ION T A R G A L F N O C EW CRISPO’S
ANDR
Who: Andrew Crispo What: Explosion at Southampton estate Where: Gin Lane, Southampton When: July 22, 1989
After Andrew Crispo’s Southampton home burned to the ground, the chimney and door frame were all that remained
PHOTO BY PAUL DEMARIA/NY DAILY NEWS ARCHIVE VIA GETTY IMAGES
One week after art dealer Andrew Crispo was released from federal prison—having served just over three years for tax evasion—a thunderous explosion leveled his white stucco summerhouse in Southampton, sending flames and black plumes of smoke skyward. The notoriety of its 44-year-old owner made the conflagration seem suspicious. Four years earlier, Crispo had been implicated in the “death mask murder” of Eigil Vesti, a handsome fashion student and model from Norway whose charred and mutilated corpse was found by a group of young boys in a smokehouse in Rockland County.
JOE PIKUL: DRESSED TO KILL Who: Joe and Diane Pikul What: Cross-dressing Wall Street analyst murders wife Where: Amagansett When: Oct. 24, 1987
The victim, wearing only a leather mask used in sadomasochistic rituals, had two bullet holes in the back of his head. Crispo’s assistant, Bernard LeGeros, confessed to firing the gun that killed Vesti, but insisted that he had done so at his boss’s request. LeGeros claimed that other bodies were buried at Crispo’s Southampton estate, prompting a grisly—and fruitless—search. Crispo was never indicted for murder. In 1991, a jury awarded him $8.6 million from the Long Island Lighting Company, which accepted responsibility for the gas leak under the house that had caused the explosion.
In the midst of an ugly divorce, Joe and Diane Pikul met in Amagansett to prepare their summerhouse for sale. Diane arrived at about 1 a.m., while their two young children were asleep. Joe later testified that his wife showed him pictures of himself in women’s clothing—threatening to use them for blackmail in their divorce—and then attacked him with a knife. In self-defense, he claimed, he bludgeoned her head and strangled her to death. He then wrapped her bloodied corpse in a tarp. The next morning, he bought ice from a local deli because, he would later admit, “I didn’t know what I was going to do with Diane’s body.” With his dead wife in the trunk, he drove with his children to upstate New York, leaving the kids with a former girlfriend there. He then visited his first wife, Sandra Jarvinen, in Massachusetts, and asked if he could bury the corpse in her backyard. She refused. Pikul finally dumped the body in a drainage ditch 30 feet from an interstate highway, and drove to a car wash to clean out the trunk. He offered a $100 tip to the attendant, who became suspicious and called the police. After his arrest, detectives instructed Pikul to strip and found he was wearing a bra and women’s panties. He lost custody of his children and was convicted of second-degree murder. ✦
Read “The Heat Is On” by Christopher Mason online at www.avenueinsider.com JULY 2011 · AVENUE MAGAZINE | 53