Silence Deepens Mystery / Witness seeking immunity;
Melanie Lefkowitz. STAFF WRITER. Newsday. N.Y.: Apr 29, 2003. pg. A.07
Full Text (1255 words)
(Copyright Newsday Inc., 2003) [Table]
Quotes: 'It's part of something we need to get behind us.' - Mark
O'Brien, father of Burke
Whatever he knows, he's not telling.
Forrest Bloede, the young advertising man who watched as his college buddy was shot and killed in front of a Lower East Side building on a cold January morning, says he wants to work with police to track down the killer. More than three months later, though, detectives say they are still waiting for Bloede's help - assistance that has been held up by his request for immunity from prosecution.
The victim, Burke O'Brien, 25, described by friends and family as an outdoorsman, athlete and mentor to teens who was poised for success, was blasted in the chest as he and Bloede, his former fraternity brother, returned to Bloede's Orchard Street apartment from a late night out.
Police initially arrested Bloede, 24, whose account of the shooting had discrepancies, and charged him with murder. He was released 12 hours later when the Manhattan district attorney's office declined to prosecute because there was no apparent motive or sufficient evidence.
"It's part of something we need to get behind us," said O'Brien's father, Mark, 53, an options trader who lives in a Chicago suburb. "We've had a horrible time; it's a horrible thing.
"How has it affected our family? It's been like a cancer. Over a thousand people have reached out to us - that's been great. Except for the one person we need."
Detectives now theorize that O'Brien may have been shot by two local men during a botched robbery attempt, but they have had difficulty proceeding without Bloede's aid. He has yet to provide a description to a sketch artist, look at an array of photos police have assembled, or account for a possible disturbance outside his apartment in the days before O'Brien's death, sources said.
Bloede's lawyer, Glenn Wolther, said he recently sent a six-page letter to Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, "indicating our eagerness and willingness for Forrest to cooperate" but received what he described only as a "terse" one-paragraph reply.
"They're not willing to so much as say they're sorry," Wolther said yesterday. "The danger is that he's already been falsely arrested and falsely charged with murder once, and it's unclear how he can trust them."
Bloede, who has moved from Orchard Street but remains in the city, is trying to get on with his life, his attorney said.
"Months and months have passed, and they appear to have done little, yet he sits there eager to cooperate," Wolther said. "It's a tragedy for the O'Briens."
Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for Morgenthau, said the probe into O'Brien's death is an "active, active investigation." She declined further comment. A police official said the NYPD's investigation is also active, adding that "detectives would welcome any information that could be helpful." Anyone with information is asked to call 800-577-TIPS.
The circumstances of the shooting in the gentrifying neighborhood were murky from the start.
Investigators at first suspected a rivalry over a woman, but it turned out there was no such conflict. The .45-caliber handgun used to kill O'Brien has not been found.
Two bystanders who heard but didn't see the shooting said the only person they saw fleeing the scene was Bloede. A third witness came forward a day later, an attorney who said she had been drinking. She recalled seeing two other men on the street, bolstering Bloede's account of a robbery attempt by two dark- skinned men.
In the weeks after Bloede's release, police circulated fliers seeking information about the men described by Bloede.
Police say they no longer consider Bloede a suspect but have not ruled anything out. O'Brien's sister, Raurie, remembers her brother mentioning a fight outside Bloede's apartment in the days before Jan. 12 but the family has not been able to learn any more about it.
Bloede, who works at a prominent Manhattan advertising firm, and O'Brien, who was ready to start his first job in finance at Bank of America after traveling the world, teaching in Ecuador and leading wilderness canoe trips through the northern reaches of Canada, were members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter of Colorado State University. Both graduated with business majors in 2001.
It seemed natural that on one of his many visits to New York, O'Brien would stay at Bloede's.
"Burke had been coming up to New York City for four months or so - pretty regularly, every other weekend, to do interviews," said Raurie O'Brien, who was out with Bloede and Burke the night he died. "So instead of staying with the same person every single time and wearing out his welcome, every time he would come he would stay with someone different. He was friends with Forrest."
A party of five went out that night to see a band called M-Lab at the Elbow Room. They ended up at a restaurant around the corner and split into two cabs to return to Bloede's apartment around 4 a.m. Raurie and two friends rode in one, and Burke and Bloede followed in the other. The two men didn't have enough cash to pay the fare, however, so they stopped at an ATM down the street and withdrew $20 before walking together to Bloede's building.
"It was just a very upbeat, music, dancing, friends kind of a night," recalled Raurie, who, like all of Burke's surviving siblings, moved back home after his death.
Just moments after Raurie and her group returned to the Orchard Street apartment, Bloede ran in screaming for a phone. She rushed out into the street where Burke was lying. Raurie tried to perform CPR on him while they waited for the ambulance.
When Raurie went with her brother to the hospital, Bloede went with the police.
"As far as I was concerned, none of it made sense," said Raurie, whose only impression of Bloede before the shooting was as a fun- loving friend of her brother.
"With respect to the notion of Forrest having done it, none of the things that were happening were in the scheme of reality I knew. As far as I was concerned, everything was possible."
Nothing Certain Beyond His Death
Key dates in the probe of Burke O'Brien's slaying:
Jan. 12.
O'Brien, 25, a graduate of Colorado State University who was to begin work at the Bank of America, is shot on the Lower East Side. Police say he is killed in front of a six-story walkup on Orchard Street after a night out with friends.
Jan. 13
O'Brien's friend Forrest Bloede is arrested after a witness reports he saw two men arguing. Bloede says his friend was shot after they withdrew cash from an ATM and two men accosted them. Police later release Bloede.
Jan. 20
A week later, police say Bloede is no longer considered a suspect, with no credible motive apparent, and witness accounts now seeming to support the robbery story.
01/20/2004/ NYPOST
FAMILY'S TORMENT; DESPERATE HUNT FOR SON'S KILLERS
Byline: By ALISHA BERGER
Mark O'Brien believes that somewhere there is somebody who knows who killed his son.
Burke O'Brien, 25, was murdered a year ago after two muggers stole $12 from him and his college pal Forrest Bloede in front of Bloede's Lower East Side apartment. Burke was staying with his former frat brother while interviewing for finance jobs.
There is a $30,000 reward on the table, but leads are few and far between. Mark O'Brien said his family is trying to heal, but without any answers, moving on has been nearly impossible.
"We have dedicated our lives to getting this resolved," O'Brien said. "I'm just shaking the tree. If we do it enough, somebody will come forward."
After Burke's murder, the entire O'Brien clan moved back home to Chicago, where they've tried to reclaim their lives. "This past year, I have had to learn how to be in this world feeling completely vulnerable," said Mariah O'Brien, 27, Burke's sister.
Carleigh O'Brien, 19, visits her brother's grave often. "He never deserved that," she said. "It's the most unjust thing and it's so unanswered."
The sisters remember Burke as tall, handsome and charismatic. He was a star football and hockey player. He spoke fluent Spanish and taught English in Ecuador.
Bloede, 26, Burke's pal, was there when he was shot. He is still haunted by the experience.
"I don't go by the site," he said quietly. "This is something you've got to live with every day. I lost my good friend . . People try to block out traumatic events . . [but] you can't turn it off. You have to keep it fresh for its purpose and that is to stand as a witness."
Two men approached the friends at around 4 a.m. on Jan. 12, 2003. One leveled a gun at them. The other ordered them to "take everything out of your pockets," Bloede recalled. They only had $12.
The robber demanded again. Burke took off his coat, placed it on a railing and walked toward the muggers, his hands in the air, saying, "You don't want to do this."
The gunman said, "No, you don't want to do this." Burke continued to move slowly, the gunman fired. Burke fell to the ground, the men took off, and Bloede called 911.
Anyone with information should call the Seventh Precinct detective squad at (212) 477-7671 or CrimeStoppers at (800) 577-TIPS.
1/15/2004 NYPOST
WITNESS TO PAL'S SLAY SPEAKS OUT A YEAR LATER
By ALISHA BERGER
Almost a year to the day after he watched in horror as his close friend was shot to death - and he was falsely charged with the crime - Forrest Bloede last night broke his silence, describing the murder and its aftermath as "so surreal, I couldn't believe it."
The bizarre and tragic sequence of events began early on Jan. 12, 2003, when Bloede and Burke O'Brien returned from a night out on the town. Burke, whose family lives in Chicago, was in New York hoping to land a job in finance and was planning to "crash at my place," said Bloede, 25.
They were accosted by two muggers just outside Bloede's Lower East Side apartment. One of them brandished a gun as the other ordered them to "take everything out of your pockets," Bloede recalled.
"There are so many things going through your head," Bloede said. "You want them to leave, get out of there."
Bloede gave the robber all he had, about $12.
"They said it again and I told them again, that was all we had. You can take that scene and wish you'd done different things, like I'd given them my cell phone. I play it over and over in my mind. There were so many 'what ifs.'
"Burke took his coat off and placed it on the railing. He had his hands up," Bloede said. "He was walking toward him, saying, 'come on, you don't need to do this.'
"I had my head down. I was just scared. I didn't see all of it.Burke took one more step and he fired the weapon."
The muggers fled down the block and "I went right to Burke," he said. "I was in absolute disbelief. He was down on the ground and having a hard time breathing. I said 'Hold on! Hold on! I put his coat over him. I ran upstairs and called 911."
One of the killers, who was wearing a scarf that partially hid his face, was black with "almond shaped eyes," he said. The other had a beard and looked Hispanic.
Bloede spoke to several officers and was eventually told his account "wasn't matching up" to a story told by a witness, who claimed not to have seen anyone besides the two friends. "I went through 14 hours of interrogation, and didn't ask for a lawyer until I was charged," Bloede said. "You go from losing your friend to all of a sudden being in the craziest position in the world."
He was let go the next day after another witness backed his story.
01/12/2004/NYPOST
BANKER SLAY UNSOLVED ONE YEAR LATER
By ANDY GELLER and LARRY CELONA
Cops are asking for the public's help in finding the killer of a young banker who was shot to death a year ago today during a robbery attempt outside a Lower East Side apartment building.
The NYPD has rereleased a sketch of the suspect in the senseless slaying of Burke O'Brien, 25, and is reminding the public that a $30,000 reward is being offered.
The shooter is described as a light-skinned black or Hispanic man about 22 to 26 years old who is 5-foot-11, weighs 175 pounds and was wearing a red jacket and blue jeans.
O'Brien was shot in the chest and killed at 4 a.m. after he and his former college roommate, Forrest Bloede, 24, returned to Bloede's building at 75-79 Orchard St. after a night of clubbing.
Bloede told cops he and O'Brien were returning home after hitting an ATM when they were accosted by two robbers.
Bloede said he gave the men $12, but O'Brien took off his coat and it appeared he wanted to fight. One of the thugs shot him in the chest.
Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS or the Seventh Precinct detective squad at (212) 477-7671. The Crime Stoppers van will be outside the building between 8 a.m. and noon today.
Additional reporting by Tatiana Deligiannakis
By LARRY CELONA
The only witness to the January slaying of a would-be banker on the Lower East Side has supplied cops with enough information to produce a sketch of the shooter, sources have told The Post.
Forrest Bloede, 24 - who cops initially charged in the killing - had declined to speak with investigators for more than three months, relenting only after the victim's family pilloried him for not cooperating.
Bloede spoke to detectives last week and again Monday, giving a physical description of the shooter and an accomplice, but refused to answer questions on the advice of his lawyer, investigators said.
"Whoever told you that is damned liar," said Glenn Wolther, Bloede's lawyer. "Forrest Bloede has been fully cooperating with all requests from both the district attorney's office and the NYPD."
Bloede initially said he and Burke O'Brien, 25, were walking home to O'Brien's Orchard Street apartment in the early morning of Jan. 12 when they were confronted by two robbers, one of whom fatally shot O'Brien.
Bloede was arrested and charged with the murder of his Colorado State University fraternity brother, but was released 12 hours later.
Police said Bloede's jacket bore gunpowder residue, but not enough for him to have fired the shot.
Nor was a credible motive established for Bloede to have shot his buddy, cops said at the time.
A woman who heard the shot said she didn't hear anyone arguing or running away from the scene.
05/01/2003/NYPOST
WITNESS TALKS IN PAL SLAY
By LARRY CELONA, MURRAY WEISS and ANGELINA CAPPIELO
A 24-year-old Manhattan man who says he watched helplessly as his friend was shot to death on the Lower East Side in January suddenly began cooperating with cops yesterday after the victim's family denounced him for failing to help investigators.
Forrest Bloede showed up at the Pitt Street station house to aid the investigation into the death of Burke O'Brien, authorities said.
O'Brien, 25, was fatally shot in front of his Orchard Street walkup on Jan. 12 when he and Bloede, a former Colorado State University fraternity brother, were returning from a night out.
Cops initially arrested Bloede and charged him with murder, but released him 12 hours later. They cited a lack of sufficient evidence and a credible motive.
The case lay dormant for three months as O'Brien's family complained of the lack of progress - and Bloede's refusal to cooperate with detectives.
O'Brien's father, Mark O'Brien, planned to meet with prosecutors this week and raise the reward for information leading to an arrest to $25,000.
Yesterday, the elder O'Brien said Bloede's refusal to help catch the killer was "disgraceful."
"I'm angry," he told The Post. "We've been waiting for him to speak."
The victim's younger sister, Mariah, said, "He's not giving information pertinent to the case and he's the only one who knows the story."
But the probe took a sudden turn at 1 p.m. yesterday when Bloede showed up with his lawyer, Glenn Wolther, and looked at photos for about three hours.
Bloede didn't recognize the killer, but apparently saw something in photos of suspects in similar crimes that may be helpful, the lawyer said.
He said his client was "forced to be cautious" because while the detectives said privately they knew O'Brien was killed by two robbers, they wouldn't publicly rule Bloede out as a suspect.
01/21/2003/NYPOST
ARRESTED SLAY PAL RIPS COPS
By Rita Delfiner
Cops put a Manhattan man they arrested - and then released - through "hours of abusive interrogation" in connection with the Lower East Side slaying of a college buddy, his lawyer claimed yesterday.
Forrest Bloede, 24, "was subjected to hours of abusive interrogation and wrongfully arrested just hours after watching his friend get shot and surviving an armed mugging himself," said the lawyer, Glenn Wolther.
The lawyer declined to comment on a possible lawsuit against the NYPD.
The victim, Burke O'Brien, a 25-year-old banker, was killed Jan. 12 as he and Bloede returned to Bloede's Orchard Street apartment building.
Bloede told police that Burke was shot in the chest once after he resisted two muggers who had taken $12 from his pal.
The next day cops arrested Bloede and charged him with second-degree murder with the knowledge of the Manhattan district attorney's office - but hours later prosecutors declined to file charges against him and he was freed.
"The trauma Forrest suffered at the hands of the murderer is compounded by the treatment by the DA's office and the police," Wolther said yesterday. "His name must be completely cleared."
01/19/2003/NYPOST
CRIME WAVE JOLTS ‘NEW' LOWER EAST SIDE
By SAM SMITH
Frank Stringer was walking home two months ago through the Lower East Side when he was jumped by a group of young men and kicked until his scalp was torn lose, his ribs were broken and his wallet and jacket were gone.
The chef, who worked for 71 Clinton Fresh Foods, one of the flag-bearers of Lower East Side gentrification, said he hadn't previously felt scared or nervous about walking through the neighborhood.
"It took me off guard," he said. "I would spend all day walking up and down Clinton, cutting through these groups of kids. I guess I got desensitized to them. I cut through this group one night, ‘Excuse me, excuse me,' and when I got through, one of them hit me on the back of the head with something."
After the attack, Stringer decided the Lower East Side and his $1,000-a-month studio apartment on Rivington Street weren't living up to the hype he had heard, and he recently moved to Jersey City.
His case is typical of a social tug-of-war currently under way between the old Lower East Side and the new that some say also is responsible for a spike in street crime there - a claim underlined again last week with the murder of 25-year-old banker Burke O'Brien after his friend was robbed of $12.
The Lower East Side has experienced a wave of gentrification over the last five years. Hot spots like Alias, Suba and 1492 have flooded the area, and rents have risen as high as $60 per square foot, more than some places on Park Avenue. Also on the rise in the area last year was crime.
Reported incidents at the Lower East Side's two police precincts (the 7th and 9th) jumped by a combined 6.3 percent from those reported in 2001.
Police say the numbers are up last year only because they went down drastically in 2001 when cops were everywhere downtown after Sept. 11.
But crime dropped in 2002 in other lower-Manhattan precincts, areas similarly affected by 9/11.
Lower East Side residents see changes in their neighborhood.
Angela Cefaratti, who lives on Allen Street and bartends at the Motorcity Bar on Ludlow, says her apartment building was broken into four times last year, more than in all of the six prior years she has lived there.
"I feel less safe now than I did when I first moved here," she said.
"People are concerned," says Enrique Cervera, who has lived on Rivington Street for four years. "You don't see as many police at night as you used to. You didn't see all these groups of kids on the streets three years ago. It's like the New York of the '80s is coming out again."
Some say the increased crime is linked to rising tension in the neighborhood as property values continue to drive out longtime residents and businesses.
Roberto Napoleon, chairman of Hispanos Unidos, a new organization formed to help staunch the flow of Hispanics and African-Americans out of the Lower East Side, says the crime spike is not surprising. As every Spanish bodega closes and a new bar opens, friction intensifies, he says.
"We formed this organization to help stop a bloody situation from happening here," he said. "People are very angry. They are being pushed out, the stores are closing, new people are coming in, and they don't like it."
Hispanos Unidos brokered a deal last year to keep 67 units across three new buildings as low-rent apartments. More than 10,000 applications were received for the units, which open in May.
Dewey Dufresne, who helped launch 71 Clinton Fresh Foods and is general manager of WD50, a new upscale restaurant now being built just up the street in an old bodega, says he's aware of the local anger focused on businesses like his.
"There is part of it that's true," he said. "We came here because it was desolate. We made it hip. I think any increase in crime is because of the bad economy. I don't think opening a restaurant has anything to do with it."
Unsafe streets
Recent crime incidents in Lower East Side neighborhoods include:
January
* 75 Orchard St.: man murdered and robbed
* Bowery and Division Street: man stabbed in the face
December
* East 12th and Avenue D: man murdered
* Ludlow and Stanton streets: woman kidnapped and robbed
November
* Suffolk and Houston streets: man beaten and robbed
* 105 Second Ave.: bank robbery
* East 8th and Avenue D: woman robbed and sodomized
October
* 216 Avenue B: bodega holdup
* 80 Columbia St.: man shot
September
* Madison Street: woman raped at gunpoint
Other major crimes there last year:
June
* 504 Grand St.: 3 murdered in their apartments
* 175 Second Ave.: 3 shot and hostages sprayed with gasoline in bar
CRIME TRENDS: From 2001 to 2002:
Lower East Side 7th and 9th precincts......... +6.3%
Other Lower Manhattan precincts
1st Precinct........ - 8.8%
5th Precinct....... -5.2%
6th Precinct...... -2.2%
Source: NYPD
HOMETOWN TEARS FOR SLAIN BANKER
By PATRICIA RICHARDSON Post Correspondent
CHICAGO -The weeping mother of the young banker shot to death on Manhattan's Lower East Side told hundreds of people at his funeral yesterday that her beloved son "was all heart."
"Burke O'Brien was all heart as a brother, as a son and as a friend," Barbara Burke said, her trembling voice so quiet that 600 mourners in Sts. Faith, Hope and Charity Catholic Church strained to hear.
Among them were dozens of boys who flew in from around the country to say goodby to O'Brien, 25, who for the past seven summers was a leader at Langskib North Waters, a Canadian wilderness camp.
"What do you say to a young man when their hero is no longer with them?" said David Knudsen, founder of the camp where O'Brien took underprivileged kids under his wing.
O'Brien was killed early Sunday as he and a friend, Forrest Bloede, returned to Bloede's Orchard Street apartment building.
Bloede said O'Brien was shot once in the chest after he resisted two muggers who took $12 from his pal.
Bloede was arrested and then released in the slaying. Police sources said his lawyer, Glenn Wolther, barred him from looking at mug shots of possible suspects.
Wolther yesterday said his client has good reason to be wary of helping cops.
"You have to remember the last time Forrest tried to help the police find his friend's killer, the police turned around and wrongly accused him of being Burke's murderer. Forrest's name must be completely cleared," he added.
01/14/2003 NYPOST
PAL FREED IN BANKER SHOOTING
By WILLIAM J. GORTA in York, Pa., JAMIE SCHRAM and ANDY GELLER in N.Y.
Cops arrested an ex-college roommate yesterday in the shooting death of a young banker on the Lower East Side - but freed him hours later.
The release of Forrest Bloede, 24, in the slaying of Burke O'Brien, 25, has now left police to theorize that O'Brien was shot once in the chest and killed while resisting a robbery.
Bloede was freed after tests of his jacket revealed it didn't have the volume of gunpowder residue that would be expected if he had fired a weapon at close range, investigators said.
There was some gunpowder residue on the jacket, however.
Bloede - O'Brien's former roommate at Colorado State University - explained this by saying he and O'Brien were confronted by two robbers when they returned to Bloede's building at 4 a.m. Sunday and that O'Brien was shot when he resisted, investigators said.
Cops arrested the roommate after a man who heard the shot told police he turned and saw Bloede running into the building, but did not see the two other men.
A 23-year-old marketing analyst who lives on the second floor of the building at 75-79 Orchard St. told The Post she was awakened by the gunshot.
"I heard a kid. He was going f---, f---, f---," the woman said. "He ran into the building screaming to get others. Then I heard people saying, 'Keep him awake! Keep him awake!'
"I didn't hear anyone arguing," she added. "I didn't hear anyone running away."
Family members said O'Brien, who graduated with a business administration degree in August 2001, came to the Big Apple last Thursday to begin work with the Bank of America.
But a bank spokesman said O'Brien was only being interviewed for a post with its foreign exchange group and wasn't a bank employee "at the time of his tragic death."
O'Brien was born in Chicago, but divided his time between the Windy City and York, Pa., where his mother moved after his parents divorced. He was the second of five children.
"After the divorce, he was in charge of his brothers and sisters. He was always in control. He always kept them together," said Andrew Ryscavage, 25, one of his four cousins in York.
After his graduation, O'Brien bummed around South America, Europe and Australia, Ryscavage said.
"He was 25 years old, and he lived more of a life than any of us will," he said.
"He could create his own money once he got where he was going. He could always figure it out. He was a survivor. He seemed invincible. Put him in any situation, and he'd come out on top."
Additional reporting by Ikimulisa Sockwell-Mason, Larry Celona, Dan Kadison and Laura Italiano
1/13/2003 NEW YORK POST
ILLINOIS MAN SLAIN ON VISIT TO N.Y. SISTER
LARRY CELONA
An Illinois man visiting his sister was shot dead early yesterday morning outside the Lower East Side apartment where he was staying, cops said.
Burke O'Brien, 24, had been out with his sister and other relatives and friends for a night on the town when they returned to the apartment on Orchard Street at about 4 a.m.
While his sister and several others went inside, O'Brien and an acquaintance lingered on the street, cops said.
What happened next remains unclear, but O'Brien was shot once in the chest.
A relative in the apartment heard screams, ran downstairs and called an ambulance. O'Brien was taken to NYU Downtown Hospital, where he was pronounced dead about a half-hour later.
O'Brien's acquaintance told cops that a man approached them and demanded money before opening fire.
But another witness told police a conflicting story, and cops today were attempting to unravel the mystery.
anuary 15, 2003, Wednesday
METROPOLITAN DESK
Witness Bolsters Robbery Theory in Lower East Side Murder
By MARC SANTORA (NYT) 361 words
As the police sorted through two competing theories about who killed a 25-year-old man on the Lower East Side on Sunday, a third witness emerged whose account suggested that the victim, Burke O'Brien, was killed by robbers, the police said yesterday.
Investigators said they were still evaluating evidence in the shooting of Mr. O'Brien, a Chicago native who had just come to New York to begin work at the Bank of America.
The police had briefly charged Forrest Bloede, a college acquaintance of Mr. Burke's with whom he was staying, on the basis of two eyewitness accounts. But the charge against Mr. Bloede (pronounced BLO-dee) was dropped after investigators determined those statements were insufficient and there was no credible motive for Mr. Bloede to kill Mr. Burke.
Police officials had also said that a test of Mr. Bloede's jacket indicated that it was unlikely that he had fired a weapon. But yesterday, they said there had been a miscommunication among officials: the tests have not yet been conducted.
The third witness came forward Monday afternoon. She told investigators she saw a group of as many as five people outside the apartment building at 75-79 Orchard Street, between Grand and Broome Streets, at the time of the shooting. That would support Mr. Bloede's account that two robbers shot Mr. O'Brien. While the new witness, a lawyer who was walking on the block, was not able to describe the people she saw, she said some looked menacing enough that she ran away, investigators said. Then she heard a gunshot.
Her statement contradicts two earlier accounts, investigators said. One man who came forward said he was about 25 yards away and saw two men, not four, according to investigators. The witness did not see a gun, but he said one of the men -- who wore a striped hat of a type that investigators say Mr. Bloede was wearing -- had outstretched his arm in a manner that he took to be the pointing of one. The witness told investigators he then heard a shot and saw the other man collapse, the investigators said. The other earlier account corroborated that one.
CAPTIONS:
May 1, 2003, Thursday
METROPOLITAN DESK
Witness in January Killing Of Friend Speaks to Police
By SHAILA K. DEWAN (NYT) 672 words
A young advertising executive who witnessed the killing of his friend on the Lower East Side on Jan. 12 spoke with police detectives for more than an hour yesterday after refusing to do so for more than three months.
The witness, Forrest Bloede, 24, had initially been arrested in the killing of his friend, Burke O'Brien, 25, but was released less than a day later when the Manhattan district attorney's office declined to prosecute him. Mr. O'Brien had been shot dead in front of Mr. Bloede's apartment building on Orchard Street as the two men were returning from a night out.
While Mr. Bloede's lawyer, Glenn A. Wolther, said that prosecutors had privately assured him that his client was no longer a suspect, Mr. Wolther had sought a public declaration to that effect before Mr. Bloede would cooperate. But after the dead man's family told reporters this week of Mr. Bloede's refusal to help, Mr. Bloede went to the station house in the Seventh Precinct on the Lower East Side, where he viewed mug shots of possible suspects, Mr. Wolther said.
Mr. Bloede received no public declaration of innocence, and the district attorney's office did not break its steadfast refusal to comment on the investigation. Law enforcement officials have maintained that they could not offer Mr. Bloede immunity from prosecution until they learned more about what happened early that morning. Mr. Bloede has said that two men robbed them, then shot his friend, and at least one other witness has offered some corroboration.
Capt. James Klein, a spokesman for the Police Department, said Mr. Bloede was being treated as a witness. ''Would we rule him out as a suspect?'' he said. ''I don't think anybody can be ruled out as a suspect until we find out what went on there.''
Leaving the station house yesterday afternoon, Mr. Bloede stood wordlessly next to his lawyer. But Mr. Wolther later spoke for his client: ''Despite the fact that Forrest's good name has been tarnished and he's been falsely accused, he has made the moral decision that he must help with the investigation.''
Mark O'Brien, the victim's father, expressed a guarded optimism about the latest development in the case. ''I'm hopeful that Forrest would cooperate fully,'' he said. ''That would be wonderful. This is a small step in that direction. That's a good thing.''
Mr. Wolther maintained yesterday that the police and the district attorney were unwilling to clear his client because they did not want to admit they had made a mistake in arresting him. He released a six-page letter he had written to District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, which he said made it clear that Mr. Bloede had been willing to cooperate.
The letter said that Mr. Bloede had been hounded even after he was released, and that his family's home in Dallas had been searched. Mr. O'Brien said he had been told that the Dallas police were asked to go to the Bloede home in search of a gun. A murder weapon has never been found.
Mr. Wolther said that neither the fact that Mr. Bloede was released nor the fact that the police released a description of a suspect of a different race amounted to a public clearing of his client's name.
''They would rather have Burke O'Brien's murderer running free than to offer him the slightest assurance that he wasn't a suspect. And that is unconscionable,'' Mr. Wolther said.
Asked how his client could have jeopardized himself by agreeing to look at new evidence in the case, Mr. Wolther said that his client's caution was understandable. ''You have to remember he was arrested and charged with murder,'' he said. ''The stakes could not be higher.''
CAPTIONS:
November 16, 2003, Sunday
METROPOLITAN DESK
Unsolved, and Unsettling; Murders Are Down, but Open Cases Nag at the Public and the Police
By SHAILA K. DEWAN (NYT) 1635 words
One night last January, a young man about to start his first job in New York City was shot dead on the Lower East Side as he returned home after a night out with friends. On Sept. 9, a young woman and three elderly relatives were found dead in bloody tableaux throughout their two-story house in Jamaica, Queens. On two consecutive days later in September, a Hunter College student was fatally shot on a Harlem corner, and a Mexican immigrant was stabbed to death as his subway car neared Times Square.
On Oct. 12, two young children in Canarsie, Brooklyn, were found dead in a fire believed to have been deliberately set, and a few miles away a Fairfield University student's body was dumped on a Brooklyn street.
Detectives are fond of saying that each homicide is unique, but these 10 have two things in common: they generated headlines day after day, and they remain unsolved -- most frustratingly, perhaps, the quadruple homicide, one of the few city killings with more than two victims to remain a mystery for so long.
When three people were shot above the Carnegie Deli in 2001, the first suspect was arrested within two weeks. When five people died in the basement of a Wendy's in Flushing, Queens, in 2000, the two men who were later convicted were arrested in two days. The first suspect in a 1993 massacre on St. Valentine's Day, in which six people were fatally shot in the Bronx, was picked up within two weeks.
With homicides in the city at a 40-year low, the thought of murderers on the loose does not infect the public's imagination as it once might have. The Police Department and the city are preoccupied with other issues, terrorism and quality-of-life crimes among them. Yet in any climate, unsolved high-profile crimes can give the public a lingering sense of unease. And even after an unsolved killing drops out of the collective consciousness, it leaves families stuck in grief and detectives praying for a break.
The Police Department says its homicide investigations are as aggressive as ever. ''It's not that we can't solve them at all. We're working on them,'' said Chief George F. Brown, the commander of the department's Detective Bureau. ''Some have witnesses, some don't. Some have forensic evidence, some don't.''
The percentage of homicides solved by the department is up over all -- not as high as its peak of 88 percent in 1997, but well above the national average. The clearance rate last year was 75 percent, according to Chief Brown, while the F.B.I.'s preliminary Uniform Crime Report gives the 2002 nationwide rate as 64 percent.
The police also point to successes this year, like the arrest of Larme Price, who is charged with four killings in small businesses in Brooklyn and Queens, and the arrest of six people in connection with the fatal shooting of two undercover detectives in Staten Island. (Nationwide, more than 90 percent of the killings of police officers are solved.)
But the clearance rate can be misleading, because any case that is solved, even from an earlier year, counts as a solution of a murder in the current year. Andrew Karmen, the author of a book on the city's homicide rate, ''New York Murder Mystery,'' said that an examination of statistics showed that even as the number of homicides dropped, the clearance rate for new cases hovered from 50 to 60 percent from year to year. He has not reviewed data, however, from the last few years.
One question that intrigues criminologists is why the clearance rate has not increased as crime has fallen nationwide. Charles Wellford, the co-author of a 1999 study on clearance rates for the Justice Research and Statistics Association in Washington, D.C., suggested that the answer might be that the nature of crime had changed. Drug-related killings and those in which the perpetrator and the victim do not know each other seem to have risen, he said.
In the New York Police Department, supervisors on homicide cases say that the number of experienced detectives has declined considerably over the last few years and that many precinct detective squads have vacancies.
And on outstanding major cases, the clock is ticking: 50 percent of all homicide cases are solved within a week, and 88 percent within six months, according to the Justice Research study.
''I don't think you can apply timelines like that to an investigation,'' said Lt. Alfred Murphy, whose squad in the 103rd Precinct has set aside an office for the seven detectives dedicated to the quadruple killing in Queens. ''The first 24 hours are important, but cases have been solved weeks, months later.'' There is, he added, a $12,000 reward for information leading to arrests in the case.
''Our goal and our desire,'' Lieutenant Murphy said, ''is we want to solve these cases.''
Advances in DNA testing and other crime-fighting technology have raised the public's expectations, and television crime shows make solving a murder case look far easier than it is. ''The public watches TV and in an hour the most heinous crime is solved,'' said Capt. Daniel Murphy of the Queens Detectives Major Crimes Section. ''It takes time, and it takes patience.''
There are ways in which the passing of time can work for investigators. Technological advances can make old evidence more useful. Criminals might keep what they know about a killing in reserve, as a bargaining chip if arrested. Or a power relationship could shift, causing witnesses to tell the police what they know.
''We've broken cases 25, 27 years old and that's because witnesses will come forward because they're not fearful anymore,'' said Joseph Pollini, a retired lieutenant who commanded the special projects unit of the Police Department's cold case squad.
As time passes, though, memories fade, evidence scatters and families sour on the investigative process. Two years after her daughter was beaten to death in Central Park in 1995, Lidia Pinto Machado lashed out at the police, suggesting that they did not care about solving the case because her daughter was a Brazilian immigrant.
At the same time, Brazil's head of state would ask the mayor about the case whenever he visited the city, Lieutenant Pollini said. ''Every time we knew he was coming, we really had to be on top of things,'' he said.
Sometimes the police can take the heat for a case that may not even involve murder. Svetlana Aronov, whose disappearance in March while walking her father's dog prompted weeks of speculation, later turned up drowned in the East River. The medical examiner's office has not ruled on whether her death was an accident or a homicide, and the Police Department's missing person file on Ms. Aronov has been closed.
It comes as no surprise that the most notorious crimes are the ones to which the chiefs pay closest attention. ''These detectives have plenty of pressure on them,'' said Robert J. Louden, a retired detective lieutenant and a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. ''The first pressure, they're putting on themselves. Secondly, the organization puts pressure on them. The community, either directly or through the organization, puts pressure on them, and that includes families, victims, survivors, whatever. The public is insatiable about wanting the police to solve, if not all crimes, their crime.''
If notoriety brings scrutiny from the brass, it can also be the detective's friend. Publicity generates tips, and, Lieutenant Louden said, ''it's hard to generate publicity when there's nothing new in the story from the police point of view.''
In the case of Matthew Hall, the Hunter College student who was shot down on a street corner in September after leaving a meeting of Universal Zulu Nation, a hip hop group, the police released sketches of two men about a week after the shooting. Since then, though, little has been heard publicly about the case. For the families of victims, there is the knowledge that their case will slowly go from hot to cold, their file pushed to the bottom of a growing stack.
''It's really scary to have this erode,'' Mark O'Brien said last week from his home outside Chicago. Earlier that day, he said, he spoke to the assistant district attorney assigned to the murder case of his 25-year-old son, Burke O'Brien, who was killed on Orchard Street on the Lower East Side, apparently during a robbery.
There are few witnesses and little physical evidence in the O'Brien case, but this summer a friend who was with Burke O'Brien that night provided the police with a description for a sketch. Since then, Mr. O'Brien said, detectives have identified a prisoner who matches the description, and locked up a drug dealer who may have some knowledge about the case.
Mr. O'Brien and his daughters Raurie and Carleigh have visited New York five times since Burke O'Brien's death, and Mr. O'Brien remains in contact weekly with investigators. ''I have some faith in the people who are working on the case, I do,'' he said. ''I don't think I'm being naïve.''
CAPTIONS: Photos: Lt. Alfred Murphy, left, and Detectives James Lusk, center, and Michael McHugh discussing the investigation into a quadruple killing in Jamaica, Queens. (Photo by James Estrin/The New York Times)(pg. 35); Funeral cards, clockwise from top left, for James and Robert Armstead, Hattie Morris and Charisse Davenport, victims of a quadruple killing. (pg. 38)
January 13, 2003, Monday
METROPOLITAN DESK
Man Starting Career in City Is Slain on Lower East Side
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN and MARC SANTORA (NYT) 1279 words
A 25-year-old man who arrived in New York last week to begin a career in banking was shot to death by an unknown killer early yesterday as he returned from an evening out to an apartment building on the Lower East Side where he had been staying with his sister and friends, the police said.
Investigators said the victim, Burke O'Brien, had stepped out of a cab with a male friend at 4 a.m. and was inserting his key in the entry lock of the six-story walkup at 75-79 Orchard Street, between Grand and Broome Streets, when the assailant shot him once in the chest and fled.
As Mr. O'Brien collapsed on the sidewalk, the police said, the friend ran inside to the ground-floor apartment where Mr. O'Brien had been staying, shrieking for help. The victim's sister, Raurie O'Brien, 24, ran out and tried cardiopulmonary resuscitation for six minutes until an ambulance arrived.
Jennifer Howell, 24, who lives in a second-floor apartment overlooking the scene, said she was awakened by the crack of the shot, looked out and saw the victim lying face up under the light of a street lamp. There was a woman kneeling to administer CPR and a man was standing by, she said.
''They kept saying they couldn't find the bullet hole,'' Ms. Howell said, and it was not until paramedics opened Mr. O'Brien's jacket and shirt that they found the small hole in his chest. Ms. Howell said she also observed a police officer with a flashlight who found a shell casing eight feet from the body.
Mr. O'Brien -- a Chicago native and a graduate of Colorado State College who had lived in Ecuador and Australia and was to have begun work with the Bank of America in New York shortly -- was taken to New York University Downtown Hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival, the police said.
January 21, 2003, Tuesday
METROPOLITAN DESK
Man Arrested After a Slaying Is No Longer Seen as a Suspect
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM (NYT) 534 words
A 25-year-old man who was arrested last week in the slaying of a college acquaintance on the Lower East Side and then released hours later is no longer a suspect, a police official and the man's lawyer said yesterday.
The man, Forrest Bloede, was initially arrested and charged in the killing of Burke O'Brien, who was shot once in the chest in the early hours of Jan. 12 in front of 75-79 Orchard Street. But the charges, which came after Mr. Bloede was questioned over a period of about 20 hours, were later dropped after supervisors at the Manhattan district attorney's office reviewed the case, investigators have said. Mr. Bloede was released.
Mr. Bloede (pronounced BLO-dee) and Mr. O'Brien, a Chicago native and a Colorado State University graduate who had recently arrived in the city to begin working for the Bank of America, were returning from a night out when Mr. O'Brien was shot shortly before 4 a.m. outside the apartment building where they were staying with friends.
Mr. Bloede's arrest was based on the initial accounts of two witnesses who said the two men were alone, with one pointing something, possibly a gun, at the other, before a shot rang out, investigators have said. But the charges were dropped after those statements were determined to be insufficient to support the arrest and no credible motive could be found for Mr. Bloede to kill Mr. O'Brien, investigators have said. During a subsequent interview, one of the witnesses made statements that led investigators to believe that he may have seen the aftermath, rather than the shooting itself, and a third witness provided an account that supported Mr. Bloede's contention that Mr. Burke was shot by robbers, investigators said.
Mr. Bloede's lawyer, Glenn A. Wolther, said yesterday that it was ''essential'' that his client's name be cleared, and he criticized the way the case was handled. ''Mistakes made by the D.A.'s office and the police in the early hours of the investigation wasted critical time,'' he said. ''Moreover, Forrest was subjected to hours of abusive interrogation and wrongly arrested just hours after watching his friend get shot and surviving an armed mugging himself.''
A police spokesman said the department would have no comment and a spokeswoman for Robert M. Morganthau, the Manhattan district attorney, also declined to comment.
Detectives on the Lower East Side recently began distributing fliers offering a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and indictment of Mr. Burke's killer. The fliers describe two assailants and ask anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. The fliers say one of the assailants was a black or light-skinned 5-foot-11-inch Hispanic man who weighed 175 pounds and had a goatee. The other assailant is described as a dark-skinned black man from 5 feet 6 inches to 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighing 130 to 145 pounds. Mr. Bloede is white.
CAPTIONS:
April 30, 2003, Wednesday
METROPOLITAN DESK
Main Witness to Murder, Briefly Held, Isn't Helping
By SHAILA K. DEWAN (NYT) 628 words
The central witness to a killing on the Lower East Side in January has refused for more than three months to assist investigators in solving the case, even though he was a close friend of the victim, the victim's family said yesterday.
Asked to comment on the family's assertions about Forrest Bloede, the witness, the Police Department's chief spokesman, Michael P. O'Looney, said only, ''We would appreciate any cooperation Mr. Bloede could provide in this investigation.''
Mr. Bloede, 24, was with his friend Burke O'Brien, 25, early in the morning of Jan. 12 when Mr. O'Brien was shot and killed on Orchard Street.
Much to the surprise of Mr. O'Brien's family and friends, the police arrested Mr. Bloede a day after the killing, but released him the same day, when the Manhattan district attorney decided there was not enough evidence to charge him.
Mr. Bloede's lawyer complained that his client had been subjected to ''hours of abusive interrogation'' during his arrest. Since then, Mr. Bloede has not responded to repeated requests to give a description of the two men who he said robbed him and his friend of $12 and then shot Mr. O'Brien, and has not looked at photographs of possible suspects, Mr. O'Brien's family said.
''He's been uncooperative, and I think it's an outrage,'' said Barbara Burke, the mother of the slain young man, from her home in York, Pa. ''I can't understand why he wouldn't do that if he calls himself my son's friend. He keeps saying that he will do it, and he doesn't.''
Mr. Bloede, reached at work at the advertising agency Young & Rubicam in New York, referred all questions to his lawyer, Glenn A. Wolther.
Mr. Wolther said yesterday afternoon that he had been in discussions with the district attorney's office and was ''hours away'' from an agreement that would allow his client to cooperate in the investigation.
Mr. Bloede's refusal to cooperate was first reported yesterday in Newsday.
Asked if Mr. Bloede was seeking a guarantee that he would not be charged in the crime, Mr. Wolther said, ''We were seeking to have a generalized understanding before we went in that Forrest was not going to be considered a suspect.''
He added, ''Forrest has very much wanted to cooperate for quite some time, but upon the advice of counsel he has waited for the appropriate moment.''
But Mark O'Brien, the father of the victim, said that he did not believe there was any agreement in the works between Mr. Bloede and investigators. ''It's the total opposite of what I know to be true,'' said Mr. O'Brien, as he traveled by car to New York City from his home near Chicago for the first time since his son's death. ''Our attempts to get Forrest to cooperate have gone on for 10 weeks.''
A spokeswoman for Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, declined to comment.
Mr. O'Brien said that Mr. Bloede could cooperate without any contact with the detectives who arrested him. He said his family had agonized about whether to contact Mr. Bloede directly, but had communicated only through intermediaries.
One of those was David Newell, who was a friend of both men in college. ''I got off the phone with him a number of times thinking that something was going to happen with him that week,'' Mr. Newell said of Mr. Bloede yesterday.
July 19, 2004 -- The father of a young man gunned down in front of his college buddy's Lower East Side apartment nearly two years ago has launched a Web site and upped the reward for finding his son's killer.
Burke O'Brien, 25, was shot through the heart in January 2003 after he and his friend Forrest Bloede returned to Bloede's Orchard Street apartment from a night on the town.
The killer or killers are still at large.
Frustrated by the lack of leads in the case, the O'Brien family has upped the reward to $50,000 and launched a Web site, www.burkeobrien.org.
The slain man's story will also be the subject of an episode of the controversial all-access show "NYPD 24/7." It will air tomorrow night on ABC.
O'Brien's father, Mark, says it will be tough to watch, but he hopes the show will be seen by someone who knows what happened.
"I want them captured," O'Brien said. "The key is more public exposure."
Just hours into the investigation, police focused on Bloede after an eyewitness erroneously told them he'd seen O'Brien's buddy pull the trigger. But the witness had only heard the gunshot go off. The misinformation led detectives astray during the early hours of the investigation.
Their missteps will be exposed as the reality show highlights the first 72 hours of the investigation.
"The first 48 hours of any homicide investigation are critical, and they spent that time looking at the wrong guy," said series executive producer Terrence Wrong.
