He Used to Be on Police Dramas, Then He Met a Bad Guy in Real Life By Michael Wilson
Aug. 16, 2013 New York Times
A 72-year-old man stretched his tall, thick, worn self onto the little bed in his Greenwich Village apartment for an afternoon nap. It was Aug. 1, hot outside.
He was awakened by a noise. In the next room, a window to the street was open for the breeze, and through it, a stranger was climbing into his home.
The intruder filled the man in bed not with fear, but fury. How dare he?
The man in bed was Tom Ligon, who was born in New Orleans and then made his way to New York in the early 1960s to try to act for a living. He fell in with a kindred spirit named Sam Waterston, and the two shared a $25-a-month sublet until they lost that, and Mr. Waterston found this spot on a quiet block of the Village.
One night, the two went to a party, and by the end, the way Mr. Ligon remembers it, Mr. Waterston was mooning over a young lady. He moved out and married her. And Mr. Ligon stayed put.
Mr. Waterston went on to great success, and the two remained friends. “He says, ‘You married me off to get the apartment,’” Mr. Ligon said.)
In 1969, Mr. Ligon landed a role in the film “Paint Your Wagon.”
Around the same time, a friend visiting the apartment brought along a young lady, and now it was Mr. Ligon’s turn to moon. She was an actress and dialect coach named Katharine Dunfee Clarke.
“We were a special pair,” Mr. Ligon said. They married and lived on and off in California pursuing roles, but they never gave up the apartment. “I closed it up,” he said.
He was handsome and muscular. He ate raw food and practiced yoga and meditation. Fans of 1970s police shows have Mr. Ligon’s face stamped in unconscious corners of their minds.
He played bit parts in “Baretta” and “Police Woman.” In an episode of “Starsky and Hutch,” he played a character listed in the credits as Young Man, a mumbling, brainwashed prisoner in a castle. He played Cadet Ted Miller in an episode of “Charlie's Angels
In 1978, Mr. Ligon stepped into the role for which he is widely remembered to viewers, mostly women, of a certain age: Lucas Lorenzo Prentiss on the soap opera “The Young and the Restless.” He was game for anything the show threw at him. (“Lucas discovered ‘Priscilla’ as a stowaway on the jet,” an online fan site wrote in a description of his character.) He spent more than four years on the show, until 1982. (“Lucas left town for parts unknown.”)
In the Village, he remained accustomed to shouts of “Lucas!” In 1989, he acted in “Cutting Class,” playing a father. His son was played by an unknown, Brad Pitt. Mr. Ligon told his wife, “He’s going to be a big star.”
He had a recurring role as a prisoner in “Oz” on HBO, and there were several appearances on various “Law and Order” properties.
He also visited his wife’s dialect and voice classes at the Circle in the Square Theater School.
His wife was blunt. She was said to have told James Gandolfini, cast in a stage production of “On the Waterfront,” that he wasn’t having a dialect problem, but an acting problem
In 2009, she died of a blood disorder. She was 60 and terribly ill, spending her painful final weeks at St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan.
Mr. Ligon came home around the corner to an empty apartment.
“It’s the first time I’ve lived alone,” he said.
He drank heavily. His solid frame softened and he grew a pot belly.
St. Vincent’s closed. “I’m glad it’s gone,” he said. Bad memories.
It has been four years. This is the man who was napping Aug. 1.
“Who comes through the window?” he said later. “Maybe one friend back in the ’70s, back when we were smoking a lot of dope.”
He leapt up from bed. “You don’t think, ‘Oh, I can’t move like that,’ ” he said. “I did this purely on reflexes. I take 10 minutes to get out of bed in the morning.”
Mr. Ligon yelled “my Japanese yell — ‘Hi-YA!’” he said. “I hit him in the top of the head with my fist.” The intruder fell to the sidewalk and ran away, losing a sneaker in his escape. The police took it for evidence. He remains at large.
At least his wife was not there. “She would have killed him,” he said.
A Victim Looks Back on a Crime With Hope, Not Fear By Michael Wilson
June 12, 2016 New York Times
A detective called Tom Ligon last month with the news. There had been an arrest in his case, three years later.
Mr. Ligon, 75, was surprised. He had heard the police had a suspect in custody back in 2013, but nothing more, and he let it go. After all, the man who had tried to break into his home that day, Aug. 1, 2013, hadn’t even succeeded. In fleeing down the Manhattan street, the intruder had lost a shoe that was kept as evidence.
“A lady policeman went and put her hat on top of the shoe, because it was starting to rain,” Mr. Ligon recalled on Thursday.
The police were able to extract DNA from the shoe, and they matched it to a man arrested on May 19 after what they described as a crime spree.
Mr. Ligon thinks back on that day in 2013 with more nostalgia than fear or outrage. It has been a long three years — longer, actually, since his wife died in 2009, leaving him alone in the Waverly Place apartment in Greenwich Village that they had shared for decades.
Mr. Ligon is an actor whose past roles include a bit part as a nephew on an episode of “The Honeymooners” and a longtime part as Lucas Lorenzo Prentiss on the soap opera “The Young and the Restless.” But recent years have found him working less and eating and drinking more, and they have taken a toll.
Walks in the neighborhood have became difficult. He has to stop at stoops or storefront benches once or twice on every block to catch his breath. He used to laugh at guys who hit 300 pounds. His livelihood depended on his looks, and he wondered how someone could let that happen. Then last month he stepped on a scale and looked at the number: 292.
“I just let go of the reins a little too much,” he said.
When the detective called last month, it was a welcome distraction from the visits to the doctors, the breathless walks. The suspect was identified as Kenneth Wiley, 34, with addresses listed in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The police, working backward, said Mr. Wiley was linked to many more crimes than the one at Mr. Ligon’s home.
On May 4, a woman on a downtown subway train said she was approached by a man who asked her: “How do I get to the C train? I need to go to the hospital because of my stomach.” The woman saw that he was fondling himself, and told him to get away, the police said.
The police said the same man had approached different women on different trains the same way, on March 28, April 1 and, on April 29, twice, all in Manhattan. The suspect in the encounters was identified as Mr. Wiley, the police said. He was also linked to 16 burglaries, the most recent on May 18.
The first: Aug. 1, 2013, at the apartment on Waverly Place.
Mr. Ligon was napping that day when he heard a noise in the next room. Someone was climbing through his window.
He sprang from the bed, crossed the room in a flash, let out a piercing shriek he learned from a Kendo master and punched the intruder in the face.
Later, Mr. Ligon saw video of that moment. “He ran down the block, and you see me stick my head out,” he said, recalling what a street surveillance camera recorded. “‘I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.’”
The detective on the phone said the police would like Mr. Ligon to consider testifying at trial, if necessary.
Sure, he replied.
Things are looking up now. Mr. Ligon landed a voice-over job that would have been impossible to imagine when he was on “The Honeymooners.” It was for a new podcast series called “Songonauts,” about a band that travels through time.
He is working on losing weight. That number on the scale scared him straight, he said. He stopped drinking. No carbs for a while. More walking, no matter how many times he has to stop. He thinks of the 100 pounds he wants to shed as two bulging suitcases he carries everywhere.
“I need my luggage to get lost,” he said.
He thinks back on that day at the window, he said, and it makes him feel good. About what he did and what he hopes to be able to do again.
“It makes me not afraid,” he said.
By
Paul Raven ·
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