5

Police Officer Kenneth Mahon
11/30/45–12/28/74 End of Tour

“He died as he lived … a hero.”

—ASSISTANT CHIEF ANTHONY BOUZA, BRONX AREA COMMANDER

I was at home working out and listening to music on the radio when the hourly news came on. A plainclothes police officer was reported shot and killed in the area encompassing the Four-One. That caught my attention. I became still as I stopped what I was doing and waited for more information, but there were no specifics forthcoming.

I’ve learned in my time that initial reports of any tragedy, be it police-involved or otherwise, are generally not strong on accuracy. There were many police officers working in plainclothes in the area: not only Four-One Anti-Crime but also City-Wide Anti-Crime, and the Tactical Patrol Force had some of its cops working out of uniform. As my heart raced and I reached for the phone to call the office, I rationalized how the media could confuse all sorts of characters with a “plainclothes police officer”—the list was endless. I would prefer no law enforcement officer were killed, but I said a silent prayer: let him not be a cop from my unit … please.

Sergeant Battaglia, one of my bosses, picked up. He confirmed that the victim was a cop from Four-One Anti-Crime. But not just any cop …

“It was Kenny, Ralph,” Sergeant Battaglia said quietly. “He’s gone.”

Kenny Mahon was dead? I couldn’t believe it. My head felt as if it took a direct hit from a brick. My mind went totally blank. I couldn’t think, and I felt faint. Battaglia was still talking.

“… perp still on the loose … Get here as fast as you can.”

Regaining my composure, I told him I was on my way. I grabbed my two .38s, a shotgun, and my bulletproof vest. I was in my car in less than a minute.

The next thing I remember is driving like a madman to the Four-One. The roads were deserted given the early hour. I think I made the usual twenty-minute trip in ten, but it could’ve been less.

There were dozens of marked and unmarked cars blocking the street leading to the station house. A cop’s murder is the time to circle the wagons—all available officers of every rank converge on the command of occurrence. Off-duty, on-duty, retired, in all manners of attire, police from all over the city and beyond answer the unspoken call to arms.

I left my car in the middle of Simpson Street, dodged TV reporters in front of the station house, and took the stairs three at a time to the Anti-Crime office.

The scene was surreal: cops were crying; others appeared cried out and were looking blankly around the room as if trying to figure out what to do. Every available phone was being used. I saw uniforms I didn’t recognize—those of officers from other departments who had heard what happened and had reached out to help.

My first impulse was to break down. Kenny and I were close, and I was having a tough time wrapping my head around his being gone. But falling apart wouldn’t help anything; I needed facts. If the killers or a killer was still being sought, I wanted to be the one to get him. I had revenge in my heart.

Sergeant Battaglia came out of his office, saw me, and waved me over. He looked like he’d aged ten years since yesterday. He was the strength of the Anti-Crime unit, the rock-solid boss, someone who would always have your back and have an answer to whatever problem might arise. For the first time since I met him, he actually looked helpless.

Sergeant Battaglia grabbed my arm, waking me from my reverie. “We just got a tip that the missing suspect in a rape/robbery of a young woman may have shot Kenny, who went looking for him … a guy named Vasquez … Daniel Vasquez is either on his way to JFK or there already looking to board a plane to PR. Grab someone and get to the airport now and see if that rat fuck is there. If he’s on a plane, yank him off—fuck a warrant.” He handed me an old booking picture. “This is him; he’s got an extensive sheet.” He stared at me. “Go! What are you waiting for?”

I teamed up with Billy Rath, Richie McLes, and another officer whose name I’ve forgotten; scooped up a set of keys to an unmarked auto; and ran for the car. Within minutes we were at the Triborough Bridge coming up on a tollbooth without any cars. At this hour of the morning, the toll taker was probably working on autopilot. He was standing in the booth ready to collect the next two-dollar toll when we shot past him doing eighty-five. I thought for sure the vacuum created by the wind blast was going to suck him out of the booth. I was relieved he didn’t have his arm extended to grab my toll money, or it may have wound up splattered across the windshield.

I amped up the speed to over one hundred when we came off the slope leading from the bridge to the Grand Central Parkway, which was nearly deserted. We were at the Van Wyck Expressway within three minutes, and I slowed down for the first time since I left the station house to make the sharp turn onto the roadway. The Van Wyck is a straight three-lane road leading directly into JFK airport. Normally a ten-minute drive, we made the perimeter of the airport in four minutes. In two more minutes we were screeching to a halt in front of the international arrivals building on the upper departure level. We’d made a trip that should have taken forty-five minutes (with no traffic) from the Four-One to JFK Airport in fourteen minutes.

We ran into the building and found a Port Authority cop who told us a direct Eastern Airlines flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico, was loading passengers as we spoke. He gave us the gate number, and we took off running as fast as our legs would carry us. There were no security checkpoints back then to delay us.

The plane was fully loaded when we arrived. Breathless, we identified ourselves and babbled our mission to the flight attendant at the gate. I grabbed the passenger manifest … there was no Daniel Vasquez listed. Passengers didn’t need passports to go to Puerto Rico, and realistically they didn’t even have to give their actual name to buy a ticket, so we decided to see for ourselves if our man was here.

The Jetway was still attached to the plane, so we were no longer in a rush; if Vasquez was on board, he wasn’t going anywhere. We slowed down, boarding the plane like we were passengers, dividing up and walking the two aisles. We asked the Port Authority cop, who was in uniform, to stay behind on the Jetway and out of sight. The plan was to pounce on the son of a bitch before he had a chance to react and possibly endanger other passengers.

This story doesn’t end heroically. Vasquez wasn’t on the plane. There were no other planes leaving for Puerto Rico anytime soon. The Port Authority cop assured us he would put out the word and be on the lookout. I didn’t hold out much hope.

*   *   *

Often, after a particularly heinous crime is committed, rumors fly because solid information is lacking, and sometimes it takes days to sort out exactly what happened. Since Kenny and Emile DeFoe were looking for Vasquez for the rape/robbery, it was assumed that he had been stopped and shot Kenny, but it could’ve been anyone with a gun who hated cops.

When Kenny and Emile entered the building where Vasquez was known to live, they encountered a man who identified himself as David. When asked for his identification, he told the two cops that he didn’t have it on him but lived upstairs and would get it. He began to walk down the hallway; Kenny must have sensed something was wrong because he started to tell him to stop. But at that moment a second man appeared in a doorway, temporarily distracting Kenny and Emile.

When they regained their focus, they started down the hallway after David, Kenny leading. Kenny shouted “Halt,” whereupon their subject whirled and fired two deafening .357 magnum rounds from a large revolver, both hitting Kenny, who went down, gravely wounded. Emile returned fire unsuccessfully while using his finger to plug up a badly bleeding bullet hole in Kenny’s side. When he ran out of ammo, Emile seized his partner’s unfired revolver and continued firing at the shooter. The gunman ducked into a stairwell, then reappeared, firing yet another round into Kenny. Emile fired back, missing again, and then the gunman took off up the stairs.

Kenny Mahon had been hit in the left hip, the left knee, and once in the chest. Emile dragged him outside, intending to get to the street and nearer to the ambulance that was surely on its way. He got as far as the courtyard when he began taking fire from the roof. Emile shielded Kenny’s body with his own and returned fire in the direction of the muzzle flashes. He continued to keep his finger in Kenny’s most severely bleeding wound.

Kenny would be rushed to Lincoln Hospital, where died on the operating table.

Meanwhile, Kenny’s wife, Linda, was awoken by Detective Frank Macchio, who’d been dispatched to the Mahon home in College Point, Queens, to get her to the hospital as quickly as possible. Across the city, cops would know what had happened before Mrs. Mahon even got into Detective Macchio’s department vehicle. They were all instructed to maintain radio silence regarding Kenny’s shooting, lest Linda Mahon hear what happened through the radio chatter.

For hours after Kenny died, a small army of cops searched the building and immediate neighborhood for the shooter, witnesses, or clues. Most of the cops had Vasquez’s picture and showed it to anyone who would stay still long enough to look at it. There was much confusion over whether the shooter, who’d identified himself as David, was actually Daniel Vasquez, lying about his real identity. Vasquez was, after all, wanted in connection with a rape/robbery.

Several hours after the gunman had shot Kenny, most of the officers were relieved from the scene and told to go home. Three cops from the 40th Precinct were assigned to remain (the shooting occurred in the 40th, one block outside the boundary of the Four-One). One of those cops, Kevin Henry, went to the roof; the other two, to the courtyard. A fresh set of officers would be assigned to continue the search at sunup.

At approximately 5 AM (after the JFK search came up empty for Vasquez), Henry heard a sound behind him on the dark roof. He turned to see a Hispanic man. After challenging the man with his gun drawn, the man shouted, “Don’t shoot!” Henry ordered him to freeze and shoved him to the ground. Next to the prone man the officer saw a large gun—a .357 revolver, apparently dropped by the suspect, the same caliber that had killed Kenny.

Henry called for assistance, and the two cops in the courtyard came running, arriving in less than a minute. As Henry moved in to cuff his prisoner, the man lashed out and elbowed Officer Henry in the ribs. That’s all the three cops had to see; they were sure they had the thug who murdered Kenny, and now the asshole couldn’t resist hurting another cop. They beat the suspect, subsequently identified as David Navedo, bloody, pulverizing his face so badly that Emile DeFoe, the only witness to the shooting, couldn’t identify him. It mattered little. It was Navedo, not Vasquez, who had killed Kenny; he was in possession of the murder weapon, had recently fired a gun (ascertained through a paraffin test of his hands), and was hiding at the scene of the crime. It was thought that he had waited a few hours for things to calm down and was going to make his escape across the rooftops when Officer Henry spotted him. Navedo had a record of five arrests for burglary, larceny, and other offenses, but this would be the crime to end it all.

He confessed, pleading guilty to manslaughter (he claimed he didn’t know the two Anti-Crime officers were cops and thought they were going to rob him), and was sentenced to twenty years to life in prison. He had copped to a lesser charge, but he would never see the light of day. David Navedo died in prison in 2003 of natural causes after being repeatedly turned down for parole.

*   *   *

Kenny Mahon’s funeral was held at Saint Gabriel’s Roman Catholic Church in Jackson Heights, Queens, on December 31, 1974. It was a raw, bitterly cold day, but that didn’t stop thousands of police officers, some from departments across the United States, from attending.

The church itself could only hold a few hundred people, so only family members, the usual assemblage of politicians, high-ranking brass, and pretty much every cop assigned to the Four-One was permitted inside. Cops from neighboring Bronx commands patrolled our precinct that day. The rest of the attendees stood in quiet formations outside the church, silent as the ghosts in the nearby cemetery.

There is a protocol for funerals of police officers who die in the line of duty. Every officer, including detectives, those assigned to plainclothes units, and Anti-Crime, wears dress uniform. The ceremony includes a group of bagpipers playing a funeral dirge. Pallbearers from the NYPD Ceremonial Unit usually escort the body at funerals for cops who die in the line of duty as well as those who’ve retired. There was a special honor guard, composed of Four-One cops in full dress uniforms on the steps of the church, the last tribute to a fallen member of their command as the coffin entered and left the church.

The service was a blur; I don’t recall much, and I suspect many others who worked the Four-One had the same experience. We were all still in shock. What I do remember was the coffin, since I was unable to comprehend that Kenny was in it. He was so full of life—how could he be dead?

Everyone was crying, some uncontrollably. Emile DeFoe was a wreck. Not only was he Kenny’s partner that fateful night, but he and Kenny were best friends. They were always at each other’s homes helping with projects, watching sports, sharing the camaraderie that only men who risk their lives for each other on a daily basis can understand. They loved to go fishing together, but after Kenny’s death Emile never fished again. Emile was also going to college on his off-duty time. He quit school.

Both Kenny and Emile received the Medal of Honor, Kenny posthumously, for their actions on December 28, 1974. Emile’s conduct was exemplary; he was a true hero by anyone’s definition of the word, but we all thought that Emile would never fully understand why he’d been decorated with the NYPD’s highest award for an incident in which his best friend had died.

Emile DeFoe was never the same. He received counseling, a lot of it, but the guilt persisted. He retired on a disability pension while still a young man. I hope, these many years later, that he has found some amount of peace. He’ll never forget Kenny Mahon; anyone who knew Kenny will never forget him.

I’ve kept the Mass card from Kenny’s funeral, which has his picture on it, on my desk for forty-two years. Kenny’s death was a blow from which I’m still recovering.