NYPD Investigates Subway Murder

Mar. 13, 1965 - Detectives investigating the slaying of a 17-year-old boy on a subway train in Brooklyn appealed today for help from the 10 persons believed to have witnessed the murder.

So far, the police said, not one person who saw the slaying has come forward to help identify those who stabbed Andrew Mormile of 67 Grand Ave., Brooklyn, Friday night.

All who saw the stabbing had disappeared by the time police found the boy dead on an IND train about 11:30 p.m.

Deputy Chief Inspector Joseph McLaughlin, who is supervising the efforts of 30 detectives on the case, said: “We are in desperate need of assistance. How can we solve this crime if the people who saw it won’t come forward and tell us about it? If citizens won’t do their part when they can, they are leaving the city to the lawless element.”

An autopsy showed that the youth had suffered two knife wounds in the head. His skull had been fractured, causing bleeding in the brain. He had also been stabbed in the left ear and in the lip.

Albert Mormile, the 44-year-old father of the slain boy, also appealed to any witnesses to help the police.

Interviewed in his four-room, $45-a-month tenement flat, Mr. Mormile said:“It was such a senseless thing to kill him. He was a gentle boy who never hurt anyone.”

He reached over to the mantelpiece of the living room and took down a small snapshot of a sparrow.

“He found this in the street a few years ago when boys were throwing stones at it,” he said, his voice breaking. “The bird had a broken leg, but he built a cage and nursed it back to health. I’ll never forget how he cried when the bird died.”

The Mormiles have three other children, two girls and a boy. Mr. Mormile works as a handyman for a Queens milk company. His slain son was a senior at the Brooklyn High School for Automotive Trades.

“How can I let my daughters go on the subways after what happened?” he asked. “What can I do?”

The father said his son had visited his 15-year-old girlfriend Friday evening at her home in Ozone Park, Queens.

“He paid a $5 deposit on a friendship ring on Feb. 26,” he said. “Then he did odd jobs after school. Friday, he and the girl went to the jewelers in Jamaica to get the ring. Then he left to come home.”

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