I was relaxing on the beach in North Carolina, when suddenly my phone rang and jolted me out of my dream. Before I answered the phone I looked at my watch laying next to the bed, it read 1:30 am. Being a New York City detective, I was used to getting these calls at all hours. When I finally picked up the phone, Captain Windell said that there had been a mass laughtering in a high priced house on the East side. These houses were typically owned by doctors and lawyers who had their noses so high in the air that if it rained they would drown to death. Well back to the neighborhood, the only kind of deaths I have ever encountered in this neighborhood were suicides. I guess the people got tired of living the high life and they wanted it all to end.
The captain told me that this wasn’t a suicide so I should come prepared to not get any sleep for a day or two. When I arrived at the crime scene I could hardly get to the door due to all of the media. I knew right then that it wasn’t going to be a pretty site. When I finally got inside I saw a trail of blood leading from one room to another and then up the steps. I found the captain and had her fill me in. She said that there were fourteen dead. She said the house was owned by a doctor who was well known throughout New York City, that’s why all of the media was there. The dead were found by the doctors nephew who arrived to cut the doctors grass. He had come into the house to get the key to the garage. When the police got there they found that all of the tables were turned over and there was a white powder on the carpet next to all of the glass tables, and what appeared to be joints all over the floor. They also said that there was a strange smell roaming the basement air, and when the coroner arrived he confirmed that the smell wasn’t coming from the dead bodies. He also confirmed after thoroughly looking over the bodies that the murders took place at approximately midnight. The captain finally said,“It’s all up to you.” That’s when I took control of the investigation.
The first order I made was to rope off all of the land surrounding the house. I gave the order, “If anybody crosses that line that is not involved in the investigation arrest them. I also want nothing said to the press. Now lets get to work.” First I selected men to chalk the positions that the dead were laying in. I then had the coroner remove the bodies, after I took anything and everything that might be of some use off of them. I then looked through black books I found on the bodies. In all of the books, I found a lot of the same phone numbers. The majority of these phone numbers were for banks. That was strange, but at the time I didn’t think it had any connection with the murders. As I walked around the house trying to find the basement door, I noticed that the house seemed to be getting hotter and hotter. I ordered somebody to find the thermostat and turn the air conditioner on, being as it was August and all. When somebody found the thermostat they yelled out that the heat was turned up as high as it would go. This made me suspicious because I have never heard of anybody having their heat on in August, when the average temperature is 92 degrees.
When I finally found the basement door I proceeded down the steps. When I got to the last step the odor hit me, it was a smell I had never smelled before. It smelled horrible and as I would breath in the air, the smell would get into my mouth, and it almost tasted like what I would imagine sewage to taste like. As I walked around the basement, I noticed that there were no doors anywhere leading to other rooms. The only room in the basement was about the size of half of the main floor of the house. This made me wonder if there was a secret room in the basement, so I called the courthouse to request that the blueprints for the house be sent directly over to the crime scene. While I was waiting on the blueprints I looked around the basement. When I walked up to the bar, that was in a corner, I saw a coffee mug in the sink that appeared to have black and green smudges on it. So I walked around the bar, to the sink, and picked the mug up with my clean gloves that I had just put on. I examined the mug closely to determine what the black and green stuff was. I determined that they were smudges, and not a design on the cup. As I moved the cup around in my hand I noticed that the smudges smeared. This told me that the smudges were made recently.
When the blueprints arrived, an officer brought them down to me in the basement immediately. I then rolled them out on a table and quickly looked at the basement layout. As soon as I glanced at the plans I knew there had to be another room somewhere in this basement. After my partner Kristy and I looked at the plans closely, we determined that there were more rooms on all sides of the room we were in. We immediately decided to have the provided police assistance take crow bars and remove the paneling from all of the walls. The first piece that was taken down was directly behind the bar. My partner and I first had to move a cabinet out of the way so the officers could get to the paneling. After we moved the cabinet we thought that this was the wrong place, because the paneling didn’t look like it had ever been moved since it had been put up.
When the first piece was taken down it looked like there was a little bit of light shining out from behind the second piece. This made us anxious to get the paneling off really fast, so we urged Officer Nelson to keep going as fast as he could. When he tried to pry the paneling off he had trouble, it seemed to be up really well. So Kristy, I, and some officer named Bill, that I had never seen before, rushed to get the paneling off. When all of us pulled as hard as we could, the paneling, along with a large piece of the ceiling and wall fell to the floor. When all of the dust cleared we saw that there was a secret room, and it had some kind of machine in the largest part of it. The secret room extended all around the outside of the other room and it looked like it was about three times the size of the main room. We then realized that there was a door at the far end of the room, but before I could open it Kristy yelled at me. She told me to hurry up and get to the other side of the room, so I did so as fast as I could. When I got there she was looking at the end of the machine I hadn’t seen yet. She told me it was a printing press. I asked what they were printing with it, and she replied, “money”. I immediately realized that the green and black smudges on the coffee mug were ink.
When we found a box full of twenty dollar bills that had dried and been cut we examined them closely. I immediately noticed at the same time as Kristy, that the bills had serial numbers running through them. I then remarked, “I thought only the government knew how to put the serial numbers in money.” I then proceeded back to the door that I had started to enter earlier. After I opened the door I noticed something moving around in the room. Slowly and carefully, I shut the door so that it wouldn’t make any noise. Then I went and gathered up all of the officers that were in the house. While I was waiting for them to gather around, I called the police station and I had them bring gas masks and two tear gas grenades to the house. They were there in five minutes and everybody was suited up with weapons loaded in another minute, and we were ready to go in. I first pulled the pin on the two grenades, threw them in, waited five seconds, then sent the men in. When we got in, we ended up finding three people downstairs. I split the men up and sent a group up each of the two sets of stairs. Kristy and I then decided that we were no longer in the same house, instead we were in the neighboring house. When the two groups got up the stairs they found three people and saw another one that ran out the back door. As soon as he got outside we heard somebody yell “d*m*”. So two officers went outside and they saw a guy and a lady laying on the concrete walkway. They immediately handcuffed these two people and brought them inside with the other people we had captured. The paddy wagon arrived and took the captives down to the police station and booked them. In the basement of the second house we found another printing press that was used to print ten dollar bills.
When we got back over to the basement of the original house, Kristy found Bill, the officer I had never seen before, was carrying the box of twenty dollar bills up the steps. I told Kristy to follow him, but not to let him know she was. I then rushed back over to the other house and outside, making sure I beat him there. When I saw him walk out the front door, I walked up to him and asked him if he was taking the evidence to the police station to be tagged. He replied with a hesitation, “Yap.” I then thanked him for being on top of things and I let him go. He got in a unmarked car, which looked just like the rest of the unmarked cars, except it didn’t have city license plate tags on it. Instead it had regular tags. I then saw that Kristy was getting in her car that was also unmarked except it had city tags on the rear of it. She followed him and about five minutes later she radioed back that she needed backup at 1746 Dick Avenue.
As myself and seven other police cars arrived at the Dick Avenue address, she told us that he took the box of money into the house and hadn’t left since. I then went to the rear of my squad car and took a tear gas grenade from the trunk. We then threw the tear gas grenade into the house and then we followed in with gas masks on. We found him inside trying to hide the money. We arrested him and one of the officers took him to the police station. After the tear gas cleared we searched the house. We found marijuana, cocaine, and some self prescribed drugs. We also found some jeans, socks, a shirt, and a pair of gloves that were all covered in blood. Another officer also noticed that the shower had blood in it.
Bill was charged with assisting in the counterfeiting operation, posing as a police officer, having possession of drugs in his home, and the murder of fourteen people. Due to the overwhelming evidence, it was an open and shut case. The jury quickly returned with a guilty verdict, and Bill was sentenced to be executed in a gas chamber for fourteen counts of first degree murder, posing as a police officer, counterfeiting, and the possession of illegal drugs.
The rest of the people arrested were sentenced to thirty years in prison for counterfeiting and they would not be eligible for parole until they had served twenty-three years in prison. The case was finished and all of the evidence had been collected within 48 hours of the murder.
Kristy Romer and I, James Brown, were given the key to the City of New York for our work above and beyond the call of duty on this case.