Echoes of My Soul

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  The downward spiral had started with the arrest of Richard Robles and the media blitz that had painted George Whitmore Jr. as an innocent scapegoat and his accusers as dirty racist cops. Then in April ’65, shortly after the Edmonds mistrial, the NAACP brought to the attention of the press the story of David Coleman, an unemployed twenty-two-year-old black man living in Brooklyn when he was convicted in 1959 of the murder and rape of an elderly white woman, Margaret O’Meara. Detective Bulger had been the lead detective in that case, too, when they interrogated Coleman. After pleading his innocence for thirty-six hours, the suspect had finally confessed to the murder and nearly a hundred burglaries. Although he’d quickly recanted and accused the police of intimidating him, he was convicted and sentenced to death based almost solely on his confession.

  Then shortly after the Edmonds mistrial, the NAACP uncovered another case of a questionable confession involving Detective Bulger. A murder suspect, Charles Everett, was told by Bulger that if he would admit to attacking the victim, who the detective claimed was still alive, Bulger would convince the victim to agree to a light sentence. Frightened, Everett decided to confess to assault and hope for the best. But the victim was dead, and Everett was charged with murder and convicted.

  In light of the Whitmore allegations of Bulger’s questionable conduct, both cases were currently being reviewed at the appellate court level, and the early consensus was that the convictions would be overturned. The disturbing similarity of the other two cases and Whitmore’s was one of the main reasons cited when the legislature and Governor Rockefeller did away with the death penalty in July ’65.

  As Detective Bulger clenched his jaw and walked past the prosecution table, with his eyes fixed straight ahead, Mel Glass thought about the hours he and John Keenan had spent discussing the Brooklyn cops’ motives. In the beginning they didn’t believe that the Brooklyn detectives, Bulger in particular, had set about trying to frame an innocent man. Edward Bulger had seen the photograph and he’d been convinced that the blonde was Janice Wylie and that George Whitmore Jr. was her killer. Whether it was from a real desire to see justice done, or to make himself a hero, or a little of both was up for discussion. After that sighting of the photograph, Bulger had done everything in his power to badger, cajole and trick an easily manipulated and compliant young man with a low IQ, an eighth-grade education and a pronounced naïveté into confessing.

  And if that meant helping to refresh the suspect’s memory by providing some of the details, then, well, the ends justified the means, didn’t they? Glass thought ruefully.

  After the revelations about the Coleman and Everett cases, the prosecutors wondered if they’d been giving Bulger too much of the benefit of the doubt about his motives. At the very least, the detective and his cohorts, who’d gone along for the ride, had been myopic and lazy. Captain Frank Weldon and Edward Bulger had both been told by Detective John Lynch in the early-morning hours of Saturday, April 25, 1964, that Max Wylie denied that the blonde in the photo was his daughter. It wouldn’t have necessarily killed their case. The photograph could still have come from the apartment. However, the Brooklyn detectives and their bosses didn’t take the next step and drive to Wildwood to see if Whitmore’s story about the dump, or his alibi about being in the Ivy Hotel, held up. Neither had they tried to find the women in the photograph.

  The detectives not only supplied Whitmore with the factual details of the murders through their leading questions, but they also directed him to the conclusions that determined his guilt. For example, when Whitmore told ADA James Hosty during the Q&A that the apartment building was four to five stories high, Bulger left the room. When the detective came back, he whispered in the prosecutor’s ear.

  Playing into the detective’s determination to make Whitmore’s statement fit the facts, Hosty then asked, “You mentioned that this building was about four to five stories high. Could it have been eight to ten stories?”

  “Yes,” Whitmore replied.

  Then there was the anecdote about the razor blade wrapper that Bulger said he’d seen lying on the bathroom floor. The detective knew that a razor blade had been found on the floor of the murder room; at his suggestion Whitmore said he’d taken the blade out of a paper wrapper and used it to cut a sheet into strips to bind the girls—all details that had been supplied by Bulger and DiPrima. But the detective apparently didn’t know that the razor blade had been from a dispenser found in a bedroom drawer; it never had a paper wrapper. So the ever-pleasing Whitmore had confessed to something that never happened—a story that could have only come from the detective.

  Glass’s and Keenan’s concerns about the Brooklyn detectives’ manipulation of Whitmore were further illuminated by two other anecdotes. In the first, during the afternoon questioning, Bulger had told Whitmore that he’d just spoken to the girls on the phone. Later, when Hosty took the Q&A in the early-morning hours of April 25, he asked Whitmore about the window shades being down.

  “Why did you pull the shades down?” Hosty had asked.

  “If they came to, they would get up,” Whitmore had replied.

  “The two girls you cut?”

  “Yes, and somebody in the next apartment would see them tied up.”

  “You were afraid somebody from the outside could look into the apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  When Glass and Keenan read about this exchange, they were astounded. Anyone who had attacked and brutally murdered the girls—especially in the manner in which it was done—would have known that scenario was inconceivable.

  Significantly, the Hosty Q&A started at two in the morning and ended fifty minutes later on April 25. Not satisfied with the faux confession, the interrogators had reconvened the session at 4:03 A.M. Whitmore had claimed to have cut Janice Wylie “a few times around the face.” Given the medical examiner’s description that Janice Wylie was disemboweled and Emily Hoffert virtually decapitated, the detectives and Hosty needed a more evidentiary consistent confession:

  “Now you originally told me that you cut her (Janice Wylie) a few times around the face?” Hosty then asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And was that correct?”

  “No.”

  “Where did you cut her?”

  “In the stomach.”

  “How did you cut her around the stomach?”

  “Sliced.”

  “How many times did you slice her?”

  “Two or three times.”

  Keenan and Glass were stunned and appalled at the manipulation. They believed that between the end of the initial Q&A and its resumption more than an hour later, Whitmore had been given answers that once again fit the evidence. So after having a suspect in custody for eighteen hours, during which time George Whitmore Jr. was continually questioned, Detective Edward Bulger got what he felt he needed to be the sleuth who solved the notorious “Career Girls Murders.”

  Detective Bulger’s appearance in the courtroom was not by his choice. In fact, he’d tried to avoid showing up despite having been subpoenaed. In the days before his scheduled appearance, he’d “disappeared” and couldn’t be located when Detective Lynch was sent to find him.

  The defense and NYPD had even asked Bulger’s son, who was also a detective, but he said he didn’t know where his father had gone. Believing that the son was less than sincere, Glass insisted that he be brought before Judge Davidson in his chambers and ordered to contact his father. Davidson was not the sort of judge who put up with any shenanigans. He glared at the son, who then declared that “by coincidence” he’d heard from his father the night before. “He’s waiting for my call at a motel in Miami,” the son said.

  “Then I suggest you call him and tell him to be in court tomorrow at ten A.M. sharp. Am I clear?” Judge Davidson demanded.

  “Yes, sir, very clear,” the son responded.

  The order worked. Bulger now sat in the witness chair and explained to the jury that he’d recently retired from the force, but he had been a detect
ive first grade with the Brooklyn North Homicide Squad on April 24, 1964, and into the morning of April 25, when he questioned George Whitmore about the Wylie-Hoffert slayings.

  Like Joseph DiPrima before him, Edward Bulger recounted the events that eventually led to Whitmore’s arrest for the murders. And, he said, no one threatened George Whitmore Jr. or told him what to say. “I made out a statement for George Whitmore to sign. He initialed each page and signed the last one.”

  On cross-examination Keenan made sure that the jury understood that Detective Bulger had been assigned to the Wylie-Hoffert task force for about three months, much longer than most other detectives similarly situated, except for the detectives originally assigned to the case. As such, he’d made himself an expert, or so he might have thought, on every aspect of the murders: he read all of the DD5s, viewed all of the crime scene photographs numerous times and had spent multiple hours on various occasions inside apartment 3C at 57 East Eighty-Eighth Street.

  Keenan also got Bulger to note that Whitmore did not have a lawyer present at the Seventy-third Precinct when he confessed. He knew the jury would remember that Richard Robles did have a lawyer available when he decided to make statements to David Downes and the other Manhattan detectives.

  Now, as in the second Joe Louis–Max Schmeling heavyweight fight in Yankee Stadium, the initial fundamental sparring was to be mere prelude as Keenan moved abruptly to the knockout. He asked the detective to describe his interviewing style. “You are always polite, soft-spoken, calm, and you don’t feed the suspect any information?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Walking over to the jury box ledge to examine his notes, Keenan appeared to be reading when he asked: “Do you recall questioning Eddie White, a black man, about twenty-four years of age, about the Wylie-Hoffert murders on December 16, 1963?”

  “I remember vaguely talking to him,” Bulger replied, frowning.

  “Do you recall saying to Mr. White as you leaned across the desk in the presence of Sergeant Brent, of the Twenty-third Detective Squad, and hitting your hand on the desk”—as he spoke, Keenan’s voice grew louder and angrier; everyone in the courtroom seemed to jump when he slammed his hand on the ledge, where he kept his notes—“and saying to Mr. White, ‘You’re the guy who did this! You saw the door open and walked in. You saw the bottles on the floor and picked them up! Then you saw Janice . . . nude!’ ”

  Bulger’s jaw set as he glared at Keenan. “No, sir!”

  “Do you recall Sergeant Brent looking at you after you said that to Mr. White?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you recall saying to Mr. White then, ‘All right, get out of here, but I’m not through with you yet’? Do you recall saying any such thing?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You deny that happened?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You don’t deny that happened?”

  “I do deny it happened.”

  As the witness stewed, Keenan lowered his voice. He moved on to People’s Exhibit 72, the photograph of Abbe Mills and Jennifer Holley.

  Bulger acknowledged that Whitmore first told him he got the photograph at the Wildwood dump, and that he’d written the inscription on the back.

  “And you responded how?” Keenan asked.

  “I told him I didn’t believe him.”

  “Were you watching George Whitmore’s stomach?”

  The question caught everyone except Glass off guard. Bulger furrowed his brow. “I don’t know.”

  “But you didn’t believe him,” Keenan suggested, shrugging.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You thought he was lying.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Now direct and assertive, Keenan asked, “Well, didn’t you tell my colleague Mel Glass on July 30, 1964, in room 617 of the District Attorney’s Office in New York County that you could always tell when a Negro was lying by watching his stomach because it moves in and out when he lies?”

  It seemed that for a moment everyone in the courtroom held his or her breath. There were quite a few black spectators in the courtroom, and their faces contorted into scowls. Angry muttering rose to such a level that Judge Davidson had to put a stop to it with a stern look.

  “I don’t remember,” Bulger replied.

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I’m not saying I didn’t say it, but I don’t remember saying it. I may have said it.”

  As Keenan’s questioning went on, Bulger seemed to wear down. He claimed it was Joseph DiPrima who demanded that George Whitmore Jr. tell the truth and quit saying he got the photograph from the dump. “Then Whitmore said he got it in the apartment on Eighty-eighth Street in Manhattan.”

  Bulger, however, insisted that Whitmore mentioned the Eighty-eighth Street apartment before anyone else discussed the address.

  The detective denied that Whitmore was badgered for hours before he began to make admissions. “It was maybe a half hour,” he said.

  But Keenan pointed out that Bulger told James Hosty it had been an hour.

  “I was all mixed-up,” Bulger claimed.

  “But you didn’t say you were mixed-up when you saw Mr. Glass in July 1964 and said there were no errors in the summary you wrote for Hosty,” Keenan noted.

  “That’s because I needed to refresh my memory,” Bulger retorted. “I got straightened out talking to the other detectives.”

  “And that was more accurate than the summary you wrote for Mr. Hosty three days after Whitmore’s arrest?” Keenan asked.

  During question after question, Keenan demonstrated the efforts Bulger made to make Whitmore’s admissions fit the facts—such as when Whitmore was asked by the detective what time he left Brooklyn to travel to the Upper East Side.

  “He said ten A.M., which you knew would not have given him enough time,” Keenan pointed out. “You asked him if it wasn’t more like eight-thirty, because you knew the clock radio had stopped at ten thirty-seven.”

  “Around that time, yes, sir. Approximately that time, yes, sir.”

  Nearing the end of his cross-examination, Keenan moved on to whether Bulger had told Whitmore that the victims were still alive.

  “Now, Mr. Bulger, did you or anybody in your presence, any detective or any official, tell Whitmore that the girls were alive?” Keenan asked.

  “No, sir. Not to my knowledge, not in my presence.”

  “Nobody told Whitmore that the girls were alive?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  Keenan continued to pursue the point. “So you don’t recall whether Whitmore was told the girls were alive?”

  “I don’t recall it,” Bulger replied, with his eyes flicking back and forth among all the jurors and Keenan.

  “Whitmore told you the reason he pulled down the shade after he had cut the girls, and after he tied them up, was because he was afraid they would get up?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Didn’t that indicate to you, Mr. Bulger, that Whitmore thought the girls were alive?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  Keenan relentlessly pressed again. “Did you ever tell Whitmore that you had just talked to the two girls on the telephone and that they weren’t mad at him, that they had only been in the hospital a short time?”

  “I’m not sure. I might have.”

  “You might have said that to Whitmore?”

  “I might have,” Bulger replied defensively. “I might have.”

  “You might have told Whitmore that you might have just talked to the two girls, Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert. You might have said that to him?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “What is your best recollection? Did you?”

  “I say I might have.”

  “You might have?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if you did, that was a lie, wasn’t it?”

  “Well, it’s all the way you look at it.”

  As Keenan wrapped up, Edward Bulger sat in the witness c
hair with his head down. Defeated, Glass thought, but he felt no pity for the detective or his colleague Joseph DiPrima.

  It wasn’t just how they’d conducted their investigation, Glass thought. But what really rankled him was that they’d also been unwilling to concede when faced with the facts that they’d made a mistake.

  In fact, they were so concerned about their egos and reputations, Mel Glass believed, that they were willing to provide the real killer with his defense. Or as he’d said to John Keenan before he began to cross-examine Bulger, “They’d rather see a vicious predator like Robles set free on the streets, and send an innocent man to prison for life, than admit they were wrong.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Sitting at the prosecution table, Mel Glass seethed. He tried not to show it, but his eyes hardened as he followed Mack Dollinger’s movements in front of the jury as the defense attorney delivered his final summation.

  What had set Glass off was that the tall, handsome and capable man exhorting the jury to acquit his client had once worked for Frank Hogan. Dollinger knew the ethics that Hogan demanded of his attorneys. Yet, he had just accused the New York DAO of framing Richard Robles, which was as vile as it was absurd. The most galling aspect was that Dollinger knew better. In fact, Dollinger had reason to know since the night of Robles’s arrest on January 26, 1965, that his client was as guilty as sin.

  When Glass left Robles in the holding area that evening to speak to Mack Dollinger, Glass told the defense attorney everything the young killer had just admitted: “ ‘It wasn’t panic. Something went wrong.’ ”

  Dollinger had then spoken to Robles and, leaving his client with David Downes, approached Glass with an offer: “My client just confirmed everything you told me. We’re willing to accept a plea to murder, but no death penalty.”