NYPD HOMICIDE DETECTIVE DISCUSSES THE CASE- A ROSE DIED IN SPANISH HARLEM PT.1

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to True Detective Stories podcast,the podcast where homicide detectives shared their most
intense cases. Let's begin. Welcometo Detective Scott Wagner's NYPD show as he
takes us through his career seventeen yearcareer the Homicide Unit the NYPD and today's

(00:24):
episode one A Rose Died in SpanishHarlem Part one. So well, let's
welcome to the show, Detective Wagner. Welcome sir, Thank you, doctor
Carls. It's a pleasure to behere with you. I can't wait.
I'm really excited about this series.You had an incredible career at the NYPD
twenty three years seventeen in homicide,and first and foremost, thank you very

(00:46):
much for your servicer. Thank youvery much your most kind saying that.
So let's go ahead and let's getstarted with this case. This is an
amazing case. Really, it isincredible you worked on. Take us through
the case. How did they findthis body? Well, the victim's name
was Jason Adams. Of all thecases, the hundreds of homicide cases that

(01:11):
I've had, I've caught myself andassisted on them, this was one of
the most heenous crimes that I dealtwith in the fact that this individual was
a total innocent saint of a man. He was a victim of a brutal,

(01:34):
brutal stabbing attack which which caught himby surprise, he couldn't even put
up a fight. And again dealingwith so many cases by the way,
just to take you back. Thisoccurred in October of nineteen ninety eight an

(01:57):
area called Tarlem Spanish Harlem Albaio.That's what it's referred to. In New
York. It's sometimes called the Uppereast Side. It's depending upon what media
coverage there is, the neighborhood canchange. It happened on at three thirty

(02:20):
eight East one hundred and sixth Street, which is located on the south side
of one hundred and six between Firstand Second Avenue in Manhattan, again the
Upper east Side. Technically, theborders to Spanish Harlem go from the north
side of ninety sixth Street to onehundred and twenty fifth Street, from the

(02:43):
east River to the east side ofFifth Avenue. That's East Harlem or Spanish
Harlem. Had this occurred in let'ssay, ten blocks south of Crime,
there would have been a task forceof detectives assigned to the case, but

(03:08):
being that the victim was a personof color and that it occurred on one
hundred and sixth Street as opposed toninety sixth Street. It was just my
partner, myself and the members ofour team. I'll explain briefly. In
a detective squad, you have yourone on one partner, but you're also

(03:30):
part of a team. It couldbe anywhere from three sets apartners to five
sets apartments in that team, andwe work what's called the four and two
sharp, meaning four days on,two days off. So every three weeks
your days off change two night twois meaning four pm to one am,

(03:53):
and then you do what it's calleda turnaround because you literally turn around and
come back at eight o'clock in themorning and you work two eight to four
ships and then you have your twodays off. So it's a bit of
a difficult chart to adjust to.And the sad part about it is you

(04:15):
with the other detectives in your squad, in the entire precinct, or or
in the homicide squad or whatever specializedunit you're in, you kind of pass
like ships in the night. Youreally don't have time to share information or
talk to one another unless somebody inanother team is on overtime so they're lingering

(04:40):
around the office or they change theirshift for whatever reason. So, for
instance, when I came on inthe job, originally you were three departments
in New York. It was theNew York City Police Department, New York
City Transit Police Department, and theNew York City Housing Adarity Police Department,

(05:00):
all of which had complete parody acrossthe board, pay, training, and
powers. But for instance, Iwas part of the Housing Police Department.
Our main concern were the tenants andproperty of the New York City Housing Authority,
which is the largest housing authority inthe country. Okay, within the

(05:25):
area the confines of the two threeprecinct or Spanish Harlem, it's the second
largest contingent of New York City HousingAuthority projects. Well now is they're called
developments in the city. There arethirteen different New York City Housing Authority projects

(05:46):
within the confines of that preseason belong. The population of Spanish Harlem is approximately
between one hundred and twenty five andone hundred and forty thousand people graphical area
that I described before. Three quartersof those people reside in public houses,

(06:06):
so that alone is a city withina city in housing. Eventually, in
nineteen ninety five they merged all threedepartments together into one and the Transit Police
became the Transit Bureau and the HousingPolice became the Housing Bureau of the NPD.

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When we were detectives in Housing,I was in the homicide squad as
well. We worked our day shiftsfor ten to six, so the guys
that came in at four o'clock fortwo hours, you had two teams of
detectives in. It was very crowdedin the office, but in those two
hours, the exchange of information thatwent back and forth between detectives was incredible,

(06:54):
and that alone solved a lot ofcases. Because there's a lot of
duplicity, there's a lot of redundancy. For instance, you and I could
be in the same detective squad andsomeone makes a complaint against their significant double.
Let's say for a domestic incident,Well, you might catch a case

(07:17):
with it and you are in let'ssay the C team. I'm in the
D team as DZ and David.I might also and maybe she made multiple
complaints those women, so I mightcatch a case with the same individual,
and that happened oftentimes, So whenwe hit that two hour overlap, you'd

(07:42):
be surprised how many cases got solved. But someone would say, hey,
hey, I have a case similarto that. Let me look through my
folder. And then another detective wouldpop up and say the same thing.
Wait a minute, and I gotone that looks like that, And next
you know, you're solving a robberypattern, or you're not creating a robbery
pattern or a burglary pat or anassault pattern. You know. So again

(08:05):
in the NPD, that sort ofchanged. So when my partner and I
got back together after the merge hitbecause we were scattered to the winds basically
throughout the end way or I reconnectedand we became a homicide team. Our

(08:26):
lieutenant appointed us as a homicide teamwithin the priestinct. So not only would
we catch regular cases, but wewould also assist the other detectives with their
homicides. Because when you catch ahomicide in a detective squad, they take
you off what it'll be called thecatching chart for a week. In other
words, you don't catch any othercases. That's it a week. They

(08:46):
expect you to solve it because ahomicide needs undivided attention and there are factual
numbers to back that up. Overninety five percent of homicides can be solved
if you have enough manpower and resources. I mean, it's going to be

(09:07):
that percentage of mysteries that go on. But they are far and few between.
Most homicide victims or victims of homicides, they know they're assailant in one
way, shape, form, oranother, whether it's a lover's stat or
a business and I say business legitimateor illegitimate. You know they're known to

(09:31):
one another in a certain way.A street beef a beef. It could
be a beef that it was hadin a nightclub and carried over. It
could be it's a myriad of reasonsthat that murders it. He murders a
carful parking spaces. But with thatbeing said, this particular crime, the
ferocity of it was that the victimwas stabbed seventy one times, now seventy

(09:58):
one times. To stab someone isindicative, as you well known as a
psychologist, of rage by the perpetratoror perpetrators. Also, stabbing someone is
much more personal than shooting them oryou know, or hitting them with an

(10:22):
object. Stabbing is it's almost intimatebecause you have to get right up on
the individual and physically plunge that bladeor sharp object into their body. It's
very easy to pull a trigger onsomeone three pounds of pressure, and you

(10:43):
could pull a tuger from a blockaway, you know, and be on
target. And again it doesn't it'seven snipers. It's a very you know,
they it's a it's a business likething. Sometimes. That's why contract
killers in the mob aren't considered serialkillers, because they do it for business.

(11:07):
Now again, this individual, wedo what's called victimology, because you
can't begin to solve a case unlessyou know everything there is to know about
the victim, because that'll usually againlike I told you before, most victims
know their sounds. So in thiscase, we were notified early on a

(11:31):
Friday morning. We came in ateight o'clock in the morning. About nine
o'clock in the morning, we getnotified from the death sergeant that there's a
male stab apparently the OA, whichmeans they're on arrival, but he's dead

(11:52):
in an apartment and it seems tobe no forced entry to the apartment.
Respond out to the location. Mypartner and I and members of our team
My partner's name was Thomas Lombardo.We were at the same academy class,

(12:13):
so we knew each other from dayone, and we were partnered on and
off eighteen years. Out of twentythree years that I did and he did
twenty years, we were partnered onand off eighteen of those years. Partners
are very strange companions. Sometimes you'renot friends. We happen to be friends.

(12:39):
But the bond between partners is muchdifferent than just a friendship or a
regular relationship, because not only doour lives depend on one another, but
cases depend on each other, andwe have to think of like we have
to be on the same page.A side note is in any case we

(13:01):
worked, we had to be intotal agreement that the individual was either innocent
or guilty that we were dealing with, and if we weren't, we would
step out of the interview room orwhatever, and we would hash it out
amongst ourselves, and a couple oftimes it almost came to blows. That's
how passionate we were about our cases. It was just like, you want

(13:24):
to put the real perpetrator away,you don't want to put an innocent personal
way, and that's just as greata cause. So we respond out to
the scene. We are greeted byuniformed officers who had formed us that they

(13:46):
were notified by an individual who theyhad standing by, who was a friend
of the victim, and he statedthat he was scheduled to meet up with
the victim early in the morning andthey were to go out and do a
series of errands and then have lunchtogether later in the day. The victim
the friend, excuse me, Thefriend called the victim in the morning because

(14:11):
the victim had told him call meand wake me in the morning because he
had gone out the night before,he knew he was going to be out,
so he might not hear his alarmclock. So the friend called and
the phone just rang and rang andrang. Now he knew that the victim
had an answer machine, so rightaway he was raised up a little because

(14:33):
the answer machine didn't pick up.So, after several attempts to call on
the phone, all in vain.He lived a few blocks away, he
walked over to the victim's house tohis apartment building, which was a five
story walked up what they call railroadflat in New York. The air windows

(14:54):
in the front and the back ofthe apartment they go straight back. Visual
had the front apartment the victim,so his his windows was his bedroom windows
faced the front of the building,so and he always kept his window cracked
open. And again this was Octoberand it was a relatively warm fall that

(15:16):
season, so he had his bedroomwindows open. So his friend would call
him from the street, called upto the window because his bed was right
under the windows. So he wasyelling to him from the street, and
he even took some pennies from hispocket and were throwing them up to hit
the window to see if you know, his friend would wait. Maybe he

(15:37):
thought he was drunk and he wasjust so sound asleep, hung over what
have So the lobby door to thebuilding was locked, so he couldn't get
buzzed in, so he waited andwaited, and finally someone edited the building
and he used that to go upstairsand he went to his friend's door,

(15:58):
his apartment door. He knock onthe door and the door was ajar.
The door just opened up. Soright then and there, he got extremely
worried and scared because that was notlike Jason at all. Jason would always
lock to go behind him. Asa matter of fact, he had three
separate locks on the interior of hisdoor that we saw. Not that he

(16:21):
was paranoid, but it's not thebest of neighborhoods. He lived alone,
so he took precautions. The friendgingerly entered the apartment. He noticed right
away as he entered, he saweven though the apartment wasn't an immaculately neat

(16:41):
apartment, it was not dirty orby any means, it was clutter because
there was a relatively small apartment andthe individual had a lot of things.
He wasn't a hoarder or anything,but it was a cluttered apartment as most
of the New York City apartments arevery small, and he noticed draws open,

(17:03):
things sticking out of draws. Heimmediately noticed next to the telephone that
the answering machine was not there.So again he peered in a little more
and he looked to his leaf wherethe bedroom was, which was a wide
open space like you walk into theapartment, you win like a vestibule that

(17:27):
was like a dining area, andit opened up into what was his bedroom.
He had a curtain there, butnot a formal door to block the
bedroom off, so it was basicallylike a large one room studio per se.
I mean you would call it astudio apartment, but larger than a

(17:48):
studio. So basically the living area, the living room area was his bedroom.
So he peered in and he sawblood all over, so he backed
out and ran to a payphone.There's a gas station on the corner.
He ran to the payphone and calledNineland one and stood and waited for the

(18:08):
police to arrive. The uniformed officersarrived quite quickly. They entered again.
They kept the friend out, andthey entered gingerly again because you don't know
if the perpetrator or perpetrators are stillon the scene or not. So they
entered and basically cleared the apartment tomake sure there were no perpetrators in the

(18:33):
apartment. They notified EMS, whichis our paramedics in New York. Paramedics
arrived just prior to our arrival,and they pronounced the victim deceased upon our
arrival. Because you have a crimescene that is pretty much christine in the

(19:00):
sense that it's it's enclosed. Weknow, we know who's entered, we
know the two uniformed officers that haveentered, and we know the friend that
is entered, so if we haveto take what's called elimination fingerprints, you
know, because if we if weif our crime scene unit finds fingerprints that

(19:21):
do not belong to the victim,we can always cross reference them with uniformed
officers and or the discover the ofthe body. Now, as a rule
of thumb when it comes to crimescenes, anyone who enters the crime scene

(19:41):
of any sort brings something with theminto the crime scene, and you automatically
take something out with you when youleave the crime scene. Now, what
we did was, of course,we put up with don gloves, vertical
gloves. We would roll up ourpants, we would tuck our ties into

(20:06):
our shirts so it was not toyou know, get blood on us.
We had booties like surgical booties thatwe were able to put on so as
not to track anything from outside intothe apartment, you know, any dirt,
fibers, whatever. In other words, again, at the time,

(20:27):
I owned a cat, so Icould have had some cat hair on my
suit jacket or whatever. So ifcrime scene unit came and they found cat
hair and the victim doesn't have acat, well we can explain it away.
I own a cat, you know, my partner owned the dog.
So again, you know you couldcarry That's what I mean by carrying evidence

(20:51):
into a scene. Just like whenwe leave the scene, we could have
blood on us, a speck ofblood or fibers or whatever that we picked
up in the scene. That's whywe wear gloves and have the booty zone.
So we notified our crime scene unitto come while awaiting their arrival.

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Now, just a side note,there's so many CSI shows that you see
nowadays NYPD, unlike any other departmentin the country, we don't call them
CSI, this CSU. They're thecrime scene unit. Okay, they conduct

(21:33):
crime scene investigations, but we don't. They're referred to as crime scene unit.
They are all detectives. None ofthem was criminalists or civilians. They're
all detectives and highly trained, highlyskilled. This is all they do is

(21:55):
crime scene work. Now, mindyou, this is nineteen ninety eight.
Photography was still thirty five millimeter byten glassies, no digital photography. We
used the old polaroid cameras to takeour pictures. Uh DNA was still in

(22:22):
its infancy. And again you wouldguide the In that instance, I was
the one who guided the crime sceneand detectives as to what I wanted done.
Like, they'll come in to automaticallydo a sketch of the apartment,
the layout showing where the body is, where any potential weapons are, anything

(22:45):
of the kind. Then let's sayI notice a cigarette butt, or I
notice a glass of wine or somethinghalf you know, half full, half
empty. You look at it,I'm designate them. I want that bag
for evidence, you know. Soagain they'll take their photos, they'll photo

(23:07):
body extensively, they'll photo the wholeentire apartment. We will have them check
the locks because even though the doorwas there was no signs of force entry,
Like the door wasn't kicked in,there's a possibility the locks could have
been picked. So you have thelocks removed because they can be broken down

(23:33):
and analyzed to see if there's anypick marks or what they call tool marks
in the lock, to see ifthe lock was played with okay, because
that could you know, be potentially. It turned out it wasn't, but
that was just normal course of businessthat we did in that type of crime
scene. The telephone is very importantback in those days because you were able

(24:02):
to retrieve the last outgoing and incomingphone calls to the victim. He had
no cell phone. He only hada landline, a hard wire phone,
which a lot of people don't evenknow what it is anymore. They have
a landline or a hard ware phone. So again that was important. We

(24:29):
found what we thought was the murderweapon that had to be photographed in detail
packaged. What we do is webag the victim's hands in case the victim
did fight back, there might beunder the fingernails scraping or you know,

(24:56):
of someone else's skin of blood.So as a again as a crime scene,
one on one, so to speak, you begged the victims hands and
again handy. Any blood evidence hasto be packaged in paper. So if
on TV you see any blood evidencebeing put into a plastic bag, now

(25:18):
plastic will decompose anything quickly. It'sgot to be packaged in paper. So
again the crime scene was processed.While I was watching the crime scene technicians
do good job. I was takingnotes in my notebook of what I saw

(25:40):
during my own diagram, taking notesof certain draws that were open, things
that caught my eye that didn't lookcorrect or didn't look right to me,
as were my partners. Everyone wastaking notes because everyone looks at things from
their own perspective and their own pointof view, and then later on we
come back or we compare notes becausemaybe I didn't notice the cigarette butt but

(26:07):
you did. Or I didn't noticethe can of beer, but you did,
you know, things of that sort. So I was basically counting the
stab wounds on the victim, andI stopped counting at forty. I couldn't

(26:29):
go I couldn't go on anymore.It was just innumerable. And again you
now that crime scene finishes there processing, we have to wait for the medical
examiner to come. And the medicalexaminer actually rolls the body over. It

(26:51):
moved the body and noticed that numberone, the front of the victim,
the entire front of the victim,there was not There was only one wound,
and that was a perforation to hiscenter of his chest, but from

(27:12):
a back wound. So it wentthrough the back, through the chest,
Yes, into the mattress. Yes, it was. It was quite a
large, a butcher knife that theya butcher type knife that they gleaned from
the apartment, from the victim's apartment. It was his knife that was you.

(27:36):
And later on in the investigation wewould find out that this one particular
stab wound was done by both perpetratorswith such force that they both had to
push down on a knife and itimpaled the heart. The heart actually impaled.

(28:02):
That's how again he and is andbrutal scene this was. It was
an immense amount of anger. Immenseright away we assumed it had he had
to know. Is a sound thecombination of you know, he obviously let
them in and again he's lying nude, face down on a bed, basically

(28:32):
spread eagle. Yet he was atap from behind, so he didn't even
have a chance to fight. Isa sound off? Is what we call
defense wounds. If someone is tryingto stab you, you'll you'll naturally put
your hands up to your face oracross, you know, wherever the person

(28:52):
is trying to stab you, andyou'll get cuts along the hands, along
the forearms. You know what theycall hesitation marks where the knife it's not
a direct plunge, but it's almostlike it's hesitating before it goes in.
Okay, there were no hesitation stables. These were all completely bang bang bang

(29:18):
bang upon the medical examiner's examination ofthe body. Once they were once they
completed their examination again, crime scenestays around to take more pictures. The
body is then removed by the medicalexaminer to be brought down to the Office

(29:42):
chief Medical Examiner for autopsy, whichis usually done the following day. So
now once the body is removed,crime scene unit is gone. They finished
doing that thing. Now we're inthe apartment alone. There's about six of

(30:03):
us in this small apartment, andwe are now looking for any type of
evidence, anything that can give usvictimology what we call victimology again, that
is getting to know the victim becauseright now we have his name from his

(30:30):
friend. Obviously he lives in thisapartment, but we don't know what he
does for a living. This isin the prelim investigation. This is within
hours, a couple of hours ofhim being frowned. So these are in
the early stages. So now wehave a team of detectives canvassing. Canvassing

(30:52):
is going door to door. Now, mind you, this is a five
story walk up two apartments to afloor, so there's only ten apartment doors.
Danaka, this is not a bigapartment building, you know, where
you have a lot of neighbors thatcould potentially have heard screens or shouts or

(31:15):
commotion or anything like that, orpeople coming and going. This is pre
cameras. You know, there wasnot much to Kansas. You came us
to building, you had people inthe street, you know, we had
detectives in the street. There werebusinesses on either side, you know,

(31:36):
again asking if they knew the individual, because again we took a polaroid photo.
For those of your listens who don'tknow where polaroids are those they're just
coming back now. They were aninstant camera that we used back in the
day where you take the snap shotand the photo would come out and within
twenty five seconds it would appear.We took a show out of his face,

(32:01):
cleaned up a little to show peoplein the street, do you reckon
you know this individual? How youknow the things of that nature. So
we had teams of detectors doing that. My job as the lead investigator or
the catching detective in this particular caseis I want to take as many notes

(32:22):
as I can. Well, Ihave the scene in my possession basically like
that, we have it. Eventhough like I said, we had the
locks remove for testing. We're goingto padlock the door and we're going to
put a seal on it. Eventually, because we might have to re enter
it a later day. So we'llhave the keys, we'll be able to
control who comes and goes in thatapartment. So we began our search,

(32:47):
and we noticed certain things right away. We noticed, just like the outcry
witness, notice the answering machine wasgone from the phone, and you could
see the little outline on the tablethat he had the answer machine, like
the dust outline. Now again notthat the problem was dirty, but you

(33:12):
could see that there was something therethat is no longer there. It was
a little outline, like a squareoutline, like an eight in square outline.
That's where the answer machine would havebeen. So right away we made
a notation of that. We noticedthe wires hanging from his television, that
the cable box was gone. Wenoticed that he had computer wires, and

(33:40):
again on one of the tables,he had a long table that apparently his
computer equipment was on. Now rememberthis is ninety eight. Maybe there was
one laptop out by that at thatpoint. But so the PCs were large
monitors thick, plus the keyboards,and plus you had what they call it

(34:00):
the tower, which was the driver. So you could see the wiring was
still there. But those three itemswere gone. The three items that you
needed for a personal computer home computerwere gone, so we know that's missing.
We noticed again through his friend whowas interviewed extensively while Primestein was doing

(34:27):
their thing. We were interviewing thefriend outside, asking the friend did he
have certain items. The friends saidhe had the clock radio. Again,
we don't see it on his manytable, so we assume that's take all
the draws, his dresser draws,his end table draws, the kitchen cabinets.

(34:47):
The kitchen draws were all a job. They're all opened, some had
closed dumped out of them, butwe assumed dumped out of them, because
again you don't know if someone liveslike this or you know, they just
slabs or the apartment was completely ransacked. So again, like first, we

(35:10):
went into the bathroom and the bathroomwas very neat and we didn't notice anything.
The tub was dry, because wechecked it to see had anyone taken
a shower, you know, recentlyor used the bathtub. Tub was dry,

(35:30):
the soap was dry. There wasno signs of any blood or anything
in the bathroom. There were nobloody footprints, and again this was quite
a bloody scene in the bedroom areaaround his body, but there was no
transfer of blood into the rest ofthe apartment. We of course tracked blood,

(35:59):
you know though, because we're walkingaround the whole apartment with our booties
on. But so we're tracking book. That's why we go in after crime
scene takes their pictures, okay,and we took we made notes of a
lot of things. Now we startgoing through his draws and his personal belongings.
We find his wallet what guys inour generation used to call the little

(36:27):
black book, the little a dressbook, which now everyone has in their
phone, but we used to actuallyremember phone numbers back in the day.
And we found all of his hiscontact information, all his friends and relatives
that we get, you know.In his book, we found like a
diary book, a planner, whichis very it turned out to be very

(36:47):
important, you know, down theline. And the one thing that we
found throughout the apartment, in everynook and cranny were photographed. Apparently the
victim was an avid amateur photographer.He loved to take pictures. And you

(37:12):
know, we're finding these photos inbunches, in groups, and again back
in the day when cameras had filmedin them, actual film you used to
bring your film to a processing center, maybe a drug store or a film
developing center, and you would putit in an envelope with your name on

(37:32):
it and your address or whatever youhand it in, and two three days
they'd call you up and say,mister Vasquez, your photos already, come
pick them up, and you wouldcome in to be an envelope with your
photos and the prints of your photosand the corresponding negatives to your photos.
We found tons of those envelopes,some with photos in them, some without

(37:57):
photos, but we took those aswell. There were negatives in them.
Every negative could be printed into aphoto if we need to do that down
the line, because again we don'tknow who these photos are of. We
just know there's a ton of them. So when all was setting done,
there were hundreds upon hundreds of photosthat we found that we ended up filling

(38:22):
up two large black garbage bags likeyou would use lown and leaf bags,
let's say like thirty five gallon bagsfor instance. We filled up almost two
of them completely with just photographs.That's hundreds in hundred, I'd say,

(38:43):
maybe close to a thousand photographs.And again we found personal papers of his
because we had to also make notifications. That's very important. Next to ken,
you know, he lived alone.So our obligation when someone lives alone
is also to try to find bankbooks, insurance policies, any official documents,

(39:06):
birth certificates, solid security cards,anything not need to help identify the
victim, but also for his nextas king, because we don't know if
he has life insurance with beneficiaries orwhat have you. So a detective's responsibility
in a homicide or in any deathinvestigation is very important. And we have

(39:30):
a phrase that we use in homicideinvestigation that was coined by a former lieutenant
commander of the detective Squad from theBronx Homicide in New York named Vernon Gebett.
He wrote a book called Practical HomicideInvestigation. It's like the unofficial Bible

(39:54):
of death investigation. And his sayingis we work for God. And it
really couldn't be a truer statement becausein any other crime, and again I'm
not trying to downplay any child abuseor sex crimes, or robberies or any

(40:16):
other violent assaults or what have you. Anything imaginable that man can do the
fellow man in a murder, weare there to speak on behalf of the
victim. We are there. Wecan't bring the victim no matter what we
do, we can never bring thevictim back. But we can offer the

(40:37):
family of the victim, the lovedones of the victim, some sort of
closure in their lives to help themgo through the morning and grieving process.
Because, again, to have achild taken away from you, even though

(40:58):
he was thirty four years old atthe time, his dad was a grown
man. Still, he had amother, he had a grandmother, he
had ants, he had siblings.Okay, it's not a natural course of
events for a parent to lose achild. So with that being said,
they can't move on with their lifeif they know that there's someone out that

(41:21):
responsible for taking away their loved onefrom them, how can they move on.
So that's our job, that's ourposition. And again in any other
type of case, we're just usedas a tool to make the arrest.
At the end of the day,if you're the victim of a crime,

(41:43):
whether it be a rape or robberyassault, you're the one who has to
testify in court and point out theindividual in court and say that's the individual
that robbed me, that's the individualthat raped me and so on. But
in a homicide investigation, the victimcan't. Now that's where we come in.

(42:07):
We speak on behalf of it victory. And when I say we work
for God, that's God's work andthat gives us the right to go the
extra mile, so to speak.Things are not black and white in the

(42:27):
world. There's a lot of gray. So in the course of an investigation,
you might have to make so calledmake a deal with the devil,
so to speak. You you mighthave to in order to gain information,

(42:51):
you might have to deal with thestom of the earth and maybe cut that.
I'm a break in something for thegreater good. If you understand what
I'm saying. I mean, ifyou're trying to get a witness, and
or you're trying to get information,and let's say, you know, like

(43:14):
in this case, a lot ofpeople that were arrested near that area,
you know, prior to and afterwardswe're interviewed and debriefed, and we would
tell them, all right, yougot locked up for a robbery. If
you could provide us information that leadsto the arrest and conviction of these individuals,
we will speak to the district attorneyon your behalf that you cooperate,

(43:37):
maybe we can get you some sortof a deal for your cooperation. Again,
this is the steps we have totake. So with that being said,
we all take our notes, Imake our observations. We collect as
much as we can, you know, from the victim's apartment, again the

(44:01):
main thing being his address book,his wallet, and his photographs, his
collection of his huge collection of photographs, which we then remove to our office.
And one of the things that wererecovered amongst the deceased paperwork was a

(44:30):
business card from a Bronx parole officerand that raised our suspicions up why would
this individual have a parole office's businesscard. But again that will be taking

(44:57):
up at a later time. Butat this point, like I said,
we now take our investigation back tothe office. We get the door secured,
the door's pad lot. We puta seal on it on the door
so we could tell if someone triedto gain entry. The seal is placed
over the crack of the door frame. And we have a hasspen, a

(45:19):
large padlot, because again you don'twant people coming in and ransacking what might
be left in the apartment either.And again we might have to go back
and look for more evidence at alater date. You don't know where the
investigation is going to take you,so you have to be able to keep
that scene as long as you possiblycan. So the investigation now goes back
to the precinct, back to ouroffice, and we start doing our what

(45:45):
we call victimology, which is runningcomputer checks on the victim see if he
has any sort of record. Andagain we prepare to go through this immense
trove of photographs and his address bookand all his paperwork because again notifications have

(46:06):
to be made to next to canthings. That's very important to be done
right away as soon as possible aswell, and we were able to do
that within hours. We were ableto make the notification. So that's that's
where we start. Now the investigationreally starts and goes into the next year.

(46:27):
I can't wait because I know inpart two, folks, and part
two, we're going to begin lookingat the investigation, find out what that
card means. Why did he havea parole agent's card, officer's card on
him. Fascinating stuff, Detective,fascinating stuff. I can't wait for episode
two, Folks Again, Detective ScottWager the NYPD shows his episode one.

(46:50):
This is going to be a series, not sure exactly how many episodes were
going to take For this case,we'll find out. We like to go
natural here, so we'll see howit is exist in the natural course of
events. But please, if youwant to support the show, make sure
to share and subscribe and hit thatlike button. That really helps us a
lot. That's it for now,