A Murder in Forest Hills

Orsolya Gaal (Facebook)

Consider these facts in the case of the Forest Hills housewife and mother whose body was found stuffed in her son’s duffel bag, not far from her house. She had been at Lincoln Center with friends the night of her murder. Afterwards she had gone to a bar where, she lingered for 45 minutes over a drink—as she often did (how many upper middle-class housewives drink alone at a bar on a regular basis). She had two sons 17 and 13. The younger one  was in the house at the time of the murder. The l7 year old, a gifted musician, was in Portland Oregon with his father--perhaps visiting a college like Reed? A note about the couple's handyman on the refrigerator led to the killer with whom she’d been having an affair for 18 months. She had been stabbed 58 times in what was deemed to be a crime of passion. Kitty Genovese was famously stabbed on a Kew Gardens street in l964, but that case famous for the indifference of her neighbors only compares in its victim, a woman, its locale, Queens and its weapon, a knife. Another femme fatale, Mary Jo Kopechne also comes to mind, though her case has nothing at all in common with this one. The handyman, David Bonola's disheveled hair and ponytail gave him the appearance of a crazed Marat on his way to arraignment on the night of April 21.The woman, Orsolya Gaal, whose exotic name itself elicits speculation (she significantly hadn't adopted the name of her husband, Howard Klein) was, from her photo, preternaturally beautiful. Some women with exceptional beauty become sexualized due to the high degree of stimulation their appearance has always created. Was the husband totally impervious to his wife’s dalliances? Adultery, especially of an endemic kind, often provokes cries of indignation and expressions of fury from a dejected spouse. Yet how complicit is the partner? How much do they know or not know, at least subliminally? How convenient is it to have their "loved one" cheating on them? To what degree is it a matter of ignorance or simply not wanting to face what they know or what would be clearly obvious, were they not unable or unwilling to face the truth.

Read "The Findings" by Francis Levy, Evergreen Review

and watch the animation of Erotomania