3 Porno Zones For Manhattan

The Board of Estimate has decided to restrict pornographic establishments to three Manhattan areas – Times Square and two downtown locations. The downtown districts include the World Trade Center’s North Tower and the area around City Hall, a Planning Commission spokesman said. Photo: Beame The Vice Raider Mayor Beame, with a heavy media escort, went along on raids on several topless clubs and peep show parlors today. Here he’s outside Jax Three Ring Circus, a nude showplace at 53rd and Lexington Ave. Reaction: not in my backyard Page 10

NYP 3/24/77

Chicken-Hawk Trade Found Attracting More Young Boys to Times Square Area

“The night was bitterly cold on Times Square. Prostitutes and other shady habitués had taken refuge indoors, and the gaudy lights and tawdry attractions of 42nd Street beckoned only to a few gawking tourists. Standing near a pinball emporium between 7th and 8th avenues, two plainclothes policemen watch for a thriving form of prostitution – involving “hawks,” men who pick up young boys and “chickens,” some as young as 10 years old. Many of the hawks are white, middle-class men who drive in from the suburbs. A policeman is not permitted to pose as a hawk – that is considered entrapment. As for posing as a chicken an officer said – “if we had some undercover cops who looked like teenagers, it would be a lot easier, but we don’t even have any young-looking cops, because they’ve all been laid off.” Hawks are rarely imprisoned. Usually they are allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct and told to get psychiatric help.

NYT 3/24/77

Residents of Forest Hills Want to Keep Extra Patrol

“They have given us extra police and we want to make sure they stay.”

The police believe that the gunman who killed Miss Voskerichian is also responsible for the Jan 30 killing of Christine Freund and the murder of Donna Laurie in the Bronx last summer. All were killed with the same pistol.

Everyone at the meeting appeared up to date about the news in the case. When one man asked what kind of gun had been used, the audience murmured, in unison, “A 44.”

Excerpt from March 23, 1977 New York Times

FALN Claims Responsibility for 2 Bombings in New York City

A Puerto Rican nationalist group yesterday claimed responsibility for two bombings in New York City just after midnight Sunday, calling them actions against the FBI and the American Bank Note Company as “symbols of Yanki (sic) repression and exploitation.”

The group, whose name means Armed National Liberation Forces, also demanded release for four Puerto Rican nationalists who are in prison for 1954 shootings in Congress and another who is in prison for a 1950 attempt to assassinate President Harry S Truman.

NYT Kihss 3/22/77

Mother and Girl, 3, Slain in Bronx

Police officers at the 48th Precinct complained bitterly yesterday that their efforts to get an ambulance for the two girls had been hampered by bureaucratic red tape. “We lost a good 15 to 20 minutes because they wouldn’t dispatch an ambulance without a doctor’s name,” said Officer John Argiento. Officer A and his partner Officer Joe Dionisio took the girls to Bronx Lebanon Hospital in their radio car.

excerpt NYT 3/22/77

Pickpockets Are Thriving Because of Police Cutbacks

They drove slowly, looking for cars known to belong to con artists and pickpockets. Vehicles bearing license plates from Ohio, Michigan and Alabama, among others, were closely observed because, according to the detectives, those states are spawning grounds for criminals.

excerpt from NYT 3/22/77

Queens Man Accused of a Tavern Slaying

Less than 10 hours after a retired policeman was shot to death in the Queens tavern where he worked as a night bartender, one of the regular customers, a 25-year-old apartment-building doorman, was arrested and charged with murder. The police said they believe Charles Schaefer and the bartender, 52 year old Louis Angelos who retired from the PD four years ago as a patrolman had been alone in the bar as Mr A was closing up at about 4 am.

The cash register was open and the victim was clutching $440 in his hands, the police said. When Mr S was arrested at about 1:30pm the police said he had a 38 caliber revolver that Mr Angelos had worn when he worked behind the bar. Three years earlier the police said Mr S had shot another bartender in the Steinway Terrace three times in the back. That time, the bartender lived. Mr S had been convicted of assault, the police said, and spent “a couple of years” in a state prison.

excerpt NYT 3/20/77 Joseph Treaster

2 Holdup Suspects Are Chased Into Police Arms by Bar Patron

The police here (Hackensack NJ) made two easy arrests when an angry bar patron chased two suspected robbers into the arms of a group of patrolmen. Patrolmen Dennis Conroy, Kenneth Soranno and Joseph Furman were preparing to go on duty early yesterday when they heard someone out in the street screaming, “Help,help.” The officers caught Jessie Trusdale,20-years-old and Willie McCain,19, who were grateful to escape the wrath of Dominic Mangano, a Closter NJ contractor who does not like to be interrupted while having a quiet drink, the police said. The police said Mr. T and Mr M had walked into the Commodore Rest here flashed a knife and demanded money. Mr Mangano hit the two men and then cracked their heads together, the police said. With Mr Mangano hot on their trail, the two scrabbled out the door and into the arms of the police, authorities said.

Excerpt from March 19, 1977 New York Times

A Man Not in Blue (Or in Any Color) Steals Police Car

There are eight million stories in the naked city. This is one of them.

A blue and white police car sped through Central Park early yesterday morning, headed north. There was nothing unusual about it – except that the man behind the wheel had no clothes on. Close behind him came a lot of other police cars. Their drivers had all their clothes on, but they were as embarrassed as if they hadn’t. The naked man had stolen the car from two of their fully uniformed colleagues. It all started when Officers Francis Kitz and Reluardo Amaral came upon a man strolling through Greenwich Village completely naked. They stopped and ordered him into their patrol car, the man leaped from the rear seat to the front, engaged the gears and roared off. The two stranded policemen called the Sixth Precinct station house, on West 10th Street. In Riverside Park the man stopped the car and fled into the bushes where he was captured. For his court appearance the man was provided with a raincoat and a pair of old trousers, but no shoes. Officers Kitz and Amaral were provided with considerable amount of needling by their fellow officers. “They took some ribbing,” another police officer said.

Excerpt from March 19, 1977 New York Times

Stuyvesant Town Tenant, 76, Slain In Apparent Mugging in Vestibule

A 76-year-old man believed to have been returning from filing his income tax returns was stabbed to death during an apparent robbery last night in the vestibule of his apartment building in S.T. the police reported.

“I am seriously considering moving to a safer building,” said Carmel Lawlor a neighbor.

excerpt NYT 3/19/77 Nathaniel Sheppard Jr

2 Boys Facing Trial In Woman’s Slaying

According to Police Officer John Skala, the 12-year-old said he had ransacked the apartment and found only 25 cents under the bed.

Dr. Robins, school principal, said the 12-year-old had broken into the school on several occasions and stolen equipment, and had thrown a chair at one teacher, a piece of 2x4 lumber at another, and a piece of pipe at a third teacher.

excerpt NYT 3/18/77 David Bird

For FBI Agents, New York Heads ‘Least Wanted’ List

Somewhere out there among the 7000 or so agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who are working west of the Hudson and South of Perth Amboy, there are, by actual count, four who have expressed a desire to work in New York City.

This figure is sited with amusement but not much surprise by bureau officials, who also are aware that the roughly 900 special agents in the New York field office, nearly 600 have said in writing that they’d rather work elsewhere.

“We’ve always had problems getting people to work in New York, but it’s gotten worse in recent years,” says one official. “There are agents who like to work there because the best cases are there, but most of them think of it in terms of high taxes and a brutal commute.”

“The biggest gripe here is about the taxes, and that moves people out from under the city tax,” says one longtime agent who wants to stay in Manhattan. “And the other thing, which nobody wants to admit, is that means we’re trapped into using ghetto kids for staff jobs.”

“Everything is major league here: the theater, the football, and the crime.”


NYT Marro 3/17/77

Aged Couple Were Beaten on a Street of Strangers

It is like scores of other neighborhoods in the city that slid into decline after the earlier residents moved on – nobody pays attention to them until something brutally startling happens. Except for scattered enclaves of brownstone revival, much of Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights – an area to the northwest of Crown Heights – was slipping away until an aged couple were severely beaten in their home at 867 Pacific Street earlier this month.

The wife, Ida H died Sunday of injuries suffered in the beating. Her husband remains in critical condition in Brookly Hospital.

Sam Milton, a black man who with his wife, Gladys, has rented the top floor of the Hochman’s three-story red brick building for 5 years, said he had never really talked to the Hochmans. “They’re Jewish,” Mr. Milton said as he stood in the doorway, “and I wouldn’t know what they are talking about anyway.”

“It’s become a way of life in this jungle that is New York,” said Rabbi Norman Zdanowitz.

excerpt NYT 3/16/77 David Bird

A Pianist Who Moved to Midtown For Safety Slain in 55th Street Lobby

Ernst Lubin, a 60-year-old pianist, composer and author who had moved his family from Washington Heights a month ago because one of his teenage sons had been repeatedly mugged, was robbed (wallet held $15) and fatally shot shortly after midnight yesterday in the lobby of his new residence at 204 West 55th Street.

After being wounded in the head, Mr. Lubin, a stocky man with thick gray hair, staggered across the lobby, through the adjoining door to the Woodward Hotel and collapsed in front of the night clerk. He was taken to St Clare’s Hospital, where he died some 17 hours later.

Recalling the assaults on their son Daniel, Mrs. Lubin said, “They once mugged him for an ice-cream cone.”

excerpt from NYT 3/16/77 Joseph Treaster

70 Arrested in an After-Hours Club on West Side

Cries of “Police! Freeze!” stunned patrons into instant silence on the first floor of a lavish New York City after-hours club at 6:30 yesterday morning. The club is the Fish Tank, at 621 West 55th Street, which the police say has been patronized chiefly by pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers. About 30 policemen entered including 6 with shot guns, “so they would know it was a police raid and not a holdup, and wouldn’t get violent,” according to Sgt George Trapp. According to the police, the Fish Tank is one of several after-hours clubs in Manhattan patronized by free-spending pimps and their top prostitutes after their business subsides in the early morning hours. Sgt Trapp estimated that the raid “will put about 400 or 500 girls out of business – at least for the time being – because 10 of the cities most active pimps were among those arrested. About 40 expensive automobiles, many of them Cadillacs, were parked near the building, which is in an industrial area between 11th and 12th Aves.

NYT Asbury 3/12/77

2 Brooklyn Youths Charged in Attacks on Elderly Couple

Two youths were arrested yesterday and charged with beating an 84-year-old Brooklyn man and returning the next day to assault his 80-year-old wife.

The victims, Philip and Ida Hochman of 867 Pacific Street in the Crown Heights section, were reported to be in serious condition at Brooklyn Hospital with head injuries. The police said the youths, who are 12 and 15 years old and who are neighbors of the Hochmans, went to the couple’s home on March 4th. They saw Mr Hochman on the stairs, emptied his pockets and hit him on the head with a wooden plank before fleeing, the police said. Mr. Hochman, who was found unconscious at the foot of the stairs, was taken to the hospital. But because no foul play was initially suspected, the incident was not reported to the police.

The next day, about noon, according to the police, the same youths returned to the three-story brownstone and forced open the door to the Hochman’s ground floor apartment. They allegedly beat Mrs. Hochman with a wooden club and then ransacked the apartment in search of money. Mrs. Hochman, unconscious, was not discovered by a neighbor until 10:00pm.

excerpt 3/12/77 NYT

3 Murders of Women Since July 29 Believed Actions of Same Gunman

The commissioner gave the following description of a person wanted for questioning in the murders: male, white, between 25 and 30 years of age, between 5 feet 10 inches and 6 feet tall, medium build, well groomed, with dark hair combed back.

Excerpt from Murray Schumach March 11, 1977 New York Times

Adolescent Sought as Student's Killer

A man in the quiet, affluent neighborhood was said to have told police he had seen a pudgy youth running from the vicinity of the killing and heard him say “Oh, Jesus.”

Police said there was no connection to the murder.

Excerpt from Murray Schumach March 10, 1977 New York Times

Killing Stuns Forest Hills – Coed is 2d Victim

A second murder in 6 weeks has shocked residents of the exclusive Forest Hills Gardens section of Queens. Last nights seemingly senseless murder of 20-year-old Columbia coed Virginia Voskerichian came on the first full day of operations of a new citizens patrol formed partly in reaction to the earlier killing. “The first was regarded as an isolated incident,” said Dr Gerald Gavin, a dentist and president of the Forest Hills Gardens Corp, which maintains the private community. “Now people are very concerned.”

Detectives said, however, they do not now believe the slaying of Miss V. is related to the earlier murder. In the earlier case Christine Freund was shot 3 times with a large caliber gun Jan 30 while sitting with her boyfriend in a car parked within a stone’s throw of the scene of Miss V.’s death. “We do not believe this is the same person at this time,” said one detective. He pointed out that the guns used in the two murders were quite different.

He was described as a white male, about 5-8 and between 16 and 18 years old. One passerby told the police that the youth blurted, “Oh, Jesus,” as he ran by realizing that his face had been seen.

Excerpt from William Slattery March 9, 1977 New York Post

Two 14-Year-Old Boys Are Held After Police Blockade Halts a Stolen Greyhound Bus

A Sceni-Cruiser Greyhound bus was cruising up the avenue with a young boy at the wheel and another boy seated behind him. Neither wore Greyhound grey. Spotted by two cops at Madison and 116th – Detective Gilberti leaned out of the police car window and ordered the bus driver to pull over. Instead the boy stepped on the gas and steered the bus into 116th street, heading toward Fifth Avenue. The police chased him. The bus speeded down Fifth Avenue and continued into Central Park, with the police car in hot pursuit. Traveling wildly around turns at a speed of about 50 miles an hour, the bus emerged at 97th Street and went over to Amsterdam Avenue, with the police car still behind it. The chase continued uptown on Amsterdam, with pedestrians running to safety and motorists pulling over to curbs to avoid being hit. At 130th Street the bus turned left and sped onto the Henry Hudson Parkway. As it headed north on a parkway that only carries automobile traffic, Sgt Frank Krzyick commandeered a Sanitation Department garbage truck and used it to block northbound traffic at about 177th Street.

The boys, both 14 years old, were captured there. It was reported that the bus had been stolen by the boys from a Greyhound maintenance lot at 40th Street and 11th Avenue. One of the boys was said by the police to have escaped recently from the Manhattan State Hospital, a state mental institution. “He handled the bus like a pro,” said Officer Devlin later.

“We had no idea when it was stolen and didn’t know it was taken until the police apprehended the young men,” the spokesmen said. A guard is posted at the gate of the lot where the bus was parked, the spokesman said, but he apparently didn’t realize an unauthorized driver was at the wheel. “Obviously the guard would have reported it if he had seen it,” the spokesman said.

Excerpt from Emanuel Perlmutter March 3, 1977 New York Times