[N.S.: I apologize to my partner-in-crime, David in TN, for not getting this up sooner. However, ID frequently re-runs these stories, so it should run again presently.]
Remember in Knoxville when we briefly discussed the 1963 Wylie-Hoffert “Career Girls Murders”? I told you that Janice Wylie was the niece of author Philip Wylie and you quickly said: “Momism,” something novelist Philip Wylie invented.
The Investigative Discovery Channel has a new series called Crimes to Remember from the fifties and sixties. The Career Girls episode runs Tuesday night at 10 p.m. ET.
The first episode last week was about Alice Crimmins, sort of an early Casey Anthony case. The show called Kew Gardens of 1965 Queens a “safe place,” even though Kitty Genovese was killed there a year earlier.
I had meant to respond in time for the blog—sorry about that—but will post this anyway, in case ID re-runs it sometime soon.
A simple-minded, innocent black man confessed to the crime, but it turned out that the killer was a (white, or very light-skinned) Hispanic drug dealer/addict. I recall Marjoe Gortner playing the killer in the TV movie.
The significance of the “Career Girls” murder was that the two roommates lived in a nice neighborhood in Manhattan, and such rape-slaughters were unheard of at the time, not only in Manhattan, but just about anywhere in this country. The political purpose of the Marcus Nelson Murders, however, was in seeking to sell the American public on the notion that the prisons were full of innocent black men who had confessed to crimes they hadn’t committed.
I recall the name Alice Crimmins from my childhood, but little else. However, the notion of Kew Gardens being a safe neighborhood has persisted long since 1964, because it is in fact one of the two nicest areas in the borough, the other being Forest Hills.
To return to your use of safe within scare quotes, 50 or so years ago, the phrase “safe neighborhood” meant just that. Today, due to the beating the English language has taken in the intervening years, it could mean anything, and nothing, but never means what it did in, say, 1950.
1 comment:
The ID Channel will repeat this episode three times on Sunday, November 24-25:
9 pm ET
12 am ET
4 am ET
I've studied this case for years and recommend the ID treatment. Forty five minutes minus commercials was not long enough for the whole story. They left out Manhattan Assistant DA Mel Glass, who found the New Jersey woman in the photograph, proving it was not Janice Wylie.
This torpedoed Whitmore's alleged confession.
At the 1965 trial of Ricky Robles, the defense called the Brooklyn detectives who induced the false confession from George Whitmore. They still insisted on the stand that Whitmore was the killer of Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert.
On cross-examination of the Brooklyn detectives, the prosecutors were able to convince the jury that a false confession had taken place and that Robles was the actual killer.
Robles admitted his guilt to a parole hearing in 1986 and said he was a changed man deserving parole on the basis of other killers who entered prison the same time he did being released.
He was denied and is still in prison. I believe he and Winston Mosely, Kitty Genovese's killer, are the two longest-serving convicts in the New York prison system.
David In TN
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