The Murders Down the Hall

[Nevilledog]

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Justin Miller
@justinjm1
When an elderly woman was found dead in a pool of blood, NYPD believed it was natural causes. Turns out she was stabbed to death.

When a 2nd woman was strangled, NYPD didn't arrest a suspect despite and eyewitness and DNA.

Then a 3rd was murdered.

The Murders Down the Hall
393 Powell Street was a peaceful home, until residents started dying in brutal, mysterious ways.
nymag.com
5:29 AM · Oct 12, 2021

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/nycha-nypd-woodson-houses-nyc-murders.html

No paywall
https://archive.is/GWrC1


When Myrtle McKinney first moved into the Carter G. Woodson Houses in 2004, she felt lucky to be there. The complex is one of only 38 public-housing developments in New York City reserved for seniors, and the waiting list for a one-bedroom can stretch on for years.

A Jamaican emigrant in her early 70s, she had raised seven kids working as a housekeeper in Florida and the Bahamas before relocating to Brooklyn to live with her daughter. By the time her application was approved, she was desperate for a place of her own.

After settling into apartment 6M, McKinney quickly jumped into the bustling social scene enjoyed by the development’s 450 residents. She joined a knitting circle in the first-floor senior center and spent her mornings relaxing with friends amid the rows of shade-dappled benches in the courtyard out front. In the afternoons, her neighbor in 6E, an easygoing man in his early 70s named Leon Gavin, whom everyone called “Music Man,” liked to DJ dance parties in the courtyard from a small speaker hooked up to his mobility scooter. It was like a middle-school dance, one resident said: girls on one side, boys on the other.

Situated in the heart of eastern Brooklyn along the border between Brownsville and East New York, the Woodson Houses occupy nearly an entire block in one of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods. But to the residents who lived there, the complex was a refuge, “a place of peace,” as one family member put it. Over the next decade, though, that feeling would slowly disappear. The complex had always dealt with its share of low-level crime, but around 2013, an influx of new tenants seemed to bring with them new dangers. Now, when a resident’s caregiver was buzzed into the main tower’s front door, a seemingly endless stream of interlopers sneaked in after, vanishing into the dark corners of the high-rise. Longtime residents suddenly found themselves accosted in the hallways by strangers asking for money. Some smoked crack in the stairwells and on the roof. And while some residents fretted over the conditions, others started supplementing their income by renting out couches to drug users off the street. Things got so bad that at one point, a small band of users took over an elderly tenant’s cramped second-floor apartment and turned it into a thriving crack den.

*snip*

[hlthe2b]

1. Too bad we don't have a REAL Captain Olivia Benson & her SUV squad to take these seriously.

How the hell they can defend their actions (assumptions and conclusions) absolutely floors me.

[Demovictory9]

2. Bookmarking to read