John T. Conlin was tired, hungry, and not a little drunk after a long night out, so when he stepped out of a taxi and entered his Queens building he barely took notice of the tall young man lurking in the darkened hallway.
Not that the guy seemed like much of a threat, even at 2 a.m. on this cool April night in 1931. The baby-faced youth was a pleasant-looking fellow in a natty brown suit and sported a sparse mustache that somehow made him look younger. Hardly the look of a Depression-era desperado.
It wasn’t until he pulled a rod that Conlin realized he was in danger.
“Hold ‘em up,” the man barked. “Give me your money and your ring.”
Conlin complied and handed over his wallet containing $63 and the ring. But when the stickup man demanded more, Conlin stammered that it was all he had.
A vicious scowl suddenly darkened the robber’s youthful face. He cursed at his victim — then fired his revolver once and fled, leaving a bleeding Conlin slumped on the floor just a few feet away from the Astoria apartment he shared with his wife, Amy.
Conlin was rushed to St. John’s Hospital in Long Island City, a sure goner. The bullet had entered his spine, paralyzing the 45-year-old maitre’d of a nearby catering hall and leaving him in agonizing pain. Doctors were amazed that he’d survived the gunshot wound, but only gave him 30 days to live at best.
Mrs. Amy Conlin (Daily News Photo)
He had slipped into a coma, and the paralysis caused the atrophying of his certain bodily functions, meaning his body was slowly poisoning itself. It would be a horrible, lingering death, doctors told Amy.
News of her impending widowhood hit the petite brunette hard. She practically passed out when she was told her husband’s days were numbered and spent hours wailing uncontrollably by his hospital bed.
Police were hard pressed to ask any questions — Amy was in no shape to talk, she insisted — and they decided to leave the weeping woman alone until she felt up to it.
It only took a couple of days for detectives to realize the shrieking spouse was putting on an act worthy of Norma Shearer. A little digging into the couple’s private life showed Amy was hardly the devoted wife she made herself out to be. She had sued Conlin for separation on the grounds of cruelty a couple of months before the shooting and was desperate to leave him.
Though they had since reconciled, neighbors told cops they continued to bicker, and that while Conlin was known to come home in the wee hours a bit zozzled, Amy was no angel, either. She was seen on more than one occasion hanging out at local speakeasies while her husband worked night shifts at the catering hall.
Convinced there was more to the robbery than meets the eye, investigators searched their modest apartment — and uncovered a treasure trove of evidence that Conlin’s shooting was likely no random robbery.
James De Pew (New York Daily News Archive)
It was a stash of hidden letters from a man, addressed to Amy, that led to the arrest of a suspect.
Police dragged James De Pew, a 22-year-old described as a “tall, swaggering youth of the gigolo type,” to the stationhouse, where he later claimed he was handcuffed to a scalding steampipe until he spilled all about his May-December romance with Amy, who at age 40 was nearly twice his age.
He also confessed to shooting Conlin in a staged robbery meant to bankroll their eventual escape together, but De Pew swore he didn’t mean to fire the gun. He had gotten “excited,” he said, and pulled the trigger without realizing it.
A Belgium-born drifter who’d done time in the pen for robbery, De Pew likewise had kept a collection of passionate letters from Amy that left no doubt they were having an illicit affair.
Readers of the New York papers thrilled — or gagged — over breakfast to the contents of the passionate missives, which Amy typically began with “My darling, loving Sonny Boy” and were full of complaints about the horrible life she led with John, who constantly drank with the boys, beat her often and would then add insult to injury by going on fishing trips without her.
De Pew and Amy had met in a speakeasy, and the smitten older woman was soon giving the good-looking dandy money to live on and enjoying the thrill of their clandestine rendezvous.
But De Pew’s arrest and subsequent confession led to Amy Conlin being hauled in as well, and the ardor of their furtive romance was immediately snuffed out.
John T. Conlin (New York Daily News Archive)
The Daily News compared them to the spectacularly scandalous case of Ruth Snyder, the Queens housewife who together with her lover murdered her husband and was sent to the electric chair in 1928 — her execution immortalized on The News’ front page by a photographer who snuck a camera into the death chamber.
Like Snyder, Amy Conlin turned on De Pew the moment the younger man implicated her in the shooting, calling him a “rat” and a “bum” and swearing it was all his idea to shoot her husband.
The only difference from the Snyder case was that John Conlin was still alive — and stayed that way for more than two months, during which he emerged from his coma and identified De Pew as the fiend who plugged him in a dramatic bedside confrontation after cops brought the accused shooter to the hospital.
But once Conlin succumbed to his wound, the charges against the ex-lovers were upgraded from felonious assault to murder.
New York Daily News for Sunday, April 29, 1931.
Seven months later, a judge wiped the smirk off the arrogant young gigolo’s face when he sentenced De Pew to 30 years to life imprisonment.
Amy Conlin, a cheating wife accused of leading her boyish paramour to homicide, somehow escaped the jury’s wrath. She was acquitted of any role in the long and excruciatingly painful death of her husband — and promptly fainted upon hearing the unexpected verdict.
Unlike Ruth Snyder, who had famously fried for basically the same crime, Mrs. Conlin walked out of court a free woman.
James De Pew smokes during a break in trial. (New York Daily News Archive)
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Copyright © 2022, New York Daily News