Roseann Quinn - Investigation and Aftermath

Investigation and Aftermath

In the days before DNA evidence, there was little to connect Quinn and her killer. No one at Tweeds knew the identity of the man she left with or could say what he looked like, and the crime scene had been effectively sanitized. Desperate to crack a case that had been on the front pages for days, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) released a police sketch that ran in several New York newspapers on Sunday, January 7, 1973. The sketch was not of the killer, but of the accountant Geary Guest.

Guest was still not sure Wilson had actually committed the murder until he saw her name in the newspaper article. Fearing he might be charged as an accessory after the fact, Guest's first calls were to his friends Fred Ebb and Gary Greenwood, Ebb's personal assistant. Guest told Ebb and Greenwood that he could not tell them about what had happened on the phone, but it was the worst thing anyone could be involved with. He then stated he was coming to California and hung up. He arrived at Ebb's Bel-Air, Los Angeles, California home the next day; there, he told Ebb and Greenwood about Wilson and the murder. Guest said he had been out with Wilson and had left early because he had to go to work in the morning. He said when he woke up, Wilson had not returned to the apartment, and Guest became worried. Wilson subsequently arrived and confessed the murder to him and Guest gave him money.

Ebb called Guest's therapist, Hadassah, in New York; she said she would contact an attorney and call him back as soon as possible. Shortly thereafter, she and the attorney called back; the attorney advised Ebb to put Guest on the first plane back to New York City. He also advised Ebb and Greenwood not to say a word about what Guest had told them. In mid-March, Ebb and Greenwood flew to New York City. It took more than two weeks to convince Guest to talk to the police, as Guest agonized over the fact that his information could send his friend Wilson to prison for life or to death row. Guest's lawyer contacted the police and got Guest immunity in exchange for Wilson’s whereabouts.

NYPD Detectives Patrick Toomey and John Lafferty of New York's Fourth District Homicide Squad flew to Indiana, where, accompanied by Indianapolis Police Sgt. H. Greg Byrne, they arrested Wilson at his mother's house in Indianapolis. "He offered no resistance, and acted as though he had expected arrest," police sources said. Wilson was brought back to New York and incarcerated in the Manhattan Detention Complex, known as the Tombs.

After spending some weeks in The Tombs, Wilson was sent to Bellevue Hospital Center on April 19 to be tested for childhood brain damage that his attorney planned to claim as part of an insanity defense. Wilson stayed at Bellevue for several weeks, but the tests were never administered, and he was eventually returned to The Tombs. Though he had been diagnosed as suicidal, the cells for the suicide watch were full, so Wilson was placed in a regular cell on the fourth floor.

In May, Wilson got into an argument with a prison guard and threatened to kill himself. The guard taunted him by asking if he wanted sheets to do it with and later threw bed sheets into his cell. Wilson used those sheets to hang himself on May 5, 1973. An investigation was held into the circumstances of Wilson's death, but no charges were ever filed. Guest felt he bore the blame for Wilson's suicide, and had a black-out. Ten days later, Ebb and Greenwood received a call from a mental institution just outside Phoenix, Arizona. Guest had flown to Phoenix and checked himself in as a John Doe. Shortly after Guest returned to New York City, the prosecuting attorney supposedly told him that if the case had gone to trial and Wilson was not convicted, murder charges would have been brought against Guest, though he was innocent.