This unremarkable tenement building at 169 Avenue B hides a gruesome secret. In October 1967, rich-girl-turned-runaway Linda Fitzpatrick was found bludgeoned to death in a sleeping bag in the basement with her drug-dealing boyfriend, James “Groovy” Hutchinson.
The murders triggered much hand-wringing by parents and authorities on why “good” kids like Linda were turning to drugs and the East Village hippie lifestyle. Read her story in the terrific Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times article by J. Anthony Lukas. (Unfortunately, you have to pay for it in the NYT archive.)
Tags: Avenue B, East Village, groovy murders
February 28, 2009 at 4:41 pm |
This picture is actually taken on Ave. A, not B…
February 28, 2009 at 10:44 pm |
Thank you, I’ve been meaning to fix that for months. Coming soon….
April 23, 2009 at 12:11 am |
I remember this crime as if it occurred yesterday … and I spent more than 40 years in the prisons of New York State reading about, and sometimes meeting some of the criminals that entered its gates. One of the “Groovy Murders” perps, Dennis, lived a very fearful existence in prison during the years spent there; and I thought I would never hear or read about him ever again after having met this rather small, uneducated killer in Attica Prison shortly before the Attica Uprising of 1971. At any rate, I’ve discovered rather belatedly that Dennis died in prison during his third criminal stint in 1984.