Wesley Diggs was a tall, slender Black man who owned several bars in Harlem. A college graduate, he’d once been a hell of a b-ball player on courts throughout Harlem and had worked as an electrical engineer. In school, he developed an entrepreneurial spirit that led to him opening several bar businesses and a stationery store. One chilly Saturday afternoon in 1975, he drove across the George Washington Bridge, going home to his wife Jean and four kids in Teaneck, New Jersey for the first time in three days. Between work and mistresses, Diggs was spending less time at home than usual.
It was December 6th and the following day was the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Christmas was around the corner, and with such a big family I’m sure thoughts of gifts loomed large in Mr. Diggs’ mind. His youngest son Roger was five years old, an age when many boys were asking Santa Claus to deliver a Big Wheel or GI Joe action figures. There were also his bars in Harlem: Diggs’ Den located at 320 West 145th Street and the Cafe Lounge up the hill on Amsterdam Avenue; patrons expected a little sprucing-up and decorating with their holiday cheer.
A lover of jazz, it’s easy to imagine Diggs zooming in his ride listening to John Coltrane and humming along to “My Favorite Things.” Pulling onto Carlton Terrance, he would’ve turned down the music. It was a quiet neighborhood and he had no intention being branded “the loud Black man” on their block. Glancing out the window, some of the houses were already decorated with red lights flashing and reindeer on the lawn.
The Diggs family moved to Teaneck from Harlem in 1969, a year before Roger was born, and had integrated the neighborhood. It was during that era that many African-American and West Indian families from New York City fled rising drugs and violence in urban areas, and hoped that life in “the ‘burbs” would be a respite from random danger.
In Teaneck, a town in Bergen County, the kids received a better public school education, lived in private houses and, in the summer, splashed in their own pool. As a contrast, one of uptown’s most dangerous swimming pools was in Colonial Park, which was directly across the street from the Den on Bradhurst Avenue. Formerly a bar called the 19th Hole, Diggs’ Den opened in 1967 at 320 West 145th Street. It was a relaxed place that my Uncle Carl, who grew-up around the corner on St. Nicholas Avenue, compared to some of the nicer neighborhood bars.
As a small boy, I passed Diggs’ often when I visited my Aunt Katie on 143rd and, even then, was aware that the surrounding hood was becoming more drugged out with head nodding heroin addicts on one corner, a Rasta weed spot on another and angel dust coming soon. From the doorway of Diggs’ Den, its owner could clearly see the deterioration that was happening in the community and felt blessed to have moved twenty miles away from the mayhem of upper Manhattan.
It was almost 4pm when Wesley reached his home at 266 Carlton. Built in 1925, the colonial house was white stucco and red brick. One must wonder if, though the neighborhood was quiet, Wesley thought, as he approached the front door, that the silence was more hushed than usual. Opening the door, the only sound in the house was coming from an upstairs television set. After Wesley climbed the steps, he saw his daughter Audrey, 19, sprawled on her bedroom floor.
Frightened, he fled and wound-up at his neighbor Edward Murphy’s house. “My daughter’s been hurt, call an ambulance,” he reportedly screamed. One of Murphy’s own daughter’s was a nurse and she dashed over to the Diggs residence with her sister. In the first New York Times story covering the case, reporter Ronald Sullivan wrote, “The nurse went upstairs and came down moments later, shaken and pale. ‘Mary, she’s dead, she’s dead,’ she told her sister.’”
Soon enough, the other three bodies were discovered shot-up and scattered throughout the house. Roger and Wesley Jr., 12, were discovered in another bedroom and Allison, 16, was in her room. Jean Diggs, 39, was found in the basement. The wife and mother had been described as a charming woman who had recently become an Avon representative. “She was a beautiful woman in every way, stunning to look at, kind and gentle, devoted her life to her family,” Frances Mairs, one neighbor, told the Times.
There was no forced entry. Though there were over twenty rounds fired from a .22 rifle, no one in the community heard or saw anything. Besides Jean’s .22 pistol, nothing was missing. Diggs told police that, after a political rally at the Den, he had stayed with his girlfriend in the Bronx the night before. The bodies were bagged and tagged, and Wesley never returned to that house again.
After the autopsy, the bodies were released and taken to Benta’s Funeral Home in Harlem. Located at 624 St. Nicholas Avenue, it was just a few blocks from Diggs Den. Those who witnessed the five caskets together talked about the sorrowful spectacle that would never disappear from their memories.
Days later, the bodies were brought back to New Jersey, where the family funeral was held at Presbyterian Church of Teaneck. Outside it was pouring. The holy house was filled to capacity with five hundred people in attendance. It was standing-room only, but there was also a meeting room broadcasting to an additional three hundred-fifty while a crowd stood in the rain listening to the services on a loudspeaker as Reverend Chase read from the 23d Psalm. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the‐days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever,” the minister recited.
Wesley sat with his mother and two brothers. Many friends and strangers wept for the family. The New York Times openly surprised by the diversity of the community, padded their new stories with passages like, “…many white residents who were neighbors and friends of the Diggs family had come (to the funeral) as well…an equal blending of black and white was also evident in the 40 young ushers, classmates of the two Diggs children who had attended Teaneck High School. The ushers formed a cordon on the walk in front of the church.”
At some point the maudlin Gladys Knight’s song “Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me” was played, a track that Wesley said was a favorite of the couple. Family friend Arthur Symes read a statement written by Wesley in which he spoke directly to the family. “I am a better person for having been exposed to you. I gave you shelter and now I ask each of you to forgive me for not sheltering you in your greatest hour of need and to give me the strength to go on without you.”
According to the New York Times, Wesley “…sat motionless in his pew,” through the entire service. The funeral was quite a scene and in the end, as photographers stood outside snapping pictures, Wesley walked slowly to his limo and slumped into this seat. There was a police escort to the burial grounds. More than 90 cars, headlights on, followed to the George Washington Memorial Park in Paramus, N.J., where the bodies were buried. After keeping his composure during earlier, it was at the burial where Wesley broke down and cried. Decades later a man named Bruce S. Morgan, writing in the Facebook group Harlem History noted, “I don’t ever remember seeing Wes smile after that day.”
Chief Robert E. Fitzpatrick of the Teaneck police, who had been on the force for forty years, went on record saying, “It’s the worst crime of my career.” It would also prove to be the most difficult. There were few clues, other than the bullets, two of which came from a different gun. Of course, Wesley’s loss and grief didn’t keep him from being considered murder suspect number one. The local police teamed up with the N.Y.P.D. and looked into possible links with loan sharks, drug dealers, petty thieves and whoever else they thought might lead them to the answers.
While the family was covered by life insurance, it was determined that the payout of $6,500 would not been enough motivation for Wesley to kill his whole family. They even gave Wesley a polygraph test, which he passed. There were theories that included Diggs’ street life had caught-up with him, he was targeted for a heist or that wife Jean, tired of her husband’s cheating ways, had committed a murder/suicide.
Uptown, there was chatter about drug dealers and a transaction that went very wrong. The streets were watching, but they didn’t always speak the truth. Lastly, maybe it was about payback: “Revenge would have to be the motive,” Joseph C. Woodcock Jr., the Bergen County Prosecutor, said on December 18, 1975. “We’re trying to see if there isn’t someone out there who had reason to do something to him. It seems to us if he didn’t do it; we have to find out if someone else had a reason to do it.”
Even after Diggs was no longer a suspect, he was always a suspect to some, especially after admitting to the extramarital affairs the sometimes kept him away from home. To others that knew the man, such as the porter from area who told a Times reporter that Wesley was a model citizen. “There’s no way he could have done it. He was just too good a man. He pays his bills, takes care of business and keeps himself together; he was never a violent dude.”
Wesley moved back to Harlem, but sold his bars to his brother Arnold. Frustrated that the police on both sides of the Hudson weren’t doing their job, Diggs pleaded for the F.B.I. to help, even wrote a letter to Gerald Ford, but was rejected. A few months before Ford refused to help New York City during its financial crises, so he obviously didn’t care about its citizens.
A few years after Wesley sold it, Diggs’ Den became a notorious angel dust joint, one of the places my late friend Gary Harris told me about, where he and his crew went after balling at the Rucker or over at the Battlegrounds. “That was one of the best dust spots in the hood,” Garry told me. Bradhurst Avenue continued to sink as it became more beat down. Like the South Bronx during that same era, many of the apartment buildings were burned-up and abandoned.
In 1981, Diggs fathered another daughter. That same year Reverend Robert (Bob) Chase wrote a book about the murdered family titled Diggs. Published in 1981 by the vanity publisher Vantage Press, the production costs paid for by Wesley. While Diggs is difficult to find, the reader’s comments on Amazon were interesting. One person using the name PhilGibbs, wrote: “I know the case, and searched for the book, because I went to school with Allison before she moved to New Jersey. She was a wonderful girl, as was her whole family. She would have done great things if not for this murder.”
Another reviewer, TheTeaneckGirl, noted: “I went to school with Wesley Jr. and played with him that Friday. We had just received our school pictures and promised to exchange photos on the following Monday. They were murdered that Sunday. As a 12 year old little girl this affected me tremendously and still does.”
Twelve years after his family was murdered and many bouts of bad health, Wesley Diggs had a fatal heart attack in 1987 in front of his candy supply store on Macombs Place in Harlem. He was 52 years old when he dropped to the sidewalk and died on the spot.
It’s been forty-six years and the Den has become a Duane Reade with a luxury apartment building constructed above; the former Rasta weed spot is a Starbucks while the empty lots and abandoned buildings have been transformed into condos. My friend Darryl Lewis and I recently laughed about the white folks hanging-out in Jackie Robinson Park after dark, whereas back in the day, when most still thought of it as Colonial Park, most neighborhood people didn’t cross through there unless they were trying become a statistic.
Everything has changed, except the status of the Diggs’ murder case, which was never solved.
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For more on the Diggs family murders listen to the podcast, The Trail Went Cold/Episode 179.
