Echoes of My Soul

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  The jurors listened raptly as the witness recalled Robles’s description of his actions after he decided that the women had to die: striking them on the head with the Pepsi bottles, the frenzy of slashing and stabbing that followed.

  “One of the girls took a long time to die. He said he had to stab her several times up through her stomach to get to her heart.”

  Glass knew there wasn’t a juror who wasn’t thinking of Dr. Helpern’s testimony regarding the odor emitted when Delaney added, “Robles said the smell was awful—so bad he almost threw up.”

  Covered with blood and gore, the killer had then gone into the bathroom, where he took a shower and cleaned the knife, which he left on the sink, Delaney testified Robles had told him and Margie.

  As the defense would have certainly raised the issue if Keenan had not, the prosecutor asked what had brought Delaney to the attention of the police in the Wylie-Hoffert murders.

  “I killed a drug pusher named Cruz,” Delaney admitted. “It was self-defense. He hit me with a steel rod.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Mel Glass looked over at the defense table as the court clerk handed the jury foreman a sheaf of printouts as he instructed the jurors to take one and pass the others to their peers. Mack Dollinger kept a small smile plastered on his face as he watched the jurors, while Richard Robles sat with his head bowed, staring blankly at the table in front of him. In a few moments, the jurors would hear him talk about the murders in his own words as they read along on the transcripts they’d just been given.

  It was November 3, a Wednesday afternoon, five days since Jimmy Delaney last took the stand. After John Keenan finished his direct examination of Delaney, Dollinger had jumped to his feet as though answering the bell in a boxing ring. The thrust of his cross-examination was primarily focused on the promises the prosecution had made regarding the dismissal of the Cruz homicide, Delaney’s criminal history and portraying him as a drug-addicted killer desperate to make a deal.

  Through his questioning, Dollinger also implied that Delaney knew that if his story was believed, he would be eligible for the $10,000 reward offered by Newsweek for the arrest and conviction of the killer. Delaney contended he didn’t know about the reward until just before the trial, but the defense attorney merely scoffed at his answer.

  Glass thought Delaney had held up well during a day and a half on the stand. He’d looked forward to Margie’s testimony, which was supposed to follow immediately. However, she’d had a miscarriage while her husband was on the stand, and they’d had to postpone her appearance for a few days.

  Scrambling to fill the time, John Keenan and Mel Glass decided to introduce the tape recordings of the conversations that had occurred among Jimmy and Margie Delaney and Richard Robles. So the day after Jimmy’s testimony ended, the jury was excused so that the defense attorneys could occupy an office in the DAO to listen to the parts of three separate conversations that the prosecutors wanted to play in the courtroom.

  To accommodate the audio presentation, the courtroom had been set up as a virtual sound studio. There was a speaker for the judge, the defense and prosecution, and two speakers for the jury. One of the detectives who’d assisted in preparing the recorded conversations sat next to the machine. He was ready to turn it on and off so that the jury would only hear those portions approved by Judge Davidson. It would take split-second timing. If he waited too long and the jurors heard something they weren’t supposed to hear, it could result in a mistrial; if he turned it off too quickly, they’d miss important passages.

  Against Mack Dollinger’s objections, the prosecutors also had the recordings transcribed so that the jury could follow along more easily. All three conversations that were prepared for the jurors had occurred in the Delaney apartment in January ’65 after the better recording equipment was installed. Glass played them for ADA Vince Dermody, the senior member of the Homicide Bureau, who was revered by those participants, commentators and observers of the New York justice system to be without equal. His trial experience and sound judgment set him apart; he was the lead knight at Hogan’s Round Table. And when he heard the tapes, he was extremely pleased that the recordings established unequivocally the evidentiary corroboration that was required to proceed against the defendant and would be able to dismiss with respect to Whitmore.

  Judge Davidson informed the jurors that the transcripts were aids to help them follow along while listening to the recordings. “But the real evidence is the tape. What you hear, not what you read, is what’s important here.”

  With that, Judge Davidson nodded to John Keenan, who informed the jury that the three excerpted conversations they were about to hear revealed in substance that the defendant, Richard Robles, “in his own words voluntarily incriminated himself.” He began by playing the first taped conversation, in which Robles talked about how he “eventually” got the glasses off Emily Hoffert, that he was “crazy when I killed that girl” and his circuitous taxi journeys after fleeing the murder scene.

  In the second tape, Robles told the Delaneys, “If I could just plant in my mind that you made it all up, I would take the lie detector test.”

  As that conversation was played, Mel Glass thought about how Robles, instead of taking the test, tried to commit suicide by overdosing. Because he knew he couldn’t pass the test.

  Finally John Keenan introduced the third conversation between Robles and Jimmy Delaney. “In this conversation the defendant is reading a newspaper,” he said, pausing for a moment before adding, “I would like to apologize in advance for what you are about to hear, which is graphic in nature, but we believe it is important.” Keenan nodded to the detective, who switched on the machine for the third time:

  Robles: It says I forced Janice into an act of perversion. That’s supposed to mean she sucked my dick.

  Delaney: You sucked her dick?

  Robles: No, she sucked my dick.

  Glass noted the sudden blushes, grimaces and scowls on the faces of the jurors. The language had come as a shock, but he was sure that they would also recognize what it meant: Robles had just admitted that he’d sexually assaulted Janice Wylie.

  When the machine was turned off, Keenan again apologized for the language. And that, he added, concluded the People’s presentation of the recorded conversations.

  The next day Margie Delaney was called to the stand and entered the courtroom. She looked frail and haggard, far beyond her thirty years. Still, when she took her seat, she glared at Robles before turning to face John Keenan.

  As he had with her husband, Keenan started with her personal history. She said she’d been married to Jimmy for twelve years and had three kids, ages eight to twelve, Francisco, Nathan and Rebecca. She’d been convicted twice on narcotics charges; the first conviction had been suspended and she’d been placed on probation for the other.

  She again glared at Robles, who kept his eyes on the jury, when she identified him as the common-law husband of her aunt Dolly Ruiz. Margie said she’d known him since 1956.

  Like her husband before her, Margie recalled the day Robles showed up at her home. He was carrying a paper bag and had blood on his shirt and pants. “I’d just gone into the kitchen to make some coffee when I heard the door buzzer,” she said. “So I was in the other room when Jimmy let him in. But I heard him say that he was in trouble because he’d killed two women.” There was further conversation.

  Jimmy left to buy some dope. Robles then told her more about the killings. “He said he hit them with Pepsi bottles to try to knock them out. One of them was unconscious right away, but the other one fought back. He said he cut her throat on one of the beds to stop her from screaming.”

  The killer told her that the second girl was lying between the bed and the window when he finished her off. “She was unconscious, but he said she wouldn’t die, so he kept stabbing her in the heart.”

  Robles had shown her a pair of pink rubber gloves, which he took out of the paper bag. He’d even pulled them on and pressed h
is fingers against a mirror to make sure they didn’t leave fingerprints.

  There was no particular reason he’d chosen that building or apartment other than the open window had presented the opportunity, Margie said. He’d only wanted money to buy drugs.

  The young killer had told her that he’d struggled with one of the girls to remove her glasses. Then he’d tied them back to back on the bed while he thought for several minutes about what to do next. “He decided he needed to kill them and told me he said, ‘God forgive me,’ and then went to the kitchen to get Pepsi bottles. He thought it would be less painful if he knocked them out first.”

  On cross-examination Mack Dollinger had stuck with his strategy of portraying Margie Delaney as a drug addict who was trying to help her husband get out of a murder rap.

  “Would you lie for your husband?” the defense attorney asked.

  “Yes,” Margie replied, “but I’m not lying now.”

  As the tiny woman climbed down from the witness stand, she looked at Mel Glass, who nodded solemnly. He was recalling that evening in October 1964 when she told him her story. He knew at that moment that he was hearing the truth.

  As he’d told Paddy Lappin and Thomas Cavanaugh outside his office in the hallway that night, he knew it was the truth because the details of what she said matched the evidence. There were some important details that were not memorialized in any police reports, including the DD5s.

  “We know that both women were struck with Pepsi bottles,” he’d said, “and that Janice’s skull was fractured, but Emily’s was not. And according to the medical examiner’s report, Emily had her throat cut on the bed—the blood on the mattress was type A, the same as Emily’s. Most of the blood on the floor was type O. Janice had type O blood. The ME also noted that Janice was stabbed five or six times in and around her heart. Only the real killer could have told her that—only the real killer could have known. And nowhere in the file—not in one of the more than a thousand police reports—will you find mention that the bedroom had an awful odor.”

  CHAPTER 20

  As Detective David Downes followed Margie Delaney to the stand, Mel Glass reflected on all the careful groundwork and trial preparation he and John Keenan had taken to reach the last few witnesses. And how it was all about to pay off.

  The focus of the mosaic was more sharply defined on January 26, 1965, when Richard Robles confessed to Glass that “something went wrong,” but he wanted to speak to his attorney, Mack Dollinger, before he would tell the whole story. It might have ended there, with the defense attorney refusing to let him speak anymore. Yet, the suspect—tormented in his own mind by his evil deeds—had not waited.

  As Detective Downes now told the jury, he had arrived at the Twenty-third Precinct that evening at Glass’s direction and eventually had a conversation with the accused: “I don’t know, Downes. I went to pull a lousy burglary and I wound up killing two girls,” Robles stated.

  The young murderer had gone on to tell him the story of that day: He got into the apartment by climbing in the kitchen window. He’d forced the first girl to perform oral sex. He’d struck both women with Pepsi bottles. He broke the blade of one of the knives when he stabbed Emily in the back. He’d left the apartment through the kitchen service stairwell door. He took a cab to the Delaneys’ apartment. He’d thrown his bloodstained shirt in the East River.

  Downes went on to testify, “I asked Robles, ‘So are the Delaneys telling the truth?’ He said yes.”

  As the detective stepped down from the stand, Downes and Glass exchanged a meaningful look. On that evening in January, the detective had decided he wouldn’t tell anyone about the confession because he didn’t think anyone would believe him. It would have been just his word against Robles’s.

  However, Lieutenant Thomas Cavanaugh had then entered the room, and Detective Downes had suggested that Robles repeat his story. The young man complied, as the lieutenant told the jury after following Downes to the stand.

  They’d been joined by two more detectives, who also had heard his confession. One of them asked Robles what he felt when he heard that George Whitmore Jr. had been arrested for the murders in Brooklyn.

  “Relieved,” Robles responded.

  Another asked if he wanted the detective to say anything to his mother and Dolly Ruiz.

  “Ask them to forgive me.” And then Richard Robles began to cry.

  CHAPTER 21

  The young black man with the acne-scarred face stared sullenly down at the defense attorney, who was approaching the witness stand like a lion stalking an antelope. Mack Dollinger obviously believed that George Whitmore Jr. would crumble under questioning, as he had with the Brooklyn detectives.

  Despite the judge’s admonition to the jury that Whitmore wasn’t on trial in this case, that hoped-for misperception was essentially a large part of Dollinger’s strategy. If he could make a case to the jury that Whitmore was the real killer or, barring that, show that he was at least as good a suspect as Robles, the defense attorney might sow enough doubt to win an acquittal. However, the witness, dressed in a gray jail jumpsuit, was getting to be an old hand at testifying. He had grown tired of being pushed around.

  Whitmore was now twenty-one. As he’d told the press, which had gone from labeling him the “Brooklyn Psycho” to championing his cause, he was living a nightmare that seemed to have no end—especially as he was still under indictment for the Edmonds and Estrada cases in Brooklyn.

  The first witness called by the defense had been Liam Gynt, who’d been working as the doorman at the 57 East Eighty-eighth residence on the day of the murders. The thirty-seven-year-old was married, with five kids, but he was a “real lush” in Mel Glass’s opinion. Gynt’s memory and judgment had been clouded by alcohol.

  In fact, the defense owed it to Glass that the doorman was even present in the courtroom. First, during the course of the investigation, Glass had interviewed Gynt, who gave conflicting versions on what he saw and heard that day. So Glass turned him and the questionable information over to the defense.

  Thereafter, the defense advised Glass that they wanted to speak to Gynt and possibly call him as a witness at trial. When Glass called him before the trial and told him about the defense’s intentions, Gynt, who was a merchant marine, gave the impression that he was going to “ship out” before he could be served with a subpoena. So Glass called Dollinger’s office and said that if they wanted Gynt, they had better serve him immediately.

  On the witness stand, Gynt recounted how he’d delivered a package to apartment 3C from Bloomingdale’s and was met at the door by the then-unmarried Kate Olsen. Charged with picking up the garbage twice a day from the stairwell landings, he said that when he picked up the garbage between ten and eleven that morning, he hadn’t heard anything from apartment 3C. However, when he returned at about three in the afternoon, and was, in fact, in the hall across from 3C, he heard someone moving around in the apartment and the sound of water running. He also testified that he’d seen the service stairwell door ajar at the same time.

  After getting off work at four o’clock, Gynt said, he’d gone around the corner to a bar, where he drank until about ten that night. When he went home, he learned that the police wanted to talk to him.

  Of course, Mack Dollinger’s point in putting Gynt on the stand was the witness claiming to have heard someone in the apartment—presumably the “real” killer—running the water in the afternoon. The Delaneys, however, had testified that Robles arrived at their apartment before noon, claiming that’s when he confessed to killing two women in the morning.

  When Glass and Keenan discussed Gynt’s potential testimony the night before, they didn’t think that Liam Gynt was purposefully trying to throw water on the prosecution case against Robles. However, given that Glass and Keenan felt Gynt was an unreliable witness—and that two years had passed—they believed he may have “compressed time” and had mixed up what he saw, heard and when.

  On cross-examination Keenan as
ked, “Don’t you remember telling Mr. Glass that the door to 3C was closed in the afternoon?”

  “Then I made a mistake,” Gynt said. “’Cause I know the door, like I say, was ajar. It wasn’t locked. In other words, you could have pushed the door in and walked right in.”

  “Mr. Gynt, isn’t it a fact that you told Detective Zinkand the next day, August 29 of 1963, that the kitchen door was closed about three o’clock when you were picking up the garbage?”

  Gynt furrowed his brow. “Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t. I don’t remember.”

  After Liam Gynt stepped down, Mack Dollinger called George Whitmore Jr. to the stand. As he took a seat, Whitmore glanced briefly over at his mother, who sat in the seat behind the prosecution table.

  Glass had turned to follow the witness’s look. His gaze met that of Bernadine Whitmore, who gave him a slight smile and a nod. Her son was still a prisoner, but she knew that Mel Glass and the New York DAO, which had formally dismissed the indictment against George, had done what they could to correct an injustice. She had called Mel shortly before the Robles trial to thank him for his efforts.

  “You told me you would find the truth,” she said. “And you lived up to your promise.”

  While on the stand, Whitmore was wearing a pair of thick, black-rimmed eyeglasses, which he needed to see the documents that Mack Dollinger gave to him, one at a time, as he started his questioning. The first documents were Detective Edward Bulger’s notes from his interrogation.

  Looking carefully over the pages, Whitmore then handed them back, saying the signature on the pages wasn’t his. Presented next with a diagram of the East Eighty-eighth Street apartment, Whitmore also denied drawing it, as Bulger had claimed. It was an important point, as the alleged suspect’s “knowledge” of the apartment layout was one of Bulger’s contentions that proved Whitmore had been there. But now the witness said all he had done was place marks on the diagram, which had already been drawn, under the guidance of the detectives in the room.