CHAPTER 8

Early Investigation

Before his father was buried, Scott Kogan tried to talk to Barbara about funeral arrangements for his father. But, he would later say, she wanted only to talk about his father’s will and not his burial. To Scott, his mother seemed too preoccupied with finances.

“There are more pressing issues. We have to bury him,” Scott told his mother. So, he and his brother Billy, as well as George’s siblings, helped plan their father’s service and burial. On October 26, 1990, a Friday morning, a traditional Jewish funeral service, with a visitation immediately before, was held for George H. Kogan. It was hosted by the historic Riverside Memorial Chapel on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, which has provided services for New York’s Jewish community for more than a century.

Attending George’s service and burial three days after his murder were two homicide cops from NYPD’s Manhattan North Homicide Squad. At that stage in the police investigation, detectives had already started probing George’s personal life and financial records, looking deeper for clues into who might have wanted him dead.

The funeral service was part of the homicide team’s investigation. It’s not at all unusual—common, even—for police to attend funerals to see who is there, who is not, and to watch for unusual behavior by mourners, including those who appear to be genuinely mourning and those who look like they’re faking it. So detectives were there when George H. Kogan was laid to rest “beneath overcast skies,” as a Newsday article titled “Slain Businessman’s Final Farewell” described it.

“My father would have been pleased that you came,” Scott Kogan told 150 friends and relatives who filled the chapel’s pews during the morning service. “He provided a sound education, both religious and secular, for his children, and left memories for all of us.”

Barbara Kogan sat front and center, between the couple’s grown sons, Scott, twenty-four, and Billy, twenty-three. In the pew behind were George’s brother Lawrence, sister Myrna, and mother Ida, as well as George’s distraught twelve-year-old niece, Taryn Kogan, who wept throughout the service.

Missing from the service was George’s live-in girlfriend of two years, Mary-Louise Hawkins. She had been by George’s side at the hospital and at his deathbed, but out of fear of a media frenzy, Mary-Louise stayed away from the funeral and burial, paying her respects in her own way. George’s family understood her absence, especially considering the Kogans’ nasty divorce and the animosity Barbara held toward Mary-Louise, whom she felt had stolen her husband from her.

Barbara’s parents, Emanuel and Rose, also did not attend.

Divorce attorney Aaron Richard Golub attended the funeral, as did Barbara’s estate attorney Norman H. Donald III. Scott’s roommate in Puerto Rico, Omar Quinones, was there as well.

Also in attendance to show his respects was John Lyons, who had been Barbara’s recent male companion and friend. Lyons attended the service with lawyer Manuel Martinez, whom Barbara had retained a couple months earlier to help her find a Puerto Rican divorce attorney.

Lyons, tall and slim, with skin marred by acne scars, was in his early forties and two or three years younger than Barbara. He had a calm and quiet demeanor with a gentlemanly air about him. His apartment, on East Fifty-sixth Street near Madison Avenue, wasn’t far from Barbara’s Olympic Tower suite. Lyons was a companion for Barbara, a woman still lonely two years after the sudden end of her lengthy marriage to George.

During the service, even the rabbi who presided over Kogan’s funeral acknowledged trouble between Barbara and George. “This marriage had its problems, as all marriages do,” Rabbi Robert Graubart said during his eulogy. “But Barbara has fond memories of their early years together in Puerto Rico. And if you measure this marriage by its legacy—two young men of good character—it was among the most successful.”

Afterward, Newsday photographer Ozier Muhammad captured Barbara as she left the chapel with her sons and friends and headed out in a limousine for the twenty-five-mile drive to Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, on Long Island, for George Kogan’s interment.

At the burial, once George’s body was placed in the ground, each person poured a shovelful of dirt onto the casket. After groundskeepers finished filling his grave, each attendee chose a rock to place at the head of the grave site. Rocks, unlike perishable flowers, remain for years atop the tombstone, leaving an enduring record of all who paid their respects to George Kogan that day.

For George’s extended family, his murder was not only horrifyingly shocking but also a tremendous loss. “He was a personality who was charming,” said one cousin, who asked not to be named. “There was always something interesting going on in his life. He joked around quite a bit. He didn’t so much talk about his business. He was just colorful.” At family gatherings after George’s death, the conversation eventually turned to the topic of George’s murder. “We talked about it and explored possibilities about who could have done it,” the cousin said. “They’re sorrowful conversations. He didn’t deserve it. He was a nice man. He was always good to us.”

A family stone, engraved with the letters KOGAN, now sits at the head of George’s plot, at grave number three in the upper row of section four. His plot also has a footstone with his name, date of birth, and date of death. His final resting place, next to a path at Beth David Cemetery, is surrounded by trees. George is the only member of the Kogan family buried there.

Deputy District Attorney Joel Seidemann, some years later, mocked Barbara’s presence at her estranged husband’s funeral. “She played up the role of the grieving widow at the funeral,” he said, “showing up in sunglasses, claiming to be grateful for the good years she had with George.” It wasn’t the first time authorities thought they’d caught Barbara playacting, as also evidenced in the hours following the shooting when she told police she cried and screamed.

With the passage of time, however, Barbara increasingly had difficulties keeping up the façade of the grieving wife.