August 30, 2006
1941 Cold Case
This is a crime scene photo from either the “suicide” or murder of mob hitman, Abe Reles, taken in front of the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island in 1941.
I found the case files for Abe Reles in a warehouse in Brooklyn maintained by the Central Records Division. I've posted this before, but normally case records for unsolved homicides are supposed to stay in the precinct where the homicides occurred. Anything older than the 1980’s is often missing, however. They were lost in a move, the people at the precinct usually explain, or destroyed in a flooded basement. But 187 boxes of homicide records both solved and unsolved, and spanning the years 1921 to 1973, sit largely forgotten in an aisle at the very back of the Central Records warehouse. Some boxes have a few cases, some have thirty or more. They may be falling apart from age, but there are probably 4,000 to 7,000 case files there.
I thought of writing about Reles, but for various reasons decided not to. It’s a gruesome and interesting story though. He killed people by jamming an ice pick through their ear into their brain. He was eventually caught and was going to be convicted most likely, but instead he became a government witness. Hence the quotes around the word suicide.
August 25, 2006
Websites I've Come Across
LAPD blog. It can get a little PR-y, but it’s also informative and I like when they talk back about articles about the LAPD.
NYPD Rant. Just what it says, a bunch of guys ranting. But if you want to know what goes on inside these guy’s heads, this is the place. I’ve also gotten some pretty interesting information here.
The Policeman's Blog. Inside the head of a policeman in the UK!
Crime Scene Reconstruction and Cold Case Investigation seminar in January 2007.
Victim Assistance Unit of the Denver Police VAU Cold Case Victim Services.
Cold Case website of the San Jose Police Department.
Cold Case website of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.
Cold Case website of the Gainesville Police Department.
Cold Case website of the Home Office Police (UK).
Cold Case website of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
Cold Case website of the Kentucky State Police.
Cold Case website of the New Mexico State Police.
Cold Case website of the Nashville District Attorney’s office and the Nashville Police Department.
August 21, 2006
Thomas McAvoy
This is a picture of a street memorial for Thomas McAvoy, who was murdered on March 9, 1976. Mr. McAvoy's murder was never solved. There's so many unsolved murders, I don't know why one stands out more than another. Probably because the Time's writer did a good job on this piece.
According to the article, detectives came to a street memorial service and that started Mrs. McAvoy on her current quest to once again try and find out who killed her husband. This really stood out for me. This is something detectives do, go to services and funerals for murder victims, just to see who shows up. But that indicates the detectives were working this case, and it's very unusual for detectives to work on 30-year-old cases without prompting from the family or a reason, like a new lead. If they had a reason, why wouldn't they just tell the family what it was? Anyway, it was nice to read that they were still trying.
The family has asked to see the records of the investigation and the autopsy report (which they can also get from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner). The NYPD has been slow to give them copies of the records. I wonder if part of the reason for that is they don't want the family to see how small the file was. If there were no witnesses, and no evidence--and with a murder from a single bullet that took place outside, there may have been little evidence beyond that bullet--there wouldn't be much the police could do besides canvassing the area and re-canvassing from time to time. Also, there were 1,622 murders that year, so there was the additional problem of having their hands full. Who would want to hand over a sad, small file?
Since it's unlikely that bullet is still in the NYPD's possession, (they don't have a lot of evidence from 1976 in their warehouses, although they do have some, so there's a chance) aside from finding and re-canvassing everyone who lived or worked around the spot where Mr. McAvoy was murdered, and seeing if anyone who might have seen something but was reluctant to talk might be willing to talk now, there isn't too much they can do today either. Again, it was nice to read that they came to the service and were trying.
I just checked, according to my estimates, there are 701 other unsolved murders from 1976. The McAvoy family is not alone.
(The picture was taken and uploaded to Flickr by someone who calls himself Colorstalker.)
August 17, 2006
YouTube and the NYPD
I go to YouTube more and more, just to browse, and I did a search on the NYPD yesterday. A bunch of stuff came back, good and bad. I decided to put up a positive one. Someone put this together from one of the graduation ceremonies. (I love the girl's voice, the first one you hear.)
I went to a promotion ceremony when two of the guys in the Cold Case Squad were promoted. It was extremely moving. The NYPD is incredibly good at celebration and making you feel like you matter, and you're important. The whole thing was just so uplifting, but the thing they got the most right was making everyone feel like they were part of a family, and a family that does good work. I was jealous! I wanted to be part of the family.
August 13, 2006
"The best guys are retiring."
I heard this a lot when I was researching my book. Apparently, they are also not being replaced. "The number of detectives has dropped from 7,182 in January 2001 to 5,200 this month, a 28% decline, according to numbers provided by the Detectives' Endowment Association," and reported today in a Daily News piece by Alison Gendar called Fading Shields.
I know why people are retiring, but I'm not sure what the issue is with replacement. Not enough people with experience or talent enough to be promoted? That can't be right though, can it? It must be a financial issue. Has to be.
According to the piece, the "Bronx 46 squad in University Heights had 38 detectives in 2001, 18 now," and "Brooklyn's 67 squad had 35 detectives on the books before Sept. 11. It has 27 today." I'd be curious to know how many are manning the 44 in the Bronx and the 75 in Brooklyn. Those were the precincts with the highest numbers of unsolved murders when my book went to press. The precinct with the third highest number of unsolved murders was the 34 in Manhattan.
August 11, 2006
Cold Case Quick Facts
I have a list of facts that I take with me to interviews, in case I freeze and can't remember something. It's many pages long, but here are some highlights.
- The first Cold Case Squad was in Florida. In 1979, the Metro-Dade Police Department (now the Miami-Dade Police Department) created the first cold case squad in the United States. They called it the Pending Case Squad. There were some problems, and the squad was disbanded. They tried again 1983, and solved a 1982 murder of a little girl, and by 1984 they decided to formally give it another go, this time calling it the Cold Case Squad.
- The NYPD has the largest Cold Case Squad in the country, the next largest is in Los Angeles.
- There are just under 9,000 unsolved murders in New York since 1985.
- Los Angeles, the next largest city in America, had 8,000 from 1960 to 2004.
- For comparison, Fairfax, VA, has 75 going back to 1964.
- The number of unsolved murders is always going up, never down. In 2005, murder went up 4.8% nationally, but the clearance rate for that year is 62.6%. All over America, more than a third of all murder cases go cold.
- In New York, an unsolved murder has up to 5 - 10% chance of being cleared within one year after it goes cold. After two years, that chance decreases to less than 1%.
- DNA was used in less than 2% of the cases the NYPD’s Cold Case Squad cleared.
- “In most state or federal systems, for every one crime solved with DNA, we solve 26 cases with fingerprints,” according to Ed German, a recently retired Chief of Intelligence for the Army Criminal Investigation Command.
- 10 million Americans have had a family member or close friend murdered. 4 million of those people will never see their loved one’s killer locked up. (Data is from the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center, Medical University of South Carolina.)
- In New York you’re twice as likely to be murdered if you’re black, and your case is four times as likely to go cold.
August 03, 2006
Happy 10th Anniversary!
The NYPD's Cold Case Squad was formed in 1996. At the time my book went to press, of the 2,136 cases they had worked on by that point, they arrested 1,332 people in connection with those crimes, successfully cleared 629 cases and got exceptional clearances on 71 more (a case can be "exceptionally" cleared when the murderer has been identified definitively—by a substantiated confession for example—but the murderer has since died, or is in a country that refuses to extradite him. They don’t like to do it because it’s not as satisfying as taking someone off the streets and putting him in jail).
Congratulations Cold Case Squad, and thank you. There should be a party or dinner in your honor, something.
Here's a teeny, tiny picture of the squad when they were first formed. Sadly, the squad is a lot smaller now.
August 02, 2006
Congratulations, Det. Stradford
Det. Wendell Stradford, (former Transit guy) makes an arrest. From the piece: "Franklin praised cold-case Detective Wendell Stradford and Assistant DA Nitin Savur for hunting down Montgomery." This was for a 1974 murder. In some ways I think the older the better. Those cases are sadder, they are the most forgotten, and the hardest to solve. After two years, if a murder hasn't been solved, the chances of it ever being solved goes down to .01%. Solving a 32 year old case was really beating the odds.
Good work, Wendell and everyone who worked with him. (The picture is from one of Stradford's promotion ceremonies.)