Two disappeared homicides and two disappeared first-degree rapes from december, 1995 (disappearing murder in new york)

By Nicholas Stix

“Last October 11 [1995], the Daily News published a memo by Deputy Inspector Anthony Kissik, commander of The Bronx’ 50th Precinct, which merely formalized the city’s unwritten policy of ‘defining down’ many violent attacks into misdemeanors or no crimes at all. At the other extreme, on January 29 [1996], Newsday’s Leonard Levitt charged that the city had failed to disclose a recent [December, 1995] double-rape, a shooting homicide, and the fatal shooting of a car thief by a cop.”

The rape vics and relatives of the dead guys had contacted Levitt, or we’d have never heard of the cases.

Police commissioner Howard Safir asserted that the NYCPD had put out the reports of the aforementioned rapes and homicides in the press room at One Police Plaza, but that a reporter had stolen them. (That would have been three different sets of crime reports.) And if you believe that, I’ve got a great deal for you on a slightly used bridge.

Len Levitt’s January 29, 1996 column was a breakthrough for me. My managing editor at Chronicles, Ted Pappas, had commissioned me to research and write a major report on the nycpd’s campaign to “disappear” crime, based on a pitch I’d made with some early scandals.

Levitt’s report became part of “Crime Stories,” which I spent an entire year researching and writing, and which became the first national exposé on police fakestats.

I would later be friends with the legendary FDNY fire marshal, John Knox, who condemned Levitt as a “cop-hater.” However, I consider Levitt’s exposés of the NYCPD’s record-keeping fraud credible. (He was never found to be a liar.)

Among other cases, John investigated the Malcolm Little/X/Shabazz arson. The unofficial story was that the nation of islam had firebombed Malcolm’s family home in Elmhurst, Queens, but John explained how the arson was obviously Malcolm’s doing. He said that in an arson by an outside actor, the window glass would have broken into the house, when the Molotov cocktail broke through the window. However, in Malcolm’s case, he smashed the window from inside, and then threw it into the room he was in. The broken glass was all outside. However, the truth was covered up.

I have no idea if the NYCPD ever added those two homicides or the two forcible, first-degree rapes to its totals for 1995. I rather doubt it.

In 2014, I contacted Levitt, who had long since retired, to see if he remembered the names of the murder vics, but he couldn’t recall anything about them.

That’s a problem with being a veteran reporter. You forget things you’ve done.

A lovely English girl I knew during my first year in West Germany (1980-1981) said she’d considered becoming an interpreter until she learned that they tend to suffer from memory loss after a few years.