The Alice Crimmins Case

by Ken Gross

  —THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS

  There were no more paper ballots. These men had gone through two grand juries with less than a case. But Mosley, in his methodical fashion, wanted to review it all again, step by step, as much to reassure himself of the structure of prosecution as to convince the men around the conference table. He dragged out the charts, the lists of witnesses, constructing a textbook chain of evidence.

  Mosley outlined his plan like a general organizing a battle. The detectives would have to deploy their forces, without, of course, alerting the enemy. Surprise was an important factor. He felt confident, planning the attack.

  Lombardino didn’t notice when the lights went on in the office as it became dark outside. He didn’t notice until they were turned off at dawn when the curtains were opened.

  “Well,” said Mosley finally, like a general who didn’t feel comfortable without a two-to-one advantage, “do you think we have enough? Should we try for another indictment?”

  “Enough!” cried Lombardino, exhausted by Mosley’s incurable hesitancy. “Enough!”

  “OK,” said Mosley, “then let’s see a show of hands.”

  The arms went up like salutes—everyone wanted another crack indicting Alice Crimmins.

  Lombardino looked through the window and thought with satisfaction of the morning when, driving on the expressway and listening to the news bulletins, he had dreamed vaguely of prosecuting the killer. He stretched and realized that he was famished.

  Only one man left the room haunted by doubts. It might be a case Strong enough for Queens, it would probably result in an indictment, but inside his professional soul James Mosley knew that the Manhattan District Attorney’s office would never proceed on such uncertain evidence. Cases of circumstantial evidence had been brought to fruition in Manhattan, but the circumstances had always been convincing. Mosley did not believe there was sufficient evidence against Alice Crimmins to obtain a conviction.

  Anthony Lombardino went home to breakfast. He had already outlined the argument he would use before the jury: Alice had killed her daughter in a fit of anger, then had got someone else to dispose of her son. He would not suggest who, for she would not be charged with her son’s murder. Lombardino would tell the jury that Alice had killed her child because Missy got in her way. It was a weak argument, but he had presented it powerfully in Mosley’s office. The thing was, he never believed it himself. Even when he got before a jury and presented the argument, he didn’t believe it.

  Five years later, looking back, he would say: “To this day I know it’s weak. I don’t know if she did it. It still seems unlikely. I can’t believe it. I can’t even believe the story I told the jury. I don’t even believe it now.”

  The guardian of the basement command post that summer was forty-eight-year-old Audrey Montoy, a career member of the District Attorney’s staff—a woman who probably knew more secrets than any of the senior assistants, but regarded each secret with the sanctity of something heard in a confessional. She was faced with an impossible job. The activity in and out of Mosley’s suite was constant and she had all she could do to keep away the probing reporters. Witnesses were brought in and reminded of their testimony. New charts were drawn, showing with geometric precision the lines of guilt leading to Alice Crimmins. What Mosley lacked in tangible evidence, he tried to compensate for with overwork, demonstrating that only Alice could have had the motive and opportunity to slaughter her children.

  Still, Dr. Milton Helpern refused to say that Eddie’s death was a homicide. One could infer homicide, based on the circumstances that his sister was found apparently murdered in almost identical conditions. But the logic broke down under close study.

  “OK,” said Mosley, “we just go for an indictment on the girl.”

  “You’ll stand by what you said about the girl?” asked Lombardino. “You’ll stick by the statement that Missy must have been dead by midnight?”

  Dr. Helpern, the world’s foremost forensic pathologist, nodded his head, burying whatever doubts lingered, becoming a partner of the District Attorney’s office. Helpern had, through the years since Missy’s and Eddie’s death, been under relentless siege by the office—from the supplication of Nick Ferraro to the understated puzzlement of Eddie Devlin, to the academic probings of James Mosley, to the urgency of Tony Lombardino. Dr. Helpern, Lombardino reported to Mosley, would perform his duty.

  Anthony Lombardino was like a man trying to keep a thousand puppets dancing—this one had become reluctant, that one had moved away, someone else’s memory was slicing away the details. None of the witnesses were more important than Sophie Earomirski. Without her, there was no case. Lombardino assigned Policewoman Margie Powers to stay with Sophie, who had to be pampered and reassured like a reluctant opera star. For Policewoman Powers it was not an unwelcome assignment. She had disliked Alice Crimmins from the beginning—from the first moment she had laid eyes on her that second morning after the disappearance, after Missy had already been found dead. Alice was busy putting on her makeup before submitting to another round of police questioning. That moment stood out for Margie Powers—a woman who was supposed to be in the ultimate stages of grief and anxiety (her son was still missing) was more concerned about her appearance!

  Margie Powers did not keep her observation to herself. She made it plain with the expectation of distaste that she believed the gesture deserved. It was passed along to other police and thus, reinforced as the observation of a woman, spread through courthouses and lunchrooms and bars. Wherever anyone went in Queens in the latter part of the 1960s, the name of Alice Crimmins would conjure visions of a woman more concerned with her makeup than with her dead children.

  Even with the full-time assignment of Margie Powers to Sophie Earomirski, Lombardino found himself spending more and more time stroking Sophie’s doubts. Her husband had opposed her coming forward. Lombardino appealed to his civic duty, his patriotism, and showed him photographs of the dead children. Lombardino suppressed his Vesuvian temper and overcame the doubts of Mr. Earomirski. Mr. Earomirski knew his wife; he knew her tendency toward overstatement, he was afraid that she was jumping into something serious, something over her head. But Lombardino realized that without Sophie Earomirski there would be no indictment—the case would be thrown out by the first judge to review the evidence.

  Everyone involved was attacked by nerves. Twice, grand juries had heard the evidence and failed to return indictments—in December 1966 and in May 1967. Harold Harrison was telling reporters that his client was being persecuted, and there were indications that reporters were becoming bored with the official obsession. They would print the ritual stories about imminent breaks and mystery witnesses, but without any second effort or follow-up stories. And Mackell was coming up for re-election.

  On September 1, 1967, James Mosley went before a fresh grand jury to present the Alice Crimmins case. He did it carefully, without undue fanfare. He brought in Joe Rorech, and this time Rorech told about the second telephone call to Alice Crimmins at 2:00 a.m. when there was no answer. Then Mosley laid the groundwork for Sophie. He brought in lighting experts, who testified that it had been possible to distinguish things at a certain distance that night. Sound engineers told the jury it was possible to hear conversation in the middle of the night and that the mall acted as a kind of echo chamber.

  And then appeared Sophie Earomirski, the mystery witness. It was hard to distinguish Sophie from her escort, Margie Powers—both were overfed. But the newspapers had been full of tantalizing hints about the mystery witness, and her entrance was watched with undisguised fascination.

  Until the 1940s the names of witnesses who appeared before a grand jury were a matter of public record. But there had been a period of mob retaliation against grand-jury witnesses, and after Abe Reles was thrown from his window at the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island before he could testify and Arnold Schuster was murdered after testifying against bank robber Willie Sutton, the New York
state legislature conferred secrecy on the names of witnesses. The price of such protection helped District Attorney Tom Dewey, but it was a great hardship to defense attorneys, since the identity of the accuser would not be known until he appeared in open court—too late for serious background investigations to be undertaken. In the Crimmins case, Sophie Earomirski’s medical past was thus protected against Harold Harrison’s army of private detectives.

  On the first Thursday in September she testified before the grand jury for forty-five minutes. “Keep it down,” Lombardino had advised her, knowing the woman’s impulse to embellish.

  “How did I do?” she asked Lombardino after her appearance.

  “Beautiful,” he said, sounding more like a dramatic coach than like the attorney for the People.

  This time Mosley could see the grand jury clicking in his direction. The arched questions, questions starched with skepticism, had turned into hushed, respectful requests for fleshing out with details. The detectives who testified—Piering, Kelly, and Byrnes—added their own incriminating punctures. But by the time Sophie Earomirski told about seeing Alice cross the mall carrying the bundle of clothing—presumably Missy—the grand jurors were ready to act. The pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place.

  Late on September 12 the grand jury voted an indictment against Alice Crimmins for the murder of her daughter, Missy. And then James Mosley, Jerry Piering, Jerry Byrnes, Harry Shields, and Walter Anderson walked across the windy lanes of Queens Boulevard to Luigi’s, where they drank the night away. More than two years had been invested in this case by most of these men, but somehow the celebration lacked dimension. Tomorrow they would arrest Alice Crimmins. Tonight the liquor let them down.

  Piering and Byrnes shook off the effects of the whiskey and called for the assistance of a policewoman. Policewoman Lillian Smith met them at the courthouse at 6:00 a.m. Byrnes drove, Piering sat next to him, and the policewoman was in the back of the cruiser.

  “We are going to arrest Alice Crimmins,” said Jerry Piering simply as they drove to Beechhurst. The police cruiser remained in ambush for more than an hour, and a few minutes after 8:00 a.m. Piering nudged his partner. Alice was leaving for work.

  “Actually, I’ve always been a very happy-go-lucky person,” Alice would recall years later. “I’d always have my door open; have people dropping in. I’d always walk out with a kind of expectation. A new day; a new beginning. It was always an invigorating thing, to walk outdoors on a bright summer day. Until that day, that is. I’ve never been able to walk out without looking in both directions since. I never open my door any more unless I ask who it is. I’ve become a more closed person.”

  Byrnes waited until Alice Crimmins reached her car, then pulled the police cruiser into a blocking position. Alice was behind the wheel, but had not yet closed the door. She had grown accustomed to sudden police attention over the years and was not overly concerned.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “You have to come with us, Alice,” said Detective Byrnes.

  She didn’t understand. During the time she had dealt with the police, they had always asked her to come with them. It had never been a command. “I have to what?”

  “You have to come with us,” repeated Byrnes.

  “I want to talk to my lawyer,” Alice said, beginning to yell. “I’m not going anywhere without talking to my lawyer.”

  “The grand jury has indicted you for the murder of Alice Marie,” said Piering, showing her the warrant for her arrest.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said through clenched teeth. “I’m not going anywhere.” Her hands gripped the steering wheel as if it could hold off the police and the warrants.

  Piering pleaded with her not to make a fuss because the neighbors were watching. Byrnes signaled for Policewoman Smith, who spoke calmly through the door. “Don’t make me use jujitsu,” said the policewoman. “I’ve had quite a bit of training.”

  Alice got out of her car and followed the trio of police to their cruiser. She asked if she could tell Eddie, who was upstairs asleep. Piering said she could make one telephone call at the Fresh Meadows Precinct.

  And then Piering turned in the front passenger seat and suggested that it would have been so much easier if she had only told the truth from the beginning—that is, confessed. “But you did everything the hard way.”

  “Drop dead,” said Alice Crimmins.

  They were all waiting at the 107th Precinct—the inspectors, the detectives, the District Attorney. Alice phoned Eddie and told him to get in touch with Harold Harrison.

  Harrison didn’t need a telephone call to tell him that his client was under arrest. He was listening to the radio while shaving when a bulletin was broadcast that Alice Crimmins had been indicted for the murder of her daughter and was being arraigned at the Fresh Meadows Precinct. Harrison telephoned the precinct that under recent Miranda rules as laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court he was instructing the police not to question his client. Joseph Coyle told his men not to utter a word to Alice, but when the police tried to process her, she balked.

  Harrison, who lived less than a mile from the station house, was soon there. He took Alice aside and advised her to go through the formalities—he would try to have her free as soon as possible. She signed the fingerprint card that she had spurned moments earlier. She submitted docilely as the police took her pedigree:

  NAME: Alice Crimmins

  AGE: 29

  ADDRESS: 9-20 166th St., Beechhurst, Queens

  OCCUPATION: Secretary

  ADDICTIONS: None

  The routine was simple. Assistant District Attorney James Mosley asked that bail be set at $75,000. Harrison argued before Supreme Court Justice Charles Margett (whom he had clerked for when he graduated from law school) that his client was no risk and would not flee. Bail was set at $25,000, and by late afternoon Alice was free to go home until the case came to court. At first the police assigned a policewoman to shadow her, their contention being that she was in danger since she was involved with another person; the policewoman was there to protect her. Harrison made some angry telephone calls and said it was another instance of police harassment.

  The question of bail caused controversy. Piering argued that a night in the slam would crack Alice’s crust. She had already had a fainting spell in a courtroom antechamber before the proceedings. Alice was now officially accused of killing her child. It was another turn of the wheel that was supposed to make her crack.

  Alice’s defenses were infinitely complicated. She would say later that the persecution had become a form of grief for her dead children. “You see,” she would explain, “I never got a chance to grieve for my child . . . I never got a chance to grieve. From the first I was a suspect, and so I got angry. That became my grief.”

  In a hidden compartment of her purse Alice carried a picture of each of her dead children. When she was certain she was alone, she would take them out and weep. But never in public. “I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.”

  During the next few months Harold Harrison was invited for informal chats with one Assistant District Attorney after another. He knew the encounters were not casual. Each of the officials made it plain that Alice could have immunity, never spend one day in jail, if she would name the person who assisted her in killing the children.

  “She says that she didn’t kill her children and doesn’t know anything about it,” Harrison replied each time.

  Meanwhile, each side was mobilizing for the courtroom test. The District Attorney’s office had the head start, notifying witnesses of the impending case and warning them against speaking to the agents of Harold Harrison.

  Harrison employed a variety of services. Among them was Superior Investigations & Claims Services Inc., of Brooklyn, which tallied Joe Rorech’s various debts and creditors. The chief investigations were conduct
ed by Victor Lederman of Massapequa Park; aside from poking around Rorech’s past, he dug up material about neighbors and potential hostile witnesses. A thick dossier on Dr. Milton Helpern was compiled, establishing, if nothing else, that his achievements were broad and widely recognized. Harrison also employed Stanley Rivkin and a man who went by several names—Sam Poulos, Sam Gianapoulos, and Sam Spade. It would become Sam Spade’s honor to be arrested during the course of his inquiries on a petty-larceny charge—he allegedly took housing records in an overzealous effort to find the “mystery witness.” The charges were dropped, but Sam Spade would live on in the legend of the case as the indomitable private eye—a man who knew no limits in his grasp for the vital evidence. The truth was a little less dramatic. The arrest so shook him that Sam Spade retreated into virtual hiding, dissociating himself from Alice Crimmins.

  The investigations were scattered and wasteful. The advantage lay with the prosecution, which knew precisely what evidence was going to come out. Meanwhile, Alice had conferences with her attorneys.

  “I wanted her to have her hair done in a certain way,” recalled Marty Baron. “You know, subdued. I wanted her to wear subdued clothing and quit her nighttime activities. But Alice was a strong-headed woman. Things had to be done her way. She kept saying that she wasn’t guilty and she had nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Harold Harrison waited a few months, then moved for a dismissal. The Assistant District Attorney, unsure of his case and hoping for further proof, kept asking for more time, but as 1967 slipped into 1968 the courts became impatient with James Mosley. He would have to move for trial or drop the case. In May he moved.

  A famous confrontation took place one day between Harold Harrison and Anthony Lombardino. Harrison said that Lombardino had no case and that it would never go to the jury. The smugness bothered Lombardino, who passed word to the presiding judge, Peter Farrell, asking if it were true. The word came back indirectly that from the evidence he had seen, Farrell was ready to dismiss the charges. At that moment Lombardino knew he had to break Joseph Rorech completely.