Joseph Baldi (January 16, 1941 - October 17, 2009), known as the Queens Creeper, stabbed four women and girls to death as they slept in their homes in the Jamaica neighbourhood of Queens, New York, between September 1970 and June 1972. Areti Koularmanis was killed on September 20, 1970. Camille Perniola, 17, was stabbed in her bed on March 18, 1972, and Clara Toriello, 21, on 13 April. Deborah Januszko was knifed in the chest through an open window at about 3.30am on June 17, 1972 and told her parents what had happened before she died; her age is given as 15 in the court record and 16 elsewhere.
The sequence turned on an administrative failure. Baldi had been indicted in December 1971 for the attempted murder of a police officer, was found incompetent to stand trial and was confined at Creedmoor State Hospital. Because the district attorney's office was not told of the transfer and the hospital was not told of the indictment, he was released on January 21, 1972. Three of the four killings followed within five months.
He was arrested on June 21, 1972, four days after the Januszko killing, and gave a tape-recorded re-enactment of four murders. He raised an insanity defence on all the indictments; a psychiatric report found a personality disorder but no incapacity to stand trial. He was convicted on four counts of murder and one of attempted murder and received two life sentences. He died at Sing Sing on October 17, 2009, aged 68.
The appeal, People v. Baldi, became the leading New York authority on ineffective assistance of counsel, argued on his lawyer's failure to develop the insanity defence given his psychiatric history.