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New York City 2014. 2 days after New Year's, a picturesque snowstorm turns into a dangerous white out.
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There's basically a blizzard in uh New York. A local Jewish businessman was kidnapped less than a month from
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Hanukkah. What happened to this father of seven? Why would he have been kidnapped? Was it
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his family? Was it something personal? To say it created a firestorm would be an understatement.
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As a community grows angry, they turn their frustration toward police. The holidays present a lot of issues for
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police in general. There's a lot of anti-semitism events that actually do happen.
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We end up getting notified by the Nassau County police that they found a body. It's one of New York's first homicides
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of the year. Detectives are overwhelmed with leads. Why? What did he do? This looked like a targeted
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attack. 40 million is a lot of money. And what occurred on on this video was horrifying.
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[Music] [Music] Hello, I'm Nancy Grace. New Year's in New York City. It conjures up visions of
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the beautiful glittering ball dropping in Time Square, bustling bars, crowded restaurants, and streets filled with
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merry makers. 2014, the city and its burrows are still dealing with the New Year's
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Eve hangover when they're hit with a crippling snowstorm. Monakam Stark, a committed family man, is at the office
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in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. He's not concerned by the weather. He
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plans to work late, then head home. [Music] Right after New Year's, people start to
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come back to work. They start to get back into their normal routine. And January 2nd, again, day after New
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Year's, the city got hit with the first big blizzard that day. 2014 has begun
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with an extreme blast of winter weather. A huge storm has been moving across much
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of the country, bringing with it freezing temperatures and lots of snow. It was snowing pretty hard. I mean,
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people couldn't see it. There was no visibility if you were driving in the streets. It was coming down hard. There
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weren't a lot of people out on the streets. Well, Monakam Stark was working in his
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office. He always came home the same time every night. In fact, when he spoke to his
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wife earlier in the day, he mentioned that he would be home around 11:30. Now, it's
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11:40. His wife doesn't hear from him. She's very nervous. She calls the phone
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and somebody hangs up. Now, she's very nervous. It's close to midnight when Monakam Stark's
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brother-in-law checks his office. There's no sign of the reliable family man. Then they make the phone call to
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911. They report he hasn't shown up home. This is out of character for him. His office is not far from home. So,
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we're not thinking an accident, you know, ran off the road somewhere, doesn't have his cell phone. were
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thinking there could be more to this than just a missing person's case. Detectives went to his office and the
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office seemed to be, you know, closed [Music] up, but they did notice that his car was
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outside and that was very strange that he wasn't there and the car was. It's bitterly cold January 3, 2014.
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Detectives from the 90th precinct canvas the neighborhood around Monakam Stark's
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office building. There was a video camera positioned right in front of the building and we found the video footage
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and what occurred on on this video was [Music] horrifying. We noticed him locking up
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the office and he was walking to his car when a very large male grabbed him and Manakam started fighting with him.
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Manakam Stark put up a very big uh fight. I don't think these guys expected to him to put a fight like that. They
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were struggling for 3, four, five minutes and another male came from the car and helped
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him and they threw him in the back of a light colored minivan and he was still fighting as
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they put him in the van and then they drove away. When police watch the footage, they
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realize their missing person's case is now a kidnapping. The weather makes leads hard to come
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by because of the snow, because of the the brightness, I guess, of the snow, it blurred the videotape itself. So, we
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were having trouble. We couldn't even identify at the time the type of minivan
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it was. We couldn't identify the race of any of these two abductors. All we had
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was one of them looked like a larger male. The other looked like he was smaller. We could absolutely see that
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there was a struggle, but there was no way to get a license plate. There was no way to do a facial recognition to
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identify either one of the people we were going to end up looking for. The NYPD releases the surveillance video
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to the media. The case quickly grabs the attention of the public. [Music] I received a phone call that said a
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local Jewish businessman was kidnapped as he left his office shortly before midnight. And I remembered this was less
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than a month from Hanukkah. The holidays present a lot of issues for police in general. There is
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normally an uptick in crime. It's robberies. It's shootings um right before the holidays. Whether it's
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because of a lack of money, whether it's family issues, family disputes. Thank
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God people aren't abducted off the streets of New York City. That's a strange event no matter who. But when
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somebody's taken off the street, an acidic male in that tightknit community,
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it doesn't happen. I actually reached out to a couple of people who lived and
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work in Williamsburg to see what they heard. there. Everything spreads like wildfire
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within the community. So, everybody in the community had heard what happened that night. You had to then start
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digging in to see who this person was. You have to find what the next layer. You have to dig what the next
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layer is. Why was who who is who is this person that was kidnapped? So, you have
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to find out who he is before you could find out why. When we investigated uh Manakam Stark's background, we knew that
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he was a loving husband and a loving father. He had seven kids. We knew he was in the real estate business. The
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neighbors we spoke with, um the people from the temples we spoke with, you know, reinforced that he was a good
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person. He was a family man. Everybody that came out publicly said, uh what a great guy he was. Uh he always were
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helping the down and out. that rarely do you find individuals who give away their money.
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And if they don't have their money, they go out there to ensure to knock on some
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people's door who has money in order to respond to a person in need. Approximately 400 p.m. January 3, police
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get a phone call from a gas station attendant out on Long Island. In a kidnapping investigation, you're always
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waiting on whether somebody's going to ask for ransom or is somebody going to
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just drive him around, have him take money out of ATMs. We don't know what their
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intentions were when they took Monakam Stark. That's what creates angst for the
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family. And then we end up getting notified by the Nassau County police that they found a
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body of a male dressed in traditional acidic garb half burnt in a uh dumpster at a Getty gas station in Great Neck,
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Long Island. The gas station attendant when he arrived for work that morning saw the
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smoke coming out of the dumpster. Approached the dumpster said it was a foul smell coming out of the dumpster.
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Called the police and called the fire department. Started smelling a burning like like a like you know a burning
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flesh kind of smell and he just saw smoke coming out of the dumpster because the lower half of the body had been
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burned and the upper half hadn't been burned as badly. Nassau County detectives that responded realized that
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this was somebody that belonged to the hetic community. That's some 30 miles away from the scene
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where Manakam was taken and put into a van and driven away. Monakam Stark's family praying for a miracle. They head
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to Long Island hoping the body in the Moore belongs to somebody, anybody else. The body that was found in the dumpster
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was in fact Monakam Stark. Welcome back. The 90th precinct in Brooklyn rings in the new year 2014
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with a grizzly homicide investigation. The half burnt body of a man dressed in traditional hidic clothing found over 30
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miles from his office in Brooklyn. He is identified as the kidnap victim. Manakam
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Stark, a well-known businessman in his community and a beloved family man. when you're trying to celebrate and
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now all of a sudden you get like a heinous crime like this senseless murder, you know, it just makes people
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stop and say like like we were just celebrating, we were just having a good time and then all of a sudden you get
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hit, you're back to reality. Saturday, Nassau County police found the 39-year-old ultraorththodox man's body
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in a dumpster at a Great Neck gas station. Now, we know we're dealing with a homicide. And one of the confusing
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points of the case initially was that the body was found in Long Island. Normally, if something happens in
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Brooklyn, it doesn't wander out to Long Island. It doesn't wander too far out of
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the burrow. Because of the blizzard, many of the roads were closed. And uh one of the major thoroughares over in
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that area is the 495, the Long Island Expressway. and that night was closed to any traffic. So, it was a little unusual
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how Mr. Stark was in one location and then his body discovered in a dumpster in uh Great
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Neck with all this weather related road issues. It was a little curious how he got
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there. I mean, if you were looking to dump a body, there are many places in Brooklyn,
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Queens, you know, is a bigger story now. You know, you go from a kidnapping to a
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[Music] murder. According to Jewish religious law, a body must be buried within 24
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hours after the person dies. So in this case, the pressure is on the medical examiner to quickly perform that autopsy
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and release Monakam Stark's body to his family. The autopsy is basically done.
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They find out that it was a chest compression and asphyxiation, which basically means that
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uh you couldn't breathe because somebody was sitting on your chest. Just imagine
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you're laying on the floor and somebody's sitting on your chest and it can't expand and you're basically
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suffocating. It shows a sign of a, you know, a violent [Music] struggle. It's a horrible way to die.
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Manakam Stark's brutal murder frightens the community. But that community pulls
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together and a show of support for Monakam's family. The community came out in mass to mourn
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his death. There were thousands of people that came. I mean, the hesetic community is a very tight community, but
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I hadn't seen anything like that before. the murder of Manakam Stark. Uh it shocked the community. People were, you
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know, uh very upset and very nervous and and rightly so. You know, everybody's guessing, but they
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had no idea why he was killed. It seems nearly incomprehensible anyone within the Hidic
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community could commit such violence on one of their own. Investigators turned their attention to where Monakam Stark's
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life intersected outside that close-knit community. We went to the family to try and find
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out is anything going on with the business? Is anything going on with the neighbors? Is anything anything unusual
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that might have happened just prior to to the night he was kidnapped? They basically said no. And then we uh were
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directed to go out and interview the tenants in the buildings that he owned. Well, Stark was actually a a
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landlord on quite a few buildings. Real estate, it would appear, was his primary source of
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income. We looked into his real estate holdings. We found out that he started buying buildings in the area around
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2000. And by 2008, he had spent uh over $61 million on 37 buildings, which is a significant real estate
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portfolio. Nakamark owned 17 vacant or druginfested buildings in Brooklyn, Queens. those buildings had
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racked up 233 complaints and 148 violations. So while detectives were doing a canvas, you know, talking to
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people in the neighborhood, especially people who live in his buildings, they came across more than their share of
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tenants who were not happy with Monakum Stalker as a landlord. Talking to the tenants, we're finding out that uh I
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don't have hot water, my ceiling's leaking, I don't have heat. When you hear about that, it would be,
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you know, an obvious motivation for somebody to harm Mr. Stark. A guy that had over a thousand tenants that you're
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not going to have a few unsatisfied parents. There's no such a thing. Police wonder if a resentful or unhinged
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tenant could be responsible for Monakam Stark's murder. Passions run high in New
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York's tough rental market. But could those passions actually add up to murder? When you're in the real estate
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business, there's always tenants that are going to love you, and then they're
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going to be tenants that hate you. Some of the tenants had withheld rent, but again, it didn't get us to the
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point where we were thinking a tenant possibly did this. It that to us didn't
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make sense to the detectives investigating the case. There was no clear-cut person that stuck out that,
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you know, wouldn't want to do harm to this guy. We kind of came to the conclusion that we this wasn't where we
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were going with the case. On the surface, Monakam Stark appears to be a successful, wealthy real estate
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owner. When investigators dig deeper into finances, they are shocked by what they find.
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There were a lot of outstanding loans. There was a lot of money that he owed. We found out that his company was in
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debt for almost $40 million. The name of Monakam Stark's company was Southside
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Associates. Southside Associates was going south. We found out that Southside Associates was facing foreclosure on
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almost half of their buildings. 40 million is a lot of money. And if it's owed out to the wrong
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people and the Russian mob was involved, now we're kind of getting to where there might have been a
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motive. New York 2014. During a bitter snowstorm two days into the new year, a citic businessman Monakam Stark is
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kidnapped outside his office and then brutally murdered. His body is set a fire and left in a Long Island dumpster.
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Detectives from the 90th precinct are deep into the investigation of their first murder of the new year and they're
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examining the finances of the victim. Once the financial stuff came back, we kind of went in a different direction.
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It's kind of like, okay, wait a minute, maybe there is something here. We started doing different interviews. We
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were interviewing business partners. Once we got into the finance end of this, um, his wife lawyered up.
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They were very guarded on the finance end of it. We probably did one or two interviews, but after that, it was talk
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to my attorney. Manakam Stark's company, Southside Associates, is deeply in debt.
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It's facing foreclosure on half of its buildings. In the days before his murder, Stark argues with his partner,
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Israel Pearl, who is also known as Sam. When Sam found out that Monakam was taking large sums of money out of the
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count, he confronted him. He was not happy during those times. Their relationship became
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tense. They had joint accounts. They both had access to the accounts. Initially, we thought that
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they didn't really have to talk too much about removing money, but interviewing
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his partner Sam, we found out, well, not exactly. They had had a loud confrontation. They had argued days
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before the homicide. There was a joint account that Monakam Stark took $300,000 out of without
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letting him know. When he went to look at the account, he thought there was a lot of money in it and there was no
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money left in there. And of course, he was I rate like anybody would be I rateate if they saw that much money was
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gone. Does business partner Sam Pearlmutter have a motive for murder? The murder of Monakam Stark? Speaking
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with Mr. promoter. Initially, I got a little bit of a sense that I wasn't getting
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that full cooperation that I was looking for. He wasn't being, I don't think, as
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forthcoming as he should have been, knowing that Mr. uh Stark was murdered. Sam Pearlmutter's reluctance to
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cooperate also makes police suspicious. Money is kind of a motive in a lot of homicides. was definitely something that
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had to be looked at. Although he didn't fit the profile or the stature of the guy that abducted
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him, could he in theory have hired some big goons to kill him? Yes. Police soon determined Sam Pearlmutter's behavior
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seems like someone who is also afraid for his own life. He was afraid for his life. He hired
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bodyguards. He had people sit outside his house. He avoided the social events. He was keeping pretty low key, not being
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seen too much in the area. We asked him where his whereabouts were that night and his alibi checked
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out. His real pearl mutter. He was a he was a real estate businessman. He wasn't
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a killer. So after I believe it was two interviews, we kind of said, "All right,
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this isn't who we're looking for." Police cannot link Monakam Stark's
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financial problems to his murder. So for now, they must consider Manakum Stark is
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targeted solely because of his faith. There's a lot of anti-semitism events that actually do happen in the Hidic
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neighborhood. You know, rare, but it does happen. They came to pray and hate greeted them at the synagogue door early
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Friday morning. People in this tight-knit hidic community saw these symbols of hate spray painted all over
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the neighborhood. But it didn't seem to be a hate crime. It wasn't like somebody
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was walking by somebody and then just, you know, punched them for no reason or said something in regards to their
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religion. This looked like a targeted attack. It it it appeared to be a planned event.
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Investigators dig deeper into Monakam Stark's financial affairs. They discover
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he was having trouble borrowing money from legitimate banks. It got to the point where he had to go and borrow
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money from the Broadway bank in Chicago, which everybody knew was a mob run bank.
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But that's how desperate he got. He ended up owing the bank $1.5 million, which he never paid. and that $ 1.5
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million contributed to the bank closing and going out of business. The intense press coverage generates
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many, many tips. It turns out it's not just a mobbacked bank to which Monakam
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Stark owes money. We received something on Reddit. Somebody posted that the Russian mob killed Monakam Stark. What
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we had found out from sources in the community is that the Russian mob had made loans to the Hida community. There
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was deals made between the two. But once the Russian mob was mentioned, now it's kind of like, okay,
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wait a minute, maybe there is something here. The Russian mob, they're going to
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come and break a couple of legs. They're going to break an arm. They're going to
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threaten. They want their money. Manakov Stark's downward financial spiral does not end with the Russian
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mob. We know that he borrowed money from Russian mob members and then he also borrowed money from Lone Shark in the
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Hidic community that apparently he lent money to Monakam to pay back the Russian
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gangster. Angry tenants, underworld bankers, Russian mobsters, a lone shark. The list of people who have potential
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issues with Monakam Stark keeps getting longer. And it's all summed up in an
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outrageous headline from our friends at the New York Post. Who didn't want him
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dead? Well, when that paper hit the stands, to say it created a firestorm would be an understatement. The Hidic
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community was up in arms. They were calling the switchboard at the New York Post. They were complaining, "How could
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you write such a thing?" Jewish community leaders and elected officials are outraged after the New York Post
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controversial coverage of a man's murder. In America, if you are a bad landlord, you go to housing court, not
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the mall. None of the tenants would say that I would have killed him. No, they would have not have killed him. You
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know, most of the times uh you know, we have a case, it's one little article and
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something else happens and that case sort of goes to the back burner. This case, it seems like it was, you know, it
00:25:47
was coming out of a fire hose. The detectives in Brooklyn North homicide, the bosses are yelling at
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them, "When are we going to solve this? When are we going to solve it?" and they
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just put their head down and they just continue to to grind and grind and grind. The suspect pool expands because
00:26:06
of the financial investigation. Detectives begin zeroing in on Manakam Stark's dubious lenders. Starting with
00:26:15
the Russian mob, we actually located that Russian mobster and first of all, he wasn't in the
00:26:23
country at the time of the murder. And then when we did interview him, he says that he did lend money to Monakam Stark,
00:26:29
but it was paid back. And then in further investigation, there was another male, Abe Hoffman, who was a lone shark
00:26:38
in the acidic community. Then obviously we looked at Abe Hoffman, and he just recently lent
00:26:46
the money to Monakam, and he's like, he's not even defaulted on the loan yet.
00:26:51
like why would I kill him if he hasn't passed the due date yet? We quickly dismissed him as a subject in the
00:27:01
homicide. Pretty much everywhere we're going, we're coming up with nothing. So,
00:27:07
we are under pressure from the police department. We're under pressure from city hall. We're under pressure from the
00:27:14
DA's office. And we're just we're not coming up with anything solid. We had
00:27:21
eliminated the tenants. We had eliminated the business partner. We had eliminated the Russian mob. So now it's
00:27:28
becoming frustrating. The detectives investigating the case when we started to say, you know, we got to rethink this
00:27:36
a little bit. Police return to the scene of the kidnap. They canvas the area around Monakam Stark's office once
00:27:45
again. It's routine investigative work, but it's about to pay off. We send out
00:27:52
people that do verbal canvases where you know, did anybody see anything? Did anybody hear anything? Also video
00:27:58
canvases. And that's when we found that piece of video. Now it's game on.
00:28:09
In 2014, New Yorkers demand justice. They are mesmerized when a hidic businessman is kidnapped during a New
00:28:19
Year's blizzard and then violently murdered. The investigation leads police on a wild goose chase of low lives. From
00:28:29
Russian mobsters to notorious lone sharks, detectives are stuck with a real life who done it. That's until they take
00:28:38
another look, a careful look at the surveillance cameras that were operating the night of the murder. There's a lot
00:28:46
of video that's available to us from all different places. It's a matter of just
00:28:51
going out there and looking for it. We received video from down the block from NAM Stark's office and what it
00:29:00
showed was a light colored minivan. They look very similar to the minivan that abducted Manakam
00:29:13
Stark. By bringing some of the stills to Autoprime, they were able to make the model year of the minivan. So now that
00:29:25
really kind of gives us something else to explore. That's solid. We know it's
00:29:29
that van. It's a 2002 light colored Dodge Caravan and it's been parked near
00:29:36
Monakam Stark's workplace for 6 hours before the kidnap. We needed to figure
00:29:42
out how they were keeping track of Monakam's movements and how they would have known on a snowy night at 11:30 at
00:29:49
night he was going to be in his office. They're wondering there's something more
00:29:55
whoever kidnapped Monakam did he have another way of tracking him? We theorized that there was a tracking
00:30:04
device in Manakam Stark's car. January 10, 7 days after the murder, detective Sam Monakam Stark's vehicle to
00:30:14
their lab for analysis. They put it up on a lift and there it was. There was a cell phone
00:30:21
that was uh taped to the gas tank of the car. That's where the investigation
00:30:26
really, really took off. The cell phone planted on Monakam Stark's car is a gamecher.
00:30:34
[Music] And now we do subpoenas on the cell phone. We find out the owner of the cell
00:30:40
phone is a man named Jeff Cely. This guy's got to be interviewed. And when we went to speak
00:30:48
to Jeff Cely and he's like, "Yeah, it's a phone that's on my family plan." I'm
00:30:53
like, "Well, any idea why it was stuck to a murder victim's gas tank?" The story that he tells us is
00:31:04
that one of the guys that work for him asks him to get him a cell phone. The reason he needs a cell phone is because
00:31:11
he feels that the girl he's dating is cheating on him and he wants to be able
00:31:16
to track her through the Sprint family tracking plan through the phone. It was too good of a story to to make up. He's
00:31:24
like, "Oh, last time I gave that phone, I gave it to a friend of mine, Erkstein,
00:31:29
Felix." So once we have Erkstein, Felix's name, does anybody in his family
00:31:35
or does he own a white van that's similar to the one that was used in the abduction?
00:31:43
And it turns out that his father, Philip Felix, was the one who was registered to
00:31:48
a van that looked just like the car that was used in the Manakam Starks abduction. That's a solid piece of
00:31:54
evidence. We know that that van was involved. If we can find the van, then that's going to help us out.
00:32:02
So then when we ran the van, we noticed the numerous tickets on it. We impounded
00:32:07
it for tickets. The van is impounded. NYPD forensics examined the vehicle for evidence and
00:32:14
it's a gold mine. We found cash check duct tape and we found zip ties and we
00:32:22
also found a substantial amount of blood in there. And ultimately after a DNA analysis we found out that it's Monakum
00:32:29
Snarks. So now we know we have the van, we have the cell phone, and now we got kind of a good idea where we're going
00:32:37
with this. Philip Felix actually came in looking for the van. And he wanted to know, you
00:32:42
know, why did you take the van and can I get it back? And he's like, I don't use
00:32:47
the van. My sons use the van. They use it for construction. We need the van back because that's how they make their
00:32:54
money. During the course of the interview, Mr. Felix explained to me that he did have some type of dealings
00:33:01
with Manakam Stark, that he was involved in construction himself as well as his son,
00:33:10
and they in fact had worked for Monakum at some point. Police obtain a subpoena for Erskin Felix's phone records and
00:33:18
they discover he contacted his brother Kendall and his two cousins, Kendall Felix and Irvin Henry. Police subpoena
00:33:29
their phone records as well. We were able to pinpoint where those phones were at that particular night of the Monakam
00:33:37
Stark murder. We were able to put them in the vicinity of the crime on those specific night.
00:33:44
Phones are very big when it comes to homicide because everybody has their phones now. Like it's the new smoking
00:33:50
gun. The decisions made that we're going to pick them up individually and take
00:33:54
them into different precincts. So this way there's no chance of putting a story together. There's no
00:34:03
chance of listen, this is what I'm going to say, this is what you should say.
00:34:08
We're we're going to get a story from each one of them and then we'll compare
00:34:12
the stories and try and figure out who's possibly telling us the truth and who's
00:34:15
not. Two suspects brought into the 90th precinct in Brooklyn. Two are brought into the 79th precinct.
00:34:27
Stein Felix, he denied everything. We confronted him with the phone. We said to him, "Oh, do you know Manakam Stark?"
00:34:36
And he's like, "Yeah, I love Monaco. You know, I I treat him like a dad. In fact,
00:34:42
I protect him from people that are trying to hurt him because he's got a lot of money and tenants don't like
00:34:49
him." Stein said he was with his girlfriend all all night. There's no way
00:34:54
he could have killed Monakam Stark. His phone wasn't with his girlfriend. It was
00:34:58
pinging right where the abduction took place. We know that it was [ __ ] but he kept with his story that he had nothing
00:35:08
to do with it. Erskin Felix's brother Kendall and his cousins Irvin and Kandell are just as
00:35:17
tight lipped. Detectives know they don't have enough evidence to make arrests.
00:35:22
It's all circumstantial at this point. They need one of the suspects to crack.
00:35:28
Kendelle is the youngest of the four. from experienced detectives. Usually the youngest of the four might be the
00:35:36
weakest link. We spent probably an hour just talking to him about his background,
00:35:44
sports, just to kind of break the ice to get him to feel comfortable with us. So it was about 6:30 and we knew
00:35:52
that Kendall hadn't had dinner. And he looked at me, he said, "You know, I
00:35:56
really just want to go home and eat my mother's cooking." And I kind of looked
00:36:01
back at him and I said, "Uh, I don't think that's going to happen anytime
00:36:05
soon." And from his facial expression and his body language, I knew I I had
00:36:11
hit a nerve. I knew something was up. Kendall, uh, he was the driver of the the van that night. He actually he
00:36:20
broke. He said, "Listen, it was all Erkstein's plan. He owed us $20,000."
00:36:27
Erskin was having problems with Mr. Stark. Erskin had not been paid for a job or some type of construction
00:36:37
work. The night of when this kidnapping took place that he told Kendall, "Tonight is the night that we're getting
00:36:45
paid." He gave us everything. Christmas 2013 places too much financial pressure on construction worker Erskin
00:37:04
Felix. He doesn't want to be broke over the holidays. During a New Year's snowstorm,
00:37:11
Felix thinks he can safely shake down businessman and landlord Manakam Stark, who owes him money. When Stark's half
00:37:22
burned body is found in a Long Island dumpster, it's a grim sign of a New Year's gone very wrong.
00:37:30
Kendall laid the whole thing out. Appeared to be a robbery that went wrong. The dispute started to escalate
00:37:40
sometime in November. The phone was placed on the car sometime in late November. At that
00:37:49
point they were tracking him. Monakam had owed Erskin the money for some time and Erskin was getting
00:37:57
frustrated uh to the point of he was now actually getting mad. Erskin needed money to have a Christmas for his
00:38:06
family. Finally, right after New Year's, Erskin had reached a boiling point.
00:38:13
So Manakob Stark was behind in paying these guys about $20,000 for their work. And they came up with a plan. If he's
00:38:21
not going to give him the money, we're going to take it from him. They decide
00:38:24
to do it on a snowy night right after New Year's. They thought, you know, with
00:38:28
all the snow, the cops weren't going to be out. It would have been a good night
00:38:31
to get away with something like that. They didn't expect him to fight as violently as as he did, and the plan
00:38:39
just went really bad from there. Kendall said that he was the driver. Erskin was out in the snow with him
00:38:46
fighting. Erskin told him, "You got to put hands on him, too. Let's let's go."
00:38:50
They were able to get him into the van. At that point, Mr. Stark was still fighting Erskin in the back of the van.
00:38:57
As they pulled away from the office, at some point, Stark stopped fighting. Stark stopped breathing. There was panic
00:39:06
in the van. Kendall didn't know what to do. Erskin and Kendell Felix are also
00:39:13
part of a close-knit family who are immigrants from St. Lucia. When they panic, they recruit Erskin's brother
00:39:21
Kendall and cousin Irvin Henry. Henry at the time said that he opened up the van and saw the body in there. He's
00:39:34
like, I, you know, I want no part of this. And and he left. The three of them along with Mr. Stark drove back near the
00:39:43
location of uh Mr. Stark's office and uh Kendall indicated at that point uh the
00:39:50
block was uh closed off and there was uh police activity over by Mr. Stark's uh
00:39:56
office at that time. The Felix family is desperate to remove evidence at the scene. The cell phone they used as a
00:40:04
tracker on Monocus Stark's car. Erstein ordered them to stop a couple blocks
00:40:10
away from the murder scene. That's when he got out of the car and he tried to go
00:40:15
see if he could retrieve the phone from underneath Monakam Stark's car. He said
00:40:20
it was too hot, too many cops around. So then he never got back to the van. He called up Kendall and told him to drive
00:40:27
the body out to Long Island and dispose of it. It was never really explained why uh
00:40:35
that location was picked, but they they drove uh Mr. Stark's body and it seems
00:40:42
that they just picked this gas station and deposited Mr. uh uh Stark's body in
00:40:48
that dumpster and they were able to obtain some gasoline and then uh took that gasoline that they purchased and
00:40:56
went back to the location and ignited the dumpster on fire and drove back to Brooklyn that
00:41:03
night. Kendell Felix is arrested on murder charges. He says he'll never testify
00:41:10
against family in court. Without that testimony, detectives won't have a case
00:41:16
against Erskin, Kendall, and Henry Irvin. Although he implicated other people, um you can't just arrest people
00:41:25
based on what they call a co-conspirator statement. So, unfortunately, we had to
00:41:32
let uh everybody go except for Kendall. It was an empty feeling, but you know that happens sometimes when you're
00:41:43
investigating murders. Like you have to have patience. You can't just throw somebody in jail because you think they
00:41:49
did the murder. You have to have a prosecutable case against them. So you sometimes it takes a little longer to
00:41:56
gather that evidence to put those people on trial. Kandell Felix spends 11 months in jail,
00:42:04
but then he finally decides to testify against the others in exchange for a lenient sentence.
00:42:12
Originally, Kendelle, he told them what had happened that night. He said he would not testify against his relatives.
00:42:19
when he was getting ready to go to trial, his lawyer told him like uh if he's convicted of murder, he would be
00:42:27
facing 25 years to life. At that point, he decided to cooperate police and uh testify against his
00:42:41
relatives, but he did give us a good story of who was involved and who went where. And everything that Kendall told
00:42:49
us was corroborated through other means uh electronically and forensically to piece together this crime to make it a
00:42:58
solid case. Erskin Felix is charged with murder and kidnapping. Kendall is charged with hindering prosecution and
00:43:05
tampering with physical evidence. Their arrest come nearly 3 years after the crime. Kendall Felix and Erskin Felix
00:43:13
are both convicted of Manakam Stark's murder. Erskin sentenced to 24 years to
00:43:19
life behind bars. His brother Kendall pleads guilty to conspiracy and hindering prosecution. He's sentenced to
00:43:28
2 and 12 to 7 years. Cousin Kandell given a reduced sentence of 15 years to life. Irvin Henry pleads guilty to
00:43:39
tampering with physical evidence and a sentence to just 3 months in jail. We cannot bring you back. Well, definitely
00:43:47
the family will always be broken and our family will never be the same as it was
00:43:52
in the past. Whether it's Hanukkah, Christmas, New Year's, Thanksgiving, you
00:43:56
know, whatever holiday it is, if you lost a family member right before any holiday, I don't think it's something
00:44:02
you forget. It's something that you're going to be reminded of every year. In
00:44:06
the end, the murder of family man and businessman Stark is supposed to be a smaller crime which goes horribly wrong.
00:44:16
Its lurid details captivate the city of New York with its real life drama of crime and a tragic way to ring in the
00:44:27
new year. I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for joining us here on the Christmas killings.
00:44:49
[Music] Heat. Heat.