February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
On April 11, the O’Connors and Salem will remember Christopher once more, noting the 17th anniversary of his death.
O’Connor, like Salem, a native of Queens, worked for him in Salem’s mail order business and was a typical young man from a blue-collar Irish-American family. He liked beer, loved pool, and by 1987 was into heavy metal music. And he certainly did not deserve to die mysteriously in the parking lot of the L’Amour East nightclub on April 11, 1987.
The previous night he had gone to the nightclub to see the British band Motorhead. In the early hours, he placed a call to 911 to report that he had been beaten, and various witnesses report that he was at the club, was in a disagreement with bouncers there, that he had been thrown out of the club, and, according to one witness, was seen to reenter the club and was taken to its basement by the bouncers.
Coroner Josette Montas cited alcohol poisoning as the cause of O’Connor’s death. There is no doubt that Christopher drank heavily, and did so on the night he died, but though his blood alcohol level was high, O’Connor was 6 feet tall and weighed 228 pounds. Salem speculates that a man O’Connor’s couldn’t have been felled by a night of heavy drinking.
Then there is the physical evidence on O’Connor’s neck and body.
The medical examination also contained autopsy color slides that show ligature marks on O’Connor’s neck. Was he strangled? He had clearly been manhandled, and somehow he ended up in L’Amour East’s parking lot, face up and dead. The slides also show scratches and abrasions on O’Connor’s chest and back consistent with his body being dragged. None of these marks made it into Montas’s report on the death.
Other allegations emerged over the years. For example, a former homicide assistant district attorney, John Scarpa, alleged that the Queens district attorney’s office had not given the transcripts of O’Connor’s 911 call to the medical examiner.
A “complete lack of interest” fell over the case, according to the Web site www.helpchristopher.com, which is maintained to highlight O’Connor’s story and the $100,000 that is offered for information “leading to the arrest, conviction, and incarceration for murder of the person or persons involved with Christopher’s death.”
L’Amour East was a nightclub with, at very least, a criminal fraternity. It was eventually closed by the city after numerous violent incidents.
From 1983-89 dozens of crimes, including assault, robbery, weapons violations, rape and sodomy are linked to L’Amour East (it was also known as “The Edge” for some years). O’Connor was not the only suspicious death. In November 1987, Victor Vicenty, aged 19, died of a gunshot wound after a dispute in the club. Its bouncers, who worked at several shady Queens venues, had an unhealthy appetite for brutality, some claim.
O’Connor’s body was found at about 1:45 p.m. on April 11, 1987 by Riza Dekidjiev, a porter employed by L’Amour East who also lived in the nightclub. Dekidjiev eventually agreed to speak to the O’Connor family’s lawyers in June 1989 about the violent, criminal atmosphere at the club. He was found bludgeoned to death in the nightclub days before he was due to speak. His murder has never been solved either, but Salem asks the most obvious question: did someone kill Dekidjiev to shut him up?
At his lowest moments in the 17 years since O’Connor’s death, Salem admits to finding solace in just being able to keep his memory alive.
“He would be 40 on Sept. 19,” Salem said this week, reflecting on another anniversary.
O’Connor’s death brought Salem to seek help from a nationwide organization called Parents of Murdered Children, which acts as often as a support group for bereaved relatives and friends as it does with more active intervention, such as helping victims’ families prevent convicted murderers from being paroled.
He has seen other families and friends at POMC meetings achieve a measure of closure when a murder case is suddenly solved after many years of dead ends and heartache. But O’Connor’s mother, Denise, died last year, friends say of a broken heart, with her son’s death unexplained.
Recently Salem had cause to ring around all the friends and contacts that have supported him over the years. He had a new lead in the case, tenuous at best, but better than nothing: a woman in California had come across Christopher’s Web site on the Internet and contacted a private investigator connected with the case.
She said that she had once been in a relationship with a man who said he had been a bouncer at L’Amour East. She had been left in no doubt by the man that he and his bouncer colleagues were no strangers to violence and one evening while drunk he had confessed to murdering someone. Not a strong lead, but something new to go on.
Salem pursues the case with energy and dedication. He carries photocopied synopses of O’Connor’s story everywhere and hands them out to strangers. Anyone could lead to a new contact, he reasons, and anyway, O’Connor’s tragedy deserves to be told.
“One day, this is all going to bust wide open,” Salem said confidently.
For further information, visit www.helpchristopher.com.