Welcome back to Line of Blood. I'm Jana Marcus. I'm recounting the sordid clues of the death of my great uncle Abe "Jew Murphy" Babchick and his brother, the missing Uncle Frankie. These took place in 1940s New York City.

Last time our story took an intriguing turn. I had put away my investigation into Uncle's Abe and Frankie due to the overwhelming grief of the death of my father.

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But five years later, after a mysterious call from the daughter of Uncle Abe's chauffeur, and then an email from an old acquaintance who was a crime scene psychic, I was invigorated to return to the family mysteries. I was going to solve them once and for all.

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This is Episode 7: New York Noir.

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Last time we learned that I was now working with Maria, the psychic, having sessions via video since her initial visit to my home. At her request, she was never told anything about the case. But, holy snooping folks, she honed in on exactly what had happened, in detail. I had even brought on my pal Eric to help me research her messages from beyond the grave, so that we could verify with hard evidence that what she was seeing was true.

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These sessions were incredible, not only in the details that Maria gave, but in how she took on the physical ailments of the spirits. Often, she would talk back to them in a sassy demeanor, but we also heard things. Yes, the spirits did use electronic devices to communicate. I mean, If I had been a skeptic before, well, let me tell you, that was out the window now!

 At every session, I could fully see Maria's body sitting in front of the camera, and there was no way she caused the bell ringing that we heard, or the low rumbles, or even voices that came through the computer microphones.

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And one time, I even saw a blue light streak over her head. It happened in a nanosecond, as she said, "Abe is here."

I had Eric distill the video from that moment to single frames, and we could see a blue, milky haze over her head. You can see that image on my website. It was a spooky movie come to life.

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Maria said she was channeling messages from both Uncles Abe and Frankie, giving names of high-ranking officials and locations. My research pal Eric and I were able to verify these as true through our hard research.

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Maria had described Abe's headquarters on Lincoln Place in detail. And, that important documents were buried at this location that we had to find. This is also where she saw Frankie being beaten and close to death.

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The spirits had also showed Maria a path of locations on Abe's last night alive. They were images layered on top of each other. First, she saw Abe at a restaurant where he was being followed by what she called the White Fedora Man, a high-ranking police officer. Then, she saw this old decrepit gate somewhere near the restaurant where Abe met with the White Carnation Man, also, who we now know, is John Harlan Amen, the special prosecutor. Abe gave Amen a list of 20 names of important officials he was paying bribe money to.

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Then, Maria saw Abe in a police car with a large 69 on the side being taken to a dirt road under a bridge that dropped off into water. This is where she saw his death by several police officers. Later, his body was found in his own car on Albany Avenue, a few blocks away.

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Now, I knew all of these locations as they had been mentioned in documents and news articles, except for this strange, mysterious place under the bridge where she said he had actually been murdered. This could be that Abe's body really had been moved, which had not been mentioned in any of the news articles.

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Well, it was time to go to New York. After all these years, I was going to Brooklyn to visit the locations of the murder mystery. I was so excited and Maria, she was stoked, because hauntings were her wheelhouse and what she thrived on.

My team would soon be meeting up in New York for an adventure into the past. The team consisted of Mark-the-Cop, Maria-the-Psychic, and my cousin, Michael.

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During a final planning meeting with Maria, before we left for New York, she wound up channeling Uncle Abe and another racketeer, named Frosh, who I knew all about. They came through with a couple mysterious messages. They told us a bunch of last names, which meant absolutely nothing to me, and then the words, “Atlantic, Pennsylvania, Nobody.”

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Well, Maria and I, we didn't know what it meant. Not yet.

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So let me ask you this: Do you think that locations can hold residual energies from the past? Is it possible to feel or sense an event that happened over 75 years ago? Well, that is what we will try to find out.

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The date is March of 2015. It was finally here, the on the ground investigation. I landed in New York and spent the first day in Manhattan at the New York Municipal Archives with my sister. We were looking for threads, anything that might mention Uncle Abe or help piece together his story. Any small clue could be crucial evidence. We spent hours looking through the Murder Incorporated files. We actually held bullets and evidence. And, you know, this is the beauty of doing research. Holding real items. It was incredible. But we found nothing about Uncle Abe.

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We found old photos of DuBrow's Restaurant, where Abe was last seen alive. And we did find photos of Abe's headquarters in the old building assessment records. But still nothing about Uncle Abe.

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After hours of searching and not finding anything, our hope was regained when the archivist actually pulled Uncle Abe's medical examiner's report from his death.

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It was the only real piece of documentation I had. Well, maybe the only real official piece of documentation. But it was confusing. It had lots of medical language I didn't understand. And check this out: there was a xerox of the original toe tag smeared with blood. It made me so queasy. I mean, the reality of this? That it hung from his toe in the morgue? Well, it was kind of gut wrenching. Ugh, I decided I was going to have to read this report later when I actually had an Alka Seltzer. It really affected me.

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I met someone at the archives who connected me to Detective Stradford of the Cold Case Squad. He was very friendly and forthcoming with suggestions when I called him.

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He explained that he didn't usually bother with a case from the 1940s because everyone involved had certainly died. Still, he was willing to look through some case files to see what he could find. I gave him all the info I had about Abe, including the autopsy report and the death certificate numbers. He told me that his search could yield more information than a request by someone from the general public. He could bypass all the Freedom of Information Act restrictions and give me the entire report. I was anxious to get the real documents, but he warned me it might take several weeks.

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The next day was our big trip to Brooklyn. Mark-the-Cop, Maria-the-Psychic, Cousin Michael and me, all met up at the car rental place on the Upper West Side.

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It had snowed the night before, and thick ice caked the streets. There was a bitter chill in the air. I wondered how Mark-the-Cop felt about all this. I mean, did he believe in this paranormal stuff? He was curious what Maria might reveal at the key locations, and I appreciated his openness to the possibilities.

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You know, I had actually never been to Brooklyn before, but I always felt safe with Mark. I mean, he knew Brooklyn better than anyone, and this had once been his turf when on the force. Cousin Michael, well, he had been a bit skeptical about the psychic, until she channeled some secret word he had with my grandmother, and then his mind was totally blown.

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Our plan was to visit the three locations involved in Abe's last night alive. These were based on eyewitness accounts, news articles, and now Maria's visions as well.

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Our first stop was Abe's racket headquarters on Lincoln Place, in the Crown Heights neighborhood. This was the site that Maria had described to me in detail–a brick four story building with narrow windows, an empty lot next to it, and a black gate that led to a lower-level basement with many rooms that she described as wet and the key nerve center of Abe's operation. This is where she had seen Uncle Frankie being beaten.

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As we approached the location, Maria began to shake, and she just kept repeating the words, “Money, money list, Jonesy…money, money list, Jonesy.” She was shaking and sweating, and I was worried about her, but she told me this was just part of how she worked.

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So, you may wonder, what was it like to actually be there? Well, as soon as we got out of the car, Maria started to get physically ill. But as for me, well, I had Google walked this area on Street View many times, but it really was surreal to actually be on site.

We stood in front of the empty lot, and my heart just felt so full. I mean, this was where it had all happened. This was Abe's building. Maria was seeing it in the 1940s, and I was seeing it as it was today, a disheveled and run down building.

Previously, Maria had described the basement in detail and said we had to go down there to find an important piece of evidence, some sort of satchel holding documents. But, the black gate, which led to an alleyway outside of the basement door, it was locked.

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We rang for the super and a curmudgeonly old man did open the gate for us, but not the basement door. He laughed at us as he scuttled away, leaving us in the alleyway. He thought we were ridiculous for wanting to see the basement.

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Well, we peered into a window of the basement and could see that there was a laundry room and a closed door beyond it.

“Look! There's another room in there!” Maria pointed excitedly, and she said, “The spirits are showing me a large room through one of the doors in there. The room is to the right, and it's almost like a command center. They had money in there. I'm seeing it like a fully functioning room, and people are working and doing stuff. You know, upstairs on the fourth floor was their office. That was the legit part. But down here was where everything happened, where they counted the money, where the ledger books were. This is where a lot of things were stolen and things were kept down here that the officials brought Frankie back to find. There's still stuff here!”

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Maria nodded her head anxiously, “I'm seeing the room, and a man named Jonesy is crawling through the front black window. He's wearing a leather bomber jacket and joppers and boots and he's watching Frankie being hurt on the floor. Oh God, there's blood everywhere. There's stuff overturned on the floor and it's wet. It's so wet in there.”

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We couldn't get into the basement so as we started to leave, suddenly a young man was exiting the building. We chatted him up and to our surprise he lived in the basement apartment.

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Well, the tenant told us that the basement was very wet and his apartment had a huge mold problem. He also told us that he and his roommates had seen orbs and shadow figures down in the basement and disliked that place intensely. He was planning to move as soon as he could.

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He was very kind and he opened the basement door and gave us a tour. The large basement had a hallway and several locked doors on either side. Down the hallway to the right was a much larger room, just as Maria had envisioned. Mark, Michael, and I started rummaging through stuff in the largest area, looking for a satchel or anything that was old.

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There was this single fluorescent tube on the ceiling, casting this green grimy light on the area. It was cluttered with objects­­–boxes and paintings and chairs, hoses, ladders, air conditioners–everything was strewn about. Dirty gas meters and decrepit rusted pipes lined the walls and ceiling. It smelled like a damp swamp in summertime.

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Maria, she was pale as a ghost. She was swaying as if she might pass out. She said, “Something is pushing me to stay out of this room.”

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Then she started to speak very, very quickly and channeled, "Frankie's on the ground. It's residual energy. It's like it's playing over and over again. I'm seeing two things happening at once…I see Frankie's beating, and then I see people rummaging through everything here looking for stuff."

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"What are they looking for?" I asked.

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Maria just kept repeating, "Money, money list, Jonesy, Jonesy…It's a money list. Frankie's screaming, ‘I don't have it, I don't have it anymore.’"

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Maria kept repeating the words, shaking, saying, “The room is torn up. They're looking for something. There's just blood everywhere, there's stuff buried here, and on the lot next door.”

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She went on to say, "I don't know who Jonesy is, but he's with this group of people who are beating Frankie, which included some of the police that we've identified, like DA Heffernan and Police Commissioner Wallander.”

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She said, “Jana, they dumped Frankie someplace. He was near death here. This was his end.”

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Maria was experiencing Frankie's death and she was getting very dizzy and felt like she was going to pass out. "My ears are ringing. I have this sharp pain on my back. My chest and everything hurts. I feel like I'm going to puke,” and she turned and she ran outside.

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I heard the sound of dry heaving coming from the alleyway and went to go check on her. She said, “I just…, I can't be in that room right now. I can't do the dry heave and blood thing that Frankie is experiencing. I just…I can't be in there.”

Meanwhile, Mark had found a small four-foot crawl space that expanded to the left. He bent down to explore it using his cell phone as a flashlight. “Look, this leads someplace. It's really old. There's something on the other side.”

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The crawlspace was wet and corroded, dead rats on the ground. He turned around immediately. At one time, this had definitely been a singular large room. Against part of the original brick wall, Mark had also discovered an old dumbwaiter. We continued shifting boxes around and sifting through piles of tiles and electronics and brushing away cobwebs. I mean, everything was disintegrating and toxic. We needed hazmat suits to actually dig through the garbage for this supposed satchel.

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Unprepared for the mess that we found, we decided as a group to move on to our next location. We thanked the basement tenant for his help and exchanged contact information.

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Our next stop was Eastern Parkway. This is a bustling thoroughfare with two to three lanes in each direction. Buses, shops, people everywhere, lots of activity.

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Now what had once been DuBrow's Cafeteria Restaurant, where Abe was last seen alive, was now a discount clothing shop. Maria stood with her back to the front of the shop looking out across the parkway, where a large church and a bank dominated the street. I found it amazing that she could actually concentrate with all the street noise, but she started channeling right away.

She saw Abe in the restaurant and she said, “Abe is sitting at a table and he sees the White Carnation Man, John Harlan Amen, standing in front of the church, and he runs across the parkway to meet him. After the meeting, Abe goes back to the restaurant and he sees the White Fedora Man and other detectives in long coats sprinkled throughout the restaurant. Abe knows they're there and watching him.

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I can hear Abe tell his driver, “You can go home now. I won't need you anymore.” And then Abe goes back across the parkway to his car.

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Well, I thought to myself, how could Abe have seen him all the way across the parkway? And, how could Abe have just run across the median strip because there was a big fence there?

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It didn't make sense until I remembered that my sister and I had found photographs in the archives that showed the front of DuBrow's was full windows. Abe could have seen Amen standing in front of the church. And, back in the ‘40s there was no median strip or a fence, so he could have easily run back and forth.

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Maria wanted to go across the street to hear the conversation between Abe and the White Carnation Man, Amen. We all crossed Eastern Parkway to the front of St. Matthew's. The large, gray stone church rose to a patinaed green dome. There was a residential rectory adjacent to the church.

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My researcher, Eric, thought that the ancient gate that Maria had seen in her vision might be somewhere at the church. Through Google's street camera, the fencing appeared to only be short and modern, not at all like the rusted ancient gate Maria had described.

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Well, we scanned the length of the fence, which recessed deep into the block, between the rectory and the bank. And then all of a sudden, instantaneously, Maria and I both saw it at the same time. There it was, a much older, obviously original wrought iron gate about 200 feet back from the street. Its ancient iron had rusted to a reddish brown, and it was secured with three old padlocks.

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Holy snooping, this was the gate, and it was right in front of the church! Well, I turned to face back looking over the parkway and was stunned to see that it was a direct shot to the front of the restaurant. Abe absolutely could have seen Amen wearing his white carnation standing in front of the church.

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Well, Maria stood next to the gate shivering as she started to speak her visions. She could see Abe talking to Amen giving him that list of 20 to 23 names. Maria said she could see numbers next to those names and that Abe gave this folded piece of paper to Amen, and then they talked about meeting in two weeks.

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Maria continued with her eyes closed and she said, “There are two cops standing at the street corner to our right. Abe is aware of them. He returns to the restaurant and tells his driver to leave. Then he walks back across the parkway to his car. But he is being followed. I can see two dark figures coming up behind him.”

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“Oh my gosh, he didn't drive,” Maria turned to me and started to shake. “Cop is driving, cop is driving. Oh my god, what's down that way?” Maria asked, pointing toward Utica Avenue.

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Mark replied with street names, but Maria interrupted him with a shout, “That's it! That's the way they went! Abe was in the police car for a long while, but I see him on the floor. I can see a cop driving, but I can't see where he's going. My God, why is Abe on the floor of the car?”

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“Well,” Mark responded, “He's probably on the floor because they don't want anyone to see that Abe is in the car with them. They probably just drove around to make sure that no one was tailing them and then went to wherever they were going to go.”

“But I can feel the road beneath Abe,” Maria continued. “He had money on him. I see him paying people, but when he's on the floor of the police car, he has nothing. They took all of his personal items off of him. Ughh, and there's another guy in the backseat with him. But Abe is on the floor. Why is he on the floor? This backseat is huge!”

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Well, Mark explained, “Old Caddies and Buicks, they had huge backseats. Big enough for someone to lie on the floor.”

Well, Maria kept channeling her visions. “I can see them driving to a warehouse type building. I see oil drums. It's on a secluded street. And they're going to this place under a bridge that drops into water.”

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“Well, I'm trying to think of where there's warehouses,” said Mark. “It could be the Brooklyn Navy Yard, or it could be in Canarsie off Linden Boulevard. But you know, if you're saying water, then that would be down Atlantic and Penn toward the Belt Parkway. That's this whole industrial area where bodies used to be dumped.”

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I raised my eyebrows in complete shock. “Did you say Atlantic and Pennsylvania? That was the message we were given last week.”

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“Well, yeah,” responded Mark. “Atlantic and Penn, they're avenues that intersect. They're at the edge of the 69th precinct.”

They were avenues that crossed? The 69th precinct? Well, holy hot diggity. This was staggering!

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“Come on,” said Maria, pulling at my arm. “We need to go now and we need to take Abe's Last ride.”

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We got into the car and headed down Utica Avenue. Maria was concentrating and I was hypothesizing.

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“Okay, so if they took Abe someplace, but his car is left here on Eastern Parkway, then how did his body and car end up on Empire Boulevard a few hours later?”

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Michael suggested, “Maybe they put him in the trunk of the police car and brought him back to Eastern Parkway.”

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But, Mark interjected, “What makes you think they drive back to Eastern Parkway to put his body in his own car? How do we know that his car is even still there? They might have met up to move the body from one car to another.”

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“A cop moved Abe's car,” Maria added seriously. “The same officials who approached Abe when inside the restaurant? They watched and followed. That's what I'm being told, ‘They watched and followed.’”

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“Well,” said Mark, “This whole scenario transcends robbery.” Mark shook his head. “This is not about money that Abe won in a crap game. This is about something much, much bigger.”

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“Do you think, Mark, then the idea that they put Abe back in his own car on a popular street like Empire Boulevard was to make it known that he was dead?”

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“That's right,” said Mark. “The perps were sending a message. They wanted people to know that this had happened. They were making a statement like, ‘We're in control and we silenced him.’ I'll bet ya’, Jana, the wise guys of the time, they knew all about this.”

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We refocused on the drive at hand. Maria insisted on going down Utica Avenue, but she didn't know why. She continued to describe to Mark what she was seeing.

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Traveling down Utica Avenue, the buildings became more and more run down as we left Crown Heights and made our way towards Brownsville. At Atlantic Avenue, we turned and found ourselves driving parallel to the elevated train, which was nestled above the looming oxidized arches of the Long Island Railroad.

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 Well, Mark explained to us that this whole warehouse industrial area on Atlantic Avenue and crossing at Penn were where the above ground trains intersected. “This might be the bridge you're seeing,” said Mark.

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Mark continued to drive down Atlantic Avenue to the intersection with Pennsylvania.

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“Is there water near here?” Maria asked anxiously. Mark assured her there was a small waterway under the elevated tracks, and he had an idea where the elements she was seeing all came together.

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Holy snooping! Could the elevated train be the bridge that Maria was seeing? Michael and I were listening in awe at the edge of our seats at this synergistic flow of information that was happening between Maria's visions and Mark's ability to figure out what she was seeing.

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He turned the car onto Pennsylvania Avenue and then onto Liberty Avenue. As we passed underneath the elevated train tracks, Maria started to shake.

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“This is it!” She shouted. “This is it! This is it!” And her hand was feverishly banging against the car window, and then pointing down a one-way street named Van Sinderen Avenue.

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Behind tall fencing, we could see a dirt road directly beneath the elevated tracks that was closed off to the public.

“There's a gully down there,” Mark pointed. “You used to be able to drive under the tracks very easily back in the day, but you can't anymore. That fencing went up about 15 years ago.”

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Well, Maria was transfixed and continued banging her hand on the window. “This is the place! Stop! Stop the car!” Maria was absolutely frantic.

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I said, “Hey Mark, can we back up into this one-way road?”

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Well, Mark winked at me, “We can do anything. I'm the police.”

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He sped down Van Sinderen Avenue in reverse, almost to Atlantic Avenue. The narrow one-way road was flanked by a brick warehouse with metal siding on one side, and on the other was the unpaved road following the length of the elevated train.

The elevated train was the bridge, and this looked exactly as Maria had described it.

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“Ahhh, Jesus, this is awful!” Maria was moaning and shaking uncontrollably. “This is just awful!”

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We jumped out of the car and approached the padlocked fence blocking the entrance to the unmarked road beneath the tracks. The sound of rushing water was all around us, and wet gravel crunched beneath our shoes. Maria and I peered beyond the fence that separated us from the location where Abe's life had come to an end.

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Maria was mesmerized and her face scrunched with pain, her body shaking. “The police car was parked there. They threw Abe on the ground. God, they're beating him. My left ear is ringing. It's so loud. It's so…I can't hear anything.” Maria stopped speaking. Not sharing what she was seeing, except to repeat, “It's so horrible. It's so very, very horrible what they did to Abe. I can't even tell you, Jana.”

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We clasped each other's hands tightly, gazing at the wet road before us. We both felt the heavy weight of discovering the place of Abe's death.

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Back in the car, we were on our way to Empire Boulevard. This is where Abe's Buick sedan and body were found. Maria had had no previous vision about this final place.

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As we turned on to Empire Boulevard, I immediately recognized the area. This was the location of all the crime scene photos I had. Now, one of those images showed Abe's body lying on the pavement, police standing over him, going through his pockets, and the White Fedora Man pointing at his body.

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I'd never shown that particular image to Maria. But as we stood in the exact spot, she channeled the following: “I feel like I'm being pulled by the nap of my neck, dragged out onto the street. God, it's bad enough he was murdered, but then they just tossed him out of the car like he was a piece of meat. I can feel the thud of Abe's body hitting the ground. God, it's awful. There was just no regard for him. But, honestly, Jana, Abe is not here. Usually, when someone dies, the place holds their energy. But there's nothing here. Abe was dead by the time they brought him here. It was really just a drop off spot. Abe did die under those tracks.”

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We milled around the patch of gray sidewalk for several moments, mostly for my benefit. I found myself searching the concrete for bloodstains that would have soaked into the ground some 73 years earlier. But of course, nothing was there.

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Standing in the exact spot where the police had removed Abe's body, I just wanted to sit down on the pavement and cry. I mean, half of my life I had spent trying to figure out this mystery, and now that I had retraced the steps, I felt such great sadness. Not only of the family's loss, but of the sheer terror that my uncle must have endured.

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I took one last look around, and then stumbled back to the car to rejoin the others. Everyone was quiet as we drove back to Manhattan. Maria stared out the window at the passing Brooklyn scenery. “I'm just overwhelmed. This city is crazy!”

“Ha! Well,” laughed Mark, “There's a lot going on here. 300 years of almost anything you can imagine.”

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Mark and Michael, they were eager to get some food. Maria and I, we were lost in our individual thoughts. As the hour neared 5 pm., we were back on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

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After a well-deserved, liquor-saturated dinner, we all went our separate ways. Maria came back to relax at the apartment I was staying at. She didn't want to go to sleep before her early morning train back to Connecticut. She didn't want to revisit in dreams all the death she had seen earlier in the day.

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“I can't even tell you everything I saw during Abe's horrific death,” Maria said. “It was so awful, Jana. It just hurt my heart. It was so emotional, I mean, it was fucked. Nobody had any regard for who he was, and nobody understood who he was. I'm angry about that and I kept asking Abe, ‘why is this happening to you?’”

“Hey Maria, I need to know what you saw under the tracks.”

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“Oh God, I just was so frightened, Jana, because there was nothing I could do. I couldn't change it. There was utter chaos happening. And, the fear that Abe and Frankie experienced was very real for me. I felt that deafening ring of their final moments. I can't…awwk! When I do this work, I just want to spare people what it feels like, so I block it. I just don't want people to have to see or hear what I do.”

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“So are you telling me that when you heard the ringing, Maria, that was Abe's last moment?”

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She nodded and made two rapid low sounds, “Poof! Poof! You don't hear the gun the way the victim does, Jana. They don't hear a pop. The victim feels a poof. Abe felt a pressure that knocked him forward and then it bounced all through his brain and popped out on the right side. He felt every ounce of that and then a deathly coldness.”

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“Well, did you see anything before Abe's last moment, Maria? I mean, any words that were spoken?”

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“I felt Abe physically hit the ground. There were five men there. Two men in front of him, in cop uniforms, and then three behind him in long overcoats. White Fedora Man was there, and also at that final location on Empire Boulevard. The only part that I can't see clearly is how they got Abe's body back into his car.”

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I sighed and then said to Maria, “Wow, you know, a lot really did come together today. I just wonder what the cops wanted so badly from Abe that they did this to him and then tried to get it from Frankie three years later. What were they trying to find at Lincoln Place?” I shook my head. “I guess maybe we'll just never know.”

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 But, Maria replied, "Or, maybe we will."

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With that, we both drifted into a reluctant sleep.

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Thank you for listening. Join me, Jana Marcus, next time, as we continue the baffling investigation in Line of Blood.

You can join me in this investigation, episode-by-episode, by checking out the historical files on our website.

And as a special add on, you can see actual video footage of the team during our investigations in Brooklyn, find out how on our website at lineofblood-podcast.com.

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If you've enjoyed this episode, we would love for you to leave us a review, subscribe, or tell your friends. And if you want even more of a deep dive, check out the book version of Line of Blood, which is available at all online booksellers.

Special thanks go out to Suki Wessling, Eric Sassaman, Valerie Marcus Ramshur, and Amy Scott. Music by Blue Dot Sessions.