Boy Fatally Beaten With Poker as He Pleads
with Widow to Return to Queens Home

(Maspeth, June 4, 1935, NY Times) Fraturtina Grabowski, 49 years old, of 56-02 Sixty-first Street, Maspeth, Queens, a widow with seven children, was arrested last night charged with beating her son, Chester, 13, to death with a poker. Mrs. Grabowski was locked up in the Glendale police station to await arraignment today in Ridgewood magistrate's court on a charge of homicide.
The boy was taken to St. John’s Hospital, Long Island City, about 2 P.M. with a deep wound on his right side of the head. Dr. Anthony Mira said the child’s skull was fractured and punctured with cuts on the brain. The boy died at 10 P.M. without regaining consciousness.
Inspector John Gallagher and Captain Edward Burke, who investigated, said Mrs. Grabowski was visiting Benedict Piotrowski, 55, of 60-17 Perry Avenue, Maspeth, a distant relative, in the early afternoon. Chester, home from school for lunch, stopped at the Perry Avenue tenement a little after 1 o’clock to urge his mother to go home.
Mrs. Grabowski became angry and ordered the boy to leave. He persisted. Enraged, the mother flung plates and silverware at the boy, the policeman said, and finally chased him down the stairs, belaboring him with a poker she had snatched from a stove.
Chester collapsed in the hallway and Mrs. Grabowski sought the aid of neighbors. Mrs. Grabowski was hysterical when taken into custody and was unable to tell a coherent story. The police got most of their facts from Piotrowski.
Four other sons live with Mrs. Grabowski in Maspeth. They are Anthony, 21; William, 19; Benjamin, 18 and Edward, 5. Two sons by a former marriage live in Poland. Mrs. Grabowski’s second husband, a chicle mixer, died in February 1934. Since then she by doing housework, and Anthony, by factory labor, have supported the family.