Edgar Sandoval

He claims he cannot recall bludgeoning four men to death with a piece of metal.

“I was looking for bottles for cash,” Santos said in an interview at Rikers Island, where he was jailed awaiting trial for murder. “I needed the money because I was living on the streets and at an abandoned building. That’s all I remember.”

Santos’ claim of a memory lapse, whether truthful or a convenient ruse, did little to clear up the mystery surrounding the motive behind one of the most horrific quadruple murders in New York’s history, a seemingly senseless attack on random homeless men sleeping on sidewalks.

The case has highlighted cracks in the legal and social services systems that allowed Santos to roam the streets, even though he had committed several violent assaults before.

His family has blamed mental illness and drug abuse for his violent outbursts, including an attack on his own grandfather. His lawyer, Arnold Levine, did not return a call for comment. Santos has pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors have a strong case. Santos, 24, was holding a bloody, 15-pound metal bar when he was arrested, and security cameras from local shops recorded him as he sneaked up on the men while they slept and bashed in their heads, according to a criminal complaint.

Shown the video, Santos told investigators he was the attacker, according to court records.

‘I Want to Get Out of Here’

Before a short interview last week, Santos strolled to the visiting room decorated with colorful murals of flowers more reminiscent of an elementary classroom than a lockup.

“I don’t understand the charges or why I am here,” Santos said. “No one has explained them to me.” He blamed a language barrier for his confusion; he speaks only Spanish.

The night of the murders, Santos said, he recalled making his way downtown from an abandoned building in the Bronx where he had been staying. But the rest of the night, he said, was a blur.

Santos, wearing a tight brown jail jumpsuit, folded his hands and spoke softly and matter-of-factly about his goals once he is freed. He seemed unaware that if he is convicted he faces life in prison. “I take every class and activity they offer me here,” he said. “I want to educate myself. I try to stay active, occupied.”

He added: “I want to get out of here and have a future. I want to marry. I want to have children.”

‘Such an Explosion of Rage’

Santos’ stated desire to better himself seems at odd with his recent history. Over the past two years, Santos was given several chances by the criminal justice system to turn his life around. He had avoided long stints in jail and had been offered counseling, despite charges that he groped or assaulted several people.

Andrea Dazio, a 48-year-old investment banker from Milan, said he knew Santos would be a danger to others if he were not jailed.

Santos had attacked Dazio on Dec. 28, 2017, as he rode a subway train with his wife, Mirjana, and two children, breaking a bone under Dazio’s eye and opening cuts that required 22 stitches to close.

“I saw what he could do, such violence, such an explosion of rage,” Dazio said. “Nobody took care of this guy when they had the time.”

Dazio said Santos started staring at him and his family when they got on an F train at Avenue U in Brooklyn. “I can still picture his glance, so menacing,” he recalled.

For nearly an hour, Dazio took playful photos and videos of the family’s ride to Manhattan, incidentally capturing Santos sitting next to his wife, and two sons.

“He was mumbling and he was looking at me, but I really didn’t care,” Dazio said. “We were just smiling. We were on vacation.”

As the train approached Union Square, Santos abruptly stood up and yelled, “Why are you talking about me?” Dazio said. Then, Santos punched Dazio in the face, causing him to collapse on the seats. “I was bleeding all over the car, like I was hit by a truck,” Dazio said.

Santos grinned and sat down again, as Dazio’s wife took the boys to the other side of the train, Dazio said.

It took four police officers to arrest Santos after the train had stopped, Dazio said. Hours later, a judge set him free.

“They treated it like a fight between brothers fighting for a piece of cake,” Dazio said. “How could they let him walk free? I knew he was going to hurt other people.”

Dazio said he told prosecutors he was willing to return to New York to testify against Santos but was never called. The Manhattan district attorney’s office said the case was dismissed and sealed.

‘I’ve Had a Complicated Life’

The attack on Dazio was not an isolated incident.

Around the same time, Santos’ mother had kicked him out of her Bronx apartment after he assaulted his grandfather during an argument, his family said. An aunt said she later tried to persuade Santos to go to a drug rehabilitation clinic — he had been depressed and abusing drugs that made him paranoid, she said — but he balked at the idea of being unable to leave the facilities when he wanted.

A year ago, Santos was arrested on charges he choked and bit a 55-year-old man at a Manhattan employment agency. Four days later, he was accused of punching a man riding the Q train, officials said.

In March, a 19-year-old woman told the police he groped her buttocks during a stay in a Queens shelter. Then in May, Santos, in a fit of rage, punched a 24-year-old at a Brooklyn shelter, officials said.

Santos is scheduled to respond to the groping charge and a Brooklyn fare evasion theft charge in December and January, officials said.

In most cases, he was released because the victims either declined to press charges or stopped cooperating, law enforcement officials said.

In two cases, a judge gave him a chance to avoid jail time if he enrolled in counseling programs. Santos, however, never signed up for the programs and, after he skipped a court date for the groping charge, warrants were issued for his arrest.

Police officers then picked Santos up on a warrant over the summer. He was sent to Rikers Island but released in August after the Bronx Freedom Fund, a charity that posts bail for poor people charged with low-level offenses, put up $1,000.

A week before the Chinatown rampage, Santos attacked a 38-year-old homeless man sleeping in a park on the riverside near the High Line, beating him with a stick and trying to throw him over a barricade and into the river, police said.

Asked about his previous arrests for assault and his decision not to attend court-ordered counseling, Santos shrugged.

“I’ve had a complicated life,” he said. Then he ended the interview.

Plans to Return Home

Maria Guadalupe Vazquez, 32, said her father, Nazario A. Vazquez, 54, who was among the four men killed in Chinatown, might still be alive today if Santos had been convicted in one of the previous assaults.

“It took four murders to keep him behind bars,” Vazquez said.

Five years ago, Nazario Vazquez had left his wife and five children behind in a small hamlet about 40 miles southeast of Mexico City to come to live with his daughter on Staten Island. He found work at restaurants and cleaning boats — “any place that would hire him,” his daughter said.

But he also befriended homeless men in Chinatown while waiting for buses that took him to out-of-state casinos, she said. It was not unusual for him to disappear for days at a time.

“Some days I would call him worried, ‘Dad, where are you?’ ” Maria Vazquez recalled. “He would say, ‘Don’t worry daughter, I’m OK.’ ”

Before his murder, Nazario Vazquez had made plans to return his home in San Juan Tehuixtitlán in December. “He was tired,” Maria Vazquez said. “He said, ‘Hija, I lived all the years that I were meant to live here. It’s time to go back.’ ”

In October, Nazario Vazquez was buried in his hometown.

“My mother and brothers could not wait for my father to return,” she said, weeping. “Just not like this, not in a casket.”

This article originally appeared in

Suspected Killer Recalls Little. But Past Victims Remember Him.

NEW YORK — Randy Santos says he remembers walking through Chinatown at 2 a.m. looking for cans and bottles to get the deposit money. He remembers police officers motioning him to stop. He remembers feeling perplexed when they handcuffed him.

Bailey had a front-row seat as federal prosecutors unspooled Guzmán’s long career shipping hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States and orchestrating the deaths of dozens of people to protect his vast operation.

On Wednesday, Bailey was back in a courtroom, this time as a defendant.

Bailey was accused by prosecutors in Queens of moonlighting as a bodyguard for people he believed to be drug dealers and of selling illegal drugs, according to a criminal complaint. Bailey, who became an officer 12 years ago, was suspended without pay.

Karlton Jarrett, an assistant Queens district attorney, said in court Wednesday that Bailey had worked off-duty jobs, including as “escort security” for Guzmán’s wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro.

Bailey has not entered a plea, and his lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The accusations against the officer involve wrongdoing that occurred long after the trial of Guzmán ended and are not related to the Mexican drug cartel he controlled.

The acting Queens district attorney, John Ryan, said Bailey had betrayed his oath of office.

“Today, sadly, he is accused of taking part in an illicit drug operation,” Ryan said in a statement. “This kind of malfeasance will not be tolerated.”

New York’s police commissioner, James O’Neill, also expressed his dismay.

“There is no place for corruption within the NYPD,” O’Neill said. “When an individual officer intentionally tarnishes the shield worn proudly by thousands before him, he will be held to the highest account the law provides.”

Bailey had worked briefly for a company that provided transportation for Aispuro, police said. Police officers often work second jobs, but it was not clear if the department knew at the time that Bailey had arranged to work for Aispuro.

The investigation of Bailey began in July after his commanding officer raised concerns about him, according to Assistant Chief Brian O’Neill, executive officer of the Internal Affairs Bureau. O’Neill would not say what those concerns were.

According to the criminal complaint, Bailey, 36, agreed to act as a security guard and to transport and sell cocaine from late August to mid-September.

On Aug. 27, Bailey first agreed to act as a security guard for a drug dealer who turned out to be an undercover police officer.

Bailey met with the same undercover agent on Sept. 4 in Astoria, Queens, and held open a duffel bag while three packages — one of them containing cocaine and the other two with material meant to look like cocaine — were placed in the bag, the complaint said.

Bailey was paid $2,500 to take the bag to a parking lot and give it to a man who was also an undercover police officer. Later, Bailey again offered security services to the first undercover officer, and he was paid $10,000 to pick up 2 kilograms of cocaine, according to the complaint.

Bailey faces a host of charges including first-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance, first-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance, second-degree conspiracy, second-degree bribe receiving and official misconduct, officials said.

Bailey’s brother, Joshua Bailey, 34, said his family was in disbelief over the accusations. He described the officer as a dedicated member of the force and a father of two.

“He’s a good man, a good father,” Bailey said. “I can’t believe this.”

Officer Who Guarded El Chapo's Wife Is Accused of Dealing Drugs

NEW YORK — A New York City officer named Ishmael Bailey had an off-duty job as a bodyguard this year for the wife of one of the most notorious defendants to step inside a courthouse — Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the Mexican drug lord known as El Chapo.

<h1>At the door, Gilbert told his elated mother he needed time alone with his father to discuss business.</h1>

Less than five minutes later, his father, Thomas Gilbert Sr., a 70-year-old hedge fund manager, lay dead on his bedroom floor, shot in the head.

On Friday, a jury in Manhattan found Gilbert guilty of second-degree murder, rejecting an insanity defense after two days of deliberation.

Gilbert stared straight ahead with no expression as the foreman read the verdict and one by one the six men and six women of the jury affirmed the decision. He faces 25 years to life when Justice Melissa Jackson sentences him Aug. 9.

His lawyer, Arnold Levine, had argued that the shooting was the act of a mentally ill man who was too impaired to comprehend what he was doing. Prosecutors had countered that Gilbert was a ungrateful son — angered because his father had cut him off financially — who had planned the murder after purchasing a pistol in Ohio seven months earlier.

Levine said he planned to appeal. “Someone like Tommy doesn’t belong in state prison,” he said. “He needs to be in a psychiatric hospital.”

The murder four years ago of Gilbert’s father, a well-known figure in Manhattan and the Hamptons, stunned New York’s high society.

During the five-week trial, prosecutors painted a portrait of a troubled young man, born with many advantages in life, who failed to make his own way and then developed an irrational anger toward the father who had supported him with a weekly $1,000 allowance.

Gilbert, 34, attended private boarding schools on the Upper East Side and in New England, graduated from Princeton with an economics degree and was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps to a lucrative Wall Street career, witnesses said.

His father tried unsuccessfully to bring him into the family business, Wainscott Capital Partners.

But Gilbert never flourished. Instead, he spent years living off his parents while he surfed, traveled the world and attended exclusive social clubs in Manhattan and the Hamptons.

He was diagnosed with several mental illnesses, including obsessive compulsive disorder, depression and schizophrenia, and his parents sought help from doctors who prescribed him medication that he refused to take, according to testimony.

His mother, Shelley Gilbert, recalled on the witness stand feeling delighted when her son, whom she referred to adoringly as Tommy, showed up unannounced at their Turtle Bay apartment on the afternoon of Jan. 4, 2015.

“He came in and told me he wanted to talk to Dad about business, and so I was excited about that,” she said.

She testified that she had not seen her son in months, so she obliged when he asked her to go out to buy him a sandwich and a Coke, a brand of soda he knew his parents never stocked in the apartment.

On her way out, she went to the bedroom where her husband was watching a sports game from his bed.

She quietly put on a pair of sneakers and left the apartment without saying a word to her husband about her son’s arrival. She told the jury she wanted father and son to sort out their differences on their own.

But she changed her mind as soon as she stepped out of the doorman building, thinking the two might need a mediator if they got into a confrontation, she said.

Three minutes later she returned to find her husband lying dead next to their bed, she said. She called 911, and according to a recording played for the jury, when the operator asked who had shot her husband, she replied, “My son, who is nuts.”

The fact that Gilbert asked his mother to go out and buy him a sandwich and a soft drink proved important in deliberations, three jurors said after the verdict.

Although the jurors believed Gilbert struggled with mental illness, the panel came to a consensus that he knew killing his father was morally wrong because he went out of his way to clear the room before committing the crime.

“It was the can of Coke,” said one juror, Julie Thiry-Couvillion, 32, a Broadway wardrobe supervisor. “And also the fact that she offered to make him something there and he said, ‘I’d like you to go out.’ It let us know that he knew what he was doing.”

Levine had tried to convince the jury that his client’s mental illness clouded his sense of reality, preventing him from understanding his actions or knowing they were wrong.

Most notably, he said, Gilbert became obsessed with the idea that random objects, and even people around him, would contaminate him with unknown, toxic substances. As he grew older, his delusions led him to be aggressive toward his father, according to three psychiatrists and a psychologist summoned by the defense.

“It’s mental illness — that’s not the real Tommy,” Levine said during closing arguments. “Tommy Sr. was the object of Tommy’s delusions.”

But prosecutors argued that while Gilbert suffered from conditions commonly treated with medicine, his moral judgment was not impaired.

They portrayed him as an entitled and vindictive son who carefully planned to kill his father when his father followed up on a threat and cut his allowance to $300 a week.

“This defendant didn’t want to grow up and be an adult,” the lead prosecutor, Craig Ortner, said during closing arguments. “When his father tried to push him along in that direction and cut his allowance, he threw the ultimate tantrum.”

To help prove the killing was premeditated, prosecutors called to the stand John Jay Bennett, a former U.S. Navy service member, who told jurors that Gilbert drove 570 miles to a town in rural Ohio to buy a .40-caliber pistol he had advertised on Facebook.

Detectives also asserted Gilbert had placed the pistol in his father’s left hand in a clumsy attempt to make the death look like a suicide.

Ortner, in his summation, said Gilbert acted because he was about to lose his only financial support.

“The timing shows a rationality. It disproves his insanity defense,” the prosecutor said. “A truly insane person kills for no reason at all. They strike seemingly at random times and places. That’s not the case here.”

Princeton Graduate Found Guilty of Killing Father Over Allowance

NEW YORK — For a brief moment, Thomas Gilbert Jr.’s surprise visit to his parents’ home had the markings of a wayward son seeking to mend a strained relationship with his father.

Princeton graduate found guilty of killing father over allowance

At the door, Gilbert told his elated mother he needed time alone with his father to discuss business.

To help prove the killing was premeditated, prosecutors called to the stand John Bay Bennett, a former U.S. Navy service member, who told jurors that Gilbert drove 570 miles to rural Ohio to buy a .40-caliber gun that he had advertised on Facebook.

But six minutes into the call, Shelley Gilbert revealed the uniquely heart-wrenching circumstances she found herself in on the afternoon of Jan. 4, 2015.

“He has been shot,” Gilbert said, trying to keep her voice calm.

When the operator asked her who had done it, she quickly added: “My son, who is nuts. But I had no idea he was this nuts. He shot him in the head.”

Moments earlier she had greeted her son, Thomas Gilbert Jr., and had left him alone with his father, Thomas Gilbert Sr., a fixture on Wall Street who had founded a successful hedge fund.

The killing stunned New York society four years ago with its scandalous details: an Ivy League-educated child of privilege accused of killing his father for cutting back his $1,000 weekly allowance.

A jury heard the agonizing 911 call during the first day of testimony in Thomas Gilbert’s trial on second-degree murder charges.

Thomas Gilbert, 34, bearded and visibly gaunt, kept his head low as the 11-minute call played for the jury in state Supreme Court in Manhattan. Late in the afternoon, Justice Melissa Jackson reprimanded him for shouting “objection” several times, urging him to “refrain from these outbursts.”

Thomas Gilbert’s lawyers had argued unsuccessfully that he was unfit to stand trial because of mental illness, but prosecutors Tuesday worked to paint him as a vindictive child who had planned to kill his father for reducing his weekly allowance by hundreds of dollars.

“Rather than being a compulsive act of a person deranged, the evidence will show that this was a planned and calculated act of a self-absorbed and vengeful son,” Craig Ortner, an assistant district attorney, told jurors.

Ortner said Thomas Gilbert had showed up unannounced that afternoon, and had asked his mother to leave them alone to “talk about business.”

She found her husband on his back, his left hand covering a gun on his chest. Prosecutors have argued that the scene was clumsily staged to look like a suicide.

Shelley Gilbert testified Tuesday that she had agreed, reluctantly, to cut her son’s allowance in an effort to force him to seek psychiatric help.

“For years we wanted Tommy to go to a psychiatric hospital. We tried everything we could,” she said. “This wasn’t a disciplinary problem. This was a health problem — a severe one.”

Thomas Gilbert Sr. was an energetic 70 year old who still ran the successful hedge fund he founded in 2011, Wainscott Capital Partners Fund, when he was killed. He often played tennis at the River Club. He lived with his daughter and wife of 33 years in an apartment on Beekman Place in Turtle Bay.

“Tom Gilbert’s financial success was self-made. He made his money by wisely investing in the stock market,” Ortner said.

“At the age of 70, he still had a lot of living up to do.”

Unlike his father, Thomas Gilbert Jr., a graduate of Princeton University, had known few successes outside surfing and was not able to keep a steady job, prosecutors said.

Ortner said the younger man grew dissatisfied with his father’s diminishing financial help, even as he enjoyed a lavish lifestyle that included a Chelsea apartment, fine dining and vacations in Europe and Hawaii.

“He was able to do these things because his parents supported him,” he said.

Thomas Gilbert Jr. received psychiatric treatment and took medicine for depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses, “like many other New Yorkers,” Ortner said. Still, he said, he “knew what he was doing.”

Investigators determined that he had tried to order a gun via Facebook, but later drove to pick it up in Ohio after failed attempts to have it delivered to New York, prosecutors said.

“The evidence will not support that he was legally insane,” Ortner said. “The defendant was fully aware of what he was doing. The evidence will show that he executed his father in cold blood.”

But Thomas Gilbert’s lawyer, Arnold Levine, told the jury that the defendant had a 10-year history of psychotic illnesses and had failed to find proper treatment despite visits to many doctors.

He had been diagnosed with a long list of mental disorders including anxiety, paranoia, depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.

“He believed that people were trying to steal his soul,” Levine said. “Don’t be thrown off by motives manufactured. He was given serious medication for a decade. It renders him criminally not responsible.”

Shelley Gilbert said she was at first encouraged by her son’s impromptu visit.

“He came in and told me he wanted to talk to Dad about business, and so I was excited about that,” she testified. “That could be good for both of them.”

But after leaving, she said, she decided to return and grew worried when she put her ear to the door and heard silence.

“My husband was lying on the floor,” she said. “I remember calling his name and hoping he was just knocked out. And then I looked at him, and then I knew he was no longer with us.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="f92d2551-56b7-375e-ace8-1d6d382142a9" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/nyregion/murder-trial-thomas-gilbert.html">The New York Times</a>.

Wife of Slain Wall Street Banker: My Son Did It, but He 'Is Nuts'

NEW YORK — It began like a typical 911 call. The operator instructed a woman how to perform chest compressions on her husband, who was unconscious on the floor of their Manhattan apartment.

Wife of slain Wall Street banker: My son did it, but he 'is nuts'

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Edgar Sandoval

Articles written by the author

Suspected Killer Recalls Little. But Past Victims Remember Him.

Officer Who Guarded El Chapo's Wife Is Accused of Dealing Drugs

Princeton graduate found guilty of killing father over allowance

Princeton graduate found guilty of killing father over allowance

Wife of slain Wall Street banker: My son did it, but he 'is nuts'