Wayne Thomas Lonergan (January 14, 1918 - January 2, 1986) was convicted,
in one of the most sensational trials of the 1940's, of the slaying of his
wife, Patricia, heiress to a New York beer fortune.
Queer Places:
313 E 51st St, New York, NY 10022
342 Bloor St W, Toronto, ON M5S 1W9, Canada
Wayne Thomas Lonergan (January 14, 1918 - January 2, 1986) was convicted,
in one of the most sensational trials of the 1940's, of the slaying of his
wife, Patricia, heiress to a New York beer fortune.
William O. Burton (who anglicized his surname from Bernheimer), heir to a beer fortune, was an aspiring portrait painter who studied at the Yale School of Fine Arts, the Art Students League, and the School of Applied Arts. He married Lucile Wolfe at Elberon, NJ, on 25 September 1920, and they had a daughter, Patricia Hartley Burton. His wife eventually divorced him for desertion in 1925; an underage boy was named as one of the correspondents.
Wayne Thomas Lonergan was born in Toronto on January 14, 1918. He grew up in a neighborhood where a boy had to hustle to keep ahead of the law, on the one hand, and of a life in crime, on the other. Wayne had an older brother and sister; his mother died in a mental institution. When he was barely out of his teens, his father’s death left him an orphan. But he grew into a husky (sixfoot-two, 185 pounds), good-looking, personable young man and never seemed to have much trouble getting by. He was always able to find himself good jobs for those depression days. He worked on the beaches one summer as a lifeguard and for a while he served in Ontario Premier Mitch Hepburn’s antilabor squad, knocking the heads of CTO men who got out of line.
In 1939, a young man on the make, he went to New York City and hired on at the world’s fair as a guide, pushing wornout sightseers around in a wheelchair. And there one afternoon, one wornout sightseer, William O. Burton, a well-dressed man in his mid-fifties, took a shine to Wayne. He invited him back to his apartment in Beekman Hill, a residential section reserved for New York’s rich. Lonergan’s history is silent on his motive, that summer day in 1939, for accepting the well-dressed man’s invitation, but it was that moment’s decision that was to put him within touching distance of a fortune and to lead him inexorably into the courts and prison.
After a succession of other male “protégées”, William finally became besotted with the handsome young Canadian. Soon after meeting William, there was no need for him to continue working. Only a year later, however, Burton died, leaving his seven million dollar fortune to his teenage daughter, Patricia. Lonergan promptly transferred his affections from the father to the daughter and in the winter of 1941 the two eloped to Las Vegas against the wishes of the bride’s mother, who knew the nature of his relationship with her late husband.
He and Patricia moved first to an apartment on New York’s Park Avenue, later to a three-story apartment at 313 East 51st Street. They rarely saw either place except to sleep, change clothes and to throw parties for other socialites and playboys. They were financed by the weekly sevenhundred-dollar allowance Pat received from her father’s estate, and they looked forward to Pat's thirty-first birthday when she would inherit a large lump sum from grandfather Bernheimer’s estate. Only two events of any significance interrupted their idyllic existence in those days. One was the birth on July 1, 1942, of their son William Wayne Lonergan, and the other was the draft hoard’s rejection of Wayne Thomas Lonergan for reasons of “immoral tendencies.” In an apparent fit of candor — or to dodge the draft — Lonergan had confessed to the board that he was a homosexual. In August 1943 the good life did run out for Lonergan. His wife dismissed him from her life and her apartment. She was tired of him. Lonergan returned to Canada to volunteer in the Royal Canadian Air Force.
The slaying of Patricia Burton Lonergan, heiress to the Burton-Bernheimer beer fortune, occurred Oct. 24, 1943, in her East 51st Street triplex apartment, shortly after she had filed for separation and cut Lonergan out of her will. Lonergan, by then a cadet in the Royal Canadian Air Force, was in New York on a weekend pass. He visited his wife at the 51st Street apartment on Saturday afternoon and they discussed, amicably enough, arrangements for their divorce. That night Lonergan dated an actress, a woman whose name, Jean Murphy Jaburg, hasn't left much imprint on the annals of the theatre. He escorted Mrs. Jaburg to dinner, to a play and on a round of nightclubs, and at 3 a.m. he left her at her apartment door.
He spent much of the night in a succession of gay nightclubs. His 22 year-old wife was said to have spent the night also lost in a similar quest for alcohol and attractive men. Both arriving at their home at 313 East 51st Street at approximately 7:00 a.m., they collapsed onto their marital bed and, amazingly, began passionate sex. The situation turned unexpectedly violent when Patricia reportedly bit her husband in a sensitive area. Enraged and in pain, Lonergan picked up a candelabra from the nightstand, beat Patricia about the head, and strangled her to death. Lonergan then calmly dressed, taking care to use makeup to hide her scratch marks on his face. He cut up his bloody military uniform and threw it into the river (where it was never found) before taking a taxi to a weekend house party to which he had been invited. After his eventual arrest, his unorthodox alibi was that he could not have killed his wife as, at the time of the murder, he was having anonymous sex with a soldier he had picked up during the night. Lonergan also said the soldier had stolen his uniform.
Next morning at eight o’clock, Wayne Lonergan was arrested in the room of a male friend at 342 Bloor Street West in Toronto by Detectives Arthur Harris and Alex Deans of the Toronto police acting on telegraph instructions from the New York police. Lonergan was put under guard in an office at police headquarters in College Street. He waited there eleven hours, unaware, he says, of the reason for his arrest but aware enough of his rights to ask the police to contact a lawyer friend named Michael Doyle. By a not unlikely coincidence, Doyle was trying to see him. He had been retained by Lonergan's uncle who had read of the arrest in the paper. The Toronto police, on instructions from New York, deliberately prevented Lonergan and Doyle from contacting each other.
The resulting media frenzy was inhibited only by what the newspapers could not say about the murder, other than an attempt by one to write that Lonergan was “in great pain” when he killed his wife. He eventually confessed but later tried to recant saying the confession was beaten out of him by Canadian police. The first attempt at justice was declared a mistrial before the jury was chosen, and in the second trial Lonergan was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to 35 years to life in prison.
Released in 1967, he was deported to Canada. While still in prison he attempted to gain his wife’s fortune but the courts ruled that he was “civilly dead” and thus could not inherit. His son, who was only one year old at the time of his mother’s murder, changed his name (he had been told he was an orphan) and in 1954 legally inherited his mother’s fortune. Lonergan sought a second trial in 1965 based upon his forced confession but was unsuccessful. He was paroled in 1967 on the condition that he remain in Canada.
Wayne Lonergan died of cancer on 2 January 1986 in Toronto at the age of 67. He was reported to have spent his last years as a companion to an elderly actress.
My published books:
