Savage Grace - Natalie Robins (53 page)
From the Transcript, The People of the State of New York Against Antony Baekeland, Defendant, Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York, September 19
,
1980
The Court Clerk:
Mr. Baekeland, you have been indicted by the Grand Jury of the County of New York, charging you with attempted murder in the second degree and assault in the first degree. How do you plead to the charges, guilty or not guilty?
Defendant:
I plead not guilty.
Mr. Siegel:
Your Honor, I would like to have the matter adjourned for a few weeks for motions on the issue of bail. I would ask some bail be set.
Letter from Shirley Cox to Assistant District Attorney Sarah Hines, Undated
New York
Dear Ms. Hines:
As a close friend of Mrs. Nina Daly (the victim) for many years, and her business affairs manager for the past five years, this letter is to earnestly request that in the event of Antony Baekeland’s release, Mrs. Daly be accorded 24-hour-a-day police protection.
I feel this would be absolutely essential to the safety of her life.
I hope you will give this request your serious consideration and support.
Sincerely, Shirley Cox (Mrs.)
Judge Robert M. Haft
There was no serious bail application. It would not have been appropriate. Anyway, Tony Baekeland had no place to go.
He was always very pleasant and smiled a lot. He was never agitated. I would say he had a sort of inappropriate affect, considering what was happening to him.
From the Transcript, The People of the State of New York Against Antony Baekeland, Defendant, Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York, October 22
,
1980
The Court:
Was the defendant examined by a psychiatrist of your choice?
Mr. Siegel:
Yes, he was. I’m awaiting the report. The examination has taken place.
The Court:
Adjourned to November 7th.
From a Psychiatric Interview with Antony Baekeland, New York City, 1980
The purpose of this evaluation was to determine Mr. Baekeland’s mental status at the time of the alleged crime. When asked where he was born, Mr. Baekeland replied, “I don’t know. I was told that I was born in Manhattan. That’s what my mother told me, but I have no siblings. In fact, as far as I know, she told me that her friend is the Son of Sam and he is also my brother because he is my age.” When asked who raised him, he answered, “I think I was raised by my mother, father, and grandmother, but it was all very confusing. Our family is spiritually everywhere, so my mother’s death would not bother her. We all lived together—a few people but we are all the same person. A close friend of mine is a very powerful magician and he made such magic that I could kill my mother with the same knife that he made the magic with.” At this point, the patient started talking quite irrelevantly about his father, stating, “I don’t remember him loving me terribly. I didn’t know what exactly he wanted me to do. He is a physicist and writes many books. We are very rich people from his family. They sell stocks and real estate and I have a lot of money which is not bad but I never worked for it.”
P
SYCHIATRIC
D
IAGNOSIS:
S
CHIZOPHRENIA,
P
ARANOID
T
YPE.
Sarah Hines
We wanted to prove that he was responsible for his crime. We wanted to have as much control over him as possible, in order to give the People and his family security, and there’s not much control available when the insanity plea is used—he might have walked.
Letter from Shirley Cox to Assistant District Attorney Sarah Hines, Undated
New York
Dear Ms. Hines:
Further to our recent telephone conversation, this will confirm that the personal belongings of Antony Baekeland, left behind in his grandmother’s apartment in New York at the time of his arrest, were stolen from the basement storage room. Four of the tenants in the building also lost a variety of personal possessions in trunks and suitcases, and one had her bicycle stolen.
As you will remember, I had tried very early on to have Mr.
Baekeland’s possessions transferred to him in Rikers Island or to his lawyer (if it could be determined who that would be on a continuing basis). But I was told that the suitcases and cartons (containing clothes, shoes, tape recorder, tapes, books, etc.) would not be accepted, and that they should be stored somewhere for the interim until a Court decision had been reached. It was considered important by those concerned about Mrs. Daly’s welfare to clean up her apartment and remove the remnants of the traumatic incident before she was released from Lenox Hill Hospital. Consequently, for lack of choice the items were placed in the basement storage room (which was equipped with a lock) until further notice. Whoever committed the robbery had used a key to effect entrance.
Once the robbery was discovered, the 19th Precinct was advised but despite three phone calls over a three-hour period, while the tenants involved waited in the basement, no officer arrived to inspect the premises or to make a report of the incident.
I merely wish to report the fact of the robbery of Mr. Baekeland’s possessions to someone in an official capacity relating to his situation. I do believe that, had some official help been extended, Mr. Baekeland’s belongings might still be intact.
Sincerely,
Shirley Cox (Mrs.)
NOVEMBER 1–DECEMBER 16, 1980
John Murray
I met Tony in the bull pen, which is where they hold you before you go to court. I was in for burglary. Coincidentally, he was in the same quad as me, too—I was about eight cells away. We were together about six or seven months. I was his closest friend at that time. I definitely was, yes. He said he’d been staying at his grandmother’s and he felt all right and then all of a sudden he just heard her saying things like he couldn’t go out to see anybody or somebody couldn’t come over to the house, and she was next to the phone and he just hit her a few times. I told him that was a lie. I said, “Why don’t you tell me the truth?” And he said, “Oh, yeah, well, the truth of the matter is that she was almost killed.”
Then he told me that he had spent time in London, England, for psychiatric reasons for killing his mother. He was sorry about it, because he loved his mother. No one knows why people do things like that. They just do them, and after that, it’s over and done with, and you have to live with that—without that person—for the rest of your life.
On good days Tony would keep himself confined to where he was and what he was doing. On days when he was restless and reckless he’d talk about how he killed his mother. He’d whisper, like someone mortified. He’d either whisper or his lips would move and he wouldn’t be speaking. That’s how he’d say how sorry he was.
He told me once or twice that his mother was very beautiful but he never described her to me in detail or anything. And he told me he knew a beautiful lady named Jinty Money-Coutts and he said that when I got out, if I had no place to stay, I could maybe stay there with her in London.
He told me he had a very small family and that his father had died when he was younger—or something like that. I think he said died but maybe he told me his father just didn’t want to see him anymore. But mostly we talked about what the correctional officers were up to—whether this guy dilly-dallies all day or that guy bullshits around or not.
Sometimes he did drawings—rough sketches with crayons. And some pastels—pictures of sailboats and rivers and docks. But one day he just tore them all up.
Sara Duffy Chermayeff
I drove out to Rikers Island to see him. We just talked in a room, at a table. He didn’t talk about stabbing his grandmother. We just talked about old times. I mean, that’s all I had to talk to him about. To me, he looked just like he’d always looked—very handsome. I always thought he was wonderfully handsome.
Look, I’d known him when he was little, and I never again expect to know anyone who killed anybody. I wondered when I went there what the hell I was doing—I mean, there was probably some sort of curiosity and vanity involved in my going to see him. I felt ashamed afterward, because I felt that I’d exploited him. I remember we said goodbye as if we would meet again—it was like we were at Schrafft’s.
James Reeve
Broadmoor was a sort of retreat, really, wasn’t it? He was safe there. My God, when he was in that hellhole in America he must have looked back on Broadmoor as nirvana.
Martin J. Siegel
I was relieved as Tony Baekeland’s lawyer in November of 1980. I turned his entire file over to his new lawyer, Ronnie Arrick. I was very surprised when Tony hired him because Tony and I had had a very good attorney-client relationship and there really hadn’t been any problem. But apparently a friend of his at Rikers recommended him to Tony. Now, I know Arrick is a very fine and competent attorney—he’s also a very nice guy. Who can explain why people want to go into this coffee shop as opposed to that coffee shop?
Ronald Arrick
The first time I met Tony Baekeland was in November when I think Siegel was canned. Anyway, I took over the defense. My job was to represent him on the entire criminal matter all the way through trial and to try to work it out to his entire advantage. His grandmother was not withdrawing the charges. The D.A. was not withdrawing the charges. I was also involved in long-distance dealing with certain facilities in England, because his only defense was a psychiatric defense.
My hope was to get him placed in what I gather his grandmother thought he should be in when she had him brought back here—a hospital. I wanted to have him found not guilty by reason of insanity, and I discussed this with him as about the only thing that could be done.
He had access to funds—I think it was a combination of trust and cash available. He would give in a written request to his trustees, U.S. Trust, sort of like a check facsimile, and they would issue the funds.
John Murray
Since Tony had money, he was wary of who would know his business by the way he was acting: Would it show on him? Would people abuse him for it? Would they try to get it from him too quickly?
Tony was very well liked as far as I could see. He had a calm nature, you know, but he had a very rude temper. He had a thing about if he couldn’t get his way he would more or less say shove off, you know—kiss it goodbye.
Dr. Helene Weiss
He was very volatile and I’m sure after a while he had some trouble with other inmates. I know he had some transient episodes. On December 11th he was switched over to our Mental Health Center.
John Rakis
The Mental Health Center has single cells and a higher complement of officers than anywhere else at Rikers Island.
Natalie Robins
I wanted to see Tony’s cell. Captain Earl Tulon, who was to be my prison guide, met me in the visitors’ parking lot on the Queens side of the island and drove me in a big Cadillac across the narrow bridge that is the only access to Rikers Island. He pointed out the various buildings to me as we took the exact route Tony Baekeland’s blue prison bus had taken. My first impression of the island was that of a bleak but tidy campus. School again, for Broadmoor Special Hospital had had the same effect on me at first sight. The difference is that here there seemed to be miles and miles of barbed wire, and once you began to follow it you couldn’t take your eyes off it.
We went inside a building called the Anna M. Kross Center where the reception area had a strong antiseptic smell. Here I received a visitor’s badge and my briefcase and shoulder bag were thoroughly searched by a correction officer. I then had to walk through a metal detector. Now I had officially arrived at Rikers Island.
We went down a very long corridor whose walls, surprisingly, were decorated with red-yellow-green-blue rainbows interspersed with large orange and purple triangles. Then we entered an older part of the building where the walls were bare. This area housed the Mental Health Center.
Here we were joined by a staff psychologist, J. Victor Benson—everyone called him “Benson” or “Vic.” He escorted us into Lower Three Quad. On the left was an area that reminded me of a classroom in a run-down elementary school: plastic chairs piled up on one side, two or three tables scattered around—one next to a wall. “That’s the table where I used to sit and talk to Tony. It’s even in the same place,” Vic Benson told me.
Then I was taken to the cells, a series of tiny single rooms, with doors that have small squares cut out, covered with metal bars. Tony’s old cell was at the end of a corridor on the left. Most cells don’t have windows, but his had one; it was covered with wire mesh embedded in the glass and looked out on a dirt lot that had one or two patches of crabgrass and weeds.
The current inmate-in-residence was in court, I was told. There was a thick gray wool blanket on the bed. Vic Benson said the bed was in the exact same spot as when Tony was there. Two pairs of underwear were hanging to dry on a metal shelf, and a dirty pair of socks and shoes were on the floor. There was some red-ink graffiti on the walls: Somebody loves somebody. I don’t remember what the names were, but Vic Benson said they weren’t there when Tony was in the cell.
Custodial Medical Information Form, Prison Health Services, New York City Department of Health, December 11
,
1980
M
ENTAL
H
EALTH
Name:
Baekeland, Antony
Suicide Potential:
No evidence
Depression:
Mild
Assaultive Potential:
No evidence
Violence Potential:
No evidence
Medication:
Thorazine
J. Victor Benson
As a psychologist at the Mental Health Center, I got to know Tony quite intimately when he was detained on my quad. When I found out about his family background, I did some research on it. Tony himself didn’t take much pride in his background, and in fact when he spoke of it, and the wealth, it was all quite casually.
Some of the things he told me sounded like delusional material. It wasn’t, though. He told me quite blandly about murdering his mother. He mentioned that his relationship with his father was strained because of his homosexuality—he said his mother had been dissatisfied with his sexual orientation, too. The only good thing he said about his father concerned a trip they both took up to Yonkers once to visit his great-grandfather’s lab. It was a pleasant memory, that trip to the lab.
At the time Tony was here we had a relatively quiet quad, although emotions
are
easily aroused because the inmates live so closely together. Some inmates have to be kept off balance—separated, you know, so they don’t get into fights and so on. There’s also constant cell movement. They want to go to the law library, then they want to go to the barber shop—in this unit the barber shop comes to
them.
The commissary is a very big thing—that’s the supply of niceties that the inmates have. They deposit money in their commissary accounts and once a week they submit an order. The most popular items are cigarettes, and candy and cookies—because so many are drug addicts, they love the sweets. If you’re in the general population here, you can go directly to the commissary and pick up your order, but if you’re in a mental observation unit like Tony was, they deliver the commissary to you.
Tony was very generous with many of the inmates. He was supporting them—well, not exactly supporting them, but he was very generous with commissary. He maintained friendships in that fashion. That’s
one
of the methods he used in cementing his friendships. He ordered huge amounts of commissary. But nobody could challenge that because he always had the money.
You know, all during the day on this quad the correction officers have to make repeated security inspections—check the keys, the locks, check the bars, the gates, the shower room, the windows, the screens, the walls, the dayroom, utility closet, the lighting, the cell walls which they could cut through because they’re only made of tile. They’re supposed to be impregnable but they are not—an inmate could chip away at the tiles and remove them a few at a time until they had a hole for escape. Also check the vents, because inmates have a habit of storing things there, like jail booze, which they’re very clever in fermenting. Check the slop sinks. Check the toilet bowls.
It’s a very noisy place, sometimes it gets to be unbearable—the telephone ringing, the inmates wanting to make telephone calls. They can’t receive calls, but they can arrange through Social Services to make calls and have an extended conversation, either local or long-distance.
Note from File on Antony Baekeland
Tony Baekeland and a friend of his in prison have been calling Nina Daly repeatedly and abusively. We can’t prevent Tony from telephoning his grandmother since she seems to acquiesce and won’t tell the police; but he can be advised to cut it out.
John Murray
I spoke to his grandmother when Tony called her. They were not harassing phone calls. That must have been someone else. I don’t know who that could have been. I asked her not to press charges on Tony, and I also spoke to her about reducing the charges, and she told me that she definitely, invariably would.
One time she got mad and I said, “Whoa, slow down, slow down, I didn’t know all that about Tony. Could you tell me that a little bit slower?” And she said, “I’ll slow down,” and then she said Tony’s gay and this and that, and I said, “I know about it.”