On this day, Sept. 25, in 1911, Gertrude Gibson Patterson, dubbed “The Most Beautiful Woman in America” by newspapers, fatally shot her husband while taking a walk in the Richthofen Castle in Denver.
Patterson fired four shots, two of which missed her husband, Charles, a former football player. The other two bullets struck him in the back.
Patterson’s attorney claimed shots in the back were proof of self-defense: The wife-beating husband was fleeing after he realized that his fists were no match for Gertrude’s pistol, he argued.
The 12 male jurors found Patterson not guilty. Four of them later visited Gertrude at her hotel.
Following her acquittal, Gertrude and her new husband took a European honeymoon but died on the Titanic.
– Scott McCabe
