On March 6, 2006, Bruce Blackwood, a 55-year-old resident of the Queens borough of New York, was due to report to work at a local Off Track Betting office.
Blackwood called out sick 10 minutes ahead of his arrival time and said he’d fallen in the shower and hurt himself. He was never seen again and was reported missing.
The fact that Blackwood never called loved ones about getting injured raised red flags. “He called his family daily,” said Peter Galasso, then a New York City Police Department detective at the 113th Precinct in Queens.
“Right off the bat, we felt that he was the victim of suspicious circumstances,” Galasso said in “The Almost Perfect Murder” episode of New York Homicide, airing Saturdays at 9/8c p.m. on Oxygen.
Investigators subpoenaed Blackwood’s phone records and reviewed his E-ZPass history to trace his whereabouts.
As of March 6, “everything pretty much stops,” said Joseph Laspina, then an NYPD detective at the 113th precinct.
“We had felt that Mr. Blackwood was potentially a victim of a suspicious crime, possibly a murder,” Galasso told New York Homicide.
Who was Bruce Blackwood?
For Blackwood, family was everything, according to his niece Desiree Blackwood. “Bruce would come through for his brothers. He also adored his nieces and nephews.”
The feeling was mutual. “Bruce didn’t have any enemies. Everybody loved Bruce,” said his friend Judy Latimer. She’d met him in the 1970’s when they worked as flight attendants.
Besides his job at OTB, Blackwood was a landlord. He purchased rundown buildings, renovated them, and rented the apartments. One building was at 983 Hancock St. in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Searching for clues in Bruce Blackwood’s disappearance
Detectives learned that a friend of Blackwood from Philadelphia stayed with him in Queens on March 4 and 5.
The friend, who was cleared as a suspect, told police that Blackwood had a heated phone argument and said that he regretted getting “involved with these people.”
Investigators focused on Blackwood’s OTB job. “There’s always been an involvement of the mafia in horses,” said former homicide prosecutor Jarrett J. Ferentino.
But after thorough follow-up, detectives concluded that Blackwood was not the victim of organized crime.
Handyman Luis Perez says Bruce Blackwood rode off with friend “Mike”
Detectives learned from Luis Perez — a handyman and resident at the Hancock St. building that Blackwood owned — that Blackwood came by on March 6 to discuss a new tenant, according to Laspina.
Perez also told investigators that a man Blackwood said was a friend named “Mike” had pulled up in a black Toyota Camry. The handyman told authorities that Blackwood said he was going to take a ride with “Mike” to run errands. Perez claimed that was the last time he saw Blackwood. Detectives searched for “Mike,” but it turned out to be a dead end.
On March 10, one of Blackwood’s friends told police that she’d had a phone conversation a week earlier with Blackwood, who’d said he was going to confront Perez about $7,700 in missing checks.
“We felt that we now have a motive for a disappearance, and probably a murder,” said Galasso.
Suspicions were bolstered by the fact that Perez had several aliases and an extensive criminal history. Years prior, he’d tried to kill his own then-6-year-old daughter, Irene, and her mother, according to New York Homicide. He served 10 years for those crimes.
“We’re dealing with a psychopath,” said Galasso.
Urgency intensified when investigators learned from one of Blackwood’s neighbors in Queens that he’d seen the missing man arguing with two Hispanic men. From a photo, the witness identified one of them as Perez.
Luis Perez becomes prime suspect
Detectives obtained 13 checks that had been stolen from Blackwood and forged by Perez, which added up to $7,700.
Most were payable to Perez, but one was made out to Martin Rodriguez. Investigators confirmed that Rodriguez was the other man that Blackwood’s neighbor saw arguing with Blackwood alongside Perez.
On May 2, Blackwood’s phone history showed that when he called out sick to OTB, his cell phone was used. Records showed that the call was made two blocks from the 983 Hancock St. address where Perez lived.
“We felt that Mr. Blackwood might have been dismembered in that apartment [building],” said Galasso.
Luis Perez, Martin Rodriguez arrested for forging Bruce Blackwood’s checks
In June 2006, investigators arrested Perez and Rodriguez for the forged checks, enabling them to search Perez’s Hancock St. apartment for Blackwood’s DNA.
The apartment was searched from top to bottom. Sheetrock and carpeting were removed. Drains and pipes were dismantled. A baseball bat and knives were collected.
In May 2007, while Perez and Rodriguez were still behind bars awaiting trial in the grand larceny case, crime lab results came in. They revealed no trace of Blackwood’s DNA from the Bushwick apartment.
In June 2007, Perez and Rodriguez were found guilty of grand larceny. Perez was sentenced to 25 months in prison. Rodriguez received six months.
Two years after Blackwood vanished, the investigation into his disappearance came to a halt.
Bruce Blackwood cold case re-opened as a homicide
Blackwood’s brother, Edward Blackwood, persistently appealed to law enforcement and the news media. In March 2011, it paid off.
“We got a tip from police that this missing persons case was a homicide and that they were going to open a new case,” New York Daily News reporter Kerry Burke told New York Homicide.
Burke got a phone number for Perez and called him. “I say, ‘Look, I’m just hoping you’ll talk a bit about Bruce.’ Perez tells me, ‘I don’t know where Bruce is at. He’s missing. I had nothing to do with it.’ And he hangs up.”
On March 6, 2011, Burke’s news story ran. The case was re-opened as a homicide. Wendell Stradford, then a detective with the NYPD’s Cold Case Homicide Squad, was in charge of it.
He focused on the two original suspects. Stradford began with Rodriguez, who he tracked down to a trailer park in Florida. Stradford asked him to tell him what he knew about Blackwood. Rodriguez denied any wrongdoing.
Martin Rodriguez reveals crucial information
“From that point, he launched into what he thought happened,” said Stradford. “He said Blackwood came to Hancock St. and said he knew we were stealing money from him and that he was going to call the police.”
Rodriguez said that before he left the Hancock St. apartment, Perez had hatched a plan to torture Blackwood into giving up his PIN number for ATM cards.
“He said, ‘I knew Perez was going to kill Mr. Blackwood,’” said Stradford. “That still wasn’t enough to make an arrest of anybody.”
Stradford learned that in 2009, Perez had been paroled to his now-adult daughter Irene’s address in Brooklyn. When Stradford visited the address, he told Irene he was looking for her father.
“She said, ‘Are you here about that guy? That missing guy in the newspaper?’” said Stradford.
Irene had read Burke’s Daily News article. “The pain in Bruce Blackwell’s brother’s face is what made me need to get all the details,” she told New York Homicide in her first public interview about the case.
“I called my dad,” she said, her face obscured in shadow. “I said, ‘There’s an article, and apparently you’re the suspect in the murder of Bruce Blackwood.’”
Luis Perez’s daughter secretly records him describing Bruce Blackwood’s murder
Irene and Perez agreed to meet at her home in Brooklyn. In May 2011, she used her phone to secretly record her father confessing to murdering Blackwood.
She turned her phone over to the police, but there was a problem. “You really cannot hear anything that’s being said,” said Melissa Carvajal, a former assistant district attorney with the Brooklyn’s District Attorney’s Office.
Irene agreed to record Perez again with a police device. She captured him describing how he lined the apartment with plastic and used a machete to butcher Blackwood before having the bagged remains dumped in trash receptacles.
“It’s not about committing the perfect crime,” Perez said in the recording. “It’s about cleaning it afterwards.”
Luis Perez charged and tried for Bruce Blackwood’s murder
Perez was arrested for killing Blackwood. On September 21, 2015, his daughter Irene took the stand at his trial. After she confirmed that the recorded voices were hers and her father’s, the tape was played.
“It was the nail in the coffin,” said Carvajal
On September 29, 2015, Perez was found guilty of second-degree murder. He received the maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison.
To learn more about the case, watch “The Almost Perfect Murder” episode of New York Homicide, which airs new episodes on Saturdays at 9/8c p.m. on Oxygen.