The Alice Crimmins Case

by Ken Gross

  On October 16, 1964, Sophie suffered one of her “accidents.” This one was destined to interrupt and fatally flaw her career. She was working as a hostess at a booth at the World’s Fair. Her job was to be charming to the public and develop leads for the home-improvement company that ran the booth. It was a pleasant, effortless position and she had been working there for two months. She had the advantage of being able to see all the exhibits at the Fair and of lunching in the dazzling variety of international restaurants. On that fall afternoon, however, at lunchtime Sophie reached down to retrieve the purse she had stored in one of the sample boxes. She lurched up and struck her head against a beam. It was a powerful blow that knocked her unconscious for half an hour. Later she would claim that a yellow mouse had scampered up her arm and made her leap, striking the beam with the left side of her head. She would explain with what she regarded as impeccable logic that a yellow mouse was perfectly plausible. There was a cheese display nearby and the mouse could have been coated with cheese. Hence the yellow mouse.

  The accident would leave Sophie “nervous” and subject to long fits of sleeplessness and dizziness. She would be suffering one of her bouts of nervous insomnia on the night of July 13/14, 1965.

  It was inevitable that Sophie Earomirski would notice Alice Crimmins. They patronized the same beautician, but Alice had star presence, while Sophie was lost in the assembly line of processed heads. She would pass Alice on the street and would notice Alice, but Alice would not recognize Sophie. They would shop next to each other at the supermarket, but Sophie would remain a stranger. Each encounter would register negatively with Sophie.

  She would later claim that she could remember clearly an incident at the supermarket in early July of 1965, less than two weeks before the children disappeared. Sophie recalled that little Eddie wanted a ride on one of the plastic horses parked outside the supermarket. Alice became annoyed and cursed and cuffed little Eddie. Such behavior was uncharacteristic of Alice, and Sophie’s memory might have been colored by the scandalous stories she heard at the beauty parlor. But she was sure she had seen Alice Crimmins cuff little Eddie.

  About two weeks later, during her night of jittery insomnia on July 13/14J she was standing at her window trying to catch a breeze. The most dramatic event of her life was transpiring somewhere in the next court, where Alice Crimmins lived. And Sophie believed that she saw something.

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  The letter was dated “Nov. 30, 1966”—more than sixteen months after the event. It had been lost in the avalanche of mail inspired by the deaths of Missy and Eddie Crimmins. There has never been an official count—some of the letters came addressed to the District Attorney, some to a particular assistant directing one aspect of the case, some to the police. There were tens of thousands of letters over the years. Most were indignant. The public—usually a writer who signed himself/herself as “a taxpayer”—wanted to know why no one was apprehended in this most heinous of all crimes. What were the authorities doing? Other letters were written by fanatics who suggested that if the detectives would pray, the answer would come to them. Priests volunteered round-the-clock prayer. Nuns offered sisterly sympathy. Obscure religious sects posted thick envelopes quoting what they felt was relevant scripture—a portion predicting tragedy and holocaust meaningfully underlined. Some of the letters, from as far away as San Francisco and Singapore, were meant for Alice and suggested that she repent. A few contained prayerbooks, crucifixes, missals. They were stamped with slogans about “God is Love” and assured Alice that she would be forgiven anything if she repented and confessed.

  Pathetic, lonely men and women also wrote Alice. They would usually begin by saying how sorry they were for her plight and that they understood her predicament. And then they would offer their love. The offers were very specific and they made Alice shudder.

  Finally there were letters containing tips, and these the police sifted through. Most came from wives who made tormented, oblique accusations against husbands they didn’t trust. Hundreds of men who stayed late at work were now under domestic suspicion of infidelity and, incidentally, collusion in a double homicide. The mid-1960s was a difficult time for married cheaters on Long Island. Wives suspected husbands of hustling cocktail waitresses, and husbands suspected wives of not belonging to a bowling league.

  DD5: Checked on Frank Pomeroy, insurance agent, who hung around the Heritage House, where suspect Alice Crimmins was working as a cocktail waitress. Investigation was in response to a letter from Pomeroy’s wife that her husband had been seen in the company of said suspect on numerous occasions. Pomeroy denied that he knew Alice and introduced us to his girl friend, Margie Knowland, his secretary, who swore they spent the night together at Howard Johnson’s motel on night of July 13/14. She remembered incident because they had known of Alice at Heritage House, but had never met her. Margie Knowland’s husband said his wife had not come home until 6 a.m. that night—he remembered because it was the final fight before their separation.

  It became almost impossible to separate the crank letters from those of people legitimately concerned. Inevitably, because of the crush of time, they all became lumped together. One of the dead letters buried in District Attorney Nat Hentel’s file was painfully, reluctantly handwritten.

  Nov. 30, 1966

  Dear Mr. Hentel:

  Have been reading about your bringing the Crimmins case to the grand jury and am glad to hear of it.

  May I please tell you of an incident that I witnessed. It may be connected and may not. But I will feel better telling it to you. This was on the night before the children were missing.

  But as the press reported that a handyman saw them at the window that morning, it may not be related at all.*

  The night was very hot and I could not sleep. I went into the living room and was looking out the window getting some air. This was at 2 a.m. A short while later, a man and woman were walking down the street toward 72 Road. The woman was about five feet in back of the man. She was holding what appeared to be a bundle of blankets that were white under her left arm and was holding a little child walking with her right hand. He now hollered at her to “hurry up.” She told him “to be quiet or someone will see us.” At that moment I closed my window, which squeeks [sic] and they looked up but did not see me.

  The man took the white bundle and he heaved it into the back seat of the car. She picked up the little baby and sat with him in the back seat of the car. This woman was then with dark hair, the man was tall, not heavy, with dark hair and a large nose. This took place under a street light so I was able to see it quite planly [sic]. The car turned from the comer of 153 St. onto 72 Road and out to Kissena boulevard.

  Please forgive me for not signing my name, but I am afraid to.

  Wishing you the best of luck.

  A reader

  P.S.—About one hour later I thought I saw just the man getting into a late model white car.

  * There was such a report, but it remained totally unsubstantiated.

  The letter came too late to help Nat Hentel. Back in 1965, Paul Screvane’s ambition to succeed his friend Robert Wagner as Mayor was crushed in the Democratic primary by Abe Beame, who later lost to John Lindsay in the general election. Probably it had no part in the campaign, but political reporters close to Screvane knew he had been questioned by detectives about the Crimmins case. Even Mayor Wagner was indirectly asked some questions. Aides said he was not involved, and he was not bothered further. Naturally, it was unthinkable that either man was connected with the sordid mystery in Queens, but there were connections that had to be explained. The interviews with Screvane were never anything approaching official. A detective, sprinkling his sentences with “sir,” asked if Screvane knew Sal LoCurto, a former Deputy Sanitation Commissioner. Of course Screvane knew LoCurto.

  LoCurto was a close associate of Anthony Grace, was he not? Anthony Grace did a lot of work for the city and there were busines
s and social connections. Yes.

  Sal LoCurto owned a boat? Yes.

  You went for a cruise on that boat during 1964? Yes.

  Alice Crimmins was on that boat during that cruise. Did you know her?

  There were many people on the boat, replied the would-be Mayor of New York. If he knew Alice Crimmins, it had nothing to do with his high office. Was he being accused of anything?

  The detectives backed off. There was never a hint that Screvane—or any other important official—was involved in anything more than social contact with Alice Crimmins. Still, it was a matter to be checked.

  Paul Screvane would never become Mayor. He watched John Lindsay take power and Frank D. O’Connor become City Council President—the post Screvane had given up to run for Mayor.

  O’Connor, a flinty Irishman, had made his reputation for rectitude when he was a private lawyer. He had solved the famous “Wrong Man” case in Queens and was regarded as a man above sordid motives. Although O’Connor was District Attorney when the Crimmins case broke, he had already turned over the functions of the office to his subordinates. He was preoccupied with his ambition—the run for the Governor’s mansion, with a local stop at City Hall. Although Lindsay, a Republican, won the Mayoralty, Frank O’Connor, a Democrat, was elected City Council President. It was a measure of his popularity. The victory was also regarded by the polls as a triumph of media. O’Connor had made a series of effective television commercials, showing him in the street, which, he said, had to be made safe. The lesson would not be lost on his successor.

  When Frank O’Connor resigned as District Attorney after his election, it fell to Governor Nelson Rockefeller to replace him. Rockefeller had his own ambitions. He was constructing a national base for a run for the Republican Presidential nomination for 1968. First he would require a secure home base. It was imperative for Rockefeller to maintain the warmest possible relations with the Republican subalterns throughout New York State. O’Connor’s election was like the gift of an unknown rich uncle dying. For one thing, Republicans would finally get a shot at the job. In Queens—a Democratic base camp—only the primaries counted. Democratic candidates were elected for local posts with fateful monotony. The primary fights might become contentious, but the long knives were never drawn, for the Democrats kept the county and all the jobs like a trust. The young lawyers coming out of St. John’s and Fordham knew that if they joined a Queens Democratic Club, attended the meetings, and paid the dues, they could get a crack at one of the 100 or so Assistant District Attorney posts in Queens.

  Rockefeller felt that 1965 offered an opportunity to break the Democratic hold on Queens. There were many worthy Republicans in the line of succession—men who would be helpful and grateful for the honor of serving as District Attorney, if only for a brief period. But what Rockefeller wanted was someone who could win an election in 1966. He was looking for a Republican who had charisma—enough charisma to carry Queens and keep Rockefeller loyalties alive until 1968.

  To replace O’Connor, Rockefeller picked Nat Hentel, a plucky little attorney with a private practice who dangled cigars out of his mouth like Edward G. Robinson. Hentel was a clubhouse Republican, and the kind of man who made an effort to slur his diction and try to sound like a cop. He had a back-slapping way about him. He was small, but the impression he made was larger than life. He called the reporters “boys” and made certain that his friends were never “scooped.” The “boys” on the afternoon papers were provided with a fresh lead to compete against the morning papers. Hentel was always available for television interviews. When he staged a raid on a “so-called Mafia little Apalachin” meeting in a Queens restaurant, he notified certain reporters before he informed precinct commanders. His public-relations assistant became the most important man on his staff. Hentel believed he would be re-elected through the effective use of saturation publicity. If that meant sacrificing some of the dignity of the District Attorney’s office, Hentel would become a populist. If it meant risking legal points by violating a defendant’s rights, Hentel would stretch the point as far as he could. He was determined to get elected. From the moment he took office, he was convinced that a successful prosecution of the Alice Crimmins case would win him the election. He faced a deadline. He took over the job in January of 1966 and there would be an election in November.

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  When Nat Hentel became District Attorney, all the Republican lawyers in Queens came out of the wings. Anthony Lombardino could almost taste the opportunity.

  Tony Lombardino, at the age of thirty-four, was a very hungry young lawyer. He had broken from the family tradition of Democratic loyalty, but not out of philosophical disagreement Lombardino did not believe he could indulge himself in the luxury of conscience. The Democrats in Queens were fat and powerful and he would have to wait at the end of a long line for his chance. So in the late 1950s Lombardino joined the anemic Republican Party in Queens, where he was at least near the front of the line. “Tough Tony,” as he came to be known, simply didn’t have the patience that the Democrats kept urging on him. He was shaped like a barrel and his personality had the obstinate force of one: he would roll over opposition with the same purposeful determination.

  On the morning after the children disappeared, Anthony Lombardino was driving along the Belt Parkway in his oversized Oldsmobile. He was on his way to Freeport, Long Island, to go fishing. A fleet of charter boats waited there for weekend fishermen; they would motor out before dawn, returning just after lunch, when the pails of beer were empty and the tubs of fish were full. As he drove, listening to the radio, he was alone in the car. “Helicopters . . . dozens of detectives . . . hundreds of policemen . . . Mayor Wagner deplores . . .” Lombardino was excited. The sun had just begun to flash off his hand jewelry—the gold watch, the pinky ring with diamond chips spelling “AL” on his left hand, a ring on the right hand in the shape of a huge gold crucifix. “Instantly,” he would recall later, remembering the long drive to Freeport, “I wanted to be the prosecutor.”

  In January 1966, Tony Lombardino joined the staff of District Attorney Hentel, along with a flood of other young Republican attorneys. Lombardino was appointed to the felony trial part, where he began to establish a reputation as a flashy but effective prosecutor. He got along with the cops, even if his style did violate the esthetics of some of the older, more traditional Republicans. Lombardino did not have the Crimmins case, but he kept abreast of every detail. He made friends with the detectives dogging the killings. And he never let pass an opportunity to boast that only he could obtain a conviction.

  Later, when police officials began to have doubts about the District Attorney’s office—when they sensed a failure of nerve about pressing Alice Crimmins; when they became skeptical about the jugular intentions of the polite prosecution lawyers; when they began to suspect that someone would go soft inside the courtroom and hesitate—they would look for someone to drive the stake into Alice. The police knew that it would be a formidable job—going up against a woman who would be depicted as a pathetic victim, the mother of two dead children. It would take someone who could tear through the pretty layers of makeup and grief and bring out all the sexual tangents the police felt were relevant to their case. They entertained sharp doubts about the killer instincts of the mild, bespectacled attorney assigned to the case, James Mosley. They would have no such reservations about Tony Lombardino, who would sit in a bar across the street from the courthouse gulping Scotch sours and offer to put the nails in the coffin of Alice Crimmins.

  Tony Lombardino was born just around the corner from respectability, on February 27,1931, in a railroad flat on Furman Avenue in Brooklyn. Close by on Bushwick Avenue lived the doctors and judges and attorneys and dentists. Lombardino’s father, Tony, was a clerk for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. His mother, Christina, almost ruined her eyes as a dressmaker. Lombardino had two older sisters—Josephine, thirteen years older; Antoinette, ten years older—but it was clear that
the family ambition rested with the son. He was expected to make the leap from working to professional class. It was an unspoken but powerful factor in his youth. Lombardino’s grandparents had struggled to America from a fishing village on the coast of Sicily—Sciacca. The grandson believes that there is a genetic link in his past in his passion for fishing. There is nothing he enjoys more than spending the day catching a load of bass, cleaning them, and cooking them for dinner.

  In Brooklyn, as a youth, Anthony Lombardino was taught pride. It was the pride of people who were at an ethnic disadvantage—Italians who could barely make themselves understood in English—but who had transplanted themselves to America convinced that centuries of European civilization would not be cast aside like an old language.

  The Lombardinos would never accept charity. No matter how dire their finances, the money would be pooled and they would scrape by. On Saturday mornings Anthony Lombardino remembers seeing the old women in black scrubbing the three steps leading into the rented brick homes. In the vestibules he would smell the fresh linseed oil that the women stroked lovingly into banisters and paneling that they didn’t even own. Recently he went back to the now rundown neighborhood and was moved to tears by the broken stoops and graffiti.

  In 1941 the Lombardinos moved to a strange neighborhood in Queens. It was not much of an improvement—a forty-year-old semi-attached brick building—but it was their own. The first thing his father did was finish the basement, where they took all their meals. Their section of Queens—Ridgewood—was on the Brooklyn-Queens border, but already there were psychological differences in Lombar-dino’s life. His cousins were laborers or butchers. None had ever finished high school. But his father made Tony understand that better things were expected of him. He would be a dentist. Or an accountant. Something.