The Halloween crime that has NYC talking

Edie Magnus Correspondent • Profile

NEW YORK CITY - Halloween night in New York was mostly notable for what didn’t happen: It didn’t get unseasonably cold. The city’s annual parade up Sixth Avenue went off without a hitch, and the masses of costumed revelers were kept in good spirits. 

No one knew, until the holiday was over, what was happening just a few blocks away—what a night of true and unfathomable horror it had been for a woman living here in the trendy Chelsea section of New York.  

On the surface, it was an unlikely and puzzling encounter which police said involved two successful people from New York’s glamorous fashion world.  But investigators would soon discover a disturbing crime that might be the real-life acting out of a failed playwright— which would launch one of this city’s most intense manhunts in years.

The woman, 34 years old and single, lived alone on the fourth floor of an apartment building on West 24^th street.  Around 6 p.m., amid the Halloween revelry, there was a report of fire in her building in one of the stairwells.

Angelo Barela, neighbor: It was a thick, gray smoke.

Barela says he began frantically alerting fellow tenants to flee the building, including the woman living in apartment 4J. 

Barela: I knocked on her door screaming, “You have to evacuate. There’s a fire in the building.” 

But he says he got no response. And police say there was a terrible reason why: Just before Barela, someone else had come knocking— a man wearing a firefighter’s jacket and pants.

New York Post criminal justice editor Murray Weiss: When she opened the door he quickly pushed his way in. 

The New York Post’s criminal justice editor Murray Weiss has been tracking the police investigation.  

Edie Magnus, Dateline correspondent: When she answered her door, did he look like a fireman?

Weiss: He was dressed in fire department gear. He had every reason to believe that he was a fireman. 

Magnus: He looked authentic?

Weiss: Absolutely authentic.

It was a cruel, sick ruse: Police say the man was not a firefighter, but an assailant who’d set the fire and then used that as a pretext to force his way inside her home.

Weiss: He poured Chloroform on a cloth, put it over her face, and overpowered her. She was rendered pretty much unconscious immediately.

Within minutes, there were more than two dozen real firefighters on the scene.  But Weiss says they found only a couple of small blazes and a lot of smoke. The firefighters figured it was all just a holiday prank and, with no reports of injuries, returned to their firehouses. But inside apartment “4J” police say a bizarre ordeal was carried out over a long, terrible night.

Weiss: Over the next 13 hours he tied her up, tied her to a bed and basically tormented and tortured her.

Magnus: Was she raped?

Weiss: No, she was not raped. She was just physically manhandled, if you will.

More terrifying, perhaps, than the physical assault itself was the fact that, according to police, the attacker clearly knew who she was, had been studying her for some time, and had amassed intimate knowledge about her life.

Weiss: He knew details of where she worked and people she knew. If you can imagine being the victim of a crime where you’re tied up and you’re helpless.  As awful as that is, now somebody is tormenting you by indicating they know things about you.

Magnus: Very personal things?

Weiss: Extremely personal.

Personal—and devastating—and he seemed to take pleasure that night in reminding her  about it.  Reporter Vanessa Grigoriadis wrote a cover story on the case for New York Magazine.

Vanessa Grigoriadis, New York Magazine writer: And this was about making her remember a scene and a time that had been deeply, deeply embarrassing to her.  

It went on and on.  Hour after hour.  He kept the woman drugged the whole, but she told police she thought he videotaped his attack on her.  She also reportedly remembered hearing the sound of a zipper, and believes the man may have stuffed his fake firefighter gear, the latex gloves he’d worn, and his trash— all the evidence of his having been there— into a duffel bag. 

At around 6 a.m. the next morning the man simply left, and the victim managed to free herself, and call 911 for help.

When news of the attack got out, New Yorkers were shocked to learn it wasn’t just a random act.

Weiss: In the case of going through an elaborate ruse to attack them, and then hold them captive it takes on the air of like a carefully crafted script, that’s extraordinarily unusual. 

Unusual, but perhaps not unsolvable: The investigators’ belief that the perpetrator had clearly planned this assault in advance and had not chosen his victim randomly gave them a small bit of hope they could crack the case.

Weiss: As cold as it sounds, the fact that she said that he tormented her verbally and knew things about her, that was actually good for them. They liked hearing that, because that meant the universe of suspects was somebody that had some dealings with her. 

Police released a sketch of the alleged attacker and soon after got a big break.  And the idea that the attack may have been scripted, step-by-step, would figure even larger once police learned who they were looking for.

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