Grief Over Elderly Woman's Stabbing
By: Robert D. McFadden
The New York Times, February 22, 1999
For Neighbors, Word That Young Friend is Suspect Adds to
Shock
There was no news at 772 St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem yesterday,
nothing to report but the residents' grief, anger, despair and solemn
prayers for Thelma Keets, an 82-year-old widow who had lived quietly on
the top floor of the six-story building for 42 years, until someone
knocked at her door on Saturday.
It was someone she knew, the police and her neighbors said, a teenager
for whom she had baby-sat years ago, and had continued to befriend despite
his troubles with drugs and the law. She let him in, they said, and he
attacked her ferociously with a knife, apparently for a few dollars to buy
marijuana.
Mrs. Keets was slashed and stabbed repeatedly in the head, neck,
shoulders and body and her small cluttered apartment was set afire to
conceal the crime, officials said. As the assailant fled, a neighbor
smelled smoke and Mrs. Keets was rescued by firefighters, although her
flat was left charred by the flames.
And yesterday, as snowflakes fell in the brindled winter light of a
cold February afternoon, Mrs. Keets clung to life at Harlem Hospital, in
critical but stable condition, and the police hunted for Anthony Woods,
19, of 29 Eldert Street, in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, who often
visited relatives in the drab, tan building near 149th Street where Mrs.
Keets lived.
It is a melancholy place, with dirty hallways and a broken elevator and
bare bulbs to light the way. There are no names on the vestibule buzzers
or on the mailboxes beyond the unlocked entry. A marble floor in the lobby
must have been elegant once. The building, dating to before World War II,
is home to 30 or 40 people.
And many of them yesterday remembered Mrs. Keets as a kind, gentle
person whose husband, Terrance, a postal worker, died about five years
ago, a church-going woman who had two children - one dead and the other
living update - and who walked with a cane and the submissive step of old
age, but always seemed to have a friendly word for her neighbors.
"Mrs. Keets is an angel, a sweetheart of a woman," said
Arlene Peek, 65, pausing on the worn stairwell to talk of a neighbor she
had known for 26 years. "She certainly didn't deserve this. It's very
sad. We used to always talk on the street, but she hasn't been out for
about a year."
Mrs. Peek and others said that Mrs. Keets has suffered from
elephantiasis, a chronic and painful swelling of the legs that made it
difficult for her to get to services at St. Charles Church on 141st
Street, to the Hamilton Grange Senior Center at 145th Street and Convent
Avenue, to a shop where she bought Lotto tickets, or even to the stoop,
where she often sat of an evening. She depended on a home-care aide who
visited her regularly, she said.
"Mrs. Keets has been walking with a cane very slowly, but was
always smiling, always asking how everyone was," said Leon Richard,
58, a former resident of the building who lives in the neighborhood.
"She was friendly with everybody in this building. Both her and her
husband were very good people."
Some residents also remembered Mr. Woods, who they said often visited a
relative, Frances Lightburn, in her apartment next door to Mrs. Keets.
Mrs. Lightburn, variously described by neighbors as an aunt or a
grandmother to the teenager, was also said to be a close friend to Mrs.
Keets. Mrs. Lightburn refused to speak to a reporter yesterday.
But Mr. Richard, who often visits his mother at No. 772, called Mr.
Woods a thuggish youth who had broken windows and locks at the entry
several times, had smoked marijuana in the halls and had once got into a
dispute with Mr. Richard's mother, Doris. "People in this building
knew what he was doing," Mr. Richard said.
A 25-year-old resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said
that Mrs. Lightburn and the teenager frequently had loud fights, and that
the youth would hang out in the halls and smoke marijuana.
"Frances would throw him out and tell him to stay out of the
apartment and he would try to break down the door," she said.
"They were always fighting. He's a very strange person. He sometimes
slept on the stairs and smoked marijuana in the hallways. Once I tried to
get past him on the stairs, and said excuse me, and he cursed me. He's a
troublemaker."
The police said Mr. Woods had been charged in September with attempted
robbery. The outcome of the case could not be learned yesterday.
Harrison Bucknor, 73, who has known Mrs. Keets for the 35 years he has
lived in the building, said she had often taken care of Mr. Woods when he
was a baby. Mr. Richard recalled the same thing, saying Mrs. Keets took
the boy in whenever Mrs. Lightburn went out. Others said Mrs. Keets still
regarded herself as a friend to the youth, and they voiced shock and
dismay over the attack.
Mrs. Keets's apartment was silent yesterday. The odor of smoke from the
charred interior was strong in the hallway, despite open windows, some of
them shattered by firefighters. Next door at the Lightburn apartment, a
man who answered the door declined to give his name but identified himself
as Anthony Woods's uncle.
Of Mrs. Keets, he said: "She was a fine lady. She didn't deserve
this. It was a heinous crime."
And he appealed to his nephew. "Anthony, we all love you," he
said. "We know you're running scared. Turn yourself in before they
get you. Please turn in yourself right now."
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