Speaker 1: In the early nineteen seventies, New York City was a
Speaker 1: metropolis tetering between decline and defiance. The streets were grimy
Speaker 1: with neglect, the subway cars were covered in graffiti, and
Speaker 1: crime statistics were climbing towards record highs. Despite this, the
Speaker 1: city remained electric with possibility. Eight million people compressed into
Speaker 1: five boroughs, each one convinced that they were living at
Speaker 1: the center of the universe, and in many ways they
Speaker 1: were right. This was still New York, after all, the
Speaker 1: city that never sleeps, but it did hold its breath.
Speaker 1: Sometimes in the small hours between midnight and dawn, when
Speaker 1: the bars had emptied and the street lights hummed alone,
Speaker 1: even New York could feel fragile. West seventy Second Street
Speaker 1: cutstery Manhattan's upper west side, connecting the Hudson River to
Speaker 1: Zandral Park. At the intersection of seventy second the Broadway
Speaker 1: sat Sherman Square, a small triangular park that locals had
Speaker 1: another name for Needle Park. By nineteen seventy three, the
Speaker 1: nickname had already become infamous, immortalized in a film just
Speaker 1: two years earlier. Here, in plain daylight, heroin dealers worked
Speaker 1: the benches while attics knotted off against the trees. It
Speaker 1: was an open air drug market, brazen and desperate, the
Speaker 1: kind of place where discarded syringes glinted in the gutter
Speaker 1: and everybody learned to look away. On New Year's Eve
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy two, the city erupted in its annual
Speaker 1: ritual of noise and hope in Times Square. Half a
Speaker 1: million people crushed together to watch the ball drop through
Speaker 1: At Manhattan, apartment windows glowed with party lights, champagne corks,
Speaker 1: ricochetted off sailings, strangers kissed at midnight. The year nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three arrived with fireworks and car horns and a
Speaker 1: collective delusion that this time things could be different. By
Speaker 1: the first of January, the hangovers had seven The city
Speaker 1: woke slowly that Monday morning. Some businesses were closed, their
Speaker 1: owners granting themselves one more day of rest. Saint Joseph's
Speaker 1: School for the Deaf was one of them, its hallways empty,
Speaker 1: its classroom stark. When it reopened the next day, Tuesday,
Speaker 1: the second of January, students filtered back through its doors.
Speaker 1: Teachers arrived with coffe lesson plants, shaking off the last
Speaker 1: traces of holiday indulgence, the building came back to life,
Speaker 1: but one teacher was noticeably absent. Roseanne Quinn was born
Speaker 1: in November of nineteen forty four into the kind of
Speaker 1: Catholic family where faith wasn't just practiced on Sundays, it
Speaker 1: was woven into everything. Her parents, John and Roseanne Quinn,
Speaker 1: were Irish Americans, carrying with them the traditions and values
Speaker 1: that had traveled across an ocean and settled into the
Speaker 1: soil of their new country. They had three other children, John, Dennis,
Speaker 1: and Donna. The father, John was an executive with Bell Laboratories,
Speaker 1: and his career eventually pulled the family away from their roots,
Speaker 1: relocating them to suburban New Jersey. It was the kind
Speaker 1: of move that millions of American family were making in
Speaker 1: the post war years, trading city blogs for cul de
Speaker 1: sacs tenements for ranch houses with neat lawns and room
Speaker 1: to breathe. Roseanne's childhood unfolded in that suburban landscape, seemingly
Speaker 1: ordinary and safe, But it took another turn when she
Speaker 1: was thirteen years old. Polio struck what should have been
Speaker 1: a year of sleepovers in school, dances, of first crushes,
Speaker 1: and friendship bracelets became a year in a hospital bed.
Speaker 1: When she finally walked out of that hospital, it was
Speaker 1: with a slight limp, a permanent reminder of what her
Speaker 1: body had endured, what it had survived. Some kids might
Speaker 1: have let that define them, but Roseanne didn't. She finished
Speaker 1: her studies at Morse Catholic High School in Denville, graduating
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty two, and she kept going. She enrolled
Speaker 1: in Newark State College and graduated in nineteen sixty six
Speaker 1: with her degree in hand. But then she set her
Speaker 1: sights on somewhere bigger. In her early twenties, Roseanne made
Speaker 1: the move that so many young people from the suburbs
Speaker 1: dreamed about, the move that felt like stepping into the
Speaker 1: real beginning of her life. She came to New York City.
Speaker 1: She moved into a small apartment in the Bronx. Nothing fancy,
Speaker 1: but it was hers. And in New York City, Roseanne
Speaker 1: found work that felt like more than just a job.
Speaker 1: She became a special education teacher at Saint Joseph's School
Speaker 1: for the Deaf. At the time, it was a one
Speaker 1: hundred and two year old institution at one hundred Hutchinson
Speaker 1: River Parkway in the East Bronx. There were fifty teachers
Speaker 1: for about one hundred and fifty students, and Roseanne was
Speaker 1: assigned a class of eight year olds. Children at that
Speaker 1: tender age where the world was still taking shape, where
Speaker 1: a good teacher really could make all the difference, and
Speaker 1: Roseanne was a very dedicated teacher. She often steadiliate to
Speaker 1: help children who were struggling. Some morning, she even brought
Speaker 1: in breakfast Duke's boxes and muffins serreal in small containers.
Speaker 1: She explained to her friend that some of her students
Speaker 1: had to get up early to catch the bus, so
Speaker 1: they often skipped the first meal of the day. They
Speaker 1: arrived hungry, unable to focus, and Roseanne couldn't stand it.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was her own experiences with adversity that drear
Speaker 1: the children who face their own challenges. Maybe she understood
Speaker 1: what it felt like to be different, to navigate a
Speaker 1: world that wasn't built with you in mind. Or maybe
Speaker 1: she just had a gift for seeing people who felt
Speaker 1: them visible, for making them feel valued and heard even
Speaker 1: when they couldn't hear it all. Either way, Roseanne threw
Speaker 1: herself into it. By nineteen seventy two, Roseanne was twenty
Speaker 1: eight and still hungry to grow, still reaching for more.
Speaker 1: She was taking night classes at Hunter College, giving away
Speaker 1: at a master degree in teaching the death. That same year,
Speaker 1: Roseanne moved to Manhattan's Upper west Side. She found herself
Speaker 1: a small studio apartment on the seventh floor of two
Speaker 1: five three West seventy second Street. The building was once
Speaker 1: a hotel, its bones remembering a more elegant era, but
Speaker 1: now I had been converted into the west Over Apartments,
Speaker 1: studios and one bedrooms that were carved out of what
Speaker 1: used to be guest rooms and suites. Rosanne loved the building.
Speaker 1: It sat on a tree lined street where the sounds
Speaker 1: of traffic mixed with distant laughter from Riverside Park. From
Speaker 1: Roseanne's seventh floor window, she could see slices of the city,
Speaker 1: the rooftops, the water tors, the endless sprawl of buildings
Speaker 1: reaching towards the sky. It felt like being part of
Speaker 1: something that was bigger than herself. But the apartment complex
Speaker 1: wasn't in a particularly desirable area. The Upper west Side
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two wasn't the gentrified neighborhood it would
Speaker 1: later become. It was still rough around the edges, still
Speaker 1: finding its identity somewhere between elegance and decay, and Roseanne's
Speaker 1: building was within walking distance of one of the city's
Speaker 1: most notorious drug markets, Needle Park. Al Press owned a
Speaker 1: dry cleaning store nearby. He knew the neighborhood, saw the
Speaker 1: kind of people who drifted through. Years later he would
Speaker 1: remember Rosanne. He said, we get some weird people around here,
Speaker 1: but this girl was different. She was very nice and
Speaker 1: quiet and shy. She wore skirts and blouses, not the
Speaker 1: hippie stuff. Roseanne stood out because she didn't fit the
Speaker 1: profile of the neighborhood's transient population, the attics, the dealers,
Speaker 1: the runaways, the lost souls who congregated in Sherman Square.
Speaker 1: Roseanne was clean cut and respectable, the kind of person
Speaker 1: you'd expect to see teaching in a suburban school, not
Speaker 1: living alone on West seventy second Street. But there she was.
Speaker 1: New York City was winding down after New Year's Eve
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy two. The Conferi still littered the straits
Speaker 1: of Times Square, ground into a pub by a million footsteps.
Speaker 1: Sanitation crews worked through the early morning hours, their trucks
Speaker 1: rumbling through intersections, collecting the debris of celebration. The city
Speaker 1: was in that strange liminal space between the old year
Speaker 1: and the new where time feels elastic and nothing quite
Speaker 1: operates on schedule. For many New Yorkers, January first meant
Speaker 1: sleeping off hangovers behind drawn curtains. Some ventured out for
Speaker 1: walks in Central Park, bundling against the cold, needing fresh
Speaker 1: air and movement to shake off the previous night's success.
Speaker 1: Other stain in pajamas all day, watching the Rose Parade
Speaker 1: on television, making resolutions they'd forget. By February, most of
Speaker 1: the city's bars and restaurants, which were usually buzzing with energy,
Speaker 1: were dark. On New Year's Day, the storefronts were sh uttered.
Speaker 1: By the second of January, life was supposed to return
Speaker 1: to normal. The machinery of the city was meant to restart.
Speaker 1: People were men to go back to work, back to school,
Speaker 1: back to routine. Roseanne was scheduled debate at school teaching
Speaker 1: on the second of January, but nine a m. Came
Speaker 1: and went, and Roseanne never shoot. It wasn't like her,
Speaker 1: The other teachers noticed immediately. Rosanne was punctual, always early,
Speaker 1: even she was usually the one aready in her classroom.
Speaker 1: When others arrived, so her absence was immediately noticed. When
Speaker 1: she failed to show, a substitute teacher stepped in, taking
Speaker 1: over her classroom of eight year olds. But the same
Speaker 1: thing happened again the next morning, Wednesday, January third, Roseanne
Speaker 1: failed to show. Now it wasn't just unusual, it was alarming.
Speaker 1: School authorities made the decision to act. They arranged for
Speaker 1: a colleague to make their way over to Rosanne's apartment
Speaker 1: on West seventy second Street. The colligue arrived at the
Speaker 1: West Over Apartments and explained the situation to the building superintendent,
Speaker 1: A Medio Guzzy. Something was wrong and he needed to
Speaker 1: check on her. They went up to the seventh floor
Speaker 1: in the elevator, or Medio carried the spare cat. He
Speaker 1: ll knocked the front door, turned the handle, and they
Speaker 1: stepped inside. It didn't take them long to see what
Speaker 1: had happened to Roseanne. The small studio apartment was spattered
Speaker 1: in blood. It was on the floor, on the walls.
Speaker 1: Blood was pulling on the bed, soaking into the sheets
Speaker 1: and the mattress, and in the middle lay Roseanne. She
Speaker 1: was nude and sprawled out on the bed. Stab wounds
Speaker 1: peppered her body. She been stabbed six times in the
Speaker 1: stomach and twelve times in the neck. Her face had
Speaker 1: also been beaten. There was also a large statuette lying
Speaker 1: on her face. It was an artistic pace crafted by
Speaker 1: a friend, meant to capture Rosanne's likeness in clemplaster. It
Speaker 1: had been a gift, something personal and meaningful, but now
Speaker 1: it was a weapon. It weighed about sixty five pounds
Speaker 1: and it was clear that somebody had lifted it, raised
Speaker 1: it above their head and smashed it down onto Roseanne's
Speaker 1: face with enough's force to shatter bone. The colleague had
Speaker 1: come to check on Roseanne stumbled backwards, hand over mouth.
Speaker 1: Medio stood frozen, his mind, trying to process what his
Speaker 1: eyes were saying. Detectives quickly arrived at the apartment. They
Speaker 1: coordined it off with crime scene tape. The hallway of
Speaker 1: the seventh floor became restricted. Uniformed officers stood guard while
Speaker 1: crime scene photographers arrived with their equipment. The medical examiner
Speaker 1: was called and they began their investigation. Roseanne's body was
Speaker 1: documented as it was found. Closer inspection, it could be
Speaker 1: seen that there were bite marks on her body. Detectives
Speaker 1: needed to figure out how the killer had gotten in sight.
Speaker 1: They examined the door, the lock, the frame, but there
Speaker 1: was no sign of forced entry. The door hadn't been
Speaker 1: kicked in, the lock hadn't been jimmied or picked, and
Speaker 1: the apartment hadn't been rifled through. Roseanne's belongings were largely undisturbed,
Speaker 1: and nothing was obviously missing. It was apparent that this
Speaker 1: wasn't a burglary that had escalated. Roseann's apartment faced a
Speaker 1: door to the stairwell just across the narrow hallway. It
Speaker 1: was one of the first things you'd see if he
Speaker 1: came up those stairs instead of taking the elevator. One
Speaker 1: theory detectives were considering was that the killer had climbed
Speaker 1: the stairs, perhaps avoiding the elevator, deliberately knocked on the
Speaker 1: first door he saw, and then barged his way inside
Speaker 1: when it opened, a crime of opportunity. Either that or
Speaker 1: there was another possibility, one that felt more likely given
Speaker 1: the evidence. Rose I knew her killer and she welcomed
Speaker 1: them inside. She'd opened the door willingly and let her
Speaker 1: killer into the apartment. The news of Roseanne's murder spread
Speaker 1: through New York City rapidly, carried by newspapers and television broadcasts.
Speaker 1: It absolutely terrified women, in particular those living alone. Single
Speaker 1: women in studio apartments all over Manhattan suddenly felt exposed
Speaker 1: and vulnerable. They checked their locks obsessively. They stopped answering
Speaker 1: the door after dark. Barbara Mer lived in an apartment
Speaker 1: below Roseanne's, just one floored on in the same building.
Speaker 1: She probably passed Rosanne in the lobby in the elevator
Speaker 1: on the street. Maybe they had exchanged pleasantries, the small
Speaker 1: talk of neighbors. Now she gave an interview with the
Speaker 1: Daily News and said, we're having an extra lock installed tomorrow.
Speaker 1: I know the killer might have been invited upstairs, but
Speaker 1: I'm scared all the same. He admitted. She would have
Speaker 1: preferred to live over on East Side, where it was safer,
Speaker 1: or at least where people told themselves it was safer,
Speaker 1: But rent there was much more expansive, often double what
Speaker 1: you'd pay on the Upper west Side. Barbara was paying
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty five dollars a month for her apartment.
Speaker 1: For many young women trying to make it in New York,
Speaker 1: the Upper west Side was what they could afford. Safety
Speaker 1: was a luxury, priced out of reach, and indeed the
Speaker 1: area wasn't that safe. Rosanne herself had filed a complaint
Speaker 1: against a man the year before for punching her in
Speaker 1: the face after she rejected him. It was an unprovoked,
Speaker 1: violent encounter, the kind that leaves you looking over your shoulder.
Speaker 1: He was the first person detectives looked into, pulling its file,
Speaker 1: tracking him down for questioning, but he was quickly rolled out.
Speaker 1: His alibi was solid. He wasn't their man. At the time,
Speaker 1: there was a new rape analysis unit operating within the
Speaker 1: NYP day a cutting edge approach to investigating sexual crimes.
Speaker 1: Detectives called in their assistance, hoping the unit's resources might
Speaker 1: crack the case open. They used computers to detect patterns
Speaker 1: and crimes against women, massive machines that filled entire rooms,
Speaker 1: fed with punch cards and magnetic tape. Records of attempted
Speaker 1: rapes in the area and names of neighborhood residents with
Speaker 1: records for violence were fed into the computers. The machines
Speaker 1: processed the data searching for connections. However, no suspicious patterns emerged,
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't be long until detectives received their first
Speaker 1: lucrative tip. Rosanne was a familiar face in the bars
Speaker 1: that surrounded her apartment. According to some friends, she had
Speaker 1: a habit of dating, not in the traditional sense of
Speaker 1: dinner reservations, something more spontaneous. Roseanne liked to sit by
Speaker 1: herself and read in the bars on the West Side,
Speaker 1: nursing a drink while turning pages content in her own company.
Speaker 1: But she also liked to strike up conversations with men.
Speaker 1: She was friendly and approachable. They often brought her drinks,
Speaker 1: and the conversation would flow about books about the city,
Speaker 1: about nothing in particular. Sometimes Roseanne invited these men back
Speaker 1: to her apartment. It was a pattern that her friends
Speaker 1: knew about, but perhaps they didn't fully understand. This was
Speaker 1: Rosanne the teacher who stead lay it to help her
Speaker 1: students and brought them breakfast. But it was also Roseanne,
Speaker 1: the single woman in her late twenties living alone in Manhattan,
Speaker 1: looking for connection in whatever form it took. And on
Speaker 1: New Year's Day, Roseanne was seen at a bar named W. M. Tweets.
Speaker 1: It was close to where she lived, just a short
Speaker 1: walk from the West Over apartments. Three witnesses told detectives
Speaker 1: they had seen her there, sitting at the bar with
Speaker 1: two men. The trio seemed relaxed. Conversational drinks were ordered
Speaker 1: and consumed. At around eleven p m. One of the
Speaker 1: men left, gathering his coat and heading out into the
Speaker 1: winter night, leaving Roseanne alone with the other. Then, some
Speaker 1: time later, she and the other man left the bar together.
Speaker 1: They walked out into the darkness, perhaps headed towards her
Speaker 1: apartment just blocks away. It was the last time anybody
Speaker 1: reported seeing Roseanne Quinn alive. She was killed just stars later.
Speaker 1: Detectives announced that they were seeking either of these men.
Speaker 1: They would have been the last people to see her.
Speaker 1: The witnesses at w N Tweede's had provided descriptions, and
Speaker 1: investigators worked with a sketch artists to create a composite.
Speaker 1: They held a press conference, standing before a room full
Speaker 1: of reporters with no pads and cameras. The composite sketch
Speaker 1: was released, distributed to newspapers across the city, posted in
Speaker 1: police stations, and shown on the evening news. It showed
Speaker 1: a young man with distinctive features. They stressed that he
Speaker 1: was in a suspect, just a person of interest who
Speaker 1: could offer assistance in the search for Rosanne's killer. They
Speaker 1: needed him to come forward. They needed to know what
Speaker 1: he knew. He was described as about one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty five pawns, twenty eight to thirty years old, and
Speaker 1: around six feet tall. He had light brown hair that
Speaker 1: was described as having a wet look, styled slicked back
Speaker 1: and not long. He was of slight build and fair complexion,
Speaker 1: more Nordic than Latin. One detective noted, Deputy Inspector Richard
Speaker 1: Nicastro addressed the cameras directly, we would like for him
Speaker 1: to come forward. He might possibly be of some assistance
Speaker 1: to us in solving this crime. The implication was clear,
Speaker 1: even if unstated, come forward voluntarily in you're helping stay hidden,
Speaker 1: and you become something else. In. As the search for
Speaker 1: the man and the bar pressed on, Rosanne was led
Speaker 1: to rest. Around three hundred people gathered at Saint Mary's
Speaker 1: Roman Catholic Church in Wharton, the community where Roseanne had
Speaker 1: grown up and where her family still lived. The pews
Speaker 1: filled with relatives, colleagues from Saint Joseph's school, former classmates,
Speaker 1: neighbors who remembered her as just a girl. The service
Speaker 1: was presided over by Roseanne's cousin, Reverend John Waldron. He
Speaker 1: spoke of her dedication, her kindness, her commitment to children
Speaker 1: who needed her most. Afterwards, Rosanne was buried in the
Speaker 1: church cemetery. Her parents stood at the gravesite, John and
Speaker 1: Roseanne Quinn, watching as their daughter was lured into the earth.
Speaker 1: The days continued to pass, and the man seen on
Speaker 1: a date with Roseanne failed to come forward. This led
Speaker 1: to alarm bells ringing with the investigators. If he was innocent,
Speaker 1: why hadn't he come forward, Detectives wondered, fear was in
Speaker 1: every newspaper, the composite was on television. Someone who had
Speaker 1: nothing to hide would have called by nou. His silence
Speaker 1: suggested guilt. Detectives began to theorize that Rosanne had invited
Speaker 1: the man back to her apartment and he killed her.
Speaker 1: Either that or he had followed her back uninvited and
Speaker 1: then forced his way inside. In an effort to track
Speaker 1: him down, detectives approached Rosanne's neighbors with the composite, knocking
Speaker 1: on doors throughout the west Over apartments, asking if anybody
Speaker 1: had seen him. Had anyone noticed a stranger on New
Speaker 1: Year's Day or the early morning ours of January two,
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be long before the man in the composite
Speaker 1: sketch was identified, but he was identified by somebody very uninspected.
Speaker 1: Gary Gah stared at the composite sketch in the newspaper.
Speaker 1: His blood ran cold, his hands trembled slightly as he
Speaker 1: held the page. He knew that the composite sketch was him.
Speaker 1: The wet look hair, the Nordic features, the slight build.
Speaker 1: It was unmistakably his own face staring back at him
Speaker 1: from the newspaper. On New Year's Day, he had been
Speaker 1: drinking at W. N. Twade's with his twenty two year
Speaker 1: old friend, John Wayne Wilson. They had struck up a
Speaker 1: conversation with a woman there who said her name was
Speaker 1: Roseanne Quinn. She was friendly, intelligent, easy to talk to.
Speaker 1: The three of them sat at the bar together, drinks accumulating.
Speaker 1: So I'm passing in the loose way it does in
Speaker 1: bars where nobody has anywhere urgent to be. Gary left
Speaker 1: at eleven pm that night because he had worked the
Speaker 1: next morning he needed sleep. His friend John said that
Speaker 1: he was going to stay out later. He waved Gary off,
Speaker 1: turning back to his conversation with Roseanne. The two men
Speaker 1: had lived together in an apartment on the West Side
Speaker 1: for a round seven months. But John Willam Wilson wasn't
Speaker 1: just another young man trying to make it in New York.
Speaker 1: He'd come to the city after escaping from jail in
Speaker 1: Miami in July the previous year. He was awaiting trial
Speaker 1: for breaking and entering when he'd simply walked away, vanishing
Speaker 1: into the anonymous sprawl of another city. John had been
Speaker 1: born and raised in Indianapolis, and he was the oldest
Speaker 1: of four children. His father was a crane operator, and
Speaker 1: his mother steed at home to raise John and his
Speaker 1: three siblings. She was said to be domineering, and his
Speaker 1: father rarely entered family conversations. John's emotional trouble began in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty when he was struck by a car and
Speaker 1: knocked unconscious as he left school. He started suffering from
Speaker 1: blackout spells and migraines. He struggled to sleep. He started
Speaker 1: running away from home when he was just eleven. When
Speaker 1: he was fifteen, he woke up with deep gashes on
Speaker 1: his arm. He torn out his skin while he was asleep.
Speaker 1: This was only the first in a long list of instances.
Speaker 1: He told friends that he felt there were two sides
Speaker 1: to his personality. He said he was afraid that the
Speaker 1: bad might try to do away with the good. John
Speaker 1: was committed to the Madison State Mental Hospital for eighteen months,
Speaker 1: and then he headed to Miami. By nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: he was married to a woman named Candy and they
Speaker 1: were expecting a baby together. His family were in Miami
Speaker 1: while he laid low in New York City, living under
Speaker 1: the radar, avoiding anything that might draw attention. He was
Speaker 1: drinking a quart of whiskey a day. According to some sources,
Speaker 1: he sold sex to men to get by. It was
Speaker 1: income that came with no paper trail, no tax forms,
Speaker 1: no questions asked. It kept him fed and housed while
Speaker 1: he waited for whatever came next. When Gary woke up
Speaker 1: on the morning of January two, he found that John
Speaker 1: hadn't returned home that night. The apartment was quiet and
Speaker 1: John's bed was empty. That wasn't entirely unusual. Sometimes John
Speaker 1: stared out, crashed with other people, lived his life in
Speaker 1: ways that Gary didn't ask too many questions about. John
Speaker 1: was something of a drifter. Did you know that Americans
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Speaker 1: went to work and when he arrived back home later
Speaker 1: that day, John was there, but something was wrong. He
Speaker 1: was in a state of panic. His movements were jerky
Speaker 1: and unfocused, His eyes were wild. He looked like a
Speaker 1: man that was coming aparted, the seems. He then told
Speaker 1: Gary what happened. He said that he had gone home
Speaker 1: with Roseanne to her apartment after Gary left them at
Speaker 1: the bar. They'd walked together through the cold straits to
Speaker 1: her building, taking the elevator to the seventh floor, where
Speaker 1: she had unlocked the door and welcomed him in. They
Speaker 1: then smoked marijuana and attempted to have sex, but John
Speaker 1: said he couldn't get an erection. According to him, Rouseanne
Speaker 1: insulted him. He said she made him feel small and worthless,
Speaker 1: and then she ordered him to leave. John said that
Speaker 1: an argument broke out, and during the struggle, he grabbed
Speaker 1: a knife from somewhere in this small studio. He said.
Speaker 1: He then lunged at Roseanne and stabbed her to death.
Speaker 1: He stood there for a few moments afterwards, staring at
Speaker 1: what he'd done. He said. He then covered her body
Speaker 1: with the bath room. He had a shower, washing away
Speaker 1: the blood, and then he left the apartment, but not
Speaker 1: before wiping his fingerprints off the murder weapon, the door knobs,
Speaker 1: and other surfaces he thought he'd touched. He said, he
Speaker 1: even wiped the elevator button. Gary didn't believe John. The
Speaker 1: murder still hadn't been discovered at this point. It was
Speaker 1: still January, second before the school had noticed Roseanne's absence,
Speaker 1: before anybody had gone to check on her. There was
Speaker 1: no news coverage, no police investigation, no reason to think
Speaker 1: that John was telling the truth. Gary thought that John
Speaker 1: was making up stories because he wanted to go home,
Speaker 1: because he wanted money, because he wanted an excuse to
Speaker 1: leave New York and return to his family in Miami.
Speaker 1: It sounded like the kind of dramatic fiction some one
Speaker 1: might invent to extract cash from a roommate. So Gary
Speaker 1: gave him enough money to leave torn. He just gave
Speaker 1: it to him, glad to be rid of whatever the
Speaker 1: situation was, whatever John was going through, John said he
Speaker 1: was flying out to Miami to pick up his wife, Candy.
Speaker 1: He packed his things and disappeared. But just a few
Speaker 1: days later Gary read about the murder in the newspaper
Speaker 1: Teachers laying in Upper West Side apartment. The details matched
Speaker 1: what John had told him, the location, the timing, everything.
Speaker 1: Then he saw the composite sketch of a man he
Speaker 1: knew was him, his own face, rendered him pencil and
Speaker 1: distributed across the city. The pieces fell into place. John
Speaker 1: hadn't been lying. John had killed someone and Gary had
Speaker 1: given him money to escape. Gary was terrified that he
Speaker 1: could be charged as an accessory after the fact he
Speaker 1: had aided a fugitive, He had helped a murderer leave
Speaker 1: torn the legal consequences could destroy his life. He called
Speaker 1: up his friend Fred Ebb to ask for some advice.
Speaker 1: Fred was a successful lyricist. He'd written Cabaret in New York,
Speaker 1: New York. Somebody with connections, somebody who might know what
Speaker 1: to do. On the phone, Gary said he couldn't explain
Speaker 1: the situation Philly, but said it was the worst thing ever.
Speaker 1: He was panicking. He said he was going to fly
Speaker 1: out to California, so Gary showed up at Fred's home
Speaker 1: in bel Air, Los Angeles. He sat down with Fred
Speaker 1: and his personal assistant, Gary Greenwood and told them exactly
Speaker 1: what happened. He said he was scared that John had
Speaker 1: killed Rosanne. Fred placed a call to Gary's therapist in
Speaker 1: New York to ask for advice. She listened to the
Speaker 1: situation and said she would contact an attorney who specialized
Speaker 1: in criminal matters. Shortly thereafter, the attorney called Fred back.
Speaker 1: He said to put Gary on the first plane back
Speaker 1: to New York City, and he told Fred and Gary
Speaker 1: not to say a word about what Gary had told them.
Speaker 1: Attorney client privileged, which didn't extend to them, and they
Speaker 1: could be compelled to testify if anybody found out what
Speaker 1: they knew. So Gary returned to New York City, but
Speaker 1: he was terrified about contacting police. The fear nodded him.
Speaker 1: He knew that his information could put his friend John
Speaker 1: on death row. He knew that testifying might mean John's execution.
Speaker 1: That wey sat heavy on his conscience even knowing what
Speaker 1: John had done. His attorney ultimately cut a deal for
Speaker 1: immunity with the Manhattan District Attorney in exchange for Gary's
Speaker 1: feel confession and testimony he wouldn't be charged as an accessory.
Speaker 1: He would walk away clean. Gary agreed to meet with
Speaker 1: the detectives, and he told them everything he knew, every
Speaker 1: detail of that night, of John's confession of where he'd gone.
Speaker 1: He agreed to have his phone tapped. The police installed
Speaker 1: recording equipment, waiting for the call they hoped would come.
Speaker 1: Later that night, John called Gary. He was calling from
Speaker 1: his brother's apartment in Indiana. Within ours, two detectives were
Speaker 1: on a play into Indianapolis, Indiana. Their target was twenty
Speaker 1: two year old John Wayne Wilson. They arrived outside Wilson's
Speaker 1: brothers Maurice's apartment on North Delaware Street in downtown Indianapolis.
Speaker 1: They knocked and the door swung open. Standing there was
Speaker 1: John Wayne Wilson. He didn't run, he didn't fight, he
Speaker 1: didn't even look surprised. Wilson calmly said, let me put
Speaker 1: on my shoes. At the Indianapolis Homicide Division, Wilson signed
Speaker 1: a waiver of extradition without hesitation. He didn't deny that
Speaker 1: he had killed Rosanne. In fact, he made a full
Speaker 1: and detailed confession. At a press conference announcing the arrest,
Speaker 1: District Attorney Frank Cogan said, the quick solution of this
Speaker 1: case is a striking example of how the different arms
Speaker 1: of law enforcement can work together. Wilson was extradided back
Speaker 1: to New York and he was immediately sent to Bellevue
Speaker 1: Hospital for psychiatric observation. On the eighteenth of January, he
Speaker 1: appeared in court where he was indicted for the murder
Speaker 1: of Roseann Quinn. The psychiatric evaluation had found him mentally competent,
Speaker 1: capable of standing trial, capable of understanding the charges against him.
Speaker 1: His defense attorneys, John Nicholas Nuzzi and Aaron jaff weren't convinced.
Speaker 1: They filed notice with State Supreme Court Justice Gerald Golkin
Speaker 1: that they would be mounting an insanity defense, but as
Speaker 1: it turned out, there would be no defense, there would
Speaker 1: be no trial, there would be no justice. After being
Speaker 1: declared competent, Wilson was transferred to the Tombs the Manhattan
Speaker 1: Detention Complex, a place with a reputation as grim as
Speaker 1: its nickname suggests. Then in April something changed. Defense attorney
Speaker 1: Aaron jf grew concerned. He feared that Wilson might be
Speaker 1: suffering from brain damage and requested he be sent back
Speaker 1: to Bellevue for further testing. The request was granted. Wilson
Speaker 1: returned to the psychiatric ward, where everybody anticipated he would
Speaker 1: finally receive comprehensive evaluation, but those tests never came. Instead,
Speaker 1: Wilson languished weeks passed in limbo, and on the fourth
Speaker 1: of May, Wilson was sent back to the Tombs. By
Speaker 1: this point, prison doctors had diagnosed him as schizophrenic. They
Speaker 1: also flagged him as suicidal. When Wilson had been at
Speaker 1: the Tombs before, he'd been housed in a dormitory style
Speaker 1: room with other inmates, but now overcrowding had changed the equation.
Speaker 1: He was sent to the fourth floor and placed in
Speaker 1: a single cell alone with his thoughts. He could have
Speaker 1: been placed in a mental observation ward. He should have
Speaker 1: been placed in a mental observation ward, but he wasn't.
Speaker 1: The next day, just after noon, Wilson got into an
Speaker 1: argument with the prison guard. His voice rose to a
Speaker 1: scream as he yelled, I'm going to kill myself rather
Speaker 1: than raising an alarm, rather than calling for help, The
Speaker 1: guard taunted him. He asked him if he wanted bed
Speaker 1: sheets to hang himself. Then he disappeared. Moments later, he
Speaker 1: returned bed sheets in hand, He threw them into Wilson's
Speaker 1: cell and walked off. Twenty minutes passed. An inmate performing
Speaker 1: orderly duties made his way along the fourth floor corridor,
Speaker 1: moving from cell to cell. When he reached Wilson's cell,
Speaker 1: he peered through the bars. What he saw would traumatize him.
Speaker 1: Wilson's feet dangled in the air, his body suspended from
Speaker 1: a noose fashioned from torn bed sheets, looped through the
Speaker 1: ceiling ventilation holes. The inmates screams brought guards running. They
Speaker 1: cut Wilson down and began mouth to mouth resuscitation. Minutes
Speaker 1: passed before a jail doctor arrived and took over, but
Speaker 1: they all knew it was already too late. John Wayne
Speaker 1: Wilson was pronounced dead. The Medical Examiner's office, doctor Lavelle Levine,
Speaker 1: took an impression of Wilson's teeth. He said they were
Speaker 1: consistent with the bitte marks that were found on Roseanne's body.
Speaker 1: The Board of Corrections, which his nine community leaders appointed
Speaker 1: by the mayor to oversee the prison system, launched an
Speaker 1: investigation into Wilson's death. What they found was damning. Wilson
Speaker 1: was the sixth inmate to take his life in New
Speaker 1: York City that year. It was only May. The board's
Speaker 1: conclusion was scathing the courts, the correction Department, the defense attorneys,
Speaker 1: every focet of the criminal justice system had ignored Wilson's
Speaker 1: suicidal tendencies. His first court appearance had included documentation of
Speaker 1: his mental state, yet he was denied adequate psychiatric care.
Speaker 1: When he was finally sent back to Bellevue at his
Speaker 1: attorney's assistance, he simply sat in the psychiatric ward, untested
Speaker 1: and forgotten. One day after returning to the Tombs, he
Speaker 1: was dead. Board Chairman Robert said that the handling of
Speaker 1: John Wayne Wilson exemplified the apathy and lack of accountability
Speaker 1: that permitted a hopelessly overburdened criminal justice system. Everybody had
Speaker 1: failed to respond properly to his needs. There was one exception.
Speaker 1: Lewis Steele, who was Wilson's original court appointed defense attorney,
Speaker 1: had immediately lined up two private psychiatrists to evaluate his client.
Speaker 1: Both Steele and Wilson had requested that Steele remain on
Speaker 1: the case, but Justice George Postel had assigned two new
Speaker 1: defense attorneys instead. John Wilson's body was returned to Shelbyville,
Speaker 1: where he grew up. He was buried in the town
Speaker 1: cemetery as the service began. His wife gave birth to
Speaker 1: a baby boy in Miami. Tragically, he was born sleeping.
Speaker 1: The death of Roseanne Quinn didn't fade quietly into the
Speaker 1: archives of New York City crime. Her story called the
Speaker 1: attention of novelist Judy Rosner. Rossner saw something in the
Speaker 1: tragedy that went far beyond the typical crime story. Here
Speaker 1: was a young woman, a school teacher, who had led
Speaker 1: a double life that challenged the neat categories society liked
Speaker 1: to draw. Her murder raised unco comfortable questions about the
Speaker 1: changing landscape of the nineteen seventies, about sexual liberation, about risk,
Speaker 1: about the dangers lurking in the city singles bar scene.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy five, Rosner published Looking for Mister Goodbar,
Speaker 1: a novel that was inspired by Roseanne's life and death.
Speaker 1: Though fictionalized, the book drey heavily on the real case,
Speaker 1: the story of a teacher by day who frequented singles
Speaker 1: bars at night, searching for connection in all the wrong places.
Speaker 1: It struck a nerve in in America, grappling with the
Speaker 1: aftermath of the sexual Revolution, capturing both the allure and
Speaker 1: the peril of the new freedom's women were claiming. Two
Speaker 1: years later, in nineteen seventy seven, the book was adapted
Speaker 1: into a film starring Diane Keaton, bringing Roseanne's story, or
Speaker 1: at least the fictional version of it, to an even
Speaker 1: wider audience. But here's what often gets lost behind the
Speaker 1: best seller, behind the Hollywood adoption. There was a real
Speaker 1: woman Ruzanquin, had dreams, had students who loved her, had
Speaker 1: a family who mourned her. Very little is known about
Speaker 1: her actual life. And there was a real killer, a
Speaker 1: deeply troubled young man who should have received the mental
Speaker 1: health care he so desperately needed, but instead he died
Speaker 1: alone in a cell, failed by every single system meant
Speaker 1: to help him. The case ultimately became a cautionary tale,
Speaker 1: filtered through fiction, reshaped by popular culture, but the truth
Speaker 1: remains embedded in the court records and newspaper clippings of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three. Two lives cut short, a system exposed
Speaker 1: as broken, and a story that still haunts us decades later.
Speaker 1: Well that is it for this episode of Morbidology. As always,
Speaker 1: thank you so much, for listening, and I'd like to
Speaker 1: say a massive thank you to my new supporters up
Speaker 1: on Paedron, Kelsey, carne Afton, Luisa and Brandon. The link
Speaker 1: to Patron is in the show notes if you'd like
Speaker 1: to join. I upload ad free and early release episodes
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, and I also send out some cool
Speaker 1: merch along with a thank you card. I also upload
Speaker 1: bonus episodes of Morbidology Plus that aren't on their regular
Speaker 1: podcast platforms, and these are also available on Apple subscriptions
Speaker 1: for any of you that like to listen on Apple.
Speaker 1: I'd also like to say to everybody Happy New Year,
Speaker 1: and thank you for all the support the past year.
Speaker 1: Everybody that's listened to an episode, commented on an episode,
Speaker 1: Garden episode, I really really do appreciate all of your
Speaker 1: support and I'm eternally grateful. The past year has genuinely
Speaker 1: been the best year of my life, and my little
Speaker 1: baby girl, Amber just turned one on the twelfth of December.
Speaker 1: It's hard to imagine that I ever existed without her
Speaker 1: in my life, and she genuinely is the best thing
Speaker 1: that ever happened to me. So I hope that everybody
Speaker 1: has had an amazing year and here's to twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: Until next time, take care of yourself, stay safe, and
Speaker 1: have an amazing week.