and Norman ran the local Democratic organization. A lot of promising careers have ended when crime met politics, so this investigation was getting Vecchione’s complete attention. This was going to make Second Coming headlines, and as everyone in law enforcement knows, big headlines often mean big headaches. There was a lot of pressure on him to get it right.
“The timing couldn’t have been worse,” Vecchione remembers. “I was in the middle of preparing several of the most important prosecutions of my entire career. The other bureaus I supervised were overloaded with work. We had a hiring freeze in place so I was spending a couple of hours every day just juggling lawyers to make sure everything got covered. And then Tommy walks in and tells me he’s got this great case. I almost laughed. There was no way I had the time for it, whatever it was, no way. But with Tommy…I didn’t know what he had, but I knew my life was about to get a lot more complicated.”
Dades and Vecchione had met in 1992, just after Mike had been named Chief of the Homicide Bureau. Tommy was still assigned to the Sixty-eighth Precinct Detective Squad. The first case Tommy brought to him, the Casatelli case, wasn’t even a homicide. That was typical Tommy. It was a brutal assault that put three college kids in the hospital. And it wasn’t precisely a cold case; at best it was lukewarm. It wasn’t even an important case; maybe it would make page 16. Below the fold. It was the kind of case most detectives would have long since forgotten. But as usual, when Tommy got involved, the mother was in the middle of it.
Casatelli started one night in 1992. Five college kids were celebrating a birthday in a Brooklyn bar. When they came out of the bar they got into some kind of dispute with three neighborhood tough guys. It was the basic egos-and-alcohol argument. The college kids then got into their car and drove away. Most nights it would have ended there, but not that night. That night lives changed.
The locals followed in their own car. When the college kids stopped to buy cigarettes the street guys attacked them with baseball bats and knives. Three of the five of them were left lying in their own blood on the sidewalk; each of them had been beaten and stabbed at least ten times.
After spending more than a year in the hospital two of the victims eventually recovered, but the third one remained in a semicomatose state. So technically it still wasn’t a homicide. Not as long as the machines kept him alive.
Tommy caught the case. The two kids who had escaped injury had given the police a solid description of their attackers. Within a couple of days Tommy got one name from the streets, a punk he’d arrested twice before named Tommy Kane. Dades got photos of Kane, his brother, and some ofthe guys they hung out with and glued those pictures to a sheet of paper, creating a rudimentary lineup. The witnesses picked out Kane, his brother Paulie, and a third tough guy named T. J. Hynes. Dades quickly arrested Paulie Kane, who pleaded guilty. But Tommy Kane and Hynes ran. They disappeared.
The newspapers never bothered with the case. A lot of detectives would have let it go. A file in a drawer. But Tommy got to know the mother of one of the victims, Mrs. Casatelli. They spoke regularly. How you doing, Tommy? I’m fine, is everything okay? Why can’t they find the people who did this to my son? Tommy promised her he wouldn’t forget her son. And he didn’t.
Tommy was plugged into Brooklyn. If Kane and Hynes were hiding in a Brooklyn sewer, Tommy would have known about it. Believing they’d left the state, he knew eventually he was going to need legal assistance to bring them back. That’s when he went up to see Mike Vecchione.
Vecchione’s office was on the fourth floor of Brooklyn’s old Municipal Building. It was a dingy corner office, the kind of office that could have come out of a black and white B picture. The windows were covered with so
“The timing couldn’t have been worse,” Vecchione remembers. “I was in the middle of preparing several of the most important prosecutions of my entire career. The other bureaus I supervised were overloaded with work. We had a hiring freeze in place so I was spending a couple of hours every day just juggling lawyers to make sure everything got covered. And then Tommy walks in and tells me he’s got this great case. I almost laughed. There was no way I had the time for it, whatever it was, no way. But with Tommy…I didn’t know what he had, but I knew my life was about to get a lot more complicated.”
Dades and Vecchione had met in 1992, just after Mike had been named Chief of the Homicide Bureau. Tommy was still assigned to the Sixty-eighth Precinct Detective Squad. The first case Tommy brought to him, the Casatelli case, wasn’t even a homicide. That was typical Tommy. It was a brutal assault that put three college kids in the hospital. And it wasn’t precisely a cold case; at best it was lukewarm. It wasn’t even an important case; maybe it would make page 16. Below the fold. It was the kind of case most detectives would have long since forgotten. But as usual, when Tommy got involved, the mother was in the middle of it.
Casatelli started one night in 1992. Five college kids were celebrating a birthday in a Brooklyn bar. When they came out of the bar they got into some kind of dispute with three neighborhood tough guys. It was the basic egos-and-alcohol argument. The college kids then got into their car and drove away. Most nights it would have ended there, but not that night. That night lives changed.
The locals followed in their own car. When the college kids stopped to buy cigarettes the street guys attacked them with baseball bats and knives. Three of the five of them were left lying in their own blood on the sidewalk; each of them had been beaten and stabbed at least ten times.
After spending more than a year in the hospital two of the victims eventually recovered, but the third one remained in a semicomatose state. So technically it still wasn’t a homicide. Not as long as the machines kept him alive.
Tommy caught the case. The two kids who had escaped injury had given the police a solid description of their attackers. Within a couple of days Tommy got one name from the streets, a punk he’d arrested twice before named Tommy Kane. Dades got photos of Kane, his brother, and some ofthe guys they hung out with and glued those pictures to a sheet of paper, creating a rudimentary lineup. The witnesses picked out Kane, his brother Paulie, and a third tough guy named T. J. Hynes. Dades quickly arrested Paulie Kane, who pleaded guilty. But Tommy Kane and Hynes ran. They disappeared.
The newspapers never bothered with the case. A lot of detectives would have let it go. A file in a drawer. But Tommy got to know the mother of one of the victims, Mrs. Casatelli. They spoke regularly. How you doing, Tommy? I’m fine, is everything okay? Why can’t they find the people who did this to my son? Tommy promised her he wouldn’t forget her son. And he didn’t.
Tommy was plugged into Brooklyn. If Kane and Hynes were hiding in a Brooklyn sewer, Tommy would have known about it. Believing they’d left the state, he knew eventually he was going to need legal assistance to bring them back. That’s when he went up to see Mike Vecchione.
Vecchione’s office was on the fourth floor of Brooklyn’s old Municipal Building. It was a dingy corner office, the kind of office that could have come out of a black and white B picture. The windows were covered with so
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