Paperback: Unexpected juvenile violence can happen any place, anytime, and it seems as if recent years have ushered in more of these appalling incidents than ever before.
Frederick Law Olmsted, who, along with Calvert Vaux, designed Central Park in 1858, remarked that the park "exercises a distinctly harmonizing and refining influence upon the most lawless classes of the city - an influence favourable to courtesy, self-control and temperance." However, in the early hours of Friday, 23 May 1997, courtesy, self-control and temperance were not in existence as a blast of violence engulfed Central Park in a murder that horrified and stunned a city, not to mention hardened New Yorkers, where, all too often, crime is a distinct fact of life.
Cops like to say that anything more serious than a broken cuticle in Central Park is big news. That is because Central Park is not merely a wonderland that serves as New Yorkers' personal patch of paradise, as well as the destination for innumerable tourists, but it is also a highly politicized arena in which the city's pulse, its emotional and physical well-being, is monitored on a daily basis.
A murder in the "2-0" or the "7-5" is news but a murder in Central Park is a metaphor. Magnified a hundredfold, a park homicide equals more than one dead person. It is a symbol of urban decay, of the financial and cultural capital of the world gone to the dogs.
On 23 May 1997, affable realtor Michael McMorrow was strolling home through Central Park when he met up with two fresh-faced teens. The kids stabbed the 44-year-old thirty-four times, disemboweled him, and then threw his body into the lake. Overnight, the brutal killing made spoiled rich girl, Daphne Abdela, and her working-class boyfriend, Christopher Vasquez, the most famous and reviled fifteen-year-olds in Manhattan.
The case fueled headlines from day one through the explosive trial, not only because of its brutality but also because of the young age of the defendants. "Why are kids killing?" People Magazine asked in a June 1997 issue. Like everyone else, they did not have the answer, just the question.
Commenting on the media frenzy that was taking place, Jerry Nachman (deceased, as of 2004), a former editor of the Post and a former news director at WCBS-TV, said: "Is there a test of what qualifies as news that this story fails?" It seemed not. The story included, among other things: youth, wealth, race, gender, drugs (both illegal and prescription), alcohol, adoption, divorce, agoraphobia, motive, a weapon, viciousness, the park and even love. The newspapers raised many questions regarding the teens and the murdered man and each person's motives.
With two very different clients and two vastly different attorney styles, the stage was set for a richly nuanced and complex drama in which character development and plot would drive the play forward in equal measure, until the climax and ultimate denouement revealed who was the leading character, who played the supporting role and what was the precipitating event.
Both teens were found guilty of first-degree manslaughter and got ten years but they served only six. The verdict meant that neither of the two teen-agers accused in the killing was found guilty of intentionally murdering Michael McMorrow. After twice being denied parole, the two were freed in January 2004. The same year she was released, Daphne Abdela was up to her old tricks. She was busted in October 2004 for making phone death threats to a Brooklyn woman.
In the civil suit against Vasquez and multimillionaire Abdela, McMorrow's family received just $60 000. The public was furious and the family was stunned. Featuring exclusive interviews with McMorrow's family, Baby-Faced Butchers (2007) is a definitive account of an appalling crime that arouses controversy even as it continues to horrify.
About the author: Stella Sands is Executive Editor of Kids Discover, an award-winning magazine with over 400,000 subscribers geared to children 7 to 12 years old. She is author of the true-crime book Baby-Faced Butchers, as well as other works including Odyssea and Natural Disasters. Her plays, Lou Passin’ Through, Black-eyed Peas, and E-me, have been produced in Off-Off Broadway theaters in New York City.
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