By 2:00 A.M. Whitmore’s story was seemingly complete; the highly detailed diagram of the murder scene had been notarized by George. It had taken more than ten hours to lay out all the details of the Wylie-Hoffert murders and get the perp to regurgitate it all back to the investigators. Now came the hardest part: Whitmore would have to give his statement to an assistant district attorney and have it recorded by a stenographer.
Assistant district attorneys arrived from both the Brooklyn and Manhattan D.A.’s offices. Whitmore would have to give three separate statements for the three separate crimes. These statements would become the official version in the state’s case against the accused, to be used by prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, and jury members. They had to be perfect.
The Borrero and Edmonds confessions went off without a hitch. Seated in the squad commander’s office, with the assistant D.A. and a stenographer on one side of him and detectives on the other, Whitmore gave his name, address, and date of birth, and was then led through the details of the crimes. Recalled Whitmore:
People say you must have a wonderful memory to remember all that, but it weren’t so hard. Most of the questions I could tell where they were goin’ cause I had good schoolin’ on that. Whenever I got into trouble and forgot my answer, I’d look sideways at my detectives and they’d hint me with shakin’ their head or scratchin’ their nose or somethin’ like that. I think even one time they whispered an answer to me.
Getting the Borrero and Edmonds confession down on paper took about an hour. The Wylie-Hoffert confession was more problematic. To make the case as airtight as possible, Bulger had filled Whitmore’s head with minute details about the case. It could be confusing, but the detectives had worked out a system with George so he could keep some of the details straight.
My detectives told me if anybody ask you, the first girl you seen is the baby girl and the second one who comes in later is the mother. That’s the way I can keep the girls straight in my memory. So I make believe to myself the left hand is the baby girl and the right one is the mother and when he ask me ’bout the first girl I make a fist with my left hand when he ask me ’bout the second girl I make a fist with my right for the mother. A game, kind of. That’s my whole story. That’s the whole story of a Negro boy who never hurt nobody, in the police precinct on Friday that April.
The assistant D.A. from Manhattan was Peter Koste. He should have been suspicious when the detectives warned him ahead of time that Whitmore probably believed that Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert were still alive. That was the first of many details that went against normal protocol. It was within Koste’s job description to question the detectives about their methods of interrogation, but Koste found himself in a Brooklyn precinct surrounded by two dozen detectives and high-ranking police officials, all of whom could hardly contain their excitement at the prospect of breaking the case. As far as these men were concerned, taking down Whitmore’s confession was a formality. Koste was expected to do his part.
It was a nerve-racking process. George had been prepared well, but occasionally there were details that he and the detectives hadn’t gone over. For instance, at one point Assistant D.A. Koste asked Whitmore about the building at 57 East Eighty-eighth Street.
Q: What kind of building?
A: About a four-story house.
Q: Four-story house, you think it was?
A: Yes.
Q: What did you do when you spotted this four-story house? You think it was four stories?
A: Four or five stories.
Apparently, the number of stories in the building had never come up. At this point, as the finished transcript noted, “Detective Bulger leaves room.” Twenty questions later, Bulger returned and the questioning veered back to the height of the building.
Q: You mentioned that this building was about four or five stories, could it have been eight or ten stories?
A: I don’t know if it’s that high or not.
Q: Could it have been eight stories?
A: Yes.
Q: But it could have been more than four or five stories?
A: Yes.
The questioning continued in a similar manner. Whenever there was confusion about an important detail, the detectives ducked out of the room, figured out the answer among themselves, then returned. The line of inquiry would return to important details to make sure they were clarified in the transcript. The investigators were determined to cover everything. George had even been supplied with a story about how, after committing the murders, he had retrieved a package of razor blades from the bathroom. He opened the package and took out a blade, used it to slice a bedsheet into strips, and then used the strips of cloth to tie up the bodies.
The detectives and the assistant D.A. worked as a team. The inspectors and chiefs were there to make sure everyone dotted their i’s and crossed their t’s.
At 4:12 A.M., Koste said, “All right. Thank you, George. No further questions.” The longest murder confession in the history of New York State was complete. Koste had asked 594 questions. The transcript was sixty-one pages long. Whitmore was asked to sign it, and he did.
A quiver of excitement rippled through the police command, all the way from the Seventy-third Precinct to the office of the commissioner. Before Whitmore had even finished giving his statement, someone had leaked to the press that a suspect in the Career Girls Murders was confessing to the crime. Reporters started arriving at the precinct around 4:00 A.M.; they were held at bay near the station house front desk by uniformed cops and told that Chief McKearney would be down soon to issue a statement.
Upstairs, Whitmore was placed in the cage and left there by himself. He had passed beyond fatigue into what resembled an out-of-body experience. Alone, away from the detectives for the first time in many hours, he began to feel something like anger. For nearly twenty-four hours he had been in police custody. Not once had detectives told him that he could make a phone call or have an attorney present. Not once had they asked him if he had an alibi for the dates and times of the crimes in question. They weren’t interested in alibis. They had promised George that, after he satisfied their needs and demands, it would “all be over” and he could go. Well, obviously that was a lie. For the first time, George realized that he’d gotten himself into something he might not be getting out of for a long time.
After a while, a big group of white men in suits came and took George from the cell. Along with Bulger and Aidala and Di Prima, there was Detective Martin Zinkand, who’d arrived at the precinct as a representative of the Manhattan homicide squad. Department protocol called for the glory to be spread evenly among the various detective units involved.
With Bulger holding George Whitmore by one arm and Di Prima by the other, they led the accused toward a staircase leading down to the front desk.
It was approximately 5:30 A.M. At this hour, the station house in Brownsville was usually as quiet as a cemetery. But today was not an ordinary day.
That morning, Fred C. Shapiro, a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune who lived in Brooklyn, was awoken by a phone call from an assistant city editor. “Get over to the East New York Avenue precinct,” he was told. “They’ve got the Wylie killer.”
Shapiro, a veteran reporter, was accustomed to early-morning calls, but this one seemed especially urgent. “Do we know the identity of the suspect?” he asked.
“You never heard of him,” he was told. “It’s a jig named Whitmore.”
At the station house, Shapiro crammed into the front desk area with dozens of other print reporters, crime beat photographers, and TV news crews setting up lights. A buzz of excitement permeated the room, punctuated by the incessant ringing of the station house phones. Off-duty detectives were coming by to see what was going on. The reporters’ cigarettes created a layer of smoke in the air.
Around 6:30 A.M. there was a rustle of expectation. Chief McKearney appeared and read an official statement from a yellow notepad: “Suspect’s name is George Whitmore Jr., age n
ineteen…admitted killing one Minnie Edmonds…attempted to commit felonious rape on one Elba Borrero…was apprehended by Patrolman Frank Isola, who had engaged the suspect in a chase…did admit these crimes.”
The reporters shouted questions: What about Wylie-Hoffert? Yeah, the Career Girls Murders—did he do it?
The chief continued: “Whitmore is a drifter…. He wandered to the apartment on 88th Street…. He found the door cracked…stabbed the girls repeatedly after binding them with a sheet…. Then he calmly washed his hands and left as he came.” McKearney added that a walletsized photo of Janice Wylie had been found on Whitmore. At first, said the chief, the perpetrator claimed he’d found the picture on a dump in his hometown of Wildwood, but under questioning he admitted taking it from the apartment on the day he killed the girls.
The reporters jockeyed for position, tripping over one another to ask their questions.
The chief was tired and running low on patience. “Look fellas, we wouldn’t have booked him if we weren’t sure. He gave us facts only the killer could give…. We got the right guy—no question about it.”
From the top of the stairs, Whitmore heard shouting and the sound of cameras flashing. Bulger and Di Prima were still holding him, with a phalanx of detectives behind them. When he spotted the mob of reporters below them, George hesitated. One of the detectives said reassuringly, “It’s okay, George. Let’s go.”
They descended the stairs. Bright lights from TV cameras illuminated the dingy precinct. Phosphorescent bulbs flashed. Questions were shouted all at once: George, why did you do it? Did they beat you? What do you have to say, George? George, was it fun?
Fred Shapiro pushed to the front of the crowd. Years later, in a book on the Whitmore case, he would write: “The detectives made no effort to clear a path for Whitmore…. rather, it seemed that he cleared a path for them through massed reporters and photographers who pressed close to, but did not touch him.”
Within a few moments, the prisoner was led out of the station house to a squad car that would take him to arraignment court in downtown Brooklyn.
The police station quickly emptied out, with reporters dashing off to file their stories in time for the next edition. There was nothing left to say. The NYPD had their man.
AT ARRAIGNMENT COURT in downtown Brooklyn, Whitmore felt so weak he thought his legs might give out. The room was packed with reporters, cops, lawyers, and the judge seated on high looking down on the accused. George saw some of his family in the spectators gallery—his aunt, his girlfriend Beverly, his brother Gerald—and felt a wave of humiliation.
“Do you have a lawyer?” barked Judge James J. Comerford. Though the judge had been living in New York most of his life, he had the accent of a man who’d never left the green fields of his birthplace in County Clare, Ireland.
Whitmore stood handcuffed, with Detective Aidala on one side and Detective Zinkand on the other. To the judge’s question he answered, “No.”
“Do you intend to get a lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t hear you,” said the judge.
“Yes,” said Whitmore.
“When will you have a lawyer of your own choice?”
Detective Aidala spoke up. “He can’t afford a lawyer, Judge.”
“Let him speak for himself. Is there any lawyer in court here now?”
The judge scanned the area where lawyers from the public defender’s office gathered. “You,” he said, pointing at Jerome J. Leftow. “Do you want to assist the court by speaking with the defendant?”
Leftow stepped forward.
This scene, intended to appear spontaneous, was anything but. In fact, early that morning, when the judge first heard that the perpetrator of the notorious Wylie-Hoffert murders was being brought to his courtroom, he summoned Jerome Leftow to his chambers. Leftow was thirty years old and relatively inexperienced as a criminal defense attorney, but he was a member of the Madison Club, a well-placed political club in Brooklyn. Years later, Leftow remembered how his political connections paid off by netting him the most famous case of his career. “In his chambers Judge Comerford said to me, ‘Young man, I’m going to help you out and get your name in the newspapers. I’m going to assign you a case that’s gotten national attention. The reporters are out there, and the photographers are out there.’ And then he tells me what the case is about. I say, ‘What about those other more experienced lawyers out there? They’re gonna want to be involved.’ He says, ‘Don’t worry about it—you’re getting it.’”
And the scene in the courtroom that morning? “The judge was putting on a show,” Leftow remembered. “It had already been decided.”
Jerome Leftow, whose inexperience as an attorney was matched by his inexpensive suit, purchased wholesale at an outlet in downtown Brooklyn, walked over and stood next to Whitmore.
A court clerk read the docket number and charges, and then asked Detective Aidala to verify the facts of the Borrero assault and the Edmonds murder.
This was the first time that George Whitmore realized Minnie Edmonds had been killed and he had confessed to the murder.
The court clerk then asked Detective Zinkand to swear that he had arrested the defendant “on a charge of homicide with a knife which he believes he committed on August 28, 1963 at 57 East 88th Street, apartment 3C, County of New York, between the hours of 9:30 and 2 P.M. in that the defendant herein did stab and cut with a knife about the throat, neck and body of two females, Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert, as a result of which injuries were inflicted that resulted in death of the aforesaid.”
George wasn’t sure, but he figured all of that must mean those two girls were dead. It was another murder he’d confessed to without knowing it.
Judge Comerford offered Leftow ten minutes to speak with his client. The lawyer pulled Whitmore aside. The kid was shaking and appeared confused. He looked at Leftow with suspicion: Is this another white guy in a suit, working for the police and the D.A. to help make me look guilty?
Leftow handed George a copy of the formal complaint against him. “Do you want to read this, George?”
Whitmore’s eyes glazed over the complaint. Leftow saw at once that his defendant wouldn’t be able to absorb the document. He was far too tired and unfocused.
“Do you understand the charges against you, George?” asked Leftow.
Whitmore nodded.
“Is it true?”
“No. Definitely not true.”
Leftow took a deep breath. This was going to be more complicated than he’d expected. “George,” he asked, “why did you make these statements to the police if they are not true?”
Whitmore’s eyes filled. “They made me. They made me say those things.” He gave a rambling minute-long explanation of how he came to sign the confession.
Leftow looked at the kid, unsure what to make of him. Lots of criminals claimed they were innocent. This kid looked and sounded sincere, but Leftow would need to spend some time with him before he could make an assessment. “George,” said Leftow, “I’m going to tell the judge what you just told me.”
The lawyer and Whitmore walked back over in front of the bench. Leftow cleared his throat and said, “Judge, I’m the first person the defendant has had the opportunity to discuss this matter with, besides the police officials. And at this point the defendant informs me that he made certain statements yesterday pertaining to these particular crimes he is charged with. He now states to me that the statements and confession pertaining to all three crimes he is alleged to have committed were made under duress and threats, and now he recants all confessions and statements made, Your Honor.”
The prosecutor, Assistant D.A. Robert Walsh, jumped up as if on cue. “If Your Honor please, I think the officers ought to be commended for fine police work in this matter…. I know that this man has been wanted for quite some time for this murder in Manhattan. And I think a lot of people feel easier that he has been apprehended.”
Comerford nodded. The judge
was a product of the city’s Democratic Party machine, a proud member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians and one of the chief organizers of the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. The police were his people.
Said Comerford, “The court wishes to point out at this time that nobody is saying the defendant is guilty, nobody is saying the defendant is not guilty. That will be a matter of due process of the law when the time comes. But the citizens of this town are very much pleased with the police department of New York City…. I have found out that the police department do a fine, effective police job, do it efficiently and do it properly. And the court commends the police department of the City of New York, the individual officers concerned, and…our citizens have much more confidence in law enforcement than they may have had a couple days ago in relation to these two major crimes.”
The judge recommended that the defendant be remanded to a psychiatric facility to determine his state of mind. He banged his gavel and called the next case. Whitmore was taken away.
[ four ]
“GET THOSE NIGGERS”
A NEGRO BOY claiming he’d been coerced into confessing to a crime he didn’t commit—it was a symbol of the city’s zeitgeist at that moment. To those citizens who raged that the Great City of New York was being destroyed by niggers and spics, it was no big deal. To make an omelet, you needed to break a few eggs. To the city’s rapidly growing black population, framing young Negro men in this way was an injustice as deep and resonant as a lash delivered during the bullwhip days. News of the arrest, and of Whitmore’s claim of coercion, was one more drop of blood in the rivers of Babylon, its ripples radiating outward from places like Harlem and Brownsville to other interested quarters across the country.
The Savage City Page 8