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Point Judith Press
Chief!
Chief!
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Cigar-chomping, steely-eyed, Albert Seedman was the the highest-profile, and most brilliant, chief of detectives in NYPD history. His retirement, on the day after his image appeared on the cover of the New York Times Magazine in April 1972 made possible this uniquely detailed and riveting memoir of Seedman's greatest cases. Many are still remembered today: the murder of Kitty Genovese, the explosion of a Greenwich Village townhouse turned into a Weatherman bomb factory, the Mafia killings of Joe Gallo and Joe Colombo, the executions of cops by the Black Liberation Army, and the Jewish Defense League bombing of the Soviet trade mission. Seedman solved them all.
Seedman, who was a CPA before entering the NYPD police academy, kept complete files on all his cases, including thousands of DD-5 incident reports, photos, wiretap transcripts, and even the drawing made by Kitty Genovese's killer of the murder scene, making possible the accurate narration of these cases.
At the time of his resignation as chief of detectives, Seedman told his co-author that he had retired because, once the then police commissioner, Patrick Murphy, saw his photo on the New York Times magazine cover, he would have been forced to resign; Murphy wanted raise up the stature of street patrolmen, and that meant deglamorizing the detective bureau. Seedman was the glamor that had to go. In fact, Seedman's resignation was due to a much more painful reason: the refusal of higher-ups to allow him to properly secure the crime scene in a Harlem mosque where patrolman Phillip Cardillo was fatally shot on April 14 1972. Mayor John Lindsay, then anticipating a run for the presidency, did not want a riot in his city, and the incident at the mosque threatened to turn into just that. And so no conviction was ever obtained in the murder of Carillo.
Why hadn't Seedman publicly voiced his real reason for retiring when he did? "I loved the department so much I didn't want to drag it through the mud," he explained 37 years later, at age 92.
THE FULL STORY OF THE ABORTED INVESTIGATION AT THE HARLEM MOSQUE IS TOLD IN A NEW INTRODUCTION TO THIS EDITION OF CHIEF! GREAT CASES FROM THE FILES OF THE CHIEF OF DETECTIVES, BY ALBERT SEEDMAN AND PETER HELLMAN
" Fascinating! Seedman recounts with vividness and detail...crimes that were page one stories...excellent."
--The New York Times
Seedman, who was a CPA before entering the NYPD police academy, kept complete files on all his cases, including thousands of DD-5 incident reports, photos, wiretap transcripts, and even the drawing made by Kitty Genovese's killer of the murder scene, making possible the accurate narration of these cases.
At the time of his resignation as chief of detectives, Seedman told his co-author that he had retired because, once the then police commissioner, Patrick Murphy, saw his photo on the New York Times magazine cover, he would have been forced to resign; Murphy wanted raise up the stature of street patrolmen, and that meant deglamorizing the detective bureau. Seedman was the glamor that had to go. In fact, Seedman's resignation was due to a much more painful reason: the refusal of higher-ups to allow him to properly secure the crime scene in a Harlem mosque where patrolman Phillip Cardillo was fatally shot on April 14 1972. Mayor John Lindsay, then anticipating a run for the presidency, did not want a riot in his city, and the incident at the mosque threatened to turn into just that. And so no conviction was ever obtained in the murder of Carillo.
Why hadn't Seedman publicly voiced his real reason for retiring when he did? "I loved the department so much I didn't want to drag it through the mud," he explained 37 years later, at age 92.
THE FULL STORY OF THE ABORTED INVESTIGATION AT THE HARLEM MOSQUE IS TOLD IN A NEW INTRODUCTION TO THIS EDITION OF CHIEF! GREAT CASES FROM THE FILES OF THE CHIEF OF DETECTIVES, BY ALBERT SEEDMAN AND PETER HELLMAN
" Fascinating! Seedman recounts with vividness and detail...crimes that were page one stories...excellent."
--The New York Times
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