Section (C)
For the Want of a Telephone Call
For more than half an hour 38 respectable Brooklyn, New York citizens watched a man attack and stab (刺杀) a woman three separate times. Twice their talk and the sudden glow of their bedroom lights frightened him off. Each time he returned and stabbed her again. Not one person telephoned the police during the attack; one person called after the woman was dead.
That was two weeks ago.Still shocked is Assistant Police Chief Keith Williams, in charge of the Brooklyn detectives (侦探). He can tell you the facts of many murders. But this killing leaves him confused—not because it is a murder, but because “good people” failed to call the police.“As we understand it,” he said, “the man had three chances to kill this woman during a 35-minute period. He returned twice to complete the job. If we had been called when he first attacked, the woman might not be dead now.”This is what the police say happened beginning at 3:20 AM in the proper, tree-lined neighborhood:Twenty-eight-year-old Marissa Parry was returning home from her job as manager of a bar (酒吧). She parked her car in a lot next to the local railroad station, locked the door, and started to walk the 100 feet to the entrance of her apartment. The entrance to the apartment is at the rear of the building because the front of the building contains small stores. The neighborhood was covered in a sleeping darkness.Miss Parry noticed a man at the far end of the lot, near a seven-story apartment house. She halted. Then, nervously, she headed up the street, where there is a police call box. She got as far as a street light in front of a bookstore (书店) before the man grabbed her. She screamed. Lights went on in the ten-story apartment house across the street. Windows were opened and voices spoke in the early-morning stillness.
Miss Parry screamed: “Oh, my God, he stabbed me! Please help me! Please help me!”From one of the upper windows in the apartment house, a man called down: “Let that girl alone!”The man looked up at him, shrugged (耸肩) and walked down the street toward a white car parked a short distance away.Miss Parry struggled to her feet.Lights went out. The man returned to Miss Parry, now trying to make her way around the side of the building by the parking lot to get to her apartment. The man stabbed her again.“I'm dying!” she called out. “I'm dying!”Windows were opened again, and lights went on in many apartments. The man got into his car and drove away. Miss Parry staggered to her feet. A city bus passed. It was 3:35 AM.The man returned. By then, Miss Parry had crawled (爬行) to the back of the building, where doors to the apartment house held out hope for safety. The killer tried the first door; she wasn't there. At the second door, he saw her lying on the floor at the foot of the stairs. He stabbed her a third time — killing her.
It was 3:50 by the time the police received their first call, from a man who was a neighbor of Miss Parry. In two minutes they were at the scene. The neighbor, a 70-year-old woman, and another woman were the only persons on the street. Nobody else came forward.The man explained that he had called the police after much thought. He had phoned a friend for advice and then he had gone to the apartment of the elderly woman to get her to make the call. “I didn't want to get involved,” he told the police. Six days later, the police arrested Vincent Ellis, a 29-year-old business-machine operator, and charged him with murder.Ellis had no previous police record. He is married, has two children and owns a home. On Wednesday, a court committed him to a hospital for observation (观察) of his mental condition. When questioned by the police, Ellis said that he had killed two other women.
The police stressed how simple it would have been to have gotten in touch with them. “A phone call,” said one of the policemen, “would have done it.”Today people from the neighborhood, which is made up mostly of expensive one-family homes with the exception of the two apartment houses near the railroad station, find it difficult to explain why they didn't call the police. A housewife said, “We thought it was a quarrel between two lovers.” A husband and wife both said, “Frankly, we were afraid.”Another couple, now willing to talk about that night, said they heard the first screams. “We went to the window to see what was happening,” the husband said, “but the light from our bedroom made it difficult to see the street.” The wife, still uneasy, added: “I put out the light and we were able to see better.” When asked why they hadn't called the police, she shrugged and
replied: “I don't know.”A man looked out from his apartment and gave a description of the killer's second attack. Why hadn't he called the police at the time? “I was tired,” he said without emotion. “I went back to bed.”
It was 4:25 AM when the ambulance arrived to take the body of Miss Parry. It drove off. “Then,” a policeman said, “the people came out.”
