and amateur theatrical companies in the decades since.You can read a 1928 article about his Wisconsin roots in our Wisconsin Local History & Biographies collection. [Source: Thornton Wilder Society]
Google-a-Day poses an entertainment question: “What actress, best known for her role on “Guiding Light,” has a sister-in-law that’s been nominated for an Academy Award seventeen times?”
To connect the Buddhist teaching of impermanence that Thornton Wilder used thematically in “Our Town”, Maeve Kinkead’s stint on “Guiding Light” came to an end, as most soap operas did, with cancellation.
Well, I didn’t know this answer, but I do know that it’s come in one of the most artfully-crafted comments I’ve read. Great stuff.