![\"New](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newyorkcitygangs.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Untitled.jpg?resize=622%2C449&ssl=1\")
<\/a>New York Foundling Hospital<\/p><\/div>\n
In 1937, a young girl named Rhonda Andrade (name changed) had just turned 15 years old and met a 19-year-old man in New York City.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t clear if she was interested in him romantically or if she only knew him platonically, but shortly after they met, this man raped Rhonda and caused her to become pregnant.\u00a0 Rhonda already had a very unhappy childhood before experiencing this trauma.\u00a0 He was sentenced to the penitentiary for four years for the rape.\u00a0 Rhonda carried the baby to full term and about six weeks before she turned 16 years old, she gave birth to a baby boy who she named Eddie (name changed).<\/p>\n
In another awful injustice, this time perpetrated by the state, Rhonda was sent to the New York State Training School for Girls as a \u201csex delinquent,\u201d shortly after she gave birth to Eddie.\u00a0 With Rhonda imprisoned, young Eddie was without a mother, and had a rapist father incarcerated for his crime.<\/p>\n
For the next nine years of his life Eddie lived in the New York Foundling Hospital.\u00a0 While at the hospital they tried to place him in three foster homes, but each home sent him back reporting that he was ungovernable.\u00a0 Eddie\u2019s mother was paroled from the New York State Training School for girls in 1940, when he was two years old, and tried the best she could for her son, even trying to see him when he was in foster homes.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t clear why Eddie wasn\u2019t released back to his mother right away.\u00a0 After her own release from reformatory, Rhonda had regular employment as a Nurse\u2019s Aid at different hospitals and by 1955 she was working at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n
When Eddie was 9 years old, he was finally taken out of Foundling Hospital and sent to live with his mother Rhonda and his maternal grandmother and grandfather.\u00a0 They lived at 117 East 100th<\/sup> Street in Manhattan and had a five-room apartment with a rental of $30 a month.\u00a0 There were three bedrooms in the apartment and Eddie had his own room.\u00a0 The apartment was decently furnished and they had a TV.<\/p>\n Returning to a home he had never been to before should have been a triumphant moment for the lad and Rhonda.\u00a0 Instead, it was nothing but gloom.\u00a0 His grandparents and mother continually fought and instead of receiving the warmth of a family waiting for him, there was no peace.\u00a0 To make things worse, his grandfather resented Eddie and treated him badly (this changed however, when later on he became very interested in his grandson).\u00a0 An uncle who also lived in the same house had his own experience as a delinquent boy and was known to various law enforcement agencies.\u00a0 His uncle spent time at the New York State Training School for Boys and other institutions and had a bad influence on Eddie.<\/p>\n With a delinquent uncle as his influence, a passive grandmother, a grandfather that rejected him and a mother who was strict and cold, Eddie\u2019s formative years were a train wreck.\u00a0 A report from 1955 stated that his young years were \u201cfraught with bickering, turmoil, anxieties, frustrations, bad examples and insecurity.\u201d<\/p>\n All of this angst growing up did a number on Eddie and he became \u201cextremely frustrated and repressed.\u201d\u00a0 He was hostile and had a \u201c\u2026disorganized personality [that] contributed to his inability to cope with home, school, or social problems in an acceptable manner.\u201d\u00a0 Eddie was emotionally disturbed, had disturbed thinking and was combative.\u00a0 All of this contributed to his love of power and extreme aggression towards authority figures.<\/p>\n A job was out of the question and Eddie never worked.<\/p>\n There was much concern over the direction Eddie was heading, and in 1948, when he was 10 years old, he had a psychiatric examination at Kings County Hospital.\u00a0 They noted that he \u201cwas markedly disturbed in his thinking and emotional process and that there were paranoid features and only a marginal contact with reality.\u201d\u00a0 Three years later he was re-examined at the same hospital and they reported that:<\/p>\n he was of average intellect but was severely retarded educationally and that he could not cope with educational problems\u2026his mother was strict and cold and he has a tremendous amount of hostility and that he regarded male figures as monsters and there is a feeling that he had the decided absence of feeling for human relationships.<\/p>\n Despite Eddie\u2019s average intellect, he was \u201ceducationally retarded,\u201d and supposedly had \u201csubnormal intelligence.\u201d\u00a0 One wonders if he had a more normal experience growing up how he would have done in school.<\/p>\n From his earliest school days, Eddie was \u201cprovocative\u201d and had a \u201cdisturbing influence\u201d and was \u201calmost completely unresponsive to ethical standards or routine restraints.\u201d<\/p>\n Eddie began school at PS 41 in Brooklyn between the years of 1944 and 1946 from the ages of 6-8.\u00a0 This was while he was living at Foundling Hospital and there is no note as to how he got there from Manhattan; likely he got there on a bus.\u00a0 Even at this young age, the school reported that Eddie fought with the other children.\u00a0 The school had various bad reports on him so they transferred him in September 1946 to a class for mentally retarded children at PS 93, also in Brooklyn.\u00a0 He stayed here for two years until October 1948 when he was 10 years old.\u00a0 While at PS 93, he was put on a \u201csuspense register\u201d (I\u2019m assuming this meant he was suspended from school) five times.\u00a0 He also stole, used bad language and was uncontrollable.<\/p>\n In October 1948, he was transferred again, this time to PS 612, a school for emotionally disturbed children.\u00a0 He remained there until January 1954, when he was 15 years old.\u00a0 This school reported that Eddie couldn\u2019t get along with others, was disobedient and a troublemaker.<\/p>\n Again Eddie was transferred to another school, this one also for emotionally disturbed children.\u00a0 This school was PS 614.\u00a0 He made a terrible go of it there too, and the school reported that he was emotionally unstable, stole and lied, had a violent temper and fought with other students.\u00a0 He insulted the mothers of the male students in the school.\u00a0 He was such a challenge that he could not be placed with female teachers and would use filthy language against his teachers.\u00a0 Unsurprisingly he was unpopular at this school.<\/p>\n It was at PS 614, three days before Christmas 1954, that he tried to attack his teacher.\u00a0 Then on January 20, 1955, he slashed the leather coat of a student with a razor blade.<\/p>\n Eddie was considered an expert on knives and had one confiscated from him that he had taken to school.\u00a0 Not only was he enamored with knives, but he was obsessed with gangs and guns and continually talked about them.\u00a0 The teacher he had attempted to assault said that Eddie had one of his ear lobes pierced so he could wear an earring so he could be identified in the street battles he was involved in.\u00a0 The school concluded that Eddie was a \u201cmenace\u201d to everyone around him.<\/p>\n The apartment that Eddie lived in at East 100th<\/sup> Street in East Harlem was ground zero of the infamous Enchanters gang, a large and bellicose gang which was responsible for a murder in February 1955.\u00a0 Not only was Eddie a member of the Enchanters, but he was an enthusiastic participant.\u00a0 He had a neighborhood reputation of being a bully and trouble maker and he opened the door for younger boys to enter into the world of delinquent behavior, just like his uncle had done for him.<\/p>\n By the time Eddie was 16 years old, he had numerous run-ins with the law; to wit: pushing other children on subways, holding the doors of the subway train open, stealing pigeons from a roof cage, stealing $43 from a woman\u2019s pocketbook, shoplifting from Bloomingdale\u2019s, possession of a hunting knife, jumping a subway turnstile and sneaking into the Eagle Theater in the Bronx and being abusive to the manager when he was caught.<\/p>\n He was on probation for stealing the woman\u2019s pocketbook, but did not respond well.\u00a0 He defied the probation officer\u2019s demand to stay away from the Enchanters and was irregular in reporting, disrespectful and had a bad attitude.<\/p>\n No doubt these run-ins with the law had softened him up for a crime of a more violent nature.\u00a0 In 1955, when Eddie was 17 years old, he was short, stocky and a well-built lad.\u00a0 He also had a scar over his left eye from a street fight.<\/p>\n It was on September 7, 1955 when all the bottled-up rage and violence that had been bubbling up in Eddie came out in horrific fashion.\u00a0 It happened around 8:30 p.m. on the street in the area of East 101st<\/sup> Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan.<\/p>\n East 101st Street and Third Avenue Manhattan<\/p><\/div>\n Eddie was the President of the Enchanters and on this evening he had an issue with an 18-year-old youth named Howard Paterson who had mistreated a member of the Enchanters.\u00a0 As President of the gang, Eddie had to do something.\u00a0 So when he found Howard on the street, Eddie threatened him.\u00a0 Howard replied by punching him in the mouth.\u00a0 Eddie escalated the situation even further and without warning pulled out a dagger he was carrying in his pocket and stabbed Paterson in the chest.<\/p>\n Paterson stumbled and staggered around on the street, gushing blood from his wound.\u00a0 Eddie bolted from the scene.\u00a0 Howard was taken to Beth David Hospital where he told a detective from the 23rd<\/sup> Precinct what happened.\u00a0 The detective went straight to Eddie\u2019s house informing his mom that her son was being sought for the stabbing.\u00a0 Eddie wasn\u2019t there when the detective knocked on the door, so he ordered Rhonda to tell Eddie that he had to report to the precinct station house the next day.<\/p>\n When Eddie checked himself into the 23rd<\/sup> precinct he confessed his crime to the detective and was then arrested.<\/p>\n Although Eddie willingly confessed to the crime, the detective noted that Eddie was not sorry for what he had done and in fact was \u201cextremely surly\u201d and had an \u201cunfeeling attitude.\u201d\u00a0 As the detective pressed in on the details of the crime and Eddie\u2019s background, he found out from people in the neighborhood that Eddie was a known troublemaker and bully.\u00a0 In fact more than one person said they were happy that Eddie was finally apprehended and off the streets.<\/p>\n The stories that Eddie and Howard told the detective were basically the same.\u00a0 Howard said that he had been simply walking on the street on his way home when he was approached by Eddie.\u00a0 He said that it was true that he had assaulted a member of the Enchanters a week earlier and that gang code meant that Eddie and him had to fight it out.\u00a0 When Eddie threatened him, he admitted that he struck the first blow which he delivered directly into Eddie’s face.\u00a0 That is when Eddie pulled the dagger out of his back pocket and stabbed him.<\/p>\n Eddie said \u2013 without remorse \u2013 \u00a0that he and the Enchanters were out that night for the purpose of teaching Howard a lesson and that when Howard punched him, he lost all control and stabbed him in the chest.<\/p>\n NYPD Report on Enchanter Gang Member Assault 1955<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n What made all of this even more shocking was that Howard and Eddie were actually friends.\u00a0 Not only that, but they were lifelong friends.\u00a0 When asked why he would stab his friend Eddie had no explanation as to how he could be so hostile and aggressive to him.\u00a0 Eddie showed no feelings of remorse when his probation officer talked to him either.\u00a0 In fact he was cocky and didn\u2019t seem to care or worry about the problem he found himself in.<\/p>\n It took Howard one month to recover from his near-death experience at the hands of his friend.\u00a0 Two operations were needed to save his life and he required 17 pints of blood in order to survive.\u00a0 Because of the assault, Howard could not attend school and missed an entire term.\u00a0 He also couldn\u2019t work at his part-time job as a furniture mover.<\/p>\n Eddie was so disturbed in the mind that he was given yet another psychiatric examination, this time at Bellevue Hospital.\u00a0 They found that he was without psychosis but he was showing a pattern of becoming an adolescent psychopath.\u00a0 He could only read at a Grade 4 level, and his arithmetic was even lower than that.\u00a0 His memory for numbers, \u201cmental control, verbal facility and fund of information\u201d was \u201cdefective.\u201d<\/p>\n This psychiatric report was written on November 28, 1955, and even though it was nearly three months after the attack, there was no change in Eddie\u2019s mind and he had no feelings of guilt for what he did.\u00a0 He felt he was justified in almost killing his lifelong friend because his friend punched him in the mouth.<\/p>\n The evidence against Eddie was overwhelming and he plead guilty to Assault 2nd<\/sup> Degree.\u00a0 Five days before Christmas 1955, he was sentenced to Napanoch Reformatory which was a place where \u201cdefective delinquents\u201d were stored.<\/p>\n Both Howard and Eddie drop off the map at this point and their demise and\/or whereabouts today is unknown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the late 1860s, New York City experienced a tragic and terrible social problem of mothers abandoning their infants on the streets.\u00a0 Some of the reasons for this were inadequate housing, an economic depression and poverty.\u00a0 By 1869 it wasn\u2019t … Continue reading ![\"East](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newyorkcitygangs.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/East-101st-Street-and-Third-Avenue-Manhattan.jpg?resize=640%2C332&ssl=1\")
<\/a>![\"NYPD](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newyorkcitygangs.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/NYPD-Report-on-Enchanter-Gang-Member-Assault-1955.jpg?resize=570%2C715&ssl=1\")
<\/a>