Media Meddlers: The Real Truth About the Murder Case Against Rubin “Hurricane” Carter

By LeAD DetectiVe Vincent J. De Simone Jr. WitH JAmeS V. De Simone

Media Meddlers is a provocative book that not only addresses one of the nation’s most controversial murder cases, but also indicts a sacred institution— the media—for the way some of its members used the power of the First Amendment to turn justice into injustice. Seldom has there been written a book that so clearly exposes the abuse of freedom of speech.
Early on the morning of June 17, 1966, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, then at the height of his career as a professional middleweight boxer, and his friend, young John Artis, walked into the Lafayette Grill in Paterson, New Jersey, and blasted away with a shotgun and .32 caliber pistol, killing two men and a woman. Another man, shot through the head, miraculously survived.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hybrid Global Publishing
• Release date: Jun 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781948181457

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INTRODUCTION

My father, Vincent J. De Simone, was a caring and loving provider to his family, albeit a strict disciplinarian. As the only son (among four sisters) of a law enforcement officer, there was enough pressure on me growing up, but it was even more challenging during the time of the Rubin Hurricane Carter case. My father’s only concern, no matter how troubling work became, was for my family to live by the Good Book and to conduct our lives with honesty and integrity. This was reinforced by a gift I received from my dad at the age of fifteen: a mounted plaque with a poem entitled the The Man in the Glass. The essence of the poem is to be true to yourself, that honesty is your strongest asset. It reads as follows:

The Man in the Glass

When you get what you want in your struggle for self

And the world makes you king for a day,

Just go to a mirror and look at yourself,

And see what that man has to say.

For it isn’t your father or mother or wife,

Whose judgement upon you must pass,

The fellow whose verdict counts most in life

Is the one staring back in the glass.

He’s the fellow to please, never mind all the rest,

For he’s with you clear up to the end,

And you’ve passed the most dangerous, difficult test

If the man in the glass is your friend.

You may be like little Jack Horner and chisel a plum,

And think you’re a wonderful guy,

But the man in the glass says you’re a bum

If you can’t look him straight in the eye.

You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years,

And get pats on the back as you pass,

But your final reward will be heartaches and tears

If you’ve cheated the man in the glass.

—DALE WIMBROW

Throughout my life, when we spoke man to man, my father insisted upon one thing that showed true honesty: looking him directly in the eyes. Having interrogated prisoners his entire career, he would always tell me that if the defendant didn’t look straight into his eyes, he was usually lying. As I grew up, I often thought to myself that my father was the kind of man that I wanted to emulate, and if I grew up following his advice and living according to his standards of honesty and integrity, I was bound to succeed both personally and professionally.

Over the past fifty years my family and I have encountered many accusations and innuendos that painted my dad as a crooked cop who was allegedly racist at a time when racism was running rampant in our country, and that he was out to get Rubin Carter. If anyone had taken the time to get to know my father, they would have quickly ascertained that he was a hardworking, trustworthy, honest man who was never out to get anyone. His only goal was to find the truth and prove the facts toward guilt or innocence and act accordingly. Everything he did in his career in law enforcement was based on innocent until proven guilty. The Carter/Artis murders were no exception!

For many years I thought about trying to finally clear my father’s name once and for all. In 2018, when the BBC informed me about their plans of releasing a well-documented podcast about the Carter case, it compelled me to release a manuscript for a book that my dad had written with a co-author. It contains the true facts of the case, documented by actual evidence, and shows how Carter’s guilt was proven through two trials and indisputable facts.

I finally felt that the time was right to reveal the actual manuscript, which I had held for fifty years, as a factual accounting of what transpired from the evening of the murders until Rubin Carter was convicted of murder. If the public wants to know the truth, they now will have the opportunity to educate themselves on the facts of this case. Rubin Carter and John Artis were proven guilt, not once, but twice, of committing the murders at the Lafayette Grill on June 17, 1966. The convicted men were never exonerated from their crimes, and when the potential of yet another trial came up, they each had only a few years left to serve on their respective sentences. Most of the parties involved in the trial were either retired or deceased, and the decision was made to not spend the time or money once again to arrive at the same conclusion. Our hope is that the victims of these murders, James Oliver, Fred Cedar Grove Bob Nauyaks, and Hazel Tanis, as well as my father, are able to REST IN PEACE.

As one final testament to my father, he left me another plaque that I use as a guideline for my life and cherish every single day. This reinforces the incredible man my father was and what he stood for. The plaque reads as follows:

De Simone

You got it from your father, it was all he had to give.

So, it’s yours to use and cherish, for as long as you may live.

If you lose the watch he gave you, it can always be replaced.

But a black mark on your name, son, can never be erased.

It was clean the day you took it, and a worthy name to bear.

When he got it from his father, there was no dishonor there.

So, make sure you guard it wisely, after all is said and done.

You’ll be glad the name is spotless when you give it to your son.

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Who steals my purse steals trash;

’Tis something, nothing;

’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been

slave to thousands;

But he that filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which no enriches him,

And makes me poor indeed.

SHAKESPEARE, OTHELLO

Seconds after the jury brought in a repeat murder conviction of Rubin Hurricane Carter and his pal, John Artis, I rushed to the nearest telephone and called Barbara Mancuso, daughter of one of the three victims who were brutally shot down in a barroom slaughter in Paterson, New Jersey, more than ten years ago.

We’ve redeemed your mother’s death, Barbara, I told her as my voice trembled under the excitement. The jury has found them both guilty.

She began to sob, and amidst the tears I heard her say, Vince, there’s only one place for you to go when your times comes, and that’s heaven.

We became emotional on the telephone, Barbara because she now knew that the men who killed her mother in one of America’s most heinous triple slayings would no longer go free, and me because that was the nicest thing anyone said to me in more than two years of bitterness, disappointments, and vicious name calling.

The months that preceded the jury verdict were the most difficult of my fifty-eight years, even harsher than the agonizing times I spent recovering from a Nazi sniper bullet that pierced the left side of my face and projected out of my mouth in World War II. Physical pain diminishes after time. There is no medicine to cure the mental anguish that people perpetrate upon each other.

In the newspapers, on television, and on radio, I had been painted by the media, the defendants, uninformed politicians, and show business celebrities as a diabolical ogre who masterminded a wild story to send two poor innocent men to prison. Barely a night passed that my wife, four daughters, and son did not flick on the television set to hear about this vindictive contriver who lived in their household. I was vilified and castigated unlike any policeman in the history of the United States, not only in the comparative privacy of the courtroom, but exposed in the open arena for all to see.

And the tragedy was that I was not allowed to answer. How badly I wanted to reply every time the public relations people tried the case in the New York Times or on New York City’s Channel 5, or in the Star-Ledger, New Jersey’s largest newspaper. But I was hamstrung by the law that today zealously protects defendants and not so zealously guards the prosecutors who represent the people. This law decreed that I was not to say anything in public that might prejudice the defendants’ case. So, as a law enforcement officer, I was required to remain silent pending trial, never reeling once outwardly but often going down for the count inwardly.

Now it is over. The jury has vindicated me with a miraculous decision, affirming a verdict that occurred ten years ago and overcoming what seemed to be insurmountable odds.

The Carter-Artis case has an epilogue, though, and this book shall be it. In the pages to follow will be my account of how this incredible case developed into a fallacious cause célèbre. This will be my story of how they stole my purse but couldn’t filch my name.

It is the nature of the species that violence and law enforcement have lived together in an unholy alliance since Cain and Abel in the land of Eden. Cain’s violence, of course, was dealt with directly by the Ultimate Enforcer. Since then we earthly mortals have been acting as agents for the highest court in the history of mankind, attempting to enforce the law as written by our modern-day prophets in the chambers of our legislatures.

As one of these law enforcement agents, first as a patrolman and then as a detective, I have courted violence for more than thirty years. I have seen the throat of a small-time hood slashed from ear to ear. I have viewed the remains of a tavern owner whose head was virtually shot off by a blast from a .12-gauge shotgun, and I have investigated a case in which a man smashed his wife’s face into an unrecognizable bloody pulp.

I was a violence observer in these cases. Three years before I became a policeman, I was more than an observer. I was a participant in violence that was to have a great effect on the course of my life and especially on my credibility as a law enforcement officer. The facial damage suffered as a result of this act of violence would make me a courtroom target of acquittal-hungry defense lawyers and their accused muggers, rapists, stickup artists, and murderers.

When Vince De Simone walked into the courtroom, his shot-up face made it open season for charges of brutality and harassment. On the streets, the criminal element dubbed him as The Deacon and Fair Square Vince, but once he became part of the theatrics of the courtroom his face made him the heavy. Vince De Simone became the Edward G. Robinson of law enforcement.

World War II, September 1944. The fortunes of the Allied forces had taken a turn for the better after two years of setbacks in the Pacific. The invasion of France on June 6, 1944, came off successfully, and American troops were now in Germany, barely across the Belgian border.

The war in Europe was to end the following April, but before victory would be achieved, the most bitter part of the encounter was yet to be fought. Paris was still under Nazi control and Belgium, where the Battle of the Bulge took so many American lives, was awaiting liberation.

As the pace of the war stepped up, the demand increased for more military manpower from the home front to replace the casualties and the combat weary. For the first two years of the war, I had been deferred because of my employment in an airplane defense factory. This deferment expired in April 1944, and I entered the Infantry, eight months after I married my childhood neighbor, Nancy Giannelli. My oldest daughter, Patricia, was born in the summer of ’44, just before I was shipped overseas.

Before my arrival as a member of the Timberwolf Infantry Division, Stolberg, a quiet, residential village, was one of the first German territories to be taken by the American troops. Militarily, it was an important geographical area because it served as the gateway to Belgium where the Nazis had a viselike stranglehold. Although Stolberg was American occupied, it was not firmly secured. The Germans were still holed up in bombed out buildings and taking sniper shots at the Americans.

One of these attacks occurred along a country road as our medics were evacuating American wounded. The gunfire appeared to be coming from two adjacent houses, and it was my assignment with two other GIs to clear the enemy out of those buildings. One house was so dilapidated it looked like it was occupied by only rats, so I chose the other as my initial target.

While my buddies covered me with their gunfire, I ran across the road, hurled two grenades into the building, shielded myself from the explosions and waited for the dust to clear. Rifle poised, I then walked in cautiously and found the dead bodies of a German soldier upstairs, another downstairs.

As I walked out to signal all clear, I felt as if I had been struck in the nose with an axe. It was a bullet from a sniper in the next house, and it struck me in the left side of the face, penetrating the lower portion of my nose and exiting through my mouth.

My knees trembled and I heard other shots, these from my friends shooting down the sniper. I fell to the ground, spitting out teeth and gobs of blood, and then collapsed.

When I regained consciousness, I was in a German schoolhouse that had been converted into an emergency American field hospital. Although combat was over for me, difficult times were still ahead. I knew my face was shot up very badly, but I had no idea how bad it was until I peeked in a mirror. It was ghastly, something out of a Bela Lugosi horror movie where the mad doctor’s experiment goes berserk. Right then I wished the Germans had done a complete job. What would I tell my wife of one year? I was never a Cary Grant, but I wasn’t a Frankenstein monster either.

The doctors eased the mental anguish somewhat by telling me that plastic surgery could perform miracles and my appearance would eventually change. They never promised a return to my original face, but they indicated I would be acceptable in social circles.

For four months after the shooting, I made a tour of hospitals in Europe and the United States. A deep-seated infection resulted from the bullet wound, and I hovered between life and death. I underwent one operation in Europe and later nine others for plastic surgery in the United States.

The Army returned me to the states in February 1945, first to a military hospital at Camp Edwards on Massachusetts’ Cape Cod and then by mistake to the Fletcher General Hospital in Cambridge, Ohio. After a few days there, they rectified this blunder and shipped me to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. That’s where most of my facial surgery took place.

First, though, I was given a weekend pass, and I warned my wife in a letter that she might not recognize the man she married.

It was one of the most difficult times of my life, walking through the military clogged halls of the Pennsylvania Railroad Station in Newark, not knowing how I would be received by my family. I was so scared I wanted to turn around and hop the next train to New York City and disappear from the face of the earth.

Before I could leave, two women rushed down the hallway, threw their arms about me and crushed me in a pincer movement that would have made General Patton proud.

My boy! screamed my mother in the clatter of the busy station.

My wife sobbed so heavily she couldn’t speak. She just smothered me with kisses.

The scene was not uncommon during World War II, when most people commuted with joy and tragedy on a daily basis. Somewhere in the United States, in just about every railroad station, a wife, a sweetheart, a mother was rushing to meet her loved one who for the time being had escaped the violence of war and its often fatal consequences. In my case, however, this was not the face of the son/husband they had sent off to war. I wondered what kind of traumatic effect it would have on my young wife and middle-aged mother.

Later, in the quiet of our home, I told my wife that if she wished to end the marriage, I would not stand in her way.

Don’t you ever say that again, she admonished me. I married you for better or worse, and you’re just as good as you ever were.

We have been married now for thirty-five years, and my wife has grown accustomed to my face.

Before the war, the thought of becoming a policeman had never really crossed my mind. A few of my friends joined the force, but I couldn’t see myself parading around in a blue uniform. I wasn’t against regimentation or law enforcement or any of those things some of today’s youth rebel against—I just felt I didn’t fit into the scene.

I took a closer look at the life of a policeman after the Army discharged me. When I considered the pension benefits for my family, I thought a policeman’s lot might not be all that bad. I studied at length for a Civil Service examination, finished high on the list, and was appointed to the Paterson police force on October 1, 1947. I stayed there for four years before being named a court attendant in 1951 for two years and then a county detective in the county prosecutor’s office in April of 1953.

My face continued to haunt me after I was named a street patrolman. I was assigned to the toughest section of Paterson, an area replete with rundown barrooms where nightly stabbings were not uncommon. There seemed to be a street brawl on every corner, and even at that time muggings were pretty high on the hit parade list. Because of my face and my deep baritone voice, I gained a reputation for being a tough cop in a tough district. When I showed up at a tavern disturbance, everybody suddenly became as friendly as Damon and Pythias. I pride myself on the fact that in the four years that I was assigned to this tough district, not once was I required to shoot anybody.

The boys of the street gave me a nickname in my rookie days as a cop. Whenever the word got around that I was on the beat, they would tell their underworld friends that Scarface was down the street. And when I performed school crossing duty, I could hear the kids calling me Scarface in cruel jest.

By this time I was used to it. The police force had given me a new lease on life. Later I was to be called other names, the most flattering of which came from a judge, shortly after the jury returned the second guilty verdict in the Carter-Artis trial. He called me the Italian Kojak. I told him I refused to shave my hair.

Even Hurricane Carter got into the name-calling act in his book, The Sixteenth Round. He called me a bulldog, whose face was one that only a mother could love (provided she wore blinders).

Mr. Carter should know that I received that face fighting for democracy, the world’s greatest, so people like him can receive one, two, and three trials for murdering harmless, innocent, and defenseless citizens.

CHAPTER TWO

June 16, 1966

The three men were shot first—the bartender by a single blast of a 12 gauge shotgun, the two patrons almost simultaneously by shots from a .32 caliber revolver. The woman was shot last at the end of the bar, her body sprayed with shotgun and .32 caliber bullets from chest to the abdomen.

James Oliver was the bartender; he was fifty-one-years old, white, and married. He saw the two black men first. One of them was tall and looked like a basketball player; the other was shorter and stocky. When Oliver saw the weapons they carried, he dropped the money he was counting, picked up a beer bottle, and threw it at them. The stocky one pulled the shotgun trigger once, and Oliver fell to the floor, his spinal column severed.

Fred Cedar Grove Bob Nauyaks, a sixty-year-old white male, was sitting near the center of the bar after playing a game of pool. He had just lit a cigarette when the tall one pumped a .32 caliber bullet through his brain. He slumped forward on the bar, dead.

Willie Marins, a forty-two-year-old white male, was the miracle man who survived. He was at the bar with Nauyaks when the gunmen came in. The tall man shot him in the left temple. The bullet exited his forehead between his eyes, blinding him in the left eye. He staggered to a supporting pole, went to the bathroom where he defecated, and then finished his glass of beer while waiting for the ambulance. Marins was released from the hospital three weeks later. He died six years later of other causes.

Hazel Tanis, a fifty-one-year old white female, was the irony of the case. She was a waitress at the Westmount Country Club and a friend of the tavern owner. She phoned Oliver earlier that night to ask if he could stay open longer than usual. She wanted to make arrangements with him for a surprise engagement party for the tavern owner, Betty Panagia. Oliver promised he would remain open until she arrived. If she hadn’t made that phone call, the murders at the Lafayette Grill would not have happened.¹

The two invaders didn’t see Hazel until they turned around to leave. The stocky one emptied the remainder of his shotgun load into her and the taller one emptied his five remaining .32 caliber shells into her as well. She fought death for a month before succumbing.

Earlier that night, at another tavern, the Waltz Inn, five blocks away, the top of the head of a black man, Le Roy Holloway, was torn off by two blasts of a shotgun triggered by Frank Conforti, a white man. Holloway had purchased the tavern from Conforti and was paying off the price on a monthly basis. Conforti was upset that Holloway was doing well with his former venture and continually bugged the new owner to sell him back an interest in the tavern. Holloway refused.

Conforti persisted again on the night of the killings, and when Holloway ordered him out of his tavern, the angry Conforti went to his car for a shotgun, came back to the tavern filled with black patrons and shot Holloway at 8:10 p.m., six hours and twenty minutes before the triple murders five blocks away.

Holloway’s stepson, Edward Bawls, was a bartender at yet another tavern, the Nite Spot, not too far away. The tavern was a favorite watering spot for Rubin Hurricane Carter and John Artis, and both men had been there that night.

The Lafayette Grill, where the three murders occurred, the Waltz Inn, where Le Roy Holloway was murdered, and the Nite Spot, where the seed of revenge was planted, were the strands that would eventually tie together the solution of the murders of James Oliver, Fred Nauyaks, and Hazel Tanis.

The bedside telephone in my home in Hawthorne, New Jersey, roused me just before daybreak on the morning of Friday, June 17. As long as I have been a detective, I have never become accustomed to these nocturnal interruptions.

Vince, we’ve got a bad one for you, said the voice from Paterson police headquarters.

So what else is new? Do you ever have a good one?

No, this one is really bad. Two dead, two probables in a massacre at the Lafayette Grill, Lafayette and East 18th Streets, Paterson.

I dressed quickly, told my wife I was off on a mission, and drove out of my driveway past the milkman. At this point I had been a county detective for thirteen years and now held the rank of lieutenant. I was a member of the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office, often referred to as the district attorney’s office. Whenever there was a murder or other serious crime in the county, we entered the case and took command, working in conjunction with the local police.

The Lafayette Grill was a neighborhood tavern in a section of Paterson, New Jersey, that once was inhabited by immigrants from Germany, Italy and Switzerland. As the complexion of American cities changed, so did this neighborhood, but at the time of the murders it was on the fringe of the ghetto. In the not too distant future, it would become part of the ghetto.

On the way to Paterson police headquarters, I stopped at the scene of the shooting. There wasn’t much to see as the bodies of the victims had already been removed.

At police headquarters I talked to witnesses and police, and after reading earlier statements, I was able to come up with a preliminary reconstruction of the events of that fateful night.

Patricia Ann Graham, twenty-three years old, soon to become Patricia Ann Valentine, lived in an apartment above the bar. She had fallen asleep on her living room couch while watching television and was awakened by three noises she thought were the sounds of Bartender Oliver closing the downstairs tavern. Looking out her front window, she saw nothing, but she heard a woman screaming. She then ran to the side window, where she saw two colored men running to a white car. Both wore sports jackets, one a hat. The men entered the car which she identified as having dark license plates with what looked like gold letters.

The concerned woman threw a raincoat over her pajamas, hurried barefooted downstairs, opened a side door as a white man entered the front door. He told her to stay out, but she rushed toward Willie Marins who was hanging on to a pole, and then she saw the bloody body of Hazel Tanis on the floor.

Pat, please help me; call the police, Hazel begged as she struggled for breath.

Fighting hysteria, Patricia Graham rushed upstairs, phoned the police, and returned to the barroom. Hazel asked her to make another call to a friend. Patricia Graham again went back to her apartment, called the friend, got dressed, and once more went downstairs where she met the police.

Patricia Graham could not identify the men who ran out of the tavern, but she said the taillights on the white car were wider on the outside and tapered in toward the center of the car. Later that morning when police brought Rubin Carter and John Artis to the tavern in the car in which they were stopped, they confronted her with the automobile.

I was positive it was the car I had seen pull away after the shots, she said in her police statement.

Patricia Graham was to become an important corroborative and independent witness in both trials of Carter and Artis, and despite pressure by the defense and the media, she held up admirably during the ten-year period as a civic-minded citizen. If more people came forth and served as courageously as she did, there would be fewer unsolved crimes on the books today.

The man Patricia Graham met in the tavern was Alfred Patrick Bello, who would become one of the most controversial witnesses in the Carter-Artis trials. Bello was burglar-robber who had been in and out of reformatories during his twenty-three years and at the time was out on parole.

Bello nervously told police he was on his way to the tavern to pick up a pack of cigarettes when he heard two gunshots. He stopped and heard two more shots pierce the quiet of the night. In his police statement given about two hours after the shooting, Bello said:

Then, two colored guys came out of the front door; one was about as tall as me, the other was a little taller than the first man. The short one had on a light-colored jacket, and he was carrying a pump shotgun. The tall one, his clothes were dark in color, and he was wearing a hat. We both saw each other at the same time, and I turned around and ran. I didn’t stop to look back, but I think they chased me the full block. I ran about five or six houses up and turned into the alleyway. I stopped, waited a minute or two, nobody came, and then I heard a car pulling away real fast, with a squeaking of the wheels. I ran out to the front of the house and a white car came shooting by me. The two colored guys were in it. Well, the clearest thing I saw was the back of the car. It had—it was a brand-new car. It had these two taillights and they tapered out toward the outside of the car. I didn’t see the plate number.

Puffing on one cigarette after another, Bello continued his narrative at Paterson police headquarters, explaining how he rushed into the front entrance of the bar and saw one man laying over the bar and another one just sitting there.

I went over to the woman and knelt down by her. She grabbed my hand and asked me to help her. I didn’t think that I had better try, as her stomach looked like it was shot out. She wouldn’t let go of my hand and I had to pull away.

Bello said Patricia Graham then came in, looked around, and screamed. She left shortly after and he called the operator and asked her to send the police. The operator asked where the tavern was located. Bello went outside, panicked when he couldn’t find a street sign (there was actually one right at the corner), and returned to the phone. Hazel Tanis, meanwhile, pleaded with him to hurry up and get the police.

Listen, lady, Bello screamed at the operator, everybody’s dead over here. Send the police to the Lafayette Grill!

Bello then went outside because, he said, he feared the two armed men would come back. The police arrived two minutes later.

Bello later identified the car in which Carter and Artis were riding as the one he saw pulling away. Asked whether he could identify the men, Bello replied: Yes, I could give you a rough description. I didn’t see their faces, but that is definitely the car.

There was something about Bello’s story I didn’t buy—the part about him going to the tavern to buy a pack of cigarettes. I knew he hadn’t committed the murders because there was definite identification from other witnesses that the men were black. But I figured he was there for other purposes, and I told him so.

Isn’t it a fact, Bello, that you were in the area to commit a burglary, that you walked into the Lafayette Grill, saw the slaughter, walked over a dead man, and stole the money from the cash register? I asked him.

Bello became indignant, loudly denying the accusation, and then refused to talk to me anymore that day. I didn’t see him again until four months later when he confirmed my suspicions about the burglary and his ghoulish theft at the murder scene.

Two doors from the tavern in a house on the same side of Lafayette Street, Ronald Francis Ruggiero, a less-than-successful prize fighter who knew Rubin Carter, was dozing in his bed when he heard four or five shots.

He looked out his window and saw a white car that looked like a Chevy. He said he saw two people in the vehicle, both of them black. Before the car came into view, he saw Bello running down the street.

Pressed about the make of the car, Ruggiero said he couldn’t be sure, but reiterated he knew it was white. He said he could not identify the men in the vehicle.

At 2:34 a.m.—four minutes after the mass slayings—Radio Patrolmen Theodore Capter and Angelo De Chellis were touring the city’s streets when they received sketchy information over their police radio about the shootings. Traveling north on East 24th Street and approaching 12th Avenue, ten blocks from the murder scene, they spotted a white car speeding across their path on 12th Avenue. The policemen tried to catch up to the car, but lost track of it on the city’s empty streets.

Six minutes later, at 2:40 a.m., they found a white automobile on East 28th Street