“We’re going to miss her forever. And she’s always going to be in our hearts.”
So said Anne Marie De Blasio-Leva on Monday afternoon about Denise Morgan, the 39-year-old Irish woman shot to death in her Glendale, Queens, apartment in the early hours of Saturday morning.
“I had seen her on Friday,” Lisa Loughery said and added about their regular get-togethers. “We’d catch up. We’d talk about the week. We’d talk about work. We’d talk about her life.”
De Blasio-Leva and Loughery both became friends with Morgan in 2010 when they all worked together at the Cottage, previously known as the Irish Cottage, on 72nd Avenue in Forest Hills.
In subsequent years, Morgan married, gave birth and spent some time working back home in County Louth. After she returned to New York, she and her husband, Larry, separated amicably and agreed to share custody of their daughter, Molly, who celebrated her 9th birthday last month.
At some point, Morgan began another relationship. It is believed that she was shot by the 33-year-old man with whom she shared her apartment, and that he then shot himself.
“She was always happy. Little things in life made her happy. A beautiful person. Very kind, sweet. A great mother.” De Blasio-Leva said. “I can’t believe this happened to her.”
“Always happy,” agreed Roy Guzman, the owner of the Cottage. “A great person. I could only say good things about her.
“A great worker, a professional,” he added about someone he first met when she was a young immigrant.
Last year, he said, she took a job in Manhattan, but returned to the Cottage regularly, often on Fridays. “She loved pork chops,” Guzman said. Sometimes she’d bring Molly, and did on that last occasion.
Loughery, a Derry native, said, “She’d a great sense of humor. She engaged with everybody. Whether she was working or not, she talked with everybody in the bar. She was a happy, positive person.”
A woman from Donegal was the common thread in all of their lives. When Guzman came from Ecuador 37 years ago, at age 17, his first job was given to him by Kathleen McNulty in the Irish Cottage. He trained there as a chef.
“She was like my mother” he said.
“She had this place for 60 years,” he added. “So, she had to be doing something good. She was tough and a great businesswoman.”
Her husband Danny McNulty, who died in the 1980s, acquired the bar and restaurant in 1960. Shortly after Kathleen died of Covid in April 2020, family members closed the business, which is near the corner of Austin Street, Forest Hills' busy shopping thoroughfare.
Friends, from left, Anne Marie, Eileen, Lisa and Denise at the Irish Cottage.
The Ecuadorean and his wife Yadira reopened it later as a restaurant, and it was eventually granted a liquor license; however, he had to amend the name to “The Cottage” for legal reasons.
Guzman hoped that Morgan would return to work at the Cottage eventually. As usual last Friday, she went down to the kitchen to chat with him. “Everything doing okay?” she asked him.
“We talked a little bit,” Guzman recalled. “That’s why I cannot believe it — 3 o’clock she was here, and 2:45 she got killed. She went to her job in the city. When she went to the apartment [after work] the guy was there.
“Very sad, I can’t explain with words. Especially as she was a very good girl,” he said. “She had plans. She had a child. I cannot understand how that happened. I cannot believe it.
“She always had problems with him,” Guzman said. “He was a very possessive, sick, jealous guy.
“In my opinion, he was a crazy guy,” he added.
“The signs were there. The person seems to be happy. You have to listen to what they’re saying, even if they make light of it,” Loughery said. “Even though she had arguments with him and had a bad relationship, and was leaving him, she put on a happy front.
“He was very jealous, didn’t like her bar-tending. He didn’t want her to be friends with all the friends she had.”
“She wanted a fresh start,” De Blasio-Leva said. “She was adamant about not staying on in the apartment.”
“It had bad vibes for her,” Loughery added.
Thoughts on Monday also turned to Molly .
“I think her mother was her whole world, and vice versa. As a mother, I just can’t imagine,” De Blasio-Leva commented about the loss. Her own children are 9 and 7.
“Thankfully, she is close to her father, too,” she said.
Guzman agreed that that’s a blessing. “She’s very tight with both,” he said.
It’s understood that the dead man himself had a daughter of school-going age.
“That poor child, too,” De Blasio-Leva said.
As Loughery found herself with other close friends in a “nightmare,” she dealt with practical matters.
“We were planning to go to Vegas for New Year’s Eve,“ she said, referring to her, Morgan and another friend, “That was going to be a great girls’ trip.” Instead Monday, she was organizing a GoFundMe account, “In Memory of Denise Morgan,” to raise money for the dead woman’s final journey home.
“We’re going to have something for her here,” Guzman said. “Everybody knew her. All the customers knew her.
“The sister is coming from Ireland to do all the paperwork,” he added. “I”m waiting for her to come. She’ll tell us what to do, and how we can help.”
To contribute to the GoFundMe account click here.
The Cottage in Forest Hills, Queens, was long a part of Denise Morgan's life. [Photo by Peter McDermott]
