Savage Grace - Natalie Robins (50 page)

Dr. Stanley L. Portnow

A lady came to visit me when Tony Baekeland was still in England, claiming she was very interested in having him brought back to the United States and that the only way the hospital in England would discharge him would be if they were secure in their feeling that he would have follow-up treatment by a psychiatrist in New York. I said I would be glad to evaluate him and if I couldn’t take care of him myself, for one reason or another, I would see to it that he got a proper referral. Then there was talk about my going over to England to examine him, and that suggestion was from this same lady. The trip to England never came off. I never heard from the lady again.

Telegram from Kingman Brewster, Jr., United States Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, American Embassy, London, to Cyrus R. Vance, Secretary of State, Washington, D.C., May 20
,
1980

Telegram from Kingman Brewster, Jr., United States Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, to Interpol, Washington, D.C., June 20, 1980

Michael Alexander

Even though the Home Office had in fact authorized Tony’s release, there was quite a lot of red tape still involved, and meanwhile he had to remain at Broadmoor, locked up. We all thought, those last weeks in Broadmoor, that he was very together, you know. He seemed absolutely fine.

Jake Cooper

I cried for the first time in a very long time when I learned that Antony was getting out. I felt it was such a very special thing to happen. I felt at least I could be happy that my dear friend was finding free space in
his
life again, because, you see,
I
used to be a leader—in Cadaqués, in Morocco, in Paris. Without meaning to be. I just seemed able to get things together, and then all of a sudden I got in this cracked-up state.

Letter from Antony Baekeland to Jake Cooper, July 18, 1980

Letter from Dr. Thomas Maguire to Miwa Svinka-Zielinski, July 21
,
1980

Heather Cohane

Tony was handed over to Cecelia Brebner at London airport and put on the plane on the condition that he never come back to England. I was a little frightened when he was actually leaving, just because I had been, you know, quite instrumental in persuading the doctors to let him out.

Cecelia Brebner

I thought I was taking him to New York to go to a halfway house. But at the airport when I rendezvoused with Broadmoor—at the eleventh hour, yes!—when he was handed over to me, they said, “It’s all changed. We tried to contact you at Kensington Palace but you’d already left and Lady Mary didn’t know where we could reach you. Antony Baekeland is going directly to his maternal grandmother, Mrs. Nina Daly.”
Well.

On the aircraft over, he went into how he had murdered his mother. In absolute detail. He said, “Celia, a friend of Mummy’s had rung while she was out and when Mummy got back she said she didn’t want to see her but I had already told this friend to come round that evening and Mummy screamed at me.” Then, he said, he threw something at her. And then, he said, she rushed into the kitchen and wrote a note on a piece of paper, to the Spanish maid who was ironing, so he just picked up the carving knife and stabbed her. He said, “Mummy was dying. I knelt down and turned her face toward me and asked, ‘What is your name? Who are you?’” He said, “But it doesn’t matter because Mummy and I are one. It really doesn’t matter at all.” I said, “Well, Tony, what now? Do you think you are going to be able to cope with life in New York?” “Oh yes,” he said. “I’m going to look after Nini and cook for her and do marvelous things for her.” And I said fine.

Susan Lannan

The International Social Service of Great Britain was still looking into the matter of Antony Baekeland’s rehabilitation in America when we heard that he had been released. We were concerned.

Cecelia Brebner

And so we arrived. It was ninety-two degrees in New York that day. Tony said, “You know something, Celia—New York hasn’t changed. It’s just the same.” And he was extraordinary—he saw to all the baggage and when we got into the cab he said, “I want to stop and get Nini some flowers but I haven’t any money on me,” and I said, “I have money,” so he got her a huge bouquet.

Shirley Cox

Nini did not know Tony was coming until she got a call, I believe the day before, saying he would be here the following day. That’s what she told me when I stopped by to pick up her mail. I live in her building and I handle all her bills and all her business affairs—I’ve done that for many years.

Lena Richards

Mrs. Daly had broken her hip and needed round-the-clock care. I was the weekend nurse but I was still there on Monday afternoon when Tony came in from the airport with Mrs. Brebner. She wanted to know what the setup was going to be, who was to be responsible for Tony’s care, and when Nini and I said nobody, she couldn’t believe it.

He looked a little distant to me, but I didn’t know what his problems were. Nini had never said anything, she’d never said anything but good things about him.

Cecelia Brebner

When we arrived at Nini’s apartment on Seventy-fourth Street, we went directly into her bedroom to see her. And there was a huge painting of Barbara Baekeland there, and Tony saw it and said, “Nini, take it down!” And she said, “Oh no, Tony, it’s my favorite, favorite portrait of Mummy.” “Take it down!” he said. I saw the look on this man’s face and I knew that I had done the wrong thing.

Dr. Thomas Maguire

My conscience is quite clear. I did ten times the normal amount of work to get Tony to America. I tried everything I possibly could to find the proper care for him.

Brooks Baekeland

I felt sorry for Maguire then, and I feel sorry for him now. I did not berate him, as you might think. I tried to comfort him, whom I did not know—realizing how he must be feeling, how
I
would feel.

Shirley Cox

Nini told me later that the moment he walked in the door she knew he wasn’t well. And later I saw that for myself. My first thought was, “I’m going to call Fred Baekeland.” But Nini said, “No no no no! Promise me you won’t do that.
Promise
me you won’t! You’re my friend, promise me.”

Ethel Woodward de Croisset

When he wrote me saying he was going back to his grandmother’s place where he had spent so many happy days as a child—it was where he sometimes used to go in the afternoons when he was let out of Buckley School, you see—I said to myself, This boy’s going to find that apartment very small. And later Nini told me that she could see at once that he felt oppressed—and it was also very hot, to make matters worse—so she suggested they go out immediately, that first night, and have dinner around the corner.

Brooks Baekeland

By coincidence I came back to the U.S. at about the same time as Tony. I went, first, to stay with probably my oldest friend, my cousin Baekeland Roll, and his wife, Kate, in Rhode Island. The Rolls are much reputed for their hospitalities and other virtues: a gregarious, large-familied tribe, their house always bulging with children and guests. I had not seen it, breathed its wacky air, for many a year, and a great weight seemed to go off me there for a while.

I had not been on Block Island more than a week, I think, when I got a telephone call—everyone in the house listened to it—from Tony, who had just arrived at Nini’s. He said he wanted to come out to that full, happy, child-brimming house. I said no.

Clement Biddle Wood

I suppose Brooks was terrified to see Tony for fear that Tony might attack
him.

Brooks Baekeland

For myself I felt no fear. My pessimism makes me immune to fear, and I have a certain confidence, even now, in my wits and brawn. But I knew my tiger, and I did not even ask the Rolls if they would receive him. I just said no. My bad reputation increased with that “no.”

Oh yes, he had often wanted to assault me—I saw the lust for it come into his eyes. But he never did—he was a
woman
-beater. I said to him once in Mallorca, in Robert Goulet’s house in Fornalutx, “Crazy you may be and you are, but there are crazy saints—the hospitals are full of gentle Christs—and there are crazy brutes, and you are one of the latter.” I had crossed him about something, and he was crouched in front of me with his fists clenched and a murderous look on his face. But I was bigger than he was—and I wasn’t kneeling on the floor like poor Sam Shaw! Had I turned my back and had he been armed, he would have killed me. Tony never attacked anyone equally armed or stronger than he was—had he done so, had he ever dared to take
me
on, for instance….

Cecelia Brebner

I was staying nearby, on Sixty-ninth Street, with Georgette Klinger. I was going to look after her little poodle for about three months while she did a European tour. I called Nini every day and she always said, “He’s okay, Celia,” and one day I said, “Look, I’d like to come round and see him,” so I took him out for dinner, and he seemed quite rational, perhaps a little bit strange but certainly not manic.

Shirley Cox

Tony promised he would get Nini’s breakfast every day, she told me, because, you see, her nurse could not be there overnight when Tony was staying, there was simply not enough room. This meant that Nini had no care at night if she wanted to get up and go to the bathroom and things like that.

I know he didn’t fix her breakfast because the nurse would arrive in the morning and he would still be in bed. Nini told me he stayed up all night playing the record player. Well, I think that’s understandable. Having been incarcerated for so long, you now have freedom, you know, to do all the things you’ve been prevented from doing. But he was in a small apartment, in a small apartment house, where the people on either side and around have to get up and go to work, so Nini knew that if the noise lasted for more than two or three days the neighbors would complain and she was terrified of that. So she said she asked him to lower the volume, and he completely ignored her.

Sam Green

He called me right after he got to town and it was a close call. Bart, my assistant, took the call. Tony said he wanted to see me urgently, that I was his only friend and he wanted me to get him some dope so he could get high. Bart told him that I was out of the country.

At some point you just have to protect yourself. I mean, clearly one
should
have been nice to Tony, and generous—he had been through a terrible ordeal and needed companionship and forgiveness, but I just didn’t want to do it anymore.

Tom Dillow

Tony asked Bart for
my
number, and Bart called to warn me that Tony was trying to find me. I mean, I was in the phone book, but, you know, for the Baekelands a telephone number didn’t exist unless they
got
it from someone. Bart said Tony told him, “T-t-t-tom n-never understood why I m-m-murdered M-mummy.”

Bart Gorin

When I first started working for Sam Green, he told me that probably someday a person named Tony Baekeland would call and that I was just to make up anything to keep him away. I guess it was just sort of understood that Tony would be coming back at some point, but we never knew when exactly. So anyway, one hot day there he was on the phone. Sam was out on Fire Island, but I said, “Gee, Tony, Sam’s in Singapore,” or somewhere like that. And then he asked if I knew about him and I played sort of dumb, and he said, “You don’t know who I am?” And I said no. Then he told me fairly matter-of-factly that he had killed his mother. I said, “What are you going to do now? What are your plans?” And he said, “Well, my grandmother Mrs. Daly is the only person who has stood by me all this time, in fact she was the one who got me out of that awful place I was in. She’s an old lady now and I want to make her last days as happy as possible”—I remember
that
very well. And then he asked me if I would go shopping with him because all he had were winter clothes, from England, and it was summer out. I said I was going away for the weekend and he said, “Can I call you on Monday?” and I said sure. I never spoke with him again.

Gloria Jones

I didn’t know they’d let him out till he called from New York. He called Muriel Murphy first and then he called
me.
He said he’d like to come out to visit me on Long Island, where I was living now. I was absolutely terrified. Jim was dead by then so I called up Irwin Shaw, who I wouldn’t have bothered if Jim were alive. Irwin said, “You can’t have him come out,” and I said, “Well, God, we’ve got to do
something
about him.” Irwin didn’t know the Baekelands that well—I guess he was very smart, he just stayed away from the whole thing, very clever. He said to me, “Stay totally out of it. You just don’t know…. You have children around and everything.” So I called Tony back and said that my house was filled, you know. And it
was
filled.

Clement Biddle Wood

Jessie and I had come over from Europe for the summer and we were visiting Muriel Murphy in East Hampton when Tony called. He said, “Muriel, I’m in New York and it’s boiling.” It
was
an exceptional heatwave—I mean, even for July. He said, “I’m cooped up in this tiny little apartment with my grandmother and there are pictures of my mother everywhere and her ashes are in an urn on the mantelpiece and I’m just going crazy. I’ve got to get out of town.” Obviously he was hoping Muriel would invite him out to Long Island. Which she didn’t. And then he said, “Maybe I can find rooms for my grandmother and myself out there somewhere.” And Muriel said, “Everything’s pretty full up,” which of course is always true in the summer. So then he said, “Well, I’ll probably be coming out if I
can
find anywhere to stay, and I’ll give you a ring.” Muriel got terribly upset, she said to us, “This boy’s a homicidal maniac, he shouldn’t be in an apartment alone with his grandmother, but I certainly don’t want him coming out
here
and fastening on to
me
as some sort of mother substitute.”

Phyllis Harriman Mason

One day that week I thought I saw him on the street, Sixty-ninth Street, and I was scared stiff because I was afraid he would identify me with Barbara.

René Jean Teillard

I saw Tony on Lexington Avenue. I am a friend since a very long time of his beautiful grandmother, Mrs. Hallowell. I was going to buy a newspaper and suddenly I saw him there and I said, “Tony, what are
you
doing here? I’m so glad you came back,” and he said, “I’m buying a pair of shoes.” I said, “But to buy a pair of shoes you should go to Alexander’s.” “Oh,” he said, “I didn’t know. I’ve been in England.” And so we chatted and I said I wanted him to come and have dinner and he came the next day and it was all right.

When he and his mother left for London a year before her assassination I invited them to dinner and I gave them some frogs’ legs, because they were international and I’m French myself. And I gave him frogs’ legs again. I gave him the exact same dinner as when he had left.

We ate on a little bridge table which I had beautifully prepared, near the telephone and close to some weights which were on the floor by my feet in case something should happen, since I hadn’t seen him since he left that night for England and if something happened now because he was crazy in a moment, I was therefore prepared with my telephone and my weights.

He was not reluctant to answer all the questions I asked. First of all I asked him what happened and he told me how he had killed his mother. He was able to tell me without any emotion how he plunged the knife in her chest. I told him, “You need friends now that you are back here and you need to see the doctor.” “I don’t need to see any doctor,” he said. I said, “But Dr. Greene is a friend of yours since your youth, and I am certain he would be delighted to see you since he even went over to England to see you.”

His face changed when I first spoke “doctor.” But then when I said “Dr. Greene,” everything was just fine and we finished dinner. I said, “You can come back, you have my telephone number.” And he left.

Shirley Cox

On Wednesday and Thursday, the third and fourth days he was here, he put all the pictures of his mother and some candles on a chest of drawers in Nini’s living room—he made it into an altar.

Cecelia Brebner