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Speaker 3: Yes, you are now listening to True Murder, The most
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Speaker 3: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
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Speaker 3: your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
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Speaker 5: Denville in the nineteen fifties was an idyllic place to live,
Speaker 5: yet a dark chapter in the era's history has remained uncovered.
Speaker 5: During the summer of nineteen fifty three, a wealthy traveler
Speaker 5: with a secret rap sheet as a convicted sex offender,
Speaker 5: arrived in town to continue his misdeeds. A group of
Speaker 5: thirteen local boys ranging in age from fourteen to twenty two,
Speaker 5: took it upon themselves to teach the Mano Lesson and
Speaker 5: drive him out of the town. What resulted was his
Speaker 5: brutal death and the largest number of people ever indicted
Speaker 5: for murder in the nation at the time. The harrowing
Speaker 5: trial and its aftermath revealed the town forced to grapple
Speaker 5: with how to protect its youth and come to terms
Speaker 5: with the gruesome incident. Local historian Peter z a Blocki
Speaker 5: covers the crime and a small town's path to redemption.
Speaker 5: The book that we're featuring this evening is the Denville
Speaker 5: Thirteen Murder, Redemption and Forgiveness in Small Town, New Jersey,
Speaker 5: with my special guest, historian and author Peters A. BLOCKI.
Speaker 5: Welcome to the program, and thank you so much for
Speaker 5: this interview. Peter's a Blockie, Hi.
Speaker 2: How are you? Thank you for having me, Thank.
Speaker 5: You so much. Let's start off right away with this
Speaker 5: incredible book. When did you first discover the story of
Speaker 5: the Denville Thirteen? Tell us how this came about?
Speaker 2: So I called it the accidental Book. I actually set
Speaker 2: out to write a book and collect stories of local
Speaker 2: population of my town of Denville, where I serve on
Speaker 2: the board of DN Historical Society. I'm trying to interview
Speaker 2: a lot of elderly faults from World War two times
Speaker 2: about essentially their experiences in World War Two, and as
Speaker 2: I started meeting with individuals that were in their eighties nineties,
Speaker 2: oddly enough, DEVI was thirteen to murder them if there
Speaker 2: no one's ever heard of it. I mean to the
Speaker 2: extent that it was buried so much that I have
Speaker 2: people coming out with me since the book's publication. They're like,
Speaker 2: I've lived through my whole life, how did I not know? However,
Speaker 2: as I was interviewing these elderly faults, they basically at
Speaker 2: the end of each interview, a lot of them were like, hey,
Speaker 2: you know, there was this murder that happened in nineteen fifties,
Speaker 2: but no one talks about it. And at first I
Speaker 2: kind of dismissed it, and I was like, aheah, that's great,
Speaker 2: but let's talk about, you know, rationing in nineteen forty three.
Speaker 2: But then it started to come up more and more
Speaker 2: and more, to the extent that ironically, and like weirdly enough,
Speaker 2: a few individuals actually asked me as I was recording
Speaker 2: this interviews, you know it is your camera off? And
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, it's off. We're done now. Thank you
Speaker 2: for the interviews, and you know, at that point they
Speaker 2: were like, well, you know, there's this murder, and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: now I'm curious enough. And that is really how it started.
Speaker 2: And the name Denvil thirteen was thrown around by by
Speaker 2: these individuals, you know, by these eighty nine year old
Speaker 2: ladies and gentlemen. They were like, you know, it was
Speaker 2: done on thirteen. But when I googled it, there was nothing.
Speaker 2: You know, I thought, you know, twenty first century, if.
Speaker 6: You google something, if it doesn't exist on Google, it doesn't.
Speaker 2: Exist since my book's publication. Now, like one article from
Speaker 2: New York Times pops up because I uncovered a lot
Speaker 2: of those those things. There's some key words they could
Speaker 2: probably search for now, and there's a little bit more
Speaker 2: information on the weblin this, but still nowhere near as
Speaker 2: much as for anything else really, because when I started
Speaker 2: looking into this, I couldn't find it. I mean, this
Speaker 2: was I'm like, where does one look for this? And
Speaker 2: I started with Murdering Denvil nineteen fifty fifty one, fifty two.
Speaker 2: I went through every year and nothing popped up. And
Speaker 2: that's kind of when I sort of really dig in
Speaker 2: into the newspaper. So I know Denvill had a newspaper
Speaker 2: of its own. It was called a Denvil Herald and
Speaker 2: it published over twenty years. So the library has a
Speaker 2: PDF file of the entire twenty year run. So that
Speaker 2: was my first starting point, and I went in and
Speaker 2: a PDFI was scan in such a bad way that,
Speaker 2: you know, the search function, the control f function, it
Speaker 2: doesn't really work well. So I'm literally scanning through every
Speaker 2: possible issue in nineteen fifties, and oddly enough, I realized
Speaker 2: that the entire decade is full, but it's missing three
Speaker 2: pages of the first September issue September third of nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty three. And I found out really odd that we
Speaker 2: would have every single issue but missing three pages. You know,
Speaker 2: the first two pages are gone. So that kind of
Speaker 2: got me thinking of like, all right, September ish, nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty three, and that became my starting point. Then I
Speaker 2: started looking at other newspapers in the area, all the
Speaker 2: towns around it. Basically it was like four different towns
Speaker 2: around that had local newspapers in the fifties, and I
Speaker 2: was looking for September issues. No mention of this, however,
Speaker 2: I spoke to a member of the historical study an
Speaker 2: older member of historical society, and he said, you know,
Speaker 2: there's this folder that's somewhere upstairs. And one of these
Speaker 2: historians in the town of Denville nineteen seventies collected this
Speaker 2: scrapbook of some stuff, and I think there's something in
Speaker 2: there about this murder. But you know, when no one
Speaker 2: ever talked about it, it's kind of hidden somewhere in
Speaker 2: the attic. So I went in the attic and I
Speaker 2: sort of looking for that folder. Meanwhile, I also realized
Speaker 2: that in our historical society in town, we have the
Speaker 2: microfilm of every Denvil Herald that was photographed in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventies as well. So I powered up the microfilm machine
Speaker 2: and I went through it all. And this time around,
Speaker 2: not only was just the three pages missing of that
Speaker 2: first September issue, but that entire September issue was never
Speaker 2: photographed in nineteen seventies. So I'm like, all right, someone
Speaker 2: is clearly deliberately trying to hide this event. I mean,
Speaker 2: while I still don't really know what the events about,
Speaker 2: I just know it was Denvill thirteen. I assumed there
Speaker 2: was thirteen people not much past that. Then we went
Speaker 2: into these crates. We have these crates at the museum
Speaker 2: that are actually someone meticulously collected every Denvil Herald newspaper
Speaker 2: and put him in crates based on the year. So
Speaker 2: I'm like, you know what this is. It like, I'm
Speaker 2: going to have the real hard copy. And I started
Speaker 2: looking through it, right, and I get to it at
Speaker 2: fifty three crate. You know, I'm like going through this
Speaker 2: the Kroll space and I pull it all out, and
Speaker 2: then I'm in August. I'm excited in boom No first
Speaker 2: September issue. I'm like, this is crazy. So I started
Speaker 2: doing research and realized that Denvil published one thousand copies
Speaker 2: of each of their issue therefore to this day, by
Speaker 2: the way, I have not found that copy of that issue.
Speaker 2: It's gone. So someone somewhere hit a thousand copies of
Speaker 2: this issue. Meanwhile, I did finally find this folder, the
Speaker 2: scrapbook by this historian in the town in nineteen seventies
Speaker 2: that kind of did this on his own, and I
Speaker 2: found a couple clippings, and the clippings I found I
Speaker 2: finally figured it out based on eclippings. You know, this
Speaker 2: deals with teenagers, This deals with a really young population
Speaker 2: of kids, and this is the largest indictment for a
Speaker 2: single murder in all of American history. And I'm like, whoa,
Speaker 2: this is. This is big. But then I still had
Speaker 2: no idea what newspapers those clippings came from, because the
Speaker 2: way the historian did it, he kind of just cut
Speaker 2: him out and you know, Scotch taped them. This is
Speaker 2: like nineteen seventy, you know. So I went back to
Speaker 2: the drawing board. I wound up contacting on the Moors
Speaker 2: County Historical Society and the Morris County Museum. So Morristown
Speaker 2: is the bigger city. It's kind of like a quasi
Speaker 2: I would say, capital of my county where Denvill is located, right,
Speaker 2: And they had They're like, well, we have the Daily Record,
Speaker 2: which has been around, you know, for like one hundred years,
Speaker 2: and we have all the hard copies. It's not digitized,
Speaker 2: so you would have to come see it. But it's COVID,
Speaker 2: and you know, COVID had just started. I'm like, all right, right,
Speaker 2: So an nice gentleman was like, you know what, I
Speaker 2: got nothing to do here anyway, it's COVID. No one's
Speaker 2: coming in. What do you need? I'll scan it for you.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, well, I just need a couple issues
Speaker 2: for probably September, and he scanned them over, sent them
Speaker 2: over to me, and he was just like wow. And
Speaker 2: then I found my alluded. You know, I found those
Speaker 2: articles that kind of uncovered his story when it happened
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty three, and they were actually published from page
Speaker 2: US for like two weeks straight in this one particular
Speaker 2: newspaper in the capital of the county. But even those
Speaker 2: copies I could not find anywhere but the Historical Society.
Speaker 2: They're not on the internet, they don't exist. And that
Speaker 2: kind of Now I saw a story and I was
Speaker 2: piecing it together here by, you know, little by little.
Speaker 2: I was still doing interviews with the elderly people based
Speaker 2: on World War two book, but I kind of paused
Speaker 2: the World War Two book, and now I kind of
Speaker 2: started asking questions about this, and a lot of them
Speaker 2: were kind of reluctant to talk about it. And they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: we don't, we don't, we don't talk about it. Someone
Speaker 2: told me that, you know, I once they did a
Speaker 2: girl and she was a daughter of one of the thirteen,
Speaker 2: and my mom said I couldn't date her, so I
Speaker 2: better not talk about it. I hang out these are
Speaker 2: like older folks, and I'm like, okay. So then after
Speaker 2: I pieced it enough from the newspapers, I said to myself,
Speaker 2: you know, like there's got to be more to the story.
Speaker 2: So as one of the town historians, I reached out
Speaker 2: to the prosecutor's office in the county and I asked
Speaker 2: if this file exists for this murder through the OPRAH
Speaker 2: and Open Public Relations Act, and they're like, it does exist,
Speaker 2: but it's so old. It's in the box, it's offsite,
Speaker 2: like we don't know where it is. No one's acced
Speaker 2: us this since fifty three, but we could try to
Speaker 2: find it for you. I'm like okay, and I kind
Speaker 2: of just let it go. I'm back to my World
Speaker 2: War two research. And then then I received a file.
Speaker 2: They actually scanned it for me with autopso reports, pictures, names,
Speaker 2: mug shots, I mean everything. And that's when I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: I can't just put this to this side, Like I
Speaker 2: have to do something with this. And I started writing
Speaker 2: and just researching and piecing it together, and I said,
Speaker 2: it's an accidental book because it's never really meant to
Speaker 2: be a book. I finished the entire manuscript. I put
Speaker 2: it in a three ring binder. I brought it to
Speaker 2: the museum in Denville. I put it amongst the other
Speaker 2: binders of stories, and I just like walked away from
Speaker 2: it and I'm like, all right, well, I'm done. And
Speaker 2: then members of the Historical Society we had a meeting
Speaker 2: and they're like, you should probably like look into that,
Speaker 2: like this story needs to be told. And I was
Speaker 2: kind of reluctant, mainly because I live in a town.
Speaker 2: I have two young kids that live in a town,
Speaker 2: and this is a very touchy topic that was clearly
Speaker 2: meticulously hidden for you know, seventy years add years, And
Speaker 2: at that time I was not yet able to locate
Speaker 2: all the members of the thirteen. Since then, I have
Speaker 2: located all of them. But at the time I wasn't sure,
Speaker 2: like what if, you know, like what if I know
Speaker 2: they're grand kids or my kids are best friends with
Speaker 2: their grant grand kids. It was kind of like this,
Speaker 2: I don't know. But then more I thought about it,
Speaker 2: and I feel like the way I wrote the book
Speaker 2: ultimately is like I felt like there really was a
Speaker 2: story that it was I put it in context, and
Speaker 2: once I put it in as a story, and I
Speaker 2: thought of it why would something like this happen? And
Speaker 2: also why would something like this be hidden for seventy years?
Speaker 2: And then I felt like this really was at the
Speaker 2: end of the day history, and this was you know,
Speaker 2: like I tell my students in my high school history
Speaker 2: teacher during the day, and I tell my students all
Speaker 2: the time that you know, if I teach history right,
Speaker 2: I'm going to offend somebody at some point this year
Speaker 2: because history is offensive. And I kind of stuck with
Speaker 2: that and decided, oh, you know what, let's let's turn
Speaker 2: this into a manuscript and send it out. And I did,
Speaker 2: and I got interest from publishers right away, actually within
Speaker 2: like days, and you know, I picked a history press,
Speaker 2: Arcadia Publishing, and uh, we're having this conversation.
Speaker 5: Very interesting now as you read in the book, you
Speaker 5: give us a background, because like I mentioned and before
Speaker 5: we spoke on the program here is that we've got
Speaker 5: to give the historical and you do give the historical
Speaker 5: background of what Denville and America was like in nineteen
Speaker 5: fifty three. And in fact, with some of the research
Speaker 5: you've done as a historian, you know that from nineteen
Speaker 5: forty three there was talk about juvenile delinquency, so tell
Speaker 5: us about what America and this little place of six
Speaker 5: thousand population Denville was doing. What was the situation in
Speaker 5: Denville regarding juvenile juveniles and juvenile delinquency. What did the
Speaker 5: people of that community in America? What were their concerns?
Speaker 2: Yep, so Bason, I feel like Denville's very much like
Speaker 2: a microcosm of just suburbia America nineteen forties, nineteen fifties,
Speaker 2: and what ultimately happened in nineteen forties. And I got
Speaker 2: this a lot from first hand accounts because of interviewing
Speaker 2: people that lived here at the time. To America. When
Speaker 2: World War Two started, everyone seemed to pitch in. And
Speaker 2: while the male population oftentime was drafted and went to
Speaker 2: fight in the war, the female population really did enter
Speaker 2: the workforce. And you know, we've studied this in textbooks
Speaker 2: and we you know, we see this in documentaries, but
Speaker 2: just listening from the real perspective, looking at letters from
Speaker 2: real people and diary entries and speaking to people that
Speaker 2: were alive during the time, both parents entered the workforce,
Speaker 2: and all these parents worked in war related industries. Nearby Denville,
Speaker 2: there was actually Picatinny Arsenal, which was supplying the military
Speaker 2: during World War Two, and it hired a lot of
Speaker 2: local Denvil people, you know, female as well as male.
Speaker 2: There was also a radio airfield nearby Denvill, like a
Speaker 2: mile outside of Denville that was making radios and transistors
Speaker 2: for World War Two. There was so much war work
Speaker 2: that ultimately you had parents for the first time, especially
Speaker 2: following the depression where there was this pinch there's not
Speaker 2: enough money nineteen thirties or worked kind of tough nineteen forties,
Speaker 2: a whole a sudden, there's an opportunity to go to work,
Speaker 2: and people jump on that opportunity, and unfortunately it starts
Speaker 2: to happen. Is as I started to go home. Back
Speaker 2: in newspapers into nineteen forties, I started reading about this
Speaker 2: juvenile delinquency problem, which was not just in Denville, but
Speaker 2: it really was a national issue, but very much for
Speaker 2: the same reasons. And the reason was that both parents
Speaker 2: went to work and the kids were kind of left unattended.
Speaker 2: Now by kids, I actually read accounts of I mean
Speaker 2: like four or five year olds left home alone, you know,
Speaker 2: for five hours at a time, and I thought to myself,
Speaker 2: you know, five year olds, I mean, how do you
Speaker 2: leave a five year old for six hours, but they did,
Speaker 2: I guess different times. However, the juvenile delinquency problem that
Speaker 2: started in the forties, Denville actually held the community meetings.
Speaker 2: First time that held these community meetings in a community
Speaker 2: church was in the forties because there was a juvenile
Speaker 2: linksy problem that dealt with kids that were under the
Speaker 2: age of ten. And that's what shocked the community. It's
Speaker 2: like there was an eight year old that stole someone's
Speaker 2: gun and basically you just ran around town sort of
Speaker 2: shooting in windows. He was caught. He was he had
Speaker 2: just turned eight years old, and think of my eight
Speaker 2: year old. He can't even tie his shoes, right, you know,
Speaker 2: Like there's again discrepancy here, you know. And that was
Speaker 2: the issues, like why are what's going on? And even
Speaker 2: then they were able to pinpoint that. They were very
Speaker 2: quick to attack the parents, you know. And when you
Speaker 2: listen and you looked at those statements from the forties,
Speaker 2: they're saying, well, everyone's too busy trying to get a
Speaker 2: job and make a buck, and everyone's leaving these kids
Speaker 2: alone to kind of raise themselves. And that same premise
Speaker 2: kind of continues from the forties onto the fifties. Now
Speaker 2: in Denville's case. What's very interesting is that the Denvil
Speaker 2: juvenile problem with kids that were like eight years old,
Speaker 2: and when the case of Denvill thirteen, which we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about a little bit, comes into play, you know,
Speaker 2: ten years later or eight years later, they're not necessarily
Speaker 2: different kids. They're the same generation kids. They simply grew
Speaker 2: up and now they're seventeen and eighteen as opposed to being.
Speaker 5: Eight years old.
Speaker 2: So it's not like the juvenile delinquency problem changed in
Speaker 2: the sense that it became different. It was the same problem.
Speaker 2: It's just that the generation of these kids that were
Speaker 2: left alone grew up to continuously also be left alone. Right,
Speaker 2: And I kind of felt like, overall speaking, I think
Speaker 2: this is a ton of shows across the nation very
Speaker 2: similar trends.
Speaker 5: Right. So, you have a city, a town concerned with
Speaker 5: the attitude of young people and too much time on
Speaker 5: their hands, and there's all kinds of conversations about why,
Speaker 5: what contributes to all of this, including sort of a
Speaker 5: breakdown of the family unit. Everything is discussed. You take
Speaker 5: us to Paul's Diner August thirtieth, nineteen fifty three, about
Speaker 5: two thirty am in Mountain Lakes which must be near Denville,
Speaker 5: and it's still thereby day.
Speaker 2: You could still go get yourself a cheesebake there if
Speaker 2: you want.
Speaker 5: Now, this August thirtieth is just the day before school
Speaker 5: is supposed to be back in. So tell us about
Speaker 5: what who are at this Paul's diner according to witnesses
Speaker 5: at two thirty am.
Speaker 2: So two thirty am, according to witnesses, a group of
Speaker 2: four boys come into a diner. They look very agitated.
Speaker 2: It is late. They're technically starting school the next day,
Speaker 2: so it's like the last day of the summer, and
Speaker 2: they kind of seem out of place, but they get
Speaker 2: the booth. We don't really know what they ordered per se,
Speaker 2: but we know they didn't stay along. We know that
Speaker 2: they've stayed in this one particular booth, and they kept
Speaker 2: them looking around as if they were kind of scared
Speaker 2: to be there. Their kids range. The youngest when was fourteen.
Speaker 2: The oldest boy was twenty two. The other two that
Speaker 2: were present were eighteen and seventeen, so mostly teenagers. One
Speaker 2: person that was not a teenager. In fact, out of
Speaker 2: the thirteen from the Denvil thirteen, only one is not
Speaker 2: a teenager, and that's this twenty two year old, and
Speaker 2: they don't stay long. However, what happens is as they leave,
Speaker 2: they decide to leave after a little bit, and apparently
Speaker 2: out of one of these voice back pockets, pocket falls
Speaker 2: out a wallet, and the wallet kind of gets like
Speaker 2: I would say, gets nudged in between the cushion or
Speaker 2: your back cushion and your seat cushion and that booth,
Speaker 2: and that wallet belonged to a particular man. His name
Speaker 2: was Ross was his first name, and it was an
Speaker 2: out of state license. And this is the person who
Speaker 2: we later find out is was murdered a couple hours
Speaker 2: before that event happens.
Speaker 5: Right, So now you talk about you talk about these
Speaker 5: boys in this soda shop here and they have some
Speaker 5: drinks and then they leave. At the end, you also
Speaker 5: then take us back to August twenty ninth at six
Speaker 5: thirty pm, So you take us back a little ways
Speaker 5: in time to rock Away River Beach. Tell us about
Speaker 5: the four young boys and what's happening at this river.
Speaker 2: So what essentially happens here is there's a group of boys.
Speaker 2: They always hang out in this one particular soda shop
Speaker 2: in town. There's actually two soda shops in town, and
Speaker 2: the initial newspaper reports have the name of them wrong. Ironically,
Speaker 2: I spoke to somebody since then, and that person says
Speaker 2: to me, well, the goodie two shoes hang out with
Speaker 2: that one. We hung out with this one. Ironic because
Speaker 2: just kind of an interesting story in itself. These boys
Speaker 2: have noticed this one particular man that drove into town
Speaker 2: that summer. Apparently he was so this is the end
Speaker 2: of summer, but he kind of started earlier in the summer,
Speaker 2: which is why some people had issues with the police
Speaker 2: that this was not picked up earlier. But this man
Speaker 2: drives in with a convertible car. It is a Hudson convertible.
Speaker 2: It is meticulous, very wealthy car. The person is in
Speaker 2: his early thirties. He dressed really well. He spends money lavishly,
Speaker 2: and he's kind of hanging out in all the hangout
Speaker 2: spots where all these teens hang out, including these soda
Speaker 2: shops as well as this one particular beach. Denvil as
Speaker 2: a town, has a few lakes, it's pretty much pretty
Speaker 2: much a lake community. But for those people that did
Speaker 2: not belong to the lake communities, there was this one
Speaker 2: particular beach that was on the river, on the Rockaway
Speaker 2: River and also a big hangout spot for kids that
Speaker 2: kind of felt like they didn't belong anywhere else. So
Speaker 2: this man also used to hang out there a lota.
Speaker 2: That particular morning of that day, the men walked into
Speaker 2: the soda shops and apparently based on witnesses, he started
Speaker 2: hitting on a young boy. The young boy in question
Speaker 2: was about eleven years old. After the men leaves, the
Speaker 2: four boys that witness this basically decide that they're going
Speaker 2: to drive him out of town. That is their ultimate goal.
Speaker 2: And they're sitting there over soda.
Speaker 5: This man that they had saw and believed that had
Speaker 5: molested their their one of their friends friends.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 5: So what was what was their plan that they hatched
Speaker 5: at that time?
Speaker 2: So the initial plan they hatched was they were going
Speaker 2: to get more kids involved in this, and that's kind
Speaker 2: of how it starts to grow to the number thirteen.
Speaker 2: And what happens is they said they're going to bait
Speaker 2: this man. They know he's going to show up at
Speaker 2: the other soda shops that same day, So they basically
Speaker 2: plant two kids that are fourteen years old at the
Speaker 2: soda shop and they basically try to get these two
Speaker 2: boys to bait him to hang out with him that night.
Speaker 2: The man is very, very kind of excited about this,
Speaker 2: he said, of course, absolutely, And what they decide to do.
Speaker 2: The plan is they're trying to get him or lure
Speaker 2: him into one of the town's lover's lane. There was
Speaker 2: a Morris County canal that ran through Denvil by this
Speaker 2: time nineteen fifties. The canal itself is dry. However, the
Speaker 2: towpath next to the canal kind of snakes through the
Speaker 2: town and then it goes through these areas that are
Speaker 2: very wooded, and this is one of the spots where
Speaker 2: teenagers will kind of go and do their teenage things.
Speaker 2: So the ultimate goal is to get this man somehow
Speaker 2: with these two fourteen year old boys or so, to
Speaker 2: this particular spot. And the goal is that if they
Speaker 2: get him to that spot, they could catch him in
Speaker 2: the act one, two beat him up, and three kind
Speaker 2: of chase him out of town. That's the ultimate golf
Speaker 2: And the plan is that they're going to have three
Speaker 2: cars by this time. There's actually by mid afternoon, there's
Speaker 2: twelve kids involved in this entire plan. And I'll explain
Speaker 2: why only twelve in a second. But you have these
Speaker 2: twelve boys that are ready for this. They're divided into
Speaker 2: essentially two cars. Some of the boys load up to
Speaker 2: one car drive through this lover's lane, which is in
Speaker 2: this thing imagine like a dirt path and deep woods,
Speaker 2: and they drive down this till path. They reverse their
Speaker 2: car in, shut the lights off, and they're gonna wait
Speaker 2: there until the other boys will bait this man onto
Speaker 2: this lover's lane. Now, when this happens, there's another car
Speaker 2: full of these the rest of the boys, I guess,
Speaker 2: and their job will be to follow this man and
Speaker 2: the boys that are baiting him to kind of make
Speaker 2: sure there's no cellf ones yet, but they kind of
Speaker 2: want to make sure they don't lose him, and the
Speaker 2: plant stays the plan is always to get him to
Speaker 2: that lover's lane. Well, the man suggests the one idea
Speaker 2: was to maybe get him to the beach first to
Speaker 2: see if he does anything on the beach, And the
Speaker 2: man kind of suggests himself, like, yeah, let's go to
Speaker 2: the beach. When the plan is set into motion, the
Speaker 2: one car full of teenagers already goes to the lover's lane.
Speaker 2: It waits they're in the dark. The man himself actually
Speaker 2: winds up getting together with three boys, not just two
Speaker 2: to we're fourteen, one is seventeen, and he does suggest
Speaker 2: to go to the beach first, So they go to
Speaker 2: the beach. He doesn't know or realize that he's actually
Speaker 2: being followed by this other car, also full of teenagers. Now,
Speaker 2: after the beach, the plan was to tell him to
Speaker 2: just kind of getting dark already, and they're like, let's
Speaker 2: get him to go to this lover's lane. However, that
Speaker 2: doesn't happen, so as opposed to making a turn in
Speaker 2: one direction, the man makes a turn in a different
Speaker 2: direction with these three boys inside his car, and he
Speaker 2: takes into a local bar in a town over. While
Speaker 2: this is happening, you still have the one car full
Speaker 2: of boys waiting in the dark, kind of getting a
Speaker 2: little freaked out, like where are they? What's going on? Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: the other car follows them to the bar. While at
Speaker 2: the bar, they stayed at bar for actually a few hours,
Speaker 2: and this thirty something out of year old man proceeds
Speaker 2: to get these two fourteen year olds and seventeen year
Speaker 2: old drunk. He keeps on buying them drink, spending money lavishly. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: there's a car waiting the parking lot and these kids
Speaker 2: are like, what's going on in that bar? We need
Speaker 2: to know what's going on. Well, lucky for them, one
Speaker 2: of the three boys runs out to their car and says,
Speaker 2: all right, he's buying us drinks. I think everything a
Speaker 2: plan is still there. He wants to go to Lover's Lane.
Speaker 2: Will go there, We'll get there. The boys are like, fine,
Speaker 2: we'll wait here until everything is good to go. Finally,
Speaker 2: after hours of sitting in this bar, half of the
Speaker 2: kids sitting in one area in the woods not knowing
Speaker 2: what's going on, the other half sitting in this car
Speaker 2: in a parking lot, really waiting for the inevitable, the
Speaker 2: man gets out. He actually allows one of these boys
Speaker 2: to drive his car while he gets in the back
Speaker 2: of the car with both of his fourteen year old boys.
Speaker 2: So he's in the back with fourty year old boys
Speaker 2: and there's a seventeen year old boys driving, and now
Speaker 2: the plan is set into motion. They drive, they go
Speaker 2: across town. Now while this is happening, the other car
Speaker 2: is following them. The car with the rest of the
Speaker 2: boys total now is twelve And this is where the
Speaker 2: thirteenth boy comes into play, which I thought was kind
Speaker 2: of a very ironic story. It's a very sad story.
Speaker 2: While this boy at seventeen is driving to Lover's Lane,
Speaker 2: the car following behind them is driving through the town
Speaker 2: of Denville and Denville's which is on the cover of
Speaker 2: my book. It was very known at the time to
Speaker 2: have this movie theater and a particular boy walks out
Speaker 2: of the movie theater. It just happens to walk out.
Speaker 2: It's really late, it's after midnight, and he sees a
Speaker 2: car full of teenagers drives by. He knows some of them.
Speaker 2: He flags them down and basically ask them can I
Speaker 2: get a ride home? And they're like, short, hop in
Speaker 2: a car. We got to take care of something first.
Speaker 2: He's like, what do we gotta do? We got to
Speaker 2: run this guy out of town. And he's like, yeah, whatever,
Speaker 2: just take me home. So he becomes the thirteenth boy. Now,
Speaker 2: while this is happening, the cars continue. The man with
Speaker 2: the three boys, the car pulls into Lover's Lane, into
Speaker 2: this dirt path into the woods. As he pulls in
Speaker 2: there there's actually another car with a young couple boy
Speaker 2: and a girl had also tried to go to this
Speaker 2: Lover's Lane, but there was this unwritten rule that if
Speaker 2: you see a car there, you just keep on going
Speaker 2: because it's taken. So this is important because that means
Speaker 2: that we know the exact time on the scene when
Speaker 2: this man got there that ultimately is the victim. So
Speaker 2: he pulls in. While he pulls in, there's boys hidden
Speaker 2: in front of him, well ahead of him. He doesn't
Speaker 2: see them in the car. The other car pulls in
Speaker 2: behind him, lights off. The man stays in the car
Speaker 2: with the one fourteen year old boy. The other fourteen
Speaker 2: year old boy and a seventeen year old boy exit
Speaker 2: the vehicle. While the exit the vehicle, the boys from
Speaker 2: the front walk towards him. The boys in the back
Speaker 2: of the car that just arrived there, including the thirteenth boy,
Speaker 2: who quickly realizes what's going on. He does not stay
Speaker 2: for the beating. He actually runs home. The boy is
Speaker 2: really young, he's fifteen years old. He's like, what is
Speaker 2: going on, so he doesn't stay it for the beating.
Speaker 2: He kind of gets brought in with the thirteen, but
Speaker 2: he's really not there. These boys approach this car, they
Speaker 2: essentially knock on the door. The windows are down, and
Speaker 2: although it's a convertible, the top was up. They knock
Speaker 2: on the door and they basically peek in. They tell
Speaker 2: them and to get out. The man is visibly shaken
Speaker 2: up by this. He's kind of nervous that this is happening.
Speaker 2: He refuses to get out. They kind of prompt him
Speaker 2: to get out a couple more times, continues to refuse.
Speaker 2: At that point, someone opens the door. They drag him out,
Speaker 2: and that's pretty much how this murder starts.
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Speaker 5: at the point where twelve of these boys, thirteen of
Speaker 5: these boys. One of the boys leaves and doesn't witness
Speaker 5: the actual assault, or doesn't it doesn't witness the extent
Speaker 5: of it, let's say that, and goes home and tells
Speaker 5: his parents, Yep, now this was a coca this was
Speaker 5: a pop bottle, a soda pop bottle.
Speaker 2: It was a yeah, a soda pop bottle. Yeah, that
Speaker 2: he was hit with. So ultimately what starts to happen
Speaker 2: is they start pushing him around. There's a shoving match
Speaker 2: going back and forth most of the boys. If you
Speaker 2: could imagine this, it is dark. Actually, it's actually quite dark,
Speaker 2: very dark. Really. The car's lights were turned off for
Speaker 2: a reason. Obviously at one point someone supposedly did go
Speaker 2: back and turn the lights on on the car that
Speaker 2: was driven by the group of boys that pulled in
Speaker 2: behind the victims car. So there's imagine just illumination probably
Speaker 2: to like your you know, you know, your belt area.
Speaker 2: It's fairly dark, and they're pushing this guy around. Most
Speaker 2: of these boys are standing on the outskirts. They're kind
Speaker 2: of standing around and they're like watching this situation. There's yelling, cursing,
Speaker 2: so on and so forth, until one of the boys says, hey,
Speaker 2: give me that soda bottle, grabs a soda bottle, and
Speaker 2: he starts hitting him the victim with a soda bottle.
Speaker 2: This continues until another boy jumps in and he starts
Speaker 2: hitting him as well. It gets to the point that
Speaker 2: the man falls to the ground, and once there's she's
Speaker 2: two boys that are hitting him. A third boy runs
Speaker 2: up and actually grabs the boy that's doing the hitting
Speaker 2: at this point and pulls him off this man and
Speaker 2: says enough enough, so they pull him off. Meanwhile, so
Speaker 2: we'll probably have only three kids that are involved. There's
Speaker 2: twelve there, so imagine nine standing on the side. And
Speaker 2: now this man is unconscious. Someone says, hey, go through
Speaker 2: his wallet, go through his wallet. So someone another boy
Speaker 2: picks up, goes through the man's wallet. The man is
Speaker 2: still unconscious. It is later stated in the police reports
Speaker 2: that the boys felt that he was still alive at
Speaker 2: this point, at least when they were going searching through
Speaker 2: his wallet and so on and so forth. However, it quickly
Speaker 2: becomes evident to them that the man is unconscious to
Speaker 2: the extent that he's dead, and that's kind of when
Speaker 2: the panic sets in, because they didn't anticipate killing anybody
Speaker 2: that moment, you know, the point was just scare this man.
Speaker 2: At least that was the original intent or impetus that
Speaker 2: night However, at this point you could see that most
Speaker 2: of these kids are kind of like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: like what just happened? What do we do now? And
Speaker 2: a lot of them, a few of them actually started
Speaker 2: walking home, never making it home. Some people slept outside,
Speaker 2: some people slept in cars, park benches, some made it home.
Speaker 2: Everyone kind of just dispersed, and I left the body
Speaker 2: laying right next to this car. The initial group of
Speaker 2: boys who planned this whole thing that morning at the
Speaker 2: soda shop. Out of whom out of these boys, these
Speaker 2: four boys, you have the oldest one that's twenty two,
Speaker 2: which is the one that starts the hitting with the bottle.
Speaker 2: He's the one that initiates the hard hitting. You have
Speaker 2: another boy who does the hitting as well. And then
Speaker 2: in that group of four is also a fourteen year
Speaker 2: old who has later proven to be one of the
Speaker 2: main ringleaders ironically of this group. And he was the
Speaker 2: youngest of this group. And they are the ones that
Speaker 2: kind of freak out and wind up going to a
Speaker 2: local diner, which is where I kind of started my
Speaker 2: story when I started telling the story, because they do
Speaker 2: a couple things that really lead to them being caught.
Speaker 2: The first one is the fact that they leave the
Speaker 2: wallet of the victim, as I mentioned, accidentally in that booth,
Speaker 2: which ties them directly to this murder. The other thing.
Speaker 2: While they're at this, you know, it's getting kind of
Speaker 2: late and like it's getting kind of early rather so
Speaker 2: this guy's getting a little brighter, and they has this
Speaker 2: plan like maybe we'll make this look like an accident
Speaker 2: of some sorts. So they decide that they're going to
Speaker 2: go back to the scene of the crime. And they
Speaker 2: drive back to the scene of the crime, and it's
Speaker 2: really early in the morning. And as they drive in
Speaker 2: to get there, to this lover's lane, you have to
Speaker 2: go into this then end street. So imagine driving it
Speaker 2: down this den and street. No one it's that end
Speaker 2: unless you live there, And why would you be there
Speaker 2: at five am or six am. Well, when they drive
Speaker 2: down there, they realize that there was already someone there
Speaker 2: next to the car. They quickly turn around speed away. However,
Speaker 2: again the car is identified and it places them on
Speaker 2: the scene. So it's not just the wallet, but it's
Speaker 2: also the fact that they were seen at the scene
Speaker 2: that morning. The person that discovers this body, there's a
Speaker 2: lady that goes out for a walk, presumably with a dog,
Speaker 2: and she sees a car parked the lover's lane. Again,
Speaker 2: this is some This is something that teenagers used to
Speaker 2: do all the time. So the way that the body
Speaker 2: is laying down is she actually if you look at
Speaker 2: the cover of my book, on the back cover of
Speaker 2: the book is the picture of the car itself, and
Speaker 2: the door of the car is open, and right underneath
Speaker 2: that door, if you look on the cover there's it's
Speaker 2: through adactive picture. You see like this dark blob, and
Speaker 2: that's because you would see the body laying right next
Speaker 2: to that open door. The way that this lady walks
Speaker 2: towards the car, she walks towards it from the other
Speaker 2: direction on the right side, so she doesn't really see
Speaker 2: the body. She kind of gets close enough and she's like,
Speaker 2: I don't know what's going on there. She runs back
Speaker 2: home and gets a family member to come out there,
Speaker 2: and that's when he comes out and he discovers his body.
Speaker 2: Police is notified right away, they get in the scene,
Speaker 2: and more or less the way that I gathered it
Speaker 2: from the police files but also from newspapers, they had
Speaker 2: thirteen kids in custody within twenty four hours. This was quick.
Speaker 2: You know, this wasn't like trying to find them. They
Speaker 2: got them. Within a week. You have and this would
Speaker 2: never happen in today's world. Within a week, you have
Speaker 2: a from page of a newspaper has all of their mugshots,
Speaker 2: including and most of these kids are fourteen years old.
Speaker 2: There's fourteen or fifteen. There's a couple of sixteens. But
Speaker 2: you know these are young kids. And you have all
Speaker 2: of their mugshots from page of newspaper with a big
Speaker 2: headline saying all thirteen face murder charge. Right in the
Speaker 2: articles that were published. You have their street addresses, their
Speaker 2: parents' fools and nightful names, you have what do you
Speaker 2: call it? You also have their parents' addresses of work.
Speaker 2: I mean, things that would never happen for miners in
Speaker 2: today's day and age. This is shocking. Apparently, what I
Speaker 2: gather is that the town literally just stops. You know,
Speaker 2: it is to at this point, the largest, to this point,
Speaker 2: the largest indictment for a single murder in all of
Speaker 2: American history. And what makes it so much more shocking
Speaker 2: is that all but one of these perpetrators are teenagers.
Speaker 2: And that's when the shock factor hits. It's like, wait,
Speaker 2: what just happened, which I think also contributes to why
Speaker 2: this is hidden so much for the next seventy years.
Speaker 2: You talk about it, you.
Speaker 5: Talk about Chief Harry B. Jenkins being instrumental, being a
Speaker 5: big figure in town, an important figure, and also very
Speaker 5: concerned about what's going on in the city in the
Speaker 5: last ten years with this juvenile delinquency rise. He is
Speaker 5: instrumental and be able to get the information from these people.
Speaker 5: You write again, another thing that never happened today is
Speaker 5: all of the parents are there present when they make
Speaker 5: statements to the police. So there was a again a
Speaker 5: kind of cooperation that would never exist today with it.
Speaker 2: Yep, absolutely, and Chief Jenkins. Everyone that I spoke about
Speaker 2: the new Chief Jenkins, they said he was a very
Speaker 2: whole man and he had a certain presence. You know.
Speaker 2: He was the guy when you were five years old
Speaker 2: that would help you cross the street in front of
Speaker 2: the school. I've won you in for that. And he
Speaker 2: was also the guy that if you got in trouble,
Speaker 2: he didn't put you in jail. He went to talk
Speaker 2: to your mom and dad. You know. He was the
Speaker 2: guy that would show up for a doorstep and kind
Speaker 2: of left it in the parents' hands, be like, all right, listen,
Speaker 2: this is this is what Jimmy did today, and you
Speaker 2: kind of you had the respect for Chief Jenkins like
Speaker 2: he was there. It definitely was this. It almost looked like,
Speaker 2: you know, like Andy Griffith show kind of thing. You know,
Speaker 2: you had that vibe in this small town America. So
Speaker 2: Chief Jenkins was because of the relationships that he formed
Speaker 2: with the parents of these kids, you know, this kind
Speaker 2: of it wasn't like I felt, at least when I
Speaker 2: was reading into it, that this was a very like
Speaker 2: sad time when he brought them all in. I actually
Speaker 2: got first in accounts when these kids got arrested. I
Speaker 2: mean he uh a one particular Denville thirteen kid, he
Speaker 2: showed up a door, rang the doorbell, and basically said
Speaker 2: to the you know, mom and dad, you know, we
Speaker 2: got to take this person to the police station. He
Speaker 2: did something really bad. And the parents were like, all right,
Speaker 2: that's what you think that has to happen, you know,
Speaker 2: Chief Jenkins, that's what has to happen. Like that was it.
Speaker 2: They just kind of led him, you know, because there's
Speaker 2: that trust, and he felt very much that the blame
Speaker 2: was going to go on him because of the fact
Speaker 2: that this man. It's almost like a story of vigilance
Speaker 2: and justice. I mean, that's ultately what this is. You
Speaker 2: have these and I think that's the vibe I got
Speaker 2: from doing the interviews and reading into it, is that
Speaker 2: these thirteen kids took it upon themselves to clean they
Speaker 2: or their town of what they perceived to be a threat. Now,
Speaker 2: their intent was not murder. However, that is ultimately the
Speaker 2: end result, which is why we're talking about this seven
Speaker 2: years later. But Chief Jenkins had this feeling that this
Speaker 2: man was in town for a couple months, and he
Speaker 2: felt that people were going to blame him for the
Speaker 2: fact that this was allowed to get this far. But
Speaker 2: as I mentioned in the book, very similar to many
Speaker 2: of these small American towns, Chief Jenkins was one of
Speaker 2: three police officers in a whole town and the police
Speaker 2: officers at the time, one was part time, the other two,
Speaker 2: including h Jenkins, were not. But there were so many
Speaker 2: different responsibilities of checking in on businesses in nineteen fifty thousand,
Speaker 2: drive down main Street and make sure all businesses were locked.
Speaker 2: You would think that an owner would do that, but
Speaker 2: the police did that. There were so many things that
Speaker 2: they were responsible for this group of like two and
Speaker 2: a half men that you know, three and a half
Speaker 2: men that you know. He kind of felt like he
Speaker 2: did his best by trying to establish a sense of
Speaker 2: community where all the parents were also the police. Does
Speaker 2: that make sense?
Speaker 5: Mm hmm. So let's talk about the potential Let's talk
Speaker 5: about the potential charges that can be had. You said
Speaker 5: that the announcement in the papers were that they would
Speaker 5: all be charged for murder. Yeah, but you talk about
Speaker 5: the existing law at that time in terms of motive.
Speaker 5: If a motive like robbery were to be found in
Speaker 5: this case, tell us about what those that.
Speaker 2: Here was. Yeah. The main question was once these guys
Speaker 2: were put on trial, a lot of their cases were
Speaker 2: dismissed due to the fact of their age. So a
Speaker 2: lot of these boys were directed to juvenile court. However,
Speaker 2: their cases were still hurt and made public. The bit
Speaker 2: he was intent. If this person was killed without theft,
Speaker 2: the judge assumed at the time or stayed at the time,
Speaker 2: then there was a possibility of manslaughter. That you know,
Speaker 2: there was no intent of trying to get something from
Speaker 2: this person. Potentially that might have been an accidental killing. However,
Speaker 2: if they could prove that there was intent to steal
Speaker 2: something or take something from that person right away, the
Speaker 2: theft aspect would turn this into essentially a first degree murder.
Speaker 2: And then there was like different levels of that intent
Speaker 2: of taking something, you know, like did they set out
Speaker 2: to take it or did they take it afterwards? And
Speaker 2: in this case, the wallet is what comes back to
Speaker 2: haunt these boys because by taking that wallet, that becomes
Speaker 2: a key because it's like, well, was it intended? Was
Speaker 2: not intended? And they kept on being brought up in court.
Speaker 2: Who took the wallet, who looked into wallet, who looked
Speaker 2: into this person? You know, it was very specific, like
Speaker 2: what was taken? Who about this? Was this premeditated in
Speaker 2: any way, shape or form. And ultimately, once this case
Speaker 2: did get to court, all these boys face charges. And
Speaker 2: as I mentioned before, you know when you look at
Speaker 2: the prosecutor's office, and I spoke about that in one
Speaker 2: of the chapters, one of the main boys that kind
Speaker 2: of orchestrated this whole thing, that said, hey, we're going
Speaker 2: to get someone to bait this guy. We're going to
Speaker 2: get in the lover's lane, we'll beat him up, we'll
Speaker 2: do we have He was fourteen years old and he
Speaker 2: was unable to be tried in a regular court. However,
Speaker 2: he was in regular court to listen to the hearing,
Speaker 2: and the judge made sure he was very clear to
Speaker 2: him that what you did is not excused by your age,
Speaker 2: Like you know, what you did was. It was bad
Speaker 2: and he needs to live with that for the rest
Speaker 2: of your life. He tried to really kind of instill
Speaker 2: this in his boys, that you guys have some form
Speaker 2: of guilt to live with for the rest of your life. Ultimately,
Speaker 2: as the case goes on in court, what is determined.
Speaker 2: And I kind of got this vibe that I think
Speaker 2: it dealt a lot with the situation of the age
Speaker 2: of these kids. The person that winds up going to
Speaker 2: jail for this is the only non teenager, the one
Speaker 2: that starts off with the photo bottle and the one
Speaker 2: that starts the actual hitting. And that's actually George Compo.
Speaker 2: I didn't use this last name in the book, but
Speaker 2: since he was an adult, I have a problem using it.
Speaker 2: His name is George Compo, and George Compo is the
Speaker 2: only person that actually receives jail time out of these
Speaker 2: thirteen kids. Now, if you study and look into the
Speaker 2: history of George Compo, which is an interesting story in itself.
Speaker 2: George Compo was born in nineteen thirty one. If you Google,
Speaker 2: just pipe into Google Compo nineteen thirty one, New Jersey.
Speaker 2: I was trying to kind of pinpoint and find out
Speaker 2: what happened to all these guys. What pops up is
Speaker 2: a different Compo And this isn't a story, This is
Speaker 2: story in itself. George Compos's dad was arrested the year
Speaker 2: that George Compo was His mom was pregnant with him,
Speaker 2: so before he was born, his mom was pregnant with him.
Speaker 2: His father's arrested for multiple murders in the city of
Speaker 2: Newark in New Jersey. He is a gang member, a
Speaker 2: young twenty year old gang member that is arrested for
Speaker 2: multiple murders the year that George is born. When he's
Speaker 2: an infant. His father is electrocuted by the state of
Speaker 2: New Jersey for committing those murders, and twenty two years
Speaker 2: later later, his son goes to jail for committing murder.
Speaker 2: It is an interesting story in itself. Out of the
Speaker 2: other the other twelve boys, the other one that did
Speaker 2: the hitting was actually given a choice to enlist in
Speaker 2: a military and he takes that to pick that choice.
Speaker 2: He enlists in the military, so he does not serve
Speaker 2: any time. However, we have to mention the Korean War
Speaker 2: is going on during this time, and the boy that
Speaker 2: enlists in the military winds up dying in a freak
Speaker 2: airplane accident while in the military only a few short
Speaker 2: months later. As for the remainder of the boys, and
Speaker 2: this is kind of where the story gets interesting, because
Speaker 2: the reindeer of the boys, the fourteen year old, winds
Speaker 2: up going to a juvenile kind of delinquency center and
Speaker 2: he's not around for a couple of years, so he
Speaker 2: goes away. Another boy goes away for a year or so.
Speaker 2: But for the most part, so out of that you're
Speaker 2: looking at, that leaves us with nine kids. They all
Speaker 2: go back to school. They go, you know, by Thanksgiving
Speaker 2: Christmas time, because that's pretty much how long this drags in,
Speaker 2: So drags from last day of summer to about end
Speaker 2: of things given time. After that, they all returned to school,
Speaker 2: and everyone kind of knows what happened, but the town
Speaker 2: chooses to just let them be, and they do they
Speaker 2: very much just let them be. Like I said, it
Speaker 2: was a thousand newspapers printed that September. I cannot find
Speaker 2: a single one today, having multiple opportunities to find it,
Speaker 2: I just can't find it. No one talks about this case.
Speaker 2: When people, you know, talked about it, even to me,
Speaker 2: it was very quiet. It was I have people that
Speaker 2: lived here since then, that moved into town in the
Speaker 2: late fifties or sixties, and that like, we've never heard
Speaker 2: of this. And those that did live during this time,
Speaker 2: some are still reluctant talk about it, like we don't
Speaker 2: talk about that. It was a very unfortunate thing, you know.
Speaker 2: So when I published this book, I was very curious
Speaker 2: what happened to these guys. And after tracing all of
Speaker 2: these families and the thirteen boys, none of them actually
Speaker 2: are still life. So as by the time I published
Speaker 2: this book a couple of months ago, the last person
Speaker 2: had passed away three months before that, so they passed
Speaker 2: away last year. And therefore none of them were ever
Speaker 2: aware of the fact that I ever wrote this story,
Speaker 2: because this story was nonexistent, I mean, it supposedly never existed.
Speaker 5: You talk about you write about. The judge in this
Speaker 5: case did a lot of questioning despite these polas to
Speaker 5: find out that many of these boys were just there
Speaker 5: for the ride, and so he wanted to determine their
Speaker 5: culpability in this, and so he asked them and the
Speaker 5: attorneys to furnish that that information. Part of this, though,
Speaker 5: it seems, is that this victims hasn't had a police record.
Speaker 5: He was a sex offender. Tell us about the record
Speaker 5: of the victim and what you think of its role
Speaker 5: in sort of the leniency afforded these youths despite the murder.
Speaker 2: So a big role, as you mentioned, a huge role
Speaker 2: I think in the fact that except for one boy
Speaker 2: going to prison, everybody else being set free. I think
Speaker 2: this is very closely tied to who this person that
Speaker 2: they wind up murdering really was. So Ross, who was
Speaker 2: in his thirties, was a convicted sex offender. He actually
Speaker 2: spent time in the maximum maximum security prison a few
Speaker 2: years prior to this event for having sex with boys
Speaker 2: that are raging between age of eleven and thirteen. So
Speaker 2: it wasn't even the fact that he was gay, which
Speaker 2: in itself in nineteen fifties was something that was extremely
Speaker 2: frowned upon. And almost out of this maximum security prison,
Speaker 2: this man gets engaged to a woman, which basically what
Speaker 2: I was looking at for nineteen fifties and homosexuality. A
Speaker 2: lot of people that were homosexual still societies I asciet
Speaker 2: these expectations definitely took the precedents, and a lot of
Speaker 2: them did it, settle down, have families and almost lived
Speaker 2: like two different lives. In this case, it wasn't just
Speaker 2: the fact that this man was gay. It was the
Speaker 2: fact that he had been convicted of having sex with
Speaker 2: boys that were extremely young and underage. He spent a
Speaker 2: few years in prison, as I mentioned. When he leave prison,
Speaker 2: that is when he essentially decides to move to Denville.
Speaker 2: And I think a lot of that has to do
Speaker 2: with the fact that he lives in a town next
Speaker 2: to Denville, but he hangs out in Denville an awful lot.
Speaker 2: And I think that has a lot to do with
Speaker 2: the fact that there is so many beaches in Denville.
Speaker 2: Denville is very much viewed as like a summer fun
Speaker 2: summer community suburb, and he moves there during summer. He also,
Speaker 2: during this time, actually enlists two become a priest. He
Speaker 2: begins to study to become a priest while this is
Speaker 2: all happening. So when all that is uncovered, specifically in newspapers,
Speaker 2: once this case is happening. So these boys are all arrested.
Speaker 2: They're arrested in September. They are actually kept in a
Speaker 2: county jail for approximately two three months. By the time
Speaker 2: this is all done and over with, their family members
Speaker 2: could only visit them on Saturdays, and they go and
Speaker 2: see them, you know, so sisters, brothers, parents, they go
Speaker 2: and see these boys ultimately through a jail cell for
Speaker 2: a couple hours. Meanwhile, the newspapers are kind of very
Speaker 2: blunt about the fact that this person that these boys
Speaker 2: potentially accidentally killed or murdered was not a good person,
Speaker 2: you know, that he was here to ultimately continue his misdeeds.
Speaker 2: That was the story, the narrative that was presented in
Speaker 2: the town, which, as you mention then, I think plays
Speaker 2: a huge role. And ultimately the fact that this judge
Speaker 2: kind of looks at these boys and says, you know,
Speaker 2: it's almost there's this morality question here. I mean, ultimately,
Speaker 2: this man could have done a lot of harm to
Speaker 2: some people, but at the same time, it's never okay
Speaker 2: to murder anybody. So there's this big morality question here.
Speaker 2: You know, It's like these boys definitely took matters in
Speaker 2: their own hands. And I think that's the vibe that
Speaker 2: I got as well from interviewing people with this. Well,
Speaker 2: these boys try to protect their town. It just got
Speaker 2: out of hand, and ultimately the towns in return was
Speaker 2: going to protect them, which is why Denvil thirteen disappears
Speaker 2: for seventy years.
Speaker 5: You right, though, that the George C, the ringleader, exhibited
Speaker 5: a certain behavior at this hearing unlike the other boys.
Speaker 5: What was that reaction?
Speaker 2: So I've actually spoken to some people that were friends
Speaker 2: with these depical fifteen guys that grew up there and
Speaker 2: it hung out the same soda shop, and and this,
Speaker 2: and I quote. I was basically told that George C.
Speaker 2: Was like Biff from Back to the Future. He was
Speaker 2: the guy that felt like he was untouchable. He was
Speaker 2: the guy that would spit at people, the guy that
Speaker 2: would say in appropriate things to girls, the guy that
Speaker 2: had complete disregard for authority, and almost somebody that everybody
Speaker 2: else was afraid to say no to. I should also
Speaker 2: mention that he also had a criminal record. Out of
Speaker 2: these Tunvil thirteen, he had a criminal record as well.
Speaker 2: And what he does during this court hearing. Because I
Speaker 2: don't like reviewing these court documents I'm thinking to myself, like,
Speaker 2: did they only pick him because he was the oldest.
Speaker 2: But then I kind of you know, he started, you
Speaker 2: start reading into it, and he was the first one
Speaker 2: to initiate hitting himself. He was there to plan it.
Speaker 2: And during this hearing, well all these boys for the
Speaker 2: most part, are crying and they're like, I cannot believe
Speaker 2: this is happening to me. He sits there with like
Speaker 2: a smirk on his face. You know, this vibe of
Speaker 2: almost like well, I did the right thing, and he
Speaker 2: was not afraid. He was not afraid of It's almost
Speaker 2: like I got the vibe of he welcomed the fact
Speaker 2: that he was going to be found as someone that's
Speaker 2: responsible for killing this person. That's just kind of the
Speaker 2: vibe I got from it.
Speaker 5: You had a chance to talk to another person, Donald F.
Speaker 5: You Wright, and this is the person that ran away
Speaker 5: and told his parents that got just sucked into this
Speaker 5: thing going to a movie theater. What did his daughter
Speaker 5: have to say?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I spoke to his daughter since then and
Speaker 2: as well as sister, and you know, we kind of
Speaker 2: got talking about the fact that this was hidden almost
Speaker 2: directly after it happened. It's almost as if someone made
Speaker 2: this unofficial, unwritten decision to say, we're just never going
Speaker 2: to talk about this, the newspapers disappear and it's just
Speaker 2: never mentioned. And when I spoke to his family, you know,
Speaker 2: this boy got kind of loose brought into this. His
Speaker 2: you know, face is on the front page of a newspaper,
Speaker 2: his name is there, except he wasn't really there. He
Speaker 2: didn't plan it, he didn't even stay for the event.
Speaker 2: He was truly an accidental thirteenth boy, and how much
Speaker 2: it impacted his life going forward. And when I spoke
Speaker 2: to his family, they said that they almost wish that,
Speaker 2: as hard as it was for this book to come
Speaker 2: out right now, they almost wish that this was talked
Speaker 2: about seventy years ago. You know, it's almost as if
Speaker 2: like people were able to be open about it, and
Speaker 2: this gu for what it was, and these were kids
Speaker 2: doing stupid things and it got out of hand, and
Speaker 2: this idea that, you know, one rotten apple spoils a
Speaker 2: whole bunch. And when I spoke to a daughter and
Speaker 2: a sister of this boy, they said he lived his
Speaker 2: whole life and shame like he was. He had to
Speaker 2: live a secret. And although I was unable to kind
Speaker 2: of confirm that from a lot of the other guys
Speaker 2: because I haven't talked to their families. But I haven't
Speaker 2: I have an idea that as a feeling that this
Speaker 2: is something that is concurrent with a lot of these men,
Speaker 2: this feeling of just guilt, like they lived with something
Speaker 2: that was It's almost like they were part of his
Speaker 2: secret of a town and they couldn't talk about it.
Speaker 2: And they tell, you know, psychologically and philosophically, and they
Speaker 2: tell you should talk about your problems, right, these guys didn't.
Speaker 2: And from what they got from this family is that
Speaker 2: I mean it led to alcohol. You know, he was
Speaker 2: a great man with a really good life going forward,
Speaker 2: but he truly always when you looked in his face,
Speaker 2: like he was carrying a big weight. Yes.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. In the end with the Denvil thirteen, the city,
Speaker 5: the town again covered up this and didn't want to
Speaker 5: talk about it. But the city went on to take
Speaker 5: some of the device from those town hall meetings and
Speaker 5: towards juveniles and made some changes, didn't they.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they did. So when I was coming up with
Speaker 2: the title for this book, you know, Denville thirteen was
Speaker 2: definitely the title. I mean, that's what they were called.
Speaker 2: Murder definitely drives this story, but I felt like this
Speaker 2: was as much a story about redemption and forgiveness of
Speaker 2: a town and then just the murder. I feel like
Speaker 2: the murder started this. But in reality, after, as you mentioned,
Speaker 2: after this murder takes place, the town responds by holding
Speaker 2: these community meetings that they held during World War Two,
Speaker 2: and now it's a decade later and they bring in
Speaker 2: I think it's really ahead of its time for nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty suburbs. They bring in psychologists, child psychologists, They bring
Speaker 2: in teachers, they bring in community leaders, mayors, police, they
Speaker 2: bring students. You know, they're like, we want to hear
Speaker 2: from high school students, Well, what's going on here? They
Speaker 2: bring they're almost like every possible outlet they could think
Speaker 2: of to try to come up with a plan of
Speaker 2: not just explaining how this happened, but to make sure
Speaker 2: that nothing like this ever happens again, that the boys
Speaker 2: would never be put in a situation where they would
Speaker 2: even be capable or think that this is okay to do.
Speaker 2: And what also to decide is that the town suburbs
Speaker 2: at a time I was opposed to like elevit town
Speaker 2: style suburban town where there's not much to do. It
Speaker 2: is decided that Denville should become a very family oriented community.
Speaker 2: Within a year, you have almost ten new playgrounds. You
Speaker 2: have a whole field directed. You know. Now it's like
Speaker 2: the rage of every town having a field and soccer
Speaker 2: fields and baseball fields. Denville has all of that. In
Speaker 2: the fifties they opened up a whole community basically recreation park,
Speaker 2: multiple baseball fields, football field, soccer field. This is a
Speaker 2: way ahead of its time. They create the Police Athletic
Speaker 2: League for both boys and girls. Within mere months of
Speaker 2: this em Little League Baseball, which at the time was
Speaker 2: only started a year prior and it went only up
Speaker 2: to seek the age of nine or ten. They extended
Speaker 2: up for teenagers as well. The idea was to kind
Speaker 2: of make Devil very inclusive. Do you have parades that
Speaker 2: are all of a sudden kind of bringing together all
Speaker 2: these different community organizations. You have Santa Land, which is
Speaker 2: actually still around to this day, where if you can't
Speaker 2: afford to take your son or daughter to go take
Speaker 2: a picture with Santa in the mall, you go to
Speaker 2: Santa Land and which is basically like a little area
Speaker 2: in Denville where Santa lives and you could bring your
Speaker 2: son or daughter and you don't need to pay anything.
Speaker 2: You just take a picture of Fanta and you go
Speaker 2: talk to Fanta. And that's still going on today. And
Speaker 2: it started directly after this. It was this idea of
Speaker 2: let's turn this event and really try and strive to
Speaker 2: make Denville a very inclusive, family oriented town. And ironically
Speaker 2: that is what attracted Means to move to this town
Speaker 2: and start a family here. I mean, I consider Denvill
Speaker 2: to be my hometown. And it took a great, great
Speaker 2: town for kids raising kids, and.
Speaker 5: Absolutely I want to thank you so much for coming
Speaker 5: on and talking about the Denville thirteen murder, redemption and
Speaker 5: forgiveness in small town New Jersey. It's been fascinating for
Speaker 5: those that might might want to take a look. Is
Speaker 5: there a website? I know this is a history press release.
Speaker 5: Tell us about any place where they might take a
Speaker 5: look at this book.
Speaker 2: Further, So, technically this book you could get this book
Speaker 2: anywhere the books are sold. I mean they tell them
Speaker 2: on Bars and Nobles, Amazon, Target and so on and
Speaker 2: so forth. I have you can find you on on Facebook.
Speaker 2: You could just type in Peter as a blockie and
Speaker 2: you could find my author's page on Facebook. This is
Speaker 2: the History Press for release.
Speaker 6: I also, if you want to read a little bit
Speaker 6: more about myself, I also have a podcast, nothing like
Speaker 6: your production by any means, but my best friend and
Speaker 6: I have a podcast. We're both history teachers and it's
Speaker 6: called History Teachers Talking.
Speaker 2: So you can always find us at History Teachers talkingpodcast
Speaker 2: dot com. And I also have a link in there
Speaker 2: true information about this book, as that is kind of
Speaker 2: like my main social media platform at this point.
Speaker 5: But well, thank you so much, Peter. It's been fascinating
Speaker 5: as a Denville thirteen murder redemption and forgiveness in small
Speaker 5: town New Jersey. Thank you so much for making this call,
Speaker 5: especially under the circumstances. Thank you so much. You have
Speaker 5: a great evening, Thank you.
Speaker 2: So much, and thank you for having me have a
Speaker 2: great night.
Speaker 5: Thank you too.
Speaker 2: Good night.
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