Select Ledes | Tom Troncone

http://troncone.me/my-ledes/

Tom Troncone

SELECT LEDES
The early-30s man emerges from the motel room with the late-40s prostitute. Hes dressed in a hooded designer sweatshirt, windbreaker pants and a Yankees cap pulled over his eyes. His date pulls on a cigarette, runs a hand through her scraggly hair and scans the parking lot. A stained sweatshirt hangs from her rail-thin body. In most places, theyd make an odd pair. But not here, not in the welfare motel that the private jets skim as they deliver millionaires to Teterboro Airport across the street. The Airport Motel is a lifetime away from that world. So is the go-go joint hidden among the warehouses behind it, just down the street from the South Hackensack police station. Drugs and booze. Hookers and porn. Dancers and cheating spouses. If its possible for North Jersey to have a red-light district, this half-mile strip of Route 46 is it. *** The realness of Dana Christmas monologue is harrowing a heart-wrenching narrative of the moment that forever changed her life, ended three others and stole the innocence of a freshman class. Its a sort of verbal time machine, bringing the viewer back to January 2000 and into the choking, toxic smoke on the third oor of the Seton Hall University freshman dorm. I pat the back of my scalp trying to extinguish the ames, Christmas says on the video, pro-

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Select Ledes | Tom Troncone

http://troncone.me/my-ledes/

duced by the Center for Campus Fire Safety and uploaded to YouTube.com. Then I notice my hands, theyre on re. And from there, then I see that no one is waking up. Im thinking to myself: Im gonna die. Im only 21 years old. *** The words on the pin worn by Maria Soto capture more than any other the ery spirit of her brother, Gilberto: Si Se Puede. The words roughly translate to Yes, You Can. Its a fathers motto that keeps a son from giving in to pain, or a daughter from crying when she peers into a school auditorium once lled with her fathers boisterous applause. For the entire extended Soto family, the last six months are a blur, a hazy, day-to-day conuence of confusion, grief, anger and, above all, a burning desire for justice for a murdered brother, son, uncle and father. *** For years, the joke among New York mobsters was that you couldnt have a sit-down with a member of the DeCavalcante crime syndicate until after 4 oclock. Thats when the whistles blew and the job sites closed for the day. Members of New Jerseys only homegrown Maa family worked blue-collar jobs and shunned ashy cars and expensive suits a social camouage that helped them quietly control labor unions and maintain a stranglehold on construction in the Garden State. *** The rst time Kevin Vickers removed a spine from a cadaver, he said, it took two hours. But Dr. Mikes guys could tear one out in about ve minutes ripping though esh and bone

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Select Ledes | Tom Troncone

http://troncone.me/my-ledes/

with electric saws and claiming the parts like auto thieves in a chop shop, he said. *** Michael Mastromarino was an aggressive salesman, courting New Jersey funeral homes for cadavers he could harvest for the second act of his medical career. His life as a surgeon having been ruined by drug abuse, Mastromarino turned to the new frontier of biomedicine, extracting bones, tendons and skin from hospitals, morgues and funeral homes. Now the 42-year-old Fort Lee resident is a target of a body-snatching probe in which cadavers were allegedly dissected for prot without consent. The accusations have rattled the multibillion-dollar tissue transplant industry and launched a massive federal recall of biomedical products. *** The videos are as damning as they are chilling, authorities say a multi-camera chronicle of Jennifer Moores nal hours in a Weehawken ophouse and of her alleged killers daylong attempt to get away with murder. One of the cameras captures Moore and Draymond Coleman arriving at the hotel around dawn on July 25, authorities say. Another, positioned in an upstairs hallway, shows the improbable pair entering Room 37, one of the old hotels dingy quarters. Moments later, the Harrington Park teen leaves the room, walks downstairs and tries to place a call on her cellphone that, for some reason, wont go through. In hindsight, it might have been Moores last chance to save herself at the Park Avenue Hotel. *** Jennifer Moore was scared and alone, walking through the pre-dawn quiet of Manhattans West Side with no money and no way back to Harrington Park when, police say, she crossed paths with Draymond Coleman.

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But Coleman was no savior to the intoxicated 18-year-old, they said. An ex-convict whose own mother says he lusts after crack cocaine, Coleman brought Moore back to his Weehawken hotel room. There, sometime after 5 a.m. Tuesday, he beat and strangled her, authorities said. *** They climbed from the partially submerged fuselage and into the bitter arctic afternoon, strangers who in one terrifying instant had become part of a fraternity: the survivors of US Airways Flight 1549. One by one, they emerged onto wings that seconds earlier had soared above New York City. Commuter ferries sped to them, pulling each to safety. *** They drove to New York City in a pair of showy cars, bringing with them an eye for the high life and the cash to live it. David Taylor and Allan Jay Plowden ashed stacks of money in city clubs and brought a string of women some paid for, others not back to various hotel rooms. But the duos September of sin had its price. While living like rap stars, they were being tagged as easy marks by thieves drawn to their Rolexes and German luxury sedans, authorities said. One robbery scheme allegedly organized by a budding Harlem rapper went horribly wrong, however, and Taylor was shot dead Sept. 22 in a Fort Lee hotel room. *** Joseph Caiati strode into Lodi police headquarters Monday night sporting a white police shirt adorned with a gold badge that said Chief. He signed in as chief. He began working his shift as chief. He visited a favorite local diner dressed as chief. Theres only one hitch: Caiati is not the chief.

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Select Ledes | Tom Troncone

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*** Gravely wounded, Rachel Morgan fell backwards onto the snowy ground. It could have been over within seconds. All Michael Carmody had to do was step out of his car and forever have his name tagged with the modier cop killer. *** Angela Lassiter heeded the voice inside her head. Throwing on whatever clothes were nearby, she hurried outside, where the December air was frigid but devoid of the overpowering smell of natural gas that lled her Bergeneld apartment. Lassiter got into her car. She turned the ignition key. Then she heard it: BOOM! *** The family members on both sides of the courtroom leaned forward Wednesday morning, straining to hear Joseph LePore and then Sean Ryan nally confess. On one side, close friends and family members of Frank Caltabilota, John Giunta and Aaron Karol 18-year-olds killed in a dormitory blaze at Seton Hall University nearly seven years ago bore pained expressions and teary eyes. On the other side, supporters of the two lifelong friends looked on stoically. *** Paul Duncsak expected to be relaxing with his ance and two young children in Virginia Beach today, far from the strife and worry that engulfed his life the past few years. Early Wednesday evening, the doting Ramsey dad telephoned the woman he planned to marry.

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Its not clear what they talked about, but something was obviously wrong. In the middle of the conversation, the line went dead. *** Ronald Saglimbene remembered the signicance of the date moments before his plane left the ground. Aug. 11, his childhood sweethearts birthday. The day usually sticks in his head like an alarm clock set to remind him each year of Joyce Saglimbenes short life and her grisly murder. *** JERSEY CITY City police didnt allow themselves to mourn Tuesday. There will be time for that later, when the wet suits and waders are put away and their colleagues body is found. Sleep-deprived and stone-faced, police and rescue workers continued combing the murky water and weeded banks of the lower Hackensack River shortly after daybreak. The search for the body of city Police Ofcer Robert Nguyen was halted at nightfall. Nguyen and his partner, Shawn Carson, died after they inadvertently drove off the edge of an open lift bridge Christmas night as horried fellow ofcers desperately tried to stop them. *** PARAMUS The last time she appeared before the state Parole Board, Patricia Rybka brought a photo collage. Beginning with a happy couple smiling on their wedding day, it built up to the birth of their son. It continued through the boys infant and toddler years. But then, around the time when a picture depicting her husband playing catch with their son might have appeared, Joseph Rybka disappeared from the collage.

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The photos continued without Joe his wifes way of showing the Parole Board how the 1979 murder tore a gaping hole in their small family. The board denied parole for Joseph Rybkas killer. *** MANALAPAN One is a born-again Christian, an American Legion chaplain and a man so sel ess, according to those who know him, that he openly prayed for the happiness of his estranged wife and her new love. But Douglas W. Winn also hoped that God would help repair his marriage. The other is a man who found the love he was looking for his entire adult life in the arms of a married woman. Describing Kevin Schellet as a gentle giant, friends said he was a man so giving that he would cook for disadvantaged kids and someone who made friends wherever he went. So those who knew either man were shocked when they learned Winn, the man who friends said wouldnt hurt a y, was arrested and charged with running down Schellet with a pickup truck early Friday evening.

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