Mendez

Saturday, January 5, 2002

Milan kin jailed in Camden slaying

By KATHY MATHESON
Courier-Post Staff
CAMDEN

A cousin of former Mayor Milton Milan is being held on more than $1 million bail after his arraignment Friday in the February shooting death of a city resident.

David Mendez, 36, said he appeared before Superior Court Judge Linda Baxter without a lawyer because he was still looking for "the right one."

Baxter entered an automatic plea of innocent for Mendez and started the process of assigning him a public defender in the interim.

Police accused Mendez of gunning down 24-year-old Luis Ocasio, of the Ferry Station Apartments, in February.

Mendez, formerly of State Street, fled after the shooting but was arrested Sept. 6 in Brooklyn, N.Y., officials said. He was extradited to Camden on Thursday.

The motive for the slaying is unclear, officials said. Camden County Assistant Prosecutor Gregory Smith said only that the two men had an argument, after which Mendez returned and shot Ocasio as the victim sat in a car in the 1100 block of North 34th Street.

Authorities believe Mendez may have information about the unsolved 1988 killing of Francisco "Pancho" Chamorro. Milan was questioned about the murder, which occurred before he was elected to public office, but was not charged in the slaying. Milan has repeatedly denied any involvement.

Milan is now serving more than seven years in federal prison for corruption.

December 07, 1999
Chamorro murder still haunting Mayor Milan

By FRANK KUMMER and CLINT RILEY
Courier-Post staff
CAMDEN


Francisco `Poncho' Chamorro turned the ignition on his red and white Cadillac at 1:32 a.m. on Christmas Eve, unaware of three men lurking in the fog.

Police would later question Milton Milan -- now the city's mayor -- about that night in 1988 when the trio, cloaked in black and wearing ski masks, stalked Chamorro.

As Chamorro moved the Cadillac from where it blocked the narrow street in front of his home, the masked men emerged from the fog. Chamorro's wife later told police she watched from her front steps as a 6-foot-tall gunman with a heavy build opened fire with an automatic rifle, emptying bullets from a banana clip.

Seventy-seven .223-caliber shells perforated Chamorro's head and body, riddled the driver's side door and shattered two windows. Five bullet casings from a 9mm handgun were also recovered at the scene.

Chamorro's car slowly rolled down tiny Dauphin Street until it struck a pole in front of a crumbling garage where someone has since scrawled: `Camden is the Outworld. Let Mortal Kombat Begin.'

Milan maintains his innocence, and has never been charged in the murder or any other related crime. But an investigator's report compiled at the time indicates he admitted he was involved in a street fight police believe sparked the Chamorro killing.

As the 11th anniversary of the shooting nears, a confidential law enforcement source has told the Courier-Post that investigators have questioned a potential witness within the last six months. An inmate being held on an unrelated charge told investigators he witnessed the murder and put Milan at the scene, the source said.

The newspaper has also learned investigators recovered the rifle used in the Chamorro killing in South Camden sometime in the early 1990s. Ballistics tests later confirmed it is the murder weapon.

New details have also been uncovered about the convicted felons police suspected were involved and their close association to Milan.

The information is based on a law enforcement report written after police questioned Milan in early 1989, as well as the statement of a teen-age witness, dozens of arrest records, federal and state court documents, and interviews with law enforcement authorities.

And a key figure in the murder -- a man police believe may have been an intended target of the hit -- is speaking out. From the state prison where he is serving time for an unrelated murder and other charges, Abel `Nica' Figueroa said he witnessed the trio kill Chamorro and saw Milan's vehicle at the scene. The Courier-Post has confirmed Figueroa is not the inmate investigators interviewed earlier this year.

Figueroa admits he was told that he failed a lie detector test when he related his account to the FBI two years ago.

As federal law enforcement officials probe Milan's past in an ongoing investigation into citywide corruption, the Chamorro murder and the mayor's past connections with drug dealers continue to haunt his administration.

Milan referred questions about the Chamorro murder to his attorney, Carlos A. Martir Jr. Martir said Monday that neither he nor Milan would comment on `any phase of the investigation at this point.' He confirmed his client was interviewed about Chamorro's death shortly after the murder.

Milan was 26 at the time and little known to police, having only a 1988 arrest in Pennsauken for possessing a small amount of marijuana, which he later denied using and said belonged to a friend.

Milan grew up on Bailey Street in North Camden, one of the city's harshest areas, then served in the Marine Corps from September 1981 to July 1985 as a heavy equipment operator, according to his military records. He served as a shore-based member of the 22nd Marine Amphibious Unit off the coast of Beirut and earned three Rifle Expert Badges. Milan later returned home to Camden.

About the same time, the crack cocaine epidemic was making its full assault on the city.

Chamorro, a heroin dealer, was the city's 31st murder victim in 1988, reflecting a 26 percent increase over the previous year. Police already had a string of unsolved murders and too few people to investigate them.

Even in that violent atmosphere, the Chamorro hit stood out for its stunning excess.

`There was bullet holes all over the place,' one city police officer who responded to the scene said recently, still amazed 11 years later. The officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, recalls sitting in a patrol car later that night in front of Chamorro's house, so edgy he kept a tight grip on a shotgun lying across his lap.

The following account is based on police reports, past news stories, and recent interviews with investigators:

The Chamorro murder began with a bungled robbery earlier in December 1988, police believe. At the time, suburban drug buyers and city dealers were exchanging millions of dollars openly on city streets.

Two local men, Jorge `George' Vargas and Abel `Nica' Figueroa, saw easy pickings among the cash-laden dealers and began robbing them.

But they made a mortal enemy the day they tried to rob a dealer named Luis Medina, investigators believe.

Medina, a three-time felon and convicted drug dealer, operated the short-lived Luis Fashion Shoes on Marlton Pike in East Camden, where Milan told police he worked. Police now believe the store was little more than a front to conceal Medina's drug dealing.

Milan and Medina were well acquainted. They both lived at Stockton Station apartments in East Camden. They had mutual friends. Milan was frequently seen driving Medina's van.

Medina was lucky when Figueroa tried to rob him that December night. As he stood at 5th and State streets, he had a friend nearby: Milan.

Milan ran to Medina's aid. They fought with Figueroa, who had a handgun. Milan and Medina turned the tables they beat Figueroa so badly he had to be treated at Cooper Hospital.

Figueroa gave a slightly different version Monday, saying the altercation began over a drug deal gone bad, not an aborted robbery.

Either way, the feud had begun.

A week or so later, Vargas and Figueroa were parked on Mount Ephraim Avenue when a blue-and-white, 1979 Ford Bronco with yellow running lights on the roof pulled behind them.

The Bronco's occupants started shooting.

Vargas and Figueroa fled along Mount Ephraim Avenue with the Bronco in pursuit, its occupants still firing. According to Figueroa, he and Vargas were able to lose their pursuers by driving to a police substation in East Camden.

After the Chamorro murder, police located a Bronco parked near Luis Fashion Shoes, where Vargas and Figueroa identified it as `looking like' the vehicle that chased them. The Bronco was registered to Milan.

Though the timeline is unclear, a witness told police that Vargas and Figueroa also shot at Milan, Medina and Milan's cousin, David Mendez, in another incident before the murder. Police would later find a bullet hole in Medina's dark-colored van.

As Christmas approached, tension grew between the two groups -- Vargas and Figueroa on one side; Milan, Medina and Mendez on the other.

Chamorro was about to be dragged into the escalating feud. Chamorro was raised in Ponce, Puerto Rico, where he worked as a security guard and certified paramedic at a Union Carbide plant. He and his wife, Annette, moved to the Bronx, N.Y., and then to Camden. She applied for welfare; Chamorro, 39, secretly sold heroin a few blocks from home.

Chamorro was a throwback compared to the younger dealers who hustled crack. Over a 20-year span, he had been arrested 11 times in Chicago, New York and Camden six times for drug offenses.

Chamorro began hanging with Vargas and Figueroa. They began borrowing Chamorro's red-and-white 1978 Cadillac when they went to rob drug dealers.

People began associating Vargas with Chamorro's Cadillac.

One of those Vargas and Figueroa crossed was a dealer identified in a police report as `Tito.' The report indicates Vargas and Figueroa had robbed Tito and street dealers he oversaw.

Law enforcement sources said investigators believe that dealer was Ernesto `Tito' Padilla, who was indicted in 1998 for his alleged role in the powerful drug syndicate known as the Organization. He later accepted a plea bargain and pleaded guilty to four lesser drug distribution charges. He remains imprisoned.

State prison records show Padilla had been in prison in late 1988 on drug charges, and was released two days before the murder.

Again, Figueroa offered a different account Monday. He said Tito was a man in his 40s who ran a now-closed bodega at 4th and Royden streets. Padilla was only 19 at the time.

Half an hour before Chamorro was gunned down, he and Vargas had picked up Chinese takeout food and stopped at the bodega. `Tito' came in and confronted Vargas about the robberies, an investigator wrote in a report.

Vargas denied robbing Tito and left in Chamorro's Cadillac. Chamorro took Vargas' beige Renault. They met at Chamorro's house, where Vargas parked the Cadillac blocking the street.

Chamorro's two-story rowhome is situated only a few feet from the asphalt of tiny Dauphin Street. The street is actually more like an alley two blocks long, cutting across Division Street, which has been renamed Ramona Gonzalez Boulevard.

It was a mild night and an earlier freezing rain had given way to fog.

Chamorro and his friend went inside to eat with Annette Chamorro. The couple's four children slept, awaiting Christmas.

Chamorro got up and said he had to move the Cadillac. As he walked down the steps, his wife came to the door to watch.

His three killers arrived in a dark van they parked a few blocks from the house, police later learned.

They opened fire on Chamorro as he moved the car about 40 feet from his home to Division Street.

Annette was watching from the steps and cried out, `Why? Why are you killing him? He's done you no harm.'

One of the gunmen turned a rifle toward her. Vargas yanked her inside.

Figueroa said Monday he had been with Vargas and Chamorro earlier that night. But just before the murder, he said, he went to his own house, then started walking toward Chamorro's home. Police reports confirm Figueroa lived just two blocks away in the 300 block of Walnut Street.

Figueroa gave his account on the phone on Monday from behind a glass barrier at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, where he is serving a life sentence for murder, kidnapping and other violent crimes.

As he approached the house that night, Figueroa recalled, he heard gunfire coming from around the corner and hid inside a row of run-down garages.

`I hear the shots, `pop, pop, pop,' so I go into the garage to hide,' he said. `I don't know what's going on. I see the Cadillac stop at the pole. The three guys are still shooting, `pop, pop, pop.'

`I see three guys coming down. I say, `Oh my God, they got me.' But it's dark.'

Figueroa said he managed to remain unseen and then fled.

He said he saw the blue-and-white Bronco parked nearby.

`I recognized the truck,' he said, as the one that had chased him and Vargas earlier that December. Police later identified it as being registered to Milan.

But there is no record in reports reviewed by the Courier-Post that Figueroa told police at the time that he saw the Bronco the night of the murder.

The day after Christmas, Vargas and Figueroa holed up in Chamorro's home, so frightened that they carried an Uzi submachine gun and automatic pistol.

A week later, Milan and Medina attended a New Year's Eve party with Mendez, Milan's cousin, also a convicted drug offender.

There, they told a teen-age girl, Maria Serrano, that they had killed Chamorro by mistake, Serrano later told police. Milan admitted he and Medina were out to kill Vargas and Figueroa, Serrano said. She mentioned Mendez as being part of the plot. Mendez, now 34, has felony convictions stretching back to his youth and is in jail.

`They said that they didn't mean to shoot at Poncho,' Serrano said, according to a police transcript of the interview, `that (who) they wanted was Nica and Georgie.'

On Jan. 6, 1989, Milan entered Camden Police headquarters wearing a maroon sweater, black jacket, tight gray pants and black military boots. He said he had heard on the street that police wanted to talk to him, and he voluntarily submitted to questioning.

He denied any knowledge of the Chamorro killing, but admitted beating up Figueroa during the robbery attempt earlier in December.

Milan told police he had driven Medina's van the night of the shooting. But he said he used it to go Christmas shopping until 10:30 p.m., then had gone home about 12:30 a.m. and remained with his girlfriend now his wife, Kathryn Santa for the rest of the night.

Police noted that Milan was `familiar with the use of the automatic M-16 rifle' which uses a .223-caliber bullet.

Milan agreed to a polygraph test. He `failed all questions concerning the death,' of Chamorro, police noted.

But police realized they had a case that could easily be picked apart by a sharp attorney. Their main witness, Serrano, was 15 and known to associate with drug dealers.

Seven years later, Serrano and another woman tried to rob a third woman. Her accomplice shot and killed the victim. Even though Serrano did not pull the trigger, she was sentenced to 20 years for murder. She is serving her term in the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Clinton. She declined to be interviewed for this article.

Milan went on to become a city councilman and opened his 3rd Ward office in early 1996 next to the defunct Luis Fashion Shoes.

Annette Chamorro, who witnessed her husband's murder, could not be located for comment. Her whereabouts are unknown.

A few days after her husband's death, she held a viewing in her living room. Chamorro's body was dressed in a white suit and stylish black hat.

Chamorro had survived the streets of Puerto Rico, the Bronx, Chicago, and seven surgeries for stomach hernias. He could not survive Camden.

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