by Mike McAlary
“His hand was in the cookie jar all along,” said one juror, William Stills, an airlines courier. “Once his hand was in, he didn’t know how to get it out.” The jury foreman, Paul Heckler, was outraged. He told reporters, “He knew what he was doing all the time. He took an oath to uphold and protect the law and he broke it. He stole and he robbed—the tapes told it all.”
Rathbun was sentenced to three-and-a-half- to-ten-and-a-half years in prison on June 29, 1987. Prior to his incarceration, Rathbun explained, “I was burnt out. I was between a rock and a hard place. I was depressed and I chose the wrong way out.”
A week before Rathbun went to jail, another jury decided to reject Winter’s testimony and simply disregard the voices of corruption on his tapes. Officer Frank Lauria, twenty-eight, was charged with breaking into a Brooklyn apartment on June 10, 1986 and stealing $280 from a drug dealer. Lauria claimed he had gone to the apartment looking for a cop killer and had not taken any money. The jurors sided with Lauria, declaring him innocent of all charges. They did this even as another indicted officer, Jose Villarini, was pleading guilty to burglary and theft. Villarini received probation.
Faced with a departmental trial on the charges he beat in court, Lauria quit the police force. In a post-verdict twist, his attorney, Bruce Smirti, told reporters that the best witness for the defense had been Henry Winter.
“One of the jurors said to me that Police Officer Winter, the rat, was the most immoral, disgusting individual they had ever come across and that they wouldn’t have believed him in a thousand years.”
The jury in People vs. Day, a case in which James Day was charged with stealing thirty-nine vials of crack and accepting a $160 payoff, was similarly unimpressed with Tony Magno. Asked by the prosecutor, Pamela Haynes, how long he had been a corrupt cop, a definition which she defined as including accepting gratuities like free cigarettes and coffee, Magno had replied, “My whole career.” The jury lost interest in Magno and his tapes after that exchange.
Day was acquitted on July 8, 1987, after just ninety-six minutes of jury deliberation. During his summation, Day’s attorney, Joel Winograd, told the jury that the prosecution had put the wrong cop on trial. Some jurors agreed.
“Magno was lying through his teeth,” said juror Richard Anderson, a transit worker, who decided Magno had singled out Day for prosecution and refused to wear a wire on the precinct’s most corrupt cops. “It was a case of a corrupt cop who wasn’t burying any of his friends.”
The most bitter trial resulted in the November 5, 1987 conviction of Crystal Spivey on corruption charges. The trial began with name calling—defense attorney Howard J. Herman referred to Winter as “slime” and “the Ayatollah of Corruption”—and ended with insults when Spivey’s father called Winter a coward. In between the attacks on Winter, Spivey was described both as “incredibly naive” by Herman and the “Mata Hari of Corruption” by prosecutors.
Mildred Spivey, the ruined cop’s mother, attended each court session but sat in a wooden pew for much of the trial with the headphones on her lap. “I can’t always listen,” she told reporters. The cop’s former boyfriend, the street dealer named Understanding, testified against Spivey in exchange for immunity in a robbery case. “She’s guilty,” Understanding told reporters covering the trial. “But it’s a shame. Crystal wasn’t doing anything out there that all the other cops aren’t still doing.”
During his cross-examination of Winter, Herman insinuated that Henry and Crystal had once been lovers. He also tried to prove that Winter had only gone after Spivey because she was a black police officer and Internal Affairs had run out of white targets. A jury deliberated the case for eight hours before coming back with a split verdict. Spivey was acquitted of drug possession charges but found guilty of official misconduct and renting out her badge for $500. She faces four years in prison.
The best witness against Spivey turned out to be Internal Affairs detective Eugene Poulson, the fifty-year-old undercover narcotics dealer she had known as “Mo.” Upon taking the stand, Poulson, who had also worked as an undercover agent in the case involving Henry’s brother-in-law at the 75th Precinct, called the Spivey case “his toughest assignment.” He explained that he had once worked with Crystal’s father, Sergeant Leroy Spivey, and that he had known the defendant’s parents for almost thirty years. “I broke in on this job with her father.” Poulson testified. “I know her mother Mildred. They are fine people.”
Sergeant Spivey would not condemn the same man he once shared a patrol car with. “Detective Poulson was just doing his job,” Sergeant Spivey told reporters. “But I wouldn’t want to be Henry Winter. I don’t see how he’ll be able to live with himself. He knows what he has done to his friends. Henry Winter is a coward.”
By the winter of 1987, after a series of court appearances in which they testified against other cops, Henry and Tony had become the Police Department’s reigning outcasts. They were assigned to a single room at Internal Affairs and were constantly watched. A supervisor had the only key to their office, and on those days when he was absent or late, Henry and Tony had to stand in the hall outside.
While making a return visit to their sector to locate witnesses in July, 1987, Henry and Tony spotted their old patrol car—No. 1491—stopped for a traffic light. The insignia “77” had been painted over with the letters “MT”—police shorthand for Motor Transport.
When he inquired about the status of the car, Henry was told that 77th Precinct cops had nicknamed it “The Rat-mobile,” and simply refused to ride in it. The car was shuttled off to a new command and is now used only as a patrol car of last resort—a fill-in for cops with broken-down cars.
In June 1987, thirteen months after the investigation began, Henry had made his first and last return trip to the 77th Precinct stationhouse. He had come along with two investigators from the special prosecutor’s office to point out different areas of the stationhouse where he had divided up stolen drugs and cash with other cops.
One of the few remaining cops who had worked with Henry at the precinct, an officer assigned to community affairs, spotted Winter as he walked past the muster room. He yelled, “Quiet guys. Quiet guys. Fucking Winter is here. He might be wired.” The precinct’s new cops snapped to silent, sneering attention. The investigators walked away from Henry, leaving him to walk out of the precinct alone.
As Henry stood on the sidewalk, he felt the eyes of the precinct upon him. He turned around and saw a dozen faces pressed against the building’s windows. Each cop wanted to get a good look at the type of cop who turns in other cops. The front door opened and Henry saw an elderly woman, a precinct secretary, standing before him. Once they had been close.
Henry smiled and asked, “You got a kiss for me?” The secretary replied, “Not for you,” and slammed the door in Henry’s face.
As the trials progressed Henry and Tony were forced to get their home telephone numbers changed to unlisted exchanges. A trickle of crank phone calls became a deluge of threats once the Rathbun verdict came in. On the night before Rathbun’s sentencing, someone left a message on Henry’s answering machine: “You better do yourself before someone else does you.” One of the ruined officers’ relatives called to add, “You might be free on us but you’re gonna rot in hell.”
In late September 1987, a year after the first suspensions were announced, Henry’s mother telephoned her son, saying she had news for him. Hynes had lost the indictment against Albert Smolinski, one of twelve officers who had surrendered for arrest in November 1986. Originally charged with a break-in, Smolinski had returned to work in August, agreeing to a deal in which he forfeited eight months back pay in return for his job.
“I got to tell you something about Albert,” Henry’s mother told him.
“Albert?” Henry said. “What Albert?”
“The Albert that got arrested in the Seven-Seven,” Mildred Winter said. “Albert Smolinski. That’s your aunt Anna’s son. She just called me.”
“Wha
t?”
“Yeah. Albert Smolinski is your cousin.”
Henry began to stammer. “What do you mean he’s my cousin? I never saw him at anything with the family. I didn’t know he was my cousin. You think I’d do this to my own cousin?”
The policeman’s mother sighed.
“Of course not, dear,” she said. “We know you’re not like that.”
Acknowledgments
Unfortunately, this is a true story.
An investigation in the dealings of corrupt police officers in Brooklyn’s 77th Precinct first appeared in the pages of New York Newsday. My colleagues in the newsroom—City Editor James Hairston, reporters Marianne Arnenberg, Bob Drury, Richard Esposito and Sandra Widener—combined sweat, legwork and a selfless determination to breathe life into a simple list of thirteen names, the roster of the suspended police officers. They combined day after day to tell the story of the 77th Precinct in compelling detail, with accuracy and fairness, under intense deadline conditions. I am forever in their debt.
My agent, Flip Brophy of the Sterling Lord Agency, deserves equal credit for the completion of this book. She believed in the story from the start and kept a late-night ear available for a first-time author’s frenzied telephone calls.
Finally, I would like to thank my editor at Putnam, Chris Schillig, for the use of her critical eye and practiced hand. At the point of Schillig’s No. 2 pencil, Buddy Boys made the startling transformation from unruly manuscript to polished book.
About the Author
Mike McAlary (1957–1998) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author. Originally a sportswriter, he worked as a reporter for Newsday and as a columnist at the Daily News and the New York Post. McAlary won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for his extensive coverage of the torture of Abner Louima by Brooklyn police officers. He wrote one novel, Sore Loser, and three nonfiction books: Buddy Boys, Cop Shot, and Good Cop, Bad Cop. A play based on McAlary’s life, Lucky Guy written by Nora Ephron and starring Tom Hanks, debuted on Broadway in 2013.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 1987 by Mike McAlary
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2132-6
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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