THE FOLLOWING IS AN additional portion of the statement dictated to a representative of the District Attorney’s Office, County of New York, by Gerald Bingham, Jr., a minor, resident of Apartment 5A, 535 East Seventy-third Street, New York, New York, excerpted from recordings NYDA-#146-113A-113G, and as transcribed (NYDA-#146-113AT-113GT).
WITNESS: I estimated it was now approximately three in the morning. I heard voices and sounds of activity coming from across the hall. I judged that the thieves were ransacking Apartment Five B and would soon be into our apartment. This caused me some trepidation, as I felt certain they would discover the electronic equipment in the closet in my bedroom. However, I took comfort from the fact that it might be possible they would not recognize the nature of the equipment. They would not realize it was a shortwave transmitter. Perhaps I could convince them it was part of our hi-fi system.
In any event, you understand, although I felt some fear—I realized that my body was covered with perspiration—I did not really care what they did to me. They could not know I had used the equipment. And I did not really believe they would kill me. I felt they might hurt me if they recognized the equipment and thought I might have used it. But I am no stranger to pain, and the prospect did not alarm me unduly. But I was disturbed by the realization that they might hurt my mother and father.
However, all my fears were groundless. For reasons I did not comprehend at the time, they skipped our apartment completely. The only man who came in was the tall, slender one who had removed my wheelchair and crutches earlier. He came in, stood alongside my bed and said, “Behaving yourself, boy?”
I said, “Yes, sir.”
As soon as I said it, I wondered why I called him Sir. I do not call my father Sir. But there was something about this masked man. I have thought a great deal about him since the events of that night, and I have decided that somehow—I don’t know quite how—he had an air and bearing of authority. Somehow, I don’t know how, he demanded respect.
In any event, he nodded and looked about. “Your room?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I said.
“All yours.” He nodded again. “When I was your age, I lived in a room not much bigger than this with my mammy and pappy and five brothers and sisters.”
“The late John F. Kennedy said that life is unfair,” I told him.
He laughed and said, “Yes, that is so. And anyone over the age of four who don’t realize it ain’t got much of a brain in him. What you want to be, boy?”
“A research scientist,” I said promptly. “Perhaps in medicine, perhaps in electronics, maybe in space technology. I haven’t decided yet.”
“A research scientist?” he asked, and by the way he said it, I knew he didn’t have a very clear idea of what that was. I was going to explain to him but then I thought better of it.
“A research scientist?” he repeated. “Is there money in it?”
I told him there was, that I’d already had offers from two companies and that if you discovered something really important, you could become a multimillionaire. I don’t know why I was telling him these things except that he seemed genuinely interested. At least, that’s the impression I received.
“A multimillionaire,” he repeated. He said, “Mult-eye.”
Then he looked around the room—at my books, my work table, the space maps I had pinned to the walls.
“I could—” he started to say, but then he stopped and didn’t go on.
“Sir?” I said.
“I could never understand any of this shit,” he said finally and laughed. Then he said, “You keep behaving yourself, y’hear? We’ll be out of here soon. Try to get some sleep.”
He turned around and walked out. I only saw him once after that, very briefly. I felt that if he … I felt that maybe I could have been a good … I felt that maybe he and I might … I am afraid I am not being very precise. I do not know exactly what I felt at that moment.