Kiss the Girls Goodnight

Chapter 2: Germs
DeWitt, a small town located 10 miles east
of Syracuse, New York, was named after a
Revolutionary War era judge and soldier,
Moses Dewitt, a cousin of Dewitt Clinton. It
is an affluent community where the average
income is well over $60,000 and less than
4% of the families live at or below the
poverty level. However, it wasn’t always the
picture of success. When John Thomas
Jamelske was born in DeWitt in 1935, the
town was a rural area with many farms and a
population that was only a fraction of what it
is today. John Thomas was the son of John
and Wanda Jamelske, who, after years of
struggle, had managed to buy a home and
property located on State Route 92, one of
the busy roads that led into Syracuse.
John Sr. was a frugal man who enjoyed
collecting and repairing clocks. The family
also sold home-grown berries and vegetables
to travelers who passed by the family farm on
their busy road. When John Jr. became a
teenager, he attended nearby Fayetteville
High School, where he had a rather
undistinguished academic career for four
years. He never attended social gatherings,
nor did he participate in sports. His grades
were at or below average and he rarely
exhibited enthusiasm for anything. He was
quiet, unassertive and never drew attention to
himself. “He wasn’t much to talk,” a
classmate later said to the press. “You’d say
hello and that would be the conversation.” To
make matters worse, John Jr. had a persistent
acne problem, which caused him to be
painfully self-conscious. He wore old shirts
and jeans and often showed up at school
wearing the same clothes. His classmates
knew about his careless attitude toward his
appearance. They had a nickname for the
teenager, which they used whenever they saw
him. They called him “Germs.”
Despite his poor showing in high school,
John Jr. went on to college at the insistence
of his father. He attended the State University
of New York at the Morrisville, NY, campus
and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in
1955. Shortly afterward, he joined the Army
Reserves
where, according to
his
recollections, he met and carried on sexual
relationships with dozens of women who
could not resist his charms. He later claimed
that he was one of the most popular soldiers
on the base.
A few years later, he met Dorothy
Richmond, an outgoing girl who aspired to be
a teacher. They were married in 1959 and had
three sons in succession beginning in 1961:
Paul, Eric and Brian. The Jamelskes seemed
to be an average hard-working family striving
to make ends meet and raising their children.
Dorothy taught at a day school in nearby
Fayetteville and became a substitute teacher
at Moses DeWitt Elementary School.
Jamelske coached Little League baseball and
worked in local retail stores.
Like his father, he was a penny-pincher and
often argued with people over money, even if
it was only a few cents. “I’m very thrifty,” he
once told a news reporter, “extremely
thrifty.” He also made it a habit to go to the
local library each Monday to retrieve the
supermarket coupons from the Sunday
newspaper so he wouldn’t have to buy it.
Jamelske had persuaded the librarians to save
the coupons for him. On the few occasions
when they didn’t, he became abusive and
angry toward the staff. He demanded to know
what the library would do to make it up to
him. “The way he would behave if we didn’t
have them would be kind of scary,” a staff
member later said.
Jamelske was a careless dresser and most
often wore blue jeans and a dirty sweatshirt.
His sneakers were always dirty, and he
frequently went days without shaving. Most
people knew him as a rather quirky man who
roamed the streets at night looking for
bottles and cans that he could cash in for
their deposit value. He was a familiar sight
around DeWitt and neighboring towns as he