100 Murder Cases

Murder mystery in NYC's Central Park

In the 1940s, Central Park's northeastern corner was desolate. Some rough neighborhoods stood at its border, thick stands of dogwood and elm trees kept it in perpetual shade, and tall grasses made it hard to take a stroll.

Most visitors shunned the place, which was used as a bird sanctuary. "No sane woman would visit that area day or night," declared a parks department official.

But for elevator operator Fridolph Trieman, it was the perfect spot to exercise a couple of large, imposing dogs. On the morning of Nov. 2, 1942, Trieman took Hassa, his German Shepherd, and Butch, who belonged to a neighbor, for a romp in the grass.

Hassa soon came back, barking and tugging at his trouser cuff. He followed the dog to a ditch, where he spotted the body of a young woman. Her skirt was pulled up, exposing her legs and panties, and a sleeve had been ripped off her coat. Four welts around her throat hinted at a cause of death.

No purse or form of ID could be found. But her identity remained a mystery only until the evening, when a worried mother, Viola Petecca, from Arthur Ave. in the Bronx, reported her daughter, Louise Almodovar, 24, missing.

Detectives noticed similarities between the description of the missing person and the corpse in the city morgue.

Later, Assunto Petecca, a sanitation worker, visited the morgue. "That's my daughter, Louisa," he said.

An autopsy revealed that she had been strangled.

Petecca told police that around 6:30 the night before, Louise was summoned to the candy store across the street to answer a phone call. She went off to meet someone.

The caller, Petecca said, was likely "that no-good husband of hers."

Louise had been separated from her groom, Anibal Almodovar, 21, for about five months after a brief stormy marriage.

Almodovar was born in Puerto Rico, dropped out of school after fourth grade, and came to New York in 1938. He lived with a brother for a time and then moved in with Maria Nunez, whom he called his common-law wife.

Almodovar met Louise in March 1942, and they married three months later. During the brief union, the "slim, slick-haired and swaggering" youth, as reporters described him, revealed himself to be a man of many interests. Most of these involved girls and dancing at a place called the Rhumba Palace on 125th St.

None of his interests seemed to involve anything that resembled gainful employment.

Within five weeks, Louise was back home with her mom and dad.

Petecca told police his daughter could not break away. Whenever Almodovar called, she jumped. Their reunions were often explosive. Louise took a dim view of her husband's other women, and he was not about to stop tangoing.

"She was very jealous. She beat up some of my girlfriends. Once she met me on the street with my common-law wife, Maria. Louise pulled her hair and scratched her," Almodovar would later tell police.

Louise's father said there had been a vicious quarrel in front of the Petecca home a couple of days before the murder. It ended with Almodovar ripping off his necktie and stomping away, screaming, "She asked for it and she is going to get it."

But when police questioned Almodovar, he insisted, "I couldn't have killed her. I was dancing."

He stuck to that story until December when detectives pointed out a weakness in his alibi, and he confessed. He blamed his troubles on his admirers. Women, he said, were constantly throwing themselves at him. Louise's jealousy was "always interfering with my love affairs."

The night of the killing, he said, the couple went into the park to talk. It led to sex, then a quarrel. She slapped his face; he went crazy, strangled her, and left her in the ditch.

By the time his trial started in February 1943, Almodovar changed his story again, saying that he was tricked into confessing.

But the prosecution had some new evidence — a green suit the defendant wore and then pawned the next day. Grass seeds in the pocket and trouser cuffs provided the missing link between Almodovar and the murder scene.

Forensic botany, the examination of plants to solve crimes, was a new discipline; among the first cases was the high-profile 1935 trial of Bruno Hauptmann, accused of the kidnap and murder of the Lindbergh baby. Wood from a ladder used during the kidnapping matched planks found in Hauptmann's home and helped lead to a conviction.

A botany professor, Joseph J. Copeland, examined the seeds from Almodovar's suit and determined that they came from a type of grass that is rare in New York.

The scientist testified that he only saw this variety in a few spots in Westchester County and Long Island and three places in Central Park, including the ditch where Louise's body was found.

"GRASS SEEDS CONVICT HIM AS WIFE SLAYER," was the New York Daily News headline on Mar. 14, 1943.

Upon hearing his sentence, Almodovar performed a dance of death — howling, flailing, tossing off his shoes, and ripping his pants. Subduing him took nine court attendants.

He was shrieking in a straitjacket when he entered Sing Sing's death row.

"The Rumba Sheik," as The News called him, calmed down considerably for his date with the electric chair in September. Newspapers reported he sat down silently at 11:02 p.m. and was declared dead two minutes later.