Later that evening, Gus Oliver sat at a desk in the plush law offices of Andrew Saks. Spread before him lay photocopies of Suffolk County Police Department’s file contents relating to the murder of Francis Dermott McAdams. Included were numerous eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch photographs of the body, crime scene, and various objects and locations deemed pertinent to the investigations.
On October 7, 1959, some six months earlier, in a heavily wooded area beside a gravel road near the Poospatuck Indian Reservation, within the small Long Island community of Mastic, a man’s body was found. The victim had been shot to death.
County investigators, working with the two-man Mastic Police Department, soon learned that the deceased was a sixty-four-year-old retired New York City police captain, Francis McAdams, who had recently moved to Shirley, a town not far from where the body had been found.
It was later learned that the victim’s house was located less than a quarter-mile from that of another former New York City resident, Lily O’Rourke.
The Suffolk County investigators visited McAdams’ home where, accompanied by Shirley police chief Gene Worthy, they methodically searched the house.
The divorced McAdams had lived alone. Found among his belongings was a thick, battered scrapbook. Curious, Worthy sat at the small kitchen table leafing through the scrapbook, its yellowed, dog-eared press clippings dating from the early nineteen twenties until McAdams’ retirement in 1956.
One series of articles in particular caught the chief’s eye. In 1927, at what had apparently been an infamous and legendary New York speakeasy, thirty-two-year-old McAdams, then a lieutenant, had been involved in a deadly face-to-face shootout with a known associate of Lucky Luciano, thirty-year-old Guiseppe Cataldo Rudialaro, a.k.a. Joe Rudi. The shooting had taken place inside the second-floor brothel of the speakeasy where Rudi served as bouncer. There had been only one eyewitness present: Lily O’Rourke Cosenza, the twenty-seven-year-old wife of the establishment’s owner, Dominick Cosenza.
Chief Worthy quickly turned pages, finding follow-up stories detailing how, after sworn testimony from both McAdams and Lily, the Grand Jury reached its decision: Not only was the shooting deemed justified, but in slaying Joe Rudi, Lieutenant McAdams had saved his own life, and most probably Lily’s. But with careful reading, those same articles hinted at the possibility of a somewhat more sinister and unspecified scenario.
“Hey, Inspector,” Worthy had called. “I think you need to see this.”
As the current investigation continued, it was discovered that Lily had often been seen in McAdams’ company since his recent arrival in Shirley. Inquiries to the New York City Police Department provided details of the checkered, criminally themed life of Lily O’Rourke Cosenza, as well as indications of a somewhat less than noble police career for Francis McAdams.
Tire tracks found in the mud near the body proved unreadable as to tire type or wear but did reveal that the car that left them had a front-wheel track width of 58.0 inches and a rear track of 58.8.
The 1955 four-door Chevrolet Bel Air registered to Lily O’Rourke had identical dimensions.
A search warrant was issued, the car examined carefully, however no forensic evidence was found. A search of Lily’s house turned up two unregistered handguns, a .22 automatic and a snub-nose Colt .38 revolver. Although McAdams had been shot twice with a .38, the recovered bullets did not match Lily’s weapon.
Autopsy indicated the body had been lying in the woods for not less than five, nor more than ten days, and that McAdams had initially been murdered somewhere else and his body merely dumped in the woods. Examinations of both his and Lily’s homes were negative for traces of blood or other forensics.
Gus continued to read through the file, finishing up with a long, detailed report from the New York City police. When he was done, he slipped off his reading glasses and rubbed at his weary eyes.
He needed to meet this Lily O’Rourke.
On Friday morning Gus visited the women’s wing of the Suffolk County jail, Lily O’Rourke sitting opposite him at the table in an interview room. Her matronly prison garb seemed oddly at opposition to her pretty grey eyes and medium-length chestnut hair, only lightly speckled with grey. Despite the slight facial puffiness indicative of a heavy drinker, she was an attractive woman with a touch of sensuality emanating from her. Gus Oliver found it easy to believe that a man in his sixties, such as Andrew Saks, would find Lily alluring and, Gus speculated, perhaps easy to believe.
“So, Gus,” she said, “welcome to the club.”
“The club? Which club is that, Lily?”
She smiled with her answer. “The ‘Let’s help the poor girl get outta jail’ club. I guess if Andrew Saks is the president, you must be second in charge.”
Gus shrugged. “I haven’t joined any club, Lily. Tell you the truth, after reading the case file, I doubt I’ll be applying for membership.”
“Look,” she said, “I’ll tell you what I told Andrew. If they throw me in the gas chamber for this, it’s not exactly Joan of Arc going to the stake, you know? Maybe I even deserve it — hell, I’ve done some hurt in my life. But — if right and wrong mean anything to you, then I’m telling you: I didn’t kill this guy. Twenty years ago, if it became necessary, yeah, maybe I would have. But now I’m fifty-nine years old and all I wanna do is watch Dobie Gillis and Rawhide on TV. If I start missin’ the good old days, maybe I’ll tune into The Untouchables. I watch TV, sip some bourbon, and go to bed. Alone, thank God. No more need to have some hairy ape pawing at me.” She smiled. “No offense.”
Gus nodded. “None taken. So, you’ve made your speech. Want to hear mine?”
“Sure. Case you ain’t noticed, I really got nowhere to go.”
“The way the police see it, you had means, motive, and opportunity. You were seen with the guy plenty, no doubt you knew him. In fact, far as the police can find out, last time he was seen alive he was with you. You own two illegal guns, probably know how to use ’em. Maybe even had a third that’s now at the bottom of Moriches Bay. You’re no stranger to violence or criminal behavior, and it sure was no coincidence that McAdams decided to move out of the city and, of all the places in the world, buy a house close enough to yours he can hit it with a rock. Then there’s the tire tracks. Pretty good match for your Chevy.”
“You maybe want to read that file again, Gus. It should tell you I’m the only person out here he knew. Who else would he have been seen with? And remember, the tracks don’t match, only the track widths match. You know how many Chevys there are on the road?”
“No. Plenty, I guess.”
“Yeah. And the cops don’t even know what date he was killed, so I have no opportunity to alibi myself. And as for motive, I know what the cops say. NYPD told them all the rumors of how I skipped out of New York and dropped Cosenza from my name because I was carrying a ton of mob dough in my pocket, dough I supposedly robbed from the boys. So the cops figure McAdams was crooked and maybe sent out to find me, then decided, ‘What the hell, I’ll just rob the dough from her and skip.’ Or, if the jury don’t like that one, the cops figure they’ll just say McAdams was gonna blackmail me, threaten to tell the goombas where they could find me. So I killed him. Let me ask you something, Gus: How stupid do you figure I am? If I did kill him, don’t you think I’d know the cops would be knockin’ on my door in under twenty-four hours? Hell, I even look good as a suspect to myself. You think I don’t realize that? Believe me, if for some reason I had to kill McAdams, he would have accidentally drowned in his tub or tripped down his staircase or maybe swallowed some pills to end it all. I sure as hell wouldn’t shoot the son of a bitch and dump him two miles from my house.”