Inside the store we couldn’t find Sammy, but we found the sight of curiosity all over the joint from the way a couple of workers and a group of kids looked at us. They all appeared dazed.
I was working as a corrections officer at the time and learned a few things when it came to reading people. Susan kept an eye on Elaine while I asked the manager what was going on. Sweat drenched my shirt. Where in the hell was Sammy?
A few teenagers congregated around the counter in front of the manager. He said the person in the car who parked weirdly in his lot was taken by some guys. One of the teens chimed in and said the man he thinks we were talking about was dragged out of his car and taken away (pointing in the direction of the turnpike). Another teen described the dog in the back seat running around so wildly that the car bounced.
Susan and I grabbed hold of one another. “What?” we collectively bellowed. “Like kidnapped?” I piggybacked the disbelief with a question to continue the inquisition. We froze with jaws on the floor. The first kid said they were like gangsters and asked if we knew the guy who was taken.
The store manager indicated that the men, unable to recall how many for sure—a few he proclaimed, looked like a bunch of wise guys. Another teen said that they looked like bad asses and one of them carried a gun. The same youngster believed there were three men working together against one victim.
I asked the manager if he called the cops. He said no. I got the impression he wanted to look the other way, so to speak. The kids were kind enough to wish us well and they split, too, likely not wanting to stick around much longer. The described mobster-type men had everyone on edge.
On the verge of calling the police, I noticed a cop car pull into the lot. It felt comforting, yet odd. If no one called the police how would they know what was going on? Maybe someone else around the neighborhood or store called, I thought. Anyway, Susan went outside toward Elaine, who quickly grabbed the officer’s attention for obvious reasons. I made a quick call to a lawyer friend of mine to explain what was going down and then joined the commotion outside.
The front driver’s side door was part way open. A slimy mist, like dew, covered most of the windows, probably from the dog’s cries. It didn’t look like Sammy was around. All eyes fixated on the cop for answers. Car running. Dog freaking out. No Sammy. The officer then did a quick search of the car.
Elaine then left with the officer to go across the way a short distance to the Mayfair Shopping Center to use a phone. We just stood by the car trying to comfort the dog without being able to touch anything. The biggest thing we couldn’t touch was reality. We were scared and more so for Sammy.
The officer said that he and Elaine would be back in a matter of minutes. Their poor dog’s barks grew hoarser. I told Susan that I called Joe Scibilia, and that he might be able to help Sammy from a legal standpoint, if needed.
Like the officer promised, he returned with Elaine. She looked as mad as she did worried a few moments ago. I asked what was going on. The officer informed us that he called the station to see if there was anything on Mr. Sommer. I could tell Elaine was pissed. She then insisted that her husband was kidnapped. Just hearing that word sent shivers through my body.
The officer said that she would need to fill out a Missing Persons Report at the police station in Hauppauge. He told Elaine that she could take the car home (for perceived concern about the dog). The cop’s intention appeared heartfelt toward the dog; yet, I found it strange that he would release the car back to its owner so quickly. Theoretically, this location and the vehicle itself could still be considered a potential crime scene, I thought.
Here’s what else seemed screwed up. The officer didn’t write anything down up until this point. From my years in corrections, documentation means everything. Writing something down gave an impression of importance and focus. How do you dismiss a running car with the driver’s side door left open and a dog going nuts in the back seat as anything not related to foul play?
Nonchalantly like another day at the office, the officer reminded us of the Missing Persons Report and departed the scene. His calmness drove me nuts. No urgency. It was going to be a long night.
Susan skillfully excelled in the field of empathy. She was a gentle offset to my dealing with hard asses all the time. I thanked her for comforting Elaine. I trusted her more than myself to handle Elaine the best way possible given the circumstance. I was too upset at this farce of an investigation.
We both agreed to bring the vehicle and dog back to Sam’s home. It might buffer the heart-stopping news a bit for Elaine about her husband, and frankly, the dog was pretty messed up. Susan and I followed Elaine back to her house where she parked the car and took the dog inside. A neighbor was watching the Sommer kids, and the three of us proceeded to the fourth precinct.
Susan guided a tear-drenched Elaine into the back seat of our car, and in a flash we took off to get this report done. Maybe then we could start to get somewhere concerning Sammy. There we went… into the waning abyss of hell known as May 22, 1968.
***
Gill and his men quickly returned to Sam’s abuse chamber from just outside the room at the Suffolk County Fourth Precinct Homicide Division. A day etched in lawlessness against a hardworking young man, husband, and father of seven came close to an end—at least based on the time of day. Sam didn’t know if these sworn men of honor were just getting warmed up for an all-nighter or maybe an amateur form of execution.
Sitting with his head resting on a small table, Sam fielded a command from Gill to get up and pay attention. He gingerly rose and hunched over in a state of pain and stood as attentive as possible. A slap to the back of Sam’s head and neck with a phone book now serving as a weapon staggered him from wall-to-wall in another round of late night captivity. He felt like dying. Gill felt impatient, like he didn’t want to be there and would rather have the whole thing over with.
Lowered back in the chair, Sam’s head tilted toward God in prayer of something to happen—heaven or home. Surrounded by folded arms and smoky drags around the table, Gill leaned into his helpless prey. “Fess up, Sommer.”
The verbal onslaughts that previously followed with a physical bashing took a different turn this time. Two men behind Sam rather gently lifted him upright. What should have felt comforting seemed creepy to Sam. After he was lifted, the stool beneath him was removed and the detectives laid him on the ground. The men ripped his t-shirt and removed his clothes. Sam curled into a ball on a cold floor, stark naked.
“Gonna speak now, Sommer,” one of the detectives asked pompously in a new twist of torture. The room succumbed to silence. Suffolk County’s interrogation techniques were building in stunning infamy. “Come on, Sommer,” insisted Gill or Mansel based on Sam’s aged recollection. “Fess up.”
“Florida,” Sam uttered from his shell. No response. No punches. No accusations. He prayed for even a belch in the room. The stillness defined a level of fear that Sam never fathomed. He believed the next phase in this scheme was death. He knew that protecting himself was even more of a fairy tale since he wasn’t wearing any clothes.
Sam lifted his head a smidgeon to see that the men walked away from the table. In the first act of a humane tone since getting seized from a donut shop parking lot, Gill calmly inquired, “Tell us more, Sommer, about Florida. What the hell does that mean?”
Sam as a suspect suddenly had a voice in this assumed interrogation proceeding going down in the final hours of May 22. The interrogators welcomed his voice for the first time outside the realm of being toyed with to make a false confession. “Took my family to Florida… came back early to help Silver deal with a matter about the business,” murmured a drained Sam.
“You told me last week you were going to meet Silver, and that was around the time he was wacked,” Mansel reminded Sam.
“We were working together on some bad shit with Goberman—you need to talk to Harold Gobe
rman,” uttered the helpless suspect.
No reply. Sam heard some shuffling of feet and a whisper or two. He could sense growing frustration in the room among the badges. He predicted that these guys weren’t going to leave him alone until they got what they sought—a confession to the murder of Irving Silver. His prediction materialized. In so many testy words, Gill told him that he needed to give them what they wanted so they could wrap up the investigation.
At one point the detectives moved Sam into a basement room for a few minutes. His state of confusion disallowed him to really make heads or tails of what was going on. Since Sam was so weak, he kind of went with the flow during this peculiar little tour of the precinct’s lower level. The detectives didn’t say much—it seemed like they were hiding him. Within moments, they returned Sam upstairs to his original interrogation room.
The smell of judicial corruption took over. Whoever was orchestrating the targeting of Sam Sommer was friends with the devil. ‘What the…?’ Sam internalized while wincing in pain moving his exposed body to the floor. ‘This is serious shit. First, a dead relative. Then a phone call from a guy we were trying to help get his life together, followed by getting nabbed from my own damn car to having the shit kicked out of me and stripped. Why ask me about Florida and then disregard it?’
***
Phil Cirrone and the two ladies arrived at the same Suffolk County precinct near Smithtown where Sam was getting tortured. Unaware of that coincidence upon arrival, Philly tried to work over the officers by way of influence as a member of the New York City Department of Corrections. He started to flex his relational muscle for the Sommers to get some real answers.
Bingo, but not on Philly’s card. No more than a couple of minutes after the three entered the station, Susan recognized a friend of her brother, an FBI special agent. He was there conducting some business related to a case on Long Island.
“Remember me?” asked Susan. “I’m Marvin’s sister.”
“Yes,” replied the agent. “You’re”…
“Susan, Susan Cirrone.”
She briefly small talked about her brother after shaking hands with the agent. She then reintroduced her husband, recalling their paths crossed before through her brother. Phil was consumed in watching over Elaine so Susan could converse with her brother’s friend. Elaine wanted to speak to someone in charge, ASAP.
“What brings you here? Is everything OK?” the agent asked Susan.
Phil introduced Elaine to the agent, and she explained the situation to him with reference to Sam’s name. Expecting support related to the process of reporting a missing person, the three instead hear an Orson Wells-caliber revelation.
“I think he’s down the hall, locked up.”
Paled and going through her own version of abuse from yet another bomb dropped, Elaine darted toward a long hallway, the direction in which the agent glanced when he made the claim. Phil grabbed Elaine’s arm and slowed her enough to allow Susan to thank the agent and apologize for the trouble. The three citizen investigators of Sam heard the word “locked,” and an aura of injustice dismissed the conversation.
The agent embarrassingly gathered that he shouldn’t have disclosed Sam’s whereabouts. He added out of desperation to deflect the situation elsewhere, “They’ve moved him to another precinct. It’s common to rotate someone… uh.” The agent stopped talking and left abruptly.
Whether he was lying or inferred “elsewhere” as being a hospital remains unsettled today. The agent could not later testify to such a claim for obvious reasons of conflict of interest. Incidentally, Sam was moved from his first-floor interrogation room to a similar room in the basement at some point between 10:00 and 11:00 that night. He believes to this day the move was made out of fear by the police that three people were there looking for him.
After the agent split, Phil’s gut told him that Sam was still down the hall. He led the ladies past the front desk on a mission. Authorized Personnel Only signs warned of their against-the-grain gamble to another part of the building. One officer emerged from another room past the desk and thwarted their journey. He sandwiched the Sam-seekers. Right out of a movie.
Elaine was in no mood to be trapped by the very people who may have something to do with her husband’s quandary. The officers instructed the organic search party to leave the unauthorized location. Elaine wasn’t accepting such orders. She demanded to know where her husband was.
The front desk officer said he would make a call for her. After a few attempts, the officer verified that her husband was taken into custody. He told her that he was relocated to another part of the multiple-facility complex. This was a far cry difference than what she heard a few minutes earlier that there was no Sam Sommer on site for sake of interviewing or lodging. The officer insisted that Elaine go home and that her husband would call her.
A salty and red-faced Elaine Sommer slowly made her way out of the station under the care of Phil and Susan. She wondered where Sam was—the rock in her world, loving husband, lover of the Lord Jesus Christ, and devoted father who’d been building American Dreams for so many people. Elaine felt empty without the strength to take another step toward the Cirrone’s car. Sam wouldn’t be coming home tonight was all her mind held.
It was late. Wednesday, May 22, 1968, was winding down into a day of sobering consequences to whatever Suffolk County, New York wants, it supposedly gets.
***
Sam did not confess to killing Irving Silver from his holding cell or anytime afterward. On a note pad, Sam recalled Thomas Gill recording that he did confess. The “official” form of documentation resembled a third-grader pulling out a piece of paper from his desk to draw a picture at will.
Finally, the brutality ended. The detectives escorted Sam across a parking lot to a different building where he was photographed, fingerprinted, and processed for arrest and lodging purposes. They then transported him to a hospital in Riverhead, New York, to be treated for injuries. He then slept a few winks in a cell at the Suffolk County Riverhead Police Station.
2.
Career Kid
A hug between the two young men drained air from their lungs. It was the first time the two blood rivals ever genuinely and openly hugged one another. The suffocation expressed an untold story.
Hard to let go, but time to go. Big brother was heading off to serve at the onset of the Korean War in early summer of 1950, a year out of high school. Fourteen-year-old Sam Sommer and his parents didn’t know when they’d see Morris again, so the hug felt valid for a lifetime.
Tears did the talking before Morris grabbed his suitcase. He then headed out the front door without looking back. Sam and his parents each dispersed to their own window to watch Morris get into an important-looking car and travel away down the crowded streets of South Bronx toward the unknown. One war just ended and another began.
Goodbye family unit of nearly twenty years. Two decades of witnessing the effects of war, ethnic cleansing, economic suppression, and learning to grow in faith and family opened another chapter for these pursuers of the American Dream.
***
Most of Sam’s and Morris’ Jewish-American 1940s upbringing in a South Bronx lower-to-middle-class neighborhood came with baggage. There was enough competition between the boys to make ringside alive and well anywhere in their two-bedroom, fourth-floor tenement at 1125 Evergreen Avenue. These units in the Bronx’s southern neighborhoods mostly all mirrored one another for several blocks.
If Sam lost a fight to Morris in his parents’ eyes, he would take his defeat to a rusty view of humanity known as a fire escape. He accessed the getaway to solitude from his bedroom window, and from there he would watch the world go by in catlike curiosity. Sam may have lost a brotherly dispute or two like most all kids, but he gained a good release from that metal perch. It also provided a snapshot of a neighborhood trying to find an identity.
Morris Som
mer’s reserved character became easily annoyed by Sam’s extroverted dabbles in people and projects. Morris waited for the right moves; Sam made moves. Cultural affiliations and turf wars slowly started to define the New York City streets, and the two boys seemed to handle the inner city influences and cultural growing pains differently.
Despite their distinctions and five-year separation, the two Sommer lads bonded in standing tall together. The boys grew strong and critical in thought from hearing about the persecution of Jews during World War II. Regular showers of propaganda made the act of living in the 1940s under a big city umbrella a distrustful walk around the block. By the latter part of the decade, television entered the mecca of journalism. The technology launched a visual springboard of opinion, bias, and emotional tugs into the world of assimilating news.
Television created images of an unsettled New York City predicated on robust immigration. Sons of a father who emigrated from Austria, the boys were exposed to a strong work ethic and commitment to family from a steady diet of their elders’ spiritual faith in Yahweh, the God of Israel.
Maximillian Sommer left Austria after studying to be a rabbi for an American version of similar understudy in New York City. He felt a hub in the United States would give him both an education as a rabbi and the surroundings to put his preaching into practice faster than overseas. Then a woman entered the scene.
In 1930, Max married Anna, a local gal who worked feverishly to finish junior high school despite expectations during the Great Depression that meant finding work and nothing more. Anna looked beyond the bare trees to know that one day an orchard would bless her family in the shape of a high school education for her future kids.
The couple welcomed Morris Sommer into the world in 1931. Max worked long days in a men’s garment factory while Anna tended to the apartment and child. Rare family time was spent practicing faith and planning for the future—one that would bring a sibling to Morris.
Anna gave birth to Samuel L. Sommer on June 9, 1936, near the end of the Depression but at the beginning of world conflict and Nazi Germany. Looking ahead, the couple was happy with two children—an unusual level of contentment in this regard for traditional Jewish families.
Ted Bundy's Murderous Mysteries Page 29