June 11, 2004

On May 21, 1924, two young men from well-to-do families murdered a teenager. It was on that day that Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks, supposedly for the ransom the kidnapping would bring. But that motive fails in the light of the impressive college education both had completed while still teenagers, as well as their elevated economic status. The real motive for the senseless killing was concluded as being the “thrill” of committing a murder.

A recent and particularly disturbing pattern of thrill killings is becoming evident: it is a pattern that singles out a most vulnerable group of targeted victims; namely, pizza deliverypersons. In “The Armed Citizen” section of American Rifleman Magazine, the premier monthly publication of the National Rifle Association, an account of a pizza deliverygirl was reported several years ago. It seems two armed men robbed her. After running several yards, one robber turned, aimed and fired his pistol at the girl.

The deliverygirl pulled a .357 Magnum revolver from a concealed holster and returned fire, killing the would-be murderer. She did the right thing initially in assessing that a gunfight and the possible loss of life was not worth the price of the stolen pizza or the small amount of money taken. And since the robbery was over and the take not really significant, one can only conclude that the perpetrator intended to kill her for the sheer thrill of it. Had the robber known the pizza girl was armed, he and his partner would most likely have avoided her. Certainly, he wouldn’t have shot at her once in the clear.

In March 2001, a 17-year-old pizza delivery boy, Ivan Martinez, making deliveries on his bicycle in East New York, was on his way to a delivery when a car with two young men and two young women, purportedly with the intent of robbing the boy, put a gun to his head and deliberately killed him. After the murder, they took somewhere between $10 and $40 and treated themselves to Chinese food. At absolutely no time during their prosecution and sentencing did these savage, mindless killers show any remorse.

Pizza delivery thrill killings don’t need a motive. Did the robbers have to shoot at the pizza delivery girl, or the Martinez boy, who worked six nights a week to send the money he earned back to his family in Mexico? In a gas station robbery in northern New Jersey, an Indian youth also working long, hard hours to send money back home, was shot and wounded. The robber started to leave, but seeing the attendant scampering for cover, ran back into the store and continued shooting at the prostrate victim ensuring his death.

Then there’s the 1997 case of Thomas Koskovich and Jayson Vreeland, ages 18 and 17 respectively. The pair called several pizzerias, trying to have pizza delivered to an isolated shack in a town in Sussex County, New Jersey. When pizzeria owner Giorgio Gallara, 24, and his deliveryman, Jeremy Giordano, 22, arrived at the address, the teenagers shot them dead. They later admitted that the crime was just for the thrill of it.

In Kearny, NJ, three teenagers wielding a baseball bat beat a 24-year-old pizza deliveryman to death. Then there is the case of pizza deliveryman Ronald Honeycutt as reported by the Associated Press in The Indianapolis Star on May 28th. Considering the staggering cases of fatal attacks on pizza deliverypersons, and especially the bad high crime neighborhood Honeycutt was working, Pizza Hut’s firing of the deliveryman for shooting and killing a would-be robber is precisely the wrong reaction.

The executives of Pizza Hut should know the long history of pizza murders. The articles and accounts are carried in pizza trade magazines and publications. Pizza Hut’s attitude is the same as that of the airlines prior to 9-11 after being warned of impending hijackings and then refusing to arm their pilots as they once had been after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Pizza Hut shouldn’t make deliveries, and profits, if it cannot ensure the safety of its delivery personnel, or at least allow deliverypersons to protect themselves. Why do corporate executives and government bureaucrats continue to refuse people their natural, constitutional right to protect themselves? Are insurance costs more important than the lives of citizens and employees? How much did the airlines save? Perhaps when a criminal murders a Pizza Hut deliveryperson, the surviving family members should consider the handling by Pizza Hut of the Honeycutt incident, and consult a lawyer!

Theodore E. Lang

© 2004 THEODORE E. LANG All rights reserved

Ted Lang is a political analyst and a freelance writer.

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