by Ken Gross
“It’s time, Jerry,” said Helen Piering.
“Oh, no,” said Piering.
But Piering didn’t panic. He called his father and left to attend the ceremony. At a Manhattan armory he kept slipping away to ask whether his wife had given birth yet. “Any minute,” he was told. The new policemen were taken downtown, where they had to fill out endless forms. Piering wasn’t allowed to leave the room to call about his wife. Finally he got to a question that said he should list his dependents. He raised his hand and the sergeant recognized him.
“Well, I put down two of my kids for dependents,” said Piering, “but I’m sure by now I got another. I’d just like to call and see what sex so I can write down the name.”
Piering was excused to make the call. “If that sergeant had given me any crap, I’d have told him to shove the job,” he said later.
The third child was Kenneth. There would be three more. Piering’s attachment to his family was real and deep. He enjoyed hunting and had had a large collection of shotguns. But when the children came along, he had got rid of the guns. “I just didn’t want them around the house with the kids young,” he would explain.
Piering’s hobbies became making furniture, sailing his eighteen-foot runabout, and trying to establish a second income with a trucking business. The boat was often in drydock, the trucking business became a tax writeoff, but the furniture was a satisfying pastime. Piering would spend long hours in his basement, stripping antique tables or building chairs.
Although he was not well liked by his fellow officers, he had earned their respect for his tenacity and imagination. He had spent only a few weeks in uniform. When he was first assigned to the Bergen Street Precinct in Brooklyn, he had decided that his walking post was too long and his path too predictable. “Some bum could see me walking along Flatbush Avenue, wait until I was out of sight, then break into a house,” he recalled. So he laid a trap. He began walking his post and when he got out of sight of the street he leaped aboard a returning milk-delivery truck. He told the startled driver to be quiet and keep going.
“I got my burglar,” he recalled. “Pretty good collar.”
Piering moved into plainclothes seven weeks after going on the job.
20
Sixty-eighth Drive leads nowhere. Between Main Street and the Van Wyck Expressway the narrow road stops. Sometimes motorists looking for a way out perform elaborate U-turns while residents watch with some satisfaction—the outsider has been momentarily trapped in their maize. Between 136th and 138th streets there is a gentle curve in the road. In the cup of the curve is a courtyard where the private garbage collectors leave a trail of spilled debris. The carelessness irritates the residents of the garden apartments, but they are used to helpless indignation. Their protests are trapped on the same deadend street.
Vernon Warnecke was on the last day of a two-week vacation from his job in the mail room at the Diners Club. It had not been a particularly memorable holiday. Bored and restless, Warnecke prowled the two-bedroom apartment at 137–39—a few doors in from the street. His wife, Ralpha, watched her husband and made a suggestion.
“Ralphie, why don’t you take Daddy down and show him the tree house where the boys play?”
Ralph Warnecke shrugged and asked his father if he wanted to take the walk. Little Ralph was almost ten years old and starting to get his growth. Like many children sprouting up quickly, he was awkward and shy, even with his parents. His father was a withdrawn, self-contained man who understood the need for privacy. Both lived under the roof of a woman who spoke like a scattergun. Ralpha Warnecke said the first thing on her mind—and she was always thinking of something. “Go on, take Daddy down and show him the tree house where you play.”
“Wanna go?” asked little Ralph.
“OK,” said Vernon with the same economy of conversation.
Actually, Ralph had other reasons for wanting to take the walk. The wooded area usually was filled with bottles—beer bottles tossed into the bushes by teenagers who used the spot for a lovers’ lane. That was how Ralph Warnecke got his spending money—cashing in the deposit bottles.
Vernon Warnecke was a nervous man who smoked too much. He stuffed an extra pack of cigarettes into his white shirt and resigned himself to the walk that his wife insisted he take.
“It was as if God told me to send them down there,” recalls Ralpha. Now she remembers it as a semireligious event. At the time, however, it seemed more like another instance of her tendency to run things: “You two go and get out now.”
They were quiet as they walked down 68th Drive. Later the newspapers would report that they were walking their half-breed dog, Lady. But Ralpha took Lady out around the house. “I just got off crutches,” said Ralpha later. “I couldn’t walk that far.” And there were steps she couldn’t negotiate.
Ralpha started to put her hair in rollers while her husband and son were out. She was troubled by the fact that her husband didn’t have the money to go fishing on his vacation and had to take walks for recreation.
It was 10:30 in the morning and the street was not crowded that Monday, July 19.
Ralph Warnecke always walked with his head down. Sometimes he found spare change or deposit bottles that way. He had retrieved two beer bottles before they reached the mall flanking the Van Wyck Expressway. He was wearing shorts and had to be careful not to cut his legs in the underbrush. They had headed into the embankment overlooking the expressway where, twenty yards away from the street, there was a hidden tree house. The foliage was thick enough to make it seem private.
In their sweeps for Eddie Crimmins, the police had searched this area three and four days ago. Helicopters were still making sorties over Kew Gardens Hills as Vernon and Ralph swam through the branches, but Eddie Crimmins was not on the Warneckes’ minds. Like everyone else, they had paid attention during the first stages of the disappearance; they had been properly shocked by the death of Missy, but tomorrow Vernon Warnecke had to return to work and he had other thoughts.
And then Ralph’s heart sank in disappointment. The tree house had been boarded up. Father and son stared up at it for a few moments without speaking. Then they started out.
Suddenly Vernon stopped as if he had been jolted. He saw a patch of blue cloth. The newspapers had been talking about a blue-and-white blanket in connection with the missing Crimmins children.
Vernon pushed Ralph away and walked cautiously to the blanket. Using his right toe, he slowly lifted the end of the blanket. Something moved underneath and Warnecke and his son lurched away. As he fingered the blanket, a swarm of flies flew out.
The stench was overwhelming. Vernon Warnecke had been in the war, but he had never seen anything like this. He grabbed his son and started to run. Near the street, Vernon put his leg on a milk crate and spilled his breakfast.
“What was that?” asked his son.
Whatever it was had been eaten away by rats and insects. It was black and formless.
“Maybe it was a dead dog,” said Vernon, trying to protect his son. “Maybe it was an animal.”
“Dead dogs don’t have pants on them,” replied his son sensibly.
“I think we found a body,” concluded Vernon Warnecke.
The search for Eddie Crimmins was over.
21
The police had to keep soaking the area with alcohol. The body was so badly decomposed that when the wet blanket was lifted, the odor was like a physical assault. The flies and maggots were a persistent shroud. A special ambulance had to be dispatched from Queens General Hospital with extra gallons of alcohol. They swabbed the area again and again, trying to drive away the vermin and the awful smell. No matter how much they used, it was almost impossible to stay there.
The body was found about a mile from the Crimmins apartment on an embankment overlooking the Van Wycke Expressway. Dr. William Benenson spent almost an hour scribbling notes:
The body was lying on a blue and white and yellow che
cked blanket. The blanket was pulled over the feet; the body is on its right side, with the knees high; that is, the knees were drawn up, the left higher. The back of the neck rests against the clump of bushes; the right upper arm has been eaten away by maggots. . . .
In fact, the descriptions were a matter of convenience. There was no neck, as such. Or arms. The body was simply a blackened, formless mass, chewed and decayed beyond recognition. Deputy Inspector Thomas McGuire and a brace of homicide detectives—men hardened against almost any horror—were sickened by what they found. And it was compounded by the knowledge that once this had been someone’s child.
McGuire had a professional problem: he was not certain that they had found Eddie Crimmins. There was no face left to identify, and even the fingers were almost all gone. The remains were packed into a mortuary bag and taken to the Medical Examiner’s office, where pathologists would try to find some latent prints. “We’re almost certain that it’s Eddie,” McGuire told reporters waiting at the 107th Precinct.
The man had put together his life by sheer nerve. He began with a hammer, doing carpentry and repairs on Long Island. It was a modest business. But in the 1950s the people who had started out with simple Cape Cods were growing out of room. And Joe Rorech specialized in making dormers. He became the king of home improvements on Long Island. He drove a new Cadillac every year, picked up tabs, and carried many girls on his arm. At home he had a faithful wife and seven kids, but that didn’t interfere with his business and showy front. The office in Huntington seemed an accurate reflection. It was splashed with wood surfaces and artificial plants.
Joe Rorech seemed almost geometrically constructed. Even his hair was cut to match the planes of his face. He was good-looking. But in his mid-thirties something was happening to Rorech. The effort was beginning to sap his strength. The dormer business was tapering off and expenses had started to outstrip income.
Rorech had begun to bore friends with tales of his endless conquests. And he drank more and more to keep up his nerve. The straight, good-looking lines of the self-made Joe Rorech suffered under the influence of alcohol. There were cruel outbursts. There were lapses, blackouts. He hung out in a bar with a female impersonator.
It was eleven in the morning and the detectives who had come to talk to Rorech saw he had already been drinking. His hands trembled. The detectives agreed to continue the interview in a bar. Rorech ordered a double Scotch whiskey and the questioning about his relationship with Alice Crimmins began.
“This isn’t going to get back to my wife?” he asked. “I mean, Gloria doesn’t have to know about this, does she?”
“No reason to drag you into this,” said Detective Charlie Prestia.
“No reason at all,” agreed Detective Bill Corbett “You just tell us what you know. You help us, we’ll help you.”
Corbett, the amateur psychologist, had already concluded that Joe Rorech was a slave to his weaknesses and would never be able to take sustained pressure.
They met on the night of January 19, 1964, when Alice Crimmins went to work as a cocktail waitress at the Bourbon House in Syosset. A lot of things changed for Alice that night. Joe Rorech had been dating another cocktail waitress at the Bourbon House—Anita Ellis—but such attachments were perishable and were rearranged by vagrant whims. On her first night as a cocktail waitress, Alice saw only the great wads of money and soft, seductive smiles of important men. One place was the same as another, but there was always motion among the fast crowds on Long Island. In sleek white Lincolns or dark new Cadillacs they went from the Bourbon House to the Heritage House to André’s to the Lakeside Manor. Joe Rorech always seemed to have some other urgent rendezvous. It was more than impatience. It was as if he were being chased.
Seventeen days after she met Joe Rorech, Eddie moved out of the Crimmins apartment. He was replaced by Anita Ellis—Tiger. Anita and Alice snared the costs of baby-sitters, the maid, and the rent. They also shared Joe Rorech. This strained, though it didn’t crack, their relationship. After all, they had shared a brave adventure—a sisterhood unknown to Joe Rorech. Antia too had a broken marriage and a child. They had too much in common to turn on each other.
Tiger and Rusty knew that Joe Rorech was a vain, though not unattractive, man. He was amusing at times. He would talk delightfully with the women on a range of things of no consequence. But Anita and Alice recognized that he was not a serious man. He did not have the internal fortitude to risk everything for the sake of independence. As they had done. He needed liquor, a string of women swearing undying adoration, and attention. He could never bear to walk into a room and be ignored.
He had a beautiful wife and seven children at home. But he treated Gloria badly.
“This happened in 1962,” said Jimmy Curran, a man who broke into the home-improvement business with Rorech. “We went to a convention of the Home Improvement Association in Chicago. Naturally, Joe had a broad along. He always had to have a broad along. Couldn’t stand to be alone. After the convention he doesn’t want to go home. He flies to Las Vegas with the broad. He told me to tell Gloria that he’s sick. Now, she’s a friend of mine. I mean, I’ve had dinner at the house. She’s there at the airport, waiting for him. I just ducked her. This guy Rorech was a wild man. He could drink like mad. The cunt really killed him, though. He couldn’t leave it alone. He’d always have to have them younger and prettier than anyone else. He would never have been seen with someone like Alice when he was riding high. He met her on the way down. By then he was in all kinds of trouble. Bad checks. Federal taxes. But he still lived the same.”
At first Alice noticed only Joe the high roller. She was not put off by the seamier side of the life of a suburban cocktail waitress. She saw aging women trying desperately to connect or hang on—giving quick head in a private room; consenting to faceless sex for “a friend,” giving themselves casually for a favor. Alice Crimmins was too young and too much in control to feel threatened.
Eddie tried to warn her. He said she would be sorry. She in turn felt sorry for Eddie, sipping beers in his lonely room night after night, never dreaming how much fun life could be.
Anita Ellis understood, even when Joe Rorech switched his affections to Alice. That had been almost predictable. Joe had told Anita that he loved her. But she knew he had told that to Gloria, to a woman named Ginger, to Alice, and to countless others.
Mrs. Warnecke stood on 68th Drive listening to the commotion and wondering what was going on. An unmarked police car stopped, and one of the men told her what had happened, so she hobbled to the embankment.
Another police car took the family to the 107th Precinct, where Mrs. Warnecke insinuated herself into the center of the discovery. “We don’t have a telephone,” she told the lieutenant, who listened politely. “So I told Vernon to run up on to Main Street and find one of the police callboxes. I didn’t even have a dime, for goodness’ sake.”
The Warneckes were locked in what Mrs. Warnecke remembers as a tiny room in the 107th. Whenever anyone came in, Mrs. Warnecke would remind him that they hadn’t eaten. “I kept telling them that I was hungry,” she recalled.
Most of the police had lost their appetites after a look and a whiff of the body. But Ralpha Warnecke hadn’t got really close. She was a sturdy woman who almost never missed meals. Finally one of the detectives told the family to go to the corner drugstore. But don’t talk to anyone, especially the reporters, he warned. And come right back.
Vernon Warnecke—whose elbow was shattered during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II—led his wife and son through the clamoring line of reporters. Mrs. Warnecke felt a tingle from the attention.
That afternoon would become a high point in her life. The details would be etched in her memory more clearly than her wedding day. She remembers every step of the walk to the drugstore. They ordered sandwiches and coffee, but she was almost too excited to eat. She telephoned her daughter, telling her to come over and feed the dog. She remembers seeing famou
s journalists waiting to interview her like a celebrity. Jimmy Breslin was there. Polite. Deferential.
And while she was on the telephone the waitress took away her sandwich. She hadn’t finished. She decided not to make a fuss and demand a new sandwich. Vemon was grateful.
22
“Detectives working on the case took a very emotional view. When you saw Missy on that slab, with her beautiful blond hair, naked and with the ligature around her neck, she appeared to be a little angel, and they, all of us, have children and we just wanted to work on it, to catch whoever did it. The boy, when they found him, he looked like a bundle of garbage. His whole body was eaten away by maggots—like a bundle of nothing, not even a skeleton.” —DETECTIVE CHARLES PRESTIA
Alice and Eddie Crimmins were at her mother’s home in the Bronx when Jerry Piering came to deliver the news that their son had been found. Alice had taken a powerful sedative, but when she heard the news confirmed, she fluttered into a faint.
Piering himself was under important pressure. He had never handled a murder case before and his first one was growing more complicated every minute. There was the primary emotional factor—two brutally murdered children. The principals in the case were obstinate, uncooperative, and unsavory. The field reports coming in concerned men like Joe Rorech and Anthony Grace, who had powerful motives for evasion.
There were, of course, internecine complications within the Police Department. By his own aggressiveness and by chance, Jerry Piering had “caught” a case that should have gone to a more experienced investigator. The men from Queens Homicide were jealous. They let Piering make blunders. When more seasoned detectives later came into the case, they were amazed that Piering had been allowed to make such a mess of the investigation. Evidence was lost—the blanket in which Missy was found disappeared. Routine procedures were forgotten. The police photographers—who normally operate under the supervision of the assigning detective in a homicide case—had taken pictures inside the Crimmins apartment that were random and incomplete. When one veteran homicide detective joined the case two weeks later and asked for the “interior” shots of the apartment, Piering looked at him blankly.