Killings of 2 Elderly People Have Police Seeking
Pattern
By: Ronald Smothers
The New York Times, January 23, 1999
A 77-year-old man in a wheelchair was killed Thursday in his home in
Orange, N.J., and investigators were trying to determine whether the
slaying was related to a nearly identical killing of an elderly woman
three months ago in the same neighborhood.
The Essex County Prosecutor and the Orange police have set up a task
force on the crimes and are urging residents in the neighborhood to be
cautious about answering and opening their doors.
The man who was killed, Robert Wang, was found in the kitchen of his
single-family home on Lakeside Avenue, covered with blood and with his
throat cut, nearly to the point of decapitation, the police said. Officers
discovered the body at 7 P.M. Thursday after they were alerted by a friend
of the victim who had come by to check on Mr. Wang and got no answer to
his knocks at the door.
Investigators said it appeared that Mr. Wang, who lived alone, was
killed in the morning as he prepared his breakfast of instant hot cereal.
The television was on, and there was evidence that the house had been
ransacked, but it was not clear whether anything had been taken, said
Patricia A. Hurt, the Essex County Prosecutor.
Many of the details of the crime are similar to those of a killing on
Nov. 9, just around the corner from Mr. Wang's house. Olga Schwab, 86, was
found dead in the kitchen of her first-floor apartment in a three-family
house on Cleveland Street. Her grandson found her when he returned from
school about 3:45 P.M. Her throat had been cut nearly all the way through.
Her home had been ransacked, but there was no evidence that anything had
been taken and no sign of forced entry, Ms. Hurt said.
Ms. Hurt said today that there were "striking similarities in
these horrific crimes," including the profiles of the victims, the
kind of weapon used and the absence of any evidence of forced entry. The
victims' homes were within 200 feet of each other.
"To say that these were stranger-to-stranger killings would be
misleading at this point," Ms. Hurt said. "Because there was no
forced entry, I will not rule out that they knew the person or persons who
did this."
As Ms. Hurt announced the formation of the task force, she was flanked
by the Mayor of Orange, Mims Hackett, and the City Council President,
Donald Page, both of whom live in the neighborhood where the killings
occurred. That section comprises neat one-, two- and three-family homes
surrounded by poorer neighborhoods.
Ms. Hurt said that she carefully weighed the risks of causing panic in
the neighborhood by her announcement. But in the end, she said, it was
more important to warn people of a possible problem, to urge caution and
to ask residents to help investigators with any information that they
might have.
Investigators are awaiting the results of forensic tests to determine
if the same knife or blade was used in both killings, Ms. Hurt said. She
refused to disclose whether there was other forensic evidence that might
provide clues in the two cases and prove or disprove whether the victims
were killed by the same person.
The task force, made up of 10 investigators from the Prosecutor's
office and 4 officers from the Orange Police Department, will canvass the
neighborhood on Saturday, gathering information and urging residents to
keep doors and windows locked and to take extra precautions when answering
and opening their doors.
Ms. Hurt said that residents should demand to see the badges and
identification of the authorities who knock on their doors, even if the
visitors say they are investigating the killings.
One investigator said the task force would also be "looking at
every kind of service that you would be opening your door to,"
including utility meter readers, home health aides and delivery people.
The neighborhood, near Rosedale Cemetery and just a block away from New
Jersey Transit's Midtown Direct station, is changing as many of the
elderly, longtime residents die or move away and are replaced by younger,
middle-income families.
Oscar Marchant, 60, a counselor at Seton Hall University who lives just
down the block from Mr. Wang's house, said that there were some
"pretty bad tenement buildings" one block east and one block
west of the neighborhood, with loiterers constant out front. But the
neighborhood around Cleveland and Lakeside had long seemed calm, he said.
"One of the reasons I wasn't very concerned was that I would
imagine that if we had the Mayor and Councilman living around here, we
would have some extra security," he said. "I guess not."
Donnie Nickelson, who lives next door to Ms. Schwab's home, said that
she speculated from the beginning that the elderly woman, who was hard of
hearing and rarely came outside, probably knew her assailant. Ms.
Nickelson said the possibility of the two killings being linked was
"starting to make me a little nervous." She said she welcomed
the creation of the investigative task force and the attention that it was
focusing on the neighborhood and on the crimes.
"This is a shame," Ms. Nickelson said. "You can't even
live your elderly years comfortably. You could be young and they do this
to you, but they are preying on somebody weaker. I hope they catch this
person."
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