Albo-Skop Ninjas in New York

[Boreas]

'Bad guys before they got to America'
Former detective for Island D.A. had a line on the Balkan bunch

Wednesday, April 23, 2008
By Cormac Gordon
Staten Island Advance
Staten Island, N.Y.

-- The Ninja Burglar case has a long tail.

It stretches from a million-dollar neighborhood on top of Todt Hill all the way to the rugged mountains outside Debar in Macedonia, just across the border from Albania.

That's where at least some of the men who committed the 19 high-profile Island "Ninja" burglaries hailed from, and where a couple of them have returned -- or are on their way to -- compliments of the U.S. government.

How did the local crime story track across the Atlantic Ocean and through Western Europe to the villages of the Korab Mountains, ending in a dusty town along some of the world's most ancient smuggling routes?

At least in some measure because of an NYPD connection that goes back 25 years and dozens of Island cases, most of which centered on murder and organized crime.

Joe Rauchet was a detective in the Island district attorney's squad back in the days of Bill Murphy's reign.

He showed up in Murphy's office in the early 1980s as a young cop who refused to wear socks to work, and ended his career there several years ago with a reputation as the lead detective on some of the biggest organized crime cases in Island history.

After locking up Junior Gotti and Pete Rose's bookmaker and half the Island hierarchy of the Bonanno crime family, with the help of a dozen or so other pros on Murphy's staff, Rauchet moved on to the state attorney general's organized crime task force.

And a couple of years back, when newly free countries in Eastern Europe began feeling pressure from sophisticated organized crime clans, he went off to Macedonia to fight some more battles in a different setting, this time under contract for a company of experts paid by the U.S. Justice Department.

"I'm in the land of the abandoned pillboxes [defense fortifications]," Rauchet said by phone yesterday from Skopje, Macedonia, an hour's ride from the war-torn border villages that some of the Island burglars called home.

What's it like?

"The weather's good," the long-time Islander laughed. "And there's plenty of work to keep busy."

Like many newly independent countries in that part of the world, Macedonia has its challenges. Problems like a 35 percent unemployment rate, a weak criminal justice infrastructure and ethnic tensions between the Eastern Orthodox majority and the Muslim minority.

"There are a lot of people with time on their hands and no money," Rauchet said. "And because of all the recent warfare in this part of the world, there are plenty of guns."

TOXIC MIX

That toxic mix is what produced the street kids who took the usual illegal routes through Western Europe into the U.S. and, eventually, to Staten Island.

When they arrived, the figuring was they'd continue doing what made them money back home.

But Todt Hill isn't the anything-goes mountains of the Balkans.

And once Island detectives identified the newly arrived crooks as suspects in the "Ninja" burglaries, which was months ago, some of the NYPD veterans involved reached out to the cop they'd worked with back in the day, the guy who didn't wear any socks.

Rauchet met with the burglary task force on a fall trip back to New York.

"They did all the work," Rauchet insisted yesterday. "It was the Island detectives who did the investigation and identified the bad guys. I just helped them where I could with a little background."

Rauchet placed histories with names for the Island cops, and gave them a heads-up as to who had associated with whom back in the old country.

"They were bad guys before they got to America," he said.

As of right now, the result of the investigation is going to be a couple of suspects charged with some Island burglaries and a couple more deported.

None is being tagged in the actual "Ninja" crimes.

THE RIGHT GUYS

But cops are sure they have the right guys. Police brass are so certain, in fact, they shut down the investigation a while back.

Case closed, you might say.

And the wacky conspiracy theorists and homegrown Sherlock Holmes types who don't believe the obvious are like the folks still looking for those riflemen who were on the Grassy Knoll that day.

Like a lot of other investigations, the Ninja Burglar case became a big deal to the public because it was out of the norm. Second-story criminals in a ritzy residential area. Thieves dressed all in black.

Everyone -- except the victims -- likes that sort of thing.

But it was solved in the old-fashioned way just about all of them are. There was plenty of hard work by good cops, and they know who they are. NYPD Major Case was involved, guys who have been at this sort of thing longer than most other cops have been alive. And the Island's precinct squads. There were specialists from everywhere in the city, and young undercovers who looked the part and spoke the native language of the burglars.

First, the task force narrowed down the field of possible suspects. Then they put hours and hours into watching the bad guys and gathering evidence.

All that was needed was a break.

They got that with an unrelated burglary arrest.

And to fill out the picture, they had an old NYPD connection from halfway around the world.

Skopje isn't Todt Hill.

But these days, the two places are not that far apart.


http://www.silive.com/columnists/gor...l=1&thispage=1

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