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Speaker 2: You are now listening to True Murder The most shocking
Speaker 2: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 2: written about them Geesy Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 2: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 2: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 2: journalist and author Dan Zupanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 4: The narrative of details are unprintable primarily on folds over
Speaker 4: a seventh month period from October nineteen forty three to
Speaker 4: April nineteen forty four, from the moment the body of
Speaker 4: twenty two year old Patricia Burton Lonegren is discovered in
Speaker 4: the bedroom of our New York City Beakman Hill Apart apartment,
Speaker 4: to the arrest of her husband of two years, Wayne Lanigan,
Speaker 4: for her murder and his subsequent trial and conviction. But
Speaker 4: this story goes back in time to the nineteen twenties
Speaker 4: when Wayne Lanigan grew up in Toronto, and then forward
Speaker 4: to his post prison life following his deportation to Canada.
Speaker 4: It is the chronicle of Lonegan in denial as a
Speaker 4: bisexual or a gay man living in an intolerant and
Speaker 4: morally superior heterosexual world, and of Patricia rich and entitled
Speaker 4: a secret of attention who loved the night out on
Speaker 4: the town, All set against the fast paced of New
Speaker 4: York's ostentatious cafe society. Part true crime and part of
Speaker 4: social history of New York City in the nineteen forties.
Speaker 4: This book transports readers to the New York World's Fair
Speaker 4: of nineteen thirty nine, when Patricia's father, William Burton, first
Speaker 4: encountered Lonegan the Stork Club, twenty one Club and El
Speaker 4: Morocco to experience with Patricia a night of drinking champagne,
Speaker 4: cocktails and dancing and I Maggie New York Courtroom, where
Speaker 4: Lonagan's fate was decided. What truly happened on that tragic
Speaker 4: night on October twenty fourth, nineteen forty three. Should we
Speaker 4: accept Larnagan's confession at face value as the jury did,
Speaker 4: or was he indeed a victim of physical and mental
Speaker 4: abuse by the state prosecutors and the police, as he
Speaker 4: maintained for the rest of his life. This book considers
Speaker 4: these and other key questions. The book that we're featuring
Speaker 4: this evening is details are Unfrintable Wayne Langan and the
Speaker 4: sensational Cafe Society Murder with my special guest, historian, journalist
Speaker 4: and author Alan Levine. Thank you very much for this
Speaker 4: interview and welcome to the program. First off, tell us
Speaker 4: how you came to want and be the author of
Speaker 4: this book.
Speaker 3: I'm an historian. I've written many nonfiction books, generally different
Speaker 3: kinds of European, some Jewish content, but any man I
Speaker 3: had been looking for I was always fascinated by true crime.
Speaker 3: I also have written some historical mysteries in the early
Speaker 3: nineteenth century, so you know, is this is a genre
Speaker 3: that appealed to me and it's you know, as you know,
Speaker 3: it's very difficult to find a true crime that hasn't
Speaker 3: been done before or and also the documentation to tell
Speaker 3: the story properly in some originality. Any event, I had
Speaker 3: been leafing or I guess looking through on a computer
Speaker 3: screen old copies of Cosmopoultan magazine, and I came across
Speaker 3: an article by Raymond Chandler, the great techno novelist from
Speaker 3: Cosmopaultan in October nineteen forty eight and when she has
Speaker 3: his anielists for the magazine ten Greatest Crimes of the Century,
Speaker 3: and the first one was the Lindberg kidnapping, which was
Speaker 3: in the thirties and still famous. But number nine was
Speaker 3: this case involving Wayne Langan that I had never heard of.
Speaker 3: And the case A drew was interesting. For the first
Speaker 3: reason it was interesting was that it was involved in
Speaker 3: Canadian lannaganet. As you said, I had been born in Toronto,
Speaker 3: so that sort of was interesting. And I started digging
Speaker 3: into the case and realized there had been a well,
Speaker 3: actually sort of two books, one written in the fifties
Speaker 3: by a TV calumnist, which was you know, basically just
Speaker 3: lifted from newspaper articles, and there had been another book
Speaker 3: written in early seventies by a Florida crime writer named
Speaker 3: Hamilton Darby Perry. And I got a hold of that book,
Speaker 3: and you know, he had actually interviewed Lanigan before he died.
Speaker 3: But there was stuff in the book that just didn't
Speaker 3: sit well in And then the thing that really got
Speaker 3: me into it was that I had access I started
Speaker 3: digging into where the district attorney files were on these
Speaker 3: kinds of cases. And I discovered that in New York
Speaker 3: more than which I've since learned more than most states,
Speaker 3: to be honest, and you can get access to this
Speaker 3: stuff at the New York Municipal Archives and lo and behold,
Speaker 3: they had this fantastic collection over sixteen hundred pages of
Speaker 3: the district attorney's files from the case, the trial in
Speaker 3: forty four, as well as there was a peel in
Speaker 3: the or mid sixties. So they had all that document
Speaker 3: and I was able to get access to it, get
Speaker 3: it digitized, get it shipped me into my home Winnipeg, Canada,
Speaker 3: and I discovered that it was just fantastic. It had
Speaker 3: witness testimonies, financial information of Patricia lanergen, biographies of people
Speaker 3: that I never would have been able to find information for,
Speaker 3: and private correspondence between the police and the lawyers, and
Speaker 3: just really laid out the entire case. Lnergan's confession is
Speaker 3: alibi initially, I mean, and just every possible aspect of
Speaker 3: the case. So I was I thought, this is fantastic,
Speaker 3: and I knew that I could tell the story in
Speaker 3: a much more detailed way. And as you said, my
Speaker 3: aim was to not just tell the story of the murder,
Speaker 3: but to also put the murder in some kind of context.
Speaker 3: And I because I discovered right away that the case
Speaker 3: also had a morality issue to it about Lanigan's homosexuality,
Speaker 3: and in the period under nineteen thirties and forties, this
Speaker 3: was an issue that was extremely controversial, and it does
Speaker 3: taint the trial, as I wrote a note, And it
Speaker 3: also played a sort of a strange part in Laanergan's
Speaker 3: story because he himself never admitted to his own sexuality,
Speaker 3: and in fact, when in Hamilton Darby Perry's book, it's
Speaker 3: not mentioned at all or briefly mentioned anyways. But years later,
Speaker 3: before Hamilton Darby Perry died, he did make a note
Speaker 3: in another edition of his book published by a specialized
Speaker 3: publisher that he did believe Wayne was bisexual or homosexual,
Speaker 3: but that certainly affected his whole life, and it comes
Speaker 3: up in all sorts of strange ways throughout Wayne's life,
Speaker 3: but certainly during the story of the case itself, where
Speaker 3: it's an excuse in fact, that it plays a part
Speaker 3: in his initial alibi when he's questioned by the District
Speaker 3: Attorney's office and the police. So that's how that's really
Speaker 3: how how I came to it, and I found it
Speaker 3: to be a fascinating story.
Speaker 4: Let's get to this, yes, truly fascinating story. You take
Speaker 4: us to New York City initially October twenty fourth, nineteen
Speaker 4: forty three. Patricia Burton Launergren, they call her, friends call
Speaker 4: her Patsy. She's called a classy dame and is a
Speaker 4: daughter of a wealthy, assimilated German Jewish family. Rich and spoiled. Yes,
Speaker 4: tell us about this last evening of her life. You say,
Speaker 4: by six point thirty at am, she'd been out for
Speaker 4: close to sixteen hours on a date. Tell us about
Speaker 4: New York cafe society as you write about, and tell
Speaker 4: us about Patricia Burton Launergren.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, first of all, she's only twenty two,
Speaker 3: even though in the photographs I always it's probably the
Speaker 3: hairstyle and just the way people held themselves in those days.
Speaker 3: But they're both young. I mean, you know, Lanergan's only
Speaker 3: twenty five, she's twenty two. They were only married for
Speaker 3: a short time before they had problems. They've got married
Speaker 3: in forty one at a child in July one, forty two,
Speaker 3: and then were separated by this summer in nineteen forty three,
Speaker 3: so a couple months before the murder took place. Patricia
Speaker 3: is you know, she was brought up in a very
Speaker 3: wealthy environment. Her family, as you said, had German American
Speaker 3: German Jewish roots. Rather her grandfather, great grandfather, I guess
Speaker 3: it would have been, came from Germany as an immigrant,
Speaker 3: started a beer business and became fairly wealthy, and his
Speaker 3: son that would have been her grandfather, built upon the business,
Speaker 3: and so they lived a very high lifestyle. Her father, William,
Speaker 3: the family's name was actually Bernheimer, and later when Patricia's
Speaker 3: father was older, in his twenty or when he turned
Speaker 3: twenty one, I guess him and his brother changed the
Speaker 3: name to Burton. It was like this was during the
Speaker 3: First World War, partially, he says, because he was being
Speaker 3: discriminated against because of a German sounding name, but really
Speaker 3: probably also because he was Jewish, and despite attempts to
Speaker 3: lead a rather assimilated life, he was probably just trying
Speaker 3: to fit in and too man and what he wasn't
Speaker 3: certainly the only New York jew with German roots, Sewer.
Speaker 3: We lived a fairly secular life to do this. I
Speaker 3: mean they belonged to a reform synagogue, and so that
Speaker 3: was part of their story. William Burton is an interesting
Speaker 3: character because he probably too was bisexual, which plays into
Speaker 3: a little bit of the story later on. But he
Speaker 3: marries because in those days, you know, homosexuality or bisexuality
Speaker 3: was not talked about and you were expected to get married.
Speaker 3: And he ends up marrying this woman, Lucille, who comes
Speaker 3: from also an old moneyed family, although they had lost
Speaker 3: some of their money. They came from the Deep South
Speaker 3: and lost some of their money during the Civil War.
Speaker 3: Louise Wilfer name was, and they end up getting married.
Speaker 3: They two also have a lousy marriage, partially I think
Speaker 3: because of the sexual issues, and she was, you know,
Speaker 3: she expected a lot out of life. But they lived,
Speaker 3: you know, Patricia was born in nineteen twenty one. They
Speaker 3: lived this rather idyllic lifestyle. They lived part of the
Speaker 3: year in New York and fancy Park Avenue apartment. He
Speaker 3: was brought up by nannies like as it was common
Speaker 3: among wealthy people in those days. They had a house.
Speaker 3: They spent half the year in France, in Paris, where
Speaker 3: William fancied himself an artist, although he wasn't really any good.
Speaker 3: And then they had this villa in near Conns in
Speaker 3: the south of France. And you know, so that was
Speaker 3: she was brought up. I guess she went to boarding
Speaker 3: school or finishing school at some point in her life.
Speaker 3: And she didn't never really worked much in her life.
Speaker 3: Even during when she was older, she was like a debutante,
Speaker 3: I suppose you could call her. She attended teas and socials, societies,
Speaker 3: met with other wealthy young women. During when World War
Speaker 3: two started, she did do a bit of fundraising. This
Speaker 3: is even before the United States got involved in the war,
Speaker 3: and after Pearl Harbor in December nineteen forty one, and
Speaker 3: she you know, never was had any money problems and
Speaker 3: lived a very wealthy lifestyle. The death of her father,
Speaker 3: William in nineteen forty from a heart attack, which ran
Speaker 3: in their family. All the men died pretty young, including
Speaker 3: her grandfather, uncle now and her father, sort of affected
Speaker 3: her deeply obviously, and also set in motion her relationship
Speaker 3: with Wayne Long again because it was the father her father, William,
Speaker 3: was the one who had introduced her to Wayne. Whether
Speaker 3: or not she knew about her father's other life, I
Speaker 3: don't know, you know, the as I said, homosexuality in
Speaker 3: the nineteen thirties and forties was like the one of
Speaker 3: the worst things you could possibly be accused of. People
Speaker 3: hit it. It was against the law. Both in Canada,
Speaker 3: United States and France. It was more legal. You could
Speaker 3: do what you want, which maybe have been the attraction
Speaker 3: for living in fan but you know, you could be
Speaker 3: arrested bartender serving a drink to two men, dancing on
Speaker 3: the floor, or doing anything could have been their place
Speaker 3: could have been shut down. In New York, it was
Speaker 3: regarded as a sickness perversion, a psychopath. You know, people
Speaker 3: were a psychopath. It was regarded as a learned behavior
Speaker 3: just just completely you know, not what most people would
Speaker 3: think of today, but plays a huge part in understanding
Speaker 3: of what went on. I was just actually watching I
Speaker 3: don't know if you've seen the new Perry Mason series,
Speaker 3: but there was two of the characters are gay, living
Speaker 3: in the nineteen thirties in Los Angeles, and I thought
Speaker 3: to myself as I watched it, you know, they had
Speaker 3: to hide their other life, and this man and women
Speaker 3: who are both gay, had to pretend to be a
Speaker 3: couple on the night on the town. And it's exactly
Speaker 3: the way it was in the book as well. And
Speaker 3: even in a cosmopolitan place like New York, it was
Speaker 3: dangerous to come out. So William, you know, William Burton,
Speaker 3: probably had to be very careful, and thus he was married,
Speaker 3: although he gets divorced from his wife maybe about five
Speaker 3: six years after they got married, and then strangely enough,
Speaker 3: four years later they remarry. They said they later did
Speaker 3: it to help Patsy because they loved her so much.
Speaker 3: But even after they got remarried, they lived fairly separate lives,
Speaker 3: and they just before World War two they came, although
Speaker 3: Lucille's lived in Europe a little longer. William brought Patsy
Speaker 3: back to New York, supposedly with all of his very
Speaker 3: expensive artwork. But I have since learned since the book
Speaker 3: was published, and I can talk about this later, but
Speaker 3: I since learned that in fact he had left his
Speaker 3: villa to the French resistance, but apparently the Nazis had
Speaker 3: taken a lot of his artwork, and a film crew
Speaker 3: in Paris of France that intered viewed me about the
Speaker 3: case discovered that in fact, the Nazis had taken it
Speaker 3: and they were trying to track down some of the artwork.
Speaker 3: But gets into the story about what happened to their son,
Speaker 3: who's now eighty years old, and I can talk about
Speaker 3: it near after because it's quite fascinating. I learned something
Speaker 3: just recently thanks to the interview these peoples did with
Speaker 3: me from this French TV station.
Speaker 4: Let's get back to Wayne Lanigan and this marriage that
Speaker 4: eventually happens between the two, but the relationship and what
Speaker 4: it was characterized by.
Speaker 3: Well Wayne, you know, Okay, So Wayne is born in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighteen in Toronto. He grows he grows up in
Speaker 3: a fairly middle class environment, although I think the most
Speaker 3: important thing in his life and his mother was ill.
Speaker 3: She had what we would call it a bipolar and
Speaker 3: she dies fairly young. His father also dies young. He
Speaker 3: had two siblings. But Wayne spent a lot of his
Speaker 3: childhood in trouble with the law. He spent a couple
Speaker 3: times literally had stints at reformatories and again, you know,
Speaker 3: being you know, he was said late he had run
Speaker 3: ins with the police, and you know, he told them
Speaker 3: he was making money and dealing by being intimate with
Speaker 3: gay men. And again sort of the beginning of this process.
Speaker 3: He has all sorts of other jobs, trying to make
Speaker 3: something of himself. I mean, I think he really wants
Speaker 3: the good life. He's a bit of a liar, and
Speaker 3: I think he continues that for all the rest of
Speaker 3: his life, to be honest, he eventually decides in nineteenth
Speaker 3: after being a lifeguard and a helper of a conductor
Speaker 3: and other sort of jobs, he gets a job in
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty nine at the New York World's Fair, which
Speaker 3: was the time, was this massive extravaganza in Queens Now
Speaker 3: this where the US Open plays and was also the
Speaker 3: site of the nineteen sixty four New York World's Fair,
Speaker 3: but in nineteen thirty nine it was it was a
Speaker 3: really huge deal, and he got a job as a
Speaker 3: bus dispatcher, and through that that brings him to New
Speaker 3: York and at some point he meets William, Patricia's father,
Speaker 3: I believe, and according to all the documents I can
Speaker 3: find and other sources and other authors, and they probably
Speaker 3: have some sort of intimate relationship. William was about at
Speaker 3: least eighteen to twenty years older than him and introduces
Speaker 3: Wayne to this fairly expensive lifestyle cafe society, going to
Speaker 3: the Stark Club and ne Al Morocco. And through William,
Speaker 3: as I said, he's introduced to Patricia when William dies
Speaker 3: in nineteen forty Bizarrely, whether again Patsy knew about who
Speaker 3: Wayne really was or what his relationship with her father was,
Speaker 3: They start to date. They go to this their first
Speaker 3: date is allegedly, at least according to Wayne, because I
Speaker 3: could never find out if this was true. At the
Speaker 3: Stark Club, where Wayne is apparently treated, he's only like
Speaker 3: you know, early twenties, he's treated with deference by the
Speaker 3: dorman who had all his power to let people into
Speaker 3: the club because it was extremely difficult to get in.
Speaker 3: Whether that's true or not, I suspect that still part
Speaker 3: of the story is not. Lucille was wary of Wayne,
Speaker 3: probably saw him as a bit of a hustler, because
Speaker 3: that's what he was. She takes her. At one point,
Speaker 3: she takes Patricia to Santa Barbara, California for a holiday.
Speaker 3: Wayne manages to scrum some money together and travel and
Speaker 3: visit her, and they decide to elope in Las Vegas,
Speaker 3: and she runs away with Wayne, and in the summer
Speaker 3: in nineteen forty one, they decide to get married and
Speaker 3: they go to like one of these you know hitching
Speaker 3: places in Las Vegas, which was well more well known
Speaker 3: than gambling, and they come back to live there this
Speaker 3: you know life in New York. You know, Wayne never
Speaker 3: works really a day in his life after that, and
Speaker 3: maybe maybe a little bit, but not much. I mean
Speaker 3: Patricia inherits a pretty good think of money from when
Speaker 3: her father dies. So you know, she's living on a
Speaker 3: certain amount of money, you know, a thousands, more than
Speaker 3: one thousand dollars every month. And they they she gives
Speaker 3: support Swayne financially. She even supports them actually after they
Speaker 3: have problems, and she's always giving them money any and
Speaker 3: he develops a very high taste in suits and a
Speaker 3: lot of shoes and monogram shirts and you know, so
Speaker 3: he's living this high life that he plays bridge all day,
Speaker 3: doesn't get out of bed till ten thirty in the morning,
Speaker 3: and doesn't do too much. And they spend a lot
Speaker 3: of evenings out, you know, trying to brush shoulders with
Speaker 3: the Broadway and Hollywood stars that are at the Store
Speaker 3: Club al Morocco, the twenty one Club and places like
Speaker 3: that where people with you know, dancing into the night
Speaker 3: and and those clubs were famous for being you know,
Speaker 3: you want to be seen, you want your picture taken
Speaker 3: by the photographer. You want to end up in the
Speaker 3: next day's gossip column by Walter Windshield or Dorothy Kilgallen
Speaker 3: or Ed Sullivan. And you know, they were what I
Speaker 3: refer to as you know, in those days, that's what
Speaker 3: it's like Twitter. You know that that was the whole
Speaker 3: object to be to be seen and to be known.
Speaker 3: And and Wayne and they are mentioned. You know, they're
Speaker 3: they're sort of bit players really in the whole scheme
Speaker 3: of things until until the murder. You know, because the
Speaker 3: last night of Patricia's life she spends at the al
Speaker 3: Morocco and the club was never really happy that they
Speaker 3: were associated with with with either of them. So you
Speaker 3: know that that their their marriage meantime is is poor,
Speaker 3: even after the child is born. You know, Wayne, Wayne's
Speaker 3: just a bit of a low to mean he according
Speaker 3: to one witness, a person who worked for them for
Speaker 3: a little while. They had servants, maids and nannies and
Speaker 3: so forth. They said that, you know, Patricia would come
Speaker 3: home crying sometimes in the evening after they went out.
Speaker 3: Wayne would just sort of desert her at the club
Speaker 3: and she'd be left on her own. I'm sure that's
Speaker 3: quite believable. And you know, during this period of time,
Speaker 3: Wayne is in fact contacted by the US government Select
Speaker 3: Service about enlisting. Even though he's a Canadian, he's actually
Speaker 3: still eligible to be drafted in the US Army, and
Speaker 3: he is, in fact twice he goes through this process.
Speaker 3: Once he gets away he's just drunk and they dismiss him.
Speaker 3: Another he uses the fact that he's homosexual again to
Speaker 3: get out of He's eventually declared for f and is
Speaker 3: let go and not accepted because of her immorality. Again.
Speaker 3: The US Army is it's just crazy how they had
Speaker 3: all these insane tests to try to determine if someone
Speaker 3: was homosexual. It's pretty when you read about it today,
Speaker 3: you can't believe that they actually did this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: They would strip a guy naked and start asking him
Speaker 3: all these sexual questions to see what his response would
Speaker 3: be to determine. This was supposed to determine whether someone
Speaker 3: was gay, because they either than communists. I think the
Speaker 3: greatest fear was that homosexuals will get into the Army.
Speaker 3: So Wayne is able to evade getting drafted. But you know,
Speaker 3: there's a certain tension and I suppose in their lives
Speaker 3: because of it and by them let's say the June
Speaker 3: nineteen forty three, so this is like a year after
Speaker 3: their child is born. The marriage is in trouble, and
Speaker 3: ultimately Patricia kicks Wayne out of their apartment. They live
Speaker 3: with this nice place at the time on Park Avenue
Speaker 3: near seventy second Street. I stood in front of the building,
Speaker 3: still a beautiful building, and I was that's, by the way,
Speaker 3: just an aside. One of the great things about writing
Speaker 3: this book was in because New York so well, I
Speaker 3: could visit all the sites more or less. Other than
Speaker 3: the clubs, the Start Club and they El Morocco are
Speaker 3: along gone, but you know where Wayne Will lived and
Speaker 3: where Patricia lived, where the murder took place on fifty
Speaker 3: first Streets. It's all still standing, so you at least
Speaker 3: get a sense of the geography of the arta, which
Speaker 3: is kind of interesting. And by this time, in fact,
Speaker 3: Patricia so Wayne leaves. He does some work as a
Speaker 3: photographer for a little while, actually supported by Patricia again,
Speaker 3: who pays his tuition to this a school of art
Speaker 3: to learn how to be a photographer and a photographer's assistant,
Speaker 3: which does. Wayne gets a job, and then she decides
Speaker 3: she's going to move into this fifty first Street townhouse
Speaker 3: to ground floor and to other floor the first two
Speaker 3: floors and then above them as a family living on
Speaker 3: the third and fourth floor. So it's a really nice
Speaker 3: brownstone in a nice quiet area. Beakmon Hill's a very fancy,
Speaker 3: quiet place area of the city and it's sort of
Speaker 3: away from like off between second and third Avenue. Wrote
Speaker 3: really nice. At some point, Wayne around this time, decides
Speaker 3: he's going to enlist in the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Speaker 3: He wants maybe he's trying to he thinks the marriage
Speaker 3: can be saved. He's I found a few. After one fight,
Speaker 3: he writes Patricia a bit of a love letter to
Speaker 3: try to make up with her. But by this time
Speaker 3: she has actually written him out of her will, which
Speaker 3: I guess he does find out about it and probably
Speaker 3: does cause it because she I should add that not
Speaker 3: only does she have this trust fund that her father
Speaker 3: left her, but because a father died and along with
Speaker 3: his other she is the sole inheritor of the of
Speaker 3: the estate of the Bernheimer family. She has a grandmother
Speaker 3: named Stella, who had remarried once her husband died. But
Speaker 3: when Stella dies and at the time she doesn't actually
Speaker 3: die till nineteen fifty four after Patricia died. But you know,
Speaker 3: the state is probably worth like seven eight million dollars,
Speaker 3: which is like, you know, about sixty million dollars would
Speaker 3: have been about worth sixty million dollars today or something
Speaker 3: along those lines. So she's destined to be a very,
Speaker 3: very wealthy woman when her grandmother dies. At least that's
Speaker 3: the idea. So you know, maybe that's in the back
Speaker 3: of Wayne's mind as well. But he decides to enlist
Speaker 3: in the Air Force, you know, and he does get it.
Speaker 3: They have a program at the University of Toronto downtown
Speaker 3: and he's sort of learning, and he is allowed because
Speaker 3: he has a kid. And even though travel is restricted
Speaker 3: during the Second World War for variety every reasons between
Speaker 3: county United States, Wayne is allowed as a serviceman to
Speaker 3: visit New York and and see his kid. And he
Speaker 3: goes there once or twice once, I guess, late fall
Speaker 3: of nineteen forty three, and then he decides on this
Speaker 3: fateful weekend to come October twenty second Friday, nineteen forty
Speaker 3: three to see his son. And that's the weekend of
Speaker 3: the murder. And then there's the whole story of what
Speaker 3: happens at the weekend, which I can launch into if
Speaker 3: you like.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about that that day and also the plans
Speaker 4: that she had. You write that she had said to
Speaker 4: someone just previous to this that she had no animosity
Speaker 4: towards Wayne and wanted to continue that their good relationship
Speaker 4: that she sought. So she sought. She was not alarmed
Speaker 4: in any way by Wayne Lonegan.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know. I wouldn't say they had a
Speaker 3: good relationship, but she was decent enough to know then
Speaker 3: she cared about her son. That you know, she did
Speaker 3: tell her maid and I was keeping made and the governor,
Speaker 3: the governess rather Miss Elizabeth Black was the one who
Speaker 3: was really raising. His name was William the little Billy.
Speaker 3: They called him that Wayne once. If Wayne was in
Speaker 3: New York, he could see a kid whenever he wanted to.
Speaker 3: And you know, which was decent of her. She again,
Speaker 3: as I said, she had this lifestyle or even though
Speaker 3: she was separated, she started dating other men. In fact,
Speaker 3: the weekend of the murder, she was dating this Italian decorator,
Speaker 3: probably about twenty years older than her. His name was
Speaker 3: Mario Gabolini. He's quite a character. I'm sure he only
Speaker 3: wanted one thing from Patricia. But actually this is just
Speaker 3: as another funny aside. We thought there was a funny
Speaker 3: story initially. Of course, when Patricia's found dead, they suspect Gabylini,
Speaker 3: this guy, So they get to his apartment and find
Speaker 3: him his shirt and his shirt has red stains on
Speaker 3: except when the examine more closely turns out to be
Speaker 3: tomato sauce, not blood, so he was cleared. He had
Speaker 3: been married a few times. He was just a player,
Speaker 3: you know, after a young woman. Obviously he was rich.
Speaker 3: I'm sure that's all his story was. But you know,
Speaker 3: he gets drawn into this story as well. So you know,
Speaker 3: Wayne comes to New York. He stays at the apartment
Speaker 3: of wealthy fan, a real you know, elite guy named
Speaker 3: John Harjes, whose family is in the banking business in
Speaker 3: Europe and in New York. And then Wayne had met
Speaker 3: I probably through his contact with Patricia's family, and he
Speaker 3: in fact was an usher at Harges's wedding, although his
Speaker 3: marriage also dissolved on grounds of cruelty. So he's living
Speaker 3: on this really nice place on seventy ninth and Lexington,
Speaker 3: also still standing. And I talked to the dormant of
Speaker 3: the building and Wayne he he har just has a
Speaker 3: wedding outside of the city for that weekend, but he's
Speaker 3: told he is a butler and a maid a married
Speaker 3: couple they lived there named Peters and last name Peterson,
Speaker 3: and Wayne is allowed to stay in the apartment that weekend.
Speaker 3: He's wearing his real Canadian Air Force uniform because he
Speaker 3: was obligated to do that, and he stays there, he
Speaker 3: har Just before har just leaves, he introduces him to
Speaker 3: this woman named Jean Murphy or Jean jay Burg. She's
Speaker 3: a divorced woman with a seven year old who was
Speaker 3: a showgirl, you know, mildly successful, though she also later
Speaker 3: claimed her association with Lannagan ruined her career, which may
Speaker 3: or may not be a good looking woman, and she
Speaker 3: was in a few you know, chorus line kind of parts. Anyways,
Speaker 3: she Wayne had tickets to a Broadway play and her
Speaker 3: just sets her up with this woman who lives right
Speaker 3: next door to him in an adjacent apartment adjacent building
Speaker 3: rather and Wayne goes out with her. So on the
Speaker 3: night on the day that Saturday, the like October twenty third,
Speaker 3: Patricia leaves her place, as you said, around noon to
Speaker 3: a friend. She leaves her child with you know, with
Speaker 3: miss blackfair enough, but really she's gone from like noon's Saturday,
Speaker 3: doesn't come back till six thirty in the morning. She's
Speaker 3: out all night dancing with friends at the al Morocco
Speaker 3: with Gabalini. They meet other friends, then they have a
Speaker 3: late breakfast and you know, he's gone for like eighteen hours.
Speaker 3: It's you know, it's you got to think it's a
Speaker 3: little unusual. I mean, she does have a child, so
Speaker 3: but you know who, Maybe I'm not Maybe I'm judging
Speaker 3: her too harshly. I'm not sure. In the meantime, Wayne
Speaker 3: is also out that night, Saturday night with Jeane. They
Speaker 3: go to this Broadway play and they also try to
Speaker 3: get into the al Morocco where they would have bumped
Speaker 3: into Patricia, but they weren't didn't have reservations, and they
Speaker 3: ended up going somewhere else, I think the Waldorf Story Hotel,
Speaker 3: where they had supper. Wayne takes Jean Murphy back home.
Speaker 3: He later claims that they kissed each other good night.
Speaker 3: Jean Murphy says, no, there was no kiss. You know,
Speaker 3: she was mildly liked Wayne. He was a pretty good
Speaker 3: looking guy and had a certain style, I imagine, and
Speaker 3: could tell a good story. But you know, they go separate.
Speaker 3: When Wayne was later confronted by the police, his initial
Speaker 3: story is this concocted alibi that is just beyond silly.
Speaker 3: Yet you know, eventually he does take it back, but
Speaker 3: the newspapers get a hold of it and it completely
Speaker 3: taints his reputation. I'm sure by that among the jury
Speaker 3: members who later sat on that jury. And Wayne's story
Speaker 3: that he tells the assistant district attorney is that after
Speaker 3: he dropped off Jean jay Berg, he stopped for a
Speaker 3: cigarette outside the building because to get you had to
Speaker 3: walk outside between the two buildings where she lived and
Speaker 3: where Harjes's apartment was, And he has a cigarette and
Speaker 3: he bumps into this American souldier uniform. They start to
Speaker 3: talking and Wayne invites him up to the Hearjes's apartment,
Speaker 3: so he says the peters, the maid, and the butler
Speaker 3: are sleeping. Wayne then says that they have homosexual intimacy
Speaker 3: and into my relations and that in the middle of
Speaker 3: the night, some kind of argument ensues in which Wayne
Speaker 3: is assaulted by the soldier, who proceeds to rob him
Speaker 3: of his money and strangely enough, take his uniform, his
Speaker 3: Royal can in the Air Force uniform. Why why a
Speaker 3: US soldier would want to make a Royal Air Force
Speaker 3: unit worm is interesting enough. And that's Wayne's story. Well,
Speaker 3: of course, you know when when the story was leaked,
Speaker 3: probably by police sources, because Wayne actually offers this story
Speaker 3: to a guy named John lor who is like a
Speaker 3: deputy sistant attorney and his family. I tracked down he
Speaker 3: was a young guy working with the assistant district attorney
Speaker 3: on the case of a guy named Groomy Don Groome
Speaker 3: was his last name, and Lare worked for him. Loric
Speaker 3: flies to Toronto and introduces Wayne, initially after the Toronto
Speaker 3: police had picked him up once because the New York
Speaker 3: police wanted him to tang. He had left after the murder.
Speaker 3: He had gone back to Toronto and Wayne tells the lore
Speaker 3: this crazy story. Well, someone leaks it and then it
Speaker 3: becomes part of the story. As Wayne is has the
Speaker 3: case is unfolding and the story the murders unfolding. The
Speaker 3: daily news. It particularly has these huge pictures and there's
Speaker 3: one I have in the book that it says, top
Speaker 3: huge headline with a picture of Wayne coming down the
Speaker 3: stairs of a plane. He says, twisted sucks, and you know,
Speaker 3: he's described as being perverted. And the soldier's name, by
Speaker 3: the way, he comes up with a name. I always
Speaker 3: said it sounds like some of the name out of
Speaker 3: a Seinfeld episode. The guy's name is Morris Worchester. I
Speaker 3: don't know quite know why he picked that name or
Speaker 3: who this guy was, But funnily enough, there was really
Speaker 3: a guy named Orris were Just who worked across New
Speaker 3: York in Connecticut and whose friends started rassing him that
Speaker 3: he was gay. So he comes forward at one point
Speaker 3: and declares that he's not the guy a soldier that
Speaker 3: Wayne had met. I mean, the story is a socilly that,
Speaker 3: but it's just funny that he had come up with
Speaker 3: this name, and you know, so Wayne, that's Wayne's story.
Speaker 3: And then the next day he says he has lunch
Speaker 3: with Jean Jay Berg and her son at a restaurant,
Speaker 3: and then he ultimately he drops off a gift for
Speaker 3: his son Billy, not seeing anybody, just leaves the package
Speaker 3: and the vestibules sort of this main entrance to the
Speaker 3: building on fifty first Street, and then eventually leaves New
Speaker 3: York and flies back to Toronto. Well, you know, that's
Speaker 3: one version of the story. It's not the version of
Speaker 3: the truth, but it's the version that Wayne initially has.
Speaker 3: So Patricia that same night, as I said, she was
Speaker 3: at the El Morocco and she was dancing and Gabolinia
Speaker 3: Mario Gabolini eventually brings her home six thirty in the morning.
Speaker 3: She doesn't invite him in. She's very tired, and she
Speaker 3: goes into her bedroom, locked in the door and goes
Speaker 3: supposedly goes to sleep.
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Speaker 4: official story, not the story that Wayne Lonergan gave to police.
Speaker 3: Once her body is found in the Sunday, her bedroom
Speaker 3: door remains shut. The governesses they're looking after the billy
Speaker 3: all through the day. They're not sure exactly that no
Speaker 3: one hears from her, and eventually Elizabeth, the governess, becomes concerned.
Speaker 3: They call over the mother, Lucille, who lives nearby. He
Speaker 3: attempts to get into the bedroom and they can't. It's
Speaker 3: locked somehow, And ultimately a friend of college of a friend,
Speaker 3: the big football player type guy who is in the Army,
Speaker 3: is going back to somewhere in North Carolina I think,
Speaker 3: or one of those places too for some training. He
Speaker 3: comes over and they decide they're gonna He gets a
Speaker 3: screwdriver and he takes the hinges off the door and
Speaker 3: they get into the bedroom where they discover her half
Speaker 3: naked body strewn or she has a big gash on
Speaker 3: her head and she's lying sort of twisted on the
Speaker 3: bed and she's dead. There's a terrible scene, of course,
Speaker 3: as you can imagine, and right away, you know, the
Speaker 3: police come and they investigate, and then they discover through
Speaker 3: witnesses and through what people, the people who work for
Speaker 3: her told that her husband that their separated. The separated
Speaker 3: husband had been in New York, and so he becomes
Speaker 3: a person of interest the New York police authorities on
Speaker 3: the DA they decide to track Wayn down. They ask
Speaker 3: the Toronto police to track Wayne down. You find him
Speaker 3: at a boarding house that he's living at near the
Speaker 3: University of Toronto downtown and he willingly decides to come
Speaker 3: into custody. He didn't never ask for a lawyer ever,
Speaker 3: like then once he's in New York. Nothing, even though
Speaker 3: one of his relatives and in New York and Toronto
Speaker 3: did offer his uncle, I think, offered to get him
Speaker 3: a lawyer. But somehow the police that was one of
Speaker 3: the issues that came up later that the Toronto police
Speaker 3: had violated his rights, although in those days, you know
Speaker 3: that police had a lot more latitude than they would
Speaker 3: have today. Anyways, you know, Wayne wasn't treated poorly. They
Speaker 3: Toronto police just really hold him until New York detectives
Speaker 3: and the this guy Lore flies in to question him.
Speaker 3: And so that takes place the following day, like it
Speaker 3: would have been the Monday. They find him, and then
Speaker 3: on Tuesday, I guess they get him, they question him,
Speaker 3: or maybe it was Monday night and probably Tuesday, and
Speaker 3: Wayne then tells them this crazy story, but he agrees
Speaker 3: to go back to New York with them, again not
Speaker 3: asking a lawyer. They take a train and to Buffalo
Speaker 3: and then get kind of there's kind of some kind
Speaker 3: of bureaucratic snaffu where they detectives end up having to
Speaker 3: keep Wayne in a hotel and Buffalo over night, where
Speaker 3: they handcuff him to the bed. Now here's a guy
Speaker 3: who's in charge with anything, but yet they're handcuffing up
Speaker 3: to it, bet because the don't want him to leave.
Speaker 3: That might be considered to be rather treatment that a
Speaker 3: lawyer kind of dealt with, but never really comes up.
Speaker 3: Wayne then is brought to New York the next day.
Speaker 3: That's that picture over the twisted sex already as his
Speaker 3: statements has already known, and the papers already are talking
Speaker 3: about this crazy alibi. And then eventually, you know, he's
Speaker 3: brought to the District Attorney's always in downtown New York
Speaker 3: and where he eventually Lare sort of weighs him down,
Speaker 3: tells him that his alibi, but the homosexual relationship, is
Speaker 3: not a good idea, that he's leaving a terrible legacy
Speaker 3: for his son, and and brates him Wayne is. Wayne
Speaker 3: eventually agrees to tell them what happened, but he doesn't
Speaker 3: want them questioning anything to do his morality, doesn't want
Speaker 3: his morals questioned or anything.
Speaker 1: Again.
Speaker 3: He's he later, by the way, I should say years later,
Speaker 3: like in the ninth went so he's actually released from prison.
Speaker 3: He gives an interview with the CBC in Toronto. He says,
Speaker 3: the whole story, the alibi, I was just a ruse,
Speaker 3: that he made it up and it wasn't It wasn't true,
Speaker 3: but at the time it wasn't so clear that was
Speaker 3: the case. So eventually he decides he will confess again,
Speaker 3: never asking for a lawyer to be present when he's
Speaker 3: doing this, which is rather strange. But again, he's only
Speaker 3: twenty five and not his birthday yet, and he tells
Speaker 3: them this story, which is a little more believable that
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, on the Sunday morning, October twenty fourth,
Speaker 3: he decided to go see Patricia. Maybe he thought they
Speaker 3: could reconcile, maybe not. Anyways, he shows up, maybe a
Speaker 3: thirty in the morning. It's pretty quiet Sunday morning. He
Speaker 3: knocks on her bedroom door. She's half asleep, and she
Speaker 3: answers the door. She you know, what are you doing here? Everybody?
Speaker 3: She lets him in and then there's this interaction between them.
Speaker 3: You know. My view from what I can understand from
Speaker 3: the story and what happened is that ultimately the argument
Speaker 3: became heated. I believe that she told him, at least
Speaker 3: according to him, that she was going to not let
Speaker 3: them see their son anymore, and that just sort of
Speaker 3: triggered a reaction. Like many murders, you know, it wasn't premeditated.
Speaker 3: I don't think he went there with the intention, which
Speaker 3: is probably the reason why he was charged his second
Speaker 3: agreement rather than first agree murder. But he just snapped
Speaker 3: and he reached four on her night table. She had
Speaker 3: these onyx or glass statues with brass bases, and he
Speaker 3: threw one at her or then struck her on the
Speaker 3: head with that, weakening her, and then he strangled her.
Speaker 3: And that's and then she died. And and I don't
Speaker 3: know if he intended to, you know, just in a
Speaker 3: fit of rage. He had got blood on his uniform,
Speaker 3: which will explain why he had to get rid of it,
Speaker 3: and that's why he game up with his cockycock eyed
Speaker 3: story about the soldiers stealing it. None of the you
Speaker 3: know in those you know, as I've said, if this
Speaker 3: case would have happened today, it probably would have been
Speaker 3: solved in fifteen minutes with DNA, But there was no
Speaker 3: DNA testing, of course in nineteen forty three. Even fingerprints,
Speaker 3: there was good fingerprinting, but they nobody left enough fingerprints.
Speaker 3: There was blood found in the bathroom of Patricia's bedroom,
Speaker 3: but course in those days they only didn't really know
Speaker 3: they had blood grouping. In other words, they could have
Speaker 3: determined that someone was oh, typo, but big deal, half
Speaker 3: the planet is typo, so that really didn't help at all.
Speaker 3: They had cigarette butts that both Wayne and Patricia smoke
Speaker 3: went Wayne was a chain smoker his whole life and
Speaker 3: end up dying of cancer from it, probably and he
Speaker 3: you know, they couldn't determine whose cigarette it was or
Speaker 3: anything about it. So they had all these forensic experts there,
Speaker 3: some of the doctors and other medical experts and police experts,
Speaker 3: but they didn't really introduce any of it into the trial.
Speaker 3: But they did have Wayne's confession. He said that he
Speaker 3: got out of the house without anybody seeing him. The
Speaker 3: only person who may have probably did hear the murder
Speaker 3: was this nanny who was taking care of the kid
Speaker 3: who lived on the suite above Patricia's on the third
Speaker 3: and fourth floor. She was a German housekeeper, nanny and
Speaker 3: young woman who came down for the paper. Heard somebody
Speaker 3: scream behind closed doors, then another scream, than silence. They
Speaker 3: didn't hear a man's voice, just a woman's voice, did it.
Speaker 3: Decided not to call the police. She was about to
Speaker 3: knock on the door and see if everybody was okay,
Speaker 3: but chose not to. Later said that it wasn't really
Speaker 3: my place, And you know, that's how she saw the situation,
Speaker 3: and whether or not she probably did hear the murder,
Speaker 3: but I could never try. I don't know what happened
Speaker 3: to her. It was unsuccessful in trying to figure out what.
Speaker 3: She probably got married, changed her name. And I did
Speaker 3: talk to people. I talked to the daughter of the
Speaker 3: family that lived above, but no one alive was still
Speaker 3: around that lived in that apartment that this woman had
Speaker 3: been born after the family moved, but she did clue
Speaker 3: me into the family. And then Wayne eventually and he
Speaker 3: takes some crazy route back to Harjes's place, which I
Speaker 3: also followed walked. He's back and forth between his first
Speaker 3: and second and third avenue and anyways, he gets back
Speaker 3: to Harges so somehow again manages to get into the
Speaker 3: apartment without the butler and the maid seeing him. At
Speaker 3: Harges's place, takes off the uniform, showers and then he
Speaker 3: puts He finds a duffel bag that he had. He
Speaker 3: takes the uniforms, cuts it up, puts it in the
Speaker 3: duffel bag, and then takes a dumb bell that Harjes
Speaker 3: has and then walks to the East River. Now two
Speaker 3: things that he does at this point he gets some
Speaker 3: He takes the a florist who he in the neighborhood
Speaker 3: walking her dog on a Sunday morning, sees Wayne from
Speaker 3: a distance carrying the Duffel bag, and that's all she
Speaker 3: can testify too. She doesn't know anything about it, but
Speaker 3: she says she did see him. I think he took
Speaker 3: it to the East River, which wasn't too far and
Speaker 3: there's a fence there. He threw the Duffel bag, weighed
Speaker 3: down with That's where the uniform was and it sinks
Speaker 3: and the police were never able to find the Duffel bag.
Speaker 3: For whatever reason, Wayne never explain lanes properly what happened
Speaker 3: to that uniform or where it is or what he
Speaker 3: did with it, or you know, or anything really about
Speaker 3: it or why what happened to it. He then goes
Speaker 3: to a pharmacist and gets Patricia had scratched him, and
Speaker 3: he got some makeup which the drug a pharmacist somewhat
Speaker 3: remembers someone buying the makeup like Max Factor makeup, theatrical makeup,
Speaker 3: and he covers the scratches on his neck, which is
Speaker 3: the reason. When he has lunch that day with Gene Murphy,
Speaker 3: he claims that he didn't have any scratches, but you
Speaker 3: can see plainly at a picture that was taken in
Speaker 3: the later like after they apprehended him, that he does
Speaker 3: have scratches under his net or chin around his chin,
Speaker 3: and clearly again scratch again. DNA evidence is going to
Speaker 3: have proven that it was Patricia, but they didn't didn't
Speaker 3: have the weren't available. And then he drops off the
Speaker 3: present and it goes back to her apartment, drops off
Speaker 3: the present for his kid, leaves, no one sees him,
Speaker 3: and then he gets out of New York eventually and
Speaker 3: then comes back and then and then then Toronto police show
Speaker 3: up the next day. So you know, that's that's the
Speaker 3: story of likely she died. Wayne Wayne is then you know,
Speaker 3: put on trial from second degree murder. But the only
Speaker 3: you know, the only real evidence they have is is
Speaker 3: the confession later he has actually there are two trials
Speaker 3: when one is called off and they have to start
Speaker 3: a second one soon after. But he's got this bombastic lawyer,
Speaker 3: you know, a big, huge guy named it Broader, and
Speaker 3: he causes fits for the DA and the judge, trying
Speaker 3: to every which way to figure out how to help
Speaker 3: Wayne Wayne, you know, against the confession. And the only
Speaker 3: thing he of course could come up with is that
Speaker 3: somehow the confession is coerced. So Wayne uses this coerce
Speaker 3: confession excuse. He brings it up at his lawyer, brings
Speaker 3: it up at the trial, and twenty years later it's
Speaker 3: also brought up partially because of the law about confessions
Speaker 3: in New York changes in those days. You know, Okay,
Speaker 3: let's look at it two ways. One, I can tell
Speaker 3: you that even though we know that the police did
Speaker 3: beat confessions out of people, and innocent people do go
Speaker 3: to jail, I mean clearly in New York and elsewhere
Speaker 3: in the United States and in Canada it happens. I
Speaker 3: don't believe it was the case in this I have
Speaker 3: AffA Davids from every single person in that room. Wayne
Speaker 3: was treated and normally by everybody. Really, he was never
Speaker 3: other than be blocked in a hotel room in Buffalo.
Speaker 3: That's about the worst thing that happened to him. Mean,
Speaker 3: he was given cigarettes, food, water. Everybody in the room
Speaker 3: treated him respectfully. No one coerced him. They you know,
Speaker 3: he could have had a lawyer, he chose not to,
Speaker 3: and I know so he was never his confession was
Speaker 3: not coerced. Nor did any appeal court ever find that
Speaker 3: it was. The you know, the only thing in New
Speaker 3: York was at the time and in other states had
Speaker 3: various ways in which confessions are treated in a trial,
Speaker 3: and the New York had one of the worst ways,
Speaker 3: really is that they the jury, themsel else could decide
Speaker 3: whether the confession was coerced. In the nineteen forties, other
Speaker 3: states had it that the judge had to at least
Speaker 3: consider this issue before the jury saw it, and the
Speaker 3: jury the judge would decide whether they should see it
Speaker 3: or not. Later in the early nineteen sixties, the New
Speaker 3: York confession rule, or the way they did it, was
Speaker 3: found to be unconstitutional, which triggered a whole bunch of
Speaker 3: legal problems for New York prosecutors because a lot of
Speaker 3: trials that had confessions had to be re examined, and
Speaker 3: one of them was Wayne's. And that's ultimately why he
Speaker 3: gets a hearing in nineteen sixty five. He has been
Speaker 3: in prison.
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Speaker 4: trial and the verdict before we talk about the effort
Speaker 4: to try to get him out on appeal once he
Speaker 4: is convicted.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, well, I mean the trial is a second trial.
Speaker 3: The first was called up because of his large antics
Speaker 3: of judges got so exasperated he gets at another trial
Speaker 3: with a guy was a little tough for a firmer
Speaker 3: Da was the judge. You know, it's just pretty I mean,
Speaker 3: he got a lot of publicity in the press. People
Speaker 3: were lined up, a lot of reporters from all over
Speaker 3: the world came. You know, as I said, he he
Speaker 3: literally pushed the Second World War off the front pages
Speaker 3: for a little while. That certainly was the case in
Speaker 3: New York and Toronto. And there's a lot of publicity.
Speaker 3: And he doesn't testify on his own behalf as he
Speaker 3: could have. You know, they call the various witnesses describing there,
Speaker 3: you know, what went on between the two of them.
Speaker 3: But alas you know, it's the jury does. The DA
Speaker 3: plays games with defense. The defense attorney is in New
Speaker 3: York up to very recently, the prosecution is under no
Speaker 3: obligation to give any evidence at all or telling anything
Speaker 3: they have, any witnesses they're going to call to the
Speaker 3: defense attorney. And that really only changes within the last
Speaker 3: couple of years, believe it or not. I know, in
Speaker 3: Canada the nineteen nineties, this change in which they had
Speaker 3: to disclosure rules in Canada that you know they were
Speaker 3: defense attorneys are now can get access to information that
Speaker 3: the Crown prosecutor have. But in New York it took
Speaker 3: a long time to do that, and so you know,
Speaker 3: defense attorneys were at a complete disadvantage. But Broderick attempted
Speaker 3: all sorts of things. I mean, Groome doesn't give him
Speaker 3: the medical examiners the report, let's say, which I have
Speaker 3: copies of. I have the whole report was maybe thirty pages.
Speaker 3: He gives Broaderick about twenty pages, twenty five pages. But
Speaker 3: the funny thing is there's nothing I compared them. I mean,
Speaker 3: the main thing that he gave the defense attorney was
Speaker 3: how she died and the contusions on her head and
Speaker 3: the strangle what they medical examiner found. So there's nothing
Speaker 3: in the other pages of any consequence really, but he
Speaker 3: decided not to give them to him, and Broadwick of
Speaker 3: course decided that this was some kind of trick and
Speaker 3: that if he could get the whole medical examiners apart,
Speaker 3: he'd find information that would exonerate Wayne, which was that
Speaker 3: not the case, but he was just, you know, essentially
Speaker 3: twining with them. It was. It's kind of strange. It's
Speaker 3: this gamesmanship I suppose you could call it that they played,
Speaker 3: and the jury is left with Wayne's confession, which they
Speaker 3: ultimately believed all men, because it's funny women were interviewed
Speaker 3: to be in the jury. They didn't think women could
Speaker 3: stomach the stuff about Wayne's life and the homosexuality is
Speaker 3: just ridiculous really, so men. The men are on this
Speaker 3: jury and they decide with it, and they didn't have
Speaker 3: to meet very long to decide that Wayne was guilty.
Speaker 3: And he is sent to sing Sing initially and then
Speaker 3: ends up in dan Mora Clifton prison. I think it is, yes,
Speaker 3: and where he you know, he's convicted for he gets
Speaker 3: a thirty year sentence. He ends up serving from nineteen
Speaker 3: forty four till nineteen sixty five. In that period of time,
Speaker 3: he decides that, you know, he'd been railroaded and cheated,
Speaker 3: and that his confession was coerced. And you know, by
Speaker 3: the time he later tells the story and is hearing
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty five, as I said in the book,
Speaker 3: you know it's he describes his experience as being a
Speaker 3: kin to the Spanish Inquisition. I mean, he's had all
Speaker 3: these years in prison to come up with the story,
Speaker 3: and he takes full advantage of that. But you know,
Speaker 3: the only other thing about him is that he also
Speaker 3: once he gets out of prison, gives an interview on
Speaker 3: CBC that I'm in and he's got to I guess
Speaker 3: maybe from being around New Yorkers for all those years,
Speaker 3: but he's got this thick bron again of New York
Speaker 3: accent and uses the phrase forget about it, and everything
Speaker 3: is pretty funny. I only had the audio files that
Speaker 3: couldn't find the actual visuals of the of this TV show,
Speaker 3: This Hour at seven Days, which was like an early
Speaker 3: version of sixty Minutes. I was on CPC, a very
Speaker 3: controversial show. And then I actually talked to the journalist
Speaker 3: who interviewed him, who died recently, and Lefole just passed away.
Speaker 3: You know, he was his probably in his eighties, and
Speaker 3: you know he didn't remember. He did remember Wayne. But
Speaker 3: you know, Wayne gets another lawyer, another controversial woman, Francis Kahn,
Speaker 3: who tries all sorts of tricks and uses the change
Speaker 3: in the law in New York to get this hearing,
Speaker 3: and so the whole thing is reconvened again in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty five, and just before Wayne is released on parole.
Speaker 3: And you know, once he's released, they deport him back
Speaker 3: to Toronto, and you know, the hearing doesn't go anywhere.
Speaker 3: There's there's really no written decision. They just refuse to
Speaker 3: overturn his conviction or anything like that. So he gets
Speaker 3: out in nineteen sixty five. He ends up back in Toronto.
Speaker 3: Got Young of the Globe and Mail, a columnist who's
Speaker 3: Neil Young's father. The musician takes an interest in the
Speaker 3: case and in Wayne. Initially, you know, he helps him,
Speaker 3: interviews him and actually sets up this interview that Wayne
Speaker 3: gives in December nineteen sixty five. Once he's back and
Speaker 3: you know interesting in that interview too. I always thought
Speaker 3: Wayne Wayne did. The actual interview went for about four
Speaker 3: hours of time. Wayne never once mentions Patricia's name. He
Speaker 3: only calls her my wife in his line when they was.
Speaker 3: When he was asked by LAFOLLI, did you kill your wife?
Speaker 3: He says, my position is no. That was his response
Speaker 3: kind of telling I post you know he's a liar,
Speaker 3: But he initially said he's he plans to go. He
Speaker 3: goes to London for a while, actually gets a passport
Speaker 3: and is able to get to London, then comes back
Speaker 3: to Toronto and ends up being taken him by yet
Speaker 3: another woman who fascinates a actress in Canada named Barbara Hamilton,
Speaker 3: who looks after him and I had an interesting conversation
Speaker 3: with the lake. Gordon Pincer, the actor who knew Wayne
Speaker 3: was friends with Barbara Hamilton, him and his wife were friends,
Speaker 3: and his daughter, Leah, was also an actress, also remembered Wayne. Leah,
Speaker 3: who was like twelve at the time, probably thought Wayne
Speaker 3: in the sixties was rather creepy, didn't talk much. Gordon
Speaker 3: pins had said that Wayne drank a lot of drambiuti
Speaker 3: and Scotch and didn't say much. Barbara Hamilton, Barbara Hamilton
Speaker 3: had a rule that when she was interviewed, she was
Speaker 3: never no one was ever allowed to ask her about
Speaker 3: Wayne or Wayne's other life. And I'm assuming she thought
Speaker 3: that he had been railroaded or was innocent, and then
Speaker 3: he died, you know, he died in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 3: He probably never saw his son again when he got
Speaker 3: out of prison. His son, his son was raised by
Speaker 3: Patricia's mother, Lucille, who died in nineteen sixty six. Apparently
Speaker 3: Wayne tried to contact the boy, but I think from
Speaker 3: what I understand, he got a letter back from lawyers
Speaker 3: saying not to do this. So I'm assuming he never did.
Speaker 3: The last piece of you know, any kind of some
Speaker 3: mention of the boy in the new his name was
Speaker 3: changed to Burton from Lonagan, so she changed his name
Speaker 3: to Burton. He sort of fades away. There's some mention
Speaker 3: of him going to Harvard in the nineteen sixties. This
Speaker 3: is what I just learned though, and it was kind
Speaker 3: of interesting. I was sort of searching for him. I
Speaker 3: wasn't sure what I could ask him because he was
Speaker 3: only like, you know, eighteen months old and all this
Speaker 3: was happening. So his father was the heys of killing
Speaker 3: his mother, who he doesn't remember anyways, and he's also
Speaker 3: very wealthy. He's the one who inherited his grandmother's money
Speaker 3: eventually when she died in nineteen fifty four. I thought
Speaker 3: I found where he lived in New York by the name,
Speaker 3: and I was reticent about contacting him. I had read
Speaker 3: a Dominic Dunn had written about the story in a
Speaker 3: Vanity Fair article that he subsequently published in a book
Speaker 3: he had chapters on true crime. One of them was
Speaker 3: in fact Wandergon storted that they got a lot of
Speaker 3: the facts wrong, but he did say that he too
Speaker 3: didn't decide not to talk to the kid, because you know,
Speaker 3: it's just sort of traumatic. So I sort of followed that,
Speaker 3: but I always sort of felt ambivalent about it. I
Speaker 3: sort of felt like I should have tried to talk
Speaker 3: to him. At least he might have been able to
Speaker 3: tell me more about the grandmother, but I'm not sure
Speaker 3: what his reaction would have been. But this French TV
Speaker 3: station did find him, and I recently saw their video
Speaker 3: of the interview with him, which I am also in
Speaker 3: the show. Said he knows about my book I mean
Speaker 3: they didn't. A French TV journalist who I spoke to
Speaker 3: decided not to ask him about the murder. She thought
Speaker 3: it was too disrespectful. But you know, it's this old
Speaker 3: guy's wealthy living in New York, and he's exactly the
Speaker 3: person who I thought he was. He just turned eight,
Speaker 3: he would have been eighty in twenty twenty one, so
Speaker 3: he's like, you know, going to be maybe three in
Speaker 3: a few weeks. So that I thought was interesting. And
Speaker 3: I'm not sure, you know, he seems like sort of
Speaker 3: a strange kind of to be honest, but he's the
Speaker 3: elderly who knows exactly his life. I don't think. I'm
Speaker 3: not sure if he married. I don't think he had
Speaker 3: any children. But I thought that was interesting and the
Speaker 3: fact that they found out that a lot of William
Speaker 3: Burton's goods were stolen from by the Nazis from this
Speaker 3: villa in France, and thus ends the story.
Speaker 4: Yes, I want to thank you so much, Alan Levine
Speaker 4: for coming on and talking about your book. Details are unprintable.
Speaker 4: Wayne Launergan and the Sensational Cafe Society Murder. For those
Speaker 4: who might want to take another further look at your work,
Speaker 4: can you tell us about your website and if you
Speaker 4: do any social media.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Www Allan Levine books dot com. You can find information.
Speaker 3: The book is available on Amazon and all other book sites,
Speaker 3: and you can find me on Twitter at Alan Levine
Speaker 3: twelve and there's some periodic stuff about that as well.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Alan Levine. Details are unprintable. Wayne
Speaker 4: Launergan and the Sensational Cafe Society Murder thank you for
Speaker 4: this interview and have a great evening.
Speaker 3: Thanks for good night.