Peter Weinberger's house

This is the house where baby Peter Weinberger was kidnapped.

It is located at 17 Albemarle Road in Westbury on Long Island, New York.

At around 3 p.m. on July 4th, 1956, Betty Weinberger left her one-month-old son Peter in a baby carriage on the back porch of the property.

When she returned 10 minutes later, he was gone. Inside the carriage, she found a handwritten ransom note demanding $2,000 ($22,000 in 2024).

After contacting the Nassau County Police Department and weighing up the situation, the Weinberger family decided that the only way to ensure Peter's safety was to pay the money as soon as possible.

The drop-off was supposed to take place at a signpost near the Weinberger family home the following morning.

To avoid unnerving the kidnapper, the police asked the media to hold off on reporting on the abduction for at least 24 hours. That way, they could make the exchange and get the child home safely before it became news.

Most outlets did the responsible thing and agreed to a self-imposed media blackout. The New York Daily News, however, ignored the request and ran the story on the front page of its evening newspaper.

This publicity resulted in a swarm of activity in the neighborhood as journalists, TV crews, and photographers started gathering at both the Weinberger home and the drop-site.

In the light of the media frenzy, the kidnapper refused to show up.

When he didn't collect the money, the police held a press conference in which they claimed that Peter needed to drink a special baby formula that only a pharmacist could prepare. This was a lie, as no such formula existed.

The authorities hoped that the kidnapper would visit a pharmacy and request the milk, thereby drawing attention to himself. However, this strategy failed. Following the press conference, they received no reports of anyone looking for such a formula.

A few days later, the kidnapper called the Weinberger house and told Peter's father, Morris, to drop the ransom money at Exit 26 of the Northern State Parkway. Although Morris complied with his demands, he never showed up.

Later that day, he called the house a second time and accused them of not sticking to the agreement. When the child's mother, Betty, told him that they had left the money at Exit 26, he wasted little time scheduling another drop-off. On this occasion, he directed them to place the cash in a blue plastic bag beside one of the signs at Exit 28.

For hours, an undercover police team posed as highway workers and kept the bag under surveillance. When the kidnapper proved to be a no-show yet again, they looked inside the bag and found a second ransom note that repeated his earlier demands of $2,000.

In 1956, the FBI had to wait one week before it could legally join a kidnapping case. When the required period passed, dozens of agents from New York City descended upon Long Island to take part in the investigation.

The FBI's handwriting experts analyzed the ransom notes and noticed that the offender's lowercase "m" looked like a "z" that had been turned sideways. 15 other letters of the alphabet also bore distinguishing characteristics.

Using this information, officials began trawling through thousands of public documents in an effort to find a match. Roughly five weeks later, a probation officer in Brooklyn came across the distinctive "m" in one of his documents. The handwriting belonged to 31-year-old Angelo LaMarca, a mechanic from Plainview who had recently finished probation for a bootlegging conviction.

Following his arrest, LaMarca quickly buckled under pressure. During his confession, he said that he had left Peter Weinberger alive in a wooded area off Exit 37 of the Northern State Parkway.

When LaMarca led them to the site, they found the infant's remains roughly 150 feet south of the eastbound service road. By that point, he had been dead for a number of weeks. The cause of death was determined to be a combination of asphyxia, starvation, and exposure.

During his trial, LaMarca pleaded not guilty by insanity. His defense team argued that he had been suffering from temporary insanity due to financial issues. This failed to convince the jury, however, as the evidence showed that he had planned the crime and taken several precautions to avoid detection.

In December 1956, LaMarca was convicted of felony first-degree murder and sentenced to death.

On the night of August 7th, 1958, he was strapped into an electric chair at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York, and executed.

Photos

Photos of the house and other related images.

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