The Alice Crimmins Case

New York, Summer of 1965. Two children disappear . . . the mother must be guilty.

One hot summer, two young children disappeared from their first-floor apartment in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens, New York. Their mother, Alice Crimmins, reported them missing to the police. Later that day, the body of four-year-old Missy was found in a vacant lot, showing signs of having been strangled. The body of five-year-old Eddie, Jr., was found several days later.

Police were immediately suspicious of the mother. Recently divorced, with teased red hair and heavy makeup, Alice Crimmins did not fit the maternal ideal held by the predominantly Catholic police detectives on the case. Her every action was scrutinized: Was she behaving like an appropriately grief-stricken mother or like a cold-hearted killer? After three years of police surveillance, Alice was charged with the murder of her children in 1968 in a highly publicized trial. Ultimately found guilty of manslaughter, Alice spent a decade in prison before being released on parole in 1977.

But was she truly guilty, or just the victim of police bias and misogynistic judgment? Journalist Anaïs Renevier revisits the case, exploring one of the most famous and divisive trials in recent American history.

50 States of Crime: France’s leading true crime journalists investigate America’s most notorious cases, one for every state in the Union, offering up fresh perspectives on famously storied crimes and reflecting, in the process, a dark national legacy that leads from coast to coast.

Renevier’s coverage is concise and fast-moving, and it provides a detailed overview of the case and its social and cultural aftermath.”
—CrimeSpree Magazine

Anaïs Renevier is a French journalist. She began her career in 2011 as a correspondent in Beirut, Lebanon, reporting about the Middle East for multiple international media outlets. As an independent reporter, she now regularly travels across the United States on investigative assignments. She likes to tell the country’s story from the perspective of those living at the margins of society. Outside of her work as a journalist, she freelances as a florist and enjoys boxing. She lives in Marseille, France.   

Translated by Laurie Bennett