On February 23, , my book on the Mau Maus and Sand Street Angels, who were two Brooklyn youth gangs from the s, has been completed. If you want to buy a copy, click here and this link will take you to an online ordering page. I always find it interesting to see buildings from the s, especially those places where former gang members and their victims lived. It is surprising to see how many pictures of New York City are out there in general, regardless of the time period.
At the time of the killings Sal lived in halfway houses in Manhattan, but before that he lived in the Navy Yard part of Brooklyn on Hudson Ave. Read more about that here. He was sentenced to 7. Salvador Agron was, despite heavy criticism and arguments that he wasn't mentally fit, sentenced to death.
It was also claimed that the trial wasn't fair, partly since Salvador changed his statement saying that he didn't remember the events in the playground. Salvador was at this time 18 years old, and the youngest ever on death row in New York, where he was in Sing Sing. Eleanor Roosevelt worked against the death penalty , and especially for turning Salvador's sentence into a life term. This was supported by the father of victim Robert Young, while Krzesinski's mother vowed for retribution.
Just six days before his scheduled execution in , Governor Nelson Rockefeller changed the sentence to life in prison without any parole until During his time in prison, Salvador changed. He learned how to read and write. He was a calm and liked prisoner.
The social worker Stella Davis became his teacher and close friend. He started to take College correspondence courses and published his poems in newspapers.
He started helping fellow inmates with writing legal papers such as appeals etc. He earned a B. In he wrote a letter to the New York Times where he said "I have been able to maintain the little humanity that was left within me, and working at it in the face of backward surroundings, have been able to cultivate my humanity I will continue to make this a positive experience.
However, how much is enough? How long does it take to correct or rehabilitate a first-time offender? In he participated in a jail-release program, from which he escaped.
He voluntarily turned himself over after two weeks - in Arizona - and claimed temporary insanity. That didn't work, however, and another two years were added to his sentence. In , he was released on parole again, and moved in with his mother and sister in Bronx , New York. He took a job as a youth counselor and also helped former offenders back to society. He lived quietly in New York City with his mother, sister and her daughter.
In , shortly before his 43rd birthday , he was taken to hospital for pneumonia and internal bleedings. The Capeman died a week later, at the age of On February 23, , my book on the Mau Maus and Sand Street Angels, who were two Brooklyn youth gangs from the s, has been completed. If you want to buy a copy, click here and this link will take you to an online ordering page.
My research on New York City youth gangs requires analysis of different kinds of source documents. Period photos, newspaper articles, magazine articles and books are all excellent ways to understand and learn more about gangs.
But this is not enough, so I also rely on primary sources such as interviews with people that lived in gang-ridden neighborhoods and former gang members. Secondary sources can also be a source of information, but care must be taken with them and they should be put through rigorous analysis.
Probably the best kind of sources besides interviews with former gang members are court records. Although court records are part of the public domain, it is difficult to access them and sometimes it can take a tortuous route to get your hands on them.
Navigating a clunky and cumbersome bureaucracy that houses these old records requires patience. Before I describe the frustrating journey to view these records, an explanation of the two different kinds of court records that are available will be helpful.
First, there are District Attorney case files that house all the various kinds of important information the prosecutor needed to win a conviction. Typically, the more serious the crime, the more records there are in the District Attorney case file. For example, a case file for a burglary charge might only total six or seven records.
Court records for homicide cases, however, are more numerous. But even with a defendant pleading guilty, there were still more records than a felonious assault.
For example, statements to the police alone would beef up the case file considerably. On the other hand, if a defendant would plead innocent, a trial would ensue. Trials forced the District Attorney to come up with enough evidence for a conviction, and depending on the complexity and notoriety of the case, this could lead to a large amount of evidence and records in the case file. For example, in the Michael Farmer trial where the defendants pled innocent, there is a considerable amount of records to sift through.
Typically the DA keeps their case files for 25 years, after which point they are given to the Municipal Archives. In the case of the Manhattan District Attorney, case files are all safely in the protection of the Municipal Archives.
The Bronx District Attorney case files seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth from the s, though I am still trying to track them down. As you can see, each of these three boroughs seem to do it differently than the other borough, even though they are all part of New York City. As for the kind of records found in the District Attorney case files, they are generally things like psychiatric reports, statements made to the police, letters written to the District Attorney, crime scene photos, probation reports and a treasure trove of other unusual documents that can sometimes shed further light on a particular defendant or crime.
But again, the files seem to differ a little between the boroughs and even the statements made to the police in Manhattan differ slightly than with statements made to Brooklyn police.
How are these records accessed? To look at these records you need an indictment number. Finding an indictment number is not simple. There are a lot of cases tried from year to year, so it can take a long time to find an defendant name on the microfilm.
Plus, this was in the age before computers, so all the entries put in the ledger are in difficult-to-decipher hand-writing. If you do find the case and defendant name on the microfilm, it is accompanied with the indictment number.
So to find the indictment number, you have to approach the Criminal Court for the particular borough the case was tried in. Provide the defendant name and they will hopefully give you the indictment number.
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