Widow of ‘Duck Sauce Killer’ testifies about abusive marriage in Queens court

Over two years after “Duck Sauce Killer” Glenn Hirsch was arrested for murder and his widow was charged with weapons possession, Dorothy Hirsch finally spoke in public about her infamous partner and the abuse she suffered during their marriage while on the stand Tuesday in Queens Criminal Court.

Breaking into tears at one point, she took a break to compose herself as Judge David Kirschner handed her a box of tissues.

“I remember having irrational thoughts that he was omnipresent or that he knows everything,” Dorothy Hirsch, 64, told the court, explaining that she was terrified of Glenn Hirsch.

On one occasion during the 21-year marriage, Dorothy Hirsch tried to throw out a broken mirror belonging to her hoarder husband only to find it placed in her closet with an ominous note, she testified.

“This broken mirror will forever represent our broken relationship and the shattered dreams I once had,” Glenn Hirsch wrote his wife. “Another violence, a symbol of your lies and deceit. My precious things discarded amongst the roaches and waste. All will be revealed and you will never be forgiven.”

Dorothy Hirsch described the relationship as “complicated.

“There were times I thought he was getting better, that we could live a normal, happy life,” she said. “He was so domineering, volatile, controlling.”

Dorothy Hirsch detailed both physical and emotional abuse at her late husband’s hands.

“Physical violence would include slapping or shoving and if I tried to scream or cry out loud, he would drag me by my hair and throw me on the bed and try to muffle the noise with a pillow.

“There was a lot of verbal abuse and threats. ‘Are you stupid? Your mother must have dropped you on your head as a baby. Maybe you’re just dense. This is all your fault. You’re always hiding things behind my back. I always find out you dumb ass fucking c—t,’” she recounted.

Dorothy Hirsch is on trial for 18 counts of violating city and state weapons possession laws, including possession of loaded guns.

Prosecutors say eight firearms found in her Briarwood home after her husband’s arrest belonged to her. The defendant maintains that everything in that closet belonged to her husband, saying it was filled with only his belongings and she was far too frightened of him to dare look through the things he insisted on keeping in her home despite having an apartment of his own.

“The number-one thing was his property. He did not want me to touch his things, move his things, discard any of his things.” Dorothy Hirsch said from the stand.

“Glenn hoarded everything that anyone could think of — from small items, coins, magazines, electronic devices, speakers, VCR players, VHS tapes, just hordes — and stored in black garbage bags and boxes.”

Glenn Hirsch would belittle and harass his wife whenever she touched his belongings, she said, even when she tried to winnow down stacks of old newspaper and magazines that were up to 5 feet high.

“I would — trying to feel like I have some control — throw out some old copies of newspapers and put it in the incinerator. He found this, brought it in the apartment,” she said. “He had this crazed look in his eyes and threw the newspapers at me.”

Dorothy Hirsch was busted the day after her husband’s arrest in the April 30, 2022 slaying of beloved Chinese-food deliveryman Zhiwen Yan, 45. Glenn Hirsch was accused of killing Yan in a months-long feud with Great Wall Restaurant in Forest Hills over whether enough duck sauce was included with his delivery orders.

The NYPD searched her residence and found a cluttered closet containing eight guns stored in boxes, trash bags, ziplock bags and tin foil, including .38 Specials, Magnums, Lugers and 9-mm. pistols.

After years of living with abuse, Dorothy Hirsch moved out of the apartment she shared with her husband and into a nearby co-op in 2019. About a month later, Glenn Hirsch started taking things kept at a storage unit in West Hempstead and putting them into his wife’s new home.

At first he placed them in her bedroom, but later moved them into the closet where the illegal firearms were discovered.

Dorothy Hirsch said she felt powerless to stop him and that she had no idea what was in the garbage bags and cardboard boxes her husband, by then estranged, stashed at her new place.

“I felt like I was trying to get away from that environment and then it’s the same environment that’s building in my apartment,” she said.

In 2007, the beleaguered spouse reported her husband to police, claiming he threatened her with a gun, but she never saw the firearm. Cops later recovered a gun from his apartment and he was arrested, she said.

It was the fifth time since 1995 that Dorothy Hirsch made a domestic violence report to cops, said her lawyer Mark Bederow.

While out on $500,000 bail, Glenn Hirsch shot and killed himself on Aug. 5, 2022 with a gun that had not been discovered during a police search of his home. In a six-page suicide note, he railed against the press and swore Dorothy Hirsch was innocent of any charges.