FAMOUS LAST WOODS

Sure is peaceful out here in nature all by myself. Yep, really glad I decided to do this.

Above is a June 1955 issue of True Detective, with a woman proving yet again that—on pulp covers at least—it’s always a bad idea to wander in the woods alone. But at least she has a chance to run away, unlike these women who got fully naked and leaped into the nearest pond before being surprised by intruders. Inside this True Detective is a story on the Ann Yarrow murder of February 1955. Little known now, at the time it was a major story, mixing those favorite pulp elements of sex, race, and brutality into a stew that had all New York City gripped during the winter of that year.

Ann Yarrow was a twenty-three-year old NYU honors graduate who was found raped, strangled, and stabbed thirty-seven times in a cheap apartment in an area of Manhattan known today as the East Village. Yarrow was an unusual woman for the times in that she judged people by neither social standing nor skin color. Thus she had friends from all walks

of life and at the time of her murder had just split with her African-American boyfriend Ernest Jackson. Once police learned of Jackson’s existence he became the prime suspect, though his exemplary background made him an unlikely candidate.

The New York tabloids published tales of tawdry interracial sex, but it soon became so obvious that Jackson was not the killer that even while he was in custody Ann Yarrow’s father tried to contact him to offer sympathy and reassurance. When the police finally decided they couldn’t make the case, they moved on to Yarrow’s last known acquaintance, Angelo “Mike” Morelli. They knew Morelli had called Yarrow’s apartment at least once, and one of the last letters written by Yarrow mentioned a person named Mike. When arrested, Morelli still bore a woman’s scratches on his back and a little legwork revealed that he had sent his suit to the cleaner the day after Yarrow’s murder.

Morelli’s alibi was thin. He claimed that he had spoken to Yarrow but had never actually met her. He said the scratches came from a prostitute he had scuffled with the night of the murder. And he said he had sent his suit to the cleaner as a matter of course rather than to cover up a crime. A few days after his arrest, Morelli was able to pass a note to an acquaintance,

who took it to the New York News. The note, gleefully published by the paper, claimed cops had beaten Morelli while in custody to coerce a confession. But beaten or not, he never confessed, and soon he made $10,000 bail and was freed (above left, with his lawyer) pending further investigation.

Weeks later, less than a month after Yarrow’s death, police arrested a former psychiatric patient named William Patrick Farrell on the charge of raping his sister-in-law Irene Miller. While in custody, police asked him if he had committed similar crimes before, and he allegedly said he had, and confessed to the Yarrow killing, even adding that he had disposed of the knife in a sewer. Days later he recanted, saying, “I didn’t do it. I didn’t. I don’t know why I made a confession.” Nevertheless, he was a deeply disturbed man who had raped Irene Miller in front of her three-year-old son, and about this there was no doubt—Miller’s stepfather had called the police after Farrell chased him at knifepoint from the apartment. That apartment was only blocks from where Yarrow had been living.

The case against Farrell was entirely circumstantial, but he had confessed and police expressed no doubts he had spoken the truth. From his confession: “I just caught sight of her on the street. I took a fancy to her and followed her home. I rang the doorbell and when she opened it I put my foot in it.” If DNA testing had existed at the time, perhaps Mike Morelli would have been the one facing a judge, but he walked, and Farrell was tried and convicted of murder and sent to the Matteawan Hospital for the Criminally Insane, in Beacon, New York.

Ann Yarrow’s slaying had fueled the tabloids for weeks, and most of those stories questioned the wisdom of her associations and stirred up racial animus, but ultimately it may have been a random encounter that led to her ugly demise. The murder was all anyone wanted to talk about during the winter of 1955, but in the end, other crimes filled the tabloids and New Yorkers went on as if William Patrick Farrell, Mike Morelli, Ernest Jackson, and Ann Yarrow had never existed.

New York City, East Village, New York News, Ann Yarrow, William Patrick Farrell, True Detective, true crime magazine

Vintage Pulp

January 5 2010

SOMMER IN THE CITY

German actress Elke Sommer in her up-do on the cover of New York News Sunday magazine, forty-six years ago today.

Germany, New York News, Elke Sommer

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

April 28

1947—Heyerdahl Embarks on Kon-Tiki

Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl and his five man crew set out from Peru on a giant balsa wood raft called the Kon-Tiki in order to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia. After a 101 day, 4,300 mile (8,000 km) journey, Kon-Tiki smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, 1947, thus demonstrating that it is possible for a primitive craft to survive a Pacific crossing.

April 28

1989—Soviets Acknowledge Chernobyl Accident

After two days of rumors and denials the Soviet Union admits there was an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Reactor number four had suffered a meltdown, sending a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Today the abandoned radioactive area surrounding Chernobyl is rife with local wildlife and has been converted into a wildlife sanctuary, one of the largest in Europe.

April 27

1945—Mussolini Is Arrested

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci, and fifteen supporters are arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, Italy while attempting to escape the region in the wake of the collapse of Mussolini’s fascist government. The next day, Mussolini and his mistress are both executed, along with most of the members of their group. Their bodies are then trucked to Milan where they are hung upside down on meathooks from the roof of a gas station, then spat upon and stoned until they are unrecognizable.

April 26

1933—The Gestapo Is Formed

The Geheime Staatspolizei, aka Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established. It begins under the administration of SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police, but by 1939 is administered by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or Reich Main Security Office, and is a feared entity in every corner of Germany and beyond.

April 26

1937—Guernica Is Bombed

In Spain during the Spanish Civil War, the Basque town of Guernica is bombed by the German Luftwaffe, resulting in widespread destruction and casualties. The Basque government reports 1,654 people killed, while later research suggests far fewer deaths, but regardless, Guernica is viewed as an example of terror bombing and other countries learn that Nazi Germany is committed to that tactic. The bombing also becomes inspiration for Pablo Picasso, resulting in a protest painting that is not only his most famous work, but one the most important pieces of art ever produced.

April 25

1939—Batman Debuts

In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise featuring such leads as Michael Keaton, George Clooney, Val Kilmer, Robert Pattinson, and Christian Bale.

April 25

1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results

British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves.