Cold Case Files - Gone In A New York Minute

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

In March 2006, landlord Bruce Blackwood disappears without a trace in a city with eight million residents. The NYPD are sure there is foul play, despite no body being found. Check out our great sponsors! SimpliSafe: Customize your home security system at simplisafe.com/coldcase and claim a free indoor security camera plus 20% off your order with Interactive Monitoring! ZocDoc: Go to Zocdoc.com/ccf and download the Zocdoc app for FREE and find and book a top-rated doctor today! Progressive: Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 29 million drivers who trust Progressive!

An A&E original podcast. This episode contains descriptions of violence. Listener discretion is advised. Bruce was my brother. He's my youngest brother. Me and my brother were close. We were tight. Bruce is not the type of person to just go off

and not let anybody know where he was going and what he was doing. The fear started to set in when I had not heard from my brother. The police are looking to see if there was anything that may have caused him to disappear. They can't find him. Nobody wants to feel somebody that they love to be discarded like that. I wasn't going to let him go like that.

He didn't deserve this, and I just kept at it, at it, at it, at it again. Giving up on him is like maybe giving up on myself. I was going to find out what happened to my brother. There are 120,000 unsolved murders in America. Each one is a cold case. Only 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. It's the morning of Monday, March 6th, 2006, in Queens, New York. And 55-year-old Bruce Blackwood does something unusual, at least for him. He calls into the off-track betting parlor he manages and tells him that he won't be coming to work. The call concerns Bruce's friend, Tina.

It was a very brief call. The person that took the phone call said, Bruce said, I slipped and fell in the bathtub. I have to go to the hospital. I can't make it into work. I was worried about him. Bruce had never missed a day of work, and his colleagues are concerned, especially because he tells them he had hit his head.

When I heard that Bruce called in sick, I immediately called Bruce. When he didn't pick up, the first time I figured, okay, maybe he just didn't get to the phone. The second time, I was telling him, Bruce, it's Tina, pick up. It's me. The third time, the fourth, fifth, I said, something's wrong. He always picks up for me. Bruce never picks up or calls back.

The next day, he fails to show up for work again. And even his close friends can't get in touch with him. I was out on maternity leave, but Bruce and I would talk to each other at least two or three times a day. After not hearing from him for a couple of days, I was in a complete panic. He was just gone. Bruce's friends contact his brother, Ed. A friend of his told me that she had not heard from Bruce and did I hear from Bruce within those two days?

And I said, no, something may have happened to Bruce because Bruce is not that type of a person to just go off and not let anybody know where he was going and what he was doing. The fear started to set in. Ed goes to the New York City police and reports his brother as a missing person. Detective Peter Galasso works on the case. We received an official missing persons report

on March 9th, which was three days after he called in sick at that point. When Ed made this missing persons report, I knew it was very serious. That was scary. It was like reality hit. I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin. I prayed that he was okay.

The first thing the detectives do is interview Bruce's brother, Ed, in an effort to learn more about the missing man. We grew up together in Queens. Bruce, he played the clarinet for the band in high school. He sang in a glee club. He was very much involved in different types of organizations. Bruce was very friendly. Me and my brother were close.

I mean, we were tight. And Bruce always had a lending hand. He helped my mother out quite a lot. When I was pregnant, Bruce would come over and rub my belly, and he'd say, I can't wait till you have this baby. I can't wait to hold him. I said to Bruce, you're going to make a great uncle. He was so excited.

He was a very giving person. He'd listen to you. He could always talk to my brother about anything. He would come through. He'd be there for you. Now, my brother was missing. I'm left out in the cold. The detectives learn that Bruce is well off, at least on paper. He has real estate holdings worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, providing him with financial security that took almost four decades to cement as he climbed the career ladder at the off-track betting parlor known as OTB. Bruce worked for the airlines for 30 years as a flight attendant.

And at that time, being a flight attendant was like star quality. You know what I mean? Then the TWA went out of business. The OTB, it just went from a cashier all the way up to a manager. Bruce loved to work. Bruce's life was work. He then got into the real estate. He wanted to invest in buying property. And when he was retired, he wanted to be able to just live a comfortable life. He was a go-getter. New York Daily News reporter Carrie Burke learns more about Bruce through reporting on the case. Bruce Blackwood was a striver, a hardworking New York guy who took what little money he had and bought run-down properties and turned them into apartments. After reporting his brother missing, Ed begins his own search for Bruce. I went to the building that he owned in Bushwick.

I got a group together that consisted of family friends, and I made up a picture of my brother and wrote out had anybody seen him, and we went into that area, passing out posters, went into the stores, nailed them up on the trees, stopped people in the street. That's what we did. They do what they always do in New York. They post flyers everywhere, and they go door to door trying to get any lead about where he might be. But they found nothing. Meanwhile, detectives Peter Galasso and Steve Pellin

search through Bruce's home for clues. Detectives from my office responded to Mr. Blackwood's residence in Queens. Mr. Blackwood's Cadillac SUV was standing in his driveway. He had nice things, nice house. We searched the house to make sure he hadn't fallen or something happened to him inside the house. There was nothing there to find out where he was. And there was no signs of any foul play.

We didn't have any physical evidence even to say that this was a crime. He wasn't on any types of medication. He wasn't depressed. He didn't have any financial problems that we were aware of. There was no reason why he would be missing. The lack of physical evidence does little to suppress the detective's suspicions. All roads led us to believe that there was definitely something nefarious had been done to Mr. Blackwood. There was definitely foul play involved, but we didn't know what.

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That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com. ZocDoc.com. It's March 10th, 2006, four days since anyone heard from Bruce Blackwood. My brother was missing. We had not heard from him. They say that if they're not found within two to three days, then the outlook doesn't look good.

The detectives try tracking Bruce's cell phone, but it has been switched off, so they have no way of determining his location. They subpoena his cell phone records instead and begin to speak with people who know Bruce. We had it all hands on deck.

I was a homicide investigator at the time and worked in a 113 precinct for a long time. We do a homicide investigator at the time and worked in a 113 precinct for a long time. We do a morgue search, check for car accidents. Unfortunately, in this case, he had just disappeared off the face of the earth. Nobody had a bad thing to say about the man. He was loved by all. The detectives speak with Bruce's colleagues at the off-track betting parlor.

He handled the money, the OTB. Back then, the OTB in the city was making a lot of money. And people could bet on horses in the bar. He was responsible for the safe, so we needed to check to make sure someone didn't rob him or hold him, maybe try to take money from the OTB. We spoke to everybody to try to gain more information. Nobody knew anything additional. Those are crazy gamblers, but he never

led me to believe that there might be a customer that might be after him or anything like that. We went down every avenue possible to see if there was any other potential people who may have been involved in Bruce's disappearance. We turned up nothing. Nothing made sense. Nothing jumped off the page as to why, who. Investigators ask the public to help them find Bruce Blackwood. We had the missing person squad print up missing posters.

We distributed them to every precinct in the city, all 75 of them. We also flooded the neighborhood where Bruce resided and the locations where he owned the property in the Bronx and in Brooklyn. Sometimes witnesses come forward. I've seen that individual. I last saw him here. I heard about this, things of that nature. Unfortunately, we didn't develop any leads

from the missing posters. So we were very concerned, but we never turned our backs on anybody. Police question the tenants in the buildings Bruce owns. If he's met with foul play and isn't just missing, a tenant might be to blame. Police obviously hit neighbors, tenants, particularly tenants, because if he's going to have any kind of conflict, it's going to be with tenants. People who don't pay the rent, people who complain and threaten lawsuits,

people who might be conceivable enemies. I went to the Hancock Street address in Brooklyn to interview the tenants that live in the building and the handyman slash super. He lived in the apartment on the third floor. He invited us in. We went up to his apartment on the third floor. The handyman told detectives that he saw Mr. Blackwood on Tuesday,

the following day, which would be March 7th. Bruce had arrived at the house at about 9.30, 10 o'clock in the morning. They discussed renovations that were being done, and Bruce had told him that he had to take a ride somewhere to run some errands. At some point, he heard a horn beeping outside, and Mr. Blackwood told him that his friend Michael, Mike, was outside. He then observed Mr. Blackwood leave the building and entered a black Toyota Camry and drove off with this individual. The handyman didn't know who Mike was, never saw him before, and that was the last time that he had seen Mr. Blackwood.

Detectives sweep the Brooklyn neighborhood in search of video footage of the black car. We checked the immediate area for video cameras. There was a supermarket directly across the street, but the video cameras that they had were not working properly. The investigators also ask Bruce's friends if they know anyone called Mike. I could not think of one person that Bruce ever mentioned to me with the name Mike. There were a couple of co-workers named Mike at work, but no one that Bruce was friendly with on that level. All cops had was Bruce Blackwood was last seen with a guy named Mike in a car, but Mike could be anybody. We needed to find out who Mike was immediately.

We were running out of time. The detectives canvassed the neighborhood to try and track down their only lead, someone the building handyman had seen with Bruce on the day he went missing. Nobody knew any individual by the name of Mike with a black Toyota Camry, and certainly didn't know anybody that Mr. Black would just go with without letting anybody know. We were unsuccessful coming up with any mics. We just could not find him. It really bothered me.

Bruce Blackwood was an upstanding citizen, did everything right his whole entire life. What happened to Mr. Blackwood? The uncertainty starts to take a toll on Bruce's brother, Ed. Not knowing about whether my brother was alive or dead is the hardest thing to grasp. I felt that something will show up eventually. And I was just hoping that the best would show up,

you know, not the worst. Mr. Blackwood was not an individual that would go off the grid for several days. There was no reason other than something must have happened to him for him to disappear like this. We believed Mr. Blackwood was no longer with us. And it was extremely frustrating not being able to find any physical evidence to indicate that he was in fact a victim of a homicide. A week has passed since anyone heard from Bruce Blackwood. And the detectives are told by the missing man's friends that they had recently seen a change in his behavior.

Right before I went on maternity, I knew something was wrong. Bruce was very anxious. He was very moody. He didn't want to talk. And that was not like him. He said, yeah, everything's fine. Everything's okay. As his friend, I just felt like, okay, I'm going to respect his privacy. Bruce Blackwood had a very good friend who lived in Pennsylvania,

and he would come up and visit him every other weekend. He had been staying with him for the weekend prior to him last being seen. This individual had told us that Mr. Blackwood was on edge and there was something bothering him. At some point during the day, Mr. Blackwood just got very angry and agitated and started saying stuff like, I don't know why I got involved with these individuals.

His friend questioned him on it, trying to get him to give him some information, and he refused. He just wouldn't say who he was actually talking about. Detectives speak with a friend of Bruce's who says she went looking for him at his Brooklyn building even before he was reported missing. There was no sign of Bruce, but she did see something alarming. At the time of Mr. Blackwood's disappearance,

one of his best friends, she observed, the handyman, Luis Perez, driving Mr. Blackwood's Cadillac SUV. She immediately flagged down a police car she saw going by and relayed the information that Bruce Blackwood owns that car and that he would not have given it to anybody else. The officers actually conducted a car stop and spoke to Mr. Perez. Yes, this is my boss's car. Mr. Blackwood asked me to hold on to the car for him

and move it for alternate side of the street. We have alternative side parking in New York, and you have to move your car to the other side of the street once, twice a week. Some neighborhoods, every day. So it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for a handyman to move someone's car. The explanation that Luis Perez gave us was very legitimate because alternate side of the street was in effect for that whole week. Looking for a solid lead, detectives interview one of Bruce's neighbors. He spoke to a neighbor who recalled the weekend right before Mr. Blackwood went missing

that he observed Mr. Blackwood involved in an argument with two individuals standing in his driveway. He described both individuals as being male Hispanics. One of the males he recognized from doing work on Mr. Blackwood's house. He believed that he was an employee and the handyman for Mr. Blackwood. He stated that the altercation became heated. Both men appeared very agitated.

He overheard Mr. Blackwood say something to the effect that it wasn't supposed to cost this much money. That's not what we agreed on. The argument was definitely over money. As we all know, money could be the root of all evil. Money can destroy friendships. It can destroy families. So this argument definitely raised our suspicions a lot

because we were looking for a motive for Mr. Blackwood's disappearance. And money appeared to be a very viable motive at this point. Bruce Blackwood had been doing well at this point of his life. He drove a nice car, owned several properties, and seemed to have money. The police think that money is a likely motive, and they take a closer look at Bruce's handyman, Luis Perez, as a suspect. A week has passed since Bruce was last heard from, and the investigators pry into Bruce's finances. I personally went to the American Airlines credit union, and that's when we realized Bruce had been to that credit union to

report that he was missing 13 checks. A total of 13 personal checks that were fraudulently signed or forged checks. 12 of those checks were written out to Luis Perez and one check was written out to Martin Rodriguez. An individual, Luis Perez, basically hired to do work at Hancock Street. The total amount for all 13 forged checks was $7,700. Louis Perez was somehow involved, but unfortunately we had to wait on subpoenas to the banks, to the credit union to prove it.

Blackwood, he's a small investor, and $7,700 is a great deal of money to a blue-collar worker who's trying to make good. My brother became very suspicious about the checks, so he knew that something was going on with Perez. It's March 15th, 2006, and the detectives start to dig into Luis Perez's criminal record. They discover that Perez spent 10 years in jail in Massachusetts for attempting to kill his daughter and her mother. State troopers had tried to stop him, and he had stabbed one of the troopers in the struggle.

Bruce's phone records are finally released on May 2, 2006. It's been two months since he went missing, and the detectives begin to go over his calls, including the one he made to the bedding parlor to let them know he had slipped in the bathtub and wouldn't make it to work that day. We were able to triangulate that call, and he was hitting off a cell phone tower

approximately two blocks away from the Hancock Street location. We believed that he was actually inside and that he was with Luis Perez. Detectives can't prove that Bruce was murdered, but they do have proof that someone was stealing from him. We received copies of all the forged checks. A handwriting analysis was able to determine that Luis Perez did write those checks out.

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My body got warm and it just said, get up. You're not done. Get up. I'm Caitlin VanMol, back with a brand new season of I Survived. The more I begged him, the happier and the more excited he got. Join me for new episodes of I Survived every Monday. And subscribe now, wherever you listen to podcasts. We also secured a search warrant for Perez's Hancock Street residence, where we believe Mr. Blackwood was murdered. We had extreme high hopes of finding any kind of physical evidence inside that residence

linking Luis Perez to the murder. DNA, blood, weapons, knives, things of that nature. Our crime scene unit ripped up carpeting. They removed drain pipes, traps in the sinks and the shower and bathtub. Unfortunately, there was nothing there that they found that could help in our investigation. So it was very disheartening and very upsetting to everybody who was involved. I was very dejected. A year passes, and on June 5th, 2007, Luis Perez pleads guilty to passing fraudulent checks. We put Luis Perez in jail for at least two to four years, and he probably was going to

do all four because of his past criminal history. But all this proves is that these guys were stealing from Blackwood. And this still is a missing persons case. It was upsetting to think that Luis Perez would only get two to four years for forgery when he definitely had something to do with Bruce's disappearance. But they had no evidence. The detectives have no evidence, no witnesses, and no body to prove that Bruce was murdered. As a result, the case goes cold. I never thought that this case was ever going to get solved.

There was nothing. So I said to myself, I'm not going to let my brother die like this. I'm not going to. This is a hell of a way for him to go out. He didn't deserve this. Giving up on him is like maybe giving up on myself, you know? I would find out really what happened to my brother. The lingering questions weigh heavy on Ed Blackwood's heart

as he struggles to come to terms with his brother's disappearance. They had determined that it was a cold case. They couldn't go any further. Nobody wants to feel somebody that they love to be discarded like that. I wasn't going to let him go like that. I was going to find out who killed my brother. If somebody murdered a family member of mine when nobody was held accountable, that would destroy me, my family, anybody's family. It's now March 6th, 2011, exactly five years since Bruce Blackwood went missing. Bruce's brother, never gave up. He was not letting this go. He wanted justice to be served.

I just kept at it, at it, at it, at it again. NYPD has really countless cold cases, and they only hear people who keep trying, and that's what Ed Blackwood did. Ed forms bonds with others who are as determined as he to find his brother. One of the people he strikes up a friendship with is Detective Pellin. I retired in 2008, but I became friends with Ed over the years. Ed told me he was going to try to get a hold of news agencies, TV networks,

somebody that would show a little interest in his brother's disappearance. I was reading an article from this Daily News reporter. I thought it was well done. So I said, what the hell did I have to lose? Ed reaches out to the Daily News, and reporter Kerry Burke gets to work. I hit the streets and started climbing stairs and knocking doors like detectives do, trying to find folks who remembered Bruce Blackwood. And much to my surprise, five years later, people did.

Kerry goes in search of Luis Perez, the man convicted of stealing over $7,000 from Bruce. Perez is out of prison and back on the street. Perez was the key point in my brother's death. I felt that very strongly. But Luis Perez was like a ghost. I turned my attention to trying to find him. But this guy moved around a lot. Eventually, I got him by phone, and he basically denied everything. On March 6th, we ran the story, and it got a kind of response that was remarkable.

It was in the Sunday paper, and it was a big article. They had interviewed me, and I told them that this case still haunted me, and I felt I didn't do my job. I didn't finish what I started. In one police plaza, they didn't want to have any bad publicity going on, and that's when they reopened up the case. Detective Wendell Stradford is assigned to investigate the cold case. I was a first grade detective at the time. Cold case squad, we only focus on homicide. I'm reading the articles in the newspaper.

A few days go by and I'm getting summons to one police plaza by the chief of detectives and the police commissioner along with my boss. And they're telling me that I am going to take this cold case. It's my job as a detective to look at every single piece. I want to see everything. Why all of a sudden this man would just go missing? We checked everything. Everything led back to Perez.

But when you can't even find the body and you don't have that one witness. You have nothing. It's July 2011, and the detective gets contacted by an unexpected source. It was Luis Perez's daughter. She proceeded to tell me what she knew about this case. She says, he's going to do something like that again. She was so afraid of him, but she was afraid for the well-being of her daughter that she decided to come forward.

District Attorney Melissa Carvajal explains Perez's daughter's reasons. She was willing to come forward with this evidence because she did not want him near her or near her kids. The detectives speak with Perez's daughter, and she confides in them about her father's favorite topic of conversation. She goes, he talks about it all the time because it's like a trophy to him about how he got away with killing this man, and I feel bad, you know, for that man's family.

I asked her, would she be willing to record him talking about it? We had a mini recorder that we gave her. She can seclude it in any place she wanted. I instructed her, listen, don't bring it up. Let him talk. If he's going to talk, he talks. But I don't need you prompting him to do anything. What she did, it was very risky because he is a terrible man.

I think there was a part of her that realized that her father was pure evil. He talked about how he could do the perfect crime and no one would ever find out. The conversation is recorded, but the recordings alone may not be enough to convict Luis Perez. What he said on that recorder is not really a confession. Any defense attorney would be like, yeah, you know, look at him. He's a braggart, you know, big guy in the streets. And we knew, and the DA said it too, you're going to have to bring in whatever witnesses you can find

that can corroborate that tape. There was no body. The body in itself is such a big piece of evidence in a murder case. From a prosecutor's standpoint, that is a very, very tough case and not a case that is brought often at all. It's almost unprecedented that someone's convicted a homicide without a body. There is no crime without a victim. A defense attorney could stand up and say,

we don't know what happened to Bruce Blackwood. And that could have convinced a jury. There's always that fear. The district attorney is confident that they have their killer. But they don't have any physical evidence to back it up. We knew Luis Perez killed Bruce Blackwood. We knew that he had gotten rid of his body and that he had done a good job in getting rid of it. There was no forensic evidence whatsoever,

meaning not even a blood trail, no body, not even a piece of a body. Still, I secured an indictment and Detective Strafford went out and arrested Luis Perez. By the time the murder trial begins in September 2015, the police have located some key witnesses, including Perez's former helper. Martin Rodriguez, this little squirrely, mousy type of guy who couldn't hurt a fly. He was scared to death that Perez was out to get him. Martin Rodriguez was Perez's flunky, for want of a better word, because that's exactly what he was. Martin Rodriguez got on the stand and that's how we got a lot of insight into what happened to Bruce Blackwood.

It was very clear that Martin Rodriguez had nothing to do with the murder of Bruce Blackwood. Fourteen days into the trial, Perez's daughter takes the stand to reveal what her father told her. She testified to what her dad had told her in gruesome, terrible details, everything that he did to Bruce Blackwood. But the jury needed to hear the recording in his own voice.

He said that Bruce had found out he had been stealing checks from him. And Perez said, Perez said he tied Bruce to a chair and put him in a chokehold. But he choked him too hard and snapped his neck. He then said that he knew he had to get rid of him. And then he went to work, his words. The plastic that I put down is a construction plastic. The real, real, real thick plastic. And then he went to work, his words. He went to work on his body.

He used a saw. He used a machete. Melissa went on to describe how her father used a saw and a machete to dismember Bruce Blackwood before he bleached the crime scene and the drains to remove any forensic evidence. After cleaning up, Perez put Bruce's remains into garbage bags. He paid several homeless people. They didn't know what they were doing, and they just deposited the bags that had Mr. Blackwood's remains in different locations so that they would be picked up by sanitation. To strengthen their case, prosecutors call Perez's former girlfriend and neighbor to the stand.

She goes into Perez's apartment and she says, where's Mr. Blackwood? I heard the police have been here. And Perez says, don't worry about Mr. Blackwood. He's gone. I went to work on his body. He's not coming back. And he had some type of electrical saw or a power saw on top of the table dismantled in several pieces, and he was placing them inside a garbage bag. He told her, if you tell anybody,

I'll kill you, I'll kill your family, keep your mouth shut. She was crucial to my case because I think the jury needed to believe that a whole body has disappeared. It makes it more real. After a three-week trial, the jury begins deliberating. I was worried, thinking that Luis Perez might go free because there was no evidence and there was no body. The jury deliberated for less than three hours and they found him guilty of murder in the second degree.

Luis Perez was sentenced to 25 to life and that was the maximum sentence that was allowable under the law. So there is some justice there. Is there justice for Bruce Blackwood? No. The way he was tragically taken, the way his remains were desecrated, there's no justice in that. Ed Blackwood only receives a small comfort from the verdict.

I didn't have a body to bury. My brother was chopped up, and for him to be stuffed in bags like he was a piece of garbage, to be destroyed like that, you know, I mean, that hurt really, really tremendously. But I know if he was here, we would still be friends. Bruce would have made a great uncle. He would have been so involved and so loving to my son.

I miss Bruce tremendously. I've lost my brother, someone that I had loved and my confidence on. And you can't replace that. You can never replace that. That's all I can say is I miss him a lot. I miss my brother a lot. Cold Case Files is hosted by Paula Barrows. It's produced by the Law and Crime Network and written by Eileen McFarlane and Emily G. Thompson. Our composer is Blake Maples. For A&E, our senior producer is John Thrasher,

and our supervising producer is McKamey Lynn. Our executive producers are Jesse Katz, Maite Cueva, and Peter Tarshis. This podcast is based on A&E's Emmy-winning TV series, Cold Case Files. For more Cold Case Files, visit aetv.com. I'm Lola. And I'm Megan. And we're the hosts of Trust Me, cults, extreme belief, and manipulation.

We both have childhood cult experiences. And we're here to debunk the myths about people who join them and show that anyone can be manipulated. Our past interviews include survivors and former members of the Manson family, NXIVM, MS-13, Teal Swan, Heaven's Gate, Children of God, and the Branch Davidians. Join us every week as we help you spot the red flags. Get new episodes of Trust Me every Wednesday on Podcast One or wherever you get your podcasts.