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Father, Son Talk Over the Slaying of Seven
In his 57 years, stolid Ralph Whitney never made a more difficult phone call. He placed it late yesterday afternoon from the quiet Pomona Valley community of Upland to the West Palm Beach, Fla., County Jail. That's where Dennis, second youngest of Whitney's 10 children, was. This was to be the first conversation between the father and his son since the 17-year-old youth went off on a cross-country murder spree that stupefied the nation. But the call — which we had arranged for him to make from the offices of the Upland News — got off to a bad start. The drawling deputy who answered gave it to the father straight. "That kid killed seven people," he said. "I ain't going near him to bring him to the phone." But another deputy eventually did. Dennis said hello into the speaker and the strange exchange between the father and his confessed-killer son began: |
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| WHITNEY: Is this you, Dennis? This is dad. DENNIS: Yeah. I can hear you fine. W. — What ever made you do such a thing? D. — I don't know. W. — Have you stopped to think it over now? D. — Yeah. W. — What do you think about it? D. — I think it was a mistake. W. — I just can't figure it out. You had a good job and had everything you could want. What happened? D. — Just things you don't understand . . . W. — What do you think will happen to you now? D. — Well, I'll be tried as an adult here and I guess I don't have much time left. W. — Are you sure this is Dennis I'm talking to? D. — Yeah. This is Dennis. W. — I don't know. What's your middle name? D. — Manfred. Same as yours. W. — You're Dennis. (pause) But how do you feel about what you've done? D. — I've had it. W. — I'll say so. But I can't understand what made you do such terrible things to people who never did anything bad to you. D. — What's done is done and you can't turn it back . . . W. — Do you know when you'll be tried? D. — They haven't said. I go before the grand jury. They try you as an adult at 17 here. W. — How do you feel about all the people you killed, Dennis? D. — Wee. I'm just sorry I did it. W. — You know you'll be sent to the chair? D. — Yeah. I know. W. — You ought to call somebody and make peace with your God. D. — I have been. W. — Thank God your mother isn't living to know about this terrible thing. (Whitney's wife died in 1954, when Dennis was 11.) D. — If she was here, there wouldn't be any mess like this. W. — Well, that could be true. D. — I'm thankful, anyway, that she's not here to see it. W. — Well, son, I still love you. But there's nothing I can do for you. D. — I guess there's nothing anybody can do. W. — I guess there's nothing else I can say to you, except I still can't see why you did it. D. — Okay. I'll see you. (pause) I mean I guess I won't be seeing you. W. — Well, maybe we'll see each other. I'll try to write you a letter. D. — Okay. There were no good-bys. Nobody cried. They just hung up. |
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