"Uncle Ted" McCarrick and the Preppy Murderer
Last week, former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the disgraced, defrocked homosexual predator and child sex abuser, was finally charged criminally, while another civil suit, and another, were filed on behalf of still more victims. These cases and so many others—like the case of James Grein, which was the catalyst for McCarrick’s laicization by the pope—involve McCarrick’s rape and molestation of boys, beginning when they were about 11 or 12 years old and often continuing for years.
The mind boggles at the trail of victims that 91-year-old “Uncle Ted” has left in his wake from his decades of sex crimes against children and adult seminarians. There is reason to suspect that a teenaged Theodore McCarrick’s perversions were already in play around the time that he mysteriously exited from his prestigious Jesuit high school in the 1940s. What we know for certain is that he went on to serially sexually abuse countless young boys and men in the years that followed.
We know that every one of his deviant crimes affected not only the victim but an exponential expanse of family members, friends, and entire communities connected to those victims. The collateral damage continues in a whirlwind to this day. Until the General Judgement, at which time both the immediate and ripple effects of every man’s sin will be laid bare for all to see, we cannot know how much carnage a single man’s wicked deeds have wrought.
The Preppy Murder
A year or so ago, a friend tipped me off to the disturbing connection between Theodore McCarrick and Robert Chambers, the notorious “Preppy Murderer” (aka the “Central Park Strangler”).
I remember the case well, because Chambers and his victim, Jennifer Levin, were around my age at the time (late teens), and Levin was a week away from starting college in Boston, right down the road from my own college. The 1986 murder and its aftermath were sensationalized in a national media and tabloid frenzy, and America was gripped by the “Trial of the Decade.”
The 19-year-old killer and Theodore McCarrick were well-acquainted.
While serving in New York in the prestigious role of Cardinal Terence Cooke’s personal secretary, then-Father Theodore McCarrick maintained a close relationship with the Chambers family, specifically Robert’s devoutly Catholic mother, an Irish immigrant; he took a special interest in her strikingly handsome young son, an only child. “In sixth grade, [Robert Chambers] was confirmed in St. Thomas More Roman Catholic Church, on East 89th Street, under the sponsorship of Theodore McCarrick.”
Let that sink in: “Uncle Ted,” a well-positioned New York priest on the way up the ecclesiastical ladder, was young Robert Chambers’ confirmation sponsor when Chambers was around 11 or 12 years old, in the late 1970s. According to Wikipedia, there was at least one later accusation that McCarrick had sexually abused a young boy during the same time period (presumably not Chambers).
Recall also that James Grein’s own long-term sexual abuse by McCarrick began at the age of 11. Grein was the first child McCarrick ever baptized, and McCarrick was a close family friend of the Greins. Going by the timeline of Grein’s abuse, which began in 1969, we know that by the time this important, busy priest took the time to sponsor Robert Chambers, the quiet, good-looking altar boy and family friend, Fr. McCarrick had already been grooming and raping other young boys for at least a decade that we know of.
By all accounts, Robert Chambers began using drugs as a young teen. He quickly became a hard-core drug user and cocaine addict, and later a serial burglar, stealing over $70,000 worth of cash and merchandise from his friends’ well-heeled parents’ upscale New York apartments to fuel his drug addiction. His many “rich kid” friends on the Upper East Side enjoyed partying and clubbing with him, but they didn’t know about the grand theft. And they never perceived him as violent.
After Chambers’ swift arrest for the murder of Jennifer Levin (he admitted to “accidentally” causing her death), the prosecution was stunned when certain parties in the Catholic Church threw their full support behind Chambers. The most powerful of these was Theodore McCarrick, now the Archbishop of Newark, who took the “unusual step” of writing a letter to the judge, vouching for Chambers’ good character.
Looking back on the case, prosecutor Linda Fairstein said that the letter from McCarrick had the effect of “throw[ing] all the weight of the Catholic Church behind Robert.” And according to Michael Sheehan, the lead investigator in the case, “People were deathly afraid of McCarrick. He had tremendous clout.”
In his letter to the judge, McCarrick claimed that Chambers—who had just brutally killed a teenager and left her battered body lying half-naked in Central Park—had a “gentleness and a very special respect for persons…. I believe it reflects a true respect for his neighbor and an unwillingness to cause pain.” McCarrick later admitted to not knowing any facts of the case. After the judge received McCarrick’s letter, he released Robert Chambers on $150,000 bail.
McCarrick certainly had Chambers’ back.
Although Chambers had dated and had sex with Jennifer Levin two or three times earlier that summer, Chambers’ girlfriend at the time of Levin’s murder was Alex Kapp. She was 16, and he was 19. In an interview about a 2019 AMC documentary about the case, Kapp made a connection that seems reasonable:
It was hard to hear the details in the [documentary] about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, because that piece makes a tremendous amount of sense to me now. Knowing that there’s the potential that Robert was a victim of assault by that priest makes everything line up for me: At 14 years old, he starts failing at his school, starts smoking pot, starts stealing for drug money. It doesn’t justify a murder, but he was a vulnerable kid. His mother was extremely tied to the Catholic Church. It feels like the writing’s on the wall.
No one is making excuses for Robert Chambers’ and his murderous act; I certainly am not. And I pray that no one is making excuses for the crimes of the unrepentant serial child-rapist Theodore McCarrick, who likely shaped—or deformed—Chambers’ childhood.
My question: When will we look into the fact that “everyone knew” that McCarrick was a homosexual predator, at least when it came to countless vulnerable seminarians? When will we look into the fact that McCarrick was the “kingmaker” who hand-picked and shaped the current episcopate in America according to his image and likeness? The major players, including most of the US cardinals, are McCarrick’s boys. They run the joint. And aside from disgraced Cardinal Donald Wuerl, they are all still firmly in power—the lavender mafia that McCarrick put in place—and no one is doing a damn thing about it.
I’m waiting for someone, anyone, to bust it all wide open. Because everyone knew, and everyone knows. Maybe God Himself will be the one to do it, if no one else is willing to step up. Justice will come for all of us someday.
As Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.”
The bill is coming due, gentlemen.
