People v. Fernandez

On the night of March 1, 1949, the dead body of a woman — with bent head and flexed limbs tightly bound against the torso, and with a white scarf knotted twice around the neck— was exhumed from beneath the concrete floor of a private house on 149th Street in South Ozone Park, Queens County, New York. An autopsy disclosed a fractured larynx and two head wounds which penetrated the cranial cavity and pierced those membranes which overlie the brain.

*307The body was that of Janet J. Fay who had met her death in a manner, presently to be described, which has given rise to this criminal prosecution.

The…