Chester Gillette
The Gillette Skirt Company on Miller Street in Cortland where
Grace Brown and Chester
Gillette first met.
Chester’s uncle owned
the factory. Today the building is home
to Wernick L. and Sons
Supply Co. Inc.
Arrowhead Lodge on Fourth Lake in Inlet, New York. This is where
Chester Gillette
checked in after he walked from the drowning site
on Big Moose Lake.
This is a photo from an old newspaper from 1906 depicting the
trial of Chester Gillette.
The caption reads
"Gillette's trial is of
absorbing interest to women." This fact was
true because many women
went
to the trial, partly because of the fact that
some of them were
attracted to Chester.
The New York Times on Jan. 27, 2008, reported on the publication
of The Prison Diary and
Letters of Chester
Gillette, by
Hamilton's Richard W. Couper Press.
The book reveals the private
thoughts of Chester Gillette,
convicted murderer of his
pregnant
lover Grace Brown in the Adirondacks in 1906. The diary was written
while he awaited his execution at Auburn State Prison in 1907-1908.
The diary written by Chester Gillette is
displayed at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y.
Monday, Jan. 21,
2008.
Gillette killed his pregnant lover Grace Brown on an
Adirondack lake in July 1906, setting
in motion events that would
lead to his execution in the electric chair two years
later _ and
unwittingly bring the couple immortality.
These file photographs, originally supplied by the Herkimer
County Historical Society, show
Chester Gillette,
left, and Grace
Brown from Gilette's 1906 murder trial.
Gillette was convicted and
put to death for the
murder of Brown, his pregnant lover, on
July
11, 1906, in New York's Adirondack Mountains. The case inspired the
novel, "An
American Tragedy," by Theodore Dreiser, a film, an opera,
TV programs,
songs and true crime books.
The victim
Grace (top center) attended school in a one-room schoolhouse about
half a mile from her house.
This is a class photo taken around
1902 when she was 16.
This is the famous portrait of Grace Brown, the woman whose murder
in 1906 inspired the classic
Theodore Dreiser novel, "An American
Tragedy" and the movie "A Place in the Sun."
Grace's home in South Otselic taken on the day of her funeral. The
funeral took place four days
after her murder at Big Moose Lake on
July 11, 1906. By then, Chester was already taken
into custody by
Herkimer County officials.
