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Burglar Slays Man in One Apartment, Then Kills Elderly Couple Downstairs
A prowler climbed through the bathroom window of a Lower East Side apartment early yesterday, shot a sleeping man in the head, police officials said, then drank the dead man's whiskey and watched sex videos before heading downstairs, where he killed an elderly couple. The woman's body was left naked in a living room chair, and she had been sexually abused, the police said, and her husband was dead in their bed, with several of his blank personal checks crammed in his mouth. The couple, Sara Sprung, 88, and Larry Sprung, 86, and the man in the apartment directly upstairs, Raymond Damelio, 49, were all shot once behind the ear at close range, the police said. Both apartments, in a 1930's-era building at 504 Grand Street, had been ransacked. Word of the killings stunned residents in this pleasant neighborhood of working families, where crime has dropped precipitously in recent years and remains at low levels. Shortly after the killings, a 20-year-old convicted burglar who grew up nearby was arrested running away from the building, one of several trim redbrick co-ops ringed by a waist-high privet hedge. Police officers from the Seventh Precinct had responded to a 911 call placed at 6:22 a.m. that reported a man on the fire escape in one of the eight, six-story structures in the complex, the Amalgamated Dwellings. After several officers spent more than an hour searching for the prowler, one saw a man running, chased him down and took him into custody in a rear alley, a move that Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said put a quick end to a string of crimes that might otherwise have continued. The man, identified by the police as Steven Santos, later admitted to the killings, saying he had spent Tuesday night and yesterday morning on the street corners of the Avenue of the Americas, smoking marijuana laced with a narcotic, possibly cocaine, police officials said. Mr. Santos, who was on probation for burglaries in Maryland, had a .380-caliber handgun tucked in a nylon belt holster, some cash and credit and debit cards from the apartments, the police said. He also had Mr. Damelio's expensive wristwatch, which was personally inscribed, some of Mr. Damelio's personal photographs, his driver's license and some of Mr. Sprung's blank checks. Mr. Santos told detectives that he picked the first apartment because he saw an open window, and that after he scaled the fire escape and killed Mr. Damelio, who lived alone, he drank from the man's bottle of Jack Daniels and watched videotapes he found in the apartment, several investigators said. Yesterday, neighborhood residents gathered in groups on street corners or in a nearby park or at the Bialystoker Synagogue, where the Sprungs worshiped. They tried to comprehend the unsettling events, and they prayed for the victims. Last night, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a friend of the Sprungs' and their relatives, came to assuage the concerns of area residents. "It was a shock to the whole neighborhood," said Bluma Singer, whose late husband, Rabbi Yitzchok Singer, officiated at the Sprungs' wedding about 40 years ago. "People are walking around in disbelief at the news." She said she did not know Mr. Damelio. "We haven't had incidents of this type previously," she said. "Innocent people were killed for no reason at all; innocent, fine, honest people." As each new fragment of information surfaced, the ripples of grief only seemed to intensify around the death of the elderly couple remembered by friends and relatives as generous and deeply religious. The savagery of the unprovoked attacks on helpless victims — particularly in the case of the Sprungs — and the sexual assault, troubled not only the victims' neighbors, but also police investigators. "This guy did terrible things up there," said one investigator, who balked at providing details of the sexual assault. "I will tell you this much; this guy is a monster." Security cameras are installed at the co-op, which has 247 units, and guards usually patrol there, one resident said. But that resident said the guards usually go off duty 5 to 8 a.m., which is when the crimes took place. Investigators believe that Mr. Santos entered Mr. Damelio's apartment first. They said that neighbors first saw him on the fire escape after he attacked Mr. Damelio, but before he had entered the Sprung apartment. It took some time for the officers who responded to the 6:22 a.m. call to 911 to first locate the correct building — G — and then the fire escape where the prowler was seen, before they could begin to determine which apartment or apartments may have been burglarized, a police official said. Eventually they saw an open third-floor window. Some of officers climbed up the fire escape, while others rang a buzzer to be let inside the building. The officers initially found Mr. Damelio's body, but it took more time to discover that the apartment below his had also been entered, the police said. Even then, they had to break the door down, which took more time. "They came in, they were very quiet, they were looking for somebody," said George Leong, 36, who lives across the second-floor hallway from the Sprungs with his wife and two children and has known them all his life. "They said, `Are they home? Should they be home?' " he said the officers asked. He said the Sprungs were early risers. "I said, `They should definitely have left.' The newspaper was there on their doormat. I had this horrible feeling because the cops knocked on their door and no one answered." Prosecutors expect to charge Mr. Santos with first-degree murder, a capital offense, a law enforcement official said. He is expected to be arraigned today. Commissioner Kelly, while he stressed the neighborhood's "very low" crime statistics, said that with warmer weather, residents should be careful to secure their windows. "You have to keep your windows locked, particularly if you're on a fire escape," he said. "And the landlord, or whoever manages the building, should make sure the fire escapes are not accessible from the ground." FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Action on Aging distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
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