The Coffey Files

by Coffey, Joseph; Schmetterer, Jerry;

  They were instinctively bothered by the information the summons issued to Berkowitz contained. It was written at 2:05 A.M., minutes before the shooting, and they could not understand what a man with a Jewish-sounding name was doing parked illegally in that heavily Italian neighborhood in the middle of the night.

  On the morning of August 10, 1977, detectives Ed Zigo and John Longo went to the Pine Street address to interview Berkowitz. When they arrived they saw his car parked in front of the building and looked inside. What they saw made their hearts stop. Behind the front seat was an army duffel bag with the name D. Berkowitz stenciled on it. Sticking out of the top was undoubtably a machine gun.

  The two detectives called their office back in Coney Island and were told to take no action. Zigo was ordered to head to Yonkers Police Headquarters and get a search warrant for the car. The Omega force was notified of the find, and Chief of Detectives Keenan, Inspector Dowd, and Borrelli, guessing that they had their man, drove to Yonkers Police Headquarters to coordinate the capture.

  By 7:30 that evening Pine Street was crawling with New York City detectives. Local residents, seeing something was going on, came out in beach chairs to view the action. At 10:00 P.M., David Berkowitz, a postal worker from the Bronx, left the building at 35 Pine Street and headed for his cream-colored 1977 Ford Galaxie. Zigo was still not back with the arrest warrant, and the cops did not want to move without it. On the other hand they were not going to let Berkowitz drive away.

  So as David Berkowitz opened his front door and threw a paper bag containing a .44 caliber Charter Arms Bulldog on the front seat, Longo and Detective John Falotico, who had been sent up by the 10th, aimed their .38 caliber detective specials at his head and put him under arrest.

  As police legend has it, Falotico ordered Berkowitz to freeze and the suspect murmured, “You’ve got me.”

  “Who do I have?” Falotico is said to have asked.

  “You’ve got the Son of Sam.”

  The most vicious killer in New York’s history was taken into custody without a struggle. As he was driven into Yonkers Police Headquarters, he had a childlike smile on his face. The smile would become as much a trademark as the .44 caliber bullet.

  Joe Coffey was at home when Berkowitz was arrested. A call from Keenan’s office ordered him to go to One Police Plaza, where Berkowitz was to be brought for questioning. Coffey would lead the questioning because he was the only detective familiar with every aspect of the case. He was, after all, the only one who had thought they were dealing with a serial killer from his first day on the job in Queens, when he was sent to Station Plaza in Forest Hills to investigate the murder of Christine Freund.

  Berkowitz and a police bodyguard were alone in an interrogation room when Coffey and Sergeant Dick Conlon entered to question him. “I was filled with rage when I went in that room. This was a man I was prepared to kill, a man I thought I hated,” remembers Coffey.

  “But after a few minutes I actually began to feel sorry for him. He was a vegetable. He had this pitiful smile on his face and he never blinked.

  “But his mind was sharp. He walked us through every case, every shooting. He remembered the smallest details, like what color coat the victim was wearing. He told us that two cops had stopped him on the Willis Avenue Bridge in the Bronx after he shot Stacy Moskowitz, but they, like others before them, let him go. He told me how he saw me on the highway the night of the Elephas shooting. He said he didn’t care about our plans on the bridges or anything else. He said that demons told him where and when to kill and that the orders were given to him by Sam Carr’s dog.

  “He also said he was an auxiliary cop in the 45th Precinct, the precinct where he killed Donna Lauria. Remember I had assigned myself to check out auxiliaries in those precincts in the Bronx and Queens where attacks took place. For some reason I never made it to the Bronx. I stopped after background checks in Queens did not pan out.”

  Coffey spent two hours with Berkowitz and came out feeling sorry for him. After the session Coffey went to a makeshift bar set up and paid for by Mayor Beame in the chief of detectives’ office.

  Following the interrogation Coffey led a motorcade of cars to the 84th Precinct, where Berkowitz was booked for the murder of Stacy Moskowitz and the attempted murder of Robert Violante. The precinct was in chaos, with cops, reporters, and photographers all fighting for a look at Son of Sam. Coffey remembers having to stop Deputy Commissioner McLaughlin from punching an overly aggressive photographer. Finally, he found a quiet phone and called Pat to tell her it was all over.

  Joe believes that had Berkowitz not pleaded guilty but gone to trial, either pleading insanity or innocence, he might have beaten the case. Following the arrest, the criminal justice system behaved like Keystone Kops. District attorneys argued about who would prosecute, detectives who had little or nothing to do with the Son of Sam murders negotiated with Hollywood producers, and reporters wrote books in a weekend.

  For a month the men of Omega force could not buy a drink in Queens. They were the toast of the city and were eventually rewarded. Twenty-five who played a role in the case were promoted. Dowd was raised to deputy chief and Borrelli, starting on his path to chief of detectives, was raised to deputy inspector. Because a sergeant cannot normally be promoted to lieutenant without taking a civil service test, Joe Coffey was provided with a loophole in that rule. This allowed him to receive lieutenant’s pay, about a $5,000-a-year raise. Power, Conlon, Moscardini, O’Connell, and Marlin Hopkins, who had played a crucial role in the beginning of the manhunt, were also rewarded with promotions and raises.

  There was a lot of infighting over who would get promotions. The mayor wanted the task force men rewarded. Commissioner Codd, who had little love for detectives, insisted uniformed cops also be included in the rewards. The two police officers who could not remember giving the ticket to Berkowitz’s car were promoted to detectives.

  Coffey has few regrets about the way the manhunt for Son of Sam was handled. Given the fact that the killer was insane, there was probably no deductive way to figure out his next move. Catching him in the act still seemed like the best course of action.

  After the commotion died down, Joe went to the 45th Precinct to see what he might have found if he continued his auxiliary background checks. Nothing in the file would have indicated Berkowitz was a suspect. In fact, Coffey’s attitude might have been just the opposite. In Berkowitz’s file was a letter of commendation from Police Commissioner Michael Codd, praising Berkowitz’s volunteer work. Joe Coffey was ordered to destroy the letter.

  VII

  THE RAT SQUAD

  During the winter of 1982, when the Coffey Gang was in the fourth year of its original thirty-day assignment, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York was involved in an investigation of a stolen car ring. The ring had a distinctive specialty: it stole luxury cars and shipped them to the Middle East where they were resold on the black market at enormous profit.

  The federal investigation into this operation was pointing increasingly towards the involvement of New York’s Mafia families in the racket. The Gambino family, specifically, controlled the locations where most of the Mercedes Benzes, BMWs, Jaguars, and Cadillacs were stolen, including the parking lot at Kennedy Airport and the surrounding streets, as well as the garages of Howard Beach, Queens.

  After some minor alterations to serial numbers and maybe a fast paint job, the cars were driven to ports in Brooklyn and New Jersey, deposited on freighters, and shipped to the Middle East.

  When it became clear to the investigators that the Gambinos were behind the scheme, U.S. Attorney John Martin called New York Police Commissioner Robert McGuire and requested the help of his specialized units.

  After huddling with Chief of the Organized Crime Control Bureau Dan Courtney, McGuire agreed to the assignment of Lieutenant Jack Ferguson to supervise detectives from the Auto Crime Unit who would be assigned to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

  It was als
o agreed that because of a number of homicides apparently attributed to the car theft ring, Joe Coffey would set up shop at Martin’s office, in a smaller building a short walk across the plaza from Police Headquarters. Another expert detective who was being assigned to the new operation was Ken McCabe. He had spent much of his career chasing the Mafia in Brooklyn and was an expert on the Gambinos.

  The highly regarded assistant U.S. attorney Walter Mack, chief of the federal Organized Crime Strike Force, was put in charge of the expanded unit.

  Joe was elated about the prospect of working with such an elite team. He had followed the stolen car ring investigation as best he could without official involvement. He suspected the ring was the work of the Gambino family and thought it might provide a route to bring down Paul Castellano. As usual, he was thinking big. He knew he could clear several homicides with information already compiled by Mack and his men.

  He was also happy about the chance to once again work with Ferguson, whom Joe considered one of the best men working in the New York Police Department. The two had shared a couple of cases two years earlier that had almost cost an undercover agent his life and had come close to ending Joe Coffey’s career in disgrace.

  It began in February 1980, when Joe got a call from two detectives who had worked under him on the Son of Sam case. They said they had a present for him and set up a meeting for later that evening.

  Joe had learned by now never to attend any kind of meeting, even with two cops he knew and had no reason not to trust, without a member of his team with him. So with a new member of the Coffey Gang, Sergeant Harry Sakin, in tow, Coffey met detectives Ron Marsenison and Richey Paul at a restaurant called T.T.’s Cellar in midtown. It was a favorite watering hole of FBI agents assigned to New York.

  Coffey and Sakin arrived first and took a table near the back of the restaurant. Coffey hoped he did not run into any federal agents he knew. He had little regard for the agency, agreeing with the New York cops’ definition of their acronym as “Famous But Incompetent.”

  “It’s not that the bureau wasn’t capable of good work. Their record proves they were. But most local cops did not like working with them,” Coffey says. “We used to say streets were named after the FBI—One Way. They took all they could get from us and offered very little in return.”

  Joe still harbored resentment of the bureau’s foot-dragging in the Vatican case, and around this time he was reliving that experience as the primary source for a book on the subject. As years passed he grew more and more convinced that if the FBI had been more aggressive, Archbishop Marcinkus would not have escaped justice.

  When Marsenison and Paul showed up they had a seedy, nervous-looking man with them. He was the kind of character veteran cops look at and classify as a “criminal type.”

  The detectives noticed the look of displeasure on the faces of sergeants Coffey and Sakin, who did not like unscheduled appointments with “criminal types.” In response to the greeting, Paul agreed to sit alone at the table with the unknown guest while Marsenison took Coffey and Sakin to the bar to explain what was going down.

  “Look fellas, don’t get the wrong idea. I think you’re going to like this guy,” Marsenison told the two sergeants. “His name is Kenny O’Donnell and he’s been a reliable informant for us and the Bronx DA’s office for years. He’s very wired into the wiseguys.”

  Coffey and Sakin had the same thought. “If he’s so good, why are you giving him to us?” they asked simultaneously.

  Marsenison explained that O’Donnell had been living in Florida after helping the Bronx DA make a big case. But his money had run out and he was looking for some action. O’Donnell was one of those people who thrived by living on the edge of death. He was currently involved with some Brooklyn wiseguys and was willing to rat them out. He had some information Marsenison thought Coffey’s gang could use.

  Coffey and Sakin both trusted Marsenison, and they agreed to return to the table to interview O’Donnell.

  “I remember that as I sat down O’Donnell even looked like a rat. From that moment on I always referred to him as Kenny the Rat,” recalls Coffey.

  Back at the table Marsenison introduced O’Donnell to Coffey and Sakin. No hands were offered in greeting. For a second or two there was a cold silence. Joe Coffey had little respect for informants and the message his eyes delivered made that clear to O’Donnell.

  O’Donnell was nothing if not streetwise. He realized that if he did not break the ice, Coffey and Sakin might sit there all night and not say anything. With a nervous stutter he offered: “I—I can give you some of the top—some of the top wiseguys in the city.”

  “Who and what for?” Joe responded, judging O’Donnell to be a scam artist looking for a meal ticket.

  His hand shaking as he lifted a scotch on the rocks to his lips, O’Donnell mumbled the names of several mob loan sharks. The men were well known to both Coffey and Sakin.

  “We figured the Rat was into shylocks and wanted us to pay them off for him in return for some information that might or might not be important,” Coffey says. “That was not an unusual arrangement to have with a stool pigeon, but I was interested in hit men, not shylocks. I told him we weren’t in the habit of buying a pig in a poke and would not reach for the department’s wallet for every asshole who comes along with a good story.”

  O’Donnell began whining. “Please, Sergeant Coffey. I swear I’m telling the truth. Give me a lie detector test.”

  Joe had learned over the years that most professional stoolies can beat the lie detector because they are such practiced liars. To himself he thought, “I’ll give this guy a lie detector test when we go back to the rubber hose in the interrogation room.”

  He had a better test in mind—the kind of test listed only in the textbook of Coffey’s Martial Law. “Here’s what we’ll do,” he told Kenny the Rat. “I want you to wear a wire and go up against one of the top mobsters in the Bonanno family and prove by actual conversation with him that you were shylocked by him.”

  “I’ll do it. No problem,” O’Donnell quickly agreed. A second later, when Coffey told him who the target would be, he was sorry.

  “I want you to meet Al Embarrato and have a conversation with him that verifies what you have told us.”

  Embarrato, who was also known as Al Walker, was one of the most vicious loan sharks in the city. His patience with a nonpaying customer ran out much faster than other loan sharks’, and his methods of collecting were distinguished by their brutality.

  But to everyone’s surprise O’Donnell pulled his weight. He set up a meeting, the time and place chosen by Embarrato. It was high noon on the street in front of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

  O’Donnell had borrowed money from the shylock in the past and wanted to borrow again. Standing on the street corner he asked Embarrato for $2,500. Embarrato did not hesitate. He reached into his pocket for the large roll of cash he always carried and peeled off twenty-five hundred-dollar bills, the standard small change of the Mafia.

  The wire O’Donnell was wearing recorded the following exchange:

  O’Donnell: I appreciate this, Al. Thanks for meeting me.

  Embarrato: What’s a friend for?

  O’Donnell: I could have met you downtown if you wanted.

  Embarrato: No, this is good. There’s no eyes here that I don’t know.

  O’Donnell: Twenty-five is good if it’s all right with you. I don’t want to put you out.

  Embarrato: The only way you put me out is if I don’t see you every Friday with the juice. Then I put you out [laughs].

  O’Donnell: You can count on me, Al. I ain’t no deadbeat. You can ask anybody.

  Embarrato: I already did. I want to see you every week. No exceptions. You capice?

  O’Donnell: Anthony vouched for me with you.

  Embarrato: See you next Friday.

  O’Donnell: Thanks. Thanks, Al.

  Embarrato’s part of the conversation, all record
ed on O’Donnell’s wire, was eventually enough to put his loan-sharking crew out of business.

  A few days later O’Donnell called Coffey and told him he could deliver into his hands a major gunrunner operating in Queens. Based on his success with Embarrato, Coffey agreed to set up an operation.

  The target was a wiseguy named John Santora, a Colombo crime family soldier who earned his living by hijacking shipments from Kennedy Airport and selling the stolen goods to the highest bidders. Sometimes the goods were guns being shipped to legitimate dealers.

  Coffey agreed to go after Santora as a means of breaking into the larger problem of the pilferage at Kennedy. Wearing a wire, O’Donnell paid $300 to Santora for a handgun. The same day, now knowing the possibility of nailing Santora and his associates was real and knowing a gun-buying operation would eventually strain the NYPD’s resources, Coffey called Joe Kelly, the Group Supervisor in New York for the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Division of the Treasury Department.

  O’Donnell also had made contact with another gun dealer who said he could provide silencer-equipped machine guns. Each would cost $1,350. There was no way the NYPD, which was always strapped for money to spend on undercover assignments, was going to put up that kind of money, but Kelly, at ATF, agreed to split the cost for the purchase of ten such machine guns.

  The Coffey Gang had passed on a great deal of information to Kelly during their investigation of the Irish Mafia, and Kelly had not forgotten those days. For the next few months O’Donnell led the Coffey Gang, now supplemented by the federal agent and his contacts, into all the dark alleys ruled by the Mafia. Coffey was building cases for units throughout the police department. Narcotics, vice, robbery, and his own homicide detectives were all profiting from the fearless work of Kenny the Rat. Joe realized that the number of cases being originated by O’Donnell was becoming more than his unit could coordinate alone.