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A Queens murder mystery

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

By Patrick Markey

The Saturday night revelers at Backdrafts would have been bustling around the bar when a telephone call came through for Patrick Fahey. One of the owners of the popular Queens tavern, Fahey had been working the floor, as he did most evening, greeting regulars in his own way, buying drinks and chatting with newcomers.

Fahey took the call. Shortly afterward he told the bar staff he had to meet someone and headed outside. It was just after 10 p.m. when he stepped out into the November night. That was 1996 and the last time anyone at the bar saw Patrick J. Fahey alive.

Six days later a motorist who had pulled off the Belt Parkway found the Irishman’s battered body stripped and bruised in a wooded section off the highway. Lying crumpled in just his underwear, Fahey had been shot once through the head and dumped off the roadside. His killers had also mutilated his body.

Almost three years after his death, the P.J. Fahey murder investigation has landed in the hands of the Queens Cold Case Homicide Squad, the police detail that handles cases that have stumped borough detectives. It’s a fresh set of ideas, a new set of eyes to scour evidence in the city’s more vexing murder cases.

With the help of federal authorities, detectives say they are now focusing on one group of individuals who may be able to provide information about the Irishman’s death. If detectives have tightened the net around their suspects, they have also again piqued the Fahey family’s interest in closing their long wait for answers.

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Fahey’s death and his gruesome wounds caused a flurry of media speculation when his body was discovered in early November 1996. His reported earlier run-ins with local mobsters and the trappings of his successful bar business became fodder to the media rumor mill about Mafia hits and violent revenge. Certainly, the nature of his injuries seemed to suggest that his killers were trying to send a message.

Had Fahey run afoul of mobsters muscling in on his business? Perhaps his involvement with a jailed man’s wife cost him his life, or was there some other aspect of his business that had caused him to cross paths with the wrong person? All were viable theories, all have been investigated and none have been dismissed, say investigators.

"That’s why it’s so difficult. There are so many theories, none of them more substantiated than others," said one homicide detective involved in the case.

New York start

Patrick Joseph Fahey arrived in New York in 1981. Born in the small town of Hollymount, a short drive from Castlebar in County Mayo, Fahey came from a large family of six siblings. But he was the first to break out and soon found himself working as an auto mechanic in Queens, one of a new flood of Irish immigrants escaping scarce job opportunities at home.

In four years, Fahey managed to forge his way into the construction business and soon his younger brothers Joe and Sean joined him in the U.S. The three brothers founded a construction company, PSJ Construction, helped along by P.J.’s reputation and contacts within the Irish community.

"He was really like a father to us out here when we arrived," said his brother Joe, 31, who still works in the construction business.

P.J.’s brothers mostly paint a portrait of the happy-go-lucky immigrant with a flair for business and an innate enjoyment of the attention his success brought him. Those attributes came in handy when he was invited to enter into the bar business by a friend.

"He had a way about him," Joe said. "He was talented enough to make a success of anything. You’d meet him one time and you wouldn’t forget him. He had a very natural way about him."

As much as he enjoyed himself, his brothers said, P.J. always managed to keep in touch. The first few anxious days after he went missing only fueled their suspicions. Sean was on vacation in St. Martins when his brother called to say that P.J. was missing.

"I knew something was wrong. I knew P.J. always came back to the bar. A lot of people said that was just like P.J. disappearing like that. But we knew something was wrong," Sean said.

It was Sean who was called into the precinct when police discovered his brother’s body. But he already knew P.J. was gone.

Soon after his death, a local newspaper reported that Fahey had been involved with the wife of a jailed drug dealer, a man alleged linked to part of the New York mob. Given what one detective described as P.J.’s playboy lifestyle, the theory that revenge may have played a part seemed to fit the bill.

That relationship stoked speculation over mob involvement in Fahey’s death. But although the brothers acknowledge P.J. was a ladies man, they are less certain about any alleged Mafia involvement.

"The first thing we saw when we got home to Ireland was the newspaper saying our brother was murdered for a Mafia princess," Sean said. "But after we put our heads together, we didn’t think it was a Mafia hit."

Speculation

But other incidents only added to speculation about who pulled the trigger.

Two years before Fahey’s death and just as he was set to open up his bar, Backdrafts, in October 1994, somebody broke into the building, splashed gasoline on the inside of the bar and tossed in a match. Damage was minimal, mainly smoke and water flooding, but it was an indication perhaps of the troubles ahead.

Fahey had contacted a local newspaper and told the editors that neighborhood mobsters had tried to muscle in on the bar’s vending machine business, a report that police confirm. Take-our-machines-or-else were not terms that Patrick Fahey felt comfortable accepting. Soon after the bar opened. there were several incidents where someone tossed smoke bombs into the bar, according to police. Somebody was still watching. No one has been arrested for those incidents.

Out near the border of Queens and Nassau County, the Cold Case Squad operates out of the 105 Precinct building. Run by Lt. Phillip Panzarella, the squad has been responsible for tracking some of the city’s more heinous criminals — many after they have spent years on the run.

At the side of his desk, Det. Tom Mansfield has three worn brown cardboard boxes stacked with papers on the Fahey case. It is, he says, one of the harder cases in the three which he works.

"It is probably one of the more difficult cases because this guy was in the bar business. Like any other barman, there are so many possible suspects," Mansfield said. "Any one of them is a viable one and you can’t throw any of them out."

Federal authorities — mainly the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys Office — are now assisting the Cold Case squad and detectives there are working with the Queens District Attorney’s office and Queens Homicide. And while the screws have tightened, a lot of questions remain unanswered.

Who called Fahey on the night he left the bar? Was it a pre-arranged meeting or was the call related to the supposed meeting? Fahey’s car was still parked outside the bar after he left, so it is possible someone was waiting for him outside and snatched him when he arrived to meet them, say detectives.

"There are people out there with information, but they think it’s not needed or that the cops already have it," Mansfield said.

"There’s a rumor going around that we’ve made an arrest on this. It’s not true. Time passes and people think it’s over. It’s not," he said.

"Eventually you hope that the right person is going to be spoken to, and there will be a collar on this," said another detective involved in the case.

Sean Fahey recently increased to $100,000 reward money posted for information leading to the conviction of his brother’s killer.

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