The informant’s name was Arjune and he hardly looked like a hero. He was just a small black man with watchful eyes, an auto mechanic and immigrant from Guyana who was trying to make his way in America, and part of doing this was to settle himself and his wife and kids in South Jamaica, Queens, in a battered three-story gray house on the corner of 107th Avenue and Inwood Street. Nicknamed “Tobacco Road,” the neighborhood he lived in consisted mostly of narrow, short one-way streets on which were set small wood-frame homes universally in need of repair, and the concrete sidewalks that ran by them were heaved and cracked and the air was always polluted with the sharp scent of burned wood. But to Arjune (he only used one name) it was heaven in disguise.
The truly profound courage he had only showed itself when stress came his way, and it did—big time.
On the night of November 7, 1987, at a little after 6:00 p.m., he was standing by a living room window and as he looked out he saw two young black men in the street light doing a drug deal. That wasn’t unusual. The neighborhood where Arjune lived was infested with crack dealers, crack having recently come in vogue as the new cheap drug of choice. Crack had made rich a lot of desperate young men for whom hope had run out when they were very young.
The thing that was unusual was Arjune’s reaction—he called the cops. This was a perilous thing to do. Drug dealers were and are as violent as human beings get, and murder among them is a way of life, part and parcel of their egos. Indeed, you can be shot for holding eye contact too long. But being an informant is the worst thing you could do. If anyone in the neighborhood doubted that, there was a gruesome example just a month earlier. An elderly woman named Mildred Green, who ran a taxi stand in South Jamaica, had spotted a crack deal occurring and had reported what she had seen to the police, also testifying to a secret grand jury. A month later she was killed with a shotgun blast that took half her head off.
A patrol car responded to Arjune’s call, and two “uniforms” looked the scene over and talked with Arjune. Their incorrect conclusion, which they reported back to Central, was that Arjune’s complaint was “unfounded.” They drove off. Then, about 2:30 in the morning, Arjune, again looking out a living room window, spotted more crack dealers in action and called 911 again. The cops returned to the scene, and this time they were able to collar a young kid as he discarded a paper bag that contained six vials of crack.
Then, detectives showed up—and a very bad mistake was made. During the conversation between all the officers it became clear to the collared drug dealer that the guy in the gray house had ratted him out. Eventually, Arjune went to bed, but at around 4:30 a.m. he was awakened—fortunately—by the continuous yapping of a dog. He went to the living room windows again to see what the hubbub was and saw two men in their late teens or early twenties on his lawn, one of them holding a blazing Molotov cocktail, which he promptly tossed through a window into the room. Arjune pounced on it and was able to put it out, but he burned his hands in the process. Then the gritty Arjune again dialed 911 and the cops came again.
The perps, of course, had fled, but the cops, who had no choice but to believe Arjune now, had an idea. Maybe they could drive Arjune around the neighborhood and see if he could spot the perps. Arjune agreed.
At around 6:00 a.m., they were driving slowly down one of the blocks when Arjune identified one of the firebombers. The cops promptly arrested him, a man named Claude Johnson, a hulking man with a shaved head.
The cops took Arjune back home, but the attacks weren’t done. Ten minutes after the cops left, the other firebomber was on his lawn, this time with a Molotov cocktail in each hand. He tossed each at the house but missed a window and they bounced harmlessly off the siding.
A few days later, on November 10, two cops in a patrol car and using Arjune’s description spotted the other perp and, after a pursuit, captured him. He was then dragged back in front of Arjune and ID’d as a firebomber.
There were no explicit threats to Arjune as 1987 wound down, but it was clear to the police brass—who had been deeply embarrassed by Mildred Green’s murder—that Arjune was in great danger. His home would be given around-the-clock protection: A blue-and-white with an officer would be at his curb, thirty feet from his house, 24/7. And every day at roll call, sector cars were made aware of the hazardous situation that existed, so they were constantly on high alert, driving by the house every now and then to check how things were going for the cop in the car and primed to come running if need be.
Arjune’s incredibly ballsy behavior had not gone unnoticed by the media. Headlines and feature stories celebrated him as a hero. Then, one day after the protection had been set up, Arjune was driving along in his old Chevy sedan when a thin man with scary eyes in a red Porsche cut Arjune off at a red light and issued an ominous warning:
“If you and your family ain’t moved out in three weeks, you’ll be killed.”
Arjune reported the threat and the media descended on him to see what he was going to do. He told a cluster of TV reporters that he was going to stand his ground.
“I stand for justice,” he said. “Tell them I am ready to go [die] at any time.”
Sitting in a patrol car for eight hours in a row was widely regarded as “shit” work, tedium to the nth degree. And since it was winter, cold in New York, windows had to be kept closed most of the time, creating an air supply that was warm and stale, perfect for promoting snoozing.
The protection detail, therefore, was usually given to the lowest men and women on the totem pole, the rookie cops.
One of the cops who drew the detail was Ed Byrne, a nice-looking, trim, six foot, blue-eyed young man who was twenty-two years old. He’d been in the New York City Transit Police since going on the job in July of 1986. He was able to get into the NYPD—considered a more elite force—by July of 1987. There was little special about Eddie Byrne. He was an ex-high-school football player, but too slim to use his skills in college or beyond. He was engaged to be married, and he loved being a cop. He became one despite being discouraged by his father, a retired NYPD detective, who hated the politics in the department.
As a cop spends more and more time on the job, he or she usually changes. While many cops say that they love being a cop, that it is a great job dealing on a daily basis with a lot of “beautiful shit,” as one put it, it can also erode or even break your spirit. And it has another effect: it can make you rabidly cynical, so that when you look at anyone, your first thought is what crime they had committed lately. (A favorite cop joke is when one cop who has twenty years on the job goes to his mother’s house for Christmas and asks her: “So, what’d you do lately, Ma?”)
Still a cynical streak probably makes you a better cop because it does make you more suspicious: the world is full of people who can hurt you—and want to. But young Eddie Byrne wasn’t at that point yet. He was just a young guy—other cops called him “Rookie”—on the cusp of his life, just a few years out of high school.
On the cold night of February 25, 1988, Eddie Byrne drove in from his house in the suburban community of Massapequa, a suburb on the south shore of Long Island, where he lived with his mother and father, to take over the midnight tour protecting Arjune. When he arrived, the female officer on duty reported to him, “It’s dead.”
After she left and before getting in the car, he hung a miniature TV called a Sony Watchman on the rear-view mirror and placed an AM-FM radio on the passenger seat. He took out his six-shot Ruger pistol, a pair of six-shot speed-loaders, and his holster and, when he sat down behind the wheel, he placed them on his lap. This action was not to make it quicker and easier to get at his gun, but simply to allow him to be more comfortable while sitting behind the wheel.
What Byrne was doing was a violation of the “book,” but if caught with the TV or the radio on it would likely just elicit a chewing out. What he had to avoid, because it impacted so directly his ability to protect Arjune, was what cops called “cooping,” which applied to going off-post and holing up somewhere during one’s tour, but also included sleeping on the job. For that he could get suspended, a very serious offense, particularly since he was such a young cop. Being suspended would follow him like a dark smudge on a white hat for the rest of his career.
In position, he took his tie off, and at one point started to watch the tiny TV. Time crawled on. Byrne’s lunch hour was for three o’clock, and as that time approached he must have started to get hungry. Though he didn’t know it, the cop who was to relieve him, a man named Danny Leonard, had been called to fill in on the switchboard for a while and was destined to be late.
Eddie Byrne
At around ten after three, Byrne saw a plain gray car approaching, and he knew it was the unmarked vehicle carrying the duty sergeant, Ron Norfleet, a twenty-year police veteran, and his driver. Byrne quickly flicked off the Watchman, and rolled down his window.
The unmarked stopped next to Byrne’s car so Norfleet could talk to him through the open passenger-side window.
“Everything okay?” Norfleet asked.
“Yes sir,” Byrne said, handing Norfleet his duty book to sign.
Norfleet scribbled his name, what cops called a “scratch,” in the book, and handed it back, saying nothing about the TV.
What Byrne did not tell Norfleet was that he was sleepy, and as soon as he left Byrne closed his eyes. Hence, when the banged-up yellow Dodge, which had approached from Byrne’s rear, passed him, he didn’t even see it. But the three young black men easily saw him, since the car was under a highintensity street lamp. And what they saw was the cop inside with his head slumped, close to asleep—or asleep.
Later, some of the details of what happened next would be debated, but the most likely scenario was as follows.
The Dodge continued down 107th Avenue for a little over a hundred yards, then made a right on Pinegrove Street, went partially down the block, and pulled to the curb. The driver, dressed in a safari hat and a camouflage flak jacket, turned the car off except for the radio. The two other men, one dressed in a dark blue three-quarter length ski parka and dark green sweatpants, the other in a red, green, and yellow leather jacket over a hooded sweatshirt, got out of the car and started walking back toward 107th Avenue. Then they got a surprise, which made the man in the leather jacket freeze and the man in the parka dive out of sight behind a hedge.
Another patrol car had come down the street in their direction and pulled to the driver’s side window of Eddie Byrne’s car. The men could not only see the cops but, in the extreme quiet of the block, could hear some of what was being said.
“You okay, Eddie?” asked the patrol car’s driver, Darin Hamilton.
“Fine,” Eddie said, then mumbled something about it being hard to stay awake.
“You want coffee?” Hamilton asked.
Byrne looked at his wrist watch. It was 3:20.
“Danny Leonard should be here any minute,” Byrne said.
“We’ll see you later then,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton pulled away, heading up 107th and turning right on Pinegrove. The cops immediately saw the parked yellow car and switched on their high beams. They observed a lightskinned black man behind the wheel. Then, the cops’ attention switched to the man in the multicolored leather jacket, now standing across the street, who immediately pulled his jacket up, exposing his flat, ribbed stomach, and said: “I got nothing,” meaning that he had no drugs on him.
The cops switched off the high beams and continued down the block. They did not talk, but Hamilton had thought they must just be young guys who lived on the block. The man in the parka, hidden in the hedges, had not been spotted at all.
With the cops gone, the man in the hedges joined the one who had raised his jacket, and after five minutes started walking down 107th toward the patrol car. Eddie Byrne’s head had slumped again.
One of the things that Byrne had done when he got into the car was adjust the side mirrors so he could see behind him, but even if he was awake he would not have been able to clearly see someone approaching directly from the rear, because there was a large white dog cage on the ledge in the back, which cut down visibility through the rear window.
Then, the two men were there. The man in the leather jacket went around by the closed passenger window and made some sort of noise, “Arghh! Arghh,” to attract Byrne’s attention, simultaneously pulling the hood back, showing his face. He was acting as a decoy. Byrne stirred and his eyes opened. He looked toward the decoy and placed his right hand on his Ruger, which was still on his lap.
Meanwhile, the man in the parka—which is where the danger was—crouched down at the driver’s side window, which was also closed, and pointed a nickel-plated .357 Magnum, one of the most powerful handguns there is, at Byrne’s head, the end of its barrel six to eight inches away…and pulled the trigger.
The sound exploded on the quiet street like a bomb. The copper-jacketed bullet smashed the window to smithereens and drove through Byrne’s head just above the left eyebrow, exiting at the top of his skull. Then the shooter fired four more shots: three into the head and the fourth into the neck, spraying bone, brain matter, and blood all over the front of the car—seats, dashboard, windshield, and Byrne himself. In seconds, what had been the head of a human being was now a mess you’d find on a slaughterhouse floor.
The police car in which Eddie Byrne was assassinated. It now sits in a yard containing cars involved in crimes.
The man with the leather jacket had been energized, excited, thrilled by the event. He came around and leaned into the opening where the window had been.
“That shit was swift,” he enthused.
He was so mesmerized by what had occurred that the shooter had to pull him away from the scene. Lights were coming on in the houses all around.
They ran up the block, laughing as they hit Pinegrove and headed for their car.
“You rocked that nigger,” the non-shooter said, in a phrase that was to become a mantra in the neighborhood.
“I seen his blue eyes,” the shooter said.
Then they were in the car, moving, the driver keeping within the speed limit as they went. Soon they were on the Van Wyck Expressway and had made a smooth getaway. And behind them, all hell, as it were, was about to break loose.
The murder of Eddie Byrne galvanized the largest investigation into a murder in the city of New York. Within days, the cops had collared the perps, and eventually the motive for the killing came out. Howard “Pappy” Mason, a high-ranking drug dealer who had been incarcerated the day before the shooting on a weapons charge, had ordered the men to kill any cop who was guarding Arjune, as retribution for them “fucking him over.” Eventually, though, all three in the assassination team were convicted and given sentences of twenty-five years to life, and Mason was also tried and convicted of ordering the hit. Arjune went into a witness protection program, and he ultimately testified against a few drug dealers. He is really in no danger whatsoever. The chances of any of the copkillers getting out of prison and getting to him are zero.
Killing a Cop Is Not a Good Idea
Killing a cop is not a “good way,” as one cop said, to maintain overall health.
Cops take such deaths extremely personally, and though there’s never much publicity about it, we think that cops will do anything to get even with a copkiller.
One of the most infamous examples is Thomas Silverstein. Silverstein killed a guard out in a maximum-security prison in Colorado and is now in maximum-security ADX, where he literally never sees the light of day. He is ensconced in an underground cell where the lights stay on 24/7. To us, it is actually a wonder that he is still alive, that he hasn’t suffered an “accidental” death.
We’ve heard of some other people who have not been so lucky. For example in one northeastern jurisdiction, a young punk killed a cop, but he had a very sharp lawyer and got off. Later, though, a cop I know told me he moved down south, and he knew cops down there who knew what had happened. One day, this cop said, “this guy just disappeared. Vanished. No one knows what happened to him,” he said, a twinkle in his eye.
Perhaps the most astonishing thing we ever heard of, though, was about Larry Davis, a drug dealer and killer in the early 1980s. He actually didn’t kill a cop, but he shot six of them, and they all miraculously lived. Why he didn’t die back then, we’ll never know. He did die in prison, though, by shank.
In honor of Eddie Byrne, 91st Avenue in Queens was renamed “P.O. Edward R. Byrne Avenue.” And it will always be a reminder of what can happen to any cop on any given day. But there is an even more potent reminder in the Whitestone car impound lot in Queens. Following the killing, the car Byrne was killed in was towed to the pound and remains there to this day, should it ever be needed as evidence in any case arising from the murder.
My ex-cop friend and sometimes coauthor Scott Baker said, “I had seen it for the first time in 1993, tucked away in a corner of the pound with other cars that were wrecked or bulletriddled evidence in waiting.”
The driver’s window, which had been shot out, was still uncovered and the K-9 dog cage was still up in the back because it was a K-9 car—a shit car for a shit job.
I had the feeling I shouldn’t be looking inside the car, but I did, and it was terrible. Eddie’s blood and brain matter were still visible all over the front—on the window, seat, and console.
Emotions had run through me like a bunch of raging rivers. First, I was young—just twenty-five…but Eddie was only twenty-two! I knew how his parents had been broken in half by his loss, and how, if it were me, those closest to me would have been affected. And I wondered: wasn’t there some way Eddie could have saved himself?
I analyzed it like cops do, are supposed to do with a shooting, considered various possible tactics and scenarios, but there was no way out. Eddie Byrne was doomed to die on that cold February night because that’s what those guys wanted, that’s what their leader wanted. Even if Eddie had awakened, was suspicious, and had picked up that Ruger and fired at the figures who had approached the car, without first seeing a gun, and somehow saved himself, would he have spent a long time in jail for taking the wrong action? The vicious irony was that he could have, but that’s what cops face every time they pull their guns.
Then, in the fall of 2007, I went to the pound to get pictures of the car. It was still there in the same spot, everything in place, except the blood and brain matter had been washed away by years of weather. The only thing remaining was the faded stains on the seats. Still, it was hard to look at, and after I took the pictures I turned and walked away, and I felt surrounded by emptiness, and knew that my feelings, the heartache, the sense of loss of a brother cop, would never go away. They were indelible.
Other Infamous New York Cop Killings
Cop-killings occur all over the world, but big cities have more than their share of them. While every cop killing is infamous, some stick in our minds more than others. Following are some of these.
A Hard Lesson Learned
On July 5, 1986, a uniformed police officer named Scott Gadell and his partner, James Connelly, were driving along in a patrol car in a Rockaway neighborhood, when they were flagged down by a hysterical man. The man explained that he had had an argument with a man who had shot at him twice.
The cops told him to get in the car and then they cruised the neighborhood looking for the shooter. Eventually they spotted him, and he fled. The cops chased him, Gadell going one way, Connelly going the other, and then by chance it was Gadell alone against the man, who had taken refuge in a recessed basement entry. The man shot at Gadell with his 9mm revolver and Gadell returned fire with his .38. What eventually happened was to reverberate through the police world, and the weaponry they carried would change dramatically as a result, because while Gadell was reloading his gun, the perp trotted up and, still with a half dozen bullets in his gun, shot Gadell in the head. The NYPD learned the hard way that 9mm guns with sixteen shots were much better for cops than .38s with just five rounds, and it wasn’t long before the entire department had switched to 9mm automatic pistols.
UC
The old saying of airline pilots that their job is “hours and hours of pure tedium interrupted by moments of stark terror” pretty much describes police work—except if you’re a “UC” or undercover officer. These very special cops are constantly in “buy and bust” operations where they have to eat their fear and many times—much more frequently than ordinary cops—end up in the middle of terrifying situations.
On October 18, 1988, twenty-five-year-old Christopher Hoban and his partner were making a drug buy when one of the dealers got suspicious. Within moments, what had been merely a tense meeting turned into the gunfight at the OK corral, and when it was over Hoban was dead.
Sometimes the Perp Is Infamous
Lillo Brancato Jr. had been made famous for his role in A Bronx Tale, where he played the starry-eyed, gangster-idolizing son of Robert DeNiro. Later, he had roles in other films and also worked on The Sopranos. But he had blossomed as a young man into a drug-taking punk and thief. In the wee hours of the morning of December 11, 2005, Brancato and an older man named Steve Armento tried to break into an apartment in Yonkers and encountered an off-duty police officer named Daniel Enchautegui, whose life would literally end, and so, in a sense, would Brancato’s.
Deadly Pursuit
Female cops are just as often in great danger as male officers. Irma Lozada, who came on the job in 1982, proved that with her life. Irma was spotted by her bosses as a comer. She was appointed to plainclothes on the citywide task force that patrolled subways, and one day she and her partner spotted a man on a subway platform steal a necklace from a woman and race off. They pursued him, then split up. Lozada, knowing that many perps who stole at this particular subway station would make their escape through nearby abandoned warehouses, stationed herself at the place where the perp might emerge, and sure enough, he did. Lozada made believe she was looking for her dog and when the perp turned to help her look she pulled her gun. Then she made a tactical error, and tried to cuff the perp alone. He wrestled her gun from her and shot her in the head twice. Commissioner Ray Kelly commented at her funeral that she shared with others an “equality of risk.”
When Eddie Byrne was murdered, it sent a message to the city that drug dealer killers were capable of anything. The city, and probably police officers all over the country, got the message—and a war against crack began.
“The assassination of Police Officer Eddie Byrne was a ruthless act that captured the city’s attention like few others,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
The year he was killed there were 1,896 homicides in the city, and everyone knew that the vast majority of them were drug-related.
“These guys were vicious, and they wanted to show that they could get anybody,” said retired NYPD Officer George Reynolds to the Daily News. “It was a wake-up call.”
Byrne’s murder led to the creation of the NYPD’s Tactical Narcotics Teams, which made street-level buy-and-busts. Pappy Mason, who had ordered the hit on the cop, and the major drug crews were shattered. Selling drugs on the street was no longer tolerated and gangs broke up or moved indoors. As the drug traffic faded, murder statistics lowered. The next twenty years saw the city’s homicide rate plummet to just under five hundred in 2008.
“It did make a difference,” said a cop who, with his partner, captured one of the killers. “People had been dying for years, but it made the country aware of what was going on with crack and narcotics.”
The white-and-gray shingled house at 107th Avenue and Inwood Street has been demolished, but cops have not forgotten, and every year they gather to remember the young cop who gave his life in the line of duty.
Q. In what situations are cops most likely to be murdered?
A. It is said that one of the most dangerous situations cops can find themselves in, which often start off as undangerous, is when they respond to what is commonly known as a “domestic disturbance.”
The problem is that the cops go into a situation where people are fighting, in a state of inflamed emotions, say between a husband and wife. Alcohol is many times involved and people are just looking to vent on someone. That someone often becomes the police officer: one minute an alcoholic husband is raging at a wife, and then his rage is transferred to the cop or cops, and if a weapon is available, the situation becomes quite dangerous. Many cops have lost their lives in this situation.
The other situation that rates high on a danger list—it’s perhaps second on the danger hit parade for a cop—is what is known as a “traffic stop,” where a cop pulls over a driver for a traffic violation, and the person driving the car or his passengers are felons. Felons are usually armed. A traffic ticket escalates into a life or death situation.
1. My younger brother and I were born in Princeton, New Jersey, four years apart. Our dad was a Cuban immigrant. We were attractive, intelligent, and had natural athletic abilities. We loved tennis and would eventually play it at a professional level.
2. Our father became a highly paid executive who worked in both the record and movie industries, and we enjoyed the fruits of his success. We went to the best schools and drove the best cars. We got anything we wanted.
3. Despite these advantages, we became arrogant loners and sociopathic criminal types. We got kicked out of school and stole $100,000 worth of money and jewelry from our neighbors. Our parents were disgusted.
4. Dad was worth $14,000,000. We were concerned we might be taken out of the will because of his disappointment in us. One night we watched a TV movie about ruthless young men who killed people for money and material gain. This was the inspiration we needed. We bought a couple of 12-gauge shotguns, and three weeks later our parents were dead.
5. On the night of August 20, 1989, as our parents dozed in the family room of our Beverly Hills mansion, we walked in with shotguns and killed them execution-style. Dad died quickly. Mom took several shots. In fact, we had to go get more ammunition, reload, and shoot her again before she would die.
6. We wanted to make it look like a Mafia hit, so we went out to the movie Batman in another town to create an alibi. When we returned, I called the police, hysterically screaming, “Somebody killed my parents!”
7. There was an investigation, but we weren’t even considered suspects initially, and we received a large insurance settlement. People did notice, however, that we started burning through the inheritance money at an incredible rate during what should have been a grieving period.
8. We were having a great time until my younger brother became overwhelmed with guilt and told his therapist about the murders. We were arrested, jailed, and put on trial.
9. We were tried together but had separate juries. We had certainly rehearsed our defense together. We said we had been suffering emotional abuse and molestation for years and feared our parents might kill us. The prosecution claimed we killed our parents because we were afraid they might write us out of their will for being such screw-ups. We didn’t want to lose out on all that money.
10. Our first trial ended in a deadlocked vote and subsequently a mistrial. In the second trial the jury got it right. We were convicted on two counts of first degree murder. We were sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
Answer: We are Lyle and Eric Menendez.
1. Scott Peterson | A) Shot her diet doctor lover to death because he was having an affair with a younger woman |
2. Susan Smith | B) Killed her five children by drowning them in a bathtub |
3. John List | C) Killed her husband, a protestant minister, with a shotgun, alleging long-term mental abuse |
4. Jean Harris | D) Session musician who bludgeoned and stabbed his mother to death with a hammer and knife |
5. Richard Allen Davis | E) Drowned her two young sons by pushing her car into a lake |
6. Colin Ferguson | F) Kidnapped a twelve-year-old girl from a slumber party at knifepoint and later strangled her |
7. Andrea Yates | G) USPS worker who, in 1983, fatally shot his postmaster and wounded two employees; first case cited as “going postal” |
8. Jim Gordon | H) Killed his mother, wife, and three kids to save them from financial hardship |
9. Mary Winkler | I) Killed six people and wounded nineteen others in a shooting spree on a Long Island Rail Road commuter train |
10. Perry Smith | J) Murdered his pregnant wife for financial gain and to be with his lover |
Answers: 1-J, 2-E, 3-H, 4-A, 5-F, 6-I, 7-B, 8-D, 9-C, 10-G