Hellman Peter - Chief! -Classic Cases from the Files of the Chief of Detectives

POINT JUDITH PRESS

CHIEF!

CLASSIC CASES FROM THE FILES OF THE CHIEF OF DETECTIVES

Copyright 1974, 2011 by Albert A. Seedman and Peter Hellman

Publisher

Point Judith Press

www.chiefseedman.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The views in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contact: www.chiefseedman.com

ISBN: 978-0-9834793-0-7

To my colleagues
in the
New York City Police Department,
the finest police officers
in the world

While all the incidents in this book are true, many of the names have been changed to protect innocent witnesses or suspects whose cases have not yet come to trial.

I want to extend thanks to Lts. Bernard Jacobs, Joe White; Sgts. John Weber, George Howard, Joe McAndrews; Capt. Angelo Galante; Insps. Eddie Jenkins, Nick NiCastro; Dets. Joe Gibney, Sam Parola, Pete Perotta, Eddie Lambert, Marty Flanagan, John Tartaglia, Tony Cordero, Sandy Tice, Clarence Crabb and Joe Gregorowicz; and especially Arthur Fields.

As for the many members of the Detective Bureau whose story this is as well as mine, no words of gratitude could possibly be adequate.

ALBERT A. SEEDMAN

New York, 1974

By the nature of his work, and even more by personal inclination, Albert Seedman was never one to readily reveal information about his job as Chief of Detectives of the New York City Police Department. That went double when the probing came from a journalist like me. From the first hour I met him in his cavernous office at the very grand palace that once was police headquarters on Centre Street, I knew that, as an interviewee, he would be a tough nut to crack. If I posed a question that delved where he didnt want to go, which was often, the first response Id get was a puff of cigar smoke in the face.

Eventually, after writing a cover story about Seedman in The New York Times Magazine , followed by two years of collaborating with him on this book, I was sure, maybe even cocksure, that Id coaxed out of him most of the key information about his exceptionally eventful 30-year career in the police department. That included understanding the reason why, on Friday, April 28, 1972, he abruptly resigned as Chief of Detectives. That was two days before his appearance on the cover of the Times magazine, habitual cigar clenched between his teeth at a jaunty angle.

Seedman hadnt lied to me about why he quit. What hed done was to share only the periphery of his motivation, not its core. When Seedman finally revealed what was really behind his resignation, almost forty years after Chief! was first published, I asked him why he had waited so long.

He delivered the answer with emotion cracking his 92 year-old voice: I loved the police department so much that I couldnt drag it through the dirt by saying what those bastards did.

What Seedman chose not to expose then was the recent and shameful conduct of the highest echelons of the department in a case centered on the murder of one of its own. By his own choice, it was his last case, and the only one which he had been forbidden to solve.

Some days before the magazine was due out, Seedman called me one evening and asked, When is that story going to be printed?

Itll be out next Sunday, April 30.

That wasnt my question. When does it get printed .

On the Tuesday night before it comes out.

Seedman growled and clicked off. On Wednesday morning after the press run, the most famous chief of detectives in NYPD history announced he was retiring. That Friday was his last day at work. On Monday, he started a new job as vice president for security at a department store chain. The Times profile became outdated news, and the editors were miffed. For me, the outcome was positive: Seedman was now free to co-write his memoirs, which he could not have done if hed stayed on the job, and we quickly agreed to do it together. Negotiating with him over a book contract turned out to be a cinch compared to trying to extract information from him about the inner workings of his criminal investigations.

Seedmans resignation, as he put it to me back then, was the result of a disagreement over the future of the Detective Bureau between him and Patrick V. Murphy, then New Yorks police commissioner. Murphy had once been a patrolman but never a detective, and he did not buy into the glamour of the gold shield. His view was that The most important person in a police department is the general patrol officer . Detectives, by the nature of their work, were more independent and secretive than patrol officers. Murphy was by nature an administrator rather than a crime solver. It bothered him that detectives did not always keep to regular shifts. If they were working on a pressing case, the clock, and even the calendar, didnt matter. What mattered was getting the case solved. How do we know where your people are, Al? Murphy had once asked Seedman.

I know where they are.

That answer was deeply unsatisfying to the commissioner. He wanted the detective bureau reorganized, so that there would be more oversight, and Seedman had done that for him. But Murphy had in mind a more fundamental change. He wanted to elevate the stature of patrolmen, while dialing back the elitist image of detectives. That meant reconfiguring the standard patrolmans dream of one day being awarded a gold shield. Catch a bank robber, or save a citizen, and you could be spot-promoted to third grade detective. Above that, there was second and, top rung of the ladder, first grade detective to aspire to. The detective who had caught one of the citys most notorious killers, Son of Sam David Berkowitz, for example, was immediately promoted to first grade.

Murphy had indicated to Seedman that he wanted to eliminate detective grades. He also pondered removing detectives from their independent command chain and requiring them to answer to uniformed patrol officers. Seedman had done as much reorganizing as he felt was constructive. He did not intend to oversee the dismantling of the largest investigatory force in the country, second to the FBI.

Seedman was the most recognizable chief that the detective bureau had ever known. So long as he remained, the bureau would retain its mystique. Once Murphy saw my picture on the cover of the Times magazine, I couldnt have stayed on as chief, Seedman told me back then. That seemed like a reasonable explanation of why he decided to resign pre-emptively. With a high-paying, security directors job awaiting him, hed have a soft landing.

Arthur Fields, the publisher of our book, died on the day it went to press. Even without him, the book did well, briefly becoming a best seller. And then it went out of print for decades. Thanks to a program of the Authors Guild called Backinprint, along with the dawn of ebooks, our book got a new life. And that put me back in touch with Seedman after years of being out of contact. I wasnt sure if his unlisted number in Florida, where he had retired, was still the same, or even if he was still alive. But after one ring, I heard his familiar low and gravelly voice: Hell-o, with the accent on the first syllable. Detail oriented always, he told me that he had taken care to renew the books copyright, allowing us to go forward.