Back in 1984, WNET Public Television produced and filmed Hizzoner! a one man play starring Tony Lo Bianco at The Egg in Albany, NY. This theater, officially named the Empire State Institute for the Performing Arts was called The Egg to try to convince folks that it’s brutalist architecture was egg shaped, and not a near perfect representation of a giant, gray toilet bowl.

Back in middle school through high-school, I was a volunteer with the theater and was on hand as an usher or coat check for several plays, performance by Dizzy Gillespie, Pinetop Perkins, and a reading by local author William Kennedy. Our bosses at The Egg were Bowtie Blotto from the band that gave us the MTV hit, I wanna be a Lifeguard, and a lovely lady who was one of the heirs to the Cadbury Chocolate empire. We hosted after-parties which were attended by people you would not expect to see in the Capital District - unless my memory is warped, we had visits from Queen Noor, Rosemary Clooney, and most amazing of all as far as I was concerned at age 16, Adrienne Barbeau, star of my nana’s favorite show Maude, and Escape from New York and Swamp Thing.

“Go up and tell Ms. Barbeau how much you liked her in Swamp Thing!” Mrs. Cadbury urged, but I was dumbstruck as she walked by me in a slinky gown with a plunging neckline, holding a plastic flute of a sparkling wine that could not legally be called champagne. Despite my sudden inability to speak around Barbeau, I had terrific conversations and lots of laughs meeting Pinetop, Diz, and stage actors you’d recognize from flu medicine commercials. When the time came to chat with Tony Lo Bianco, I knew just what I wanted to tell him.

We didn’t have our usual cast party after the taping of Hizzoner! but I had my chance to corner Tony as he dined alone at the restaurant in the old Albany Hilton that used to be on State Street.

“Mister Lo Bianco, you did awesome playing Mayor LaGuardia. Hey, did you know you killed my mom’s aunt in a movie!”

Tony did not know. He put down his fork and looked at me with wide-eyed concern.

“Wow. I’m sorry.”

“Oh no, my Aunt Eleanor said she was a nut. It’s okay.”

This was true. My Aunt Mary had moved in with my grandfather’s family after her mother died and her father remarried Janet Fay. According to my Aunt Mary’s cousin, my Aunt Eleanor, after the sudden and young death of her husband, Janet developed an unhealthy religiosity, surrounding herself with votive candles and Catholic art. Her obsession drove the rest of the family away and in her isolation she sought out companionship in the lonely hearts personal ads in the back of the newspaper. This was used to gain her confidence by serial bigamist Raymond Fernandez and his partner Martha Beck.

Janet brought her new friends - Martha posed as the dowager sister of Raymond - to visit Aunt Mary and her husband, my Uncle Al Spencer, an OB/GYN in Amsterdam, NY (also an Episcopalian who bad mouthed us Irish Catholics every chance he got).

Though not suspicious at the time of their meeting, when Janet had not been heard of for some time, they started to worry. A strange, typed letter showed up at their home, and Aunt Mary brought it to the Albany Police. Janet’s remains were soon found in a shallow grave dug in the basement of a Long Island home. The couple dubbed in the press as “The Lonely Hearts Killers” were suspected of carrying out up to twenty murders in addition to the three they confessed to. For the gruesome murder of Janet Fay, they were sent to the chair at Sing Sing on March 8, 1951. The old timers in the family told me they were the last two convicts sent to the chair in NY, but they were wrong. Executions were carried out by the Empire State until 1963 when they were ruled unconstitutional.

I always meant to apologize for disturbing Tony’s dinner, and figured that sooner or later our paths would cross again, but that never happened. Tony died at home in Maryland at the age of 87 in 2024. In his 70s, there was a revival of his one man play, retitled "The Little Flower” and I am sorry that I was not able to get back home to NY for it.

When Uncle Al died, and the family were gathered at his funeral in Amsterdam, my Uncle Lou said “Looks like old Al finally got us papists into the Episcopal Church!” I can’t figure out how Uncle Al could have been fooled by Raymond Fernandez’ devout Catholic persona. Every time I tried to ask, he’d go off on how I needed to join his church, while my Aunt Mary would remark on how priestly I looked in my black heavy metal t-shirts, and just needed a Roman collar. Aunt Eleanor would take me aside and whisper “Aunt Janet was just cuckoo.” and tell me not to worry about a past event that the family came to regard as a curiosity, rather than a horrible trauma. They had the Famine, the Depression and two world wars for that.