July 19, 2026
Closet panic, con men, chaos
The Chickens and the Bulls (2012)
Fake cops, frightened secrets, and readers raging over who really caused the scandal
TLDR: A detective’s chance encounter in Grand Central helped expose a brutal 1960s blackmail ring that preyed on gay men who feared public ruin. Readers are split between obsessing over the scam’s audacity and arguing that the real scandal was a society so hostile it made extortion easy.
Slate’s look back opens like a noir thriller: in 1965, a real Manhattan detective spots a man posing as a cop at Grand Central, standing beside a 14-year-old runaway and trying to squeeze extra money from the boy’s father. That moment cracked open a much uglier story—an extortion ring that targeted prominent gay men in an era when being exposed could destroy lives, careers, and families. And in the comments? Readers did not stay calm.
The biggest reaction was fury mixed with heartbreak. One camp said the real villains were obvious: the scammers who weaponized shame and fear. Another camp went bigger, arguing the entire culture of the 1960s was the true accomplice, because criminal laws and public hysteria made blackmail terrifyingly easy. That sparked the hottest fight in the thread: do you focus on the crooks, or on the cruel system that made their scheme work? Some readers wanted less true-crime suspense and more outrage at the closet culture that trapped victims.
There was also plenty of dark humor. Commenters compared the fake detective’s slip-up over a police report to a movie gangster forgetting his own script, and several joked this was basically a "prestige TV pilot" hiding in history. The mood swung between grim, angry, and morbidly amused: readers were hooked by the con, but haunted by how vulnerable these men were in a world built to punish them.
Key Points
- •The article opens with a late-July 1965 call received by Detective James McDonnell about a possible police impersonator at Grand Central Station.
- •The suspect was with a 14-year-old runaway and had asked the boy’s father in Texas to wire $150, which raised suspicion because it exceeded the expected airfare.
- •McDonnell went from Manhattan’s 17th Precinct to the Western Union office in Grand Central to investigate.
- •The man appeared convincing at first but became suspicious when he was slow to identify himself and did not understand police terminology such as an incident report called a "5."
- •McDonnell had the office secured and arranged for backup, and the article frames this encounter as the beginning of a larger account about an extortion ring targeting prominent gay men in the 1960s.