Top Quotes: “Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York” — Elon Green

“It was a time of heightened, often irrational caution; only a few years earlier, William Masters and Virginia Johnson warned that AIDS could be transmitted via a toilet seat. Eleven hundred and fifty six Pennsylvanians died of the disease the year before. In February, Jeanne White, whose teenage son Ryan had died after becoming infected during a blood transfusion, addressed an audience at nearby Elizabethtown College. “People need to be educated about AIDS, to understand the disease and how it is transmitted,” wrote the editors of the local paper. “AIDS is a frightening disease. But with education and awareness, people can learn how to take precautions against AIDS and to treat those who are HIV positive as real people, not as monsters.”

Queer Pennsylvanians — trans Pennsylvanians, disproportionately — were the targets. It was believed that AIDS dripped off the walls of the Tally-Ho Tavern on Lancaster’s West Orange Street. The city’s queer bookstore, the Closet, would be bombed twice that summer; the second time — after the proprietor had been shot at — four sticks of dynamite leveled the store, blowing a hole straight through the back wall. The rainbow flag in the window was partially incinerated.”

“Mansour, who became an influential film programmer, had known he was gay since his early teens, when he began having sex with men, including his sister’s husband. A fat child, he decided he’d “rather eat dick than mashed potatoes” and lost weight. An error-riddled account of the party ran in Shibley’s scandal sheet. Mansour, a high school valedictorian, was accepted at Boston University. Upon realizing the incoming student had been convicted on a morals charge, the university revoked his acceptance.”

“In nearly every corner of the US, insurance companies could require that applicants be tested for AIDS and then, depending on the results, deny coverage.”

“In March 1980, three men in Chelsea were attacked by white kids wielding bats. One man lost two teeth; another sustained thirty-six stitches to his forehead, a damaged eye, and a broken nose. This did not make the local papers. Assaults of gay men were commonplace, and this one, at first, was no different. For months, men had driven in from New Jersey, Long Island, and the outer boroughs of New York City to throw bottles at Village and Chelsea residents who were presumed to be queer.”

“A young man on his way to a Gay Pride Day parade had his jaw broken by five men who called him a “filthy AIDS carrier” and a “faggot.” In New York City alone, incidents of beatings, knifings, rapes, and threats against gay people grew by 83 percent between 1985 and 1986. The virus, a sergeant from the NYPD’s bias unit said, “has undoubtedly had an effect on the number of attacks.” Visibility, too, could be a factor; several years earlier, a lurid CBS News documentary entitled “Gay Power, Gay Politics” was credited with a dramatic spike in violence.”

“A New Jersey trooper, years later, would ruminate on how lucky detectives had already been with the investigation: “The thing with this particular killer, he was very good at disposing of the bodies.” This was not an intuitive point. After all, detectives were aware of the four victims because their bodies had, indeed, been found. But, the trooper argued, each discovery was actually something of a fluke. Had an interior bag holding Thomas Mulcahy not ripped, “we never (would have] come across that one.” Had an animal not dragged Anthony Marrero’s arm onto the road, he would have been classified as a missing person. And had Michael Sakara’s remains not been deposited in a fifty-five-gallon drum owned by a zealously observant hot dog vendor — “they’re probably going to make its way to the landfill, and we don’t have Michael Sakara. So, the question you ask yourself is, how many more are out there that we just don’t know about?

“You don’t just stop once you get a craving for this type of killing,” the trooper continued, “The conclusions we arrived at is; either he’s locked up, he’s dead, or he’s still out there and he’s just getting a lot better at it”

At least two of these propositions proved wrong.”

“That Monday evening, Richard went to G.. Club on East Fifty-third Street. It served an older crowd, which is precisely what Richard looked for in a bar. He walked in and stood against the wall, scanning for a place to sit. He took a seat to the right of a businessman, a decade his senior, at the bar. The older man, whose name was Sandy Harrow, was talking with his friends about real estate and the stock markets, which were on the up-swing. Richard joined in the conversation.

After Sandy’s friends left, Richard told him about the Merle Place apartment. It had recently gone co-op, he said, and he’d gotten it for an insider’s price: $45,000. Cheap enough, he continued, that it could probably be flipped for nearly double that amount.

Richard asked if he would like to come back to Staten Island to see the apartment. Sandy, who lived in Manhattan, initially refused. It was, after all, Staten Island — New Yorkers frequently look askance at the city’s most conservative borough — and it was already eight o’clock. But after Richard volunteered to drive him there and then drive him back home to Midtown, he agreed to leave the bar. And so they did.

In the elevator, Richard warned Sandy that the fifth-floor apartment would be hot, and it was. Richard went to use the bathroom. Then he offered his guest a drink. Sandy requested a diet soda, but Richard returned with orange juice.

Sandy began to drink. The orange juice tasted fine. But the businessman began to lose consciousness. He could see himself fall forward on the dark blue rug.

When Sandy awoke, he realized he had been unconscious for hours. He was naked, lying on his back, and his hands and ankles were bound with more than a dozen hospital ID bracelets. He began to scream. Richard calmly injected a hypodermic needle into the vein on top of his hand.

“That will take care of you for a while,” he said.

Sandy passed out.

It was vague, but Sandy would remember being threaded into his clothes and then pushed through the vestibule of his apartment building. When he awoke several hours later, on Tuesday morning, he called a friend who took him to the local police precinct. Sandy then went to Roosevelt Hospital, where he was subjected to a series of tests. Doctors noted bruises on the vein in his hand. Terrified of contracting AIDS, he requested a rape kit. It came back negative.

Five weeks later, on August 18, Richard was arrested. He was back at work two days later.”

“After the trial, Richard’s next few years were filled with work and travel. He was a good nurse, coworkers thought, and deceptively strong; he could lift an adult patient onto a gurney without assistance. And he was a perfectionist — intolerant of anyone he believed was falling short. Richard wouldn’t mask his displeasure if questioned or challenged on his work.

Richard had the day off on May 4, 1991, the morning after Peter Anderson stumbled out of the Waldorf Astoria. He was also off on May 5, when Peter’s body was found at a Pennsylvania Turnpike rest area.

In August, he purchased a new Toyota Corolla, and registered the car with the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles. He liked to drive, and by November had put nearly fourteen thousand miles on the car. By February 1992, he had driven another five thousand miles, and returned to New Jersey to have the Corolla serviced. In April, at twenty-four thousand miles, it was serviced again.

Richard then took off swaths of June and July. He wasn’t working on July 7. On July 8, shortly after eleven o’clock that night, Thomas Mulcahy was last seen. He had gone to the Townhouse, closing out a successful business trip. Richard was off on July 9, and the next day, too, when Tom’s body parts were found, spread across two rest areas in New Jersey.

In September, it was back to New Jersey; the Corolla now had just over thirty thousand miles on it.

The first week of 1993 began with three twelve-hour shifts.

In mid-March, the Corolla was serviced at thirty-five thousand miles. That month, Richard drove the car to a slew of Bass Hotels & Resorts, including franchises in Morehead, Kentucky; Valdosta, Georgia; Homestead, Florida; and, at the end of March, Lakeland.

On April 27, Richard used a vacation day, and then was off for the next week. On Tuesday, May 4, and Wednesday, May 5, he worked from 8:30 P.M. to 8:00 A.M. On May 6, when a Port Authority sex worker named Anthony Marrero was last seen, he had the day off. Richard had the day off on May 7, too, three days before Anthony’s body was found on a dirt road in Ocean County, New Jersey, and one day before the dead man was supposed to attend a friend’s birthday party.

During the next two months, Richard mostly worked on consecutive days and then took two or three days off.

In the early morning hours of July 30, Richard walked into the Five Oaks and was seen leaving with Michael Sakara, who told a panhandler they were “going upstate.”

Richard was off that day and the next.

On August 8, two days before Richard had his Corolla serviced (at 44,326 miles), Michael’s torso and legs were found off Route 9W in Stony Point, New York.”

“Before the search began, John Halliday, a senior detective, walked through the house, snapping photos of every comer and cranny while the home was still pristine. This was a bookend of sorts; he’d documented Tom’s crime scene nine years earlier. Halliday was unnerved by the state of the house. “It was immaculate,” he said nearly twenty years later. “He would give my wife a run for her money. That house was fucking clean.” The rest of the detectives proceeded slowly from room to room.

They could see grooves in the living room carpet where Richard fanatically vacuumed; remote controls, evenly spaced, along the back of the couch; lobby posters for Charade, Dial M for Murder, and Love in the Afternoon hung in perfect symmetry on the wall. Hundreds of VHS recordings, alphabetized and separated by genre. (Fifteen years later, detectives marveled about the number of Golden Girls episodes.) Nothing out of place.”