Warped World of Sal Agron

From Page 1B

to her job in the hat factory and Gonzalez to his in a textile factory. "Stay home. Do not go out," they warned the children. Aureo and Salvador obeyed, huddling at the window and watching the world go by.

One day, some boys teased Salvador, saying Aureo was his girl and that they did forbidden things together. Salvador ran into the streetnever again to be content with leaning on a window sill.

It was better on the streets. There were rooftops to explore and peeks at young lovers and learning about grown-up sex. And the roofs were launching pads for bags of water or garbage to dump on "Americans" meaning anyone not Spanish-walking the street.

On the stoops, he stood in open-mouthed awe and listened to the brave talk of elder boys about rumbles with Italians and Irish and Negroes. He heard the roll call of gangs-Heart Kings, Dragors, the Enchanters. He laughed wildly at the big joke as girls in tight toreador pants did outrageous fox trots, mimicking the dance of the proper Americans.

Ran Away From School

Put in school-in the first grade at 8-he learned the ruse of raising his arm for permission to go to the washroom. Then he'd run away. He was afraid to go home. And then coming home very late, catch hell from Carlos Gonzalez.

The truant officer chased him and so did Gonzalez. And at the age of 10, with the family's consent, Salvador went to a special school for troubled boys. He was no worse or better than the others. He got the regular counseling of a psychologist and, for a time, special therapy of a psychiatrist.

The day before he turned 13, he came home. Aureo was gone. She hated Gonzalez so much she got married at 14 to make a home of her own. Gonzalez insisted Puerto Rico was a better place for Salvador and packed him off to his natural father. There are no fighting gangs in Puerto Rico, but Salvador brought the big city tricks with him and got into trouble. Papa Agron sent him back to New York.

When Gonzalez was too stern, Salvador went to Aureo's house. He liked her husband, Diaz. Agron did crazy things there, like dressing in Aureo's clothes and wearing lipstick and giggling and squirming and imitating girls. "Sal used to do that sometimes when we were smaller," Aureo says.

In the dreary, dead-end Brooklyn factory tenement street where they now lived, Gonzalez had his store-front Pentecostal Church Messenger of Christ No. 1. He wanted Salvador to pray and to listen to his sermons, but sometimes Salvador would misbehave and Gonzalez would be enraged.

"If I can't control my own son in church, how can I control others?"

Salvador, an outcast, joined other outcasts. Sometimes they had a name, like the Vampires. They had a way about them, an air that the knowing eye recognizes as the sign of a bopping gang. Gonzalez saw it, and recalls:

"I didn't like the arrogant way Salvador stood like a gangster."

'Life Worth Living'

-

Away from home, that was where there was a life worth living. There were easy touches like "bien pagada"the good payer-a homosexual was generous with those he favored. There was stuff to make a man giddy, beer or sometimes something stronger. There were the pushers with heroin and the guys with pot marijuana. There were girls, too. But the craziest, wildest, best times were with the guys, the Vampires.

He was with some of them, and some guys from the Heart Kings and the Dragons, the night of Aug. 29. He was now 16, according to police records. But if the date of Oct. 1 is accepted as his birthdate, that meant he was 15-and at such an age it is unlikely that he would now be facing the electric chair for his crime.

There was big talk. The guys-some 20 altogetherwere going to get even with some Irish and Italian guys for beating up a pal. And they were going to get the Italian who tried to sell pot to one guy's mother. Cape and Dagger

Salvador put on a black cape with a red liningand became the figure of Dracula. He had a 12 inch dagger. One other had an umbrella. Another. a studded garrison belt. Still others, pipe lengths.

A few minutes after midnight, they invaded a playground off Tenth Avenue on Manhattan's West Side. They were after "American" enemies. They found some neighborhood boys and girls, but not the ones they were seeking.

Salvador, off by himself for a moment, was jeered. "They were booing, booing," he says. All the aches of the unloved, all the rage of the unwanted, apparently set him in motion. There were coarse words and then mayhem.

The tapered blade of Salvador's dagger went quick and deep into Anthony Krzesinski's chest, piercing his lung and heart; it drove into the back of Robert Young, as his arms were pinned by other boys; it plunged into the stomach of Edward Riemer. Krzesinski ran a race with death, got to the safety of a tenement hallway across the street, and died there. Young ran, too, with blood flowing from the 7-inch tunnel left by the dagger. He got into a flat in the adjoining building and died. Riemer lay in agony on the ground, writhing to avoid the stomping feet of his attackers. He lived to face Salvador in court. What does Salvador think about his act, about the boys he killed? His answer shows the twisted law by which he lived, for he makes his victims the wrong-doers,

"The fellows that got killed shouldn't be in the park at 12 o'clock at night. They should be in bed. Maybe God wanted them, so that if it was going to happen, it was going to happen. It happened."