The Acid King Read online

  The fifty-six-year-old mother of three relented, and filled out the required paperwork for Roemer. Now armed with the documentation he needed, Roemer could continue his investigation. He wanted to question Jean Wells immediately, so he headed south to Madonna Heights School for Girls, only ten miles outside of Northport.

  When Roemer pulled up to the large white mansion at the end of the long, paved driveway, he found Jean’s parents waiting for their fifteen-year-old daughter. When Jean emerged from her classroom, they began to chastise her.

  “What did you do wrong now?!” her mother and father demanded.

  Officer Roemer stepped in.

  “Your daughter did something very courageous,” he told the distraught couple.

  Sitting down with Jean, Roemer asked how she found out about Gary’s murder. She replied that she had gone to the Northport movie theater around noon the previous day to hang out with her friend Karen. The two had made plans to meet at the Midway, Northport’s local head shop, and then walk downtown to see a movie. Afterward, they planned to grab lunch at Phase II Heros on Main Street.

  Also joining them on that fateful day was Karen’s boyfriend, Jimmy Troiano. Jean was slightly intimidated by Jimmy. An eighteen-year-old high school dropout, Jimmy had a reputation for being a tough guy who dabbled in drug dealing and the occasional burglary. His physical appearance was also unsettling to some. Since he was a young boy, Jimmy Troiano’s face had been adorned with a large scar, along with a grin marked by a mouthful of unnaturally sharp teeth. The canines were the result of genetics, but the scar came from a childhood injury on a local playground. Some say a seven-year-old Jimmy took the chained hook from a swing set and jumped off the top, tearing his cheek open in the process. Others maintain he merely fell. Either way, Troiano’s face had earned him the unflattering nickname “Drac”—short for Dracula. Before he dropped out of Northport High School in the middle of his sophomore year, Jimmy’s classmates made sure “Monster Mash” was played in his honor at their ninth-grade dance.

  Once Jean arrived at the Midway, she exchanged small talk with Karen and Jimmy before asking the question that would change their lives forever.

  “Hey, I haven’t seen Ricky since I left for boarding school,” Jean said. “How’s he doing?”

  “Ricky” was Ricky Kasso, Jimmy Troiano’s best friend. Ricky’s taste for ingesting and selling LSD had earned him the tongue-in-cheek nickname “the Acid King.” In reality, Ricky’s kingdom was sparse. For the last three years, he had been bouncing back and forth between his parents’ home and living on the streets. His father, a strict disciplinarian, had no tolerance for his son’s drug-fueled rebellion. By spring 1984, Ricky was seventeen and homeless, with no job or education. He survived by sleeping on friends’ couches, inside public restrooms, and even in a sewer trench at the Port Jefferson railroad station. What little money he had from selling drugs usually went to buying more.

  “Oh, Ricky? He just killed some guy,” Jimmy replied. “What’s his name? Um . . . um . . . Gary.”

  “Gary Lauwers?” she asked. Jean knew Gary well. The two had been friends since they were in elementary school.

  “Yeah,” Jimmy replied nonchalantly.

  “What?!” Jean exclaimed. “That’s not funny, Jimmy!”

  “Nah, I’m serious!” Jimmy insisted. “Do you wanna go up and see it?”

  “ ‘No!” Jean replied. “What are you talking about?!”

  The three stood in the rain as Jimmy told them how there had supposedly been a “bad drug deal” between Ricky and Gary, so he and Ricky decided to ambush him. Jimmy and Ricky, along with their friend Albert Quinones, then lured Gary into Aztakea Woods and stabbed him to death. Karen laughed, thinking Jimmy was pulling a prank on Jean. She had no reason to believe the things her boyfriend was saying. The laughter caused Jean to temporarily relax and they all headed downtown to catch their movie. However, sitting in the darkness of Northport’s small theater, Jean couldn’t stop thinking about what Jimmy had said to her.

  What if Gary really was lying dead up in Aztakea?

  After the movie, Jean skipped lunch with Karen and Jimmy and called her mom from a pay phone, asking to be picked up right away. Once she got home, Jean quietly snuck over to a neighbor’s house and asked to use their phone. She called the Lauwers residence and Gary’s mother, Yvonne, picked up.

  “Hi, Mrs. Lauwers, this is Jean,” she said. “Is Gary home?”

  “No, Jean, he’s not,” Yvonne replied. “I haven’t seen him in two weeks.”

  Jean felt a chill dancing up her spine. She hung up and immediately called the Northport Village Police Department.

  While Jean’s story seemed believable to Roemer, he still wondered if the girl was simply the butt of a cruel joke. After all, he knew about Kasso, Troiano, and the trouble they liked to cause.

  “Jean, is it possible Jimmy may have been lying to you?” he asked. “We checked the woods yesterday and we didn’t find anything.”

  “Oh, of course!” the pretty young blonde said, desperate to believe Roemer’s suggestion. “Jimmy definitely could have been telling me a story. . . .”

  Roemer left Madonna Heights wondering if this investigation had become a fool’s errand. He now had the names of the victim and the alleged killers, but no hard evidence. When he returned to headquarters, Roemer called the Suffolk County Police Department, asking for help locating Gary Lauwers’s remains. However, Suffolk County turned down this request, telling him that teenage gossip wasn’t enough to warrant their intervention. Undeterred, Roemer scheduled another search of Aztakea Woods for the following afternoon.

  When he returned to Madonna Heights the next morning, Roemer asked Jean Wells if she would be willing to take a polygraph test. She agreed without hesitation. When Jean arrived at the Suffolk County Police Department in Yaphank for the test, Roemer first had her meet with detectives from the homicide bureau. Upon hearing her story, the detectives decided Jean was credible, canceled the test, and agreed to help the Northport police search Aztakea that afternoon.

  Unfortunately, this search also came up empty. Due to severe thunderstorms, the police dogs could not key in on any kind of scent that might have led to a body. Tired and frustrated, the investigators decided to go home and try again the next day.

  Chapter 2

  THE UNMARKED POLICE CRUISER CRAWLED up Church Street and made a right onto Franklin. This afternoon would mark the third day spent roaming Aztakea Woods in search of Gary Lauwers’s body. The rain had finally let up overnight, leading to more manageable conditions, but some of the investigators had become frustrated. Most of them wished they were home. It was Independence Day, after all, and some had begun to suspect they were on a wild-goose chase.

  As more unmarked vehicles from the Suffolk County Police Department arrived, Officer Roemer grabbed his walkie-talkie. Suffolk County Homicide Detective Kevin James McCready, known to fellow officers as “Jim,” sat next to him, clutching his radio. Normally, the walkie-talkies would have been tuned to the Northport Village Police Department’s frequency, but special care was being taken to ensure the search was kept secret, to not tip off the suspects or the press, so a separate frequency was used.

  Soon after, a wave of car doors opened, releasing a small group of Suffolk County Police cadaver dogs, each partnered with an investigator. The dog teams were assigned specific areas, and after some brief discussion between the detectives, they entered Aztakea.

  It didn’t take them long to find what they were looking for.

  “Hey, guys, come on over here,” a voice called out through the static of Roemer’s walkie-talkie.

  Roemer and McCready exited their car and ran into the woods. About a hundred yards away from the opening path, they found a cadaver dog named Reb pulling on something embedded in the dirt. Roemer bent down for a closer look and realized Reb was chewing on a blood-soaked scalp. He pulled the dog away and radioed for the Suffolk County Crime Lab in Hauppauge to get to Aztakea ri
ght away.

  As Roemer lowered the walkie-talkie, he came upon another gut-wrenching realization—he had walked on top of this spot the day before, but the bad weather had prevented him from realizing it.

  Forensic scientists from the Suffolk County Crime Lab, along with police photographers and videographers, quickly descended on the scene. As tripods were set up, the forensic scientists started digging into the soggy ground. They soon realized how little work they’d have to do. Only an inch of soil and leaves covered the decaying corpse lying underneath.

  As more and more dirt was removed from the grave, the situation became increasingly grim. Chief Howard peered into the opening in the ground and was horrified to discover that Gary Lauwers’s head had all but rotted away, leaving little more than a skull lying next to the festering body’s feet. His first suspicion was that Lauwers had been killed by decapitation. The idea made the forty-three-year-old police chief sick to his stomach. In the two decades since he had joined the Northport Village Police Department, Howard had never gotten used to the sight of a dead body—and the maggot-infested remains lying before him didn’t change this.

  Unlike Howard, Roemer and McCready didn’t have time to ponder the cause of death. Exiting Aztakea, they walked back to their car and began their search for Ricky Kasso, Jimmy Troiano, and Albert Quinones. While Ricky and Jimmy were nowhere to be found after hours of searching, Northport Police Officer Tommy Schramm received a tip that Albert Quinones was at his home on Maple Avenue. While Roemer and McCready were more interested in locating Ricky and Jimmy, they definitely didn’t want Albert fleeing once word got out about Gary’s body being found. The two picked up Schramm, who was in plainclothes, and devised a plan wherein he would peek into a window at the Quinones residence, confirm Albert was present, and then meet the investigators at the Lewis Oliver Dairy Farm, two blocks over on Burt Avenue. There, the three would discuss their next move.

  Around one a.m., the unmarked police car gently braked in front of a two-story house on the corner of Maple Avenue and Oxford Street, about three doors down from the Quinones home. Schramm got out, and the car drove off. He then casually walked down the quiet, tree-lined block until he came to the small brown house marked “85.” Turning left onto the concrete walkway on the side of the house, Schramm approached a side window next to a wooden gate leading to the backyard. Peering inside, he saw Albert’s sister Wendy and a friend, sixteen-year-old Mark Florimonte, sitting in the living room. Albert was absent. Almost immediately, Wendy and Mark locked eyes with Schramm, and the two dashed toward the front door. Schramm backed away from the window as the teenagers came barreling out onto the porch, running after him.

  Sitting in their car two blocks away, Roemer and McCready heard their portable radios come alive. Someone inside the Quinones residence had called the police to report a “prowler.” Meanwhile, Wendy and Mark were chasing Schramm farther away from his rendezvous point. Roemer and McCready quickly realized Schramm wasn’t headed their way and began searching for him.

  The two eventually found Schramm, who jumped into the back seat as the cruiser sped off. While the twenty-seven-year-old officer sat catching his breath, Roemer and McCready began to wonder how they could bring Albert in for questioning without alerting his sister and friend. If one of them tipped off Ricky or Jimmy, finding the accused killers would become much more difficult.

  Roemer chuckled.

  He turned to Schramm and said, “Hey, Tommy, I got a good idea. . . .”

  The three then drove back to the police station, where Roemer told Schramm to get downstairs and put his uniform on.

  A short while later a marked Northport police cruiser pulled up in front of 85 Maple Avenue. The vehicle began shining its spotlight around the area, pretending to look for a burglar. Albert and Wendy Quinones, along with Mark Florimonte, saw the searchlight and approached the vehicle as a newly uniformed Tommy Schramm stepped out of the driver’s seat.

  “You guys see a prowler around?” Schramm asked.

  “Yeah!” Wendy and Mark replied in unison.

  Schramm asked the two to describe the man they had seen earlier, all while nodding along and trying not to laugh. When Wendy and Mark finished their descriptions, the officer offered a suggestion.

  “Why don’t you get in the back of the car?” Schramm said. “That way, if you see him, we can get him.”

  The three agreed and hopped into the police cruiser. Albert and Wendy sat behind Schramm, while Florimonte buckled himself into the passenger seat.

  Schramm began to drive, pretending to search for the mysterious “prowler” on the darkened streets of Northport. Looking out the rear passenger-side window, Wendy Quinones noticed a parked car with two men—Roemer and McCready—hiding behind it, and alerted Schramm, who then decided it was time to bring Albert in.

  First, however, he had to get rid of Wendy and Mark.

  Turning to Wendy, Schramm said, “You and Mark get out of the car, and Albert will stay with me. We’re about to do some police business, and I might need some help.”

  Wendy Quinones, tired of riding in the back seat of a police car, replied, “Oh, that’s good! Thank you very much!”

  The two exited the car, and Schramm drove back to the corner of Laurel and Main, making small talk with Albert. Once they arrived, Schramm parked the vehicle, picked up his radio, and called out to Roemer and McCready.

  “I got him,” Schramm said calmly.

  Albert looked around, noticeably confused.

  Suddenly the cruiser’s door flew open as Roemer and McCready pulled Albert from his seat. The two put him into their unmarked car and headed straight for the Suffolk County Police headquarters in Yaphank, about forty minutes away.

  Once there, Albert was brought into a private room by Suffolk County investigators and extensively questioned regarding Gary’s murder. Terrified that the police were trying to frame him, he refused to talk. After two frustrating hours, the detectives ended the interview and released Albert. Despite the lack of cooperation from the teenager, the investigators went to work obtaining an arrest warrant for Ricky and Jimmy.

  Meanwhile, back in Northport, the police were staked out on Main Street, silently observing a Fourth of July gathering of teenagers inside Cow Harbor Park. Mingling with the crowd were Ricky and Jimmy. The officers were tasking with keeping an eye on the two while Suffolk County worked on getting arrest warrants for them.

  Later, around four thirty a.m. on Thursday, July 5, the moment of truth finally came. Suffolk County detectives were given the go-ahead to apprehend Ricky Kasso and Jimmy Troiano. At some point during the night, however, the two had vanished.

  An hour later, Northport Police Sergeant Ed McMullen drove up Bluff Point Road, passing the Northport Yacht Club on his left. He observed nothing out of the ordinary on this dead-end street, so he turned around and continued his patrol elsewhere. A few minutes later, a battered old Pontiac driven by two stoned teens pulled up in front of a house across from the yacht club and parked. They rolled their windows down to bring relief from the muggy weather, and hung their legs outside the car.

  Around seven a.m., the Northport Village Police Department received a call from a homeowner on Bluff Point Road. She told the officer that a strange vehicle was parked in front of her house, and that two young men were sleeping inside it. Sgt. McMullen returned to the area and parked behind the maroon sedan. Thanks to a tip from one of Ricky’s acquaintances, McMullen, along with the rest of the investigators, was on the lookout for an “old purple car.” Standing before the Pontiac, he was confident that these were the guys he was looking for, but he had to be positive before calling for backup.

  McMullen approached the vehicle and found Ricky Kasso sleeping in the back seat and Jimmy Troiano asleep in the front. McMullen instantly recognized the two from their prior run-ins with law enforcement for burglary, vandalism, and drug use, and rushed back to his cruiser to alert dispatch. Officer Roemer was then contacted via the secret police frequ
ency.

  “They got your guys down on Bluff Point Road,” dispatch radioed.

  Acting quickly, Roemer, along with Chief Howard and more than a dozen other officers, arrived on Bluff Point Road and charged toward the Pontiac. Despite the flurry of action, Kasso and Troiano remained asleep in the car until the investigators opened the dented doors, guns drawn. Ricky and Jimmy were quickly cuffed, tossed into the backs of separate cars, and driven away. The detectives looked forward to interviewing the accused killers and finally getting some answers about what had happened to Gary Lauwers.

  Nothing could have prepared them for what they were about to hear.

  Chapter 3

  THE CARAVAN OF SQUAD CARS and unmarked vehicles sped away from Bluff Point Road and toward Suffolk County Police headquarters in Yaphank. When they arrived, Ricky was placed in a cell while Jimmy was questioned by McCready and Detective Lieutenant Robert Dunn, commanding officer of the Suffolk County Homicide Squad. Seated across from each other in the small interrogation room, Troiano and McCready were total opposites. Jimmy had long, unkempt hair and homemade tattoos, and he wore a smelly bootleg tie-dye Grateful Dead shirt and ratty blue jeans. McCready, on the other hand, wore a freshly dry-cleaned suit, an ironed dress shirt sporting an impeccably knotted tie, and well-combed hair that was neatly trimmed around his chiseled face.

  Visibly upset, Jimmy started talking. He told them the basics: his full name, date of birth, and former address. “Former” because he, like Ricky, had been recently thrown out by his parents, and the two were now living in the rusted-out Pontiac. After some pressing, Jimmy began to discuss the incident in question.

  “I’m not sure when, but Gary took ten bags of angel dust out of Ricky’s pocket,” he told the detectives. “I heard that Ricky was passed out at the time.”