The Awful Death of Jim Finkenstadt

by Bob McHugh

The awful death of Jim Finkenstadt has me stunned. Anytime a bright and genial soul is taken at age 55, it’s senseless. Leaving a wife and children behind makes it worse.

But anyone who knew Jim knows that his death is even a greater loss. Jim was a gentleman, in the most literal sense of the word. He was an extraordinary journalist – the Asbury Park Press, the APF, the Globe. And he was trying to help me speak French.

I have been to Paris a half dozen times, and twice when Jim and Elizabeth lived there. Visits to their home, to Jim’s newsroom and to Versaille made one of the world’s most wonderful places seem all more wonderful. Jim was a near-native French speaker and a pleasure to listen to.

Within the last year, he invited me to Paris again. Like a fool, I never went. Just two weeks ago, I sent him a “what’s up” email. Va tu, mon ami? Damn.

In 1979 – an unimaginable 30 years ago – I graduated from night copy boy to reporter at the Press. I was assigned to the “city zone” and to cover Eatontown and Bradley Beach, replacing Jim. (I soon realized why he was so delighted to hand over the reins …)

I remember Jim introducing me to the township attorney, an orange jumpsuit in waiting named “Nestor.” Jim was not the type to tell an eager new reporter outright that Nestor was, shall we say, less than credible. He simply told me to be careful.

I left the Press in 1985 for the Associated Press and I was proud that I had become a “wire service guy” like Jim.

I’ll always remember the Finkenstadt’s changing diapers at Jody and Carl Calendar’s. Jody and Carl stayed devoted friends to Jim. And I’ll always remember buying bread and cheese enroute to the Finkenstadt’s house outside Paris.

And I’ll never forget my friend, Jim.

Dismembered; Remembered

by Bob McHugh

David George spent much of his life drawing, following the Grateful Dead and selling pot. The first two made him happy and sometimes, a living. The last got him killed.

George edited an underground college newspaper in Olympia, Wash. He followed the Dead literally all around the world until he and Jerry Garcia became friends. And, in 2004, he was stabbed repeatedly and hacked into pieces by two maniacs over a bad Marijuana deal.

What do you say about a friend who has been dismembered?

An odd and macabre question, agreed. But it happened to me. Rather, I should say, it happened to my college roommate who I’ve just learned was killed and, yes, dismembered in a horrific drug murder about seven years ago.

The victim, David George, was a gentle, if somewhatmischievous man. In college in Boston in the early 70s, he was a hippie who threw the I Ch’ing, followed the Grateful Dead and sold pot. And, though I had not seen him in some 35 years, those things apparently did not change much.

I found in newspaper accounts and talking to mutual friends that David moved to Evergreen, Oregon, after leaving Boston about 1973. He continued his main passions: drawing comics, going to Dead concerts and smoking weed. Dead serious about all three, David reportedly became friendly with legendary Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, and joined the band’s traveling carnival – including a show at the foot of the Pyramids of Egypt.

He stayed true to cartooning, too. In college, he created “Buzz Gang Comics,” depicting me and our other friends as a band of merry, if stoned men. I was Ray Morphus, private eye, who David drew with an angular jaw and a Marlboro hanging from his (my) mouth.

David became the on-again, off-again publisher of the Evergreen Free Press, an alternative paper at Evergreen College near Olympia. David also stayed true to his affection for “recreational” drugs marijuana and the buying and selling of them.

Over two years, I never knew my roommate to be in the league of dealers who order planeloads of pot from Central American bad guys. But, we often had strangers visit our Back Bay apartment with cash in hand.

Sadly, if not unsurprisingly, drugs were David’s undoing. He was murdered in 2003 by two men, who stabbed him repeatedly and threw him in the trunk of a Toyota. David bled to death in there and, after leaving him dead in the woods for a few days in panic, the men – boys, really, at 21 and 19 – returned to hack him up and bury most of his parts in shallow graves. David’s head has still not been found.

What was left of David George was stumbled upon by a hapless hiker. The killers, Mert Celebisoy and Felix D’Allesandro, were tried and convicted and are serving lengthy sentences in an Oregon prison.

According to an appeal document, both men blamed each other:

Celebisoy testified that D’Allesandro had asked him to drive to a meeting with George. D’Allesandro was not satisfied with a recent marijuana purchase and wanted to talk with George. They met George on the street and he got into the car and Celebisoy drove while George and D’Allesandro talked. D’Allesandro demanded his money back and George refused. D’Allesandro became irate, reached over the seat, and stabbed George several times. Celebisoy stopped the car and got out; then George got out of the car, stumbled, and fell near the trunk. Threatening with the bloody knife, D’Allesandro ordered Celebisoy to ‘Pop the trunk.’ Celebisoy complied and, at D’Allesandro’s request, helped lift George into the trunk. Celebisoy denied having any advance knowledge that D’Allesandro was planning to kill George. D’Allesandro testified that Celebisoy called him to arrange a meeting so he (Celebisoy) could purchase cocaine from George. D’Allesandro arranged the meeting and drove Celebisoy to meet George. George sat in the front passenger seat while Celebisoy sat in the back seat. As D’Allesandro drove around, Celebisoy and George conversed. They started to argue loudly, and Celebisoy said, ‘Here you go, motherf***er,’ and Celebisoy stabbed George multiple times in the back.

People can be unspeakably violent to each other. The Romans threw Christians to the lions. The English, who gave us our just laws, ripped people apart and cut out their entrails. Revered artists, from Caravaggio to Tarantino, have made gore an art form.

Celebisoy and D’Allesandro probably won’t win any appeal. Chopping somebody to pieces is over just about any legal line. Someday, I might just go to Washington to meet David’s killers. I’ll ask them what they knew about my old roommate and why, on top of everything else, they decided to dismember him.

They probably won’t know.

September 4, 2011

Gimme Shelter: Thirty Hours in a Hurricane

by Bob McHugh

At the emergency shelter, a young man in a do-rag, obviously drunk, walked to the bathroom with his pants down – all the way down. An extended family of about 12 huddled on cots in a corner sharing Chef Boyardee ravioli. A cop dozed by the door. A thin, pregnant woman stepped out to smoke. These images were snapshots of New Jersey’s second-largest city during Hurricane Irene.

Like most of the Northeast, Jersey City prudently over-prepared for the terrifyingly touted maelstrom. But it had deteriorated to a tropical storm by the time it hit New York Harbor.

City officials, in their zeal, ordered mandatory evacuations of low-lying areas. Shelters were set up and widespread flooding and downed power lines were expected. The actual effect, while marked, was a lot less serious.

Though the first real wind and rain from Irene were more than 12 hours away, people began to arrive by 10 a.m. Saturday at the annex of William Dickinson High School, built in 1933 adjacent to the iconic main building that sits atop Bergen Hill. Fire Department recruits had spent much of Friday setting up Army-style cots in gymnasiums at four public schools. Dickinson had room for about 150.

Among the first to show up were curious neighbors not ready to abandon home, but wanting a look at their options. Two extended families of about a dozen each – grandmothers, mothers and fathers, children and children’s children – set up camp before noon. And camp it was. They brought bins of food, extra blankets, books, and games.

A temporary home

By midday, word of the shelter was out to the city’s homeless community. Though it sounds like a contradiction, the homeless are indeed a community. They know each other. They befriend each other. And when word gets out about a new shelter – especially one serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner – they tell each other.

People with no regular access to baths or food or clean clothes stand out. Yes, some of them smell bad. Others look emaciated or old beyond their ages. They are easy to spot. “I’m homeless,” they would answer when asked for their address at the registration table.

Other guests were affluent by contrast. They parked their Hondas in the school lot. A stranded flight attendant brought teabags and books. A well-groomed Puerto Rican man asked about Wi-Fi access. Remarkably, no one complained about their temporary neighbors – at least at first.

Friday passed quickly. Stores on nearby Newark Avenue stayed open through the evening and people were able to walk for Chinese food or cigarettes. A 22-year-old girl, pregnant and thin, frequently came out on the massive front stoop to share a smoke with the man she introduced as her “baby daddy.” Since cigarettes top $8 a pack these days, they rolled their own.

Not everybody was peaceful. A man with a pony tail and a scruffy beard said he had been sent by Jesus. Two men, one who had forgotten to bring his teeth, argued over a cot while more than 100 others went unclaimed. Though the dingy gym was brightly lit, a grandmother begged shelter operators not to dim the lights for sleep. “I’m scared,” she said simply.

The city had provided each shelter with a police officer, and the Board of Education assigned two school security guards.

A young man and a few companions arrived in the early evening. Dressed in low-hanging shorts, athletic t-shirts, and do-rags they looked like gangbangers, but seemed harmless enough.

“No liquor. No illegal drugs and no weapons,” the shelter workers told every arrival and required them to sign a statement to that effect.

Drunk, hungry, tired

But one young man ignored his pledge and took off later in search of booze. He came back obviously inebriated. After a while, he showed up in the hall asking for the bathroom. He was naked from his waist to his knees.

Despite a warning from school officers, he continued to act out. Finally, a Jersey City policeman said, “If you keep this up, you’re gonna be out of here.”

“Why you picking on me?” the man asked.

“Because you’re f—ked up,” the cop said.

An hour later, the same guy told the officer that he was vomiting and had severe stomach pain. The officer radioed for an ambulance and the man was taken away.

No food

The city’s plans to feed the evacuees went awry. A stick-thin woman of indeterminate age asked around 6 p.m., “Are we gonna get food?” “We’re working on it,” she was told, but the shelter staff didn’t know any more than she did. Around 8 p.m., the same woman asked the same thing and got the same answer. Just before 10 p.m., the city’s Recreation Department showed up with subs for dinner, accompanied by milk and juice from the school cafeteria.

By midnight on Sunday, despite the glaring lights and driving rain, the 50 or so overnighters settled in while Irene had her way.

By three a.m. even one of Jersey City’s finest had his eyelids shut. About 6 a.m., they were rudely awakened by the shrill school fire alarm, apparently shorted by a leak. A significant amount of rain had leaked into the cafeteria one floor below the gym. Residents had to endure the deafening noise on and off for a half hour, until the custodian finally shut it down.

Seeing little chance of more sleep, shelter officials rustled up breakfast of juice and milk and donuts and corn muffins.

By 10 a.m. Sunday, the rain and wind began to abate. Those with places to go began to leave. The Recreation Department brought a mid-morning snack of buttered rolls. But by noon, only the homeless remained, hoping at least for lunch. It never came, and word eventually came down from the city’s Office of Emergency Management that the shelter would close by 2 p.m.

The pregnant girl announced, “I’m cold. I’m keeping the blanket.” Several others did the same thing, but no one in authority stopped them. One man asked if he could take a cot. He was told “No.”

About 1:45, the city sent a van to take the three final evacuees – a young girl, a young man, and an old man on a cane – to the only remaining open shelter in town. Everyone else had gone home or to find something to eat.

Reprinted from the Sept. 4, ’11 edition of “The Jersey City Reporter.”