Only Make Believe by Elliott Mackle

Author:Elliott Mackle [Mackle, Elliott]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Amazon, Retail
ISBN: 9781590214282
Goodreads: 15838533
Publisher: Lethe Press
Published: 2012-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

Mighty Hunters

New-Press (Fort Myers), Friday, January 12, 1951:

DEAD BUSINESSMAN’S SHOCKING SECRET LIFE

— By Ralph Nype, City Editor

Exclusive information obtained by the News-Press indicates that Nicholas C. DiGennaro, 37, the Bradenton executive who died early Monday after a beating at a riverside hotel, may have invited the vicious attack. According to inside sources, Mr. DiGennaro allegedly practiced unnatural vices. Married and the father of two, the burly businessman was clad in women’s foundation garments and Nylon stockings when assaulted at a local hotel. Furnishings in the man’s room were disturbed and cash was removed but no other objects of value taken.

Witnesses report that DiGennaro sashayed around the public areas of the riverside hostelry dressed in an evening gown and wig during the dinner hour. A source at the hotel said this was not Mr. DiGennaro’s first such appearance in Myers. The source admitted it is possible that someone accompanied Mr. DiGennaro upstairs.

Lee Memorial Hospital records reveal that Mr. DiGennaro died of heart failure. Detective S. Wright of the Lee County Sheriff’s Department refused to speculate on any connection between the attack and the victim’s limp-wristed performance at the historic property. Officer Wright also refused comment as to whether the dead man might be considered an alleged invert or degenerate. No suspect has been apprehended in the case.

Coleman Husby, downtown business owner and presiding elder of the Southwest Florida Council of Churches, said he wasn’t surprised to hear that perverted passion is running rampant along the riverside. “That hotel has practically become a haven for abominations of every type,” he said. “Sinners who seek the crime against nature that dares not say its name are certainly among them,” he charged. Elder Husby added that the hotel and its private club rooms are rumored to employ persons who are allegedly of the same debauched persuasion.

DiGennaro, originally a native of New Jersey, moved to the Sunshine State in 1938 to become one of Bradenton’s most noted business, educational and religious leaders. He operated DiGennaro and Co., a leading wholesaler of school books and supplies. The firm sponsors a Catholic-youth-league softball team and Mr. DiGennaro personally underwrote all staff salaries and sports equipment purchases at the Big Cypress Boy Scout Camp near Sunniland. However, a check of the Manatee and Collier county vice units showed no record of arrests for child molestation, unnatural acts or self-exposure under DiGennaro’s name.

Neither the deceased’s wife, Mrs. Amelia DiGennaro, 35, son Nicholas C. (“Chuck”) Jr., 16, or daughter Cecilia (“Cissy”), 15, would speak to a reporter who called at the family home. But a neighbor, Louise A. Warnke, described the widow as “distraught” and the children as “beautiful kids, and taking it well.” Mrs. Warnke, a social worker for the Veterans Administration, when pressed about the effect of such shocking revelations on a family, said she was most worried about the DiGennaros’ son. “Chuck is such a sensitive, handsome boy,” she told the News-Press. “I’m afraid he may already be adversely affected by his father’s lavender tendencies, and thus ruined as a man even before he reaches his majority.

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