By Paul LaRosa

By Paul LaRosa

By Paul LaRosa


This Yankee/Red Sox rivalry has really gotten out of hand. I mean, I know it's intense but this past weekend, Ivonne Hernandez, a woman raised in the Bronx who calls herself a Yankee fan, allegedly killed a Red Sox fan by running him over with her car in a parking lot in Nashua, New Hampshire.

Hernandez, who also happens to be a big Derek Jeter fan, was so incensed that some Red Sox fans were chanting "Yankees suck" that she gunned the engine of her Dodge Intrepid and slammed into poor Matthew Beaudoin, a 29-year-old, who was trying to protect a woman from getting hit. Beaudoin was taken off life support the following day.

It's a horrible story, especially when you see the poor face of Beaudoin's mom that ran in the NY Post. A NY Post reporter caught up to her while she was kissing photos of her dead son. "I am just so glad we have all these pictures," she told the Post. "Those eyes. Those beautiful eyes."

Beaudoin's parents want Hernandez to be jailed forever because of the deliberate act and who can blame them? Hernandez, by the way, was also charged with DWI which probably accounts for the tragedy a lot more than her alleged love of the Bronx bombers.

By Paul LaRosa

As part of National Crime Victims' Week, I thought I'd post this email I got the other day from a mother mourning her daughter's murder and the reality that no one has ever been arrested, never mind convicted. Cecilia Tagliaferri's daughter Leah was murdered six years ago on April 6th and she recently sent me this email:


Dear Mr. LaRosa,

I found your site by accident, I was googling strangled and Yonkers and Ramos and you popped up.

Why google those three words? I was searching to see if there was anything new on Nusinaida Ramos who had been strangled to death in her apartment in Yonkers in 1997. There was no forced entry and she was found fully clothed on the dining room floor. If there had been a sexual assault it wasn't mentioned in the newspaper. Her murder is unsolved.

Why the interest in Mrs. Ramos? Because my daughter Leah (photo) was strangled in Woodside in 2002. There was no forced entry and she was found fully clothed on the bathroom floor. There had been no sexual assault. Her murder is also unsolved.

I'm struck by the similarities.

Are murders that are covered extensively in the newspapers more likely to be solved? Does public pressure make a difference, do the police work harder because the spotlight is on them, or are some murders just not solvable?

Here are some more that seem to be cold cases:

-- Laura Gossmann was found strangled in a vacant lot in Woodside, Queens in December of 1991. There had been no sexual assault.

-- Chantel Petro-Nixon was found strangled and stuffed in a plastic bag on the street in Brooklyn in June of 2006. There had been no sexual assault.

-- Stacey Inman was found in the Bronx in November of 2006 also stuffed in a plastic bag. The cause of death was not given.

-- Sarah Fox was strangled and left in the woods in Manhattan in May of 2004. She was found naked.

-- Priscella Pimentel was found stabbed to death in the bathtub in her apartment in Richmond Hill, Queens in November of 2006. Sexual assault wasn't mentioned.

-- Martha Vega of Ridgewood, Queens was stabbed and beaten to death in September of 2007. It was reported that there was no robbery and no sexual assault.

-- Christine Diefenbach, 14 years old, was found beaten and stomped to death near the railroad tracks in Richmond Hill, Queens in February of 1988.

-- Shevon Jones was found in a fire in Brooklyn in October of 2007, tied up, and either stabbed or strangled.


Only the murder of Sarah Fox was widely covered by the press. I read about Christine Diefenbach in the book "The Restless Sleep" by Stacy Horn. The remaining murders were reported as small stories except for Leah's which was not reported until two months after the fact, and only in Newsday. Six lines of type for Leah.

Did the police suppress the fact of Leah's murder on the day her body was discovered, or did the newspapers think it was too much trouble to go to Queens to report it? I don't know, but I think the if it had been publicized it might have been solved. Maybe there were people in Woodside who saw something or heard something pertaining to the crime and who would have come forward with information. But seeing or hearing something suspicious doesn't mean anything if there's nothing to connect it to.

How many more murders are not publicized? How do newspapers get their information about crimes? Is there a police blotter that is open to all, and is it accurate? Do not the police and the newspapers have an obligation to make major crimes public knowledge? How can we protect ourselves if we don't have this information?

As to the question of why some murders get big coverage and others hardly any, or none, it's pretty evident to me that only Manhattan victims make front page news. Compare the coverage of the murder of Romona Moore against Imette St. Guillen; both were horrific and happened about the same time, but only Imette made the national news.

For the families of victims - National Victims' Rights Week is coming up and on April 18, 2008 at 10:00 AM there will be a commemoration at the Queens Criminal Court House. The telephone number is 718-286-6818.

Yours truly,Cecilia Tagliaferri

After posting Cecilia's letter on my blog, I got another email highlighting what National Crime Victims' Week is all about. We in the media often get criticized for over-publicizing certain crimes and while that's true, it's important (at least for my own sanity) to remember that for every crime that gets too much attention, there are ten that need attention. We can't highlight every one but we do give people a voice, people who seek us out. Here's that second email:



Thanks for printing the plea from a mother, you give the victims a voice.

National Crime Victims' Rights week(NCRVW) offers a chance to look beyond the headlines-to show that crime affects not only victims but everyone. The 2008 NCVRW theme " Justice for victims, Justice for all" suggests that anyone can become a victim of crime, every citizen has a powerful stake in victims' rights.

Failure to honor those rights tarnishes our national ideal of Justice for all. The human impact of crime is the real story. When plea deals are made what happens to the families denied justice.

When families of a homicide victim are not seen as the victims of crime they truly are, how does that affect our community?What happens when light sentences for murder are imposed such as in the recent cases of Murderers Christopher Bayer and John White, both of whom took another life and were sentenced to minimal sentences?

What if it were your family members life that was taken would you feel that there was justice for all?? Is justice only given to the victim when the defendant doesn't have a high powered attorney?? What about all the unsolved homicides and all the families who await justice? Is there really justice for all or only for the high profile victims and for defendants with high paid attorneys..??

What about all the cases that linger on due to continual adjournments that deny families that right to a speedy trial, interupting crime victims' lives jeopardizing their recovery. I think a lot of people think justice is about retribution. I believe justice is really about being able to go to sleep at night, injustice to victims weakens public safety.

Victims want offenders held accountable for their crimes.

April 13-19th is National crime victim's week, a time to improve our community's response to victims,and a time to honor those who serve victims well. Victims may need compensation for their losses, a chance to be heard in court, truth in media that does not re-victimize families, fair sentences, less plea deals at the expense of the victim's families and neighbors who understand and acknowledge that anyone can become a victim, crimes can happen to anyone. Communities that support justice for victims invest in achieving justice for all.

Donna Kukura (sister of Brian K. Boothe- unsolved murder 12/25/2002)

***************************************

On a side note, I wanted to alert you all that my new book "Death of a Dream" about Catherine Woods, a young woman who was murdered and then became the fodder of tabloid writers, is now available at bookstores and online. Also you may download the first chapter free right now by clicking on this link. Thanks.

Here are just some of the great advance reviews:

“La Rosa and Moriarty deliver a compelling account of [Catherine's] horrifying murder and the subsequent investigation and trial. Their version of events allows readers to draw their own conclusions as to whether justice was served.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Dreams often do die hard—but few as brutally as those of Catherine Woods.
DEATH OF A DREAM is a haunting tale of murder, obsessive love, and betrayal—and a chilling good read.” —Linda Fairstein, former prosecutor and best-selling author of Killer Heat

As the new year began, I had this brainstorm that I would try to record every murder in NYC that appears in the city's three daily newspapers for all of 2008. Why? I was curious as to who was being killed and where the victims were being killed, for what reasons, etc. etc. Instead of doing this at the end of the year, I decided it would be unique to try to record all the murders as they occurred and to keep a running monthly tally to come to some basic conclusions. I'm still learning as I go but here's the first month's report in which 36 New Yorkers fell victim to murder. (To follow this daily experiment, please check out my web site "The Murder Book 2008."

I calculated that figure after closely reading the three city daily newspapers every day and cataloguing each reported murder. I decided to break down the statistics by various categories but my overall finding – based on the placement of news stories and follow-ups – is that none of murders captured the city’s attention as some infamous murders have in the past.

The biggest stories involving death – not necessarily murder -- this month were that of actor Heath Ledger and the “dead man rolling” caper. Ledger’s death made news because he was famous while the tale of two Hell’s Kitchen friends rolling a dead third friend to a check-cashing outlet to make a payday made news because it was, on many levels, so absurd.

The only murder to make Page One was the hit & run death of Florence Cioffi, a 59-year-old white woman, who was killed by a Mercedes SUV allegedly driven by Wall Street Executive George Anderson. Often the murders were reported in small briefs far back in the news ‘hole.’

That brings us to some statistics. Ms. Cioffi was one of only four women murdered in January. Two others – Galbane Linkouke and Maribel Hernandez – allegedly were killed by their boyfriends while the fourth, Helen Abbot, a 69-year-old black woman, was sexually assaulted and strangled in her East Harlem apartment. No arrest has been made in Ms. Abbot’s murder.

Obviously, that means that 32 of the murder victims were men.

Breaking down the figures first by race: 18 of the victims were of unknown ethnicity or race (I only included the race if I was absolutely certain.); 12 victims were black; 5 were Hispanic and 1 was white.

Where the murders occurred: 11 were killed in the Bronx; 9 in Queens; 9 in Manhattan; 6 in Brooklyn, and 1 in Staten Island.

Age: 15 of the departed were in their 20s;10 were in their 30s; 3 were teenagers; 2 were in their 40s; 2 were in their 50s; 1 was in her 60s; 1 male was 80; 2 were of unknown age.

Method of death: 18 were shot. (2 men were killed by police in apparently justified homicides but are included here); 10 were stabbed; 4 people were beaten; 2 were vehicular homicides;1 was by an unknown method; 1 – a woman – was shot and stabbed.

By Paul LaRosa

Sometimes it's interesting to return to court after a case is over and done with just to see the final paperwork in a killer's file. I found myself in Oakland yesterday, and since the case I was on broke for the day at 12:30 p.m., I headed up to Napa to revisit the court file of Eric Copple, the killer in my latest book "Nightmare in Napa."

It was a gold mine of information but my favorite item was a letter filed by Copple's defense team detailing "the quantity and nature of chemical substances that Eric was ingesting at or around the time of the offense." So the following, according to Copple's defense lawyers, is a pretty complete list of what Copple was hopped up on when he killed Leslie Mazzara and Adriane Insogna.

Copple says he used drugs and alcohol to self-medicate the pain he felt from depression and says, on the day of the killings, he started drinking early in the day. After all, he was going out to a small party that night with his fiance and some friends.

On such a day, here's what Copple would consume:

-- Twenty beers. Usually microbrews such as Sam Adams but he'd turn to Coors Light "if money was tight." Also, his lawyers noted, "at the party he drank a large quantity of wine." Copple himself says he blacked out before he went to the party.

-- One 12-cup pot of coffee plus a six-shot Espresso Macchiato from Starbucks.

-- Two to three energy drinks. These came in 16-ounce cans and his favorites included those with names like Lost, Rocket Fuel, Monster and Rock Star.

-- Over the counter ginseng supplements from Seven-11. Typically, he take 2,000 mg. "once to twice a day." But perhaps, his lawyers noted, he was not using ginseng that day. Thank God!

-- A cocktail of Watkins brand supplements including an energy enhancer, something for brain function, men's health formula tablets, bone health, an immune boost and a multivitamin.

Wow!!! This guy's system must have been going haywire the day he murdered those two women. There was no listing for what he ate that day but one can easily see how he put his own body chemistry completely out of whack. It's a wonder he didn't run onto a nearby highway and race some cars.

This is only one of the fascinating tidbits in his file. I'm going to post more on my blog as the week progresses.

A couple of weeks ago, Dr. Charles Friedgood, perhaps better known as the oldest inmate in the New York State penal system, celebrated (?) his 89th birthday behind bars. The State Parole board refused to even give him a birthday present, rejecting his bid for freedom for the fifth time. The refusal came, even though he has terminal cancer and wears a colostomy bag.

What makes Friedgood so bad and why is he still incarcerated? Well, there is the little matter of him killing his invalid wife, the mother of his six children, back in 1975 when he was found guilty of injecting her with a lethal dose of painkiller. His wife was an invalid at the time.

His story is that she was in a lot of pain and, well, he was sick and tired of hearing her complain. As he recently told Sam Roberts of the New York Times, “She was suffering, always complaining that she couldn’t play golf like she used to, and she was lame on one side – one arm and one leg and she became a heavy drinker and was always complaining of pain and that was a sad situation.”

So sad that Friedgood decided she needed a really strong dose of painkillers. He still insists he only meant to quiet her down and give her peace but he wound up killing her by accident. He admitted to the Times that maybe, just maybe, he wanted to kill her subconsciously.

The Times interview appeared before the most recent Parole Board hearing and when the commissioners got a load of Friedgood’s quotes, they sent his ass back to prison. No surprise there really.

The question I have for all of you is whether he should still be incarcerated. Hasn’t he paid his debt to society by now? He’s reconciled with all his children and served more than 25 years of his 25 to life sentence. Who is benefiting by having an 89-year-old remain in jail? Certainly not taxpayers who have no choice but to pay for his room, board and medical expenses.

I’m inclined to be a softy and say let him out but the floor is open for disagreement.

O Holy Cow is the title of a book published in 1993 by Tom Peyer & Hart Seely and what it is, is brilliant, at least to me.