Two Million Reasons for Murder

By Kenneth Miller

Justin Barber said his wife was killed during a late-night robbery. But the details didn't add up.

The Beach Went Black
For couples craving solitude, the beach at Guana River State Park is an ideal spot for a late-night tryst. Hidden by thickets of saw palmetto, the ribbon of sand unspools along a lonesome stretch of Route A1A south of Jacksonville, Florida. Entry after sunset is officially forbidden, but intrepid lovers often park on the roadside and follow wooden walkways into the dunes.

Justin Barber, 30, and his wife April, 27, had done just that on August 17, 2002. They were tipsy and amorous, Justin later recalled, having celebrated their third wedding anniversary with dinner at Carrabba's Italian Grill in Jacksonville, followed by cocktails at a bar. Around 10:30 p.m., as they strolled along the water's edge, April suddenly squeezed Justin's hand. A tall man in a baggy T-shirt was approaching. He waved a pistol and yelled something about cash and car keys. Justin stepped in front of April. The gun went off. He grappled with the stranger. The beach went black.

When Justin came to, he found he'd been shot four times -- in both shoulders, under the right nipple, and through the left hand. The man was gone. Justin called April's name, then spotted her floating facedown in the surf. There was a .22-caliber hole in her left cheek. He dragged her up the beach until his strength gave out, then left her and staggered to the road to flag down passing cars. When none stopped, he climbed into his Toyota 4Runner, turned on the flashers and gunned it. Nearly ten miles down the road, a motorist signaled him to pull over and called 911. As Justin was transferred to a hospital, police and rescuers searched the beach for April.

Lt. Ben Tanner of the St. Johns County Sheriff's Department found her. "She was lying with her head to the north, facing the ocean," he says. "She didn't have a pulse."

April's photo is etched into her tombstone; it shows a woman with a brilliant smile, corn-silk hair and exquisite cheekbones. But her beauty wasn't just skin-deep. April was a survivor of family tragedy who poured her energy into helping others, from her younger siblings to the cancer patients she served as a radiation therapist. "She put more value on relationships than most people do," says her best friend, Amber Mitchell, an Internet entrepreneur in Oklahoma City.
"She didn't take life for granted."

The Instant Connection
Who would want to snuff out such a vibrant spirit? Justin would tell investigators that he thought the culprit was a crazed mugger. But a few of those close to April developed their own theory. They suspected the killer was someone she knew very well.

April grew up in Hennessey (pop. 2,024), Oklahoma, an island of century-old storefronts and modest homes in a sea of prairie. She stood out as sharply as the local grain elevator: an A student, thoughtful yet popular, as comfortable at a rodeo as in biology lab.

During April's senior year of high school, her mother was diagnosed with lung cancer and died after six months of agony. April's father, an oil field worker, was too traumatized to care for the kids. Though other relatives took them in, April became a surrogate mom to her siblings Julie, then nine, and Kendon, one. Still, she kept her grades up and was named her class's salutatorian. She went on to the premed program at Oklahoma State University, then studied radiation therapy at the University of Oklahoma.

In October 1998, Amber Mitchell introduced April to one of her business school classmates -- a handsome blond named Justin. The two clicked instantly. April had dated a string of men for whom fidelity was not a strong point; Justin seemed different. He spoke of his Christian values. He had grown up in a town even smaller than Hennessey, herding cattle with his older brother on their parents' 120-acre spread. A quiet and solitary boy, he'd blossomed into a star athlete in high school and graduated as valedictorian. He'd married in college and spent a few years drifting between low-paying jobs. When he met April, however, he was newly divorced and aflame with ambition. "He was among the best and brightest in our class," says Amber. "April was attracted to his drivenness."

April and Justin quickly became engaged; then he moved to Dallas, taking a job as a financial analyst for a wood-products corporation. The two carried on a long-distance romance until August 4, 1999, when they married in a small ceremony in the Bahamas.

They relocated for Justin's job to Douglas, Georgia, where April found work at a hospital. A month later her siblings moved in, and the trouble began. Julie was 15 then, and a rebellious teenager; her behavior infuriated Justin, sparking fights between him and April. At one point, according to several of April's confidants, he threatened to never let April bear his children. Within a year, Julie and Kendon were back in Oklahoma.

Charm and Criticism
By then, some of April's loved ones had begun to see a disturbing pattern. "Justin seemed very into appearances," says April's aunt Patti Parrish, a civil court judge. He tried on his jeans from high school every month and fasted until they fit. He made fun of his overweight mother behind her back, and publicly criticized April's singing voice, her taste in clothing and her weight. He warned her not to embarrass him at his company Christmas party and discouraged her from calling or e-mailing him at work. When his barbs made her cry, he mimicked her sobs. Yet April tolerated Justin's mistreatment.

But in January 2001, when Justin was transferred to Jacksonville, April decided to stay put. "She told me that if they lived together every day, they'd kill each other," Amber says. Justin bought a condo in an upscale neighborhood, and the two saw each other on weekends. Usually it was April who drove the three hours to visit.

She just wasn't ready to give up on Justin. He could be charming, and his criticisms dovetailed with some of her deep insecurities. "She was harder on herself than anyone else," says Amber. "She put up with a lot from her men."

Still, there was always a point at which she drew the line.

"Suspect Foul Play"
The man in the hospital bed was soft-spoken and personable, and seemed eager to help catch his wife's killer. But something about him made Detective Howard "Skip" Cole uneasy. Justin's account of the attack was oddly businesslike. "His body language and demeanor didn't seem appropriate," says Cole, 35, who'd been assigned to lead the investigation.

In the days that followed, Cole's suspicions grew. Justin's story was frustratingly vague, and the details kept changing. The case raised a slew of questions. How did Justin escape with minor wounds -- he left the hospital with just his arm in a sling -- while his wife was killed with a single shot? Why did he claim she'd been drinking, when her blood-alcohol level measured .000? Why had he left his cell phone at home that night, and why didn't he use April's, in her purse on the passenger-side floor of his car? What made him drive so far in search of help, when there were mansions and gas stations along his route?

Meanwhile, April's friends and relatives were pondering possible answers. Aunt Patti remembered that in the summer of 2001, April had told her Justin wanted them to take out $2 million insurance policies on each other's lives. "She asked if I didn't think it weird that he was pushing for such a large amount," Patti says. "I told her yeah but said I didn't think they would qualify. She called back the next day and said, 'You can't say anything to Justin. He'll be furious if he finds out I told you.'"

Justin found a company that would cover them. Not long afterward, April began to suspect that he was having an affair. She told Amber she'd found an earring in his bedroom, and in July 2002, she discovered he was playing tennis regularly with a rental-car agent named Shannon Kennedy. Despite Justin's admonitions, April e-mailed him at work, asking him to tell her when he was socializing with other women. Justin responded with a sarcastic message listing every female he'd glimpsed that day.

April told her boss, Ramesh Nair, that she was going to confront Justin on their anniversary -- August 4. She visited her husband that weekend; when she returned, she told Nair that she'd threatened to end the marriage, but Justin had denied everything. She seemed agitated. On Friday the 16th, she drove back to Jacksonville.

The next night, she was dead.

Amber and Patti's first thought was "Justin did it." And Nair was struck by a memory from a few months earlier: "One day, out of the blue, April said, 'If anything happens to me, suspect foul play.' I answered with a joke, and she looked hurt, like, You're not taking me seriously. Don't forget."

Murder Was Another Matter
April's body was flown to a mortuary in Hennessey. Justin, seeming withdrawn, shrugged when asked to make decisions about the funeral. He asked Patti if she would front for burial expenses. "What about the $2 million?" she responded. Startled, he said, "Did April tell you?" He told her he thought the policy had lapsed. Patti did some digging and learned that it hadn't.

At the funeral, in Hennessey's First Baptist Church, a crowd of 300 overflowed the pews. Several attendees were struck by Justin's failure to cry, though he appeared to be trying. The next day, Patti called Detective Cole. She told him what she knew and put him in touch with Amber.

During a search of Justin's condo, Cole found the insurance policy in a filing cabinet. Brought in for questioning, Justin denied his affair with Shannon Kennedy until he was told she was in the next room; then he insisted that his marriage had been generally placid.

Cole knew he was dealing with a liar, but arresting Justin for murder was another matter. There were no witnesses; no weapon had been found. Even the motive remained fuzzy. Justin was a rising professional with a base salary in the $70,000s; his wife earned nearly as much. Living apart from her, he could cheat with relative impunity. Did he kill her -- and shoot himself -- simply to upgrade his lifestyle a few notches?

Cole and his team traveled to Georgia and Oklahoma to interview people who had known or met Justin and April. They probed the couple's financial records and Justin's computer files. They analyzed bloodstains, ballistics and the abrasions on April's body. By July 2004, they had enough evidence to take Justin into custody, but it took another two years of spadework -- and, crucially, advancements in computer forensics -- before they were ready to go to trial.

The proceedings began on June 12, 2006, in a pink stucco courthouse in St. Augustine, Florida. Cole took the stand only briefly. Much of what the sleuths had dug up was ruled inadmissible: April's conversations with Nair, for example, and Justin's purchase of a bulletproof chest plate on eBay before the killing. Instead, the case turned on a few stark facts.

First, there were the trysts: Justin, it emerged, had carried on at least five during his three-year marriage. The fling with Shannon Kennedy seemed the most serious. Shortly before the killing, he asked her to travel with him to California; two days afterward, he stopped by her office and demanded to see her. He pursued her for several more weeks before transferring to Portland, Oregon, where he quickly got involved with another woman.

Then there was the money. Unbeknown to his wife, Justin had run up $58,000 in credit card debt, mostly through online stock trading. "The adage is true, even if it's corny," Assistant District Attorney Matt Foxman told the jury. "The defendant has two million reasons to commit this crime."

That took care of motive. As to method, prosecutors argued that Justin had spent a year planning the crime. The most damning evidence came from his laptop. On February 9, 2002, Justin Googled the phrase "medical trauma right chest." On Valentine's Day, he tried "gunshot wound right chest." The prosecutor asked, "What are the odds of somebody researching 'gunshot wound to the right chest,' getting a gunshot wound to the right chest six months later?"

He Wanted It All
On July 19, Justin Googled "Florida divorce" and doubtless discovered that if April dumped him, he could no longer be her beneficiary. And on August 17, an hour before the fatal outing, he downloaded 16 songs. Among them was "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" by Guns N' Roses. Another Guns N' Roses number pinpointed his intentions: "Used to Love Her (But I Had to Kill Her)." Foxman played the track in court. Justin, he said, had been psyching himself up for murder.

Finally, there was the crime-scene evidence. Justin claimed he hauled April from the water after she was shot, carrying her in at least nine different positions. Yet the blood on her face all flowed in one direction, suggesting she had been shot on the walkway and left there to die. Foam at her nose and mouth indicated that she'd suffered a "near-drowning episode" before the shooting.

Foxman laid out his theory: Justin intended to shoot April, load her corpse in the car and drive off in search of "help." The scheme went awry when she tried to run. He held her underwater until she stopped struggling, then dragged her to the walkway, where he shot her and himself. The plan derailed again when his pain kept him from carrying her farther. Justin had to modify his tactics, Foxman said, but his strategy never changed: "He wanted the $2 million, he wanted sympathy for being shot, and he wanted to look like a hero who tried to save his wife. He wanted it all."

Justin's attorney, Robert Willis, gamely offered alternative interpretations for each scrap of evidence. But Justin's behavior in a different courtroom three years earlier may ultimately have swayed the jury as much as any lawyer's arguments.

Midway through the first-degree premeditated murder trial, prosecutors played a video deposition Justin gave in 2003 as part of a civil case concerning insurance proceeds. (Those matters remain unresolved.) On the tape, the plaintiffs' attorney grills Justin on the attack, his affairs, his sex life with April. He claims not to remember some key details but answers even the most disturbing questions with uncanny calm. His mouth is set in a downward curve, and he dabs his eyes once. Otherwise, he shows little emotion. When the lawyer asks him to recall the high points of his marriage, Justin says tersely, "We were in love." Pressed for details, he says, "I don't recall specifically."

He seemed equally unmoved when the jurors of the criminal trial, after 33 hours of deliberation, announced their verdict: guilty. His supporters wept, as did April's mourners. Justin barely blinked, even when the jury recommended the death penalty a week later. (Judge Edward Hedstrom later sentenced him to life without parole, and Willis vowed to appeal.) Such detachment is a classic symptom of sociopathy, says University of Texas psychologist Shari Julian, a well-known expert on the disorder.

"The true mark of a sociopath is that he always wears a mask," Julian observes. Unable to connect emotionally, sociopaths learn to gratify their desires without getting caught. They tend to be intelligent, charismatic and monstrously manipulative.

"He's a very gentle person," says Justin's mother, Linda, who still believes in his innocence. "A good guy."

But Amber Mitchell rejoices that the mask is off at last. "This has been a long, horrible chapter in our lives," she says. "I want the jury to know they got it right."

Source

Kendall Francois

The Disappeared
During the late 1980s, when Argentina experienced a great deal of political unrest, opponents of the government suddenly began to vanish off city streets. Frantic relatives appealed to the authorities, who would do little or nothing to help them. A strong suspicion developed that the government was deeply involved in the abductions. In truth, these people were kidnapped by the police themselves who frequently tortured or murdered the unfortunate victims. Many were never seen again. They were called “los desaparecidos,” the disappeared.

Something similar happened in Dutchess County in upstate New York during the years 1997 and 1998. But “los desaparecidos” in this case were not being abducted for political reasons. There were much darker motives. And when the truth emerged, it would leave in its wake at least eight women dead and a frightened, angry community that was dumbfounded that a serial killer could live and work undetected within their midst.

The Women
In October 1996, Wendy Meyers, age 30, was reported missing to the Town of Lloyd Police, in Ulster County, New York. She was described as a white female, with a slim build, hazel eyes and short brown hair. She was last seen at the Valley Rest Motel in Highland, a small town situated near the banks of the Hudson River just south of Kingston.

Two months later, in early December, 1996, Gina Barone was reported missing by her mother, Patricia Barone. Gina was 29 years old and had a small build, brown hair and an eagle tattooed on her back. On her right arm she had another tattoo that read simply “POP.” She was last seen November 29, 1996 in Poughkeepsie on a street corner, apparently having a dispute with a man.

Poughkeepsie is a small city of 28,000 located 90 miles north of New York City. Dutchess County has a long and dramatic history that can easily be traced back to the Revolutionary War. Like any other modern municipality though, Poughkeepsie has its problems. There is a small but persistent drug trade centered in the downtown area that periodically erupts into violence. Prostitutes can often be seen working the same area and shootings are not at all uncommon. Some say Gina was arguing over drugs on that November 29. But in any event, it was the last time anyone could remember seeing her alive.

The missing persons report was filed with the city of Poughkeepsie Police Department and assigned to the Detective Division. On January 1, 1997, the Divison came under the command of Det. Lt. Bill Siegrist, a 29-year veteran of the department. Although Wendy Meyers' disappearance was filed with the Town of Lloyd Police Department, she was well known to Poughkeepsie police and frequented the downtown area of the city. Lt. Siegrist became interested in the two cases. It seemed implausible that two girls who traveled in the same circles in the same city should suddenly disappear. “It seemed like more than a coincidence,” he said recently.

Then in January 1997, Kathleen Hurley, 47, disappeared. She was last seen walking along Main Street in the downtown area of Poughkeepsie. Kathleen, like the others, was white, had brown hair and a small build. The letters “CJ” were tattooed on her left bicep. Although it is not unusual for police to receive missing person reports, the three cases, Hurley, Meyers and Barone, seemed related. But people are reported missing for many reasons. Family disputes, simple runaways, drugs and a nomadic lifestyle are just a few of those reasons. Sometimes people are arrested in other jurisdictions and they neglect to notify their families. In other cases, people will simply move on to new areas only to return a short time later. In most cases, the missing person turns up within a few days and the report is subsequently cancelled.

Nevertheless, the Poughkeepsie Police were already interested in the cases. Lt. Siegrist made an inquiry to the Neighborhood Recovery Unit (N.R.U.), which is the department’s narcotic unit. N.R.U., like most police narc units, spends a lot of time on the streets and deals extensively with confidential informants, drug dealers, convicted criminals, prostitutes and other street dwellers almost on a daily basis. Usually, these units are a wealth of current information. N.R.U. reported back to Lt. Siegrist that some of the Main Street prostitutes were complaining of a local man who was rough with the girls and had been known to be violent during sex. He was Kendall Francois, who lived over on Fulton Avenue in the Town of Poughkeepsie, just minutes from the city’s downtown area. Lt. Siegrist, upon hearing this information, then contacted the Town of Poughkeepsie Police and made an inquiry about Francois. They reported that Francois had recently been the subject of an assault complaint by a prostitute.

Armed with this information, detectives decided to maintain surveillance of Francois’ home at 99 Fulton Avenue. But after several weeks of watching the residence in January 1997, no new information was developed. One prostitute cooperated with the police and allowed herself to be wired up and meet with Francois. The girl worked her usual spots in the city’s downtown area until Francois arrived in his white Toyota Camry. Although she had clear instructions not to get into his vehicle, the girl was able to engage Francois in conversation on a number of occasions. Police monitored these meetings but again, no useful information was obtained.

Two months later, on March 7, 1997, a woman named Catherine Marsh was reported missing by her mother. Catherine was last observed November 11, 1996 also in the city of Poughkeepsie. Four months had passed since she was last seen alive which made her case very difficult to investigate. Like the other girls, she was white, small build, blue eyes and brown hair. Her clothes and personal items were still at her apartment. Teletypes from across the nation were checked for recently discovered D.O.A.s who had not been identified. It is a routine practice for police to attempt to match up unidentified bodies with reports of the missing. Rap sheets were requested on all the missing girls to ascertain if they were in custody somewhere. Canvasses were made of the neighborhoods where the women frequented and arrest records were checked and re-checked. Specially-trained cadaver dogs from the Ramapo Rescue Squad were utilized to search areas in and around the city. The case came to a frustrating standstill with no workable leads and no viable suspects. But as Lt. Siegrist pointed out: “We had no evidence of criminality.” So on the surface, the cases were simply a series of missing persons reports. But on another level, the Detective Division was convinced something had happened to these women.

In April 1997, Poughkeepsie Police made a decision to contact the F.B.I. for help. Although the F.B.I. investigators were interested, they were limited by the circumstances of the case. In order to establish a profile of a suspect, they needed a crime scene. In this instance, there was no crime scene and worse, it had not been established that a crime had even occurred. Simply put, there was not much the F.B.I. could do.

On October 9, 1997, Michelle Eason, 27 years old, was reported missing in the city of Poughkeepsie. She too was last seen in the downtown area but unlike all the others, who were white, Michelle was an African American. She was also slight of build, barely 5’2 and 115 lbs.

Then, just one month later, on November 13, Mary Healy Giaccone, 29 years old, was reported missing. But this report was actually initiated by the police. Mary’s mother died in October 1997. Mary’s father, a retired New York State corrections officer, came to the police to ask for help in locating her so he could give Mary the bad news. But police soon discovered that Mary was actually last seen alive in February, 1997 on the same Poughkeepsie streets as some of the others. And like all the others, Mary was small, 5’4” and weighed 110 lbs. Police increased their efforts on the case. The similarities between the girls were striking. All the girls lived in or near Poughkeepsie, all had the same physical build, several of the girls had been arrested for prostitution and most did not have regular contact with their families. But all shared one common bond: they had simply vanished.

The Investigation
For the next few months, the police tried many different tactics to locate the missing women. Helicopter searches were made of the Dutchess County area by air. State Police searched the Hudson River and municipalities along the shore on a regular basis. Police informants were pressed for any information on the case. Hundreds of people were interviewed. With no hard evidence and no bodies, police were stumped. Although they realized the suspicious nature of the disappearances, the investigation was at a standstill.

But there was an ominous feeling among the detectives. Former F.B.I profiler Gregg McCrary told the Associated Press that the disappearances “were well beyond suspicious.” And because some of the women were prostitutes made the situation worse because prostitutes get into cars with just about anyone.

To complicate the situation further, different suspects continuously drifted in and out of the case. One man from the South, who had arrived in the Poughkeepsie area in the summer of 1997, became a suspect when it was revealed he was a convicted rapist and also a suspect in an unrelated missing persons. Almost to the very end of the case, this individual was considered a major suspect in the disappearances. Another city resident came to the attention of the police when prostitutes said that he was very rough with the girls during sex. In June of 1997, another local man was arrested for the rape and assault of a Poughkeepsie woman. Later he was found to be in custody during the disappearances of the first three women. A boyfriend of one of the missing women was also considered suspect because he had an extensive criminal record and had assaulted women in the past. But as various suspects were developed and abandoned, Kendall Francois remained on the list.

The public grew more concerned and criticism of the police was growing. There was a feeling in the community that the police were not taking the reports seriously since the missing women may have been prostitutes. Early on, street people were well aware of the situation since they were accustomed to seeing these women on a daily basis. The disappearances were very obvious to them. But the police rejected the criticism. Lt. Siegrist said “These girls don’t have set schedules. It took time for the families to realize something was wrong, and then they even thought for a while they might turn up.”

By the time the stories began to appear in the newspapers, the City of Poughkeepsie Police had already working the case for more than eight months. Of course, the public could not be told of the details of that investigation, so the police had to take the criticism mostly in silence.

In early January, 1998, Poughkeepsie Police made a decision to interview Francois about the missing women. They staked out the Francois home at 99 Fulton Avenue and soon discovered that Francois had a routine that he often followed. In the morning he would take the family car, drive his mother to work at a nearby psychiatric center where she was a nurse, drop her off and then return to downtown Poughkeepsie where he would cruise the streets.

On one cold morning, Lt. Siegrist and his detectives pulled over Francois and asked him to come into the police department for an interview. Francois, who had a calm and respectful demeanor, readily agreed and drove his own car over to the police station. Francois was interviewed over a period of several hours and answered all questions police asked of him. Of course, police still had no concrete ideas exactly what had happened to the missing girls and no clue where they could be found. But Francois was easy to talk to and cooperative. The police, however, were not convinced.

Poughkeepsie police accompanied him to his home where Francois even let a detective inside his room for a brief time. The detective reported back that the inside of the house was in horrendous condition. There was garbage virtually everywhere he could see. It smelled awful. But Francois made no admissions and said nothing incriminating. By law, he was free to go about his business.

Then in late January, 1998 Kendall Francois was arrested for assaulting a prostitute. The crime took place on the second floor of 99 Fulton Avenue. At that time , the girl said she was picked up by Kendall Francois on Cannon Street, Poughkeepsie, near South Hamilton. Kendall drove her to his house where he took the girl up to his room on the second floor. They had a dispute over money and Kendall punched her in the face, knocking her down onto the bed. He then got on top of her and began to choke her with his bare hands. She agreed to have sex with him and when he finished, he brought the girl back to Cannon Street.

The victim reluctantly reported the incident to the police and pressed charges against him. Francois was arrested and received the assistance of an attorney. Later, on May 5, he pled guilty to third-degree assault, a misdemeanor, in City Court. He spent a total of 15 days in jail.

More Vanish
On June 12, 1998, Sandra Jean French, 51, disappeared. She was white, 5’, just 120 lbs., hazel eyes and a very slight build. She was reported missing from the small town of Dover, which is about 20 miles east of Poughkeepsie. Her car was found abandoned in the town of Poughkeepsie barely three blocks from the Francois home.

In July, 1998, the Missing Women’s Task Force was formed, consisting of full-time police investigators from the City of Poughkeepsie, Town of Poughkeepsie and New York State Police. The task force was under the command of City of Poughkeepsie's Sgt. Michael Horkan. The task force took up residence in the city’s downtown area at Market and Main Street, not far from the police station. But the existence of the team was not announced nor was it publicized. The formation of this team was an unusual event because task forces such as these are usually assembled after bodies are found and foul play is apparent.

The work load was enormous. Each tip or scrap of information had to be evaluated and acted upon if it was deemed important. Every day detectives studied the teletypes from National Crime Information Center (NCIC). These teletypes originate from every police municipality in the nation and report on every single unidentified body in America 365 days a year. Attempts to match up any of the girls to the reports were fruitless. Many on the investigative team were convinced that the girls were already dead, the victim of some unknown serial killer. Others were not so sure. But the task force was ordered not to talk about any details of the case, an essential point to any successful police investigation. The need for confidentiality is paramount in murder investigations, more so in a multiple homicide. The revelation of some significant detail or the publication of some other aspect of the investigation could alert the killer and wreck the case or, worse, induce the killer to flee. “It’s a possibility that they are linked” State Police Investigator Monte Martin told the press on July 26, 1998, “but we can’t say anything at this point”.

Just one month later on August 26, 1998, Catina Newmaster, 25 years old, vanished. Like almost all the others, she was slight of build, brown hair and was last seen in the same downtown streets of Poughkeepsie. At the police department, pressures to solve the case were enormous. A sudden feeling of urgency descended upon the community. There was real fear on the streets. People were afraid to come outside, especially street dwellers.

“We’re low lifes, that’s what it comes down to. People don’t care that we’re missing because they think we don’t belong on the streets in the first place. It’s not just the police, it’s the community,” a prostitute had told the Journal on July 26, 1998.

But they were wrong; the police were taking it very seriously and had been for nearly 22 months. Thousands of hours of investigative work had already been expended on the case. The City of Poughkeepsie Police, Town of Poughkeepsie, Town of Lloyd, the New York State Police and the F.B.I had all worked together on the investigation, which had grown to epic proportions.
The families of the missing girls were numb from worry. In a prophetic statement to the Albany Times, Patricia Barone, whose daughter had been missing nearly two years, said: “If they find one of them, they’ll find all of them, I’m sure of that.” She didn’t know how right she was.

Of course, she had no way of knowing that not far from the Market Street office, where the members of the task force diligently processed their paperwork every day, a house of horrors awaited them. The home was set on a quiet residential block, in the shadow of famous Vassar College -- a dark, gloomy two-story house virtually across the street from a funeral home. A house that neighbors and children knew well. They saw it every day as they walked to work, parked their cars, rode their bicycles, played on the street. The local mailman and some neighborhood kids, the usual delivery people, they knew it too. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the house well -- because it stunk to high heaven.

The Beginning of the End
On Tuesday, September 1, 1998, at about 8:30 in the morning in the second floor bedroom of this same house, a young woman was quietly being strangled. She was a slightly built woman who had gone there to get paid for sex. The person who was trying to kill her was a very large man, whom she had seen before on the city streets late at night, cruising for girls. He had his huge hands wrapped around her throat, his thumbs pressed deep into her flesh while she fought against him with all the strength God could give her. Somehow, she wriggled free and convinced the man to let her go. He agreed to drive her back to Main Street where he had picked her up only a short time ago. They got into his white car and drove to a local gas station. But just before he pulled into the station, the girl jumped from the car and ran away. The man continued to drive down the street.

At the same moment and less than one block away, Detectives Skip Mannain and . Bob McCready were in their unmarked car preparing to hand out flyers asking the public for help in the Catina Newmaster disappearance.Within seconds, they saw the very large man in his familiar white Camry and waved to him. The man quickly waved back because he recognized Det. Mannain from previous contacts. It was Kendall Francois.

As the officers pulled into the same gas station that Francois just left, a man came up to the car and told the police that a girl, who was now walking away, said that she was just assaulted. Quickly, the cops located the girl, who confirmed the attack. She was brought into the police station where she filed a complaint against Francois.

That same afternoon, the police returned to 99 Fulton Street to talk with Kendall Francois about this most recent attack. They asked him to come into the police department to discuss the report. He agreed and was taken to headquarters. Over the next few hours, Francois eventually made many admissions regarding the disappearance of the women. He was arrested and charged with a single count of murder in the death of Catina Newmaster on August 26, 1998. The police were elated. A search warrant was drawn up and signed. Then, on September 2, 1998, shortly after midnight, a team of detectives, the district attorney, EMS crews, crime scene processors and an army of cops drove over to 99 Fulton Street and entered into the house of horrors.

The House of Horrors
Police knocked on the door and it was soon answered by Kendall’s mother. The officers informed Kendall's parents and sister of the purpose of the visit. They were taken to the Town of Poughkeepsie Police Department while the police began their search. Within the hour, they located the first body. The house was immediately surrounded by police and secured. “We were resolved to preserve the scene at any cost,” said Lt. Siegrist. Rather than work the house throughout the night, the New York State Police decided to process the crime scene beginning at daylight.

99 Fulton was a two-story green colonial home situated in the middle of the block, sandwiched in between two other similar houses. It looked like any other home on the block, although it had a slightly run-down appearance. According to the Town of Poughkeepsie assessor’s office, the house, which was built on less than a quarter acre, sold in 1975 to a McKinley H. and Paulette Francois for $11,500. The neighborhood is average when compared to others in that section of town and many homes in that same area rent to college students.

In the morning, the police, dressed in sterile white suits and wearing anti-putrefaction masks, entered the home. The house was filled with garbage that was strewn everywhere, on the floors, furniture, in the sinks and closets. Clothes were piled on every inch of floor space and sheets were pulled over the windows. One detective remarked in all his years on the job, he had never seen such wretched living conditions. The stench was overpowering, it permeated every room, every corner and seeped out into the street like some toxic cloud.

Within one hour, hundreds of people gathered outside the building. The word had spread that Kendall Francois had been arrested for murder. Dozens of people from the media descended upon the neighborhood. Spotlights and cameras soon lined the street as the police went about their morbid business. Relatives of some of the victims arrived to watch the gruesome story unfold. A woman's body was found in the attic. Then another. And still another. Some spectators ran from the scene, gagging on the oppressive smell of death and garbage.

District Attorney William Grady told the newspapers: “Based on what the suspect told us, the eight bodies are inside that house.” Slowly, in a grim pageant of death, the bodies were removed from the house. The corpses were in various states of decomposition, some far advanced beyond the putrefaction stage. Insect activity was widespread and there were indications of rodent presence. The bodies were located in several different areas of the structure, often covered with clothes or blankets.

The New York Daily News said, “When cops went to the green, aluminum-sided house at 99 Fulton St., they were nearly bowled over by the stench of rotting flesh.” Detectives knew that it would be days before identifications could be made. Estimates of time of death in such cases are difficult, if not impossible, to determine. There is only one rigid rule: the longer period of time between death and the estimate, the more inaccurate the estimate will be.

Also present in the growing crowd on Fulton Avenue was Patricia Barone, mother of Gina Barone, who was reported missing back in December, 1996. Mrs. Barone stood bravely with her family but she was prepared for the worst. “In my head, I’d come to terms with it. I had a feeling she was gone all this time. I always felt that when the good Lord thought I was ready to hear it, I’d hear it,” she told reporters from the N.Y. Times.

Over the next five days, the police investigators continued their search for bodies and evidence. The crowds got bigger, the media was everywhere. Relatives of victims gathered outside and held vigils in remembrance of their loved ones. On September 5, the eighth and last body was removed from the Francois home. By then, the first body found was identified as Catina Newmaster, the last girl to be reported missing. Identifications of Gina Barone, Sandra French and Catherine Marsh quickly followed. A few days later, Wendy Meyers, Kathleen Hurley and Mary Giaccone were also identified.

Police made another gruesome discovery: one body, later identified as Audrey Pugliese, 34, was from New Rochelle, NY; she had not been reported missing. How she came to be inside the house, no one knew. Only the enigmatic Kendall Francois could provide a clue, but he wasn’t talking. Kendall was charged with second-degree murder on the morning of September 2. Represented by an attorney, he would not make any further statements. But he was well known in the city of Poughkeepsie. One prostitute told the Journal, “Most of us knew him. We did crack together.”

"Stinky"
Kendall Francois was born in the city of Poughkeepsie and grew up on Fulton Street. He attended Arlington High School, where the 6’4” teenager played football on the school team until he graduated in 1989. He joined the Army in 1990 and went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, for basic training. In 1993, Kendall attended class at Dutchess County Community College as a liberal arts major. He continued as a student on and off until 1998.

Although he was not working at the time of his arrest, he did have several jobs in the past. Kendall was employed at the Arlington Middle School from 1996-97, which is a few miles from Fulton Avenue, as a school monitor. Some teachers at the school complained about Kendall’s behavior, especially toward the female students. He often played with the girls in an inappropriate manner, touching their hair and telling sexual jokes. Although he had a clean record at the Middle School, children had a strange name for Kendall. They called him “Stinky.”

During the time span surrounding the disappearances, Kendall Francois lived at home with his mother, father and younger sister, who continue to deny any knowledge of the killings. Many people wondered how the parents could not have known what was going on? Especially Kendall’s mother who was employed as a nurse for many years at the Hudson River Psychiatric Center in Poughkeepsie. Surely at least she should have suspected. But it was reported that Kendall had told his parents a family of raccoons had died in the attic and he was having trouble removing the carcasses. This explanation seemed to suffice. In a statement issued through their attorney, the family had this to say: “We find ourselves plagued by unimaginable circumstances. Our youngest son is suspected of committing grave offenses from which his life hangs in the balance. We have virtually lost everything, been dispossessed of our home and cast into the street with only the clothes on our backs….The family requests that under these extraordinary circumstances, the public and media respect the only two items we have now, our privacy and personal respect”.

Guilty But Alive
On September 4, 1998 , Kendall Francois was indicted in Dutchess County Court for murder in the death of Catina Newmaster. The indictment came as the relentless search for bodies continued at 99 Fulton Avenue. Forensic experts had already been summoned to assist county investigators in the post mortem examinations. Special x-ray devices were utilized at the home to locate bones and other body pieces that may have been hidden inside walls or buried on the property.

In the pouring rain, the search continued. Onlookers in the street huddled underneath umbrellas as the media took up a watch across the street from the Francois home. Some small trees and bushes that were growing in front of the property were cut down by the police and were laying in a pile on the sidewalk. Flower bouquets and other memorabilia from victim’s families and friends sat under a tree near the Francois home. An eerie quiet permeated the scene and even the drenching rain could not wash away the sadness of the crowd at 99 Fulton Avenue. A few blocks away, at the Holy Trinity Church, a memorial service was held for the victims on Tuesday night. The Rev. Richard LaMorte offered comfort to victims' loved ones and police alike, who had been searching the house for a week with no break. He said to the press: “in tragedies like this, you need a religious experience. I realize some of those police are my parishioners.”

The following day, on Wednesday, September 9, 1998, the public got its first look at Kendall Francois as he appeared in Dutchess County Court to enter a plea. Wearing black pants and a white shirt, the big man stood silently before Judge Thomas J. Dolan as a plea of “not guilty” was entered. Kendall showed no emotion and seemed distant from the proceedings.
Some of the spectators became enraged. “He killed my daughter!” the mother of one of the victim’s cried. Others almost had to be removed from the courtroom by officers who struggled to control their emotional outbursts. But when court officers asked some spectators to leave, Judge Dolan permitted all the families to remain.

In his next appearance on October 13, 1998, he was formally charged with eight counts of first-degree murder, eight counts of second-degree murder and one count of attempted assault. In the state of New York, first-degree murder includes serial murder. Upon conviction of this charge, Francois could receive the death penalty. His attorneys were well aware of this and, as a result, on December 23, they attempted to enter a plea of guilty to the murders.

In the state of New York, prosecutors have 120 days from indictment of first-degree murder to decide whether to pursue the death penalty and must then notify the court of that intent. A death penalty in New York can only be imposed by a jury, therefore a defendant who avoids a trial removes the threat of capital punishment. As a result, Francois’ plea of guilty to a Murder 1 indictment, prior to prosecution’s notification to court that they intend to seek the death penalty, spared his life. The very next day, District Attorney Grady announced that his office would seek the death penalty in Francois’ case. However, the status of Francois’ guilty plea was unclear.

On February 11, 1999 the matter was decided in Dutchess County Court when Judge Dolan ruled that the death penalty law, in the way it currently applies, does not permit a plea of guilty prior to prosecution’s filing of a death penalty case. The defense team appealed the decision and the matter headed over to the State Court of Appeals, one of the most liberal minded courts in the nation. The case was heard on March 31, 2000. At issue was the crucial question of whether Kendall Francois, and other future murder suspects who face execution, will be able to avoid the death penalty, ironically, by admitting to their crimes. The Appeals Court ruled that a defendant may not plea prior to the D.A.'s filing notice of a death penalty case.

On the morning of August 7, 2000, the Dutchess County courthouse was packed with spectators, friends and family members of the murder victims. They sat for hours, their grief and anger steadily building for what was to come. Then, at 1:10 p.m., a sudden hush fell over the room. A side door opened and Kendall Francois, his huge six-foot-four frame towering over the deputies, was led into the court. He had on a dark blue button-down shirt, black pants and wore thin, wire frame glasses. A few people cursed at him as he sat in his seat and stared straight ahead.

As arranged through the District Attorney's Office and the defense team, Kendall Francois was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the killing of eight women. He could be confined to his cell for as much as 23 hours a day. The families of the victims were allowed to make statements to the court as Francois sat in his chair. At times, their rage and tears overwhelmed the court. "You took the child I had waited so many years for," said Marguerite Marsh, mother of victim Catherine Marsh. "You are a cold-blooded killer, Francois!" said an aunt of another victim.

Francois declined to make any statement but said through his attorney: "He is deeply sorry for his actions." He was led slowly out of the court in chains as some spectators continued to curse him. On August 10, 2000, Francois was processed into New York's toughest prison, Attica, where he remains today, inmate #A4160.

The ending to the story of Kendall Francois and “los desaparecidos” has been written. However, for one family, the saga continues. Michelle Eason, the only African American among the missing, has not been found. As of May, 2000, she was still missing. “Although I believed that she was a part of this in the beginning, I don’t believe it anymore” Lt. Siegrist recently said, “All the girls involved in the Francois case were white and were found inside Francois’ home.” There are no new leads in her case. As in all missing persons incidents, however, there are many possibilities. But up to now, her disappearance remains a total mystery.

Source

Blood Money

By Michael Crowley

At first they seemed little more than small-town smugglers. Then the trail led to the world's most dangerous terrorists.

Fairly Routine
When Ken Bell heard that the FBI wanted to see him, he thought little of it. After all, visits like that were a familiar part of his job. As a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's office in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bell was often handling cases that involved the agency. But what he'd been working on in the spring of 1999 was a cigarette-smuggling case that seemed fairly routine. In fact, his office was ready to file an indictment and make some arrests when the FBI said they wanted to talk to him about it.

Something was up. Bell knew it as soon as the agents arrived at his office and handed him a document to sign. It was an acknowledgment that he was about to hear classified information, and could be prosecuted for sharing it. This is going to be good, Bell thought. The FBI agents set up a projector, and a PowerPoint presentation flashed onto the screen. The first slides summarized the smuggling ring -- nothing new there. Then came one with a startling word: Hezbollah.

From the news, Bell knew this was an organization of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, and that no group, at the time, had murdered more Americans. But what did these killers have to do with cigarette smuggling in North Carolina?

Up next on the screen was an image of eight men -- all of whom Bell recognized as part of the smuggling ring. He glanced at the agent across the table. "You've got a Hezbollah cell in Charlotte," the man said.

The first hints of something suspicious had come four years earlier, in April 1995. An off-duty deputy sheriff named Bob Fromme was working as a security guard at JR Discount, a retail outlet and cigarette wholesaler in sleepy Statesville, North Carolina. His main job was to track and catch shoplifters, but one day he noticed that four olive-skinned young men were buying huge numbers of cigarettes. There was nothing so wrong with that, except each of the men was buying exactly 299 cartons at a time, one less than the number that would require legal paperwork. Stranger still, one man paid for everything in cash.

Fromme watched as he pulled thick wads of bills bound by rubber bands from a plastic bag. The entire transaction cost close to $30,000. Fromme, a stocky man with thick glasses, followed the men out to the parking lot, where they talked into cell phones, looking around warily as they loaded the cigarettes into a van. Then they drove off. On his next shift at JR's, Fromme saw them again. Soon it was a regular pattern. The group varied, but several faces became familiar. Fromme decided to run license-plate checks on their vehicles, which led to rental agencies in Charlotte. Later that spring, he tailed the vans to the state line and watched as the drivers crossed north into Virginia, or west into Tennessee. Where they went from there, he hadn't a clue.

It was time to take this higher, so Fromme called a buddy, John Lorick, at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The friend knew immediately what was happening: Those guys, he said, are smuggling cigarettes. It was a familiar scheme. You buy cheap cigarettes in a state with low tobacco taxes, like North Carolina, and sell them someplace where taxes are high. The difference is pure profit. It's also illegal. In the fall of 1996 the ATF opened an official investigation, later code-named Operation Smokescreen, and Fromme was assigned to it by the sheriff's department.

The Case of a Lifetime
Right away, the ATF began a round-the-clock surveillance of the smugglers. Fromme did his part by spending long days at a vacant storefront across from JR's, where he'd papered over the windows and set up hidden cameras. Soon the ATF established that the smuggling ring involved more than a dozen people who had settled into quiet middle-class Charlotte neighborhoods. They weren't Hispanics, as Fromme had first assumed. They were Arabs.

Unknown to the smugglers, each van led a secret motorcade of five ATF cars as they drove north. The cars would take turns following closely behind the van -- "the eyeball," they called it -- so that no one vehicle was in the smugglers' rearview mirror for too long. As an extra precaution, the agents sometimes changed clothes and switched license plates during pit stops.

While the routes varied, the smugglers' destination was always the same: Michigan. Sometimes it was a gas station in Dearborn, other times the garage of a house in Detroit, where more Arab men unloaded the cargo and handed over cash payments. Since Michigan had the nation's highest cigarette taxes, at $7.50 per carton, while North Carolina's tax was just 50 cents, the attractions of the operation were obvious. That $7 profit on every carton meant up to $13,000 for a full van load. At the height of the operation, three or four vans made the trip each day. One big puzzle piece remained missing, though. The investigators found that the smugglers didn't seem to spend much of the money. Where, then, were all the profits going?

Unbeknownst to both Fromme and the ATF, the FBI was conducting a parallel investigation. For two years, then three, the smugglers carried on their routine while the FBI tried to find out what was motivating the nefarious smugglers by tracking the full range of their operations. Once the feds started to intercept shipments to build evidence, the smugglers changed their tactics. They hired women to travel with them, and strapped bikes to the vans to look like vacationers. In spring 1999 investigators finally had enough evidence to wrap up the case. Meanwhile, the ATF asked the U.S. Attorney's office in Charlotte to prepare indictments. That was when Ken Bell entered the case. And it was why, three days later, the FBI entered his office.

He listened as the agents described the swarthy band of smugglers as supporters of one of the most treacherous terrorist groups in the world: Hezbollah. Ken Bell knew he was being handed the case of a lifetime. A quick thinker with a cool demeanor, he'd risen in the ranks fast. Fifteen years earlier, at just 25, he'd become the youngest assistant U.S. Attorney in the country. Two years later he was jailing mobsters and coke dealers as the head of a regional organized crime and drug task force. Now he was his office's top prosecutor.

Still, Bell realized this case would be tough, and probably dangerous. The more he researched Hezbollah, the more he understood what was at stake.

Founded in 1982 to fight the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, the Lebanese-based organization was behind the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 people. It's also been linked to the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, which destroyed a building housing U.S. servicemen, killing 19. While Hezbollah's main goal is to destroy Israel, its leaders often call for America's ruin as well. "Death to America was, is and will stay our slogan," says the group's secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah.

Hezbollah's Tentacles
Supported by Iran and Syria, Hezbollah has tentacles that reach distant corners of the globe. The group is thought to have hundreds of dedicated operatives embedded in Western Europe, South America, and the United States. The primary goal of these true believers is making money for the cause and sending it back to Lebanon. But analysts fear they could be summoned to violent service at any time -- including suicide bombings, which Hezbollah pioneered. There's no question Hezbollah has the capability of launching attacks on American targets, says Steve Emerson of the Investigative Project, a terrorism research group in Washington, D.C. "Hezbollah's agenda," adds Emerson, "is very close to al Qaeda's."

Bell was determined to nail the smugglers' ties to Hezbollah.

He poured his energies into the case, spending 80 hours a week in his office, surrounded by stacks of evidence. More and more, he found himself skipping dinner instead of sharing a meal at home with his wife, Gayle, and two young boys. He had been coaching his younger son's Little League team, and had decided to sit out this season, but soon he couldn't even go to games. The kids began to ask Gayle why he was never around anymore. "Dad's doing something important," she told them.

From FBI surveillance, wiretaps and undercover informants, a full picture of the terrorist cell emerged. The organizers had been a core group of eight Lebanese-born men. All had entered the United States in the early 1990s, most as teenagers, with the help of phony visas. Of these, four applied for political asylum, skipped their hearings, and then wed American women in bogus "green card marriages" to escape deportation. At least four of the group had not met their wives until their wedding day.

The leader of the cell was Mohamad Hammoud, a soft-spoken Beirut native in his mid-20s. After being repeatedly denied a U.S. visa in Syria, Hammoud and two cousins traveled to Venezuela and purchased fake visas for $200. In America he joined his two brothers and another cousin, as well as two Muslim friends from the same impoverished Beirut suburb. All of them, the FBI believed, had been sent to America by Hezbollah.

Hammoud and his associates chose to settle in the Charlotte area, with its close-knit Arab-American community, where they rented modest apartments and took menial jobs, several of them working at Domino's Pizza. They blended in well, with their tank tops and blue jeans and Charlotte Hornets gear. On Sundays they played pickup soccer in a local park.

But they also got busy building an empire of financial fraud that went beyond cigarette smuggling. A favorite tactic was called "busting out": They signed up for credit cards with false identities, maxed them out, and then tossed them away. Many of the purchased goods were resold for cash. One cell member bribed a bank clerk to give him access to the account of a woman who had recently left the country. There was no way of knowing how much money these scams raised, but one of the men bragged that he had personally made more than $500,000. In any case, they kept enough for themselves to buy homes in pleasant middle-class areas. None of them lived with their "wives," except for Hammoud. But their ordinary lifestyles drew no unwanted attention.

To keep focused, the cell members gathered every Thursday night, usually at Hammoud's house, for propaganda videos and prayers. Typically, they'd listen to a speech by the Ayatollah Khomeini and watch films glorifying martyrs preparing for suicide attacks against Israel. One tape later found in the house had graphic footage of the bombed Marine barracks. Informants said Hammoud would lead the meetings, shedding his natural shyness to deliver fiery speeches. Neighbors couldn't help noticing the cars, drawn shades, and people filing in and out of the house, but they assumed Hammoud was holding harmless meetings. "The women I saw usually wore veils," one neighbor recalls. "We thought it was a religious group."

The Most Versatile Crook
It was just before dawn on the morning of July 21, 2000, when the tranquility of East Charlotte's Donnefield Street was shattered by a convoy of police sedans and dark SUVs. Federal agents, clad in body armor and carrying machine guns, swarmed to the front door of Mohamad Hammoud's house and kicked it open. Hammoud leapt out of bed and grabbed a pistol. But as the armed team rushed into his living room, he thought better of resisting and quickly surrendered.

The FBI and ATF raid netted 17 other suspects in the Charlotte area, some of them local residents who'd been enlisted to help in the smuggling. (Eight others would be charged later.) Bob Fromme joined Ken Bell in monitoring the operation from a downtown police command post.

At Hammoud's house, agents seized shotguns, pistols and an AK-47 assault rifle, as well as piles of militant literature and videotapes. The prize find, though, was communication -- both letters and tapped conversations -- between Hammoud and Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon. Among these was a note from spiritual leader Sheikh Fadlallah, acknowledging a $1,300 contribution. For Bell, this was confirmation of what informants and surveillance had suggested: Hammoud was hot-wired to the highest levels of Hezbollah.

Most of the defendants would plead guilty to conspiracy, racketeering and fraud. But Bell wanted to bring the toughest charges possible against Hammoud. After the Oklahoma City bombing, Congress had made it a federal crime to provide financial support to any terrorist organization. So far, no prosecutor had tried to bring such a charge to trial. Bell intended to be the first. But to pull it off, he needed one of the terrorists to turn against Hammoud.

If there was one cell member who Bell thought was vulnerable, it was Said Harb. A smooth talker with an innocent air, Harb was perhaps the most versatile crook of the bunch. He had played a key role in the cell's criminal activities, personally driving cigarettes to Michigan and raising a lot of money through bank and credit fraud. At one time he had 12 credit cards and three driver's licenses, all in different names. His cell phone had five distinct rings, each for a separate identity, and he needed to refer to a notebook to keep track of his myriad Social Security numbers and bank accounts.

Harb also conducted some of the cell's most sensitive work. Canadian intelligence officials had monitored two trips he took to Vancouver in the late 1990s. The first time he met with an old childhood friend named Mohamad Dbouk. Dbouk, officials say, was in charge of procuring military equipment for Hezbollah in North America, and Harb provided him with fake credit cards and forged checks to make his purchases. The shopping list, issued by a senior Hezbollah commander, was extensive: night-vision goggles, laser range finders, blasting equipment, GPS devices, mine detectors, dog-repellent weapons and more. All of it would be shipped back to Lebanon for use in military operations against Israel.

But Harb had a weakness for the material temptations of America. He frequented Charlotte nightclubs, dabbled in Internet pornography, and bought himself a $36,000 BMW. He hated America's policies and, at the same time, appeared to thrive on its freedoms. More than the others, he seemed self-interested, more westernized and less ideologically committed -- perhaps the sort willing to cut a deal to save his own hide. By pressuring Harb with damning evidence about his trips to Canada, Bell hoped he would help nail Hammoud.

Cooperation
That meant winning the cooperation of Canadian intelligence officials, whose wiretaps had captured the details of Harb's shopping trips. Foreign intelligence had rarely been used in a U.S. courtroom before, and Bell's idea drew skepticism from federal officials. Nonetheless, Bell traveled to Canada in early 2002 to meet with some of that country's senior spooks. One of the top Canadian officials cut to the chase. "Tell me, what is it you really want?" he asked. Bell looked him in the eye. "What we want is to take your stuff and use it in an American courtroom." The Canadian seemed to admire Bell's directness. Soon they had a deal.

Bell's plan worked beautifully. Not long after he presented Harb's lawyer with some of the incriminating wiretaps, Harb agreed to negotiate a plea bargain. But he was worried about his own safety, and that of his family in Lebanon, so Harb insisted that the negotiations be secret. That meant that Bell couldn't talk with him in jail. Instead the two met in an empty room in the federal courthouse, Bell sliding his large frame behind a table across from the diminutive Harb, who wore handcuffs and an orange prison jumpsuit. Over time, the two managed a kind of odd rapport: Harb would sing the praises of Islam, and Bell would counter with his own firm Catholic beliefs.

In exchange for a lenient sentence, Harb was prepared to incriminate Hammoud as the cell's mastermind, and say that Hammoud had provided Hezbollah with "material support" in the form of financial contributions. But Harb had one major condition. Since his cooperation would mean a Hezbollah death sentence for his relatives in Lebanon, he insisted that all 12 of them be relocated to the United States. Bell told him that he could not make such a commitment because it required approval from high levels in Washington, D.C.

"You can find a way," Harb told him. Otherwise, Bell could find another witness.

With the trial date fast approaching, Bell rushed background checks on Harb's family to ensure they weren't terrorists, and then he convinced the State Department to bend its rules. On Easter Sunday, 2002, Harb's family drove to Syria under cover of darkness to board a plane to the United States. But there was a last-minute snag with their visas. Bell was repeatedly dragged away from Easter dinner with his family to take urgent phone calls. Each time he returned grim-faced and picked at his turkey. "I can't talk about it," he would say apologetically.

The snag was ultimately solved, and Harb finally got what he wanted: a call from his relatives saying they were safely on American soil. Bell was then free to enter Harb's plea, and he quickly used the opportunity to file new and much harsher charges against Hammoud. Now it would come down to a face-off between the two men at Hammoud's trial.

Bell worked feverishly day and night preparing for the April 2002 opening of the trial. Always in the back of his mind was his family's safety, and a disturbing call he had received from the FBI some months before. "

Hammoud is trying to have you killed," an agent told him. An informant said Hammoud had asked him to "put two bullets into the skull of the arrogant bastard prosecutor" and bomb the courthouse to destroy evidence. Bell and his wife had discussed sending the boys out of town to stay with relatives until the trial was over. But Gayle ultimately decided against it. "We'll stay here and do this together," she told him. Bell even turned down round-the-clock protection from federal marshals. Better not to spook the boys, he figured.

He also found out that he wasn't the only individual who was in danger. One afternoon, Bob Fromme came home early to find two Arabic-looking men standing in his living room, rummaging through a briefcase. They fled out his back door. Despite a sweep of the area and an undercover effort in the Arab-American community, the intruders could not be identified.

The Climax
The courthouse looked like a military zone when Hammoud's trial finally got underway. Bell showed up at a building ringed by concrete barriers. Federal marshals with shotguns and assault rifles stood guard. The jurors, whose names were kept secret, were driven to the courthouse from a secret location by armed marshals. It was all for good reason: Harb's brothers had reported that before they left Lebanon, Hezbollah leaders had grilled them for details about security at the courthouse.

Hammoud, now 29, sat in the courtroom in shackles, "staring daggers through Bell," as one agent on the case put it.

Hammoud's lawyer, Deke Falls, argued to the jury that his client was the victim of an unfair post-9/11 witch hunt, and that he sympathized with Hezbollah only for its peaceful social work and political activities. "This man right here is not a terrorist," he told the jury as he pointed to Hammoud. "This is an overblown cigarette case."

Bell countered by playing for the jury several of the videotapes seized from Hammoud's home, one of which showed a "Martyr's Squad" -- a few dozen men dressed in fatigues with explosive belts strapped around their waists. A speaker says they will "detonate ourselves to cause the earth to shake under the feet of our enemy, America and Israel." On another tape, Hammoud's sister could be heard speaking to his two cousins. "Who are you?" she asks. One of them, a young boy, begins to cry as he is told "Hezbollah."

"Hezbollah," the boy repeats, with a raised fist. "Hezbollah!"

When Said Harb testified, he said that Hammoud had solicited donations for Hezbollah at the Thursday night meetings, and had given him $3,500 to take to Hezbollah officials in Lebanon. Falls tried to discredit Harb as a sleazy hustler whose testimony was just one more con.

Everyone knew Bell's cross-exam of Hammoud would be the climax of the trial. The day came on June 14, 2002. For more than three hours, Bell grilled Hammoud about his Hezbollah connections.

Hammoud was composed, and spoke with gentle warmth. Bell sensed that the good-looking defendant was even making flirtatious eye contact with the female jurors. Hammoud stated that he had come from Lebanon not for sinister purposes, but to flee nonstop violence, like the Israeli rocket attack that had killed one of his boyhood friends. He admitted to sympathizing with Hezbollah, but only for its resistance to Israel and political and humanitarian work in Lebanon. Hammoud said he did not hate Americans and would not live with them if he did. He also suggested he was being unfairly persecuted. "I am in the United States. I am not in Syria or any other country." America, he said, is "the mother of democracy."

Bell then produced a striking photograph of a teenage Hammoud at a Hezbollah youth center in Lebanon. The picture showed Hammoud in military garb, holding up an assault rifle. "And that's part of your good works with Hezbollah right there in your hand?" Bell asked.

He also pressed Hammoud about a letter that had been found at his house from Sheikh Abbas Harake, a Hezbollah military leader in Beirut. Harake, according to Said Harb's testimony, was the recipient of the $3,500 "donation." The letter referred to Hammoud as "a dear brother who has not forgotten his field of work," and also to unspecified places where Harake and Hammoud "worked together."

"What was your 'field of work'?" Bell asked.

"I don't know what he's talking about," Hammoud replied.

It was the one moment when he did not have a ready answer. And yet he never fully lost his composure the way any prosecutor would hope a defendant would. Bell was left exhausted, and returned to his chair feeling discouraged. He turned to one of his colleagues and muttered, "I'm not sure I laid a glove on him."

Guilty
Bell had always hated jury deliberations. It was the one part of a trial when events were out of his control. He could have gone back to his office and done some work, but instead he hung around the courthouse, for one day, then two, then three.

The deliberations were going on a lot longer than Bell liked. Based on the questions that were being sent in to the judge, Bell suspected the jury had been easily convinced on the lesser charges of fraud and smuggling, but was probably deadlocked on the critical question of "material support" for terrorism. So Mohamad Hammoud might have survived the questions about his Hezbollah connections all too well.

On the third day, a Friday, Bell heard shouts coming from the jury room. He felt a knot in his stomach. We've lost it, he thought. He would be known across the country as the prosecutor who blew the first major terrorism case after September 11.

Soon after, the jury returned with its verdict. One juror, a woman, had tears in her eyes. Bell assumed the shouting had to do with her. Hammoud was called to the courtroom, and the judge read through the list of charges and verdicts. Guilty. Guilty. ... And on the critical charge ... guilty. Bell felt a mix of relief and elation. Hammoud stared ahead blankly, knowing he would be going to prison for a very long time.

Outside the courthouse, reporters mobbed Bell. "We're not going to make a distinction between terrorists and those who fund terrorists," he declared. "Terrorist acts cannot be carried out without the help of those who fund them."

A few months later, Mohamad Hammoud was sentenced to 155 years in prison, maintaining his innocence all the while, claiming he was a victim of post-9/11 paranoia. Hammoud said that the jurors looked at him throughout the trial "like they hated me."

Federal officials hailed the case as a model for the urgent task of smashing terrorist cells in the United States. Bell and Fromme both received awards from the Justice Department and were personally congratulated by Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Bell left the U.S. Attorney's office soon after to become a partner in a major Charlotte law firm. Fromme is still at the Iredell County sheriff's department, and this past spring he was finally able to take his honeymoon -- seven years after getting married. Said Harb, meanwhile, was released after serving a reduced sentence; his current whereabouts are a well-guarded secret.

While the trial of Hammoud is over, the Charlotte Hezbollah terrorist case remains open. Five named defendants are still fugitives, and the FBI continues to hunt for them. Officials are particularly concerned about Mohamad Dbouk, Said Harb's contact in Canada. In recent testimony before Congress, U.S. Attorney Robert Conrad testified that Dbouk had applied five times to Hezbollah leaders to become a martyr by carrying out a suicide operation. Each time he was turned down, on the ground that he was too valuable to the group. No one knows if he's still trying.

Meanwhile, federal officials say they are monitoring suspected Hezbollah cells in several other U.S. cities.

Bob Fromme, for one, assumes that the danger is far from over. Just this past fall, he received a troubling call from an informant at JR's. Arabic men had shown up in vehicles with out-of-state plates -- and paid cash for large numbers of cigarettes.

Source

The O.J. Simpson Murder Trial

No one enters suit justly, no one goes to court honestly; they rely on empty pleas, they speak lies, they conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity.
Isaiah 59: 4,9-11, 14-15

In the beginning it was a double murder, and then it was a criminal trial that dominated public attention as the law tried its hardest to convict a man.

A man who became perhaps the most famous criminal defendant in American history and so easily recognizable that people referred to him by his initials only. It went on for nine months. There were 11 lawyers representing the man in the dock and 25 working around the clock for the largest prosecutor's office in the country.

It became the most publicized case in US history. It was the longest trial ever held in California, costing over $20 million to fight and defend, running up 50,000 pages of trial transcript in the process. Th! ere were 150 witnesses called to give evidence before a jury that was sequestered at the Hotel Intercontinental in downtown L.A. from January until October.

Half way through the trial, the presiding judge, who could so easily have wandered into the whole thing from Alice in Wonderland, decided they needed some recreation and arranged for them to go sightseeing in a Goodyear blimp. For added measure he sent them to the theater and on a boat trip to Catalania Island as well.

No movie or television courtroom drama would have dared to unfold the way this one did, and it was not without coincidence that it evolved in Los Angeles, so often referred to by cynics as "La La Land," the only place in the world where you look for culture in yogurt cups. The rest of the country became obsessed with the empty, celebrity-dominated West Los Angeles backdrop to the crime.

On CNN, Larry King told his viewers, "If we had God booked ! and O.J. was available, we'd move God."

The case rec eived more media coverage and was accompanied by more unadulterated hype than any other criminal trial since the Lindbergh kidnapping-murder case in New Jersey in the 1930s, even exceeding the notorious Manson Family trial of the early 1970s.

The media influence, in fact, became so intense that one poll showed? 74% of Americans could identify Kato Kaelin but only 25% knew who Vice President was.

An incredible 91% of the television viewing audience watched it and an unbelievable 142 million people listened on radio and watched television as the verdict was delivered.

One study estimated that U.S. industry lost more than $25 billion as workers turned away from their jobs to follow the trial.

2000 reporters covered the trial.! 121 video feeds snaked out of the Criminal Courts building where it was held. There were over 80 miles of cable servicing 19 television stations and eight radio stations. 23 newspaper and magazines were represented throughout the trial, the Los Angeles Times itself publishing over 1000 articles throughout the period. Over 80 books and thousands of articles have already been published, authored seemingly by everyone with any role in the trial.

But why did America go stir-crazy over O.J. Simpson and the "Trial of the Century"?
When the events began to unfold, the lead actor in the greatest soap opera to fascinate the American public in the twentieth century was hardly that important. He had admittedly been a famous professional football star, considered by some to have been one of the greatest running backs in American football history. He had won the Heisman Trophy as the nation's top college football player in 1968 and his NFL rec! ords, mainly secured in his career with the Buffalo Bills, included mo st rushing yards gained in one season, most rushing yards gained in a single game and most touchdowns scored in a season.

But he had retired in 1979 and drifted into a mediocre to modestly successful career in sports broadcasting and minor movie roles. He was best known as the spokesman for Hertz Rental Cars. When Nicole Brown, his second wife, first met him, she had no idea who he was. When the lead prosecutor against him was approached by a LAPD detective for help in getting a search warrant on a property owned by O.J., she asked the police officer, "Who is O.J. Simpson? Phil, I'm sorry, I don't know him."

Yet all three major television networks plus CNN covered the story of his trial in massive detail. A murder trial involving victims known only to their family and friends and a defendant called Simpson, who was less known and recognizable than Bart Simpson, became an epic of media overkill.

If all of this was not enou! gh, the brutal murder of two innocent victims spawned a legal mud fight that questioned the competence of just about everyone involved and created a schism between the black and white population that a CNN poll estimated may have set back race relations in the US by 30 years.

To many, particularly in minority communities,? the trial of Orenthal James Simpson became not so much a determination of his guilt or innocence of murder in the first degree, beyond a reasonable doubt, but whether or not a black man could find justice in a legal system designed by and largely administered by whites. To others, many of whom were white, the key question was whether a mostly minority jury would convict a black celebrity regardless of the weight of evidence against him.

To others, the tragic deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman always seemed stage left, as the man on trial for their murders commanded center stage in his fight to prove bigotr! y and racism were the real issues on trial, using a pack of slick lawy ers willing to circumnavigate the parameters of legal etiquette and acceptable courtroom manners to achieve their objectives, transforming their client, an accused double murderer, into some kind of political prisoner.

Source

There’s Been a Murder at the Versace House

by Matt Meltzer on July 19, 2007

The shooting of famed fashion designer and “King of South Beach” Gianni Versace is perhaps the most visible and memorable homicide in Miami Beach history. And while it involved a cast of characters from Italy to San Diego, Minneapolis to Hamburg, the case and its associated players cannot escape the air of the bizarre and suspicious that any crime committed south of the Georgia border seems to embody. Had Versace been shot in New York or Milan or Los Angeles, it probably would have been your run-of-the mill celebrity shooting. But since it happened in Miami, well, nobody involved seems altogether reputable.

For those unfamiliar, on the morning of July 15, 1997, Gianni Versace set about his morning routine of walking down Ocean Drive to News Café and purchasing himself a copy of an Italian newspaper. Upon returning to his oceanside mansion, he was accosted by a man named Andrew Cunanan and shot twice in the face, dying almost instantly. This random act of violence against a well-liked celebrity seemed inexplicable. That is, of course, until you examine the killer a little further.

Andrew Cunanan grew up in San Diego, the son of a Marine officer and his chronically depressed wife. As a teenager, he attended private school in the area where he began to engage in outrageously flamboyant homosexual encounters of which he bragged to other classmates. The perpetually-attention-seeking Cunanan soon began to attend clubs in the local San Diego gay community, attracting the attention of wealthier, older gay men who were favorable to his open nature. This gay party-boy lifestyle continued when he enrolled at the University of California in Berkeley, near San Francisco. He became part of the gay social scene, enjoying the perks that his relationships with wealthier gays afforded him. It was during this time that he met and began affairs with Jeff Trail, a young Naval officer, and architect David Madson.

Like so many who love to take advantage of richer older men, soon Cunanan’s youth and beauty began to fade and he became depressed. Severely depressed. He returned to San Diego, gained weight, and began to deal drugs to support himself. It was during this depression that Cunanan decided to pay a visit to his former lover Madson who had become acquainted with Trail. He had, coincidentally, moved to the same city. Never one for rational thought, Cunanan soon became a festering volcano of jealousy until one night in April 2007, Madson arranged a meeting between the three to iron out the whole situation. This was, in retrospect, not Madson’s brightest idea.

No one is certain exactly what took place at this meeting, but at some point Trail said something to Cunanan that was offensive enough for Andrew to bludgeon the former Naval officer to death with a hammer. Never one to intervene, Madson decided it best to let Cunanan get his anger out on Trail, then help him dispose of the body in a rolled up Persian rug. Cunanan showed his gratitude by shooting Madson 3 times once the two fugitives got 45 miles out of town. Minneapolis authorities found both bodies and identified Cunanan as the killer within a few days, but by then nobody knew exactly where he was.

No one, that is, except Chicago real estate mogul Lee Miglin, who was unfortunate enough to be standing outside his Chicago townhouse on May 3 when Cunanan drove by. It is presumed that the killer forced Miglin back into his home at gunpoint, tied him to a chair, punched and kicked him repeatedly before stabbing him with a pair of garden shears and slitting his throat with a hacksaw. He then took the body out to the garage in a sack and rolled back and forth over Miglin’s body in the developer’s own Lexus until it was barely solid. Cunanan returned to the house, ate some food, slept in Miglin’s bed, and left Chicago the next morning. This after leaving Madson’s red Jeep only a few blocks away, littered in pictures implicating that this, was, in fact Cunanan’s escape vehicle.

Because he made little effort to escape detection, Cunanan was identified again by Chicago authorities and was tracked by the phone in Miglin’s Lexus. Crazy, but not dumb, Cunanan realized this somewhere in Pennsylvania and discarded the phone, quickly looking for a new vehicle. It did not take him long to find one. Unfortunately the vehicle belonged to 45-year-old William Reese, a cemetery worker in Pennsville, New Jersey. Cunanan did not see this as much of an obstacle, however, and shot Reese for the keys to his red pickup truck. Then, like any good refugee from mainstream society, he headed to South Florida.

Upon arrival in the area, Andrew Cunanan took up residence in the Normandy Plaza hotel on 69th and Collins in Miami Beach. Though he didn’t show his face for a while, knowing full well he was now squarely on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list, he did begin to make the rounds of the various gay nightspots around South Beach. And while it was suspected that Cunanan was hiding out in South Florida, with tips coming in after airings of “America’s Most Wanted” from a Palm Beach courthouse to a Miami Subs on 71st St., nobody really seemed too concerned about a possible serial killer wandering the streets of South Florida. What’s one more?

Not surprisingly to anyone, WSVN Channel 7 was the only station to do a report on Cunanan before his most infamous shooting. But, again, Channel 7 reporting on a possible life-threatening danger to you and your family is sort of like any other channel reporting the score of a Marlins game. So nobody gave that much notice either.

That was, of course, until the fateful morning of July 15, when Cunanan shot the most famous resident South Beach had to offer. And it was at this point that the story goes from South Florida drifter committing vicious crime to “Only in Miami.”

Police soon identified Cunanan as the killer and found his red pickup truck parked in a South Beach garage it had occupied for the previous two months. That is to say a stolen red pickup sat in a public garage for two months without anyone being the wiser. This, of course, teaches us all the valuable lesson that if you want to steal a car and don’t want anyone to know about it, the best place to stick it is a public parking garage in Miami Beach. After all, police actually look in neighborhoods known for chop shops and auto theft. Tourist destinations, though, are excellent locations for fugitive vehicles.

Upon finding the truck, police found a room key to the Normandy Plaza hotel with room 205 written on the card. This, to many police organizations, might be a good indication of where this FBI 10 Most Wanted fugitive may be. But Beach police being Beach police thought it wiser to pursue some other, more concrete leads than, say, a room key with a number and a hotel written on it. Two days later they decided that it might be a good idea to check the Normandy Plaza and barged in on a rather surprised couple, no doubt enjoying their honeymoon in true Miami fashion; with a SWAT team and gun barrels in their face. Apparently Cunanan thought it a good idea to check out of the Normandy plaza after his picture was plastered over every TV station in America, not just Channel 7.

It later came to surface that Cunanan had pawned some gold coins he had earlier stolen from Lee Miglin in order to cover the $37 a night the Normandy was charging him. In order to do so, he had to fill out a card with his name, address and thumb print, all of which he did. Under his real name. This was about a week before he shot Versace. One might think that a pawn shop, a spot known for selling dangerous weapons and buying from the desperate, might be a good place to alert if a known fugitive is thought to be in your area. Not so much the case in South Florida, although it is debatable that it would have even mattered in a city where handguns are easier to buy than cold medication. So Cunanan walked in, gave his real name and location, pawned a $50 gold piece stolen from a homicide victim, and walked out. Surprising they didn’t offer to sell him a Tec-9 on his way out.

South Floridians, as we like to do from time to time, worked ourselves in to a tizzy, locking doors and looking around corners since there was a serial killer on the loose. Police, state and federal agents set out on a massive manhunt for Cunanan, rumors circulating that he was about to leave the country. Or, even worse, disguising himself as a woman to evade capture. After all, in South Beach, a man dressed as a woman is hardly going to stick out. The FBI offered up a reward, as did the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the City of Miami Beach, Metro-Dade, a New York anti-violence group and the City of New York. Presumably for the security of its residents during long weekends.

It was not until July 23 that authorities were able to locate the most wanted man in America. Was it a massive surveillance dragnet that nabbed this psychotic killer? A police raid? A well-executed under-cover operation? No, no. It was an old man who spoke no English who thought maybe he heard gunshots and actually hadn’t. Fernando Carreira, a 71-year-old caretaker of a houseboat on 52nd and Collins, went in to do his usual rounds of the boat. He claimed to have seen a stranger on the boat who fired a single shot at him before Carreira ran off. After failing 3 times to call authorities from his cell phone, he then alerted his son who called 911.

The operator, speaking in Spanish to the elder Mr. Carreira, got the description of the assailant as a young man with dark hair, a description which readily applied to Cunanan. Police from the City of Miami Beach and Metro Dade surrounded the shuttered houseboat for several hours until finally storming the vessel in search of the killer. And what did Beach police find upon entering the boat? According to first reports, nothing. As in no body, no Cunanan, no gun, nothing. So much so that the early edition of the next day’s Miami Herald read “Under Siege: Search Comes up Empty.” An hour later, though, police were telling a different story.

The official version given by Miami Beach Police is that Metro Cops went in, found the body, and announced “clear” over the radio, which Beach police took to mean that nothing was in the boat. They then made that announcement. Within an hour, of course, when a second raid was made and the body was found, they realized there had been some sort of a mistake. Some may argue that it’s tough to miss a bloody corpse with half its face blown off lying in the middle of a houseboat. Others might argue that police lied to keep the media from storming the boat. One or two might actually believe that it was a communication error. Any story you choose to believe, Cunanan was found dead, victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. His suicide his last, desperate cry for attention before ending his life.

But what exactly was Cunanan doing on this boat? As it turned out the boat belonged to a German businessman named Torsten Reineck. Initially disregarded as coincidence, Reineck split his time between Miami and Las Vegas where he ran a health club that fronted as a gay bathhouse. So Cunanan shoots one wealthy gay man and hides out on the boat of another. Apparently, Reineck was known in Las Vegas as Doc Ruehl, a supposed ear, nose and throat specialist who was very prominent in the Vegas gay scene. Doc was also known for not paying many of his business associates and getting angry very easily. Before he was the nefarious Doc Ruehl, Reineck was implicated in an array of document forging cases stemming from his ownership of a printing company in Hamburg. He was also wanted in Europe for non-payment of $500,000 in back taxes. So a man needing to leave the country is hiding out on the boat of a shady gay foreign businessman who is a suspected document forger? The connection, though, was never put together.

As for Carreira, the caretaker of the boat? Well, apparently the reward money he deserved from all the various organizations was not really intended for him. As in when they say “Any tips leading to the capture of this criminal,” they apparently mean “show up with this guy in the passenger seat of your car and we’ll THINK about giving you the money.” The FBI, who operates under normal rules, and the New York anti-violence group both agreed to pay the $10,000 each they had promised. However the City of Miami Beach and Metro Dade hemmed and hawed, discussing whether or not he had previous knowledge or if he had even, actually, led them to find Cunanan. Obviously, some believed they would have found him on the boat eventually. It was only when Carreira threatened to sue and investigations were closed that he ever got his money. The City of New York, as they do to so many people, gave Carreira the finger and left him with nothing. This was before Rudy Giuliani was considering running for president.

Carreira, though, fared alright in the end, collecting $55,000 in reward money and getting an endorsement deal from Caretaker Quick Draw, manufacturers of a $25 pistol holder. Hopefully, he learned English in time for the TV spots.

It is still unknown what Cunanan’s connection to Versace was. Most people familiar with the case say that the two knew a lot of people in common. Those close to both say they had met a few times over cocktails. One couple suggested they had seen the two together watching the movie “Contact” on a night prior to the shooting, but that is mere speculation. Still, the coincidences and similar social circles are very closely linked, and most speculate that the two, at the very least, had met before Versace’s death. Given that Cunanan was not a mentally stable person, it is still a mystery why he chose Versace as his victim, if it was a random act, a pre-planned murder from the beginning, or an idea that came to him as he settled in South Beach. Many think that his suicide was carried out so as to leave everyone with a mystery surrounding him. So that his name would never be forgotten and that he would remain interesting. And that may be true in some respect, but sadly for Cunanan, his name was out of the headlines almost as soon as it was in them. A month later Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris, and Andrew Cunanan became just another crazy character in the colorful history of South Florida Crime.

Source

Love Is A Risk

by E.W. Count

E.W. Count is the author of COP TALK: TRUE DETECTIVE STORIES FROM THE NYPD (Pocket Books), and is the moderator of Prodigy's online interest group, Cops & Crime. She is working on her third book about NYPD detectives.

When I met retired Mafia Detective Roland Cadieux, I couldn't tell a Gambino from a Genovese. Along with a few other NYPD mob mavens I interviewed, Cadieux made the names, the families, spring to life, in all their rich, scheming brutality.

The mob does business in every borough of New York City, of course, and Cadieux chased them all over, but Brooklyn -- full of mob flavor and history -- seems the quintessential venue. Bensonhurst and Bath Beach, for instance -- about as far south as you can get in Brooklyn, short of Coney Island -- are neighborhoods full of warmth, color, and streets kept clean and safe by fear. Don't mess with the neighborhood, or you'll hear from mob neighbors, cozy in their private houses.

Brooklyn-born Ron Cadieux, whose French-Canadian name can seem to the casual observer the most complicated thing about him, worked his first organized crime case in Brooklyn's 10th Homicide in 1972. With his partner, Kenny McCabe, Cadieux put the cuffs on the Gambino godfather, "Big Paul" Castellano, in March, 1984. Both partners know the silk socks set inside out.

Unfortunately, while Cadieux and McCabe, and the rest of the federal/city strike force that took down the godfather, were looking forward to getting him in front of a judge and jury, Gotti's black coat guys finished off Big Paul instead. Pop pop pop pop pop -- the hit of the century happened outside Spark's steak house, in the midst of the evening rush hour.

The money that mobsters live for never has proved bulletproof, not even for a godfather -- a 'capo'. In the Mafia, according to Cadieux, ruling hands come with sweaty palms. Once the strike force had amassed their evidence against Big Paul, they arranged a quiet, gentleman's arrest at his attorney's midtown Manhattan office. When Ron and Kenny cuffed him, the capo's palms had been soaking wet.

Cadieux's career full of quality collars notwithstanding, arresting Big Paul was the high point for the detective, and he retired after twenty-three years on the job. By then, he could tell you enough tales of Mafia blood and betrayal to put Scheherezade to shame.

Despite the trenchcoat, Cadieux, a private investigator now, is hard to stereotype. Tall and polished, he could have been working Wall Street white-collar crime in the NYPD as easily as murders and mobsters. Practically speaking, though, he has the kind of investigative background that La Cosa Nostra lawyers love to hire. Many respectable PIs accept mob lawyers' fat fees; Cadieux politely declines. He has enough mob stories, surely -- and plenty of work. He can even take a time-consuming case for next to nothing, if a good family needs his help.

When Cadieux met a grieving father named Gerald Vasquez in mid-1989, the PI felt for him. And, Cadieux was intrigued. A pretty daughter, a bad guy, a greedy scheme with a familiar whiff of the mob. Cadieux was the second PI to confront the baffling case. The pretty thirty-year-old daughter, Rosemary Vasquez, was missing, and so was her mother, Rose Santoro. Were they murder victims? The official NYPD position -- missing. Since when? Tuesday, September 14, 1988, according to one of a handful of clues.

The first time I met him, Cadieux regaled me for hours with Mafia tales full of money and murder. We were winding down when he spoke of the startling, sensational find awhile back, in a South Brooklyn parking lot: a Cadillac with two women's mummified bodies in the trunk. Corpses in the trunks of cars are a mob signature, but this discovery of two murdered women was bizarre, even for Brooklyn; I remembered the media splash.

Cadieux reviewed the reports of a PI who had already worked the case, and he gumshoed his way over the same territory. An NYPD insider, Cadieux had an advantage over the first PI -- his colleagues of the Detective Bureau willingly shared whatever they knew. Unofficially, the detectives agreed with Ron Cadieux and his client: the women had died violently, at the hands of a likely suspect. But opinions, even those of seasoned detectives, have never been accepted as evidence by a DA, much less in court.

Lacking any hard evidence at all, Cadieux took an unorthodox step -- he called a reporter. News coverage might jolt someone or something out of the woodwork, that would help nail the suspected murderer.

Introduced by Cadieux to Rosemary's surviving relatives, Daily News reporter Gene Mustain wrote up the mystery. The story ran in May '91 -- more than two-and-a-half years since anyone had last seen the two women.

In the background of the tragic story was the ugly divorce that had strained Gerald's relationship with his only child. After his marriage ended, the mother was unwilling, as misguided parents sometimes are, to risk sharing her child's affection with her dad. Trust only your mother and God the Father, was the lesson the child absorbed.

Gerald did manage, finally, to re-establish contact with his grown daughter, but even then, he told Cadieux, meetings seemed awkward. Lately, he had once again lost touch with Rosemary. Rose, the divorced mother, had never really loosened her adoring hold. Rosemary, a secretary, hardly dated. When she worked on Wall Street, Rose met her each evening at the subway to walk her safely to their tidy one-bedroom apartment upstairs in a private house. The women went together to their church, St. Finbar's in Bath Beach, and regularly to others, as well, chosen from the many in the neighborhood. Brooklyn also is the Borough of Churches.

Ironically, the news of Rosemary's disappearance came to Gerald in a call from the women's landlord. The landlord counted on their rent check, like clockwork by the third of each month. He had delayed an extra week before going upstairs to see what was going on. The scene, when he did go, was eerie: food in a pan on the kitchen stove; Rose's reading glasses and her newspaper, dated Friday, September 14, 1988, on the table. No sign that anyone intended to be gone longer than an hour or so.

The unnerving tableau sent the landlord straight to the police station, where officers speculated that his tenants had no doubt left town temporarily. Even if the tenants were missing persons, the landlord learned, only a relative may file a report to that effect. No report was filed.

Rosemary and her mother were missed by church friends, too, who came looking for them at the house. The worried landlord rushed to the station for the second time -- again, to no avail. Revisiting the upstairs apartment, he unearthed the telephone number of a relative. Three weeks after the date on Rose's newspaper, Gerald heard the landlord's disturbing news.

Gerald and his wife were kin to the missing women, of course -- but they, too, struck out with the police. Since Rosemary and Rose were of sound mind and body, the father learned, and both older than age eighteen and younger than sixty-five (Rose was sixty-four), they did not fit NYPD guidelines for opening a missing persons investigation.

By the time Cadieux took the case, the police had long since opened the missing persons case. But the months of bureaucratic delay bothered him, not only for the sake of his clients and their case, but for the cops who had come after him. In his day, if the bosses chose to so slavishly adhere to case guidelines, detectives would have found a little time when their tour was over to take a ride to the Vasquez girl's place and see what the story was. There's always a way, he insisted, to help someone with a problem.

Well before Friday, September 14, the likely day of Rose and Rosemary's disappearance, their landlord had received from Rose Santoro some startling news. Rosemary had accepted a suitor's proposal -- indeed, would marry him -- and what's more, Rose would be going to live with the couple in their new house.

Rosemary's suitor was Demetrio Lifrieri, a Sicilian immigrant and an old business friend of her father's -- it was, in fact, through her father that Rosemary had met him. Years back, Gerald had brought his friend around, hoping to lighten those awkward meetings between himself and his daughter; he had thought another voice in the conversation might just help put her at ease. The father was by no means matchmaking; Lifrieri, a mechanic by trade, was married.

Around the same time in late summer of '88, when the women's landlord heard that Rose and Rosemary would be moving, Gerald Vasquez received a surprising phone call from Marina Lifrieri, Demetrio's wife. Marina, in her turn, reported an odd phone call from Rose, demanding to know what was holding up Marina's and Demetrio's divorce. If there were something between Rosemary and Demetrio, Vasquez told Marina, this was the first he'd heard of it.

As that summer waned, a friend of Rosemary's heard from her that the marriage was off; all she wanted now was the $40,000 -- her mother's life savings -- that she had loaned to Demetrio. Rosemary was frantic to get the money back.

In November 1988, Gerald and Helen Vasquez had retained their first PI, and set about searching the apartment from which Rose and Rosemary had vanished. What they found provided their investigator with a solid lead. In one search, they came up with four checks totaling over $40,000, each payable to Rosemary, signed by none other than Lifrieri -- but returned to her by the bank marked 'Insufficient Funds'. Scouring the place again, Gerald and Helen discovered an IOU for $40,000 to Rosemary from Lifrieri. When their investigator confronted him, the "fiance" stonewalled.

Lifrieri now worked a couple of jobs, one at Blue Chip Coffee, where he had started as a mechanic and moved up to salesman. The coffee import business was run from a warehouse in the Park Slope section by the owner, Anthony Viola. (Cadieux had been raised in Park Slope.)

The papers found by Gerald Vasquez sent his first investigator to the police, who went to Lifrieri-- who had little to say. They offered a lie detector test, a simple way he could take the heat off himself, but he brushed them off, telling them to talk to his lawyer. When Marina, his wife, asked why didn't he let the police give him the test, he got furious and and violently shoved her. Marina threw her husband out-- better to divorce him than to disappear.

On December 5, 1988, police at last took the missing persons report from Gerald and Helen, and began a real investigation. But a time lapse is always an investigative handicap, especially when a crime happens unobtrusively. Someone who had noticed the sudden departure of Rosemary and her mother, but thought little of it in September, would likely have trouble recalling details almost three months later. In a pattern that would repeat itself, the detectives made some progress but then hit a wall.

Upset and impatient, the Vasquez family had consulted a PI and a psychic, before retaining Cadieux. They wanted to follow up on the psychic's advice that the bodies were in a marsh. Cadieux had no problem with that. "If my daughter was missing," he said, "I'd try anything, too." Even the police now went along, diligently searching the nearest marshland, but it was impossibly wet -- a body wouldn't even stay buried.

Then Cadieux followed Lifrieri through Brooklyn, noting the subject's many stops at businesses where he went in and came out in less than a minute, always empty-handed. With a thirty-second spiel, tops, Lifrieri wasn't exactly selling coffee -- nor any other legitimate product or service.

On Wednesday afternoon, July 5, 1989, Cadieux watched covertly as Lifrieri came home, then approached Lifrieri's door and rang the bell. The suspect was not about to open the door.

"I'm not a cop," Cadieux recalls telling the door, "I'm a private investigator, you can talk to me."

"Why do you want to speak to me?" Lifrieri asked, through the door now partly open.

"Do you know Rosemary Vasquez and Rose Santoro?"

"Yes, but I don't know why you want to talk to me about them."

"I'm working for the family," Cadieux stated the obvious, and wondered aloud whether he might be expected to question people at random. "How did you know them," he continued, "and what kind of realationship did you have?"

"I was friends with Rosemary. Her father introduced me to her seven years ago. I know her father, Jerry, fifteen years."

"Was Rosemary your girlfriend?"

"No, we were just friends."

"When did you see Rosemary or her mother, Rose, last?"

"Sometime in early August of last year."

"Do you know where they are," asked Cadieux, "or if something has happened to them?"

"I have no idea," Lifrieri protested. "The police questioned me about them. I told them the same thing -- that I know nothing about them or where they might be."

Cadieux asked about another woman, whom Lifrieri admitted was his longtime girlfriend, and then the PI changed the focus, "Did you ever borrow $40,000 from Rosemary and her mother?"

"No, I didn't. In 1987, I owed her $15,000. I paid her $15,000 and $2,500 interest."

"Where did you get the money to pay Rosemary?"

Lifrieri said he had sold assets, to satisfy an IRS bill.

"Did you ever sign a note for a $40,000 loan?"

"Absolutely not," said the man Rosemary had loved. The only man her mother had trusted with her cherished daughter was lying to a PI about the loan to him of their life savings.
"Did the police ask you to take a lie detector test?"

"I offered to take one," Lifrieri announced, "but changed my mind, because I didn't like the way the police were handling everything."

"Would you take a lie detector test if I could set one up?" asked Cadieux. "Nothing to do with the police."

"No, not after the way I've been treated."

"Did you give Rosemary checks for $29,000 and $20,800?"

Lifrieri admitted he had -- the checks were for "some condo deal... I know they bounced," he admitted. "They weren't supposed to be cashed or deposited. I was pissed off that she put those checks through."

Cadieux was understanding. "Did you think they were trying to pull a fast one on you?"

"Yes," Lifrieri said, "I did."

"Did you think they were trying to rip you off?"

"That's exactly what I thought."

"Were you angry at Rosemary?"

"I wouldn't say angry, but I was upset." Cadieux knew Lifrieri had written a new set of checks and he got Lifrieri to confirm it. "They were for the same condo deal -- not for deposit."

"If you were upset about the first two checks," Cadieux wondered, "why did you give them more checks?"

"I felt sorry for them. I wanted to help them out."

"You thought they were trying to rip you off -- why would you want to help them?"

"That's it, I'm done," snapped Lifrieri. "If anyone wants to ask questions, they can do it through my attorney."

Cadieux had kept Lifrieri talking for forty minutes on his doorstep, catching him out several times. The PI knew the cops had asked Lifrieri what happened to the Cadillac Fleetwood registered in his name; Lifrieri had told them he "sold it to some Spanish guys on the street." He told Cadieux he sold the car for junk.

Lifrieri's boss at Blue Chip was under investigation by the state Waterfront Commission, Cadieux knew, for highjacking goods off the piers, and by Customs and the DEA for importing Colombian drugs stashed among huge bags of coffee. Viola's was 'blue chip' coffee, all right. The boss of the Waterfront Commission cops was Jack Ferguson, a retired NYPD detective pal of Cadieux. (Detectives frequently remain in law enforcement after retiring with twenty years of NYPD service.)

Anthony Viola, though not an actual "made guy," was a bona fide Genovese associate. Lifrieri had to have been thrilled by the mob connections he had made -- for the big money-making potential. Cadieux figured Lifrieri saw himself as a loan shark or a coke dealer -- all he needed was a stake. Say, forty thousand dollars, for openers. The Daily News story about Rosemary and her mom omitted Lifrieri's mob connection and the fact that his boss was under investigation.

Early on, Ron Cadieux had called Jack Ferguson at his Waterfront office. Over coffee, the PI talked about his new case, and about the suspect, Lifrieri, working for Blue Chip. Ferguson took a few notes. He would call Cadieux if anything popped up. The PI knew that to solve this puzzle, he must stay in touch with all the investigators, get them all cooperating. "You can never have too much cooperation," he believes. Lone-wolf heroes are for PI novels.

Periodically, the mystery of Rosemary and her mom was brought to the attention of the Brooklyn DA, and a prosecutor was assigned. About two years after the women disappeared, Brooklyn South Homicide put a mob detective, Bill Tomasulo, on the case with Bath Beach detective, Frank LaBarbera. To get the DA to indict Lifrieri, Tomasulo and LaBarbera needed those bodies -- the bosses took the partners "off the chart" so they could work this case exclusively.

Tomasulo was another guy Cadieux had worked murders with, on the job. Tomasulo also was one of the NYPD mob mavens who helped me sort out the Mafia names and styles. His grasp of the Columbo family, for instance, is respected, especially by the Columbos, who would much rather have someone less knowledgeable on their case.

Brooklyn to the core, "Billy Jack" Tomasulo has a thick accent to prove it (never mind that he actually lives in Staten Island). Average height, with a ready chuckle, he's dedicated to the street and knows where it can lead. If ever his kids show signs of getting too fond of the street, he takes them on a cautionary trip to the morgue.

Tomasulo may hold the record in New York for "digging up bodies that were not given proper burials." In the mid-eighties, two bodies exhumed from beneath a cement floor on South Brooklyn mob turf. In the late eighties, five dismembered corpses, "Samsonited" -- packed in suitcases -- disinterred from a Staten Island secret "Mafia graveyard" near a bird sanctuary. Billy led the white-jumpsuit brigade of detectives and technicians who dug for weeks in that site -- to the immense delight of Staten Island Advance photographers, who got a lot of mileage out of the operation.

Billy Jack knew about the Federal/State investigation of Viola's Blue Chip Coffee, so he reached out for Waterfront and hooked up with Ferguson. All the good guys were in this together.

By the time the Daily News story came out, the feds and the Waterfront cops had a "wire" (phone tap) up on Viola. Cadieux hoped someone would soon be overheard complaining about detectives snooping around about murders. It didn't happen, but Jack Ferguson says the murders were solved because of what Cadieux told him over coffee about the case he was investigating.

By July, Ferguson and the feds had enough on Viola's drug wholesaling and smuggling crimes, and they were ready to pick him up. Billy Jack Tomasulo and LaBarbara were in on the bust. On a rainy Monday afternoon, the umarked detective car waited with Ferguson's, out of sight of the Blue Chip warehouse but close by. Viola's new Mercedes could outrun the cops, Ferguson knew, so they would have to grab him fast.

From an observation point in a building with a good view, a surveillance team would radio when Viola came out. With luck, he would come out alone, and be in custody before his workers found out. Viola left with two other guys, one of whom got into an old Chevy with Florida plates.

As Ferguson moved on Viola's Mercedes, he radioed Billy Jack, "Take the guy in the Chevy over to the Waterfront Commission, give him a summons and hold the car." Ferguson recognized the guy, a heroin junkie who hung around Viola's place.

At the Waterfront office, the guy in the Chevy told the detectives his name: Robert Paolucci. He did odd jobs around Viola's warehouse, and he had worked for a funeral parlor. And, like a lot of junkies, he was an informant anytime he could be. Junkies-- street people-- know what goes on, and they know that detectives can pay small amounts for useful information. They know whatever they need to know to get money from "the system."

Almost before Tomasulo and LaBarbara could ask, Paolucci excitedly spoke up. "I'll help you," he said. "I know two bodies . . ."

The detectives tried hard to keep their cool as Paolucci explained that he had not killed the two women -- only disposed of their bodies after the murders. Lifrieri had choked the victims to death, and then paid Paolucci to wrapped them up in plastic and put them in the trunk of Lifrieri's Caddy. The junkie then parked the car within sight of Blue Chip.

Jack Ferguson was in Manhattan with the prisoner, Anthony Viola, and the feds, when their phone rang. Det. Tomasulo and his partner were elated. The junkie "gave it up," yelled Tomasulo -- cop talk for "confessed," or "provided key information". Cadieux's office phone rang and Ferguson relayed the amazing news.

Paolucci did not give up where the Caddy was, because he did not know, but the witness did know where Lifrieri had done the murders. Crime Scene was called to Viola's coffee warehouse, and they recovered blood evidence in the very closet Paolucci described. He also told the detectives how Lifrieri had lured the younger woman to Blue Chip with a promise to pay her back. . . and how, before very long, the mother had followed her daughter there -- only to meet the same horrible fate.

The detectives still had no clue to the bodies' location. The Caddy had remained where the junkie had parked it, until an odor made it unwelcome. Viola told Lifrieri, "Get rid of the car." Mob guys often push cars into the water, and Paolucci offered Tomasulo a likely location on the Brooklyn waterfront. As soon as the detective could, he called the NYPD scuba team to do a search. No Caddy.

To try a murder, prosecutors really like to have a body -- at the very least, proof of death under violent circumstances. The Brooklyn DA needed proof that the blood found in Blue Chip's closet was Rosemary's. Her father, Gerald Vasquez, gave the detectives a sample of his blood for DNA comparison with the crime scene blood. The delicate DNA lab tests were completed over the summer, and came back a positive match.

"In a rare move for a murder case," reported the Daily News on Tuesday, September 17, 1991, "Lifrieri was arrested, even though the bodies have not been recovered." Cadieux had asked The News reporter to emphasize that point; other media noted it, as well. The PI was sure that someone would come forward with information.

On the night of the collar, Lifrieri denied the crimes to the arresting detectives, and lied again about what he had done with his Caddy Fleetwood. Lifrieri occupied the prisoners' cell adjacent to the squad room at Brooklyn South Homicide. Det. Tomasulo and the informant, Paolucci, put their heads together. Paolucci, "under arrest as an accessory," would be thrown in the cell with Lifrieri, and would tell Lifrieri to do the right thing. "I don't wanna go for two murders! Tell them where you put your car." Hours later, when Tomasulo released Paolucci, the junkie did not say where the car was, but he told Billy Jack, "Not to worry -- you'll find it. . . "

Before midnight that same Tuesday night, September 17, the 577-TIPS line rang at 1 Police Plaza, in the Crime Stoppers squad office. Referring to The News article, the anonymous tipster gave an address only blocks from Lifrieri's home. The bodies, the tipster said, were in the trunk of a car, parked in an open air lot in the Bay Ridge section of South Brooklyn. It was too late for the next day's papers, but on Thursday, shots of the gray Cadillac were featured -- along with the bizarre news that since April, 1990, Lifrieri had been paying to park the car -- a hundred dollars per month. Why he kept the bodies is an abiding mystery.

In New York City, the Crime Stoppers squad advertises rewards of up to a thousand dollars if a caller's tip pans out. Anonymity is key: the caller gets an ID number, and never need give a name to collect the money. The identity of the hotline caller will never be known. Well, not for sure. The junkie has since died of AIDS. But, Det. Tomasulo contends, "Of course, Paolucci knew the hotline and he knew their rewards are plenty more than we could pay him. . . ."

In 1988, the year Rose Santoro and her daughter died at Lifrieri's hands, more than two percent of all New York City murders were committed by spouses (legally married, or common law) who killed their partners. Rose Santoro never should have put aside her fear of sharing her daughter with any man. Indeed, the story and statistics confirm what the mother had always known, love is a risk.

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