Rant #3,172: Heaven Help Us All

What do you make of this Gilgo Beach murder suspect?

It seems that all roads now point to him as the likely killer of at least three prostitutes—don’t you just love how the media refuses to use that term, calling them “sex workers” or “escorts”—and possibly a fourth one … and since there were others murdered and dumped in the area, he might have just been a serial killer of about a dozen victims.

And also, don’t you just wonder why everything infamous always seems to happen or somehow revolve around Massapequa Park?

The notorious and the infamous seem to coagulate in the Long Island area that I have called home for around 50 years—

The first person that I think brought attention to this area was Christine Jorgenson, the American service member who raised a worldwide stir when she became the first transgender person back in the 1950s, and used that celebrity and notoriety to become an entertainer?

Flash forward to when I became a resident of Massapequa Park in the 1970s and 1980s, and you had Jessica Hahn, the supposedly innocent church secretary who was embroiled in a sex scandal that brought down the empire of Tammy and Jim Bakker, and who later posed nude in Playboy Magazine?

How about the entire “Long Island Lolita” saga, where Joey Buttufucco had an affair with an underage prostitute named Amy Fisher, and when Fisher became infatuated with her older lover, she ended up shooting his wife, Mary Jo—and then all hell broke loose in one of the most infamous yellow journalism sagas in modern history.

And perhaps for not a specific single misdeed—but for an accumulation of them—we have the Baldwin brothers, who were born in Syracuse, New Yolk, but moved to Massapequa Park as children, growing up here, and going through high school here—led by oldest brother Alec, who has become the poster boy for “what not to do right and still make millions from it.”

(And as an aside, one of the Baldwin brothers actually went to high school with the accused serial killer! He posted the high school photo of the accused murderer on social media last week as the entire ruckus was unfolding.)

Yes, there are some absolutely regular Joes who have grown up here or are somehow attached to Massapequa Park that have gained nothing but positive notoriety, like Jerry Seinfeld, the Stray Cats, Elliot Easton, Helen Shaver, and many others—and there are people like me, who moved from New York City to Massapequa Park and had good lives, nothing more.

But why does Massapequa Park spawn such notorious characters as I have previously mentioned?

I have no idea, I really don’t.

I live about five minutes away from the accused Gilgo Beach murderer, and like where I am, that area is pretty much a hardscrabble one, with a mix of modest and nice homes lived in by a mix of blue and white-collar workers and their families.

Is it something in the water?

I wouldn’t know, since I don’t drink water, or at least I don’t drink water from the tap.

Is it something in the air?

I don’t know, Massapequa Park residents breathe the same polluted-by-the Canadian-wildfires air as everyone else does.

Is it in our upbringing?

I really can’t say, although the accused killer has never lived in another house in his entire life, growing up in the same house he now owns.

And speaking about his house … how could his wife not have known anything about what was going on with him—not necessarily the murderers he is accused of committing, but of other bizarre behavior he must have exhibited over the years?

Can you be so blindly in love with someone—and so close to someone—that you kind of overlook your spouse’s major imperfections?

Of course, now she has filed for divorce to almost cover her tracks, but something was awry in that house well before everything exploded—I mean, his wife and kids were out of the house for such long periods that he was able to pull all of this off?

Somebody’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.

And what of these neighbors who are springing out of the woodwork, trying to get their 15 minutes of fame through their proximity to the murder suspect?

I almost had to laugh when one neighbor said that about 30 or more years ago, he had to scold the future murder suspect for looking over the fence that separated the two houses when the future murder suspect eyed his wife sunbathing on the neighbor’s property.

Was she sunbathing nude? Was she sunbathing topless? Was she simply trying to get some rays?

Look, unless he was really ogling her—and perhaps he was, but somehow, I doubt it—this is a true non-story … you men out there, you never looked at a woman sunbathing?

Please, let’s not make this horrific story worse than it is with utter nonsense thrown into the mix. We went through this once with the “Long Island Lolita” imbecility, let’s not repeat the same nonsense again.

Massapequa Park … where art thou?