Artis saw two shotguns and a handgun pointed at him. “For what?” he demanded.
“For the Lafayette bar murders!”
“Get outta here!”
Police bullying of blacks in Paterson was so common that Artis thought this was more of the same, an ugly prank. But then two officers began patting him down around his stomach and back pockets. Artis handed his clean shirts to the liquor store clerk and told him to take them to his father. His wrists were then cuffed behind his back. Damn, Artis thought, these guys are serious! On his way out of Laramie’s, Artis yelled his father’s name: “JOHHHHN ARTIS!” As he was shoved into a police car, Artis saw his father’s stricken face appear in the second-story window.
Rubin Carter was at Club LaPetite when one of Artis’s girlfriends approached him with the news: John had been arrested.
“For what?” Carter asked.
“I don’t know, they just arrested him.”
Like Artis, Carter had seen the “Mystery Witness” headline in the newspaper but hadn’t given it a second thought, and he didn’t connect the headline to Artis’s arrest. Carter, distrustful of the police, feared for Artis’s safety, so he got into his Eldorado and drove to police headquarters to check up on the young man. As he neared the station, he put his foot on the brake; then, out of nowhere, detectives on foot and in unmarked cars swarmed around his car.
“Don’t move! Put your hands on the wheel! Don’t move!”
Here we go again, was all Carter could think. But this police encounter proved to be much more harrowing than his June confrontation. His hands were quickly cuffed behind his back, and he was shoved into the back seat of an unmarked detective’s car. According to Carter, the officers did not tell him why they had stopped him or what he was being charged with. Instead, with detectives on either side of him, the car doors slammed shut and the vehicle sped away, followed by several other unmarked cars. Carter had no idea where they were going, or why. Soon the caravan headed up Garrett Mountain, cruising past the evergreens and maple trees. Even at night Carter knew the winding roads because he often rode his horse on the mountain. The motorcade finally came to a stop along a dark road, and there they sat. Detectives holding their shotguns milled around, and Carter heard the crackling of the car radios and officers speaking in code. They did not ask him any questions. Damn! They’re going to kill me. They sat for at least an hour, then Carter heard on the car radio: “Okay, bring him in.” He always assumed that someone had talked the detectives out of shooting him.
At headquarters, Carter was met by Lieutenant DeSimone and by Assistant County Prosecutor Vincent E. Hull. It was Hull who spoke: “We are arresting you for the murders of the Lafayette bar shooting. You have the right to remain silent …” The time was 2:45 A.M. Unknown to Carter, Artis had also been taken to Garrett Mountain, held for more than an hour, then returned to headquarters and arrested for the murders. The Evening News said the arrests “capped a cloak-and-dagger maneuver masterminded by Mayor Graves,” who grandly praised his police department: “Our young, aggressive, hard-working department brought [the case] to its present conclusion.”
Some nettlesome questions remained. Though the police searched the city’s gutters and fields and dragged the Passaic River, they never found the murder weapons. The authorities were also not divulging why Carter and Artis killed three people. Robbery had already been ruled out, and the Evening News reported on October 16 that the police had determined there was no connection between the Roy Holloway murder and the Lafayette bar shooting. Such details were unimportant. The Morning News rejoiced at the arrest, trumpeting on the same day that the newspaper “exclusively broke the news that the four-month-old tavern murders were solved.”
Carter figured his arrest was tied to the November elections. Mayor Graves, prohibited by law from running for a fourth consecutive term, was hoping to hand the job over to his chosen successor, John Wegner. What better way to show that the city was under control than by solving the most heinous crime in its history? After the election, Carter reckoned he’d be set free.*
But sitting in the Passaic County Jail, where each day he was served jelly sandwiches, Carter learned through the jailhouse grapevine that two hostile witnesses had emerged. Alfred Bello, the former con who had been at headquarters following the crime, and Arthur Dexter Bradley, another career criminal, were near the Lafayette bar trying to rob a warehouse on the night of the murders. Questioned by the police that night, Bello said he could not identify the assailants. But suddenly his memory had improved. Both Bello and Bradley now told police that they had witnessed Carter and Artis fleeing the crime scene.
The Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office took the case to a special grand jury empaneled in the basement of the YMCA, convened to investigate the sensational killing of a young housewife named Judy Kavanaugh. On November 30, Carter heard a radio report on the loudspeakers in jail that the grand jury had indicted Kavanaugh’s husband for the murder. Paul Kavanaugh was in a cell near Carter’s. Then, almost as an afterthought, the announcer said: “Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter and John Artis were also indicted for the Lafayette bar slayings.”
The twining of the Kavanaugh and the Lafayette bar murders fueled rumors for many years to come. Speculation centered on the role that the mob may have played in persuading the prosecutor’s office to pursue enemies of the underworld. The Mafia connection was more direct in the Kavanaugh case. Eight months after the killing, a small-time hood named Johnny “the Walk” DeFranco died from a slit throat, the victim of a gangland-style murder. Prosecutors put forth a theory that Judy Kavanaugh had been involved in a counterfeiting and pornography ring and was silenced when she panicked, while DeFranco was later killed to keep him silent about her death. Five people were ultimately indicted for one or both crimes, including Harold Matzner, the young publisher of a suburban newspaper company in New Jersey. He had backed a series of articles that tried to link the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office to the underworld. All the defendants in both crimes, including Matzner, were ultimately acquitted amid allegations of witness tampering and gross misconduct inside the prosecutor’s office.*
Carter’s indictment also generated discussion about the underworld in Paterson. Mobsters had approached Carter about throwing fights, but he had always refused. In theory, this would give the mob an incentive to turn against him—just as the mob had an incentive to turn against Harold Matzner. Rumors circulated that mobsters, seeking vengeance against Carter, gave the prosecutor’s office conclusive evidence of his guilt, but the evidence could never be introduced because of its origins. The rumor is fantastic, but it gained some currency over the years as prosecutors, seemingly armed with little direct proof of guilt against Carter or Matzner, pursed each man with zeal. Other unsettling parallels between the Kavanaugh and Lafayette bar murders would surface in time.
When Carter heard about his indictment on the radio, he was shocked. Even though he had hired a lawyer, he still believed that the authorities planned to release him. But after being jailed for about six weeks, he guessed that prosecutors sought the indictment against him because they feared a possible lawsuit against Passaic County for false arrest. (Carter had no such intention.) If a jury returned a verdict of not guilty, prosecutors could say they had done their best with the evidence they had. Carter’s shock soon gave way to fury and fear. He was now trapped in jail until his trial. With little to do, he began writing letters to people who had seen him on the night of June 16 and who could serve as his alibi witnesses.
To those who knew Carter, the accusation didn’t make sense. His friends and family believed he was capable of killing three people, but not in the fashion