The Day After: The Life and Times of a New York FBI Agent

By Jason Randazzo

The Day After: The Life and Times of a New York FBI Agent tells the true stories of an FBI agent and some of the cases that were investigated in New York throughout a twenty-eight-year career. The cases and events involve a variety of investigations that have been publicized in the news...and a few that the public have never heard about. The inner workings of the New York Office of the FBI are described in detail, which allows the reader to envision how this relatively secretive world operates from the viewpoint of the rank-and-file "brick" agent. As in my first book, entitled Just Another Day, this book also reveals the stories of interactions with characters on both sides of the law. And the characters run from my neighborhood friends and associates in New York to those individuals whom you have seen either in the news, on the television, or in social media.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886548761

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The Day After

The Life and Times of a New York FBI Agent

Jason Randazzo

Copyright © 2023 Jason Randazzo

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88654-864-8 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88654-882-2 (hc)

ISBN 979-8-88654-876-1 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Up, Up, and Away

Just the Facts

That's a Wrap!

About the Author

Part 1

Up, Up, and Away

My book Just Another Day followed my life through the interactions with people from the neighborhood where I was raised in Richmond Hill, Queens, as well as through my career in law enforcement. It also contained stories regarding the relationships between cops and robbers, explored the mindset of confidential informants and the motivation for their actions, and delved into investigations and how they were conducted. The Day After comes through with the cases and other stories of interest that could not fall seamlessly into the pages of the first book. Also held in these pages are the photographs that were not able to make it in the first book, which was published during the pandemic of 2020 at no fault of the publishing house.

I have been asked by many as to the inspiration for writing my first book, Just Another Day. And before I go any further, there are some people mentioned in this book who are more widely described in that book. So if you didn't read the first book, it would behoove you (now there's a word I reference in the first book) to put this book down in a drawer where you won't be tempted to pick it up sooner than you should pick it up, go to your computer, and order Just Another Day. Believe me, this will all come together a lot easier if you do what I just wrote.

I spent a lot of time in the Hamptons throughout the 1980s into the 2000s. I was introduced to it by a friend from the neighborhood named Nick, also known as Buba. Unlike the glitzy areas patronized by celebrities in Bridgehampton running east to the town on the end of Long Island called Montauk, Buba and the people whom I would associate with would go to the ghettos of the Hamptons. And I use that term only in comparatively, as you still needed money to stay there, to drink there, and to party there.

During the time we were raised in Richmond Hill, Buba stayed with his friends who hung out at PS90 on 108th Street just north of Jamaica Avenue. Since my friends and I hung out in the schoolyard of PS51 between 117th and 118th Streets just south of Jamaica Avenue, we were close rivals. Together with the group of guys who hung out on 112th Street just south of Jamaica Avenue, we called ourselves 90 Park, 51 Park, and 112 Park respectively. We organized ourselves into softball and basketball, as well as football teams. We played other organized football teams that we would see out on the fields of grass at Victory Field, at the intersection of Woodhaven Boulevard and Myrtle Avenue, and on artificial turf at John Adams High School.

Buba's team had players who were slightly older than us and, in effect, a bit more mature physically. Whereas we had the best teams in the neighborhood in most sports because of the skill level of our players, the transition to the brutal game of football was not as smooth when the guys involved were fifteen to seventeen years of age playing against competitors who were nineteen to twenty-four. And when the older players came with guys whose nicknames were Big Nick, Nutty, and Nutz, that merely magnified the difference in age and, more importantly, size and ferocity. As men get older, the difference of six to eight years in age is rather insignificant. But while we were still maturing, the difference in age was bone-rattling on the football field.

They trounced us for years. Their quarterback, Richie LaVag, was identical in the mold of Ken the Snake Stabler of the then Oakland Raiders. He was a lefty thrower with a smooth delivery who could run sweeps behind his mammoth line after having a few beers in the clubhouse that morning. They would leave our defensive line and linebackers, one of which was me, in their wake as the phalanx cut through us like a hot knife through butter. Fitz, the Greene brothers and cousins (112 Park had the Browne family, who also had both brothers and cousins), and other skilled players whom they eventually poached from other teams that they had pounded into submission filled out their roster.

We would play against them a number of times each year, our quarterback Steve, who was our most talented player athletically, running for his life from the large men against the offensive line of the boys that we had on the field. Johnny would make a spectacular diving catch of a bomb, followed by a drop of a routine catch that would have given us a crucial first down. It took a few years before we were able to add our own pieces to our puzzle of other talented, and larger, players and matured to the point where we could at least be competitive with the teams who had stomped on us during that time.

And as we eventually added the beef to our team, we seemed to enlist some eclectic personalities as well. Most of the teams that we played against would wear uniforms. The brutes who taunted us for years from 90 Park looked like the Penn State Nittany Lions. Members of our team looked like they picked out their least smelly jersey from the basement that morning. Some would have car dealer advertisements or Mickey Mouse on the front of their jerseys.

And as the new players prepared for the games on the sidelines, they didn't strap on the same protective equipment that most of us purchased from the long-forgotten Herman's sporting goods store on Queens Boulevard. These guys found stuff throughout the house, especially from the basement or kitchen, which would be covered by plenty of gauze and tape. Our opponents had no idea what they were hitting them with. From across the field, we looked more like some of the characters from the movie The Road Warrior. Although we officially represented ourselves as 51 Park, as time went by, other teams began to call us the Convicts. And it was a moniker that we embraced, for what we lacked in appearance, we made up with in playing ability.

We were not only competitive against 90 Park but also dominant against other teams. However, there came a time when we all were coming of the age of responsibility. We were winning games at a high percentage up until the time that a few of us became civil servants for the City of New York and a few more started jobs that became their careers. We ended our playing careers because of the demands of full-time employment, where the risk of physical injury could jeopardize our livelihoods. The depletion of those players led to the demise of the team but left many great memories on the grass of Victory Field and the artificial turf at John Adams High School.

After the team disbanded, I played my one season of organized football with the Lynvet football team. We had a lot of heart but were devoid of much talent and didn't win many games. After I became an NYPD cop, I joined their football team for the 1986 season. That team was very good and won every game that year except the final showdown with the NYC Fire Department team at Columbia University's Baker Field, located at the very top of Manhattan. Since the team was set with their veterans, I saw limited time on the field, which was mostly mopping up the last quarter during lopsided victories. But the experience was still rewarding as I was proud to be one of fifty-some players who represented the NYPD.

But during those earlier years, I had developed bonds with the players on that 90 Park team. We all patronized the same bars of Richmond Hill, whether it was Glenn's bar, the Shield, Jagermeisters, Lenihan's tavern, or the Little Brown Jug, and away from the fields and the streets, we could be friends. The legal age to consume alcohol and patronize those establishments then was eighteen, and of course, being from the neighborhood, it was unofficially lowered to sixteen. Buba, who became an actuary, took me from the neighborhood bars of Richmond Hill that we all frequented and introduced me to the party life of the Hamptons.

Big Nick and I came to blows after a play on the field. Fortunately for me, the bulkiness of football equipment inhibited flexible movement for fighting and likely saved me from being pulverized by him. However, after that game, Nick seemed to gain a newfound respect for someone who did not just walk away from him after he tried to instill his will of intimidation. I maintained a close friendship with Nick, who would become an executive for one of the four big accounting firms, until his move to New Jersey with his growing family and my awkward hours working in law enforcement made those personal encounters harder to sustain over time.

Big Nick was a graduate of St. Bonaventure University, who later became a high-flying executive for one of the big four New York City accounting firms. Our friendship rose to the point that I listed him as a reference on my FBI application. Another of his teammates who went by the same first name was also listed on my FBI application. He was widely known by his nickname Buba, and his occupational stature as an actuary belied his wild escapades, many of which occurred both in the bars of Richmond Hill as well as a share house in the summer party platform of the Hamptons.

Buba had his share in a rental house in Hampton Bays. Now these aren't your typical rental houses that would populate the towns surrounding Hampton Bays like Westhampton, Quogue, East Quogue, and Southampton. There were no families of four with a dog having picnics in the yard. These share houses were usually rented by a few people, all single of mixed genders, who would provide the money and sign the contract for the house. They, in turn, then went one of two ways: they either had enough friends and associates who could populate the entire number of shares or they had to reach out with advertisements to people they did not know who had enough money to purchase a share in the house.

The simple mathematics then involved those individuals who would then figure out the number of shares that would be accommodated in the house and divide that by the price paid for the rental. The share would entitle you to a bed in the house, usually in a bedroom that had beds lined up to where you had to walk on the balls of your feet to keep your balance and not step on someone else's bed. The houses would be very large, having at least four but usually as many as six or seven bedrooms. And of course, there was the obligatory large swimming pool in the backyard, sometimes with a Jacuzzi.

A full share would be entitled to a bed, usually the same one, every weekend from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day weekend. A half share, if you didn't want to shell out for the full, would be entitled to a bed, usually not the same one, every other weekend during the same stretch of time. But since there was never a shortage of people in their twenties and thirties from the five boroughs of New York City who wanted to fill those beds, or at least have a place to rest in between helping members of the opposite sex fill their beds in this house or another one somewhere else, needing half shares to fill the house were rare.

And if you didn't know enough people to chip in shares to account for the rental price, then a bit of advertisement in the Village Voice, local newspapers, or company bulletin boards would yield results like shooting fish in a barrel. There were a lot of people with raging hormones in a city where, although the population was in the millions, plenty of them tended to feel lonely and isolated in small apartments. Those three summer months was an opportunity not only to flee the hot, sticky, humid air of the concrete jungle but also a chance to meet people of both genders whom you would never meet under the normal gruel of working in the City of New York. The only downside of attracting share people through this process is, you don't know what you're getting.

Through the years, I would continue to go out there, whether by car or motorcycle, never by the Long Island Rail Road or the Hampton Jitney as a lot of the city dwellers would make their way out there. I would sometimes go out as a guest of someone, like I had done with Nick, but I had also gotten shares with cops whom I worked with or friends whom I associated with. There were always plenty of animals, and I mean that affectionately, like myself who looked for beer, liquor, a little bit of food to keep them upright, and a queen for a lifetime…or at least the weekend!

The bars and clubs, including the bartenders and staff, looked to maximize their potential profits with cover charges, long lines, and plenty of waitresses and shot girls for those who had a hard time making their way through the three-deep mass of partygoers at the bar. The city dwellers sought their summertime fun by day either at the beach or by their backyard pools before showering after the long day and heading out at night to the bars and clubs.

And clubs were plentiful. There were the outdoor venues like the Bay Club, the Beach House, Foggy Goggles in Hampton Bays, and the Drift Inn on that sliver of pavement called Dune Road. A gigantic indoor venue was CPI, a.k.a. Canoe Place Inn, a majestic structure near the Shinnecock Canal off Old Montauk Highway in Hampton Bays. CPI, historically one of the oldest taverns in the United States where British troops were once housed 150 years ago, was touted having the longest bar on the East Coast. There was Club Marrakesh and Casey's in Westhampton and, of course, Buba's favorite place, the World-Famous Ed's Bay Pub in a strip mall right near an all-night pizzeria in the center of Hampton Bays. Many a time we would walk into Ed's to cap off a night of partying and join the crowd as they got whipped into a frenzy grooving to the band James's song Laid, Buster Poindexter's Hot, Hot, Hot, New Order's Bizarre Love Triangle, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones' The Impression That I Get, Redbone's Come and Get Your Love, or Dexys Midnight Runners' C'mon Eileen as it bellowed out from the jukebox speakers before ending the night with a rendition of Don McLean's American Pie.

And for those who sought to start their drinking early and not just stay by the pool or go to Ponquogue or Tiana Beach, there were Summer's and Neptune's bars. These clubs were adjacent to each other on Dune Road and featured enormous decks that stretched onto the beach where bikinis and beer were the call of the day. The MTV channel rented a house within walking distance from these places during the summer to host their shows and parties.

And lastly, the only bar from those days that is still in existence is the Boardy Barn. The Boardy Barn is simply an outdoor tent that is open from late morning until the afternoon on the weekends. A long line preceded a party on pavement that featured cheap plastic mugs of beer, which, by the end of the day, ended up more being splashed on drunken people by other drunken people than imbibed by the patrons.

And it was during those party weekends drinking beers around the pool that I would tell some stories of the people who were raised in my neighborhood in Queens to my cousin Deb's husband, Rich. After three summers of renting someone else's house, Rich, Deb, another friend, and I decided to buy our own Hampton house. Buba had met his future wife, Bernadette, in the Hamptons, and in 1995, they decided to spend their time battling less traffic and being closer to home during the summers by purchasing a small condo in Long Beach on the south shore of Nassau County, Long Island. It was an opportunity that I appreciated being offered and smartly accepted.

Deb was familiar with the party element in the Hamptons. She and Rich had no plans to raise children. So the idea of taking our drinking get-togethers from the compound, as we called their large living room where we congregated to partake of our mixed drinks and beer, on the road out east to a rental house in the Hamptons with our friends seemed like a fun adventure.

And after a summer of fun in the sun out there, they came up with a great idea.

They collected the share money from whomever participated in coming out to the rental house over the summer. They would take a majority portion of the share money and pay the rental fee of the house to the owner, and then the remainder of the money would go to the expenses of keeping the house running from Memorial Day weekend through to Labor Day weekend. The expenses would include the electric bill, pool maintenance, landscaping, and other expenses associated with the house.

Over the winter, Deb and Rich proposed instead to purchase a house themselves to not only have fun in the sun but also to pay it off as an investment over time. Both a close friend of ours, Ken, and I proposed joining them in this financial venture. They welcomed the arrangement, and before we knew it, we had our own house on Apaucuck Point Road in Westhampton starting the summer of 2001.

During our time there, I told them a few of the stories about the people I grew up with in Richmond Hill. They often would give me a look as though I admitted to committing a murder. Their reactions literally inspired me to put fingers to the laptop and continue to recall the stories of my youth, my short career as a New York City police officer, and my continuing career as a special agent of the FBI. (And I won't say it again about what to do at this point while you are reading if you haven't done it before!)

After my yearlong assignment in California, I returned to New York to work in the largest field office of the FBI and took a hiatus from the summer ventures at the Hamptons. I was learning and growing into a passion; I could not have dreamed that the course of my career would wind as well as it did. The Hamptons became a source of unbridled summer fun, but during one summer, a deadly occurrence rained down from the sky.

Trans World Airlines (TWA) flight number 800 was a regular flight that originated late at night from John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City and flew across the Atlantic Ocean to Paris. For those who are reading this tome who are too young to know, there once was an airline called TWA, which has since been memorialized by a hotel of the same name located at JFK Airport. There was also an airline at the time called Pan American World Airways (Pan Am), which had its name displayed at the top of what is now known as the MetLife Building. Pan Am folded in 1991.

On July 17, 1996, at 8:19 p.m., the flight of the Boeing 747, which was built in 1977, took off and began its journey east, crossing over Long Island to continue on the trajectory toward Europe in fairly clear weather. The plane had arrived from Athens that afternoon without incident. But as it turned over the Atlantic Ocean, there was an explosion underneath the plane that also seemed to ignite the fuel tank. The flight turned into a ball of flame and debris as it descended from its flight path and scattered into the ocean not far from the south shore of Long Island. There were no survivors of the 230 souls who had been aboard the plane; 212 passengers along with a flight crew of 18 perished in the crash.

The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board responded to the scene on Long Island and soon established that there might have been either a criminal or terrorist act that caused the crash of the plane. Several witnesses had been interviewed who recalled seeing a bright light swirl a path toward the plane before a gigantic explosion erupted and the remaining pieces hurtled down to the ocean. It was decided at that point in time that the FBI should undertake the investigation, which might not have been an accident.

It was on the Saturday morning after the incident that I received a call from our Operations Center at the headquarters office in New York City from the duty agent. He told me to grab whatever gear that I deemed necessary with clothing to cover me for at least three days and respond to the Westhampton Volunteer Ambulance Corp (WVAC), where a command center had been established to conduct the investigation. Two other members of my squad, Doug and Mike, would also be responding there as well as other agents from other squads.

Much like the scene in the movie Mississippi Burning, when the FBI needs to mobilize to conduct a major investigation, no expense is spared and manpower is always flooded to the scene to make sure that there are more than enough personnel to carry out the job. Almost every agent who responded to this investigation brought appropriate attire for the tasks that lay ahead of them. The usual call to order established that, considering the laid-back community that they would be among, for the most part, agents would be decked out in polo shirts and khaki pants or jeans, better to blend in with the people they would interact with while conducting their interviews, especially considering the heat and humidity of the summer. Mike and I, like most of the other agents, were dressed in such a way that we were prepared to stay for at least three days, if not longer. Doug arrived at the WVAC wearing a blue suit with a tie cinched up at his neck, and that was the only thing that he brought with him, as he was convinced that he would be returning home that evening.

One friend I had out there, Tommy, whom I had met in the Hamptons years earlier and who would later become a NYC firefighter, was one of the owners of the bar called the Drift Inn. The Drift can be described as a large covered wooden deck that protruded over the water on the bay side of Dune Road. Dune Road ran the distance of the slice of land that was no longer than a half mile wide and several miles long. A restaurant named Oakland's sat at one end of this stretch of land, and Cupsogue Beach County Park capped a town called West Hampton Dunes at the other end. Multimillion-dollar houses dotted the land on both sides of Dune Road, some sitting on the bay side but the more expensive and exclusive of them on the beach side, which looked out onto the ocean. The island was hooked to the mainland by two bridges.

We had arrived that morning and were investigating reports of witnesses who claimed to have seen the streak of a bright light that ascended up toward the plane before the fatal explosion. These witness accounts were a major reason for the initiation and duration of the FBI's criminal investigation. We would receive assignments while at the Westhampton Volunteer Ambulance Corp building and then drive to these witnesses in pairs and conduct the interviews before returning to the station to document our interviews.

During our travels, we would individually seek reservations at hotels or motels in the Hamptons, which weren't easy during the summer and prohibitively expensive. Although we eventually were compensated at 50 percent over the per diem that was given for a room, we obviously doubled with another agent for a night's sleep, since the rooms were so expensive during the summer that money still had to be laid out from our own pockets to supplement the cost. But it was one of the few things that we never complained about.

After a long day, which went into the night of conducting these interviews and then documenting them, I suggested to Doug and Mike that we relax before the next morning of work by visiting Tommy at the Drift. We drove down and were lucky enough to be able to park the Bureau car on a dune that we hoped no one, including either the town or the Suffolk County Police, would bother with it. The parking plaque, which read that it was an official federal law enforcement vehicle, sitting next to the red ball police light noticeably placed on the dashboard was hopefully helpful in securing our spot. We met Tommy at the front of the long winding line where he hustled us past everyone in the scene.

Music blasted from the DJ booth as the crowd shimmied to the tunes on the dance floor. Tommy grabbed us a round of drinks before disappearing into the crowd to make sure things continued to run smoothly with the club. We were pretty exhausted from a long day of interviewing witnesses, many of whom saw a bright streak of light ascend to a point where it exploded over the ocean. We felt a need to decompress emotionally for a bit before catching a few hours of sleep and repeating the process again tomorrow. The gravity of the investigation had not escaped us, but a few hours of relief was needed to continue our duties.

As Mike and I visually scoured the crowd looking at all the scantily dressed pretty women seductively moving their curves, we noticed that we had lost sight of Doug. We changed our focus to see what he might have gotten mixed up with as Mike tapped my elbow. I turned to see Mike gazing up on top of the bar. I looked in the same direction expecting to see one of the hot club girls who had made her way on top of the bar, with the admiring help of the guys standing directly around her, and was now shaking her stuff for the entire crowd to see.

Instead, I saw a female bartender standing on top of the bar with a bottle of a mixed potion of liquor in her hand. Directly below her were several patrons awaiting a free poured shot of the jungle juice from the pourer right into their mouths, and among those patrons looking like a baby bird in his nest who was about to receive the regurgitated food from the mouth of its mother was Doug, his mouth widely perched open, waiting for her to pour away.

By this time of the night, Doug had dispensed with the jacket and tie. The bartender came around to him and poured the liquor while shaking her ass to the music. And as most of the mixed liquor made it into his mouth, some of it missed the mark and went to both the left and right, where it left drips down the front of both sides of his dress shirt. Mike and I looked at each other and laughed as we partied into the night until the place closed at 4:00 a.m. We thanked Tommy for a fun evening as we walked down the now empty plank where hundreds of people queued to enter the club a few hours earlier and drove back to the hotel for a few hours of sleep.

We met at the staging area of the Westhampton Volunteer Ambulance Corp building the following morning worse for wear from our previous night of activities to continue to conduct more interviews and document them on computers set up in the basement there. I saw Mike and Doug there—Mike dressed in a fresh set of clothes and Doug still attired in his stained dress shirt and pants. As I laughed throughout while eating the bagel and cream cheese that I retrieved from a table set up for us there, Doug and Mike teamed together for the next round of interviews, while I was partnered with a female agent who was new to the job. Mike, Doug, and I agreed that we would meet somewhere around lunchtime and take a drive to Tiana Beach for lunch.

As the four of us gathered after a morning of more interviews of witnesses, we decided upon my recommendation that we would stop at Summer's for lunch. As we walked to the entrance to the deck, which was manned by beefy bouncers, the music was blasting as a body shot contest was underway. Unlike everyone else who was waiting at the entrance who was dressed in beachwear, since Mike and I were dressed in polo shirts and khaki pants and Doug was attired in what was left of his nice suit, including the shirt with jungle juice stains rained down the front of it, the bouncers obviously knew that we were law enforcement agents from some agency and granted us unchecked access to the deck to conduct our inspection of the premises. The female agent reluctantly followed along.

Fanny packs were a trend during this time among men both straight and gay. Taking advantage of the trend, many agents would pack the large-caliber firearms that were carried by us in specially made fanny packs that would easily be accessed by pulling on a corner of the outside of the pack that was held tight by Velcro. The firearm would then be quickly exposed and ready to be deployed for action.

As we made our way to a corner of the deck, a guy was sucking down liquor from the navel of a girl who was lying prone on the bar. I called over them to the bartender for four beers. When I came back to the crew of us in the corner with the beers, they were gladly accepted by Mike and Doug…but the partner that I had for the day politely declined! I realized then that there wasn't going to be much fun that day between