CRIME TIME AROUND NOONTIME

A week ago, I was the only staff reporter on-hand, so when the call came in about an attempted murder up the road, I was the guy who answered it.

The suspect was an accountant named Marilyn Pulaski, who apparently had a history of not getting along with her mother. Around noontime of last Friday, for whatever reason, she snapped, and grabbed the aforementioned matriarch off the street, dragging her into their office on the corner of 69^th St. & Maurice Ave.

Once inside, Marilyn stabbed her mother in the head, arms, and legs with a pair of scissors.

The mother’s screams were heard up and down the block, drawing the attention of passerbys and business owners. One of them happened to be a friend of our office manager, which is why our publication was the first at the scene, as well as the only newspaper in the entire city to have photos of the stabbing site.

Yes, I took those photos. The blood still looked fresh when I got there, and cops were waiting for the forensics team to show up and start collecting evidence. One of the police officers on-hand restricted me to about five feet from the doorway, despite my press pass. I totally acquiesced, figuring that they couldn’t risk having some reporter potentially mussing up their crime scene, even with Marilyn in custody.

A few minutes later, my publisher showed up, and said that today would be a good day to teach me the ropes about crime journalism. And so, for the next hour, we walked up and down the nearby streets, talking to anyone we could find. We asked people what drew them out from their offices or industrial shops. Did they hear screaming? Did they know Marilyn Pulaski or her mom? Had they ever seen the pair argue? How long have they had that office in the neighborhood?

One clue led to another, and before long, the puzzle that had been the strained relationship between a mother and daughter began taking shape. Another puzzle began to form before our eyes as well, that of an unbalanced psyche - Marilyn's - possibly wracked by drugs, alcohol, or brain disease. We heard tales about how she displayed odd behavior, would be seen talking to no one in particular, laughing and screaming without provocation.

My publisher gave me a lift back to the office, where I called the person who gave us our hint in the first place, then DCPI, the NYC Police Department’s equivalent of PR. The latter call yielded something new: Someone else might have witnessed crazed Marilyn snatching her mother off the street. That afternoon, I ended up canvassing the crime scene yet again, this time trying to find out the identity of this third party.

I wish I could say that all my legwork yielded the scoop of my young career. However, that aforementioned witness was already at the 108^th Precinct, and no one I spoke to had anything beyond vague details to share about her. Nevertheless, I learned a lot about crime journalism on that fateful afternoon, and with the world being what it is, I’ll probably get a chance to hone those skills real soon.