Apr. 27, 1964 - A 19-year-old unemployed laborer accused of killing Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert in an East Side apartment last August has asked for a lie detector test.
The accused, George Whitmore Jr., confessed to the slayings, the police said, but he repudiated the statements at his arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court Saturday.
Whitmore’s court-appointed lawyer, Jerome Leftow, said today that the youth had asked the police to give him a lie-detector test when he was taken into custody last Friday. The police declined to comply with the request, Mr. Leftow said.
Lie-detector tests have not been admissible in the courts in New York, and the Police Department has said it does not use such tests in its interrogations. Lie-detectors have been used, however, by Federal agencies in personnel investigations.
Mr. Leftow said he had talked at length with Whitmore in the Brooklyn House of Detention on Sunday and today. He said the youth had consistently denied the crimes, as he had in his first conversation with the lawyer on Saturday.
“He’s a religious boy,” Mr. Leftow went on. “He would read the Bible every morning and also before meals. He asked me to get him a Bible. He prays that the truth will come out and God will help the police with clues to find the real killers.”
District Attorney Frank S. Hogan’s office said today that the Wylie and Hoffert case was still being checked out and that there had been no decision yet as to when Whitmore’s asserted role would be presented to the New York County grand jury. The girls were stabbed to death in their third-floor apartment at 57 East 88th Street on August 28, 1963.
Police officials confirmed they had found “quite a few” fingerprints in the Wylie-Hoffert apartment, at least some of which were unidentified, but they refused to discuss whether any matched those taken from Whitmore on Saturday.
Support this project at patreon.com/realtime1960s
Comments