The abridged story of Nelson Newhull Part I

Born into privilege in December of 1924, Nelson Newhull (name changed) was the only son of a wealthy New York family. His father was a lawyer and his mother was a Rochester socialite. He saw little of either growing up and was raised primarily by nannies who catered to his every whim. Nelson was a uniquely bright child and could have excelled in school. However, as a youngster he was often overtaken by abruptly changing fits of anger and depression. He frequently overreacted to criticism. Around other people he was loud and boastful, and without provocation he commonly insulted strangers and acquaintances alike. As a consequence, his time at school was a challenge. Despite his exceptional cognitive ability, his grades suffered. He grew averse to school. He was frequently truant in his teens, preferring instead to play cards and chess at illegal gambling dens around the city.

In 1943 he left high school and immediately enlisted in the army. He was sent to the U.K. after boot camp to participate in the Allied landing at Normandy. He survived the war, and despite losing his left eye, he remained in France until 1947. During his last two years in the army, he continued playing chess and poker for money and by the end of his tour he had amassed close to $100,000 in winnings. (He later boasted to my father that some of his money had been made through petty thievery and murder. In one story, he claimed to have killed the owners of a cigar factory in France in order to raid the place for cigars. He told my father that he and a few other men netted 2 truckloads of cigars and sold them to Allied troops for a huge profit.)

In addition to gambling, Nelson had also developed a penchant for drinking and prostitutes while he was in France. Upon his return to New York, with no real aims, no friends, and no want for money, Nelson became a flashy, hard drinking, shit talking professional gambler. To gambling events, he often carried "good luck" Nazi paraphernalia he had acquired during the war. For nearly 13 years, he supported his lavish self-indulgent lifestyle travelling the country to play poker and book horse racing and sporting events. Around 1960, Nelson began loansharking as well.

That was when his previously "friendly" relations with Italian organized crime figures turned sour. Nelson was never actually liked in his gambling circles, but he was tolerated because his book making activities made the Italian wire rooms money. All that changed in 1960 when he roughed up a low level mob guy over a bad debt. The Italian response, whatever it was, forced Nelson to flee the U.S. and so he bought a 50 ft yacht and taught himself to sail. That was how he ended up in the Bahamas. For the next few years he improved his sailing acumen and used the yacht to make a living, chartering tourists around the islands. Although he had largely ceased to gamble, he had continued full throttle to drink heavily everyday. Sometimes, to combat his worsening mania he would drink 4 or 5 liters of whiskey per week.

It was at some point in the mid sixties then, that while he was still chartering two things happened: he was diagnosed with rectal cancer and then he met his first wife. She was his nurse and also a uterine cancer survivor herself so she felt especially empathetic toward Nelson when she first met him in the hospital. Partly due to the hysterectomy and partly due to childhood abuse, she had extremely low self esteem. Around Nelson she was exceptionally submissive . He took complete advantage of her and she accepted his brutality for 3 years until she finally found the courage to leave him. The rectal cancer stayed. In the year before he met my father, it was surgically removed along with his rectum. In its place, a colostomy bag clung to his side.

It was then, in 1969 that my father met Nelson at a marina in Freeport. They happened to be docked along side each other and would say "good morning" or "hello" on occasion. My father could see that Nelson owned a large yacht, was well dressed, and that he wore a large crimson patch over his left eye. He would later come to know all the rest first hand and at great risk to his own life.