Mrs Crimmins Guilty in 2 Deaths (Published 1971) (2024)

Mrs. Alice Crimmins was convicted yesterday of murder in the first degree in the death of her 5‐year‐old son, Edmund Jr., and of manslaughter in the first degree in the death of her daughter, Alice Marie, 4. They died on or about July 14, 1965.

When the jury foreman read the verdict—the severest possi ble verdict the jury could have reached in its 16 hours of de liberation — Mrs. Crimmins shrieked.

She collasped on the counsel table and began to scream. “Oh my God, how could they do it?” she cried. Her two attorneys clutched her in their arms and tried to console her.

Loud gasps of shock re sounded through the crowded courtroom in State Supreme Court in Queens and many women began to weep audibly.

The defendant's mother, Mrs. Alice Burke, moaned: “Oh Jesus, oh no, it couldn't be.”

John Burke, the defendant's younger brother, fell over on his knees and began to sob. Her former husband, Edmund Crimmins, sitting beside him, bowed his head.

During all this time, the 12 male jurors, their faces grim and tired ‐ looking, remained standing. Judge George J. Bal bach polled them individually about the verdict and each an swered, “Yes,” as the 32‐year‐ old Mrs. Crimmins continued to sob.

Judge Balbach then ordered Mrs. Crimmins remanded to the Manhattan House of Detention for Women to await sentencing on May 13. The punishment for murder is life imprisonment, for first‐degree manslaughter a maximum of 25 years.

In 1968, on trial only for the murder of her daugher, Mrs. Crimmins was Convicted of manslaughter in the first de gree. That verdict was later overturned because jurors had made an unauthorized visit to the scene of the crime.

As seven security guards surrounded the shaking defend ant to take her from the court room, he brother jumped from his aisle scat. He tried to force his way through a barrier of guards to reach her, but they pushed him back and she was taken from the room sobbing.

As spectators began to file slowly from the courtroom, Herbert A. Lyon, the chief de fense attorney —his eyes red, his hands shaking — said he had not expected the verdict. He said he hoped an appeal would ultimately free her.

Two assistant district attor neys, Thomas Demakos and Vincent Nicolosi, looked depressed and solemn. They lingered in the courtroom talk ing about the verdict, and one was overheard to say that he was “stunned by its severity.”

Anthony V. Lombardino, an assistant United States attor ney for the Eastern district of New York, was beaming. As an assistant district attorney of Queens, he prosecuted Mrs. Crimmins in 1968. On his way out of the courtroom, Mr. Loin bardino shook hands with some of the spectators who had, crowded in the hallway.

Later, District Attorney Thomas J. Mackell of Queens said at a news conference that he had “expected the verdict all the time.”

One juror, reached last eve ning by telephone, said that the men had taken their first vote yesterday at about noon and that all agreed Mrs. Crimmins was guilty on both counts.

During the afternoon, he said, they debated the various degrees, with two men holding out for a lesser degree of guilt in the boy's death. The man asked to remain anonymous.

Mrs. Crimmins, who had been free on $25,000 bail, was ordered remanded to jail Thurs day night while the jury delib erated. Yesterday morning, she emerged from a police van, shaking and white‐faced, after an apparently sleepless night.

The trial, the second court room examination of a mur der case now six years old, began March 15 and involved gangsters, convicts and the un derworld, sex and adultery and allegations of “deals” between prosecutors and witnesses. In all, 64 witnesses testified.

Among the few incontrovert ible facts brought out in the more than five weeks of testi mony were that at 9 A.M. on July 14, 1965, Mrs. Crimmins reported to the police that her children were missing, that her daughter's body was found a few hours later and that the boy's body was discovered on July 19.

Contradictory Stories

Beyond that, almost all that the jurors had was the word of one witness against the oth er. There were, for example, Mrs. Sophie Earomirski and Jo seph Rorech for the prosecu tion, Marvin Weinstein and Vin cent Colabella for the defense, and, throughout, conflicting pic tures of Mrs. Crimmins.

Was she a housewife who preferred having romances to caring for her children, who saw her children as a hind rance? That was what the pro secution maintained.

Or was she a “swinger,” as the defense admitted, but not a murderer? An easy‐going woman who liked to play and have a good time, but who loved her children and was truly distraught and shocked when their bodies were found.

There are thousands of un solved murders, the defense said, murders by prowlers and perverts and couldn't these be two more?

Report of ‘Confession’

A key thrust of the prosecu tion case, however, was that Mrs. Crimmins had confessed. Joseph Rorech, a Long Island contractor who had dated her steadily, testified that Mrs. Crimmins told him she had killed her daughter and “agreed” to the death of her son. Mr. Rorech said she had even named Vincent Colabella, a convicted narcotics dealer, as the man who helped her.

But, the defense countered, couldn't she have been the vic tim of a jealous, rejected lover? Didn't Mr. Rorech scheme for years to destroy this woman who used to tease him and laugh with him?

Didn't he accept a deal from the prosecution during the 1968 trial and then, in return, agree to reveal the alleged confes sion?

The prosecution said no, the defense yes.

Colabella himself agreed with the defense. Flown here from the Federal penitentiary in At lanta, where he is serving 20‐year sentence for selling narcotics, he testified twice in behalf of Mrs. Crimmins, woman he said he had never seen before.

Tall, handsome and dour, Co labella became almost as im portant a figure in the trial as the defendant. The prosecu tion asserted throughout that he had helped murder Little Eddie. He has never been in dicted for the crime and, as the defense revealed through testimony, his name was never even mentioned to any of the three grand juries that ex amined the case.

His laconic remarks from the witness stand, however, pro vided some of the most sen sational testimony of the trial. If true, they offered the court room a glimpse of the District Attorney's office — determined and resolute through the years to convict Mrs. Crimmins.

A former assistant district attorney once told him, Cola bella testified, for example, that he could “go home free” if he would testify against her. “Why don't you say when you got there [to Mrs. Crimmins's home on July 14, 1965] the children were already dead?” he quoted the prosecutor as saying.

The other focus of the prose cution case was the man, the woman, the dog and the little boy two witnesses saw walking on 153d Street near the Crim mins apartment in Kew Gar dens Hills at 2 A.M. on the night in question.

One of them, Mrs. Earomi ski, said the woman was Alice Crimmins. She had listened to the couple talking in the street three floors below and there was no doubting, the prosecution contended, that the phrases she overheard referred to the body of Missy—Alice Marie—wrapped up in the bundle in the woman's arms.

Attempts by the prosecution to substantiate this account and by the defense to destroy it, consumed hours of testi mony. Tina DeVita appeared for the state and said she had seen the same family group.

Then Marvin Weinstein testi fied for the defense that he and his wife, dog, little boy and infant daughter had been in the same spot at the same time. “I feel it is my responsi bility to point out we could have been the family they saw,” he said.

The prosecution countered with Anthony King, who said that Mr. Wehistein had lied. He was never on that street that night. Then two more people arrived for the defense. One, Mrs. Weinstein, supported her husband's story. The other, Sheldon Weiss, said Mr. King had a reputation as a liar.

However, as Judge Balbach told the jury before it started deliberating, “Use your own good common sense” to de termine what is the truth and what happened that night six years ago.