March 6, 2024 • 26 mins
An overzealous detective trying to infiltrate a betting scheme in Fairfax County, Virginia, targets an innocent and well-liked optometrist named Sal Culosi in a three-month undercover investigation, culminating in his shocking death.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Murder Holmes is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Sal Kulossi
comes out. He's not wearing socks right.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Vacoum is in the driver's seat of his car and
Glosi is just leaning in through the window to hand
over Balcom's winnings, Sal's losings from I think I think
one Pittsburgh game, and so he's outside the vehicle. Colosi
is Balcom's inside the vehicle, and then another car pulls
up with SWAT officers and Bullock gets up and shoots
(00:32):
Glosi dead.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
I'm sitting in a sports bar named Jimbo's Grill in
Fairfax County, Virginia, thinking about a dead optometris named Sal Klosi.
Jimbo's is situated in the corner of a nondescript shopping plaza,
next to a twenty four to seven cleaners and a
nail salon, and inside it looks stuck in time. Sports
banners and bud light posters, a rectangular bar where the
(01:03):
regulars have mastered the art of talking to each other
softly while glancing at the wide screens. A couple of
eulderly military veterans have taken their seat at the bar,
surprised that none of the other regulars seems particularly interested
in the upcoming Army Navy game. Jimbo's Grill used to
be called Thursdays, and seventeen years ago, thirty seven year
(01:24):
old Salklosi, a friendly looking guy with kind brown eyes
and a slight smile, was sitting at this bar when
another sports fan pulled up a stool next to him
and sat down. The skinny man with the crew cut
and neat mustache who sat down next to sal Klosi
was named David Balcom. And I'm trying to imagine how
that first bit of small talk went. When you were
(01:46):
looking up at a dozen wide screens. It couldn't have
been too difficult for David Balcom to pretend he was
a sports fan. Maybe he even was. This is Murder Holmes.
I'm Matt Meridovitch. It's dark and dreary inside Jimbo's, and
(02:16):
it's a bright, beautiful day outside, but you wouldn't know
that in here. Love. I've ordered a hot coffee, but
the bartender comes back with something cold and rust colored
in a Mason jar. I politely point out that I'd
ordered a hot coffee, and he tells me that he
heard me clearly, and I'd asked for an ic. For
a moment, he looks like he wants to take a
swing at me. Then he turns his back and returns
(02:37):
with the coffee and creamer. Thank you very much. Yeah.
I would like to think that I could fit in
a sports bar like this, or a sports bar anywhere.
But the truth is that regular size you up the
minute you walk in the door, and they instantly know
when you don't really belong. Saculosi was a regular at Thursdays.
He belonged. He loved it here. Everyone loves him. Seventeen
(03:03):
years later, at the very same bar that salth Colosi frequented,
I work up the nerve to ask the bartender a question.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
So this used to be Thursdays for how long go
to It's probably been about eight or nine years. That's
changed to Jimbo's.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
So now no one remembers much about the south Kielosi
in icing one. It's a football season, and it was
football season when David Balcolm pulled up a seat next
to sal Klosi when this bar was called Thursdays. The
conversation must have float easily and freely. It's not hard
to talk about sports. David had an agenda, though, and
(03:38):
after a while he asked Sal if he knew anybody
who would take a bet on a game. He'd overheard
Coelosi talking with his friends about some money he had
on a Redskins game at Thursdays. Placing a bet on
a football game would have been about as shocking as
ordering a burger and fries. It was something almost everybody
did at the bar, while also being aware that Virginia
(03:58):
state law considered a two one thousand dollars wager in
a single day of felony. Sal had a modest amount
of cash to burn. He was a successful, upper middle
class optometrist who had just bought a condo sixteen miles
away in one of those generic complexes you see dotting
the gentle hillsides all over this county, neat and vaguely
(04:19):
depressing islands of attached townhomes sharing one gabled roof. His narrow,
two story townhome on Cavalier Landing Court looked just like
the others who was sandwiched between, but it still seemed
like plenty of space for a bachelor. When the weekend arrived,
he meet his friends at Thursdays, where they'd buy each
other a few rounds of beer and bet on some games.
(04:41):
He was intelligent and amiable, and he relished the adrenaline
rush of a little gambling on the weekends. Having something
at stake in a game made it infinitely more fun,
and sure, maybe it was a little addictive. The friendly
guy who sat down next to him, David Balcom, could
have picked a dozen other regulars to strike up a
conversation with and found a way to place a bed,
(05:02):
but he picked Sal, and as they sat there in
that mid October afternoon, the sun's setting somewhere in the
parking lot as the late games started, Sal had no
idea that the man he was talking to was an
undercover detective who worked for the Organized Crime and Narcotics
Division of the Fairfax Police Department, and David Balcolm would have,
of course be using an alias, a name that Sal
(05:22):
would never be able to trace if he got curious.
Sel had no idea that this friendly stranger pawing at
French Fries while watching the Redskins lose to the Giants
would be the man directly responsible for ending his life
on a cold January day four months later. Washington Post
reporter Tom Jackman has never forgotten about the Sal Colosi case.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
I've gotten to know the families well in several of
these cases, including the Colossies, and that just makes it
all the more memorable because you watch them suffer.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
It's really hard.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
His family is as devastated today as they were then,
and there still isn't any resolution on that. So the
Colosi case is absolutely one of the most memorable ones
that I've ever covered, part because it was so unjustifiable
and important to see such a good family suffer so much.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Eventually, sal agreed to take David's bets. Over the course
of the NFL football season, Sal and David wagered on games,
with Salad mostly winning. The amounts by real bookie standards
were small, a few thousand here and there, adding up
to twenty eight thousand in total bets, with sal by
the end of the season coming out five thousand ahead.
(06:38):
If you wanted to call saladbookie, a real one would
have scoffed at the money that changed hands. Sal was
an approachable, friendly, gregarious good guy by day. He performed
eye exams and reassured his most anxious patience that their
vision wasn't failing before going over the pros and cons
of progressive lenses. If his career choice was a little
on the dull and predictable side, even it out with
(07:00):
the occasional raucous weekend with his friends. They drank beer,
they watched games, they bent on them. The adrenaline rush
would have evaporated by the time he left Thursdays and
drove down Lee Highway, pulling into the condo complex at
Cavalier Landing Court Drive. He pulled a car into the garage,
climb up the stairs of his narrow, three story home,
(07:20):
grab a glass beer, and get ready for a long
walk week. He owned two optometry offices located in nearby
shopping malls. It wasn't the sexiest line of work, but
it had enabled him to buy the condo on Cavalier
Landing for two hundred and three thousand dollars, and his parents,
Sal Senior and Anita were proud of him. His new
(07:41):
pal David had been regularly calling him every week to
place bets and to Sal, who thought of betting and
football as the most pleasurable part of his week. There
was nothing about this fellow sports fan that concerned him,
and he was winning most of the bets with David anyway.
He always paid him when he lost and collected from
him when he won. There was no bitterness or grumbling
(08:02):
on either side, but maybe just the tacit acknowledgment that
Sal had better instincts when it came to understanding football odds.
And in the fall of two thousand and five, Saal
would have said that things were definitely looking good. He'd
found a way to spice up what otherwise might have
been a slightly dull existence, especially as a bachelor and
a cookie cutter condo village off a drab six lane highway.
(08:23):
What he didn't know is that the Fairfax County Police
Department also had a gambling problem, but that it was
much more severe than Sal's. We'll be back after a
short break. We're back with murder homes. The Organized Crime
(08:45):
and Narcotics Division of the Fairfax County Police Department was
an overfronted group of board somewhat hapless detectives who were
beginning to feel the pressure to show some results, and
he'd become something of a joke within the department, Betting
hundreds of thousands of taxpayer money, they tried to infiltrate
a gambling empire that did not exist. I asked Tom
(09:06):
Jackman about the folly of this pursuit and the outrageous
sums the money laundering unit wasted to zero effect.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
It was definitely six figures.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
I could never get to the exact number because they
wouldn't tell me, but there were court documents that would indicate, oh,
we lost one hundred and twenty five thousand in this one,
and someone else claimed that they lost similar amounts. And
this was their attempts to try to figure out who
was doing the sports gambling in Fairfax County, a very
wealthy suburb of Washington, d C. So a lot of
(09:36):
money to be spread around. They sent a swat team
in to a twenty thousand dollars buy in private poker
game at a very wealthy neighborhood a Fairfax County. Everybody
had to pay twenty thousand just to sit at that table,
and there were two, two or three pros there and
they all wound up getting charged with misdemeanor illegal gambling.
(10:00):
But this is after they'd had rifles pointed at their faces,
which they felt was a little excessive, and the police said, well,
you know, we had to shoot before they shoot us.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Now, the taxpayers of Fairfax County were down five thousand
to an optometrist named Sal Colosi, and Detective Balcolm had
nothing really to show for this three month sting operation.
At Thursdays, Colosi, he knew, was small potatoes and most
likely we'd be slapped with a misdemeanor if the case
ever came to court. Balcolm was also humiliated that he
kept losing to Colosi, handing over cash under the bar
(10:32):
at Thursdays as Sal dipped a wing and some blue
cheese dressing and offered David a few tips on some
upcoming games. Every sports bar seems to have a guy
who really knows what he's talking about when it comes
to NFL games, and Colosi was Thursday's most reliable authority
on just about anything they had to do with football,
the one who might roll his eyes a little if
you were taking the overbet on the Panthers game. David Balcom,
(10:55):
on the other hand, was feeling more and more like
a fraud. He was working for a police unit that
was losing hundreds of thousands of dollars on failed investigations,
and the only role he could play convincingly was that
of a sucker. No matter how nice Sal was, it
must have gotten under his skin, because Salo was a
kind person, a real sweetheart. It turns out his friends
(11:15):
loved him, his parents loved him. His mother still keeps
a blog and writes letters to her dead son every month.
There are six hundred and fifty six entries. This is
an excerpt from a recent post.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Dear Salvatore, today's weather has been a nice break from
what it was this past week, when it was extremely
hot and very muggy. It was actually a lovely summer day,
one that you should have been able to enjoy and
be out and about sadly in marks instead. The seventeenth
year and six months remembrance day of your loss to
us to say I feel aggrieved for the blatantly unfair
(11:51):
treatment you received at the hands of those who were
sworn to serve and protect doesn't even scratch the surface
of what happened to you and our family. I wonder
at times if any of those involved have any remorse
or ever think of the part they played in putting
you in harm's way.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
They have changed our.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
Family's lives forever by what they did, and it is unforgivable.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
The fall of two thousand and six was measured by
Sal as usual by the seventeen weeks of football season,
from the sunder end stadiums of late September to the
rain soak games of late November, all seen from his
favorite stool at Thursdays, and in that strange space of
time when the playoffs start and the last wagers of
the season take place. Super Bowl forty was coming up,
(12:37):
and a slightly dim witted pal David had finally placed
a winning bet. Being sal he was actually happy for him.
On a cold Tuesday night, January twenty fourth, two thousand
and six, Detective Malcolm was preparing to pick up the
eleven hundred dollars he had won in a sting operation
that had stretched only four months, costing Fairfax County tax
payers thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of police overtime.
(13:01):
But Balcolm then did something truly sinister or criminally stupid.
Instead of driving by Colosi's home at one one six
two six Cavalier Landing Court and placing the optometrist under
arrest after he handed over his winnings, he demanded a
swat team follow him to the neatly packed condominiums on
the hill. That team would wait on Lee Highway and
(13:21):
then when he gave the signal, come racing down the street,
performing what is known as a vehicular takedown. As soon
as the SWAT team heard this, two of the members
bailed out, leaving just the driver and a SWAT team
officer named Daval Bullok to handle the arrest. The tactical
team would leap from their suv and take down sal
who had never once shown the slightest hint of being violent.
(13:44):
The most aggressive move he had probably ever made was
stealing a few of David Balcom's fries. At Thursdays, I
drove to Sale's condo unit off Lee Highway with a friend.
I wanted to see the home he had proudly owned,
get a sense of his final moments. So I'm with
my friend Rob and we're driving by, and it's gonna
(14:04):
be one one six, two six. This is where he
came out.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
That walkway I think goes through to the fronts.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah, it's a well kept condo, red brick on the
first floor, white vinyl siding on the second, with a
one car garage in front. Attached to identical condos to
the right and left. The whole complex feels temporary, the
residents biding their time before saving enough money to buy
a place with a little bit of land, a hedge
neighbors you can wave at instead of hearing their arguments
(14:33):
through the walls. The blinds at one, one six, two
six had been pulled down. I tried to imagine Sell
cracking a beer and the kind of kitchen you've seen
a thousand times before Corran countertop, oh kitchen cabinets, a
tight row of modest stainless steel appliances, then flopping back
on the couch and picking up a book again. There's
(14:54):
a gas fireplace across from him, the flames jetting out
of the fake log, almost making him feel cozy, but
he can't quite relax because he's waiting for a call
from David Balcom, who amazingly enough has finally placed the
winning bet. Sal's just beginning to think he might not
call when his cell phone rings. David tells him he's
about five minutes away, so sALS stuffs the eleven hundred
(15:17):
in the envelope and climbs down the staircase in his socks.
He's just wearing a T shirt and jeans, and he
knows it's freezing outside, but the whole transaction should take
about a minute, and then he'll be back in his
warm home. I picture David Balcom pulling up in his suv.
The garage door is already opening, Sal ducking under it
and striding out toward him. He leans in the open
(15:39):
window of the passenger side and hands Balcolm his cash,
and they make like they always have a little small talk.
Sal has no idea that Balcolm has signaled for the
second car with the SWAT team to proceed with a takedown.
They come ripping down cavalier landing Court breaks shrieking as
a nearly crash into Balcom's car. The SWAT team suv
has now come to a stock and saw Colossi is
(16:01):
just beginning to turn around the cell phone still in
his hand. Deval Bullock, the SWAT team officer, leaps out
of the passenger side door, raising his gun and aiming
it at Sal, who has gone pale at the sight
of an officer in full tactical gear aiming the Heckler
and Coke handgun straight at his heart. A single shot explodes,
(16:21):
the sound echoing off the condos on either side of them.
Sal Kulosi collapses, blood spreading across his white T shirt.
The bullet tore through Sal's aorta and he would die
within minutes. He lay on a coal patch of grass
near the curb, staring up at David Balcom, the man
he thought was a friend, just calling about a bet.
(16:41):
Only moments before the last words Sal spoke were to Balcom.
It was an almost polite question, dude, what are you doing?
I was reading a book. Sal must have been thinking,
I can't be dying. This can't be happening. I know
this person, the SWAT team officer bullet. So the shot
was discharged accidentally when the car door hit his left elbow,
(17:04):
causing his right index finger to drop down in a
reflex action and pull a trigger. Not possible, right, Tom
Jackman still thinks that explanation.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Is a joke to this day. It doesn't make sense
to me, all of it, Bullock says.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
His explanation keeps evolving that he has no explanation for
his finger being anywhere near the trigger. First, then it's
that the door is hitting his left arm, which causes
a reflex on his right arm to slide down on
the trigger and pull it. And then months later there's
this new explanation that it was a reflex, and that
he was also up all night at a deer hunt.
(17:40):
Is there anything kind of strange about that to you?
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah, but mainly that he gets out of a car
with the car on his left, and that somehow as
he gets out of the car, the door bumps him.
The door bumps his left side, but he's getting out
from around the door. How does the door bump him?
Does he open the door so widely that it comes
(18:05):
back this way? I don't see how he would, but
I guess it's possible, But that that door then slams
into him, and he then puts a perfect shot straight
into the side of sell Calosi's chest and goes straight
into his heart.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
I don't believe it.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Tom Jackman has another theory about why developed billook the
swat team officer shoots Salculosi through the heart.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
I think that, you know, he thought that Colosi's cell
phone was a gun, because Colosi was holding a cell
phone which then landed a few feet away. But the
door thing, I've never bought it. I think it's one
of the things he told them, which was he thought
that might have been a gun, and uh, four iPhones basically,
and so I think everybody had a flip phone, which
(18:50):
were more likely to be shiny or reflective in the dark.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
You know, even so he's not pointing it at anybody.
A and B.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
They really put all their emphasis on the door hitting
Bullock and causing him to fire.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
If a car door hits you, I.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Would think that you would, I don't know, not be
able to maintain your perfect daying. You would be somehow
knocked just a little bit out of position.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Sell bled to death on the small patch of grass
outside his open garage door before the ambulance even arrived.
Balcom Bullock. The paramedics all knew you was deceased, but
they went through the motions, his chest heaving as they
placed the defibrillator on him. On the way to the hospital,
Balcom watched the ambulance lights flash through the bare trees
(19:43):
and then turned down Lee Highway. Celosi's home was empty,
now all his. They neatly taped it off the condo
that sal had been spending the last hours of Tuesday
in so that the shock neighbors couldn't come too close.
Then Balcolm walked through the open garage door and with
the help of his colleagues, began to tear Salas home apart.
(20:06):
They pulled out drawers, knocked over dressers, pounded walls, looked
for secret compartments, pulled out the cushions of the sofa
where Salad and Reading's book only a few minutes before.
For four hours, they destroyed Sal's neat town home, eventually
discovering thirty eight thousand in cash and half a gram
of coke. For four hours, balcom ransacked the home because
(20:26):
he wanted to prove that Sal was more than a
small stakes, part time gambler, but he couldn't find anything else.
At two in the morning, the Fairfax County Police Department
decided it was finally time to notify Sal's parents of
their only son's death. We'll be back after a short break.
(20:53):
We're back with murder homes. In the months after Sal's death,
Balcolm still chased his losses. Determined to prove that Sal
was part of a massive bookmaking scheme. He called all
the numbers on Sala's phone, terrorizing loved ones, brothers, uncles,
good friends, beginning each threatening call with the same words,
how much were you into Sal?
Speaker 2 (21:13):
For?
Speaker 1 (21:15):
I asked Tom Jackman about the calls. One of the
most outrageous things to me was that months after the
death of Sal Closi, he had Closi's phone and was
continuing to call his relatives and ended up contacting his
brother in law and asking you know how much we
into Sal for that? To me is just you know,
the insult to injury. I got the information from you.
(21:37):
I was wondering how you felt about it.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Well, I think their justification was, we have to investigate
this all the way to the end, even if the
target of our investigation is dead. Our theory is that
he was running a bookmaking operation, so let's find out
who else was betting with him, how widespread it was.
So that was their of a weak attempt to do
(22:02):
that by calling people in his phone, not knowing who
they were.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Just asking them if they were customers.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Sal was actually just a regular sports enthusiast and a
guy who put money on games with friends. He wasn't
a bookie, and they had misunderstood that from the start.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
They thought that he.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Was running a book making scheme and he was dealing
out bets and taking in bets from numerous people, and
they found out that wasn't true.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Do you think that he continued to do that? After
to justify what had happened. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
I mean that was to try to make it clear
that there was a reason why they were there going
after Colosi, because the focus then became why did you
even bring a swat team to arrest this guy? And
so I think there was a move to try to
justify that by saying, well, he must have been a
big time bookie. He had cash in his apartment and
we were adding five hundred or one thousand dollars a game,
(23:03):
so he must have been the big time.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Malcolm still works for the Fairfax County Police Department. I've
tried to reach him numerous times. I left voicemails. I
emailed if you hear this, Detective Malcom, call me back,
because I want to hear your side of the story.
I want to start from the beginning. When you walk
into Thursdays on a Sunday afternoon in October and you
see sALS sitting there. I want to know what beery
(23:27):
he was drinking. I want to know what he was wearing.
I want to know the first words you said to
him and what he said to you. I want to
know if you have a regret or too about what happened.
But My feeling is that the worst people in the
world have this amazing ability to shrug things off. And
I'd bet two thousand dollars you don't think about cull
Colosi at all. There's the sameness to the condo complexes
(23:51):
and shopping plazas of Fairfax County, like some warm idea
of home created in a petri dish. It's a formula
that's repeated as far as you can see. These clusters
of communities, vaguely resembling colonial houses, vast woodlands still space
between them, and thin curving roads where a car full
of board teens my friend tells me recently drove one
(24:12):
hundred miles an hour and went sailing into the forest,
killing them all. I get the sense you have to
be careful what you do for an adrenaline rush around here,
because the Fairfax Money Laundering Unit is still watching, even
barrowing into a poker game with automatic weapons not too
long ago and pointing their guns at the thinning hair
of the players in their cashmer sweaters. Meanwhile, back at
(24:39):
Jimbo's grill, I couldn't stop thinking as I listened to
the regular softly chatter while the game's played. A KGNAC
set before a man with a handlebar mustache, that we
were all listening to each other's conversations, the football tips,
the unfunny jokes, the gripes, everything that makes a Sunday
in the middle of nowhere feel right, just like David
Balk had listened to sal laughing and joking with his
(25:02):
friends seventeen years ago before pulling up a seat next
to him. It's noon outside and it's a crisp, shiny
winter day, but it feels like early evening at Jimbo's,
a comforting gray light settling over all of us as
the regulars come and go. The Army Navy game starts
at one pm. This is Murder Holmes. I'm Matt Mrinovitch.
(25:34):
Murder Holmes is created by an executive producer by Matt Mrinovich.
Executive producers are Jennifer Bassett and Taylor Chakoine. Story editor
is Jennifer Bassett. Supervising producer is Carl Ktel. Producer is
Evan Tyer. Sound designed by Taylor Chicoine, Evan Tyer and
Carl Katle. Special thanks to Ali Perry and Nikiyetour. Murder
(26:01):
Holmes is a production of iHeart Podcasts. For more shows
from iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Murder Holmes is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Sal Kulossi
comes out. He's not wearing socks right.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Vacoum is in the driver's seat of his car and
Glosi is just leaning in through the window to hand
over Balcom's winnings, Sal's losings from I think I think
one Pittsburgh game, and so he's outside the vehicle. Colosi
is Balcom's inside the vehicle, and then another car pulls
up with SWAT officers and Bullock gets up and shoots
(00:32):
Glosi dead.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
I'm sitting in a sports bar named Jimbo's Grill in
Fairfax County, Virginia, thinking about a dead optometris named Sal Klosi.
Jimbo's is situated in the corner of a nondescript shopping plaza,
next to a twenty four to seven cleaners and a
nail salon, and inside it looks stuck in time. Sports
banners and bud light posters, a rectangular bar where the
(01:03):
regulars have mastered the art of talking to each other
softly while glancing at the wide screens. A couple of
eulderly military veterans have taken their seat at the bar,
surprised that none of the other regulars seems particularly interested
in the upcoming Army Navy game. Jimbo's Grill used to
be called Thursdays, and seventeen years ago, thirty seven year
(01:24):
old Salklosi, a friendly looking guy with kind brown eyes
and a slight smile, was sitting at this bar when
another sports fan pulled up a stool next to him
and sat down. The skinny man with the crew cut
and neat mustache who sat down next to sal Klosi
was named David Balcom. And I'm trying to imagine how
that first bit of small talk went. When you were
(01:46):
looking up at a dozen wide screens. It couldn't have
been too difficult for David Balcom to pretend he was
a sports fan. Maybe he even was. This is Murder Holmes.
I'm Matt Meridovitch. It's dark and dreary inside Jimbo's, and
(02:16):
it's a bright, beautiful day outside, but you wouldn't know
that in here. Love. I've ordered a hot coffee, but
the bartender comes back with something cold and rust colored
in a Mason jar. I politely point out that I'd
ordered a hot coffee, and he tells me that he
heard me clearly, and I'd asked for an ic. For
a moment, he looks like he wants to take a
swing at me. Then he turns his back and returns
(02:37):
with the coffee and creamer. Thank you very much. Yeah.
I would like to think that I could fit in
a sports bar like this, or a sports bar anywhere.
But the truth is that regular size you up the
minute you walk in the door, and they instantly know
when you don't really belong. Saculosi was a regular at Thursdays.
He belonged. He loved it here. Everyone loves him. Seventeen
(03:03):
years later, at the very same bar that salth Colosi frequented,
I work up the nerve to ask the bartender a question.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
So this used to be Thursdays for how long go
to It's probably been about eight or nine years. That's
changed to Jimbo's.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
So now no one remembers much about the south Kielosi
in icing one. It's a football season, and it was
football season when David Balcolm pulled up a seat next
to sal Klosi when this bar was called Thursdays. The
conversation must have float easily and freely. It's not hard
to talk about sports. David had an agenda, though, and
(03:38):
after a while he asked Sal if he knew anybody
who would take a bet on a game. He'd overheard
Coelosi talking with his friends about some money he had
on a Redskins game at Thursdays. Placing a bet on
a football game would have been about as shocking as
ordering a burger and fries. It was something almost everybody
did at the bar, while also being aware that Virginia
(03:58):
state law considered a two one thousand dollars wager in
a single day of felony. Sal had a modest amount
of cash to burn. He was a successful, upper middle
class optometrist who had just bought a condo sixteen miles
away in one of those generic complexes you see dotting
the gentle hillsides all over this county, neat and vaguely
(04:19):
depressing islands of attached townhomes sharing one gabled roof. His narrow,
two story townhome on Cavalier Landing Court looked just like
the others who was sandwiched between, but it still seemed
like plenty of space for a bachelor. When the weekend arrived,
he meet his friends at Thursdays, where they'd buy each
other a few rounds of beer and bet on some games.
(04:41):
He was intelligent and amiable, and he relished the adrenaline
rush of a little gambling on the weekends. Having something
at stake in a game made it infinitely more fun,
and sure, maybe it was a little addictive. The friendly
guy who sat down next to him, David Balcom, could
have picked a dozen other regulars to strike up a
conversation with and found a way to place a bed,
(05:02):
but he picked Sal, and as they sat there in
that mid October afternoon, the sun's setting somewhere in the
parking lot as the late games started, Sal had no
idea that the man he was talking to was an
undercover detective who worked for the Organized Crime and Narcotics
Division of the Fairfax Police Department, and David Balcolm would have,
of course be using an alias, a name that Sal
(05:22):
would never be able to trace if he got curious.
Sel had no idea that this friendly stranger pawing at
French Fries while watching the Redskins lose to the Giants
would be the man directly responsible for ending his life
on a cold January day four months later. Washington Post
reporter Tom Jackman has never forgotten about the Sal Colosi case.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
I've gotten to know the families well in several of
these cases, including the Colossies, and that just makes it
all the more memorable because you watch them suffer.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
It's really hard.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
His family is as devastated today as they were then,
and there still isn't any resolution on that. So the
Colosi case is absolutely one of the most memorable ones
that I've ever covered, part because it was so unjustifiable
and important to see such a good family suffer so much.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Eventually, sal agreed to take David's bets. Over the course
of the NFL football season, Sal and David wagered on games,
with Salad mostly winning. The amounts by real bookie standards
were small, a few thousand here and there, adding up
to twenty eight thousand in total bets, with sal by
the end of the season coming out five thousand ahead.
(06:38):
If you wanted to call saladbookie, a real one would
have scoffed at the money that changed hands. Sal was
an approachable, friendly, gregarious good guy by day. He performed
eye exams and reassured his most anxious patience that their
vision wasn't failing before going over the pros and cons
of progressive lenses. If his career choice was a little
on the dull and predictable side, even it out with
(07:00):
the occasional raucous weekend with his friends. They drank beer,
they watched games, they bent on them. The adrenaline rush
would have evaporated by the time he left Thursdays and
drove down Lee Highway, pulling into the condo complex at
Cavalier Landing Court Drive. He pulled a car into the garage,
climb up the stairs of his narrow, three story home,
(07:20):
grab a glass beer, and get ready for a long
walk week. He owned two optometry offices located in nearby
shopping malls. It wasn't the sexiest line of work, but
it had enabled him to buy the condo on Cavalier
Landing for two hundred and three thousand dollars, and his parents,
Sal Senior and Anita were proud of him. His new
(07:41):
pal David had been regularly calling him every week to
place bets and to Sal, who thought of betting and
football as the most pleasurable part of his week. There
was nothing about this fellow sports fan that concerned him,
and he was winning most of the bets with David anyway.
He always paid him when he lost and collected from
him when he won. There was no bitterness or grumbling
(08:02):
on either side, but maybe just the tacit acknowledgment that
Sal had better instincts when it came to understanding football odds.
And in the fall of two thousand and five, Saal
would have said that things were definitely looking good. He'd
found a way to spice up what otherwise might have
been a slightly dull existence, especially as a bachelor and
a cookie cutter condo village off a drab six lane highway.
(08:23):
What he didn't know is that the Fairfax County Police
Department also had a gambling problem, but that it was
much more severe than Sal's. We'll be back after a
short break. We're back with murder homes. The Organized Crime
(08:45):
and Narcotics Division of the Fairfax County Police Department was
an overfronted group of board somewhat hapless detectives who were
beginning to feel the pressure to show some results, and
he'd become something of a joke within the department, Betting
hundreds of thousands of taxpayer money, they tried to infiltrate
a gambling empire that did not exist. I asked Tom
(09:06):
Jackman about the folly of this pursuit and the outrageous
sums the money laundering unit wasted to zero effect.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
It was definitely six figures.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
I could never get to the exact number because they
wouldn't tell me, but there were court documents that would indicate, oh,
we lost one hundred and twenty five thousand in this one,
and someone else claimed that they lost similar amounts. And
this was their attempts to try to figure out who
was doing the sports gambling in Fairfax County, a very
wealthy suburb of Washington, d C. So a lot of
(09:36):
money to be spread around. They sent a swat team
in to a twenty thousand dollars buy in private poker
game at a very wealthy neighborhood a Fairfax County. Everybody
had to pay twenty thousand just to sit at that table,
and there were two, two or three pros there and
they all wound up getting charged with misdemeanor illegal gambling.
(10:00):
But this is after they'd had rifles pointed at their faces,
which they felt was a little excessive, and the police said, well,
you know, we had to shoot before they shoot us.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Now, the taxpayers of Fairfax County were down five thousand
to an optometrist named Sal Colosi, and Detective Balcolm had
nothing really to show for this three month sting operation.
At Thursdays, Colosi, he knew, was small potatoes and most
likely we'd be slapped with a misdemeanor if the case
ever came to court. Balcolm was also humiliated that he
kept losing to Colosi, handing over cash under the bar
(10:32):
at Thursdays as Sal dipped a wing and some blue
cheese dressing and offered David a few tips on some
upcoming games. Every sports bar seems to have a guy
who really knows what he's talking about when it comes
to NFL games, and Colosi was Thursday's most reliable authority
on just about anything they had to do with football,
the one who might roll his eyes a little if
you were taking the overbet on the Panthers game. David Balcom,
(10:55):
on the other hand, was feeling more and more like
a fraud. He was working for a police unit that
was losing hundreds of thousands of dollars on failed investigations,
and the only role he could play convincingly was that
of a sucker. No matter how nice Sal was, it
must have gotten under his skin, because Salo was a
kind person, a real sweetheart. It turns out his friends
(11:15):
loved him, his parents loved him. His mother still keeps
a blog and writes letters to her dead son every month.
There are six hundred and fifty six entries. This is
an excerpt from a recent post.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Dear Salvatore, today's weather has been a nice break from
what it was this past week, when it was extremely
hot and very muggy. It was actually a lovely summer day,
one that you should have been able to enjoy and
be out and about sadly in marks instead. The seventeenth
year and six months remembrance day of your loss to
us to say I feel aggrieved for the blatantly unfair
(11:51):
treatment you received at the hands of those who were
sworn to serve and protect doesn't even scratch the surface
of what happened to you and our family. I wonder
at times if any of those involved have any remorse
or ever think of the part they played in putting
you in harm's way.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
They have changed our.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
Family's lives forever by what they did, and it is unforgivable.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
The fall of two thousand and six was measured by
Sal as usual by the seventeen weeks of football season,
from the sunder end stadiums of late September to the
rain soak games of late November, all seen from his
favorite stool at Thursdays, and in that strange space of
time when the playoffs start and the last wagers of
the season take place. Super Bowl forty was coming up,
(12:37):
and a slightly dim witted pal David had finally placed
a winning bet. Being sal he was actually happy for him.
On a cold Tuesday night, January twenty fourth, two thousand
and six, Detective Malcolm was preparing to pick up the
eleven hundred dollars he had won in a sting operation
that had stretched only four months, costing Fairfax County tax
payers thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of police overtime.
(13:01):
But Balcolm then did something truly sinister or criminally stupid.
Instead of driving by Colosi's home at one one six
two six Cavalier Landing Court and placing the optometrist under
arrest after he handed over his winnings, he demanded a
swat team follow him to the neatly packed condominiums on
the hill. That team would wait on Lee Highway and
(13:21):
then when he gave the signal, come racing down the street,
performing what is known as a vehicular takedown. As soon
as the SWAT team heard this, two of the members
bailed out, leaving just the driver and a SWAT team
officer named Daval Bullok to handle the arrest. The tactical
team would leap from their suv and take down sal
who had never once shown the slightest hint of being violent.
(13:44):
The most aggressive move he had probably ever made was
stealing a few of David Balcom's fries. At Thursdays, I
drove to Sale's condo unit off Lee Highway with a friend.
I wanted to see the home he had proudly owned,
get a sense of his final moments. So I'm with
my friend Rob and we're driving by, and it's gonna
(14:04):
be one one six, two six. This is where he
came out.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
That walkway I think goes through to the fronts.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah, it's a well kept condo, red brick on the
first floor, white vinyl siding on the second, with a
one car garage in front. Attached to identical condos to
the right and left. The whole complex feels temporary, the
residents biding their time before saving enough money to buy
a place with a little bit of land, a hedge
neighbors you can wave at instead of hearing their arguments
(14:33):
through the walls. The blinds at one, one six, two
six had been pulled down. I tried to imagine Sell
cracking a beer and the kind of kitchen you've seen
a thousand times before Corran countertop, oh kitchen cabinets, a
tight row of modest stainless steel appliances, then flopping back
on the couch and picking up a book again. There's
(14:54):
a gas fireplace across from him, the flames jetting out
of the fake log, almost making him feel cozy, but
he can't quite relax because he's waiting for a call
from David Balcom, who amazingly enough has finally placed the
winning bet. Sal's just beginning to think he might not
call when his cell phone rings. David tells him he's
about five minutes away, so sALS stuffs the eleven hundred
(15:17):
in the envelope and climbs down the staircase in his socks.
He's just wearing a T shirt and jeans, and he
knows it's freezing outside, but the whole transaction should take
about a minute, and then he'll be back in his
warm home. I picture David Balcom pulling up in his suv.
The garage door is already opening, Sal ducking under it
and striding out toward him. He leans in the open
(15:39):
window of the passenger side and hands Balcolm his cash,
and they make like they always have a little small talk.
Sal has no idea that Balcolm has signaled for the
second car with the SWAT team to proceed with a takedown.
They come ripping down cavalier landing Court breaks shrieking as
a nearly crash into Balcom's car. The SWAT team suv
has now come to a stock and saw Colossi is
(16:01):
just beginning to turn around the cell phone still in
his hand. Deval Bullock, the SWAT team officer, leaps out
of the passenger side door, raising his gun and aiming
it at Sal, who has gone pale at the sight
of an officer in full tactical gear aiming the Heckler
and Coke handgun straight at his heart. A single shot explodes,
(16:21):
the sound echoing off the condos on either side of them.
Sal Kulosi collapses, blood spreading across his white T shirt.
The bullet tore through Sal's aorta and he would die
within minutes. He lay on a coal patch of grass
near the curb, staring up at David Balcom, the man
he thought was a friend, just calling about a bet.
(16:41):
Only moments before the last words Sal spoke were to Balcom.
It was an almost polite question, dude, what are you doing?
I was reading a book. Sal must have been thinking,
I can't be dying. This can't be happening. I know
this person, the SWAT team officer bullet. So the shot
was discharged accidentally when the car door hit his left elbow,
(17:04):
causing his right index finger to drop down in a
reflex action and pull a trigger. Not possible, right, Tom
Jackman still thinks that explanation.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Is a joke to this day. It doesn't make sense
to me, all of it, Bullock says.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
His explanation keeps evolving that he has no explanation for
his finger being anywhere near the trigger. First, then it's
that the door is hitting his left arm, which causes
a reflex on his right arm to slide down on
the trigger and pull it. And then months later there's
this new explanation that it was a reflex, and that
he was also up all night at a deer hunt.
(17:40):
Is there anything kind of strange about that to you?
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah, but mainly that he gets out of a car
with the car on his left, and that somehow as
he gets out of the car, the door bumps him.
The door bumps his left side, but he's getting out
from around the door. How does the door bump him?
Does he open the door so widely that it comes
(18:05):
back this way? I don't see how he would, but
I guess it's possible, But that that door then slams
into him, and he then puts a perfect shot straight
into the side of sell Calosi's chest and goes straight
into his heart.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
I don't believe it.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Tom Jackman has another theory about why developed billook the
swat team officer shoots Salculosi through the heart.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
I think that, you know, he thought that Colosi's cell
phone was a gun, because Colosi was holding a cell
phone which then landed a few feet away. But the
door thing, I've never bought it. I think it's one
of the things he told them, which was he thought
that might have been a gun, and uh, four iPhones basically,
and so I think everybody had a flip phone, which
(18:50):
were more likely to be shiny or reflective in the dark.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
You know, even so he's not pointing it at anybody.
A and B.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
They really put all their emphasis on the door hitting
Bullock and causing him to fire.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
If a car door hits you, I.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Would think that you would, I don't know, not be
able to maintain your perfect daying. You would be somehow
knocked just a little bit out of position.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Sell bled to death on the small patch of grass
outside his open garage door before the ambulance even arrived.
Balcom Bullock. The paramedics all knew you was deceased, but
they went through the motions, his chest heaving as they
placed the defibrillator on him. On the way to the hospital,
Balcom watched the ambulance lights flash through the bare trees
(19:43):
and then turned down Lee Highway. Celosi's home was empty,
now all his. They neatly taped it off the condo
that sal had been spending the last hours of Tuesday
in so that the shock neighbors couldn't come too close.
Then Balcolm walked through the open garage door and with
the help of his colleagues, began to tear Salas home apart.
(20:06):
They pulled out drawers, knocked over dressers, pounded walls, looked
for secret compartments, pulled out the cushions of the sofa
where Salad and Reading's book only a few minutes before.
For four hours, they destroyed Sal's neat town home, eventually
discovering thirty eight thousand in cash and half a gram
of coke. For four hours, balcom ransacked the home because
(20:26):
he wanted to prove that Sal was more than a
small stakes, part time gambler, but he couldn't find anything else.
At two in the morning, the Fairfax County Police Department
decided it was finally time to notify Sal's parents of
their only son's death. We'll be back after a short break.
(20:53):
We're back with murder homes. In the months after Sal's death,
Balcolm still chased his losses. Determined to prove that Sal
was part of a massive bookmaking scheme. He called all
the numbers on Sala's phone, terrorizing loved ones, brothers, uncles,
good friends, beginning each threatening call with the same words,
how much were you into Sal?
Speaker 2 (21:13):
For?
Speaker 1 (21:15):
I asked Tom Jackman about the calls. One of the
most outrageous things to me was that months after the
death of Sal Closi, he had Closi's phone and was
continuing to call his relatives and ended up contacting his
brother in law and asking you know how much we
into Sal for that? To me is just you know,
the insult to injury. I got the information from you.
(21:37):
I was wondering how you felt about it.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Well, I think their justification was, we have to investigate
this all the way to the end, even if the
target of our investigation is dead. Our theory is that
he was running a bookmaking operation, so let's find out
who else was betting with him, how widespread it was.
So that was their of a weak attempt to do
(22:02):
that by calling people in his phone, not knowing who
they were.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Just asking them if they were customers.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Sal was actually just a regular sports enthusiast and a
guy who put money on games with friends. He wasn't
a bookie, and they had misunderstood that from the start.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
They thought that he.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Was running a book making scheme and he was dealing
out bets and taking in bets from numerous people, and
they found out that wasn't true.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Do you think that he continued to do that? After
to justify what had happened. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
I mean that was to try to make it clear
that there was a reason why they were there going
after Colosi, because the focus then became why did you
even bring a swat team to arrest this guy? And
so I think there was a move to try to
justify that by saying, well, he must have been a
big time bookie. He had cash in his apartment and
we were adding five hundred or one thousand dollars a game,
(23:03):
so he must have been the big time.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Malcolm still works for the Fairfax County Police Department. I've
tried to reach him numerous times. I left voicemails. I
emailed if you hear this, Detective Malcom, call me back,
because I want to hear your side of the story.
I want to start from the beginning. When you walk
into Thursdays on a Sunday afternoon in October and you
see sALS sitting there. I want to know what beery
(23:27):
he was drinking. I want to know what he was wearing.
I want to know the first words you said to
him and what he said to you. I want to
know if you have a regret or too about what happened.
But My feeling is that the worst people in the
world have this amazing ability to shrug things off. And
I'd bet two thousand dollars you don't think about cull
Colosi at all. There's the sameness to the condo complexes
(23:51):
and shopping plazas of Fairfax County, like some warm idea
of home created in a petri dish. It's a formula
that's repeated as far as you can see. These clusters
of communities, vaguely resembling colonial houses, vast woodlands still space
between them, and thin curving roads where a car full
of board teens my friend tells me recently drove one
(24:12):
hundred miles an hour and went sailing into the forest,
killing them all. I get the sense you have to
be careful what you do for an adrenaline rush around here,
because the Fairfax Money Laundering Unit is still watching, even
barrowing into a poker game with automatic weapons not too
long ago and pointing their guns at the thinning hair
of the players in their cashmer sweaters. Meanwhile, back at
(24:39):
Jimbo's grill, I couldn't stop thinking as I listened to
the regular softly chatter while the game's played. A KGNAC
set before a man with a handlebar mustache, that we
were all listening to each other's conversations, the football tips,
the unfunny jokes, the gripes, everything that makes a Sunday
in the middle of nowhere feel right, just like David
Balk had listened to sal laughing and joking with his
(25:02):
friends seventeen years ago before pulling up a seat next
to him. It's noon outside and it's a crisp, shiny
winter day, but it feels like early evening at Jimbo's,
a comforting gray light settling over all of us as
the regulars come and go. The Army Navy game starts
at one pm. This is Murder Holmes. I'm Matt Mrinovitch.
(25:34):
Murder Holmes is created by an executive producer by Matt Mrinovich.
Executive producers are Jennifer Bassett and Taylor Chakoine. Story editor
is Jennifer Bassett. Supervising producer is Carl Ktel. Producer is
Evan Tyer. Sound designed by Taylor Chicoine, Evan Tyer and
Carl Katle. Special thanks to Ali Perry and Nikiyetour. Murder
(26:01):
Holmes is a production of iHeart Podcasts. For more shows
from iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Matt Marinovich
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