DA & Cops Crack 23-year-old Murder Case

Family comes to DA in 2007; two years later a homicide detective and prosecutor solve the 1986 murder of Samuel Quentzel

MINEOLA, NY – Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice and Police Commissioner Lawrence Mulvey announced Wednesday that a homicide detective and an assistant district attorney have solved the case of a Woodmere man robbed and murdered almost 23 years ago in the driveway of his home.  In a secret grand jury proceeding that has taken place over the last three weeks, prosecutors have presented evidence that links two career criminals from Brooklyn to the 1986 murder of Samuel Quentzel, 54, a husband and father of three who ran a family-owned plumbing business in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. 

An indictment unsealed by prosecutors Wednesday morning outlines charges against Lewis Slaughter, 60, and Roger Williams, 48, for their role in the murder and robbery.  Rice said that prosecutors from her office and detectives from the Nassau County police department have also uncovered evidence against a third man involved in the plot, 33-year-old Clifton Waters.  Waters, who is believed to be the triggerman, was accidently shot to death in his Brooklyn apartment building four months after the murder of Samuel Quentzel.

Roger Williams was scheduled to be released Monday after completing a six-month sentence in New York City for an unrelated parole violation stemming from a 1999 drug-dealing conviction.    Lewis Slaughter is currently serving 25 years to life in prison at Woodbourne Correctional Facility for the October 1986 murder of a woman that took place during Slaughter, Williams and Waters’ flight from the robbery of a Nabisco factory in Queens. 

Both defendants were brought to Nassau County court in Mineola Wednesday morning where they were arraigned in front of Nassau County Judge James McCormack.  A grand jury’s indictment includes a single charge of Murder in the Second Degree against each man.  Charges of robbery and weapons possession are barred by the statute of limitations. Each defendant faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted of his or her role in the murder.

The Murder

At the time of his death in 1986, Samuel Quentzel was the owner of Henry Quentzel Plumbing Supply Company, Inc., a family-owned business that remains today in the same Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn where his father opened the business more than 50 years ago.  

Rice said that at approximately 7:00 P.M. on the evening of September 4, 1986, Quentzel was arriving at his Woodmere home after a day at work in Brooklyn.  He was scheduled to meet his wife, Ann, and an architect the family had hired to design plans for a home renovation. 

Just minutes after 7:00 P.M., Ann and the architect, who was touring the home prior to Samuel’s arrival, heard a commotion and a car horn blowing in the driveway.  They both ran to a window and witnessed a male (now believed to be Clifton Waters) slamming the driver’s door of the Oldsmobile and running towards a tan van waiting in the street.  As Ann ran out of the house she witnessed another male running towards the same van. 

Ann attempted to open the vehicle door but it was locked and she was forced to run into the home’s garage and retrieve a hammer to smash a window of the car.  Once she was able to unlock the car door, she found her husband slumped across the front seat with a fatal bullet wound to the left side of his chest.  Samuel Quentzel was pronounced dead at the scene.  Detectives recovered $2,500 in cash in Quentzel’s pockets.  Quentzel was known for carrying large amounts of cash while he ran his business, according to Rice, adding that authorities believe the attack was a botched robbery attempt.

As Ann ran to her husband’s aid, the architect attempted to jot down the license plate of the fleeing van, which was being driven by a third man (now believed to be Lewis Slaughter).  He was able to tell authorities the first three letters of the plate:  AEI.  The van was found burned-out less than an hour later, fewer than four blocks from Quentzel’s plumbing store in Brooklyn.  The van, bearing New Jersey license plate AEI38J, had been reported stolen in Brooklyn two weeks earlier. 

In the days following the murder, the Nassau County Police Department hauled the burned-out van back to Nassau for inspection.  Recovered in the van were four cigarette butts, a bullet, and a checkbook belonging to Samuel Quentzel.  

In 2003, hoping to take advantage of DNA technology unavailable to law enforcement at the time of the murder, the cigarette butts were submitted to a laboratory for testing.  The DNA testing indentified a distinct genetic profile on one of the butts.  The profile was given a specimen identification number and entered into a national DNA databank, without yielding a match.   

The Investigation

In May of 2007, Ann Quentzel and her son, Andrew, contacted District Attorney Rice in the hopes of renewing the investigation into Samuel’s murder.  The DA assigned her chief investigative attorney, Executive Assistant District Attorney Meg Reiss, to the case.  ADA Reiss contacted the Nassau County Police Department’s homicide squad and soon after Detective James Hendry was assigned to the case.  Detective Hendry analyzed evidence gathered from the scene more than 20 years ago, reviewed old leads and spoke to witnesses and individuals who claimed to have information on the case. 

Meanwhile, in 2006, the New York State legislature passed a bill allowing for the expansion of the state’s DNA databank.  The law expanded the DNA databank to include for the first time those convicted of any felony crime or one of a handful of misdemeanor offenses.  While the law only required samples from individuals convicted after June 23, 2006, it applied retroactively to those convicted of one of the designated offenses prior to June 23 if the individual was still incarcerated or on parole from the offense on that date.

In 2006 career criminal Roger Williams became one of the thousands added to the DNA databank as a result of the change in state law.  Williams, despite his lengthy rap sheet, had never been convicted of a DNA eligible offense until the law changed to include all felony offenses, including Williams’s most recent conviction for felony drug sale in 1999.  In 2006, Williams was still on parole as a result of that conviction and by December 2007 the state received Williams’ sample and entered it into the statewide databank for the first time in his criminal career.

On January 4, 2008, the DA’s office received a letter from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services indicating that a recently submitted profile linked to current parolee Roger Williams matched the profile taken from the cigarette butt found in the burned-out van more than 20 years earlier.

After the DNA profile hit, Detective Hendry moved quickly to determine Williams’ whereabouts and where he was at the time of the murder.  The detective soon learned that at the time of the murder, Williams was living with his wife in Brooklyn, approximately two miles from the Quentzel’s plumbing shop.  Detectives also learned that Williams’ father-in-law was a contractor and superintendent of several apartment buildings in Brooklyn and that over the last 20 years, in between numerous stints in state prison, Williams worked for his father-in-law on several of the Brooklyn apartment buildings.  Authorities were then able to confirm that Williams’ father-in-law’s business often purchased supplies from the Quentzel store.

Detectives and prosecutors soon learned that Williams had been arrested on a misdemeanor drug charge in March of 2006, and that the charge resulted in a violation of his parole.  Williams would again violate his parole in late 2008, resulting in the imposition of a six-month sentence ending on June 15, 2009.

Believing they had indentified one of Samuel Quentzel’s killers, prosecutors and detectives worked towards building a case against Williams and his accomplices in the murder.  Detectives and prosecutors immediately began reviewing old case files of crimes Williams was involved in and those files of Williams’ known associates.  The review led authorities to immediately believe that Williams was part of a ‘crime crew’ that targeted businesses on paydays in Brooklyn, Queens and Nassau County.  Detectives honed in on one individual, Lewis Slaughter, as a possible accomplice in the Quentzel murder.  Slaughter was known to be the driver in several robberies done by the crew, including a botched 1986 heist of a Queens Nabisco factory that left an innocent bystander dead.  Slaughter was convicted of murder in that case and has been serving 25 years to life in prison since the crime. 

Detectives and prosecutors began interviewing individuals connected to Slaughter, all the while monitoring his jailhouse phone calls.  Authorities quickly confirmed that a little more than a month before Slaughter’s involvement in the fatal Nabisco robbery, he was the mystery driver of the tan van spotted fleeing the Quentzel home. 

In reviewing the case files of Williams and Slaughter, after poring over more than 50 hours of jailhouse phone calls and after interviewing and corroborating numerous bits of information collected from individuals who have come into contact with the defendants over the last 20 years, authorities were also convinced that the third man involved in the heist – and the individual who shot Samuel Quentzel – was Clifton Waters, who was also involved with Williams and Slaughter in the Nabisco robbery and murder.  Less than two months after the Quentzel murder, Waters was killed during an accidental shooting in the vestibule of his Brooklyn apartment.

To solidify their case against Williams and Slaughter and to corroborate their history together, detectives and prosecutors devised a plan for the two to meet, unaware that authorities would be electronically eavesdropping on their conversation. 

To legally eavesdrop on a conversation, prosecutors are required to obtain a warrant detailing the probable cause to intercept their conversations and the absolute necessity of such an invasive investigatory tactic.  Prosecutors drafted the application and in March, a judge in the New York State Appellate Division, Second Department signed the eavesdropping warrant.

With an eavesdropping warrant in hand, detectives orchestrated a plan to remove both Williams and Slaughter from their jail cells and transport them to Nassau County.  Detectives placed both individuals in a bugged interview room of the police department’s homicide squad.  After not seeing each other for more than twenty years, Roger Williams and Lewis Slaughter were together again, with authorities leaving the room and listening to their every word.

While District Attorney Rice is prohibited from releasing the details of the duo’s secretly recorded conversations, what is clear is that “these two knew each other, they did many crimes together and they were absolutely involved in the murder of Samuel Quentzel,” said Rice.

Rice and Mulvey thanked numerous law enforcement agencies and personnel for their assistance in this investigation, including Peter Crusco, Peter Reese, Sharon Brodt and Jack Warsawsky of the Queens County DA’s Office; the New York City Police Department; the Kings County DA’s Office; the United States Attorney’s Office – Eastern District of New York and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Handling the case for the District Attorney's Office is Executive Assistant District Attorney Meg Reiss and Assistant District Attorneys Kara Kaplan and Andrew Weiss.  Williams is represented by Oscar Holt, Esq., and Slaughter is being represented by Christopher Devane, Esq.

The charges are merely accusations and the defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.