About Tommy Wray
Detective Tommy Wray was promoted to 1st Grade Detective on Christmas Eve,
2001, twenty-seven years after he first joined the force and the same year
he took over the Christine Diefenbach case that is written about in The
Restless Sleep.
Before that, Tommy Wray spent 12 years, from 1979 to 1990, in the 9th
precinct in the East Village, a tough precinct at the time. Tiny brown
crack vials used to pile up on the curbs and in doorways. "There were
probably more drugs being sold in that precinct than anywhere
else in the United States," he remembers.
He was only in uniform for a year before he went into the Anti-Crime Unit.
From there he went into RIP (Robbery Identification Program), then Missing
Persons, then to the detective squad, then to Manhattan North Homicide in
1990. Wray received a Commendation for arresting the most wanted man in
Puerto Rico. In 1992 he was transferred to Queen's Homicide, where
he met Phil Panzarella, who was the commanding officer at the time. Lt.
Panzarella, who was taking command of the Queens division of the Cold Case
Squad, asked Wray to join them in 1996, the year it was formed.
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