Those living in Baltimore in 1969 can never forget the shocking murder of 11-year old Esther Lebowitz, H’yd, who was brutally killed by Stephan Wayne Young.
Stephen Wayne Young was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Over the years, his case has come up for parole many times, but he has been thankfully denied for many reasons. However, Young now has a real chance of being released. Because of a judge’s decision in a case referred to as the “Unger ruling”, scores of convicted murderers are being freed to walk and live amongst us. Why is this happening – because the “Unger ruling” overturned their convictions on a technicality.
The Young conviction is now up for evaluation based on this ruling and is poised to be overturned resulting in the release of Stephen Wayne Young.
However, States Attorney, Gregg Bernstein and his assistants have decided that they will fight to keep him in prison. The attorneys in this case have told us that it would help support their efforts to keep Young behind bars, if as many people as possible showed up in court to support Young remaining in prison.
The case will be heard on Thursday, March 20, at 2:00 pm at 111 N. Calvert St. (Old Post Office, across from the regular Court House) Room 227.
We have one chance to make this work. In order to accomplish this, we need you to participate and strongly urge you to be there if you can. We must do everything possible to keep this brutal murderer behind bars.
The Article below is from the Owings Mills Times 2006
Almost 36 years after murdering 11-year old Esther Lebowitz, Wayne Stephen Young last week was denied parole for the 11th time.
His parole was refused largely because of the efforts of the same people his crime so rattled in 1969.
Letters and faxes from residents of Northwest Baltimore County who grew up in and around Park Heights and remember the girl’s grisly murder helped convince the two members of the Maryland Parole Commission who heard the case to rule against Young’s parole “in minutes,” a witness at the hearing Jan. 10 said.
Neil Schachter, president of the Northwest Citizens Patrol, said the board showed Young a file with letters and petitions from the community “2 to 3 inches thick” containing pleas to keep him in prison.
That community outpouring, Schachter said, “made an obvious difference.”
One handwritten letter with 25 signatures urged the board to refuse Young’s parole request because the murder had caused “fear and trepidation in every home.”
Another letter said that Young “stole the life of Esther Lebowitz, and with it stole the innocence of many children growing up in that time period.”
Schachter, who was named their designee by the Lebowitz family – Lebowitz’s parents, brother and sister moved to Israel shortly after the girl’s murder – testified that the crime was so horrific that Young “couldn’t be let back out onto the streets.”
Schachter told the board that, even though the crime was committed 36 years ago, “you can’t take a chance” on someone who committed such an act on a little girl.
To understand the community’s fury one must understand the permanent impression the murder left on those who lived nearby.
One September day
On Sept. 29, 1969, Rabbi Boruch Milikowsky was driving three girls home from the Bais Yaakov School on Greenspring Avenue. One was Esther Lebowitz.
Her mother, who worked at the school, had given her 50 cents that day to buy a notebook clip at a local drugstore, located at the corner of West Rogers and Park Heights avenues, several blocks from their home.
Miliknowsky dropped her off at the store at 1:45 p.m.
The family never saw the fifth-grader alive again.
Her body was found by three police officers at 10 a.m. Oct. 1 near the University of Baltimore in midtown Baltimore.
According to a Sun story of Oct. 2, 1969, assistant medical examiner Dr. Ronald Kornblum said Lebowitz had been struck on the head with a blunt instrument “at least 17 times.”
Police were able to match “very refined” gravel found at the scene with gravel used in fish tanks.
Young, then 23, and his mother owned Tropical Fish Haven on Park Heights Avenue. The fish store sat 50 feet from the drugstore where Miliknowsky dropped off the girl.
Indicted on rape and murder charges, Young was convicted of the murder charge in November 1970.
He is serving a life sentence at the Maryland Correctional Training Center in Hagerstown.
The impact
For Gail and Lauren, two girls who grew up in the neighborhood near Lebowitz, the impact of the crime has been lasting. Almost 40 years later, both women requested their last names be withheld for fear of retribution should Young ever be paroled.
Gail lives in Reisterstown. She was 12 years old on that September day and lived in the same Park Heights neighborhood as Lebowitz.
Lauren, who lived nearby, now resides in Pikesville.
The murder was like a stone thrown into a calm pond, the women said, the ripples endless and far-reaching.
“He robbed her (Lebowitz) of her life and robbed us of our innocence,” Gail said.
Lauren said “to this day” she is terrified. Anytime she hears of a child molested or kidnapped, she reflexively thinks of Lebowitz.
For days after Lebowitz disappeared, the crime was front-page news, they said.
Terrified parents wouldn’t let children outside unattended. In fact, life didn’t return to normal, even long after Young was arrested Oct. 3.
“It was always there, hanging over us,” Lauren said.
They said even though the crime happened so long ago, they were at such an impressionable age that today, as mothers themselves, they automatically think of Young when they worry about their children.
“He was our own personal boogeyman,” Lauren said.
Short-termed relief
The women were among many others in the community who were ecstatic when word spread last week that Young had again been refused parole.
“That’s all anybody is talking about,” said a woman answering phones at Bais Yaakov School.
But the relief may be short-lived.
The same people who fought so hard this month to keep Young behind bars must fight the same battle three years from now.
According to L. Thomas Pennewell, program manager for hearings for the Maryland Parole Commission, Young is eligible to have another parole hearing in 2009.
“When they said life in prison, we thought they should have meant life in prison,” Gail said.
Lauren agrees.
“Life should be life.”
Gail agrees.
“I don’t want him on the streets,” she said. “I don’t want him walking the Earth.”
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2 Responses
What a mean person. Too many of them
I remember it so well. The incredible fears. The hours spent by the men in the community looking for her–even on Shabbos. The howls of pain at the levaya. And the stories–the fascination with a child innocently walking into a store never to be seen again. I often think about you Esther. I often think about the sick mind that can perpetrate such a crime against a child. I think about your parents–can one ever come to terms with the death of a child in such a gruesome way? People rot in jail for crimes involving money. He took away the potential of a lifetime–let him stay put for his lifetime.