They wrestled for years with unanswered questions, their minds crowded with theories of what had become of their father, who abruptly disappeared from his home on Staten Island, New York, in 1972.
As a boy, one of Vincent Palmieris sons searched for him in trash bins and in shadows. Another thought he may have been abducted by aliens. A third believed he may have been chopped up into little pieces.
They only knew two things for sure. Their fathers car was found abandoned at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York. And, he was gone.
Meanwhile, 350 miles away in the cold-running waters of the Passumpsic River in East Barnet, Vermont, about 60 miles south of the Canadian border, the body of a partially-dressed man with distinctive tattoos was discovered that spring by a sewage repair worker. It was Palmieri, but it was a long while until anyone knew 45 years, to be exact.
This summer, Palmieris family filed an $800,000 lawsuit against the state of Vermont and the Vermont State Police over the mysterious disappearance of their father a murder that remains unsolved. Although the complaint filed in late June is just six pages long, it attempts to mitigate decades of heartache for the family, who only learned three years ago their father had been shot dead and dumped in that river when he was 35 years old.
The lawsuit alleges shoddy investigative work by Vermont police detectives and an air of complacency when they first identified Palmieris body in 2006.
A Vermont State Police sergeant took certain actions to determine the identity of any family members of the victim between July 2006 and July 2007, and again in December 2009 but such actions only constituted a cursory investigation, wrote Brice C. Simon, a Vermont attorney representing the Palmieris.
Palmieris remains spent 45 years in a lonely grave with an anonymous marker in Lakeview Cemetery in Burlington, Vermont, until the Vermont State Police located and contacted Palmieris children in 2017. They brought their fathers remains home to be buried on Staten Island, next to their mother.
My father had a very strong presence that I hadnt felt in 46 years. When I walked into the cemetery to bring him home I felt it again, said Vincent Palmieri Jr.
Gerald Palmieri, left, and his older brother Vincent Palmieri Jr. kneel at the gravesite for their late parents in St. Peters Cemetery in the Brightwood section of Staten Island. Their mother, Annette, died of natural causes in 2015. Stephanie Barry / The Republican
Confounding links to Western Massachusetts
The gun that killed Palmieri a Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver has also been linked to two slayings in Greater Springfield within weeks of his death. The bodies of organized crime figure Victor DeCaro and a low-level criminal, Gary J. Dube, also turned up in watery graves, riddled with bullets.
Only Dubes murder was solved. Francis Soffen, a notorious outlaw and bank robber who died in prison in 2015, pleaded guilty in 1973 to killing Dube and another man, Stephen J. Perrot.
Available police and court records offer little evidence of any meaningful investigation into DeCaros killing.
But for a short missing person report filed with the Agawam Police Department, the Hampden district attorneys office does not appear to have a single investigative file linked to his death. The agency was, at the time, led by the late Matthew J. Matty Ryan, who reportedly had an affinity for gangsters and was known to clamp down on certain investigations.
DeCaros unsolved slaying is not even listed in the cold case database on the Hampden County district attorneys website, which features cases dating back to the late 1950s. Current Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni ignored requests for comment.
For years, the critical link among the three deaths was neither publicized nor probed by law enforcement, until the Palmieri family began its own investigation. They ask why their father met the same end with the same gun as Agawam resident Dube, a witness against Soffen, and DeCaro, reportedly a philandering wiseguy from Longmeadow. DeCaro allegedly took an interest in the wrong gangsters wife and disappeared from the parking lot of his restaurant near the Agawam rotary.
Soffen was well known to be a renegade and a hired gun during his criminal heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, leading a group of outlaws known as the Soffen gang. He moved easily among crime circles.
At left, an artists portrait of Gary J. Dube. At right, a photograph of Victor C. DeCaro from the archives of The Republican.
But, Palmieris family says he had no connection with Soffen and no ties to Greater Springfield or anyone in New England, to their knowledge. There isnt a confirmed theory about any of the most pertinent questions about his death: the why, the where, the who or the how. Even the when at least, not precisely.
The union typesetter and Manhattan native vanished around May 1, 1972, leaving behind nine bewildered children and a heartbroken wife in a tight-knit, working-class New York City borough where single mothers were few.
All those years, the family never knew their fathers badly decomposed body had washed ashore one month after he disappeared.
His wife, Annette, filed a missing person report on May 5, 1972. Her sons, during a series of interviews with The Republican over two years, said New York City police treated her shabbily.
They laughed at her. They mocked her, telling her my dad was a gangster or that he ran off and left us, Vincent Palmieri Jr. said. Daddy was not a gangster. He was a street guy. He knew some knock-around guys from the neighborhood. But he had a legitimate job and we didnt have a lot of money. We lived in a project.
While the bodies of all three men were dumped in waterways between Connecticut and Vermont, Palmieris was the farthest from home, suggesting his killer or killers wanted him to stay gone.
A July 11, 1972, article in The Springfield Union, predecessor to The Republican, said police believed the man found in the Vermont river was from Greater Springfield but it didnt say why. The article toyed with the similarities between the three killings but the message apparently never made it to New York City.
At left, Staten Island resident Vincent Palmieri, a murder victim who mysteriously disappeared from his neighborhood in 1972, is shown in an undated photo next to a car found abandoned at John F. Kennedy International Airport that year. At right, a parking claim ticket found when his car was discovered. Courtesy of the Palmieri family
A mystery man
The man in the river was shirtless, his body bloated, three bullet wounds to his back and one to the side of his skull. He had some dollar bills and loose change in his pockets and distinctive tattoos on his arms. He still wore a gold pinky ring and a woven belt. He didnt look like a local.
A medical examiner in Vermont estimated the body had been in the water for up to a month.
Annette was tattooed on the mans upper right forearm, and surrounding a heart on his lower arm was Vin LOVE A. U. a tribute to his brides maiden name, Annette Uricola.
In the absence of a national fingerprint database, DNA technology or the internet, Vermont police had nothing but straight gumshoe work to do for months. With no crime scene to work from, the case went cold inside of a year.
Decades later, a simple internet search almost surely would have connected Palmieris family to the mystery man or the Passumpsic river floater in Vermont, as police labeled him at the time. Investigators do not know where he had been abducted or killed only where he had been dumped.
A lengthy story in an obscure crime magazine about crime sprees in Greater Springfield in the early 1970s even featured a drawing of his body ink and the pattern of his belt.
Police had hoped that published drawings of tattoos found on the arms of a water-borne corpse might lead to identification of man also thought to be connected to gangland. Also sketched was the design of the belt worn by the victim, reads a caption from a story titled Thieves Fall Out published April 8, 1973.
With a dearth of sophisticated forensics methods or search engines, though, the details never made it as far as New York. Palmieris remains languished in that unmarked grave in Vermont for more than four decades.
Vincent Palmieri, far left, with his wife and several of their children in an undated photograph.Photo courtesy of the Palmieri family
A family haunted
As the years wore on, the Palmieri children rarely spoke of their father. Friends stopped asking why they didnt have a dad. They finished school, fell in love, married, had their own children, built careers and made their own homes on Staten Island.
Palmieri was identified by Vermont State Police in 2006 using the national FBI fingerprint database, according to now-retired Capt. J.P. Sinclair, who headed the states cold case unit. He helped the Palmieri children bring their fathers remains home a decade later.
Sinclair said they were unable to find next of kin until a young researcher decided to try Ancestry.com and got a hit.
This delay represents the crux of the recent lawsuit: Did the police try hard enough to find his family? Could his family have begun to come to terms with their fathers death sooner? Simon, the familys attorney, argues troopers didnt try hard enough.
The gravamen of the lawsuit is the state of Vermont breached its duty by failing to undertake reasonable efforts to determine the family members of Vincent Palmieri, Simon said. They had his identity and they investigated the identity. There are notes in the police report indicating that there was going to be some follow-up and then they dropped the ball for 10 years.
Simon said the money the lawsuit seeks, $100,000 per child, isnt merely an attempt at a cash grab.
I dont think its about the money for the Palmieris, he said. I think they just want to achieve some sort of recognition that this wasnt handled properly and they suffered as a result.
Palmieri is now buried next to his wife in the heart of Staten Island. An ornate, shared headstone joins them in death. Family members visit often. Their youngest son says he occasionally finds himself there in the middle of the night.
Annette Palmieri died in 2015, never knowing her husband had not simply walked out on her and the children.
My mom asked if I knew anything about my father on her deathbed, like I was keeping something from her. On her deathbed, she still talked about him, Vincent Palmieri Jr. said during an extensive series of interviews.
Finding out what happened all those years ago is like a double-edged sword, a blessing and a curse all those sayings, he said. We had almost gotten used to the fact that he was gone. Now, were all tortured all over again with questions. We want to know what happened to him.
It was like their father, their Pops, never even existed, said the now 63-year-old namesake. Staten Island police showed little interest. There were no updates, no arrests, no deathbed confessions. The family still harbors a mountain of resentment against law enforcement agencies they believe never even bothered to try to uncover who was responsible for their fathers death, and why.
Vincent Palmieri Jr. is a gregarious type who worked in finance, saw two planes hit the World Trade Center from the Staten Island Ferry on Sept. 11, 2001, is a father to one son, lost his wife to an illness, and duked the gravediggers in Vermont so they would handle his father with care.
His youngest brother, Gerald, is in private security and has been intensely sleuthing since learning of their fathers fate. Gerald Palmieri often carries with him the catchers mitt his father gave him as a child. Both Vincent Jr. and Gerry have remained on Staten Island with their siblings: Patrick, Salvatore, Angela, Stephen, Nancy and Elizabeth. Another sister, Antonette, died of spinal meningitis in 2008.
Daddy was not a gangster. He was a street guy. He knew some knock-around guys from the neighborhood. But he had a legitimate job and we didnt have a lot of money.
Vincent Palmieri Jr.
They say their dad was a steady guy with a nontraditional schedule. He worked nights in the city, a member of a small labor union. He came home every morning after his shift on the lower East Side, bringing Chinese food or bagels and lox. He had the good looks of a big-screen star, a dimpled grin and a thick head of dark hair.
In the sprawling projects of the West Brighton Housing Complex, Palmieri would offer impromptu swim lessons to neighborhood kids and headed off racial tensions, according to his sons. He often tossed a football around with his boys or read stories aloud from books that sat on a tall, narrow bookshelf in their living room.
Palmieri had no criminal record, but for a single arrest in his youth. Vermont police could never track down the arrest report. The Palmieri family cannot even locate the missing person report their mother filed with New York City police.
Patrick Palmieri, the eldest of the Palmieri sons, said he took his younger brothers to a ballgame on the last day he remembers seeing his father.
I remember seeing my dad at the corner store. He would spend time at the store, as a lot of people in the neighborhood would. My family was not a democracy. I would not, for instance, say: Who was that person you were talking to and what business do you have with him? It didnt work that way in our house, said Patrick Palmieri, a mental health counselor at a New York state hospital.
He vaguely remembers his father talking to him about moving the family to the country. He thinks his father may have mentioned Massachusetts or even Vermont, but is uncertain whether his memory is playing tricks on him whether he is retrofitting a recollection to unlock some mystery about his fathers disappearance.
A March 23, 2018 photograph shows the stretch of the Passumpsic River in East Barnet, Vt. where Vincent Palmieris body was found on June 1, 1972. Stephanie Barry / The Republican
Not a mob hit
Vincent Palmieri Sr. grew up in Little Italy, in lower Manhattan. The neighborhood was not the trendy tourist draw it is today, his son Patrick said. The social milieu of the enclave during the 1940s and 50s was that of an Italian ghetto for new immigrants, he said.
He and other family members suspect their fathers disappearance was dismissed as the fate of a womanizer, a rakish Italian guy from the neighborhood that was once the heart of the New York-based Genovese crime family still one of the powerful five clans that exist today.
For generations, the crime family has also had a grip on Springfield and parts of Connecticut.
While Vincent Palmieris slaying had all the hallmarks of a classic mob hit an ambush-style shooting, the river dump many miles from home the family insists he had nothing to do with organized crime. Vincent Palmieri Sr. was not a made guy, they say, and he was largely a homebody.
If this was a mob hit, they would have whacked him in the middle of the street and left him there as a message. Thats how the mob does that. This wasnt that, Vincent Jr. insists.
The family concedes it wouldnt have been the wildest idea that he kept up with some of his childhood friends from the old neighborhood, where avoiding at least brushing up against budding gangsters was virtually impossible. Plus, there is the obvious challenge of raising nine children on a single salary in New York City.
Retired Vermont State Police Capt. JP Sinclair in his office at the departments headquarters in Waterbury, where he harnessed much of the cold case information linked to Vincent Palmieris unsolved slaying. Stephanie Barry / The Republican
A new twist
Last year, a 48-year-old woman from New Jersey approached the Palmieris to inform them they shared the same father. She said she made the discovery through one of the DNA tests that are growing popular on the internet.
The womans mother initially denied any connection to the late Vincent Palmieri Sr. in interviews with police, according to the Palmieris. But Vincent Palmieri Jr. said she later admitted to her daughter that she knew his father.
The womans mother had been married to a man with a long criminal history who raised Palmieris child as his own, according to Palmieri Jr. However, the mother recently passed away, after her stepfather died years ago. Another door slammed shut.
The alleged half-sister of the Palmieris did not respond to requests for an interview.
The passage of time makes a lot of things difficult to know.
But for Sinclair, other law enforcement officials have had little to offer. A records repository where any documentation may have been held in New York City was washed away by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, family members were told. They have little evidence and few records to hang onto. Still, they search.
Among the things Palmieris family has held onto is a weathered parking ticket from the JFK airport that appears to say May 1 in small letters in an upper corner and Lot 1 in the center, along with small print about the lot minders limited liability.
When Palmieris body turned up in the river all those years ago, a Vermont state police detective contacted law enforcement agencies in Massachusetts and Connecticut about missing persons, including two in particular: Dube and DeCaro. But, police reports from that era indicate those were conveyed as dead ends by other agencies.
Victor DeCaro was last seen in May 1972 at a bar near the Connecticut River in Agawam, shown above on July 30, 2020. His body was pulled from the river July 3, 1972 in Windsor, Ct.Greg Saulmon / The Republican
Their bodies were never publicly linked through a ballistics report which is a curious thing, since it existed, Sinclair said. The ballistics report by the Connecticut State Police lab, in the state where DeCaros body was found, sat dormant. Why that was remains unclear.
The laboratory in 1972 identified a common .38-caliber pistol to link the killings. Soffen pleaded guilty to Dubes murder in 1973, plus the murder of Perrot with a different weapon. He remained mum on any other killings linked to the .38.
Sinclair said during initial interrogations after Soffens arrest, he made a vague reference about the man found in the river in Vermont being a nobody from Springfield but there was never any apparent follow-up.
Before his retirement, Sinclair said his only solace is having found the Palmieri family and reunited them with their fathers remains, bittersweet as it may be.
Ive done this for many years worked really hard to connect a person who was murdered or who had died alone with their family members, Sinclair said. And the worst outcome is to realize that no one really cared about that person. Vincent Palmieri had a loving family who had wondered about him for years and years.
Coming Monday: Three victims, one gun. What did they have in common?
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The Gun: Vincent Palmieri disappeared from Staten Island in 1972; his death has a mysterious link to Western - MassLive.com
