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Newsday from New York, New York • 41

Publication:
Newsdayi
Location:
New York, New York
Issue Date:
Page:
41
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

Killer Pride in His-Son ROYSTER from Page A4 John Sr wore a purple silk shirt matching turtleneck and green prison-issue pants reflecting rules allowing inmates a semblance of-freedom in the visiting room He mixed tender recollections of childhood with musings about the legalities of his case his study of foreign languages exercise my brain and the works of Andrew Carnegie and Lewis Carroll life is like the Looking he said I have to Bom in Manhattan John Sr was raised with eight siblings in Brooklyn As a child he was so responsible his fatherless family nicknamed him He attended Catholic schools was an altar boy a nerd not a tough he said was the skinniest kid I was the guy that the other ones would cross the street to see if he had any money to take But I was a thinking person There were places where no one was In those places John Sr said he felt a despair he believes his son knows as well can understand this he said can remember dependency being unavailable to After considering the priesthood John Sr enrolled in Manhattan College and earned an accounting degree in 197L Jobs in finance and insurance a marriage and the birth of his only son followed His son he said could recite his ABCs before he could walk was brilliant He was like John Sr said But by tiie mid-1970s the father was locked in a bitter divorce and custody battle Given visitation rights in 1980 John Sr managed one of father-son outings to Central Park and events at Madison Square Garden John Sr revealed little about the years preceding his arrest But authorities have said they were marked by shady business ventures and an aimless lifestyle incompatible with fatherhood A six-year relationship with a girlfriend named Willye Jean Dukes ended in 1987 She sought court protection claiming he was threatening to kill her John Sr followed through in January 1988 While Dukes and her sisters waited for a subway train on a crowded platform John Sr emerged with a 12-gauge shotgun and fired a deadly blast The defendant represented himself at his trial facing prosecutors who portrayed him as a bloodthirsty stalker At sentencing he told the judge: my son who always gave love and never asked for anything in return but love I want him to know that at this moment I am thinking about him" Whether John Jr was prying attention is unclear By 1988 despite success in school he too drifted away from his home and in and out of low-wage jobs He joined the Navy in 1994 but received a psychiatric discharge More recently friends noted his fascination with martial arts Eastern religions and unobtainable women Late last year he fell in love with a Japanese woman who was visiting New York and felt rejected when she went home In the spring John Jr was hired and quickly fired by an office-supply store A co-worker later described him as abusive toward women Fingerprints left at the scene of the dry-cleaner slaying led police to John Jr He surprised them by confessing to the Central Park assault plus two similar attacks in Yonkers and Manhattan authorities said The father learned of the arrest in June only after a reporter showed up in the visiting room to ask him about it Since then he has spent hours in the prison law library drafting pretrial motions for his son The court has ignored the father when police say his namesake to a weeklong series of attacks on four women that terrified Manhattan -In one instance John Jr 22 tried to rape a young piano teacher in Central Park in broad daylight before smashing her head against an asphalt path until she was comatose in another he beat a woman to death as she arrived to open Iter Park Avenue dry-cleaning shop police said John Jr is in the jail ward at Bellevue Hospital amid reports his lawyers are planning an insanity defense Prosecu-tors last week decided to seek life in 'prison rather than the death penalty Father and son have been portrayed by authorities and media as disadvantaged but bright as loners who once rejected by women sought bloody vengeance in public places Junior and senior look alike: short and slight with al- mond -shaped eyes Asked what he taught his son about the opposite sex John Sr smiled and replied in a near-whisper learned to love he said would be shocked if he know the type of elation known with women the Fantasy to HENICAN from Page A6 Polite Pols? Oh In a Manner Of Speaking QUEEN from Page A4 another almost-gone Times Square the sign said Stages Private Fantasy The music was loud A voice came over the microphone And up on the second floor of PeepLand1 the side wall was lined with booths The door to every booth was open yesterday There seem to be a single customer upstairs Just a heavyset man selling tokens and just six young semi-clad women on stools outside the booths They all brightened up at the first glimpse of a possible customer one of the women said a dark-haired woman said in a husky voice said a blond woman with big round eyes your Above all this chatter the $5 booth tokens were still in neat piles on the table And the register was quiet and still If only the management of PeepLand had thought to offer mouse ears Sex you know sell anymore Not in Times Square No problem there The lines at 42nd and Seventh were five and six deep Robyn Sneed and her mother said that this weekend be hitting many of New major spots The Hard Rock and maybe Planet Hollywood The Yankee Store and Metropolitan Museum Store Not the actual Yankee Stadium or the actual Met Not when all the T-shirts and the mugs are so much more conveniently for sale have to go to a bunch of out-of-the-way places anymore said the mother To find any hint yesterday of grimey old Times Square you had to walk out the door of the Disney Store cross Seventh Avenue and Broadway and go almost another long block to the east There nearly to Sixth Avenue on the southside of 42nd is an establishement called PeepLand the sex- and-sleaze parlor cloest to Times Square If sex still sells anywhere it must sell here Three or four men lingered forlornly in the aisles on Peep first floor pawing through the magazines and the video tapes A sign at the bottom of a set of stairs beckoned to Race Blurs Texaco Avis Images like that But if they like that too Democratic Councilman John Sabini consid- ered an arbiter of good taste and refinement around Jackson Heights said that and large most politicians in Queens are pretty civil although some of us can get testy at He said that politicians from the boroughs outside Manhattan tend to exhibit more manners than those from Manhattan we always speak the if 1 excuse the pun All this being said it appears that Miss theory is going to be blown to bits in the coming months as the mayoral race heats up here in the city Mayor Rudy Giuliani who has a penchant for calling people names like a spoiled kindergartner has already reserved the right to go negative and insult his would-be opponents In fact already started rhetoric can get pretty said Sabini just an observer to the may-oral race He warned however that the mayor haul better be careful because such caustic be- havior turn off voters a fine line in this business between firm and If Giuliani learned that lesson yet and judging from the vitriol been spewing recently he perhaps he should give good old Miss Manners a call Or maybe he and other would-be candidates should just take a lesson from the well-respected Queens Borough President Claire Shulman who has a reputation for being tough but extremely polite even to those who disagree with her officials have a responsibility to be courteous to the people who employ Shulman said tone should always be one of respect and We can only hope gentle reader that our politicians will actually heed such wisdom instead of acting like buffoons in the year ahead iii'iQLrc TEXACO from Page A7 are under attack In California 54 percent of the voters this month passed Proposition 209 a measure that will dismantle state-sponsored affirmative action programs in public hiring contracting and college admissions 209 was a message that said done fighting race and sex discrimination and why it was a priority for women and the civil rights movement" said Elizabeth Toledo statewide coordinator for the California National Organization for Women chapter Avis the military she said listing recent headlines are no indicators this is a problem that is going Some critics of affirmative action see the Texaco and Avis cases as reasons to keep what they Bee as flawed race-based quota programs think that makes sense If discrimination illegal a matter for the said Will Marshall president of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute of Washington DXL The Associated Press contributed to this story franchise owner and do not reflect corporate policies against discrimination The company pointed out that' 43 percent of its 1 7000-member workforce is minority The figure does not include franchises strongly feel that this is not similar to the Texaco said spokeswoman Demetria Mu-dar allegations involve an independent franchisee not our corporate culture The Texaco case involves alleged discrimination against employees while the Avis case involves customers But the lawyer for the Avis customers John Reiman of Washington DC said that together they represent a heightened awareness and sense of accountability from the public about race relations not enough for top corporate people to say we do it we plan it we had some loose said Reiman The cases come at a time when affirmative action policies meant to address race and gender imbalances NEWS DAY SUNDAY NOVEMBER 17 1996.

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