Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - History Other Hells Kitchen and the Capeman Murder Hells Kitchen and the Capeman Murder Hell’s Kitchen and the Capeman Murder Hell’s Kitchen is the section of Manhattan that is between 34th and 59th Streets and from 8th Avenue to the Hudson River. It was the home of New York’s most dangerous criminals from the early tenement days to Prohibition to the Westies. The population consisted of poor people who lived in a disorderly fashion and expressed themselves with a demanding spirit. Mayhem and reports of criminal homicide from the late nineteenth century on supply a good idea of daily life in Hell’s Kitchen. These reports illustrate a neighborhood full of crime, poverty, religious worship, hard work and family commitment. “ Vampires, Dragons, and Egyptian Kings divided by race, ethnicity, and neighborhood boundaries but united by common styles, slang, and codes of honor. They fought and sometimes killed to expand their territory. The youth gangs were a colorful and controversial part of the urban landscape made famous by the West Side Story and infamous by the media” (Schneider, 1959). The violence and the gangs on the streets formed ethnic ties as well as disparities among the people that led to a great amount of hostility and extreme violence. But before the gang wars began, there were some contributing factors that led to this hostility among the society. The first major change, in 1851, was due to the construction of a Hudson River Railroad station at the future site of 30th Street and 10th Avenue. Many Irish and German immigrants (the latter escaping the Great Potato Famine) filled the area and went to work in the Railroad yards, West Side breweries, factories, slaughterhouses, warehouses, backyards and on the docks. The soaring population reached over 350,000 by the start of the Civil War, most were divided by ethnic backgrounds, most of which lived in rows of tenements that were situated in the middle of the slaughterhouses and factories that gave off an awful smell. Second, during the drafting of the Civil War there was a lot of chaos and many fatal riots against the rich because they were able to buy there way out of the war, including the protest of the Conscription Act. Differences in the beliefs of these people led to a segregated community and the creation of gangs had begun. The first neighborhood gangs were formed by the massive amount of children (often referred to as sea urchins) that became homeless after the Civil War. The Dutch Heinrichs led the 19th Street Gang and it was known as one of the most infamous cliques around. They commanded tribute from factory owners and merchants, they broke into houses and they abused and robbed strangers. The gang’s leader – Dutch Heinricks – was incarcerated after attacking a police Captain. Thereafter came the Gophers, who were targeted for arrest after the slaying of a man named William Lennon in a bar at 45th Street and 11th Avenue, and the Dead Rabbits who lived in the filthy tenements west of 7th Avenue in the 20’s and 30’s. By the 1900’s, 36th Street to 59th Street west of 9th Avenue became an area of dirty tenements and factories forming a depressing and dark neighborhood that carried out the nature of slum life. The murder rate (often committed by gang members) in this section of the city continuously multiplied. The practices of the local criminal and the Westies gang in the middle of the 1900’s became so brutal. “One gang man tossed the heads of victims into the railway cut between 10th and 11th Avenues” (http://hellskitchen.net/resource/history/brendle/crime.htm). The Westies were involved in loansharking, labor racketeering, robbery, narcotics and murder with purported ties to the Gambino crime organization. Evidently this hard neighborhood developed an underworld type of atmosphere filled with murder and acquired a suitable nickname, “Hell’s Kitchen.” One 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 was able to make it to the doorway of the apartment. He turned to Anthony and said, “ I’m hurt, get me upstairs fast.” Shortly after that he died on the living room floor. At the same time, Tony Krezenski, also 16, was stabbed several times and he tried to reach the safety of an apartment building at No. 447 but he dropped at the foot of the door and died. Edward Riemer, 18, of Ninth Avenue, who was also stabbed and repeatedly kicked, was fortunate enough to make it to St. Claire’s hospital in critical condition and survived. Unlike a similar killing that took place a week before this atrocity, when a boy and girl were killed and six others were shot or stabbed, the only girl at the scene was untouched. Some of the accounts held that the members of the gang held the boys down while the Capeman stabbed them in the back. One of the mortally injured boys was said to have stagger across 46th Street holding his intestines in his hands. Cops arrived to the scene and the streets were filled with the neighbors who although not surprised, looked at the two dead victims in awe. When the police found a knife, a black cape, a hat, and a belt, their prime suspects were the Capeman, Salvador Agron, and his sidekick Antonio Hernandez. In total there were thirteen arrests made. Besides for the two leaders of the pack whom were charged with criminal homicide, of which they admitted to, the attackers were charged with unlawful assembly and juvenile delinquency. Agron, who’s father left him as an infant, who spent many of his adolescent years in detention centers, was asked why he engaged in the killings and his response was, “Because I felt like it.” He also said, “I don’t care if I burn, my mother could watch me.” His mother even brought him a Bible to read while he was in jail but he would not take it. Agron went on to brag about how many others he had sliced and stabbed over the years. But years later he realized how foolish his actions were as a juvenile and that when he thought about that night at the playground, it caused him intense pain and regret. Agron was found guilty on all accounts and sentenced to death even though his attorney tried to get him off in disputing that he was severely disturbed at the time and was far from a wanton killer. Hernandez pled guilty to manslaughter and was given a sentence of 7.5 to 15 years in prison. The other members received diversified lesser sentences. Agron died of a heat attack in 1986 just before his 42nd birthday. In an effort to deter the rate of homicide and gang related crime the police commissioner added thousands to the police force as a result of this instance, led to by many others. The combination of ethnic groups has changed over the years but the mixed use, mixed income, mixed cultural background of the neighborhood still remains very similar. A radical change that has taken place is that the number of children attending school has greatly increase and this has had an inverse affect on crime and gang formations and related crime and homicide. Today the neighborhood still holds some of its dark areas and tough streets but the amount of gang violence has decreased dramatically and educated youths are making a positive change within the neighborhood. Schneider, Eric C. Vampires, Dragons and Egyptian Kings Princeton University Press, New York. 1959 http://hellskitchen.net/resource/history/brendle/crime.htm http://www.midtownmedia.com/chronicle/Hkhistory.htm Bibliography: Word Count: 1556
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