Murder suspect
Police arrested a suspect in Miami on Fri. Oct. 3 in connection with the death of the bartender of Gemini Lounge, Second Ave. at 13th St., who was strangled on Sept. 25 in his Brooklyn apartment. The suspect, Michael Case, 25, was apprehended while he was signing the register of a Miami homeless shelter. Police charged him with strangling Vincent Neto Dambrova, 27, in the apartment they shared in the Kensington neighborhood in Brooklyn.
The murder occurred while the two men, who had met in the Gemini Lounge a few months before, were arguing about rent, according to reports. Case is also accused of the July 2002 murder in Buffalo of Kevin Bosinski, 27, whom he had met in a gay bar and with whom he shared an apartment.
Stabbing arrest
A fight at 12:30 a.m. Sun. Oct. 5 outside 313 Bowery, where a men’s shelter is located and next door to the club CBGB, ended with the stabbing of two victims, police said. Both victims, 20 years old, were taken to Cabrini Medical Center in stable condition, one of them with five wounds and the other stabbed once in the back. Police arrested Jose Valles, 27, of Brooklyn a short time later and charged him with aggravated assault. Police did not specify why the men were at the location and are investigating the circumstances of the case.
Shoplifters
The security guard of a Rite Aid supermarket at 113 Fourth Ave. who stopped a middle-aged woman shoplifting in the store at 4:40 p.m. Wed. Oct. 1, was stabbed in the side with a syringe by her accomplice, a man described only as white and between the ages of 40 and 50, police said. Both suspects fled.
Shot on Avenue D
A man, 29, was shot in the back by a unknown assailant in front of 178 Avenue D in the Jacob Riis Houses at 8:15 p.m. Wed. Oct. 1, police said. The victim was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital in stable condition.
Brass makes collar
Deputy Commissioner for Public Information Michael O’Looney, who had viewed a video image of a robbery suspect on the morning of Sept. 30, spotted the man near Union Sq. at 7:30 p.m. that night, and followed him into the subway station where he arrested him in the station mezzanine with the help of a Transit Bureau policeman, Jaime Soto, and three passersby.
The suspect, Harry Langert, 50, of Brooklyn, was charged with pushing his way into a woman’s apartment at 151 W. 16th St., at 4:50 p.m. Sept. 17, demanding money and then tying her hands after stabbing her in the right hand. The suspect fled with property and cash, police said.
Langert was also charged with two other robberies. One was a few hours before he was arrested on Sept. 30 and involved pushing into an apartment at 121 E. 12th St., tying up the woman victim and fleeing with unspecified property. The other was holding up two women at knifepoint in the elevator of 284 Mott St. on the afternoon of Sept. 22, punching one of them and fleeing without taking anything.
Etan Patz case
Recent statements by the suspect in the case of Etan Patz, the Soho youth who disappeared 24 years ago, are being called an “improbable” alibi, according to a report in the New York Post. The article states that in an April deposition in a wrongful-death suit brought by Patz’s parents, Jose Ramos, currently serving 10 to 20 years for molesting two Pennsylvania boys, stated he was in Washington Sq. Park with a young boy named “Jimmy” when police questioned him around 11:30 a.m. on May 25, 1979, asking if he’d seen Patz, 6. However, Patz wasn’t reported missing until 2 p.m. that day and officers would not have circulated his poster until hours later, the family’s lawyer, Brian O’Dwyer was quoted as saying, calling Ramos’ story “completely made up.” Ramos’ then-girlfriend was Etan Patz’s babysitter. Ramos has never been charged criminally in the case, though Patz’s parents feel he is guilty of murder. Ramos has allegedly made incriminating statements to inmates.
Stanley Patz, Etan’s father, said he was surprised to see the article in the Post. “It’s not new. It’s the old Jimmy story,” he said. “I don’t know if this a page-filler for them. His birthday is on Thursday,” he said of Etan. “He would have been 31 on Oct. 9.”
A commercial photographer, Patz said that Ramos’s alibi about Jimmy is 20 years old and was his “first attempt to explain his way out of it….” He said Ramos even has a Web page on which the whole Jimmy alibi is explained, www.prisoners.comttttruth.
The civil lawsuit against Ramos was filed over a year ago.
“We have every intention of prosecuting him,” Patz said.
Bank job
A man, described only as white, walked into the Fleet Bank branch at 72 Second Ave. at 3:30 p.m. Mon Sept. 29, passed a note to a teller demanding money and fled with an undetermined amount of cash, police said.
Poison pen
Police are investigating the source of two letters addressed to the employees of a business at 536 LaGuardia Pl., which arrived on Thurs. Oct. 2 with anti-Hispanic slogans.
