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Shooting Incident at New York Masonic Lodge Building
The documents on this webpage relate to a shooting incident at a Masonic Lodge building in New York in March 2004. They were collected from what I believe are reliable sources, and are generally in chronological order. The only purpose of this webpage is to provide freemasons and others with a single place where information about this incident is collected.
Issued 0310 March 9, 2004
STATEMENT BY CARL J. FITJE, GRAND MASTER OF MASONS
RE: TRAGIC INCIDENT AT THE MASONIC HALL IN PATCHOGUE, NY
“On behalf of all Masons in New York, I extend our deepest condolences and sympathies to the family of the Brother who lost his life so tragically this evening.
This was not a Masonic Lodge meeting and no formal and approved Masonic ceremonies were scheduled to take place this evening. Firearms play no role in Masonic Lodge meetings or Masonic events of any kind.
We are fully cooperating with all of the appropriate law enforcement officials.”
Carl. J Fitje
Grand Master
Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of the State of New York
PATCHOGUE, N.Y. (AP) — A man was shot in the face and killed during a Masonic initiation ceremony by a fellow member who mistakenly pulled out a real pistol instead of a blank gun, police said Tuesday.
The 76-year-old man who fired the shot was charged with manslaughter.
William James, 47, was killed Monday night at the Southside Masonic Lodge.
“We believe it was completely accidental,” said Suffolk County Detective Lt. Jack Fitzpatrick. The man under arrest, Albert Eid, was “stunned and distraught” at James’ death, he said.
The initiation rite was aimed at scaring the new member.
According to Fitzgerald, the Masons sat James in a chair and placed cans on a platform around his head. Eid, standing about 20 feet away, was supposed to fire a blank gun, and a man holding a stick was supposed to knock the cans over to make James think they had been hit by bullets.
Eid had two guns - a .22-caliber pistol loaded with blanks and a .38-caliber with real bullets - and apparently pulled the wrong one out of his pocket, the lieutenant said. He said the weapons are about the same size.
Eid had a permit for the gun. Police said it was not clear why he took it to the ceremony. He pleaded innocent and bail was set at $2,500.
Man Killed During Masonic Initiation
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 9, 2004
Filed at 5:03 p.m. ET
PATCHOGUE, N.Y. (AP) — A man was shot in the face and killed during a Masonic initiation ceremony by a fellow member who mistakenly pulled out a real pistol instead of a blank gun, police said Tuesday.
The 76-year-old man who fired the shot was charged with manslaughter.
William James, 47, was killed Monday night at the Southside Masonic Lodge.
“We believe it was completely accidental,” said Suffolk County Detective Lt. Jack Fitzpatrick. The man under arrest, Albert Eid, was “stunned and distraught” at James’ death, he said.
The initiation rite was aimed at scaring the new member.
According to Fitzgerald, the Masons sat James in a chair and placed cans on a platform around his head. Eid, standing about 20 feet away, was supposed to fire a blank gun, and a man holding a stick was supposed to knock the cans over to make James think they had been hit by bullets.
Eid had two guns — a .22-caliber pistol loaded with blanks and a .38-caliber with real bullets — and apparently pulled the wrong one out of his pocket, the lieutenant said. He said the weapons are about the same size.
Eid had a permit for the gun. Police said it was not clear why he took it to the ceremony. He pleaded innocent and bail was set at $2,500.
A Ritual Gone Fatally Wrong Puts Light on Masonic Secrecy
By PATRICK HEALY
Published: March 10, 2004
PATCHOGUE, N.Y., March 9 — The initiation rituals at the Masonic lodge here had been bathed in secrecy over the years. The climax of Monday night’s ceremony was to be a simple prank. A new member of the Fellow Craft Club, a select group within the lodge, would sit in a chair while an older member stood 20 feet away and fired a handgun loaded with blanks.
That ritual went terribly wrong inside Southside Masonic Lodge No. 493, in a basement littered with rat traps, tin cans, a 9-foot-tall guillotine, and a setup designed to mimic walking a plank.
The shooter, a 76-year-old Mason, Albert Eid, was carrying two guns, a .22-caliber handgun with blanks in his left pocket, and a .32-caliber gun with live rounds in his right pocket.
He reached into his right pants pocket, pulled out the wrong gun and shot William James, a 47-year-old fellow Mason, in the face, killing him, the authorities said.
Mr. Eid, a World War II veteran who had a license to carry his own pistol and often did, pleaded not guilty Tuesday afternoon to a charge of second-degree manslaughter and was released on $2,500 bail. He was wearing his blue Masonic jacket during his arraignment in Central Islip.
Suffolk County Police called the shooting an accident, the consequence of one man’s confusion. The fatality exposes this secret society, centuries old, to a rare degree of public scrutiny.
Late Monday night, police carried evidence and ritual objects out of the Masons’ one-story lodge in Patchogue. All day Tuesday, television reporters and curious neighbors examined the club’s bricked-over windows and peered into the front door to glimpse a bulletin board announcing the order’s recent charity efforts.
Masonic leaders statewide were quick to disavow the ritual and shooting, saying it was not Masonic custom to shoot guns at other members. Ron Steiner, a spokesman for the New York State Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons, which oversees all Masonic lodges in the state, said the social club was not officially tied to the Masonic organization.
“This is so far beyond the concept of reality it’s mind-boggling,” Mr. Steiner said. “I’ve never heard of anything like this.”
Mystery and suspicion are woven into the history of the Freemasons, who trace their roots to the stone workers’ guilds that built medieval Gothic cathedrals. The guilds evolved into secret clubs over the years with secret handshakes and rituals, and symbols like an all-seeing eye, pyramid and compass.
Over the years, the Southside Masonic Lodge members developed their own initiation rituals for the social club in the lodge that set them apart from most other Masonic organizations, members said. No members of the lodge could remember pistols being used in the rituals (they are not allowed in inside Masonic clubhouses), but some described initiations that were part prank, part exercise in trust.
One member, Michael Paquette, said that when he was initiated into the group five years ago, two mouse traps were placed before him, and he was told that one worked, and one was broken, he said. Another member tested the broken trap, then told Mr. Paquette to touch the live one. He did, and discovered that it, too, was a dud.
“It was really harmless things,” Mr. Paquette said. “It was just for you to be there and realize you were in good hands, and you didn’t have to fear anything.”
On Monday night, Mr. James and Mr. Eid were among 10 men who set to performing the club’s initiation.
Mr. James, the first to be initiated, sat down in a chair, and two tin cans were placed on a shelf by his head. The idea was for Mr. Eid to fire two blank rounds, and a man standing behind Mr. James would knock the cans down with a stick. And then it happened.
“This is a tragedy,” said Mr. Eid’s lawyer, James O’Rourke. “He is absolutely beyond grief-stricken. This is a mistake, not a criminal act.”
The Southside Masons are mostly middle-aged or retired men who come from middle-class backgrounds. The group once included about 500 members, but membership here and at other Masonic lodges has fallen over the years, and the group now has about 150 members, said Peter Berg, a member. There are about 67,000 Masons across New York State, and their numbers rose slightly last year, for the first time in a decade, Mr. Steiner said.
Orders like the Southside Masons seem more concerned today with Christmas parties and raising money for blood drives and children’s charities than ritual.
While Mr. James had only joined the Southside Masons in December, Mr. Eid had been a member for more than 30 years, other members said.
“He’s always there,” Mr. Paquette said of Mr. Eid. “He put most of his free time into the lodge.”
Fewer Masons knew Mr. James, but officials with the Town of Brookhaven, where he worked for the Planning Department, described him as a friendly man who seemed deeply devoted to his family. Mr. James’s wife, Susan, said she had no idea what was happening at the Masons’ lodge the night he was shot.
“This is so very sudden, and I’m just very upset,” she said outside the couple’s home in Medford. “To me, it was just a social thing.”
Faiza Akhtar contributed reporting for this article.
Society traces roots to ancient practices
BY JOSEPH MALLIA
STAFF WRITER
March 10, 2004
Not since Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia has there been a death in the United States like the one that took place in a Monday night ceremony in a Masonic lodge in Patchogue, according to two historians.
The death of William James of Medford at the Southside Masonic Temple appears to be one of only two in the secret society’s more than 250-year history in this country, where it has long been a centrist organization with a membership roster that extends from George Washington through Al Gore.
“To find someone else who was killed in a ritual Freemasonry ceremony, you’d have to go back to the 1740s,” said Tony Fels, chairman of the University of San Francisco history department. “I believe an initiate’s shirt caught fire, and it caused Benjamin Franklin to leave Masonry for a time.”
Society’s roots
Freemasonry’s modern era started in 1717 with the founding of the first Grand Lodge of England, according to a history of the society compiled by the University of Virginia library. Its roots are in the guilds, or unions, of medieval stonemasons who used secret handshakes and passwords as proof of their status as masters, journeymen and apprentices.
The society’s own legends trace its origins to the building of King Solomon’s temple and Greek religious practices. Its symbol is a compass and square, with the letter G, which may signify either God or geometry.
Like the Patchogue incident, the death in Franklin’s time was not related to an authorized Freemasonry ritual, but was rather a less formal event that went awry, said Steven C. Bullock, a professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, and author of “Revolutionary Brotherhood,” a book on Freemasonry’s role in forming the American democratic system.
Both Bullock and Fels said they had never heard of a ritual involving a firearm. “In my reading, I have never come across the using of a blank gun, much less a real one. It’s always more prosaic. Rustling boxes, stamping feet,” Fels said. “There are various sound and tactile effects that are intended to add emotional charge to the rituals.”
The intent of noise is not to inspire fear as much as to make the ritual and its accompanying ideas more memorable, Fels said. He said his expertise is in 18th- and 19th-century Freemasonry practices, which are very similar, and in many cases identical, to today’s versions.
Many former New York governors were Freemasons, as were U.S. presidents Gerald Ford, Harry Truman and Theodore Roosevelt, said Ronald J. Steiner, a public relations official with the New York Grand Lodge, based in Manhattan.
In March last year, Gov. George Pataki agreed to become a Freemason, though he did not follow through, Steiner said. “First he said, ‘Doesn’t that involve a lot of rituals?’ … He expressed interest and within a matter of months he changed his mind.”
At the time, a Pataki spokeswoman said the governor, who is Catholic, declined “in deference to his church.” Church officials historically have objected to an attitude among Masons regarded as anti-clerical.
Its membership
Steiner said there are about 1.5 million Freemasons in the nation and about 67,000 in New York. It is not considered a religion, but a fraternal order, though Steiner said it is compatible with Christianity, Judaism, Islam and other monotheistic religions.
Women may not join, but have a separate group within the Masonic organization, the Order of the Eastern Star. The womens’ group has similar secret rituals.
Men are invited to join the Masons based on their good reputation in the community, and those who join often say they did so for its spiritual aspects, which include prayer, and a sense of community, the scholars said.
Freemasonry’s basic tenets are brotherly love, caring for the community through philanthropy, and truth.
Each state has its own Grand Lodge, which is the highest authority in its jurisdiction and sets the rules of all individual groups. There are 650 lodges in New York and more than 30 on Long Island, Steiner said. There is no overall U.S. society.
The three levels of Freemasonry are entered apprentice, fellow craft and master mason, with each lodge headed by a worshipful master. In medieval times, stonemasons in Europe who traveled from one city to another, building cathedrals, used secret passwords and handshakes to identify themselves as members of each of these three grades. The secrets were closely guarded because higher grades got higher wages, and that secrecy carried over to the fraternal Freemasons order.
At each of the three initial levels of initiation, a Freemason learns of secret signs, words and rituals, and gives an oath to keep those secret. Those vows also accompany higher levels of initiation, including the Scottish Rite - which involves a guillotine. Dr. Joseph Guillotin, the guillotine’s namesake, was a Freemason.
Bullock said he doubted the men who witnessed the death in Patchogue will withhold information from investigators because of vows of secrecy to the organization. The ritual was not sanctioned, and therefore is not covered by their oaths, he said.
To his family and friends, simply ‘an awesome guy’
BY ERIN TEXEIRA, INDRANI SEN AND STEPHANIE McCRUMMEN
STAFF WRITERS
March 10, 2004
The man shot to death in a bizarre ritual Monday night was a gentle man, relatives said, a devoted husband who loved his friends and the Harley- Davidson motorcycle he’d painted with stars and stripes and fitted with a license plate that read “GBA,” for God Bless America.
William James was a Vietnam veteran who did not believe in guns, said his stepdaughter, Tiffany O’Reilly, who had just flown up from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and gathered last night with others at James’ beige ranch house in Medford, her grief mingling with anger.
“He was an awesome guy,” she said, “an awesome husband … He had just spent the weekend with family and friends. It wasn’t a special occasion, that’s just what he does…”
“We don’t understand. … [The Masons] put out a statement saying they don’t have anything to do with firearms, but why was one there? Why did they take him from my mom? That was her life. That’s all she has.”
James, 47, was an imposing man with an unimposing demeanor. He was 6 feet 2 and 260 pounds, wore a beard and a pony tail and drew maps for a living.
Since 1988, he worked for the Town of Brookhaven, where he could be counted on as a calm presence in a busy planning department often filled with tension, said his colleague, Donn Larson, who described James as the happy-go-lucky sort.
“He related well to all people,” he said.
James’ friends would tease him sometimes for his slow, careful driving, and for his fear of flu shots, but it rolled off him.
“He was definitely one to make fun of himself and laugh at himself,” Larson said. “He had no ego at all.”
He never talked much about the Masons or why he wanted to join, Larson said, though James had a desire to help. He had talked about donating his pony tail to a charity that makes wigs for cancer patients.
James had three children from two prior marriages.
His stepchildren, O’Reilly and her brother, Eric, said he had raised them as if they were his own, and took them to baseball games and movies.
“It’s still unreal,” said Tiffany O’Reilly. “I don’t think we’ve fathomed it yet. It’s not like he was sick and we knew it was coming.”
An angry Eric O’Reilly said “It doesn’t make sense to me.”
Transcript of Paula Zahn Now, a television program on CNN (Cable News Network)
Program that aired Tuesday evening, March 9, 2004
ZAHN: A man fatally shot in the head inside a Masonic lodge has police saying it was a secret initiation rite gone bad. It happened Monday at a Mason’s lodge on New York’s Long Island. And in a statement, the fraternal organization told us, “This was not a Masonic lodge meeting, and no formal and approved Masonic ceremonies were scheduled to take place. Firearms play no role in Masonic lodge meetings or Masonic events of any kind.”
But who are the Masons? Well, in the U.S., on the numbers, almost two million folks in the organization. And they have such famous living members, such as Bob Dole, Arnold Palmer, Sam Nunn. but it is still an organization shrouded in secrecy. Here to shed some light on the history and rituals of the Masons is Steven Bullock, a professor of history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.
Welcome.
STEVEN BULLOCK, PROF. OF HISTORY, WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INST.: Thank you for having me.
ZAHN: Our pleasure. Briefly explain to us who the Masons are and what they do.
BULLOCK: Well, the Masons are a fraternal order which assumed their modern form somewhere in the early 1700s. And since then, they’ve spread around the world. They still — as you said, about 1.8 million Masons in the United States. And they do all sorts of things, from simply fraternal activities, the sense of fellowship among themselves, to all sorts of charitable activities.
ZAHN: Now, some folks, Steven, as you know, criticize Masonic ceremonies, which include colorful costumes, blindfolds, even some wine-filled skulls, as bizarre, even satanic, they say, in some cases. What are these rituals for, and why are they so secret? BULLOCK: Well, I think it’s almost hard for us to understand this ritual — these rituals today because for most of us, membership tends to involve filling out a membership form and sending in a check. But Masonic rituals are meant to be something deeper and fuller. They’re meant to — they’re meant to take people from one status, from the lives they lead, and to make them something different, to make them better people.
ZAHN: All right, but when people hear some of the language attached to the members, like Worshipful Master, Master of the Royal Secret, the Knight of the Brazen Serpent, they kind of think that’s kind of weird and wonder what all that represents.
BULLOCK: Again, it’s a different world than we’re used to, I think. And I think one key to understanding it is that — is that the lodge room is meant to be different, meant to be distinct, much like people today enjoy the different world that something like “The Lord of the Rings” creates. The lodge is meant to be that kind of separate place because it’s meant to make people — people distinct, to change them, to bring them into a brotherhood, into a new kind of family.
ZAHN: Let’s take a look at two popular myths surrounding the Masons. Did they design the national seal on the — on the — and put the pyramid and eye on the back of the dollar bill?
BULLOCK: A lot of people believe that, but there doesn’t seem to be much evidence for that. The idea of the all-seeing eye, that is God looking out at people all the time, is a symbol which goes back long before Freemasonry becomes a fraternal order, which it does in the early 1700s. Then when the Great Seal is created, the Masons on the committee — and those included Benjamin Franklin — they did not suggest this as their preferred symbol. So there doesn’t — there’s certainly no kind of secret message, kind of secret symbol there.
ZAHN: All right. One final question for you this evening, sir. The Catholic church doesn’t want its members to be associated with the Masons in any way. Why is that, if you can tell us briefly?
BULLOCK: Well, religious opposition to Freemasonry goes back a long way. And for the Catholic church and a number of conservative Protestant groups, there’s a sense that Freemasonry takes away from the work of the church.
ZAHN: Well, it’s all fascinating to learn about, and thank you for bringing your perspective to us this evening, Steven Bullock.
BULLOCK: Thank you.
ZAHN: And we want to thank you all for being with us tonight. We’ll be back same time, same place tomorrow night. Until then, have a good night. “LARRY KING LIVE” is next.