Alban Leacock

Mass Murderer

Alban Leacock and the 1983 Hotel Belleclaire Mass Murder

Overview

Trevor Alban Leacock, commonly identified in contemporary reports as Alban Leacock, was a 41-year-old porter and handyman employed at the Hotel Belleclaire on Manhattan's Upper West Side. On February 3, 1983, Leacock opened fire inside the aging residential hotel, killing four people and attacking additional occupants. The dead included his 25-year-old wife, a 12-year-old girl, a hotel employee or resident, and the hotel's manager. The killings occurred at the Hotel Belleclaire, located at 2175 Broadway near West 77th Street in Manhattan, New York City. Although the building had originally opened as an elegant apartment hotel, by the early 1980s it operated largely as a single-room-occupancy residence with permanent tenants, hotel workers and transient guests living under the same roof.

The First Shootings

The violence began during the early morning hours of Thursday, February 3, 1983. Police accounts placed the initial shootings inside the three-room seventh-floor apartment where Leacock lived with his wife, Christine Leacock. Some early reports stated that the first shots were fired at approximately 4:30 a.m., while another preliminary account placed the discovery or reporting of the wider shooting later that morning. Inside or near the apartment, Leacock shot his wife and other people who were present. Christine Leacock was killed, as was 12-year-old Desiree Winfield. David Williams was also fatally shot during the attack. Initial news reports did not immediately provide consistent ages or complete identities for every victim, but later victim records identified Williams as 50 years old. The exact circumstances that brought the victims together inside the apartment were not fully explained in the surviving public accounts. Investigators established that Leacock deliberately used a firearm against several people in close quarters before moving through other parts of the hotel. The confined apartment and narrow interior corridors left those inside with little opportunity to escape once the shooting began.

The Shooting Spreads Through the Hotel

After the initial killings, Leacock continued firing elsewhere in the Hotel Belleclaire. Jacob Zimmer, the 61-year-old hotel manager, was shot and killed. Contemporary coverage described Zimmer as the hotel's owner or manager, reflecting his supervisory role in the building. His death brought the number of people killed to four. A woman was also seriously wounded during the shooting spree. Contemporary reports did not consistently publish her name. The later criminal judgment against Leacock included two counts of attempted second-degree murder and one count of second-degree assault, confirming that the gunfire was directed at additional victims who survived. One of the most unusual incidents involved 78-year-old hotel clerk Alex Gittens. Leacock fired at Gittens, but the bullet struck a wallet carried in the clerk's breast pocket. The wallet absorbed the impact and prevented the bullet from penetrating his body. Gittens reportedly did not realize what had happened until hours later, when he removed the wallet and the bullet fell from it. Although physically spared from a potentially fatal wound, he had been directly placed in the path of Leacock's gunfire. ...

Confirmed Victims: (4)

Christine Leacock 25 yr old Female

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