Word: essexes
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...identity of the dead sniper at first simply deepened the mystery. Mark James Robert Essex, 23, a black trainee in the city's vocational classes for hard-core unemployed ("probably the best student in the class," said a teacher), hardly seemed to fit the profile of a maniacal killer. Neighbors, acquaintances and teachers from his home town of Emporia, Kans., sketched a portrait of a congenial and well-liked youth. His parents, neighbors reported, were "upstanding Christian people." Jimmy's father was the foreman at a meat-packing plant, and his mother, who holds a master...
Summoning reporters to a news conference, the Essex family painted a different picture, one of disillusionment, bitterness and finally hatred. "It all started in the Navy," Jimmy's mother declared. "He was all right when he left here." Confronted with prejudice and discrimination, Jimmy finally went AWOL. He testified at his court-martial: "I had begun to hate all white people. I was tired of going to white people and telling them my problems and not getting anything done about it." He was given a general discharge for "unsuitability" based on character and "behavior disorder." The bitterness left over...
...police dug further, they began to suspect that Essex may have been involved in earlier unsolved shootings. Just one week before the Howard Johnson shootout, on New Year's Eve, one cop had been killed and two wounded within the space of 15 minutes in or near police headquarters. Slugs recovered from two of the victims matched some of the .44 magnum bullets fired during the Howard Johnson murders. The morning of the shootout, a white grocer in New Orleans' black Broadmoor section was also shot and wounded by a .44 magnum slug. The attacker fled on foot...
Convinced it was racism that had turned her son from a cheerful adolescent into a murderous adult, Mrs. Essex seemed almost remorseless during a press conference last week in Kansas. "I do think Jimmy was driven to this," she said. "Jimmy was trying to make white America sit up and be aware of what is happening to us." Though prejudice is hardly an excuse for wholesale slaughter, Mrs. Essex made her point. So did a white youth outside the church. As a radio reporter walked from his car to the press conference, the boy drove by shouting, "Have fun with...
...these years Bing and his Russian wife Nina, a former ballerina, have lived in the Essex House on fashionable Central Park South. Although, he says, "I did not live in New York really; I lived at the opera house. Sunday, when the house was dark, I usually stayed in bed." Now 70 and still a British subject (knighted by the Queen in 1970), he plans to stay on in New York for the time being as "Distinguished Professor" at Brooklyn College (salary: $36,275; at the Met he earned $100,000), giving two courses in opera management. At the last...