Aug. 31, 1963 - On Manhattan’s East Side today, doors were opened more cautiously, locks were added, doormen seemed more alert, and some single girls temporarily moved out of their apartments and into those of parents or friends. The murder on Wednesday of two young women, Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert, in an East 88th Street apartment (pictured) has injected fear into a neighborhood that rarely knows it — and whose residents have long paid high rents to avoid it. One elderly woman, a long-time city resident, took all the fear and apprehension rather philosophically. “Look,” she said, “we’re all horrified, but these things happen. If they happened in Brooklyn or Harlem — where they happen every day — we wouldn’t hear a thing about it. So, now it happened in a ‘good’ neighborhood. Well, I’m sorry. But believe me, in a few days in New York, it’ll only be the poor girls’ parents and friends who will care.” City police detectives have received hundreds of calls over the special number — SA 2-4448 — that has been set up to receive tips on the double murder.
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