of the most infamous murders that appeared for several days in the media after it occurred, on August 29, 1959, was known as The Capeman Murders. Salvador Agron, better known as the Capeman, and other a.k.a.’s such as Dracula, Bigfoot, and Machinegun Sal, aged 16, came from Brooklyn, where he once led a gang named the Mau Maus. Eventually he became the head of a gang that controlled Manhattan’s West 70’s and 80’s, named the Vampires. He always carried a twelve-inch-silver-mounted Mexican dagger. The next person in command, the Capeman’s partner, was a boy from the Bronx who used the sharp edge of an umbrella as a weapon hence inheriting the nickname the Umbrella Man. They both led the Vampires downtown and their goal was to gain respect south of 50th Street because rumor had it that the Italian and Irish youths were mistreating their fellow Puerto Ricans. The Italian and Irish gang, the Nordics, had arranged a gang fight with the Vampires at May Mathews Playground between West 45th and 46th Streets in the middle of Ninth and Tenth Avenues, coincidentally where many muggings had been taking place. The Nordics never showed up on that late summer night but a group of innocent teenagers did.Three teenagers on their way home from the movies walked to the other side of the playground to meet their friends, two boys and a girl, and socialize for a while. Agron and his cronies suddenly surrounded the teenagers and asked, “Where is Frenchy?” When they realized that Frenchy (one the opposing gang members) and the Nordics didn’t show up, they decided to take their anger and frustration out on the youths. One of the boys, Anthony Woznikaitis, age 15, was punched in the jaw. He dashed to his stepfather’s apartment where he saw his friend fall to his knees at the stoop of the apartment. The friend, Robert Young, 16, of 413 West Forty-seventh Street was fatally stabbed in the back but w...
