[Amanda] On July 5, 1995, a disturbing 911 call was placed by a Park Slope resident, reporting that she had been assaulted and shot by a man who had broken into the apartment she shared with her girlfriend. When police responded, they could hear someone screaming inside the apartment for help, but the door was locked. It took several moments for the caller to reach the door to let them in, and what they would find inside was a horrible scene. I’m Amanda Morgan, and this is New York’s Dark Side. 

[Intro Music]

[Amanda] Hey Dark Siders, before we get started with today's episode, I am just gonna put a little plug in that the episode today does include some discussion of sexual assault, domestic violence and crime victims rights related issues. But we're gonna go ahead and jump right into it today. 

[Amanda] The 4th of July weekend is often one filled with fun, barbecues, gatherings of friends and family, fireworks and all the things. And that's how it started for Park Slope, New York residents Amanda Leach and Sylvia Lugo. They had just returned from a trip to Virginia, where they had spent time visiting relatives of Amanda on that July 5th evening in 1995, when their world would come undone, Amanda would place a call to 911 telling them that someone had broken into their apartment, sexually assaulted her and shot her. When police arrived at their apartment door, they found that it was locked, so they began knocking on the door. They could hear Amanda calling for help, but it took her several minutes to drag herself to the door to open it and let them in. By this time, EMT's had also arrived, and one of them recognized the apartment as belonging to the couple and had informed responding officers of this. When they got inside the apartment, they found that Amanda had a gunshot wound to her leg. There was a trail of blood from where Amanda had dragged herself from the bedroom to the apartment's front door. In the bedroom, they would find Sylvia. She had taken two shots to the head. She was alive but unresponsive. Both women were rushed to the hospital. 

[Amanda] Unable to conduct questioning of the women, investigators were left to try to gather what evidence they could from the scene. One thing that perplexed law enforcement to begin with was that there was no sign of forced entry into the apartment. They did find 3 shell casings in the apartment which coincided with the three gunshot wounds between the two women, but they couldn't find the gun that had fired them. At the hospital, Amanda was rushed into emergency surgery to address the serious gunshot wounds that she had to her leg. Sylvia was placed on life support. Her family was notified of what happened and they all rushed to be by her side. 

[Amanda] To get to know our victims a little bit more. Amanda had grown up in Guyana and had come from a large family. She was one of seven children. She was incredibly smart and driven in Guyana. She had received straight A's in school and this continued when she moved to Brooklyn with her family. She attended the New York Institute of Technology on Long Island, New York, on a softball scholarship and when she graduated, she started working as a caseworker. At the time of the shooting, she was working for a foster care placement agency. Sylvia was born and raised in Park Slope, New York. She was the third of eight Lugo children. Some of her siblings would interview on the episode of New York Homicide that covered this story and they described Sylvia as a kind and generous person who would give the shirt off her back. She loved animals, and she also loved playing softball. That, in fact, was how Sylvia had met Amanda, through their softball league. Sylvia had come out to her family when she was 18 or 19 years old, she was very comfortable with her sexuality. Sylvia had been working for a factory, but the factory had closed and at the time of the shooting she was unemployed. For the Lugo family, this was not the first time that their family had been touched by such a horrible crime. In 1985, Sylvia's father, Angel Louise Lugo, had been murdered. 50 year old Angel had worked at a factory. It was a Friday evening and he had just gotten paid, so on his way home he stopped at the bar just like so many other people do. He shot pool with some strangers, and then he spent time unwinding after a long week before leaving to get on the subway to return home to his family. One of the men that had been shooting pool with him that night had other intentions. He had noticed the amount of money that Angel had in his wallet and decided that he wanted it for himself. He followed Angel to the subway and would stab him to death. In 1995, on that July 5th evening at the hospital with Sylvia, the Lugos held out hope that Sylvia would recover. Unfortunately, she would end up succumbing to her injuries later that day. 

[Amanda] It would be a while before police could interview Amanda to get her statement on what happened. When they were able to interview her, she told them that they had just returned from the trip to Virginia to visit her relatives and were in the process of unloading things from their rental car. Amanda said that she had noticed a couple of men hanging out near the apartment when they were collecting the first load of luggage, but the men didn't approach them, so they just continued to bring in their belongings. When the women went out to get the second load of luggage from the car, they were approached from behind by a man with a gun who forced them back into their first floor apartment. She said the man then instructed her to tie up Sylvia, which she did, but she said she tied up Sylvia loosely so that she could escape. The man then forced Amanda into the bedroom and began to sexually assault her. While he was assaulting her, Sylvia was able to loosen herself from the ties that bound her and she burst into the bedroom. The man shot her once in the head and Amanda said she fell to the floor, but Sylvia got back up and this is when Sylvia was shot the second time in the head. Amanda tried to fight him for the gun and this is when she was shot in the leg. She said the man tried to shoot her again, this time in the head, but the gun wouldn't fire. The man then grabbed their keys to the rental car, some jewelry and fled the apartment. The man she described was Latino, about 5 foot 5 inches, approximately 155 lbs. He was wearing a baseball cap and had a pencil thin mustache. She worked with a sketch artist to do a composite sketch for police, but this was not released to the public initially. 

[Amanda] When Sylvia's autopsy results came back, some alarm bells started to go off in law enforcement's mind and the New York homicide episode that covered this story. The detectives said that the medical examiner had reported that there was no way that Sylvia could have stood up the way that Amanda had stated she had during their interview with her. They would go on to state that they realized that sometimes people can misremember things during traumatic events, but they felt that they needed to dig a little bit more into Amanda's story. So the next thing that investigators did was obtain Amanda's medical records from the hospital. They had done a forensic examination, including a rape kit, which they said came back inconclusive. They also had some concern regarding the angle of the gunshot wound that Amanda had sustained to her leg, saying that it looked self-inflicted. 

[Amanda] While canvassing the neighbors and family for information about the couple, they would begin to hear that all was not perfect in the couple's relationship. And to be fair, what relation doesn't have its challenges? They would hear from neighbors that the couple did have a history of loud arguments, and the neighbor reported that there had been an argument between the couple about 45 minutes before the 911 call was received on July 5th. This is when investigators began to consider Amanda a suspect, however, the only evidence they had at this point that led to her was circumstantial at best, far from enough to bring charges against her. In interviews with both New York Magazine in 1996 and in the New York Homicide episode that covered this case, when the time came for Sylvia's funeral, the family would say that this was the first time they had seen Amanda since the shooting. She was in a wheelchair and the Lugos would describe her as being visibly upset and that she didn't make eye contact with anyone. Martin Lugo, one of Sylvia's brothers, would approach her and put his arm around her for a bit, but she didn't stay very long. In that interview with New York Magazine in 1996, Martin Lugo would tell them that at the time, he thought her behavior was due to the pain medicine that she was on, but at the time of the interview, that viewpoint had changed vastly. He is quoted in the New York Magazine article stating quote- Amanda couldn't look me or my mother or any of my brothers or sisters in the eye because she knew that she did it. There is no doubt. Whatsoever in any of our minds that Amanda killed Sylvia End Quote. That changing viewpoint is largely because very soon after the funeral, the police began leaking information to the press that Amanda was suspected of killing Sylvia. This was brought to the family and it was even published in newspapers by a crime reporter named Brad Hamilton, who had written an article in the Brooklyn Daily Bulletin that Amanda was the main suspect in Sylvia's murder, that she had fabricated the story of her rape and abduction, and she was expected to be arrested soon. And this is truly upsetting. 

[Amanda] This was unfortunately not the first time that police leaked information have been published in papers causing significant damage to someone's reputation. A year prior to Sylvia's shooting in April of 1994, a 27 year old woman had been out for a run and was on her way home with groceries when she was grabbed by a man in Prospect Park. He pulled her off the trail and sexually assaulted her in broad daylight. The following day, much to that poor victims horrid surprise, there was an article titled Rape Hoax the Real Crime published their Daily News, written by a very well known columnist named Mike McAlary. In the article, McAlary blasted this poor woman, accusing her of fabricating a story about her sexual assault as a bogus stunt to draw attention to an anti violence against women rally that she was allegedly scheduled to speak at. He would later admit that this information came from a high-ranking police official as the source. The police would go to a different news outlet and state that the rape kit did come back with the presence of semen from her body and on her clothes to try to backtrack this accusation, but the damage was already done and McAlary wasn't about to stop continuing to discredit this poor woman. He continued to write articles about her. The woman would end up suing both McAlary for libel along with New York Police Department, but the case was dismissed. The judge issued the reasoning for the cases dismissal as being due to the fact that she was a public figure, it wouldn't be until 2018, twenty-three years after her assault, that DNA evidence linked a serial sex offender named James Edward Webb to her assault in Prospect Park, proving her story. By this point, Mike McAlary had already passed away in 1998. The police would officially issue a formal apology to her after this evidence came back 23 years too late. 

[Amanda] One thing to know about Park Slope that I haven't mentioned yet is that it had a very large community of lesbians within it, and the episode of New York Homicide that covered this story, a woman named Kimberly who was on the same softball league with Amanda and Sylvia in her interview said that that was what drew her to moved to Park Slope, because half of the lesbians in New York City lived in the community. When the community became aware that police were homing in on Amanda as a suspect, they were pissed and it wasn't so much because Amanda was one of their own. It was because the community had been plagued by an 8 month long string of robberies and sex crimes prior to the attack on Amanda and Sylvia, and her story fit with what had been occurring to others. It was also very highly publicized that they were a lesbian couple. The attacks on the other victims were in the media and there were even street flyers hanging in the neighborhoods made by members of the community warning of a killer that was targeting lesbians. Things were starting to reach a fever pitch. When the articles were printed about Amanda by Brad Hamilton stating that she would be arrested for Sylvia's murder the Gay and Lesbian Anti Violence Program stepped in and began flooding the police station and the Daily Bulletin that had been printing the paper with calls. On July 27th, 1995, the community would rally and a group of 300 men, women and children would march through Park Slope neighborhoods where Amanda and Sylvia had lived to quote- demand consistent, accurate and timely information from the cops. The March, organized by the Anti Violence Project, was to let law enforcement know that the community was watching them and how they conducted this investigation. 

[Amanda] What the community may not have realized, according to law enforcement officials that interviewed with the New York homicide episode, was that while they were investigating Amanda as a suspect in Sylvia's murder, they were also conducting a parallel investigation into the Park Slope rapist. But another potential suspect would crop up in the investigation that linked back to Amanda. Going back to the top of the episode, when Amanda was interviewed by law enforcement, she had told them that the man who had attacked her had stolen some jewelry and the keys to the rental car before leaving the apartment. They've been searching for the rental car and would ultimately find it a couple of blocks from an ex-girlfriend of Amanda named Trelaine McKinney. The car was searched for forensic evidence, but it was completely wiped down of any fingerprints. A couple of weeks after Amanda and Trelaine had separated, Trelaine, who was also part of the same softball league as Amanda and Sylvia was heard by multiple members of the league telling Sylvia quote- I will hurt you, I will kill you at a game that she was umpiring. There was some speculation that either Trelaine had committed the crime on her own and that Amanda was attempting to cover for her, or that Trelaine and Amanda had done this together. First they had to speak to Trelaine. However, she was out of town. This is where Brad Hamilton and his feisty pen pop into the picture again and he publishes another article in the Daily Bulletin about Trelaine claiming that she had in fact been the one to commit the murder in a jealous rage and then fled to Texas. He went on to claim that Amanda knew it was her and that she was covering for her. Police would once again have to go on the record to publicly state that Trelaine was in no way a suspect and was just being sought for questioning. The fact of the matter was that Trelaine was on approved leave from her job at the post office and had gone down to Texas to visit her grandparents. Her grandfather had recently had an open heart surgery and her grandmother had also had a stroke. While in Texas, she heard from friends that police were looking for her to question her about her relationship with Amanda and Sylvia. In the episode of New York Homicide, Trelaine would say that when she returned to New York after her trip, police would come to the post office where she worked and take her out in handcuffs. This combined with the press sharing both her sexuality and potential involvement in a murder stained her reputation with the public. Customers on her postal route began calling the post office and telling them that they didn't want their mail delivered by Trelaine, and she was ultimately let go from her job. 

[Amanda] What investigators would learn from Trelaine was that she and Amanda had been dating for about 3 years. Sylvia had approached Trelaine one day asking her what Amanda's name was because she had caught Sylvia's eye and Charlene had responded back to Amanda was hers. Amanda was later claimed not to have known about this interaction until Trelaine told her about it much later. Amanda and Sylvia would eventually meet, and Amanda would move Sylvia into the apartment that she shared with Trelaine after Sylvia lost her job at the factory, claiming that they were just friends and she was helping her out. Trelaine would catch them together, and that's ultimately what ended the relationship between Trelaine and Amanda. Trelaine would admit to saying those things to Sylvia because she was angry, but that it had been a few years earlier and they had mended that relationship and moved on. After questioning Trelane, they found no evidence that she had any involvement in Sylvia's murder and she was released and cleared as a suspect. One thing the note with this is there was an extensive history of cheating in this little triangle too. The New York Magazine article does bring up in the interviews with Amanda that she had been cheating on Sylvia with another woman named Sonja. There was also some concern about domestic violence. I brought up the the arguments that had been heard by neighbors in that New York magazine article. There was discussion that Amanda may have hit Sylvia at one point and that Amanda was pathologically jealous of Sylvia. So some of these things just really stained Amanda in a bad light in terms of what law enforcement thought. 

[Amanda] Law enforcement would bring Amanda back in for questioning, and she does admit that she may have misremembered some things initially due to the pain medication she was on, but she continued to maintain her innocence and reinforce her story about the attack. She also requests a polygraph at this point to try to clear her name, which they do administer and she passes. Even after passing the polygraph, they keep Amanda on the suspect list, which I understand because they're not admissible in court. They're not always accurate, but I feel like there's a lot of times that they'll just clear someone after a polygraph that they weren't having that with Amanda. It was at this point in August, now weeks after the murder that law enforcement released the composite sketch to the public that had been completed back when Amanda was initially questioned. Members of the community were furious and they blasted law enforcement for holding on to the composite sketch for so long. A delegation from some of the local gay and lesbian organizations would also request from the deputy mayor that an award be offered for information leading to an arrest which she said she would try to get approved. Two months after Sylvia's murder in mid-September, another woman was nearly assaulted in her apartment in Park Slope. Law enforcement had 26 year old Tony Harrison under surveillance and he was witnessed by law enforcement following a woman into her apartment building on Union Street in Park Slope. Police quickly intervened and he was taken into custody. After 10 months free of him stalking, robbing and raping women in their apartment complexes at either knife or gunpoint, law enforcement had caught the Park Slope rapist. They would interrogate Harrison to see if he was in any way connected to Amanda and Sylvia's attack, but due to the fact that he did not meet the description of the attacker that Amanda had given, and his interrogation gave them no indication to believe that he was the one that attacked them, he was cleared as a suspect. 

[Amanda] At this point, a $10,000 reward is announced for information leading to the arrest of the individual responsible for killing Sylvia. But 1995 would end and a new year dawn before they would get their next break in the case. On March 30th, 1996, a young woman named Gabrielle Kerns was sitting in her car when she was approached by a man with a gun who tried to carjacked her. She refused to comply with him and he shot her in the head. Police  happen to be in the area and they responded quickly, arresting 19 year old Alex Villanueva. Gabrielle would survive the attack. Villanueva was a drifter and they would find out that he had an extensive history of doing push in robberies exactly like what happened to Sylvia and Amanda. While interrogating him more, they would find out that he referred to himself as Little Gotti and thought he was basically untouchable. What they didn't expect was that he would eventually confess to some additional crimes. The May 1995 murder of a man named Michael Turrell and the rape of Amanda Leach and murder of Sylvia Lugo Villanueva matched the description that Amanda had given law enforcement in the beginning perfectly. He would say that he was not specifically targeting anyone in the area, but happened to see Amanda and Sylvia as they were unloading their car and decided to take advantage of that opportunity. I'm kind of wondering if he is part of that group of people that Amanda had mentioned seeing because when he attacked Gabrielle, they ended up arresting two other people that were with him at the time of her assault. Anyway, he confirmed that he approached them with his gun drawn and forced them into their apartment and that he ordered Amanda to tie up Sylvia and that while he was sexually assaulting Amanda, Sylvia had burst into the room to try to help her and he shot her. When Amanda began to struggle with him for the gun, he shot her in the leg. He then attempted to shoot her in the head, but his gun jammed. He then stole the rental car and some jewelry, and he had been driving it around Brooklyn a few weeks after the murder. He had driven the car to a visit with his parole officer. When he was coming back from that visit, he saw that police had discovered the car so he just walked away from it. They would run ballistics on the gun used to shoot Gabrielle Kerns and it was a match to the bullets retrieved from Amanda and Sylvia. They would also pull Amanda in to do a photo lineup and she picked him out as being her attacker. Villanueva would be charged with murder, attempted murder, and rape and in May of 1997, he pled guilty and was sentenced to 50 years to life in prison. Martin Lugo, Sylvia's brother, would say on New York homicide that the news that Amanda had not killed Sylvia, quote -blew the family away. Not only that Amanda is innocent, but also that the person that had killed our sister had also killed other people End Quote. 

[Amanda] This case is just so heartbreaking and so important to highlight because the manner in which it was handled was extremely damaging to not only Amanda Leach but also Trelaine McKinney. Amanda was completely completely re-victimized with the spotlight publicly being cast on her that she was responsible for Sylvia's murder and faking the story of her sexual assault when in fact she was truly viciously attacked and watched her girlfriend be brutally murdered in front of her. And Trelaine, who was not involved whatsoever, ends up losing her job and would tell New York Homicide that she was cast out of her community and she lost a lot of support from her friends who believed that she was involved with this murder. It's just so heartbreaking and just highlights why it's so important to be careful with what you're saying. Anyway, we talked about a lot of very, very sad, dark stuff in this episode. So I just wanted to highlight a couple of, you know, resources that are available if you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual assault The National Sexual Assault Hotline is run by the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. It's the nation's largest anti sexual violence organization and you can reach out to them by phone at 1-800-656-HOPE or you can go online to the website online.rainn.org. If you or someone you know has been a victim of domestic violence 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year The National Domestic Violence Hotline provides essential tools and support to help survivors of domestic violence so they can live their lives free of abuse. You can call 1-800-799-7223 or you can chat with someone online at thehotline.org or text the word START to 88788 to connect with someone via text message. And just if you or someone you know has been a victim of a crime, there are crime victims advocates out there that can help you navigate through the very traumatic time that comes in the aftermath of what you've been through. So the mission of the National Center for Victims of Crime is to forge a national commitment to help the victims of crime. They built their lives and you can reach out to them at their website, victimsofcrime.org. And with that, I am going to close up today's episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It is always so humbling to see this show continuing to grow. And I feel like I say that so much, but it's it's true every day. So if this is the first time joining us, you can always follow the show on your podcast platform of choice. We are on all of them, I think. I don't know, seems like there's new ones that crop up every day. So I hope we're on all of them. We are also on social media, so you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X Twitter, all source material for this episode can be found on our website newyorkstarksidepodcast.com It is linked down in the show notes. I hope everyone has a great week ahead and I hope you'll TuneIn next week or another all new episode. Stay curious everyone