"Headless Body In Topless Bar" Killer Still Fighting To Be Freed
Jan. 23, 2012, 9:30 a.m.
Dingle was convicted of killing a bar owner and forcing a hostage to remove a bullet from the bar owner's head and then cut off the head.
Charles Dingle, left, alongside the famous Post headline
The man whose violent spree inspired the Post's most famous headline, "Headless Body in Topless Bar," is trying to get released from prison. The Post reports, "Charles Dingle, 53, will ask a three-person parole panel this week to free him from the upstate Wende Correctional Facility near Buffalo."
Of course, the Post adds, "But if his 1983 psychotic rampage and ensuing pathetic prison record are any indication, his chances are questionable," and describes Dingle's actions:
On April 13, 1983, Dingle, then 23, was high on cocaine and booze when he whipped out a gun in Herbie’s Bar in Jamaica, Queens, and blew away the owner, Herbert Cummings, 51.
Dingle then took four women hostage and raped one of them — a topless dancer — while robbing several others.
As Dingle was rifling through a pocketbook, he learned that one of the female hostages was a mortician. The madman then ordered her to dig the bullet out of Cummings’ head so police couldn’t link his gun to the slaying.
Once she completed the gruesome task, Dingle forced her to cut off Cummings’ head with a steak knife.
Hours later, he released two of the hostages. Then he went on another tear — swiping a gypsy cab and driving around with the other two hostages, along with Cummings’ head in a box.
The remaining hostages managed to escape when Dingle fell asleep behind the wheel at Broadway and West 168th Street. He was eventually convicted of rape, kidnapping and robbery and sentenced to 25 years to life, but has been insistent that he didn't commit the crime. Dingle told the Post in 2010 that there were bad witnesses, "Everything is not as it appears...They expect you to come in and plead guilty and take responsibility for the crime. I can't do it because I didn't do it."
