This powerful
photo taken by Robert C. Wiles was published as a full-page image in the 12 May
1947 issue of Life Magazine. It ran with the caption: “At the bottom of the
Empire State Building the body of Evelyn McHale reposes calmly in grotesque
bier, her falling body punched into the top of a car”. Evelyn McHale is
probably the most famous Empire State Building suicide victim. The young and
prety Evelyn leaped from the 86th-floor observatory in 1947 and landed on the
roof of a United Nations limousine parked on the street below. Her calmly
elegant demeanor, her legs crossed at the ankles, the way the car’s metal
folded like sheets and framed her head and arms—perhaps these were the reasons
that McHale’s death was given its title as “the most beautiful suicide.” When
she died, she was still wearing her pearls and white gloves.
Born September 20, 1923 and one of seven siblings, she was a
child in Washington D.C. when McHale’s mother left the household and her
parents divorced. Her father, a bank examiner, retained custody of all the
children. After high school, McHale became a WAC, stationed in Jefferson,
Missouri. She made her way to New York City where she worked as a bookkeeper
and lived quietly with her brother and sister-law in Baldwin, Long Island. She
met her fiancé Barry Rhodes, a Pennsylvania college student just discharged
from the Air Force, and was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Rhodes’ younger
brother.
On April 30, 1947, Evelyn took the train from New York to
Easton to visit Barry for his 24th birthday. All seemed well between the
couple, and the next day, Barry kissed his fiance goodbye as she boarded the
7:00 AM train to Penn Station. “When I kissed her goodbye, she was happy and as
normal as any girl about to be married.” Their wedding was set to be held at
Barry’s brother’s home in Troy, New York, that June.
Around 10:40 am Patrolman John Morrissey, directing traffic
at Thirty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue, noticed a white scarf floating down
from the upper floors of the building. Moments later he heard a crash and saw a
crowd converge on 34th street. Evelyn had jumped, cleared the setbacks, and
landed on the roof of a United Nations Assembly Cadillac limousine parked on
34th street, some 200 ft west of Fifth Ave.
A photography student across the street, Robert C. Wiles,
heard the loud crash of her body hitting the metal, and ran over too.
Fortuitously, he had his camera and took a photo of her as she lay on the roof
of the crumpled car. It was snapped just four minutes after she died and,
despite the 1050-foot fall (320 m), her body looked intact. Remarkably Evelyn
shows absolutely no evidence of trauma and appears disarmingly placid and
composed – as if asleep. Around her, however, the crumpled sheet metal and
broken glass show the violent destructive evidence of her jump. This apparent
juxtaposition is what makes Wiles’ image so arresting and memorable. Some 60
years later it remains a haunting and affecting piece of photo-journalism.
According to reports she essentially “fell apart” when they
moved her body. Her insides were basically liquefied. Later, on the observation
deck, Detective Frank Murray found her tan (or maybe gray, reports differ)
cloth coat neatly folded over the observation deck wall, a brown make-up kit
filled with family pictures and a black pocketbook with the note which read:
“I don’t want anyone in or out of my family to see any part of
me. Could you destroy my body by cremation? I beg of you and my family – don’t
have any service for me or remembrance for me. My fiance asked me to marry him
in June. I don’t think I would make a good wife for anybody. He is much better
off without me. Tell my father, I have too many of my mother’s tendencies.”
Her body was identified by her sister Helen Brenner and,
according to her wishes, she was cremated. There is no grave.
Interesting fact:
References:-
Ghosts and Ghouls
