Anette Wisher

Anette Wisher was a wealthy New Yorker and the mother of murdered socialite Pamela Wisher. She was a petite older woman with brown hair and an austere appearance. She was the widow of the late Horace Wisher.

Journalist Bill Smithback, pretending to have information about the case, visited her in her large apartment on Central Park South. Wisher saw through his ruse, but the two developed a symbiotic relationship. Smithback wrote articles that portrayed Pamela in a more sympathetic light and Wisher used Smithback as a mouthpiece for her Take Back Our City movement, a series of vaguely anti-crime, anti-homeless demonstrations that for a time disrupted life in central Manhattan and made Smithback persona non grata with the New York police.

Wisher personally attended the Take Back Our City rallies, publicly belittling the chief of police and the mayor of New York. Each rally grew more and more like a mob, finally culminating in a riot in Central Park with fighting between ralliers and homeless driven out of the underground by the police.

Following the riot, Mrs. Wisher was given a nominal post as a community liaison and continued to promote civic awareness. A small park on East 53rd St. was dedicated to her daughter Pamela.