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.