All language subtitles for A Crime to Remember s01e01 Go Ask Alice.eng

? Baby, won't you please
come home? ?

Narrator:
Alice Crimmins was just about

the hottest ticket in Queens
in 1965.

She had it down, boy.

Beautiful, sexy,
soon-to-be divorc�e.

I lived a couple doors down
back then

and I can tell you,
all us girls wanted to be her.

But that summer,
something so awful happened...

Eddie.

Missy.

It's time...

something so horrifying
that none of us

would ever be jealous
of Alice again.

All that attention she'd gotten
would become a living hell.

Eddie?

Missy?

And to this day,

I still wonder
what really happened.

Are the kids with you?

Eddie,
don't play games with me.

Eddie,
please don't do this to me.

I-I woke up
and I went in their room.

They're not here.
They're not anywhere.

[ Stammers ] They're not here.

They're not here.

Missy?

Narrator: Queens was a safe part
of New York City.

I know because I lived
right there in Kew Gardens.

It was working people
and families.

Nothing really bad
ever happened there.

That was the Bronx
or even Manhattan.

But when those kids disappeared,
that changed everything.

Nothing would ever be the same
for any of us.

And Alice's nightmare
was just beginning.

That's me.

And that's our street.

Nice, right?

I was right there when
the first police car showed up.

But I didn't give it
a second thought.

How could I have known
what this would turn into?

Cornell: First, a couple
of uniformed officers show up.

Then the word spreads
that there are kids missing

and a couple of detectives
come over.

McNamara: The children's
bedroom window is open,

the screen
propped against the wall.

And what they call
a porter's cart,

which is a baby stroller
with a box on top,

is now right under the window.

Davis: The overwhelming majority
of cases of missing kids

are resolved
with the child being found

and being
some rational explanation.

In fact, investigators found out
that these kids

have been known to have crawled
out of the window.

But in the past,
they really didn't go that far.

They would stay in the yard,
maybe go next door.

McNamara:
Eddie was 5 and Missy was 4

and they went everywhere
together.

He was very protective of her.

People often remarked
on how close they were.

Man: And when was the last time
you saw them again?

Around 8:30 or 9:00.
That's when I put them to bed.

Cornell:
Alice told detectives

that she had taken the kids out
for a picnic in the afternoon...

[ Speaks indistinctly ]

And that they left the park
around 4:30.

Then she said
they went to a deli

and that she bought a package
of frozen veal and some soda,

took them home,
gave them dinner.

After dinner
she suggested to the kids,

"Hey, let's go for a ride."

And she took them on a drive.

Cornell: And had them in bed

by a little after
9:00 in the evening.

I am praying that you keep
mommy and daddy safe.

And the neighbor told police

that she walked
past the building.

For my birthday,
I want a big red...

And she heard Missy and Eddie

saying their prayers
at that time.

She said that she checked up
on Eddie

and took Eddie to the bathroom
at about midnight.

So that was the last time
she had seen the children

Alice had said she didn't know
if she'd locked the door.

Their room had
a hook-and-eye latch lock on it.

McNamara:
The story is that Eddie Jr.

Had raided
the refrigerator before.

So there was a lock
on the bedroom door,

keeping the kids in
from doing that.

Cornell: She went in.

She saw that the kids had slept
in their beds.

There was no sign
of any struggle,

but that they were gone.

Uniformed officers
start the search.

Missy!

You're looking in basements.

You're looking in, you know,
bushes, backyards.

You're trying to comb the area.

I haven't seen them, no.

Davis:
No one's seen these kids.

Cornell:
They were questioning neighbors.

Narrator:
When the cops showed up and started asking questions,

I've got to admit,
it was exciting.

I got caught up in it.

And there was this rumor
in the neighborhood

of a bushy-haired stranger
who had tried to lure

a little boy
out of his apartment.

He was really trying to coax
this little boy

out of the apartment.

You ever seen him before?
No.

Man: So I was looking out
from the window.

I really didn't see exactly
his hair color.

Narrator: But every neighborhood
has that story

about some mysterious creep
who snatches kids, right?

In 1965,
the term "stranger danger"

was not even known.

It just wouldn't have been
a priority

for police to go and investigate
those leads.

Narrator: Besides,
why would they go looking

for some phantom pervert

when there was real drama
right in front of them?

Gross: Alice and Eddie

were in the middle
of a divorce, custody fight.

The neighbors thought,
oh, it's a custody thing.

Narrator:
Alice and Eddie Crimmins,

boy, oh, boy,
there was a soap opera.

She kicked him out a year ago

and told him
she wanted a divorce.

Now, they were both
Roman Catholic,

so this was a big deal.

Eddie just wouldn't accept it.

He moved out
but he rented a room close by

and he'd always show up places
trying to keep his hooks in her.

Hold this.

Here.

You can put it
right over there.

Cornell: This was the early days
of women's lib

and she was apparently enjoying
a sex life

that was really frowned upon
in Queens,

and she was pretty open
about it.

Do you live around here?
Yeah, I've seen you around.

In the complex?
Mm-hmm.

Wow. You look great.
Thank you.

I live right down the road.
Oh, wow.

Oh my gosh,
I know I've seen you before.

Yeah, this is here.
This is the place.

What's your name?
Joe.

Oh, Joe. Alice.

Yeah. Alice.
Good to meet you, too.

Can I talk to you for a second?

Yeah, go ahead.

You want to do this
in front of the kids?

Narrator:
And the really sad thing was,

it was the kids
who got caught in the middle

over and over.

Stop!

Eddie!

Eddie!

So that would raise your antenna
right away,

saying that's pretty likely now

that this disappearance
has something to do with that.

We know you guys
are having some problems.

If this is a prank...
Alice: No.

Custody thing...
This is not a prank.

You better tell us right now.

Davis:
The two detectives in this case

were the classic
old-timer, young guy team.

Gross: George Martin
was getting close to retirement

and Jerry Piering
was in his 30s.

Alice, if you don't mind,

I'd like to ask you
some questions

in the other room.

Then they decide
to split them up.

Listen Eddie, I want to ask you
a few more questions.

Let's start with yesterday
at around 6:00 P.M.

McNamara: Eddie says that
the day the kids went missing

he began the day by playing golf
at a public golf course.

He went and had some pizza
at a fast food place,

had some gin and tonics
at a bar.

Then you went home?

And then I went home.

And you didn't hear anything
strange during the night?

I already told you this.

Please just answer
the questions.

No.

Do you have any boyfriends?

Two.

Just two?

Yes.

You didn't have any of these
boyfriends over last night?

No.

Jerry Piering doesn't like
the looks of Alice Crimmins.

Gross:
He's seen women like this.

She's a little bit
of a wise guy.

She's too good looking.

Her clothes are way too tight.

It just makes him bristle.

Cornell: Why isn't this mother
whose kids are missing

looking upset?

Why isn't she weeping?

Why isn't she distraught?

Why does she have
all this makeup on?

McNamara: He thought she was
just a very over-sexed divorc�e

who was keeping her kids
locked up while she had this

you know, very hot sex life.

Okay.
Thank you, Mrs. Crimmins.

[ Thunder rumbles ]

Narrator:
Did it pour that afternoon.

I'll never forget it.

It was like we'd all been
holding our breath all morning

and then just...

the heavens opened up.

And when we saw Alice
climb into a car

with one of the detectives,

we thought, "Oh, thank God.
The kids have turned up."

Cornell:
And Alice is putting on mascara,

looking in her mirror,

and she doesn't know
where they're going.

Narrator: But it turns out
that detective sure did.

I don't know if it was
how Alice acted or what,

but he had a feeling

that there was something
she wasn't telling him

and damned if he didn't
try to shock it out of her.

Cornell:
And he just grabs her by the arm and leads her into the weeds.

Narrator:
Looking back on it,

I guess none of us
ever really thought

it wouldn't turn out okay.

And then, all of a sudden,
we're living in this horror show

and it was only gonna get worse.

[ Engine turns over ]

Narrator:
It was almost 50 years ago,

and I remember it
like it was yesterday.

That little girl
lying dead in a vacant lot.

The discovery
of the body of the little girl,

that totally changes
the tenor of the investigation.

Narrator:
Look, we weren't naive.

Queens was New York City.

We knew about crime,

but a 4-year-old
gets taken from her bedroom

and gets strangled

just eight blocks
from her home...

from our homes...

how are we supposed to
make sense of that?

And Alice, the mother...
that's her right there.

That morning no one outside
Kew Gardens ever heard of her,

and now it seemed like
the whole world

was staring her down.

[ Crowd shouting indistinctly ]

It's amazing how quickly
photographers show up.

[ Shouting continues ]

She just burst into tears
and rushes into her house.

So those were the first tears
that the detectives saw.

Gross: And that's considered
a sign of guilt.

She cried for the camera
but not for her daughter.

McNamara:
When Missy is found dead,

her body goes
to the medical examiner.

They determined
that she was asphyxiated.

Cornell:
The chief medical examiner

could not pinpoint
a time of death,

except between
10:00 P.M. and 4:00 A.M.

Narrator: And everyone
was thinking the same thing,

but no one
wanted to say it out loud...

Where was little Eddie?

They were beating the bushes,
literally,

going through the parks,
going through the streets.

[ Police radio chatter ]

And it's about four days later
when they discover

little Eddie's body,
the 5-year-old boy.

And he's wrapped
in a blue blanket

in a lot adjacent to
the Van Wyck Expressway.

They never can establish
a cause of death

because the body
is so decomposed.

McNamara:
Most of the violence that occurs with children, especially,

comes at the hands
of their parents.

Davis: Of course, the mother
was with the kids last

and she had physical custody
of the kids,

at least for that night.

But you can't dismiss the fact
that the father

had access to their place.

Narrator:
We all got married young back then... 19, 20.

It was what you did,

especially if you were
a good Catholic girl.

And who doesn't want a big party
with the fancy dress?

But when you kissed all your
friends and family goodbye,

you went home
with your new husband,

and a lot of girls
really didn't understand

what they had signed up for.

Alice had the two children
very young.

Eddie worked out at the airport
as an airline mechanic.

He worked long hours

and he liked to stay out
boozing.

[ Upbeat music plays ]

[ Indistinct conversations ]

And Alice was
a bored, young housewife.

She had thought there must be
something more to life.

So she got herself a job
as a cocktail waitress,

got babysitters,

started hanging out
at night herself.

Alice got interested in
a lot of men

and Eddie got jealous.

Eddie got furious.

The had split up over this.

And Eddie had moved out,

was living in
a little room nearby

to keep his eye on Alice.

And he really
didn't want to get divorced.

He wanted to try to get
back with her.

He was totally obsessed.

Narrator: There were all kinds
of stories in the neighborhood

about Eddie Sr.

He really lost it
when Alice kicked him out.

She would laugh it off,

but we all thought
he seemed kind of scary.

He had installed a little
microphone in her bedroom,

and he would sneak
into the basement and listen in

when she was having
her male guests over.

Gross: And a few times,
you know, Eddie broke in.

I mean, he has to know
she's gonna be with guys.

Narrator:
With all that craziness and now two dead kids?

Everyone knew the police
weren't going to leave

Alice and Eddie alone
any time soon.

And get this,
just like on the TV,

when the cops
talked to them again,

Eddie's story started to change.

[ Engine idling ]

McNamara: And at this point,
Eddie is saying

that he did not remain at home.

He drove to the apartment
and watched for signs of Alice.

That places him at the exact
scene of this crime.

He was very insistent
that Alice talk to him,

and she was turning him down.

He was kind of
coming apart at the seams.

You know, you wonder
if there was a revenge factor.

Cornell: And so, they were
suspicious of his story.

Narrator: And not for nothing.

Alice's story was starting
to sound strange too.

McNamara: She alleges
she went to this gas station

at 9:00 P.M.

The workers at the gas station
later say

that they remember it
being closer to 5:30.

When Missy is found dead,

in her stomach
were a partially digested dinner

of peas, carrots,

some macaroni-type food
and some string beans.

Narrator: But Alice swore
she fed them veal, not macaroni.

Gross: Detective Piering claimed
that he saw

an empty box of manicotti
in the garbage.

McNamara:
And if you're a liar about that,

aren't you lying about
what happened to your children?

Narrator:
So the cops told them

there's one easy way to prove
you're telling the truth.

Gross: So Eddie says, "Okay,"

and he took
the lie detector test.

And passed it.

So Eddie is eliminated
as a suspect.

Gross: So he said to Alice,

take the lie detector test
and they'll stop.

Then finally she agreed.

They took her in

and they start with
the preliminary questions...

"What's your name?
Where do you live?

Who's president?"

And they started
asking questions about the case.

Man: And that was the last time
you saw your son?

[ Muffled laughter ]

And she claimed
she saw cigarettes burning

trough the two-way mirror.

And she heard them laughing
in the next room.

So she ripped all the stuff off
and stalked off.

When you're dealing with
the death of a child,

you would absolutely expect

that the parent would do
anything in the world

to cooperate
in the investigation, anything.

And so, if someone refuses,

you have to really question,
"Why are they doing this?"

Narrator: None of us knew
what she was thinking.

And it wasn't
just the lie detector.

The way she behaved after?

The talk in the neighborhood
wasn't about poor Alice anymore.

Cornell:
The murder of her children

didn't cramp
Alice Crimmins' style.

She was seen out partying

a week after the discovery
of the children's murders.

She was still out at the bars,

still dancing up a storm,
still drinking,

still inviting men
to her apartment.

She just wasn't
the grieving mother.

I don't know how you grieve
or what stages you go through,

but I know one thing...

you don't dance and party
the next week.

Narrator: And for the police,

it was all the proof
they needed.

She was practically
rubbing their noses in it.

Cornell:
As the detectives saw it,

her motive was to get
the children out of the way

so that they would not interfere
with her swinging lifestyle.

She was the only person
in the house with the children

when they vanished.

She had the motive.
She had the opportunity.

Narrator: Now they just needed
to figure out

how to get Alice to talk

or find someone who would.

Narrator: The police figured
that if Alice Crimmins' kids

were getting in the way
of her sex life

there had to be
some man out there

who wanted them gone too.

Takes two to tango, right?

There were two big boyfriends
at the time.

There was Tony Grace,

a big contractor
from Long Island

who was mob connected,

or so the theory was.

[ Woman screams on television ]

Narrator: On the night
the kids went missing,

Alice told the police
she'd called

to see what he was doing.

Hello?

Gross:
Tony Grace had a lot of money,

so he could splurge

and surround himself
with a faux harem.

And he's twice as old as Alice.

Are you going to come over
and see me tonight?

Listen, I wish.
But not tonight.

According to him, the night
of the children's disappearance,

he just kind of brushed her off,
and that was the end of it.

He has a great alibi.

He was out with four women,
the bowling girls.

They were married women
who went out bowling,

looking for guys.

Cornell: And there was
her other more steady boyfriend,

Joseph Rorech.

[ Telephone rings ]

Hello?

Hey, Joe.

Narrator: Joe Rorech
was much cuter than Tony,

younger but not as rich.

She'd go out with him
when Tony wasn't around,

but I heard Alice was kind of
getting bored with Joe.

Cornell: Joe Rorech
was quite a character.

He had been a home contractor.

You know, a good-looking guy,

wavy hair, well-greased...
60s grease.

I'll talk to you soon.

Cornell: And he also had a wife
and many children

out on Long Island.

But they didn't seem
to get in his way.

Narrator: But the night
the kids disappeared,

Joe had an alibi.

He wasn't with his family,
but he had an alibi.

The cops figured
they couldn't pressure Tony.

He knew
all kinds of powerful people.

But Joe, who was Joe?

He might be willing to talk.

Mr. Rorech...
can we call you Joe?

Rorech: Sure.

Good.

Joe, I need your help.

Of course.

That's why I came down here.

Good.

Let me ask you
about Alice Crimmins.

What about her?

Narrator: Turns out he couldn't
tell them anything about Alice,

but everyone knows

if the cops got you
on something,

they can make you do anything.

And boy, oh, boy,
did they have something on Joe.

Why don't you tell me
about Ramona.

Because from what I've heard,

she's more of a Ramone
than a Ramona.

[ Laughter ]

Right?

Gross: He was bisexual.

He actually dated a guy
who dressed as a woman.

And he was so terrified
that they would tell his wife.

You're going to keep dating
Alice Crimmins.

You're going to get her
to tell you what happened.

And they'd say, "Listen, Joe,
you've got to help us."

And we'll watch out for you."

Okay.

Whatever you want.

This was the real turning point
for detectives.

They thought,
aha, now we've got Joe Rorech

and she's going to tell him
everything.

? 'Cause your mama's so alone ?

? I have tried in vain ?

? Never no more
to call your name ?

? When you left,
you broke my heart ?

? Because I never thought
we'd part ?

? Every hour of the day,
you will hear me say ?

? Baby, won't you please
come home? ?

And the police, taking a cue
from Eddie Crimmins

started listening in on her too.

So they had everything bugged,

her bedroom, her phone.

They obviously were listening in
on everything she did.

Narrator: I know,
it seems a little sneaky

but you've got to remember
there were two dead kids here.

And they were so convinced
Alice did it.

They had to be there
when she made a mistake.

And the amazing thing was,
Alice knew they were doing it

and it didn't stop her.

In fact, she figured
she'd give them a show.

Can you imagine?

Cornell:
This went on for a long time...

listening to Alice Crimmins'
sex life basically,

getting nothing
that gave them a case.

Narrator:
The police still couldn't get anything solid on Alice.

In fact, aside from
all the action in the bedroom,

Alice dropped
the hot-to-trot routine

and cleaned up her act a little.

Cornell: The attractive
red-haired cocktail waitress,

the flame-haired swinger
in the tabloids.

I mean,
it was constant headlines.

And so, she went to work
as a secretary.

Narrator:
And so, the cops decided to dial up the pressure.

Gross: She got jobs
under her maiden name of Burke,

and Piering would call up
her employers and say,

"You know who you got
working for you?"

Cornell: "That notorious lady
from Queens",

"that Alice Crimmins
who killed her kids."

And she'd get fired.

Davis: I haven't seen
that kind of surveillance

on some of the top organized
crime hit men in the city.

To think that they could do that

and that the district attorney
would even allow that

is mind-boggling.

Cornell:
It's just really hard to believe when you see how far they went

to try to break this woman.

Gross: They taped her,

they pressured her
for two years.

McNamara:
They listened 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

And in all that time, she said
not one incriminating thing.

[ Tape recorder clicks off ]

[ Sighs ]

They had a district attorney
who said,

"You know, we don't have...
there's no evidence here."

And they were going to stop
the investigation

but Piering said, "Wait, wait.
Give me a little more time."

McNamara:
These cops were fathers.

When that's emotional like that,
there's this urgency,

this feeling of,
"We need to solve this

and we need to find justice
for these children."

Piering had them go back

through the thousands of tips
they got in the mail.

Cornell: And they find
this letter from someone

who says that she was looking
out her window that night

and saw something.

Signed "anonymous."

Narrator: So the police had
their first lead in two years,

but how do you find someone
who wants to stay anonymous?

After two years,
they really don't have anything

to tie Alice Crimmins
to the killing of her kids,

except this anonymous letter
to the D.A.'s office...

This tree is actually
blocking the line of sight.

From someone who says

that she was looking
out her window that night

and she sees a woman walking,

carrying a bundle under her arm
wrapped in a blanket,

leading a little boy
by the hand,

walking with a man.

When they open a car door,
the man takes the bundle,

tosses it in the back seat
and hears the woman say,

"Oh, don't do that to her.
Don't throw her."

Do you see the one
with the light in it?

Yeah.

It's either that
or the one on the right.

McNamara: Probably the best
investigative work

was in tracking down
the letter writer.

It was aces.
It was great.

They figured out
the sight lines.

They figured out
who had air-conditioning.

[ Knocks on door ]

Cornell: They knock on doors,
they find Sophie Earomirski.

Sophie has
a kind of a funny history,

you know,
she has a few mental problems.

But she says
she's the letter writer.

Narrator:
And then they ask her,

well, could you see
who the woman was?

And sure enough,
Sophie says she could.

Man: That's her.
That's her.

Alice Crimmins?

Yes.

Alice Crimmins,
you're under arrest.

Leave me alone.

Ma'am, please come with us.

Stop!
Get off of me!

Ma'am, please.
Please.

Make your way to the car.
Make it easy on yourself.

Predict that this will be
a well-followed trial

by the very appearance
of the defendant,

an attractive woman
with a mass of flaming red hair.

Cornell:
The first day of her trial,

there are huge crowds
of spectators and press.

As the prosecutor saw it,

her motive was to get
the children out of the way

so that they would not interfere
with her dating life.

McNamara:
And that Alice killed Missy

and in a panic, called
one of her boyfriends' goons,

and that they came and helped
take Missy's body and Eddie

out of the apartment.

The prosecutors bring
Sophie Earomirski in

as a witness.

She says that she can identify
Alice Crimmins

as carrying
the body of a little child

out of her apartment.

And that, of course...

there's a big gasp
in this whole packed courtroom.

It's got to be specific
or it doesn't help us.

Joe Rorech takes the stand.

Wait, tell me...

Do you ever
even think about it?

Narrator: Now, Joe had been
working with the cops,

wearing a wire to try to get
something on Alice,

but he never could.

And he says that Alice Crimmins
once broke down in tears

and told him, "I'm sorry, Joe.
I killed her."

At this,
Alice Crimmins jumps up.

She yells, "Joe, you snake!
You liar!"

I mean, it was an incredible
moment in the courtroom.

The testimony
of the chief medical examiner,

Dr. Milton Helpern,

turned out to be devastating.

His initial finding had been

that he could not pinpoint
the time of death

any closer than between
10:00 P.M. and 4:00 A.M.

Alice Crimmins said she saw
her children alive at midnight.

McNamara:
Suddenly, out of the blue, two years later in court

the medical examiner
reverses that decision.

Cornell: He testified
that the children were dead

by 9:30 at night.

It threw Alice Crimmins' story
out the window, so to speak.

Narrator:
Don't think for a second that that went over our heads.

We lived and breathed this story
for two years.

We knew every detail.

[ Chuckles ] And now this?

The police
had worked on Milton Helpern

for quite a long time

to get him to refine
the time of death

and to make it before midnight.

And Helpern
finally went along with that.

And I get home,
and there's another one

right across the street.

Oh my God.
They really got you covered.

Narrator:
And, Joe, you're telling me that after all this time

the one time Alice said
something incriminating

was when he wasn't wearing
the wire?

Cornell:
Detectives had been unmerciful

in their pressuring
of Joseph Rorech,

telling him
what could happen to his life

if he didn't cooperate.

So he becomes
a really problematic witness

because he had ulterior motives.

Narrator: And Sophie?

Well, anyone who lived
in Kew Gardens knew

you always took her stories
with a grain of salt.

Gross: She claims she heard
the guy saying, "Hurry up"

and the woman saying,

"Don't throw her in the car..."
You couldn't hear that,

certainly not from the distance
that Sophie was,

a couple hundred feet from that.

[ Thunder rumbles ]

Narrator: And honestly,
from where we stood,

it looked like the police
were so busy

making a case against Alice

they didn't even bother
looking anywhere else.

McNamara:
Investigators later accounted

how Eddie asked them
a lot of questions

about the state
of his children's bodies,

the bruises, the decomposition.

They were questions
that they felt a perpetrator

would be more interested in
than a parent.

Grieving parents
usually don't want to know

about the injuries
to the children's bodies.

And when the children were
alleged to have disappeared,

he's there in a car.

Which is pretty interesting.

Narrator:
And what about that prowler?

I know it seemed like a story
to scare kids, but who knows?

Wasn't it worth looking into?

The kids had a history
of going out the window,

looking for food.

The screen was not bolted in.

And very early that morning,

Eddie could have gotten
out of the window,

taken the screen down,
moved the cart,

gotten his sister down

and they went off looking for
something to eat for breakfast.

They could have gone
out the window

and encountered this stranger
who fed them another meal

and ended up killing them.

When the trial comes,

a mental health expert
did write in and say

that they were conflicted,
ethically, about this,

but that they had had a patient
who mentioned the murders

and mentioned involvement.

The patient ended up
committing suicide.

You let enough time go by
and none of these leads

can lead anywhere
because they vanish.

Piering had so convinced them
that they had the right answer

that they just weren't
going to look anymore.

Narrator:
I'm no lawyer, but honestly,

I didn't think they had made
much of a case.

And just when I was
starting to feel like

Alice had to be innocent,
she took the stand,

and the story she told
sent all of us into shock.

Reporter: This was
the longest day so far

in the continuing murder trial
of Mrs. Alice Crimmins,

and in many ways, perhaps
the most dramatic of them all.

Mrs. Crimmins was the only
witness on the stand today,

on a day marked by outbursts
from all sides.

Cornell: Reporters always wait
for that moment

when a defendant
takes the stand,

especially
one like Alice Crimmins.

Alice was asked about
Joseph Rorech.

And the prosecutor asked,

"Did you ever swim
in Joseph Rorech's swimming pool

when his wife was away?"

And she said, "Well, yes I did."

"What were you wearing
when you swam

in Joseph Rorech's
swimming pool?"

And Alice,
direct as ever, said,

"One time a bathing suit,
one time nothing at all."

"And when you were swimming
in Joseph Rorech's pool

"wearing nothing at all,

where were your children?"

"They were dead," said Alice.

I mean,
you can imagine the shock

that went through
that courtroom,

just gasps of absolute horror.

Narrator:
What was wrong with her?

What mother does that

with her children
still warm in their graves?

It horrified people.

But no matter
how sickening it was,

it wasn't proof
she killed those kids.

The day of the verdict,

it seemed like all of Queens
was there.

And everybody had an opinion.

Man:
I come here every day.

I'm here every day
taking a look at this case.

Why?
Because I help

and I'd love for Mrs. Crimmins
to be innocent.

Yeah, that's right.
She is innocent.

Cornell:
Finally the verdict came in and she was convicted.

And she just passed out.

She just dropped.

It was just a really stunning
kind of a moment.

It seemed everybody
in the courtroom was crying,

and I was among them.

I was emotionally unable
to accept the idea

that Alice Crimmins
had actually put her hands

around this baby's throat

or used something
to strangler her.

I just couldn't accept it.

Narrator:
There were hoots and hollers

from the people
who thought she did it

and actual tears from the people
who thought she was innocent.

Gross:
I've covered a million trials.

It's inconceivable to me
that they could convict somebody

on the strength
of what they had.

McNamara: The motive
doesn't really track with Alice.

The police believed that Alice
wanted to get rid of the kids

because they were a damper
on her swinging lifestyle.

I saw no evidence that the kids

actually were
injuring her lifestyle.

If she wanted to be free
of the kids,

she would just let Eddie
take the kids.

She doesn't have to kill them.

And there is almost always
an escalation of violence.

There was no evidence

that these kids
were ever physically harmed.

You know,
we're supposed to believe

that just one night
after a picnic and dinner

that she kills her children.

It doesn't make a lot of sense.

Narrator: Alice went to jail
for almost 10 years

for killing Missy,

but looking back on it,
maybe she was sent to jail

for something else too.

This was the time
when women's lib

was just taking off.

[ Crowd shouting indistinctly ]

They were Irish-Catholic cops.

Couldn't be more conservative.

They were fascinated by her,

they were appalled by her,

and they were obsessed with her.

And they never
took their eyes off of her.

They pretty much accused Alice
of being a bad person

and, therefore, guilty.

Cornell:
She would not show her grief

and she was judged for that
and the men in her life.

The jury was 12 married men.

One guy who actually said,

"Well, she's capable of anything
if she lived that way."

McNamara:
Do I know whether or not

Alice Crimmins
killed her children? No.

But I certainly don't think
that she got a fair trial.

Narrator:
Look, one thing is for sure,

someone killed those kids.

And at the time,
the thought that whoever did it

wouldn't be caught
was terrifying.

Gross:
If they thought there could be

some mysterious somebody
out there,

you know,
how do you live with that?

Narrator:
You need to find the killer.

I mean,
if you don't find the killer

then none of our kids are safe.

Gross: But if you think that
it was Alice's internal madness,

you can live with that

and you say, that's what happens
when you screw around.

Not knowing
makes everybody's life unsafe.

Narrator: So if the jury said
it was Alice, who am I to argue?

That's how it works
in this country, right?

I think that we should be able
to live with mystery.

I don't know why we can't do it.

Alice Crimmins made herself
very scarce after all of that.

The condemnation,
the conviction,

the horror, the grief.

She and Tony Grace
moved off to Florida.

There were occasional
Alice sightings.

She'd be seen
on Tony Grace's yacht.

That was about it.

McNamara: One of the big
criticisms Alice got

was that she continued to drink
and see men

after her children died,

and that seemed really callous.

On the other hand,
people grieve very differently,

and she may have been numbing
her grief.

She may have just been seeking
some sort of solace in that.

Gross: I had dinner
with her once and she said,

"You don't understand.
My grief is mine.

"It's not theirs.

They can't judge me,
and they can't have it."

? Baby, won't you please
come home? ?

Cornell: She carried
little photographs

of Missy and Eddie
in her wallet.

And she said
she would open it herself

and look at their pictures
and grieve privately.

She didn't want anyone else
to see it.

? 'Cause your mama's so alone ?

Narrator: Then again,
it was a long time ago

and a lot of things have changed
since then.

Sometimes I wonder
if they got it right.

What do you think?

? I have tried in vain ?

? Never no more
to call your name ?

? When you left,
you broke my heart ?

? Because I never thought
we'd part ?

? Every hour of the day,
you will hear me say ?

? Baby, won't you please
come home? ?

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