Authors: Randy Jurgensen
To my surprise, I actually got a call from Muldoon, congratulating me on my son's arrival. I said thanks and was about to end the call when he blurted out, “By the way, we seem to have lost Foster; he kind of took off on us.”
I don't know why, but I didn't jump out of my seat. Maybe it was because I'd finally been able to detach myself from the job. In those five days alone with Lynn and Randy, I, for the first time, felt like a responsible husband and father, and it felt really good. I almost laughed at Muldoon's veiled, and sudden, request for help. All I could say was, “I don't blame him. Matter of fact, I'm doing the same thing...hiding from you people.”
I hung up. I didn't want to get sucked back into his vacuum. I knew what he was doing, eliciting emotions from me to get me back in the field to find Foster. This was their fuckup and I wanted nothing to do with it.
Lynn was privy to the fact the Foster had bolted, and she had more than time invested in this case. It was a Sunday afternoon when, in front of both her parents, she asked if I knew where Foster was. I told her I did, and she said, “Well, why not go get him and end this the right way.”
She was right. We were so close to ending this case. If something happened to Foster, it would have been all for naught. I kissed her and left.
I drove to Loretta's apartment, knocked on the door, and told Foster I was back. He smiled, packed his bag, and we drove back to the safe house. It was as simple as that. Foster hadn't taken off to make an escape. I think he just didn't feel safe unless he was with me. Foster knew first-hand how much I had devoted to the case. I had as much to lose as he did. He knew the job was coming after me, and he knew I didn't care. It was all about uncovering the truth, and we had developed a profoundly unique blood bond because of all that.
Harmon, of course, was elated when we both returned. He likewise had put a lot of time into the case. With both Foster and I
missing in action
, he saw the case evaporating. Harmon wrote a blistering letter to the police department, specifically Muldoon, about how they mishandled the star witness of a murdered cop, and how they stonewalled the investigation. He too was standing up against the almighty NYPD.
In my absence, there were a number of messages left for me from Joe Pistone. After contacting him, I was told we had to meet immediately inside the lobby bar of the Saint George Hotel.
A public meet?
This told me I was no longer a secret within the halls of the FBI, and it didn't make me feel any less uncomfortable.
At the bar Joe, handed me a small pad and pen, instructing me to write five names on the paper. “These guys are not to be trusted, and they're cops, on your job.”
If what Pistone had given me was credible information, which is what he had always passed on to me, then a lot of the case's leaks could now be explained. I hoped this one time Joe's information was off the mark, though I wasn't very optimistic. I called the personnel section at headquarters, fed the names on the list to a cop at the other end, and in a matter of seconds, he delivered the chilling results to me. All of the men were in fact police officers of the NYPD, and they all worked at the Internal Affairs Division.
The people working in IAD had to be totally trusted, because they had access to the personnel files of every cop and boss on the job. Whether they were deep undercovers or high-ranking chiefs, no one's personnel record was inaccessible to IAD. The reasoning behind this was to keep everyone honest, knowing there was an omnipresent force out in the field, at all times, monitoring their every move. It was very
KGB.
The problem with one group of men—most of whom were angry bitter turncoats—having that kind of sensitive information was that they could easily have been bought off, or for their own twisted personal beliefs, given the information away. It was no secret that some of the cops in IAD had been caught dirty, and after securing deals with prosecutors and the job to save their pensions and skins, they'd rolled on other cops. The only place they could work after that, without being billy clubbed to death was IAD, where they could spend the rest of their ruined careers and mingle with other men from the same filthy gene pool.
I was furious when I got this information. You didn't need Sherlock Holmes to consider a connection with the BLA. How was it that Twyman
Meyers came into possession of my mother's address? How did they acquire Foster and San-San's identities? The DD5 Josephs was in possession of at the mosque? The safe house location? The only way we were going to find out how far the cancer had spread was to call these men in, and I couldn't wait to interview them.
We got each cops' picture from the photo ID section. Now we had faces to go with their names. Sadly I knew one of them personally. His name was Lenny Weir; we had been uniform cops together way back when, at the 2-5 Precinct. We showed Foster the pictures; he identified all to be Muslims, and he remembered seeing two of them inside the mosque, on the day of occurrence. How could those two men justify their inaction by not coming forward and aiding in this investigation? It's what they did best, lay low and stay quiet.
We didn't want to flood the job, specifically patrol, with this information. This info had to be compartmentalized. Harmon didn't waste any time. He sent subpoenas to IAD, requesting the men to come in. After a number of days of no-shows, Harmon called IAD's commanding officer directly. I listened on another line. The CO was matter-of-fact. IAD knew all of those men were Muslim, “That was the reason the police department placed them here, so we can keep an eye on them.”
“Well, the police department didn't do a very good job. Were you aware that at least two of them were inside the mosque when the police were being assaulted and murdered?”
“No, Sir, I didn't personally know that.”
“Well, I want those men in my office at 9 a.m. tomorrow. Are we clear on that?”
“Very clear. There's only one problem. As of yesterday, 1700 hours, all of those men resigned from the NYPD. So unfortunately, those subpoenas are ineffective on my end.”
Harmon, stunned, sat back down, unable to answer. He gently placed the receiver in its cradle. Before the inspector hung up, I heard him say he was sorry.
Harmon's case was made for trial. But it was holiday season in New York, and the NYPD didn't have a real tact plan for arresting Dupree. It was sure to be a hot situation. I knew if we'd been allowed to make the collar four years prior, the backlash would have been minimal. To make the collar now, especially at the mosque, was going to be cause for an all-out riot, something Farrakhan would—yet again—use for political gain. The brass
wondered if we couldn't call the mosque, requesting that Dupree come in on his own. That was a joke. It'd be like asking an electrician, condemned to the death, to check the wiring on Old Sparky before actually sitting in the electric chair. The mosque wasn't going to give him up. They would either harbor him inside the mosque, using it as a religious sanctuary, or they'd send him to the Black Muslim Mecca: Chicago. Once the court gave the word to arrest Dupree, the NYPD would have no choice but to go get him wherever he was, and then it was going to be an all-out bloodbath. I saw the writing on the wall. Dupree was probably going to get another pass. I had to formulate my own plan to lock him up.
Through all of its scrambling and tact planning, years too late, the job wasn't wasting any time with its development of an airtight case against me. Soon after the New Year, I received my biannual evaluation. These evaluations are a report card on your performance throughout the year in certain categories, for example, arrest record, investigations and convictions, summons activity, civilian complaints, work ethic, knowledge of the job, and any type of insubordinate patterns and behavior. There are five types of evaluations given:
well above standards, above standards, meets standards, below standards
, and the terminable evaluation,
well below standards
. In nearly nineteen years on the job, I hadn't received anything other than a
well above standards
evaluation, as did most hardworking guys on the job. If you were relatively active, had a decent closure rate, had minimal civilian complaints (I had none) filed against you, had a shred of job knowledge, and you weren't a total imbecile, you received a
well above standards
evaluation. My year-end evaluation for 1976 was
well below standards
. With that evaluation, not only could I be stripped of my gold shield, I could, if the evaluation was proven to be correct, also have been thrown off the job. I wasn't going down without a fight. The sergeant who signed off on the evaluation, whom I'd never met before, was from the borough. When I asked him about it, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Sorry, Detective. I do as I'm told.”
His bluntness shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. “Sarge, that's what the Nazis said as they led women and children to their deaths. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
The smear-fest continued. I was hit with a financial questionnaire, a cavity search of mine and my family's past banking. This extended to my in-laws. As far as I was concerned, that was a scumbag and inappropriate play. They had nothing to do with any of this. It was a
black-bag
tactic to add
pressure from within my home.
Despite repeated calls from Harmon and his superiors,
Big Blue
continued dragging its feet for another two months instead of arresting Dupree. Their response was,
It's not the district attorney's office that has to keep the city from exploding; it's the cops. We'll let you know when we're ready to bring him in.
I was really at the end of my emotional and physical rope. The job was devising new ways of torturing me before my actual execution; scaling back on relief for me, holding out as long as possible with rent, utility, and food money for Foster.
I hit the wall late one Friday afternoon. I had already lost a massive amount of weight. I was weak, and my resistance was low, leaving me susceptible to all kinds of viruses. I was battling an acute digestive infection, as well as catching conjunctivitis. Foster, relegated to wheelman after the Taconic Parkway incident, drove me to a neighborhood market where we had established credit for groceries. I was barely able to stand on my feet. I told Foster that I needed to get to the safe house, which was within walking distance. I left him, running the four short blocks to the house, where I locked myself in the bathroom. Not long after that, I heard banging on the front door. That was odd because Foster had a set of keys. I got myself together, ran to the window and saw Muldoon getting in his car, ready to pull away. I freaked because he was there to give us money for the past month, money that we desperately needed. I charged out the door, catching him just in time. He looked me up and down for a while. He leaned in, sniffing me for alcohol. “Jesus, Jurgensen, you look horrible.”
“Lieutenant, I'm sick as a dog, and this eye infection is contagious, which is why I'm not at home.” He didn't want to know any more than that. “Sir, do you have last month's money?”
He handed me the thin envelope of cash with a receipt that needed to be signed. As I handed him back the slip of paper, Foster rolled up in my car. He jumped out carrying a bag of groceries. As he passed us, he coldly greeted Muldoon. Foster had Muldoon's number since day one. As Foster moved nonchalantly into the house, Muldoon pointed in my face, “You're getting one for failure to safeguard a witness.”
Getting one
was a command discipline. It was his way of finally taking me to the mat. Receiving a command discipline now, on the heels of IAD's criminal case was the fail-safe for having me relieved of duty. “I'm getting one and the guys who lost him get nothing? I
found
the witness.”
“How dare you leave the subject and allow him to drive your car. What
are you, out of your mind?”
“Well, Sir, if I had a partner or relief here, he wouldn't be alone, now would he?”
When receiving a command discipline you had one of two choices: either accept it on the spot, admit to it, and hope for leniency, or, not accept it, and go to the trial room to fight it. Fighting it in the kangaroo court guaranteed one thing:
zero tolerance
. Either way was disaster for me because the job could use the criminal case against the departmental case, or vice versa, meaning they had two ways to fire me. I had one move left, pleading with Muldoon. He had a plaque on his dashboard. I pointed to it, “Lieutenant, you know the trouble I'm in over that damn plate. You give me the CD and I'm all out of moves. Don't let them bully you into this. You're better than them! All I've done was try to lock up Phil's killer the only way possible, because they didn't let me do it any other way. Please, Lieutenant, I've done nothing wrong.”
He thought about it for while.
Did I get him
?
“So you're not accepting the CD?”
He wasn't budging. He had his orders too, and it was to get me at all costs. I was beat. They had me, game over. I shook my head, “no.” He got in his car and drove away. The irony was that in Muldoon's twenty-seven years as a boss, he had never once given out a command discipline—until now.
In three days, I received an open-ended trial date. I was GO15. That meant that I had to bring a lawyer with me to the trial room. The open date meant that they could bring me in any time they wanted. That was their way of making me sweat. I was living on borrowed time, and it was a horrible existence. Knowing they had me and could cut my legs off whenever they wanted just added insult to injury. With me gone and publicly disgraced, they'd succeed in covering up their failures on April 14, 1972, and the following years. Who was going to believe a dishonored cop with a criminal record? This was the endgame. As far as my future was concerned, I accepted the fact that they'd beaten me. What I would not accept was Dupree getting away with murder. I had to get him before the job got me. I owed that to Phil, his family, Foster 2X Thomas, and of course, Jim Harmon.
Sometime after Phil's murder, Lewis 17X Dupree had taken a collar for a minor assault charge. It wasn't going anywhere in the court system. He had made two prior court appearances. Luckily, the case was still open. My idea was to have him brought back to court on that original charge. If he still felt impervious to us, then he just might show on this case. And if he did, the
moment he stepped into the building, I was going to pounce. The problem was getting him on the court calendar without alerting everyone. It would have to be executed from within the court. The man who could make that happen was Nick Cirillo.