When I saw the size of the piece and the large drawing that accompanied it, I wondered if there was going to be more about this chapter in the city's history. A few days later an obituary appeared for Mr. Whitmore, who had passed away eight days before at 68, in a New Jersey nursing home. He wasn't completely forgotten afterall.
I didn't need to read the details, but I did, about the black teenager who, in 1964, confessed to a double homicide he didn't do. The piece is by T.J. English, who met Mr. Whitmore several times in the stages of writing a book about George Whitmore Jr. and the events that surrounded him and the very badly aligned wheels of justice.
It was August 1963, and two young women had been savagely stabbed to death in the middle of night while asleep in their Manhattan apartment. The killer entered from the fire escape and the open window. Open windows were common in Manhattan in the summer. Air conditioning basically didn't exist for most people, and the only chance of cooling yourself off was a fan, or open windows. Sometimes even moving the mattress to the fire escape was resorted to.
The young women were roommates, "Career-Girls," the euphemism of the era for young single women who lived on their own while working and living in Manhattan, pursuing "careers" rather than marriage. There are lots of sitcoms about this type of lifestyle now, and the description "career-girls" has been shelved.
This was an ugly crime, and one that shook the city. I was a very young teenager at the time, and the crime remained a topic of conversation for quite a while, one because no one was caught immediately, and then because it ushered in a realization that personal safety was at stake: you couldn't sleep with your windows open during the summer. Someone could come in and kill you. There were plenty of newspapers then, and plenty of stories.
Then, in April 1964 an arrest was made. George Whitmore, Jr. has confessed to the crimes. Crimes he didn't do, but he "confessed" regardless.
Mr. English's piece, and the subsequent obituary for George Whitmore Jr., give an accurate account of the chain of events that befell Mr. Whitmore and why his name is closely associated with the Miranda ruling. His defense had all the earmarks of "B&B," black and broke.
As the story was progressing in real time it was shown that Mr. Whitmore hadn't done the murders (he wasn't even in the state at the time) and that his confession was tainted by coercion. I remember thinking then that how could anyone confess to something they didn't do? At that point in my life I felt that if someone confessed to something it was because they did it. Case closed. And if something was beaten out of them it was still a confession because the beating just got out of them what was there to begin with. No difference.
Eventually, a recently released ex-con, Richard Robles, was arrested and convicted of the murders. He remains in prison to this day.
I've joked in the past that when asked what were the 60s like, I tell people they were hot, that there was little air conditioning.
For George Whitmore Jr., there was no justice, either.
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