THE UNIT is located on the third level of a four-story walk-up on Eleventh Avenue between W51st and W50th, sandwiched between a Mobile Service Center and a Porsche automobile dealership. It’s twelve minutes by car from the Precinct to the crime-scene: literally within our own backyard. The caller is either baiting us or bold because I don’t believe in coincidence. I reserve judgment until we discover a corpse.
Before leaving the Precinct, a quick search of the central NYPD database confirms the sole occupant at the address to be one Miranda Livingstone. There is no land-line registered to the unit. From Verizon, we access a mobile phone number in Livingstone’s name billed to the address. As we weave the short distance through traffic, Gabby dials through to the number. No answer. Gabby leaves a message for the woman to ring us back lickitty-split.
In Midtown, the temperature has reached ninety degrees. Smog is trapped like a sand dune along the horizon. To the west, the sun hangs over the Hudson River like a ball of dirty yarn the cat dragged in. Gabby and I join a pair of Patrol Officers on the street outside the building. They grumble about the heat.
The four of us convene outside the unit. I rap on the apartment door. I get no answer. Rapping a second time, I get no answer. In a voice loud enough to be heard on the street, I identify myself as a cop. A third rap, no response. I direct the blues to hammer in the door.
Once inside it takes a nanosecond to confirm we have a crime scene. In the living area is a female corpse bound with duct tape to a slat-back wood chair. A length of nylon pantyhose is wrapped around her throat.
Approaching the woman, I pull on a pair of latex gloves. With a finger to her neck, I feel for a pulse. But her bulging eyes tell me all I need to know. And the odor.
We need the Medical Examiner, not the EMT.
To the patrol officers, I say: “Secure the door. Question anyone entering the building from the street. Question anyone leaving. If they look like they need to be detained, detain them.”
Calling it into my Commanding Officer, I request the ME and Crime Scene Unit technicians. I ask him to coordinate with Patrol Division to send reinforcement officers to conduct a door-to-door canvass.
Waiting, Gabby and I stand by the body. Gabby has pulled on her own set of latex gloves. The victim is bottle-blonde, hair lank and long, thirty to forty years in age and, at one time, was probably pretty.
Her teeth are now rotted, and her skin pockmarked. She wears a short skirt and a snug halter. She is barefoot. A pair of high-heel shoes lay haplessly in a corner by the door. Judging by the line of her thigh, she was tall when standing. Beneath the chair is a puddle causing an odor, leaving a stain. For victims of a homicide, death is nothing if not humiliating.
Gabby studies the corpse. Despite the smell—with the heat, urine mixed with alcohol and decay is overwhelming—she leans in for a close look. Warily, she circles the body.
“Miranda Livingstone, I presume?”
The inference falls flat. “According to the chatterbox,” I say.
“Chatterbox?”
“The guy talks a lot.”
Gabby chuckles humorlessly. “Chatterbox? I like it. Press will eat it up.” Gabby says it like the guy is a celebrity already. In this City, he soon will be.
The press loves a serial killer, officially defined by cops as a person who commits at least three murders over more than one month. It has nothing to do with the total body-count. If Manischewitz, Mancinelli, and Livingstone are connected, based on dates, our boy officially becomes a Serial Killer.
Unlike the one-and-done shock of mass murder, for the press, serial killers have legs. Not for nothing are 48 Hours and Dateline among the most watched news magazines on TV. Not for nothing was the Making of a Murderer a Netflix hit.
Gabby points to a line of tracks on the victim’s forearm. “Junkie?” I nod. “Strangled with a pair of pantyhose. Dead maybe twenty-four, forty-eight hours. Thoughts?”
She knows but asks anyway. Gabby is tall, lean, with dark hair so black it shines blue. She is a good investigator. With her looks, Gabby could be a model on a fashion runway in Paris. Gabby should be a model on a fashion runway in Paris. I’d like to say this, but fear for the repercussions to our friendship, if not to my career.
So, I agree.
“Twenty-four, forty-eight hours? Sure, why not?” I move to a window overlooking the street. “Car dealerships and service center may have closed-circuit video.” Eyeing the entrance to the apartment, I say, “Only one way in and one way out, Gabby. Maybe we get lucky.”
“Your lips to God’s ears.”
The floor of the apartment is a checkerboard pattern of faded linoleum tile. Tattered carpet has been laid down for relief. The small living area is furnished with a collection of thrift store cast-offs; a two-seat sofa, a worn armchair, a low table with lamp, a thirty inch flat-screen TV on an acrylic stand, a handful of dog-ear paperback novels stacked on the stand. No desktop or laptop computer, no mobile phone that we can see. There are no photos of the rug-rats on the wall, and none on shelves or in frames. The apartment seems tired and very sad.
We are cautious to disturb nothing as we move about. Unlike movie cops or TV detectives, real cops don’t rummage through a crime scene corrupting evidence. We wait patiently for the Medical Examiner and the Crime Scene Unit to arrive, take note only of what is visible to our naked eye.
A cop’s job at the crime scene is not to collect evidence—the CSU techs would argue more-often-than-not we fuck-up it up—but to interpret the evidence after it’s been photographed, dusted, cataloged, bagged and tagged. For evidence at trial, chain-of-custody is key to integrity and admissibility and crucial to a successful prosecution.
The small kitchen is equipped with an apartment-size refrigerator and two-burner electric stove. I pull open the door to the fridge. Inside is a packet of process meat, a packet of cheese slices, a half-loaf of bread, an open tin of stew, a carton of milk, a container of Jiff-brand peanut butter, a jug of OJ, some browning fruit, rotting vegetables, and a head of wilted lettuce.
The freezer contains a bag of crushed ice, a carton of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream, a small bag of weed—I have weed in my freezer at home, too—and a substance wrapped in Saran that looks to me suspiciously like heroin—which I do not.
There are two empty high-ball glasses in a stained and grimy kitchen sink. The small Formica counter-top is scarred by burns from a lifetime of careless smoking.
Gabby moves through the door-frame into the bedroom.
“Bed is unmade. The room is messy but doesn’t look ransacked.” Proceeding to the bathroom, she inspects the small interior. “Filthy, but no sign of a struggle. No illicit or prescription drugs I can see.”
Returning to the front room, Gabby says, “Our boy has a type, Dex.”
“Losers and loners?” I say wearily, to which Gabby takes no offense.
It feels like a hundred degrees in the apartment. Overwhelmed by the heat, the stink, and the pain meds, I raise a window for relief.
“If the chatterbox is to be believed, this isn’t his first rodeo,” Gabby says. “Only the first time he’s felt like talking about it.”
“It did come out in a rush.”
“Expiation?”
“Claims it wasn’t a confession.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Boast? Gloat? Maybe a challenge?”
“According to this Chatterbox, the first two victims were living low. Sex?”
“Aside from the obvious, says he didn’t touch them.”
“The Ripper?” Gabby’s eyes sparkle, contemplating the possibilities.
The Craigslist Ripper, aka the Long Island serial killer, aka the Gilgo Beach Killer, is a yet to be identified subject cops believe to have murdered between twelve and twenty women involved in the sex-trade over twenty years. And one unlucky, cross-dressing Asian.
He finds his victims on Craigslist, sexually assaults them, dismembers them, and dumps their bodies along the Ocean Parkway in Suffolk County and the area of Jones Beach State Park in Nassau County. After, he distributes the remains in separate locations throughout the remote Long Island beach towns of Gilgo and Oak Beach.
The killer remains at large today. Women living in the metropolitan NYC area, be warned.
“Doesn’t fit The Ripper’s MO,” I say. “Besides, we don’t know there is a Manischewitz or a Mancinelli, yet.”
“If there is, things will get very interesting, very quickly.” Gabby grins, her bright eyes sparkle.