On the night of August 13,1944, in Riverside Park, just west of the campus of Columbia University in Manhattan, Lucien Carr, a 19 year-old Columbia undergraduate, killed David Kammerer, a 33 year-old man who was obsessed with him.
Carr was convicted of manslaughter and served two years in prison, the press and the court having accepted his version of the story ā that he was a heterosexual stalked by a predatory homosexual. One newspaper said Carr had committed an "honor killing." By 1946, Carr was working at United Press, where he would remain for 47 years. In time, he married and fathered three children.
It's an interesting story, and a controversial one among scholars. Nobody knows the true nature of Carr and Kammerer's relationship and at this point it's unlikely that anyone ever will. Everyone involved is dead: Kammerer for nearly seven decades, Carr since 2005.
