“About what size was the box?”

“A little larger than a shoe box.”

“At that time, did you have any recollection that you had ever seen her before?”

“No.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“No.”

“Did she speak to you?”

“No.”

“Did you notice her at any time in the car?”

“Yes.”

“Where did she sit?”

“It was across from me but with her back toward the front of the train.”

“Now, did your sister continue to Times Square?”

“No.”

“Where did she get off?”

“She got off at Thirty-fourth Street.”

“All right. Now, when the doors opened at Times Square station, just what happened?”

“Well, I took about three or four steps, walking toward the Fortieth Street exit, and all of a sudden—”

“On the platform?”

“On the platform. And all of a sudden I heard a very loud blast and I felt a very sharp pain in my left leg, and I bent down to sort of hold it and I reeled over and fell down on my back, and then I remember people running toward me and I remember a gentleman bending over, and I remember a girl, and the girl was Pearl Lusk.”

“You say you—”

“The girl who had been sitting in the train. She bent over me and she said—”

“Now, get control of yourself. What did you notice about yourself?”

“I did not feel my leg—it just didn’t feel like it was there—and I was practically swimming in blood.”

“From what part of your body were you swimming in blood?”

“All under me, all of me, and I remember talking to a subway guard. He asked me for my name, and he asked me for my telephone number, and I gave it to him, and then I remember being put on a stretcher and being carried up the steps, and I also remember being in the ambulance when they took me to the hospital, and I was in the emergency room there, and I remember they cut off my clothes, and the next morning they cut off my leg six inches above my knee.”

After the shooting, Pearl was taken to the West Thirtieth Street station house, where she told her story and was shown a photograph of Olga and Rocco that had been snapped in a night club before their marriage. In the photograph, Rocco was grinning expansively, and, dressed in a pencil-striped suit, a white shirt, and a flowered tie, he looked happy and prosperous. “That’s the man,” said Pearl. “He even has the same clothes on.” While the police were looking for Rocco, they tried to find out what they could about him. Neither Olga nor her parents could tell them much. All they knew was that he had met Olga at a dance in Brooklyn in 1944 and had married her after a brief courtship. He would disappear sometimes for weeks and return with lots of spending money—and, as often as not, a new car. He was fond of hunting and camping, and once or twice went away by himself for a weekend in the Catskills, taking along a shotgun and a sleeping bag. He had never talked about his background, and was vague about how he made his living. He was very jealous of Olga. After some violent quarrels, she left him, and it was then that he began telling her that he would kill her if she didn’t come back to him.

The police discovered that in 1938 Rocco had been in the business of stealing automobiles in Manhattan and selling them in the Bronx. He had been arrested for that and had served a term in Bronx County. He had no other criminal record. The probation report made on him at that time noted that his parents had died when he was a child and that he had been brought up in orphanages and foster homes. “He denies the use of narcotics and does not drink to excess,” the report went on. “He admits sexual promiscuity. He is not a member of any organized social group and states that he has few friends. He is inclined to be self-condemnatory and thinks he received a poor ‘break’ in life. He attributes his actions to the lack of helpful guidance from his elders. He was pleasant and agreeable and showed no unusual reactions or ideas. He appeared to be of dull, normal intelligence.” The report quoted a statement from the psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital, which said that Rocco “was not insane and not mentally defective, average intelligence, no delusions or hallucinations, emotionally cheerful.”

Six days after the shooting in the subway, Rocco’s trail was picked up in the Catskills, where, riding in a stolen car, he forced a number of farmers at the point of a gun to give him food. Fifty state police and two New York detectives found his car parked on the side of a mountain road, and soon afterward discovered Rocco in a sleeping bag under a spruce tree. It was night, and there was snow ten inches deep. The police called to Rocco to surrender, and one of them fired a warning shot into the air. Rocco fired four times in the direction of the flash and then was killed when the police opened up. Among the things taken from his pockets was a print of the photograph of Olga and himself in the night club.

Pearl and Olga afterward became friends, and they still see each other occasionally. Pearl has married and is raising a family. Olga barely manages to earn a living selling costume jewelry. For years, she had hopes of obtaining some compensation for the loss of her leg, because she and her lawyers believed that the police had been negligent in not protecting her from Rocco. Last April, the case came up in the New York County Supreme Court in the form of a suit for $200,000 damages brought by Olga, as plaintiff, against the City of New York, as defendant. The trial lasted for five days and was presided over by Justice Joseph A. Cox. Olga hobbled to the witness stand on crutches, and told her story once more. Various detectives corroborated those portions of it that had to do with her efforts to have them protect her from Rocco. Pearl, too, told her story again. The City of New York, represented by Assistant Corporation Counsel William F. Miller, made no effort to deny, or obscure, the facts of the case, and Justice Cox, after hearing all of them, dismissed Olga’s claim. It was the facts of the case that were against Olga. Nobody denied that the Police Department had been informed that Rocco was trying to kill Olga. If Rocco himself had followed her into the subway and shot her, Olga might conceivably have had a case against the city on the ground of police negligence, but, as Mr. Miller argued, that was not what had occurred. He seemed to find it difficult to settle on an adjective that adequately described the scheme that Rocco, in his jealousy, had thought up. “The facts in this case,” Mr. Miller said at one point, “indicate that this plaintiff was shot by another passenger on the subway system, a woman unknown and unsuspected—by the name of Pearl Lusk—under the most unsuspicious and unanticipated, bizarre and fantastic circumstances.” Almost as if he regretted having to rub this in, he added, “There was absolutely no legal duty on the part of the city to this plaintiff to afford her any protection from Pearl Lusk, an unidentified, unknown individual, concerning whom no one knew anything, concerning whom it is not even attempted to be claimed here by the plaintiff that the Police Department had any notice. She was unknown even to this plaintiff. The only person, apparently, that she was known to was Rocco himself, under an assumed name. She did not even know the relationship between Rocco and this plaintiff. There was absolutely no duty upon the part of the city to provide protection to this plaintiff against any such unknown and unsuspected individual.”

Olga’s attorney argued as best he could, but it was soon evident that no amount of circumlocution could get around the facts. When Justice Cox rendered his decision, he found it necessary to recite those same facts once more. “The proof is clear,” he said in a level tone, “that a woman unknown to the plaintiff was duped into carrying an ordinary-appearing package containing a gun with which she shot the plaintiff, believing she was photographing her. In the absence of any proof showing that the defendant [the city] foresaw, or could reasonably have foreseen, such an occurrence and took no effective action to avoid the same, there can be no recovery from injuries received from such an assault.” When, after some little time, he got around to announcing his decision, he made it clear that although the case was dismissed, it was not necessarily resolved. “In closing,” he said, “the Court is constrained to observe that this has been a shocking occurrence, the deed of a criminally diseased mind, and it is most unfortunate that some redress cannot be afforded the plaintiff.” ♦