Teenager Surrenders in N.Y. Subway Murders

Mar. 17, 1965 - A taciturn, 17-year-old youth sought in the subway slaying of a Brooklyn schoolboy surrendered to the police early today and was immediately charged with homicide.

The suspect, Christopher Lynch (pictured), a 210-pound, 6-4 unemployed youth with a police record, was booked on charges of having stabbed to death 17-year-old Andrew Mormile, a white high school student, last Friday night in an IND subway train.

Detectives at the Gates Avenue station described Lynch as a frequenter of black extremist meetings. One detective asserted that the suspect hated white persons.

A similar description was given by his sister, Mrs. Patricia Harris. “He believed in something like black nationalists,” she remarked in an interview on radio station WNEW. “That’s what got him in trouble. He had a lot of hatred in him because of the organization. They teach him, you know, to hate the white man.”Clad in a pea-green Army jacket, trousers of the same color, a khaki shirt, and brown shoes, the suspect showed up at 1:35 a.m. at the West 123d Street station house in Harlem. He was accompanied by his brother, Roger Lynch.

“I want to surrender my brother, Christopher,” Mr. Lynch told Sgt. William Hauser, the desk officer. “You’re looking for him.”

One hundred detectives had been searching for Lynch, and a 15-state police alarm had been broadcast yesterday. His photograph was also distributed to newspapers.

Yesterday, another Negro, Terry Toomer, 18, was arrested as a material witness in the stabbing of Mormile. The authorities said Toomer had told them he had accompanied Lynch on the train and that he had seen him murder young Mormile. A police source said Toomer told them the white boy had been murdered because he had resisted an attempt by Lynch to rob him.

There were 10 passengers in the first car of the train where the murder took place, but none has come forth to tell the police about it. 

The slain youth was buried yesterday at Long Island National Cemetery at Pine Lawn.

Support this project at patreon.com/realtime1960s