Echoes of My Soul

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  Whitmore was losing hope; his behavior began to indicate that he was moments from giving up. Yet, as innocuous as he might’ve been, Whitmore was no dummy. Ayala jerked his head up and Whitmore looked intently at him—almost through him, it would seem. His voice was clear and slow, and to his credit, it was defiant.

  “I don’t know what to say—sir.”

  A little after ten in the morning, John E. Currie, DiPrima’s commander at Brooklyn North Homicide, was notified that there was a suspect being questioned in the Minnie Edmonds homicide. Currie arrived at the Seventy-third Precinct at half past the hour, accompanied by Detectives Vic Arena and Edward J. Bulger. Upon arriving, Currie was notified that George Whitmore Jr. had, “in so many words,” confessed to the Minnie Edmonds case. Upon notification he left, leaving Arena and Bulger in charge. As it turned out, while Ayala and DiPrima had managed to get a roundabout confession of murder out of George Whitmore Jr., they seemed unable to get him to locate the murder weapon. At first, Whitmore denied having a weapon and began retracting his confession.

  “Georgie,” Ayala said smoothly, “the only chance you got of getting out of this room today is if you tell me what the hell kind of knife you used, and where the damn thing is.”

  “I don’t believe you,” George mumbled, gazing downward.

  “You don’t believe me?” Ayala leaned back in his chair, throwing his hands in the air. He looked to his fellow officers, grinning broadly.

  “He doesn’t believe me,” Ayala remarked to DiPrima, who looked up from his notes and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Do you believe me, DiPrima?”

  “You’re an officer of the law. Of course, I believe you,” DiPrima answered, gazing at Whitmore.

  Ayala then asked Micelli if he believed him; to which, he nodded pleasantly. Ayala then turned back to George, hardening his expression.

  “So, George, come on. Quit the games. Where’s the knife?”

  Whitmore began sputtering responses, but he was cut off by Ayala.

  “Come on Georgie, you can tell me. Tell me where the knife is.”

  The room grew silent again, but for the scribbling of DiPrima. Whitmore folded his hands over his eyes for a minute. He sniffled; his nose was runny from crying.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “Okay.”

  “Okay, what?” Ayala answered softly.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you whatever you want me to.”

  “You tell us the truth, George.”

  “And you’ll let me go, right?”

  “And we’ll let you go.”

  George Whitmore Jr. went on to describe the weapon as a black-handled, all-metal knife with a picture of a panther on each side of the handle. Officer Micelli had such a knife in his locker, so he produced one and Whitmore said his knife was similar. But when pressed as to where it was, he repeatedly denied knowing. Instead, he told them he lost it.

  While they actually all got in a squad car and drove to the stairs of a tenement building on 178 Amboy Street, where George had slept that night, as well as to his girlfriend Beverly Payne’s house, no knife was ever discovered. The police were eventually convinced that Whitmore had left the knife in the Amboy Street stairway and someone had since taken it. While the argument over the knife continued to escalate, and accusations persisted in bombarding Whitmore, by afternoon the officers had decided that—knife or no knife—they would book George Whitmore Jr. in both the Alma Estrada attack and the Minnie Edmonds homicide.

  When Whitmore again inquired as to whether he could leave, the room grew eerily silent. Finally Detective Joe DiPrima glanced up from his notes and halfheartedly managed to say, “Not yet, kid. But maybe soon.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Detective Edward Bulger had arrived at the precinct that Friday to deliver salary checks. On the squad room table was a copy of a paperback book that had been found in Whitmore’s jacket on that morning when he was initially searched. It was called The Tall Dark Man and was, ironically, a suspense novel based around a young girl who is involuntarily a witness to a murder. Detective Edward Bulger saw it and began skimming through the book. He leaned his back against the wall and rested the bottom of the book on a slight beer belly, which had formed in recent years. The result of old age, he reasoned. Bulger was a man who, at first glance, was very handsome, with a chiseled jaw and infectious smile. Upon further examination, however, his hair, which was dark and trimmed short on the sides and top, was beginning to gray around his ears and his eyebrows. His cheeks and nose were ruddy, and his forehead was lined. Bulger had been “on the job” for twenty-six years. He had been a detective for seven years, and before that a patrolman, both in uniform and then plainclothes, investigating a variety of vice violations focused primarily on gambling and prostitution. He prided himself on being a first-grade detective, the highest grade a detective can attain. And, like most other New Yorkers, he, too, was shocked when he read about the Wylie-Hoffert killings in the newspapers. And, as luck would have it, because of the magnitude of the case, Chief of Detectives Lawrence J. McKearney established a five-borough, citywide task force to search for the “Career Girls” murderer. In early October 1963, five weeks after the crime, he was told to report to the Twenty-third Detective Squad in Manhattan to begin an indefinite tour of duty as part of the team of men working on the double homicide. It had now been many months since he completed his special assignment with his brethren working out of the Twenty-third Precinct. Yet, with the case still unsolved, Bulger found it difficult, if not impossible, to erase it from his mind.

  Rolling a toothpick around in his mouth, he glanced up and saw a fellow colleague, Detective Vic Arena. Bulger said, “This is a sissy book. It’s written for eleven-year-old girls. What gives?”

  Arena shrugged his shoulders and began examining the articles on the table, one of which was George Whitmore’s wallet. In doing so, he came across a photo of a white girl sitting in a Pontiac convertible. He passed the image to Bulger.

  “Whatcha got there?” Bulger asked, scanning the photograph.

  The images that Bulger found himself studying were, in fact, a snapshot of two young women seated—one was a blonde, with shoulder-length, wavy hair, most prominently displayed in the foreground. She was seated in the backseat atop the open canvas convertible, where it folded at the passenger area nearest the car’s trunk. A brunette, with the side of her face depicted, was seated in the front-passenger side of the car. Bulger immediately closed the book and walked over to the squad table, where he studied the images more intently under a lamp. He flipped the photo over and found a handwritten inscription, To George From Louise. He turned back to the image itself and studied the blond woman closely, under the light. He was awestruck. Only six months ago, he had been pulled away from Brooklyn to join forces with the Twenty-third Precinct in upper Manhattan. He was one of a lucky few detectives out of Brooklyn who were grouped together with Manhattan detectives to help solve the famous case of Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert. And yet, following three months of tireless investigation, Bulger was sent back to Brooklyn, against his wishes, with the case no closer to an arrest than it had been the day of the murders.

  Now he stood outside the squad room where George Whitmore Jr. had just confessed to one homicide and one attempted rape; and here, in his hand, he held an image that he was utterly convinced was of Janice Wylie. That Janice Wylie. Bulger scrutinized the photo: her hair, her delicate features, her figure. This was her. It really was, he thought, working himself up. It just had to be.

  He paced the linoleum repetitively, circling the area outside the squad room. The steady tap of his shoes echoed through the corridor. He could barely wait for the door to open. Beads of sweat doused his brow as he anxiously anticipated his confrontation with Whitmore. He fantasized that the fierce “urgency of now” would inexorably lead to yet another Whitmore confession that day resulting in closing out the most celebrated brutal double murder on the books in the entire city. He would then notify his superior office
rs that he’d solved the case and outperformed his fellow detectives assigned to the Twenty-third Detective Squad in Manhattan. And like most of Brooklyn law enforcement, Bulger was tired of being seen as second rate compared to Manhattan detectives, and the Wylie-Hoffert case cemented that kind of thinking more than ever before.

  But I have to be sure, he thought. He looked back at the photograph. His weary eyes were fixed on the snapshot held inches from his face. That’s her, he repeated in his head, over and over. It has to be.

  When the door finally did open, fifteen minutes later, Edward Bulger managed to replace Louie Ayala and began an altogether new line of questioning that jostled everyone at the precinct—but not nearly as much as the already deeply troubled George Whitmore Jr.

  If Detective Bulger was surprised by or interested in the small stature of George Whitmore, or his seemingly gentle demeanor, he failed to show it. In fact, he began his line of questioning without any introductions. He entered the room swiftly, sat down in the chair directly across from Whitmore, rolled up his white shirtsleeves, placed the photo of the two women in front of Whitmore and said emphatically, “George, where did you get this photograph?”

  George sat up, craning his neck to see the tiny black-and-white photograph resting in the center of the table. By now, he was hesitant to say anything, so he studied Bulger warily before sitting back in his seat.

  “Now don’t do that, George,” Bulger said, amused. “What’s with the blank look?”

  Whitmore’s eyelids batted nervously.

  Bulger shifted his tone. He smiled and his lips widened, revealing smoker’s yellowed teeth. He began questioning again. This time he sweetened his voice. His words were delivered slowly, as if he were a hypnotist advising the patient to stare at a swinging pocket watch.

  “Now I asked you a question here, George. Where I come from, we address the person who’s speaking to us with a proper answer. So I’m going to ask you again. Where’d you get the photo, kid?” Bulger pointed his index finger on the center of the image. His fingerprint embedded itself on the blond woman’s face. “Don’t lie to me now.”

  George opened his mouth and looked over at DiPrima expectantly, but the detective remained unresponsive. Whitmore turned his attention back to Bulger, whose eyes were serious, unfriendly and heated. Whitmore shrugged his shoulders, fully aware that this reaction would further add fuel to the fire. Instead, Bulger maintained his toothy grin, leaning back in his chair, which creaked as he shifted his body. With his right hand, Bulger tapped a corner of the photograph on the table in front of him. It made a steady ticking noise, which began to unnerve Whitmore.

  “Where’d you get the photo, Georgie? Come on now.”

  George began panting for air as the term “where” seemed to be repeated endlessly—now by both detectives, their voices eerily calm and steady.

  “I got it at the dump—”

  “What?”

  “I got the picture in a garbage dump in Wildwood, New Jersey . . . where I was living.”

  “What dump? What are you talking about, Georgie?” Bulger answered mockingly. “I ask you a direct question, and you tell me you got it at the dump?”

  “I got it at the dump, where my dad lives, and I wrote on the back.”

  “You wrote on the back?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  Without missing a beat, Bulger then said, “Didn’t Detective DiPrima warn you about lying to me?”

  “I’m not lying,” Whitmore pleaded. “I got it at the dump. I—”

  “You what?”

  “I—”

  Bulger was holding the image in front of Whitmore. His index finger was pointed at the blonde in the photograph.

  “This girl here? You found a photo of this girl here at the dump? Are you sure?”

  Whitmore, so intimidated that he could hardly speak, continued to stutter until finally he managed to say, over the top of Bulger’s repetitive questioning, “I wanted to—”

  “You what?”

  Whitmore raised his voice. “—impress my friends,” he finished.

  Bulger flicked the photo across the table to Whitmore, causing him to flinch.

  “I don’t know, Georgie. It don’t add up. Come on, seriously. Where’d you get the photograph? Why would you carry a picture like this in your wallet?”

  Whitmore blinked repeatedly.

  “I told you, Officers. I got it at the dump. Louise Orr is a girl that I’m friends with, and that there’s her phone number,” he said, pointing at some scribble written on the back side of the image. He paused before adding, “Just call it and she’ll tell you herself.”

  Detective Bulger ignored this remark and changed his line of questioning: “You didn’t steal it, did you?” Bulger reached across and grabbed the image back, glancing at the writing. He tapped on the image again. “Because if you did, you could tell me, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “So you’re really sayin’, you don’t know this girl.”

  Bulger reminded Whitmore of how he was already in a hell of a lot of trouble. One more lie and it’d be over.

  Whitmore sighed, throwing his arms up in the air. “But I’m telling you the truth, Officer—that there is my handwriting, and I don’t know the girl in that photograph. And I didn’t steal it. I just took it from the junkyard. Nobody wants anything in a junkyard.”

  “But it wasn’t yours,” Bulger reasoned, “so, in effect, you sorta stole it.”

  “I—”

  Bulger lit a cigarette, leaned back in his chair and placed his feet on the table, one shoe crossed over the other. He flicked his match out, tossing it on the floor, and took a long, deep drag.

  “Okay, kid, I’ll play your game,” he said coolly, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “So, for argument’s sake, let’s just say you did get this photo from a junkyard in . . . Where’d you say you’re from? Wildwood. Wildwood, New Jersey. Fine. And then you tried to pretend it was given to you by this girl here.”

  Bulger pointed to the blonde in the photograph again. “So you wrote, ‘To George From Louise’ on the back.” He fixed his eyes on Whitmore. “And maybe you carried this thing around in your wallet, like some sort of souvenir.”

  Whitmore tried to interrupt, and tried to defend himself, but Bulger had the floor and he wasn’t about to open it up. The detective swung his legs off the table and stood up. He began slowly pacing around the squad table, until he reached Whitmore. Without turning to address him, he flicked the ash of his cigarette in Whitmore’s direction. Whitmore rubbed the gray particles from his pants and peered upward. He was exhausted now. The clock on the wall indicated that it was now a quarter past three in the afternoon, almost eight hours since he’d first been brought in. He began to wonder how much longer this questioning would take, and if he’d ever see the light of day again.

  “You stole it. Right, kid?”

  Whitmore closed his eyes, attempting to hold back tears, which were welling up. He didn’t care anymore. Nothing he said seemed to make a difference. He hung his head and rested his right hand on his forehead.

  “Just tell the truth now. That’s all I’m asking.”

  Bulger continued pacing the brief perimeter of the room, while DiPrima folded his hands and gazed across the table at Whitmore. When George opened his eyes, he turned to DiPrima, resigned.

  “I’ll just tell you what you want to hear,” he said, half asking, half pleading.

  DiPrima gestured for Bulger to sit down. He held Whitmore’s gaze and replied plainly, “You just tell us the truth, George. You tell us the truth, and everything will be okay.”

  “Can I go then?”

  Whitmore turned to Bulger, who was now seated across from him. He watched him stub out his cigarette in a half-full ashtray on the table. Bulger grabbed another cigarette from his pack of Lucky Strikes and offered one to Whitmore. George took it and leaned in for a light. Bulger struck a match and Whitmore watched the tiny flame as it crossed the length of the table. He i
nhaled, lighting the cherry, and sat back in his chair. Whitmore let out a cough. He hadn’t had a cigarette in months; and even then, he wasn’t really a smoker. But he thought this might calm the detective down, so he inhaled again. He was also grateful that Bulger wasn’t pacing anymore, and that for the moment, anyhow, the room was silent.

  “Yes,” Whitmore said finally, “I guess you could say I stole it from the junkyard.”

  Bulger slid his hand along the metal table. He leaned back in his chair and whispered something in DiPrima’s ear.

  “That’s good, kid. That’s good,” he said finally before stepping out of the room.

  Detective Louie Ayala then entered the room and cuffed George Whitmore Jr. He then led him down the hall for formal booking on the Estrada and Edmonds cases. Whitmore could hear the steady click of a typewriter, the even chime sounding off at the end of a line. From behind him, he heard the tap of footsteps, along with dull voices mingling and the sound of rustling paper. He heard his name spoken, over and over in hushed tones. George wasn’t sure if he was being beckoned or if it was all in his mind.

  “All right, kid,” a familiar voice said, tugging him down the hall, “we’ve got more work to do.”

  It was Detective DiPrima. Whitmore had just been fingerprinted and was now being taken somewhere new. He uttered, “Yes, Officer” serenely, hauling his legs up a long staircase and into a new, smaller, “more private” room, as DiPrima put it.

  He settled into a metal chair beside a small metal table and studied the graffiti etched into the vinyl tabletop. Some of it included elaborate renderings of a person’s name, like Reggie, carved in a sort of spiked font with a star carved where the dot in the i was intended to appear. Judging from these tags, Whitmore began to wonder how many more hours he would be seated in this chair. The room smelled of stale cigarettes and bologna sandwiches. The walls were barren and painted a dull white. There were two fluorescent tube lights overhead, one of which flickered every few minutes. Whitmore breathed in easy; his handcuffed wrists drooped in his lap.