Daily News from New York, New York • 1331

fcSUNDAY; NEWS, 22,, 19CS 19 lis u. and a keen-eared dog in the house? .1 mins children always were when their mother pat them to bed. At 2 P.M., Crimmins wu brought to the scene to identify his child. He looked twice at the little one, staggered, cried out, and was led back to a detective's car which took him to the Fremh Meadow station house. The children were described as "pleasant" and "cute." Those who knew Crimmins described him as "a nice, gentle They said that he was a good father and that when he paid weekend visits to the children he "never talked about his family trouble.

Detectives now reevaluated the reports of those Crimmins neighbors who had heard scrcuni tnd imediinf art around the time the children had disappeared. Someone heard a child servant at IS A July H. Someone heard man and woman argue. About 1 o'clock the couple ".7 ekBamwawassSBWasmmssff the room on the other tide of the Crimmins0 bedroom thought they heard an infant wail. Was any of this important fact? It should be pointed out that most windows were open on that hot night; that the walls in the complex were not thick; that many people were up and about.

At 1 o'clock, a muffled scream distracted a TV-watching resident (a housing authority policeman) whose window faced that of the Crimmins children. He looked out; saw nothing but the empty, moon-lit courtyard. A woman resident glanced out, too; saw nothing. Reports Seeing Stronger At 1:30, a 19-year-old beautician, walking across the courtyard, saw (or said she saw) a medium-built stranger standing at the window of the Crimmins children's bedroom. She scurried on.

Next day, she said, she got the first of several terrifying phone calls no words, just breathing. Then she heard a tapping -on her fire escape. Was this the work of prankish friends or her imagination? By this time. New York had taken -its locked-room mystery to heart a doe that didn't bark a murderer who left no clues a lack of motive A SSISTANT medical examiner "William Beneson, who did an autopsy on Missy, said there was no evidence of sexual molestation. Marks on her neck indicated that she might have died of manual strangulation, probably in her bedroom.

Who would want to strangle a baby? Who hated the child or one or both of her parents? What person wreaked his, or her, child-hunger and insanity on the hapless Crimmins couple and then laid the victim so carefully to rest? And where was Eddy that 3-foot, SO-pound tyke with scrapes on both knees Approximately 160 detectives and uni A happy Mrs. Alice Crimmins posed with daughter, Alice, and son, Edmund Jr. Then, one frightful morning, the children were missing. Then Mrs. Crimmins was brought to the body.

She screamed and collapsed in the trmi of i detectta. Later the said she couldn't remember where she last saw Missy's pa jama top. The sight of their dead child completely dispelled any lingering doubt either Alice or Edmund Crimmins held that the other had hidden the children as a form of harassment. Each knew too well that the other could never be guilty of murder. But at that point, the police were skeptical They asked tem selves if one -of the parents could have killed the little girl accidentally And where was Eddy? folic Coovereje oa Woods Fifty uniformed patrolmen, two emergency squads and a dozen radio cars converged on the woods, or "the sandlot," as Flushing youngsters called the spot where Missy was found.

Policemen, walking at arm's length of one another, searched for Eddy in the underbrush. Then the search spread through nearby Kissena, Cunningham and Alley Pond Parks. At the Freak Meadow ttation. Missy's shocked parents were questioned steadily and intensely throughout the day, and it seemed that they laid their very souls bare to their interrogators. The police would not tell reporters at that time what either parent said.

Nor will they now. They revealed only that both Alice and Edmund were bom in New York. His parents lived in Throggs Neck, her mother in the Bronx. The most accurate report of the young couple's trouble came from Crimmins' lawyer, George Marfeo. He said the Crimmins marriage turned sour be- fore Feb.

5, 1964, when Eddy was just over 4 and Missy was 3. On that day, without court action, the couple signed a separation agreement whereby Mrs. Crimmins got custody of the children and 40 a week for their care. "Ed agreed to let her have the children," Marfeo said, "because he thought it might bring her to her senses." It was about that time that Alice Crimmins hired a housekeeper-baby sitter and went to work herself. In May, 1964, she took into her home as a lodger a fellow worker who had a 4-year-old son and a number of problems.

Find Divorcee Slashed In July, 1964, police received a call about an attempted suicide and when they reached the Crimmins apartment they found the despondent lodger a young, attractive divorcee with slashed wrists. Recovered, this girl remained with Alice Crimmins until Nevember, when she moved away. Alice quit work in February, 1965. ate nor slept. She refused sedatives so that she would be awake when Eddy was found.

On the fourth day, dressed in deep black, Alice nearly collapsed at Missy's funeral. That was the day Brandy gave birth to a pup; the day the Crimminses locked up their place and went to stay with her mother in the Bronx. Then came Monday July 19, 1965 the day Alice and Edmund Crimmins were to have gone to court to battle for the custody of their children. On that day, a father and son went walking on a shrub-covered embankment overlooking the Van Wyck Expressway. They came upon a soggy plaid blanket.

The man looked to see what it covered. Then he went home and called police. The body of Eddy Crimmins lay a mile from his home and in the opposite direction from the place where his sister had been found five days before. Like his sister, Eddy had been deposited, not thrown. His body was so badly decomposed that an autopsy failed to reveal how or when he had died or whether he had been violated by a sex diviate.

Porosrh Called Aoala Again the Crimminses were called to identify their dead child. When Mrs. Crimmons saw Eddy's blanket and his brief underpants, aha tainted. Everyone who had been questioned wss now requestkned neighbors, baby sitters, the erstwhile lodger, the building superintendent, the porter, men who became acquainted with Mrs. Crimmins when she worked at the cocktail lounge, workmen in the project, and owners of cars who drove in or out of Kcw Gardens Hills that adgat.

Alice and Edmund Crimmins clung to one another when Deputy Inspector Michael J. Clifford called the crime "an inside Job because all the evidence we have so far shows that it isat likely an outsider a stranger could have committed it." By this time. 900 people had been questioned. Some thought that someone with a key entered the house, unbooked the children's door, gathered them up, hooked the door and went out There were no unexplained fingerprints in tba house, in the room, anywhere. The neichbors veered to the Idea that the little ones, in the habit of sitting in their window ledge in the morning, were lured outside by a sex maniac.

This theory took on depth aa the neighbors misquoted a woman who lived four blocks prowler who entered her apartment through her casement windows at 6 o'clock four mornings before Eddy and Missy disappeared. "And that prowler tried "to lure her 4-year-old out," said the neighbors, "but the kid said he couldn't go unless be asked his mommy." This facet of the case, said Detective Gerard (Jerry) Piering, who was working on the Crimmins murders, offers a good example of the anatomy of gossip. What actually happened was that the prowler put his finger to his lip and said "Shhhh!" as he passed the child. But when the account blossomed it had the prowler whispering "Come!" and beckoning with a crooked finger to the boy. On July SS Edmund and Alice Crimmins were questioned again and CapU John Thompson of Queens 16th Detective district, announced, "We hare ruled out kidnaping." He did not elaborate; but presumably he meant there had been no demands for ransom.

Silently the Crimminses marked Sept. 13. It would have been Eddy's first day of school, a day he talked so much about. Finally, they set up another home in Queens where they live today, childless finding what comfort they can in one another. In December, 1965, Deputy Inspector Thomaa F.H.

McGuire, who had been ia charge of the case, was moved to Brooklyn. Deputy Inspector Wolfgang Zang-lein took over. ris)yci prints Checked Even with all the other police work he has had to do, Zangiein has familiarized himself with all the details of the Crimmins case; with all the theories; with all the possibilities. He knows that all the fingerprints in the Crimmins apartment were checked out to their owners; that all the tire tracks (those in the courtyard and those near Eddy's body) were checked; that all the alibis were checked and double-checked. By this (ime.

more than 2,000 people have been interviewed. "The case is still very much alive," says Zangiein, who refuses to reveal what details have recently been developed. He believes that Justice eventually can triumph in this fantastic case, particularly if anybody who thinks he has a doe will write or telephone Lt. Daniel Crowley, the commanding xfficer of 107th- Detective squad, 18641 73d Ave, Fresh Meadows. Queens.

The telephone number is AX 7-3641. The anonymity of informants will be protected. formed men were assigned to the search and First Deputy Commissioner John Walsh, speaking for his chief who wss on vacation, said it was "one of the most intensive searches in my memory." In their hunt for the boy. dead or alive, police examined three bargeloads of Queens garbage anchored off Staten Island. (In New York, the search for the kidnap-murderer of a child is as relentless as is the hunt for a cop-killer.) On July 15, Mrs.

Crimmins went to the police station in the company of her lawyer and a policewoman. "Mrs. Crimmins is not a suspect," said Detective Lt Joseph O'Brien, commanding officer of the Queens homicide squad, "but there are things about her story we do not like." Cops Moss oa Interview "Why talk to her at the stationhouse O'Brien wu asked. "Because this is our environment," he answered bluntly. No policeman ever said what that ln-- terview was about.

It is a guess that' it or others concerned a spring-type telephone memo pad found 25 yards out-aid the Crimmins apartment. It belonged to Alice Crimmins. It held the names of many of her friends and practically all of the people she had em-' ployed as baby sitters. It could have been carried into the yard by Eddy and Missy. Anyway, after it waa found, a number of men were called to the station, questioned, and sent away.

The Crimmauet appeared for a UU-vision interview. She could only teb. When her knees buckled, ho put hie arm around her. In the three days since the children had disappeared oho neither OBVIOUSLY, Crimmins did not feel too assured of his children's happiness with Alice before or after she quit work. In Marfeo's words, "Ed decided it was best to take the children out of the apartment In June, 1968, we brought suit to take the children away.

It's usually very difficult court to have children of tender years taken from their mother. Too Lave to prove the father's right to custody. We were confident we would win the ease." The lawyer's statement started the neighbors talking. Gossiping la a better word. Many expressed outrage over the fact that Mrs.

Crimmins locked her children in their room at night and most mothers were suspicions of her announced reason for doing so (to keep the children from wandering out of the apartment). Yet all who knew her said Alice Crimmins was "a nice, quiet person: she doesnt talk much." Also, they said she was a good mother who took watchful care of Missy and Eddy; who saw that they were dean and well-fed through the day and "said their at night. away from the Crimmins apartment. This robbed fit. SIOQ.

by. a..