It didn’t seem fair, but who said a cop’s life was fair? Life’s a bitch, and then you die.
At the same time, Cadet Matthew M. Payne, Captain Moffitt’s nephew, had been about to graduate from the Police Academy. In the opinion of then-Chief of Patrol Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin, the chances that Matt Payne would last six months on the job-much less that the police department would be his career-ranged from zero to zilch.
Coughlin believed that Matt-whom he had known from the day of his birth-had reacted to (a) the death of his uncle and (b) his failure of the U.S. Marine Corps’ Pre-Commissioning Physical Examination by applying for the police department to (a) avenge his uncle and (b) prove his manhood.
It was understandable, of course, but the bottom line was that a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, who had been raised not only in wealth but as the adopted son of a Philadelphia Brahmin, was very unlikely to find happiness walking a police beat. Worse, he was liable to get hurt.
Sergeant Dennis V. Coughlin had knocked at the door of his best friend’s pregnant wife to tell her that Sergeant Jack Moffitt had been killed responding to a silent alarm at a gas station in West Philadelphia.
Chief Inspector Coughlin had no intention of knocking at the door of Mrs. Patricia Moffitt Payne to tell her that her son-Jack’s son, his godson-Matt, had been killed in the line of duty.
And all of this had coincided with the formation, at the “suggestion” of the then-mayor of the City of Philadelphia, the Hon. Jerome H. “Jerry” Carlucci, of the Special Operations Division of the police department.
Mayor Carlucci, who boasted that he had held every rank in the Philadelphia police department except for policewoman, had not been at all bashful about making suggestions about the department to then-Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernich.
Mayor Carlucci had also “suggested” to Commissioner Czernich that he consider Staff Inspector Peter F. Wohl, then assigned to Internal Affairs, to be the commanding officer of the new Special Operations Division. Commissioner Czernich had immediately seen the wisdom of the suggestions, and issued the appropriate orders.
Peter Wohl was then the youngest staff inspector-ever- in the department. It was well-known that his father, Chief Inspector (Retired) August Wohl, had been Jerry Carlucci’s rabbi as the mayor had risen through the ranks. But it was also well-known that Peter Wohl was a hell of a good cop, an absolutely straight arrow, and smarter than hell, so the cries of nepotism were not as loud as they might have been.
Coughlin, the then-chief inspector, had solved the problem of what to do with Officers Martinez, McFadden, and Payne by ordering their assignment to Special Operations.
In a private chat with then-Staff Inspector Wohl, he suggested that in his new command Wohl would probably be able to find places where Officers Martinez and McFadden could be useful in plainclothes, and that Officer Payne could probably make himself useful as Wohl’s administrative assistant, until he realized the mistake he had made by coming on the job, and quit and got on with his life.
Wohl had accepted Coughlin’s suggestions with as much alacrity as the commissioner had accepted the mayor’s suggestions. He was wise enough to know that he had very little choice in the matter. His rabbi had spoken.
Finding useful employment for Martinez and McFadden had posed no problem. Wohl had been pleasantly surprised how well they had performed in interviews with suspects. Between them, they had seemed to know when they were not being told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and then one or the other of them had been able to get it.
When they played Good Cop/Bad Cop, Martinez had been very effective as the frightening arm of the law, and McFadden, despite his size, as the kindly young Irishman who understood what had happened and wanted only to help.
Officer Payne had, not surprising Wohl, been an efficient administrative assistant-sort of a male secretary- from the first day. Wohl, who agreed with Chief Coughlin that Payne would leave the job just as soon as he realized that he really belonged in law school, as the next step on the ladder to an eventual partnership in Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester, arguably Philadelphia’s most prestigious law firm, was surprised to realize that he was actually going to miss him when he was gone.
When a serial rapist began to operate in the Northwest, and Northwest Detectives had difficulty finding him- and this difficulty was gleefully reported daily in the press-Mayor Carlucci had been very unhappy. When the rapist killed one of his victims, triggering even more scornful journalistic comment, Mayor Carlucci called a press conference and announced that henceforth the investigation would be handled by the newly formed Special Operations Division.
It was good press, but the reality was that Wohl’s Special Operations Division was less qualified to conduct the investigation than Homicide was, and Wohl, who had been a homicide detective, knew it.
Homicide had assigned the two best Homicide detectives, Jason Washington and his partner, Tony Harris, to the job. Wohl, with the assistance of Chief Coughlin, arranged-over their bitter objections-the transfer of Washington and Harris to Special Operations. Once they had reported for duty, Wohl assigned Officer Payne to the job. Payne was told that his duties were to relieve Washington and Harris of as many administrative details as possible, and to report to Wohl at least once a day-more often if necessary-of how the investigation was proceeding.
It was, Wohl thought, a really useful thing for Payne to be doing before he left the job.
It never occurred to Wohl, Washington, or Harris that Payne would do anything but run errands. Everyone understood that despite the badge on his belt and the. 38 “Detective’s Special” snub-nosed revolver in his shoulder holster, he wasn’t really on the job.
He was a really nice college boy, and Denny Coughlin’s god-son, and Coughlin had given him to Peter Wohl to sit on, out of harm’s way, until he realized he wasn’t cut out to be a cop.
When Wohl told Coughlin that he had given Payne to Washington and Harris as a gofer, Coughlin had smiled.
“Twenty years from now, he will fondly remember his days as a Homicide officer,” Coughlin said.
Four days after Officer Payne went to work as Washington’s and Harris’s gofer, the following story appeared on page one of the Philadelphia Bulletin:
NORTHWEST SERIAL RAPIST-MURDERER KILLED BY “HANDSOME” SPECIAL OPERATIONS COP AS HE RESCUES KIDNAPPED WOMAN BY MICHAEL J. O’HARA BULLETIN STAFF WRITER
Officer Matthew Payne, 22, in what Mayor Jerry Carlucci described as an act of “great personal heroism,” rescued Mrs. Naomi Schneider, 34, of the 8800 block of Norwood Street in Chestnut Hill, minutes after she had been abducted at knifepoint from her home by a man the mayor said he is positive is the man dubbed the Northwest Serial Rapist.
The man, tentatively identified as Warren K. Fletcher, 31, of Germantown, had, according to Mrs. Schneider, broken into her luxury apartment as she was preparing for bed. Mrs. Schneider said he was masked and armed with a large butcher knife. She said he forced her to disrobe, then draped her in a blanket and forced her into the rear of his Ford van and covered her with a tarpaulin.
“The next thing I knew,” Mrs. Schneider said, “there was shots, and then breaking glass, and then the van crashed. Then this handsome young cop was looking down at me and smiling and telling me everything was all right, he was a police officer.”
Moments before Officer Payne shot the kidnapper and believed rapist-murderer, according to Mayor Carlucci, the man had attempted to run Payne down with the van, slightly injuring Payne and doing several thousand dollars’ worth of damage to Payne’s personal automobile.
“Payne then, reluctantly,” Mayor Carlucci said, “concluded there was no choice but for him to use deadly force, and he proceeded to do so. Mrs. Schneider’s life was in grave danger and he knew it. I’m proud of him.”
Mayor Carlucci, whose limousine is equipped with police short-wave radios, was en route to his Chestnut Hill home from a Sons of Italy dinner in South Philadelphia when the rescue occurred.
“We were the first car to respond to the ‘shots fired’ call,” the mayor said. “Officer Payne was still helping Mrs. Schneider out of the wrecked van when we got there.”
Payne, who is special assistant to Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, commanding officer of the newly formed Special Operations Division, had spent most of the day in Bucks County, where the mutilated body of Miss Elizabeth
