homas J. Cavanagh Jr., the courtly police detective who inspired the ''Kojak'' television series when he exonerated an innocent man in solving one of New York City's most shocking murders, died on Friday at his home in Margate, Fla. Mr. Cavanagh, who retired as a detective lieutenant and squad commander in 1975, was 82.
His daughter Kerry said he had suffered from chronic lung disease.
Mr. Cavanagh, who earned the nickname ''the velvet whip'' for his talent in winning confessions from even the toughest of criminals when others failed, gained his greatest renown for cracking the 1963 Wylie-Hoffert murder case.
Mr. Cavanagh's painstaking detective work not only exonerated a falsely accused man; it also produced the killer. The false confession of the original suspect was cited by the United States Supreme Court in its Miranda decision in 1966, which required that the police advise suspects of their rights to remain silent and to consult a lawyer before being questioned about a crime.
A year earlier, many New York State legislators had said that the possibility that the wrong man might have been executed for the Wylie-Hoffert murders prompted them to vote to abolish capital punishment.
Mr. Cavanagh's work on the case inspired the 1973 television movie ''The Marcus-Nelson Murders,'' which starred Telly Savalas and served, in effect, as the pilot film for the long-running series ''Kojak.''
The so-called career-girl murders, on Aug. 28, 1963, the day of the Freedom March on Washington led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, took the lives of Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert in their Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan.
Janice Wylie, 21, was a Newsweek researcher and the daughter of the novelist Max Wylie; Emily Hoffert, 23, was a schoolteacher. Both were brutally stabbed. But the killer left no fingerprints or traceable physical evidence.
In April 1964, after six months of fruitless investigation by hundreds of officers, the police in Brooklyn announced that George Whitmore, a 19-year-old black man with a low I.Q., had confessed to the crimes.
Mr. Cavanagh, whose precinct was the site of the murders, was skeptical, especially after an old police friend told him that Mr. Whitmore was not a burglar, not a drug addict and had no previous record.
''My God, you've got the wrong fellow,'' Mr. Cavanagh said.
Despite the opposition of higher-ups in the Police Department, Mr. Cavanagh vowed to find the true killer and keep Mr. Whitmore from the electric chair.
One of the chief pieces of evidence against Mr. Whitmore, who soon recanted his confession, was an outdoor photograph supposedly of one victim, with an affectionate inscription on the back.
Mr. Cavanagh turned to botanists at Columbia University, who narrowed the site of the photo's setting to the Northeast. Park rangers and wardens located it at the New Jersey shore. Mr. Cavanagh dispatched detectives to the area, where they pinpointed a park near Wildwood that was a gathering place for local high school students. A teacher identified the girl in the picture. She was not one of the victims. The inscription did not match the handwriting of either the victim or the suspect, and the photo turned out to have come from a garbage dump next to the home of Mr. Whitmore's uncle.
Eventually, Mr. Cavanagh traced the crime to Richard Robles, a cat burglar and drug addict, who was convicted.
Mr. Cavanagh, the son of a police detective, was born in Brooklyn. He graduated from Boys High School, Brooklyn College and St. John's University Law School before joining the police force in 1940.
A solidly built 6-foot-2-inch 200-pounder, he dressed so elegantly that colleagues called him ''the senator'' or ''the detective who stepped off Park Avenue.'' Unlike many of his colleagues, he never cursed and never drank.
In addition to his daughter Kerry, of Boca Raton, Fla., Mr. Cavanagh is survived by four other children, Brian, of Coral Springs, Fla.; James, of Bloomington, Ill.; Isabelle, of Fort Myers, Fla., and Alice Gallant of Garden City, N.Y.; a brother, John, of Queens Village, N.Y., two sisters, Frances Marzette of Margate, Fla., and Bette, of Phoenix, Ariz., and seven grandchildren.
By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER Published: August 4, 1996 New York Times
His daughter Kerry said he had suffered from chronic lung disease.
Mr. Cavanagh, who earned the nickname ''the velvet whip'' for his talent in winning confessions from even the toughest of criminals when others failed, gained his greatest renown for cracking the 1963 Wylie-Hoffert murder case.
Mr. Cavanagh's painstaking detective work not only exonerated a falsely accused man; it also produced the killer. The false confession of the original suspect was cited by the United States Supreme Court in its Miranda decision in 1966, which required that the police advise suspects of their rights to remain silent and to consult a lawyer before being questioned about a crime.
A year earlier, many New York State legislators had said that the possibility that the wrong man might have been executed for the Wylie-Hoffert murders prompted them to vote to abolish capital punishment.
Mr. Cavanagh's work on the case inspired the 1973 television movie ''The Marcus-Nelson Murders,'' which starred Telly Savalas and served, in effect, as the pilot film for the long-running series ''Kojak.''
The so-called career-girl murders, on Aug. 28, 1963, the day of the Freedom March on Washington led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, took the lives of Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert in their Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan.
Janice Wylie, 21, was a Newsweek researcher and the daughter of the novelist Max Wylie; Emily Hoffert, 23, was a schoolteacher. Both were brutally stabbed. But the killer left no fingerprints or traceable physical evidence.
In April 1964, after six months of fruitless investigation by hundreds of officers, the police in Brooklyn announced that George Whitmore, a 19-year-old black man with a low I.Q., had confessed to the crimes.
Mr. Cavanagh, whose precinct was the site of the murders, was skeptical, especially after an old police friend told him that Mr. Whitmore was not a burglar, not a drug addict and had no previous record.
''My God, you've got the wrong fellow,'' Mr. Cavanagh said.
Despite the opposition of higher-ups in the Police Department, Mr. Cavanagh vowed to find the true killer and keep Mr. Whitmore from the electric chair.
One of the chief pieces of evidence against Mr. Whitmore, who soon recanted his confession, was an outdoor photograph supposedly of one victim, with an affectionate inscription on the back.
Mr. Cavanagh turned to botanists at Columbia University, who narrowed the site of the photo's setting to the Northeast. Park rangers and wardens located it at the New Jersey shore. Mr. Cavanagh dispatched detectives to the area, where they pinpointed a park near Wildwood that was a gathering place for local high school students. A teacher identified the girl in the picture. She was not one of the victims. The inscription did not match the handwriting of either the victim or the suspect, and the photo turned out to have come from a garbage dump next to the home of Mr. Whitmore's uncle.
Eventually, Mr. Cavanagh traced the crime to Richard Robles, a cat burglar and drug addict, who was convicted.
Mr. Cavanagh, the son of a police detective, was born in Brooklyn. He graduated from Boys High School, Brooklyn College and St. John's University Law School before joining the police force in 1940.
A solidly built 6-foot-2-inch 200-pounder, he dressed so elegantly that colleagues called him ''the senator'' or ''the detective who stepped off Park Avenue.'' Unlike many of his colleagues, he never cursed and never drank.
In addition to his daughter Kerry, of Boca Raton, Fla., Mr. Cavanagh is survived by four other children, Brian, of Coral Springs, Fla.; James, of Bloomington, Ill.; Isabelle, of Fort Myers, Fla., and Alice Gallant of Garden City, N.Y.; a brother, John, of Queens Village, N.Y., two sisters, Frances Marzette of Margate, Fla., and Bette, of Phoenix, Ariz., and seven grandchildren.
By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER Published: August 4, 1996 New York Times
homas J. Cavanagh Jr., the courtly police detective who inspired the ''Kojak'' television series when he exonerated an innocent man in solving one of New York City's most shocking murders, died on Friday at his home in Margate, Fla. Mr. Cavanagh, who retired as a detective lieutenant and squad commander in 1975, was 82.
His daughter Kerry said he had suffered from chronic lung disease.
Mr. Cavanagh, who earned the nickname ''the velvet whip'' for his talent in winning confessions from even the toughest of criminals when others failed, gained his greatest renown for cracking the 1963 Wylie-Hoffert murder case.
Mr. Cavanagh's painstaking detective work not only exonerated a falsely accused man; it also produced the killer. The false confession of the original suspect was cited by the United States Supreme Court in its Miranda decision in 1966, which required that the police advise suspects of their rights to remain silent and to consult a lawyer before being questioned about a crime.
A year earlier, many New York State legislators had said that the possibility that the wrong man might have been executed for the Wylie-Hoffert murders prompted them to vote to abolish capital punishment.
Mr. Cavanagh's work on the case inspired the 1973 television movie ''The Marcus-Nelson Murders,'' which starred Telly Savalas and served, in effect, as the pilot film for the long-running series ''Kojak.''
The so-called career-girl murders, on Aug. 28, 1963, the day of the Freedom March on Washington led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, took the lives of Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert in their Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan.
Janice Wylie, 21, was a Newsweek researcher and the daughter of the novelist Max Wylie; Emily Hoffert, 23, was a schoolteacher. Both were brutally stabbed. But the killer left no fingerprints or traceable physical evidence.
In April 1964, after six months of fruitless investigation by hundreds of officers, the police in Brooklyn announced that George Whitmore, a 19-year-old black man with a low I.Q., had confessed to the crimes.
Mr. Cavanagh, whose precinct was the site of the murders, was skeptical, especially after an old police friend told him that Mr. Whitmore was not a burglar, not a drug addict and had no previous record.
''My God, you've got the wrong fellow,'' Mr. Cavanagh said.
Despite the opposition of higher-ups in the Police Department, Mr. Cavanagh vowed to find the true killer and keep Mr. Whitmore from the electric chair.
One of the chief pieces of evidence against Mr. Whitmore, who soon recanted his confession, was an outdoor photograph supposedly of one victim, with an affectionate inscription on the back.
Mr. Cavanagh turned to botanists at Columbia University, who narrowed the site of the photo's setting to the Northeast. Park rangers and wardens located it at the New Jersey shore. Mr. Cavanagh dispatched detectives to the area, where they pinpointed a park near Wildwood that was a gathering place for local high school students. A teacher identified the girl in the picture. She was not one of the victims. The inscription did not match the handwriting of either the victim or the suspect, and the photo turned out to have come from a garbage dump next to the home of Mr. Whitmore's uncle.
Eventually, Mr. Cavanagh traced the crime to Richard Robles, a cat burglar and drug addict, who was convicted.
Mr. Cavanagh, the son of a police detective, was born in Brooklyn. He graduated from Boys High School, Brooklyn College and St. John's University Law School before joining the police force in 1940.
A solidly built 6-foot-2-inch 200-pounder, he dressed so elegantly that colleagues called him ''the senator'' or ''the detective who stepped off Park Avenue.'' Unlike many of his colleagues, he never cursed and never drank.
In addition to his daughter Kerry, of Boca Raton, Fla., Mr. Cavanagh is survived by four other children, Brian, of Coral Springs, Fla.; James, of Bloomington, Ill.; Isabelle, of Fort Myers, Fla., and Alice Gallant of Garden City, N.Y.; a brother, John, of Queens Village, N.Y., two sisters, Frances Marzette of Margate, Fla., and Bette, of Phoenix, Ariz., and seven grandchildren.
By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER Published: August 4, 1996 New York Times
His daughter Kerry said he had suffered from chronic lung disease.
Mr. Cavanagh, who earned the nickname ''the velvet whip'' for his talent in winning confessions from even the toughest of criminals when others failed, gained his greatest renown for cracking the 1963 Wylie-Hoffert murder case.
Mr. Cavanagh's painstaking detective work not only exonerated a falsely accused man; it also produced the killer. The false confession of the original suspect was cited by the United States Supreme Court in its Miranda decision in 1966, which required that the police advise suspects of their rights to remain silent and to consult a lawyer before being questioned about a crime.
A year earlier, many New York State legislators had said that the possibility that the wrong man might have been executed for the Wylie-Hoffert murders prompted them to vote to abolish capital punishment.
Mr. Cavanagh's work on the case inspired the 1973 television movie ''The Marcus-Nelson Murders,'' which starred Telly Savalas and served, in effect, as the pilot film for the long-running series ''Kojak.''
The so-called career-girl murders, on Aug. 28, 1963, the day of the Freedom March on Washington led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, took the lives of Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert in their Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan.
Janice Wylie, 21, was a Newsweek researcher and the daughter of the novelist Max Wylie; Emily Hoffert, 23, was a schoolteacher. Both were brutally stabbed. But the killer left no fingerprints or traceable physical evidence.
In April 1964, after six months of fruitless investigation by hundreds of officers, the police in Brooklyn announced that George Whitmore, a 19-year-old black man with a low I.Q., had confessed to the crimes.
Mr. Cavanagh, whose precinct was the site of the murders, was skeptical, especially after an old police friend told him that Mr. Whitmore was not a burglar, not a drug addict and had no previous record.
''My God, you've got the wrong fellow,'' Mr. Cavanagh said.
Despite the opposition of higher-ups in the Police Department, Mr. Cavanagh vowed to find the true killer and keep Mr. Whitmore from the electric chair.
One of the chief pieces of evidence against Mr. Whitmore, who soon recanted his confession, was an outdoor photograph supposedly of one victim, with an affectionate inscription on the back.
Mr. Cavanagh turned to botanists at Columbia University, who narrowed the site of the photo's setting to the Northeast. Park rangers and wardens located it at the New Jersey shore. Mr. Cavanagh dispatched detectives to the area, where they pinpointed a park near Wildwood that was a gathering place for local high school students. A teacher identified the girl in the picture. She was not one of the victims. The inscription did not match the handwriting of either the victim or the suspect, and the photo turned out to have come from a garbage dump next to the home of Mr. Whitmore's uncle.
Eventually, Mr. Cavanagh traced the crime to Richard Robles, a cat burglar and drug addict, who was convicted.
Mr. Cavanagh, the son of a police detective, was born in Brooklyn. He graduated from Boys High School, Brooklyn College and St. John's University Law School before joining the police force in 1940.
A solidly built 6-foot-2-inch 200-pounder, he dressed so elegantly that colleagues called him ''the senator'' or ''the detective who stepped off Park Avenue.'' Unlike many of his colleagues, he never cursed and never drank.
In addition to his daughter Kerry, of Boca Raton, Fla., Mr. Cavanagh is survived by four other children, Brian, of Coral Springs, Fla.; James, of Bloomington, Ill.; Isabelle, of Fort Myers, Fla., and Alice Gallant of Garden City, N.Y.; a brother, John, of Queens Village, N.Y., two sisters, Frances Marzette of Margate, Fla., and Bette, of Phoenix, Ariz., and seven grandchildren.
By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER Published: August 4, 1996 New York Times
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