[ambient street noise]
[subway car rumbling]
[suspenseful music playing]
[woman] My mom worked at Two Rector Street as a cleaning lady.
Her hours were from 5:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.
On July 7th, around 10:30 p.m.,
I get a phone call from her coworker Rosa
asking to see if my mom was home.
I said, "What do you mean? My mom is not home."
"Isn't she at work? She's supposed to be at work."
She's like, "No."
They were supposed to take lunch around 7:00 p.m.
So she was curious that her phone was off.
It was going straight to voicemail at that time.
[woman] I called my aunts, my uncles.
We actually agreed to rush to her job to see if we were able to find her.
During the day, I was working in Two Rector as a security guard.
So I went to the floor that she was working on.
And I'm screaming her name throughout the building, the hallways,
and the back of the basement.
I'm trying to listen for anything.
Maybe she was hurt.
Maybe she was somewhere she can't be heard.
People saw her coming in the building obviously,
but we do not see her leave.
[woman] We spoke to the security guard that was there at the moment,
and he said that he didn't see my mom coming out the building.
So then we started calling the police.
She was nowhere to be found.
[Mooney] Every single case takes a piece out of your soul.
[Butcher] You cannot do this job unless you really care.
[McNeely] You want to find out the truth.
That's what detectives do.
[man] I've always liked the peek behind the curtain.
What really happened?
[Rivera] It's so important for a family to know who murdered their relative.
That's my job.
[Titus] In New York City, the NYPD…
this is it.
[suspenseful music trails off]
[Titus] When I'm driving into work every day,
and I'm heading into the city,
you see the whole skyline,
and I would always say to myself,
like, "Wow. I'm in… Homicide detective in NYPD in New York City."
I grew up in a tough area in South Jamaica, Queens.
There was drugs.
There was prostitution. There was gangs.
And it was a decision that I ultimately had to make
that I chose education over the streets
and became a cop.
[low, distressing music playing]
July 8th, 2009, we arrive at work at eight o'clock in the morning.
The phones are ringing like crazy. We're getting calls from the 1st Precinct.
We're getting calls from One Police Plaza.
We're getting calls from the chief of detectives' office.
Everybody's talking about
a missing cleaning woman in the financial district.
I think the public is kinda consumed
with what takes place with the stock market hours in that area.
Like, what goes on, and then the fast pace,
and the great wealth that's transferred, and things like that.
That's the kind of sexy part of it, but you have workers behind the scenes.
After the white-collar crowd went home, there's people that clean.
There's people that mop, there's people that do repairs,
people that have families,
that are working very hard to earn a living.
[man] Detectives responded to Two Rector Street.
We don't have any information at the very beginning.
All we know is that we have somebody who did not return home.
[tense, mysterious music playing]
Outside the building, one of the bosses gathers everybody up
and gives us a brief synopsis of what's going on.
So we find out that the woman missing is a woman named Eridania.
Forty-six years old.
She worked from 5:00 to 11:00.
And at some point during her shift, she vanished.
[man 2] One of the things
that stood out to me when I got to the building
was that this lady's family was down here
within hours of her just not being reachable.
You don't see that a lot in New York City. You can tell they were close-knit.
My sister, she has 17 years over me.
She always came through and helped out taking care of me.
She was a great sister and a great mother.
She would never leave the family. It's impossible.
[McNeely] Her family contended that after she was done,
she would go right home.
So it was, like, very out of the ordinary for her
to leave work without notifying somebody,
particularly her coworker.
So these raised red flags to everyone.
[Martinez] It was very unlike her just to disappear like that.
Not answering her phone calls.
I was very worried.
[suspenseful music playing]
I was working there for a year and a half, and my sister, approximately six months.
I know the building very well.
That evening when she went missing, we was, like, combing the whole building,
floor by floor.
I even went back to the basement
and… and looked up.
I screamed her name…
but it was so quiet.
[erratic, distressing music playing]
[McNeely] The location of where she went missing
is in the heart of the financial district.
So naturally, the police department takes that very seriously.
Any case in Manhattan South,
anything south of 59th Street,
always seems to be amplified.
I knew for sure this thing was gonna get a lot of media attention.
Her coworkers say that she always has dinner with them during their shift,
but the last time they saw her was around eight o'clock,
and she hasn't been seen since.
[McNeely] Basically, you have to do a search of every floor,
and the building needed to be evacuated.
So everybody, all personnel,
the suits, cleaning personnel, elevator operators,
anybody that was in there needed to be out of that building
at the time that this search was conducted.
There could be a dead body in the building, and we don't know.
It's a little scary.
[Titus] One of the things that made the location, Two Rector Street,
so unique for a missing person case
was the fact that it is like a self-contained environment.
So there are only certain ways out, certain ways in,
and everything else is just up.
It's definitely a daunting task to search that building
for anyone or anything,
because it goes up 26 floors.
It was an all-hands-on-deck.
Detectives were brought in from other commands to help.
Not just the homicide squad and 1st Precinct detective squad.
There were detectives from Midtown South, Midtown North.
[Titus] Everybody is involved.
But on top of that, you have helicopters in the air.
This was a comprehensive sweep of the entire building, top to bottom,
every nook and cranny.
When they went into her locker, we found her purse was still there.
I had a mom and four sisters.
And they don't go anywhere without that purse.
Basically a… an appendage.
So it definitely set off bells and whistles.
[tense, unnerving music playing]
[Titus] And then her pushcart and hair clip
were found on the eighth floor.
What was the purpose of it being on the floor?
Uh, you know, was there a struggle?
Maybe it's some kind of a sexual assault type of thing,
and the person is holding her hostage.
We need to speak to people.
We need to know employees of the building who work for the building itself.
Who was there during Eridania's shift?
[McNeely] The people working in the building at the time,
I would categorize them all as witnesses,
or people of interest, if you will.
[Titus] There's a lot of different things playing in our mind,
but we do know that time is of the essence.
The longer it takes us to find her, the less likely she'll be alive.
[dramatic music playing]
[Titus] We knew that if she left the building,
she would be captured by one of the many videos at one of the entrances.
[Vergona] There are 32 cameras that were in this building.
So 32 cameras at eight hours a clip that you want to review,
that you want to look at, is a really tedious act to do.
So we sent in our best guy.
Brian MacLeod, known as the "Video God."
[Vergona] He's a fantastic detective.
Brian's… a very quirky fella.
It's an important job.
Not everybody can do it, and deal with what we deal with.
-[fly buzzing] -This… I'm gonna squash that fly.
[laughing]
[McNeely] Brian's intense.
When he gets focused, he liked to put his headphones in,
and he'd listen to heavy metal music.
[heavy metal rock playing]
[MacLeod] Headbanger?
Well, when I was younger, I had a mullet, so…
[laughs]
I always had my heavy metal music going at work all day.
[Titus] He just has the patience and the diligence
to just stay there and… and stare at a screen for hours.
We knew that if she left the building,
he was gonna find her or anything else that may have looked suspicious.
You don't wanna miss something.
All you need's that one frame. You're gonna miss something.
[fly buzzing]
I got it.
[menacing music playing]
[MacLeod] It's boring.
It's time-consuming.
It strains on your eyes.
But I just had the patience for it.
Eridania is seen getting onto an elevator
to go to the upper floors to start her shift.
Think it was roughly, uh, 5:12 p.m.
But she's not seen again. She's not seen again on camera.
She's not seen getting off the elevator at any other time,
and she's not seen leaving that building.
Where is she?
[tense music playing]
[Titus] In order to understand her better,
you do a complete background, find out about relationships,
whether they had financial troubles,
everything you can about the, uh… the victim.
We found out from the family that Eridania was from the Dominican Republic.
My mother was born in Santo Domingo
and came to the United States in 1973.
She married my father, Jeronimo Figueroa,
and she had three kids.
She actually stopped going to school to basically take care of us.
[somber, touching music playing]
[Martinez] She was a matriarch herself.
Her cooking, it was unbeatable.
I always looked forward to it on Thanksgiving, New Year's, and Christmas.
It didn't matter what it was, she always wanted the family together.
This brought back memories of my mom.
She was an immigrant herself from Panama
and found little jobs until she got her feet planted
to provide for the family and make sure that we had everything we need.
I can imagine something happening to my mother
and how I would have to deal with that.
It just made the case very personal.
[Figueroa] I wasn't thinking right.
I was depressed at that moment. I was panicking.
I was just praying to God that my mom will walk in any minute.
[mysterious music playing]
With Eridania, we found out that she was divorced
and later reconnected with her ex-husband.
So we talked to her family.
He was not down at… at Two Rector Street.
So in the back of my head, I was thinking, "Why isn't he here
if the daughters are all here, the brother is here?"
He is our very first suspect,
and we need to interview him, find out what he knows.
[tense, curious music playing]
Besides the husband, the family said several days earlier
that Eridania was
what she thought was being stalked by someone that worked in the building.
[erratic music playing]
[Martinez] My sister said she had a couple of bad vibes.
She mentioned one guy looking at her
when she was taking the elevator to the floors to clean.
The news reporter came into the house to interview us.
[reporter] Her kids say her mom was nervous about a man
who worked also in that Rector Street office building
and who she believed was stalking her.
He would look at her weird, and she was nervous.
So while she was cleaning, he used to stare at her.
She said that someone was making her scared, following her.
[Vergona] The person did it two times,
but Eridania's daughter had told us
that a couple of days prior to her being missing,
he tried to speak to her again.
Obviously, the family is very scared about the situation.
She was very upset and worried about the situation
that she mentioned it to her family.
I told her give me a chance to try to get her another job.
And she's like, "Okay."
If it doesn't work in a week, she was gonna leave.
[tense music pulsing]
It was something she was willing to quit her job about because she felt unsafe.
And the fact that it happened multiple times…
Would he assault her, take her, abduct her?
How far is this guy willing to go?
Knowing that the stalker knows the layout of the building,
and the exits and entrances of the building.
It's somebody that was there daily
and knew where people went at what times,
what time the building shut down, what time it opened up,
who was where, when.
It became very important
to identify this person as soon as possible.
[McNeely] While we're looking for that guy,
detectives were dispatched to interview Eridania's husband
and verify his whereabouts.
[officer knocking on door]
His story was that he was working that evening until about eight o'clock,
at which time he went home to their apartment.
He was the only one that stayed home to see if she was to come home.
The detectives were able to verify his whereabouts and, uh, put it to bed.
[Vergona] At this time, we were confident
that he had nothing to do with the disappearance of Eridania.
[low, distressful music playing]
[McNeely] Meanwhile, we were able to contact the stalker.
We brought him upstairs to the squad, put him in the interview room.
He claimed that he was playing ping-pong with friends
that evening when Eridania was at work.
And all those people that he claimed participated in that event,
that were with him, were interviewed too, thoroughly and in detail.
And they were able to rule him out as any particular person of interest.
[suspenseful music playing]
Now we needed to really step up our efforts
and try and locate Eridania,
meticulously, with K9 units.
[Titus] Everybody knows that when they bring in K9,
if there's something there, they're gonna find it.
[Vergona] The K9 dogs, as they came through the 14th floor,
they had two hits in the utility room,
which houses the air conditioning system and the heating system for the unit.
[McNeely] They had emergency service personnel,
everybody that you can imagine, focusing now on that floor.
We were just waiting for the notification that they found something,
something that we could use,
something that would tell us more than what we already had.
It was a false hit with the K9 unit.
[distressing music playing]
It's very frustrating.
And you feel for the family because you know that they're just…
You know, every day that goes by, every hour that goes by,
their hope is shrinking too, you know?
[Martinez] For every second that was passing, every minute,
the family is just getting, like, overwhelmed.
Everybody's scared. Nobody's eating.
Like…
Everybody fears the worst.
[frantic music playing]
[sirens wailing in distance]
[MacLeod] There were so many cameras. Hundreds of hours' worth of this video.
I've spent hours at work
watching that video surveillance over and over and over.
Make absolutely sure that nothing was being missed.
I'm lookin' for evidence, anything that's suspicious.
And the only individual that was, um…
his behavior was a little off, was the maintenance guy.
You see him workin' the freight elevator. Then you see him in the basement.
You see him walking to his maintenance room,
which is also like his locker area.
Followed every single camera that he was pictured on
while he was in that building.
And he… he disappeared for quite a few minutes.
It may have been like 45 minutes or so.
And then all of a sudden, a little after 8:00,
he's spotted in the basement.
But he's not caught on camera comin' from the elevators
either in the basement or in the lobby.
The only way he could have gotten there was from the stairwell.
[menacing music playing]
His behavior on camera was like, "Hmm, what is going on here?"
We're very suspicious of what is up.
Now we felt it necessary to get him in.
He was definitely now a person of interest with regard to Eridania's whereabouts.
That person was Joseph Pabon.
I called him, and he said okay, he would talk to us.
So what I wanted to do was go back to the precinct
so we can get into a more controlled environment.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Vergona] Now, when Joseph Pabon came in,
he had said he was working the freight elevator,
and he was taking the cleaning ladies,
dropping them off at the floors that they were scheduled to clean at.
He explained that he dropped her off on the 8th floor…
which is where they found her cart and hair clip.
And that was the last time he saw her.
[unnerving, erratic music playing]
It was July.
You know, you could sweat in an igloo. It was so hot.
I have to wear a suit because I'm a New York City detective.
If I could have a pair of flip-flops on and a bathing suit and, you know…
I'm all-in.
But he was wearing a…
Like a thermal long-sleeve shirt and a T-shirt over it.
And I'm thinkin', you know, "This… This kid's out of his mind."
"He's dressed for a snowball fight, and it's July."
And that just kept bothering me the whole time I was talking to him.
Then I said, "Take your shirt off." We made him take his shirt off.
He had scratches on the back of his shoulders,
his neck, other parts of his torso.
And I asked him, "How can you explain them?"
And he said that, on the Tuesday evening that Eridania was reported missing,
he was charged with operating the freight elevator
to take this construction crew up and down.
He claimed that he was helping them off with these carts with rebar and framing.
So, I'm like, "You're a 32BJ guy. You're a union guy, right?"
He's like, "Yeah."
And my knowledge is, coming from a family that…
Union family, people in different unions,
I know if you're tasked with a job and you do another job, you're in trouble.
You don't touch anything other than that elevator lever or pressing a button.
I was like, "And you helped these guys on and off with carts?"
So, to me, that was unfathomable. I didn't believe that at all for a second.
[mysterious, disturbing music playing]
[Vergona] I tried to implore to him,
"If you did something with her, or she's somewhere in the building,
let us know where. We'll go get her."
"And maybe we could bring her back to her family."
And he just maintained that he didn't do anything.
We interviewed him a good 14 hours at that point.
We asked him, "Do you mind giving your DNA?"
And he was okay with giving his DNA.
He swabbed himself.
He was not admitting to any kind of criminal activity or anything like that.
So we were forced to let him go.
[Vergona] We don't have a body to charge him,
but I made it known to my supervisors that we believe that
this guy right now is the number one person of interest.
And at that time, we started following Joseph Pabon
and watching his whereabouts
because, possibly, he could have her somewhere.
He could have her at his house.
He could have her, uh, at another building or another site.
We put a couple of detectives on him to follow him around
and just to keep up with his whereabouts.
We wanted to provide 24-hour surveillance on Pabon.
So we set up different shifts.
If he made a right, I made a right. He made a left, I made a left.
When he went into a diner, if he stayed in there too long,
we sent someone in to make sure he was still there,
and we weren't trying to be inconspicuous.
We had no problem with him knowing that we were following him.
It was like cat-and-mouse game, us against him.
We weren't gonna lose this.
[sirens wailing in distance]
We've been looking for her for a couple days now.
We can't find her on the video.
We can't find her actually leaving the building.
[Titus] We'd looked at every nook and cranny of the building
from top to bottom, and couldn't find her.
It's like… It's just not making sense at this point.
So now, not only did we feel deflated,
but that also made our jobs a whole lot more difficult.
That means that instead of just Two Rector Street being the place
where all of the investigation was gonna take place,
it now became New York City.
It just became even bigger.
That means more resources and a wider-scale investigation.
Because she could be anywhere.
[frantic music swelling]
We decided to expand the video canvass, or surveillance canvass.
[MacLeod] Do we see her going up Trinity Street?
Do we see her walking up Greenwich Street?
Do we see her walking down Rector Street, east or west?
But that wasn't fruitful.
That didn't… We didn't see her.
[Vergona] "How come I can't find them? What am I missin'?"
"What are we missin' as a collective?"
Because there's so many of us workin' this case.
[McNeely] During the search, a bit north of Rector Street was a store,
and we found video of Joseph Pabon from Tuesday when Eridania went missing.
We were able to get the receipt from the vendor
that Joseph Pabon had purchased alcohol inside that establishment.
Possibly Eridania stumbled upon him drinking.
Maybe a verbal dispute ensued, and he made it physical.
I like to call it an "oh shit" moment.
Like, "Now I gotta cover this up." So it's reactive.
But we didn't have probable cause to arrest him.
[Titus] We still don't have a body.
We still don't have an actual crime.
We're gonna just continue following him like… like we have been.
[mysterious music playing]
We are now looking at areas where a body could be dumped,
rather than where a person could run off to.
We thought that maybe she was put into one of the trash containers.
And they are taken away by a private sanitation company.
We sent detectives out to Pennsylvania
to sift through the area in which they dumped all their trash.
[somber, pensive music playing]
[reporter] The family's been through every emotion this week.
An exhaustive search ensued earlier when police scoured a landfill
in Pennsylvania where garbage is dumped from the building.
I couldn't believe it.
My mom was not garbage.
I was just thinking, "Oh my God, can my mom be there?"
Horrible…
if someone can do that to her.
At the end of the day, there was no Eridania Rodriguez,
and there was no more evidence
that we could use to try and find Eridania Rodriguez.
Since they said nobody was found there, I had a little bit of hope again.
Forty-six-year-old Eridania Rodriguez has not been seen.
[reporter 2] Police now believe she is likely dead.
Right now, the family is going through it. We're waiting for answers.
It turned into a big story. And when you have a big story,
and you got the press askin', you know, the police department,
"What's going on here?"
There was a lot of frustration. Like, "Where the fuck is she?"
[Titus] The pressure was on.
So many resources were put on this case
that it could not be sustained at that level.
Other detectives had to get back to their cases.
Cops have to patrol the streets.
The department was gonna start pulling resources away from this
to go to other things.
Not only aren't we solving the case,
but it doesn't look good for NYPD.
[MacLeod] Now we start getting a little bit of heat from our bosses.
We're like, "Shit," you know?
Chief Matarazzo, who was the chief of detectives of Manhattan,
had us all in a meeting.
And at one point, Chief Matarazzo turned to me and goes,
"Hey, John. Well, you know, what's going on?"
You know, "What do you think? Where is she?"
I just turned to him and said, "She's gotta be still in the building."
[unnerving music playing]
He goes, "Let's get another canvass on that building."
[frantic music pulsing]
Here we go again, searchin' this building. She did not leave this building.
"Get in there. Find out where the hell she went."
And they called in ten sergeants and 100 officers
to search every nook and cranny of that building,
floor by floor.
[Titus] We were all invested.
We spent so much time with the family, with the… the whole case.
So we all wanted it to be a positive outcome.
Unfortunately, that's not what happened.
I got a phone call from a detective in the 9th Precinct.
He said, "John, I'm on the 12th floor. I just got off the elevator."
[dog barks faintly]
"You're gonna wanna come up here."
[MacLeod] Floor number 12 was under construction.
Bare-bone walls, you know, just concrete. No Sheetrock, no furniture.
[Vergona] When I got off the elevator,
the smell on the floor is the smell of death.
And the detective was like, "Take a look inside."
And I can see, um,
some blood and residue
coming from the air conditioning duct.
We had ESU and Crime Scene come.
And we opened up the air-conditioning duct,
and she was inside.
[low, haunting music playing]
Now you know you for sure have a homicide.
The original search,
those dogs weren't making up the scent they were getting.
The air was passing and rising.
On the second search, that air duct was shut off,
and the air stayed stagnant where Eridania was found on the 12th floor.
Unfortunately, there was decomposition,
which made physical identification, uh… impossible.
But we can make assumptions at that point that it was Eridania.
She was bound, hogtied, hands behind her back, mouth duct-taped.
The duct tape, I remember, wasn't typical duct tape.
It was almost like a caution tape. Yellow and black.
Oddly enough, Eridania had a crucifix that she wore around her neck,
and it was in her mouth.
There was a lot of people theorizing
that it might have been some sort of a ritualistic intent.
When you think about doing that to a person, and…
Man. He put her in the air conditioning duct.
Like, you know, who would even think to go to that extreme?
"That's how I'm gonna hide her."
Medical examiner's office was just here to remove the body.
Police have been here all day.
We're waiting to hear who they found in the building.
A lot of us still hope it's not her, but… I have a bad feeling.
[distressing music playing]
[shallow exhale]
My mom was found.
She was found in an air conditioning vent,
tied up…
like an animal.
[shakily] I'm, like, banging on the kitchen table,
and my brothers try to hold me down.
It was just nonstop of crying.
How can a person do this to a person…
[voice breaking] …that all she has done is always be there for a person?
She was so kind, so loving.
Always bringing joy to everybody.
What did she do to deserve this?
I could imagine her screaming.
Trying to scream for help,
but in that building, you could scream all you want,
they won't hear you.
I said, "We are absolutely gonna get justice for your mother."
"Because Eridania didn't deserve what happened here."
[taut, suspenseful music playing]
[McNeely] I was tasked with attending the autopsy.
I knew that whatever was found there was definitely gonna help the case.
Cause of death to start with and then forensic information.
Sexual assault was ruled out.
There were no signs of blunt trauma. No stabbing. No gunshot wounds.
No skull fractures.
Her hyoid bone was intact.
It wasn't done with a ligature or anything like that.
Because of the constricted nature that Eridania was in,
being bound,
her head was kinda pushed forward, and her neck was down.
She was duct taped, so she couldn't get a lot of air.
So it was deemed homicidal asphyxiation was the cause of death.
[Vergona] She was probably alive when somebody taped her up,
lifted her up off the floor,
put her in the air conditioning duct, and sealed it back up.
[sputtering] I…
Yeah, it just…
Yeah, like, my heart sunk because when I was in that basement,
and I looked up, I looked at that vent,
and I screamed her name, and I'm trying to listen to her.
And obviously, if she was still alive, she couldn't…
scream back, or say my name,
or scream for help, because…
the tape was… the caution tape was covering her mouth.
[voice breaking] People say, "It's not your fault. Don't think that way."
[shuddering breath]
But put yourself in my position.
When it was the last time I spoke to my sister,
she felt, like, a weird vibe.
And I told her give me a few days to get her another job somewhere else.
And then this happens.
I guess I dropped the ball on that one too.
Not letting her quit
and not combing that vacant spot on the 12th floor.
[McNeely] Fortunately for us,
we still had a person of interest remaining.
Joseph Pabon didn't have an alibi.
He actually was in Two Rector Street working
when Eridania was working.
Joseph Pabon was the only person
that had scratches on his body that weren't properly explained.
[pensive, mysterious music playing]
[MacLeod] During an autopsy, they take DNA swabs.
They take fingernail clippings
to see if there's any DNA that doesn't belong to the victim.
The only problem with that is… uh…
It's not like a COVID test you get back in 15 minutes.
We had to wait for those results, and we were hopeful
that we were gonna get back a connection between Joseph Pabon
and the DNA samples that were taken from Eridania.
[taut, suspenseful music playing]
As we dug deeper on Joseph Pabon,
we found several cases of domestic violence against women.
In one case, after an altercation with his ex-girlfriend,
he took a bowling ball and smashed out the windows of her car.
That kind of made us feel even stronger
that it's possible that this guy had some kind of breakdown or issue
where he completely lost it with Eridania.
[Vergona] We already initiated a tail on him after we interviewed him
to make sure that we knew where he was at all times.
Now we're definitely staying on him until we get the DNA back
that shows us beyond a reasonable doubt that that's him.
It would have been a major disaster
if we had lost him,
and the DNA came back, and we didn't have him.
Here we have a guy who possibly committed this heinous act.
Tied up this woman, asphyxiated her.
And yet he's living his normal life as if he did nothing.
But another thing that was also concerning was that, you know,
if he's had a domestic violence history, maybe he might attack his new girlfriend.
[suspenseful music continuing]
On July 17th, I receive a call that the DNA came back.
And it's… it's looking like two-billion-to-one that it's Joseph Pabon.
When we got the arrest warrant,
I made a phone call to Al Titus and told him,
"It's a go. Time to arrest him."
[Titus] He lived in Staten Island.
He pulled off the main street and went into one of the backstreets.
We surrounded him.
Came out with our guns out
and told him to stop the car.
[sirens wailing]
When we finally pull out Pabon and arrest him,
his girlfriend was in the car too.
She may not have realized it at the moment,
but at some point, I'm sure she realized, like,
"Wow, I was living with a killer." You know?
We possibly saved her from being the next victim.
It was a great conclusion to a long, drawn-out case
that allowed us to get the guy, which was good,
to get Pabon off the street.
[Martinez] When we finally got the news
saying they arrested Joseph Pabon on murder charges,
and everybody's screaming with happiness and crying,
I was just…
I was happy, but…
When we got off the phone with the investigator,
we was asking questions.
Like, "Why would he do something like this?"
I've been working with this guy for a year and a half.
Always conversed. He always said good morning to me.
He always talked to me at the front desk, always did his job.
I had never had a problem with him.
I never did anything to him
for him to, like, do any harm to my sister.
I didn't think he was my enemy. He was my coworker.
[somber, determined music playing]
[McNeely] He's brought back,
placed in a cell in the 1st Precinct detective squad.
Everybody's fuckin' psyched.
I was chomping at the bit. I wanted another crack at him.
I wanted him to admit what he did.
It was personal at that point to me.
Unfortunately, he invoked his right to counsel,
and we never got a crack.
But at the trial, Joseph Pabon was convicted
and sentenced to 25 years to life.
And, uh…
that's a fate he definitely deserves.
[Figueroa] When they mentioned that he was guilty,
I just broke down.
We all broke down.
He wasn't sorry.
He was laughing while looking at us.
That really broke my heart.
It took every… every strength from…
every little bit of me in my gut not to rush straight to him.
I just wanted to punch him, like, in the back of his head.
I wanted to, like, choke him out.
[Figueroa] Pabon never answered the question why he did this.
To this day, we're still waiting for that answer.
What was the purpose? Did my mom did anything to him?
Did she say anything that made him upset?
Why?
[Vergona] I just think he snapped.
I think he had a moment of anger.
Like he had in the other prior issues with women.
[solemn, mournful music playing]
[Martinez] She fought for her life. I know she did.
During her last moments, I know she was very scared.
But she's gone.
She's not coming back.
My life hasn't moved on.
I have it in the pit of my stomach.
Like, I still, to this day, don't get what happened.
Like, he altered the family, like… like, forever.
Investigating this case, and seeing them, and their grief, and…
all the work we put into this to eventually find the guy who did it…
You know, it'll stay…
That'll stay with me forever.
[somber, dramatic music playing]
I remember growing up thinking of NYPD
as the biggest gang in New York City.
But after working with them for so many years,
I realized that it's more of a family.
There's not enough understanding of what the police do.
They're not this occupying force.
And the community are not these bunch of savages
that we have to go attack.
So a couple of years after the trial,
I retired with the goal of doing my best to bring the two entities together.
I went from Detective Titus to Doctor Titus,
teaching at John Jay College of Criminal Justice…
An arrest is removing someone's freedom.
…working with future law enforcement.
Hear all of the facts and the evidence,
and then determine whether or not an individual is guilty,
not just based on their looks or some kind of stereotypical bias that…
My goal is to get you to understand
that there's a lot of different perspectives.
Some are like yours. Some are very different from yours.
And when you go into law enforcement, you have to acknowledge that.
You can't treat them differently because they're from a different place.
So the students can understand this is the world they're going out into.
And that's what's important to me.
Work for the common good of everyone,
to make the world a better and safer place.
[somber music continuing]
[distorted audio warping]
[Parrino] I think survival guilt from September 11th
is what motivates me to go to the Middle East.
I was a contractor with the Marine Corps.
And my last tour in Afghanistan,
I got a call telling me that they were gonna reopen the Howard Pilmar case.
[cryptic music playing]
[man] He was murdered in the office.
I knew no one that would want him dead,
that would want him murdered like that.
There's very few cases that I continue to think about because they're unsolved,
but the Pilmar case, I'd still be thinking about years later.
We were almost there.
I think every detective has a case
that has eluded them for some reason or another,
and it becomes the Moby-Dick of their careers.
Howard was slaughtered. He was slaughtered like a pig in a pen,
like an animal.
[dramatic outro music pulsing] slaughtered like a pig in a pen,