Deadly Masquerade

Wall Streeter Joseph Pikul and his second wife, Diane, an assistant to the publisher of Harper's magazine, were the archetypal successful couple: they had an apartment in Greenwich Village and a house on Long Island, N.Y., regularly attended the theater and dined out, had two children in private schools. But the husband was a wife-abuser, a cross-dresser, probably a bisexual. Shortly after the market crash in 1987, he killed his wife and, in a bizarre odyssey, took her body first to Massachusetts, then to upstate New York, where he disposed of it. Pikul was convicted for the murder, but died of AIDS before his appeal could be adjudicated. New York Daily News reporter Pienciak here expertly dissects the case. (Sept.)