2nd man acquitted in fatal ground zero fire (AP)

NEW YORK – A construction company safety supervisor was acquitted Wednesday of all criminal charges in a blaze that killed two firefighters at a condemned ground zero building, a verdict that marked the second acquittal in the manslaughter case.

Jurors cleared Jeffrey Melofchik a day after acquitting asbestos-cleanup foreman Salvatore DePaola of the same charges. A judge continued weighing the charges against a third man and a company as jurors spoke out about a trial they called a case of blaming a few for the mistakes of many surrounding the August 2007 fire at the former Deutsche Bank building. It was being dismantled in a complicated process designed to contain toxins.

"It was just a project with a lot of difficult things going on, and I didn't think anybody should be blamed for what happened," an elated but composed Melofchik, 49, said as he left court with his wife, Audrey, and other friends and relatives. Some had exclaimed "yes!" on hearing "not guilty" to the second of two manslaughter charges.

"It was a tragic event, and the fact that they ignored everybody else and just picked the three of us, I thought, was totally wrong," Melofchik said.

The blaze, which killed firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph P. Graffagnino, spotlighted poor oversight of the building, which had been damaged and contaminated in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Government agencies had missed inspections and failed to recognize dangers in the project's design.

Melofchik; DePaola, 56; and asbestos cleanup director Mitchel Alvo, 59, were the only people criminally charged in the fire. The John Galt Corp., which employed Alvo and DePaola, was the only company charged. The jury acquitted DePaola of all charges Tuesday.

"Everybody's a scapegoat," foreman Keith Spencer, a 41-year-old UPS worker, said as jurors left court Wednesday. "More people should have been accountable for this."

Alvo and the Galt company chose to have a judge decide the case against them; she has not said when she will rule.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said prosecutors respected the verdict and "hope that this prosecution brought necessary attention to the importance of safety in the construction and demolition industries."

A worker's careless smoking sparked the blaze, which tore through nine floors of the building. The firefighters died after being trapped in thick smoke and running out of air in their oxygen tanks.

Prosecutors said the critical factor in their deaths was a broken firefighting pipe, called a standpipe. Unable to use it, firefighters spent about an hour devising another way to get water on the flames on upper floors. In the meantime, the fire grew to deadly proportions, prosecutors said.

They said Alvo, DePaola and Melofchik knew the pipe had broken about eight months before. Under pressure not to let the cleanup lag, the men had the broken segment carted away and did nothing to repair or report it, prosecutors said. Nonetheless, Melofchik kept signing daily reports saying the building's fire-suppression system was working, according to evidence presented at the trial.

Defense lawyers said the men didn't realize the pipe's firefighting role and that the fire was fed by numerous hazards and regulators' mistakes.

Jurors said they weren't convinced that Alvo and Melofchik bore responsibility for the broken pipe, though they said they struggled more when deciding about Melofchik because of his safety-manager job. Ultimately, they felt it wasn't Alvo's job to identify and safeguard the standpipe, and testimony left questions about the extent of Melofchik's training in dealing with the pipe and whether he was aware of the break, jurors said.

And they came away from more than two months of testimony convinced that other problems had played too big a part in the deadly conditions to attribute the firefighters' deaths to the standpipe.

The project was supposed to be closely monitored by a list of government agencies. But it turned out that the Fire Department of New York hadn't inspected the building for more than a year, though it was required to do so every 15 days. Building, environmental and labor inspectors hadn't realized that firefighting would be complicated by some measures that had been undertaken to control toxins, including plywood stairwell barriers and a fan system that kept smoke in and pulled it down.

The stairwell barriers and, especially, the Fire Department's missed inspections made an impact on juror Rosemary Cardillo. "I felt as though, if they had come in and did their inspections, they would have been aware" of the problems before the fire, the retired real estate broker said.

To juror Lynette Cedeno, the case amounted to "blaming the little guy."

"Justice — it needs to start from the top, where people take responsibility for what their responsibility is, and not just pass it off," said Cedeno, 50, an occupational therapist who works for the city school system.

The city and Melofchik's employer, general contractor Bovis Lend Lease, acknowledged errors in dealing with the former bank building. The Fire Department created dozens of inspection and auditing jobs, and Bovis agreed to finance a $10 million memorial fund for slain firefighters' families, among other responses.

Then-District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said when the indictments were revealed that it would be pointless to try to prosecute the city because governments are generally immune from criminal prosecution, though individual officials and employees sometimes are charged with crimes.

Melofchik's lawyer, Edward J.M. Little, said he hoped the jury verdicts had sent prosecutors a message: "Because a case is sexy doesn't mean it should be brought."

"I think they've learned a lesson here," he said, but "it came at a terrible psychological cost for Jeff and his family."

Melofchik said he had been unable to work during the trial and had striven to keep the details from his sons, 16 and 18.

The last of the former bank building was taken down in February.

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Jennifer Peltz can be reached at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

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1 acquitted in fatal ground zero fire (AP)

NEW YORK – An asbestos-cleanup foreman who said he was a scapegoat for inspectors' failures was acquitted Tuesday of manslaughter and all other charges stemming from a 2007 blaze that killed two firefighters at a ground zero bank tower. Two other construction-company supervisors were still awaiting verdicts in the sole criminal trial stemming from the blaze at the toxic, condemned building.

"I haven't slept in four years," Salvatore DePaola said, his eyes moist, as he left the courtroom after a nearly three-month trial stemming from the August 2007 fire at the former Deutsche Bank building.

After seven days of deliberations, jurors were still debating manslaughter and other charges against co-defendant Jeffrey Melofchik. A judge is weighing the charges against a third defendant, Mitchel Alvo, and the John Galt Co., which employed him and DePaola. The company and Alvo chose to forego the jury.

Sparked by a worker's careless smoking, the blaze revealed a slate of regulatory failures at the building, which was being taken down after being damaged and contaminated with toxic debris in the Sept. 11 attacks. Government agencies and a different company admitted mistakes, but no others were criminally charged.

"There are people who didn't do their jobs, and they should have been up here," said DePaola, pointing a finger at high-ranking Fire Department officials. The department was supposed to inspect the former bank building every 15 days but hadn't done so for more than a year before the blaze ripped through nine stories.

Firefighters Robert Beddia, 53, and Joseph P. Graffagnino, 33, died after being trapped in black, choking smoke and running out of air in their oxygen tanks.

Prosecutors said the break in the firefighting pipe, called a standpipe, was the crucial factor in their deaths. With the standpipe useless, it took firefighters about an hour to get water on the flames, letting the blaze build into a lethal inferno, prosecutors said.

They said Alvo, DePaola and Melofchik knew the pipe had broken about eight months before, when workers took down some braces that were holding it to the basement ceiling. Melofchik, 49, was the project's site safety supervisor. Alvo, 59, was a toxin-cleanup director.

The supports were proving stubbornly hard to scrub of asbestos, and the bosses were under pressure to speed the cleanup to keep it from going over budget, prosecutors said.

So after the break, the men had a 42-foot section of standpipe cut up and carted away and did nothing to repair or flag it, though Melofchik continued to sign daily reports saying the building's fire-suppression system was working, prosecutors said.

"They did the thing that killed those firefighters," Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann told jurors in a closing argument. "The evidence ... woven together, paints a mosaic of overwhelming guilt — that but for these wholly reckless acts, these firefighters would be alive today."

But defense lawyers said the men didn't recognize the pipe's importance. DePaola, who didn't testify, said Tuesday he had "no idea" it was a standpipe, as it looked like many other pipes in the basement.

"My job was to make sure everything in the area was clean," he said. "I had no jurisdiction over cutting pipes."

The fire was a product of a web of shortsighted regulating and hazards beyond the defendants' control, their lawyers said.

"It's a tragedy — two great firefighters died, but as we saw, and as jurors clearly saw, Sal wasn't responsible for that," said his lawyer, Rick J. Pasacreta.

While the Fire Department missed inspections, building, environmental and labor inspectors hadn't realized that some measures meant to contain toxins could thwart firefighting. Plywood stairwell barriers slowed firefighters' progress, and a fan system kept smoke in and pulled it down, instead of letting it rise and escape.

The city and Melofchik's employer, general contractor Bovis Lend Lease, acknowledged errors. In response, the Fire Department created dozens of inspection and auditing jobs, and Bovis agreed to finance a $10 million memorial fund for slain firefighters' families, among other responses.

Then-DA Robert Morgenthau said it would have been fruitless to try to prosecute the city because of a legal doctrine that generally makes governments immune from criminal prosecution, though individual officials and employees sometimes are charged with crimes.

To Graffagnino's father, the trial has fallen short from the start. Joseph A. Graffagnino considers the defendants small players in a series of fateful mistakes at the building and thinks government officials and Bovis should also have been prosecuted.

"Having this guy (DePaola) declared not guilty, it doesn't do anything for us. It doesn't do anything against us," said Graffagnino, whose family has not attended the trial. "We feel that it's a much bigger case."

A lawyer for Beddia's family didn't immediately return a call Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the building lingered for almost a decade as a grim reminder of the attacks. The last of it was finally removed in February.

If convicted, Alvo and Melofchik could face up to 15 years in prison, and the Galt company could face a $10,000 fine.

DePaola, 56, said he had been unable to work while the case played out; he, too, had faced the possibility of up to 15 years in prison. He said he now might open a deli, like the one he ran before getting into the asbestos-cleanup business.

"I think I'm going to get away from construction," he said, "because a lot of bad things can happen in construction."

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Jennifer Peltz can be reached at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

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NY beach community becomes dumping ground of death (AP)

CAPTREE STATE PARK, N.Y. – Killers have long chosen isolated locations to secretly dump their victims: Gary Ridgway got the Green River Killer moniker for leaving women he murdered along the waterway near Seattle, some of New York serial killer Joel Rifkin's 17 victims were found in shallow graves on eastern Long Island or in creeks in Brooklyn, and in 2008 the FBI found the body of a slain mobster buried in a Long Island industrial park.

Authorities on Long Island suspect a serial killer may be responsible for the deaths of four prostitutes found in December dumped just steps from an isolated beach highway, but news this week that other killers have used the same strip of Ocean Parkway near Jones Beach as a dumping ground of death ratcheted up an already intense investigation.

"It is clear that the area in and around Gilgo Beach has been used to discard human remains for some period of time," Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said.

Spota released additional clues this week about four other victims, including two women whose torsos were left years ago 45 miles away in the woods off the Long Island Expressway. Their heads and limbs were found near the beach this spring. An unknown man and a toddler are among the latest Ocean Parkway murder mysteries confronting detectives.

And that's not all: Remains found at two locations along the same highway in neighboring Nassau County have yet to be identified. Ten sets of remains, and an unknown number of killers.

The FBI in 2004 established a database to track serial killings along U.S. highways. Since that time, it has compiled information on 595 victims and 275 suspects. Many of those crimes are believed to involve victims of over-the-road truckers or others who were found at truck stops, gas stations or restaurants along major highways. A Suffolk County police spokeswoman said all pertinent information about their investigation has been sent to the FBI, although the parkway doesn't allow access to commercial truckers.

The FBI last month provided high-tech aerial photography of the Ocean Parkway region to assist local authorities in their search for additional victims, and state and local police have expanded their search area for victims to two adjacent highways. Those data are still being analyzed.

Some Long Islanders aren't surprised killers would find the remote stretch of highway, populated by fewer than 250 year-round residents, as an attractive dumping ground.

"It makes sense," says Don Gaynor, of nearby Bay Shore, about 35 miles east of New York City. "There's very little lighting. There are no security cameras of any kind. And when you get down here at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, you could be the only car on the road for half an hour, so it's a very easy place to dump anything that you don't want people to know about, and your chances of getting caught are nil to none."

Ocean Parkway, built in the 1930s to accommodate sun worshippers headed to the newly opened Jones Beach, is a mostly four-lane highway that dissects the barrier island south of Long Island for more than 15 miles. Along the south side runs a network of state and town-run beaches, featuring pristine white sand and azure ocean water. The island is so narrow that authorities have fretted for years that a major hurricane could create a breach between the Atlantic Ocean and the Great South Bay.

Commuters hoping to avoid traffic jams on Long Island's primary roadways often use the parkway as a long shortcut to get to their destinations because there are rarely any snarls; more miles to drive, but quicker to get there.

The north side, where all the remains have been found, is largely a daunting thicket of tick-infested underbrush, including poison ivy and evergreens — an uninviting area that apparently enticed several killers. The only reason anyone might stop on that side of the roadway, where parking is prohibited, would be to deal with car trouble. Detectives have scoured parking ticket records as part of their hunt for a killer.

Dr. Michael Baden, the chief forensic pathologist with the state police and host of the HBO cable TV show "Autopsy," said the killers likely chose the location because it's an area with which they're familiar and they're likely aware that it's sparsely populated, especially in the winter, when there are few beach visitors.

"It's a place the perpetrator knows about, usually near where he grew up or where he travels to or from. It's a place where it would be easy to throw a body and not be found," Baden said. "The initial issue is to go to a place where very few cars go and nobody will see you."

Ridgway, one of the most prolific killers in U.S. history, led authorities to the site of some of his victims following his arrest in 2001. Advances in DNA technology enabled authorities to link a saliva sample he gave authorities in 1987 to some of the bodies. He is serving life without parole.

Rifkin picked up many of his 18 victims while they worked as prostitutes in New York City, and he left their remains at various locations in the metropolitan area.

Rifkin, who admitted committing the murders, has said in recent prison interviews that none of the bodies found along Ocean Parkway was of one of his victims.

Baden, who travels by train from New York City to Albany on business, said he often peers out the window along the tracks that run parallel to the Hudson River.

"It's amazing how many interesting spots you find along the railroad tracks," he said. "Tremendous areas that nobody would ever see if someone were to leave a body there."

At Captree State Park, just up the road from where the remains were found, 62-year-old Carmine LiBretti, of Bayport, said the revelations unfolding since December are startling.

"I've been coming here since I was a kid, and it's pretty scary to find out that somebody's dumping bodies like that," he said. "You know, you don't know if (the killers) are from around here or from another town or another state.

"I went fishing here with my dad years ago, with my brothers. In fact I got married right out here 32 years ago. I said to my wife, 'We got married there, and now they're finding bodies.' What the hell, man?"

Ray Marshall of Hicksville added the mystery is baffling. "I can't understand how they can dump bodies and nobody ever saw them," he said. "Somebody should have seen something."

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Associated Press researcher Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed to this report.

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