The Howard Beach Story: Ordinary Night Explodes

The events were ordinary and by all odds they should have been separate. But that Friday night, a week before Christmas, they converged with the force of a bomb, scattering racial shrapnel throughout New York City.

An 18th-birthday party in a private home where beer and Southern Comfort flowed freely, a wrong turn on a parkway and the failure of an $80 water pump in a 1976 Buick, a double-date for a play at Brooklyn College followed by a meal and light-hearted conversation at a diner--these are the events that led to the tragedy of Howard Beach.

When it was over, Michael Griffith, 23, lay dead under a blood-stained white sheet on the Belt Parkway in Queens. Three white youths were charged with being part of the teen-age crowd that savagely attacked Griffith and two other black men with a baseball bat, a tree limb and fists. A police officer’s son found himself a central figure in the investigation. And Mayor Edward I. Koch told the world that the attackers were no better than the “lynching parties that existed in the Deep South.”

Now, weeks later, thousands of letters--some critical of the mayor, most praising his remarks--still pour into City Hall, as a special prosecutor attempts to piece together precisely what happened on that night. Not only in New York, but also across the nation, the case has galvanized civil rights activists and sparked a painstaking examination of race relations. The case is rife with complications and contradictions, and many questions remain.

Just what did happen in Howard Beach, an insulated, predominantly white working-class community near Kennedy Airport in Queens that many residents compare to a small town? While a grand jury ponders evidence for possible indictments, investigators, with great difficulty, have pieced together chronologies.

On the evening of Dec. 19, Michael Griffith, a sometime construction worker; his stepfather, Cedric Sandiford, 36, a mechanic’s assistant, and Timothy Grimes, 18 and unemployed, met in the home of Sandiford’s niece, Vanessa Sandiford, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Curtis Sylvester, a 20-year-old student from Florida, had come to town, and they decided to show him parts of Brooklyn and Queens while using Sylvester’s car to visit a friend of Grimes.

After seeing the friend, they started driving back to Bedford-Stuyvesant on the Belt Parkway sometime between 9:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. To those unfamiliar with the area, the green and white signs along the parkway can be confusing. The four men turned off at an exit labeled The Rockaways instead of Rockaway Parkway, the exit they were looking for.

They traveled--heading in the wrong direction--toward the Atlantic Ocean on Cross Bay Boulevard and drove through a deserted area opposite the Jamaica Bay bird sanctuary, the largest wildlife refuge within any U.S. city, a place where glossy ibis, snowy egrets and more than 300 other species of birds settle into marshes through which the distant towers of the Empire State Building and World Trade Center in Manhattan can be seen.

Car Breaks Down

It was here that their 1976 Buick, which had begun to overheat, broke down at about 10:30 p.m. At first, when they peered under the hood, they thought the problem was as simple as a leaky hose or radiator. One of the men walked a mile and a half to a toll booth on a nearby bridge and asked for water, filling an empty antifreeze container. But when he returned, the car was still disabled.

By now, it was just before 11 and getting chilly. Temperatures were dropping into the 30s, and three of the men decided to seek help and take the subway home. Sylvester, the visitor, didn’t want to leave his auto vulnerable to thieves. He later told investigators: “I never leave my car.”

So Grimes, Sandiford and Griffith walked back along Cross Bay Boulevard in the direction of Howard Beach, about 2 1/2 miles away. After walking about half a mile, they had their first encounter with whites. They saw two young women in a red Datsun 300 ZX outside the Surfside Motel and asked them for a ride. When the women refused, there was a brief argument.

Unfazed, they continued their journey. “These were streetwise kids,” said a police investigator. “They were not scared, wandering through the neighborhood.”

While the three men were walking, 30 to 50 teen-agers in Howard Beach were attending an 18th-birthday party. Eventually, a few of the revelers decided that the party needed more liquor. According to police, Jon Lester, 17, his girlfriend, and three other friends piled into a car. At the corner of Cross Bay Boulevard and 157th Avenue, they encountered the black men at a stoplight. Whether the men stepped in front of the car or the auto swerved near to them is still under investigation. But the close call prompted angry words, including racial epithets, from both sides.

Presence Causes Alarm

The car drove off, and the blacks spotted the New Park Pizzeria nearby. Tired and hungry from their more than hourlong walk, they went inside the red brick restaurant with its distinctive pizza-pie-shaped neon sign. The presence of three black men in the restaurant in the predominantly white neighborhood alarmed at least one Howard Beach resident enough that he telephoned the police at 12:39 a.m.

Five minutes later, policemen who visited the restaurant and talked to the manager radioed from their patrol car that there was no problem. The three men finished their pizza and asked the counter man where the nearest subway stop was.

Meanwhile, on their way back to the party, the teen-agers drove past the pizzeria and spied the blacks they had angrily confronted just a little earlier. According to police and court testimony, Lester returned to the party and told friends: “Hey, there’s some niggers in the pizza parlor. Let’s go kill them.”

Violence Flares

Police say that 10 of the partygoers quickly got into three cars and sped to a parking lot half a block north of the pizzeria. They arrived as the three black men were leaving the restaurant and walking north toward the subway on Cross Bay Boulevard.

Violence flared when the two groups met. There are divergent accounts of what happened next, because a special grand jury has been dissecting fresh information in the case, including testimony from previously uncooperative witnesses.

Until Gov. Mario M. Cuomo named a special prosecutor in the case in January, investigators were pretty sure of the chronology. Their information came from interviews in Howard Beach and initial cooperation by some of the youths attending the party.

The black men ran and Grimes was struck on the back--a glancing blow--by something the teen-agers threw.

“Even though they had been drinking, the blows of the beaters were true,” said a police spokesman. “They were not too drunk to drive. They hit their target.”

Bears Brunt of Attack

The 18-year-old Grimes outdistanced his companions, running straight up Cross Bay Boulevard. Sandiford, older and slower, apparently bore the brunt of the attack. Investigators believe he was hit several times with a bat, the tree limb and fists.

According to the account given first, Sandiford and Griffith took a different route from Grimes. They ran past the lights of homes decorated for Christmas on 156th Avenue. Grimes continued north on Cross Bay Boulevard, easily outdistancing his pursuers. He ran across an overpass and down onto the westbound lane of the highway.

Meanwhile, some of the teen-agers jumped into cars to follow Griffith and Sandiford. They caught up with the older Sandiford outside a home on 156th Avenue, between 87th and 86th streets, and beat him to the ground. He got up, ran again, was caught and beaten again. Finally, he feigned unconsciousness.

At 12:52 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 20, police received a call from a woman reporting that male whites were beating a black man. Two police cars responded, couldn’t find anything and reported that to their dispatcher on the radio at 1:04 a.m.

After having beaten Sandiford, the teen-agers returned to party. “Some were crying. Some were bragging when they went back to the party,” one detective said.

Griffith, according to the earlier account, tried to climb over a fence onto the Shore Parkway. He then doubled back a block, went through a hole in the fence and tried to cross the highway. In this account, it is not certain whether the white youths were in hot pursuit. Sandiford also managed to make his way through the fence hole.

According to the second account from new witnesses who cooperated with the special prosecutor, four youths pursued Griffith from the pizza parlor across a parking lot, down 156th Avenue and onto 90th Street. He jumped a two-foot guard rail at the end of the street and ran across an exit ramp onto the parkway. By this account, Griffith did not climb through a hole in the fence. Instead, he was chased directly onto the parkway.

Crucial Distinction

This distinction is crucial, because it directly affects the seriousness of charges a grand jury can bring. If Griffith was chased directly onto the road in hot pursuit, a grand jury can indict for murder. If the youths’ actions did not lead directly to Griffith’s death, a lesser charge would be likely.

Both accounts agree that Griffith was killed by a car traveling west on the highway as he tried to cross. Initial reports were that Dominick Blum, 24, a court officer and a policeman’s son, was the driver. According to detectives, he was traveling in the car with his girlfriend after attending “Top Girls,” a play at Brooklyn College. Afterward they had eaten at a diner with another couple and dropped the couple off; now they were on their way home. But prosecutors subsequently heard testimony that Blum’s car was the second to strike Griffith and that he was hit first by another auto.

Police say one of the teen-agers who chased Sandiford later told detectives he heard a “thump” and through the fence saw Griffith’s body being thrown 20 feet into the air. Sandiford, in an initial interview with police, said he heard something being hit but did not actually witness Griffith’s death.

“The party continued,” a detective said. “Some left the party and went back along the highway and saw (Griffith) had been struck.”

Sandiford Dazed

Starting at 12:55 a.m., police received 20 telephone calls from people reporting that a man had been hit by a car. When officers arrived at the scene of Griffith’s death, they found Sandiford wandering dazed on the road. After being searched by a police lieutenant, he told of the beating, the chase and the car that had broken down. The policeman and Sandiford started searching for the auto the three men had left, but they couldn’t find it because Sandiford had confused the Belt Parkway with Cross Bay Boulevard.

At 1:50 a.m. Sandiford and the lieutenant returned to the death scene. Sandiford stared at the body. “He said words to the effect, ‘That’s Michael. That’s Griffith,’ ” a police officer said.

Meanwhile, Grimes also had reached the highway, where he hitched a ride to a subway train that took him home. The next day, detectives rang his doorbell and found him packing his bags, apparently getting ready to leave town. Police said they did not question him about why he was leaving New York because they wanted his cooperation as a friendly witness. Sylvester, who had stayed with the car, was discovered still guarding it the next day, huddled under a blanket on the back seat. The car had to be towed to a repair shop where a mechanic diagnosed its trouble as a faulty water pump and a bad transmission.

Prosecutors have concentrated on reconciling the conflicting accounts of Griffith’s death.

Find Toy Pistol

Within hours, a massive police investigation was under way. About 100 feet from Griffith’s body, officers found a beeper belonging to a construction company he frequented and a small silver-colored toy pistol. Detectives traced the beeper to the dead man, but an examination of the toy weapon for fingerprints failed to establish its owner.

Griffith’s autopsy, performed on Sunday, Dec. 21, showed that he died from multiple fractures of the skull, pelvis and extremities plus injuries to the brain and main arteries. Because of the extent of the trauma, police said it could not initially be determined whether he had been beaten as well. More sophisticated medical studies have been sent to the special prosecutor.

Detectives rang dozens of doorbells seeking witnesses. The police bias unit and investigators from other city agencies converged on Howard Beach, as did scores of journalists.

The initial break in the case came when a neighborhood youngster telephoned a detective he knew. “I know what happened,” he told the policeman, who arranged to meet him the next day, Sunday. As it turned out, the teen-ager’s knowledge was incomplete, but it was enough to lead to the party participants, who were questioned. Eleven were taken to the police station for deeper interrogation. The scene was controlled chaos as police tried to keep the youngsters separated so they would not influence one another’s stories. Some talked to the police at length. Others helped a little, while some of the teen-agers remained silent or asked for lawyers.

Judge Throws Out Charges

On Monday, Dec. 22, three Howard Beach youths were charged with second-degree murder: Lester; Jason Ladone, 16, and Scott Kern, 17. But the charges were thrown out by a State Supreme Court judge after Sandiford and Grimes refused to testify, alleging a cover-up. They contended that Blum, the driver of the car, was actually part of the mob attacking them.

After striking Griffith, Blum had continued to drive. First he went home, but later he returned to the scene of the accident in his father’s car and identified himself to police. He told investigators he thought he had hit a tire. Police, upon investigation, said Blum was not one of the attackers, but it still is possible that he could face charges of leaving the scene of an accident.

The investigation was stalemated for three weeks by the uncooperative witnesses, as anger over the chase and beatings mounted among many black activists. Other black people criticized the attorneys representing Sandiford and Grimes for encouraging their clients not to testify.

Then, on Jan. 13, a compromise was reached when Cuomo appointed Charles J. Hynes, New York City’s special anti-corruption prosecutor, to take over the case from Queens Dist. Atty. John J. Santucci, who had borne the brunt of the black criticism. Hynes has succeeded in obtaining fresh testimony from at least one of the neighborhood youngsters at the party and he has re-questioned several others.

Defensive Residents

As Christmas decorations disappeared and snow from several storms melted, the Howard Beach residents remained defensive about charges that their tight-knit community is a citadel of racism. The prevailing attitude is that what happened in their community was an isolated incident, more a question of turf than race.

Some whites in Howard Beach suggested that the attack on the black men resulted from fear that they were there to rob or burglarize, as other blacks had done before. And implicit in many comments from whites--and blacks--was a belief that just by being there the black men had violated an unspoken code that, in effect, said no blacks were allowed after dark.

Such attitudes provoked passions among civil rights activists, who asserted that in at least one respect the case is shamefully simple. “That night Griffith was nothing but a young man walking with two other men because their car broke down,” said Hazel Dukes, president of the New York state chapter of the NAACP. “He would not have been killed if some lynch mob had not attacked him.”

Mayor Meets Quietly

Recently, Mayor Koch, who was booed out of a Howard Beach church the day after the attack, because he had said earlier that the attack was like a lynching in the Old South, met quietly with leading members of the community. They complained they had been stigmatized and that businesses in Howard Beach had had a 25% drop in sales since the negative publicity began.

Thomas Malcolm, a grants management specialist at the New York State Department of Labor, is a typical Howard Beach resident, except for one thing: He is black. But he defends the community of 18,000 residents as vigorously as does the white majority. Malcolm said he, his wife and three children have had no racial problems in Howard Beach in 16 years of living there.

“Everyone has his own experiences,” said Malcolm. “Some people tried to equate Howard Beach with Johannesburg. That’s obviously not fair. This is not South Africa. We’ve come a long way.”

And over at the Linden Park Pharmacy, owner Arnold Epstein sounded angry about what he called “sensationalizing” of the Howard Beach story. The community, he said, is “no different from any other neighborhood. There’s no more racial bias here than any place.”

One of the arrested youths, Kern, worked briefly as a stock clerk at Epstein’s pharmacy. Epstein called Kern “a very nice boy,” adding, “I saw nothing bad at all” in his behavior.

In Brooklyn, Father Robert C. Seay, pastor of Our Lady of Charity Catholic Church, was just as staunch in his defense of Griffith, whose funeral was held in his church. Seay called Griffith “a very caring person” who attended church and tried to get jobs in the construction business for his friends.

In the wake of the incident, almost as many sociologists as police officers have turned their attention to Howard Beach.

Seay summed up the mood of many struggling to find meaning in the tragedy.

“Racism is so ingrained that it only takes a spark,” he said. “It lies dormant for a while, then there’s a case such as this that causes it to erupt. We become complacent for a while, and then we realize how deep-seated the problems are.”