Murder Cop: A Profile of Vernon J. Geberth
Tightening Up
"Back in 1979," Geberth remembers, "we went through a re-organization because someone had decided that we didn't need specialized homicide squads, robbery squads and burglary squads.� Headquarters came up with some social-work concept of community policing. Well, it didn't work. Within one year, there was a quiet reassignment of specialized units. Because I was a well-known homicide sergeant in the Bronx, they gave me a command.� I got the Riverdale section.� I was upset because I thought I wouldn't get as many homicides to investigate.� When I got there, the guy who was going to now be my second-in-command had been in charge, and the ten detectives who were already there had done essentially nothing for the past five years.� The five detectives whom I'd brought with me were now relegated to bicycle thefts.� It looked like I had fifteen people, but in reality I had a dysfunctional family.� I had to tighten people up, to make it work the way it was supposed to."
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They were called into an investigation of an apparent suicide.� "We had an individual who was a graduate of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, so he thought that he knew all about police work.� He'd decided he wanted to kill his common-law wife and get himself a new girlfriend. He put together a scenario in which his wife had been 'depressed' since the birth of their latest child and he'd it set up that he had to leave the house by 7:00 A.M. to get to unemployment.� When he returned at 9:45, he said, the door was unlocked and he became concerned.� He ran through the house and heard a baby crying.� He found his wife in the tub, drowned.� He attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but he couldn't save her.� Then he put his head down and cried.� He called his brother to ask for help.� The brother called 911 and the patrol sergeant responded."�
The protocol for an unattended death like this caused the patrol officer to call a sergeant, who would then notify a detective.� Geberth himself went to the scene.� "When I got there, the place was in pandemonium.� No one was doing his job, the ambulance guy wanted to take the body, and the relatives were running through the apartment.� The patrol sergeant had decided it was a suicide because the husband had given him a story and placed an empty vial of pills near his wife's body, suggesting an overdose due to depression.� I went in and said, 'This apartment is a crime scene.� Clear the apartment. This is an absolute disgrace.'"
The patrol sergeant explained why he thought it had been a suicide by overdose.� But Geberth was not convinced.� "I got a gut feeling in my stomach that there was something wrong, and when you get a gut feeling that there is something wrong, there is probably something wrong.� I went to the young woman's body, pulled the sheet back and leaned down.� I pulled her eyelids back and saw evidence of petechial hemorrhage.� That's when I realized we had a homicide.� I ordered the apartment cleared and found out who lived there.� There was an eight-year-old girl, who was in school.� I knew that she may have seen something, so I went to the school with a female relative of the victim and got her out of class.� She told us that she'd gotten up, her sister was watching cartoons, and she and Mommy had breakfast together and then she'd gone to school at 8:25.� When she left the house, she said her daddy was in bed.� He was yelling at Mommy.� We also found the three-year-old, and she told us the story of how Daddy grabbed Mommy and squeezed her neck in the tub.� She'd seen the whole thing."
Geberth was relived that he'd thought of getting to the kids before the father did.�
"By making that observation of petechial hemorrhage, I got a jump on the bad guy.� The autopsy would have established the cause of death the next day, but the husband would have had a lawyer and we wouldn't have had access to the children."
Then there was the time he got involved in a shoot-out.� Only after it was over did he discover the identity of the man he'd nearly shot.