The Alice Crimmins Case
Page 33
“The question is, is she guilty or not? Six years have passed by. Mrs. Earomirski said she heard the children crying from the grave . . . if they are crying from their grave, they are saying: ‘Let my mother go; you have had her long enough!’”
It was a summation that affected several jurors.
Demakos’ summation was more direct, less literary, angrier: “She doesn’t have the courage to stand up here and tell the world she killed her daughter—”
“Because I didn’t!” cried Alice.
“And the shame and pity of it is that this little boy had to die, too. . . .”
The day that the case went to the jury Alice was preparing to go across the street to Lyon’s office when Balbach told her to wait. When the jury had disappeared, he ordered her to remain within the courthouse. After the deliberations were adjourned for the night, Balbach held everyone in the courtroom until the last juror had gone, then ordered Mrs. Crimmins remanded to a detention pen.
“No,” she pleaded. “Please, no.”
Lyon was shocked. She had not expected to be remanded and was psychologically unprepared for it. Balbach was firm that she would not be permitted to remain free. “Not during jury deliberations,” said Balbach.
Lyon pleaded that he would be responsible for Alice, that she could sleep on the couch in his office. Alice was crumpled in tears as if a verdict of guilty had already been pronounced.
“She will be remanded tonight,” said Balbach.
Alice gripped her chair. “No. Please, you can’t do this to me!”
Erlbaum said that Mrs. Crimmins had a rheumatic heart. Four court officers were prying her fingers from the chair.
From the back of the courtroom, where she had silently sat from the beginning, a sob broke from Alice’s mother: “Your Honor, let my daughter go!”
The deliberations began after lunch on Thursday, April 23, and resumed Friday morning, after Alice had spent a sleepless night in a prison cell. At 5:45 p.m. on Friday there was an urgent summons from the third-floor courtroom. It was a verdict.
When the jury foreman began to read the verdict, Bill Erlbaum held his client’s elbow. Behind her like a cloud was the frowning matron.
“Guilty of murder in the first degree . . .”
Almost everyone sobbed. Alice fell on the defense table and wailed, “Dear God, no! Please, dear God!”
The verdict of guilty in the manslaughter charge was almost lost in aftermath. John Burke stood shaking his fist and weeping. Mrs. Burke slumped back in the bench, crying, “Sweet Jesus, no! Not again!”
“She didn’t kill her children,” her brother cried. “She didn’t kill them.”
Eddie Crimmins wept into his large, clumsy hands.
Demakos and Nicolosi seemed stunned; they hadn’t really expected victory. And Herbert Lyon looked bewildered. “I guess I convinced everyone but the jury,” he said.
EPILOGUE
Alice Crimmins would have to postpone her grief again. On Thursday, May 13, 1971, still protesting her innocence, she was sent back to Bedford Hills prison. Supreme Court Justice George Balbach imposed a life sentence for the murder of her son, and no less than five nor more than twenty years in prison for the death of her daughter. The sentences were to run concurrently, so that she would be eligible for parole at the age of fifty-eight. On the day after the jury verdict Erlbaum began drafting her appeal.
Alice became a model prisoner at Bedford Hills. Every Sunday, Tony Grace drove up the Saw Mill River Parkway, brought her cigarettes, and told her that work on her appeal was progressing.
In the summer of 1973, after she had spent more than two years in prison, Alice was freed. The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, Second Department, in Brooklyn, reversed the conviction in the case of little Eddie—ruling that there was no evidence of murder—and ordering a new trial in the manslaughter conviction of Missy. Demakos had erred in his summation when he said that Alice didn’t have “the courage to stand up here and tell the world she killed her daughter.” The statement went beyond the limits of fair summation and suggested that a defendant who didn’t take the stand was admitting guilt.
The District Attorney’s office began working on an appeal of the court’s ruling, but permitted Alice to be free in $25,000 bail. Technically, she was still under indictment for the death of Missy. Meanwhile, she tried to work and went through the motions of a normal life. She attended baseball games and went out drinking at night with Tony Grace. But she never opened her door without the fear that someone would be waiting in ambush to take her back to prison.
In February 1975, in an unusual decision, the Court of Appeals, the highest court in New York State, unanimously upheld the dismissal of Alice’s conviction of murdering her son; however, by a 5–2 vote the judges ordered the count involving manslaughter of her daughter sent back to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court for reconsideration. In May the Appellate court upheld the manslaughter conviction, and while her attorneys prepared another round of appeals Alice Crimmins was returned to prison to complete her sentence.
In the decade since Alice Crimmins, an obscure Queens housewife, became a public figure, the nature of family relationships has changed. Divorce has become easier, even in Queens. Casual relationships are no longer exceptional, even in Queens. The borough is still a collection of small towns, and some of the men who pursued Alice Crimmins so relentlessly spend occasional nights in dark bars trying to seduce the women who serve them drinks.
Lives were touched and altered by the Crimmins case. Vincent Nicolosi was elected to the State Assembly, in some measure because of the fame he achieved in the trial. Nat Hentel is a judge. Thomas Mackell resigned in disgrace and was convicted for shielding a cheap swindle in his office.* Anthony Lombardino, who became an Assistant United States Attorney, quit under a cloud after some money he was responsible for vanished mysteriously. He now practices law in Queens.
Sophie Earomirski disappeared into another section of the borough, refusing to discuss her night at the window. John Kelly works as a private investigator. Jerry Piering has made second-grade detective. Phil Brady, retired from the Police Department, has spent a few sleepless nights because of what happened to Alice Crimmins. George Martin, also retired, has more time to fly his private airplane. Dr. Milton Helpern retired with many honors. Harold Harrison tried practicing law in Manhattan, but moved back to Queens.
The graves of Missy and Eddie are still unmarked and, according to the caretaker of the Bronx cemetery, unvisited. Their pictures are buried in the folds of a secret compartment of Alice Crimmins’ wallet, where she keeps them forever four- and five-year-old angels in heaven. Eddie Crimmins still works as a mechanic and uses his airline credentials to make long, distracting trips.
And the name of Alice Crimmins still ruptures some blister of guilt, but no one is ever certain of whose.
* In April 1975, Mackell’s conviction was overturned by a higher court.
Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.
Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.
In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die.
—Through the Looking-Glass
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kenneth Gross was born in New York City and has worked as a reporter for the New York Post and Newsday. He is the coauthor, with Bernard Lefkowitz, of Victims: The Wylie-Hoffert Murder Case, published in 1969.
A NOTE ON THE TYPE
This book was set on the Linotype in Electra, a type face designed by W. A. Dwiggins. The Electra face is a simple and readable type suitable for printing books by present-day processes. It is not based on any historical model, and hence does not echo any particular time or fashion.
Born in New York
City, Kenneth Gross attended City College of New York. He began newspaper work as a copy boy on The New York Times and then was a reporter for the Newark Evening News and the New York Post. In 1970 he joined the staff of Newsday. He is a co-author (with Bernard Lefkowitz) of Victims (1969), a book about the JaniceWylie-Emily Hoffert murders.