The Paper of Record for East and West Villages, Lower East Side, Soho, Noho, Little Italy and Chinatown
January 21, 2016 • FREE Volume 5 • Number 24
An E.V. landlord’s past assault conviction has his tenants more worried BY YANNIC RACK
W
hile dozens of East Village residents have accused their new landlord of shady practices ever since he bought their buildings last year, they may be surprised to find out that he also has a criminal past. Raphael Toledano, the
25-year-old who last September expanded his real estate portfolio in the neighborhood with the purchase of 16 buildings, is the subject of a state investigation into tenant harassment. In addition, The Villager has learned that he was convicted of aggravated assault and TOLEDANO continued on p. 16
Squadron slams Senate for refusing to consider the Elevator Safety Act BY YANNIC RACK
T
enants and politicians joined in calling on state legislators to pass a bill that would improve regulation and licensing for elevator workers after a 25-year-old man was crushed to death in an elevator on New Year’s Eve. Stephen Hewett-Brown,
an aspiring rapper from the Bronx, was heading to a party at 131 Broome St. when he was fatally injured in an accident just before midnight on Dec. 31. When the elevator got stuck between floors, HewettBrown reportedly helped others get out, but was pinned ELEVATOR continued on p. 4
Front row, from left, Lenore, 7, Diane, 8, Jenean, 9, and Dorothy, 10, with Romola and David Lloyd Wilkie — later known as Adam Purple — on their passport photo to emigrate to Australia in 1964.
All Purple’s daughters BY LINCOLN ANDERSON
E
verything is true,” said Diane Beastrom. One of Adam Purple’s former stepdaughters, she called The Villager three weeks ago — the day after the newspaper’s publication of “The dark side of Purple,” an exposé of the urban gardening legend’s shocking history of sexual abuse and imprisonment — to tell her own story. Beastrom, in turn, provided a contact number for her
sister, Dorothy Brooks, in Australia, who in short order recounted to The Villager her years of nightly sexual abuse, culminating in rape, by Purple, real name David Lloyd Wilkie. “He was truly a horrible monster,” Dorothy said. “I am still recovering.” Diane also provided a phone number for Lenore Wilkie, David Wilkie’s youngest biological daughter, who, in phone interviews, similarly shared her vivid memories of growing up in the sexually deviant
household, which she credits with sending her life on a downward spiral into decades of homelessness and prostitution. Lenore also said that when she went to live with Wilkie on the Lower East Side when she was 16, he had her put in an IUD — her assumption being he clearly hoped to have sex with her — and that it left her permanently unable to bear children. In “The dark side of Purple,” Jenean, Wilkie’s oldest PURPLE continued on p. 8
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Twin Peaks in the flesh.................page 21 www.EastVillagerNews.com | May 14, 2014
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