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“Actually,” she said, “they told me what happened early on when I was opening Bongo at this location.” She has posted a sign in the bathroom with a short narrative of the event and a photo of the bar. Andrea Cohen, an owner of Bongo restaurant, where the Ramrod was, said numerous patrons knew about the killings. He was confined to secure psychiatric hospitals and died in April 2015, at 73. Crumpley “ not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect” for the murders and attempted murders. Humm said, he replied, “Everyone is welcome here, but not if they wear big H’s on their backs.” Joseph’s without mention of the fact that he had been killed because of his homosexuality. “I think in the future, when I want to hug someone, I won’t deny myself that.”
“I recall my last seeing him and my instinct was to hug him goodbye, but I have been sufficiently trained not to make such public demonstrations,” he said. “Anger was directed at the system which treats gay people as a subhuman species.”Īt a memorial service, David Rothenberg, a member of the city’s Human Rights Commission, spoke tenderly of Mr. “There were few, if any, calls for the blood of Ronald Crumpley,” he wrote. “It was like a bomb had gone off in New York,” he said.Ī vigil drew 1,500 mourners to Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village, Mr. Humm recalled on Monday that the attack occurred 15 days after Ronald Reagan had been elected president and the Republicans had taken control of the Senate from the Democrats. “It was especially stunning because it was hitting at the heart of what was the epicenter of gay life,” Mr. Though nowhere near as deadly as the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., or the arson fire at the UpStairs Lounge in New Orleans that killed 32 in 1973, the West Street rampage chills those who remember it. “I’ll kill them all - the gays - they ruin everything,” he was reported to have said. Crumpley made it plain to the police that he would have been satisfied with a higher toll.
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(Different accounts give varying name spellings and ages for the victims.) John Gamrecki, 27, was hit inside the Ramrod. Olaf Gravesen, 37, and John Litaker, 36, were wounded out on the sidewalk. Vincent’s Hospital after an hourslong struggle by doctors to save his life. Jorg Wenz, a 24-year-old Dutch immigrant working as a doorman at the Ramrod, died at St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church, was killed instantly. Vernon Kroening, 32, an organist at nearby St. Several crawled to a stairway at the back of the building in a desperate attempt to survive.” “As bullets sprayed the front window of the bar, panic swept the crowd inside. “In barely the time it takes to light a cigarette, 40 rounds tore into the crowd. “Blood spattered against the wall and door as bullets ripped into one man’s shoulder and another man’s arm,” Mr. Alwood wrote in “Straight News: Gays, Lesbians and the News Media.” “He aimed his Uzi at a group of men standing in line outside the Ramrod bar and squeezed the trigger,” Edward M. The gunman then made his way to West Street, between 10th and Christopher Streets, a blockfront shared by the Ramrod, a popular leather bar, and Sneakers, a gay dive. Crumpley opened fire outside a deli at Washington and Charles Streets, cutting down Richard Huff, 30, and Rene Matute, 23. 19, a 38-year-old former transit police officer named Ronald K. “West Street Massacre,” the headline read. 28, 1980, what most of them already knew: that a former transit police officer had rampaged through Greenwich Village, killing two men and wounding six. They were written by the reporter Andy Humm as he told readers of The New York City News on Nov. They were not written this week, but 36 years ago, describing a spasm of violence that fewer and fewer people now recall. The words appeared on the front page of a gay newspaper, heralding an article about bar patrons being gunned down where they stood. “For all of us who were worried that the conservative backlash in this country would bring about unnamed terrible things, the future is now.”