TOO NEW FOR NEWS

C'mon, guys, stick to the script!

 I've probably mentioned it before, but for a while I got into listening to recordings of the JFK assassination radio coverage. Not for pleasure, but to note how the early reports were either wrong, soon forgotten, or confused. For instance, did you know that JFK and Texas Governor John Connally were immediately killed in their car? Now you do!  

Last Friday morning, there was a rather frightening news item that came across the wire. Frightening for us because it happened four blocks away. It seemed that two women were murdered -- at 9:00 a.m.! -- on East 88th Street, near Gracie Mansion, the official home of the Mayor of New York -- in this case, Eric Adams, who allegedly lives in a Newark condo, but we'll let that pass.

The murderers were unidentified, but those famous early reports hinted they were two men who were spotted close by the victims. Ah ha! A drug deal gone wrong? Illegal migrants? Simple thievery? No matter, it was just another example of crime in our quiet neighborhood getting out of control.

Until, hours later, the facts came in:

A terminally ill retiree shot dead her former daughter-in-law and then herself on a quiet Upper East Side street Friday — the tragic capstone to a bitter custody dispute over her toddler granddaughter.

The shocking murder-suicide unfolded along East 88th Street, down the block from Gracie Mansion, just before 9 a.m., when ex-Chicago probation officer Kathleen Leigh, 65, twice shot 45-year-old mom of two Marisa Galloway, police said.

Galloway, a special education teacher, had just loaded her 1-year-old daughter into the backseat of a parked white Honda Civic when Leigh blasted her in the head and back before turning the gun on herself, cops said.

Our caring neighbors.

Leigh was shot in order for her son to win custody of his daughter -- not the one year-old, who had a different father, but their four year-old. As one of the cops told the New York Post, "I've seen a lot of shit, but this is biblical shit." Sounds like a George Carlin quote.

Sorry for the distance.

The two men hinted as the killers? Just a couple of guys walking by who
presumably notified the cops.

The saddest part of this undeniably sad story? It made us Upper East Siders feel safer knowing it didn't involve drugs, migrants, or thievery. 

By the way, I took the above photo on the right four hours after the crime happened, with the block roped off from vehicular and pedestrian traffic. I'd have been there earlier but was elsewhere when the biblical shit went down. Maybe next time I'll be a little more johnny-on-the-spot.

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