One Police Plaza was nicknamed the "puzzle palace" by members of the NYPD. For Oldham, it represented both a mystery and an opportunity as he arrived for his first day at the Major Case Squad. Riding the elevator up to the Special Investigations Division office on the eleventh floor, Oldham chafed in the new suit he was wearing. He had bought the midnight blue, single-breasted suit off the rack at Moe Ginsburg's, a discount menswear store on 5th Avenue, and it felt awkward. Oldham had worked plainclothes for years and he was used to dressing for the streets. Headquarters was for suits. There were four thousand detectives in the NYPD, but only forty made it to Major Case. It was a select group, one of the hardest assignments to get. "Elite" was the cliche used to describe Major Case. The big time was how Oldham imagined the squad.
"The detectives in Major Case were the sharpest-dressed cops I had ever seen. They were wearing Armani, Hugo Boss, high-end designer suits. The reason, I learned, was that Major Case had a satellite office in the Garment District. There were a lot of burglaries and truck hijackings in that part of the city. When stolen merchandise was recovered there were substantial discounts for 'New York's finest' on the finest in men's clothing. It was against police regulations but that didn't stop anybody. It was the way the job was. Police work didn't pay much but you didn't have to spend much, either."
According to the NYPD detective investigator's guide, the mandate of the Major Case Squad included the most important cases to every cop on the force: the investigation of the murder or wounding of a police officer. Major Case also handled many of the more significant crimes: kidnappings, bank robberies, art theft, burglaries over $500,000, truck hijackings, and safecrackings in excess of $250,000. The squad had the discretion to pull other cases for further investigation -- "enhancement," as it was called. High-profile cases not included in the mandate were often classified as "major." So were seemingly minor cases that had special significance to NYPD bosses, like the theft of the dress Marilyn Monroe had worn in Some Like It Hot. The squad had been formed in the late seventies in response to the ambush and murders of two young officers, Patrolmen Gregory Foster and Rocco Laurie, by a group called the Black Liberation Army. Major Case was designed to give the department a unit able to undertake complex, long-term investigations of crimes that transcended geographical and jurisdictional boundaries. The squad also took cases as directed by the chief of detectives, which could mean almost anything from a shadow investigation of another detective unit's investigation to acting as liaison to foreign and domestic law enforcement agencies.
Major Case detectives were given the luxury of time and freedom to develop expertise in specialized areas of crime. Some were detectives who concentrated on the high-tech aspects of investigations, putting up wires and pole cameras and triggerfish (a device that can capture the electronic serial number of cell phones). There were surveillance specialists. Some detectives ran stables of informants from phone companies, banks, cable companies-people willing to give information or pull up records without a subpoena. Oldham considered his capabilities to reside in the human aspect of police work: talking to people, getting people to talk, measuring character, understanding motives.
"As a rule, NYPD detectives investigate crime reported to the police, reacting to events on the streets. Major Case was about creating cases. We were expected to be entrepreneurial. We went looking for crimes. The bread and butter of racketeering enterprises -- gambling, loan-sharking, extortion, bribery, drug robberies, pension rip-offs, no-show jobs -- were crimes usually not reported to law enforcement. The victims were often guys operating on the margins, borrowers on the balls of their ass, who would never turn to law enforcement. Frequently they themselves had gone to the mafia, as the lenders of last resort, and then found themselves in financial quicksand. They'd end up with a wiseguy partner in their business, big vig on a small loan, maybe broken arms. In some ways the crimes were consensual -- they were participants in their own victimization. In Major Case we went prospecting for people in with the mob and in trouble with the mob. We were looking for the man on the ropes. We were looking for the organized crime associate caught with a bag of heroin who could be convinced to flip and become a cooperator in return for a light sentence. We were looking for the guy who wanted out of organized crime before he got killed or arrested. Snitches were the lifeblood of detectives like me. There was nothing more valuable than an informant who could connect the dots. The art was to find someone like that and convince him to cooperate. My strength lay in identifying other people's weaknesses."
Major Case cops operated citywide. They could go into any precinct or borough detective squad room, and there was a good chance they would be recognized by name or reputation. Considered dilettantes by many in the Detective Bureau, peacocks not burdened by the heavy caseload and onerous supervision of a precinct detective, they were flexible, resourceful, experienced, and, indeed, often arrogant. Investigators of the first and last resort, inside the force they were known as the chief of detective's detectives. Major Case had offices in all the five boroughs, and the detectives had a degree of autonomy far greater than that enjoyed by most cops. The squad room on the eleventh floor was open plan, with twenty or so desks arranged in rows in the middle and a wall of windows overlooking City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge. The floors were linoleum, the lighting harshly fluorescent, the walls painted a generic police department blue. Captain Barry Noxon, a muscular, red-headed boss, had a comer office. A bench was placed on one side of the room with handcuffs bolted to the wall. It was far from glamorous by nearby Wall Street standards but still upscale for the police department. Normally most detectives were out, apart from whoever was assigned to "catch cases" that day -- to take the next case referred to Major Case.
Oldham spent his first week in the squad attending latent-print school, learning to lift fingerprints at crime scenes. He was taught the rudiments of investigating bank robberies: analysis of demand notes, bait money, the mechanics of dye packs triggered to explode as the robbers leave the bank. Banks set their alarms with a delay of three or four minutes to ensure the police didn't arrive while the robbers were still in the bank; losing a few thousand dollars was far less important than avoiding a shootout and bad-for- business bloodshed. Oldham was scheduled to take the two-day kidnap course at the end of the week.
Before he reported for the class he was grabbed to work on his first truly major case: a kidnapping. Twelve-year-old Donnell Porter was walking from home to grammar school on the morning of December 5, 1989, when he was snatched from the street. Donnell had the misfortune of being the younger brother of a crack dealer named Richard Porter who ran a crew on West 132nd Street. The older Porter had the misfortune of being involved with a major dealer who went by the name "The Preacher." The Preacher had backed Rich Porter in the drug business, providing him the crack to get started, but the relationship had gone bad. The Preacher used kidnapping as a way to collect outstanding debts or extort money, snatching drug dealers or their girlfriends or children and demanding large sums of cash for their safe return.
The Preacher, whose true name was Clarence Heatley, led a gang in Harlem called "the family." He was known as a compelling orator and persuader, and he had a reputation for brutality even in the violent world of crack and heroin dealers. The Preacher's chief lieutenant was a New York City cop named John Cuff. Cuff went by the nickname "Captain Jack Frost," supposedly because he was so coldhearted. Off duty, Cuff was Preacher's bodyguard and driver. On and off duty, he collected drug money. Cuff was the Preacher's enforcer. Cuff strangled his victims, dismembered their bodies. He was said to be the only man the Preacher feared. "It makes you wonder why Cuff joined the police department in the first place. It wasn't like he was ground down by low pay, long hours, watching drug dealers riding around in luxury sedans while he drove a shitbox Datsun. Cuff was never a straight cop. The most insidious cops were the ones who became cops as cover. How often did guys join the police department with the knowledge and the forethought that they were going to use their position as police officers to commit crimes? It was not that easy to become a cop. There was a background check. Six months in the academy. The first assignments could be miserable, walking a foot post in Hunt's Point, a rough neighborhood in the South Bronx, or something equally awful. Internal Affairs had profiles to ID guys who went bad. They looked at cops whose patterns of behavior radically changed --- more absences, complaints of violence, sudden wealth. But it was tough nabbing a guy like Cuff. He started out bad and never changed his ways. The system was vulnerable to a cop like him."
As a Police Officer, tax id#904062, Shield #31187, assigned to Manhattan North narcotics, I was not in favor of my supervisors Lt. Ernest Pappas, and Gaptain Gavin, for filing a formal complaint with OEEO for being forced to plant drugs on people (we framed hundreds, some are still in prison). For this offense I was placed on the "Burn" posts which were punishment. I was forced to stand on a "Fixer" post on the corner of 145th and Bradhurst in Harlem. While doing so I was made aware that a Federal trial was under way of the "PREACHER'S CREW" which involved the leader CLARENCE HEATLEY, and his right hand JOHN CUFF AKA CAPTAIN JACK FROST. The building I was told to not move from in front of had Federal agents being lowered in during the day time to retrieve bodies of victims of the Preacher's Crew. I was forced to stand there from 6:00 P.M. to 2:00 A.M. What no one knew was that I witnessed NYC Police Officers putting what I believe were dead bodies into the buildings in the afternoon before the Feds came..... for the Feds to find... to strengthen their case against "JACK FROST", and the bodies where wrapped in tarp. He may have killed people but not "EIGHT"....more like "THREE".
The "Preacher's" Crew, Or The "Black Hand of Death," may have wielded a lot of power in Harlem and the Bronx, but nothing like the power the NYPD wielded in framing them and using Police Officers like me to do it. I was made to feel afraid for even questioning what was going on. I have no idea where the dead bodies came from that the Federal Agents and Police Officers where placing in the building on the corner of 145th street and Bradhurst Avenue. Some of us cops speculated that they may have been suicide jumpers from the George Washington Bridge. The NYPD were and are always finding bodies of suicide jumpers, sneakers with feet still in them and so forth. In any case, Clarence Heatley, AKA "The Preacher," and John Cuff, AKA "Captain Jack Frost," became legends on the streets of Harlem as the Boss and top Henchman of the "Preacher's Crew" that was known for kidnapping, extortion of all street drug dealers, and murder for hire. The fact that religion as a cover was used to disguise "alleged" activity made the "PREACHER'S CREW" all the more notorious. I myself never had any dealing with the "Preacher's Crew" due to their secrecy, and only being known by upper echelon Gangsters, so I have no personal feeling or affection for them besides the fact that John Cuff, AKA "Captain Jack Frost," was a corrupt NYC Police Officer, as I was. I dislike the fact that Clarence Heatley, AKA "The Preacher," became an informant, because it seems that most all BLACK successful criminal enterprises seem to end up this way makes me feel even more sympathetic toward the outcome of John "JACK FROST" Cuff who played by the rules and was sold out by a trusted friend. This repeated story on all levels of BLACK LIFE seems to be what is driving "US" into extinction.
-- "Clarence Heatley AKA "PREACHER" and his Right Hand Man Police Officer John Cuff AKA "CAPTAIN JACK FROST" Unleashed the "Black Hand of Death" onto Harlem for Over 20 Years. Everyone in the "Life" had to pay the "Preacher's" Crew in one way, or the other," by Michael Mickman Gourdine
TROUBLED diva Whitney Houston secretly paid a $400,000 ransom demand to kidnappers who threatened to kill her ex-husband Bobby Brown, a bombshell new book claims.
Brown was snatched and held “naked and hog tied” at gunpoint by members of a notorious New York street gang known as the Preacher Crew, according to author David Collins.
He was later allowed to make one phone call to Whitney, in which he pleaded with her to personally deliver the ransom to an abandoned building in the Bronx.
Disguised in a wig and dark glasses, the terrified singer obeyed, and handed over a duffle bag containing the cash 24 hours later to 6ft 7in gang boss Clarence “Preacher” Heatley, says Collins.
He claims the kidnapping, which was never reported to police, happened in April 1993 when Whitney was at the peak of her fame with her film The Bodyguard and its soundtrack album, both huge hits. Unlike the movie, however, in which Kevin Costner co-starred as her heroic minder, Whitney was forced to face her then husband’s kidnappers alone to hand over the ransom before they were both allowed to walk away free.
Former gang member Collins claims in his autobiography, Preacher of the Streets, that Brown was snatched over a $25,000 debt to a New Jersey drug dealer. Heatley, currently serving life without parole after admitting being involved in 13 gang-related killings, allegedly paid the dealer and “took over the debt”.
Heatley – described by Collins as an eighteen-and-a-half stone “mountain of evil” – then told gang members he had a plan “to make a whole lot more than $25,000”. His henchmen were sent to a Manhattan nightclub, where they allegedly plied Brown with high-grade cocaine, later luring him to a Bronx apartment with the promise of more.
Collins claims Brown was taken to a sleazy, abandoned apartment that had been taken over by Preacher Crew members. There, he was “knocked out with one punch” by one of Heatley’s henchmen. “When he awoke, Bobby was naked and hog-tied, his mouth stuffed with a rag,” says Collins.
“The Preacher then showed up and took the rag out of Bobby’s mouth. ‘It’s a shame we have to kill you,’ Preacher told Bobby. Bobby begged for his life and said Whitney could pay the debt.
“The Preacher left the room and his men then terrorised Bobby for two hours. They kicked him. They told him they would kill Whitney. One of them put a gun to his head. Bobby was weeping when the Preacher came back in the room, begging the Preacher to let him call Whitney.”
This, according to Collins, was the fear tactic Heatley believed would help him score a big financial hit. Brown was allowed to phone Whitney, telling her he would be killed unless she paid the gang. Heatley, according to Collins, then took the phone from Brown.
As Whitney pleaded with him to spare her husband, “they came to an agreement. She was personally going to bring $400,000 to get her man back. The next day, she did just that. She was wearing a wig. She paid the money. Bobby was free to go.”
Collins writes: “Once they were gone, Preacher sat there with the duffle bag of money and split it with his men. Preacher kept over $200,000 of it.” Collins believes both Brown and Whitney were lucky to escape shaken but virtually unscathed.
In his book he recounts his own years as a member of the Preacher Crew, whose income was derived mainly from drug dealing in Harlem and the Bronx and whose trademark was torturing victims who couldn’t or wouldn’t settle their drug debts.
Writes Collins: “Members would slice off body parts of rival dealers or defaulters before killing them.” The gang was eventually busted by police in a series of raids that landed its key figures in prison.
Spokespeople for both Whitney and Brown yesterday refused to discuss the kidnap allegations. But relatives are bound to be horrified by yet another account of the couple’s descent into what Whitney’s 73-year-old mother Cissy described as “a living hell”.
Brown, 40, and Whitney 45, were divorced in April 2007 after a torrid 15-year marriage, during which she went into rehab three times, police were called to their mansion numerous times and child welfare workers threatened to take their daughter Bobbi, now 15, into custody.
At the time of the alleged kidnapping, Whitney was one of the world’s leading singers and a fast-rising Hollywood A-list star.
She still holds the record for the greatest number of consecutive number one hits – seven – and, at the time of the alleged kidnapping, topped the US charts for 14 weeks running with her spin-off single from The Bodyguard movie, I Will Always Love You – still the third-highest-selling song in the history of music.
As her career soared, singer and actor Brown’s nosedived dramatically. Within the space of a few years, hers did too. Whitney’s drug problems finally became public in 2000 when pot was found in her tote bag on a flight to Hawaii.
She admitted the extent of her abuse in a 2002 television interview in which she poured her heart out about snorting coke, smoking pot and popping pills.
After a court battle, Whitney eventually agreed a shared custody deal over daughter Bobbi with Brown, who failed recently in an attempt to launch a television reality show in the US
Whitney, meanwhile, has teamed up professionally again with music mogul Clive Davis, her former mentor, and has been in the recording studio laying down tracks for a comeback album she and Davis hope to release this year.
-- Whitney Houston Pays Off Drug Gangsters, by Mike Parker, 4/5/09
The night of Donnell Porter's disappearance an unidentified caller contacted his mother. The man said they had Donnell. He told the family to wait for another call and warned them not to go to the police. At one o'clock in the morning he called again. This time the kidnappers made a ransom demand of half a million dollars. Richard, the older Porter brother, refused to pay. During yet another call, Rich bargained for a lower ransom and the demand was dropped to $350,000. The kidnappers told the family to go to the McDonald's at 125th Street and Broadway to get proof of life-proof that Donnell was in their possession and alive. The Porters sent a family friend to a bathroom in the rear of the McDonald's, as instructed. A coffee can was taped under a sink. Donnell's severed right index finger lay in the can. There was also a cassette tape. Donnell's voice was heard on the tape. "Mommy, they cutted my finger off," the boy cried. "Please help. I love you, Mommy."
The Porter family went to the police. Detectives in the Two-Six referred the case to Missing Persons who sent it on to the Major Case Squad. Inside One PP, the political implications of the case were immediately apparent in a city suffering tense race relations. If it emerged that an all-out effort had not been made to save the life of a twelve-year- old black child, there would be an outcry. The mayor, police commissioner, and the district attorney were notified of Donnell Porter's kidnapping. They decided to seek a ban on media coverage. Local newspapers and TV stations agreed not to report the snatch in order to avoid revealing the fact that the family had turned to the police. A team of over fifty detectives was assigned, including Oldham. The investigation needed to be led by an investigator with the ability to manage complexity and maintain secrecy.
The case was assigned to Detective Stephen Caracappa. The choice was an obvious one. Caracappa was older, in his late forties, a detective with a reputation for discretion and excellence. Straight-backed and thin, with a neatly trimmed mustache and dark eyes, he dressed in dark, tailored suits with a handkerchief in his breast pocket. The natty appearance was completed by a gold-nugget pinkie ring emblazoned with the NYPD detective shield as the setting for a multi carat diamond. Caracappa was quiet and watchful. He was called "the Prince of Darkness" by the other detectives in Major Case because of his grave, almost funereal presence. He was considered one of the best detectives in the city.
"Caracappa was the go-to guy in Major Case. He was a mafia specialist but he also had a breadth of experience and knowledge. Caracappa had contacts in federal, state, and local law enforcement. He had access to snitches of every kind, from crackheads to investment bankers. He kept a desk at the FBI office in Manhattan. When people were dying of heroin overdoses in Harlem, when John Gotti whacked 'Big Paul' Castellano, when a cop killed himself in his precinct house, the chiefs went to the commanding officer of Major Case and he then went to Caracappa. The younger guys in Major Case tried to emulate his style-aloof, street smart, inscrutable."
Organized crime was one of the most desirable assignments in the NYPD, attractive for the mystique and complexity of the investigations it sparked. Detective Caracappa concentrated on gathering intelligence on the mafia and was highly regarded in the world of organized crime investigations. But he could work virtually any kind of case. To succeed in Major Case, detectives had to be able to transcend stereotypes. In this, it was known in the squad room, Caracappa was a master. His ability to take on roles led him to be assigned unusual and difficult cases, such as the theft of a rare Baroque painting. The work, by Giambattista Zelotti, an Italian master of the sixteenth century, had been stolen from an investment banker's mansion on Long Island and was said to be for sale. Entitled The Mystic Hunt of the Unicorn/Annunciation to the Virgin, the painting depicted Gabriel blowing a small curved horn and the Virgin Mary holding a unicorn to pay tribute to the virtues of the mother of Christ. The allegorical combination of Mary and the unicorn, replete with phallic symbolism, made the piece unique. It was valued at a quarter of a million dollars at the time. The price being asked by the man in Chicago fencing it was $150,000.
Detectives Caracappa and Joe Keenan were given a twenty-minute lecture on Baroque allegorical Italian art by members of IFAR - International Fine Arts Recovery, a group of volunteer art historians from Ivy League schools who loved solving cases with cops. Playing the part of experts interested in purchasing black market art, Caracappa and Keenan lured the seller from Chicago to a suite in the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York. Caracappa and Keenan were wired with beeper kels -- devices designed to look like beepers and transmit voices -- and an agreed-upon code word was given to signal to detectives in an adjacent room that the deal was done. As soon as Caracappa and Keenan inspected the painting and recognized it as the Zelotti, they said the word and the perps were rushed and busted. The Zelotti was returned to its owner. The NYPD received a round of excellent publicity, and legend spread through the squad room and One PP of the cunning of Caracappa and Keenan.
"Caracappa was an actor. He transformed himself into an art expert, the kind who was looking to buy obscure art. A detective could study for weeks and learn everything about Zelotti, but he wouldn't last a minute if he couldn't play the part. Caracappa clearly knew his way around. Caracappa was self-possessed, controlled, but there was some street left in him. He spoke in grammatically correct sentences, when he spoke, which was rarely, but there was still the 'dis,' 'dems,' and 'dos' of his childhood on Staten Island. Fences dealing in stolen art were wily. They had to be convinced by Caracappa. It was a skill that couldn't be taught. He knew how to make people believe him. "
In the Porter kidnapping, Caracappa quickly took control of the investigation. Three detectives manned the "nest" -- the domicile of the victim. Caracappa and his partner Les Shanahan chose the nest as the place where the most information could be gleaned. The protocol called for a Kevlar ballistic blanket to be nailed over the inside of the front door in case the kidnappers raided the apartment. The kidnap kit included a double-barrel shotgun, a tape recorder, and a pen register. The phones in the Porter apartment were wired to record all incoming calls, and call waiting and call forwarding were disabled. The Porters were asked to surrender cell phones to ensure there were no communications with the kidnappers that the police didn't know about. A command post was established in headquarters. A synopsis of the kidnap was put up on the wall charting biographical information of the victim, known associates, previous arrests and convictions ("raps"), detectives assigned, along with photographs of the hostage and family. The operation ran 2417. The NYPD system for working kidnappings was low-tech but effective.
In a kidnapping, the nature of the ransom demand often betrayed the nature of the kidnapping, Oldham discovered. If the amount was small, a few hundred dollars, chances were it wasn't a kidnapping at all but a junkie pretending to be snatched trying to scam money from family or friends -- a surprisingly common occurrence, particularly for young female addicts. In some ethnic communities, kidnapping was used as a business tool to collect debts or recoup losses on deals gone bad. A traditional ransom kidnapping of a high-profile or wealthy person was rare. Under the circumstances, Donnell's kidnap looked drug-related. Rich Porter was unemployed and lived in public housing in a poor and dangerous part of the city, but he also drove a late-model BMW and traveled to Las Vegas frequently. It was obvious Donnell had not been snatched from the street randomly. The kidnappers thought the Porters could pay $350,000 for his return, and that meant there was drug money involved.
An operational name had to be decided upon so that detectives on the case could identify themselves on citywide radio. "Thunderbird" was the name given to the Porter case. No matter how complicated a kidnapping case became there were three key moments: the pertinent call, the money drop, and getting the victim back alive. Ideally, the victim would be recovered alive before the drop. After the drop, police were working on borrowed time. The kidnappers no longer had a motivation to keep the victim alive. They had the money. The only thing releasing a victim did was provide the cops with a live witness. The penalty for kidnapping and for murder were pretty much the same: twenty-five years to life. The kidnappers needed to make a business decision whether to release the hostage or kill him.
Over the next decade, Oldham would work dozens of kidnappings, but watching Caracappa on the first case made a deep impression. "Caracappa had an imperious quality that came across as self-assuredness. He wasn't a quiet guy in the sense of being shy or dumb or having nothing to say. He rarely spoke. You could spend a twelve-hour shift with him and not exchange a single word. He was the first person to arrive in the office every morning. He got in at five, before dawn. He had the opportunity to go over the previous day's reports before everyone else. They were called 'unusuals.' They were like the NYPD's daily newspaper. The unusuals recorded arrests, injured cops, robberies, murders. It was a way of keeping on top of crime in the city. Caracappa had the jump on everyone."
As a new member of Major Case, Oldham was assigned boilerplate detective work on the Porter case. He was sent to surveil the Porters' apartment building on 132nd Street. He sat in an unmarked van outside the nest -- the shifts were twelve hours on, twelve off - and watched and waited.
On the third day, Caracappa and the detectives working Thunderbird gathered around a table in the Major Case squad room to listen to the tape recording of Donnell pleading and weeping. There was no purpose in butchering the kid's finger, thought Oldham. It seemed more likely to be proof of death than proof of life. No kidnapper would want to sit around all day with a twelve-year-old crying in pain about his finger. "Caracappa played the tape and we all heard the boy weeping and terrified. It was awful. I looked at Caracappa and not a muscle in his face moved. As the tape ended, he smiled and turned and walked away from the table. He didn't say anything. Nothing about canvassing hospitals. Nothing about the urgency of the case. Nothing about how the kid might be killed at any time. It was a small moment but it struck me. As detectives, we had to dissociate ourselves from the victim. Cutting the boy's finger off was an audacious move. Reports from the nest were that the family had little affection for the detectives from Major Case. Caracappa seemed detached from the human component of the case. I didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. The tape rattled me. Usually investigations started after the crime was over. In murder cases, you go home at night and come back in the morning and the guy is still dead. In kidnappings the victim is always still out there waiting for someone to come and get him - if he is still alive."
Oldham lived in Harlem at the time, a few blocks from the Porter apartment and around the corner from the McDonald's where Donnell's finger had been found. He started to freelance the case off duty. He questioned the kids working the counter at McDonald's. He went to the snitches he had developed when he worked in Harlem and Washington Heights, probing into Rich Porter's crew on 132nd Street. Like the other detectives assigned to Thunderbird, Oldham assumed the older Porter knew more than he was willing to tell about who had snatched his brother. NYPD policy left the decision to pay or not pay the ransom in the hands of the family. Unknown to the police, Rich Porter was negotiating secretly with the kidnappers. Porter considered himself savvy and tough. Oldham followed Porter once when he left the nest but lost him in traffic at the entrance to the West Side Highway at 125th Street; Porter knew he was being tailed and shook him.
Oldham was conducting a shadow investigation, an attempt to retrace steps already taken to see if any stones had been left unturned. Ten days went by and there were no new leads, from the main investigation or from Oldham's. Every passing hour and day the chances of Donnell Porter's surviving grew smaller. The next communication from the kidnappers came on December 10. A boy playing in the street in the Bronx was given a note by a strange woman and told to deliver it to Donnell's aunt. The aunt lived in an apartment across the street. The stranger slipped the kid two dollars and the boy delivered the note without thinking to take notice of the woman's appearance. The note repeated the demand for money. It also said that Donnell needed medical attention. Oldham took this as a further signal the boy was going to die soon, probably painfully and awfully. After the note, there was only silence -- ominous silence -- as a blizzard blanketed the city and the Christmas season arrived.
That year the Major Case Squad holiday party was held at a restaurant called Two Toms on 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn. Situated in an Italian neighborhood near the Gowanus Canal, neighbors with two mob-frequented social clubs and the South Brooklyn Casket Company, whose motto read, "Experience a world of difference," Two Toms was popular with gangsters and off-duty detectives. It was a place known for the size of its portions and low prices, not the quality of the food. "I didn't want to go. 1wanted to keep working on the Porter kidnapping, but 1had no choice. The party was held during duty hours and attendance was not optional. When 1got there it occurred to me that this was the only time of year all the detectives in Major Case were together in one room. The detectives gathered in that room knew every trick in the book. They could get a baby out of a parked car on a hot summer day in under five seconds. They could make a rapist rat on himself by questioning his masculinity. They could run a racketeering case without leaving the office. The guys in that room would chase bad guys to the ends of the earth and never take a hard breath."
Oldham elbowed his way to the bar -- "the trough." Two detectives, Irish guys both with the last name of Henry, were giving a roast. They were known as the "two Henrys." As the new detective in Major Case, Oldham was the butt of their jokes. The two Henrys presented Oldham with a statuette of a looney bird on a tiny skating pond. "Skating" was the cop term for avoiding work; it was also the term for criminals getting away with crime. Ridicule was part of the hazing process. In truth, Oldham was already known as a worker.
"I looked around Two Toms and realized I was keeping company with the best. There were legends standing at the bar-detectives who worked the biggest cases in the country. There was Jimmy Graham, who weighed four hundred pounds. He was holding forth on how to bring a hijacked tractor trailer to a halt without firing a shot -- a feat of singular difficulty. He was the only one of us not wearing a suit because they didn't make suits in his size that he could afford. He wore blue jeans with elastic waistbands. He looked like a farmer who had wandered in from the tobacco patch. But he was one of the smartest and most capable detectives I ever met. Detective Gil Alba broke the Son of Sam case in the mid-seventies. A serial killer had terrorized an entire city by sending demented notes to the police after shooting his victims with a .44-caliber handgun -- until Alba tracked down David Berkowitz.
"In that company, Steve Caracappa was known to be a connoisseur of organized crime -- the master of its history, politics, and culture. Caracappa had an appreciation of the Byzantine. He understood plots and subplots and vengeance and betrayal and all the good things that go into a Shakespearean drama. Caracappa had a gift for making the connections. He understood the language, the meaningful silences, the shrugs and gestures. In organized crime things often weren't what they appeared to be."
The party was filled with veteran detectives -- men worn out by long hours and bad diets and too much alcohol. Caracappa looked nothing like a detective. He was dressed in a black suit, with a black tie with a pearl tie tack. He had a mantello draped over his shoulders -- a black silk cape with a drawstring tied in the front. Light on his feet, he possessed a certain kind of Fred Astaire-like elegance and could have passed for a suit salesman in an upscale haberdashery or a professional ballroom dancer. "He was a watcher, a noticer, smoking a cigarette and surveying the room. Our eyes met. He was like me in a way, always watching, always looking around. His face was expressionless, unless he was whispering and sharing a private joke with another detective. He was surrounded by the small circle of organized crime detectives -- Jack Hart, Les Shanahan, Chuck Siriano, Richie Puntillo, all excellent guys. They were their own exclusive subuniverse in Major Case, the detectives who knew the mob's secrets."
On January 4, Rich Porter's dead body was found near a horse stable in Orchard Beach in the Bronx. He had been shot once in the head and once in the chest. His wallet contained $2,239 in cash, ruling out robbery as the motive. In an attempt to raise the ransom money, Porter had met with another drug dealer who owed Porter hundreds of thousands of dollars. The dealer, a hard case known as Alpo, recognized the opportunity to erase the debt. Rather than repaying Porter, he murdered him.
After Rich Porter's death, day after day passed with no further developments. No word was heard from the kidnappers for nearly a month. The slim chance the boy would be recovered alive was evaporating. Operation Thunderbird was downsized. Caracappa and his partner were the only detectives working the kidnapping full-time. Oldham was reassigned to catch cases. Still new to Major Case, Oldham struggled to find his place. Within a week he was deluged with a pile of the least desirable cases; his supervisors considered it a rite of initiation to inundate a newcomer. In quick succession he was given an armored car theft, a burglary at the Izod Lacoste showroom, and a series of ATM heists by a gang of young Albanians using tow trucks to literally yank the machines from the walls of banks and tow them to a safe haven to be cracked. That year there was also a spate of pre-Christmas bank robberies in Manhattan. Bank robberies, in particular, were considered grunt work by Oldham.
"In some popular movies, bank robbers were portrayed as daring and romantic. But they are mostly crackheads, psychotics, rank amateurs. Bank tellers are trained to offer no resistance. The robbers walked in off the street and wrote a note on the back of a deposit slip -- they didn't even have their own pen and paper. They were often illiterate. They handed over notes to the teller saying 'I have a gub,' like the line from the Woody Allen movie Take the Money and Run. They had no guns -- they couldn't afford them. They left fingerprints all over the place. They were plainly recognizable on videotape. The local television stations reported a rash of bank robberies as though Bonnie and Clyde were tearing across New York City, but actually it was some guy having a crack attack going from bank to bank as if he were making withdrawals from his own accounts. There wasn't much to working those cases."
The real action in Major Case was taking place on the far side of the squad room, opposite Oldham's desk, in a small office that was kept locked. The room housed the Organized Crime Homicide Unit (OCHU), a secretive group dedicated to collecting intelligence on mafia murders. Oldham, like other detectives not assigned to the OCHU, was not permitted access to this room, which contained the most sensitive information held by the NYPD. Inside the OCHU room stood five filing cabinets, each dedicated to one of the five New York mafia families. A single desk faced the door. Large metal Rolodexes with OCHU contact numbers were kept on the desk; they were locked as well. The room was Spartan-no paper or mug shots were in sight, the walls were bare, nothing to give away the purpose of the office as the collection point for intelligence from the entire NYPD. The drawers and filing cabinets contained information on active cases and mob homicides under investigation -- locations, cars, perps, telephones. All were under lock and key. A phone was also locked in one of the drawers. It was what was known in law enforcement as a "hello phone" -- to be answered by saying "hello," not "Major Case" or "NYPD."
Detective Caracappa had been instrumental in forming the OCHU in the mid-eighties. The unit was comprised of five or six detectives and a sergeant. It was designed to gather and disseminate sophisticated information on mob murders. Members of OCHU were assigned to assist local precinct detectives saddled with organized crime murders. OCHU detectives each concentrated on one of the five families of New York -- Genovese, Gambino, Colombo, Bonanno, Luchese. They were regularly detailed to other agencies -- U.S. Attorney's Offices, the district attorney's offices, FBI, DEA, Joint Organized Crime Task Force. Productivity wasn't measured by arrests. What mattered was knowing the inside story.
"Caracappa and the other detectives in OCHU were experienced. They knew better than the mobsters themselves who attended whose mob weddings, dinners, and funerals. They kept scrapbooks on their assigned families, clipping and pasting newspaper stories and adding snapshots as though they were preserving the history of organized crime for future generations. Nearly all the detectives in OCHU were Italian. Most had grown up in the same neighborhoods as the mobsters in Brooklyn, Staten Island, Queens, and the Bronx. Detectives and mobsters often knew each other all their lives. They went to the same high schools, hung out in the same parks, chased the same girls. Some of the OCHU guys looked like mobsters once removed. Double-breasted suits, gold bracelets, street attitude. Understandings and boundaries and even mutual respect between certain wiseguys and the police made for a working relationship. Cops and mobsters came from working-class neighborhoods where there weren't many options in life. All it took was getting busted as a teenager out one night with your buddies, or falling in with the wrong crowd, and it could lead down the path to hooking up with a gang. A lot of gangsters had family who were cops and vice versa -- cousins, uncles, brothers. The choice for many Irish and Italian kids was the police department or organized crime."
On weekends and holidays, when the banks were closed and Oldham found himself alone in the office, he would borrow the keys to the OCHU room from the captain's desk drawer and pull old cases from the cabinets. "I came to New York to work on organized crime, not necessarily Italian or traditional OC, but sophisticated long-term cases. I hadn't gotten my chance yet. I was fascinated by the OCHU murder files. Detectives will tell you how much pleasure there is in going through a good murder file. They are written in a language the civilian reader wouldn't comprehend. It isn't technical, it is arcane. If you have worked cases, it is clear what the writer meant. 'The witness was offered a polygraph and declined' is meant to transmit that the guy they questioned is a fucking liar. 'The prisoner was subdued without unnecessary force' means they beat the hell out of the suspect. 'The facts were insufficient to support the evidence of guilt' means there is no case, but the suspect named did it. Closing a case under the designation 'all investigative leads exhausted' means it is the detective who is exhausted by the case, not the leads.
"The OCHU files had a narrative thread. The murders had more life to them than the usual homicides. Reports from outside agencies were included analyzing the particular mob family involved and what preceded the murder-rivalries, motives, intrigue. Speculation was common. The detectives reported what their snitches said. Many times detectives would know who did it but couldn't prove it. Sometimes you could see a rough sense of justice. How organized crime and law enforcement got tangled up in each other's affairs and interacted. Like the murder of Everett Hatcher. I knew the case. Every cop and federal agent in the city knew the case."
Just as criminals impersonated cops on the streets of New York, it was common for cops and federal agents to impersonate gangsters. Undercover work was one of the more effective tools available, as an FBI agent posing as a small-time hood named Donnie Brasco had proved in the early eighties by nearly destroying the Bonanno crime family. The success of undercovers made mobsters paranoid about law enforcement penetrating their organizations. Performances, Oldham knew, had to be perfect if an agent or detective was to survive. Hatcher was a DEA agent with seventeen years' experience who had taken an assignment as an undercover in a mafia-run cocaine-dealing operation. Hatcher had managed to infiltrate the crew of "Jerry" Chilli, a member of the Bonanno family. Late one night in February 1989, Hatcher and a team of five agents backing him up were on their way to buy drugs from a small-time gangster named Costabile "Gus" Farace at a diner on Staten Island. In a remote corner of the island, past the vast landfill called Fresh Kills, Hatcher lost radio contact. Panic ensued. The backup agents finally found Hatcher in his car, stopped on an overpass on a desolate stretch of highway. Hatcher had been shot four times through the driver-side window, once in the head.
The murder immediately brought national attention. Hatcher was the first DEA agent murdered in New York since the early seventies. President George H. W. Bush had just instituted a mandatory death penalty for the murder of federal agents. A reward of $250,000 was announced, at the time one of the largest ever offered. More than thirty DEA agents were put on the case, as well as scores of detectives from the NYPD. On the streets, law enforcement of every stripe came down hard on the mafia -- not just Bonannos but all five families. Through snitches and informants, it was learned that Farace was the killer and that he had acted without sanction from his bosses. Soon Farace was being hunted by both law enforcement and the mafia. It took a while, but in November 1989, Farace was found dead in a car in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. He was unrecognizable from his mug shot. He had grown a beard and dyed his hair red. He had lost weight. Farace had been shot nine times. "There were no suspects in the Farace case. It wasn't clear why Farace killed Hatcher-if Hatcher's cover had been blown or if there was some other reason. But the mob didn't want their operations interrupted by constant surveillance and attention from law enforcement. Farace was killing business so he had to be killed. Everyone in law enforcement in the city knew we forced a result. And frankly, no one was unhappy. Gus Farace got what he deserved. There wasn't going to be a huge multi agency manhunt for the killer. Whoever did him did us a favor. The Hatcher case was closed."
Oldham understood that the most important truths in a homicide file were often not in the file. Reading between the lines was crucial to advanced detective work. Oldham found a copy of the OCHU handbook for organized crime homicides on the captain's bookshelf. Detective Caracappa had compiled the handbook. Oldham took a copy home to continue his education. The NYPD shield graced the cover of the 175- page compendium of all mafia murders known to the Major Case Squad. Typed in uppercase and written in terse police prose, the book contained the blunt tales of the lives and deaths of hundreds of mob murder investigations, arranged chronologically and divided into years and families. All known mob murders from the 1980s were included.
The book began on January 5, 1980, with the murder of a Genovese associate named Norman Brownstein in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The entry for Gus Farace used law enforcement shorthand for time and place of occurrence in 1989: "AT T/P/O THE VICTIM WAS SHOT TO DEATH WHILE SITTING IN A PARKED CAR ALONG WITH JOSEPH SCLAFANI WHO WAS WOUNDED. REMARKS: THE VICTIM WAS ASSOCIATED WITH BONANNO SOLDIER 'JERRY' CHILLI, AND AT THE TIME OF HIS DEATH WAS WANTED FOR THE HOMICIDE OF SPECIAL AGENT EVERETT HATCHER OF THE DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENCY."
"Caracappa had literally written 'the book' on organized crime murders in New York. If a wiseguy was killed in Queens or the Bronx and the homicide detective who caught the case wanted to know how his victim fit in the mafia, he would look in Caracappa's book for connections. It wasn't a narrative in the conventional sense. There was an index in the front and then a brief synopsis of each murder. It was a reference work. It contained intimate knowledge of the mafia and how it functioned. In organized crime killings, motives were often obscure. Wiseguys routinely lured members of their own families to their deaths. The victim might be told he was going to kill another mobster or to a sit-down or a card game. 'Copping a sneak,' it was called. Plots were hatched over years, or in a moment of anger. Business reasons were disguised as personal grudges, and personal grudges were dressed up as matters of honor. The manner of death was meant as a message in many cases. A bird stuck in a dead man's mouth signified he was a stool pigeon. Body parts were sent to family members. The victim might be left in the street, for all to see, or chopped up and thrown into a landfill and the dead man listed forever as a 'missing person.'''
In January 1989, Oldham was in the office early one morning, going through rolls of stop-action videotape from a bank robbery, when Caracappa and a couple of other detectives came into the squad room. Caracappa was talking about the Porter kidnapping. He was planning a strategy for continuing the investigation: sending undercovers uptown to buy from Rich Porter's crew. Oldham was surprised the investigation was still in Major Case. Everyone knew Donnell Porter had to be dead. It was certain the kidnappers weren't getting any money from Richard Porter and there was no other way the Porters could pay. Oldham assumed the case had been reclassified as a murder and assigned to Bronx homicide.
"I was new to Major Case and low in the pecking order. Caracappa had made it plain he wasn't interested in hearing from me. I said to Caracappa's partner, Les Shanahan, that the kid was probably dead. I offered to search for the boy's body. It seemed to me that the body had likely been dumped near where his brother's body was found. Orchard Beach in the Bronx was deserted in winter. Caracappa looked at me and shook his head, like I was one sorry sack of shit. Shanahan said they were going to keep the case a kidnapping. On one level, I understood how the thinking went. The family lived in the ghetto, Rich Porter was a drug dealer, so fuck 'em. As lead detective you develop a proprietary claim to your cases. You don't want anyone touching your investigation. If Donnell's body was recovered, the case would be a homicide and Caracappa and Shanahan would no longer be the lead detectives. They would be assisting Bronx homicide detectives. As a kidnapping it stayed in the Major Case Squad. Caracappa and Shanahan kept control. If collars were going to be made, they had decided that they were the ones who were going to make them."
In late January, a homeless man out collecting cans found Donnell Porter's body stuffed inside two black garbage bags less than a mile from where his brother had been dumped. The boy had been dead for nearly a month. A search of the area would have uncovered his body weeks earlier. "I didn't feel any sense of vindication. The boy was dead. We had failed. The Preacher wasn't arrested until seven years later. The case was made by Detective Vinny Flynn, who was in a unit called Redrum that concentrated on drug murders."
Facing the death penalty, the Preacher made a deal with prosecutors to testify against the other members of his gang, including Cuff. The case became famous in black gangster culture. Rappers rapped about it and a movie was made called Preacher: The Black Hand of Death. The movie's poster proclaimed, "They terrorized Harlem and used it as their playground." But the story of Donnell Porter wasn't in the film -- the brutality was too much even for an ultraviolent movie. The Preacher did tell federal prosecutors about his role in the killing. Despite his confession, the Preacher was never convicted of the murder of Donnell Porter and no one was ever charged with his murder. The federal government wanted to use the Preacher as a witness.
"My belief is that prosecutors realized they couldn't put him on the stand if it was brought out in court that he was responsible for kidnapping, butchering, and murdering a twelve-year-old boy. Such a man could not be rehabilitated before a jury. The jury wouldn't care how true his testimony was if they knew about Donnell Porter. But the Preacher didn't lie about the murder. He told the government all of the grim details, they just chose not to charge him. It was one of the deals with the devil the government makes all the time, in the interest of the greater good. It was one of the paradoxes of law enforcement. The most despicable killers were often the most sagacious tellers."
Oldham had wanted to work on organized crime cases when he arrived at Major Case, but it was clear he wouldn't get the chance, at least not while Caracappa was around. Caracappa was a powerful influence inside Major Case. He was a leading candidate to be promoted to first-grade detective. First grade would be acknowledgment that Caracappa was the best of the best. He would receive lieutenant's pay. Only two hundred of the four thousand detectives in the police department made first grade. Caracappa's reputation remained very high in Major Case, and throughout the NYPD. It was a view Oldham did not share. "I didn't trust Caracappa. There was something wrong with him, something cold and calculating and evasive. I didn't consider it paranoia, at least not any more than usual for me. I didn't like him, and I assumed the feeling was mutual. Caracappa didn't want anyone in the OCHU room he didn't know and have the measure of. He wanted to control OCHU. He didn't want anyone looking at him -- and he surely knew I was watching."