By Bill Sanderson and Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writers | Sunday, April 5, 1992
The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | A01
Cristian F. Slane’s last letter to his mother and brother arrived the day after he committed suicide in the Bergen County Jail Annex.
“Life here is hell,” wrote Slane, 20. “I am in a cell that is 9 feet by 4 feet. We are only allowed out two hours a day.” Inch-high letters took up most of the second page: “I Want to Come Home.”
Elisabeth Slane, who works with troubled teenagers for a private social service agency in New York City, still weeps when she recalls her son’s death. His varied problems including a sexual assault charge stemming from a relationship with a 15-year-old girl did not diminish her love.
She says she’s not angry at jail employees for failing to prevent his suicide last year. But she wonders about the ability of the Bergen County Sheriff’s Department to ensure the safety of inmates: Christian Slane, who died May 20, was one of four men in sheriff’s custody to kill themselves in the past year.
“They’re not doing the job,” complained Millie Irving, whose son, Robert Lee, also 20, hanged himself in the main jail on Feb. 26, hours after his arrest on a charge of murdering his girlfriend’s grandmother in Lodi. “They forgot to do something. To me, the system is wrong.”
Christian Slane and Robert Irving came from different backgrounds. Slane grew up in Teaneck, the adopted child of professional parents, while Irving was raised in a working-class family in a gritty City of Passaic neighborhood.
At the end of their lives they shared the despair of being charged with a crime and jailed in Bergen County. It was a despair that may have led Slane, Irving, and two other inmates Patrick Carley, 38, of Oradell and John A. Russell, 30, of Paramus to kill themselves in the past year, and an undisclosed number of others to try unsuccessfully.
The suicide rate among the 1,000 inmates in Bergen’s overcrowded jails far exceeds that of jails in neighboring counties and the state’s prisons.
State corrections officials say that in 1990 and 1991, no suicides were reported in jails in Passaic, Essex, Hudson, and Morris counties, which together house more than 5,000 inmates. In the state’s 12 adult prisons and three juvenile institutions with a total of 24,500 inmates two suicides were reported in 1990, and one in 1991.
Bergen County Sheriff Jack Terhune said he and his officers aren’t to blame for the high number of suicides, which include an inmate who died while in officers custody at Bergen Pines County Hospital. Medical and psychiatric screening rules meet state standards, Terhune said, adding that Bergen’s jail officers get better training than those elsewhere in the state.
Terhune said that whatever his officers do, an inmate determined to commit suicide is bound to succeed.
“We have safeguards in place to make every effort to prevent this type of event from occurring,” he said. “You can’t blame the sheriff for the ills of society that are sent to his front door.”
Last month, Bergen County Prosecutor John J. Fahy began an investigation into the high number of suicides. Fahy’s probe will help little, said Terhune, who partly blames limited funding.
“I’m sure if we were given carte blanche, in terms of building and staff, sure we could do more,” he said.
Conditions in the Bergen County Jail and its annex have been the subject of litigation for years. In 1988, the state Office of Inmate Advocacy filed a suit in federal court alleging serious deficiencies in conditions, policies, and procedures in the jails, which are so overcrowded that many inmates sleep on mattresses on a gymnasium floor.
Hoping to win freeholder support and money for improved conditions, Terhune has asked consultants to study the main jail, which opened in 1912 and houses about 100 inmates next to the Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack, and the larger annex across River Street, which opened in 1967 and houses about 900 inmates. Their population far exceeds their rated total capacity of 423 inmates.
Terhune says overcrowding is probably a factor in the suicides. “Certainly decreased space has an impact on mental outlook,” he said.
None of which comforts the families of Christian Slane, Robert Irving, Patrick Carley, and John A. Russell who were accused of crimes ranging from shoplifting to murder.
A college graduate who worked as a landscaper, Russell pleaded guilty of burglary and assaulting a police officer, and was sentenced to probation in March 1991. But he violated the terms of his probation by refusing to enter a drug treatment program, records show. In August, he was given a four-year sentence.
Several days after he was sentenced, Russell tried to hang himself in the Bergen County Jail.
On Aug. 27, he was admitted to Bergen Pines County Hospital, where he was kept under constant observation until Sept. 20. Russell was discharged from the hospital 10 days later, and moved to Post 9 of the Bergen County Jail Annex where inmates with psychiatric problems are are kept under closer observation, and get more counseling, than those elsewhere in the jail.
On Oct. 4, at about 5:15 p.m., jail records show, a Post 9 inmate identified as Rex Dearborn apparently tried to kill himself. Investigators aren’t sure, but they think it may have been a diversion: Fifty minutes later, Russell was found hanging from a shoelace in a Post 9 shower stall. Efforts to save his life failed.
Carley, who committed suicide April 28, had a long history of brushes with the law. He gave his mother’s Oradell address when he was arrested April 25 by Wood-Ridge police on charges of shoplifting and disorderly conduct for stealing a bottle of rum from a delicatessen. Carley was held on $250 bail and sent to Bergen Pines for observation.
Three days later, at 4:28 p.m., he was found dead in the hospital’s prison ward under guard of sheriff’s officers with his pajama bottoms tied tightly around his neck.
Russell and Carley had long histories of substance abuse. Slane and Irving, who died just as they were emerging into adulthood, did not. They are described by those who knew them as outgoing and friendly.
Neither seemed particularly depressed in the days before they died.
Elisabeth Slane tells how, as a child g 842198rowing up in Teaneck, her son once brought home a 95-year-old woman from the nursing home next door. “He wanted her to see his room,” she said. Noticing that the woman was tired as she walked back to the nursing home, Christian said earnestly: “I ought to teach you how to ride a bike.”
It was clear to Mrs. Slane, a former teacher, that her son faced a difficult time in life.
Christian was late to start talking, and was eventually diagnosed as having a learning disability. After a time, he got along fairly well in school and had a normal childhood.
“He loved sports,” Mrs. Slane said. “Chris was a lousy team player he couldn’t stay on any team because he was hyperactive. But in individual sports, like skiing, he was excellent.”
When he was 14, as his parents marriage broke up, Slane quit school, and took up a series of unskilled jobs. At the Ground Round Restaurant in Hackensack, he dressed up as a clown for children’s birthday parties.
At age 18, Slane moved to Florida and got married. He had a a daughter, now 15 months old.
He and his wife separated, and Slane returned to New Jersey. He rented a room in Fair Lawn and got a job as a waiter at the Red Lobster in Paramus.
Slane tended to borrow more money from friends than he could repay. “He had all the middle-class tastes, but he didn’t have the education to get the jobs that go with it,” said his mother.
Elisabeth Slane said that hoping to make some money, her son offered to refinish the basement in the home where he was renting a room. He botched the job, and, apparently trying to make amends, wrote the owner a check for $4,401.50. It bounced. The landlord called the Fair Lawn police and also told them that Slane had been having a sexual relationship with his 15-year-old daughter.
Slane was arrested May 10. Because he was charged with sexual assault for having a relationship with a minor more than four years younger than himself he was placed in an isolation cell for his own protection. His bail was set at $7,500 cash, more than his parents could raise.
He was found at 5:52 p.m. on May 20, after he hanged himself with a bedsheet.
“I frankly hoped there would be more supervision in a smaller jail,” said his mother, who has worked with youths sent to New York City’s Rikers Island.
That hope was shared by Millie Irving, whose son an accused murderer also died alone in a Bergen County Jail cell.
Robert Lee Irving’s family remembers him as an outgoing youth, a good basketball player. In school he was interested in black history, auto mechanics, and electronics. He liked listening to gospel and rap music.
He had some legitimate jobs and one illegitimate one.
On Aug. 30, 1990, a Passaic police officer arrested Irving on a charge of carrying 28 vials of crack within 1,000 feet of a school. He pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of illegal drugs with intent to distribute, and served a year behind bars before he was paroled in October.
While visiting her son in the Passaic County Jail, Millie Irving first met her son’s girlfriend, Dawn LiGregni, 16, who lived with her grandmother in Lodi. Members of her family say Irving sometimes spent the night with Dawn, sneaking in the window so her grandmother wouldn’t see him. They say Mrs. LiGregni, 68, had never met him.
On Feb. 20, Ann LiGregni was found strangled, her body left in a closet of her home. Her 1987 Honda Civic was missing from the driveway. The next day, a Passaic police officer saw the car parked in a vacant lot. A fingerprint on the gearshift was identified as Robert Irving’s.
Five days later, he was arrested.
Irving admitted the killing to investigators. But his mother says it wasn’t intentional: Ann LiGregni returned home, and he hid under the bed. “She saw him. . . . That’s when they had a tussle. She spooked him.”
Robert Irving was found dead in his jail cell at 7:05 a.m. Feb. 26, barely 12 hours after his arrest. He had strangled himself with his shoelaces; officers also found a sock stuffed in his mouth.
Terhune said that like other inmates in the main jail, Irving was checked once every hour.
Millie Irving says that because her son had just been charged with murder, the Sheriff’s Department should have watched him more closely. “You can’t just tell somebody they killed someone, and leave them open like that,” she said.
Terhune said “health professionals” at the jail had determined that Irving was not suicidal.
What had been one tragedy the murder and her son’s arrest turned into a double tragedy for the Irving family. If her son was tried and convicted, Millie Irving said, at least she could have visited him in prison.
“I would have loved him more, because I would have figured he had a problem,” Mrs. Irving said. “I would have never given him up. No way.”
Caption: 1 – COLOR PHOTO – Millie Irving of the City of Passaic holding photo of her son, Robert Lee, who as found hanged Feb. 26 in jail. DANIELLE P. RICHARDS / THE RECORD –
2 – PHOTO – Elisabeth Slane with photo of her son, Christian, 20, whose last letter arrived a day after he committed suicide in Bergen County Jail Annex. ROBERT S. TOWNSEND / THE RECORD –
ID: 17373489 | Copyright © 1992, The Record (New Jersey)
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