About the Particpants
Louis R. Anemone
A 35 year veteran of the New York Police Department--for the last five
years of his tenure he was the Chief Operating Officer, the highest sworn
officer rank in the department. Anemone was one of the co-developers of
Compstat. During his tenure with the NYPD, homicides were reduced 60
percent, violent crime by 50 percent, and police use of deadly force by
60%. In 1996, Compstat received national recognition as a recipient of
the Ford Foundation and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government award for
Innovations in American Government. Amemone also played a key role in the
1995 merger of the New York Housing Police Department and the New York
City Transit Police Department into the New York Police Department. In
1996, Anemone made sure the Cold Case Squad was successfully put into
place with some of the best detectives from the now newly merged police
departments.
Anemone now has his own law enforcement and counter-terrorism consulting
company, Anemone Consulting, Inc., which in addition to providing law
enforcement consulting services, is developing software which will
accomplish worldwide some of the things that Compstat did for New York
City. He lectures around the country about domestic security, most
recently at a conference at Northeastern University, which was jointly
sponsored by The Police Institute at Rutgers University, Boston Police
Department and Massachusetts' Public Safety Department.
Andrea Coleman, M.D.
Andrea Coleman graduated from Vassar in 1989 with a bachelor's degree in
studio art. She worked as a freelance artist and graphic designer in New
York City for several years before deciding upon medicine as a career.
During her premedical studies at Columbia University, she did DNA research
in the Forensic Biology laboratory at the office of Chief Medical Examiner
of NYC before attending medical school at the State University of NY in
Brooklyn. After receiving her medical degree in 2002, she went on to train
in general pathology at Manhattan's Mount Sinai Hospital. She is currently
a fellow in Forensic Pathology at the Office of Chief Medical Examiner in
NYC.
David Feige
David Feige is here for counterpoint. A life-long public defender and
writer, David was, until recently, the Trial Chief of The Bronx Defenders,
an innovative public defender office in the South Bronx. David is an
award-winning trial lawyer, and a nationally known lecturer on trial
skills and eyewitness identification issues. He is on the faculty of the
National Criminal Defense College, and has taught trial skills for the
National Institute for Trial Advocacy, and at law schools and public
defender offices around the country.
David's writings on the criminal justice system have been published in
places as diverse as Slate, Legal Affairs, The New York Times Magazine,
and The Los Angeles Times Magazine, and his commentaries on criminal
justice issues can be heard on National Public Radio and it's New York
affiliate WNYC. In 2004 he was awarded a Soros Media Justice Fellowship.
He is a frequent commentator on Court TV and is currently at work on a
book, tentatively titled, "INDEFENSIBLE" which will be published by
Little, Brown & Co. in 2006.
Robert Shaler
Bio to come. Dr. Shaler recently retired from his position as the Head of
Forensic Biology at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in New York.
His book, Who They Were: Inside the World Trade Center DNA Story, The
Unprecedented Effort to Identify the Missing (Free Press) is coming out
this October, 2005.
Vito Spano
Retired Deputy Inspector Vito Spano has a long NYPD history of bossing
people around. In eighteen years he's been in command of the Brooklyn
Special Victims Squad, the Queens 105 Detective Squad, the Queens Robbery
Squad and Queens Special Victims Squad, he was the Executive Officer of
the Midtown South Precinct, then a Commanding Officer in the Internal
Affairs Bureau, then Executive Officer of Brooklyn's 83 Precinct, and
following that, Detective Investigative Coordinator for Brooklyn North,
Detective and Narcotic Operations, and commander of the Brooklyn Gang
Squad.
Vito Spano first joined the NYPD in 1982. In August 2001, Spano was
assigned as Commanding Officer of the Cold Case Squad, and in November
2001, he was promoted to Deputy Inspector (that's one rank above captain).
During eighteen years of management and supervisory positions with the New
York City Police Department, Spano was involved in the reduction of
gang-related violence, overall violent crime in New York City, corruption
investigations among Police Officers, and he was instrumental in the
implementation of innovative practices in handling Special Category Crime
Victims (Abused Children, Sexual Assault Victims, Elderly Victims).
Spano now works at the Office of New York State Attorney General under
Eliot Spitzer, as the Chief Investigator for Medicaid Fraud Control Unit,
and lectures to law enforcement on a variety of subjects including serial
murderers, and child abduction.
Wendell Stradford
1st Grade Detective Wendell Stradford is one of the original members of
the Cold Case Squad. Before coming to Cold Case he worked for Jack Maple,
the Deputy Commissioner of Operations, in a special unit called the Police
Commissioner's Investigation Squad, the PC Squad for short. If a precinct
was having problems, someone from the PC Squad was sent to help. They
were the Cavalry. His other assignments include: Central Robbery,
Special Investigations, the Street Crime Unit, and the Warrants Squad.
Wendell Stradford has tracked down and arrested a lot of bad guys. Since
1985, he has made 328 arrests, 23 of them while in Cold Case. He brought
in another 74 suspects of murder or attempted murder in cases opened by
other detectives who were unable to do so themselves.
Among his many commendations, Stradford received the Combat Cross in 1993
for a shooting, and later a Distinguished Duty commendation for
apprehending a robbery suspect while getting stabbed in the process. He
has a degree in Criminal Justice, and has taken classes in sex crimes,
pick pocketing, an FBI Academy class in Urban Survival, and he attended
Homicide School at John Jay.
Thomas 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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