McGraw's byline, reproduced Will's letter in full, along with excerpts from the first letter and a report on the progress of the police investigation. Sidebar stories included interviews with psychologists and criminologists. McGraw's column ran on page four, with the title 'An Open Letter to Will.' The gist of it was that Will may have been justified in what he'd done, but all the same he had to turn himself in.
But that didn't happen. Instead Will was silent, while the police investigation proceeded and got nowhere. Then, about a week later, McGraw's mail included another letter from Will.
He'd been expecting more from Will, and had been keeping an eye out for a long envelope with a typed address and no return address, but this time the envelope was small and the address handprinted in ballpoint, and there was a return address as well. So he went ahead and opened it. He unfolded the single sheet of paper, saw the typeface and the signature in script type, and dropped the letter like a hot rock.
'An Open Letter to Patrizzio Salerno,' it began, and McGraw went on to read a virtual parody of his own open letter to Richie Vollmer.
Patsy Salerno was a local mafioso, the head of one of the five families, and the elusive target of a RICO investigation who had survived innumerable attempts to put him behind bars. Will detailed Patsy's various offenses against society. 'Your own cohorts have tried repeatedly to rid us of you,' he wrote, referring to the several attempts on Patsy's life over the years. He went on to suggest that Patsy perform the first public-spirited act of his life by killing himself; failing that, the letter's author would be forced to act.
'In a sense,' he concluded, 'I have no choice in the matter. I am, after all, only
'THE PUBLIC'S WILL'
The story sold a lot of papers. Nobody managed to get an interview with Salerno, but his attorney made good copy, describing his client as an innocent businessman who'd been persecuted by the government for years. He saw this latest outrage as further persecution; either Will had been launched on his crackpot crusade by the lies the government had spread about Patrizzio Salerno, or in fact there was no Will, and this was an elaborate federal effort to uncover or fabricate new evidence against Patsy. He advanced the latter possibility while declining on his client's behalf an NYPD offer of police protection.
'Imagine the cops protecting Patsy,' the Post quoted an anonymous wise guy as saying. 'Make more sense to have Patsy protecting the cops.'
The story got a lot of play locally, in the papers and on TV, but after a few days it began to die down because there was nothing to keep it going. Then on a Sunday Patsy had dinner at a restaurant on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. I don't remember what he ate, although the tabloids reported the meal course by course. Eventually he went to the men's room, and eventually someone went in after him to find out what was taking him so long.
Patsy was sprawled out on the floor with a couple of feet of piano wire around his neck. His tongue was hanging out of his mouth, double its usual size, and his eyes were bulging.
* * *
Of course the media went crazy. The national talk shows had their experts on, discussing the ethics of vigilantism and the particular psychology of Will. Someone recalled the number from The Mikado,
'I've Got a Little List,' and it turned out that everybody had his own list of 'society offenders who might well be under ground,' as the Gilbert and Sullivan song had it. David Letterman was on hand with a Top Ten list for Will's consideration, most of the entries overexposed show biz personalities. (Rumor had it that there was a good deal of backstage debate about the propriety of putting Jay Leno at the top of the list; in any event, Letterman's late-night rival went unmentioned.) There were more than a few people who claimed to be Will, and tried to take credit for his acts. The police set up a special phone number for calls relating to the case, and they got the predictable glut of false claimants and confessors. Open letters to various citizens, purportedly by Will, flowed to the News offices in a great stream. McGraw got a couple of death threats: 'An Open Letter to Marty McGraw…
You started this, you son of a bitch, and now it's your turn…' A lot of people, in public and private, were moved to guess who Will's next target might be, and offered their recommended candidates.
Everyone was sure of one thing. There would be a third. Nobody stopped at two. One maybe, three maybe. But nobody stopped at two.
Will didn't disappoint, although his next pick may have surprised a lot of people. 'An Open Letter to Roswell Berry' was his heading, and he went on to identify the city's leading anti-abortion activist as an unindicted murderer. 'Your rhetoric has provoked violent action on the part of your followers time and time again,' Will asserted, 'and on at least two occasions death has been the direct result. The bombing at the 137th Street clinic, the assassinations of the nurse and physician on Ralph Avenue, were wanton acts of murder. Both times you have talked out of both sides of your mouth, disassociating yourself from the act but all but applauding it as a means to an end, and a far lesser evil than abortion… You champion the unborn, but your interest in a fetus ends at birth. You oppose birth control, oppose sex education, oppose any social program that might lessen the demand for abortion. You are a despicable human
being, and seemingly unpunishable. But no one can hold out for long against
'THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE'
Berry was out of town when the letter landed on Marty McGraw's desk. He was in Omaha, leading a massive protest against an abortion clinic. 'I am doing God's work,' he told the TV cameras. 'It's His will that I continue, and I'll stack that up against the so-called will of the people any day.' He told another interviewer that whatever business Will had with him would have to wait until he returned to New York, and he expected to be in Omaha for some time to come.
God's will. In AA, we're advised to pray only for knowledge of His will, and the power to carry it out.
My sponsor, Jim Faber, has said that it's the easiest thing in the world to know God's will. You just wait and see what happens, and that's it.
It may indeed have been God's work that Roswell Berry was doing, but it evidently wasn't God's will that he continue. He stayed in Omaha, just as he said he would, but when he returned to New York it was in a box.
The maid found him in his room at the Omaha Hilton. His killer, not without a sense of humor, had left him with a coat hanger wrapped around his neck.
* * *
It was the Omaha Police Department's case, of course, but they welcomed the two NYPD detectives who flew
