Echoes of My Soul

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  Detective Bulger entered the room, and the two men assumed their positions from before. Bulger lit a cigarette and blew it at Whitmore, while DiPrima offered George a congenial expression, as if to say, You’ll be out of here in no time. Just cooperate. Bulger’s sleeves were still turned up, and he cupped his hand around his jaw. His right thumb poked into his unshaven cheek. He flicked his cigarette toward Whitmore, an ash dropping on the center of the table. Whitmore didn’t look up and didn’t make eye contact. Instead, he sat, head bent, waiting anxiously for the next round of questioning to begin.

  “This nonsense about Louise Orr isn’t playing out, George,” DiPrima began in a calm, steady tone. “So what’s the real story, kid?” He paused for effect. “What are you hiding?”

  Whitmore closed his eyes.

  “George,” DiPrima added gently, “we called that number on the back of the photo and we reached a courthouse in Cape May. In fact, the person answered saying she was in Cape May Courthouse.”

  “Georgie,” Bulger inserted, taking another drag on his cigarette, “come on, kid—what are you playing at? Let me ask you—couldn’t you have gotten that photo off of Eighty-eighth Street?”

  Whitmore lifted his head and began gazing at the ceiling. He appeared to be averting his eyes from the flickering light that dangled from a rectangular metal shade, held up by a loose wire.

  Bulger continued his questioning. “Didn’t you go into the building on East Eighty-eighth Street and inside apartment 3C, grab the picture?”

  Without shifting his gaze, Whitmore mumbled, “When can I leave here?”

  “When you answer all our questions, George,” DiPrima replied quickly.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  DiPrima leaned back in his chair and it squeaked as his weight shifted. He folded his arms.

  “George,” he tried, “come on now. I know this has been a tough day, but it’s almost over. This is the last line of questioning.” He paused. “I promise.”

  “You really promise?” George asked desperately, finally meeting DiPrima’s eyes. DiPrima held his gaze and, without blinking, answered, “George, you have my word.”

  “George,” Bulger echoed, “George, let me ask you that question again.”

  Whitmore turned to Bulger and asked for a cigarette. Bulger pulled one from his pack, lit it, and passed it across the table. Whitmore brought it to his lips and inhaled deeply.

  “George—did you get this photo inside the apartment at Eighty-eighth Street in Manhattan?”

  Whitmore pulled the cigarette from his mouth and blew the smoke directly at Bulger. The room grew eerily silent for a few seconds, the light above flickering erratically. The air was cloudy with smoke and the three men—Joe DiPrima, Edward Bulger and George Whitmore Jr.—sat motionless, hearing only the sound of their own breath. Then, after some time, he spoke.

  “Yes, sir, I did.”

  CHAPTER 5

  By four-thirty in the afternoon, George Whitmore Jr. had confessed to having taken the subway to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and then transferred to an uptown train. Having taken some time to get this confession on paper, Bulger pushed forward, anxious to begin his line of questioning into the murders of Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert. He asked George if maybe he had hit one of the girls on the head with a soda bottle, when entering the apartment. As an accident, Bulger reassured George, because the girl had startled him when he thought no one was home. Wasn’t that the case?

  Whitmore waved his hands in the air and nodded his head back and forth.

  “—Not because you wanted to hurt them George . . . ,” Bulger suggested promptly.

  “I didn’t hit nobody with nothin’,” Whitmore answered defiantly, slinking back in his seat, his eyes shifting back up to the ceiling. Whitmore remained in this state for quite some time as DiPrima and Bulger revisited the line of questioning in a variety of different ways.

  “You didn’t mean to hit anybody,” DiPrima tried; and then maybe “You forgot you hit her,” Bulger attempted weakly. Realizing that they’d backed George Whitmore Jr. into a corner, the two detectives decided to give him a break and left the room for a few minutes to regroup.

  Whitmore, who by then seemed to understand why he was there, also appeared conflicted as to what to do. He looked down at his hands, wrists scratched from the handcuffs. He studied the dirt in his nails and spread his fingers out wide.

  Whitmore saw the round doorknob turn, and his heart skipped a beat. Then he gazed up tiredly as DiPrima and Bulger reentered, along with two other gentlemen dressed in plainclothes. One man was introduced as Lieutenant Currie, commander of the Brooklyn North Homicide Squad, while the other was presented as Inspector William E. Coleman, the commander of the Thirteenth Detective District. DiPrima and Bulger took their usual seats across from Whitmore, and the two other men stood to the side, against the wall. Whitmore turned and grinned awkwardly at Lieutenant Currie and Inspector Coleman; they returned his greeting with similar, awkward smiles. Cigarettes were passed around, matches struck and the room became clouded with trailing smoke. A Lucky Strike was offered to Whitmore; once again he took it, accepting a light from Bulger, who advised him not to pay any attention to their new guests. Paper shuffled, chairs squeaked as bodies adjusted in their seats and the tubular light from above continued its erratic flickering. A moment later, Detective Bulger began speaking—this time in a casual, if pleasant, tone.

  “Look, George—I just got off the phone with the girls and they say they’re not mad at you.”

  Whitmore stared at Bulger blankly.

  “You didn’t mean to do it. Right, Georgie? Isn’t that right?” he added eagerly.

  “No, I didn’t . . . ,” Whitmore responded almost inaudibly. He had reached his hands up to his eyes, and the sound of the handcuffs clinking together overpowered his voice.

  “What was that, George? Come at me again?”

  Whitmore swallowed and repeated his statement.

  “You didn’t what, George?”

  DiPrima echoed Bulger’s query, leaning his elbows on the table. And in that moment, it seemed everyone in the room—from the shadowed men towering in the corners to the two detectives at the table—was bent over, mouths agape, breath paused and movement frozen.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt those girls,” Whitmore managed finally, his voice a broken, stumbling mumble.

  His eyes welled up. He fixed his gaze on DiPrima and then on Bulger, his voice coming through now—a faint, exhausted mess of syllables:

  “Now . . . eh . . . can I pleeaase . . .”

  He inhaled quickly—so quickly it sounded like a gasp. His nose was runny and he rubbed a finger along his nostrils and blinked erratically, as if his whole being had been shaken up.

  “. . . go home?”

  News of George Whitmore Jr.’s surprising and dramatic statement, “I didn’t mean to hurt those girls,” spread through the precinct like wildfire. And such startling testimony kept on coming. Shortly after 6:00 P.M., George Whitmore Jr. had confessed, wholly, to the attack of Alma Estrada, the murder of Minnie Edmonds, and the double homicide of Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert. In the hours following his initial confession to Detective Edward Bulger, Manhattan detectives John Lynch and Andrew Dunleavy, of the Twenty-third Detective Squad, arrived at the Seventy-third, along with Assistant Chief Inspector Joseph Coyle. Both Lynch and Dunleavy, of the Twenty-third Precinct, were familiar with the facts and details of the Wylie-Hoffert case. Yet, the Brooklyn police brass and detectives denied them direct access to question George Whitmore. In fact, they were only permitted to write out a list of questions that they wanted Whitmore to answer. This growing antagonism between the Brooklyn and Manhattan detectives resulted in fetching Captain Frank Weldon, the Manhattan District detective commander who was in charge of the investigation from its inception, to act as a mediator between the opposing borough detectives.

  By eleven in the evening, James J. Hosty, a Manhattan assistant district attorney (A
DA), arrived at the Seventy-third Precinct. The Homicide Bureau of the Manhattan, New York County, District Attorney’s Office (DAO) had a procedure for its ADAs to be “on call”—the twenty-four-hour night chart—should a defendant in a homicide wish to make a statement. The process entailed the homicide detective assigned to the case to notify the ADA who was on call. The homicide detective then arranged for the ADA to be taken by squad car to the precinct where the defendant was being questioned. A young ADA, only in the DAO for three years, James Hosty happened to be the attorney on the chart and on call. After arriving at the precinct in Brooklyn, Kings County, he was advised by the Brooklyn Homicide Bureau detectives about all that had transpired, with particular detail regarding George Whitmore Jr.’s confession to the Wylie-Hoffert murders. Following this, and stretching deep into the early-morning hours of Saturday, April 25, Hosty took a Q&A statement from George Whitmore Jr., in the presence of Detectives Bulger and DiPrima and the New York County DAO stenographer Dennis Sheehan. Once again, and to everyone’s satisfaction, Whitmore described the bloody details of the night in question. George had now been under interrogation for well over seventeen hours, and it showed in his statements. At one point, when asked if he had any weapon on him during the night in question, he answered by saying, “Yes, I have it right there.”

  Here and there, detectives would leave Whitmore in the interrogation room and revisit his statements. Finally, at approximately four in the morning, ADA James Hosty called his boss, Al Herman, the head of the Manhattan DAO’s Homicide Bureau, and reported the confession. He advised Herman that the consensus seemed clear that the blonde who appeared in the photo taken from Whitmore’s wallet was indeed Janice Wylie. Upon hearing this, Herman ordered that George Whitmore Jr., who had already been arrested by the Brooklyn detectives in the Minnie Edmonds and Alma Estrada cases, be booked for the murders of Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert.

  Early that morning of April 25, 1964, the street out front of the Seventy-third Precinct was packed with various officers and detectives, reporters, photographers and curious neighbors. Chief of Detectives Lawrence J. McKearney stood amid the mass of law enforcement and media and spoke confidently and proudly. As flashbulbs went off and a hum of whispers spread over the precinct steps, voices called out questions, each one drowning out the other—referring to the Wylie-Hoffert confession. McKearney said deliberately and clearly, “Whitmore told us details that only the killer could know.”

  Later that morning, Whitmore was arraigned in Brooklyn’s criminal division courthouse for the Minnie Edmonds murder and the Alma Estrada attempted rape. Whitmore pleaded not guilty and was denied bail. The presiding magistrate effusively praised the outstanding work done by Brooklyn detectives. As Whitmore was led away to the Brooklyn lock-up detention area adjacent to the courtroom, he turned to his court-appointed lawyer, Harold Lasky, and said, with a puzzled expression, “Gee, I hope that the Brooklyn cops aren’t angry at me for lying to them about committing those crimes.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Two months later—late June 1964

  Manhattan ADA Melvin D. Glass sprinted along Park Avenue, dodging pedestrians and vendors through the heavy doors of Grand Central Station. He then rushed down a flight of stairs into the hot, reeking and crowded subway platform just as the downtown express coasted to a stop. Its headlights blinded the waiting straphangers as it emerged from the vast tunnel. He dabbed his sweaty brow with a cotton handkerchief from his jacket pocket while inching his way through the masses into the already packed subway train. Edged against a door that continued to swing open, making a whapping noise each time, he straightened his navy tie, studying his reflection in the glass window. If this train didn’t get moving, he’d have hell to pay, he thought. Normally, he carpooled into Manhattan from his home in the borough of Queens, but his car was in the shop—the diagnosis was slippery brake pads. So here he was, just another grunt, packed in like a sardine on his way down to the criminal courts.

  At Fourteenth Street, the car emptied slightly and Glass moved from the doorway toward the center. He was thinking of something his sister, Blanche, a psychologist, had said the day before. They were discussing the Wylie-Hoffert case, which the media, in its frenzied sensationalism, referred to as the “Career Girls Murders.” It was still a popular talking piece in New York that summer; and given that his sister worked just a few blocks from where the murders had occurred, it had grown to become somewhat of a family fixation. Glass had a friend, Detective John Justy, of the Nineteenth Precinct Detective Squad, who had been assigned to the Wylie-Hoffert case as the NYPD liaison to the deceaseds’ families. Justy familiarized himself with the investigative facts of the case. Through him, Mel managed to visualize the extreme violence involved and found himself, not unlike many others, haunted by the idea of it. But what troubled him now wasn’t the crime itself but the crime scene. Just the night before, his sister had said very directly, “From what you’re telling me, the killer was compulsively clean, and that’s something right there.” That’s something, all right, Mel thought as the train pulled into the City Hall/Brooklyn Bridge Station. He exited the train and walked along the platform, pushing through the turnstile and racing up the stairs to the warm concrete of Centre Street. He jogged south, half a block, and entered the district attorney’s office and quickly headed up to court.

  On his way into the courtroom, he ran into his bureau chief, Jim Yeargin, a tall, athletic, gentle, light-skinned black man, who had served in the Homicide Bureau for many years with distinction before being designated to run the Felony Trial Bureau, where Glass was now assigned.

  “Mel, I expect you to lead by example. You know what they say about those early birds. We’ve got to get in court before those ‘black robers’ grab their gavels and take the helm,” he said with a mischievous grin.

  “Carpool fell through—won’t happen again,” Glass answered, panting.

  ADA Glass gripped the sweaty handle of his briefcase, breezed into the crowded courtroom, secured the prosecution table and was ready to represent the People, just as the judge tapped on the gavel and called for order.

  “One meatball sandwich.”

  Mel glanced up from his desk to find Detective John Justy, his good friend, balancing a tray of food before him, replete with sodas. He pulled out a chair across from Mel’s desk and eased into his seat, setting the food on the desk, along with an open pack of Lucky Strikes and some matches. Mel gathered his paperwork and set it aside.

  “Where’d you go? Poughkeepsie?”

  “Very funny. Uncle Tony’s was packed today, Mel. It’s summertime—Jesus, everybody’s down there but us.”

  Mel could smell the aftershave Justy had obviously drenched himself in and arched back in his chair. Justy wore his usual white shirt, which contrasted smartly with his nifty executive-style vested suit. Justy loosened his paisley tie at his throat.

  “Heard you were running a little late this morning, ADA Glass.”

  Mel waved his hand dismissively and grinned. “I don’t know where you heard that rumor.”

  Justy took a bite of his pastrami sandwich and through steady chews added, “How’s that wife of yours?”

  “Pregnant.” Mel took a plastic knife and cut his sandwich in half.

  “When’s she due?”

  “End of the summer—thank God. Betty’s doing well and little Elizabeth’s excited, but unsure if she wants a baby brother or sister.”

  Justy chuckled. For the next few minutes, all was silent in ADA Glass’s office, except for the sound of sandwiches being gulped down and the whir of a small fan that rested in the back corner. Eventually, while sipping their soft drinks, the two men began discussing the Wylie-Hoffert case.

  Pensively and almost imperceptibly, Mel edged his chair in closer to his desk, sat up and leaned forward with his elbows resting on the arms of his chair. He said, “Listen . . . I’m curious about something, and . . . well—”

  “Well, what?”

  Justy rubbed
the palms of his hands together and quickly tossed the crumpled trash left over from his sandwich into a nearby wastebasket.

  Mel continued, “Maybe you have a logical explanation?”

  Justy blinked, leaning back in his chair. “Shoot.”

  “Well, my sister—you know Blanche, right?”

  “Sure, sure. Met her once, some time ago. She’s in the head-analyzing business, isn’t she?”

  “Sort of, a psychologist. Well, not for nothing, but she works just a few blocks from East Eighty-eighth Street, and, well, she’s kind of gotten spooked by the case.”

  Justy rolled his eyes and said, “Jesus, Mel, who hasn’t, for Christ’s sake?”

  Mel ran his hand through his shortly cropped dark brown hair, trying to think how to phrase his next question. He opened his mouth, but no words came.

  “Spit it out!” Justy exhorted, folding his arms at his chest. “You’re the one on the clock right now.”

  “Yeah,” Mel answered with a touch of hesitancy, tapping his index finger on the metal top of his desk. “Well . . .” He cocked his head to the right before continuing. “Blanche was going on about how the killer apparently cleaned himself off in the bathroom after the murders.”

  “So?”

  Mel watched as the door across the hall swung open and a few ADAs stepped into the corridor, heading down toward the elevator bank. He heard voices approaching his office and watched as a group of suits and ties shuffled down the drab hallway. As the chatter drifted off, Mel jerked forward and managed to say, as if an afterthought, “Well, she didn’t think Whitmore fit that profile.”

  Justy raised his eyebrows. He pressed his elbows onto the desktop, resting his knuckles under his chin. “Didn’t think he fit the profile?”