FEATURED RAMAPO ROOM BOOK:
Confessions of a Hayseed DA
Author: Robert R. Meehan
Publication date: 2022
Publisher: State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
EXCERPT – page 1-3:
I was going on The Barry Gray Show one evening in early December 1970 and I must say I was pleased. I had been on local radio shows in Rockland County and I had even been on a Sunday morning talk show on TV in New York, but The Barry Gray Show was a highbrow radio talk show, targeted to late evening intellectuals who scorn TV. It was a definite first for me.
I had been elected District Attorney of Rockland County back in 1965 in what was considered locally a big upset. A Democrat hadn’t held the office since 1911, so I became mildly famous in the county just for getting myself elected. However, this fame stopped very sharply at the county line. In fact, most people in New York City weren’t quite sure where Rockland County was, and they certainly didn’t know who I was.
There were two other guests on the show that night: Peter Vallone, a politician from New York City who planned to challenge Herman Badillo for Congress, and Giraud Chester, who had written a new book entitled The Ninth Juror, about his own experience as a juror on a murder trial in New York City.
I was introduced to the other guests and to Barry Gray just before we went on the air at 11:30 p.m. They all seem to know each other, or at least acted like they did, but I had never met any of them before and, although they were very pleasant, I got the impression that they wondered why I was on this New York City-oriented show—I did too.
We went into the small studio and I was impressed that the microphones looked like something out of The Big Broadcast of 1938. It was a semi-circular set up with Gray in the middle. Each of us had an individual microphone and we sat down at little tables facing each other. Gray had a headset on so he could hear his cues but other than that, it was all the same.
The show went on the air and the first thing Barry Gray did was introduce each of his guests and identify who they were. The other two were introduced first and after their introductions, Peter Vallone and Mr. Chester both said, “Good evening, glad to be with you,” or words to that effect. When he got to me, Gray said, “And lastly we have Robert Meehan, who is the District Attorney of Rockland County.” I was a little more nervous than I thought. My response was simply to nod at the microphone, which I suppose is not the best radio form.
Gray started his informal talk with Giraud Chester, asking many questions about his book and the actual trial he had sat on. Then he went to Pete Vallone and the problems of Queens and the South Bronx. After a few minutes of the ghetto problems, it was back to Chester. I thought he wasn’t even going to get to me, but he did.
Right after the second commercial break, Gray turned, looked at me dead pan, and said, “What do you do up there in Rockland County?” A monumental question, but I was prepared to start an answer when he immediately broke in and continued, “You know I’ve had district attorneys on the show, but I never had a ‘Hayseed DA’ on before. I figure that up there in Rockland County you sit around and watch haircuts on Saturday nights, just for something to do!”
I thought to myself, “Holy mackerel, I should have stuck to my late night TV movies, which I so dearly love.” But strangely enough, the rest of the show went rather well and when it was over an hour or so later, I liked Barry Gray and I kind of thought he liked me.
~
I’ve always remembered those lines of Barry Gray and they never offend me, because after all, I suppose I am something of a hayseed. My clothes never seem to quite fit, my shoes are scuffed, my ears tend to stick out a bit, and my hair always appears a little in disarray, even after I comb it. In short, I lack the polish and manner that anyone would associate with a “Mr. District Attorney” figure.
However, I am writing now because I want people to know that even us “Hayseeds” do have our interesting moments. I suppose I could start with that very day of The Barry Gray Show. The day began with a phone call that woke me from my usual sound sleep at 4:30 that morning. But better yet, let me tell you how it all began.
One month earlier, at about 7:30 in the evening, a gas station in Sloatsburg, New York, had been held up at gunpoint. The twenty-one-year-old attendant, who was working alone in the station, had not only been robbed of the day’s receipts but was kidnapped by the holdup man and his girlfriend (or “Moll,” as we should call her). They put him in the trunk of their car and headed north on the New York State Thruway. Four hours later the young attendant’s body was found lying face down a few feet off the shoulder of the Thruway, fifty-five miles to the north in Ulster County. Two .45-caliber bullets had entered the back of his skull. This was a brutal murder.
Four days after that, another young gas station attendant in nearby Mahwah in Bergen County, New Jersey, was held up and murdered by two shots from a .45-caliber weapon—according to ballistics, the same .45.
To the hardened citizens of New York City or Detroit or Los Angeles, this may be the type of news they have come to accept. In our corner of the world, it was a nightmare; a vicious killer was on the loose. The jurisdiction for prosecution was in Bergen County, New Jersey, for the Mahwah killing and Ulster County, New York, for the murder of the Sloatsburg attendant. In the state of New York, jurisdiction lies where the body is found if it is not known where the murder actually occurred, as was the case in the first days of the investigation. Hence, Ulster got the case.
An around-the-lock investigation went forward, led by the New York State Police from the Kingston Barracks in Ulster County, the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, the Ramapo Police Department, and my office from Rockland County because of our deep involvement and concern.
TO READ MORE, STOP BY THE RAMAPO ROOM AND LOOK FOR CALL NUMBER B MEEHAN
