In the summer of 1977, somebody stole the William Pitkin silver collection from the East Hartford library.
Then — the way I remember it — a guy started calling the Courant, claiming to be the Pitkin silver thief. The person he wound up talking to was Connie Neyer, the East Hartford reporter. Nobody knew whether to believe him, so he left a pair of silver serving tongs in the bushes outside the Courant. OK, now we believed him.
It made for an odd little ongoing story in the paper, the kind of thing you could string along on the front page for a few dull summer days.
At the end of the month, a man barricaded himself in his East Hartford home. The cops surrounded the place and waited. He said he had his family as hostages. He had weapons. In the middle of the whole mess, he started calling the Courant city desk. He was the silver guy. He wanted to talk to Connie.
At one point, he even told the cops he’d let his wife and kid out if Connie came in first, and I remember the managing editor Irving Kravsow yelling across the newsroom, “Do not let her go in there.” He was right. The guy had already killed his wife and his kid, but nobody knew that until later in the siege. He probably would have killed Connie too. After many, many hours, he killed himself. Even writing this, I wonder if I remember it right. He may have admitted on the phone that he’d shot his family and offered to let medical personnel take them out if Connie came in.
It was a horrible night and a grimly fascinating story. I was new to the staff, and I talked somebody into letting me go out to the scene, where I could not have been more superfluous. The paper already had sent a bunch of its best reporters out there, and there was nothing to do but wait. And the only reporter who mattered was Connie, a little fireplug of a woman who never seemed fazed by anything. She died this month, and I write this story because I feel like a citizen of Atlantis, watching the waters close over an old civilization of newspaper journalism. A lot of these stories will disappear forever.
She probably would have gone in there if she had thought it would help. I’m not sure anyone asked her.
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7 Responses to Connie Neyer and the Pitkin Silver
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CONNIE NEYER! When I saw the name in print I jumped out of my chair. A wonderful reporter. A wonderful woman.But why do I associate her with Bridgeport? Thank you for retelling the silver story, Colin. It was fun to read.
For entirely random reasons I’m commenting on the troll show here.
You missed one type of troll: Attributed ignorance.
There’s one such opinion article in the Courant today titled “Males Inordinately Responsible For Violence.”
It’s the worse kind of grad school polemic: circa 1979 era feminism. It is to non-fiction what Todd’s musings are to fine poetry.
http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/hc-op-scacco-violence-most-often-by-males-0724-20120723,0,3709771.story
I’ve got my usual rebuttal, the one where Zeus says to Hera “I’ll prove to you womankind is more cowardly and brutal and violent than men. I’ll allow abortion to be legalized for a short period of time and then we can count the bodies. We are at 55 million now since Rowe v Wade in 1972. Isn’t the point proven beyond any further discussion. Men are in fact the peaceful and honorable sex. Combat between adults and Holy War are honorable acts of valor. Hera then sputters something about coat hangars and wanders off to plot revenge and likely another war to prove Zeus wrong by proving him right once again.”
One point of view would be inflammatory and anonymous troll. The other would be considered Masters material and brilliant polemic here in Hartford.
“Men are in fact the peaceful and honorable sex.”
Well-proven by Colin’s story, yes?
Thanks for this story, Colin. I grew up in East Hartford, and although I was otherwise located when this series of events happened, I certainly read about it.
Somehow I missed this incident even though I was working in the newsroom when it happened. Then again, I was a rookie State Desk rim rat that summer & we tended to keep our heads down all night, especially given the stratification of City & State desks in those days. (Each side thought they were the Cool Kids. In retrospect, they were both right — and wrong.) Anyway, as someone who considered it a privilege to work with & for Connie, I thank you for sharing this. Knowing her as I did, I’m not sure whether she would have gone in or not. But I do know that, given the chance to talk him down, she would have somehow, someway pressed hard until the end, however it ended. That was Connie. She put every bit of her heart into what she did & I wonder whether the Courant ever truly appreciated what they had in her.
Did they get the silver back?
Thanks for sharing this story Colin, Connie is my aunt and its been wonderful hearing these anecdotes over the past few weeks! PS Thanks for visiting Oliver Ellsworth Elementary School in Windsor about 25 years ago!