The Trial of Patrolman Thomas Shea is the second book in which I’ve sought to reconstruct events subsequent to their occurrence. Here, as with my first effort, the heart of my research has been extended interviews with my subjects. Other data has derived from public records, historical texts, and documents found in the files of the Queens County District Attorney’s office, New York City Police Department, New York City Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, and the attorneys for Add Armstead, Eloise Glover, and Thomas Shea.
Where conversations are included in quotation marks, they are the result of verbatim transcripts obtained by me or a reconstruction based on the memory of one or more participants to a given conversation. In some reconstructions, such as the police deliberations leading to the arrest of Thomas Shea, I benefited from the input of many participants. In other instances, such as the conversations between Martin Bracken and Frederick Ludwig on the day of and the day following Shea’s arrest, I was limited to one direct source since Mr. Ludwig would not grant me an interview.
I should also note that it has been necessary to edit a number of transcripts down to manageable size. For example, the Shea trial transcript runs well over two thousand pages, much of it repetitive and devoted to procedural matters. I am confident that, in excerpting this material, I’ve done nothing to compromise the fairness of my manuscript. On those occasions where the memories of participants differ, I have attempted a judgment as to which version is the most credible. I should also note that the statements of Add Armstead and Thomas Shea, which form the bulk of Chapters 1 and 20, are composites of numerous remarks made by them during the course of my interviews rather than uninterrupted extemporaneous comments. However, the thoughts and words are their own.