The Restless Sleep:

Police Culture

This is a picture of G. Robert Blakey, the principal author of the RICO Statute. I enjoyed watching and learning about police culture. It was a whole new world to me. One thing I noticed early on was: bosses hate organized crime cases. The following is an excerpt from my book. Steve Kaplan is one of the detectives I wrote about and Vito Spano was the commanding officer of the squad when I wrote the book.

"Cops are used to looking at murder this way: someone is killed, they figure out who did it, the DAs prove it, that person goes to jail. They’re accustomed to working with one partner alone, someone they’ve gotten to know and trust, and together they focus on a murder case like detective-guided missiles. In 1967, the NYPD established a homicide desk in the Central Investigation Bureau to "collect, analyze and evaluate all information available in connection with homicides arising from or connected with, organized crime." Three years later Congress enacted RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Detective Steve Kaplan had cleared a few mob-related cases, but he wasn’t exactly an organized crime expert when the Ronald Stapleton case fell in his lap. Deputy Inspector Vito Spano doesn’t even like these kinds of cases. Organized crime cases are complicated.

In a RICO case, they can't just look at a murder as a murder—it’s a piece of an entire operation. The suspect is not a murderer, he’s a mobster, and murder is just one part of his job description. The focus is never on a single crime. A RICO investigation has many different goals, find the murder, find the money launderer, gambler, drug seller, etc., find the bosses, shut down the operation, and it’s not just you and your partner anymore. More than one law enforcement agency is involved. It’s like going after someone in the mail department at Enron, but you can’t pick him up and haul him in because he was just following orders and someone else needs him to testify against a guy in the sales department on the third floor, who has some information about someone in accounting, who’s been saving a memo the President quietly sent to the guy running one of their largest subsidiaries.

It requires a new way of looking at crime and its investigation that took prosecutors themselves a long time to understand. "It was ten years before I found a prosecutor who was willing to try a RICO case," G. Robert Blakey, the principal author of the RICO Statute, remembers.

RICO forces the NYPD, this notoriously territorial group, to look at the big picture with other notoriously territorial groups—groups they don’t always get along with, and can’t control—and they’re not too happy about it.

"RICO is a good tool," Spano concedes. "Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to prosecute a lot of these cases." But not only do RICO cases force the squad to proceed differently with all these other agencies, it turns out putting mobsters in jail is not even particularly satisfying. "These people were involved in high risk behavior, they know what they’re getting themselves into,” Spano explains. "They get themselves into some sort of crisis, they start killing each other, fuck ‘em. I’d rather work on senior citizen murders, random murders. Some fucking predator eyeballed and attacked and murdered someone, a person working in a store, a woman who is raped and murdered during a burglary, those I want to work on. I understand we gotta work on these other cases, I know their murder is important, I gotta clear a number and the only way I’m going to clear it is this RICO thing. I’ve gotta kiss everybody’s ass, every federal agency’s ass, just to get them to give me the privilege of bringing the case folder over."

Due to their difficulty and sheer volume, a lot of the cases that go cold are organized crime cases. And because there are a lot of organized crime cases, clearing them produces the numbers the NYPD craves and rewards, the numbers by which the entire New York Police Department is judged. No one has ever helped their NYPD career by fighting the numbers. "Whether I like them or not, they have to get done. And if we didn’t have RICO, we wouldn’t have the handle on organized crime that we do," Spano finishes. "There were 5,000 family members in 17 cities in 1963," Blakey, who is now a law professor at the Notre Dame Law School, says. "And only 1,500 in two cities in 2004."

But it’s not real detective work. "The detective’s not doing anything," Spano says. "It’s people giving up information to save their own ass. It’s a big jerk off."

40 Year Old Case Solved

The Knox County Sheriff's office of Ohio recently solved the October 30, 1966 murder of Linda Kohlmier. All the old evidence was found in 1998 and the case was re-opened. Unfortunately, the DNA profile they got from the evidence matched a man who died of natural causes in 1997. I hate the idea of murderers getting to live out their lives (I don't support the death penalty, but I want them in jail). Apparently he had a record from 1959 to 1983 of attacking women.

That doesn't take away from the fact that the Knox County Sheriff's office made the effort, even though the case was decades old. Linda Kohlmier was only 19-years-old. So, good work detectives! I wonder if a request from a family member made them start looking for those records in 1998? Here's a brief news report on the case.

Relationships Change

I used the story of Latanesha Carmichael to show how in time, relationships change and people who were reluctant to talk, for a variety of reasons, are now able to tell their story. This story is particularly sad. If I was going to write this book, it would be a book about family and not murder.

"In 1979, with the help of her 16-year old son, Madeline Carmichael beat her two-year-old daughter Latanesha to death, then walled her up first in one closet, then in another, where her body remained for the next twenty years. Madeline’s nine-year-old daughter Sabrina saw the whole thing but it took twenty years for Sabrina to feel safe enough to talk about it. Madeline routinely abused all her children, including Latanesha's twin brother Andre, and even though Andre and Sabrina were placed in separate foster homes when they were ten and sixteen, Sabrina was so frightened by her mother she never talked about the murder with anyone until she was re-united with Andre in October 1999, when they both were in their 20's."

"One month later, Cold Case detectives found Latanesha’s black, mummified remains still clothed in a shockingly clean bright, white diaper and red tshirt. The trunk they found her in was wrapped in twelve layers of garbage bags and mothballs, and sealed inside a closet filled with incense sticks, baking soda, used air fresheners and exhausted camphor sticks. Upon arrest Madeline Carmichael rambled, 'I can't remember the name, but I remember the picture, all I can remember is the force. It's a nightmare, it's a dream. I can't remember faces or eyes.'"

Thank You

People from all over the world sent gifts and letters to St. Paul's Chapel for the recovery workers who would go there to rest and eat. I was a volunteer at St. Paul's, and first gift that made me cry were the 1,000 origami paper cranes that arrived from the people of Nagasaki. It's a symbol of peace. I thought if the people of Nagasaki could show compassion to us in our time of sorrow the world had a chance.

I saved some of the letters and drawings made by children. This was one of my favorites. I thought I would let this child say thank you this year. His name is Matthew.

Thank you men and women of service, from Matthew and me.

Who Killed Our Kids

I came across an organization that provides support to families of homicide victims in Cincinnati, OH, called Who Killed Our Kids. The website is extremely well designed with current, useful information, a forum for family and friends, and more.

From their website:

"Homicides have doubled in the last 5 years. There have been a total of 417 homicides since 2000:

40 in 2000, 63 in 2001, 66 in 2002, 75 in 2003, 66 in 2004, 79 in 2005 and now 28 in 2006.

The unsolved homicide rate has nearly quadrupled since 2000. There are 168 unsolved homicides since 2000: 10 in 2000, 21 in 2001, 29 in 2002, and 27 in 2003 and 26 in 2004, 37 in 2005 and 18 in 2006."

100 Years Ago in New York

Murder was worse! (If I did my math correctly.)

One hundred years ago, in 1906, 255 people were murdered in New York City. The population of New York was 3,437,202 in 1900, and it was 8,085,742 as of 2003. At the 1906 murder rate, 600 people would be murdered this year. Murder has gone up so far this year, but the total last year was 540 -- even with the current increase it should still come out under 600.

Interesting, no? In the good old days, we were not so good. 1913 was particularly bad. 326 people were murdered that year. What was going on in New York that year??

Based on what I was able to find out about clearance rates for the time period, I estimate that 84 of the murders in 1906 and 136 of the murders from 1913 were never solved.

(The picture is Orchard Street in 1906.)