Circle of Six (41 page)

I nodded. This was one of the more surreal moments of my trial. I was basically being thrown off the job, and these three cops were here to question me in an attempted homicide investigation. It was business-as-usual on the NYPD, and I knew whether I stayed to fight, or not, the job was still going to go on.

The other detective asked, “Can we talk to you, get a statement before this fucking kangaroo court starts?”

I liked the fact that every cop knew what these court proceedings were
all about. They were about deals, and keeping face, not about the truth. Haugh said, “Not now, please wait at the back for the detective to finish up here.”

The chambers behind the NYPD's court of judges flung open. Five men, all in blue dress uniform, and none under the rank of full inspector, sat at their assigned benches. They were all grim and looked angry, at what, I had no idea. Did they want me to go all the way with this so they could hammer me into a jail cell? Or did they want me to see the trial through so their predecessors could pay for their mistakes. I was done detecting. I didn't care to analyze the whys and hows; I just wanted it all to end.

The final judge entered. These were his proceedings, Commissioner William Smith, formerly Sergeant Smith, and still formerly, the man who questioned and attacked my virtue and ethics while I testified for Eddie
Popeye Doyle
Egan. Smith sat front and center, three men to his left, two to his right. He never once looked at me or the other men as he read through the grocery list of charges the job had brought against me. I wasn't listening; my eyes wandered above and beyond Smith to the NYPD flag. A plaque above it read,
Fidelis Ad Mortem
—faithful unto death. I wondered, for the moment, if I had kept my word to that motto. I felt someone's eyes on me, close to my right, behind me. I turned. It was Lynn. I looked into her eyes; they were smiling. Yes, I kept my word, and now it was time to keep my word to my wife and family.

Smith now looked up from his bifocals toward Haugh, “So how does the defendant plea?”

Haugh looked at me one last time,
are you sure, Randy?
I said, “Nolo contendere.”

Each charge had to be read individually, to which I plead
nolo contendere
, seven times.

At the conclusion, Smith said, “All charges have been reduced. Does the defendant understand?”

I said, “Yes.”

“Defendant is hereby reduced one grade, to second grade detective. You will be fined thirty days full pay, and you will forthwith apply for retirement, turning in all equipment, including weapons. The court will recommend that on the sixtieth day from today, you will be allowed to retire. Does the defendant accept or not accept?”

I noticed Jack Haugh rifling through his file. Something wasn't right.
What now
, I wondered. He looked at me and nervously said, “We can't
accept these charges! Sixty days leaves you nineteen days shy of your twentieth year. You won't get a full pension!”

Haugh turned to Smith, reiterating what he'd just told me. All of the men on the bench began rifling through their own paper, whispering to Smith, who pulled his glasses off in frustration, pointing them at Haugh. I knew he wanted this trial to end as much as I did. He said in a foul tone, “Counselor, you accepted this deal...”

Haugh screamed, “This man has a 50,000-dollar price on his head. He's a hunted man, and you're asking him to surrender his weapons. Have you no conscience?”

Smith screamed over him, “The defendant will not lose his twenty-year pension. We will amend this. Now does the defendant accept?”

I couldn't take the screaming any longer. I grabbed Jack Haugh's arm, “It's okay, Jack. Enough.”

Haugh couldn't let it go. He wanted to rip into them. They represented everything that was wrong with the case, and with the job. “He is not a defendant. He's a detective of the New York Police Department...”

I turned to Smith, screaming, “I accept the charges and the penalties! I accept!” This brought resounding silence into the large courtroom. “I accept,” I said quietly.

There was now another round of noise. It was a droning, the finishing of my case, of my career. It was now time to walk out. I looked at the NYPD flag one last time, and said to myself, “Good-bye, my lovely, good-bye.”

Lynn and Jimmy were waiting for me as I moved down the aisle of benches, past all the cops that I'd worked with for all those years. Jimmy squeezed tightly onto my shoulder. Lynn grabbed hold of my hand. With her at my side, I was able to stand tall and walk out with my head held high. “Time to go home, Randy. Time to go home.”

Just as I was about to step out of the courtroom, the young black cop who I gave the gun to was unstrapping a .38 off his ankle holster. He said to me, “I got two of these. Please, take this one.”

I smiled, “I'll be okay, Guy.” I looked at Lynn and said, “I'll be A-okay. Time to go home.”

I found myself moving toward the wall of heroes in the lobby of headquarters. I was there to hand over my guns, and officially turn in my retirement
papers. I saw the various plaques of all the downed officers, Piagentini, Jones, Foster, Laurie, among so many others that I had worked on myself. Then I saw Phil Cardillo's plaque on the wall. I remember feeling the irony and duplicity of it all.

Once upstairs in the Pension Section, I was met by a cop who led me to his desk. Over the office loudspeakers, a police ceremony could be heard. Men were being congratulated and awarded. Cheers rose after names were called. I asked the cop, “What's going on?”

He didn't look up from the paper as he said, “Guys who broke the
Son of Sam
case are getting unit citations.”

I then heard Muldoon's name and another round of cheers. I wondered,
had none of this happened, would I have been one of the recipients of that citation? Would I be accepting the award along with the other fine detectives?
Another place, another time, because I was done detecting. As I laid my unloaded guns, shield, ID card, and rules-and-procedures book on the table, I heard the cop's small portable radio announce that Elvis Presley had died. My first thought was of Lynn, how she loved him. I knew this was going to make her sad. Suddenly the sadness of my situation had lifted. It wasn't about me anymore. It was about the people around me, and I recognized that this was a good thing.

The cop looked up at me and said, “Listen, Guy, before you retire, you've got two unpaid parking tickets that have to be paid.”

I laughed, asking the cop if I could use his phone. I called Lynn. She picked it up on the first ring. She could barely talk. I told her I'd just heard about Elvis. “Are you okay, Lynn?”

“I'm fine, Randy. It's okay. When are you coming home?” she asked.

“Right now, Lynn, my work is done here.”

The end
.

The credit belongs to those who are actually in the arena...if they fail, fail while doing greatly, so that their place shall never be with those cold, timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

–Theodore Roosevelt

True to their word, the rank and file, certain members of the service assigned to One PP, and the PBA—spearheaded by past and present administrations—called for and received an investigation into the Phil Cardillo murder and subsequent police investigation. This Special Prosecutor's Inquiry, presided over by the one time ADA homicide bureau chief, John F. Keenan, found that the NYPD's own investigation of the Phil Cardillo murder
was curtailed in deference to fears of civil unrest in the black community
, and that certain police officials had been
derelict in their duty, committing inexcusable failures to follow elementary detective procedures.
This grand jury investigation, in furtherance, stated:
political figures had impeded the homicide investigation.
The grand jury, however, could not recommend removal or disciplinary action against these officials because
all of the principal actors in this transaction
were no longer in office. The jury asserted that it had heard ninety-five witnesses but that there were
persistent lapses of memory
among high-ranking officials. There was
a concerted and orchestrated effort by members and former members of the police department to impede
the murder investigation and the jury's own inquiry. Out of those ninety-five witnesses, I was not called in to testify.

Vito Navarra was transferred to the Brooklyn South Detective Bureau, where he was promoted twice, to the rank of detective first grade, retiring after his twentieth year of duty.

John Van Lindt and Jim Harmon left the Manhattan DA's office, successfully transitioning into private practice in the New York area.

Foster 2X Thomas and Loretta Harris, after a short stint in the Federal Witness Protection Program, quietly reentered New York and reestablished themselves in the Nation of Islam in Mosque Number 7.

Louis Farrakhan married Elijah Muhammad's daughter in Chicago. Shortly after Muhammad's death, he became the controversial head imam to the entire Nation of Islam in Chicago, Illinois, where he remains to this day.

Lewis 17X Dupree continued living a duplicitous life as a part-time Black Muslim, part-time criminal entrepreneur. At one point, I received information that he had set himself up as a narcotics distributor, with a route that stretched as far south as North Carolina. After passing this intelligence on to the Queens Narcotics Bureau, a case was developed and enhanced on him. He was subsequently arrested by the FBI in North Carolina on drug-trafficking charges, where he was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in federal prison. During his trial, and after his conviction, I repeatedly sent him letters in an earnest attempt to give him the opportunity to put closure to the murder of Phil Cardillo. Dupree, who had by then changed his name to Khalid Ali, understood that
double jeopardy
—he could not be tried twice for the same crime—was in play. He agreed to talk with Jim Harmon and myself with the guarantee that he not be sent to the Georgia correctional facility where he was set to serve out his sentence. The day before he was to meet with us, we received a call from a Nation of Islam lawyer, stating that Khalid—Dupree—had a change of heart, declining our offer to talk and deal. He remains in Georgia State Penitentiary.

Joy Cardillo, represented by Jack Haugh and Jim Harmon, sued the New York City Police Department in a wrongful death suit purported upon her husband, Phil Cardillo. Rather than face a lengthy, expensive, and detrimental civil trial, the NYPD offered her a one-million-dollar settlement. She declined, took the NYPD to trial, and won, thus exonerating her husband of any malfeasance or wrongdoing. She was awarded four million dollars in damages.

At the end of my sixtieth day of suspension, I was officially retired from the NYPD. After numerous calls to the personnel section, trying to secure my pistol carry permit, I was told there was no record that I had ever worked for the New York City Police Department. I had been successfully erased from the databases and memory of the job. I immediately drove to the Hawthorne Police Barracks in Westchester County, New York,
where I applied for and received a New York State pistol permit. Within the year, I received an order from the police department that I was going to be awarded the highest citation available for my work in the Cardillo case. I respectfully asked for my name to be removed from that order. I refused the citation. Through my continued unofficial—
working relationship
—with the FBI I learned that my name has come up numerous times on wiretaps suggesting that there is still a collectible bounty of 50,000 dollars on my head. This has led me to lead a life of anonymity, living out of a post office box in an undisclosed location.

DISTRICT ATTORNEY
OF THE
COUNTY OF NEW YORK
155 LEONARD STREET
NEW YORK. N. Y. 10013
(212) 732-7300

ROBERT M. MORGENTHAU

D
ISTRICT
A
TTORNEY

NEIGHBORHOOD COMPLAINT OFFICES:

HARLEM BRANCH

55 WEST 125 STREET

NEW YORK, N.Y. 10027

(212) 831-8661

WEST SIDE BRANCH

2112 BROADWAY

NEW YORK. N.Y, 10023

(212) 595-0760

May 3, 1978

Honorable Robert J. McGuire
Police Commissioner
1 Police Plaza
New York, New York 10038

Dear Commissioner McGuire:

It is my pleasure to bring to your attention the exemplary efforts of retired Detective Randy Jurgensen in the investigation of the murder of Police Officer Phillip Cardillo at the Harlem Mosque on April 14, 1972.

The involvement of Detective Jurgensen in the case began on the day that Officer Cardillo was shot. On that day, although assigned to a stakeout with the Major Case Squad, Detective Jurgensen, under the most difficult circumstances, secured positive identifications of defendants from officers who had been assaulted. Thereafter, while assisting a fellow officer during a riotous street encounter, Detective Jurgensen sustained head injuries resulting in his hospitalization. The initiative which he displayed at the crime scene preserved critical evidence for a later, more thorough analysis.