Waldo Grant: The New York City Serial Killer
Waldo Grant was an American serial killer responsible for the murders of four young men in New York City between 1973 and 1976. Grant lived primarily on Manhattan's Upper West Side during the period in which the killings occurred. His crimes remained disconnected for several years, even though multiple victims were killed in or near places associated with him. The investigation finally focused on Grant after the discovery of his last known victim in Central Park in December 1976. He was taken into custody in January 1977 and confessed not only to that killing but also to three earlier unsolved murders.
Early Life and Move to New York
Waldo Grant was born on November 3, 1946, in Bulloch County, Georgia. He grew up in a large family in the Statesboro area and, while still a teenager, became a self-ordained minister associated with a Black gospel church. After a failed marriage, Grant left Georgia in 1971 and moved north. He eventually established himself on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
People who lived around Grant generally remembered him as quiet and solitary. Nothing about his outward behavior caused his neighbors to suspect that several violent deaths occurring in the surrounding area were connected to him. For much of the period in which he was killing, investigators treated the deaths as separate cases.
The Murder of Philip Mitchell
Grant's first known victim was Philip Mitchell. Contemporary police reporting identified Mitchell as 18 years old. The killing occurred on September 14, 1973, at the building where Grant was then living, 203 West 91st Street in Manhattan.
According to the police account later provided after Grant's arrest, Mitchell was attacked inside Grant's apartment. He was struck in the head with an iron bar and stabbed. Grant then moved Mitchell's body to the roof of the building and threw it from the roof into the area below. Investigators believed this was an attempt to make the death appear to have resulted from a fall or suicide rather than homicide.
Police questioned residents of the building at the time, including Grant, but investigators did not have sufficient evidence to arrest him. Mitchell's death therefore remained an unsolved murder for more than three years. Some later sources give September 13 as the date of Mitchell's death, but contemporary reporting based on the police investigation gives September 14, 1973.
The Murder of George Muniz
Nearly two years after Mitchell's killing, 23-year-old George Muniz became Grant's second known victim. Muniz was reported to have lived at 1976 Third Avenue in Manhattan. Police later said the murder occurred inside Grant's West 91st Street apartment.
Muniz had been stabbed repeatedly. His body was then placed inside a metal trash container and left in front of 210 West 91st Street, only a short distance from Grant's residence. Despite the unusual proximity between the disposal site and Grant's apartment, the case was not connected to Mitchell's murder at the time.
Available contemporary reporting establishes that Muniz was killed in 1975, nearly two years after Mitchell, but does not provide a sufficiently reliable exact calendar date for his death. Later summaries sometimes describe the killing as occurring in June 1975, but the precise date is not consistently documented in the surviving accounts. For that reason, an exact day is not stated here as fact.
The Murder of Harold Phillips
Grant's third known victim was Harold Phillips, identified in contemporary police reporting as 30 years old. Unlike the two earlier victims, Phillips was killed in his own residence rather than Grant's apartment.
On October 3, 1976, Phillips was killed inside his apartment at 27 East 124th Street in Manhattan. Police said he had been battered to death with a hammer. The killing demonstrated that Grant was not confined to a single neighborhood or one method of attack. By this point, three men had been killed in separate incidents, but investigators still had not established that the cases were the work of the same offender.
The Murder and Discovery of Harry Carrillo
The case that finally brought investigators to Grant was the death of 16-year-old Harry Carrillo, who lived at 125 West 109th Street. Grant had known Carrillo for several months before his death.
On December 29, 1976, children playing along a path in Central Park discovered Carrillo's remains. His body had been dismembered into three sections, placed in plastic garbage bags and transported to the park in a shopping cart. The disposal of the body was considerably more elaborate than in Grant's earlier known crimes.
The surviving contemporary accounts clearly verify December 29, 1976, as the date Carrillo's body was discovered. They do not establish with the same certainty the exact time at which he died, so December 29 should be understood as the verified discovery date rather than an independently confirmed time of death.
Known Victims
- Philip Mitchell, 18 — Killed September 14, 1973. The attack occurred at Grant's residence at 203 West 91st Street, Manhattan, New York City. Mitchell was struck with an iron bar and stabbed; his body was subsequently thrown from the roof of the building.
- George Muniz, 23 — Killed in 1975; an exact day cannot be verified reliably from the available contemporary accounts. Police said the murder occurred in Grant's West 91st Street apartment. Muniz's body was found inside a metal trash container in front of 210 West 91st Street, Manhattan.
- Harold Phillips, 30 — Killed October 3, 1976, inside his apartment at 27 East 124th Street, Manhattan. Police determined that Phillips had been beaten to death with a hammer.
- Harry Carrillo, 16 — His remains were discovered December 29, 1976, along a path in Central Park, Manhattan. The exact date of death is not independently established in the available contemporary reporting. His dismembered remains had been placed in plastic bags and transported to the park in a shopping cart.
The Investigation
Carrillo's murder provided investigators with the connection they had lacked in the earlier cases. Grant was reportedly among the last people known to have been with Carrillo, causing detectives to examine him more closely. Police questioned Grant repeatedly during the following days and began assembling circumstantial evidence connecting him to the teenager.
On January 10, 1977, investigators brought Grant in for further questioning. After several hours, he confessed to Carrillo's killing. The interrogation then widened dramatically. Grant admitted responsibility for the murders of Mitchell, Muniz and Phillips as well, suddenly providing police with explanations for three previously separate homicide investigations.
Grant described experiencing an uncontrollable urge to kill. His confessions allowed investigators to reconstruct a series of murders stretching back more than three years. The locations also revealed a pattern that had previously gone unnoticed: two of the killings were closely connected with Grant's West 91st Street residence, while another victim's body had been disposed of only a few doors away.
Conviction and Imprisonment
Grant was prosecuted for the four murders. On June 30, 1978, he was convicted of four counts of second-degree murder. He received four life sentences, ordered to run concurrently. The sentence ensured that he would remain imprisoned for the crimes that had gone undetected for years.
The Grant case illustrates the difficulties investigators faced when murders occurred at different times, in different neighborhoods and through different methods. Mitchell's death initially appeared to have been staged as a fall, Muniz was concealed in a trash container, Phillips was killed in his own apartment, and Carrillo's remains were abandoned in Central Park. Until Grant became the focus of the Carrillo investigation, there had been no publicly recognized single offender connecting all four cases.
Death
Waldo Grant remained in the custody of the New York State prison system for the remainder of his life. He died on June 6, 2023, at Albany Medical Center in Albany, New York. He was 76 years old. His confirmed criminal record remained four murders committed between 1973 and 1976, making him one of the lesser-known serial killers active in New York City during the 1970s.
