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Charles
CHAPIN
A.K.A.: "The Rose Man of Sing Sing"
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics:
Parricide -
New York newspaper editor
Number of victims: 1
Date of murder:
September 16, 1918
Date of arrest:
Same day
Date of birth:
October 19, 1858
Victim profile:
Nellie Chapin (his wife)
Method of murder:
Shooting
Location: New York
City, New York, USA
Status:
Sentenced
to a 20-year-to-life term in 1919. Died in Sing Sing prison on
December 13, 1930
Charles Chapin (October 19, 1858 – December
13, 1930) was a New York newspaper editor. He was convicted of the
murder of his wife and sentenced to a 20-year-to-life term in Sing
Sing prison.
Chapin was born in upstate Watertown, New York and
began his career on a Kansas newspaper, aged 14, moving later to
Chicago to work for the Tribune, where he gained renown as a crime
reporter. There he excelled sufficiently to be hired, in 1898, by the
World, a New York daily, run by the Pulitzer family, which enjoyed one
of the largest circulations in the country.
Chapin became editor of the evening edition of the
World and was renowned as a hard taskmaster. He is said to have fired
a total of 108 journalists during his tenure - one of them for daring
to use the new-fangled word "questionnaire". Among his victims was his
own publisher's son.
Opinions of Chapin differed. To many newspapermen
he was "the greatest city editor who ever lived". Those who worked for
him, however, often hated him; when Irvin S. Cobb, a World reporter,
heard that his editor was sick, he is said to have looked up from his
work and remarked, "I hope it’s nothing trivial." According to Andy
Logan, a noted correspondent to The New Yorker, Chapin was "terrible
tempered" and in the opinion of many of his staff had "a legendary
imperviousness to human suffering, especially theirs."
One of Chapin's most celebrated coups was the
publication of a photograph captured by an Evening World photographer
showing the moment when New York mayor William Jay Gaynor was shot by
a would-be assassin. William Warnecke, the photographer, who had been
lining up a portrait of the mayor, snapped the shutter just as Gaynor
crumpled to the ground; Chapin's response, when the developed photo
arrived on his desk, was: "Blood all over him! And exclusive, too!"
Chapin's career in New York newspapers came to an
end in September 1918 when, dogged by illness and debt, and concerned
for his increasingly fragile wife of 38 years, he shot and killed his
spouse while she was sleeping. News of the shooting shocked many of
the newsman's colleagues. "They had known he would be involved in a
murder some day," Logan writes, "but had always assumed he would be
the victim."
Although he had apparently intended to commit
suicide himself following the murder, the famous editor was instead
arrested, convicted of the shooting, and sent to Sing Sing prison for
a term of 20 years to life. There he wrote a memoir and became
renowned for the rose garden he cultivated in the grounds, acquiring
the nickname of "The Rose Man."
Chapin edited the prison newspaper at Sing Sing for
a short time. He died there on December 13, 1930.
References
Logan, Andy (1970). Against the Evidence: The
Becker-Rosenthal Affair. New York: McCall Publishing Company. ISBN
0-8415-0025-8.
Morris, James McGrath (2003). The Rose Man of Sing
Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder and Redemption in the Age of Yellow
Journalism. New York: Fordham University Press. ISBN 0-8232-2267-5
Wikipedia.org
Justice Story: City editor Charles Chapin made
his own news by killing wife after falling into financial ruin
'World' newsroom boss unraveled after missing out
on $70 million inheritance
By David J. Krajicek / New York Daily News
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Charles Chapin loved a good crime story.
He began running to sirens as a teenage cub
reporter for the Daily Champion in Atchison, Kan. And he rode ambition
to big-league newspaper jobs in Chicago, St. Louis and, finally, at
the New York Evening World.
Chapin spent two decades, from 1898 to 1918, as
city editor of the World, helping to create the tint and tone of bawdy
Yellow Journalism.
He also served as the human template for his
editing position.
There are more exalted jobs in the news racket —
editors with clean hands and pressed shirts who take cover in corner
offices. But the city editor holds a special place, seated amid the
inky smudge and shrill bawls at the center of a newsroom, trying to
wrangle the cacophony into tune once a day, at deadline.
Chapin explained, “Gathering the news of a great
city is a carefully thought-out and systematized piece of human
machinery that operates under the personal supervision of the city
editor.”
He supervised with a cudgel.
He wasn’t a big man, but Chapin could intimidate
the burliest of news brutes by setting his jaw and using his eyes to
burn holes in the object of his ire.
Chapin bragged that he fired 108 newsmen in his
career — one for using the new-fangled word “questionnaire” in a story
and another for failing to show a telltale limp after he missed work
due to a supposed foot injury.
He was both reviled and worshiped. One reporter
called him a “gnarled genius.” Another said he was “the most heartless
and hardest-boiled city editor who ever lived.”
Exclusives were the only means of staying on
Chapin’s slim sunny side. He loved scoops.
When a World photographer captured the attempted
murder of New York Mayor William Gaynor, Chapin crowed, “Blood all
over him! And exclusive, too!”
Chapin often read over the shoulders of his
legendary rewritemen, deadline Shakespeares known as the “Big Four” —
Lindsay Denison, Irvin Cobb, Martin Green and Barton Currie.
They had their moments with the volcanic boss, too.
When the acerbic Cobb heard that Chapin was ailing
one day, he quipped, “I hope it’s nothing trivial.”
Chapin spent long days at the World Building on
Park Row, but he was among the city’s most well-compensated newsmen,
earning $150 a week at a time most didn’t make that in a month.
He showed off his success with a yacht and a
touring automobile.
“He dearly loved money, not for the sake of
hoarding it, but for what it could bring him in luxury and display,”
said rewriteman Cobb.
Chapin and his wife, Nellie, lived in a suite at
the Plaza Hotel, well beyond his means. He lived like a millionaire
because he expected to inherit a fortune from his great-uncle, Russell
Sage, a filthy-rich financier.
But when Sage died in 1906, he left just $50,000 of
his $70 million estate to Chapin, who had been borrowing for years
against his expected inheritance.
The will brought financial ruin to Chapin, but he
was too proud to admit that he was broke, especially to his wife.
The childless Chapins had enjoyed a long marriage.
They wed at age 21, months after they met in Chicago. Nellie quit an
acting career to follow her husband from one newspaper gig to the
next.
“She was the sweetest, the truest, the most lovable
woman I have ever known — full of fun and joy of living,” Chapin said
of his wife. “All who knew her loved her.”
Pinching pennies, Chapin sold his yacht, stiffed
the Plaza for $2,000 and moved Nellie to the déclassé Cumberland
Hotel, at 54th and Broadway. He lost the last of his equity when the
commodities market tanked during World War I.
By 1918, he was flat broke.
“Worse than that, I was ruined and dishonored,”
Chapin wrote. “Suicide, the last resort of a moral coward, I decided,
was preferable to never-ending disgrace, so I went about preparing for
it.”
He borrowed a revolver from a former police
commissioner and shot his wife as she slept at the Cumberland on Sept.
16, 1918. He left two self-serving suicide notes.
“I have tried to think out what is best to do,” he
wrote, “and cannot bear the thought of leaving my wife to face the
world alone, so I have resolved to take her with me.”
He rode the subway to Brooklyn, planning to shoot
himself there. But he got cold feet and surrendered to cops.
Chapin claimed insanity, and a number of reporters
heartily agreed that their merciless city editor may have been crazy
all along.
But he was cleared for trial by a lunacy commission
and was allowed to plead guilty to second-degree murder, which spared
his life. An editor to the end, he chided reporters for errors in
their stories about him.
Chapin died of pneumonia at Sing Sing in 1930,
after reclaiming his life story with a self-admiring autobiography.
Warden Lewis Lawes allowed Chapin to create a
flower garden in a desolate prison yard. Someone said it inspired the
inmates’ troubled souls.
But dirt-digging was a mere hobby for Chapin. His
religion was news.
“I began life and I ended life,” he wrote, “as a
newspaper man.”
Charles Chapin at the race track with his wife
Nellie.
