A common thread

Keith Morrison Correspondent • Profile

BUFFALO, N.Y. - He seems uncomfortable, somehow, this burly Buffalo cop in the heart of wintry Manhattan.

He's still not used to being the center of positive attention.

And yet, way up high in a New York City hotel conference room, the sleek crowd, the lawyers, the judges are here to honor him for his work with the Buffalo Police Cold Case Unit. The unit solved a string of rapes and murders that stretched back more than 20 years and, in the process, freed an innocent man from prison.

But Dennis Delano is in no mood to spout the usual banalities of a grateful cop clutching his big award.

Dennis Delano: I'm speaking to you as lawyers. I'm just an average person, average intelligence. I just happen to be a person with a lot of experience in police work.

And this gathering of the cream of New York law can hardly mistake the tone of an angry man.

Dennis Delano: Surely people with law degrees have to be able to address and see that there's a flaw in the system. Something has to be done with the system. I don't know what. I just know something has be changed.

Yes, and right here, even as he is speaking, he knows his own future as a cop is very bleak indeed.

It’s a very dangerous moment in the remarkable story you're about to hear.

Here is where it began, months earlier; a simple service in a modest church. Buffalo, N.Y.

Detective Dennis Delano was at his usual Sunday post - a member of the church band.

It was just a fluke, really, when Trish Radzikowski learned that the man helping with the service...was actually a detective, a specialist in cold cases.

Trish Radzikowski: I just thought I gotta talk to this guy because he's the one that can look at my sister's case.

Her sister's case? Well, that would be the dreadful business of what happened to Joan Giambra 13 years ago.

Trish Radzikowski: Sometimes I still find myself not totally, you know, absorbed it after all these years.

Joan Giambra was 42-years-old the night her attacker raped her, choked the life out of her, left her naked and dead in the living room.

A monstrous crime. Moreso because whoever did it also assaulted Joan's 11-year-old daughter.

And when the police came they found that little girl also naked and sprawled, unconscious, across her mother's dead body.

The girl, Kathleen, was breathing but in a catatonic state when her brother Don Cormier saw the ambulance take her away.

Don was Joan's eldest son; he lived just around the corner. He'd been at his mother's house just the night before.

Don Cormier: I got out of work and I stopped over before I went home. and, normal. Kathy was awake.

Kathy: I was.

Don Cormier: And I'm trying to get her to go to bed. And my mom on the phone, talking to one of the siblings, as usual. And it was nothing out of the ordinary.

And the next morning...

Don Cormier: One of my mom's friends came and knocked on my door and told me that there was a problem.

Keith Morrison: A problem.

Don Cormier: I ran down to my mom's house. And that's when I saw Kathy on a gurney, and my mom was covered up. And I just couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Difficult even now for Don to remember. Just as, for Kathleen, the lack of memory is tormenting.

Kathy: It ate me up inside for 15 years almost that I can't remember. Trying to remember every day. And there's a reason why I don't remember maybe it was too hard

But all the initial horror -- and it did grip the city for a time -- seemed gradually to fade away as interest shifted elsewhere. And the investigation of Joan's fate just died.

Trish Radzikowski: Our family had to pretty much make our own closure for this. We just have to, you know, count on, you know, God to provide the justice, you know, that we may never see.

And so, when she learned that man in her parish was a detective, her deeply religious heart skipped a beat.

Trish Radzikowski: I was meant to be there. I believe that all that was not an accident.

Detective Delano, it should be said, did not gush enthusiasm. He has heard far too many entreaties that wound up going nowhere. Still, she was a church member.

Dennis Delano: I pulled the file, located the file, starting re-investigating it. My squad did.

Sam Giambra: At first, it looked, frankly, obvious. One more case among many of an angry husband, a woman who wanted to leave.

Dennis Delano:: She was going to serve divorce papers on her husband a week prior to her death. After reading the file, the most likely suspect seemed to be her husband.

Sam Giambra was not charged, though.

There wasn't enough evidence for that back then. But, there is one investigative tool that's come a long way since 1993, and of course that would be DNA.

Dennis Delano: The clippings from the fingernails indicate that there was a struggle, and that she had scratched her attacker.

The latest DNA technology could identify even a few stray skin cells left under those fingernails by the assailant.

Now they could know for certain if the killer was Joan's husband. If the DNA was his, he must have been the murderer.

Dennis Delano: When we went looking for the husband to talk to him, we found out that he was deceased.

Sam Giambra, it turned out, committed suicide in 2000.

Dead end again? Not quite. At the time of the murder, the coroner had preserved a crucial piece of information -- a sample of Sam's DNA. What if that new DNA technology was applied to the old sample?

Dennis Delano: We tried to match his DNA with this DNA found at the Giambra crime scene. And it turned out that it wasn't a match.

So the murderer wasn't the husband. Couldn't have been. Now the mystery was irresistible. Delano and his team went to work in earnest.

Dennis Delano: My partners and I, began taking DNA samples from everybody that we could find that was associated with that case. Everything was negative.

But DNA of course is not the only thing a good investigator has at his or her disposal. Often it's simple chatter that will break a case, remembered stories.

Like the story another of Joan Giambra's daughters told about a local bartender, who, in the weeks after Joan left her husband, took her stepping out on a date or two.

Dennis Delano: That he had called her a few times after her mother's death, asking her how she was. And he felt bad because he used to go out with her mother, and all of this stuff.

A bartender? Who was this man? Maybe -- if he was still feeling bad all these years -- he might help solve the crime. Of course, as it would turn out, there was much more to it than just a courtesy call.

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