The Acid King

by Jesse P. Pollack

  The next day Corey walked into her backyard. There, she found Ricky sleeping inside the clubhouse. She woke her uninvited guest and asked how he had learned where she lived. Apparently, Corey’s friend Kim had told Ricky he could stay there for the night. Corey wanted to be angry, but she could only laugh at her friend’s meddling. After all, Ricky was cute and had been sweet to her at the Midway. She told Ricky to wait in the clubhouse and went back inside to cook him a quick breakfast. When she returned with the food, Ricky thanked her, and the two chatted while they ate. The conversation was initially mundane, but soon turned to the grief in Ricky’s life. He told Corey of the troubles with his parents and sisters, his failures at school, and the lack of connection he felt with his peers.

  Just like they had with Gary, Corey’s protective instincts kicked in, and she told Ricky he could sleep in her clubhouse whenever he wanted. For a while, he did stay, often talking with Corey late into the night. Ricky felt like he could trust her as much as Tony and Suzi from the Place—maybe even more. Corey was not interested in Ricky’s drugs and she didn’t ask him to rob houses with her, as other friends had in the past. Unlike his parents, she never asked him to change how he dressed or how he wore his hair. Just like Tony and Suzi, Corey accepted him for who he was and listened to his problems. This gave Ricky a much-needed boost in confidence. By the last week of June 1983, Ricky was ready to return home and mend relationships. He showed up at the front door of his parents’ house just in time to join them on their annual summer trip to Argyle.

  It would be their last vacation together as a complete family.

  Chapter 16

  ON THE EVENING OF AUGUST 11, 1983, while Ricky Kasso was upstate relaxing with family, two young boys, Christopher Barber and Sean Dentrone, were riding their bicycles over by East Northport’s Dickinson Avenue Elementary School. When it began to rain, the boys sought shelter under one of the school’s outside overhangs and waited for the weather to clear up. Just as the quick shower stopped, a figure exited the small patch of woods to the east of the school and began walking toward the boys. As he got closer, he pulled a gun from the waist of his pants and pointed it at them.

  “You’re under arrest!” he yelled. “I’m a cop!”

  Considering this “cop” had long hair and wore jeans and a T-shirt, he was obviously lying. However, the sight of the pistol was enough to frighten the boys.

  “What for?” Christopher asked.

  “For vandalizing the school!” he replied. “Give me your names and phone numbers! Now!”

  Christopher told him his name and part of his phone number.

  Suddenly the young gunslinger noticed Sean crying and focused his attention on the twelve-year-old.

  “Give me your name!” he ordered.

  Sean just stood there, silently weeping.

  “Tell me your name and number!” he demanded, pushing the gun against the boy’s head.

  Before Sean could answer, another teenager pulled up on a ten-speed.

  “Hey!” he called out. “You got my two bucks?!”

  The blond gunman turned away from Christopher and Sean and began arguing with the other boy. In the middle of the squabble, the boy on the bike grabbed the gun from the teenager. He opened a compartment, spilling a cache of small metal pellets onto the soaked pavement—the weapon had been a BB gun all along. The boy then looked at Christopher and Sean and told them to go home. The two grabbed their bicycles and quickly fled to Christopher’s house on Catherine Street.

  When they got inside, Christopher told his parents, William and Linda, who called the police. Several Suffolk County officers arrived and took statements from the boys and Christopher’s father. Using Sean and Christopher’s description of their assailant, the officers briefly searched the area but had no luck. They returned to the Barber residence, promising to investigate further. After the squad cars pulled away, Sean looked at his friend’s father and said, “Mr. Barber, I was afraid to mention it, but I’m pretty sure it was Gary Lauwers. . . .”

  * * *

  A few days later the Kassos returned home from Argyle. Despite having Ricky in tow, the trip had been quiet and uneventful, thanks mostly to his lack of drug connections upstate. While most of the family was anxious having Ricky around, Wendy loved having her brother along for the trip, and now back at home.

  One evening during the third week of August 1983, Wendy was sitting in Ricky’s bedroom and noticed a Sucrets tin on his drawing table. Curious to see what was inside, she reached for the tin, but was stopped by Ricky.

  “Don’t look in there,” he told her.

  “Okay, sorry,” Wendy replied.

  “It’s fine,” Ricky said. “I’m gonna go take a shower. You can hang in here, if you want.”

  Wendy decided to stay while Ricky grabbed a change of clothes and left for the bathroom. After a few minutes, Wendy’s curiosity got the best of her, and she decided to open the Sucrets tin, despite her brother’s wishes. Inside, she found several joints. Being ten years old and naive about Ricky’s drug use, Wendy assumed they were cigarettes and put the tin back on the table. After Ricky showered, he went back into his room and saw the Sucrets tin had been moved.

  “Did you look in there?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Wendy replied.

  “What did you see?”

  “Cigarettes.”

  “Okay, good,” Ricky said, relieved.

  Wendy left to see if dinner was ready yet. When she returned to tell Ricky that it was time to eat, she found his room vacant. His window was open and his blue New York Giants comforter was missing from his bed. She looked outside and saw the comforter lying on the lawn. Wendy looked to her right and saw her brother already halfway down the block, fading into the distance. He had used the comforter to brace his landing.

  Racing down the stairs, Wendy shouted, “Mom! Dad! Ricky’s gone! He went out the window!”

  Dick, who was already seated at the dinner table, turned to Wendy and wondered aloud, “Why didn’t he just go out the front door?”

  Chapter 17

  DURING THE FINAL DAYS OF August 1983, William Barber kept himself busy trying to find the teenager who had pointed a pellet gun at his son. He asked several neighborhood kids, and a few answered, “It was probably Gary Lauwers.”

  Gary had rightfully earned his newfound reputation for violent mischief. He had recently shocked several of his peers by attacking a former friend, Mike Muxie. Coincidentally, the pellet gun used to terrorize Christopher Barber and Sean Dentrone had belonged to Mike, who had only given it to Gary after nearly an hour of pestering.

  A few days after that incident, Gary was hanging out behind the 7-Eleven uptown with Mike, Colm Clark, and their friend Steve. At one point Steve said, “Hey, Gary! Let’s give Muxie a bowl burn!” Panicking, Mike ran across the street, but Steve and Gary chased him down. Steve grabbed Mike, put him in a headlock, and started punching him in the chest, laughing wildly as he delivered the blows. Gary then took a pot pipe and started heating one end with a cigarette lighter.

  “That’s sick!” Colm yelled. “Don’t do that to him!”

  High on power, Gary ignored Colm and pushed the hot end of the pipe against Mike’s skin, instantly searing it. Mike cried out in pain, but Gary was far from finished. Before Mike was finally freed from Steve’s headlock, Gary had burned him nearly a dozen more times.

  Soon after, Gary was arrested for this and spent a night in the county jail. A very unhappy Herbert Lauwers bailed his son out the next morning. At his hearing, Gary’s lawyer, Eileen Evans Newmark, succeeded in getting Gary only five years’ probation, as opposed to the five years in jail the prosecutor had sought. During a later interview, Newmark attempted to downplay the assault, telling Newsday that Gary had merely been “acting out.”

  Around the same time, William Barber finally tracked down Gary and confronted him about the pellet gun incident. Gary immediately owned up to it and apologized, insisting it was a stupid joke, and Barber briefl
y considered letting the matter pass. However, his wife insisted that he press charges, and Barber relented. On September 15, 1983, Gary was arrested by the Suffolk County Police Department, who charged him with criminal menacing. Gary pleaded guilty and was given one year’s probation.

  * * *

  One autumn morning, Harry Schock—Gary’s and Ricky’s old Little League coach—was walking through the woods behind his Grove Street house on his way to work. When Schock wasn’t coaching, he made his living as an employee with the United States Postal Service. Since the Northport post office was close to home, Schock chose to walk through the woods to work instead of driving. That morning he found Ricky Kasso sleeping in the woods. A large tree had recently collapsed, and its roots were pulled clean from the earth, leaving a large indentation in the dirt. Ricky had filled the hole with fallen leaves, crawled in, and covered himself with the foliage to keep warm. Schock woke the boy, telling him, “Come on, let’s get you some warm clothes and something to eat.” Ricky followed him back to Grove Street. Once inside, Schock woke his wife, Yvette, and told her what had happened. Stunned at the idea of a neighborhood kid sleeping outside in a hole in the dirt, Yvette grabbed some of her son’s clothing from the laundry and brought it to Ricky.

  “Here, go put these on,” she said, handing him some jeans and a shirt. “I’m going to wash your clothes and make you some food.”

  Ricky thanked her and went to go change out of the grimy army jacket he was wearing. Shortly after, Richard Schock awoke and walked downstairs to find Ricky heading to the bathroom, carrying a pile of his own clothes.

  “He had leaves in his hair and dirt on him,” Schock recalls. “He had been wearing beat-to-shit army surplus crap because it was dirt cheap. It wasn’t even to be cool; it was because you could buy a used Vietnam-era GI shirt for like fifty cents. He had been through so much with his family and his drug addiction.”

  Ricky’s hunger was temporarily eased when Yvette gave him a plate of food for breakfast while Harry went to call the Kassos. Dick answered.

  “Hi, Dick. It’s Harry Schock,” he said. “Sorry to bother you, but I just found Ricky sleeping in the woods behind our house. Do you think you could come pick him up?”

  “We can’t have him in the house,” Dick replied. “He’s using dope.”

  “What?” Schock said. “Listen, pal, you can’t just throw your kid out!”

  Dick was unmoved.

  “Mind your own fuckin’ business!” he growled into the receiver. “He’s a monster!”

  To Harry Schock’s surprise, the line then went dead.

  “I think in Dick Kasso’s fucked-up mind, he thought, ‘Ricky’s got to pull himself up by his bootstraps! What he needs is a dose of reality!’ ” Richard Schock says. “That works sometimes, but most of the time, it doesn’t. That whole ‘tough love’ stuff doesn’t work when people have alcohol problems or narcotics problems. They need professional help. He had a legitimate reason to be concerned—the boy was unstable—but the way he handled it was one hundred percent wrong. Also, you have to understand that, unless you were literally beating your kid with a bat, the cops would say, ‘Hey, mind your business; it’s his son, not yours.’ Things were different back then.”

  After he hung up the phone, Harry Schock decided to let Ricky stay in his home—but mindful of Dick’s revelation of Ricky’s drug use, Schock asked his son to stay near his mother while he was at work.

  “It wasn’t that he thought Ricky was going to rape her or anything,” Richard Schock says, “but my father didn’t know what he was capable of. My mother and father were normal, blue-collar people. When they asked someone a question, they expected a normal answer, but Ricky was strange. He would say crazy shit like, ‘Oh man, the trees are talking to me! I can see faces. . . .’ They would have him lay down and my father just wouldn’t go to sleep. He would not let a young boy freeze to death in the woods, but he wasn’t going to go to sleep with a drugged, deranged weirdo in the house, either.”

  After a few nights, Ricky thanked the Schock family for their kindness and left, despite having nowhere else to go. Sometimes he would break into an unlocked car and sleep in the back seat. On rainy nights, when he couldn’t find a car, Ricky resorted to sleeping in the public bathroom down at Scudder Beach, only a short walk from Aztakea Woods. The small brick building wasn’t much, with its cold tile floors and the awful odor coming from the nearby sewage treatment plant, but at least it was dry. When all else failed, he would return to the crater left by the dead tree in the woods behind the Schock house.

  One day in mid-October, Harry and Richard Schock were raking leaves in their backyard when they heard a commotion in the woods. Dropping their rakes, they ran in the direction of the screaming and found Dick Kasso beating his son to the ground in the middle of the small forest. Harry Schock pulled Ricky away from his father and brought him back to his house. He sat Ricky in a chair on the back porch and helped him clean up before going back into his house and fixing Ricky a few sandwiches. Before returning outside, Harry Schock turned to his son and said, “One of these days, I’m gonna find him hanging from a tree. . . .”

  Chapter 18

  AUTUMN 1983 LATER PROVED TO be a turning point leading up to the tragedies of the following year. In October, while Northport’s younger children were getting ready for Halloween, the older kids were hosting several drinking parties across the village. One such party was held at the home of sixteen-year-old Randy Guethler. There, Randy met an older kid named Gordon. Over beers, the two talked about popular hangouts in the village, with Gordon volunteering that he liked spending time in local cemeteries. Such a revelation might have creeped out other teens, but in Northport, this was common.

  “Graveyards are very wonderful places because there’s nobody there except for dead people,” Johnny Hayward says. “When we were kids, we’d grab some girls and some beer, and go out to the back corner of the graveyard and drink. Hell, the dead people don’t mind, you know?”

  At some point during the conversation, Randy mentioned he had heard that a real human skull could fetch five hundred dollars in New York City. Some former Northport residents recall “Pagan Pat” Toussaint as the source of this rumor. No matter where the information came from, Gordon was down for this venture. In fact, he even knew just the place to pull it off—Northport Rural Cemetery, just outside of town on Sandy Hollow Road. There, Gordon knew of a stone mausoleum that would be easy to access, due to a flimsy wooden panel covering one of its windows.

  One week later, shortly before midnight, Randy and Gordon ventured into Northport Rural Cemetery carrying a crowbar and a sack taken from Gordon’s garage. Gordon led Randy over to a crypt marked MORRELL. The two pried the wooden panel from the rear of the tomb, and Gordon climbed inside while Randy stood watch. Inside, Gordon used the crowbar to smash the marble top of a stone sarcophagus, revealing the wooden casket of Joseph B. Morrell.

  In life, Morrell had been a well-accomplished man, serving as the president of the Northport Trust Company, the YMCA of Nassau and Suffolk Counties, the Methodist Episcopal Social Union, the Brooklyn–Long Island Church Society, and the Northport Yacht Club, before dying in 1930 at the age of seventy.

  Once the top was smashed, Randy climbed into the mausoleum and opened the lid of Morrell’s casket. Randy pulled out a cigarette lighter so he and Gordon could see the body lying inside. Fifty-three years after his death, Morrell’s body had decomposed to the point of near-skeletonization. A thin layer of what looked like ash covered Morrell’s burial suit, and his leather shoes had completely disintegrated, leaving only rubber soles behind. While Randy kept the tomb illuminated, Gordon reached down and twisted off Morrell’s skull. Afterward, he removed a small brass plaque from the coffin that read JOSEPH B. MORRELL, 1859–1930.

  Randy decided he wanted a souvenir for himself and asked Gordon to retrieve something for him. Gordon grabbed Morrell’s right hand and snapped it off with a loud crack. The two then bagged up the grisly
remains, put the marble slabs back in place, and climbed out of the crypt. Last, they covered the window with the wooden panel and fled.

  After Gordon dropped him off at home, Randy went into his kitchen, grabbed a brown paper lunch bag, and placed the hand inside. He then took the bag and hid it on the side of his house under a pile of leaves.

  The next morning, in an incredibly daring move, Randy brought Morrell’s hand to Northport High School, stashing it in his locker. Over the next two weeks, Randy showed the grim relic to Johnny Hayward, three more friends, and finally, Ricky Kasso, who showed up one day to say hi to friends.

  “I call him ‘Joe,’ ” Randy laughed as he pulled the hand from the bag.

  “Why ‘Joe’?” Ricky asked.

  “That’s the name of the guy we stole it from,” Randy replied. “At least, I think it is. That was the name on his grave. Anyway, Gordon’s got the guy’s skull in his van.”

  “Why?” Ricky asked. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Make it into a mug and sell it in the city,” Randy said. “I hear we can get five or six hundred bucks for it there.”

  On the surface, Ricky didn’t react any differently from the other boys Randy had shown the hand to, all of whom displayed the adolescent mix of curiosity and enthusiasm that comes with being let in on a dark secret.

  Eventually, word got back to Gordon that Randy had loose lips. He told Randy he needed to give him Morrell’s hand.