CHAPTER 2
Eight months later, Brownsville section, Brooklyn
At a few minutes before one in the morning, on Wednesday, April 22, 1964, police officer Tommy Micelli was already into his shift, just shy of an hour. Micelli, a member of the New York Police Department (NYPD) for a little over three years, was assigned to the Seventy-third Precinct, which encompassed most of the Brownsville section, an area comparable in crime conditions to Harlem. On that early morning, he had a foot post during a midnight-to-eight-A.M. tour. It had been raining when he first came on duty, and now, an hour later, the rain had stopped. There was still a moistness in the air when Micelli walked to a police call box near Sutter Avenue and Chester Street. It was time for him to call the police house or “make the ring,” as it was referred to. He picked up the phone and called in. Then he began walking west on Sutter Avenue toward Bristol Street. Almost immediately he noticed the figures of a man and woman on Bristol Street some two hundred feet from him. The man appeared to be pushing the woman into an alleyway.
Officer Micelli immediately sprang to action. He came racing toward them in the dark, his shoes hitting the pavement quick and hard. He shined his flashlight in the alley and saw a young man leap out and sprint along Sutter Avenue.
“Hey!” cried out Micelli, who was heavily winded from running so fast. He grabbed the .38-caliber revolver out of his holster and sped up.
“Hey! This is the police! Stop where you are and raise your hands!”
Micelli’s pace quickened more as he stretched to close the gap between him and the assailant. His legs burned. They rounded a corner west onto Hopkinson Avenue. Micelli lost his footing and tripped, almost landing hands first on the ground. He fell half a block behind. The assailant rushed forward, like a bullet. Micelli pushed off again, his shoes grazing the loose gravel. He fired off a few shots and called out once again. His breath was steady and shallow. When the suspect reached Amboy Street, which was one block west of Hopkinson, he turned to his right and disappeared. By this time there were a few police cars on the scene, with sirens blaring. Red and blue lights flashed everywhere. Micelli ran another two blocks before realizing he’d lost sight of him. The even sound of footsteps, too, was all but gone. Micelli could hardly see beneath the muted streetlamps of Brownsville and the pulsing lights from police cars behind him. Reluctantly, he slowed to a halt. He bent over, placing his hands on his thighs, desperate to catch his breath. He listened to the sound of his own wheezing.
Micelli gazed out into the desolate city night. The street resembled a ghost town. There were just a few neon lights shining in front of stores, and siren lights reflecting in puddles. After a few moments, he steadied himself, watching as his fellow officers sprinted past him. He stuffed his gun back in its holster and shuffled back to the scene of the crime.
She couldn’t stop shaking. Alma Estrada glanced down at her white nursing shoes, splashed with mud. She whimpered. The sidewalk was damp and moist from earlier rain showers. A streetlamp flickered two blocks ahead and the glaring sirens blinded her. Alma was petite, and just twenty years old. She cried out for her husband, who had raced down from their apartment and wrapped his arms around her. Over and over he asked her what had happened, but she could barely speak. Her face went white and she gasped for air, managing a few words here and there. As the moments ticked by, more officers began assembling around Alma, each with a notebook and pen in his hand, ready to scratch anything down, any detail at all. Officer Micelli edged his way into the semicircle as Alma accepted a handkerchief and blew her nose. With the slightest hesitation, she began relaying the details of her story.
First, she said, she heard—or thought she heard—a noise. Her heart skipped a beat and she lengthened her stride. But with each stride she took, the sound behind her steadied. Footsteps, she said. She was sure then. They were firm; they were cold; they were metallic. She rounded a corner, her legs stretching out in front of her. Her heartbeat quickened and perspiration formed on her brow. She told the officers of how she tried to convince herself it was all in her head—that she was working herself up for nothing. And yet there was no mistaking the footsteps behind her: they were real and moving.
The sea of officers took note as she crossed her hands over her heart and tried to explain how the adrenaline coursed through her body. The men nodded, all heads down and scribbling. Next she clumsily attempted to illustrate how she then began to jog. Alma stood there, beneath the streetlamp, attempting to run in place. Instead, she appeared as if she was limping awkwardly. Her purse dangled on her wrist. She explained to the officers how as curious as she was to look behind her at her chaser, she did not turn around. She was terrified. She told them that she moved to the center of the street until, finally, he reached her and thrust his arm around her throat and pressed a sharp metal object against her neck.
Alma Estrada drew her neck toward the officers and explained, in hurried syllables, “He whispered in my ear, ‘I’m going to rape and kill you.’ ”
Then she held her arms to her neck, in a choking manner, and described how her assailant dragged her into a nearby alley. Her glasses fell off, and somewhere in there she must’ve screamed. Alma had already furnished a pencil, a button and some thread when officers first arrived. She insisted that the pencil was what the attacker had held to her throat and that the button and thread came directly from the assailant’s jacket. After a few more minutes, the assembled crowd began dispersing. Alma’s husband wrapped his arms around her. After the police finished their questions, the couple disappeared into their apartment building.
Officer Tommy Micelli did not give up easily. After hearing Alma Estrada’s teary-eyed, if not frenzied, side of the story, he decided to retrace his steps. It was just after dawn when Micelli wandered down Sutter Avenue a second time. He was hopeful, if not entirely convinced, that one of his shots hit the attacker. Surely, there might be a trace of blood, he thought as he surveyed the gray asphalt carefully. Micelli paced up and down a two-block radius along Sutter Avenue. A gust of wind swept by. There was a chill in the air and some light misting—all common symptoms of early spring in New York.
Tracing his steps, it wasn’t long before he found himself on the corner of Hopkinson Avenue. He thought there was a chance he had wounded the assailant, but his search for bloodstains on the pavement proved fruitless. Through the window of a Laundromat, he noticed a young black man sitting by himself. Given the time of day, the individual seemed out of place to Micelli. Better safe than sorry, Micelli reasoned, deciding to walk in and ask a few questions.
Upon sight of this young teenager, Officer Micelli was immediately distracted by his skin. He was sitting in a metal chair by one of the dryers; his arms were folded at his chest. He peered up at Micelli as he entered. While the structure of his face was agreeable enough, and his large, squinting brown eyes seemed pleasant and unassuming, the young man’s cheeks and forehead were covered with open acne sores. In trying not to stare, Micelli focused on the kid’s dark hair, cut short without sideburns.
“Good morning,” Micelli said, nodding at him. He noticed the young man had just uncrossed his arms, placing them nervously at his sides.
“Hello, sir.”
“It’s a bit early for laundry, don’t you think?”
The kid flinched and answered slowly. “I was just . . . waiting inside, from the cold. My brother is coming by and we’re going to walk to work.”
“I see. Well, it is very cold outside.”
Micelli paused for a moment, trying to read the boy’s unsure expression. Then he added, “And where do you work, if you don’t mind my asking?”
He went on to tell Micelli that his name was George Whitmore Jr., and that he had a job at the local salt-packing plant. Micelli wrote everything down on a scrap of paper, which he peeled off from inside his jacket, even though he doubted it would prove useful. He then thanked the young man and, having never sat down, headed toward the door.
“Think it’s gonna be a rainy one today, Mr. Whitman,” Micelli said.
“Whitmore,” George corrected.
“Whitmore. Sorry about that, kid.”
Micelli had just opened the door; the doorbell had just chimed, when George Whitmore Jr. sat up out of his seat, the metal chair squealing on the linoleum floor. Micelli turned back.
“Sir,” George said timidly, “I know why you’re asking me these questions.”
Micelli let go of the door and reentered the Laundromat.
“Oh? Why?”
“It’s about that fellow the police were chasing last night. What was the shooting all about?”
Micelli walked slowly over to George. There was something particularly curious about George Whitmore Jr.—or, at least, Officer Micelli thought as much. For one thing, young black kids rarely spoke to police in Brownsville, particularly where crime was concerned. And then there was the hour—it was just seven in the morning, and Micelli found himself engaged in polite small talk with a teenager, haphazardly placed at a Laundromat mere blocks from where Mrs. Estrada was attacked. Micelli began to study George more carefully now: his slight gait, his long fingers, his awkward squinting gaze. As he did, Micelli briefly outlined the attack on Alma Estrada; to which, Whitmore added, almost interrupting, “How low can some people get. I saw the cops chasing the man down Sutter Avenue, and they were shooting at him. He went into a building on Amboy Street. I can show you where, exactly, if you like.”
Micelli was intrigued. Rather than question him further, he followed Whitmore a block west on Sutter Avenue, where George pointed to a tenement building the attacker had hidden in. As suspect as Whitmore was, or perhaps should have been, Micelli found him to be surprisingly innocuous and genuinely helpful. From a nearby call box, Micelli reached the precinct’s street sergeant, where he reported Whitmore’s information. Soon enough, another car arrived.
Whitmore seemed eager when the squad car roared up beside him on Sutter Avenue, its driver window rolled down to reveal a bloated, ruddy face, with a dark, bushy mustache. Micelli and Whitmore were standing on the sidewalk, just outside the Laundromat, when the sergeant leaned out the window to speak to George. The odor of a cigar wafted from the car as George stepped over to it.
“Between you and me,” the man said, “it’s against the law not to tell the police where a guy went to, when we’re looking for him.”
George stared at the sergeant, perplexed. “But I—”
Micelli squeezed Whitmore on the shoulder in reassurance and walked up to the sergeant’s window. The two men spoke momentarily in low voices. Then the sergeant revved his engine, told Micelli he’d be in touch and drove off, leaving a trail of exhaust. “Well, hell, thanks a lot, Whitmen,” Micelli remarked, reaching out to shake George’s hand.
“Whitmore,” George corrected again, shaking his hand. Then he added, “Is it okay if I head off now?”
Micelli smiled and waved him off lightheartedly. He watched, amused, as Whitmore lifted his hand awkwardly in an attempt to return a variation of Micelli’s good-natured gesture. Instead of a wave, Whitmore’s hand managed an ungainly, cheery slap of the thigh. Then his slight figure disappeared around the corner of the Laundromat. That’s a good kid, Micelli thought, walking away into the clear morning.
In the early 1960s, a detective within the Seventy-third Precinct in Brownsville, Brooklyn, was overtaxed with heavy caseloads—upward of six hundred—not to mention the reputation of working at the toughest station house in New York City. In addition to the average caseload, in April 1964, two detectives, Louie Ayala and Joseph “Joe” DiPrima, were caught trying to solve another brutal murder—that of Mrs. Minnie Edmonds, a forty-six-year-old woman who was stabbed to death in an alleyway, exactly one block east of where the Alma Estrada assault had taken place. Mrs. Edmonds’s clothing was disarranged in a manner indicating sexual assault. Her attack had also taken place in the early hours of the morning. As was true for most homicides out of Brownsville, the Edmonds case certainly didn’t send ripples through the heart of Gotham as the Wylie-Hoffert case inevitably did. But for the people of Brownsville and its police, this murder was highly disturbing. For Ayala and DiPrima, they had exhausted all their leads. Still, neither was about to give up; both were first-grade detectives, the highest detective mark available. Ayala had been on the force for sixteen years, while DiPrima had put in over twenty-seven. The two detectives worked well as a team, tirelessly following over ninety leads, but to no avail.
Then, on Wednesday morning, April 22, 1964, Officer Tommy Micelli walked into the Seventy-third Precinct station house and handed over his information on Alma Estrada. Joe DiPrima glanced at the file and passed it on to Ayala. He looked at Micelli head-on.
“You got a witness?”
Micelli raised his eyebrows and wiped his brow with a handkerchief. “The kid said he saw him clear as day.”
Ayala ran his fingers through his cropped, dark brown hair. Seated at his desk with his face buried in the file, he muttered, “Whitman, eh? How old is he, would you say?”
“I’d say about eighteen,” replied Micelli. “He’s got a lousy case of acne, I’ll tell you that much.”
“That’s a shame,” DiPrima remarked flatly, peeling his navy jacket off the back of his chair. DiPrima always seemed larger than he actually was, even standing next to Micelli, who was almost a foot taller. Sporting a crop of salt-and-pepper hair, DiPrima was barrel-chested and fit, for a man pushing sixty years old. Rolling up the sleeves of his pressed white shirt, he folded his arms and tapped his foot impatiently. He had a borough-wide reputation for being a crack detective, and his father-like approach to prisoners and suspects had resulted in his obtaining more than his share of confessions, exemplifying the old adage that you can get more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Ayala, twenty years his junior, closed the file and glanced over at his partner. “You thinking what I’m thinking, boss?”
DiPrima nodded.
Micelli, meanwhile, scratched the back of his neck and breathed out slowly. “So what,” he inquired quizzically, “if you don’t mind my asking, are you planning, Detective DiPrima?”
DiPrima smirked and walked past Officer Micelli, heading quickly down the hollow corridor that led out to the street. He was more eager than he’d been in weeks. The case of Alma Estrada had noteworthy similarities to that of the Edmonds case, and it was important to determine whether a sex fiend was now threatening the already high-crime-rate area. DiPrima stopped, only for a moment, and turned back to Ayala, who was now reaching for his badge and cigarettes.
“What the hell, boys!” he hollered in a thick Brooklyn accent. “Are we gonna go talk to Whitman or Whitmore, or whatever the hell his name is?”
Close to the intersection of Pitkin Avenue and Junius Street in Brooklyn was a railroad siding. Next to the siding was a building, which housed the Schoenberg Salt Company. Although a good many of the company employees were regulars who received a weekly salary, many others would “shape up” daily for the job of unloading salt from railroad cars. DiPrima, Ayala and Micelli stepped from the squad car and walked over to the salt factory, where they questioned the manager. They were told no one by the name of George Whitman or Whitmore was on the payroll. Then they checked the salt company records, but they failed to come up with the name “Whitman” or any similar name among the regular employees. While it became readily apparent that the records were very poorly kept, and the names of those transient individuals were not always accurately recorded, the fact remained that there appeared to be no connection between George Whitmore and the salt company. The three men returned to the squad car and went over the file again. Now they were suspicious.
Seated in the back, Micelli reached up front and pointed to the file. “I wrote down ‘Schoenfeld’s,’ ” he insisted, his long finger pointed toward the document Ayala was skimming.
DiPrima grabbed the document out of Ayala’s hands and held it outside the window so that the midday light illuminated the text.
Ayala lit a cigarette and, dangling his arm out of the right passenger window of the car, blew two smoke rings.
“The kid’s a liar,” Ayala stated flatly.
“I don’t know, Detective. I tell you, this kid wasn’t the type. He wasn’t all there, if you know what I mean, but sincere as all hell.”
DiPrima passed the file back to Ayala. He turned the key in the ignition and the motor roared. He glanced at Micelli in the rearview mirror. He couldn’t get over what a rookie Micelli was—married to the ideals of justice, the swift and honest catching of a killer and closing a case. DiPrima continued to rev the engine, remembering when he was like that, decades ago. If only the system actually did work, he often thought. Things now . . . Well . . . they were different. Working for the Brooklyn North Homicide Squad had taken its toll. The endless crime, the lack of support from city taxpayers, the poverty and swindling, and the brutality—there was no end in sight. The Minnie Edmonds case, which he’d been poring over, was getting to him. He wanted answers. He’d seen that woman all cut up and left for dead. And maybe she was just another cold case; but just once, he wanted to know who did it. Just once, he wanted that somebody to pay for what he did. And sometimes, on a day like the one he was having, he just wanted out of Brooklyn altogether. If he couldn’t catch this killer, if he couldn’t give the Edmonds family a little bit of closure, then what was the point of it all?
“You okay there, partner?” Ayala called, his scruffy face twisting toward DiPrima.
“I’m just thinking, that’s all.”
DiPrima switched the car into gear and peeled out of the parking lot.
“Where we headed?”
“Back to the station house. There might be something to this kid.”
Shellie Whitmore, George’s older brother, cradled George around his neck and shoulders with his right arm as they walked to the Schoenberg Salt Company. George, who was generally soft-spoken, presented his story proudly, giving an animated account of how he told the officer that the suspect said, “Help me, help me. The law is after me,” and how he illustrated for the officer where the suspect had escaped. Shellie listened intently to George, every so often rolling his eyes as if to indicate disbelief. Sensing George was winding down, Shellie stopped, turned to his brother and gripped his shoulder with his hand.
“Now you listen to me. You shouldn’t be talking to no po-lice. And what you thinking, tellin’ his white ass whose runnin’ from johnny law?”
George hung his head, clearly frustrated. Shellie pushed George away with his hand and then poked him, hard, in the chest.
“And what you go on and tell that cop that you got yourself a job at Schoenberg’s? You ain’t got no job there.”
George stumbled backward and struggled to regain his footing. His brother began walking, at a brisk pace, toward the entrance of the factory. And although George could barely see him in the near distance, as without glasses George could barely see anything, he still called out defiantly, “Today I’ll have a job at the factory, Shellie. I will today, and that’s the truth.”
George Whitmore Jr. did not, in fact, gain employment at the salt factory on that day. Having forgotten to bring his Social Security card, a prerequisite for work at the company, George was denied employment. To redeem himself, he visited his girlfriend, Beverly Payne. Greeting her at the door, he concocted a dramatic story of how he went down to the station house and looked through photos of mug shots, trying to identify the assailant. George spent the majority of the afternoon at Beverly’s, leaving late, long after the sun drifted behind the buildings and darkness fell, thick and heavy, over Brooklyn.