"That's him leaving the movie theater after using the victims' credit cards,"
It takes a lot to rattle a cop like Joe Kenny, but from the moment detectives collected neighborhood security video that allegedly showed Jamel McGriff pushing his way into an elderly couple's home, this was a case that would keep him up at night.
"What was most troubling about it was that we were hearing initially that he was knocking on doors trying to gain entry into people's homes," NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said.
McGriff allegedly set fire to the Bellerose home that he gained entry to earlier this month after torturing and killing the Olton couple.
It sparked an urgent manhunt that picked up momentum with a plethora of videos.
Police knew who their guy was; now they had to find him.
"We made the decision to leave the victims' credit cards open," Kenny said.
It was a decision that proved consequential as cops were able to track McGriff by his escapades with the victims' stolen credit cards as he gallivanted around the city.
At one point, he saw a movie in Union Square.
"A detective from my office ran downstairs, jumped on the 6 train by himself, went to the movie theater just missed the perpetrator but he was able to get clear video," Kenny said.
The photo that cracked the case showed McGriff dressed in white from head to toe.
The image was pushed from the NYPD's joint operation center as an urgent message to every cop's phone via a pivotal internal app.
"Had this image not gone out to every police officer in the city, you might have had a different outcome? We might still be looking for him," Kenny said.
The suspect certainly did not do a good job of hiding.
After taking another trip to the Bronx, he wound up back in Manhattan in Times Square.
Officers from the NYPD's pickpocket union recognized him dressed in all white, because of the photo they had on their department phones.
They approached and made the arrest.
The department has leaned on this kind of technology in its most dire investigations, including the Luigi Mangione case and the mass shooting at 345 Park Avenue.
"This guy is like 6 foot 4, 250 pounds. And he put up a hell of a fight and he tried to keep that guy out of his house. He died trying but he put up a hell of a fight," Kenny said.
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