John Rescigno, a 62-year-old man, was a white resident of Astoria, Queens, whose final hours unfolded in the thick of a New York summer weekend in 1960. On the evening of July 3, he crossed paths with a stranger who seemed down on his luck—Frederick Charles Wood, a recently paroled felon drifting through Manhattan and panhandling for cash—then shared drinks with him and brought him back to the small home Rescigno shared with an elderly roommate.
What happened inside that Astoria residence became clear in the days that followed, pieced together from Wood’s own account and the grim scene left behind. Wood later described drinking with Rescigno, hearing what he claimed was a sexual proposition, and deciding—by his own admission—that he would rob and kill him. He used an empty bottle as a weapon, striking Rescigno and then cutting his throat with jagged glass; investigators documented extensive injuries, including roughly sixteen wounds and a jugular vein that had been severed. Before leaving, Wood turned his attention to the second occupant of the home, Frederick Sess, who was asleep in another room; Sess was beaten to death, suffering multiple skull fractures.
When the bodies were discovered on July 4, 1960—amid the holiday’s end—the apartment told its own story of violence and staging. The two men were found in the “little house” they shared in Astoria, and handwritten notes were recovered in the kitchen, one of them tauntingly praising the Parole Board and another offering a performative, mocking apology for what had been done.
Wood became the central—and ultimately only—suspect as the case accelerated. He was taken into custody on July 5, initially offering an innocent explanation for a cut on his thumb, then changing his story and admitting it came from glass while he struck Rescigno. In a recorded, signed statement, he gave a detailed confession to killing both men, describing his motives as robbery mixed with personal hostility, and explaining how he searched for money afterward and attempted to present himself as outwardly calm when he left the scene.
The legal outcome was swift and final. Wood did not seriously contest that he had killed Rescigno and Sess; instead, his defense centered on insanity. A jury convicted him of two counts of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to death—an outcome later upheld as the case moved through appeal. In 1963, Wood was executed at Sing Sing Prison, closing the file on the murders with a conviction, a death sentence, and no lingering question of alternate suspects.
