Street Warrior

by Ralph Friedman

  Okay, so perhaps Alessandro’s arrest wasn’t going to be a slam dunk. Roger and I figured this to be a mere speed bump on the Highway of Justice. Everybody leaves some sort of a trail.

  We began with the obvious: phone directories. There were many Alessandros, but no Anthony.

  A visit to the Pelham Police Department was next on our agenda. The cops in that department told us that Alessandro hadn’t been on their radar. Running down the subject’s business phone number proved useless too. It had been disconnected months ago. The Bureau of Criminal Identification (BCI) also had nothing. BCI did give us a guy with the same last name who had been collared a few times, but we checked him out, and he wasn’t our Anthony, nor did he know the subject. We reviewed records at various post offices for change-of-address forms, also with no results. The Postal Frauds Bureau had never heard of the guy. We managed to find the name of a former business partner of Alessandro’s, but only an old address. Checking with the current residents of that address proved that the partner was just as much of a ghost. We were beginning to think that our boy had beaten customers out of money before; he had all the traits of a serial con man who was trying to get lost and stay that way.

  After a few more weeks of old-fashioned ground pounding, we came up with a handful of witnesses who had known Alessandro at one time but had lost track of him. It was these folks who suggested various addresses in Yonkers, Bronxville, New Rochelle, and the Bronx where he was known to hang out. We visited all of these locations and staked them out. Again, nothing. Alessandro was beginning to piss us off. It took us less time to catch Eli Gorin and he was an escaped bank robber wanted by the FBI.

  A few days later, Roger took an anonymous call from a man who claimed to know where Alessandro might be found. We went to the two Yonkers addresses that Mr. X provided, and we left with nothing more than information from a neighbor at one of the addresses indicating that the perp “may” have frequented the building in the past.

  We contacted Con Edison. Even deadbeats need electricity, right? A spokesperson for Con Ed said that Mr. Alessandro had stiffed the utility by not paying his bills and that they’d like to find him too. I told him to get in line.

  I was learning the tedious side of detective work.

  We called the original complainant and asked her if she had any additional paperwork from the Alessandro Home Improvement Company. The only thing she had shown us the first time around was a receipt for the money she paid Alessandro. We got lucky; she found promotional material with numerous phone numbers on it, plus the company’s business license number.

  Roger went to the Consumer Complaint Bureau (CCB) in Lower Manhattan and pulled a picture of Alessandro from a license application. Our complainant verified that the picture was of the elusive subject. Additional paperwork from CCB provided an address in New Rochelle in Westchester County. We were able to locate the subject’s ex-wife through the New Rochelle Police Department. The former Mrs. Alessandro was very cooperative, stating that her ex wore a well-styled wig and liked expensive, flashy clothes. She thought he currently drove a Lincoln Continental. And, no, she hadn’t seen him in at least six months. We checked with DMV and came up blank; no Lincoln or any other vehicle was registered to the subject.

  At about this time Anthony Alessandro began phoning me at the Five-Two squad room.

  “Hello, this Detective Friedman?” a male voice asked.

  “It is,” I said.

  “This is Tony Alessandro. I understand you’re looking for me.”

  I feigned indifference, although a month of looking for the guy made me want to reach through the phone line and grab him by the throat. “Yeah, I am. Just need some questions answered. Want to come in?”

  “I dunno. Maybe.”

  Now I’m thinking perhaps someone’s playing a joke and whoever’s on the other end must be a cop trying to bust my chops. Cops are known to do that—weird senses of humor. “What’s your business license number?” I asked. He rattled it off.

  This guy was no idiot; he knew exactly why I wanted to see him. “You wanna come on in, Mr. Alessandro? We have a complainant says you owe her some money.”

  “Yeah, you know, I was thinking of turning myself in. I’m tired of hiding out, you know?”

  Was it going to be this easy? “You can stop in now if you like … clear this matter up.”

  “How’s tomorrow?”

  We agreed to a time the next day. He never showed. The caller wasn’t a cop playing a joke, but he was definitely having some fun.

  * * *

  The bullshit phone calls continued for over a year, several times a month. Every time Alessandro called, he’d say he was going to turn himself in, which he never did. He just enjoyed trying to get on my nerves. He was succeeding.

  We continued handling the myriad of other cases NYPD detectives handle concurrently, but getting the slippery Anthony Alessandro was always on our minds.

  In the meantime, Roger and I continued the hunt, visiting fashionable men’s shops on White Plains Road and other areas throughout the Bronx. When that didn’t work, we began visiting shops that sold and maintained men’s wigs and toupees. Success! Finally.

  Alessandro went to a few of the hair places we visited, but he had more of a personal connection at one called Fine Hair in New Rochelle. Not only was he a customer, but he conned an employee’s sister out of six thousand dollars. Like many victims of con artists who are embarrassed, she never reported the theft to the police.

  The fine people at Fine Hair directed us to Ranger Building Products, the owner of which had lent Alessandro fifty thousand dollars that was never repaid. We felt we were getting closer to the elusive Mr. Alessandro, but closer didn’t put him in handcuffs. We needed to get lucky.

  And lucky we got. I received another anonymous phone call and was given a phone number where the mysterious Mr. Alessandro could be reached. I ran the number, which came back to a Mrs. Ann Alessandro, located on Parsons Boulevard in Queens.

  Roger called and left a message on the answering machine for Anthony to call back. Roger didn’t ID himself as a cop and left a number that no one but him would answer. The plan was to have me listen in when Alessandro called back because, after dozens of phone calls with him over the last eighteen months, I heard the sleazebag’s voice in my sleep. Apparently, Alessandro saw through that bit of bullshit because Roger got a call from an attorney instead.

  After introducing himself as Mr. D’Angelo, and without preamble, the lawyer got right to it. “Listen, I represent Anthony Alessandro. He wants to give himself up.”

  Where have I heard this bullshit before? But it turned out that the lawyer was on the level; Alessandro did indeed want to surrender this time. I guess he really was tired of running and realized I wasn’t going to give up.

  Elapsed time from the beginning of the case until the prisoner in cuffs: nineteen months.

  On January 15, 1977, and accompanied by his lawyer, Anthony Alessandro surrendered to Roger and me. Roger took the collar. Alessandro was arraigned on numerous larceny charges and released on bail. Nearly a year later, he made a deal, pleaded guilty to all charges, and was sentenced to multiple years in prison.

  Why recount this rather mundane, if not frustrating, case at all? To make the point that this case could have been handled efficiently today with the assistance of technology.

  Detectives in the modern NYPD have computer databases at their disposal—programs that make tracking down people much more manageable. The National Crime Information Center (NCIC), a database that catalogs criminality, is used by nearly every law enforcement agency in the United States. Enter a name and any other information available on an individual and the database provides up-to-date police records almost instantaneously. Cops can not only retrieve criminal convictions but also access arrests. Only law enforcement personnel can obtain arrest information, which often leads to the offender’s current location. In addition, Social Security numbers are stored, as is credit information, D
MV files, and other identifiers that can make life much easier when looking for an offender. There are also numerous other databases, listing every incarcerated prisoner in the country, offering instant identification of fingerprints, facial recognition software, and other useful tools. What’s more, practically everyone has a cell phone. As long as the phone is powered up, it can be located using GPS. It all sounds common today, but in my time it was science fiction.

  What took many months of footwork to find Anthony Alessandro could have been accomplished in one or two days today. Of course, access to so much data can be abused. This is why cops use proprietary passwords when retrieving information from computer-based sources. Cops are thus accountable for what they download, and police officers accessing law enforcement databases are held accountable for their searches; all must be police-related.

  * * *

  Another case that required determined detective work and a team effort involved a homicide in which a victim was stabbed to death on the street. Solving the crime looked pretty simple at first—we had several witnesses—but a remarkable twist in the case hampered arresting the killer for several weeks.

  The victim, a male Hispanic in his late twenties, was found faceup on a residential street, cause of death being twelve stab wounds to his torso and neck.

  Neither Roger nor I caught the case. That honor went to Detective Anthony Mosca, a very good investigator with many years in the Detective Bureau. Although there were people on the street who had seen the deceased getting stabbed, the few who would cooperate with us couldn’t even give an accurate description of the killer. After two weeks of dead ends and seemingly foggy-brained eyewitnesses, Mosca was understandably frustrated. I decided to help.

  While Mosca was a good detective and excelled in clearing cases, he dressed like a detective and therefore didn’t have the cooperation of street people. This is where I came in. I had many informants on the street that trusted me—dressing like them gave me that extra edge that cops who looked like cops didn’t have.

  I should mention that while this was Mosca’s case, it wasn’t unusual for any detective in the squad to pitch in to help another detective. It’s like this throughout the job; cops help other cops. If an arrest is made with the assistance of another detective, the original detective who caught the case gets the arrest and credit, while any detective who helps gets credit with an assist. The object is to get the job done.

  The victim wasn’t an upstanding citizen, in fact far from it. He had a long arrest record, mostly for burglaries, but contrary to what some people might think of cops, we viewed every victim as deserving of justice. Everyone’s life matters.

  I started talking to my informants on the street. Some informants are more valuable than others, their track record of supplying accurate information being the gauge of how good they are. But when you talk to a few and most come up with the same information, you listen with more interest.

  What I was hearing put an entirely new spin on the case. Apparently the “victim” had been caught in the act of raping a woman while burglarizing the apartment she shared with her husband. The husband, so the story went, had come home early and found the soon-to-be deceased beating and raping his wife. Justifiably incensed and fearing for his wife’s life, he grabbed the closest weapon available, a four-inch steak knife. He and his wife’s assailant went toe to toe in the bedroom, the rapist getting stabbed a few times, none of the injuries serious. The bad guy broke loose and ran from the apartment with the husband in pursuit. After a four-block chase, the husband overtook the rapist, stabbing him repeatedly until he collapsed and died. Then the husband fled the scene.

  It didn’t take long for the word to spread. The neighborhood rallied around the husband, and everyone clammed up. This was the Bronx, where crime was reaching epic proportions and good people were fed up. What the husband had done, in most people’s estimation, was a brand of street justice, New York style: one less rapist on the street to victimize another woman. If the neighborhood residents could’ve thrown hubby a block party, they would’ve done so. The next best thing was to forget they saw the husband kill his wife’s rapist. Those who spoke to Detective Mosca had given him false descriptions to throw him off the scent.

  Our job was complicated. First, we had to verify the story as it was told to us: that this crime was an offshoot of a man protecting his wife. Whether it was a justifiable homicide was up to the courts.

  Roger and I began systematically canvassing the neighborhood, backtracking from the crime scene and creating a timeline as it related to where the witnesses were when they either saw the chase or the homicide. The witness who first saw the pursuit could reasonably narrow down the location of the apartment building from which the pursued and the pursuer emerged.

  Detective work doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to navigate your way to a crime’s solution. Logic remains paramount: What’s the best way to find the bad guy? If you’re lucky, a fingerprint match or other forensic wizardry does the work for you. We didn’t have any of that, and extracting DNA wouldn’t be on the horizon for another fifteen years. The only things that would solve this case were logic and footwork.

  After a few days, Roger and I figured we knew the general area where the chase had begun. It boiled down to a two-square-block radius. We could either begin knocking on doors, and there were hundreds, or talk to more confidential sources, this time in the target zone.

  We got steered to a building where the killer was supposed to live, a five-story structure, five apartments to a floor. The best way to find out what goes on in a building is to talk to the superintendent: they know everything.

  The super was a little Hispanic guy who initially said he didn’t know anything. Stabbing? What stabbing? The first thing you pick up as a cop is being aware when someone is lying to you. As time goes on, your bullshit meter is honed to a degree that you can tell a liar before they open their mouths. A good detective can recognize a liar as soon as they walk into a room. Some might think that’s a great skill, but analyzing people before they say anything can take a toll on the wonderful mysteries of life, especially when your skill activates when you’re not working.

  The super was a good guy, a hardworking man who wanted to do the right thing. It was our job to convince him that identifying the man who was protecting his wife (using the word “killer” in this setting wouldn’t be helpful) wasn’t ratting; it was setting the story straight. If the street gossip was accurate, Roger told him, we could help, maybe even see that no charges were brought. Yes, a bit of a stretch, but we wanted to clear the case, and, truth be told, if the street talk we heard was true, we’d make sure the DA knew we believed it. Eventually the super identified our killer, a man in his midthirties who lived on the third floor with his wife.

  We identified ourselves through a locked door. When he opened it, we saw defeat and sorrow written all over him. He gave us his name, and we shook his hand. Just by his demeanor we knew this guy wasn’t a killer as we knew them; he was a man who acted on instinct to save his wife.

  We talked for an hour. He admitted what he did and explained that he originally jumped the bad guy to help his wife. When the perp broke loose and ran, he said he “lost it” and took off after him onto the street, catching up after a short chase. A ferocious struggle ensued while the husband tried to hold the rapist until the police arrived, during which he ended up knifing him to death.

  This was an ordinary guy who worked hard, had never so much as gotten a parking ticket, and loved his wife. For him to get caught up in what he’d experienced was a nightmare.

  “You mean you ran after him to apprehend him, right?” Roger said. “He fought and was getting the better of you; you had no other choice. You could’ve been killed.”

  Our suspect looked at Roger then to me. I just sat there stone-faced.

  “Yeah,” he said, “I guess.”

  “Don’t guess,” I said. “Neither of us is telling you what to say. We’re here for the truth.”
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  He agreed that was what happened.

  “Why’d you take off? Looks like you were justified with what you did. It was self-defense,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I was scared. I don’t know the law. I was scared no one would believe me.”

  “We believe you,” Roger said, “and so does everyone in the neighborhood. Where’s your wife?”

  We waited until she got home from work, at which point she recounted the break-in and rape. She said her husband saved her life.

  Putting the cuffs on this guy broke my heart, but it was procedure.

  Roger and I spoke up for the prisoner with the DA and anyone else who would listen. He and his wife had been through hell.

  A grand jury is convened whenever someone takes a life to determine if a crime had been committed or the killing was a justifiable homicide. Generally, the public is unaware that all killings are homicides, but not all homicides are crimes. In this case the grand jury voted no true bill, which means no crime had been committed. Our killer, whom I haven’t identified on purpose, went back home to his wife.

  I did not often get emotional satisfaction from police work. The job really has little to do with directly helping people the way you see cops in Norman Rockwell paintings. Certainly, we help greatly by taking criminals who prey on innocent people off the street, but those who get into police work because they think they’ll always leave a smile on the faces of citizens are dreaming. If we’re not locking someone up, we’re giving them bad news, issuing them summonses, or otherwise ruining their day. In fact, I find that those who enter the job because they think they’ll be successful at solving society’s problems don’t make the most productive police officers. The reason is that when they find out ridding the city of crime is an unrealistic goal and that many of the citizens we protect have no use for cops, they become bitter and cynical, which can result in a cop who decides that doing his job isn’t worth the trouble.