New York Homicide Season 1 Episode 1
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#NewYorkHomicide
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00:00When I got the call, they said,
00:26you know, Carnegie Deli, you've got a quintuple, five homicides.
00:32When we got to the scene, we had a hell of a lot of people outside,
00:36and also the restaurant was jammed.
00:38The uniform closed the place down.
00:40We want to keep the crowd there so we can interview them.
00:43Try to get witnesses as quickly as you can.
00:46I get up there, and I get briefed by the detectives.
00:56So at the scene, there was three likely and two DOAs.
01:00Three people who are likely are going to go to the emergency room.
01:02They're going to go to the hospital.
01:04I can't imagine laying there, hearing the shots go off,
01:08and knowing that you're next.
01:11You can't shoot five people in New York.
01:14They're going to hunt your ass down.
01:17They're going to find you.
01:22Every single case takes a little piece out of your soul.
01:27You cannot do this job unless you really care.
01:33You want to find out the truth.
01:37That's what detectives do.
01:39I've always liked the peek behind the curtain.
01:42What really happened?
01:44It's so important for a family to know who murdered their relative.
01:48I mean, that's my job.
01:49In New York City, the NYPD, this is it.
01:58I love New York.
02:18I grew up in Alphabet City on 10th Street in housing projects.
02:23My parents were very strict with me.
02:25I was never allowed to do a thing.
02:29But we used to cut out of high school and go to movie theaters on 42nd Street.
02:33It was a real grungy area for a long time.
02:37You had the peep shows.
02:39You had all the pedophiles in the arcades.
02:42But it had color.
02:44It had life.
02:46It also had quite a bit of business for me, most unfortunately.
02:50When I became the cop in the 80s, it was still really high crime.
02:56Police officers were hired in the 1980s.
03:00Kind of cleaned up those streets in the 1990s.
03:07By 2001, Broadway was at one of its peaks.
03:11Theaters were all crowded every night.
03:14And the Carnegie Deli was a thriving, thriving...
03:17I mean, people would wait in line to get in there.
03:20It's bright, and it's crazy, and it's filled with tourists dislocating their jaws on huge sandwiches.
03:28It was right next to the theater that Letterman filmed.
03:32So people flocked there.
03:34It was a landmark.
03:39So it's a Thursday.
03:40I worked earlier in the day and was done.
03:43And I was at the ball field coaching my son's baseball game.
03:48The game just ended when I get the call.
03:51When you start saying it's in midtown Manhattan and you start mentioning a landmark like Carnegie Deli,
04:00I have to get up there as soon as possible.
04:02In retrospect, I probably should have put a suit on.
04:04I did not.
04:05I show up.
04:06I'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt.
04:08The crime that took place in that building was on the top floor apartment.
04:13Not in the restaurant.
04:15Fifth floor was where everything took place.
04:17We spoke to the super.
04:21We speak to the neighbors.
04:23We do canvases and find out if anybody can tell us who these people are.
04:26The cooperation from the deli downstairs.
04:30We identified Jennifer Stahl.
04:33It's her apartment.
04:38I remember standing in the doorway of the apartment building and seeing this guy coming down the stairs taking pictures.
04:46And I don't know everybody in crime scene by name, but I think I know everybody in crime scene by now.
04:52I've been around long enough.
04:53And I'm like, I don't even see crime scenes called.
04:56Who's this guy taking pictures?
04:59So I remember it went something like this.
05:01Like, who are you?
05:03And what are you doing in my crime scene?
05:05Are you a crime?
05:06No, I'm not.
05:07Then who are you?
05:08I'm the police commissioner's photographer.
05:11And I'll tell you exactly what I said.
05:13You can decide to bleep it out.
05:14I don't give a fuck who you are.
05:15Get out of my fucking crime scene.
05:17Perino's not a kiss ass.
05:20A case like this, everybody wants to come and look.
05:23But when you're in charge of the crime scene, no matter who the boss is, you gotta tell them you can't come in.
05:28You get upstairs and inside, they're on the floor with two bodies, face down, with their hands behind their back, tied up in duct tape, and shot in the head.
05:44They didn't break in.
05:47Door's not broken down.
05:49So that gives you some clue.
05:51Barbara Butcher was like having another detective there, but a detective who knew more than you.
06:01I was a medical legal death investigator working for the Office of Chief Medical Examiner in New York.
06:08We go to that scene and investigate the body.
06:12We work with the police.
06:14The scene belongs to them.
06:16The body belongs to me.
06:19Four people had been lined up and shot.
06:32And there was blood in a rectangle down the living room floor.
06:40And then the smears of blood where two of the people had been pulled away by EMTs.
06:48And then I photographed the wounds and the bindings.
06:54Tied behind the back.
06:56Ankles tied.
06:57Things like that.
06:58One of the detectives saying to me, you know, let me take you in where we think the first shooting occurred, the first victim.
07:08That was Jennifer Stahl.
07:10Somebody told me that she was the owner of the apartment that had been removed because she still had a pulse.
07:21Even though the body isn't there, I still need to collect whatever evidence, whatever story I can about that person if they're likely to die.
07:32And we went back to a little recording studio.
07:38She had this wonderful little creative thing, the kind of thing I would like.
07:43And I had a flash of sadness.
07:48And to see blood in that little, sweet little studio, it was not good.
07:55You want to be careful not to let your emotions get away with you.
08:01So, you know, quick, boom, let's close the lid on that.
08:04Let's tamp that right the hell down.
08:06Let's get about our business.
08:08I remember walking into the apartment, it becomes apparent that this is a place of business.
08:19This was not the nickel bag in Washington Square Park cut with oregano kind of pot dealing.
08:25She was dealing high-end marijuana.
08:31We discovered drugs and money missing.
08:34Right away, we're going to think it's a robbery gone bad.
08:37But the fact that you have five people tied up, four people on the floor, that's very unusual, especially in Midtown.
08:42Like, that doesn't really happen there.
08:44All shot in the head, back of the head, execution style.
08:48We can think that it could be a personal thing.
08:51We can think it might be a domestic thing where Jennifer may have had a problem with a boyfriend or, you know, somebody else.
08:58The fact that Jennifer Stoll was selling weed wasn't important to us.
09:02You know, even though marijuana was illegal then, we were more concerned that five people got shot.
09:07The media was all over it from the beginning.
09:10They caught wind of it the night it happened.
09:12Detectives and crime scene investigators searched for clues hours after two men and a woman were killed and another man and woman hospitalized.
09:24A friend of mine called and was like, Misha, did you turn, turn on the TV? Did you see the news?
09:30There's been a shooting at Jen's.
09:33They were interrupting TV shows.
09:35The massacre that happened right above the Carnegie Deli.
09:37An execution style shooting inside the building were bound and gagged with duct tape.
09:41She had broken her finger and had a surgery.
09:45You could see the cast on her hand and I knew it was Jen.
09:49I knew it was her.
09:54With the media pressure came more resources, which was very helpful.
09:58Manhattan is divided for police department purposes, Manhattan North and Manhattan South.
10:02So the dividing line is 59th Street.
10:05Manhattan South handles everything south of 59th Street, down to the Battery, river to river.
10:12Each borough has several precincts.
10:15Each of those precincts has a detective squad.
10:18Homicide squads come in as a support group when a homicide drops in one of those precincts.
10:27The case was signed to Midtown North Precinct.
10:31So it's Manhattan South homicide.
10:34You need personnel.
10:35The more personnel, the more information you're going to get.
10:38You want to get Manhattan North homicide down there.
10:42We would be called to assist them.
10:44They never would be called to assist us.
10:47Manhattan South, we always called them Manhattan Soft.
10:50Cops that work in Manhattan North are tougher.
10:52So, you know, you always kind of like, there's like this whole competition.
10:54When I went to work in Manhattan South, I totally changed my opinion.
10:57Manhattan South, you have to really use your head and your investigation skills
11:00because a lot of the cases were like stranger on stranger homicides.
11:05And a lot of the perpetrators come from New Jersey, Brooklyn, Queens.
11:09They can come from anywhere.
11:11There were witnesses on the scene who saw a red car driving away close proximity to the deli.
11:23These bits of information, when they're put together, it's either going to fit into the pattern of the investigation or it's going to just get ruled out.
11:30But everything is worthy of a look.
11:32It's a full court press to find out as much as we can.
11:36First of all, we identify Jennifer Store. It's her apartment.
11:39From there, we have to identify all the victims that are there.
11:42All your effort goes into identifying the person before even goes into figuring out what happened.
11:47You do victimology. You look into their backgrounds.
11:50We had a gang database and you're going to run them through that database.
11:54Check with narcotics to see if they knew any individuals that were there.
11:58Nicknames, phone numbers, things like that.
12:01The DOAs were Stephen King and Charles Hollowell.
12:06Jennifer didn't make it.
12:08She died probably just a few hours later.
12:12Gunshot wound to the head.
12:15And the other two, by a miracle of God, despite being shot in the head, they survived.
12:32I just feel like somebody was watching out for me.
12:35You know, that definitely my mother was with me or something like that.
12:40And God was on one shoulder and my mother was on the other.
12:44Because, yeah, that was close.
12:57I was shot on my right side, behind my ear and right at the bottom of my hairline.
13:04And then the exit came out above my occipital bone.
13:12So it just basically followed the curvature of the skull and came out.
13:16Which is a lucky thing because I think if it went in, I wouldn't be here probably.
13:21I never left my spot because I didn't know.
13:26I was in like this big puddle of blood.
13:29And I didn't know if I would lodge, if the bullet was still in me, if I would lodge the bullet in me.
13:34Or if I was going to die, I didn't know.
13:39So I just stayed where I was.
13:45Once I thought that they were gone is when I got my hands untied from the gaffers tape.
13:51And reached for my cell phone in my pocket and called 911.
13:55And then just kept making phone calls.
13:59I didn't know. I just wanted to say some goodbyes to some of my friends.
14:08The two that survive, you know, we're trying to get statements out of them.
14:13The detectives were there right from when I got to the hospital.
14:19I just told them, you know, what I knew.
14:21I mean, what I saw.
14:26We found out the victims.
14:28They were all like theater people in the arts.
14:30And I understood that one of the living victims was the fiance of one of the DOAs.
14:36I told the police officer, I walked in and Jen introduced me to a couple, Rosemond and Trey that were up from St. John.
14:47They were all sitting around just having a glass of wine.
14:50She just asked me to join them and I did.
14:53My intent was just to go there and give her a trim and get weed.
14:57I'm a hairstylist, so we did a little bothering.
15:02About 15 minutes after I got there, there was a buzz at the door.
15:07It was almost like a little bit of a blur of two people coming in, but you could tell from the size of them.
15:13One was taller than the other one.
15:14One was better looking than the other one.
15:17I didn't know them from Adam.
15:19The taller one of the two took a gun out from his waistband and said,
15:25everybody get on the ground and put your arms behind your back.
15:28I mean, I just did what I was told and I thought maybe that would keep it from, you know, anything escalating.
15:34One of them took my friend Jennifer into the other room.
15:42I remember her saying, please just take whatever you want.
15:47Just don't hurt my friends.
15:48And with that, it's when I heard the first gunshot go off.
15:59And I guess he killed her right there.
16:02I just didn't hear her again after that.
16:10So I think, I just think I, I knew that this is it.
16:16You know, I figured where there wasn't going to be anything else.
16:27You know, in New York City, there's no telephone notifications when someone dies.
16:31It's face to face.
16:32You got to go knock on this person's door in the middle of the night or middle of the day and tell them that someone in their family is deceased.
16:39I mean, that's really the hardest part.
16:41Those words don't come out of your mouth easy to say that their loved one has been murdered, you know, tragically like this and senselessly.
16:49And it's, I think there's another level to it.
16:53And, you know, I just, you can, you can just feel it like when people learn it for the first time.
17:00So it's just, yeah, yeah, it's not an easy thing.
17:08It was May 11th that we found out my mom and dad, they were on the Cape and a police officer came to their house.
17:15My mother was watering her flowers in her bathroom and two at like six in the morning.
17:20Two policemen walked down the driveway and said, are you Karen Hellowell?
17:24And she just said she had this huge sinking sensation.
17:28And they're like, you know, is your husband here?
17:30And he was.
17:31And so they sat them down and then they told them the news that Trey was dead.
17:35Yeah.
17:36Our lives were forever changed that day.
17:41Two days later was his birthday and it was lilac season.
17:46He absolutely loved lilacs.
17:47He was born and he died in lilac, the height of its glory.
17:52Mm-hmm.
17:56We knew Trey was coming to New York to meet Roseman's family and to attend a cousin's wedding.
18:01And they were supposed to stay at Jennifer Stahl's Carnegie Deli apartment.
18:08Yeah.
18:09And so that's how they ended up there.
18:12My heart goes out to them.
18:15Bro's mom came to visit Jen, but I felt it was really sad because Trey didn't really know Jen.
18:21Just, you know, a friend of a friend hanging out with her.
18:31In this case, we raised 18 fingerprints between inside the apartment and on the banister, but we collected no ballistic shells.
18:40So that tells you something there.
18:43Five shots, you don't find any shells, you know you're probably looking at a revolver.
18:49Maybe they threw a weapon, the gun, in the sewer.
18:53We called DEP.
18:54We look at the garbage here.
18:56We have people looking at the garbage cans that are on the street.
18:59You're doing everything to get as much information as possible.
19:06There had been a surveillance camera installed in the staircase.
19:10That night, they discovered that.
19:15The surveillance video depicted two male blacks.
19:18One had dreads and a hoodie, and the other one had shorter hair.
19:22In my history, and the hundreds of homicides I worked on, only one other than this had video in.
19:35So, I was surprised when I saw the tape.
19:38I was like, whoa, this is, this is very good.
19:42We knew that those people were suspects.
19:44There's some people that we wanted to get into contact with and speak to.
19:53This case happened at 7.30pm.
19:56We worked around the clock in the same place.
19:59In Jennifer's apartment, there was an answering machine.
20:01It was blinking.
20:03We hit play.
20:05Her friend was asking, uh, is she okay?
20:08Um, that she hadn't heard from her, and she was wondering where she was.
20:11I had called Jennifer's house while the murders were happening.
20:17Based on that message, we needed to interview her friend and find out why she was worried about her.
20:21You know, why was she concerned that Jennifer wasn't answering her phone?
20:24The morning of May 11, homicide detectives walked into my house.
20:38They looked like they were off of a set of NYPD Blue.
20:42And they asked me questions about her business.
20:47I said to them, it was a place to gather.
20:51It was just like friends hanging out and people smoking, talking.
20:55So, there were people that we, you met in passing, but we didn't necessarily become friends.
21:01Jennifer sold weed to support her artwork.
21:05We learned that she was an actress that was in Dirty Dancing.
21:10But her music was more of an interest to her at that point than dancing and acting was.
21:17Her recording studio was the room that she dealt pot out of.
21:22She did also love to bring friends in and record with them too.
21:26People that came in and out of Jennifer's apartment were Jennifer's friends.
21:31It was just getting busier.
21:32I think it just seemed sort of chaotic to her, sometimes hard to manage, and her buzzer going off.
21:38And occasionally, she would have a friend there who would help manage the door.
21:44Steven was there working that night, answering the door for her.
21:53She was basically dealing to her friends and people that she knew in the industry.
21:57She dealt with some famous people.
22:00Saturday Night Live, Cass, things like that.
22:02Her clientele was, like, well-vetted. She had to know you.
22:06If you said, oh, so-and-so sent me, I don't think you're getting buzzed up into Jennifer's apartment.
22:11She was, she was ultra careful.
22:13This was very hard for us as her friends, because if they wanted something from Jen, she would have given it to them.
22:23There was no reason to shoot five people.
22:31I saw Jen just a few days before her murder, and she was quite upset.
22:40Jennifer had been fighting with her boyfriend.
22:43I believe she was trying to leave, and he grabbed her hand, and so her finger got broken.
22:52One of the suspects was the black man with long dreads.
22:58I felt very certain that her boyfriend had killed her, because he fit that description.
23:09With the information we got from Barbara, we, we got her, Jennifer Stoll's boyfriend's name, and then we had to go interview him.
23:19There's some domestic issues going on there, so we had to make sure that he was not involved in this homicide.
23:24I was positive that it wasn't her boyfriend.
23:28I didn't think it looked anything like him, and I met him, and he was always very nice to me, and I don't think that he would do something like that.
23:37We interviewed Jennifer Stoll's boyfriend, but he was ruled out based on the information he gave us as to where he was, you know, what he was doing.
23:46We knew that he was not the perpetrator.
23:49When he called me, he said, I had to get a lawyer.
23:54Everybody thought it was me.
23:57I said, yes, I thought it was you.
24:00And he said to me, how could you have thought it was me?
24:05I loved her.
24:07I said, you guys were fighting. She had a broken finger, and they said a black man with long dreads left the scene.
24:16I said, who was I to think?
24:19He said, how could you think I would hurt her?
24:23I apologized to him.
24:25After I was released from the hospital, the detectives had told me that Rosamund's going to be in there a lot longer.
24:38You know, the bullet lodged in her jaw.
24:41We didn't know each other.
24:43We just were both the victims of an awful circumstance, her more so than me.
24:49I mean, she lost her, you know, her other half.
24:54So, um, I can't even imagine.
25:02As the prosecutor, I have to extract as much information as I can as quickly as I can,
25:11but also be mindful of the fact that this is traumatic to talk in detail about something that they just want to forget.
25:20I remember speaking to Rosamund two days later.
25:28Rosamund was describing how the sound of the gunshots were coming closer and closer to her,
25:34and she was next in line.
25:37She heard the shot that killed her fiancé, Charles Halliwell.
25:43She did really well.
25:44I can't imagine laying there, hearing the shots go off, and knowing that you're next.
25:50If it was the last thing that she was going to do, she was going to turn around and see the person who killed her.
25:57And she moved and turned her head at the very last moment before she was shot, and that might very well have saved her life.
26:05Rosamund said that the initial buzzer ring was answered by Stephen King, and she heard Stephen King say,
26:18it's Sean, to Jennifer, and Jennifer said, okay, let him up.
26:25And so it was at that point that we had initially the name Sean.
26:30We didn't have a last name, but we had at least a first name for one of the two people.
26:34The two main leads we had were the fact that there was a name of Sean and the fact that there was the video.
26:53Those are the two main things we had to go on.
26:55I know that there's a number of prints that are removed, but we don't know the value or whether it's going to lead us to anything
27:01or, you know, whether it was the police commissioners.
27:05They interviewed several people that purchased weed from her that were friends with her.
27:09They were trying to run down whatever leads they could and try and make connections
27:12because it could be somebody that knows him and, you know, knows the person Sean.
27:17When I saw the video footage, I didn't recognize Sean.
27:20I really didn't know who it could have been.
27:25When we were searching the apartment in the crime scene, after the initial forensic collection is made,
27:30then you go back in looking for leads, things that aren't forensically connected, pieces of paper, photographs, this kind of thing.
27:37And we found a resume which gave us the first steps to a Sean.
27:41Apparently, he was a roadie for George Clinton and the Parliament Funkadelic.
27:47Jen always tried to connect people to create things.
27:52That was really a big part of what she did.
27:55They went to the address that Sean Sally had listed on his resume, and he wasn't living there.
28:04He had left that place.
28:06We were concentrating on Sean, and we ended up with numerous addresses in New Jersey.
28:13Detectives had contacted every single person just about in his life that he knew.
28:28One of those individuals viewed the videotape from the Carnegie Deli and recognized Sean Sally.
28:35Significantly, they knew the second person who we were trying to identify, they knew his nickname was Dre.
28:44So they started to run him down?
28:47We go into different homes interviewing people, and we go to, and I recall it as his girlfriend's home.
28:54She knew someone named Dre, her boyfriend slash common-law husband, Andre.
29:03Andre wasn't there.
29:05I was the only one who had business cards.
29:07I think that's why my card gets left.
29:09Sunday morning, the 20th, we get a phone call at the office.
29:28It's Andre, and he's willing to talk to us.
29:33Andre Smith showed up, ironically, in a red car that fit the description of the car that a witness saw driving away in close proximity to where the murders occurred.
29:47When Andre Smith came in, we asked him if he could give a set of prints, which he agreed to, and he took his prints.
29:53I can only assume that he thought he was going to be smart enough to keep us at bay and never get trapped into anything, but totally show cooperation.
30:02I'm assuming that was his goal.
30:04The first two people who spoke to him had him in the room for a long time, and these are like senior detectives.
30:08They were senior to us.
30:10They continued speaking to him for hours, and then when they weren't getting anywhere, then the next team comes in, fresh people who slept all night.
30:20It's kind of like this endless supply of pinch hitters until you find the pinch hitter that makes the connection, and then you run with it.
30:31Billy and Tommy Bedell go in there, and they start trying to talk to him.
30:35He denied being in Manhattan, denied being at the scene, denied having any knowledge of who Sean Sally was.
30:44I showed him still photos of the video surveillance team, and Andre Smith's face is right there, like, for him to see.
30:52And nope, he denied it.
30:54It was like, you know, he was like, what was that song, that shaggy song, It Wasn't Me?
30:59He does a very good job of denying it, but keep on talking.
31:02And, you know, there's always, the detectives always joke about the levels of denial.
31:07I don't know what you're talking about, I wasn't there.
31:10Well, I know what you're talking about, I wasn't there.
31:12Well, I know what you're talking about, I was there, but I didn't do it, to eventually, I know what you're talking about, I was there, and I did it.
31:18So, we're walking him through those levels of denial.
31:21There comes a point in time where we are able to match his prints while he's in there to the duct tape.
31:29And that becomes extremely important, because up to that point, we're pretty sure he's in there.
31:36We feel very strongly involved, but you don't have physical evidence that puts him on the scene at the time.
31:43It's a tremendous confidence builder for the interrogators that they're in the right place,
31:50and now they can probably push a little harder, because they know he was there, as opposed to pushing him to a place that they don't know the answer to.
32:00We had been in there several hours, we approached it from different angles, because he was not moving.
32:06And this guy was tough enough, we know, six detectives spoke to him and basically told him,
32:11we have you red handed, and he still fucking denied it, you know.
32:17Tom Bedell and I were talking, and, you know, we're trying to figure out another strategy.
32:22And Irma came into the room, and she said,
32:25would you guys mind if I just went in there and talked to him just now while he's eating?
32:29And I was like, no, Irma, have at it, you know, like, you know, fresh face.
32:33That's my thinking, like anything, just to, you know, change up what's been going on.
32:40You know, let a female go in there, see if you can soften him up.
32:43I don't know Andre Smith, I don't know who the person is that I'm interviewing,
32:49till I sit down in front of them, and then I can more or less read them.
32:53I can read what they like, you know, what triggers them.
32:56I go, you know, you remind me so much of my brother Ruben, because he did,
32:59he reminded me of my brother Ruben a little bit.
33:01I'll talk to perpetrators more on a personal level, and then go into interrogation.
33:07And it works for me, because I kind of make them feel comfortable with me.
33:12But I've had prisoners who said,
33:14that Rivera smiled at my face and stabbed me in the back, you know?
33:17Irma has this ability to read the suspect and figure out where it is
33:24that she has to make her connection so that she can continue
33:28and get the answers that she needs.
33:30I don't care if you're wearing a $5,000 suit or if you're homeless
33:35wearing like a pair of sweatpants and dirty sneakers,
33:38it doesn't make a difference to me.
33:39You know, I treat everybody with respect.
33:41Everybody who's bad, there's still something good in them no matter what.
33:46You got to find that good spot in them when you interview them.
33:49How did you grow up? Oh yeah, I grew up the same way.
33:52I had nothing growing up. I didn't have toys when I was a kid.
33:54I didn't have Christmas sometimes. We didn't have food sometimes.
33:57I grew up in housing projects so I could relate to them.
34:03Andre Smith was very polite.
34:06He was kind of like soft-spoken.
34:08He said he has a baby.
34:10Oh, you have a baby?
34:13I know that's going to bring something soft in him.
34:18I used that.
34:21All of a sudden, I just noticed these inflections.
34:24He picked his head up.
34:26He was engaged. He was listening to her.
34:29You could see like his eyes like kind of brightened up a little bit.
34:33She hit something like a nerve.
34:39Then he told me that he did it because he needed to get diapers for his kid.
34:43That's when I thought that he was ready.
34:45I said to him, they're going to come back in.
34:47They're great guys. They're my friends, you know, whatever.
34:49You know, you can talk to them. You can trust them.
34:54Irma gave us the signal.
34:56I had to turn around. I interrupted Tommy Adele because he was eating the fucking Susie Q and drinking a Yoohoo, which was, you know, dinner of Joyce usually.
35:04I was like, I was like, hey shithead, let's go dump that Susie Q and let's get back into this.
35:09This guy's changing up here. Let's go in there and take a hit.
35:12This is an interrogation by a team at its best.
35:15Irma gets this real personal connection where he's ready to go.
35:20It's that tipping point where they're done with the denial and they're ready to, they're ready to vomit information.
35:30He's nodding his head when I'm asking him questions.
35:33We were able to get Andre to speak and he said he met Sean Sally in Newark through a mutual friend.
35:39And Sean Sally was saying how he was like kind of down on his luck and that money and brought about this plan to, to rob a weed spot in Manhattan.
35:48And then finally Andre Smith give an account anyway, the murders.
35:52He intent to go in there, rob the weed, rob the money.
35:55And he said, I even told the girl when she said, please don't hurt me, don't hurt my friends.
36:00And he said, I told her that's not what I'm here for.
36:03She was bagging up the money and the weed for him.
36:05And he looked out and Sally was struggling to get everybody taped up.
36:10So he went out and he said, here, you stay with her.
36:13Started to tape everybody.
36:14And then he said, you know, this guy just started shooting everybody.
36:18Once we were into the written statement for the confession of Andre Smith, I get wind that the police commissioner took exception to me correcting his photographer.
36:37He also took exception to me showing up in shorts and a t-shirt.
36:43Within a day or two, I'm removed from the case by the police commissioner.
36:48I'm transferred to the 2-5 precinct in Harlem and the detective squad there.
36:54Irma goes, take his name and put it on a piece of paper and put that piece of paper in your shoe and step on them every day for 10 days.
37:04And it's all going to work out.
37:08This is my father's mother.
37:09She was into Santeria.
37:10She believed so much in that, you know.
37:12What she taught me was when anybody does anything wrong to you, she used to tell me, take a piece of paper, you put their name in it.
37:17And I know you're all going to be doing this from now on.
37:19You take their name in it, you put their name in your shoe and you walk on them.
37:23And you walk on them and you tell them you want that person out of your path.
37:28So it is hard to walk away because you kind of own it.
37:31But I can't be giving my thoughts or directions to detectives and undermining the new boss.
37:37Because now somebody else is responsible.
37:39If they call up and ask for your advice, that's great.
37:42But you don't go calling them offering advice, right?
37:45And it's difficult for them too now because they know the police commissioners mad at you.
37:50So they're not really interested in talking to you because they don't want your stink on them.
37:55So I forced myself to completely remove myself from the case.
38:02I don't even think I followed it too much in the media afterwards.
38:15They killed three people, shot two, execution style, for $2,800.
38:24The New York City Police Department has in custody at this time, Mr. Andre Smith, to the second suspect responsible for these heinous crimes,
38:33who detectives have identified as Sean Sally.
38:36Make no mistake that the New York City Police Department will be relentless until he is in our custody alongside his accomplice.
38:45My suggestions is that he follow Andre Smith's lead and turn himself in at the nearest police station.
38:52Andre Smith said that he left the apartment with Sean Sally.
38:58They went back to New York, and that was the last time he saw Sean Sally.
39:04We have to continue looking for Sean Sally.
39:06We got to get a phone number, find out who he's calling, and then track the phone.
39:10So what we were doing is we were tracking the cell sites.
39:15He had stopped in Louisiana.
39:19We had a team of people, detectives and sergeant down in New Orleans.
39:24Sally, he just seemed to be one step ahead.
39:27At that point, you know, we just keep continuing, trying to see if we get phone information, but he got rid of his phone.
39:33We had sort of run out of investigative leads.
39:37We're still pursuing it, but, you know, now it's like two months, you know, the case goes cold.
39:44We applied to have the case put on America's Most Wanted.
39:48On July 14th, America's Most Wanted aired the Sean Sally Carnegie Deli homicide case in an effort to get some leads.
39:58It's a national show.
40:00So it covers a tremendous amount of ground, and you've alerted the American public.
40:05God bless America, that's what I want to say, because 20 minutes after that aired, people started calling in.
40:16Someone in Florida recognized him and notified us.
40:22And he was thought to be at a homeless shelter in Miami.
40:29Miami gets contacted right away, and they're like, hey, you need to go get this guy.
40:35The detective from Miami was interviewing people at that homeless shelter.
40:42John Sally walked into the lobby, and he bolted.
40:47The dogs tracked him down and cornered him in someone's backyard.
40:52He was captured by a city of Miami canine officer.
41:03He did suffer a bite, a dog bite to the left forearm, but he was treated on the scene.
41:08And at this point, we do have him in custody.
41:10He's facing three charges of first-degree murder and one charge of resisting arrest without violence.
41:19Before they caught him, I was just like, every creak that I heard, I couldn't sleep through the night.
41:25I just thought that somebody was coming in.
41:28Once both of them were caught, it was relief.
41:35The chief of detective borough Manhattan at that time told me to go to Florida and do the interrogation on Sean Sally.
41:58I really feel that sometimes when people are on the run, it's kind of like a relief to get caught.
42:03He seemed that way. He seemed like he was a little bit relieved that he was caught, like, you know, at that point.
42:08You know, so then I interviewed him and asked him what happened, and he kind of like just gave it up.
42:12They had gotten oral and written statements from him where he admitted killing Jennifer,
42:18although he said the gun went off and it was an accident.
42:21And he put the rest of the blame on Andre Smith for the people in the living room.
42:29And the fact that he admitted pulling the trigger accidentally or not to killing Jennifer Stahl was significant.
42:37And it was significant because it doesn't matter in a prosecution for felony murder whether you intentionally or accidentally killed someone.
42:47In fact, it doesn't even matter whether the person died because you shot them or someone else shot them.
42:54If you participate in the underlying robbery, you are responsible under the law for the murders just as much as the person who pulled the trigger.
43:04Philip King sat in the second row of the courtroom for his first face-to-face encounter with Sean Sally, one of the men who stands accused of murdering King's son Steven.
43:17I just kept telling myself, restrain yourself, don't jump over the rail, and go for it.
43:24I could see it, you know, like, I could see what that man went through.
43:27I hope that's the relationship I have with my son.
43:30I'm getting a little choked up, you know.
43:33I'm pretty sure I do, and that's the relationship I have with my father.
43:38We're busy preparing and trying to get ready for court.
43:44It's a year or two later for you, but for that mother or that father or brother or sister, it's like it just happened yesterday.
43:52It's a Tuesday, I'm with my children, dropping them off at school, and I hear that a plane crashed into the World Trade Center.
44:13I'm in jeans and a t-shirt.
44:19Because of my trouble that I ran into at the Carnegie Deli, I went home and put a suit on.
44:24I'm assuming that held me up for maybe 20 minutes.
44:26I actually hear the second plane hit while I'm in my apartment.
44:33It was true, like, when they say terror, it was like terror.
44:37Like, everybody was fucking, like, beyond anxious and frightened and everything.
44:42Everybody that you saw.
44:45It's unbelievable what took place there.
44:47When it all collapsed, you never forget those things.
44:53And I lost some very good friends.
44:56I mean, it's a hard thing to talk about.
45:03I survived September 11th.
45:05Perhaps that 20-minute change would have put me in a different location
45:10that would have came up with different results.
45:13And I kind of always accredited that lesson with having to put the suit on
45:18and not responding in street attire to saving my life.
45:22People that died that day, you know, like God rest their memory, but it continued to kill people, like, for many years after.
45:32And 20 years later, I'm diagnosed with a 9-11-related cancer.
45:37The terrorists that did that got more bang for their buck, so to speak.
45:40I was so wrapped up in 9-11, my office was turned upside down.
45:47That changed my life so radically.
45:50It changed my work life, my personal life.
45:53It changed everything.
45:54You know, we were all involved.
45:56We were all on the same day.
45:57We were all there.
45:58And we all felt like it was necessary to pick each other up and have each other's back.
46:02And we continued to do that.
46:03And then we just got back into work and we did what we do well.
46:06And then we continued that.
46:09The trial was almost a year to the date of the murders.
46:27It was a very unique court case.
46:29I had never seen anything like that before.
46:32They were both on trial at the same time.
46:35They actually had two juries and the two defendants in the courtroom.
46:40The saving grace of doing it this way was to avoid the surviving victims having to come back.
46:47And we lived this twice in the two separate trials.
46:52It's traumatic enough once.
46:55I don't like to be the center of attention and here I am in a box, you know, telling my story.
47:00I think I focused on my friend Francesca that was sitting there.
47:03It went with me.
47:05That kept me a little bit more grounded, I think.
47:07The trial was a few weeks long.
47:10There were a lot of witnesses.
47:12I wanted to understand what happened to Jen.
47:15What happened to her friends who she loved so much.
47:18Seeing those crime scene photos, it was way too much.
47:22The one perpetrator said, oh, you know, when I was with Jennifer, I was guarding her with a gun and my hands were shaking and I was so afraid and I just wanted to get out of there and it accidentally went off.
47:34No, it did not.
47:35And the reason we know that is because Jennifer's head wound, the bullet wound, was a close contact wound.
47:44So don't tell me you were wiggling and shaking and it accidentally went off.
47:49No, you held it purposely with full intent and you shot it.
47:56The evidence doesn't lie.
48:02People do.
48:03A lot.
48:04When we heard the verdict for the Carnegie Deli, it was like a relief and a sense of pride, obviously.
48:19I was so happy because all the effort and on behalf of the people that passed away and, you know, Rosemond and Anthony that was still living and their families, everybody's families.
48:31They finally, you know, now they had something, a little bit of closure.
48:35The sleep was much easier to just say, you know, you'll never see the light of day again.
48:42Were people jumping up and down and celebrating?
48:49No.
48:50It was sort of a very quiet moment where I think people just...
48:54Hugging and crying.
48:55And just like, okay, I mean, justice has been served.
49:07The passing of Jen, so many of us were affected, but we didn't know each other.
49:11And then we just eventually all connected.
49:15Every year after that tragedy, we celebrated Jen's life on her birthday.
49:22General Jen Day.
49:24She was such a good soul.
49:27She really was.
49:32Irma's the one that called me and told me about the conviction.
49:34I was very pleased to find out that there was a conviction.
49:36But it's, you know, it's not like winning the World Series or something like that.
49:41You know, you're not elated because someone had to die for this to happen.
49:44It's a very strange, I don't know how to explain the feeling.
49:47When I first became a cop, I started getting panic attacks.
49:54And the first time that I ever experienced one, I had two dead bodies in one day.
49:59And I had never been really exposed to death.
50:01Eventually, I learned how to shut my feelings on and off.
50:04I can actually visualize like a switch in my head, like a light switch.
50:09And I can go click on, off, on, off, and I can shut it on and off.
50:13It's not that I don't care.
50:15It's just that you have no control what's going to happen.
50:18So you learn to live a day at a time.
50:23And that's how I live, a day at a time.
50:28These murders were just senseless.
50:31It brought me back to that first case where I really understood just how evil people could be.
50:37That was the Michael McMorrow case in 1997.
50:42It was so brutal.
50:46So over the top.
50:48One of the most disturbing crime scenes I ever saw.
50:52And I've seen thousands.
51:07We respond to the location for missing person at 115 Central Park West.
51:12It's a very affluent building.
51:15We see a young girl, young boy in a bathtub in water washing each other off.
51:22As awkward as that scene must have been, he noticed that there was some blood.
51:28And she said, there's a body in the lake.
51:31Body in the lake, come on, really? What's the chances of that?
51:34The body of 44-year-old Michael McMorrow was pulled from a lake in New York's Central Park.
51:40The victim had been stabbed 30 times, slid opened and disemboweled.