2:30 A.M., JUNE 17, 1966
How it all went down
Published in The Herald-News, Passaic-Clifton, N.J., 1975
Click on graphic for blowup.
By CAL DEAL
Herald-News Staff Writer
It was nearly closing time at the Lafayette Grill on Paterson's E. 18th St. The bartender and part owner, James Oliver, 51, was standing by the cash register counting the day's receipts.
Oliver's establishment was reputed to be a haven for anti-black sentiments at a time when racial tensions in the city were high. It was located on the fringe of the city's Riverside section, which then was predominately white.
Earlier in the evening, a black man had been killed elsewhere in the city by a white man. They had argued over business matters.
Fred "Bob" Nauyoks, 60, was seated at the center of the bar, close to where Oliver was standing.
At the end of the bar, Mrs. Hazel Tanis, 51, sipped a drink. Mrs. Tanis who was a friend of Oliver, had stopped to chat with him. She was on her way home to Hawthorne after an evening's work as a waitress. Her back was to the picture window that faced E. 18th.
William Marins, 42, a patron, was seated two stools to the left of Nauyoks.
The front door opened and in walked two black men. The shorter of the two was carrying a double-barreled shotgun. The other carried a .32 caliber revolver.
The bartender looked toward the front door, dropped the money he was counting and hurtled a beer bottle at the men. It smashed against the air conditioner to the right of the door.
Oliver turned to run from the gunmen. A shotgun blast caught him in the lower back. He fell to the floor behind the bar. He was dead.
At the same instant, the second gunman shot Nauyoks in the back of the ear, quickly turned to his left and shot Marins just above the eye.
Nauyoks' head slumped forward onto the bar. He looked as though he had fallen asleep. A lit cigarette remained between his fingers. His foot remained on his stool's foot rest. He, too, was dead.
Marins was dazed. With one eye blinded and his skull fractured, he stumbled around the bar. The gunmen left him for dead and turned toward the E. 18th St. door.
When they first arrived, the door had blocked their view of Mrs. Tanis. Now they saw the helpless woman who was pinned in a corner. She screamed as the two men fired one shotgun blast and four .32 caliber rounds at her. Fatally wounded, she fell to the floor near the doorway.
The gunmen walked out onto the E. 18th sidewalk, turned to their right and rounded the corner onto Lafayette, where their white was was parked. They were laughing and talking loudly. Directly in front of them, perhaps 50 feet away, was Alfred Bello -- a man with a long criminal record.
Bello, who had heard the shots, thought the the two armed men were detectives and continued walking toward them.
He was within 15 feet of the men when he suddenly realized what he had stumbled upon. He turned and ran from the gunmen, whose weapons were empty, and hid in an alley about 200 feet away. The gunmen pulled away in a white car.
When they had gone, Bello returned to the Lafayette Grill and the shocking scene inside. He walked to the cash register and pocketed about $62. He walked around the corner to E. 16th St. and gave the money to a friend [Arthur Bradley] who was trying to break into the sheet metal plant. He returned to the Lafayette Grill, but this time he called the police.
The preceding description was based on a police reconstruction of the crime. Mrs. Tanis died from her injuries July 14, 1966. Marins died in 1973.