Frank De Felitta - For Love of Audrey Rose

A MUFFLED SCREAM EMERGED FROM THE CAR.

Hoover stumbled closer. The black smoke seared his lungs. He kept low to the wet earth. There was a rush of hot air, and flames licked upward from the engine block. In the rear window, black hair torn into streamers, Jennie beat against the glass.

“daddydaddyhothothot!”

The scream barely came through the roar of the flames.

“Ivy!” shouted Bill.

“daddydaddyhothothot!”

Hoover knelt forward. The heat sucked at his eyes. Flames shot up over the roof. Smoke twined lazily from the upholstery inside. Jennie began to choke.

“IVY!!!” Bill bellowed.

“daddydaddyhothothot!”

“Dear God! No!” Hoover wailed in anguish. “Not this time!

For Buddy

Article from THE AMERICAN INQUIRER, reprinted in its entirety, dated February 3, 1976.

by Shawn Tyneham

Exactly one year ago today, the trial concluded which shocked New York and sent ripples of horror and dismay throughout the nation. On December 5, 1974, Judge Harmon T. Langley, presiding over The People of New York versus Elliot Suggins Hoover, opened session for the first time in the Criminal Courts Building, Part Seven, in downtown Manhattan. The charge: kidnapping. The victim: 10-year-old Ivy Templeton, daughter of a rising young executive in the advertising world. But in less than two months, Ivy was dead. Not from her ordeal at the hands of the suspect, Elliot Hoover, but as a result of the bizarre and inexorable machinations of Judge Langley’s own court.

Where are they now? What happened to the defendant, Elliot Hoover, to the aggrieved parents, William and Janice Templeton, since that tragic day that Ivy strangled to death in front of a horrified jury? What happened to old Judge Langley, or to the prosecutor, Scott Velie, or the defense counsel, Brice Mack?

Readers of this column will remember the trial, the crowds that made entrance and exit impossible at the doors of the Criminal Courts building. For days New York was treated to the spectacle of orange-robed Hindus wrestling with blue coated cops, impassioned and unorthodox oratory from attorney Brice Mack, and the celebrities who marched in and out of Judge Langley’s court to testify for Elliot Hoover. But many weeks of arduous research and investigation have unearthed the bizarre circumstances that led to the trial and to Ivy’s tragic death.

It began early in October, 1974, when Elliot Hoover appeared outside the Ethical Culture School. He was forty-six years old, recently returned from seven years in India, and he was waiting. Waiting for Ivy Templeton.

During the next weeks, he shadowed William Templeton, a junior partner of the Pel Simmons Advertising Agency. He sent obscene notes, gifts to Ivy, gifts to Janice Templeton, and began telephoning. He insisted on seeing them. And day after day, like a shadow that would not fade, he waited for Ivy outside the school.

Finally the Templetons agreed to see him. The following account is based on trial records and recollections of the staff of the bar and restaurant at the Hotel Des Artistes, where the meeting took place.

• DEMANDS DAUGHTER

The meeting began in an atmosphere of hostility and tension. Hoover appeared very nervous, fumbling with his tea cup, swallowing his words, unable to control his trembling fingers. At length, his incredible and uncanny story began to emerge.

He had been, he claimed, a successful Pittsburgh steel executive until, on August 4, 1964, his wife and daughter were killed in an automobile accident south of Pittsburgh. The daughter’s name was Audrey Rose. Then, according to Marie Kronstadt, waitress at the restaurant, Hoover launched into a long and incoherent account of his travels through India. When Bill Templeton angrily demanded he come to the point, a strange and seductive expression came to Hoover’s face. Audrey Rose, he said quietly, had been reincarnated and her name now was Ivy Templeton. To prove it, he continued, Ivy was born within minutes of Audrey Rose’s death.

• THE NIGHTMARE

Unable to procure police protection, the Templetons sought legal advice. Their attorney advised a second meeting to determine precisely whether Hoover’s demands were financial or sexual in nature. Accordingly, Hoover came to the Templeton apartment.

Trial records indicate a tranquil and surprisingly affable meeting. Hoover rambled at length about certain experiences in India. In particular, he displayed an extensive technical knowledge of the doctrines of reincarnation. And once again, he demanded certain rights over Ivy.

Before the Templetons could clarify Hoover’s needs, however, the telephone rang with astounding news.

Ivy had been sleeping downstairs with a neighbor, Carole Federico, in order to leave the Templeton apartment clear for the meeting with Hoover. Shortly after Hoover arrived at the apartment, however, Ivy began to display symptoms of frenzied anxiety, delirium, and generalized fear. The Templetons entered her room to find the girl sleepwalking, her arms flailing, knocking over the furniture and painfully oblivious of chairs, desk, and dresser in her way.

She called “Mommydaddymommydaddymommydaddyhothothot!!” in a voice Mrs. Federico described as “unearthly and like a prayer caused by unbearable pain.”

But the worst was yet to come.

Unable to subdue the savage nightmare of his daughter, Bill Templeton turned to see Elliot Hoover standing in the doorway. A look of “inexpressible sadness” mixed with love appeared on the intruder’s face. Then, slowly, with confidence and authority, Hoover stepped toward the girl and called to her. And gradually, she grew quiet and fell asleep in his arms.

He had called her Audrey Rose.

• ESCALATION

Hoover continued to bombard the Templetons with gifts, mostly books on the subject of reincarnation. He demanded to speak with them again. He telephoned Bill Templeton at work. All to no avail.

Within the week, Ivy was subjected to a second nightmare, worse than the first.

Possessed with alarming strength, she seemed unstoppable, smashing through her bedroom, crying in pain, calling over and over for her “daddy,” yet completely unresponsive to Bill Templeton’s frantic efforts to calm her. By now it was evident that the child was in serious danger of harming herself.

In fact, that night she suffered first and second degree burns over her hands, mostly along the palms. During the trial, Bill Templeton related that she had grasped the hot radiator during her frenzy and could not let go. Mrs. Templeton, however, contradicted that testimony. Ivy’s hands had been burned, she said, when they beat against the ice-cold windows of the bedroom.

As the trial wore on, it became clear that Audrey Rose had died slowly and painfully, trapped within the overturned automobile, beating her hands in vain against the glass of the burning wreck.

• THE THIRD NIGHTMARE

The third, and most intense, convulsive nightmare occurred when Bill Templeton was overseas on business.

This time there seemed no doubt that the child was in desperate straits, in a state of panic, and insane with suffocation and fear. She broke free of her bedroom where Mrs. Templeton had tried to sequester her, and ran into the living room, beating at the cold, dark windows, crying “HOTHOTHOTHOTHOTHOT!!”

Unable to get her family physician on the telephone, Janice Templeton allowed Elliot Hoover to enter her apartment. Her reasons, according to the trial testimony, were unambiguous: to secure the immediate safety of the child and to end the danger of grievous self-inflicted injury.