Bronx Attacker's Ultimatum: Be Hit With a Bat, or a Pipe
By SAM DOLNICK and COLIN MOYNIHAN
Published: October 11, 2010
After he had been punched, kicked and stripped of his clothes and jewelry, the 17-year-old man was given a choice: the bat or the pipe.
New York City Police Department
Rudy Vargas-Perez, 22, was said to have reneged on a promise made through a lawyer to turn himself in.
Related
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Two Worlds Collide in a Gritty Bronx Neighborhood (October 10, 2010)
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Lured Into a Trap, Then Tortured for Being Gay (October 9, 2010)
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
The police said that on Oct. 3, nine men lured three others, whom they suspected of being gay, into 1910 Osborne Place, above, in the Morris Heights section of the Bronx.
Marcus Yam for The New York Times
After Nelson Falu, 17, was arraigned in Bronx Criminal Court on Sunday, his mother, second from left, maintained her son's innocence: "He goes to school. He's doing everything good."
His attackers, part of a gang of nine young men, were in the midst of a night of savage assaults against three men they suspected of being gay, according to a criminal complaint released on Sunday.
Before the night was out, the victims would be tortured with burning cigarettes, box cutter blades, plunger handles and more, prosecutors charged. But first, the 17-year-old had to make his selection.
"I guess the bat," he said.
Idelfonso Mendez, 23, the accused ringleader and chief interrogator, proceeded to beat the teenager with a bat, the authorities say; the beating may have been blunted by the bat's composition: plastic.
Fresh details of last weekend's attack against three men emerged Sunday in Bronx Criminal Court during the arraignment of eight men charged with crimes including gang assault, sexual abuse and unlawful imprisonment, all as hate crimes. The police were still searching on Sunday for the ninth suspect, Rudy Vargas-Perez, 22, who was said to have reneged on a promise made through a lawyer to turn himself in.
The men were part of a Morris Heights street gang who called themselves Latin King Goonies.
Prosecutors say the men lured a gay 30-year-old man and two 17-year-olds to an empty apartment in a four-story house on Osborne Place and tortured and beat them, in what city officials have called the worst antigay attack in recent memory.
Six of the men, including Mr. Mendez, were being held without bail, while Judge Harold Adler set bail of $50,000 cash or $100,000 bond for both Steven Carabello and Denis Peitars, both 17 and neither charged in the attack on the 30-year-old man, which was probably the most vicious.
Mr. Peitars will testify before a grand jury, according to his court-appointed lawyer, Fred Bittlingmeyer, who said his client had not participated in the sexual abuse and had been only tangentially involved in the attacks.
"This was not part of some gang scene," he said in court. He described the night as a group of people who were drinking together until "one individual let it get out of hand."
"The 17-year-olds, in particular, Judge, were just there," Mr. Bittlingmeyer said.
Mr. Carabello's lawyer, Paul Horowitz, said, "It's very dangerous to paint all of them with a broad brush."
After the arraignment, the mother of Nelson Falu, 17, another of the accused, maintained her son's innocence.
"He goes to school," said the woman, who identified herself only as Caroline. "He's doing everything good. He has a baby on the way. I raised a good boy. I know my son has nothing to do with this."
The attacks have stirred outrage across the city. Gay-rights advocates passed out leaflets in the Morris Heights neighborhood calling for tolerance, while elected officials denounced the attack.
"How can one human being be so inhuman to another simply on the basis of who they are?" Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg asked from the pulpit of the East Ward Missionary Baptist Church in East Harlem on Sunday.
"What kind of twisted logic spurs a large group of men to show off their toughness by ganging up on helpless individuals? That's not showing you're tough, that's just showing that you're weak and despicable."
A Bronx assistant district attorney, Theresa Gottlieb, laid out a harrowing narrative describing the attacks as something of a ritualized interrogation, led by Mr. Mendez, followed by a group beating.
The victims were all seated in a chair marked with a red bandanna and attacked with whatever was at hand — a plastic bat, a box cutter, even a shaving cream can.
As the charges were outlined in court on Sunday, the men, dressed in sweatshirts, sneakers and jeans, betrayed little emotion. They all were arrested Thursday and Friday, except for Elmer Confresi, who turned himself in on Saturday.
The first attack took place on Oct. 3, early Sunday morning, after one member of the group saw the 30-year-old man, who he knew was gay, with a 17-year-old who wanted to join the gang.
They brought the teenager to the nondescript brick building that they had used all summer as a party house.
Mr. Falu, according to the criminal complaint, cut the victim in the thigh, foot and back with a box cutter, saying: "You crazy. You lost your mind."
The complaint offered other specifics: that Mr. Mendez and David Rivera, 21, punched and kicked the victim, while Mr. Mendez asked him if he was gay; that Mr. Rivera hit him in the forehead so hard with can of a shaving cream that it left a bruise that lasted four days.
"If you snitch, your family is gonna get it," he said, according to the complaint.
Then, it said, Mr. Mendez inserted a wooden stick into the victim's rectum, and asked, "Do you like this?"
Later , while the victim who was beaten with a bat was still in the house, the men lured the 30-year-old to the house with the promise of a party.
"You like to have sex with the young ones," Mr. Mendez said to the man, the complaint stated, adding that Mr. Rivera blindfolded him and chained his hands behind his back. He was punched, burned with cigarettes and sodomized with a wooden object, prosecutors said.
The men took the man's keys and went to his home, where the authorities said they tied up his brother and stole three cellular phones, $1,000 in cash and a 52-inch television.
The other defendants are Bryan Almonte, 17, and Brian Cepeda, 17. The next court hearing is set for Thursday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/nyregion/11bias.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=nyregion
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