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NYPD Special Victims Squad Detective Paul Morrison · NYPD Through The Looking Glass

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Your first gun battles with a guy by the name of Ruby Mendez.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: That was a crazy one.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't even get to shoot.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Ruby Mendez, we were dri it was a midnight, I'll never forget it.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: We were listening to Cheech and Chong's Christmas comedy on the radio.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: We were actually laughing.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: My partner, Joe Triscari and I were driving down the street, we were laughing, and two seconds later we heard a gunshot, and it was clear and crisp and close.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: We stopped the car, we looked to our right, we were on Walton Avenue, and you know, the the dark uh the streets were dark, the uh the uh courtyards were dark.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: My partner jumped out first, I got behind him, and just as we entered the front of the the courtyard, Ruby Mendez was just standing there with his gun that he had just fired by his side.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: My partner yelled, drop it, and he slowly just brought it up and pointed it directly at the two of us.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, today's guest is retired NYPD special victim squad detective Paul Morrison.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's the author of an amazing book, Knock Knock, and it details the pursuit of a serial rapist, Louis Acosta.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Knock knock is available on Amazon in paperbook and ebook download.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Morrison, welcome to the show.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Great, great to be here.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, please tell our listeners a little something about yourself.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: I was born and raised in Manhattan, Upper Manhattan.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: I moved to the Bronx when I was about 17 years old.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Went to school in in the Bronx.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Shortly after high school, I I started working in General Motors on the assembly line in Tarrytown, New York.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: And after four years of that, I said, manual labor is a little bit too much for me.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna not gonna make it, even though my father did it for 40 years.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I took all the all the civil service tests, and the first guys to call me were the NYPD, and I stuck with them ever since.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Got on the the NYPD, January 1984, started working in the 4-4 precinct, and became a detective, eventually became a detective uh out of the vice unit, uh, which back then was called the Public Morals Division, and uh then moved on to the 2-3 detective squad uh before being bounced around.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: I ended up in Bronx Special Victims back in uh 1999, the last century.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, you worked in the 4-4 precinct, which was the busiest in the city.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Please tell us about the neighborhood and the cops and the precinct itself when you first got there in 1985.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was it was kind of a culture shock getting to the 4-4.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: In 1984, I would say probably 75% of the 4-4 was abandoned buildings, and the city was was in dire straits.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: It had just come out of almost bankruptcy.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: There wasn't a lot of money, and the South Bronx was getting the least of it.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: The 4-4 uh is right around Yankee Stadium.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: That area, it's not considered the deep South Bronx, but it is the South Bronx, the West, Southwest Bronx.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: It was the it was I described it as the belly of the beast.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was the busiest because it was just insane.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Crack had just hit in uh when I got there, 1985, crack uh arrived with me.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it was just some of the wildest stuff I've I've ever seen in my life.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, there were like a lot of really good people living in these tenements in the 4-4 that went to work every day and then would have to get home before the sun went down and literally locked themselves in uh because of the the the savagery that was going on uh out in the 4-4 streets.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: I I I saw a lot, you know, in my my ten years there.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was brutal, but the cops there were 400 cops assigned there, uh 300 and change, the the tightest group of cops I've ever seen.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: You had to be, you know, it was that that that whole put you protect my back, I protect yours.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: But it really it stood the test of time at the 4-4 uh, because we're still friends.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm still friends with most of the people I worked with back then.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, reading your book Knock Knock, which is an amazing book, it details your career through the 4-4.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: And earlier you you were involved in the 4-4, well, 4-4 and Vice in three separate gun battles, and there's an amazing story in there about your first gun battles with a guy by the name of Ruby Mendez.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: That was a crazy one.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't even get to shoot.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Ruby Mendez, we were dri it was a midnight, I'll never forget it.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: We were listening to Cheech and Chong's Christmas comedy on the radio.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: We were actually laughing.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: My partner, Joe Triscari and I were driving down the street, we were laughing, and two seconds later we heard a gunshot, and it was clear and crisp and close.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: We stopped the car, we looked to our right, we were on Walton Avenue, and you know, the the dark uh the streets were dark, the uh the uh courtyards were dark.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: My partner jumped out first, I got behind him, and just as we entered the front of the the courtyard, Ruby Mendez was just standing there with his gun that he had just fired by his side.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: My partner yelled, drop it, and he slowly just brought it up and pointed it directly at the two of us.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: My partner fired one shot, hit him in the stomach, which caused him to kind of lurch forward and uh and drop the gun, and he falls face first down to the ground.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: It was a it was a perfect shot.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: We ran over and I'll never forget he had a a shoulder holster on.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: And back then the perps didn't carry holsters of any kind.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: There were no rigs, everything was tucked in their pants and their jackets.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: So and he had two wallets.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: When we pulled out the wallets out of his out of his pockets, we just looked at each other and without saying a word, we were like, we just shot a cop.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: We we we we thought he was a cop because of the holster and the two wallets.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: As it turned out, he was the furthest thing from a cop.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: He was a he was a drug dealer, and he had fired the shot.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: We had grabbed a girl that was the you know, the only person on the street was a young black girl, about 17.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: We grabbed her and she said, I just asked him where I could get some some coke or crack, whatever she was looking for, and he started yelling at me.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: She goes, When I yelled back, he pulled the gun and fired it over my head.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: So he had just fired at the girl, uh, and that was the shot we heard.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: And he ended up with a bullet in his stomach and a colostomy bag, from what I understand, for the rest of his life.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: But and but then he fled, right?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Before his case This is the interesting we uh We actually tried him in absentia.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: We tried him without him being there because word was he had fled back to Santo Domingo.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we tried him, he was found guilty of attempted murder of police officers who testified the whole bit, and we thought we had heard the last of him.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: If he returned to the United States, he he would have been arrested.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: There was an arrest, active arrest warrant.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: And if not, he was in Santo Domingo the rest of his life.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: We get word a couple of years later that not only did he return to the United States, but he returned to the building where we shot him in the courtyard.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: In the building was a woman from the Heights.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Her husband owned a group of beauty parlors in the Heights, and she was kidnapped.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: And apparently Ruby had started a kidnapping crew, and he was, of course, the brains.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: And they kidnapped this guy's wife and locked her in an apartment in the building where we where we shot him.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: And up in the apartment, while she was locked in a bathroom, she actually wrote a note on a piece of paper and threw it out the window.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: It made all the papers because it was such an interesting story.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: She had thrown it out the window and it went right into a neighbor's w window down below.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: The neighbor read it, called the police, they showed the police, they hit the door, and sure enough, Ruby's sitting there with his colostomy bag and once again arrested and now charged with the actually not charged.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: He he went to jail on the murder plus the kidnapping charges.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why on earth would he come back to the United States?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't believe he went back to the same building.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, you you you some guys are like a magnet with gun battles.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Your second gun battle, which was you got into a a shootout with a three-man robbery team on 164 in Teller Avenue.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what happened on that that night?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was in August, August 23rd, 1990.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: It was exactly one month before my wedding.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, your mind is kind of running around, you know, you the wedding, how am I going to pay for it, all this other nonsense, the my my honeymoon and all this.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: And uh my partner was on vacation.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: He went to Ocean City, Maryland, uh, Scotty Martin.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I was working with Juan Ramirez.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Juan Ramirez had more time than I did, and just a sharp, he was a sharp cock.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Juan, he knew his stuff.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I was very comfortable working with Juan, and it was my turn to drive.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: We would uh we were in anti-crime, plain clothes, and I was driving, and we were just kind of circling the the east side of the precinct, uh, Teller Avenue, and Juan spotted it.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: He said, That guy's got a gun.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: And he had seen a young young kid tucking a long silver gun in his waistband, and they were all laughing as they were getting into a a Chevy.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: As they were laughing, they had just done a robbery.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: So he he he was tucking the gun in and he was getting in the backseat.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: There was a driver that was already seated, and then another guy getting in to the passenger side.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: I cut the car off, semi-cut the car off, because it we were just like moving as fast as we could.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: I cut the car off, we both jumped out of the car, and as it turned out, the passenger that Juan had seen with the gun jumped out of the backseat and started running.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Juan took off after him because he was the only one he had seen with a gun.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: So he left me with two guys sitting in the front seat, and uh obviously I wasn't letting them go.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I was right up on him, the window was open, I stuck my gun right to the driver, and uh I told him, Don't move.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: And the passenger was a big guy.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: I I watched him reaching very slowly between his legs.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I knew I and I actually said to him, I know what you're thinking, don't do it.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Don't do it.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I'll shoot you right now.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: So he slowly came back up, put his hands up, and I said, Okay, I got it.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Driver driver had shut the car off like I told him to, and he basically sat back.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I had control of both of them, and I picked up my radio and I called for backup and 85 forthwith, and which is, you know, an emergency, basically it's help to cops.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I had to look up at the sign.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: I knew I was on teller, but I wasn't sure of the cross street.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I looked up at the sign, the sign was 164, and it was right there.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: I I looked almost straight up, and in the time it took me to look up and look away, the passenger reached down, grabbed the gun, and rolled out of the passenger seat.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now he's out of the car and he's on the other side, and I still have the driver inches from me.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: So all of a sudden he pops up and uh he fires one shot.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think it went over my head.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: I still to this day don't know where it went, but uh he fired the one shot and then ducked back down.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: What he didn't realize is I guess glass doesn't stop bullets.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I could see him directly through the rear glass, hunched down.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: He was a big guy, he was muck bigger than I was.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: I believe he was like 260 pounds, six foot two or three.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: So he wasn't hiding behind anything.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: I could see him, you know, clearly.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I fired two shots through the windows, and I thought I probably got him, but then the door opened and the driver got out, so I shot him as he as he tried to run away.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know if he was running away or charging me, but he was getting a bullet, so I shot him and then he continued past me.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: It took me a couple of seconds to circle, because by that time I was out of bullets, I had fired all six shots.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: I reloaded with the speed loader, and I was coming around when the first unit backup showed up, and it was Mike Yulako, who was my former partner in anti-crime, who was now in the rip unit.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: So Mike Yulako pulled up, and I remember him saying, Pauly, cuff him.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: So the guy was laying face on the face down on the ground, so I ran over, I handcuffed him, and I could see the blood kind of seeping out from under him, so I knew I hit him.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then we were looking for the gun, and I was like, Where's the gun?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't find the gun.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, he had a gun, he fired at me.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm I'm like almost in a panic at that point because it's like, now I just shot an unarmed man.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: But the gun was at his feet and it had slid under the car along with his feet.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, when when they got when when they started moving, they they saw the the gun.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was okay, good.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it it turned out to be a Tech 9 machine pistol that had like 23 rounds in it.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: What had happened when ballistics checked the gun, the firing pin cracked on that shot.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: When he shot at me, the firing pin cracked.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember saying to the ballistics guy, we were standing right outside the Bronx Grand Jury.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Is that something that happens?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: Is it because it's a cheap gun or something?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, No, he goes, it's actually a very good gun.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, and that never happens.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, Well, thank God it happened this time.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so and he expired on the scene.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: I remember hearing it back then they got you out of there.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: They took you to the hospital right away.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: So they were driving me to the hospital.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: I heard it over the radio.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: The the perp was gone.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: The driver ended up in the hospital in Montefiore up in the 5-2.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: He ended up, the bullet had gone right through his torso and somehow not hit any vital organs whatsoever.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: It just kind of cleared right through his through his torso.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: And he just walked in and said, you know, I was walking down the street and his bullet just came and hit me, and the 5'2 squad picked up on that one pretty quick, because I had said, I think I think I shot the driver.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: So uh he was arrested promptly at Montefiore Hospital as well.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the third guy turned up, interestingly enough, like a month or two later, the dead guy's brother was in jail, I believe, for murder.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the brother called the 4-4 squad and he said, Listen, my brother, you know, I understand my brother took on a cop and he lost.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: I got that.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, but this other piece of shit, meaning the guy who had run away, I'll tell you where he is.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: And he gets him right up.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that's how the 4-4 squad caught him.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, after working 10 years in the 4-4, which is some guys want to get out of there the minute they get in there.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: You do that for 10 years.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: You put in for OCCB, the organized crime control bureau, and you get drafted by the public morals division, which is vice for those, you know, don't know, which is prostitution, gambling, unlicensed liquor.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: That must have been culture shock again for you from going go, go, go, go, go, because that's that was thought of as more like a gentleman's job in the NYPD.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: I have a funny story that I didn't put in the book and I want and I thought of it later, and I said, Jesus, I should have put that in the book.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: My partner, Joe Triss Gary, who had been my partner in the 4-4 on patrol and anti-crime and everything else, he he was still there.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: He went back to midnight, so he was working steady midnight.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: I get to to public morals, and we have a where we do on the weekends, I was in the the social club task force.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: And on the weekends, we would actually do enforcement on social clubs.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a Saturday night, and where do we go but the 4-4?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm brand new.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: I had just gotten to Public Morals.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: I had just gotten to the Social Club Task Force, and they make me the arresting officer because it's the Bronx and I'm the Bronx guy.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: I said, no problem.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: We hit a club in the 4-4 on Girard Avenue.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: So we hit the club, and and the guys are looking at me like, I know you from somewhere.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, don't worry about it.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: So we we make like two arrests, the the two guys running the illegal social club, and we have to confiscate the beer.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got we're loading up our cars with their beer and their liquor, bottles of liquor, and we make the arrest and we close the social club down, and now I have to go into the 4-4 with this vouchered beer and uh and my two arrests.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I walk before the desk, and of course the desk officer knows me.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I say hi, I tell him, you know, what what we're doing.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no problem.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: He's writing everything in the in the log.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: And in walks my partner with a gun collar.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: So he comes walking up, he puts the gun up, I got one for a gun, and he just looks over very slowly at me.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: He was the most sarcastic human on the planet, and he just slowly looked at me, he goes, What do you got there?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: Beer?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Good job.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's all he said.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: He turned around and walked away with his spur.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Jesus, I'll never live this one down.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, I I knew the autocrime division's office in the Bronx was right next door to Vice, and I almost fell out of my chair.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: You brought up a name in your book, Ronnie House.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And for those of you who don't know, Ronnie House was a detective, knew the ins and outs of Vice.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: He also had the loudest voice I've ever heard.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: And when he was on the phone making a notification, he would always say the same thing.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: House, Ron House, like you live in.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: He was definitely a character.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: He was I got a kick out of him.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he called himself the Duke.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: We used to say to him, where did that come from, the Duke?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Never mind.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Never mind.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: He always wore like the um the Spanish Wayavera shirts on top.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, when you were in Vice, did you ever did you ever rub elbows or come across anything with um Numbers King Spanish Raymond?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Spanish Raymond worked uh worked up in Manhattan North.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: He was very well known to all of us.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we did travel into Manhattan North.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a couple of cases brought us through Wiretaps and Paladino Avenue, uh right by uh Reyos, that's where the number actually came from.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: The citywide number.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: They would they would call it out back when, you know, the illegal number, that's where it came from.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: And Spanish Raymond supposedly that was he ran that that whole uh aspect.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: But I never went after him that that was Manhattan North Vice.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: They uh they spent a lifetime chasing him around.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Guy the guy made more money just just with the illegal numbers, probably hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of his life.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing the amount of money in in numbers, you know, when we got into it, I had no idea.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: I I never played the number, right?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I didn't, you know, know.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: But all you have to do now is just watch how many people play Lotto and play the numbers, you know, in these candy stores.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: The numbers astronomical, the amount of millions that that the state took from these these these poor criminals.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when you were in public morals, you got into your third I remember this one, your third gun battle with a guy in a bicycle around the corner from the 4-2 station house.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: That was we were we would do we did our own undercover work in in Vice.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it was usually Joker poker machines on uh on on Fridays for whatever reason.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: That that was our thing.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the next day was my vacation.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Saturday, I had started a vacation.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: We were going down the shore.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: So Friday it was like one of these, all right, let's finish and let's get out of here quick.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: And we were in the 4-2, and it was a fairly big social club.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: It was almost like a I think it was a laundromat in the front, and then you go to through a door, and all it's a huge uh chocopolker menagerie.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: It was just a hundred chocopolka machines.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: It was amazing.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so we go in, we all you gotta do is play the machine and see if, you know, make sure it's it's it's operating and and paying out.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we were in there and we heard shots, like two, two shots or two or three.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I looked at my partner, we both ran right out the front door, and because we were undercover, we had no vests on, we had our our shields, you know, pulled our shields out, our little five-shot revolvers, both of us, and driving uh right across, right down the street on a bicycle was a kid, and by his side was a 45 automatic.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: He takes the 45, we yell police, he takes the 45, fires one shot, and his gun jammed, which we didn't know at the time, but he kept doing this, he kept with his hand, and I I thought, you know, he was waiting for an opportunity to shoot us.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't realize he was pulling the trigger and it wasn't firing.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we fired, we hit every every park car on that street.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: We hit everything but him.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: And he he takes off down the hill.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: I remember my partner, Jimmy McGovern, let one final shot go.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Oh, it's a good thing you didn't hit him with that one, because that would have gone right to the back of the back of his head.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: But uh, we jumped in the car and we started chasing.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Unbeknownst to us, there was a a snoo crew on the roof that was watching the group that he had fired shots at.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: So that the the crew from SNOO was putting the whole thing over, the putting it over the air.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there's a gun battle, and he put us, Jimmy McGovern and myself over as two male Hispanics.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's two male Hispanics firing at at this one one male black on a bicycle.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: The the battle raged uh, you know, uh all of three seconds.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: We jumped in the car, we took off after him.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: The captain at the 4-2 was Tommy Pertell at the time.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Patell heard it, and he it just so happened they were turning out a uh, I don't know if they if it was a CPOP group or whatever, because it was about 10 o'clock in the morning, 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: And there happened to be a group and in the muster room, a whole big group.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: And Pratel ran in there, come on, there's a guy, you know, a guy on a bicycle, and he's headed this way.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: And sure enough, as he went over the rise and down, here comes the whole 4-2 in uniform running right at him.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: And as we were behind him in the car, we were like, Oh, we don't have to catch him.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is gonna be fairly easy.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: They hit him so hard the the gun went fly.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: I remember the gun going a mile.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: And he was just like, Did you see the yeah, yeah, we saw the gun.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, good.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Get that gun.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I started charging, I I was just in a rage at that point.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I just started charging at him, and Pratel, probably the only guy, only captain who could have done this, caught me with a forearm to my chest and lifted me off the ground, and my feet were still going.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: And he he kind of set me down.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, he just shot at me.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: And Pratel kept going, I'm a captain.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: Stop speaking, I'm a captain.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I should have known that as a as a delegate to stop speaking in front of the front of the captain.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: But I was just in a rage, and then, you know, I calmed down, okay, no problem.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because all I wanted to do was get one good punch to his and uh unfortunately I never did get to.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: But he got collared, he got I think he got 10 years for that.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, you mentioned something in your book that resonated with me because I, like you, moved around with a couple of different commands during my NYPD career, and it's so true.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: When you ask for a transfer, the administration takes it personally.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, absolutely.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's awful.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: It really was.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: Every uh you know, every time I I tried to go somewhere, you know, they like me because I I worked, you know, so now it's like, you know, I don't want to lose you.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but I wanna I want my career to move on.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: It was almost like pulling teeth to to actually go anywhere.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, even retirement, you know, when you tell them you want to go and they're like, oh, we're gonna give you grade.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I've been on the grid forever.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why didn't you give it to me?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just 49 now for the link.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Every year, you gotta write down link that four-page 49 about how wonderful you are and submit it.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you running out the door?
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what are you kidding?
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: But you're right.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've had those not wanting to sign my yeah, yeah, well, I'll I'll get to you.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's like they don't want to lose that body, and especially if you're a worker, you kind of get taxed for being competent.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's true.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's true.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, Paul, you you went to in 1999, you went back to the Bronx, and you worked, you started in the in the special victims unit.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell us about that unit?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Back in in 98, I got transferred to the 2-8 because they were so low on manpower.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when you kind of realize, you know, you're just a body, you know, is because I love the 2-3.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: 2-3 was a fantastic squad, great guys.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm still friends with all of them.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I learned a lot.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: It was Spanish home.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: There were really good people living there, you know, that that yeah, and they were criminals.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: So you had everything.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: You had the bad guys, the good guys.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was a great place to work.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then they just, you know, with the stroke of a pen, you're in the 2-8 tomorrow.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I got to the 2-8, and it it tended to be a dumping ground back in 1998.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just like, how did how did I end up, you know, what happened to my career here?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I started to, you know, look for options.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh, and basically I was homesick for the Bronx.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: My partner, uh Tommy Butterworth from Anti-Crime, called me and said, I'm going to special victims.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's a new lieutenant there, Dennis Sandone, and he's putting together a team.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, I know Dennis from narcotics, but he's he's putting together, apparently special victims kind of got laxadaisical back then, and he was clean cleaned house.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: He got rid of a lot of a lot of the dead wood, and uh he was bringing in a lot of young guys, you know, that just wanted to make collars.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, okay, I did a you know 57 for for there, and I put it in, and that would have that would have died.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: I would have stayed in the 2-8 forever had I not run into Chief Scanlon, uh, who was at the time the chief of patrol.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I I basically asked him, can you make a phone call for me?
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, that's how the that's how the job works.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: And he was my he was the the captain who put me into anti-crime in the 4-4, and he was a 4-4 forever, you know, savior, really.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: He did a lot of favors for a lot of 4-4 cops.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: He put me in, you know, he said, I'll take care of his exact words were, don't unpack your box.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I literally sat there with a box on my desk with my stapler and my my scotch tape and everything in it.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't unpacking.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: And and I told him, Listen, I'm not staying.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: I told the two eight guys, I'm not staying, don't make friends with me, I'm leaving.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and my gift came.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: It took about two months, but I finally got out.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: And uh off to special victims I went in '99, January or February 99.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Your first serial rapist case was a guy by the name of David Peterson.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I was impressed to how you solved that one.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Could you go into that?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: He uh actually that wasn't a a tough solve when you think about it.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: He was a a male white in the 4-4 precinct, and the 4-4 and the 4-0, I believe he hit he hit both both precincts.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the South Bronx.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: South Bronx didn't have a lot of white criminals uh back then.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: The the white criminals were up north.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: He uh and and he had very distinctive.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: He was big, he was about 6'2, uh, had a full beard and a ponytail, and he had a ring with a P on it.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: So he gave us every clue you could possibly ask for.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: And the the interesting thing about him is he was 18 years old when he was arrested in back in 18 years prior, he was arrested in the 5'2 precinct for a series of knife point rooftop rapes.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: He would take the girls at knife point, bring them up to the roof, rape them.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I believe he did four of them, four or five in the 5'2 precinct, and got caught, got sentenced to 18 years in in prison, and he did his 18 years.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: When he gets out, they put the the ankle monitor on him.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: He's got the ankle monitor on him, he's being good, he's going to his parole hearings, everything.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: The day after his ankle uh monitor came off, another series of knife point, bring you to the roof, rapes begin in the 4440 area, which is where he's living now.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: So when I went to parole, uh, you know, we basically laid out what we, you know, do you have anybody with a ponytail?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: The parole guy, Woody, I remember his first name was Woody, I forget his last name, but uh, he was like the chief of parole, sex crimes.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: And he looked right in my eyes, he said, David Peterson, just like that.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I that's how I knew.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: He just he said, Yeah, we got him.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, I know where he lives, I know everything.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I read his folder from parole, and his parole officer was sincerely like telling us what a horrible childhood he had, and his mother was a prostitute, and he grew up in a in a bordello and this and that.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Yeah, I don't really care.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: I care about these girls he's taken to the roof with the knife.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I have to get him.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: So uh we grabbed him and uh pulled him off the streets.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: But uh he was he was he was a bad guy.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, working in in in in your unit, everybody was a bad guy.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's true.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, your book Knock Knock is about a serial rapist case you worked on for many years.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm hoping this book gets made into a movie because it's got so many twists and turns, foot chases, the guy didn't leave fingerprints behind.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: In October of 2000, we I I actually should start even before that.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: Our first case that that we worked on, my team and I was in the 5'2 precinct, the Marshall Parkway section.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh 17-year-old girl gets off the train, creepy guy walking next door, she sees him, she uh she goes into her building, he follows her into the building, she rings for the elevator, she gets on the elevator with other people with him, he hits the floor above her, she doesn't think much of it, but she said he gave me a creepy feeling, which is something that just went throughout this whole case.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: Every he gave off a creepy vibe and girls picked up on it.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: He the next thing she knows, there's a knock at the door.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I work for the super, there's a leak, it's coming from upstairs.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: She said, I can't let you in, I'm home alone.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's the worst thing you could tell a guy like this.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm home alone.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: She had a pit bull in the apartment with her, and the pit bull was very protective of her.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, he he said, Okay, and he he left.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: He did, she didn't even open the door.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: She said, about 10 minutes later, there's an another knock at the door, this time more urgent.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Listen, the water is starting to fill up upstairs.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's a chance your ceiling is gonna collapse.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: He gives her the urgent, you know, I have to get in there.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: So she lets him in.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: As she lets him in, he sees the dog.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Can you I'm I'm petrified the dogs, can you can you lock up the dog?
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: She locks the dog in a back bedroom.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: The next thing he goes into the kitchen, she goes into the living room, the next thing he comes up behind her, he chokes her.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: She's a tough 17-year-old Bronx girl.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: She's she's not gonna just give up.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh she put up a fight.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, the fight, he was stronger.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: He he you know, he gave her a black eye, he choked her unconscious, in and out of consciousness, rapes her on the couch, and then he takes her and throws her in the bathtub, kind of drops her in the bathtub, turns on the water, takes this the shampoo bottle, and he squeezes the shampoo bottle.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: So much so that when we saw the shampoo bottle, you could actually see the fingers, you know, the finger marks of where he squeezed that plastic bottle.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: How we didn't get fingerprints off that, I still don't know.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing that this guy never left a fingerprint in in all in all.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: So that was my introduction to this guy.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: I remember circling that neighborhood for hours with her in the backseat, just praying that this guy was gonna show up.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: We got a lot of tips and stuff, but back then it w there wasn't it wasn't a pattern or anything.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was just a case.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: But it was a very important case.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: My partners and I, Jimmy McGovern, it was his case actually.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I was his partner and Tommy Garnett.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: We circled that that neighborhood for hours and hours and hours.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: The next case uh that that caught my attention was the 4-7 precinct.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Young girl, 13 years old, she gets off a bus, school bus.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: Again, the guy walking behind her, she said gave off a really creepy vibe.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: She goes, It's a male Hispanic, nothing special about him, just a very plain male Hispanic.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: And he was just walking on the other side of the street, but like she goes, if I slowed up, he slowed up.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: If I move faster, he moved faster.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: She goes, you know, it just it raised the hairs.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: So she gets home, she locks her door, she turns on the ADT alarm, she goes upstairs and does whatever 13-year-old she gets on the phone with a girlfriend.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's September, it's early, school just starting.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, she's all excited about school.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: She's a very good student.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: Her mother was a school principal, I believe, and uh she was just a great, great kid.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: She gets on the phone with a friend, the next thing there's pounding at the door.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: She says, Hold on.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: She goes, and from the top of her stairs, she could see there's a window above the door.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: She could see it's the creepy guy at the door.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: She goes, and he's not ringing the bell, he's pounding on the door.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that creeps her out.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: She goes back to the bedroom, she tells her girlfriend.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: The girlfriend says, Hang up and call your mother.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: She goes, I'm gonna call my mother.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: So she tells her her mother, she calls her mother, she tells her mother what's going on.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: The mother said, Okay, hang up the phone, I'm calling 911.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: The mother calls 911, figuring if an adult calls, they'll know it's not a prank, this is more important.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: She calls 911.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: The kid calls 911.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: The other kid's mother calls 911.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: So there's there's three calls going into the police.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: He finally stops pounding on the door and he goes around to the back.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now, at this point, they're calling.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's a strange man trying to get into an apartment.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's all they said.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: He kicks in the back door.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: The back door looked like it was made of cardboard.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: He kicks in the back door, and the ADT alarm immediately goes off.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: So the ADT alarm is ringing throughout the house.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: She's in a panic, she's in her bedroom.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: She shuts the door, locks it.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: She's sitting there with a pair of scissors, and they were small scissors.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: She's sitting with small scissors on her bed and praying that the cops get there, because all these people have now called the police.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he goes up the stairs, he kicks in the bedroom door, which is nothing, takes the scissors away from her, grabs her in a chokehold, actually takes her by the hair and walks her back downstairs to shut off the alarm, which she does.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: She complies.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: He takes her back upstairs, doesn't go into her bedroom, goes into the brother's bedroom, uh, where he rapes her.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: He then takes her now in the meantime, the ADT alarm is off and still no police, takes her into the bathroom, puts her in the tub, starts running the water.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: Now he's standing outside the bathroom, which is also at the top of the stairs, and he can see the front of the house now.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: And he sees the first radio car pull up.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: He runs down the stairs and goes back out the basement door where he came in, and they're and he's he's sneaking out the bat.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: The cops that arrive, fairly sharp 4-7 cops, see him.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: They start running.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's a chase.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: He goes through the neighbor's house, slams open the door, goes to runs right through the house.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: The people are in the kitchen, they're like, what the hell was that?
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: He runs right past everybody, goes right out the front door.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now he's out on onto the main street, and there's radio cars now.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: That cop, the the initial cops called for a 1013.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: So now you got cops coming from everywhere.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's chaos.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: They start chasing him.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: He literally rolls over a radio car with his palms on the radio car hood.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: He rolls over it, takes off, jumps into a gypsy cab.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: He he gets he gets like a half a block on the gypsy cab, the radio car cuts him off, jumps out of the gypsy cab, he goes over a roof, small garage roof, drops down where there happened to be a bicycle, kid's bicycle.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: He jumps on the kid's bicycle, and they're off to the races.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: The cops are behind him the whole way.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: Somehow they lose him.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: There's helicopters in the air by now from aviation happened to be in the area, and they got called in.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: So helicopters everywhere that they're looking for this guy.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: He disappears.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: Where he went, nobody knew.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I get the call.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't I wasn't even up for that, that case, but my lieutenant had a a habit of handing me the good ones.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: So this was this looked like a a crazy bag of crap.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: So my lieutenant said, It's all yours.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: We get there, and I remember going and talked to the girl, and she said, Where were where were you guys?
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: That was her and it stayed with me forever to see an innocent 13-year-old girl, you know, say, Where were you guys?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: And uh as it turned out, when I looked into it, uh it was the dispatch, the 9-11 dispatchers bundled all the cases in one and made it a a ringing alarm.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: So it turned out to be almost a nothing call where the cops it was a change of tour, and the cops were changing tour.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: So it wasn't an emergency, it wasn't a young girl home alone, uh, you know, with an intruder, it was a ringing alarm.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that was it fell under that umbrella, and that's how it kept going out over the air, and nobody was picking it up.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the cops responded, I believe, 40 minutes after the first call.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that was that poor girl I f I always felt bad for.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: At that time, they had matched four cases, four older cases, together and formed a pattern.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: There was one, you know, one DNA that matched four cases.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: Two were in Queens, two were in the Bronx.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: He had a feeling this was that pattern.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I I immediately told Owen Brosnan, who had he was our pattern guy at the time, so he had caught the pattern.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I I asked Owen to to match this case to that.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: By that time, the prior case that I just spoke of had also been attached.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: So now I was invested in two of the two of the four cases from the Bronx.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: I was totally invested because I investigated them both.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I I asked to be uh part of the pattern and I was put on the pattern team, and we were off and running.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: What made the case interesting was DNA was was catching up now.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: The speed of it, they could they could match DNA, and they were testing old kits which had been sitting dormant for years and years.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: So they were testing old kits, the newer kits were getting matched much quicker, and then all of a sudden you have a pattern with four cases.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's like here's five, here's six, here's seven, here's eight.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: They just kept coming.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: And we found ourselves uh really scrambling for this guy.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: One of the the earliest cases was the 4-3 precinct, where he again, he does he knocks on the door and the woman answers, she's on the phone.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: She's on the phone with a girlfriend.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: He says, Yeah, I'm here to fix a leak.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: She's yeah, go ahead.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: She's like not even paying attention.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: He walks right past her, goes into the kitchen, the whole bit, he comes up behind her, grabs the phone cord, and chokes her.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: She's she's pleading, you know, with him.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: The woman on the other end hears it.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: She hangs up, calls 911, then calls a guy that they know in the building that lives upstairs.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: She said, Listen, I think there's a problem downstairs.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like this guy's raping her.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, can you do any?
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Yeah, I'll go.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: So he runs downstairs.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: The door is still ajar.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: He's he looks in and he actually sees the rape in progress.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: He backs out because he's afraid the guy has a gun.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: So he he kind of doesn't know what to do, but he kind of stays back.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: As the guy leaves, the perp leaves, he follows him.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: He's walking out the door, he's he sees the two radio, the the two cops from the radio car walking up the stairs.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know when you see a courtyard that has like four stairs and then eight stairs, it's it's kind of like levels.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: He's on the stairs and the guy is yelling.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: He just raped a woman upstairs.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: He just just now stop him, stop him.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: So the cops are kind of like caught caught off guard.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why is this guy yelling?
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: But the purpose so cool, he's like, listen, this guy's crazy.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: He's been chasing me around the building all day.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why he's doing this.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he he was just a very calm, cool character, which kind of got the cops to drop their guard for a second, and he jumped over the the little three-foot wall and down onto the sidewalk.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: He jumps down and he takes off.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: Cops take off after him.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: The front cop falls.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: There's a a hole in the in the sidewalk.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: They're running right alongside of the Cross Bronx Expressway.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: So um he f he gets his foot caught in a hole and he falls, and the uh his partner stops to make sure he didn't break his leg and he's off to the races.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: That was this the first time he he actually escaped this close from.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now what happens is the cops, the two cops and the girl pick out a perp out of the the the the mug mugshot books.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: They pick out a perp.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: It turns out the perp is a drug dealer, and uh they they go to pick him up, and he goes on the land for almost a year before they can catch him.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: By the time they catch him, they get his DNA, they put it in, his DNA didn't match.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: So the the perp and the guy, to their their credit, the guy actually did look like the perp.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: He looked just like him, uh, but he was younger.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that kind of took that that case away from Bronx Special Victims for for a year, basically.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the DNA kind of hooks it back up, and then it becomes actually for for a long time we thought it was the first case.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: We were so wrong.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: That was in 1997.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: The first case actually occurred in 1992.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: So he had been out there quite quite a long time by then.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: So through 2000, 2001, that's all we did was chase chase shadows.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: And he was a needle in a haystack.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: I I remember the sergeant used to say it all the time, and I I've grown to hate that that expression.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: He's he's a needle in a haystack.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: He can't find this guy.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because he was just a very average-looking male Hispanic in a in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it's true, you walk down the street and anybody could have been him.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: If you saw the the sketches, they all looked different, but they all looked the same.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: They were just very generic looking male.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: The the he didn't have a scar, he didn't have a tattoo, he didn't have anything that that jumped off the page at you.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: Early on, Bob Kapstadter, I don't know if you remember Bob, Bob Kapstadter was a daily news writer, uh he was very friendly with a lot of the detectives.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: He uh he coined the phrase knock-knock, and I still have the he called them the knock-knock rapists.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: They all picked up on it.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: So after that, like every newspaper was using the knock-knock rapist did this, the knock-knock rapist did that.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember saying in the squad room, when did he become the knock-knock rapist?
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't remember giving him that name.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually traced it back to Bob Kapstad.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: But uh we just called it Citywide Six because that was the the pattern it was, and it was Citywide Six for a long time.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what I find unusual about this case was how much planning the rapists did.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: He stalked some of his victims for days, knowing their routines, if there was a male around, did they have a brother or sister, did they have a pet, when they'd be vulnerable for attack.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: Is that normal with with with with with most rapists?
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, with the with the really with the the pattern guys, it's it's they get more and more.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: The more you do, the more careful you are.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: As you get like after the the the chase that I described through the 4-7, it went up into Mount Vernon and back down again.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: After that chase, he was, I'm guessing, he was so shaken up by it that he raped again a week later.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: He had to prove to himself he could do this without getting caught.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, like a week later, he hits in Queens, a whole different borough, but uh his DNA, you know, kicked, and I was like, he he got scared.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: He, you know, what happens is they get scared.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: I almost got caught on that one.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: Let's try it again, let's try it a little better.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: So he was, you know, and then there were long pauses.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't know, you know, what's going on, why the long pause.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: For a long time we thought he hit in 97, and the next hit was 99.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: As it turned out, we were given two ninety-eight cases, so they they filled in.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: So he was going steady all all along.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: He had never really slowed down by any any means.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: The only time he slowed down for any length of time was right around 911.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember thinking maybe he was in the towers, because, you know, it stopped.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then sure enough, he hit in October, I believe.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that was that.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: One point during your investigation, led your team, you guys got into his basement apartment, and you were waiting for him to return.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then there was a knock on the door for you guys.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: Can you go into that?
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that wasn't even a knock.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: After I I we we actually caught him.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: We finally caught him.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'll just give you that briefly.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: He rapes a girl, uh, another 13-year-old, and this one he sits and he smokes pot with her and he makes a drink with him, and he has a gun.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: So at first we thought this isn't our guy.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: This he never used a gun before.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: But sure enough, the DNA matches and it it's it's our guy.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: And uh she calls us one afternoon after the rape and she said he came back.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: She said, Yeah.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: He just came walking up to me on the street.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: I was with my mother, and he said, Listen, if you're pregnant, I'll take care of it.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: Don't worry.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: And uh she she was flabbergasted, she didn't know what to say, and then he just walked off.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that gave us the thing, he's coming back for her.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: He wants her again.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: So we did like a 24 hour surveillance on her.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: She never left the house without us.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: She, you know, anytime she had to leave the house, she either called us.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: When she went to school, we we had guys set up to follow her back and forth.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: We were on top of her.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the morning of May 5th, she she regular day, she'd go to school.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: It was a Monday morning.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, she's going to school with her sister.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: Normally she took her sister, dropped her sister off, and then went to school.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: That morning, the sister wasn't going, so she was by herself.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: I was the one following her that morning, as luck would have it.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was in a tracksuit and I had a shopping bag.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: In the shopping bag was my police radio.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just walking down the street like, you know, a shopper with the tracksuit on, and I'm about 10 feet behind her.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: We had a pre-arranged signal.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: She would drop to one knee and tie her shoe if she saw the guy.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: When she dropped to one knee, I almost died.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, is she on one knee?
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: And walking towards me, the only guy on the street was a male Hispanic, very generic looking, walking straight ahead.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: And thank God she dropped to one knee because he didn't see her.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: So he walked right past her.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: She stands up and she's walking behind him, doing this, like this.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm waiting for her to get out of there so I can do something.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: So she finally backs off.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: I grab him, I throw him against the car, he spins out of his jacket.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm standing there holding his jacket.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: I drop the jacket.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: I I screw the gun in his ear.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: He just takes off running.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: He knows I'm not going to shoot him in the back.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: So he just starts running.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're off to the races.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: I put it over the I pick the bag up.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: I get my radio.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: I put it over.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: 5-2 response was faster than immediate.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: They closed in on him and we grab him.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: So after we grab him, we get back to the station house.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: He uh he basically tells me his name and Nelson Figaro gives me a fake name, fake address, and I'm busy talking to the chief.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm filling in people, I'm calling the DNA lab, all this other stuff.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to keep away from him so he can't hear me.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: I want to keep out of earshot.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: So we put him in an interview room, which was a mistake, and I went to the to the uh other office.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: When I come back, the door is wide open, nobody is in the office.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, where did where is everybody?
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I I get a funny feeling in my stomach.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: I I walk out to the front.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: Sure enough, he's gone.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: So the guy on the front desk said to me, That guy that you brought in this morning in in cuffs, he's he he took he just walked out.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: I said, He just walked out.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't have any laces, he doesn't have a belt.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: How did he just walk out?
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I run out to the street.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: Now I see two detectives that were just like standing out there looking confused.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, what happened?
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: They said he just got out.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we're off to the races.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: We I circle, we look for him, he's gone.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: I come back to find out, he gave me a fake name, he gave me a fake address.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: I never took his picture, I never fingerprinted him.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: I did a DNA swab of him, but that's all I have.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: So now we're back to square one, and I'm thinking we're back to a needle in a haystack.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: Crime scene comes, they fingerprint everything, including a newspaper that I had given him to read.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: On the newspaper were 13 liftable fingerprints, 12 were mine, one was his.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it came back to Louis Acosta.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: Male Hispanic, 36 years old, no real criminal record to speak of, like uh 511.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, just nonsense.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: But at least we knew who we were who we were looking for.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: And thank God that was we finally finally identified who we were looking for, and we started uh we started the search from there.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Paul, the knock knock rapist was everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: And and and reading your book as you pursued him, it seemed like you were chasing the devil.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: He just he he didn't stop, he was hiding in plain sight, he didn't leave fingerprints.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, one fingerprint.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: He left one fingerprint, that's how we found it.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thank God.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: Was Louis Raul Acosta a highly intelligent criminal or very lucky to stays to stay one step ahead?
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: He was he he was very lucky.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: That that I will definitely give you the the the luck.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: He just he got he he got lucky a lot.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: He was clever.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't consider him smart.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't have a particular high IQ, but he was he was clever as a criminal.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_01: He he knew he knew what cops were thinking.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he he always seemed to know what we what we you know what we It was interesting on the ride to the to the precinct when we first caught him, we had him in handcuffs and I didn't know who he was, and my partner bought a bottle of water for him.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: And he I said to him, You want some water?
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Yes, so you can get my DNA, right?
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: But he took the water, you know, almost like to take a jab at me, like I know what you do, and DNA.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, This, I'm gonna get your DNA regardless.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't need a bottle of water.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, he was he was quite the character.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: Can you go into how you caught him the final time?
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_01: We He was out there for six months.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: What was funny was at the time I remember there were movies on you know about how somebody's a fugitive and you see them like they're on a phone, they're on a payphone, and you see the FBI's like this.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: He's right there, he's on the payphone, and he's there, and then they they get on the radio and there's five cars surrounding them.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, what the hell happened to that?
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't happen in real life.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: This guy made, I think, 13 phone calls from different payphones in the six months he was out there.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: And he always called his ex-wife.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh a few times he called the girlfriend, but he he always called his ex-wife.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: He was still in love with his ex-wife, which was our our advantage.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: We had that advantage.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and we stayed with it.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_01: We were up on her phone from the beginning.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: So every time he would call her, he was almost at a different burrow.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: He called the first from the Bronx, and we we were fast.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: We almost got him.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_01: And he got away, so that scared him.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: So then he went to Manhattan.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_01: He was in Harlem, upper Manhattan, uh, the heights.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: He would call from there.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: Then he would try Brooklyn, different spots in Brooklyn, then Queens, different spots in so we were like, other than Staten Island, I don't know, you know, where to where to look for this guy.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: He's calling from all over the place.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we had no idea where he was, no idea where he went.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: And we went on, I can't tell you how many uh wild goose chases.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the book you read, they just kept coming in.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he's over here.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: He's doing drugs in the 4-0, he's doing drugs up in the 5-2, he's selling drugs, he's a drug kingpin, he's this, he's that.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody was was settling their own scores.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: I wanna you know, I wanna I want to take care of this drug spot.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: He's in this drug spot.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we're hitting these doors left and right, and he was nowhere to be found.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: When we finally catch up to him, he calls his his his ex-wife finally one evening, and uh I remember listening to the conversation, standing right over the because the the the guy who was uh monitoring JR yelled to me, Paula, he's on the phone.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I run over, I'm listening, and he says to his wife, listen, I'm I've been out of town.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, I I'm I'm not in town, I've been out of town.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, but I am coming back next week.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna call you on Monday, maybe we can arrange something.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the wife was on our side.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_01: She was basically saying him, just turn yourself in.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: You can't stay out here, you know, the rest of your life.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is crazy.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, Nah.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, I'm gonna make him work a little bit.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: He he he tormented the shit out of me.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: So he's he finally says, I'm gonna call you next Monday, right around this time.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it was like seven o'clock, seven to eight o'clock at night.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, I'm gonna call you again right around this time, Monday.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: So he hangs up the phone.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's all we needed to know.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, he's gonna call on Monday.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: All we have to do is figure out what pay phone he's gonna call from, and we can pounce on him.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: So Chief Resnick was the chief of the Bronx at the time, and uh he basically ran the ran the investigation as as far as catching this guy.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh thank God, because he had the full weight of a chief.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_01: So he he put people everywhere.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: They were all over the city that night, except Staten Island.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: Thank God he didn't call from there.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: So we, you know, we were all over the place.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: He had called from Brooklyn that particular time, right by the Brooklyn Criminal Courthouse.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: So my partner and I, John Timpanero at the time, said, Where do you think he's gonna call from?
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he tried Brooklyn.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: He's gonna move probably to Queens.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: Let's try Queens.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: So he and I were driving around Queens, the areas where he had been, where he had hit.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: He knew Storia very well.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: So we were just driving around that area, and uh sure enough, he calls from the exact same phone he called the Monday prior.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh fortunately there were guys right there, and they grabbed him.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we got the call over the radio.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_01: I remember I just threw my radio.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, thank God.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_01: It was six months of of actual torture praying this guy didn't hit another girl.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that was and I remember when I walked into the station house, they parted like the sea.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: The cops all just parted, and I walked directly to the cell, and he was sitting there, he he looked terrible.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: His hair was all frumpy, he had a big afro, he was pale, and he was just sitting there looking straight ahead, not not reacting to anybody.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: Till I walked up to the gate and his head popped up.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Can we talk?
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I said, Yeah, we can have a conversation, sure.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we were he he wrote a six-page confess uh I wrote a six-page confession for him.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well the the the knock-knock rapist Louis Acosta was a character, and during one of the trials, the judge called the DA and the defense attorney into the chambers for a sidebar conversation, leaving you in the courtroom with with the rapist and a couple of court officers.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: Can you share what he said to you?
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: That was in the Queens, uh we were in the Queen's courthouse, and uh I remember he's sitting there and he had a semicircle of like five court officers around him, and they weren't giving him more than like a foot.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: So they were all just in a semicircle, and I'm on the witness stand, and it was interesting because the judge had said during his his confession, the judge said, Did they stop your your interview in the middle?
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: Which they the the chief of detectives stopped my interview in the middle in Brooklyn and moved us to the Bronx where I had to pick up the interview again.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: And thank God he he stayed with me and we actually picked up right.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember when we picked up the interview where we left off, he got he said to John Tippanero, he goes, Paulie's getting excited.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_01: Look, Paulie's getting excited.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because I was.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: I was writing down and I was excited about you know everything he was telling me.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_01: But that was, he was like, all of a sudden he's our friend.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: So uh we're sitting in the courtroom.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: The judge asks, Did they stop the interview in the middle?
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: And he looked at me like, why?
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I had nothing for him.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Yeah, they did.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, I'm gonna call call counsel.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: And he called the counsel out, and they all went out of the room into judge's chambers, and I'm sitting there, and it's just me and him all along.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he just he leans over and he goes, You're doing very well.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: His exact words, you're doing very well.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Oh, thanks.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_01: I looked at the court officers, like, do you believe this?
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: And they were like, plowed.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: They were like, oh, whatever.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_00: In the end, how many how many uh convictions were put on him?
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_01: He was convicted of one in Manhattan, four in Queens, to which he got 25 years for the one in Manhattan, 25 years for the four in Queens, and then 16 in the Bronx.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: The 16 in the Bronx, he got 172 years.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_01: He got like 160 something years, and then seven years for the escape.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: They actually added that on.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_01: But uh, from what I understand, he has they have aggregate sentencing where they you can only do a certain amount.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: I believe he can do 55 years.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: He can actually get out after 55 years, which time I believe he'll be 91 years old.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I won't worry about him then.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, and he's in Clinton Correctional, which is probably one of the worst.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: That and Attica are two of the worst prisons in the New York State Pruthing System.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: Not that any of them are nice, but Clinton is all the way up in Malone, New York.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's like 20 miles from the Canadian border.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's where he belongs.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: He sure does.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, just a side note, during the case, you and detectives got to hang out on this set of NYPD Blue when you met Dennis Fran.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: I still have the photographs.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they the NYPD Blue back then would take groups of detectives, usually four at a time.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_01: They would stay at the house of Bill Clark, who was the executive producer, who was a former Queen's homicide detective, who Sipowitz is basically based on his life.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so Bill Clark had a nice big house up in the hills where he had, you know, so many rooms.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: So detectives were were would come out.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they didn't pay anything, but you know, you got to meet the cast and hang out, and you sat with the writers and uh, you know, told them a couple of war stories and stuff like that.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it was it was an enjoyable.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_01: But unfortunately, I couldn't enjoy it fully because at the time Louis Acosta was still out there.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember we were sitting in the owner's owner's box at the Dodgers Stadium.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: They brought us to the owner's box, and it was a Dodgers and Giants game, which meant nothing to me.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: And we were sitting in the owner's box, you know, free food, free, free beer, and we're watching the ball game, and I see the camera like swing towards us.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I said to John Tempanero, I said, Wouldn't it be something if the chief of detectives is watching the two of us right now, sitting in the owner's box in Los Angeles while Louis Acosta is out there?
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we we to that from that day on, we called it our our owner's box face, the two of us like this.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_01: But somehow he did get wind that we were out there and uh nothing came of it.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_01: I actually uh I I've been interested in in writing for a long time, so I'm going to explore uh another subject and uh hopefully write a book soon.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_01: It actually was a pretty good I did it right in this this room.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_01: I have my little office at home, I lock myself in and I write, you know, a couple pages a day.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's there's no urgency to it.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: The good thing is I had a a good long career, so I have a good pension.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I don't have to work, uh although I miss working sometimes.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: I miss wait waking up and having something to do.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_01: But sometimes that just goes away real quick because it's it's actually nice.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's nice going to bed at night not knowing you don't have to get up.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have to get up in the morning.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_01: This is great.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I go back and forth sometimes.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: I've been offered a couple of jobs.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_01: Most of them are like brutal hours and lower Manhattan, and it's just I don't want to do it anymore.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to go into Lower Manhattan again.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: I did it, you know, with the union for so many, 20 years.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was brutal.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's the it takes it takes hours off your life sitting in traffic.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_01: When you live 26 miles from lower Manhattan and it takes you two hours to get home or two hours to get to work, it's it just it it weared on me too much.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I always said if the perfect job, if you got something here in Westchester County for me, I'll definitely do it.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: And and it's the right money, I'm I'm in.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_01: But uh in the meantime, I'll, you know, I'll I'm I'm probably gonna do some more writing sooner or later.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, one last time.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_00: Please share with our listeners the name of your book and where our listeners can pick up a copy.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_01: The name of the book is Knock Knock.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's available on Amazon.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's also available on Kindle if you want to download it.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's also in Barnes and Noble and I believe another bookstore.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you if you go on FultonBooks.com, you can get a link directly to all all it's available.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: But thank you.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate your time.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you for spending your time with us today.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: And as always, I'd like to thank everyone for tuning in, especially my listeners in Longmont, Colorado, Dobbs Ferry, New York, Lawrenceburg, Indiana, and Toledo, Ohio.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you worked in law enforcement or had an interesting criminal background, please drop me a note on Twitter or Instagram at VicFerrari50.
• 59:26
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• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoy the content, check out my Amazon author page.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_00: Just type in my name, Vic Ferrari LikeTheCar, where you can preview all my NYP books for free.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks again, everyone, and I'll see you next week.