Gedeon murders.”
Creighton admitted the whole thing
was a hoax on his part to sell his story
to the press, and Ryan arrested him on
charges of giving false information in
the investigation of a homicide.
Evidence from the police experts was
confusing. There were no fingerprints at
the crime scene and the ballistics report
said that the bullets had come from a
.25-calibre automatic. But none of them
matched any on file.
Neail placed the time of death
between two and three in the morning
- which bore out the testimony of
the shattered watch. His examination
revealed that Frances was still a virgin
and that there had been no sexual
assault. Lewis had died of two shots to
the head. The first was a contact wound
and the second fired from a distance of
about 15 inches. The stab wounds on
Frances’s body showed that the blade
was a stiletto-like instrument about half
an inch wide.
Most curious of all were the findings
of the police toxicologist who examined
the victims’ vital organs. Lewis, he
said, had clearly been drinking beer
and eating nuts and pickles which had
not been fully digested. But he would
have been in full control of his faculties.
The level of alcohol in Frances’s blood,
however, showed she was drunk at the
time of her death. According to the
toxicologist, she died only a short time
after consuming a large amount of
alcohol.
There were no traces of make-up on
Lewis’s lips or face which indicated that
the couple had not been necking when
they were murdered. This seemed to
throw out the theory of lovers surprised
by a sex-crazed maniac or killer seeking
revenge.
So why had they driven to a lonely
spot in the woods? Did the killer force
them there?
Ryan now believed they must have
stopped at a bar sometime between
11.45 p.m. when the rink closed and
the time they were murdered, and every
police officer in Queens was ordered to
check out the pubs and roadhouses on
their patch.
All dry-cleaners were warned to be on
the lookout for bloodstained clothes as
it was clear that Frances’s blood would
have spurted all over the killer when he
stabbed her.
The student who had invited her
to the dance was brought in for
questioning and released as innocent.
The poet was also traced, questioned
and cleared. The pond near the crime
scene was dragged, but there was no
sign of the murder weapons.
Two evenings after the murders,
a Bayside high school student called
Robert Kocroschek was skating at
Mineola when he saw a familiar figure.
Four months earlier he had bravely
chased and brought down a man who
had assaulted a woman in the street
near her home in Queens. With the
victim still screaming, Kocroschek
had grappled with the attacker, but he
proved too powerful and managed to
escape.
Recognising the man as that same
assailant, he slipped off his skates and
ran to phone the police. Everyone at the
rink was discussing Frances and Lewisand Kocroschek wondered whether
that earlier sexual assault could have
escalated to murder.
But, when questioned, Wadsworth
Anthony Vojick vigorously denied thekillings.
“You got me wrong!” he shouted.
“I’d never do anything like that. Maybe
I’d touched that woman when the guy
chased me. But I ain’t no killer.”
“So how do you account for this?”
said Ryan, pointing to a bloody
handkerchief he had taken from the
prisoner’s pocket.
“I had a nosebleed,” he said.
His alibi for the time of the murders
held good and although he was cleared
of homicide he was later tried for
attempted rape.
A few days later a waiter at a bar
recognised photographs of Frances and
Lewis and told detectives he had served
them on the night of the murder.
“There were four people in the
party,” he said. “They all seemed pretty
angry with each other. Weiss had a real
argument with a tall, light-haired man
called Slim because he was paying too
much attention to the girl. They almost
had a fight.”
“Are you positive the couple was the
same as the pictures I’m showing you?”
asked Ryan.
“Looks just like them.”“How was the girl dressed?”
“She wore some kind of red dress and
a dark hat with a veil on it,” he said.
His descriptions of the other two
members of the party were circulated to
neighbouring police and Angelo “Slim”
Roccero was soon located. The tall,
slender 22-year-old had a record of five
arrests for sex offences – the latest for
shouting obscenities in the street at girls
in Brooklyn.
“I ain’t no murderer,” he said. “I
don’t even read the newspapers. Don’t
know nothing about no red circle
killings.”
He was released after his alibi checked
out, and the waiter’s story was junked.
When Ryan re-questioned Mrs. Hajek,
he learned Frances had never worn a
veil in her life, certainly not on the night
of her murder.
The case was at an impasse, and
Ryan called a meeting with the police
commissioner and chief inspector at
which he laid all the evidence before
them.
“The killer must be a man of
tremendous ego to dramatise his crime
the way he did with those red circles,”
said Commissioner Valentine. “Seems
to me there’s a good chance he’ll strike
again, and maybe revisit the scene. Why
not work undercover and get some
detectives to pose as courting couples inAbove, top to bottom, Deputy
Chief Inspector John J.
Ryan, who took charge of the
original investigation; Police
Commissioner Lewis J. Valentine;
author Michael Stern with True
Detective editor John Shuttleworth
at the murder sceneHopes rose briefly
when a dry-cleaner
found a .25 automatic
in a suit pocket, but
ballistic tests proved
it was not the murder
weapon