- 2 weeks ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00New York City 2014 two days after New Year's a picturesque snowstorm turns
00:12into a dangerous whiteout there's basically a blizzard in New York a local
00:19Jewish businessman was kidnapped less than a month from Hanukkah what happened
00:25to this father of seven why would he have been kidnapped was his family was it
00:32something personal to say created a firestorm would be an understatement as
00:38a community grows angry they turn their frustration toward police the holidays
00:44present a lot of issues for police in general there's a lot of anti-semitism
00:50events that actually do happen we end up getting notified by the Nassau County
00:57police that they found a body it's one of New York's first homicides of the year
01:04detectives are overwhelmed with leads this looked like a targeted attack 40
01:12million is a lot of money and what occurred on on this video was horrifying
01:20hello I'm Nancy Grace New Year's in New York City it comes to the
01:50hundreds of visions of the beautiful glittering ball dropping in Times Square
01:56bustling bars crowded restaurants and streets filled with merrymakers 2014 the
02:06city and its boroughs are still dealing with the New Year's Eve hangover when
02:11they're hit with a crippling snowstorm when Ockham Stark a committed family man is at
02:17the office in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn he's not concerned by the weather he plans
02:23to work late then head home right after New Year's people start to come back to work they start to get
02:35back into normal routine and January 2nd against day after New Year's the city got hit with the first big blizzard that day 2014 has begun with an extreme blast of winter weather a huge storm has been moving across much of the country bringing with it freezing temperatures
02:41and lots of snow it was snowing pretty hard I mean people couldn't see there was no visibility if you were driving in the streets it was coming down hard there weren't a lot of people out on the streets
02:48when Ockham Stark was working in his office he always came home the same time every night
02:55in fact when he spoke to his wife earlier in a day he mentioned that he would be home around 1130 now it's 1140
03:14in fact when he spoke to his wife earlier in the day he mentioned that he would be home around 11 30
03:21now it's 11 40 his wife doesn't hear from him she's very nervous she calls the phone and somebody
03:29hangs up now she's very nervous it's close to midnight when monochem stark's brother-in-law
03:39checks his office there's no sign of the reliable family man then they make the phone call to 9-1-1
03:47they report he hasn't shown up home this is out of character for him his office is not far from home
03:54so we're not thinking an accident you know ran off the road somewhere doesn't have his cell phone we're
04:00thinking there could be more to this than just a missing persons case detectives went to his office
04:08and the office seemed to be you know closed up
04:15but they did notice that his car was outside and that was very strange that he wasn't there and the
04:20car was it's bitterly cold january 3 2014 detectives from the 90th precinct canvassed the neighborhood
04:30around monochem stark's office building there was a video camera positioned right in front of the
04:36building and we found the video footage and what occurred on on this video was horrifying
04:46we noticed him locking up the office and he was walking to his car when a very large male grabbed
04:52them and monochem started fighting with him monochem stock put up a very big fight i don't think these
05:00guys expected to him to put a fight like that they were struggling for three four or five minutes
05:05and another male came from the car and helped them
05:16and they threw him in the back of a light colored minivan
05:19and he was still fighting as they put him in the van and then they drove away
05:26when police watched the footage they realized their missing person's case
05:30is now a kidnapping the weather makes leads hard to come by
05:35because of the snow because of the brightness i guess of the snow it blurred the videotape itself so
05:48we were having trouble we couldn't even identify at the time the type of minivan it was we couldn't
05:54identify the race of any of these two abductors all we had was one of them looked like a larger male the
06:03other looked like he was smaller we could absolutely see that there was a struggle but there was no way to
06:08get a license plate there was no way to do a facial recognition to die and identify either one of the
06:15people we were going to end up looking for the nypd releases the surveillance video to the media
06:22the case quickly grabs the attention of the public
06:26i received a phone call that said a local jewish businessman was kidnapped as he left his office
06:36shortly before midnight and i remembered this was less than a month from hanukkah
06:44the holidays present a lot of issues for police in general there is normally an uptick in crime
06:50it's robberies it's shootings um right before the holidays whether it's because of a lack of money
06:56whether it's family issues family disputes thank god people aren't abducted off the streets of new
07:02york city that's a strange event no matter who but when somebody's taken off the street an acidic male
07:09in that tight-knit community it doesn't happen they actually reached out to a couple of
07:15people who lived and worked in williamsburg to see what they heard
07:21there everything spreads like wildfire within the community so everybody in the community
07:27had heard what happened that night you had to then start digging in to see who this person was
07:35you have to find what the next layer you have to dig what the next layer is
07:38why was who is who is this person that was kidnapped so you have to find out who he is before
07:43he could find out why when we investigated uh monochem stark's background we knew that he was a loving
07:50husband a loving father he had seven kids we knew he was in the real estate business the neighbors we
07:57spoke with um the people from the temples we spoke with you know reinforced that he was a good person
08:04he was a family man everybody that came out publicly said uh what a great guy he was uh he always
08:12were helping the down and out that rarely do you find individuals who give away their money and if
08:22they don't have their money they go out there to ensure to knock on some people's door who has money
08:31in order to respond to a person in need approximately 4 p.m january 3 police get a phone call from a gas
08:40station attendant out on long island in the kidnapping investigation you're always waiting on whether
08:47somebody's going to ask for ransom or is somebody gonna just drive him around have them take money out
08:54of atms we don't know what their intentions were when they took monochem stock that's what creates angst for
09:02the family and then we end up getting notified by the nassau county police that they found a body
09:13of a male dressed in traditional hasidic garb half burnt in a dumpster at a getty gas station in great
09:22neck long island
09:23the gas station attendant when he arrived for work that morning saw the smoke coming out of the dumpster
09:32approached the dumpster said it was a foul smell coming out of the dumpster called the police
09:38and called the fire department started smelling uh burning like like a like you know a burning flesh
09:43kind of smell and he just saw smoke coming out of the dumpster because the lower half of the body
09:49had been burned and the upper half hadn't been burned as badly nassau county detectives that
09:55responded realized that this was somebody that belonged to the hasidic community
10:01that's some 30 miles away from the scene where monochem was taken and put into a van and driven away
10:11monochem stark's family praying for a miracle they head to long island hoping the body in the mor
10:17belongs to somebody anybody else the body that was found in the dumpster was in fact monochem stalk
10:32welcome back the 90th precinct in brooklyn rings in the new year 2014
10:37with a grisly homicide investigation the half burnt body of a man dressed in traditional hasidic clothing
10:46found over 30 miles from his office in brooklyn he is identified as the kidnap victim monochem stark
10:54a well-known businessman in his community and a beloved family man
11:03when you're trying to celebrate and now all of a sudden you get like a heinous crime like this
11:10senseless murder you know it just makes people stop and say like like we were just celebrating
11:15we're just having a good time and then all of a sudden you get hit you're back to reality
11:21saturday nassau county police found the 39 year old ultra orthodox man's body in a dumpster
11:27at a great neck gas station now we know we're dealing with a homicide and one of the confusing points
11:35of the case initially was that the body was found in long island normally if something happens in
11:42brooklyn it doesn't wander out to long island it doesn't wander too far out of the borough
11:48because of the blizzard many of the roads were closed and one of the major thoroughfares over in
11:53that area is the 495 the long expressway and that night was closed to any traffic so it was a little
12:01unusual how mr stark was in one location and then his body discovered in a dumpster in uh great neck
12:10with all this weather related road issues it was a little curious how he got there
12:20i mean if you were looking to dump a body there are many places in brooklyn queens
12:25you know it's a bigger story now you know you go from a kidnapping to a murder
12:37according to jewish religious law a body must be buried within 24 hours after the person dies
12:45so in this case the pressure is on the medical examiner to quickly perform that autopsy
12:51and release monochem stark's body to his family the autopsy is basically done they find out that it
12:59was a chest compression and asphyxiation which basically means that uh you couldn't breathe because
13:06somebody was sitting on your chest just imagine you're laying on the floor and somebody's sitting
13:11on your chest and it can't expand and you're basically suffocating it shows a sign of a you know a violent
13:19struggle
13:24it's a horrible way to die
13:30monochem stark's brutal murder frightens the community but that community pulls together
13:37and a show of support from monochem's family
13:41the community came out in mass and mourned his death there were thousands of people that came i mean
13:47the hesetic community is a very tight community but i hadn't seen anything like that before
13:56the murder of monochem stark uh it shocked the community people were you know uh very upset and
14:03very nervous and rightly so
14:05you know everybody's guessing but they had no idea why he was killed it seems nearly incomprehensible
14:17anyone within the hasidic community could commit such violence on one of their own investigators
14:25turned their attention to where monochem stark's life intersected outside that close-knit community
14:33we went to the family to try and find out is anything going on with the business is anything
14:40going on with the neighbors is anything anything unusual that might have happened just prior to
14:46to the night he was kidnapped they basically said no and then we were directed to go out and interview
14:53the tenants in the buildings that he owned
14:59well stark was actually a landlord on quite a few buildings real estate it would appear was his primary
15:07source of income we looked into his real estate holdings we found out that he started buying buildings in the area
15:17around 2000 and by 2008 he had spent uh over 61 million dollars on 37 buildings which is a significant real
15:28real estate portfolio
15:34knockam stark owns 17 vacant or drug-infested buildings in brooklyn queens those buildings had racked up 233
15:45complaints and 148 violations so while detectives were doing a canvas you know talking to people in the
15:53neighborhood especially people who live in his buildings they came across more than their share
15:59of tenants who were not happy with monochem stark as a landlord talking to the tenants we're finding out
16:06that i don't have hot water my ceiling's leaking i don't have heat when you hear about that it would be
16:14you know an obvious motivation for somebody to harm mr stark a guy that has over a thousand tenants
16:20that you're not going to have a few unsatisfied tenants there's no such a thing
16:26police wonder if a resentful or unhinged tenant could be responsible for monochem stark's murder
16:34passions run high in new york's tough rental market but could those passions actually add up to murder
16:42when you're in the real estate business there's always tenants that are going to love you and then
16:46they're going to be tenants that hate you some of the tenants had withheld rent but again it didn't
16:54get us to the point where we were thinking a tenant possibly did this that to us didn't what didn't
16:59make sense to the detectives investigating the case there was no clear-cut person that stuck out that
17:06you know wouldn't want to do harm to this guy we kind of came to the conclusion that we this wasn't
17:11where we were going with the case on the surface monochem stark appears to be a successful
17:17wealthy real estate owner when investigators dig deeper into finances they are shocked by what they
17:24find there were a lot of outstanding loans there was a lot of money that he owed we found out that his
17:33company was in debt for almost 40 million dollars the name of monochem stark's company was southside
17:42associates southside associates was going south we found out that southside associates was facing
17:51foreclosure on almost half of their buildings 40 million is a lot of money and if it's owed out to
17:58the wrong people and the russian mob was involved now we're kind of getting to where there might have
18:05been a motive new york 2014 during a bitter snowstorm two days into the new year acidic businessman monochem
18:20start is kidnapped outside his office and then brutally murdered his body is set afire
18:30and left in a long island dumpster detectives from the 90th precinct are deep into the investigation of
18:37their first murder of the new year and they're examining the finances of the victim once the financial
18:45stuff came back we kind of went in a different direction it's kind of like okay wait a minute
18:51maybe there is something here we started doing different interviews we were interviewing business
18:56partners once we got into the finance end of this his wife lawyered up they were very guarded on the
19:04finance end of it we probably did one or two interviews but after that it was talk to my attorney
19:12monochem stark's company south side associates is deeply in debt it's facing foreclosure on half of
19:20its buildings in the days before his murder stark argues with his partner israel perlmutter who is also known
19:29as sam when sam found out that monochem was taking large sums of money out of the count he confronted
19:37him he was not happy during those times their relationship became tense they had joint accounts
19:47they both had access to the accounts initially we thought that they didn't really have to talk too
19:54much about removing money but interviewing his partner sam we found out well not exactly they had
20:00had allowed confrontation they had argued days before the homicide there was a joint account that
20:10monochem stark took three hundred thousand dollars out of without letting him know when he went to look
20:16at the account he thought there was a lot of money in it and there was no money left in there and of
20:20course he was irate like anybody would be irate if they saw that much money was gone does business partner
20:27sam perlmutter have a motive for murder the murder of monochem stark speaking with mr perlmutter
20:35initially i got a little bit of a sense that i wasn't getting that full cooperation that i was looking
20:42for he wasn't being i don't think as forthcoming as he should have been knowing that mr stark was
20:51murdered sam perlmutter's reluctance to cooperate also makes police suspicious
20:59money is kind of a motive and a lot of homicides was definitely something that had to be looked at
21:07although he didn't fit the profile or the stature of the guy that abducted him could he in theory have
21:14hired some big goons to kill him yes police soon determined sam perlmutter's behavior seems like
21:23someone who is also afraid for his own life he was afraid for his life he hired bodyguards had people
21:32sit outside his house he avoided the social events he was keeping pretty low key not being seen too much
21:39in the area we asked him where his whereabouts were that night and his alibi checked out his real
21:46perlmutter he was a he was a real estate businessman he wasn't a killer so after i believe it was two
21:52interviews we kind of said all right this isn't who we're looking for police cannot link monochem stark's
21:59financial problems to his murder so for now they must consider monochem stark is targeted solely because
22:09of his fate there's a lot of anti-semitism events that actually do happen in the hasidic neighborhood
22:17you know rare but it does happen they came to pray and hate greeted them at the synagogue door early
22:24friday morning people in this tight-knit hasidic community saw these symbols of hate spray painted
22:29all over the neighborhood but it didn't seem to be a hate crime it wasn't like somebody was walking by
22:36somebody and then just you know punched them for no reason or said something in regards to their
22:43religion this looked like a targeted attack it it appeared to be a planned event investigators dig
22:52deeper into monochem stark's financial affairs they discover he was having trouble borrowing money from
22:59legitimate banks it got to the point where he had to go and borrow money from the broadway bank in
23:06chicago which everybody knew was a mob-run bank but that's how desperate he got he ended up owing the
23:14bank 1.5 million dollars which he never paid and that 1.5 million dollars contributed to the bank
23:21closing and going out of business the intense press coverage generates many many tips it turns out it's
23:30not just a mob backed bank to which monochem stark owes money we received something on reddit somebody
23:40posted that the russian mob killed monochem stock what we had found out from sources in the community
23:48is that the russian mob hadn't made loans to the hasidic community there was deals made between the two
23:58but once the russian mob was mentioned now it's kind of like okay wait a minute baby there is something
24:05here the russian mob they're going to come and break a couple of legs they're going to break an arm
24:10they're going to threaten they want their money monochem stark's downward financial spiral does not end
24:18with the russian mob we know that he borrowed money from russian mob members and then he also borrowed
24:27money from a loan shark in the hasidic community and apparently he lent money to monochem stock to pay
24:34back the russian gangster angry tenants underworld bankers russian mobsters a loan shark the list of
24:44people who have potential issues with monochem stark keeps getting longer and it's all summed up in an
24:53outrageous headline from our friends at the new york post who didn't want him dead well when that paper
25:01hit the stands to say created a firestorm would be an understatement the hasidic community was up in
25:08arms they were calling the switchboard at the new york post they were complaining how could you write
25:14such a thing jewish community leaders and elected officials are outraged after the new york post
25:19controversial coverage of a man's murder in america if you are a bad landlord you go to housing court
25:28not the mall none of the tenants would say that i would have killed him no they would have not have
25:34killed him you know most of the times uh you know we have a case there's one little article and
25:41something else happens in that case sort of goes to the back burner this case it seems like it was
25:47you know it was coming out of a fire hose the detectives in brooklyn north uh homicide the bosses are
25:53yelling at them when are we going to solve this when are we going to solve it and they just put their
25:58head down and they just continue to to grind and grind and grind the suspect pool expands because
26:06of the financial investigation detectives begin zeroing in on monachem stark's dubious lenders
26:14starting with the russian mob
26:19we actually located that russian mobster and first of all he wasn't in the country at the time of the
26:24murder and then when we did interview him he says that he did lend money to monachem stark but it was
26:30paid back and then in further investigation there was another male abe hoffman who was a loan shark in
26:38the hasidic community then obviously we looked at abe hoffman and he just recently lent the money to
26:47monachem stark and he's like he's not even defaulted on the loan yet like why would i kill him if he hasn't
26:53passed the due date yet we quickly dismissed him as a subject in the homicide
27:03pretty much everywhere we're going we're coming up with nothing
27:06so we are under pressure from the police department we're under pressure from city hall we're under
27:12pressure from the da's office and we're just we're not coming up with anything solid
27:19we had eliminated the tenants we had eliminated the business partner we had eliminated the russian mob
27:27so now it's becoming frustrating the detectives investigating the case when we started to say
27:35you know we've got to rethink this a little bit police returned to the scene of the kidnap they canvassed the
27:42area around monachem stark's office once again it's routine investigative work but it's about to pay off
27:51you send out people that do verbal canvases that where you know did anybody see anything anybody hear
27:56anything also video canvases and that's when we found that piece of video now it's game on
28:03in 2014 new yorkers demand justice they are mesmerized when a hasidic businessman is kidnapped
28:18during a new year's blizzard and then violently murdered the investigation leads police on a wild
28:26goose chase of low lives from russian mobsters to notorious loan sharks detectives are stuck with a
28:35real life who done it that's until they take another look a careful look at the surveillance cameras
28:43that were operating the night of the murder there's a lot of video that's available to us from all
28:49different places it's a matter of just going out there and looking for it we received video from
28:56down the block from monachem stark's office and what it showed was the light colored minivan
29:05it looked very similar to the minivan that abducted monachem stark
29:10by bringing some of the stills to auto prime they were able to make the model year of the minivan so
29:24now that really kind of gives us something else to explore that's solid we know it's that van
29:31it's a 2002 light colored dodge caravan and it's been parked near monachem stark's workplace for six
29:38hours before the kidnap we needed to figure out how they were keeping track of monachem's movements
29:46and how they would have known on a snowy night at 11 30 at night he was going to be in his office
29:52are they wondering there's something wrong with whoever kidnapped monachem did he have another way of
29:58tracking him we theorized that there was a tracking device in monachem stark's car
30:08january 10 7 days after the murder detectives send monachem stark's vehicle to their lab for analysis
30:17they put it up on a lift and there was there was a cell phone that was taped to the gas tank of the
30:24car that's where the investigation really really took off the cell phone planted on monachem stark's car
30:30is a game changer and now we do subpoenas on the cell phone we find out the owner of the cell phone
30:41is in the man named jeff seeley this guy's got to be interviewed and when we went to speak to jeff
30:49seeley and he's like yeah it's a phone it's on my family plan i'm like well any idea why i was
30:55stuck to a murder victim's gas tank the story that he tells us is that one of the guys that
31:06worked for him asked him to get him a cell phone the reason he needs a cell phone is because he feels
31:12that the girl he's dating is cheating on him and he wants to be able to track her through this rent
31:19family tracking plan through the phone it was too good of a story to to make up he's like oh the last
31:25time i gave that phone i gave it to a friend of mine erkstein felix so once we have erkstein felix's name
31:34does anybody in his family or does he own a white van that's similar to the one that was used in the
31:41abduction and it turns out that his father philip felix was the one who was registered to a van that
31:48looked just like the car that was used in the menachem starks abduction that's a solid piece of
31:54evidence we know that that van was involved if we can find the van then that's going to help us out
32:03so then when we ran the van we noticed the numerous tickets on it we impounded it for tickets
32:07the van is impounded nypd forensics examined the vehicle for evidence and it's a gold mine we found
32:17cash check duct tape and we found zip ties and we also found a substantial amount of blood in there
32:24and ultimately after a dna analysis we found out that it's been akum starks so now we know we have
32:31the van we have the cell phone and now we got kind of a good idea where we're going with this
32:38philip felix actually came in looking for the van and he wanted to know you know why did you take
32:43the van and can i get it back and he's like i don't use the van my sons use the van they use it for
32:50construction we need the van back because that's how they make their money during the course of the
32:56interview mr felix explained to me that he did have some type of dealings with monachem stark
33:02that he was involved in construction himself as well as his son and bear in fact had worked for
33:12monachem at some point police obtained a subpoena for erskine felix's phone records and they discover
33:19he contacted his brother kendall and his two cousins kendall felix and irvin henry police subpoenaed
33:29their phone records as well we were able to pinpoint where those phones were at that particular
33:35night of the monachem stock murder we were able to put them in the vicinity of the crime on that
33:42specific night phones are very big when it comes to homicide because everybody has their phones now
33:48like it's the new smoking gun the decisions made that we're going to pick them up individually and
33:53take them into different precincts so this way there's no chance of putting a story together there's
34:03no chance of listen this is what i'm going to say this is what you should say we're going to get a story
34:09from each one of them and then we'll compare the stories and try and figure out who's possibly telling
34:14us the truth and who's not two suspects brought into the 90th precinct in brooklyn two are brought
34:22into the 79th precinct eric stein felix he denied everything we confronted him with the phone we said
34:32to him oh do you know monachem stark and he's like yeah i love monachem stark you know i i treat him like a
34:40dad in fact i protect him from people that are trying to hurt him because he's got a lot of money
34:47and tenants don't like him eric stein said he was with his girlfriend all all night there's no way he
34:54could have killed monachem stark his phone wasn't with his girlfriend it was pinging right where the
35:00abduction took place we know that it was but he kept with his story that he had nothing to do with it
35:11erskine felix's brother kendall and his cousins ervin and kendell are just as tight lipped detectives
35:19know they don't have enough evidence to make arrests it's all circumstantial at this point they need one
35:26of the suspects to crack kendell is the youngest of the four from experienced detectives usually the
35:33youngest of the four might be the weakest link we spent probably an hour just talking to him about
35:42his background sports just to kind of break the ice to get him to feel comfortable with us
35:48so it was about 6 30 and we knew that kendall hadn't had dinner and he looked at me he said you
35:56know i really just want to go home and eat my mother's cooking and i kind of looked back at him
36:02and i said i don't think that's going to happen anytime soon and from his facial expression and
36:08his body language i knew i i had hit a nerve i knew something was up kendall uh he was the driver of the
36:17the van that night he actually he broke he said listen it was all arkstein's plan he owed us twenty
36:25thousand dollars erskine was having problems with mr stark erskine had not been paid for a job or some
36:35type of construction work the night of when this kidnapping took place that he told kendall
36:42tonight is the night that we're getting paid he gave us everything
36:57christmas 2013 places too much financial pressure on construction worker erskine felix he doesn't want
37:06to be broke over the holidays during a new year's snowstorm felix thinks he can safely shake down
37:15businessman and landlord monochem stark who owes him money when stark's half burned body is found in a
37:23long island dumpster it's a grim sign of a new year's gone very wrong kendall laid the whole thing out
37:33appeared to be a robbery that went wrong the dispute started to escalate sometime in november
37:44the phone was placed on the car sometime in late november at that point they were tracking him
37:52monocom had owed erskine the money for some time and perskin was getting frustrated
37:58uh to the point of he was now actually getting bad erskine needed money to have a christmas for his
38:06family finally right after new year's erskine had reached a boiling point
38:13so monocom stark was behind in paying these guys about twenty thousand dollars for their work and they
38:19came up with a plan if he's not going to give him the money we're going to take it from him they decided to
38:24do it on a snowy night right after new year's they thought you know with all the snow the cops
38:29weren't going to be out it would have been a good night to get away with something like that they didn't
38:33expect him to fight as violently as as he did and the plan just went really bad from there
38:42kendall said that he was the driver erskine was out in the snow with him fighting erskine told him you
38:48got to put hands on him too let's let's go they were able to get him into the van at that point
38:54mrs stark was still fighting erskine in the back of the van as they pulled away from the office at some
39:01point stark stopped fighting stark stopped breathing there was panic in the van kendall didn't know what to
39:09do erskine and kendale felix are also part of a close-knit family who are immigrants from st lucia
39:17when they panic they recruit erskine's brother kendall and cousin ervin henry
39:27henry at the time said that he opened up the van and saw the body in there he's like i you know i
39:35want no part of this and and he left the three of them along with mr stark drove back near the location
39:43of uh mr stark's office and uh kendall indicated at that point uh the block was uh closed off and there was uh police
39:53activity over by mr stark's uh office at that time the felix family is desperate to remove evidence at the scene
40:02the cell phone they used as a tracker on monochem stark's car arkstein ordered them to stop a couple
40:10blocks away from the murder scene that's when he got out of the car and he tried to go see if he could
40:15retrieve the phone from underneath monochem stark's car he said it was too hot too many cops around so
40:23then he never got back to the van he called up kendall and told him to drive the body out to long
40:29island and dispose of it it was never really explained why uh that location was picked but they
40:37they drove uh mr stark's body and it seems that they just picked this gas station and deposited mr
40:47stark's body in that dumpster and they were able to obtain some gasoline and then took that gasoline that
40:55they purchased and went back to the location and ignited the dumpster on fire and drove back to brooklyn
41:03that night kendall felix is arrested on murder charges he says he'll never testify against family
41:12in court without that testimony detectives won't have a case against erskine kendall and henry ervin
41:20although he implicated other people um you can't just arrest people based on what they call a co-conspirator
41:28statement so unfortunately we had to let uh everybody go except for kendall
41:39it was an empty feeling but you know that happens sometimes when you're investigating murders like
41:44you have to have patience you can't just throw somebody in jail because you think they did the
41:49murder you have to have a prosecutable case against them so you sometimes it takes a little longer to
41:56gather that evidence to put those people on trial kendall felix spends 11 months in jail
42:04but then he finally decides to testify against the others in exchange for a lenient sentence
42:11originally kendall he told them what had happened that night he said he would not testify against his
42:18relatives when he was getting ready to go to trial his lawyer told him like uh if he's convicted of
42:25murder he would be facing 25 years to life at that point he decided to cooperate police and testify
42:35against his relatives but he did give us a good story of who was involved and who went where and
42:47everything that kendall told us was corroborated through other means uh electronically and forensically
42:56to piece together this crime to make it a solid case erskine felix is charged with murder and kidnapping
43:02kendall is charged with hindering prosecution and tampering with physical evidence their
43:07arrests come nearly three years after the crime kendall felix and erskine felix are both convicted
43:14of menachem stark's murder erskine sentenced to 24 years to life behind bars his brother kendall
43:23pleads guilty to conspiracy and hindering prosecution he's sentenced to two and a half to seven years
43:30cousin kendall given a reduced sentence of 15 years to life ervin henry pleads guilty to tampering with
43:39physical evidence and a sentence to just three months in jail we cannot bring it back but definitely the
43:47family will always be broken and our family will never be the same as it was in the past whether it's
43:54hanukkah christmas new year's thanksgiving you know whatever holiday it is if you lost a family member
44:00right before any holiday i don't think it's something you forget it's something that you're going to be
44:04reminded of every year in the end the murder of family man and businessman menachem stark is supposed
44:12to be a smaller crime which goes horribly wrong its lurid details captivate the city of new york with its
44:21real life drama of crime and a tragic way to ring in the new year i'm nancy grace thank you for joining us
44:31is here on the christmas killings
44:42you
44:44you
44:57you
45:01you
Comments