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Washington Heights, New York CityAustin Francis MuldoonPublished online: 16 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: Austin Francis Muldoon (2004) Washington Heights, New York City, Global Crime, 6:2, 222-229, DOI:10.1080/17440570500096809

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DISPATCHES

Central to the editorial philosophy of Global Crime is a belief that just as academic

research has much to offer the world of law enforcement and policy making, so too arethe experiences and insights of practitioners invaluable aids to scholarship. Thejournal will therefore regularly run shorter pieces by practitioners of every type –

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Washington Heights, New York CityAustin Francis Muldoon III

Austin Francis Muldoon III joined the NYPD in 1979 and after working uniform and

plain-clothes street level enforcement was assigned to Narcotics as an investigator in 1985.From January 1988 until his retirement from Homicide in 1999 he worked as a detective

in Upper Manhattan which included a time when the crack epidemic resulted in recordhomicide rates. Since 1999 M. Muldoon has been with the Special Commissioner of

Investigation in NYC where he is working with the FBI and the US Attorney’s Officeinvestigating corruption and bid rigging in the Department of Education.

Juan and Warren were just teenagers in October of 1988, when they left their Connecticut

hometown to buy drugs in an area of Upper Manhattan known as Washington Heights.Although the boys saw themselves as savvy players with the brains and the balls needed to

turn meagre investments into big, fat drug profits, the truth was that they barely rankedabove the customers that they sold to. That both boys would end the night clinging to lifeafter having been shot in the head was probably something that they had never considered.

ISSN 1744-0572 (print)/ISSN 1744-0580 (online) q 2004 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd

DOI: 10.1080/17440570500096809

Global Crime

Vol. 6, No. 2, May 2004, pp. 222–229

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By the late eighties, Washington Heights was in the grip of a drug problem ofepidemic proportions. The streets resembled Moroccan bazaars with drug peddlers

tugging at shirtsleeves and coattails while filling the air with promises of the best drugsat the best prices. And bargains did abound provided you weren’t some pimply-faced

white boy from New Jersey who might pay top dollar for a gram of baby powderpackaged in tin foil. Of those, the smart ones licked their wounds while the less gifted

returned like irate customers in a department store. If those who returned were luckythey got a lesson on what the barrel of a gun looks like close up while the less fortunate

ended up like the young construction worker from Rhode Island whose last wordswere, “Holy shit, he shot me!”

As an NYPD detective working “The Heights”, I spent most of my time mopping up

the mess created by the drug trade. The morning that Juan and Warren became part ofthat mess I was trying to find a parking spot close enough to the precinct so that my

car wouldn’t be vandalized. That’s when I saw the Crime Scene station wagon parkedon the sidewalk in front of the station house and knew that someone was dead or on

their way. I also knew that whatever had occurred I was the “catching” detective whowould take over the investigation as soon as I walked in the door.

Once I got to the squad room the night watch detectives who had started theinvestigation provided me with information about two males shot, both of whom were“likely”, as in likely to die. (A fresh homicide guaranteed the assigned detective four days

“off the chart”, that is four days without catching new cases. But a victim that was“likely” inevitably led to a heated debate about being off the chart that would start with

an analysis of the victim’s “likeliness” and might end in name calling and bruisedfeelings before a senior detective would pass judgment.) I was also informed that the

victims had been found in a first floor hallway with their hands tied behind their backsjust feet from an open apartment. Fearing that other victims may be dead or dying inside

patrol officers had entered the apartment and, not surprisingly, found it to be a drugspot that had drapes made of the same material that used to tie the victims’ hands. The

cops also found a parking ticket inside and had transmitted the plate number over theair. As a result the car was found and its driver taken to the squad room.

A detective was speaking the driver, a heavyset Hispanic man in his twenties. I could

see from the “who me?” look on his face that he wasn’t cooperating, and I could alsosee that this guy was no shooter. As in any war, the drug war consists of combat troops

and support troops, and my portly friend looked to be on permanent KP duty.The crime scene had been typical in that it had little to offer. A few rounds had been

recovered and some blood stains swabbed and photographed. (The fact that there areTV series today based on the contributions of the Crime Scene Unit amazes me.)

Nonetheless, a personal visit was important to get an orientation that photographs andnotes and sketches cannot provide.

The old five-story walk-up sat in the heart of the most violent drug area of the

precinct with nearly half of its twenty apartments associated with the drug trade inone way or another. Inside, crime scene tape still lay around, as did the torn

wrappings of first aid items left behind by EMS. Along with the smeared blood

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stains on the floor these were grim reminders of what had happened here. I made amental note that this area of the hallway was visible from the street. Just beyond the

stairs was an unlocked tattered metal door leading to the alley and any number ofother private places. Why hadn’t the shooter taken the victims into the alley and

out of direct view of the street? And why burn an ideally located drug spot bybringing the investigation literally to its doorstep? Maybe the victims had not gone

gently into that good night and had made a desperate last stand here, or maybethe shooter was just an impulsive moron who was probably now in trouble with the

owner of this spot.The two spent .25 calibre shell casings which had been recovered in the hallway

accounted for each wound. But just to complicate things two live .22 calibre rounds

were also recovered. I supposed that the .22 might have been the first weapon of choicebut that it had malfunctioned, and in an attempt to clear it, the shooter had ejected the

rounds or perhaps somebody else tried to shoot one of the victims. It was also entirelypossible that the .22 rounds were unrelated to this shooting. Ballistic evidence in this

neighbourhood was easier to find than shark’s teeth at the shore.I knew I was lucky to have a living link to the drug spot in the driver but when

I returned to the station house to find that a witness had come forward, I was ready tobuy a lottery ticket. The man was an African-American drug addict in his mid-twentieswho said that he had steered the victims to the apartment where the trouble had

started. After he waived this bait I expected he would open negotiations. People fromthese streets consider information to be a commodity that is not to be giving away

freely. However, he didn’t negotiate- he just talked and talked and talked. He explainedthat he had dealt with the victims before and that they were all right. He had first taken

them to a spot with which he was comfortable, but that spot was “out”. So rather thanwait for them to “re-up”, Juan insisted they go elsewhere. Elsewhere turned out to be

the location of a dealer that the steerer knew as Chocolate (whose name rhymed withlatte). Chocolate and another man escorted the three of them inside an apartment

where they started to frisk the boys. Juan announced that his friend was “strapped” butwhen neither dealer reacted to this news, Juan repeated it in Spanish. That got thedealers’ attention in a big way. In what can only be described as an ill-conceived show

of good faith the boys surrendered their weapon to the dealers.The steerer said that a woman came into the apartment, but left moments later with

Chocolate’s co-worker. All the while, Juan had continued to make the case that he andWarren were no threat and to help prove it he produced a wad of cash to show that he

intended to buy, not rob. If I had ever wondered what was more stupid thanvoluntarily turning your weapon over to a psychotic drug dealer, I now had my

answer. The woman and man returned with several other men, one of whom wasopenly carrying a 9 mm. automatic. As things heated up it, exactly what Chocolatewanted became less clear. The steerer thought that Juan was giving all of the right

answers, and even the other men, who were dealers who had been ripped off recently,said they had never seen the two before. But for reasons known only to himself,

Chocolate had the boys hands bound behind their backs. The steerer, fearing that his

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fate was tied to that of the boys, argued vehemently on their behalf until Chocolatestuck a gun in his face and demanded he shut up. Because he knew the point of no

return when he saw it, the steerer took the first opportunity to flee the apartment.He told me that earlier this morning he had heard that both boys had been shot, and

that he felt that left him with a choice: stay quiet or stay alive. The steerer furtherobliged us when he identified the driver who had been brought in as one of the men

that the woman had brought back to Chocolate’s drug spot.Now that we were certain that the driver had been there, we continued to question him.

After nearly fifteen hours the driver’s brother came to the precinct believing that the driverhad been charged in a double murder. Without enlightening the brother that Juan andWarren were still among the living, I allowed the two to talk. It took some time, but the

brother finally persuaded the driver to talk. The driver claimed to have been outsidethe building when Chocolate came out and said that he had two rip off guys and that he

“knew what he had to do.” The driver said that he had warned Chocolate not to doanything stupid, but that Chocolate had repeated that he “knew what he had to do.”

Chocolate returned to the apartment and emerged minutes later struggling with a guymatching Juan’s description. The driver said that he yelled, “Police!” but Chocolate

realized that it was a bluff and after struggling with the guy for a moment more, shot him.The driver said that he started to run when he heard a second shot.

The driver’s statement was all well and good but I also knew that there would be two

problems. One was the credibility problem he would have at trial. If he continued toinsist he was never in the apartment, the steerer would contradict him. The second

problem was more immediate and came to pass just as I thought it would. When hereturned to the street, it didn’t take long for somebody knowledgeable in the ways of

the law to explain to him that he couldn’t have been charged with two murders,especially when the victims had yet to die. As a result, the driver’s ill will towards me

was such that over the next couple of days several people I interviewed spoke of it.As the investigation proceeded, rumours swirled as to who, beside Chocolate, may have

been involved. I always made it my practice to leave things as muddled as possible on thestreet. In this case, the payoff came when a hardened long-time player in the drug tradeheard he was about to be arrested and came forward to clear his name. He admitted to

having been in the building at the time of the shooting, but only because he had gone tovisit a friend. Yes, he did see Chocolate in the first floor hallway holding two young men at

gun point, and yes, he did hear two shots fired as he left the building, but that was it andnow he wanted out. He wanted his name out of the investigation. I was able to oblige him,

as his name had never been part of the investigation.What this witness had told me simply by cooperating with the investigation was that

Chocolate had crossed the line. That he had gone too far even by drug dealers’standards. In that case, Chocolate could find himself out off the support networkordinarily afforded an employee who had acted in the best interests of the business.

While this would leave him more vulnerable, it also increased the likelihood of hisfleeing to the sanctuary of the Dominican Republic, which, at that time, did not have

an extradition agreement with the United States.

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Warren died just over a week after being shot. That allowed the coroner to digout the round that the surgeons had been afraid to touch. Juan, on the other hand,

continued to recover and was now at the point where he could tolerate a shortinterview. Juan started out by making the unlikely claim that he had already known

Chocolate by name after having purchased drugs from him on at least five prioroccasions. If this were true, I had no doubt that he would have used it in his

defence when trying to convince Chocolate that his intentions were legitimate.In any event, neither Juan nor the steerer had said this, so I tended to disbelieve it.

Juan did know Chocolate’s name, but he may have simply heard it before beingshot. Not knowing the extent of Juan’s brain damage I proceeded cautiously. If Juanwas out of touch with reality I didn’t want to hand a defence attorney a statement

that he could use to beat our case to death. Thankfully, Juan essentiallycorroborated the steerer’s statement. He also provided insight into his own psyche

when he spoke of his misplaced self-confidence, and how it led him to believe that,despite all appearances to the contrary, he had some sort of control over the

situation with Chocolate. He sheepishly admitted that right up to the moment thathe had been marched out into the hallway, he did not believe that Chocolate was

going to shoot him. In fact, he challenged Chocolate by saying, “If you’re going toshoot me you may as well shoot me here.” When the bullet from Chocolate’s gunroared into his skull, no one was more surprised than he was. Juan found himself

sprawled on the hallway floor while Warren vainly struggled before he too was shot.Despite being grievously injured, he was vividly aware of the sound of Warren

crying. Then he spoke of the added indignity of having a crackhead strip thejewellery from his body as he lay helpless.

That these investigations don’t exist in a vacuum was made painfully clear less thanone week later when, for the first time in the history of the New York City Police

Department, two police officers were killed in the same night in two separate incidents.The first officer to die was a narcotics’ undercover killed in a buy gone bad. Just

hours later, and just blocks north of where the first officer died, a uniformed officerfrom my own precinct was shot to death when he and his partner encountered severalmen leaving the scene of a drug robbery they had just committed.

The drug trade in Washington Heights came to a screeching halt as every effort wasmade to bring the killers of these two officers to justice. Streets that ordinarily bustled

with illicit activity became ghost towns while all through the day and night entireblocks sounded as if they were artillery ranges as one drug apartment door after

another was “boomed” by teams of officers hungry for information.It was in this climate that drug dealers lined up to offer their cooperation in order to

get these crimes solved and to get back to business as usual. One dealer was viewingmug shots when he mentioned offhandedly, “This is the guy who shot those two kids acouple of weeks back.” And just like that Chocolate had a face.

Juan never hesitated as he picked Chocolate out of a photo array (“It’s him. I’d betmy left nut on it.”). But despite having a photo of him, the pedigree information

Chocolate had provided at the time of his only arrest proved to be false. With all leads

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exhausted, a ‘wanted card’ was submitted. This would, through a fingerprint match,alert me if Chocolate were arrested again.

The more I learned about Chocolate, the more determined I was to put him behindbars. I had found that he was suspected in a Bronx homicide and for shooting out a

man’s eye over a trivial dispute. I was told that he had been a boxer noted for hisferocity and in keeping with that had, upon first arriving in the Heights, knocked out

the biggest person he could find. The victim of this unprovoked attack was a genialcrackhead who had never harmed anyone save himself.

The little information we had placed Chocolate in the Dominican Republic but eventhat couldn’t be verified. Dominican Republic or not, Washington Heights was wherethe money was and that was why I was confident he would be back. In the meantime,

my attention turned to fresh homicides as well as the twenty or so other activeinvestigations that I carried on any given day.

Two years passed before I learned that Chocolate had been arrested several daysearlier on a gun possession charge. It was my bad luck that the Assistant District

Attorney on call was indifferent to taking any action until morning. By that timeChocolate had made bail and was back in the wind. As I stood in front of the Bronx

House of Detention studying Chocolate’s release papers, inmates added insult toinjury by showering me with disparaging remarks from the open windows. Thosepapers contained enough accurate information by which, through a combination of

luck and hard work, we were able to locate a car that Chocolate was said to be driving.Incredibly, our supervisor only allowed us two hours of overtime before he ordered the

surveillance be called off. We never located that car again.It didn’t take long before Chocolate was back in hot water. One evening while

arguing with a patron in a bar, Chocolate decided that gunplay was warranted. Butshooting anything at less than point blank range was apparently beyond Chocolate’s

capabilities as he shot one unintended target in the foot and seriously woundedanother with a gunshot wound to the chest. When the bartender learned that

Chocolate had designs on killing him to insure his silence, he contacted the police andhelped set up Chocolate’s capture.

With Chocolate back in custody we set about finding our witnesses. But in time one

comes to know that any investigation, and especially drug-related homicides, exists ina fluid state. A cooperative witness today does not assure a cooperative witness

tomorrow. And an available witness today does not guarantee that tomorrow thatperson will not have left the country, or died, or fried enough brain cells that a tomato

plant would be a better witness.We found that only the steerer and Juan were available to view the line-up. In the

end the steerer identified Chocolate, but Juan did not. There would be no arrest. ThatChocolate was sentenced to six years for the shooting in the bar was some consolationbut not enough.

As the years passed my continuing efforts to put a solid case together againstChocolate always came up short. Then, just months before Chocolate’s sentence was

up a pair of aggressive Assistant District Attorney’s were given the job of prosecuting

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“cold case” homicides. That is old homicides that had been unsuccessfully investigatedbut which were resurrected due to new developments or simply renewed interest.

Both ADA’s had reputations for trying less than airtight cases provided they wereconvinced of the subject’s guilt. Chocolate fit the bill to a tee.

Years back, I had requested the assistance of the Manhattan District Attorney’sHomicide Unit on the case and though nothing had come of it, I had appreciated their

efforts. Now the cold case prosecutor asked for any paper work the unit might have.We were shocked to discover that they had located the female from the apartment and

had, inexplicably, never notified me or acted on her information themselves. At thesame time we found Juan was doing time in federal prison on charges seeminglyimpossible for someone with his permanent physical disabilities to commit. Worse yet,

we learned that he was suffering from psychiatric problems that made it difficult tocommunicate with him.

In person, Juan did appear to be in a fog. But that fog lifted just long enough for himto make it clear that he was not going to testify. We appealed to his sense of loyalty to

Warren, and then to his sense of justice, and finally to the baser desire for revenge, butnone of these arguments swayed him. The veteran prosecutor calmly accepted the

situation by explaining that “there’s always a wrinkle” and then went aboutrecalculating his strategy. In the meantime, I began a conversation with Juan about theintricate prison tattoos that now covered much of his body. Knowing full well what

these tattoos represented, I turned our conversation to prison gangs. After a time, Juanadmitted to having joined a notorious gang that, while offering him protection, also

had subjected him to a very strict code of conduct that forbids any cooperation withthe police. Like so many others before him Juan found his gang membership to be a

double-edged sword. When we were able to assure his safety and a transfer, Juanseemed relieved and anxious to help prosecute the case. There was no getting around

his inability to identify Chocolate years earlier, but he could still lay the foundationthat the prosecution would build upon.

It was only with great difficulty that we were also able to locate the driver, who,amazingly, had turned his life around. He had married, started a family, and wasworking as a mechanic. Though he reluctantly agreed to testify we found that old

habits die hard, because he still refused to put himself inside the apartment that night.The steerer, who had continued down the slippery slope of drug abuse and ever

more serious criminal activity, successfully avoided us while the drug player who hadseen Chocolate with the victims in the hallway steadfastly refused to testify.

An unexpected ace-in-the-hole was the owner of the drug spot who was now acooperating witness for the federal government. The owner was a surprisingly soft-

spoken, intelligent man who, immediately after the shootings, had had a conversationwith Chocolate during which Chocolate spoke frankly about shooting the two boys.

But most of our efforts were spent on trying to locate the woman who had been in

the apartment that night. As I combed every conceivable pit that a crackhead wouldeventually tumble into, I was informed that her boyfriend had decapitated her and

dumped her body in a secluded wooded area. This led to a search of the area but no

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body. I was also told that she was alive but that years of drug abuse had caused her tobackslide so far down the evolutionary chain that she now walked on all fours. This not

so unlikely scenario tempered my enthusiasm, but the search continued anyway.Finally, just days before Chocolate’s trial was set to begin, I found that she had recently

taken an arrest on drug possession charges. This bode well for her being alive, but notfor her mental health. Using the information from her arrest we contacted her mother

and shortly thereafter, I received a phone call from the woman saying that she wasanxious to meet with me. A place and time were agreed upon and to my utter surprise,

the person who arrived had, despite hard times, preserved a sensitivity that mostpeople never know.

Her recall of that night was as clear as it was disturbing. She told us how Chocolate

and another dealer had taken her to the apartment under the pretence of giving her ataste of some especially good cocaine. But once inside Chocolate threw her on the

couch, placed a gun to her head and demanded to know where the drugs were.The woman had no idea what Chocolate was talking about and said so. This only

infuriated Chocolate and, knowing his reputation for sadistic violence, she was notnaı̈ve enough to ask that her life be spared. Instead she begged for a quick death.

Chocolate was just about to oblige her with a shot to the head when the other dealershoved his arm to the side and told him to let the woman go. Reluctantly, Chocolateagreed, but before she could make her way out the apartment Chocolate snuck up

behind her and smashed her in the hip with a baseball bat. She described how the forceof the blow caused her to spin and when she did she saw a female friend tied to a chair

in a back room. (She later learned that Chocolate was in the process of carving thefriend up with a broken piece of glass because she too didn’t know anything about the

missing drugs.) Although our witness had made it outside just as Juan, Warren, andthe steerer arrived, Chocolate demanded that she come back to translate. She wept as

she described the boys being moved to the hallway where she pleaded with Chocolatenot to kill them. And she told us of her faint hope that she had somehow reached the

heart of Chocolate because he dropped his gun to his side and smiled at her. Her senseof relief prevented her from immediately processing Chocolate’s next move as heraised his gun and shot Juan in the head. She then recalled covering her eyes and

screaming.I asked her if she knew why Chocolate had shot the boys. She said that she had

learned that a kilo of cocaine in Chocolate’s care had been stolen and that he felt that ifhe could put the blame on the boys and then kill them, he would be off the hook.

When the owner of the drug spot took the stand and refused to testify, the woman’stestimony became even more critical. In the end, her account along with Juan’s

testimony (which the judge described as the most riveting she had ever heard) led to aguilty verdict and a sentence that required Chocolate serve thirty seven and a half yearsbefore being eligible for parole.

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