The accounts of Thaw's sadistic attacks on his wife and other young women are taken almost verbatim from documentary sources. For the record, Mrs Merrill's astonishing testimony was given not at Thaw's murder trial in 1907, but at one of Thaw's subsequent sanity hearings. Moreover, it is only an urban legend (although reported as fact countless times) that Thaw was tried at the Jefferson Market courthouse; he was arraigned there, but both his murder trials took place in the criminal courts building on Centre
Street, next to the Tombs. There is no evidence that Thaw ever visited Mrs Merrill's establishment during the period of his confinement in the Matteawan asylum. Given the ease with which he escaped, however, such an absence without leave would not have been inconceivable.
The body of Miss Elsie Sigel, granddaughter of General Franz Sigel, was indeed discovered in the summer of 1909 in a trunk in an Eighth Avenue apartment belonging to one Leon Ling. The character called Chong Sing in my book is a combination of the real-life Chong Sing and another individual also involved in the case. Miss Sigel's body, however, was found about two and a half months before Freud arrived in New York, and, needless to say, the discovery was not made by Detective Jimmy Littlemore, who is an entirely imaginary character.
Equally imaginary is Dr Stratham Younger, as is Younger s love affair with Nora.