THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 26, 1995 TAG: 9503230535
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER LEE PHILIPS
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
A MODEL CRIME
A True Fiction
CURTIS GATHJE
Donald I. Fine. 198 pp. $19.95.
A GLAMOROUS young woman is brutally murdered in her home late at night. An innocent man in the wrong place at the wrong time is also killed. The press goes into a lather over the story, and tabloid circulation skyrockets, especially when revealing photos are published to illustrate the salacious details. And an inquiring public wants to know. . . whodunit?
Sound familiar? It's what an earlier generation of newspeople called ``crime and underwear,'' a bastard child of yellow journalism and a distant cousin of ``trial by newspaper.'' While the story could easily have its origins in contemporary Los Angeles, this triple murder-mystery (the third body is not immediately undetected) took place two generations ago in Manhattan's Beekman Hill neighborhood.
In A Model Crime, Curtis Gathje renders a clever fictional account of the 1937 murders of Veronica ``Ronnie'' Gedeon, her mother and their English boarder. Gathje illustrates the story, first related to him by an uncle who was a suspect in the case, with news articles straight from the tabloids themselves. The parallels between yesteryear's journalistic treatment of true crime and today's media infatuation with celebrity homicide are, well, sensational.
Twenty-year-old Ronnie Gedeon was murdered one Saturday night after an evening of highballs and Duke Ellington in the company of Stephen Butter, a young Wall Street messenger. Gedeon's dead body and those of her mother and an Englishman boarding in their brownstone were discovered by Gedeon's brother-in-law the next morning - Easter Sunday. By nightfall, columnist Walter Winchell had assured their deaths notoriety by mentioning the case on his Sunday radio program.
Gedeon had indulged in a cafe life and worked as a figure model, posing for photographers and artists. News of her death prompted several photographers to offer their pictures to the highest bidder, which was usually The New York Daily News. The nobody they had photographed was now somebody, and the press was paying cash.
The police rounded up the usual suspects, most of whom also cashed in when reporters offered ready money for their stories - all told, of course, with the necessary journalistic embellishments. Soon everyone involved had his or her name or image in the papers, each presenting a more dramatic portrait of Ronnie Gedeon and who might have killed her.
Was it her estranged father, a schnapps-drinking bowling fanatic who loved French postcards? Or the Boston millionaire who sent Gedeon so many flowers? More than 150 names appeared in Ronnie Gedeon's address book; the police had a lot of questioning to do.
Surprise witnesses came out of the woodwork with questionable evidence. People made statements to the press just for publicity. At one newspaper, an ``editor's dilemma'' arose: Should the editors give priority to the continuing story of Gedeon's murder, or to news of, say, the U.S. Supreme Court?
Advertisers got on the bandwagon with ads for security locks, reporting that ``frightened dwellers were keeping doors carefully chained and locked'' in the wake of the ghastly murders. At least one reporter resorted to pandering in hopes of obtaining a suspect's exclusive confession.
The Ronnie Gedeon case became a national pastime, and many of those involved briefly enjoyed celebrity status as a result. But typical of even the most dramatic events, the story died the death of old news when the killer was finally apprehended.
Gathje, who grew up in Norfolk, attended Norfolk Academy and now lives in New York City, resurrects a fascinating true-crime story in A Model Crime. By smartly setting the case against the backdrop of its cultural milieu, he sheds more than a little light in his first novel on America's undying appetite for newsworthy homicide. MEMO: Christopher Lee Philips, a graduate of Old Dominion University, is a
free-lance writer in Washington, D.C. ILLUSTRATION: Jacket design by JOHN SPOSATO
by CNB