Gone but not forgotten: Haunting memories from Kings Park State Hospital
Charles Scudder Terry and his wife Loretta in 1912. In 1967, Charles was committed to Kings Park State Hospital for murdering Loretta.
Kings Park, as locals often referred to it, opened in 1885 and was one of New York State’s largest psychiatric hospitals. It sat on 100 acres of rolling hills overlooking the Long Island sound. In 1967 there were 5,200 lost souls locked away within its cold walls – my grandfather was one of them. I was 10 years old at the time, and unbelievably, my father was able to get me into the mental hospital to visit my grandfather, who was committed there for murdering my grandmother. These memories have haunted my mind for nearly 60 years.
It was a dark, cloud-filled day that only made Kings Park State Hospital look even more uninviting. My grandfather, Charles Scudder Terry, sat quietly staring down at the floor, as if he had dropped something but was unable to move to pick it up. My father was reviewing the results of my grandfather’s in-house evaluation with the hospital’s chief psychiatrist.
Sitting next to Pop, as we grandkids called him, was a big orderly in his late thirties, dressed in his white state hospital uniform. He had a small transistor radio tucked into his pocket and was softly listening to a Yankees game. Mickey Mantle, the pride of the Bronx Bombers, who my father played golf with the summer before, had just ripped a three-run RBI against the visiting Red Sox, clutching another win for the Yanks.
The orderly smiled at the thought of picking up his winnings from a local bookie he bet with from time to time. He turned to my grandfather and said, “Well Chuck, it looks like old Teddy boy here is going to have steak and chase some ladies tonight.” My grandfather looked at Ted but said nothing; he simply returned his gaze back to the grey linoleum floor.
The door to the doctor’s office opened. My father spoke clearly to the head shrink – his dad needed to be committed, not sent home. There had to be a plan to address Pop’s eroding mental health before he slipped further into a dark abyss.
We Terrys, including my folks and six siblings, have lived and worked in the Village of Northport and its surrounding waters for more than 200 years. My great grandfather, “Skipper” Bill Terry, was captain of a wooden merchant ship and soon after joined the newly formed United States Coast Guard. My grandfather, Charles Scudder Terry, was hired in 1921 by Steers Sand and Gravel company and worked there until he retired in the early sixties.
There was also Terry’s Jewelry on Main Street. Most people in Northport Village knew our family and were well liked and respected. Unfortunately, especially for my father Jack, attitudes were about to change.
The only one up early that August morning was my little sister Jean, who was walking back to her room from using the bathroom when the phone in the hallway rang.
“Oh hi, Pop. Yes, my daddy’s home,” she said.
Jean walked into my parents’ room and woke my dad. My father’s heart began to race. His father never called the house. It was always his mother who called. He immediately knew something was wrong. He grabbed the phone and said, “Pop, you ok?”
“Jack, you need to come up here, there’s something wrong with your mom.”
“Is she sick, did she fall?” The phone went dead.
My dad threw on clothes and burst through the back door of our home, scaring off a flight of mourning doves. He jumped in his car, raced down Church Street and screamed past Father Caton, who was sweeping the front steps of St. Phillip’s. In less than three minutes, he screeched to a stop in front of his parent’s home on Lewis Road.
His hands were shaking so badly he had trouble getting the key into the door lock. He walked into the front hallway, trying to adjust his eyes to the sudden darkness. He found Pop sitting in his overstuffed chair in his pajamas, just staring out into space.
“Dad, where’s Mom?” my father asked. No reply, just silence.
My grandparents’ bedroom was located right off the living room; the door was slightly open. My father very slowly entered the bedroom, fearing for what he might find. The room was dark as pitch, the only sound coming from an old wind-up alarm clock that sat on the nightstand. There was a strange odor of wet copper pennies in the air.
My father took a small step into the bedroom and quietly called for his mom but received no response. He walked further into the room and stepped onto something wet. He froze, unable to take another step, then began to hyperventilate. Lying face down in a pool of blood was his poor sweet mother, her head split wide open, his father’s ball peen hammer lying in the blood-soaked rug next to her slain body. He knew instantly his mother was dead. He walked back into the living room where Pop was still sitting, staring into space.
Dad walked over to him, placed a hand on his shoulder, and quietly whispered, “Oh my God, Dad, what did you do?” He led my grandfather to the kitchen table. He grabbed the phone and called the Northport police. “This is Jack Terry, I’m up at my parent’s house on Lewis Road, I just found my mother dead on the bedroom floor.”
My grandmother’s murder was only the second murder to have taken place in the Village of Northport since the town changed its name from Cow Harbor to Northport in 1837. News of her murder went through Northport like oats through a cow – it was all anyone could talk about. People were in shock.
Articles were splashed on the front page of the Northport Journal and Long Island’s Newsday. Several radio stations also reported on the horrific family murder in the sleepy seaside village of Northport. There was no escaping the staring eyes and the small-town gossip that followed.
Percy Ingerman and his partner Bernie Smith arranged for Pop to be taken to Kings Park State Hospital instead of going to jail. Bernie would later go before a judge to have my grandfather committed permanently.
The ride to the hospital took less than 20 minutes. We drove with the windows down; it was mid-October, and the leaves were showing off their bright yellows and reds as if to remind us that soon our world would be dark and gloomy for the next five months. My mind wandered to thoughts of Halloween and the Rifleman costume my mother was making for me.
The road leading up to the main group of buildings must have been at least a half-mile long. My grandfather was housed on the tenth floor of Building 19, where many of New York’s criminally insane lived out their remaining days in cold dank rooms in the basement. Ironically, my grandfather was not considered violent, so he was on a much better floor.
Dad pulled into a parking spot, turned off the engine and turned to talk to me. He began to explain to me that Pop had lost his mind and thought grandma was still alive. “So when he asks you how she is doing, just tell him she is fine and dandy,” he told me. Dad bought him a box of candy and told me to refuse any when he asked me if I wanted one.
We entered Building 19 through the main doors and stepped into a lobby. The hallways off the lobby were brightly lit and massive. My father walked up to a security guard sitting behind a desk and said, “Hi Carl, how’s the family?”
“Fine, Jack,” the guard said, before turning his eyes to me: “You must be John Jr.,” he said. “You coming to visit your Pop today?”
My dad signed the visitor’s log, then produced a brown paper bag from his back pants pocket and handed it to Carl. I would later learn that the bag contained Carl’s favorite brand of whiskey. This was part of the way my dad could get me in to visit Pop.
In the elevator, my dad explained to me that when we got to Pop's floor, we would see a large man dressed in a white uniform. He was the head orderly, named Ted.
Dad then pulled out a crisp $20 bill from his wallet. He took the bill and folded it several times, so it was not much bigger than a cigarette lighter, and pressed it firmly into his palm. He told me he would slip the bill to Ted when they shook hands. “I give him $20 every week, this way I know Pop will get nothing but the best treatment,” Dad said.
Ted would have done anything my father asked. “This is how you grease a palm. It’s how the world works,” he told me.
All I knew was $20 could get me into the Northport movie theater 40 times.
The elevator stopped at the tenth floor and the doors opened. The first thing that hit me was the unpleasant smell that instantly envelops you like a wet blanket. All I can tell you is that it smelled like all sorts of human body fluids and old people.
My dad looked down at me and realized from the look on my face that he should have warned me about the odor. Maybe it wasn't such a bright idea to bring a 10-year-old to a mental hospital, to visit his grandfather who just got committed for killing his wife with a ball peen hammer.
Dad leaned down and told me that I would get used to the smell, but I would never forget it. My father and I stepped off the elevator and walked over to the reception desk. My dad told the lady that we were there to see his father, Charles Terry. The lady behind the desk called down to the orderly station and let them know to bring Mr. Terry up for visitors.
The two hallways that ran off from the reception desk were each longer than a football field. I saw several old men like my grandfather walking around aimlessly, dressed in what looked like pajamas. Ted was down the hall.
This Ted guy was huge but noticeably light and quick on his feet, like a hungry tiger. He was on my father like stink on a skunk. Dad and Ted shook hands, and I saw the handoff of the crisp 20 bucks into Ted’s hand, then into his pants pocket. The exchange happened so smoothly and quickly most people would never have noticed it.
I had just witnessed my first palm greasing.
I had no idea at the time that I too would use the old palm grease from time to time when I got older. But instead of mental hospital orderlies, my palm greasing would usually be reserved for haughty restaurant maitre d’s.
Ted brought us down the hall into the visiting room. The room was about 20’ x 30’ with a few tables, chairs, two couches and pictures hung on the walls of men on horseback and hunting fox. I walked over to the windows and looked out at the beautiful Long Island Sound, the wind creating large whitecaps before crashing onto the beach. At that moment I felt sorry for my grandfather, knowing in less than an hour I was going to leave this horrible place and return home to my mother and siblings, but poor Pop would never be leaving.
We grabbed the couch in the far corner for some privacy.
Ted brought my grandfather in. He was dressed in plain pajamas and had a light grey bathrobe on. He looked very thin and tired, but he managed to smile when our eyes met. I stood up and gave Pop a hug and handed him the box of mixed chocolates Dad had gotten for him down at Jones Drug Store.
More families and other mental patients began filling up the visitor’s room. A lot of the patients had blank expressions on their faces. A few talked in gibberish and there was one old man who constantly made funny sounding noises and was later restrained and taken back to his room. I felt sad for all of them.
Pop turned to me and said, “Hey John, how’s grandma doing?” I looked at my dad then back at my grandfather and told Pop that grandma was doing well and wished she could come to see him. “Maybe next time,” he said, then turned and stared out the window as if he was watching TV.
I would go only one more time to visit my grandfather. On the ride back home, my dad told me just how proud of me he was, for handling today’s visit as well as I did.
Six months later, Charles Scudder Terry died in his sleep, oblivious to his killing of his beloved wife Loretta.
Author John Terry is the fifth of seven children who grew up in Northport, surrounded by a loving family and many friends. He recalls spending countless hours fishing down at the town docks with his friends before moving to Andover, Massachusetts when he was 16. Now retired, he is father to two daughters and lives most of the year in Dunedin, Florida with his partner Claudia. He still visits Northport yearly. More about his book, Murder on Lewis Road and Other Stories Growing Up Northport, can be found here.
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