The Newtown Pentacle

A good place to get dead, the Newtown Creek.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Something I get asked about all the time is whether or not bodies get regularly dumped into Newtown Creek. My stock response is “only of its amateur hour.” If you’re dumping a body in NY Harbor, you want to make sure that it disappears quickly. Nothing that falls into Newtown Creek vanishes, it just sinks to the bottom and eventually it comes bubbling back up to the surface. The East River is crap for this duty as well. The Hudson, or Jamaica Bay, however…

Nevertheless, a lot of people have ended up dead in the Newtown Creek over the centuries.

Charles Hannigan, who once lived on fifth street in the Eastern District of Brooklyn, was fishing along and drowned in the Newtown Creek in early September of 1856. His body was never recovered. On August 1st of 1866, a 40 year old escapee from a lunatic asylum in Flatbush, named John Montayne, attempted suicide at Newtown Creek but was revived. In 1870, a dock worker named Patrick Boyle fell into Newtown Creek nearby Hunters Point and drowned, while three men watched and did nothing to help him. In September of 1874, a Long Island City Policeman, Officer Minnocks, found the body of an infant with a crushed skull floating in Newtown Creek. In February of 1878, Blissvillian William Owens fell out of a rowboat and drowned in Newtown Creek, his body was never recovered. In 1886, the body of S.W. Meyers, who had disappeared eight weeks prior in Manhattan, was found floating nearby the Penny Bridge along Newtown Creek.

Meyers was described as feeble, and given to fainting spells. It was presumed that he just fell into the water and drowned.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Joel Rifkin, the serial killer, dumped a 55  gallon steel drum containing the corpse of a woman in May of 1992 in Newtown Creek, according to his 1995 confession. In 1996, a United States Army Captain named John Lau disposed of the bodies of a married couple, Alexander and Liane Barone, in the Newtown Creek not too far from the Metropolitan Avenue Bridge. A fellow named Derek Winefsky drove his car at high speed through the waterside fence line of Greenpoint’s Apollo Street in 2008, and whereas his body was recovered, that of his passenger disappeared into the murk. In October of 2017, a decomposing body was discovered at the very end of the English Kills tributary of Newtown Creek in Bushwick by one of my colleagues at Newtown Creek Alliance.

Basically, it’s pretty difficult and expensive to dispose of a human body, even under the best circumstances. Ever heard how much a funeral costs? Imagine trying to do it all quiet and secret like.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

A humble narrator has no first hand knowledge of the following, rather it’s the product of bar room banter with all sorts of old timey characters, disreputable rogues, and grifting undesirables in Long Island City and Greenpoint; back in the “old days” when the “boys” were still in charge around the Creek and one of their uncooperative business associate needed “getting rid of,” it wasn’t that difficult to find a local crematorium or industrial furnace tender whose palm was easily greased. Additionally, if the cover story you offer – regarding your employment – to both religious leaders and Federal prosecutors is that “you work in waste management,” ditching 150-250 pounds of meat into the waste flow isn’t that big a challenge.

So the short answer is “No, Virginia, people don’t dump bodies in Newtown Creek that often, and if they do they’re amateurs.”

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