Joseph Baldi

Joseph Baldi (January 16, 1941 – October 17, 2009), known as The Queens Creeper, was an American serial killer who, from 1970 to 1972, stabbed four women and girls to death in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, New York City. His case, along with those of Charles Yukl and Ricardo Caputo, garnered notoriety due to the fact that Baldi had been erroneously released after he was deemed mentally ill, allowing him to claim more victims.

Biography Little is known of Baldi's background. Born on January 16, 1941, in the Richmond Hill section of Queens, he became a petty criminal from a young age, frequently burglarizing various homes. He displayed signs of mental illness, for which he was treated at the Creedmoor State Hospital between April 1962 and January 1967. While there, he studied carpentry in the institution's workshop.

Murder of Areti Koularmanis On September 19, 1970, Baldi was searching for an apartment, choosing one at 144-96 88th Avenue in Jamaica. After going into a back alley and climbing through the window, he found himself in the bedroom of 23-year-old Greek-Canadian Areti Koularmanis, who was visiting her husband's parents together with her children. Further inquiries uncovered that Baldi was also wanted for an attempted murder of a police officer. He was eventually charged with the other three murders, to which he had made passing references in some of his confessions. At the court hearings for the case, Baldi's attorney, Sidney Sparrow, argued that his client was a schizophrenic suffering from dissociative identity disorder (then called "multiple personality disorder") and was thus not legally liable for his crimes. After an 8-day long trial, Baldi was convicted of the attempted murder charge and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment, allowing the prosecutors to move forward with the murder charges.

In lieu of the upcoming trial, an agreement between Sparrow and the prosecutors was made that prohibited Baldi's "reenactments" of his murders, during which he walked around opening imaginary doors and wiping blood off imaginary knives in a trance-like state, to be used as evidence. In contrast, prosecutors produced a 45-minute police tape to the court, in which Baldi confessed to the four murders. Sparrow and Dr. Harry LaBurt, a psychiatrist and former head of the Creedmoor State Hospital, later took the stand to present testimony such as exam records and interviews that showcased that Baldi was insane. He was then imposed a 25-year-to-life sentence to be served at Sing Sing, which Baldi unsuccessfully attempted to appeal over the years. Baldi would remain behind bars for the remainder of his life, before dying in Sing Sing on October 17, 2009, from undisclosed causes.

The decision to release Baldi from the mental hospital for being a "model inmate" garnered great controversy with the contemporary public in New York City. At the time, he was compared to murderer Charles Yukl and fellow serial killer Ricardo Caputo, both of whom were also considered model inmates but continued killing after their release.