George Leon FitzGerald, 29-years old, worried about the violence, drugs
and generally unsafe conditions on the block where he had remodeled a
fifth-floor tenement walkup, at 446 West 58th Street, for his wife and
year-old daughter.
He did two things about the situation: he covered his door with steel and
backed it full-width with a double-barred iron police lock, and Wednesday
he drafted a letter to the Knapp Commission, which is investigating police
corruption, to complain that the police were ignoring crimes in his
neighborhood.
Yesterday morning Mr. FitzGerald died in a fire behind the steel door
before he could release the iron bars and open two other locks. Firemen
said the blaze had started in a mattress.
His wife, Erica, had left to Eugene, Ore., less than 24 hours earlier.
She was to bring back their daughter, whom she had taken to visit Mrs.
FitzGerald's parents a few weeks ago.
The letter to the commission was found later at the new restaurant where
Mr. FitzGerald had spent two weeks training to be the bartender. He was
to get his first paycheck today.
In his letter Mr. FitzGerald--known as Leon--noted that, in his one year
of residence, an adjacent building "has produced approximately one fire
a month, numerous slashings, muggings, thefts, overdoses and at least
one death (homicide)."
The letter, written on memo sheets, stopped there without conclusion.
It began:
"KNAPP COMMISSION: I am pleased that some sort of investigation is a
reality. The point is, how real it it? It appears to be more of an
appeasement action for the general public's benefit, as usual, more than
an honest, sweeping house-cleaning."
Since 1964, Mr. FitzGerald had worked double shifts on Friday and Sundays
as an admitting clerk at Roosevelt Hospital, across 58th Street from his
living-room windows. He was dead on arrival there yesterday.
Firemen say he died of smoke asphixiation on the floor of the kitchen,
the room where the steel door opened into the hall. They theorized that,
after being unable to open it, he was overcome while trying to reach a
kitchen window leading to a narrow open space. The only fire escape was
on the front of the building.
In his renovation, Mr. FitzGerald had cut through to a hall toilet
adjacent to his kitchen, covering the resulting doorway with walnut-
stained louvres but sealing the door between toilet and hall.
9 Firemen Felled
It was the latter door that firemen finally smashed to enter from the
hall after nine of their number suffered smoke inhalation and exhaustion
trying to force open the steel door. They were treated at Roosevelt
Hospital.
Residents of the tenement said they did not know Mr. FitzGerald well and
considered him "different" from themselves. Most have at least two locks
on their doors.
The almost total destruction of the apartment--including the charred crib
and its mattress--could not obscure the hours of work and thought that
had gone into its remodelling and decoration.
Plaster had been removed from kitchen and living room to expose the brick
and dramatize a small fireplace. A round dining table and ladder-back
chairs with cane-type seats were in the kitchen and a walnut-finished
spice cabinet, fully stocked, was still in place.
Framed travel posters were from Lufthansa Airlines, where Mrs. FitzGerald
has worked in reservations and sales for the last three years.
Mr. FitzGerald, described as modishly long-haired but a "fairly
conservative dresser," frequented O'Neals' Baloon, a restaurant and bar
on Columbus Avenue across from Lincoln Center.
It was there that he met John Papakostas, manager of the Empire Hotel
coffee shop in the same building, who was reopening the hotel's vacant
Motor Bar restaurant and took him on a bartender.
Mr. Papakostas knew nothing about the FitzGeralds' Oregon relatives or
other details of their lives and neither Roosevelt Hospital nor Lufthansa
would discuss the matter.
"He was doing the wrong thing, trying to fix a place in that slum," Mr.
Papakostas said. "He should spend a little more and get in a good address.
But if it wasn't him, it would be somebody else. That's the city."