Metro

The mystery behind the only murder during the 1977 NYC blackout

When a flash of lightning zapped the city on July 13, 1977, panic hit New York. Already gripped by economic collapse and the Son of Sam terror, the city was plunged into total darkness. During the now-notorious 25-hour blackout, which affected all five boroughs, some 1,000 fires were set and 1,600 stores looted.

But there was just one murder victim that dark night: Dominick Ciscone, 17.

He was a tough kid hanging out with his brother Andrew and their friends on a corner in Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn, an old-school Italian neighborhood with a wiseguy contingent. The area, which had been home to mob enforcer Crazy Joey Gallo, was a tight-knit world unto itself, where everyone knew each other and outsiders weren’t welcome.

Now, nearly 40 years later, cops are taking a fresh look at the homicide in a final push to finally solve it.





“We’re hoping someone comes forward with information,” said Detective Kevin McDonough of the Brooklyn South homicide squad. The cold case unit is also investigating.

This all comes after two mystery tipsters phoned detectives with information about who shot Ciscone — calling with tantalizing clues on the 20th anniversary of his slaying, but hanging up without revealing the name of the alleged shooter.

He didn’t deserve to die, said the victim’s sister, Mildred Ciscone.

“That was my baby brother,” she said, describing the strapping Dominick as a beloved but fearless neighborhood protector who would go after anyone causing trouble.

“As you can imagine, it was totally devastating,” said his cousin, Joan Ciscone. “Rumor from way back when was it was a case of mistaken identity. There was so much speculation. I don’t think anybody ever knew what happened.”





Looking back, it’s hard to believe that more people didn’t die that night.

The blackout began at dusk, during a summer heat wave and amidst growing desperation, spurred by New York’s economic crisis, among many of the city’s low-income residents. A bolt of lightening struck a power substation in Westchester at 8:37 p.m., just as the sun was setting, followed by several more. Within an hour, most of the city’s electrical grid went dead.

Chaos erupted.

Officials shut LaGuardia and JFK. The tunnel crossings were closed down. About 4,000 people had to be evacuated from the subways. The lights went out at Shea Stadium at 9:30, the Mets down 2-1 to the Cubs.





Whole neighborhoods were engulfed in thick black smoke from buildings set ablaze by arsonists, and manic looting ensued. Most of the thefts occurred in Brooklyn — Crown Heights, Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant — as raging crowds savaged stores. In some cases, they wrenched off metal gates with ropes tied to cars.

People were seen brazenly carrying off TVs, furniture, clothing. One photo showed a vandal helping himself to gems at jewelry repair shop on Utica Avenue in Crown Heights. Hip-hop music took off rapidly in the months following the blackout, with some attributing its rise to the large quantity of DJ equipment stolen that night.

The Post reported that thieves grabbed everything from cars to clothespins, the streets a battleground where “even the looters were being mugged.”





A total of 3,776 people were arrested throughout the five boroughs. Mayor Abe Beame called it a “night of terror.”

But in Carroll Gardens, no one was particularly worried.

It was, and continues to be, one of the safest neighborhoods in New York, with crime numbers among the lowest of all precincts. Today, it’s an upscale enclave, with celebrity residents, chic boutiques and apartments that sell for $1 million and up. Back in the 1970s, the area was pure Italian, imbued with family, food and traditions. If something bad went down, chances were that a grandmother was watching from her third-floor window — and soon the whole neighborhood knew exactly what had occurred.

And if you happened to be standing next to one particular youth, massive in frame and big in heart, you had all the protection you might need.

Dom Ciscone was the youngest of four siblings but much bigger than his two brothers Andrew and Joe. “He was huge,” said Tommy Perez, who grew up getting rides on Dom’s shoulders. “Six feet, maybe 250, 260 [pounds]. Massive hands. Nicest guy. Very respectful of his elders. But he didn’t like bullies.”

Movie-star handsome, Dom played the part of a scuffling guardian, offering the charm of Tony Danza and the hard right of Charles Bronson. He was a bit of a showman — winning best costume in a block party in 1974 after donning the outfit of a pizza chef from the old country — but Mildred said her brother dreamed of becoming a boxer. He wasn’t against practicing his skills on anyone stupid enough to harass the local girls or cross over from the Red Hook projects to hang out on his turf. Even aspirants to the goodfella life avoided Dom. One shot from him and you went down.

“He was known to get into a lot of fights,” said McDonough. “He was quick to start swinging.”

“He was a sweetheart but he wasn’t afraid of anybody — and that wasn’t a good thing,” said Mildred. “He fought, yes, to stick up for other people. But everybody loved him.”

When the blackout struck, brothers Dom and Andrew and a circle of pals were standing on the southeast corner of Nelson and Court streets in front of a bar called Par Three, half a block from where the Ciscones lived at 135 Nelson.

It was an area of Carroll Gardens that offered just about everything a person might want: A pizzeria, a drug store, a grocery that made sandwiches, a candy store, a bike shop, a place that sold Buster Brown shoes. On one side of Court sits St. Mary Star of the Sea Church, where Al Capone was married. Par Three was the popular watering hole.

“We all used to hang out over there,” said Mildred. “It was where they gathered on the night of the blackout.”

She wasn’t there but said Andrew told her what happened.

“It was dark so they lit up a garbage pail and were standing around, singing and laughing. At the same time, they were setting off fireworks.

Someone screamed ‘Andrew!’ Dom turned to [Andrew] and said, ‘I think I got shot.’ Andrew said, ‘Nah, that’s just the fireworks.’

“[The bullet] went into [Dom’s] back and hit an artery. He went down. Andrew looked down Nelson and saw a guy running, near Smith Street. He was a little well dressed, not a bum. [Andrew] ran after the guy, [who] started shooting. One shot hit him. It gave him a cut across the side of his head, right above his eyebrow.”

Talbot was convinced his anonymous tipsters knew who shot Ciscone, and believed that they called again two months later but abruptly hung up. ‘The persons were very scared,’ he said.

Dom died before help arrived.

Afterward, police hunted for clues, suspecting that Dominick had been targeted for crossing the wrong people. He had argued with the local shopkeeper who sold bikes and mopeds, and separately brawled with one or more guys in a fight that left him bruised and in jail. Mildred said that the teen had spent six months at Rikers over those fisticuffs, and had been released just three months before he was killed.

“When I looked into the casket, he still had bruises on his face,” she recalled. “Maybe that had something to do with it.”

The case remained cold until July 1997, following a story about the murder in the Brooklyn Paper, when a pair of sources called Patrick Talbot, a detective in the 76th Precinct.

Each claimed to have knowledge about the perpetrator. But they wouldn’t give their names and were afraid to come forward. “Here is a case that is 20 years old,” Talbot told the New York Times in 1998. “And we could solve it with one more phone call.”

Talbot was convinced his anonymous tipsters knew who shot Ciscone, and believed that they called again two months later but abruptly hung up. “The persons were very scared,” he said. “They said they said they would get back to me.”

They never did.

Talbot has since died, and the investigation passed along to other detectives. McDonough said that three years ago a junkie from the neighborhood got arrested and offered an account of the killing, which didn’t match what McDonough had learned of it and couldn’t be corroborated.

“When we first talked to him, he told us a detailed story of what happened that night, but I don’t think it was true. We had nobody who could tell me his story was correct.”

As he reached out to people in Carroll Gardens, McDonough came up against the tight-lipped quality of a traditional Italian community.

“People really weren’t willing to talk about it, even to this day.”

Still, on the 40th anniversary of Dom’s death, local police have once again heated up efforts to solve this cold case.

Ciscone was the only person killed during the blackout, but not the only murder victim to die on that very corner.

Within a few years of his death, three more bodies were found there: a local man with his head slumped over the wheel of his Oldsmobile, and a drug dealer and his Cuban girlfriend, whose bodies, with black hoods over the heads, were discovered when blood was seen dripping from the trunk of a car. All had been shot.

Since then the neighborhood has acquired a decidedly different feel.

Celebrities who’ve frequented the area — within a block or two of that corner — include Jay-Z and Beyonce, Naomi Watts, Paul Giamatti and Gabriel Byrne.

Mildred moved away, taking painful memories. Andrew Ciscone died in 2002. Her oldest brother, Joe, passed in 1984. And both their parents are gone. The family matriarch, Loretta, who died in 2012, was tormented by Dominick’s slaying.

“She always wanted them to catch the person. She relived it over and over,” said Mildred. “Dominick was very special. It was a long time ago. To get shot like that in the dark.”

Anyone with information on the Dominck Ciscone case should call 1-800-577-TIPS.





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