By Bill Parry
Over 70 Jackson Heights residents joined LGBTQ activists and City Councilman Daniel Dromm (D-Jackson Heights) for a candlelight vigil Wednesday to mark the 25th anniversary of Julio Rivera’s brutal anti-gay murder. The solemn crowd, that included Rivera’s brother and sister, gathered at the southwest corner of 78th Street and 37th Avenue that bears Rivera’s name.
The 29-year-old bartender was heading home from work in the early morning hours when he was set upon by a three-man “hunting party” from a skinhead gang. Two of them, Erik Brown and Esat Bici, lured Rivera into the schoolyard of PS 69, where they beat him with a hammer and beer bottle.
The third man, Daniel Doyle, joined in stabbing Rivera and causing his death, according to the city medical examiner. Following police and media inaction, the gay and lesbian community in Jackson Heights organized rallies against hate crimes and held vigils for Rivera.
During the next three years, LGBTQ organizations were formed and grew more vocal as the NYPD “looked the other way.”
“The police were not doing a proper investigation which was the norm back then. They called it a drug deal gone bad,” filmmaker Richard Shpuntoff , who has been working on a documentary on the subject for eight years,said. “The murder of Julio Rivera was, unfortunately, not the first gay bashing murder in the neighborhood by any means. There had actually been a number of murders of gay men in similar circumstances during the ’80s.”
Shpuntoff grew up in Elmhurst.
“I remember as a teenager my mother telling me to be careful as I walked by 37th Road—the gay cruising strip known as ‘Vaseline Alley’—because gay men had been murdered there,” he said. The gay and lesbian community began to organize to get the police to “respond properly.”
“Phase 2 began when Ed Sedarbaum founded Queens Gays and Lesbians United drawing non-gays to the Community United Methodist Church,” Shpuntoff said. “The third phase was Danny Dromm and the Queens Lesbian and Gay Pride Committee. That’s where the political traction really began. Dromm said we had to show numbers, that tens of thousands of gay people in Queens were your friends and neighbors, and that’s how the parade was born.”
Dromm had made a name for himself as an award-winning, openly gay teacher who took on the District 24 board over using the Children of the Rainbow Curriculum in public schools in 1992. He founded the Queens Pride Parade, which is now the second largest Pride event in New York City each year.
Shpuntoff was the official photographer during the parade’s first 20 years. He lives with his wife in Buenos Aires, Argentina where he is working on the final cut of “Julio from Jackson Heights,” the documentary he’s been working on since 2007.
“The film begins with the Julio Rivera murder to the first parade, it encapsulates all the changes that took place during the three years in between,” he said. Shpuntoff is currently deciding which film festival he will submit his documentary to and he will eventually “bring it back” to Queens.
Reach reporter Bill Parry by e-mail at bparr
