The Capeman Murders

On the night of August 29, 1959, the curtain went

down on the performance of West Side Story on

Broadway, Leonard Bernstein's paean to young

love destroyed by youth gang warfare. It was a

time when urban youth gangs rumbled almost

nightly in the streets and alleyways of most large

cities across the land. Little did the theatre goers

at the Majestic know that an hour later and just

four blocks away, a real-life version of West Side

Story would be enacted on the streets of Hell's

Kitchen and that it would constitute one of the

most infamous crimes in the history of a

neighbourhood long known for crime: "The

Capeman Murders."

The place: A playground (named May Mathews

Playground in 1972) between West 45th and 46th

Streets, midway between Ninth and Tenth

Avenues.

The time: 12:15 a.m. on a night in late summer,

after a rainy day.

The protagonists: Six neighbourhood teenagers

sitting on a bench in the park after three of them

had attended a movie on West 42nd Street, and

twelve other teenagers, members of a gang called

the Vampires.

A taxi cab screeched to a halt on West 46th Street

about midnight. From the cab emerged Salvador

Agron, the Capeman, who was decked out in a

borrowed, crimson-lined black satin cape and

fancy shoes, and Antonio Luis Hernandez, the

Umbrella Man. Agron, a.k.a. Dracula, Bigfoot, and

Machinegun Sal, aged 16, came from Brooklyn,

where he used to lead a gang called the Mau

Maus. He moved on to become the leader of the

Vampires, based in Manhattan's West 70s and

80s. He wielded a twelve-inch silver-mounted

Mexican dagger. Hernandez, 17, who hailed from

the Bronx, was his top lieutenant and drew his

nickname from his habit of using an umbrella as a

sharp-pointed weapon. The expansionist

Vampires had come downtown for two reasons:

they aspired to the turf south of 50th Street and

they had heard that their fellow Puerto Ricans

were being ill-treated by Irish and Italian

teenagers in the area. A rumble had been

arranged between the Vampires and the Nordics,

to be held at the playground, coincidentally the

scene of a spate of recent muggings. Only the

Nordics failed to appear. Instead, minutes earlier,

three teenagers on their way from the movies

walked across the unlit playground, met three

friends, two boys and a girl, and sat down to talk.

At that point, led by the battle cry, "Where's

Frenchy?" (one of the rival gang members?), the

Vampires came pouring into the park and circled

the benches. When they realized the Nordics had

not shown up, they turned their fury on the six

local youths. Robert Young, 16, a resident of West

47th Street, was stabbed to death, dying in front

of 449 West 46th Street. Anthony Krzesinski, also

16 and a resident of West 47th Street, was

stabbed in the back and staggered across 46th

Street to 445-7 West 46th, where he fell in the

doorway, saying to his friend, "I'm hurt. Get me

upstairs fast." He died soon afterward in the

apartment of Frank Zorovich and his daughter,

Edna. Edna later said that the Vampires were

looking for someone in particular, who lived on

West 46th Street. Edward Riemer, 18, of Ninth

Avenue, was also knifed and stomped, and

brought to St. Clare's Hospital in critical condition.

He ultimately survived his wounds. According to

some accounts, some members of the gang held

the boys down while Agron stabbed them in the

back. One of the fatally wounded boys is said to

have run across 46th Street holding his "insides in

his hands." In the aftermath of the murders, cops

descended on the block and more than 100 local

residents formed a semi-circle around the

buildings where the two teenagers lay dead.

Initially, the police were unable to determine if

the attacks involved gang warfare, even though

they followed by a week gang action on the Lower

East Side which left two teenagers dead and six

others shot or stabbed. In a city reeling from

youth gang violence, the murders in May

Mathews Playground soon became famous as

"The Capeman Murders" and still stand today as

one of the most publicized crimes of the era,

serving as the climactic event of the concrete

jungle fifties.

On September 2, Sal Agron, the swaggering,

almost illiterate stepson of a Pentecostal minister,

was arrested for the murders and brought to the

West 47th Street station house (now the site of

Ramon Aponte Park). When questioned by

reporters as to why he did the crime, Agron

answered, "Because I felt like it." Said Agron at

the time, "I don't care if I burn. My mother could

watch me." In fact, his mother, Esmeralda

Gonzalez, brought him a Bible, which Agron

refused to accept.

Agron's sidekick, Antonio Luis Hernandez, was

also arrested, admitted being present at the crime

scene, but denied any role in the fatal knifeplay.

Two other Vampires were charged with

manslaughter and the rest were hit with lesser

charges.

In the two weeks following the Capeman

Murders, Mayor Wagner promised more

patrolmen on the beat and leaders from 20

Clinton organizations, including Msgr. McCaffrey

of Holy Cross Church (who had buried Krzesinski),

met at Hartley House, at the invitation of

Assistant Director Edward Tripp, to discuss crime,

the needs of youth and the neighbourhood,

leading to the creation of the Clinton Planning

Council.

The Capeman Murders riveted attention on the

legions of dispossessed youth plaguing American

cities, even as the country experienced a great

age of affluence in the years following World War

II. Here was Salvador Agron, who up until the age

of 16, had spent half his life in poorhouses and

reform schools in his native Mayaguez, as well as

in several youth and detention homes in New

York. His parents had separated when he was one

year old. He had foraged for food in garbage cans

and slept in hallways, after being abandoned by

his real father in Puerto Rico and brought to New

York by his mother.

Agron bragged that he had stabbed five people

over the years: "It was my usual procedure." His

arms bore scars, plus some self-inflicted wounds.

While imprisoned at the Brooklyn House of

Detention shortly before the Capeman Murders,

he inscribed "Liberty or" on his right arm with pins

and blue ink. Said Agron, "I left death out

because, when Patrick Henry screamed, he had no

choice and I thought maybe I might have a

choice." Of the night of the murders, Agron said

years later, "I was full of booze, full of goofballs,

full of hate. I feel deep pain when I think of that

night."

The case went to trial in General Sessions Court in

July 1960. Agron was charged with two counts of

first degree murder and one count of attempted

first degree murder. The Vampires' rules called for

the youngest member of the gang to shoulder the

blame, and despite the fact that he initially

boasted of the slayings and despite a 44-page

confession which led to his conviction, Agron

would say many years later that "someone in that

park did it and it wasn't me. I just took the blame.

I had a nasty attitude." And: "My cape had no

blood. My knife had no blood. The other knife

with the blood of the victim was suppressed by

the prosecution, was forgot. . . I can't see myself

actually plunging in the knife."

Although his attorneys contended that Agron was

severely disturbed and was not a wanton killer, he

was found guilty and sentenced to death.

Hernandez, who pled guilty to manslaughter,

received a sentence of 7½ to 15 years and was

eventually re-tried, re-convicted and released on

good time.Four other gang members received

various shorter sentences which they went on to

serve. The trial lasted thirteen weeks and there

was considerable controversy over whether or not

it was fair. For many months after the trial, the

case remained newsworthy. Agron affirmed over

and over again that he could not remember the

commission of the crime. In 1961, Anthony

Krzesinksi's mother vowed retribution for her

son's death. At the time, Agron was in Sing Sing

and for 18 months the youngest inmate in New

York State history to sit on Death Row. As the

death penalty itself was undergoing increasing

scrutiny, Eleanor Roosevelt initiated a campaign

to have Agron's sentence commuted to life in

prison, a campaign Robert Young's father

supported. The long clemency drive ended on

February 7, 1962, just six days before his

scheduled execution, when Governor Nelson

Rockefeller commuted his sentence to life in

prison without any possibility of parole until 1993.

Both trial court judge Gerald Culkin and D.A. Frank

Hogan, who had won Agron's conviction,

participated in the commutation drive.

At the time of the murders, Agron said he was "a

real skinny kid, skinny in the flesh and skinny in

the brain." He was transferred from Sing Sing to

Dannemora. From a kid who could barely read a

newspaper in 1959, he learned to read and to

write poetry and eventually became known as a

model prisoner. His rehabilitation came from

Stella Davis, a House of Detention social worker

who became his surrogate mother. Mrs. Davis not

only taught Agron to read and write, but

motivated him to take college correspondence

courses and persuaded newspapers to publish

Agron's poems. He also became a famed jailhouse

lawyer, adept at writing legal papers and appeals

for release, his own and others. He earned a high

school equivalency diploma and then a B.A. in

Sociology and Philosophy from New Paltz State

University. He grew up to be a broad-shouldered

man, 5'11" tall and weighing 170 pounds.

Attorney Harry Kresky called him a "clear case of

redemption."