Introduction

Welcome!

Although we will follow the usual blogger's practice of placing our most recent posting at the top of this our home page, to start things off we are posting our first eight items all at once.

We recommend you read them as they are placed on this page, from top to bottom.

Start with Three Violent Deaths ... and One Enlightening Conversation followed by Witnessed Track Murders and Murderous Assaults, etc., to the last, You Can Help.

 © 2015 by James Graham

Three Violent Deaths… and One Enlightening Conversation

This is all I know about Tanya Middleton. She was a young married woman with one child whose husband was serving with the US military in Germany. At about 10:15AM on Saturday, June 12, 1982 while a passenger on a northbound subway train in the Bronx she tried to walk from one car to the next. She never made it to the next car. A young man had followed her, and while both strangers were between cars he lifted the safety chain and pushed Tanya Middleton from the moving train. She was murdered.

I also know this: the New York Transit Police quickly classified her death as “accident.” As far as those officials were concerned Tanya Middleton was entirely responsible for her own horrific death.

Witnessed Track Murders and Murderous Assaults

Here in no particular order are links to several fatal and near-fatal attacks in the subway in which the victim was on the tracks. Because these incidents were witnessed by passengers the police could not classify any of them as an "accident."

Woman Killed in Subway Train Dispute "A 23 year-old woman ... was killed early yesterday morning when a man threw her from her subway train... A passenger saw the woman hanging from the side of the train between cars ..."

Reposted: "NYPD Said Foul Play Wasn't Suspected"

For those who think my estimate of "hundreds" of hidden homicides in the years since the nearly-successful attempt to blame Tanya Middleton for her own subway murder is too high—or who think the "bad old days" of subway crime are long past—I invite them to ponder the reported track deaths for the year 2012.

For a number of reasons the media's reporting of "death-by-train" incidents is sketchy. If the New York papers and other traditional media are told foul play is not suspected, they will ignore it, and, based on the following summary and my reading of scores of other reports, I am convinced that NYPD officials responsible for transit matters never officially suspect foul play in any unwitnessed track death. 

No Cameras? No Problem!

In December 2012 a woman pushed a man to his death. He had been waiting for a train on a Queens elevated subway platform. This was not a cowardly unwitnessed late night attack by criminals—it was not a hidden homicide—but the act of an irrational person who was seen muttering to herself before she pushed her victim in front of an incoming train. 

The crazed woman quickly fled the station but police—thanks to a recording made on a surveillance camera—soon had a complete description. She was quickly apprehended and charged.

But that camera was not on the subway platform. 

Aiders, Abettors and Two-Legged Judas Goats

In my opinion, by refusing to even consider the possibility of homicide whenever a track death is not witnessed by passengers the NYPD delivers this de facto message to New York's violent criminals:

If you attack someone on a platform and force him onto the tracks where he is struck and killed by a train you will have committed the perfect crime—as long as there are no witnesses willing to come forward. 

You Can Help!

Spread the word.

This site could help to change the handling of track killings—but only if it attracts enough attention, including the attention of the media.

Until enough people demand fundamental changes in the way the NYPD handles unwitnessed track deaths the police will continue to automatically rule out homicide, blaming the victims for their own deaths. The subway system will continue as a virtual "camera free" zone, an arrangement beloved by two groups of people, the criminals that prey on riders and the MTA lawyers.

As a start, let your friends know about this site by clicking on the appropriate buttons at the end of this posting. 

Family and friends of victims.

Anyone who knew a victim of a so-called "accident" in the subway is encouraged to add a comment. Write as much or as little as you like. Do so anonymously. We will not divulge your contact information to anyone.