18 year old white girl gets into cab with black man who rapes and murders her; the Times describes it as a “chance” event
(Partly drafted July 31, 2006, but not posted; I just came upon it in my files and completed it. Comments begin
here. Additional
text has been added since the entry was posted.)
This is the story of the death of 18-year-old Jennifer Moore of Saddle Brook, New Jersey. Moore, who had been graduated from high school last month, had spent a night of hard and illegal underage drinking in a Manhattan nightclub with her friend, Talia Kenan, also 18. When they went back to Talia’s car at about 2 a.m., it had been towed because Talia had parked it illegally. They went to the nearby impound lot on 12th Avenue to get the car, but the attendant would not transfer the car to Tallia because she was extremely drunk. As Talia angrily protested this injustice, she fell down unconscious. An ambulance then came and took Talia to St. Vincent’s Hospital, leaving Jennifer alone and drunk at the impound lot. Jennifer, who was 5”1’, and was wearing a halter top and miniskirt, then wandered alone down 12th Avenue, along the Hudson River. She then got into a cab with a huge black man and convicted felon named Draymond Coleman. Jennifer evidently had no qualms about getting into a car with a strange black man since her own boyfriend, by the name of Kofi Boakye, is also black; Jennifer’s father, Hugh Moore, has told the Times that Boakye (in the Times’ words), is the kind of man “that any father would be proud to have his daughter date.”
Coleman took Jennifer to a hotel in Weehawken, New Jersey where he was living with his 20-year-old white girl friend, Krystal Riordan, a prostitute. Coleman, apparently with Riordan present, proceeded to rape and sodomize Jennifer, beat her, and strangle her. He stuffed her into a laundry bag, but she kept moving, so he reached in and beat and strangled her some more until she was dead. In his court appearance after his arrest his hands were visibly puffy and bruised. Coleman and Riordan put Jennifer’s body in a suitcase and dumped it and went to hid out in a Harlem hotel. Coleman, illustrating the high intelligence of his type, proceeded to use Jennifer’s cell phone for numerous calls, which led the police directly to him.
That’s the story. Now, how did the New York Times portray this story of suicidally reckless behavior on Jennifer’s Coleman’s part and brutal rape and murder on Draymond Coleman’s part?
Here is the headline:
A Teenager’s Last Steps on a Trail of Missed Chances
By ALAN FEUER
Here is the opening of Feuer’s article:
In a city of random encounters, this one seemed especially touched by chance.
She, a tiny prep-school girl in a miniskirt and halter top, in from New Jersey to go to a club. He, a troubled drifter and convicted felon—a pimp, investigators say, who slept in cheap rented rooms and was in and out of jail for selling drugs. [He offers her a ride and she gets into a cab with him; that’s not chance, that’s choice.]
Then there was the happenstance at play: her boyfriend had not come out with her that night; her friend had gotten drunk, leaving her to wander the streets alone; their cherry red sedan had been towed from a “no standing” zone while they were dancing, leaving her no easy way of getting home.
Even the settings seemed cruelly accidental: She began the evening in safety and affluence in Harrington Park, NJ. Two days later, after her Manhattan night had ended, she was found not 16 miles from home, in a trash bin, in a parking lot, in a weary slice of a New Jersey river town, West New York.
What happened earlier this week to Jennifer Moore might be seen as a cautionary tale of what lurks in the city should one decide to navigate it alone, in the dark and after spending hours at a bar. There may be others, though, who say that when Ms. Moore, 18, met her attacker early Tuesday on the empty morning streets, it was simply the start of a saga about the arbitrary nature of intersecting lives. [See? Some people say it’s a lesson in dangerous behavior, that a young woman should wander the streets of a rough part of Manhattan alone late at night, but others say it’s simply about arbitrary chance encounters. There’s no way to choose between these two views of the matter, and the main thrust of the article is to support the view that it was all about chance.]
Here is another highlight in the article, expanding on the chance nature of the savagery
What seems so troubling about Ms. Moore’s death is that, at least four times that night, she had encounters with people who might have altered the course that ended in her death. [LA replies: So, what’s troubling is not that she wandered the deserted streets of Manhattan drunk and dressed like a prostitute in the middle of the night and got into a car with a strange black man; what troubling is not that the man raped, sodomized, and murdered her. No, what’s troubling is that various other people might have intervened in her situation, but didn’t.]
There were the bouncers and bartenders at the Guest House, a Chelsea nightclub, where she and her friend, Talia Kenan, were allowed inside to drink even though they were under age. There were the employees at the impound lot, where the police had towed Ms. Kenan’s car.
There was the taxi driver who took Ms. Moore and Mr. Coleman across the river to the Park Avenue Motel. And there was the motel’s desk clerk or one of its residents, who may have seen the pair walk in—Ms. Moore slumped over Mr. Coleman’s arm, apparently drugged or drunk.
The police have said that Ms. Moore also called her boyfriend about 4 a.m. and told him that someone was following her.
There was even a moment, early Tuesday morning, when Ms. Kenan called Ms. Moore from the ambulance, which impound workers had requested after Ms. Kenan passed out. Naomi Kenan, Ms. Kenan’s mother, said Ms. Moore had told her daughter that she was lost, but that a “nice man” was helping her out.
All of which was cold comfort for Hugh Moore.
“If someone had done something, it may have made a huge difference, but it’s 20-20 hindsight,” he said. “I don’t think anybody did anything they shouldn’t have done.”
He refused to fix blame on anyone tangentially involved in his daughter’s death.
“It’s just a million variables that led to this tragedy,” he said.
Does Hugh Moore fix blame on the killer? Does he fix blame on his daughter? In fact, he is quoted elsewhere in the article saying that his daughter “made a terrible mistake.” So he’s not completely dead morally. But when he says a million variables led to this tragedy, he seems to be taking in his daughter’s behavior and the killer’s behavior as well as that of the people tangentially involved.
So, is it true that “a million variables led to this tragedy”? Let’s consider again the supposed random elements in the incident. Talia and Jennifer, 18 year olds just out of high school, drove into Manhattan. They parked their car illegally. Unescorted, they went to a bar where they drank illegally, both being three years under the legal drinking age, evidently using false IDs, and got extremely drunk. Talia was so drunk that when they found the car missing and had to go to an impound lot to retrieve it, she collapsed and had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Jennifer, instead of escorting her friend to the hospital, left the impound lot (her father thinks it was because she feared being arrested for drinking under the legal age), and went walking alone in a deserted, dangerous part of Manhattan frequented by prostitutes. Then she met a strange black man and got into a cab with him.
Alan Feuer, the Times’ fashionably postmodern reporter, calls this “a saga about the arbitrary nature of intersecting lives,” and “[an encounter] especially touched by chance.” In reality, there was not a single element of arbitrariness or chance in this event. Jennifer took a series of wrong and reckless steps, all of them leading logically to her death.
Feuer also says: “It was Ms. Moore’s misfortune to have run into Mr. Coleman, a man with nine misdemeanors and a five-year prison term for selling crack cocaine in his past.” Misfortune? It was misfortune—bad luck—that she willingly got into a cab with a strange man, a black man, whom she met at three o’clock in the morning in a deserted area of Manhattan?
Here’s another angle on this. Imagine that the car had not been towed. Imagine that when Talia and Jennifer left the club Talia’s car was there and they got in and started driving back to New Jersey. Talia would have been driving in a state of extreme intoxication. She very likely might have gotten into serious accident. So, yes, Jennifer was horribly murdered, but how many violent deaths—including Talia’s, and including Jennifer’s by car crash instead of by beating and strangling—were avoided by the towing of Talia’s car? These two girls were a catastrophe. It can be seen as fortunate that only one life was lost as a result of their illegal, reckless behavior.
Here are links to an article New York Times article on July 28 reporting the murder, “Night Out in City Ends in Slaying of Woman, 18,” in which the facts are incomplete. In a departure for the Times, there are photos of both the white victim and the black killer.)
Here is story from the July 30, 2006 New York Daily News about the background of Krystal Riordan, the 20 year old white prostitute who stood by while her boyfriend Coleman raped and murdered Jennifer Moore. Riordan is an adopted child, who grew up in a Connecticut suburb. Her father, Timothy Riordan, is interviewed. This article says that Draymond sodomized his victim, whihc is not mentioned in the Times. (If anyone would like to look up what has happened to the killer and his accomplice, it would be interesting to know that.)
Here is Alan Feuer’s article which I’ve quoted above.
A Teenager’s Last Steps on a Trail of Missed Chances
By ALAN FEUER
July 29, 2006
In a city of random encounters, this one seemed especially touched by chance.
She, a tiny prep-school girl in a miniskirt and halter top, in from New Jersey to go to a club. He, a troubled drifter and convicted felon—a pimp, investigators say, who slept in cheap rented rooms and was in and out of jail for selling drugs.
Then there was the happenstance at play: her boyfriend had not come out with her that night; her friend had gotten drunk, leaving her to wander the streets alone; their cherry red sedan had been towed from a “no standing” zone while they were dancing, leaving her no easy way of getting home.
Even the settings seemed cruelly accidental: She began the evening in safety and affluence in Harrington Park, N.J. Two days later, after her Manhattan night had ended, she was found not 16 miles from home, in a trash bin, in a parking lot, in a weary slice of a New Jersey river town, West New York.
What happened earlier this week to Jennifer Moore might be seen as a cautionary tale of what lurks in the city should one decide to navigate it alone, in the dark and after spending hours at a bar. There may be others, though, who say that when Ms. Moore, 18, met her attacker early Tuesday on the empty morning streets, it was simply the start of a saga about the arbitrary nature of intersecting lives.
For now that saga will play out in the courts, where yesterday a Manhattan Criminal Court judge ordered that Draymond Coleman, 34, the man accused of beating and strangling Ms. Moore to death inside a Weehawken hotel, continue to be held in custody, pending extradition to New Jersey. There, New Jersey prosecutors said, he will face charges of first-degree murder and sexual assault.
In Hudson County, N.J., prosecutors also said they had arrested Krystal Riordan, a prostitute and friend of Mr. Coleman’s, and charged her with evidence tampering and hindering in Mr. Coleman’s arrest. Gaetano Gregory, the first assistant Hudson County prosecutor, said that Ms. Riordan, 20, had helped dispose of the body.
The saga will, of course, play out as well in the hearts and homes of two families—families separated by far more than the Hudson River. In Harrington Park, Ms. Moore’s father, Hugh Moore, spoke to reporters yesterday, saying that her 27-year-old brother and 21-year-old sister were “absolutely crushed” by the death and that Ms. Moore herself had made “a terrible mistake” by walking away from an impound lot on the West Side of Manhattan where her friend’s car had been towed, and into the night alone.
Meanwhile, on the Upper West Side, Mr. Coleman’s mother, Griselda Wright, did not defend her son, saying she had no idea what he was up to in his life, mostly because he was never at home. “He’s 35 years old, he’s never here, I don’t see him much,” she said.
By all accounts, Jennifer Moore, dark-haired and athletic, was a typical suburban girl, whose life revolved around her friends, her cellphone and the soccer field, where she was a star. She was co-captain of the team at Saddle River Day School in Saddle River, N.J., where the honors English class has been asked to read “Pygmalion” this summer and earlier this year two students picked up silver medals in the National Latin Exam.
She was headed to the University of Hartford in the fall to study nursing, her father said, a vocation she had picked up from a close family friend. She had a boyfriend, Kofi Boakye, of Alpine, N.J., the kind of man, Mr. Moore went on, that any father would be proud to have his daughter date.
Pretty and petite—she was only 5-foot-2—Ms. Moore was born small, Mr. Moore said, and came into her own only after she had entered Saddle River Day, where the challenges of soccer helped mature her. As a girl, she played with toys long after other girls were already fussing with their hair, but eventually she bought a ring, her father said: it read “carpe diem,” Latin for “seize the day.”
With college nearing, Ms. Moore was looking forward to a life of study, friends and independence. “She was somebody who was trying to carve out her own personality as a strong, independent woman,” he said. Given what happened on Tuesday, he added, “maybe too strong, maybe a little too independent.”
Mr. Moore acknowledged that it may have been a fear of arrest—she had been probably been drinking, despite being under the legal drinking age—that led his daughter to flee the impound lot on West 38th Street and 12th Avenue and wander toward the Hudson River, where she eventually crossed paths with Mr. Coleman. At some point, he placed her in a taxi and took her to the Park Avenue Motel, a $300-a-week joint in Weehawken, N.J.
It was Ms. Moore’s misfortune to have run into Mr. Coleman, a man with nine misdemeanors and a five-year prison term for selling crack cocaine in his past.
Released last year from prison, he had stayed with Ms. Riordan for the last month or so at the motel in Weehawken, where Antonio Hernandez, a resident, said Mr. Coleman was constantly asking others if they had drugs or knew women who might have sex with Ms. Riordan while he watched.
Mr. Coleman had a taste for cocaine, alcohol and prostitutes, Mr. Hernandez said, and sometimes earned money as a pimp or by playing online gambling games. “He did a lot of coke, drank a lot of beer and liked girls who went both ways.”
In the Bronx, neighbors of Mr. Coleman’s former girlfriend—not the woman charged in Ms. Moore’s case—said they often heard him beating her.
“You could tell what he was doing to her in there,” said Everton Thompson, who lived next door. “The sound of a body hitting the wall, that’s a terrible sound.”
Mr. Coleman’s seeming propensity for violence was demonstrated again yesterday, according to a correction official, who said that while getting into a courthouse elevator, Mr. Coleman head-butted another inmate, knocking out some of the inmate’s teeth.
What seems so troubling about Ms. Moore’s death is that, at least four times that night, she had encounters with people who might have altered the course that ended in her death.
There were the bouncers and bartenders at the Guest House, a Chelsea nightclub, where she and her friend, Talia Kenan, were allowed inside to drink even though they were under age. There were the employees at the impound lot, where the police had towed Ms. Kenan’s car.
There was the taxi driver who took Ms. Moore and Mr. Coleman across the river to the Park Avenue Motel. And there was the motel’s desk clerk or one of its residents, who may have seen the pair walk in—Ms. Moore slumped over Mr. Coleman’s arm, apparently drugged or drunk.
The police have said that Ms. Moore also called her boyfriend about 4 a.m. and told him that someone was following her.
There was even a moment, early Tuesday morning, when Ms. Kenan called Ms. Moore from the ambulance, which impound workers had requested after Ms. Kenan passed out. Naomi Kenan, Ms. Kenan’s mother, said Ms. Moore had told her daughter that she was lost, but that a “nice man” was helping her out.
All of which was cold comfort for Hugh Moore.
“If someone had done something, it may have made a huge difference, but it’s 20-20 hindsight,” he said. “I don’t think anybody did anything they shouldn’t have done.”
He refused to fix blame on anyone tangentially involved in his daughter’s death.
“It’s just a million variables that led to this tragedy,” he said.
- end of initial entry -
David B. writes:
This one got a little attention when it happened on Court TV, nothing about the true implications of course. It has been 4 months short of 3 years since it happened, but no trial has taken place that I have heard of. I searched Google and found nothing new.
LA replies:
Thank you. I appreciate your checking that out.
Three years since a horrible murder, an open and shut case (the killer was arrested the day after the murder because he was using the victim’s cell phone) and still no trial. We’re in a nihilistic society.
I was just reading last night about atomic spy Klaus Fuchs. He confessed to British authorities in January 1950, and he was convicted on March 1, 1950. Less then two months to try and convict the Soviet agent who stole the secrets of the atomic bomb. And now it takes us over three years try a pimp who took a young woman to his hotel room and strangled her to death.
Leonard D. writes:
A bit of googling shows that Draymond Coleman is now in New Jersey, awaiting trail. (See this story.) Since he had to be extradited there, that accounts for some of the time between 2006 and now.
To my mind, there is some mild interest in criticizing the victim and her choices, as well the lack of intervention from others around her. There’s definitely progressive mimetic infection there, and its associated loss of brain tissue. But I am more interested in the big picture, in the lack of law and order.
What sort of man is Draymond Coleman? Let’s consult wiki (it is very easy to find information about people with the exotic names like “draymond”):
Coleman’s criminal history included two assaults for which he served community service, and a conviction for selling drugs for which he served about five years in prison. Coleman was released from prison in June 2002. He spent the next three years in-and-out of detention for parole violations. His last incarceration ended in January 2005. His parole board noted that Coleman failed to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the criminal-justice system.
Coleman was known by the system to be a violent antisocial felon. And he was apparently unemployed, the only “work” that was reported was pimping. So we find a secondary culprit, as usual in these cases: the state, which does not fulfill its primary purpose, to keep us safe. The same state that normally shows ever so much solicitude for us, that it won’t let us eat trans fats, or smoke anywhere. But it lets a feral human loose among us, with the pious hope (but no evidence whatsoever) that he has reformed. And when evidence of the contrary is found (no job; parole violations), what does it do? Well, he was not back in prison.
LA replies:
How long did it take for Coleman to be extradited from New York City across the river to New Jersey? Two and half years?
Also, Coleman is not a good illustration of your main point, because he was not your typical extremely violent person let loose. His two assaults were apparently over 12 years ago, and he was sentenced to community service for them, so they were apparently not very serious. When he went to prison in 1997 it was for selling drugs, not for violent crime. So from what we know about him, society was not on warning that he was a dangerously violent person.
Therefore what is most remarkable and significant in this case is not the fact that Coleman was on the streets, but the totality of Talia’s and Jennifer’s behavior, culminating in Jennifer’s getting into a cab at 3.am. with a very large black man she had just met
At the time of the Central Park jogger attack, what struck me even more than the primitive savagery of the attack itself was my sense of absolute astonishment at the fact that a woman had gone jogging alone in the interior of Central Park at night, something I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing in a million years.
Jonathan W. writes:
At the time of this horrific crime, I sent an e-mail to the Attorney General (at the time Gonzales) and the U.S. Attorneys for the Southern District of New York and District of New Jersey calling for a federal prosecution under the federal kidnapping statute. I requested that the U.S. seek the death penalty against Coleman, which would not be possible in either New York or New Jersey. I never received a response.
LA replies:
Interesting. If O.J. Simpson and his accomplices could be charged with kidnapping for holding some men at gun point for a few minutes in their own hotel room, certainly Coleman could be charged with kidnapping for his attack on Jennifer Moore in his own hotel room..
James P. writes:
One of the comforting things about the Jennifer Moore story is the knowledge that drug-using felons who live with prostitutes are allowed to drive cabs in NYC!
We’ve had some recent incidents in DC that revealed that the metro system hires bus drivers “with extensive records of felony offenses” including murder. Oh, but that happened a long time ago, so no big deal, I’m sure he’s reformed now! One of their drivers recently attacked a police officer dressed as McGruff the Crime Dog. I thought they were all just stupid and surly, and not actually criminal, and now I stand corrected. At least on a bus you’re not alone with the driver, as you are in a cab…
LA replies:
But the Coleman, the killer of Moore, was not driving the cab.
James P. replies:
Somehow I got the impression Coleman was the cab driver! Oh well. But to me that makes it even MORE puzzling. I thought she’d gotten in the cab to be taken home, and the cab driver had kidnapped her. Why in God’s name would she get in a cab with some strange hulking black dude to be taken who knows where?
LA replies:
Well, that’s the point I’ve been making.
The stories I’ve read (all from the time of the murder) only say that at some point she got in a cab with him. How they met is not known. But they met, and he offered to take her somewhere. I’ve looked up some more articles and have not found any detail on how he actually met her and induced her to enter the cab with him.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 23, 2009 10:02 AM | Send