The fake cop who murdered a banker in cold blood

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Transcript

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Jack McHugh is a retired Nassau County homicide detective who's going to share an amazing story about a criminal mastermind by the name of Reginald Gauss who manipulated the Queen's District Attorney's Office into using him as a witness in an off-duty NYPD cop's murder. Jack, welcome to the show. Morning, Vic. Thanks for having me. Pleasure's mine, so take it from there, my friend. On uh January 5th, 2005, uh I caught a homicide in Franklin Square in NAFSA County. A uh 49-year-old bank manager from the Cedarhurst branch of the Chess BC Bank was uh working late that evening. The banks used to be open on Wednesday nights till six o'clock. So he locked up the bank at six. He let two other employees out the front door. Unbeknownst to them, one of those employees had had their tire slashed. Mr. Gottlieb locked up the bank, proceeded on his five or six mile drive home. And in Franklin Square, he was pulled over uh by a black SUV with a siren and lights. That uh siren drew the attention of a homeowner who uh looked out the front door of his home. It was still very well lit. It was shortly after Christmas, so it was pretty much like daylight out there. And he sees a uh male black in his 30s, dressed in cargo pants, black cargo pants, uh, some type of a duty jacket, and he describes him having a piece of rope in his hand. That piece of rope is actually a flex cuff. And uh they're uh arguing back and forth, the victim and this uh male black. Uh he's Mr. Gottlieb is saying to him, You're not a cop, uh you know, I'm not I don't have to listen to you, I'm not going with you. And Gauss is telling, or the the unknown male black at that time is telling him, uh, put your hands behind your back, yeah, I'm gonna handcuff you. And uh Mr. Gottlieb takes note of the civilian watching out the front door of his house and starts walking over to that house, and the uh male black fires around into the grass between the curb and the sidewalk. He then shoots the victim in his arm and uh jumps back in the SUV and takes off. The homeowner slams the front door, doesn't hear anything for a couple minutes. A couple moments later, he gets a bang on the door, opens the door, and the victim collapses into his house. The police are called, and in the canvas, a person a couple doors away has a background in uh in the auto body business, says uh 2004, 2005 Black Ford expedition. So we start getting uh some tips over the next couple of days. We spend a couple of days in the airport, which is JFK, which is not that far away. Because at that time the feds were driving a lot of expeditions, uh DEA, FBI, customs. A couple of days later, we get a tip from a gentleman who says he's a defense attorney, and uh his client had been falsely accused of the murder of an off-duty NYPD officer named Charles Davis, and the owner of a check caching business in East Elmhurst, where uh Davis was moonlighting. We asked some questions about that case. He he said, I don't have time to discuss it right now. Uh the guy's name is Reginald Gauss. He was he testified against my client. He was previously arrested for a similar incident. Go over to the Queen's DA's office and uh they'll tell you all about it. So we made arrangements to go over to the investigator's office on Queens Boulevard, and uh we sat down with them. And uh a couple of years prior, I believe it was 1998, Gauss had been arrested on the Van Wick at a staples store. In that case, he had pulled over the bank, uh pulled over the staples manager after closing time in an unmarked car, flexcuffed him, took him to an apartment uh up by the Jamaica Railroad Station and secured him. Gauss then went back to uh the staples with a U-Haul and was in the process of loading up the U-Haul when the uh victim managed to escape, flagged down a passing MDA cop who put it over the air, and Gauss was caught in the act inside of the staples. He went to Rikers Island, and when he arrived there, his cellmate was a young man who was under arrest for that double murder that I described, including uh near the off-duty cop. Gauss wrote a letter to the Queen's DeA's office uh detailing the information that he had about that case, and he was brought over to the office over a period of time and ultimately uh testified in, I think, in three trials. So some twenty years later, those three uh convictions were overturned. So Gauss uh stays at Rikers for a while, probably four or five years, on the robbery one and kidnapping charge. His crime is reduced from a robbery one kidnapping to uh a grand larceny. Therefore, he's not deported. He was an Haitian immigrant, so he was not deported. I'm just gonna find the date. He was released in March of 2024, and about a month later, a police impersonator pattern begins. The first one of those being in Nassau County, about Gauss lived in Rosedale, about a mile outside the Nassau County. He lived there with his mother. So the first one is a Wallbaum supermarket in Nassau County, about two miles from his home and about two miles from the bank where this whole case started. The manager, female manager, locked up the Wallbaums, drove a coworker home up into Queens. After she dropped off the co-worker, she was pulled over by an unmarked car. Male black came out, flex cuffed her, put her in the trunk of this unmarked car, and drove back to the Wallbaum supermarket. While she's in the trunk, she can hear a siren in the car going off. So he's driving lights and sirens back to the Wallbaums. He gets to Wallbaum's, he's got the keys and the alarm code, safe combination. He has some problems. Uh he leaves her in the trunk, but he has some problems getting the safe open. He goes out, gets her, brings her back into the store, and they manage to get into the safe. He then uh drops her off back up in the 105. 911 is called, and then he determined this whole thing started in Nassau, so it becomes a Nassau investigation. There's a pattern of over the next two months or so, a pattern of police impersonation robberies in Queens and Brooklyn, check cashing places. There's a couple of straight-up car stops where he robs the victims of their cash and jewelry during the car stop. And uh that pattern is investigated by the internal affairs of the NYPD police impersonation squad. So we meet with them, we get the details of those cases, uh, we look into some things uh that were also related to that. And um Gauss is next heard from in April of 2024. He's down in McLean, Texas, and he's uh driving a rental out of JFK, I believe it was a Crown Vic. He's pulled up by a uh trooper for speeding, and uh he tells the trooper he's on his way to a uh funeral for his grandfather or uncle, who was a police officer in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He shows he shows the cop a uh one of those funeral home cards that you have, you know, that gives the date of birth and the date of that you pass away. The cop obviously has some suspicions. The plates on the car are U.S. government plates that are reported stolen. So that eventually the trooper tells him, uh, I'm gonna you got any guns, drugs, or money in that car, and he gets in, and Gauss gets into a discussion with him about probable cause, and the trooper calls for the canine. So the canine is uh quite a distance away, but it comes down there, and when the canine gets there, it hits on the car. And it's on dash cam. Uh there's a brawl, an all-out brawl. They get him subdued. When they get in the car, there's a nine millimeter bulletproof vest, a scanner. The car is equipped with lights and siren. There's identification in male and female names from New York City, and there's uh two baguette watches that are valued at $150,000 and $200,000 each. So the trooper calls the FBI and says, oh, you know, we had we might have a homeland security issue here. He explains to him what's going on. And the FBI comes down and interviews Gauss, and uh, as best I could determine, it never went any further. The the two watches have alarms, police alarms on them from an NCIC from a Manhattan jewelry store robbery. And the identification, most of the identification is related to the robbery victims in the pattern. Back to the start of the investigation. Uh one good thing about being in jail for five years is you have a clean driver's license. The bad thing is you have no credit. So Gauss started a pattern of well, he had no credit cards, and the only relative that we found was his mother. So we subpoenaed her credit card information, and on those credit cards, uh, he had a bunch of car rentals out of JFK, sometimes two and three a day. Uh obviously related to some type of criminal activity. One of those rentals on the day of the murder in the afternoon is a 2004 black expedition, which matches our getaway car. That uh vehicle had been re-rented and was up in Rhode Island now. So we sent people up to Rhode Island. We brought that uh expedition back to Nassau County, and we had it examined by our Fleet Services Bureau by a master mechanic. He looked at it, the wiring had wiring harnesses had been tampered with, and there were screw holes for mounting lights and sirens, in his opinion, in his professional opinion. Also, up under the dashboard in the wiring harness on a piece of black electrical tape, we got Gauss's fingerprint. We also, off of mom's credit cards, got uh a scanner purchase from Radio Shack just prior to the murder. And we had we also had his cell phone, which was shut off. It was active, but it was shut off during the time of the murder. And at that time, both his girlfriend and his mother are trying to get hold of him, but he has the phone shut off. So we go back to Texas now, and uh he goes before the federal magistrate who deems the stop, uh the detain, him being detained for too long. It took too long for the dog to get there, and there were no drugs found in the car. So uh she had the case. He was charged federally for the firearm. She uh dropped the case and he was released. He comes back to New York uh in eight in August, I think it was, of twenty-four. Uh he stops in at the Queen's DA investigator's office to tell them uh, listen, if anybody called about a problem down in Texas, it was all a misunderstanding. Uh obviously that's true because I'm back here. And uh at that time he provided them with his current cell number. So we were able to get his current cell number. The uh on some phone calls were made to a uh police equipment store. It's over by the 103 precinct in Jamaica. We spoke to the owner there. He felt uh that the purchase may have been a duty jacket and there may have been a special order involving a holster for a nine millimeter, and a n a nine millimeter was used uh in this murder. Let me just check my notes here, Vic. Before before the banker Mr. Gottlieb died, did he give a dying declaration? No, he did not. He unfortunately he got um he got hit in his brachial brachial artery in his arm and and bled out. That's required. Another horrible part of that story is that when he doesn't show up at home, his wife loads her three kids in the car and starts backtracking his way uh back to work. His he's not answering his phone, obviously, and they come across the crime scene, she thinks it's a car accident. Uh I speak to her, we make arrangements to get the kids taken home, which they do, and then we get her over to the hospital. So that that was horrible. In the uh in the jewelry stores uh robbery that I described in uh Manhattan where the two uh brigette watches were taken. The owners open up to a what they think is a female dressed in a burqa, head-to-toe veils, who wants to see those two watches. And they're an Asian couple and they're speaking their language to each other, going, I think that's a guy. And they were right, it was a guy. And uh he produces a gun and takes the two watches and uh proceeds to drive down the sidewalk on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. Short while later, that car winds up in an NYPD pursuit. I think it's a Chevy Lumina. We ultimately get that car out of the Whitestone Pound. That's also examined by our fleet services with the same same results, wiring harnesses tampered with, holes consistent with lights and sirens. They lose him in those in this pursuit on the Grand Central, and uh short while later, he drives that car into Nassau County, about a mile from his house, to a shopping mall that's under construction, and he reports that his car was damaged by a piece of debris fire falling off the construction site, and they pretty much tell him your car's a piece of shit, you got all kinds of dents in it, what are you worried about it for? But he makes an insurance report trying to show that that car uh couldn't have been anywhere else other than North Woodman in Nassau County. So we we put the case together, he was ID'd in a in a photo pack by that civilian witness, you know, at the place of occurrence, and it came to we well he kept his house under observation, we got his pattern down, he had a girlfriend up in Jamaica, he was living with her, he would uh drop her off at work in Valley Stream, and then he would go home for a period of time. He was identified in a photo pack uh by the civilian witness where the crime happened uh in Franklin Square. So we had we had plenty of probable cause. We had him under observation, we got his uh routine down. Sometimes at the house he would back down the street two blocks, and uh he he was being very careful. So it came time to make the arrest. He was driving a well, let me let me get into this before that. One day a SUV appears in the driveway of his house that belongs to his girlfriend, and it's uh it's sitting in the driveway for a couple of days, and shortly thereafter, about a mile over the Nassau County border, it's uh discovered on fire. She made an insurance claim, which was good because we were able to lock her up for insurance fraud when the time came and do a search warrant on her house. Nothing came out of that, but once again, that pattern of doing things in in Queens or Brooklyn and then bringing it back over the Nassau border, you know, was a consistent pattern that he used. So it came time for the day of arrest. We had our uh tactical people, our Bureau of Special Operations, handle that. Uh he was driving a rocket ship in Mercedes at the time. I knew he was not going to stop. Fortunately, the it was a long block between his mother's house and the main road, so they were able to box him in pretty good. He banged the trucks a few times, but he couldn't get out. He took a fence down, and when he saw he wasn't gonna get away, he tried to uh step out of the car and he suffered a knee injury, so he didn't he didn't get a chance to run. Yeah. He was interviewed, he never gave anything up. He's a bright, articulate guy, very well spoken. You could see the kind of a guy that uh would take advantage of of the system. He was charged with uh some of the robberies, uh the the police impersonation robbies. He went to trial in in Brooklyn on a couple of them. He was convicted of some of them, some of the other ones uh he was found not guilty. Uh the trooper from McLean, Texas was brought up to testify. And uh back back to that for a moment. Uh being that that case was dismissed, uh they no longer needed that evidence down in the in Texas, so they sent all of the stuff from the car, you know, back up to us. And uh I'll never forget the day the FedEx delivery came. I was on the phone, and the guys that were helping me were inventorying what was in the box, and they're reading off the names of these of identification, including a girl who was a volunteer at Rikers Island. She had a Rikers Island ID. And I'm like, those are the victims of the check caching robberies. So not uh how that ever happened down in Texas where uh not a phone call was made to Rikers or NYPD or or NC the watches with the serial numbers run through NCIC. It's hard to believe, but it happened. And uh he went to trial, he was convicted. He got uh he got life without parole. I next heard from him a couple of months later when they were bringing him into Brooklyn for the trial. Uh he managed to overpower a corrections officer. He got the keys, and I think he got a cell phone. By the time they got him back in the cell, the keys were missing. He told him he flushed them down the toilet. That wasn't true, and they brought him back to the Nassau County jail. He set off the metal detector and they found the cuff key in his sneaker, which set off another brawl. And uh we got a they woke me up to get a search warrant for him. So we got the search warrant, and he was uh cuffed to a chair in the gymnasium of the jail on video. He was x-rayed once a day as the evidence moved through his intestinal tract, which ultimately was recovered. You know, to give you an idea of how evil a guy Reginald Gauss is, during the arraignment for the murder and robbery of your case, James Gottlieb, the widow was in the courtroom and he turns to her and he says, If you think I did this, you're never gonna find closure. He's just a ballsy guy. And uh you you were telling me the trial sounded like a circus to Judge Carter in your case, was black. Right. And there was a ruling he didn't like. He called Judge Carter the N-word and then threatened him. He said, You're a dead man on a pretty much on a regular basis. So could you so could you go into Gauss? Gauss gets sentenced to life and he's in Clinton's upstate New York prison, which is probably the worst, in my opinion. I think Clinton and Attica are the probably the worst two prisons in the New York State prison system. Could you go into how he was used in in the off-duty NYPD cops uh robbery and murder, how that backfires on the Queen's DA's office? Yeah, apparently, you know, there were some problems with the case, and it it was a cop, in addition to the civilian, you know. So the right thing had to be done. Once again, a bright, articulate guy took advantage of this kid that was his cellmate. He he pulled some of the details out, also out of the newspapers. Uh I I don't know the exact uh depth of his testimony, but I I I believe it was significant in getting the convictions. Yeah, so I did a little digging through newspapers. In 1999, Gauss testifies as a jailhouse informant against George Bell, and who was his cellmate on Rikers Island, who was accused of killing off-duty NYPD officer Charles Davis and Ira Epstein in a check uh in a robbery at check cashing place three years earlier. And what's bizarre about this case is the owner of the check caching place, Ira Epstein, the night before he was murdered, he told his wife, he goes, you know, I don't think I'm gonna come back. She goes, What are you talking about? He goes, I got a bad feeling about going into work tomorrow. Which, you know, it's like he just kind of knew something was off. And two days after the murders, the NYPD picks up a guy by the name of John Mark Bigwak. He's arrested for selling marijuana, I get, I guess, during a buy and bust operation, maybe, or precinct snoo. They bring him up for a debriefing, and he allegedly tells detectives George Bell and two other men on the on the on the morning of because this they were killed first thing in the morning opening up this check cash in place. This guy selling weed says that morning, which perps don't really wake up that early, you know what I mean? It's not like they're going to work. This guy selling weed tells the detectives that they asked him, hey, you want to go along with this robbery? And Bell shows them a handgun. And then later, after more questioning, this guy, John Mark Bigwood, tells detectives he serves as a lookout of the robbery. So now he's putting himself right there. First, it starts off, he goes, These guys came by, and now he's saying he's there. The next day, George Bell gets picked up, and under questioning, he confesses to the murder. And Bell's attorney, Mitch Dinnerstein, he's the guy years later who drops the dime on Reginald Gauss, which puts Reginald Gauss on your radar. There's just so many bizarre aspects to this check cashing robbery with the off-duty NYPD police officer and the owner being killed. During this double murder case, the alleged getaway driver, this guy Jason Ligon, L-I-G-O-N, he signs a statement admitting to driving the getaway car. He's convicted. But later on, private investigators are able to determine he wasn't even in New York City at the time of the murders. This case has got a shitload of problems with it. And then later on, through the, you know, they're they're appealing this, this guy, John Mark Big with a weed salesman, the guy who starts all this, he does five years after confessing, and then he's deported back to Liberia, and they can't find this fucking guy. So might have gotten killed. I I don't know what's going on in Liberia. But you're right. I mean, the Queen's DAS office fell all over this Reginald Gauss guy that they they let him plea to a lesser charge. He would have been deported back to Haiti. Let's see. Um Gauss during that trial of uh NYPD cop Charles Davis, he testifies that the defendant George Bell on Rikers Island said that uh Charles Davis told the gunman uh you should burn in hell just before he shoots him. And Bell tells, and then Bell allegedly says, You're gonna die first. And then when Epstein is begging for his life, Gauss testifies that Bell says, No witnesses before killing him. There's a lot of hyperbole that kind of lines up from your trial when he's running his mouth with the judge and and and trying to get into the head of the witness's wife with the theatric. Do you know to your knowledge, Mitch Dinnis Dinnerstein, this attorney that passes along the tip that basically gets Gauss arrested, and then later on, I'm guessing, I'm I'm guessing he worked in the appeals process. I don't know that to be true, though. Do you know if he he got a $25,000 award? I didn't know that he got that. I know he testified at the trial. That's an interesting thing, too. I think he I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I think I read that. I'm kind of curious if he did get that money. Did he give any of it to George Bell? Again, I don't know that to be true. Gauss also testified that George Bell bragged to him in the jail cell that he killed a cop because he was a Giuliani foot soldier. Come on. They don't have that much time during a f during a check cash and robbery that this guy is going to be saying all these, like, you know, saying all these things. Well, during a review of this case by the Queen's Conviction Integrity Unit, it was determined that trial prosecutors had withheld key evidence. The defense had never learned that a member member of another Queen's armed robbery gang had confessed to the slangs, and the prosecutor's star witness against Johnson and Bolt suffered from hallucinations. So there's just so much to this. And then NYPD detective Peter Fri Fiorillo was tasked with taking a look at the case years later. He blames the detectives, the DA's office, and the judge for the wrongful conviction of these three men. Were you ever called to testify in this? No. No. What's telling about this case is that it was overturned five years ago, and these three guys that were convicted of killing uh Charles Davis and Ira Epstein, they they they they were, you know, set free from jail. The Queen's DA's office has yet to retry the case, nor have they arrested anyone else in this crime where there was another member of that robbery gang that that had confessed. So so Jack, what's your opinion of Reginald Gauss? I mean, mine is he's he's like a criminal mastermind that'll never give up. Did he ever reach out to you or write to you when he was upstate? Because all this guy's got time on his hands. No. Probably after he watches this podcast, maybe he'll send me a note. I don't think he's got I don't think they have access to this. But Jack, you wanted me to ask if any of the NYPD members that worked on this case, the Charles Davis Ira Epstein investigation, you'd like them to reach out to you? Yes, they they apparently had spearheaded uh the the part about being innocent for years. I I they were involved, you know, they had a feel for it, and they made a determination at some point that uh things weren't right here with uh Gauss's testimony, and ultimately they'll correct. Which is kind of a unique circumstance where you have NYPDIs I don't know if they were retired or whatever, but they came out. I think they uh they I don't know if they organized the group, but uh they they pushed it. Well, if they're out there watching this podcast or somebody that knows them, if you could get in touch with them and they can get in touch with me on Twitter or Instagram at VicFerrari50, and I'll pass that information along to Jack. So, Jack, now that you're retired, what are you up to these days? I'm a licensed private investigator. I uh I I have a couple of small accounts I I keep busy. If anybody wants to get a hold of you out in Long Island for a case, where where can they get a hold of you? You have my email. You could uh send them my email. Okay, that works. Appreciate that. Jack McHugh, thank you so much for spending your time with us today. Thank you, Vic. Pleasure. I appreciate it. As always, I'd like to thank everyone for tuning in, especially my listeners in Manasqua, New Jersey, Spring Hill, Florida, Moxville, North Carolina, and Cobbleskill, New York. If you worked in law enforcement or had an interesting criminal background, drop me a note on Twitter or Instagram at VicFroy50 if you want to be a guest. If you're watching on YouTube, he's please hit the like and subscribe buttons. If you're really feeling strong, hit the share button. And if you enjoy the content, check out my Amazon author page. Just type in my name, Vic, Freud Like the Car, where you can preview all my NYPD books for free. Thanks again, everyone, and I'll see you next week. Jack, thanks a lot.