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The Fallen Stars .
From the shots Harry Thaw pumped into Stanford White to O.J. Simpson's televised odyssey down a San Diego freeway, the media has defined, and often exploited, these dramas. .
"Just as a celebrity is someone famous for being famous, a great trial of the century is famous for being famous," says historian Edward Knappman, editor of the book Great American Trials. "It is defined by the amount of public attention it gets." .
The media frenzy surrounding the 1935 murder trial of Bruno Hauptmann in Flemington, N.J., was unparalleled for its time. Hundreds of newspaper and radio reporters swarmed to the small East Coast city to cover the stow about the man accused of kidnapping and murdering the child of one of America's greatest heroes. The largest telephone system for a single event was installed just to accommodate the needs of the media. .
The public couldn't get enough. Crowds lined the sidewalks to vie for seating to witness the trial, and on weekends the courtroom was opened to tourists and curiosity seekers. Outside the courthouse, vendors hawked autographed photos and memorabilia of the trial. .
Six decades later, the nation witnessed a similar phenomenon. Television brought home the murder trial of football legend Simpson. Satellite dishes and live remotes transformed the trial into a multimedia event of the grandest proportions, and the world sat down and watched. .
More than 100 news agencies, 20 TV companies and 1,000 correspondents covered the trial at the world's entertainment capital. T-shirts and bumper stickers were sold outside the courthouse, and bus trips provided guided tours of the murder scene. .
Hauptmann's trial would not have attracted the attention it did if the child who was kidnapped and later found dead was not the son of a national hero. Similarly, the sensationalism of the Simpson case was triggered by the fall of a sports legend, not the brutal slayings of two innocents.
