100 Murder Cases

bizarre suicide pact of doctor and wife was actually a heinous double homicide

It was a sad and shocking crime scene that could break the heart of even the most hardened New York City cop.

On the kitchen floor of a Bronx apartment lay the body of a middle-aged man, clad in pajamas, a look of pain and surprise etched on his face forever. Near him was the body of his wife, dressed in street clothes. She too had died with an expression of terror and disbelief, her eyes wide and mouth agape.

And in the living room sat the couple's inconsolable son, sobbing loudly while surrounded by sheepish detectives trying to find the right time to ask the frail-looking young man some questions.

The couple was Dr. William Fraden, 53, a city Department of Health physician, and his schoolteacher wife, Shirley, 50. They were longtime residents of the large building on Metropolitan Ave. in the then-upper middle-class neighborhood of Parkchester.

Their son, 22-year-old Harlow Fraden, had come to pay his parents a visit on the morning of Aug. 20, 1953 and instead walked into a nightmare.

It didn't take much to figure out what had likely transpired in the cramped kitchen about two days before Harlow found his folks on the floor. The only question was why.

On the table was an open bottle of champagne, more than half-full. Next to it was a small vial labeled potassium cyanide. On the floor near the bodies were two used glasses with remnants of inexpensive bubbly.

It was clearly either a bizarre suicide pact between the respected doctor and his loyal wife — or worse, a murder-suicide in which Dr. Fraden tricked his unsuspecting spouse into downing a deadly cyanide-spiked drink before taking his own life.

The medical examiner would deem it a "tentative" double suicide, leaving open the possibility of a murder-suicide scenario. But the lead investigators on the case, NYPD detectives Nathan Krieger and Robert McHugh, weren't so sure it was that open-and-shut.

There was just something about the son that bugged the veteran gumshoes to no end, despite his apparent grief.

Tall, gangly and sloppily dressed, with a perpetually unkempt mop of oily hair and beady eyes that blinked constantly behind thick glasses, Harlow Fraden looked, in a word, weird. He was a recent NYU graduate with a particular fondness for fancy-pants poetry and classic literature, something that also didn't sit well with the meat-and-potatoes policemen.

But alarm bells went off after Krieger and McHugh found out he'd graduated with a degree in chemistry, and the detectives asked their superiors to quietly keep the case open while they dug around some more.

Interviews with the Fradens' neighbors, co-workers and friends failed to uncover any clear-cut reason why either of them would want to kill themselves, casting more doubt on the double-suicide theory.

It would be young Harlow himself who eventually helped the detectives build a case for a double homicide.

It didn't take long for investigators to learn that Dr. and Mrs. Fraden were quite well-off. Their estate, including cash, stocks and a life insurance policy, was in excess of $150,000 ―about $1.5 million today.

And all of it went to Harlow, their only child, immediately after his parents died.

Some further sleuthing turned up that he was hardly the devoted son he made himself out to be. Fraden, who'd been put through college by his folks and then set up in an expensive flat on Manhattan's Upper East Side, was constantly at odds with his them for his less-than-fervent efforts to find a job.

He also had serious issues with his mother, who never hesitated to demean Fraden while he was growing up, often calling the sensitive boy a "fairy" or "sissy." The abuse likely led to an incident during Fraden's childhood when he apparently lashed out at his parents by setting several small fires in their home.

The police watched with intense interest as the young man proceeded to go on a spending spree as soon as he got his hands on his parents' money. Fraden and his new roommate, a 20-year-old aspiring writer named Dennis Wepman, would host wild, men-only parties in Fraden's East End Ave. apartment.

When the landlord kicked them out, Fraden rented a luxury suite at the St. Moritz Hotel on Central Park South and continued to blow his windfall with abandon. At one point he ordered an $18,000 Rolls Royce that he planned to pick up in person while on a planned jaunt to Europe.

While Fraden's actions further convinced Kreiger and McHugh of his guilt, the cops grew increasingly frustrated knowing it was all circumstantial evidence. A 22-year-old kid gleefully burning through a large inheritance from parents he despised was hardly grounds for a conviction, never mind an arrest warrant.

Then four months after the death of the Fradens, police got the break they were hoping for.

On a cold night in mid-December, Fraden showed up at a local hospital with bruises on his face and a cut on his head requiring 17 stitches. He had gotten into a bloody brawl with Wepman, and the roiled roomie walked out on his pal for good.

That night, Wepman got in touch with a childhood friend and poured his heart out to her. He confided the role he played in poisoning two people, then swore her to secrecy.

The oath didn't last long. The concerned woman went straight to the authorities. Wepman was put under the lights by Krieger and McHugh, and it didn't take long before he started singing.

Wepman told how Fraden had purchased a vial of cyanide as part of a heinous plot to murder his parents. He set the plan in motion on the night of Aug. 19 by calling them with good news: He found a job, he lied, and was bringing a bottle of bubbly to their place to toast his good fortune.

He brought death with him instead. With Wepman hiding in the hallway of the building, Fraden poured each of them a glass of the lethal liquid. The happy family then raised their glasses to his supposed new job.

Fraden watched as they swallowed. In an instant they felt the chemical burning their throats. Shirley Fraden died quickly, her last thought undoubtedly being why her only child would do this. Dr. Fraden, meanwhile, collapsed to the floor but was still alive. Harlow Fraden casually opened the door to let Wepman in, then poured another glass and forced it down his father's throat.

Both men watched as the couple breathed their last, their faces contorted in horror. Fraden made sure to take his glass with him and left the apartment with his accomplice, giddy with the thought of riches to come.

Based on Wepman's shocking confession, Fraden was arrested that night. The "Cocktail Killer," as the Daily News dubbed him, readily confessed.

Both men avoided a trial. In February 1954, Fraden was found to have deep psychological issues and shipped to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Beacon, N.Y. Two months later Wepman pleaded guilty to second degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years to life. He was paroled in 1968.

In 1960, Fraden was found dead at Matteawan from an overdose of sedatives, a look of shock and horror frozen on his face forever.