Speaker 1: It was early two thousand and four when I met
Speaker 1: him for the first time, and I can see him
Speaker 1: right now sitting in his chair waiting for me. He
Speaker 1: was all dressed up and ready to talk about our
Speaker 1: cold case. His eyes were fading, but honey, not his memory.
Speaker 1: James O. Ponder retired from the FBI in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: but in his thirty years it was stuff of legendary status.
Speaker 1: He was one of the ones that tracked down James
Speaker 1: o'ray after the assassination of doctor King. He went over
Speaker 1: to his apartment and he found the maps, so he
Speaker 1: knew he's headed a Memphis. He had that confirmed. He
Speaker 1: also worked on the Mary Michael case, the young woman
Speaker 1: that was put in the box with limited air and
Speaker 1: buried alive, the Emory University student. He was one of
Speaker 1: the ones that found her with the straw sticking up.
Speaker 1: He also worked the Rosenberg spy case. But the reason
Speaker 1: I met with him was the Mary Shotwell little case
Speaker 1: out of Atlanta, and it was the case that he
Speaker 1: just could not let go. He said, you know, of
Speaker 1: all the things that I've done, Mary's case is the
Speaker 1: one that stuck with me. I even exchanged Christmas cards
Speaker 1: with her mother for forty years. Some cases you just
Speaker 1: can't let go. Our guest today, Detective Joseph Jackloney, spent
Speaker 1: twenty years with NYPD. Now, y'all, I've had a lot
Speaker 1: of people on Zone seven, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people in my Zone seven that have a bio that
Speaker 1: will just knock your socks off. But I want you
Speaker 1: to know before I start listing all of his act
Speaker 1: glades and successes, this is a snapshot of this man.
Speaker 1: He won the Medal of Valor. He attained the rank
Speaker 1: of sergeant sergeant over the Detective Squad Bronx Cold Case Squad.
Speaker 1: He was the commandant officer over the one hundred and
Speaker 1: tenth Precinct Detective Squad in Queens. He was the director
Speaker 1: of the New York Police Department Homicide School. He's a professor,
Speaker 1: he's an author. He literally wrote the Cold Case Handbook.
Speaker 1: I not only respect this man, but I tell you
Speaker 1: he is a decent and fine person. I want to
Speaker 1: welcome Joseph Jackaloney to his own seven. You know, you
Speaker 1: and I first met at Crime con and I was
Speaker 1: knocked out then. Just your way of approaching a case,
Speaker 1: the way you talk with people the way you work
Speaker 1: a room. It's something to what And I often tell
Speaker 1: young csis and young detectives if you don't know how
Speaker 1: to talk to people, practice try to learn how to
Speaker 1: do it. But you do it with such ease.
Speaker 2: Well, it's something that I have worked on over my years. Right,
Speaker 2: we know that communication is a skill that definitely is
Speaker 2: something that you can work on, and I try to
Speaker 2: hone that craft throughout my over two decades in the
Speaker 2: New York City Police Department. I always tell my students specifically,
Speaker 2: if you are standing online somewhere in the store and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, the person behind you is thoughts
Speaker 2: giving you their life story without asking. You have a gift.
Speaker 1: There, Amen, absolutely right, My sisters say to me, sometimes
Speaker 1: the crazy people just seek you out. I hope so,
Speaker 1: because it's a gift and it's not something I'm going
Speaker 1: to take lightly. I love it when people just want
Speaker 1: to talk to me. So, you have a case that
Speaker 1: we need to talk about, because, like Agent Ponder, this
Speaker 1: case sticks with you. This is something you cannot let go.
Speaker 1: This is something you will not forget about. So why
Speaker 1: don't you tell us about Charles Taylor and Steven Mason certainly.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is a case we had when I
Speaker 2: was in the Bronx, and we had actually thousands of
Speaker 2: open cases, and there is a case that sticks with
Speaker 2: every investigator no matter what you do, whether it's an
Speaker 2: homicide or the thack of squad or specifically a cold
Speaker 2: case squad. But that's where I had found myself in
Speaker 2: two thousand, So here's where what we're dealing with. So
Speaker 2: this case came across my desk and it was like,
Speaker 2: there are certain things that attract you to something, and
Speaker 2: for me, it was, first of all, the victim's age.
Speaker 2: So you had a double homicide, a double stabbing, and
Speaker 2: you had two young boys, one was six and one
Speaker 2: was eight, so Charles was six and step brother Stephen
Speaker 2: was eight. And that was the first thing. Because in
Speaker 2: New York City we have the accordion file, so to speak.
Speaker 2: So you have this big like banker's file or a box,
Speaker 2: and that's how we do our cases. So it's unlike
Speaker 2: the LPD who has like the murder book and everything
Speaker 2: nice and simple. We have a big, giant mess. And
Speaker 2: the issue that comes down to is that I would
Speaker 2: say the hardest thing is finding the case. So we
Speaker 2: came across this case and I saw the ages and
Speaker 2: right away I said, well, listen to this one is
Speaker 2: something that we need to look at. Like everything else,
Speaker 2: you try to find those solvability factors that get in there.
Speaker 2: But this case was dated all the way back onto
Speaker 2: February twenty first, nineteen eighty five, and it happened in
Speaker 2: two thousand Valentine Avenue, and the boys were both stabbed.
Speaker 2: They were actually their throats were cut, and they had
Speaker 2: some other injuries that I won't go into detail on
Speaker 2: because there's only things that the killer would know. And
Speaker 2: the issue that comes down to is that this is
Speaker 2: still an open case. The boys were found at the
Speaker 2: bottom of the staircase to the trash compactor room. To me,
Speaker 2: that was also another significant part of what the killer
Speaker 2: was probably thinking at the time, you know, using that location,
Speaker 2: the boys were supposed to be going to school, and
Speaker 2: they never made to school. Now, the school isn't too
Speaker 2: far from where the house is located. It's actually just
Speaker 2: through the apartment complex, make a left turn and it's
Speaker 2: like another block or two to the school, so they
Speaker 2: had a very short distance to walk. The issue that
Speaker 2: comes down to is that they never make it there.
Speaker 2: And there was a big search going on for the
Speaker 2: police all hours of the night until they finally discovered
Speaker 2: the children at the bottom of the staircase of the
Speaker 2: trash compact the room. And as you know, Cheryl, when
Speaker 2: you're dealing with a missing person's case, whether it's an
Speaker 2: elderly or it's a young child, you always try to
Speaker 2: do a complete search of the location first because more
Speaker 2: than likely that's where you find them. And unfortunately they
Speaker 2: found them. The hunt was on right. So here's where
Speaker 2: I also try to teach people who are looking at
Speaker 2: the cold cases to go back to the archives to
Speaker 2: find those old newspaper articles and newscasts because they tend
Speaker 2: to have so much more information than today's reporters. Right,
Speaker 2: today's reporters there's a twenty two second cycle. They need
Speaker 2: to get to the next story. Back in the day,
Speaker 2: the men and women that did this, they did long
Speaker 2: form investigations. They were like detectives, and they had so
Speaker 2: much information that is in their reports and on the
Speaker 2: newspaper stuff. It's amazing what you can find on it.
Speaker 2: There's unfortunately only about two articles that are archived, one
Speaker 2: in the New York Times and one in the New
Speaker 2: York Post. They actually go into some great details. So
Speaker 2: they start naming names of suspects, and they start talking
Speaker 2: about different things. They name the name of cops and
Speaker 2: the detectives that are working these things, which is all
Speaker 2: important for your investigation. But getting back into what we
Speaker 2: were doing, so for years, for a couple of years,
Speaker 2: we had one suspect narrowdown. It's unfortunate that most of
Speaker 2: the evidence in the case was destroyed and we really
Speaker 2: were left with nothing to go on other than if
Speaker 2: we brought this person in and question them and then
Speaker 2: you hope that they make a confession, which is never
Speaker 2: in a good spot to be. And so we had
Speaker 2: shows at the time to do that and continue started
Speaker 2: looking for We went to every police facility that we
Speaker 2: have that stored evidence in and we couldn't find this.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're talking about a case that was, you know,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty years old plus by the time we were
Speaker 2: looking into it again. And unfortunately a lot of things happened. Look,
Speaker 2: the NAPD just had another big fire not too long
Speaker 2: ago that a bunch of evidence from cold cases were destroyed.
Speaker 2: So when you're dealing with situation where you have so
Speaker 2: many cases of the likelihood of this happening is probability,
Speaker 2: and the issue that what we also look into is
Speaker 2: that and this is for the people who are out
Speaker 2: there investigating cases, whether in your law enforcement or you're
Speaker 2: a civilian looking at these things. Most of the time
Speaker 2: the suspect is named somewhere within the case file. It's
Speaker 2: a phenomenon that you just can't explain. At one point,
Speaker 2: the detectives had this person on their radar and it
Speaker 2: was just like everything else that missing that one piece
Speaker 2: to establish the probable cause in order to make an arrest.
Speaker 2: This is something very similar to what we had faced,
Speaker 2: But we came from the school of looking at cases
Speaker 2: without reading the files first, right, So if you had
Speaker 2: an active homicide, you wouldn't go into a filebox and
Speaker 2: start reading all or booths. They don't exist. So we
Speaker 2: would do things such as the crime scene walk through
Speaker 2: with the photographs. But the other bonus that we had
Speaker 2: in the Bronx was that during the eighties, the district
Speaker 2: attorney had a program that they videotaped every crime scene,
Speaker 2: so this crime scene was actually included, so we were
Speaker 2: able to actually watch the crime scene in living color
Speaker 2: twenty something years later, which was a bonus. And there's
Speaker 2: something that I've been preaching to police departments and DA
Speaker 2: squads everywhere I go, that every homicide that happens should
Speaker 2: be videotapes, especially now when things are so cheap you
Speaker 2: could do it with an iPhone.
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more. I could not agree more. And
Speaker 1: I tell you one thing I've been preaching for years.
Speaker 1: Incorporate drones. Get that overall you can see every possible
Speaker 1: entrance and exit, and then take that drone and do
Speaker 1: the a level of where the perpetrator would have walked
Speaker 1: in or out. It's a tremendous gift that we have now.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, It's actually something I have actually included in the
Speaker 2: new book right about using drones in order to do
Speaker 2: these crime scenes, specifically outdoor crime scenes, but they're useful
Speaker 2: for indoor crime scenes. And people say, well, how I mean,
Speaker 2: you can't be flying this thing in somebody's living room. No,
Speaker 2: it's about getting it above the ground. Almost look like
Speaker 2: that Google map view, because this is how you find
Speaker 2: extended crime scenes. This is how you find areas where
Speaker 2: the suspect could have escape from, and you could find
Speaker 2: all the different things because evidence could be all along
Speaker 2: that path that the person has fled. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: as simple.
Speaker 1: As that, no question. And let me tell you I've
Speaker 1: got a detective. He says, if you can use a
Speaker 1: drone to go into a building to search to keep
Speaker 1: your officers safe, then you take that same drone and
Speaker 1: you can go in a crime scene inside the home
Speaker 1: or building first before you go in and do your walkthrough.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely one of the best tools we have right
Speaker 1: now for documenting.
Speaker 2: It's something I wish that we had when we were
Speaker 2: doing this stuff because we had so many cases that
Speaker 2: could have benefited from this. So I tried to talk
Speaker 2: to as many people as I can, and that's one
Speaker 2: of the reasons why I wrote the book to because
Speaker 2: it gives me a wider search, a wider audience. But unfortunately,
Speaker 2: police departments are getting away from cold case squads because
Speaker 2: of the great what I referred to as resignation and retirements,
Speaker 2: and there's not enough people left to handle these cases
Speaker 2: because they all long term investigations. But I tell you,
Speaker 2: with the two new federal laws that passed last year,
Speaker 2: they're in trouble if they don't have a cold case squad.
Speaker 1: You know, there was a law pass not long ago
Speaker 1: in Indiana that said a family that had a cold
Speaker 1: case that felt like their local jurisdiction didn't do enough
Speaker 1: could give the cold case to the state police. And
Speaker 1: as soon as I saw that, I thought, this is
Speaker 1: never going to work. They're going to be inundated, They're
Speaker 1: not going to be able to turn around in that room,
Speaker 1: They're going to have so many requests. So I agree
Speaker 1: with you that you've got to do it beforehand, and
Speaker 1: you've got to get ready or before something like that
Speaker 1: becomes enacted, because I mean, buddy, you're going to be
Speaker 1: overrun pretty quick. Going back to Charles and Stephen, now
Speaker 1: they had a two year old younger brother and lived
Speaker 1: with their mama on Valentine Avenue. Was there anything that
Speaker 1: stuck out to you from the beginning about the address
Speaker 1: or any similar transactions, anything that made you say, hey,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I know something about this. You know
Speaker 1: two thousand Valentine Avenue, or I know something about this
Speaker 1: general area.
Speaker 2: One thing about two thousand Valentine Avenue had had a
Speaker 2: checkered past, and one of the things as a cold
Speaker 2: case investigator that you must do is look for companion cases,
Speaker 2: the cases that could be connected to yours, because they
Speaker 2: can each hold the piece of the puzzle to the
Speaker 2: one that you're investigating. So we did all of that right,
Speaker 2: so you figure with being you would look at We
Speaker 2: went through FBI's BYICAP right, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program,
Speaker 2: to identify other types of incidents where children were stay
Speaker 2: up at death and you know, left and kind of
Speaker 2: you know, staged in the way that they were, and
Speaker 2: unfortunately it's not it wasn't. It didn't come up with
Speaker 2: any other hits, so we knew we were dealing with
Speaker 2: somebody who this might have been their first time dealing
Speaker 2: with maybe children at this point. Because in the Bronx
Speaker 2: back in the eighties and nineties, it was a very
Speaker 2: violent place and I think we had about eight or
Speaker 2: nine thousand open homicides just from ten years prior, so
Speaker 2: there were a lot of cases and you weren't dealing
Speaker 2: with situations where you had you know, drug on drug crime,
Speaker 2: drug dealers killing each other, at gang killing each other,
Speaker 2: or when you had instances of where prostitutes were picked
Speaker 2: up and found murdered. I mean, you're dealing with two
Speaker 2: small children. So this was an outlier from the type
Speaker 2: of homicides that we were looking at, and that's what
Speaker 2: really attracted our attention to this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it would have gotten much engine two,
Speaker 1: especially they're not sexually assaulted. There were two at one time,
Speaker 1: they never left the premise of where they lived. I mean,
Speaker 1: all of those things are very unusual. And then I
Speaker 1: believe it was Steven that had some defensive wounds exactly.
Speaker 2: We know that he was killed second because he saw
Speaker 2: his brother as he was coming down the staircase, and
Speaker 2: then he put up a fight at the bottom of
Speaker 2: the staircase. But you know as well as I do,
Speaker 2: anybody who has the high ground, especially if you're an
Speaker 2: adult against an eight year old, it's going to be
Speaker 2: rather easy to get control of them. And he fought
Speaker 2: for his life for at least a minute or so there,
Speaker 2: and unfortunately he was aim able to get around him
Speaker 2: and get out. And the ironic part of this is
Speaker 2: if he was able to do it, that staircase led
Speaker 2: directly into the courtyard where somebody would available to hear
Speaker 2: its screams. For sure.
Speaker 1: Now, most of the time, if somebody attacked you with
Speaker 1: a knife, they hold you in some way, they grab
Speaker 1: a part of your shirt or something where they're holding
Speaker 1: you to stab you. Do you think that there's any
Speaker 1: chance there could be DNA own their clothing.
Speaker 2: Well, there's always a chance, right, It's just unfortunately that
Speaker 2: either it wasn't recovered at the scene and secured well,
Speaker 2: as I said, a young way to understand the value
Speaker 2: of that kind of evidence back then, or it was
Speaker 2: vouchered and we were just neighbor able to locate it.
Speaker 2: And the case file, like I said, it was old
Speaker 2: and we had the duplicates of the duplicates on the form.
Speaker 2: Do you know when you type it, you make four
Speaker 2: or five copies. It's not ideal. We had a special
Speaker 2: place where we would open up these cases because you
Speaker 2: never know what you were going to find in some
Speaker 2: of these boxes. I mean, we found boxes with bloody
Speaker 2: shirts of them. I mean, you name it. Because policing
Speaker 2: was much different back in the eighties and even the nineties,
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 1: Not something that they even understood. To protect the integrity
Speaker 1: of that scene, there was a lot that had to
Speaker 1: be taught, and a lot of training and a lot
Speaker 1: of understanding that you shouldn't walk through blood possible exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean, even in some of the videos that we've
Speaker 2: seen over the years when we were doing the stuff,
Speaker 2: you'd have detecting smoking cigarettes in the crime scene, you know,
Speaker 2: stamping them out in and you're just sitting there shaking
Speaker 2: your head. You're like, my god, as a supervisor, you'd
Speaker 2: have a stroke. To see what people would you would.
Speaker 1: Have a stroke exactly right, Yeah, and again we did.
Speaker 1: It sounds crazy, but we didn't know. I mean I
Speaker 1: remember even when I first learned the Lockhart principle in college,
Speaker 1: I was like, that sounds crazy. I don't take something
Speaker 1: and leave something. But then you work two or three
Speaker 1: of these scenes and you realize, oh my lord, that happens,
Speaker 1: you know, so it is real. And again there's not
Speaker 1: enough training. And that's why things like your new book,
Speaker 1: the Cold Case Handbook, is so imperative, and a lot
Speaker 1: of the interviews that you do because here's something else
Speaker 1: I noticed. And maybe it's because you're a professor and
Speaker 1: you're a teacher at heart, but even as you do
Speaker 1: interviews on the national news, you're teaching and you're training
Speaker 1: at a very basic level. I mean, I love the
Speaker 1: way you talk and the way you form, like, here's
Speaker 1: the scene, this is what law enforcement has done. And
Speaker 1: then you gradually go into and this is what they
Speaker 1: could do and this is what they should do to me.
Speaker 1: And I just want to be very very clear. You
Speaker 1: can't overstate the way you deliver a message.
Speaker 2: I do appreciate that, especially coming from you. And what
Speaker 2: I try to do is when I do a lot
Speaker 2: of TV stuff, and like you said, I try to explain,
Speaker 2: I just I don't do the cops speak. I don't
Speaker 2: do that, you know, this is the detective speak and
Speaker 2: start meming acronyms that people don't know. I try to
Speaker 2: explain everything, but I try to also provide people with
Speaker 2: a solid foundation of where I'm coming from in certain aspects.
Speaker 2: If it's based on my experience, I'll say based on
Speaker 2: my experience. If it's something that is basically, you know,
Speaker 2: this is what scientific experience or scientific experimentation, now we'll
Speaker 2: call that out too. I have seen a lot of
Speaker 2: things lately from other individuals. I won't name anybody, but
Speaker 2: sometimes when they go on television, I kind of question, like,
Speaker 2: you know, what are you doing? It's just there's a
Speaker 2: time and a place for everything, and I try to
Speaker 2: make sure that you just be real. I call it
Speaker 2: like it is too. I don't sugarcoat any I tell
Speaker 2: people I'm not a bakery. I don't sugarcoat anything. It
Speaker 2: is what it is. And I kind of speak my mind,
Speaker 2: which has been probably my doubtful in my lifetime too,
Speaker 2: because certain people don't want to hear the truth. Well,
Speaker 2: I always tell people that they don't ask me. But
Speaker 2: I've had a couple of arguments with people or other
Speaker 2: experts on TV too, which some of them are kind
Speaker 2: of fun.
Speaker 1: Well, I think from the hill, flat out honest, here
Speaker 1: it is. You asked me for it. Those are the
Speaker 1: kind of things to me that are imperative on these
Speaker 1: cases because if we talk around stuff and we don't
Speaker 1: flat say, hey, the fact that these children were not
Speaker 1: sexually assaulted matters. And here's why it matters. The fact
Speaker 1: that they weren't taken from their home to another location matters.
Speaker 1: Here's why I can tell you that perpetrator is right there.
Speaker 2: We believe this was personal too, and not so much
Speaker 2: about the kids, but you know, against the mother of
Speaker 2: the kids. It's definitely something that needed to be explored.
Speaker 2: I mean, like you said, a million things could have happened.
Speaker 2: It could have been kidnapped, this for ransom, It could
Speaker 2: have been anything. But this was something shortly where they
Speaker 2: left the house too, And this wasn't like, you know,
Speaker 2: they were coming home from school. Now, this happened on
Speaker 2: the way to school, within a matter of minutes from
Speaker 2: them leaving the house, because from when they come out
Speaker 2: of their apartment. And unfortunately, back in the eighties, we
Speaker 2: didn't have surveillance videos, So if God forbid, this happened today,
Speaker 2: it'd be video surveillance of that courtyard like there is today.
Speaker 2: If you go over the two thousand Valentine Avenue, there's
Speaker 2: not only security, there's gates you can't get in. There's
Speaker 2: all kinds of crazy stuff that happens over there.
Speaker 1: From what we know, I mean, they didn't scream, there
Speaker 1: wasn't anything like that. There obviously wasn't gunfire. There wasn't
Speaker 1: somebody that busted through there and ran through the courtyard bloody.
Speaker 1: So again that leads me to think the person is
Speaker 1: on the inside, the person is right there.
Speaker 2: Or somebody that the kids knew, that they were comfortable with,
Speaker 2: and that security guards knew. So if that person didn't
Speaker 2: live there, which is a possibility that the guards knew
Speaker 2: who they worked because they were constantly visiting or coming
Speaker 2: to the place, we got, hey, how you doing, and
Speaker 2: then we have to go okay, you know, and then's
Speaker 2: walk by. I mean, we know access control is really important,
Speaker 2: but unfortunately sometimes people get lazy and you see the
Speaker 2: same person every day they come visit, and then it
Speaker 2: becomes an automatic like oh, here he comes, and just
Speaker 2: hit the buzzer and with the person in.
Speaker 1: Now, let me ask you something with the five boroughs.
Speaker 1: I know you worked Queens and I know you worked
Speaker 1: the Bronx. When you work a case, no matter what
Speaker 1: it is, homicide or missing person, do you work different
Speaker 1: in those different neighborhoods.
Speaker 2: No. Yeah, people don't realize New York City's made up
Speaker 2: of five counties or five boroughs, which we call them.
Speaker 2: So you have New York County, which is Manhattan, King's County,
Speaker 2: which is the Bronx. You have Queens, you have Staten
Speaker 2: Island which is Richmond County, and you have the Bronx.
Speaker 2: So I was the CEO of the NYPD's Bronx Cold
Speaker 2: Case Squad. However, because there was only three supervisors to
Speaker 2: cover five boroughs, I used to cover Queens and Brooklyn also,
Speaker 2: so we were spread pretty thin. But like everything, else
Speaker 2: you have detectives that you can trust, right, And that's
Speaker 2: one of the things that if any chief of police
Speaker 2: out there listens to this podcast and they're looking to
Speaker 2: put people in this unit, besides their ability to be
Speaker 2: able to investigate cases, you also have to have the
Speaker 2: ability of being trustworthy and that they could be left
Speaker 2: alone for time, for a long time, sometimes without supervision,
Speaker 2: and they're going to do their job and do their work.
Speaker 2: That's an important aspect of picking people to work in
Speaker 2: a cold case squad is trust. That's critical, yes, trust
Speaker 2: and so yeah, we had one policy and procedure for everything.
Speaker 2: So for instance, our definition of a cold case was
Speaker 2: just no more active leads. It didn't have a time
Speaker 2: frame on it, so I know a lot of places
Speaker 2: you know it has to be a year old or
Speaker 2: three years old before it could be declared. The nice
Speaker 2: thing about what we dealt with is we had a
Speaker 2: good relationship because we all worked at detective squads, so
Speaker 2: we knew a lot of people, including the supervisors that
Speaker 2: when we would go look at cases, they would actually
Speaker 2: throw cases at us and say, here, Joe, take this
Speaker 2: case because we know who, we know who the purpose
Speaker 2: I just don't have time, drowning and grand larsities. Just
Speaker 2: do it, clear it. We don't care who gets the clearance.
Speaker 2: That was a good part of it that helped us
Speaker 2: do well in our job, so to speak, and be
Speaker 2: able to be recognized from the work we did. But
Speaker 2: a lot of times it was detectives giving us good
Speaker 2: cases that they just didn't have the time to work on.
Speaker 2: Because New York City we have a homicide squad, but
Speaker 2: they don't work really catch active homicides per se. They're
Speaker 2: more of a supplemental group. They will investigate some cold
Speaker 2: cases or other things out there, but it's not like
Speaker 2: La right where there's a homicide and the homicide squad
Speaker 2: does everything. We run it by each detective squad, and
Speaker 2: we have seventy seven precincts, so we have seventy seven
Speaker 2: different detective squads, but everyone works and does the same thing.
Speaker 1: Well, see, I just didn't know, if you know, the
Speaker 1: different neighborhoods had like a different vibe, a different rhythm.
Speaker 1: They just the way you approach was different. Well that's
Speaker 1: what I was asking, Like, in other words, this neighborhood,
Speaker 1: you might could do a you know, neighborhood canvas pretty
Speaker 1: quick whereas over here they're not going to respond to
Speaker 1: a canvas. You're wasting your time. If there was another
Speaker 1: way to kind of do it, That's what I was.
Speaker 1: You know, the.
Speaker 2: Bronx in Brooklyn are a tough neighborhoods to work in.
Speaker 2: It you're the police. Generally the two most violent have
Speaker 2: the two most violent precincts in there. So I've had
Speaker 2: the pleasure or unfortunate pleasure. However, you want to look
Speaker 2: at it as working and working as cops as a
Speaker 2: supervisor in both boroughs too, doing patrol work. It's interesting
Speaker 2: because you have different cultures and people too, so and
Speaker 2: each each town has its own thing. So when I
Speaker 2: worked in Brownsville, their model was never run never will
Speaker 2: you know, bedsty do or die. I mean that's the
Speaker 2: kind of stuff that you're dealing with. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 2: kind of Yeah, the mentality that you're dealing with too.
Speaker 2: And things have gotten probably i'd say worse over the
Speaker 2: last couple of years because of all of the mass
Speaker 2: eatier about the cops so how bad they are and
Speaker 2: everything else. So I'm imagining that it's even tougher today
Speaker 2: than dealing with it than I was going back in
Speaker 2: that timeframe.
Speaker 1: We have seen in Atlanta some neighborhoods that have transitioned completely.
Speaker 1: They don't look the same, they don't have the same people,
Speaker 1: they don't have the same religion, they don't have the
Speaker 1: same background. It's nuts. So again, the way you approach
Speaker 1: now is completely different. You have to know who is
Speaker 1: in your town, who's in your zone, who's in your jail,
Speaker 1: and you know who's on your beat, so that you
Speaker 1: know how to approach, how to talk. It shouldn't matter
Speaker 1: if you're in Chinatown or Wall Street. You should be
Speaker 1: able to maneuver and get people to talk to you,
Speaker 1: and even.
Speaker 2: People who are hostile to you as the police. But
Speaker 2: you know, you pull up in certain neighborhoods, everyone and
Speaker 2: in the building knows you're there before you even get
Speaker 2: into the door. So you know, they see they see
Speaker 2: you pull up in a black Chevy and Pola. Right,
Speaker 2: they know you're not the full of brushman. They know
Speaker 2: you're not selling vacuums. You know, you step out of
Speaker 2: the car and everyone knows that the cops are here. Right,
Speaker 2: you'll hear the whistles and the thing. You know, all
Speaker 2: kinds of crazy stuff that's going on and it's a
Speaker 2: certain point you're like, listen, I'm not here for any
Speaker 2: of that stuff. I don't care. This is what we're
Speaker 2: here for, you know. And a lot of times, as
Speaker 2: you know, right, I mean, how you approach people. I
Speaker 2: don't care if they are gang members, they're drug dealers.
Speaker 2: Everybody has information that they can help you with. Yeah,
Speaker 2: some don't want to Some don't want to talk to
Speaker 2: you in public, and that's why you have a business card.
Speaker 2: And that's why on the back of those business cards
Speaker 2: you should have the crime Stoppers information, so that anonymous
Speaker 2: tip line. So that's somebody who is verbally in the
Speaker 2: street saying get away from me, I don't want to
Speaker 2: talk to you, get out of here, blah blah, and
Speaker 2: you hand them a card and they take it. Right
Speaker 2: after all that whole big show, then you know exactly
Speaker 2: what it was all about. Sure, So it's an important
Speaker 2: aspect of it. And you have to it's like being
Speaker 2: a comedian and you have to work the room sometimes
Speaker 2: and you have to know your audience. And like you said, going.
Speaker 1: Back to these two little boys, Charlie and Steven, what
Speaker 1: is it about their case that still pulls you? Still
Speaker 1: draws you.
Speaker 2: I've seen a lot of bad crime scenes and to
Speaker 2: see children are always tough. So when you're watching these videos,
Speaker 2: you're also you know, then you're taking these things into
Speaker 2: the memory. So I've been now retired twelve years, and
Speaker 2: i still have reoccurrences of those videos coming up in
Speaker 2: my head. Now. I'm talking about seeing lots of live
Speaker 2: crime scenes and then you know, dealing with nine to
Speaker 2: eleven aspects after the fact and you know, doing the
Speaker 2: forensic side of that and sifting through all that stuff.
Speaker 2: This is what I still remember. And you know, people
Speaker 2: would say, well, it's a case that you can't solve
Speaker 2: and you just need to let it go, and no,
Speaker 2: you just can't let these things go. So you still
Speaker 2: try to, you know, encourage those that are in charge
Speaker 2: now to keep on, you know, with the fight because
Speaker 2: we have a strong indication, we have a name, We
Speaker 2: pretty much feel that this is the person, but we
Speaker 2: don't have enough evidence to establish powerble cause it's as
Speaker 2: simple as that. And unfortunately that happens an awful lot
Speaker 2: in these cases.
Speaker 1: And you know a lot of times somebody will ask me,
Speaker 1: why are you going to highlight a case where you
Speaker 1: know it's never going to be solved or you can't
Speaker 1: do anything else about it. Here's why listening to you
Speaker 1: talk and telling people the importance of videotaping, people are
Speaker 1: going to hear you, and then somebody's going to go, yeah,
Speaker 1: why aren't we doing that? And then now everything is
Speaker 1: changed going forward. So you basically have Charlie and Steven
Speaker 1: that are going to transform an apartment in the way
Speaker 1: they do business. And if they solve ten percent fifteen
Speaker 1: percent more cases, if they have better video or flat
Speaker 1: have video to show a jury, you're going to have
Speaker 1: better conviction rates because you're given the jury more So,
Speaker 1: what you're doing maybe is not solving their case, but
Speaker 1: because of them and through them, solving hundreds more that
Speaker 1: would not have been.
Speaker 2: And there also could be about making sure that you
Speaker 2: secure your evidence properly. In the old cases, make sure
Speaker 2: you identify where they are and toured properly. I mean,
Speaker 2: I couldn't tell you how many times that we found
Speaker 2: things with DNA on it back from the eighties and
Speaker 2: nineties that were secured and plastic and then the whole
Speaker 2: DNA sample was ruined until we realized that you know,
Speaker 2: years later that yet put everything in paper. So like
Speaker 2: you said yes, every time you every time you talk
Speaker 2: about something or you know, you learn from it and
Speaker 2: you can improve things. And also in a case like this,
Speaker 2: if you're saying, yeah, why are you still bothering whether
Speaker 2: you're never going to find it, well, because there are
Speaker 2: things that can happen, right, Sometimes somebody can get religion,
Speaker 2: or somebody's on their deathbed and they want to now
Speaker 2: you know, talk about it, and there are things that
Speaker 2: can happen. Maybe this individual or individuals told somebody and
Speaker 2: or confided in somebody and now you know what, somebody
Speaker 2: down the road gets arrested and now they want to
Speaker 2: get out of jail free card. And that's just for
Speaker 2: this case. This is for any cold case. You know, Hope.
Speaker 2: I always say hope is not a plan, but sometimes
Speaker 2: when you're dealing with cold cases, it's all you have
Speaker 2: and you just have to just keep on hammer and
Speaker 2: away and like everything else, the harder you work, the
Speaker 2: luckier you get.
Speaker 1: Hope is not a plan, but sometimes it's all you
Speaker 1: get that is fantastic, and you're you couldn't be more correct.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I got to tell you something funny, Sergeant. When I
Speaker 1: was a little girl, I told my Mama that I
Speaker 1: was gonna marry an Italian man. And she said that's
Speaker 1: a good choice, you know, you know, and she goes why,
Speaker 1: and I said, because detectives are Italian. So I wanted
Speaker 1: that last name. So to me, where I got that from,
Speaker 1: of course, was like TV and movies, Like all of
Speaker 1: these New York City detectives, they all had those names, right,
Speaker 1: and so I wanted that last name, which my maiden
Speaker 1: name was not Italian, so I thought I got to
Speaker 1: go get that through marriage. And then I was sound,
Speaker 1: you know, like a detective. And of course I'm married
Speaker 1: a scontsman. But it's okay. But every time I hear
Speaker 1: like you and other NYPD homicide detectives specifically speak, that
Speaker 1: childhood understanding comes back. But I will tell you sometimes
Speaker 1: I hear people say arguably or perhaps well, I will
Speaker 1: flat tell you that New York City homicide detectives are
Speaker 1: the best in the world. You spending any time with
Speaker 1: us today is a gift, and I just want you
Speaker 1: to tell us any last thing you want us to know,
Speaker 1: or tell us about y'all's training or your homicide school,
Speaker 1: anything you want us to know, to really showcase just
Speaker 1: what y'all are about because it's more than nine to eleven,
Speaker 1: and it's more than this brotherhood, and it's more than
Speaker 1: this training. This is not something new. I think it's
Speaker 1: always been this way for NYPD.
Speaker 2: Well, we have, unfortunately, a lot of experience in this
Speaker 2: kind of area, especially going back in the seventies and
Speaker 2: eighties and nineties, and we had life I first got
Speaker 2: into the detective squad, there were detectives there that had
Speaker 2: forty years worth of experience. On top of that, we're
Speaker 2: talking about men and women that were you know, hardcore sixties, seventies, eighties,
Speaker 2: through the riots and all the other things that were
Speaker 2: happening in New York City, and they were able to
Speaker 2: pass on that experience. And then over time where we
Speaker 2: see people retiring just after twenty years and then you know,
Speaker 2: the resignations are up now because all the stuff that's happening,
Speaker 2: you lose that experience. So the only thing that you
Speaker 2: can help replace that is with training. So we spent
Speaker 2: a lot of time developing courses and getting them accredited
Speaker 2: for people too, so that they can go to these classes. Specifically,
Speaker 2: we have the Death Investigations Course, we have a Criminal
Speaker 2: Investigations course, that every detective who gets promoted has to
Speaker 2: go through it. And it's about trying to learn how
Speaker 2: to solve the toughest cases. And I would say dealing
Speaker 2: with cold cases is not only the toughest cases, but
Speaker 2: they are America's toughest cases. They're open for a reason.
Speaker 2: If it was that easy, they would have been closed already.
Speaker 2: So it's they needed to visuals who will not get
Speaker 2: deterred by anything. No matter what obstacle you put in
Speaker 2: front of them, they are going to try to, you know,
Speaker 2: go over it, go under it, or go around it.
Speaker 2: And it's that's the bottom line about how you do it.
Speaker 2: So it's about tenacity, it's about persistence. And New York
Speaker 2: has that has the reputation of being, you know, the
Speaker 2: dog eat dog world, and I think that has a
Speaker 2: lot to do with that.
Speaker 1: Sergeant, thank you so much for not just coming on
Speaker 1: to Zone seven, but being a part of mine and
Speaker 1: reminded us the importance of talking about Stephen and Charlton y'all.
Speaker 1: I'm going to end Zone seven the way that I
Speaker 1: always do with a quote. It's important for these unspeakable
Speaker 1: things to be spoken of because they actually happened in
Speaker 1: this World John Walsh. I'm Cheryl McCollum and this is
Speaker 1: Zone seven
Speaker 2: Non