- 10 hours ago
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00Most of the time, a death investigator goes in and out of a crime scene, and there's no fanfare.
00:23But when the victim is from a prominent family, the city is on high alert.
00:28And all eyes are on me, law enforcement, to solve this case quickly.
00:33We found a 31-year-old male teacher from Taft High School in the Bronx.
00:39Somebody had taped him to a chair and brutally just executed him.
00:45He is the son of one of the richest, most powerful men in New York City.
00:50Like a slight downward drag and then a slice.
00:54These are the marks of torture.
00:57When you think of your very favorite teacher going in that fashion, it's pretty demoralizing.
01:03What motive would somebody have for doing something so hateful?
01:08She told us that my husband and Jonathan had an argument.
01:12He's been in and out of the apartment and he's left a bag of bloody clothes.
01:16There are rewards posted at Citywide Manhunt.
01:22Sometimes I have to defend my work at trial, and this defense attorney battered me.
01:27You're not even a doctor, are you?
01:30No, I'm not an M.D.
01:32I am a death investigator.
01:34The Upper West Side in the 1990s was diverse, hip and not that much crime.
01:52So when a high profile murder rattled the neighborhood, it was all hands on deck to solve this case.
02:03I was on the job just about five years and Sergeant Hortoho, he was a rookie cop.
02:09Hortoho.
02:10This case turned out to be unforgettable to both of us.
02:15Barbara Butcher, we would refer to her as Dr. Butcher, you know, as if, you know, she was a doctor, we assume, right?
02:22I always tell them I'm not a doctor, but they say, Barbara, Dr. Butcher, it just sounds so good, so I let them get away with it.
02:31You know, we were all familiar with who she was. She had a good rapport with detectives and cops.
02:37So, here we were, third floor, wasn't it?
02:423A, facing the street.
02:44And you were first on the scene?
02:46It was a bit of a drizzle, it was a rainy night.
02:53We got a call about a missing male.
02:58When we arrived, the victim's neighbor and two co-workers were there.
03:04They said this was Jonathan Levin's apartment, that he was a 31-year-old single male public high school teacher from Taft High School in the Bronx.
03:15His co-workers were distressed because Jonathan hadn't shown up to work.
03:19He had perfect attendance. Why is he not showing up Monday morning for school?
03:28To teach. I went with another teacher to his apartment, and at the entrance of the door, I saw a bill from a Friday afternoon, and this is Monday night.
03:40I said, so he's not been out of the apartment since Friday? I mean, I started kind of crying and going crazy. Then we called the police.
03:50So, when we arrived, the neighbors said, I have a key, and we kind of knew what we had here just from the smell.
04:00And we tried to prepare two women in the hall as we opened the door.
04:09I saw his body, and I saw the shirt that I gave him for his birthday. That's what I could see. It was terrible. It was something that never like in my worst nightmares I would think of.
04:24His girlfriend went to see him, and they took offices to restrain her from going in because it was a crime scene.
04:31There was a significant injury to his head.
04:35He was face down on the floor. He'd been decomposing, and he was bound with duct tape.
04:44At this point in time, the MS arrived. We declared him dead, and we waited for the detectives, and Leanne made a response.
04:59I was at the end of my shift. Then I get a call. Barbara, you've got a homicide.
05:06You know, I remember the officer had the door propped open, and as soon as I stepped close to the door, that smell came down. I said, this is the right place.
05:15Yeah.
05:17On the third floor, there was a detective standing outside. Tim Warhol was there.
05:23When you walk into the apartment, you can see into the kitchen, and that's where the victim is.
05:30His body is bloated because he's really badly decomposed, and the smell is so insistent.
05:37It takes me some time to gather myself.
05:42There's blood around him, a moderate amount of blood, and it's tried.
05:48So this is him with the body redacted in the kitchen.
05:53Just tile floor.
05:55His head here in this pool of blood, and it's on his stomach.
06:01Face down.
06:02Face down.
06:03On his face.
06:04He had to step around.
06:06That chair behind him tumbled over.
06:10Now, his wrists each have duct tape around them, and his ankles have duct tape together.
06:18So that means he was bound to that chair.
06:22And when he died, he fell forward onto his face, ripping the tape from the chair.
06:29What I see next is a gunshot wound.
06:32Just up under the air lobe, I'm immediately thinking like .22 caliber.
06:39Not only is the entrance wound small, but the bullet has not exited through his head.
06:48So obviously, that bullet's still in there.
06:53When I show up to any case, I always ask, what's been moved since you got here?
06:59And one of you poked your head out and said, oh, I opened a window.
07:04We needed some air in that room for sure.
07:06I know. It was very, very bad.
07:08I always got pissed off because that changed my time of death calculation.
07:13Why is opening the window such a mistake?
07:16Well, because the body loses one and a half degrees of temperature every hour in room temperature of say 70, 72 degrees.
07:26So it could make a difference of hours if the window is open.
07:31In this case, he was decomposed to the point where I could tell he had been dead at least three days.
07:38Right.
07:39Now I've got to look at the other side of the body.
07:44So I carefully roll him over.
07:46And now he's face up.
07:48I remember the slash cut marks to the right side of the neck.
07:54And they had a pattern like a serrated knife, like a steak knife.
07:59Right.
08:00Like a slight downward drag and then a slice.
08:03Just deep enough to hurt like hell without killing him.
08:07They weren't deep enough to cause death.
08:11I think these are the marks of torture.
08:18And finally what we found was the wound to the chest, the stab wound.
08:24But it appeared to be post-mortem because it wasn't bleeding.
08:27Wasn't a lot of blood.
08:29But why a post-mortem stab wound to the chest?
08:33It means that it's personal and there's rage.
08:36There's anger in there somewhere.
08:40As I wrap up my examination of the body, the investigators continue to explore the apartment.
08:46So we looked around and there were Chinese food containers on the coffee table.
08:55Now also, I see a couple of plates and the food is dried and crusted.
09:01There are drinks there.
09:03It was as if somebody was having dinner with him.
09:09Now, he could have had friends over sometime before he died or could have been the perpetrators.
09:14We don't know.
09:15But to take a man of Jonathan Levin's size, how is any one person going to subdue him enough to put him into a chair and tie him down?
09:25So I'm thinking already, at least two perpetrators.
09:32There was no break-in.
09:33There was no forced entry.
09:34So it was as if he knew his attacker.
09:40And then we find his wallet.
09:42There's no cash in it.
09:43An ATM card.
09:44It's missing from a slot in a wallet.
09:46Could this have been a robbery gone wrong?
09:51A fight among friends?
09:53But why the torture?
09:55This tells me that there was probably something much bigger at stake, something more personal.
10:00But what?
10:01When we were looking around the apartment, I noticed a photograph of Gerald Levin, who I recognized as the CEO of Time Warner.
10:14And a young man next to him, who we presumed to be the deceased.
10:21It doesn't take much to put two and two together and figure out that Jonathan Levin is the son of one of the most powerful men in New York City.
10:31Gerald Levin was a captain of industry.
10:34Imagine Rupert Murdoch.
10:36He hung out with Jane Fonda and Ted Turner, though this was a big deal.
10:41This was a big deal.
10:42And at that point, I looked at Tom McMorrow, the sergeant, and I said, Tom, we're going to have to start making a lot of phone calls.
10:48Oh, yeah.
10:49Because the press is going to be all over this.
10:51And sure enough, the media was waiting for us.
10:54Police want to reach out to Jonathan Levin's family immediately before they have to hear about this horrible tragedy in the news.
11:04Once we realized who his family was, we started making notifications, spoke to his mother.
11:16Very heartbreaking, sad, you know, to watch a mother, it's her baby, right?
11:21He was 31 years old, but he was still her baby.
11:23His parents were divorced when he was four, and his mother said he led a normal life.
11:32And she raised a good son.
11:36His father went on to marry again, but he apparently was close to his dad.
11:41Jonathan graduated from college and went into business, but he didn't like it.
11:47He didn't want to live an executive life or be in the business world.
11:52His calling was to become a teacher.
11:55He was a teacher at William Taft High School, which was located in the Bronx.
11:58And what we found out during the course of speaking with the faculty and students, that he was a beloved teacher.
12:02Everybody had nothing but nice things to say about him.
12:06All of his friends spoke highly of him. Everybody seems to love him.
12:10Whatever wealth that Jonathan Levin might have had, he wasn't flaunting it.
12:15With the added pressure of this being a high-profile murder and all over the media,
12:21police are under intense scrutiny as they work the case.
12:26All the brass is showing up.
12:28Now we've got starred chiefs coming in, and we've got captains.
12:32As they continue to interview the people in Jonathan's life, there are no red flags that show up indicating he was killed for his money.
12:41Nor is there any other information pointing to a motive for his murder.
12:46So at this point, we're really still at a loss.
12:50Somebody had taped him to a chair and really brutally just executed him.
12:56What motive would somebody have for doing something so hateful?
13:02We don't have any idea who did this.
13:05So we're trying to figure out why.
13:11It didn't make sense to me at all.
13:13He didn't have any enemies.
13:15One of the neighbors said he was dating a married woman.
13:18He was on a video at the ATM machine.
13:21It can't just be one person. It just doesn't make any sense.
13:24I told him he'd come out because we're coming in.
13:36A few hours after Jonathan Levin was found dead, New York City detectives are under mounting pressure to solve his high-profile murder.
13:46It was definitely premeditated. He was tortured and then shot and killed.
13:54But the real story was yet to unravel.
14:01Living's murder was so prominent that the district attorney wanted eyes and ears on the scene immediately.
14:07Gerald Levin was able to get someone in the district attorney's office to give them someone on the ground, which turned out to be me.
14:19So I went to Jonathan Levin's apartment.
14:24And we're all thinking, what can we see in here that looks out of the ordinary?
14:29Picking up, like, anything that could possibly give them a clue.
14:34Because at this point, they have no idea who they're looking for.
14:46CSU was already gathering all evidence.
14:50They're dusting every single surface for prints.
14:54And, of course, the duct tape.
14:55We noticed he had a pod-line phone with the answering machine.
15:00Maybe with that machine, we could find out the last person that had a conversation with Jonathan Levin.
15:06The thing about answering machines at that point, sometimes if you played them, they erased.
15:11And nobody wants that.
15:13So they packaged that up to play it under circumstances when it can be recorded.
15:18And then you found something.
15:20We noticed the, uh, it was like a plastic handled, like I seen on TV, Ginsu steak knife right there on the tabletop.
15:28The blade looked to be covered with dry blood.
15:31And it was, you know, good potential that it was one of the murder weapons.
15:36Right.
15:37Bagged that up.
15:38I brought it back, chain of custody, examination at the forensics lab.
15:42Paper bags.
15:43Yep.
15:44Yep, no plastic ones. There's biologicals involved.
15:46I had six paper bags that I walked out of there with that night.
15:50Yeah.
15:52But there's one piece of evidence we haven't found.
15:55We looked around the apartment carefully, but we didn't observe a gun on the scene of the crime.
16:02Before we took the body out, you know, about 3 o'clock in the morning, after 3 a.m., the media was there waiting.
16:08The next morning, I attend the autopsy.
16:21Jonathan Levin is up on the table, and I get a closer look at the pattern slash marks on his neck.
16:28They also note the bullet up behind the ear on the right side.
16:32This is not unusual.
16:34If you try to shoot someone in the back of the head around this part that bulges out the occiplet,
16:40if they move, you know, the barrel's going to move.
16:43But if you shoot them up under the ear, you have a place to hold your barrel steady.
16:47So that means the perpetrator is standing on his right side, and the wound on his chest is proven to be post-mortem.
16:59So the result of the autopsy matches everything I believed and everything I saw at the scene.
17:05The medical examiner will also send Mr. Levin's blood and urine to the toxicology lab for analysis.
17:14While the labs began analysis of their evidence, detectives candaced the building to see if any of his neighbors know anything about Mr. Levin.
17:26The team of detectives was knocking door to door, speaking to people.
17:30They said, you know, he was a young guy. A lot of people visited him. He had friends. He had girlfriends.
17:36And what PD detectives learned some surprising details about Jonathan's girlfriend and co-worker, Cleo?
17:44One of the neighbors mentioned to us that his girlfriend might have been married.
17:48Apparently, Jonathan Levin was dating a married woman, which turned out to be the teacher who worked with him at Taft.
17:57Cleo. They were still married, but separated. The story came out that there had been a disagreement where Jonathan and the husband had come face to face.
18:11They had gotten into a confrontation about a month before the murder. So there was concern that he might have been involved.
18:19So, is this something we could look at as a crime of passion?
18:24This might be the reason that Jonathan was found dead.
18:37The date following Jonathan Levin's death, police find out that he was dating a married woman.
18:43And her husband had confronted Levin just three weeks before the death.
18:47Detectives went out and spoke to her and asked her about their relationship.
18:54I told the police I met Jonathan at Taft High School. He was really dedicated. That's something that I admire.
19:03The first time I had a conversation with him, we were invited to a party with all the young teachers.
19:12We started a conversation and I said, who's this guy? So nice talking. And it was like sparks all over the place. Yes. Fireworks. It was very strong feeling. Very strong.
19:26Mm-hmm.
19:29And then all of a sudden, we started dating.
19:33We asked her about this dispute that took place between Jonathan and her husband.
19:38We were in my apartment in the Bronx. Jonathan was there and my husband. We were separated for like two, almost three years.
19:47Almost three years. He came and showed up.
19:51I said, don't come here to show up. This is my place.
19:55And he started saying bad things to Jonathan.
19:59We were in my wife's apartment. It was scary.
20:05He was angry that I was finding somebody who really cared for me.
20:08And what I did was say, Jonathan, please stay here. Let me go talk to him outside, which I was able to do. Then I made sure he left. He went home. Everything happened so quickly.
20:23Now the ex-husband would be subject number one we want to talk to.
20:26Yeah, I told the police. My ex-husband was a mailman. He was for the post office. And they went to his job and got him there and interviewed him.
20:36He stated, yes, there was a little bit of words exchanged, but he moved on.
20:41He had a new girlfriend. He had spent the weekend with her.
20:44His girlfriend gave him an alibi. He was ruled out as a suspect very quickly.
20:51Yeah.
20:53Cleon's husband has a dead end, but detectives are under an enormous amount of pressure from City Hall.
21:00There was definitely a layer of additional scrutiny because of the notoriety that the case was getting.
21:08The detectives are put on the spot to produce results.
21:15Two days into the investigation, there's a memorial service held for Jonathan Levin.
21:20And this gives the police the unique opportunity to broaden their reach into his life.
21:27His students are there. His family is there. His mother, his father, his friends, a number of celebrities.
21:35It's big. It's all over the papers. This is the only story in the papers for this week.
21:40I remember Jonathan's memorial. There was a huge police presence.
21:51And police used the opportunity to canvas the crowd for any more information.
21:55But all they encounter is grief. For these kids, they all say he was family.
22:03He could have been a rich executive, but he chose his path. He wanted to be a teacher and help students achieve and be successful in life.
22:13One interesting piece of information police got is that the students had only recently found out who Jonathan Levin's father was, that he was a rich kid.
22:26This would fit with one of the investigators' early theories that Jonathan Levin was murdered for money.
22:36Investigators continue to process and analyze the evidence found at the scene, always looking for new leads and always looking at it with fresh eyes as new information comes in about Levin's life.
22:48When detectives played the answering machine tape, what they found along with all of the messages from the concerned teachers was a message from someone named Corey saying,
23:01Mr. Levin, pick up.
23:04And he said, you know, it's important or it's urgent, something like that.
23:08And it's a young sounding voice. It's clearly not one of his colleagues, but it could be one of his students.
23:15They go to Taft High School looking for the information.
23:20Meanwhile, investigators trace the call that went to Jonathan Levin's home on the day he was murdered.
23:27We're a block off Central Park West.
23:31The phone call is traced by the phone company to a pay phone.
23:3569th or 68th Street.
23:37Over by Central Park, right?
23:38It's closer to Central Park, yeah.
23:41After identifying where this pay phone is, it was determined to see if we can come up with fingerprints of Corey, because we didn't have a last name. What we had was a name Corey.
23:51And so somebody at this point has to be sent to the phone booth to see if there's any evidence to be gathered.
23:58But they did not find anything.
24:03At this point, detectives check in with the lab to see if there's an update on any of the other evidence found at the crime scene.
24:11Crime scene unit had picked up the duct tape that Jonathan had been bound with.
24:15They tested it for latent prints and uncovered a good print.
24:19When they ran in the databases, it hit to a young man named Corey Arthur.
24:28We determined that Corey Arthur has a criminal record.
24:31He was arrested three times for selling heroin, selling crack, and other drugs.
24:36So detectives zeroed in on Corey Arthur.
24:39Immediately, the first thing that they started to do was try to figure out what was Corey Arthur doing in Jonathan Levin's apartment.
24:49It just doesn't make any sense.
24:50Detectives investigating the murder of Jonathan Levin have identified the fingerprint found on the duct tape.
25:05It belongs to 19-year-old Corey Arthur, who, it turns out, has a connection to Jonathan Levin.
25:11Corey had been a student a few years before at Taft High School.
25:21He was somebody that Jonathan had really felt a connection with.
25:26And really was trying to help.
25:29Other teachers and people around him described him as close.
25:34Corey wanted to be a big time rap star.
25:36And Jonathan would explain to him, you know, get your schooling in together, graduate, go to college.
25:42And, you know, you could still do this, but have a backup plan.
25:46Jonathan wanted to help Corey Arthur find his purpose in life.
25:50But Corey left Taft High School.
25:53And at some point between his time at Taft and the murder, he was arrested.
26:00He had a drug-related felony conviction on his record.
26:06And that made more suspicion, wait, this is somebody that he might have trusted to let into his apartment.
26:12So there was a mass manhub print out to find out where Corey Arthur might be to ascertain what he does know took place in that apartment.
26:21Corey Arthur's last address is somewhere in the Bronx.
26:24There were investigative teams of detectives from all over the city that were pressed into service, part of this canvas.
26:33They were hitting the Bronx.
26:35The police department, they couldn't find him, so they released his picture.
26:40And the Daily News had his picture on page one, wanted.
26:48So once Corey's picture is everywhere, we have an open tip line.
26:51Police also set up an $11,000 reward, hoping people will call in with information about Corey Arthur.
27:01Money is a big motivator.
27:03On the tip line, we're getting all kinds of calls, most of which are useless.
27:09But you have to listen to all of them because it might be the linchpin to your case.
27:13And then we got a call that may have changed everything.
27:17It was from a phone company worker who was doing maintenance in the area, and he overheard someone speaking about her nephew being involved in, you know, some drama down in Manhattan.
27:29And he said that the person that he apparently overhears was Corey Arthur's aunt.
27:38Now all your resources is tied into trying to locate that individual.
27:42So eventually, we tracked her down. Investigators then show up to Corey Arthur's aunt's house to follow on this lead.
27:52They had no idea if she'll even speak to them.
27:56But when police came to her door, she told them everything.
28:00I think his aunt is frightened of him.
28:04She's not actually very much older than Corey.
28:07She's got young twins.
28:09She's a single mother living in an apartment.
28:12And she says that she thinks he's the kid who killed this teacher.
28:18She said that Corey had come over to the house on that evening of the murder, and he had what all over his clothes?
28:26On his sweatshirt, on his pants, even on his shoes.
28:33And she said, what is this?
28:35And he told her, and she didn't want any part of it.
28:39He's been in and out of the apartment, and he's left a bunch of his stuff there.
28:43And she's more than happy to share them with the detectives.
28:49And a bunch of his stuff turns out to include a bag of bloody clothes.
28:53This was as big as it gets.
28:57Those bloody clothes immediately go to Barbara Butcher and to her office, where they examine the blood to determine whose it is.
29:07And immediately I see there's plenty of biological material here, especially blood.
29:17This is a major breakthrough in the case because the examination of the body tells us that Levin's gunshot wound was close range,
29:24which means that there would be blowback of his blood onto the clothes of the perpetrator.
29:31Like, all the things are kind of coming together around Corey.
29:36It will take a while for the DNA profile to be developed from the bloody clothes.
29:44In the meantime, detectives continue to pursue other evidence.
29:48The detectives realized that Levin's ATM card was missing from the crime scene.
29:53So they're gonna have to look at his banking history, find out where he banked, get to Chase's account.
30:02We've got Jonathan Levin's bank card records, and we've got his withdrawals.
30:06They track his banking and they realize, yeah, a withdrawal for $800 was made Friday.
30:14The withdrawal was from a bank machine close to his apartment right about the time of the murder.
30:22But they go to the bank and they pull the video.
30:26So the quality of camera footage was pretty low.
30:29They knew who their suspect was, but the person who was making the withdrawal didn't fit the physical description.
30:37Corey Arthur, I think it was 5'11".
30:39But this person was shorter, stockier.
30:43It's not Corey Arthur. It's not Jonathan Levin.
30:47It's someone much shorter, which means that Corey Arthur probably had an accomplice.
30:52This lines up with my findings from the death investigation,
30:55that it likely took more than one person to restrain and torture a big guy like Jonathan Levin.
31:03So it's at that point that we realize we're probably dealing with two people,
31:08and we've got to figure out who is this other person.
31:17Surveillance footage from the bank reveals that there's someone else taking money out of the ATM machine
31:23from Jonathan Levin's account.
31:26The idea that someone has tied Jonathan Levin up, taken his bank card, and tortured him,
31:33probably for the PIN number, it can't just be one person.
31:36It just doesn't work.
31:38We now have two dangerous suspects that would need to be found.
31:45It was a really intense time. The whole city is talking about this.
31:49And then the tip line, we got a call that came in stating that Corey Arthur wasn't by himself when the murder took place,
31:57that there was somebody named Monty that was with him.
32:01And they told us that the guy Monty is somebody named Montoon Hart.
32:05Monty Hart had a series of felony arrests, a few robberies, and this case looks like a home invasion robbery that ended up in a homicide.
32:18So he's definitely someone who the detectives are going to want to go talk to.
32:22So after getting the address of Brownsville location where Monty Hart lived, a team of detectives was out there scoring the area and doing a surveillance.
32:37And they see Monty Hart pull up in his vehicle.
32:40And somewhat surprisingly, he was willing to go in with them. He actually went in and sat down.
32:47So Monty Hart, he's very willing to talk to the police.
32:52And he puts himself at the crime scene but says he didn't do the shooting.
32:58And he denies his involvement in the killing.
33:02Monty Hart says that he and Corey Arthur went to Jonathan Levin's apartment to smoke weed.
33:08But the body of evidence doesn't lie.
33:11Jonathan Levin's toxicology report is negative for any drugs, including marijuana.
33:18But Monty's story changed back and forth.
33:22Detectives can often use a ruse or deception when interviewing suspects.
33:28So we tell Monty he was on a video at the ATM machine.
33:35Once you get in someone's head, they become more willing to tell a story.
33:40And at this point, Monty and Hart start to talk.
33:44He told the detective that they called Jonathan from a pay phone nearby.
33:50Then they had gone to the apartment to get Jonathan Levin's ATM card.
33:54But Jonathan, he knew them. He wasn't fearful of them.
33:59He brought them into his home. He broke bread with them.
34:02Then it turned.
34:09Monty explained that they were looking for his PIN number to his ATM card.
34:13This was all pretty much planned out ahead of time.
34:19And apparently they just kept jamming him with the knife.
34:22You know, just enough to make it hurt.
34:25And he gave up his PIN.
34:28Well, Monty went over to the bank while Corey stayed in the apartment.
34:32So Monty Hart's story, it corroborates my theory that those slashes to his neck were done to torture him.
34:38Monty Hart tells police that when he got back to the apartment with $800, that Corey Arthur was holding a gun to Jonathan Levin's head.
34:49Jonathan cried out, Corey, why are you doing this to me?
34:55He was so unable to understand why this kid who he loved and cared for and who loved and cared for him would do this to him.
35:02Then, Monty says he did not know that Corey was going to kill Jonathan Levin.
35:16And so Monty's statement definitely makes the detectives lean in on wanting to arrest Corey.
35:23It's also enough at that point to arrest Monty.
35:27So this was a huge break in the case.
35:30Even though they had Monty Hart in custody, Corey Arthur was still in the wind.
35:40And Monty claims that he has no idea where his accomplice is.
35:47As the search for Corey Arthur dominates the media, investigators obtain a key piece of information from Corey's girlfriend.
35:55She says that Corey confessed to killing Jonathan Levin.
36:01She says that Corey Arthur had presented this as, you know, I killed some rich white dude.
36:08One of the reasons she talked to the police was the press coverage.
36:14As the truth about Jonathan comes out and we see this outpouring of love for Jonathan Levin.
36:22And Corey is just looking worse and worse to his girlfriend.
36:26She says that, you know, he's hiding in so-and-so's apartment.
36:32And it was an address in Brooklyn.
36:35That address happened to be in the neighborhood about a block away from where I grew up.
36:38So me and a team of detectives went out there hoping to get Corey Arthur.
36:43The gun wasn't recovered from the scene.
36:47And they don't know if he still has it.
36:49At this point, he's considered a huge threat.
36:53He's not a kid with a whole lot to lose.
37:04Police are now closing in on the Brooklyn hideout of murder suspect Corey Arthur.
37:10And they surround the apartment.
37:14I told him he'd come out because we're coming in.
37:21He didn't put up a fight.
37:24We'd take him to the 8-1 precinct.
37:28A team of detectives from Manhattan would get a statement from Corey Arthur.
37:32While Corey was being questioned by police, they noticed something odd on his hand.
37:36Detectives came to me and said,
37:40Hey, you want to just take a look at this photo of Corey Arthur's hand?
37:45He's got a cut diagonally across there.
37:48And I said, Oh yeah, that looks like one of those, you know, slippery knife kind of things.
37:53Getting a hard surface.
37:55The handle of the knife shot out from the top.
37:58The blade cut across his hand.
38:00That looks like a serrated knife cut.
38:01Just like the one that was found at the scene and used to torture Jonathan Levin.
38:07So now there's definitely enough to arrest Corey.
38:12When word gets out about Corey Arthur's arrest, Levin's students, fellow teachers and even the public react with a mixture of relief and anger.
38:22It's hard for me to believe that a student would just shot a teacher.
38:30You want to steal his money for drugs or whatever, but just going and shot him 18 years old does not make sense to me.
38:39When you think of your very favorite teacher going in that fashion after trusting the student, it's pretty demoralizing.
38:52And there's a grief that settles over the city when something like that happens.
38:56Going into trial, the D.A. has a wealth of forensic evidence to help them get a conviction against Corey Arthur.
39:14Police test the evidence from the crime scene.
39:17And sure enough, the blood on the knife is a combination of Jonathan Levin and Corey Arthur.
39:24And those bloody clothes at Corey Arthur's aunt Deborah's apartment, the blood turns out to be Jonathan Levin's.
39:33So at this point, the D.A. evidence is stat against Corey Arthur.
39:39But I remember the defense attorney was very determined.
39:45I watched as Barbara Butcher testified at the trial. She certainly made an impression.
39:51I probably had testified four or five times in homicides by now. You can't take it personal.
39:59And this defense attorney battered me.
40:03And at one point, he asked me, well, what is this theory you have about the cut on Corey Arthur's hand?
40:09And I've got the knife in the air in my fist. And I'm demonstrating for the jury how when you slam the knife down and it hits something hard like bone, the knife slides up through your hand.
40:24And so in an upward direction, we see that cut from a serrated knife.
40:31He said to me, what are you, an expert on knife fools?
40:36Well, I have not written an article or a book, but I've probably seen four to five hundred of them.
40:41He was trying to disqualify her, and she was one of the best in her field at the time.
40:50He says, oh, Miss Butcher, you're not even a doctor, are you?
40:54No, I'm not an M.D. I am a death investigator.
40:57After three weeks of trial, the jury deliberated for a total of about 11 hours.
41:18It was a huge relief. It was very clear to us that he was guilty. None of us had any doubt.
41:25And Montoon Hart, who was the accomplice, was acquitted.
41:31It's the way the system works. We believe what we believe. That's why we arrested somebody.
41:36We believe that the evidence is pointed to Montoon Hart being there and being part of it and having a hand in Jonathan's demise.
41:46Here's somebody who was trying to make a difference, and the kid who he was trying to make a difference the most in his life turns out to be the one that ends Jonathan's life.
42:01So, yeah, it just came to a tragic end.
42:04My life would have been so different if he was still around. He represented such a big part of my life.
42:16His students didn't have a very good background, and he cared for real for them, and he wanted to show them that their life could be better.
42:24That's something that I admire for him. And he really believed that it could be possible.
42:31That's something that my family doesn't have to come back my life that I tried to make my life, but I couldn't have to say to him.
42:35What?
42:36What?
42:37What?
42:39What?
42:40What?
42:41What?
42:42What?
42:43What?
42:44What?
42:45What?
42:46What?
42:47What?
42:48What?
42:49What?
42:50What?
42:51What?
42:52What?
42:53What?
42:54What?
42:55What?
42:56What?
Recommended
44:09
|
Up next
42:35
21:27
42:44
42:32
52:22
42:31
45:13
41:32
36:51
42:31
23:56
58:09
41:31
23:11
43:12
45:00
20:23
48:24
1:00:02
44:50
37:57
Be the first to comment