Sonia Sotomayor: Legal career beginnings and the Tarzan Murderer

Sonia Sotomayor graduated from Yale in 1979, and immediately began working for the New York County District Attorney, Robert Morgenthau, as an Assistant District Attorney. Sotomayor was admitted to the New York Bar in 1980. Her experience as Assistant District Attorney gave her an abrupt introduction to handling court cases. She quickly garnered a reputation for being a tough, tireless worker who wasn’t afraid of the task at hand. This meant working long hours, and giving everything that she had to the job.

Her personal life was experiencing conflict as well. She married her high school sweetheart, Kevin Edward Noonan on August 14, 1976. The marriage occurred after she graduated from Princeton summa cum laude, and before she entered Yale. While still working as Assistant District Attorney, she and Kevin’s divorce finalized in 1983. Though they had been married for seven years, they never had children. Sotomayor has said that her career played a contributing role in the breakup, but was not the main cause.

Sotomayor prosecuted a number of different criminal cases while working as the Assistant District Attorney. Her most notable case was dubbed the “Tarzan Murderer”. The case was prosecuted in 1983 and involved a man who would break into apartments, rob the residents, and then shoot them without any apparent reason. The New York Times wrote an article about the case entitled, “Sotomayor is Recalled as a Driven Rookie Prosecutor”.

The article recounts New York in the early eighties and gives an account of the Tarzan Murderer, later identified as Richard Maddicks. He was aptly titled “Tarzan” for his ability to navigate through narrow and treacherous terrain, rooftops, and windowsills to enter apartments. The case was Sonia Sotomayor’s first homicide, and her first homicide conviction. Other cases that she prosecuted included burglary, prostitution, child pornography, and police brutality.