Pray for Us Sinners: The Hail Mary Murder

The murder of Robert Solomine, Jr. is as senseless as a crime can get. What's so abhorrent is that there's no motive and the boys involved were so young to be that callous. These kids just got it in their heads that Rob had to die, and found enjoyment in plotting ways to get rid of him. Although the three boys who were present tried to convince the judge that they didn't think Wanger would actually go through with it, they did nothing to stop him or help Solomine before or during the murder. If it seemed unreal to them, it's indicative of their lack of value of life. I admire Solomine's mother for her ability to channel her energies to making changes in the juvenile justice system, but I disagree with her that the boys' behavior was due to lack of parenting. Many parents have rebellious or wayward children, through no fault of their own. This was a very well written and sad story.

They were as different as six teenage guys could be. They ranged from fourteen to eighteen years old. One was an altar boy and Eagle Scout; another was a high-school dropout who worshiped the Mafia. Nevertheless, Robert Solimine remained the perpetual outsider, the kid too nerdy to ever fit in. But what started as cruel but not unusual ways to punish one of their own escalated into an unthinkable plot for murder. Finally, while all six boys sat in parked cars next to their high school, Solimine was convinced to recite the Hail Mary-and then garroted with an extension cord from behind. Suddenly, the plan sketchily, even jokingly, conceived by a group of seemingly typical suburban New Jersey youths had become an irretrievable act of monstrous evil, a crime that horrified the nation. From the reporter who alone covered both trials in the Hail Mary murder case comes a riveting true crime story-and a shocking expose of the violence simmering beneath the deceptively placid surface of the Ameriacn teenage dream.

The best part of this book is the author's description of southeast Passaic County, New Jersey, where the action almost exclusively takes place. Clifton, Paterson, and the industrial Passaic River valley are evoked quite well, especially the area's weird mix of industrial might, industrial blight, and lower- to middle-middle-class residential. The kids are the same dumb (but the author unconvincingly claims throughout the book that most of them are smart), wasted youth described in so many true crime books lately (e.g., Bully, Smoked), with an ethnic twist. All you need to know about a crime that was sensational back in the early 1990s but is probably forgotten now, even in northern New Jersey.