MICHAEL O. ALLEN

Menu
Tag

murder

STORE IS ROBBERY’S SECOND FATALITY; SHOP CLOSING AFTER N.J. MAN IS KILLED

By UncategorizedNo Comments

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Sunday, October 6, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A03

Daisy Benitez says being held up is something the merchants in her area learn to live with. But after a robbery claimed the life of a Tenafly man in her store, she says she’s closing up shop.
Benjamin Braddock Peisch, 24, of Oak Street was shot and killed Thursday night when he walked in on a robbery of the Daisy Bariete clothing store in Upper Manhattan and intervened.
Benitez, 34, of Queens said Saturday that she would sell her stock T-shirts, jeans, socks and close her doors for good.
“If he hadn’t had a fight with them, they wouldn’t have shot him,” Benitez said in Spanish, translated by her 24-year-old niece, Florence Ramos. “They threw him on the floor twice and told him to stay there. He kept getting up.”
John Mullin, a Tenafly High School social studies teacher, said Peisch was just the kind of person to intervene if he saw something amiss.
“This kid was a gentleman through and through; he’s always stood up for the underdog,” Mullin said. “It would have been a surprise to me that something wrong was going on and he didn’t try to set it right.”
Tenafly High School Vice Principal Bernard Josefsberg said the death was a shock to everyone at the school.
“This was really a great kid,” he said.
On graduation from the school in 1986, Peisch was given a $500 scholarship by the Tenafly Lions Club, in part for demonstrating seriousness of purpose and civic consciousness, Josefsberg said Friday.
His family declined to comment.
Peisch, a junior at Montclair State College, first came to the store about two weeks ago and stopped to talk with one of the saleswomen, Benitez said. He seemed to like the woman and returned to talk to her twice, she said.
The three robbers came in about 6 p.m. Thursday, put guns to the backs of three employees, and herded them into the back of main area of the store, in the basement of a residential building at 568 W. 171 St.
“He came down in the middle of all this and went to the girl’s defense,” Benitez said.
The robbers knocked him to the ground twice, Ramos said, the second time hitting him with the butt of a handgun and opening a gash in the back of his head. In the ensuing struggle, as the three men ganged up on Peisch, one shot him in the chest, she said.
No one else was injured, and the men escaped with an unspecified amount of money. Benitez said the employees working in the store at the time of the robbery had quit and would not return.
Police on Saturday were looking for witnesses, said New York City police Sgt. Tina Mohrmann.

Keywords: ROBBERY; STORE; CLOSING; NEW JERSEY; MURDER; TENAFLY; SHOOTING; NEW YORK CITY; CLOTHING; BENJAMIN BRADDOCK PEISCH

ID: 17357316 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)

October 6, 1991
Love0

ROBBERS KILL N.J. SHOPPER; TENAFLY MAN INTERVENED

By Homepage, The RecordNo Comments

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Saturday, October 5, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A01

A 24-year-old Tenafly man who walked in on an armed robbery at a New York City clothing store and intervened was shot and killed by one of the robbers, police said Friday.
Benjamin Peisch of 91 Oak St. died at the scene on Thursday, 34th Precinct Detective Matthew Fallon said.
“He had an altercation with one of the people committing the robbery. They hit him a couple of times, then shot him,” Fallon said.
Peisch was shot once in the chest as he struggled with one of three men during the robbery, which occurred about 6:25 p.m. in the basement of Daisy Bariete Store, a unisex clothing store at 568 W. 171 St., Fallon said.
Peisch was an innocent bystander who “seemed to have walked into an apparent robbery in the store” and decided to get involved, Fallon said, adding that police were looking on Friday for witnesses.
No one else was injured, and the men escaped with an amount of money police would not disclose.
Peisch is believed to have been a 1986 graduate of Tenafly High School.
Sgt. Norris Hollmon, a police spokesman, said police used identification in Peisch’s wallet to trace him to Tenafly late Thursday. Tenafly Police Chief Allen Layne said he was called by New York police about the death at 10:19 p.m., and that his officers notified the family. Hollmon said the family identified Peisch’s body later that night.
A man reached at the family residence on Friday declined to comment.

Keywords: TENAFLY; ROBBERY; NEW YORK CITY; SHOOTING; MURDER; CLOTHING; STORE

ID: 17357301 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)

October 5, 1991
Love0

WOMAN STABBED TO DEATH; POLICE HAVE SUSPECT IN MIND

By Homepage, The RecordNo Comments

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer

Friday, September 13, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | 6 Star | News | Page B03

A 24-year-old Irvington woman who had been stabbed several times in the chest and neck was found dead in a car in North Bergen on Wednesday, authorities said.
Guy Gregory, assistant Hudson County prosecutor, said police are looking for a man who was with Maria Arroya of 44 Grace St. at the time she was killed.
“We have a suspect in mind, but he’s not in custody, and I’m not going to be able to give you his name,” Gregory said. “I don’t really want to talk about the details of the killing because of that.”
North Bergen Police Officer Bernadette Paul found Arroya in the front seat of the 1980 Datsun underneath a railroad trestle on 83rd Street shortly before 9 p.m., North Bergen police Lt. Timothy Kelly said.
“We got a call to go to 83rd Street, east of Westside Avenue, on a possible motor-vehicle accident,” Kelly said.
A man standing next to the car told Paul another man killed Arroya, then fled east on 83rd Street, Kelly said. North Bergen police, assisted by the Bergen County Police Department’s Canine Unit, searched the area but did not find the alleged assailant, he said.
Kelly referred all further questions to the Homicide Squad of the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office. Gregory declined further comment, refusing to say whether investigators knew the relationship between the victim and the two men.
Irvington Police Chief Bernard DeLucia said a check of township police records did not turn up any information concerning Arroya or contact between her and the department.

Keywords: NORTH BERGEN; MURDER; PROBE

ID: 17355072 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)

September 13, 1991
Love0

MAN, 23, FATALLY SHOT OUTSIDE HIS HOME

By Homepage, The RecordNo Comments

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Thursday, August 22, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | Four Star B | NEWS | Page B03

A 23-year-old man was fatally shot in front of his home Tuesday night by a man who had come to his door asking for water for his car radiator, officials said.
Sergio Novo died at 3:55 a.m. in the surgical intensive care unit of University Hospital in Newark of a gunshot wound to the head, a hospital spokesman said.
Investigators do not know the motive for the shooting, nor do they have a suspect, said Bergen County First Assistant Prosecutor Paul Brickfield. Authorities do not believe robbery was a motive, he added.
“We are actively investigating his movements over the last few days and his associations and activities to try to come up with who might have had a motive to shoot him, or if this was a random activity,” Brickfield said.
Shortly before 10 p.m. Tuesday, Brickfield said, an unidentified man knocked on the door at 30 Truman Road, where Novo lived with his parents and grandmother. Novo went outside with a pitcher of water for the man, who had requested it for his car radiator.
Shortly afterward, Novo’s family and neighbors heard a “metallic noise and the sound of a car screeching,” Brickfield said. A neighbor went outside and found Novo lying on the street.
Brickfield said witnesses saw a late-model, four-door car, blue or black, possibly a Buick Century or Electra, stopped in the middle of Truman Road.
On Wednesday afternoon, John Penetra, whose son Luis was a friend of the victim, went to visit Novo’s family at their single-family home at the corner of Halsey Place and Truman Road. No one answered the door.
Penetra had heard about the shooting and wanted to find out if it were true.
“Sergio, he’s a beautiful man,” Penetra said in heavily accented English. “What a shame. I can’t believe this.”
He spoke in Spanish with a woman on Halsey Place; she told him no one had seen the shooting but that afterward everyone had come out of their homes.
Other neighbors, including a woman who said Novo was “a nice young fellow,” declined to comment or to be identified.
Novo had been a New Jersey Bell cable installer for the past 16 months and was a U.S. Navy veteran, officials said.
The shooting is being investigated by North Arlington police, the homicide squad of the Prosecutor’s Office, and the Bergen County Sheriff’s Department.
Anyone with information is asked to call the North Arlington police at 991-4400 or the homicide squad at 646-2300.

Keywords: NORTH ARLINGTON; SHOOTING; DEATH; MURDER

ID: 17353225 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)

August 22, 1991
Love0

KILLER’S REQUEST FOR PAROLE IS REJECTED

By Homepage, The RecordNo Comments

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Saturday, August 10, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | Two Star B | NEWS | Page A03

A request for parole by Christopher Righetti serving a life sentence for the 1976 rape and murder of a 20-year-old New Milford woman was rejected this week, the state Parole Board’s executive director said Friday.
Robert Egles said the panel, weighing the seriousness of Righetti’s crime, also ordered a hearing on whether his next eligibility date in three years should be delayed.
Kim Montelaro, a journalism and English student at the University of Rhode Island, had gone shopping at Paramus Park Mall when she was abducted on Aug. 31, 1976, raped, then stabbed several times in the chest. Her body was found in a ravine near Washington Township’s Pine Lake Beach Club a few days later.
Righetti maintained through most of his trial that the killing had been an act of self-defense or an accident. In a hearing to determine whether he would tried as an adult, Righetti, then 16, claimed Montelaro lured him into her car, had sex with him, then turned on him with his knife.
Righetti’s lawyer abandoned the self-defense claim on the last day of trial, saying his client should be convicted of manslaughter.
In appeals of his murder conviction, the last one in 1982, a public defender contended Righetti’s police lineup appearance was illegal. The evidence was insufficient to compel Righetti to appear in the lineup during the search for Montelaro’s killer, the lawyer said.
But Righetti’s alibi witnesses failed to show up during his trial and prosecutors proved a knife and sheath found at the scene matched items he admitted purchasing shortly before the killing.
At age 15, Righetti was released from the state Training School for Boys and Girls after serving 13 months for raping an 18-year-old woman in a Bergen County park in 1974. In March 1976, he accosted another woman at knifepoint and demanded a ride home, but charges were not pressed after authorities assured the victim Righetti would receive psychiatric help.

Keywords: NEW MILFORD; MURDER; PRISON; WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP; KIDNAPPING; PARAMUS

ID: 17352075 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)

August 10, 1991
Love0

MURDER SUSPECT IS AT PINES; LINKED TO N.Y. ARTIST’S DEATH

By UncategorizedNo Comments

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Saturday, August 3, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | Two Star B | NEWS | Page A03

A 23-year-old Bronx woman, under psychiatric care at Bergen Pines County Hospital following a disturbance in Palisades Park on Thursday, is awaiting extradition to New York City as a suspect in the murder of a 93-year-old woman, police said.
Michelle McWilliams pushed her way into amateur painter’s Mathilde Poggensee’s Bronx home looking for money to buy drugs, Detective Thomas Aiello said Friday.
A neighbor who looked in regularly on the award-winning artist, who was said to be losing her hearing and sight in recent years, found Poggensee on Wednesday night face down on the living room floor, her mouth gagged and her arms tied behind her back with an electrical cord, Aiello said.
She died of asphyxiation, caused by the gagging, and multiple rib injuries, according to a medical examiner’s report. Police think Poggensee was attacked Sunday or Monday.
Police do not know why or how McWilliams came to New Jersey. Palisades Park Police Capt. Frank Martini said borough officers picked up McWilliams, barefoot and unkempt, about 9 a.m. Thursday when they went to a Roff Avenue taxi stand where a disturbance had been reported. McWilliams was violent and appeared to be emotionally disturbed, he said.
“We did not know she was wanted in New York at that time,” Martini said.
It was discovered during routine questioning before she was committed for psychiatric evaluation that a pocketbook in McWilliams possession was one of the items taken from Poggensee’s home after it was ransacked, Aiello said.
McWilliams mother, who was informed by the hospital that her daughter was under their care, informed police of her whereabouts when 43rd Precinct detectives called her Thursday morning, Aiello added.
McWilliams faces charges of second-degree murder and robbery in New York, Aiello said.

Keywords: MURDER; NEW YORK CITY; PALISADES PARK; DRUG; PARAMUS; MENTAL; ART

ID: 17351422 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)

August 3, 1991
Love0