Crown Heights – In The Shooting Of Efraim Klien HY”D, Police Have New Clues

A group of approximately thirty Jewish community leaders and activists met with police officials Thursday night for a briefing on the investigation of the murder of Ephraim (aka Frederick) Klein HY”D. The meeting, called at the request of police, allowed those leading the investigation to report accurate information, dispel rumor, and seek the help and involvement of the community.

Assistant Chief Joseph Fox, Commanding Officer of Patrol Borough Brooklyn South, opened the meeting by sharing his sadness over the murder and acknowledging the prayers for the deceased, his family and friends. He explained that the Jewish Community of Crown Heights has a unique dynamic, “something you should all be proud of,” namely, its network of communication. If something happens at night, observed Chief Fox, everyone will know about it by morning. For that reason, police officials thought it would be a good idea to inform community leaders of the investigation’s progress, both so the community at large would feel confident that the case was being taken seriously, and to solicit any input that community members might have that could aid in the investigation.

Chief Fox revealed that when a homicide is committed, detectives investigate the deceased person’s background and dealings. If the murder victim owned real estate, for example, police would investigate whether any of his or her tenants might have had a motive for the crime; if the deceased sold cars, police would want to talk to his or her customers. The chief therefore appealed to anyone who knew anything about Mr. Klein to come forward, so that all possible leads could be followed up.
Deputy Inspector Frank Vega, Commanding Officer of the 71st Precinct, spoke next and detailed the chronology of events leading up to Mr. Klein’s murder. He said that after the shooting, detectives arrived on the scene to canvas for witnesses, look for blood evidence and any other clues that might be found. To facilitate this, the inspector noted, the Emergency Services Unit was called in immediately to light up the entire street with floodlights. Somewhere around 3:00 – 4:00 a.m., Deputy Inspector Vega made a series of calls notifying community leaders of what was happening.

Deputy Inspector Vincent DiDonato, Jr., Commanding Officer of Brooklyn South Detectives, spoke longest. The detective inspector provided what, if not for the tragic context, would have been a fascinating look into how detectives investigate a shooting, and, specifically, how this homicide is being handled.

Mr. Klein’s roommate had said Mr. Klein left his apartment at 1751 Union Street around 1:10 a.m. to go and move his car. About five minutes later, Mr. Klein was shot as he drove in the vicinity of Schenectady Avenue and Carroll Street. What happened in between? The answer seems impossible to discover, but, as became evident from Thursday’s meeting, detectives are trained to recognize evidence that non-professionals would probably not even realize exists.

Deputy Inspector DiDonato said that detectives began by trying to put themselves into Mr. Klein’s shoes and figuring out where they would have gone themselves if they had been looking for a parking space at 1:10 in the morning, near 1751 Union Street. They actually went to that location and drove around, trying to reenact what Mr. Klein might have encountered as he drove. Nothing was said, however, about any leads resulting from this experiment.

There is a red light camera at the intersection of Utica Avenue and Eastern Parkway—one short block from Mr. Klein’s apartment building—and another line of inquiry involved obtaining the video from that camera to see what vehicles were in the vicinity around the time of the shooting. Of course, not all vehicles passing that intersection would be expected to turn up at Carroll and Schenectady—in fact, it is conceivable that none did—but, stressed the inspector, no possibility should be left unexplored, so two detectives were assigned to painstakingly review the video. It was possible, after all, that Mr. Klein’s own minivan would show up on the tape, revealing where he was and in which direction he was traveling as he began his search for parking.

All calls to 911 reporting shots fired within the last six months are also being reviewed. This, presumably, could show detectives where guns had previously been fired in that general area, possibly by people known to the police. Perhaps one of them was involved in the shooting of Mr. Klein.

Narrowing the focus more specifically on the case at hand, Deputy Inspector DiDonato said that there were nine 911 calls in connection with the murder or subsequent car crash. All of them were from people on Carroll Street; five came from the block east of Schenectady Avenue and four from the block to the west. One caller, who lived on Carroll Street roughly midway between Schenectady and Utica, described hearing what he at first thought were “firecrackers,” while another caller, located near the corner of Schenectady and Carroll, said the shots sounded like they were “right outside my window.” Such descriptions by people spread out over the area allow detectives to home in and form an educated guess as to where the shooter most likely was as he or she fired the gun. Most callers said they heard three shots.

In addition, two video cameras are mounted on a private home farther south along Schenectady Avenue. Police have obtained the video from these, and they show a man on Carroll Street near the corner of Schenectady, talking on his cell phone as the shots were fired. The video reveals that the man immediately ran for cover and ducked into the second driveway in from Schenectady Avenue. He then called 911 on his cell phone and reported the shooting—which, unfortunately, he did not actually see. The man’s behavior suggests that the shots were fired from so close to where he was—Carroll Street very close to the intersection with Schenectady—that he feared they were directed at him.

Police searched the entire area around where the shots must have been fired, but no ballistic evidence—i.e., shell casings—was found on the street, despite a second search the following day and the use of metal detectors. This may turn out to be a significant factor in the investigation, for the following reason:

A single bullet was recovered from Mr. Klein’s body. It has been identified as the bullet of either a .38 caliber revolver or a 9 mm. automatic. (Attempts are ongoing to positively identify the bullet.) The significance of this is that revolver cartridges remain in the chamber of the gun, whereas automatic weapons eject a cartridge, or shell casing, after each shot. The fact that no shell casings were recovered from the scene, despite the fact that only one of three shots was accounted for, means either that the shots were fired from a revolver, or that they were fired from an automatic that was located inside someone’s apartment or inside another vehicle. In the latter cases, the ejected shell casings would be in the apartment or vehicle, not the street.

Now, the bullet that struck Mr. Klein entered his car through the passenger side window and hit the victim in the right arm. It then passed entirely through the arm and into Mr. Klein’s torso, where it entered his heart, killing him. The parallel trajectory of the bullet—the level path it took through the arm and chest—enabled police to determine the height from which the shot was fired, which must have been approximately the same height as that of Mr. Klein’s upper torso as he sat behind the wheel of his minivan.

Tying all the above points together, this means that the shots, if fired from an automatic weapon, could not have been fired from an apartment window along Schenectady Avenue, because the height of those windows is too high for a bullet to have taken a parallel trajectory from one of them through the arm and upper torso of a person sitting in a minivan outside. The shots, if fired from an automatic weapon, could not have come from the street either, since in that case, the other two shell casings should, presumably, have been recovered. Thus, if fired from an automatic weapon, the shots must have been fired from a passing vehicle. This would explain the missing shell casings, and is consistent with the parallel trajectory of the recovered bullet.

Of course, as stated above, the bullet could also have come from a revolver. In that case, although it could not have been fired from an apartment along Schenectady Avenue (because of the impossibility of a parallel trajectory from those windows), and in addition to the possibility that it was fired from a passing vehicle, it could also have been fired by a person standing in the street.

However, the video camera on the nearby house shows more than the man with the cell phone referred to earlier. At around the time the shots were fired, it also shows a white box van driving south along Schenectady Avenue, applying its brake lights (the red glow can be seen on the tape). Then, behind the white van and too far away for the camera to make out any more detail, a pair of headlights comes into view, turning from Schenectady Avenue onto Carroll Street. Detectives believe this must have been Mr. Klein’s vehicle.

Was the white van the shooter’s? Or was the driver merely applying the brakes because he or she heard the shots and was trying to see what was going on? Either way, police would very much like to speak to the driver of that white van, and have distributed signs asking anyone with information about it to come forward.

(Unlike what has been explained about the absence of shell casings, no conclusion can reasonably be drawn from the fact that three shots were heard but only one bullet recovered. In a follow-up conversation with the Crown Heights Chronicle, Deputy Inspector DiDonato explained that shell casings are much more likely to be found than actual bullets. This is because shell casings fall to the ground fairly close to the gun, but there is no way to know how far a bullet may travel before either striking something or falling to the ground. It is entirely possible, said the inspector, that the two other bullets, after missing Mr. Klein’s minivan, traveled for several blocks along the middle of the street without hitting anything, eventually falling to the ground far away. Alternatively, they may have shattered to pieces upon striking concrete, or become embedded in some building and missed by searchers.)

It is also possible to deduce several things relevant to motive. The windows of Mr. Klein’s minivan were coated with so-called “limo-tint,” a dark plastic film applied to a vehicle’s windows to make them virtually opaque. (It was this plastic film that held the glass together after the bullet made a hole right through it.) Deputy Inspector DiDonato stated that the first witness on the scene, a person who rushed up to the crashed minivan, told police he could not see who was inside because he could not see through the blackened window. Moreover, the van was found with both the driver’s side and passenger side windows rolled up. These facts, said the inspector, suggest two things: The first is that the shooter could not see into the minivan, and could not actually see Mr. Klein. The second is that Mr. Klein had not been in the midst of an argument with anyone when he was shot, since the windows were up instead of down.

All in all, summed up the detective inspector, the circumstances are consistent with an incident of “road rage,” such as if Mr. Klein, driving along with his eye out for parking spots, had accidentally cut someone off, or had begun to take a spot that another person wanted, and that person had become furious and shot at the “offending” minivan without regard for who was in it. The current thinking of police, he said, is that road rage, getting caught in fire aimed at someone else, or even random shooting are the most likely explanations for what occurred. However, continued Deputy Inspector DiDonato, on the basis of investigation into Mr. Klein’s personal affairs and the darkened windows of his car, it is believed to be highly unlikely that Mr. Klein himself was specifically targeted by anyone—either in his own right or because of his religion.

Several other points of interest were presented at the Thursday night meeting. Some members of the audience noted that police were not noticeably present at the scene of the shooting until two days afterward. Police explained that in fact, the area was “flooded” with plainclothes detectives immediately after the crime. Additionally, before the crime, there had been ongoing, routine police operations in that general area: the narcotics squad ran operations there to catch drug dealers; the gun squad sought to track illegal guns; and the warrants squad searched for people with outstanding arrest warrants, for example. Some of these operations made use of “confidential informants,” people who are essentially criminals or associates of criminals, but who secretly supply the police with credible information. People like that are considered more likely than law-abiding citizens to know something about a crime, and police strategy therefore was to have those already working the area pull in all the “bad guys”—anyone with outstanding arrest warrants, illegal guns, drug dealings, confidential informants, etc.—and interrogate them. It was only after this intelligence-gathering operation had concluded that uniformed officers were assigned to the area, the officials said.

Members of the audience also let police know that the reward was up to $30,000., not $12,000. as previously supposed. It was agreed that the posters advertising a $12,000. reward would be replaced as soon as possible with new ones announcing the larger amount. Rewards do help, said police, in enticing people to come forward with information. It was also stated that the most effective place for the reward posters is not so much on the street as in the holding cells, jails, and similar places where criminals, caught and vulnerable, will see them.

Some in the audience pressed for an estimate of how long it would take before the murderer was caught. Deputy Inspector DiDonato explained that the question was impossible to answer. Sometimes, he said, police get a lucky break: all it takes is one phone call from a witness to lead detectives to the killer. On the other hand, it could be years before someone, for example, calls police to report that an ex-boyfriend or a drinking buddy had bragged about the murder.

“We just started,” said the inspector. “I have guys here who have not been home since it happened; they’ve been sleeping on cots and going right back out into the field. I’m going to tell you right now,” he continued, “this is a tough case. But we work hard and we make our own luck—we get breaks.”

Deputy Inspector DiDonato concluded, “We solved about eight out of ten homicides over the last few years. You couldn’t have a better group of detectives investigating Mr. Klein’s murder.”

who knows?he could of been on the ave the whole time and never on carrol st!

too little too late. moychel toyves