The "Career Girls Murders" was the name given by the American media to the murders of Emily Hoffert and Janice Wylie, which occurred inside their apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City, on August 28, 1963.[1]George Whitmore Jr. was charged with this and other crimes, but he was later cleared.[2]
The actions of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) led Whitmore to be improperly accused of this and other crimes, including the murder of Minnie Edmonds and the attempted rape and assault of Elba Borrero. Whitmore was wrongfully incarcerated for 1,216 days—from his arrest on April 24, 1964, until his release on bond on July 13, 1966, and from the revocation of his bond on February 28, 1972, until his exoneration on April 10, 1973.[3] Whitmore's treatment by the authorities was cited as an example that led the United States Supreme Court to issue the guidelines known as the Miranda rights, with the Court calling Whitmore's case "the most conspicuous example" of police coercion in the country. The Court issued its 1966 ruling, establishing a set of protections for suspects—including the right to remain silent—in Miranda v. Arizona.[4]
Crimes
On August 28, 1963, 23-year-old Patricia Tolles, who worked at the book division at Time-Life, returned from work to her apartment on the third floor of 57 East 88th Street in Manhattan, New York City. There, Tolles found the apartment ransacked and a bloody knife in the bathroom. Panicked, she ran to the lobby and called Max Wylie, the father of her roommate, who lived nearby. Wylie came to investigate, and in one of the bedrooms he found the bodies of his daughter, Janice, aged 21, and her roommate, Emily Hoffert, aged 23, next to a bloodied bed by the windows. The women were tied together with strips of cloth and had been stabbed repeatedly with three knives from their own kitchen. Janice had been stabbed in the chest and lower abdomen, the latter wounds causing partial evisceration, while Hoffert had been knifed in the neck. Emily's body was fully clothed, but Janice's was nude and showed evidence of sexual assault.[5][6][7]
Janice Wylie was the daughter of advertising executive and novelist Max Wylie and niece of novelist Philip Wylie,[8] while Emily Hoffert was the daughter of a Minneapolis surgeon. Because both victims belonged to prominent families, the case created a press sensation. The media dubbed it the "Career Girls Murders" because Wylie worked as a Newsweek researcher and Hoffert was a schoolteacher. As such, they were representative of the thousands of young women who had come from all over the United States to larger cities like New York to seek jobs and careers. Other women like them now felt unsafe, and the New York City Police Department (NYPD) came under pressure to solve the murders. Hundreds of detectives were assigned to the investigation and thousands of people were interviewed, but weeks passed with no arrests made.[9]
Investigation
Initially, detectives believed that one or both the victims knew their killer. The level of violence found is usually an indication of a personal relationship with the victim.[5] There were no signs of forced entry and the apartment, which was on the third floor of a nine-story building, was also guarded by a doorman.[6][7] Though the apartment was in disarray, nothing appeared to be stolen, so robbery was not believed to be a motive. The victims were bound by their hands and feet and were tied back-to-back, with Janice nude and Emily dressed. Two bloody 10- to 12-inch carving knives were found next to the bodies and an additional knife in one of the two bathrooms.[6][7]
Police theorized that the women were attacked and murdered in the bedroom where their bodies were discovered. They did not immediately release information regarding Janice's sexual assault. They instead told the press that it did not appear that either had been raped but allowed that an autopsy might reveal otherwise. They did disclose that the women had been slashed repeatedly in the neck and abdomen.[6][7] The focus on interviewing people named in Janice's green address book did not lead to identifying a suspect.[5] A $10,000 reward was established to aid in the apprehension of a culprit.[5]
The public at large initially believed that the attacks were against women who had careers, as both of the victims fit that profile. Women—particularly white women—were left to feel vulnerable despite their desire to gain freedom and independence through their careers.[10] One year after the murders, Janice's father penned a handbook, Career Girl, Watch Your Step!, warning career women about safety and the need to be aware and "feel threatened" as a defense.[10] Many other handbooks, aimed at the safety of single women, were issued by local police and public safety departments. These handbooks mostly emphasized the importance of prevention of the attacks, including having male protection and needing physical security.[10]
Wrong suspect
In April 1964, Elba Borrero identified George Whitmore Jr., a 19-year-old day laborer, as the man who had attempted to rape her a few days prior;[11] Borrero would later acknowledge that Whitmore was the only suspect police had shown her.[5] When he was arrested, it was found that Whitmore was in possession of a photo of a white blonde woman. Brooklyn detectives Joe DiPrima and Edward Bulger jumped to the conclusion that the blonde in the photo was Janice, although her family denied it.[11] In reality the photo was that of Arlene Franco, a high school classmate of Whitmore, who had lost or discarded it in a park; Whitmore found it and decided to keep it in his wallet.[3][5] Whitmore immediately became a suspect in the Career Girl Murders, and DiPrima and Bulger proceeded to interrogate him. Hours of leading questions eventually led Whitmore to confess.[11]
The NYPD announced Whitmore's confession in the Career Girl Murders, as well as the unrelated killing of Minnie Edmonds and the attempted rape of Elba Borrero. The department claimed that Whitmore had given details of the Wylie-Hoffert killings which only the murderer could have known, but Manhattan prosecutors noticed that every detail in the Whitmore confession was known to the police beforehand.[citation needed] Police also stated that Whitmore had drawn a detailed diagram of the apartment and had in his wallet a photo of Janice that had been stolen from the flat.[5][12][13]
On October 9, 1964, Nathan "Jimmy" Delaney, aged 35, a small-time drug dealer, was arrested for the murder of a rival drug dealer, Roberto Cruz del Valle. Facing the death penalty, Delaney offered to make a deal: in return for leniency, he would give police the name of the real killer of Wylie and Hoffert, claiming it was not Whitmore. Delaney explained to police that on the day of the killings he had met an old acquaintance, Richard "Ricky" Robles, who had told him that he had committed the murders. Robles, a 22-year-old burglar, had been released from prison two months prior to the murders. To support his drug habit, Robles needed anywhere from $30 to $50 per day to secure his fix.
Delaney told detectives that Robles had turned up at his apartment on the day of the killings, demanding drugs while his hands and clothes were covered in blood. The shaken Robles told Delaney, “I just iced two dames.” Delaney gave him a clean change of clothes, then the two men went out to buy drugs with money Robles had given him. Delaney and his wife, Marjorie, were fitted with surveillance equipment, and other equipment was also installed in their and Robles' apartments. Over time, Robles talked about details of the murders that convinced investigators he was the real killer. Robles was arrested and charged on January 26, 1965.[12]
Second arrest and conviction
In the autumn of 1965, Robles was tried for the Career Girl Murders. His defense attempted to buoy the credibility of Whitmore's confession to create a reasonable doubt that their own client had committed the crime. However, prosecutor John F. Keenan replied by summoning Whitmore and the detectives who had arrested him. Robles' attorneys were unable to translate doubts about police interrogation methods to their own client's advantage, despite testimony that Robles had confessed to the murders while suffering from heroin withdrawal and without his attorney present.[citation needed] Delaney testified that Robles told him the motive for the murders was because Hoffert told him that she could identify him to police.[15] Robles' attorney indicated that Delaney was given immunity in exchange for his testimony.[3]
On December 1, 1965, Robles was found guilty of the murders of Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert and sentenced to life in prison. Just months before, the New York Legislature had abolished the death penalty, except in the cases of the killing of police officers, prison guards and murders committed while escaping jail.[3] Robles' conviction was secured largely on the basis of the tape-recorded conversations. Despite the conviction, numerous questions regarding the police conduct with regard to Whitmore were left unanswered.
Police detectives, who may have been motivated by their sense of justice, resorted to highly questionable means to extract a confession from a suspect who was too weak to resist. Their colossal blunders in the career girls murder case almost put George Whitmore Jr. on death row for a crime he certainly did not commit. No formal charges were ever brought against Detectives Bulger and DiPrima who consistently denied any wrongdoing in the case, but exactly how Whitmore was able to supply a 61-page confession to a double murder he never committed was never explained.[16]
Robles, who had himself publicly protested his innocence over the murders, did not admit his guilt until a parole board hearing in November 1986. He admitted he had broken into the apartment to obtain money for drugs and had initially assumed it was empty. When Janice, who had been taking a shower, appeared, he attacked and raped her. Emily had turned up shortly afterward and he attacked her as well. Defiantly, she told him that she would remember his face and report him to the police, whereupon he murdered both women. The three-member panel rejected granting parole, citing "the nature of the crime." No charges were pressed against the detectives who had obtained Whitmore's "confession."[16]
Legacy
Whitmore's treatment by the NYPD was one of many examples used by the United States Supreme Court when it issued the guidelines known as the Miranda rights in June 1966 by which, when a defendant is taken into custody and accused of a crime, he must be advised of his constitutional rights.[17] The Court acknowledged that coercive interrogations could produce false confessions, and in a footnote stated: "[t]he most conspicuous example occurred in New York in 1964 when a Negro of limited intelligence confessed to two brutal murders and a rape which he had not committed." When this was discovered, a prosecutor [who?] was reported as saying: "Call it what you want — brainwashing, hypnosis, fright. The only thing I don't believe is that Whitmore was beaten."[citation needed]
Janice's mother and sister, Isobel Wylie and Pamela Wylie Sullivan, respectively, both died within five years of the murders, the former from cancer. Her father, Max Wylie, committed suicide by gunshot in 1975 in Fredericksburg, Virginia.[18]
Whitmore made a life for himself in Wildwood, New Jersey. He successfully sued the City of New York for false arrest and was awarded $500,000 in damages. He operated a commercial fishing boat for a time, but he was later disabled in a boating accident. Whitmore blew through the award money, was unemployed for long stretches, and suffered from depression and alcoholism. He never married. The father of four daughters and two sons, George Whitmore Jr. died on October 8, 2012, in a nursing home of a heart attack. He was 68 years old.[19]
Robles was released on parole in May 2020. Prior to this, he was New York State Inmate #66A0003, imprisoned in the Greene Correctional Facility and had been denied parole multiple times. While in jail, Robles taught fellow prisoners computer skills and received an associate degree.[20]
In popular culture
The case served as the basis of the 1973 television movie The Marcus-Nelson Murders, which in turn served as a pilot for the crime drama series Kojak.[21]
The Killings, a 1973 novel by Edgar-winning author Clark Howard, also fictionalized the case, changing the setting from New York to Los Angeles.[citation needed]
In a 2009 episode of Mad Men (season 3, episode 9, "Wee Small Hours"), two characters hear the beginning of a radio broadcast, in which the newscaster reports that the bodies of the victims, Wylie and Hoffert, had been found in their apartment.[22]
The Central Park jogger case was a criminal case concerning the assault and rape of Trisha Meili, a woman who was running in Central Park in Manhattan, New York, on April 19, 1989. Crime in New York City was peaking in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the crack epidemic surged. On the night Meili was attacked, dozens of teenagers had entered the park, and there were reports of muggings and physical assaults.
The Hillside Strangler, later the Hillside Stranglers, is the media epithet for one, later discovered to be two, American serial killers who terrorized Los Angeles, California, between October 1977 and February 1978, with the nicknames originating from the fact that many of the victims' bodies were discovered in the hills surrounding the city.
In the early hours of March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old bartender, was raped and stabbed outside the apartment building where she lived in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens, New York, United States. Two weeks after the murder, The New York Times published an article erroneously claiming that thirty-eight witnesses saw or heard the attack, and that none of them called the police or came to her aid. The incident prompted inquiries into what became known as the bystander effect, or "Genovese syndrome", and the murder became a staple of U.S. psychology textbooks for the next four decades.
Kojak is an American action crime drama television series starring Telly Savalas as the title character, New York City Police Department Detective Lieutenant Theophilus "Theo" Kojak. Taking the time slot of the popular Cannon series, it aired on CBS from 1973 to 1978.
A false confession is an admission of guilt for a crime which the individual did not commit. Although such confessions seem counterintuitive, they can be made voluntarily, perhaps to protect a third party, or induced through coercive interrogation techniques. When some degree of coercion is involved, studies have found that subjects with highly sophisticated intelligence or manipulated by their so-called "friends" are more likely to make such confessions. Young people are particularly vulnerable to confessing, especially when stressed, tired, or traumatized, and have a significantly higher rate of false confessions than adults. Hundreds of innocent people have been convicted, imprisoned, and sometimes sentenced to death after confessing to crimes they did not commit—but years later, have been exonerated. It was not until several shocking false confession cases were publicized in the late 1980s, combined with the introduction of DNA evidence, that the extent of wrongful convictions began to emerge—and how often false confessions played a role in these.
Levi Bellfield is an English serial killer, sex offender, rapist, kidnapper, and burglar. He was found guilty on 25 February 2008 of the murders of Marsha McDonnell and Amélie Delagrange and the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy, and sentenced to life imprisonment. On 23 June 2011, Bellfield was further found guilty of the murder of Milly Dowler. On both occasions, the judge imposed a whole life order, meaning that Bellfield will serve the sentence without the possibility of parole. Bellfield was the first prisoner in history to have received two whole life orders.
Richard Francis Cottingham is an American serial killer who was convicted in New York of six murders committed between 1972 and 1980 and convicted in New Jersey of twelve murders committed between 1967 and 1978. He was nicknamed by media as the Torso Killer and the Times Square Ripper, since some of the murders he was convicted of included mutilation.
Altemio C. Sanchez, also known as the Bike Path Rapist, was a serial killer, of Puerto Rican descent, who is known to have raped and murdered at least three women, and raped at least 9 to 15 girls and women in and around Buffalo, New York, during a 31-year span from 1975, though perhaps earlier, to 2006. He was apprehended in 2007 through DNA evidence and sentenced to 75 years-to-life, serving 16 years before dying from apparent suicide in 2023.
Henry Louis Wallace, also known as the “Taco Bell Strangler”, is an American serial killer who killed eleven black women in South Carolina and North Carolina from March 1990 to March 1994. He is currently awaiting execution at Central Prison in Raleigh.
The First Deadly Sin is a 1980 American crime thriller film produced by and starring Frank Sinatra. The film features Faye Dunaway, David Dukes, Brenda Vaccaro, James Whitmore, and Martin Gabel in his final role. The film is based on the 1973 novel of the same name written by Lawrence Sanders. The screenplay was written by Mann Rubin.
The Norfolk Four are four former United States Navy sailors: Joseph J. Dick Jr., Derek Tice, Danial Williams, and Eric C. Wilson, who were wrongfully convicted of the 1997 rape and murder of Michelle Moore-Bosko while they were stationed at Naval Station Norfolk. They each declared that they had made false confessions, and their convictions are considered highly controversial. A fifth man, Omar Ballard, confessed and pleaded guilty to the crime in 2000, insisting that he had acted alone. He had been in prison since 1998 because of violent attacks on two other women in 1997. He was the only one of the suspects whose DNA matched that collected at the crime scene, and whose confession was consistent with other forensic evidence.
Rodney James Alcala was an American serial killer and sex offender who was sentenced to death in California for five murders committed between 1977 and 1979. He also pleaded guilty and received a sentence of 25 years to life for two further murders committed in New York and was also indicted for a murder in Wyoming, although charges were dropped due to a technicality. While he has been conclusively linked to eight murders, Alcala's true number of victims remains unknown and could be much higher – the actual number could be as high as 130.
Selwyn Raab is an American journalist, author and former investigative reporter for The New York Times. He has written extensively about the American Mafia and criminal justice issues.
Louis N. Scarcella is a retired detective from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) who earned frequent commendations during the "crack epidemic" of the 1980s and 1990s, before many convictions resulting from his investigations were overturned during his retirement. As a member of the Brooklyn North Homicide Squad, he and his longtime partner Stephen Chmil built a reputation for obtaining convictions in difficult cases. Since 2013, Scarcella has received extensive and sustained publicity for multiple allegations of investigative misconduct that resulted in false testimony against crime suspects, leading to innocent parties serving long prison terms and guilty individuals going free.
Stanislav Ivanovich Rogolev was a Soviet serial killer. For one and a half years he attacked 21 women, killing 10 of them. In 1980, Rogolev was convicted four times, and charged once with rape. According to writer Alexander Chekhlov, Rogolev was the informer of Aloizs Vaznis, a police officer, who, in turn, tried to shield Rogolev. In particular, he gave Rogolev full information about the crimes, fabricating a confession in which he could be declared insane. It was also believed that Rogolev had information about the progress of the investigation. According to writer and lawyer Andris Grūtups, Rogolev was a secret agent of the deputy minister, General Anrijs Kavalieris.
The shock is still too soft a word to describe the state in which Latvia was in the early 80's. Schoolgirls went to classes in close-knit groups, husbands greeted wives from late trains, and all over the place were reinforced police detachments. In every doorway, law-abiding citizens, frightened by a man, seemed to see the worst and most bloody maniac of Latvia of the Soviet period - Stanislav Rogolev.
Calvin Jackson is an American serial killer and rapist responsible for the murders of nine women in Manhattan's West Side between 1973 and 1974. The killings were connected only after Jackson was arrested and confessed to them; until then, the deaths were considered to be from natural causes or accidents. In July 1976, he was convicted and sentenced to four life imprisonment terms with a chance of parole. One of his victims was sculptor Eleanor Platt.
Kenneth Granviel was an American serial killer and rapist who was responsible for the sexually-motivated murders of seven people in Fort Worth, Texas from 1974 to 1975, most notably the mass murder of three women and two children. After willingly admitting to the crimes, he was convicted, sentenced to death and executed in 1996, after several delays and challenges to his sentence.
George Whitmore Jr. was an African American man who was charged but later cleared of the infamous Career Girls Murders that occurred in New York City in 1963. "The Supreme Court cited Mr. Whitmore’s case as 'the most conspicuous example' of police coercion when it issued its 1966 ruling in Miranda v. Arizona, establishing a set of protections for suspects, like the right to remain silent."
The Suitland murders refers to a series of murders of young girls and women committed from October 1986 to January 1987 in the unincorporated area of Suitland, Maryland, considered a suburb of Washington, D.C. All victims were black, and each had been sexually assaulted and stabbed afterwards.
↑ "Wee Small Hours". Mad Men. Season 3.09. October 11, 2009. AMC.
External links
The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge by T.J. English
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