Under the starlit sky of Long Island on the fateful July 4th, 1956, the air crackled with patriotic fervor and the scent of sizzling BBQs. Little did the residents know that the night would cast a chilling shadow over their festivities.
In the quiet suburb, Betty Weinberger, a devoted mother with dreams as her newborn son Peter, wrapped him in a blanket under the warmth of the July sun. July 4th, a day of celebration, quickly turned into a nightmare when, in mere minutes, Peter vanished from his carriage on the patio. In his place, a ransom delivered an eerie promise: $2,000 for the safe return of the baby, with a dark warning of potential harm.
Betty's call to the Nassau County Police Department set off a chain of events, but Morris, her husband, pleaded with newspapers to withhold the story. Despite his request, the New York Daily News splashed their tragedy across the front page. The following day, news reporters gathered by the ransom drop site, but the kidnapper and baby were nowhere to be seen.
As six days passed, the kidnapper continued to taunt the Weinbergers, calling twice with additional instructions on ransom drop locations. Another ransom note emerged, sparking speculation about its authenticity. Handwriting experts from the FBI Laboratory in Washington, D.C., descended on New York, comparing notes and concluding they were written by the same person.
On July 11th, seven days after the kidnapping, the FBI officially joined the investigation. With only ransom notes as leads, special agents, operating from a temporary headquarters, immersed themselves in the painstaking task of handwriting analysis. After examining nearly two million samples, a breakthrough emerged. A probation file on Angelo LaMarca, a taxi dispatcher and truck driver living in Plainview, held a striking resemblance to the ransom notes.
Angelo LaMarca, born in New York on April 13, 1925, experienced the horrors of World War II. Drafted on July 31, 1943, his enlistment papers reflected a man with "dependents" despite being single, working in the manufacturing of "paper goods," and having only attended grammar school. After the war, he married Donna LaMarca on June 6, 1946. The couple had two children, Vincent and Vivian, aged 9 and 5, respectively when LaMarca received his death sentence.
In 1954, LaMarca faced legal troubles for his involvement in a bootlegging operation, a family affair that included his father, Vincenzo, and his younger brother, Joseph. The group set up an illegal still capable of producing 500 gallons of bootleg whiskey. LaMarca, along with his co-conspirators, received a 90-day suspended sentence and a year of probation. Little did he know that the documents from this probationary period would play a significant role in connecting him to the Weinberger kidnapping.
Prior to the Weinberger case, the laws concerning federal intervention in kidnapping cases had been shaped by the Lindbergh kidnapping by Richard Hauptmann, who, like LaMarca, was executed after being convicted of the kidnapping and murder of a baby. Hauptmann's case had inspired the Federal Kidnapping Act, which, after amendments made in 1934, decreed that if a kidnapping victim was still missing after seven days, the FBI were allowed to presume that the victim had been trafficked across state lines and could therefore intervene as federal authorities. As a direct result of Peter Weinberger's kidnapping and murder, the Federal Kidnapping Act was amended in 1956 to allow the FBI to enter a kidnapping investigation after just 24 hours had passed. Later, in 1998, the Protection of Children from Sexual Predators Act would allow the FBI to become involved in kidnapping investigations prior to 24 hours passing.
Angelo LaMarca's son, Vincent LaMarca, was 11 years old at the time of his father's execution. Vincent would later go on to become a police detective. In an interview after retiring from the police force, Vincent would state, "It was actually tougher being a kid, 9, 10, or 11 years old. You're going to school with kids who see your father's name on the front page of the papers every day. Let's just say kids can be a little bit cruel." Vincent also stated that his father's predicament inspired him to become a police officer, saying in another interview, "It tore me apart when he did this horrible thing. But it taught me a lifelong lesson about responsibility. And I became a cop so that no one could ever say one single bad thing about me [and so I could] restore the family name."
Years later, in 1996, LaMarca's grandson, Joey, was implicated in a murder in Long Beach. After his arrest, Joey claimed that he was genetically predisposed to murder. The case, and Vincent's life as a whole, inspired the plot of the 2002 film City by the Sea.
As the gavel fell on LaMarca's fate, a question lingered in the minds of the Weinbergers. Did justice truly prevail, or did it merely cast a fleeting shadow over their shattered lives? The once vibrant neighborhood, once the epitome of suburban bliss, now bore the scars of a community forever changed. The echoes of Peter's laughter were replaced with the haunting silence of an empty crib, a void that couldn't be filled by the cold metal of a prison cell door slamming shut.
The courthouse, where the echoes of guilty verdicts and sentences reverberated, held no solace for the grieving parents. The passage of time did little to heal the wounds left by the tragedy, and the shadows of that Independence Day loomed over every subsequent celebration in Plainview. The once-celebrated day of freedom became a somber reminder of a loss that transcended the boundaries of a family and reached into the collective heart of a community.
Comments