NORTH BELLMORE, N.Y. (PIX11) – The Newbridge Road ramp leading to the westbound Southern State Parkway is just about a 25 mile drive away from Brownsville, Brooklyn.  This is the spot where New York State Police investigators made a grisly discovery on June 28, 2008:  the dismembered body of Tanya Rush, a 39-year-old mother of three from Brownsville.

“She was a great person, a great human being, and she just didn’t have to go that way,”  her middle daughter, Tamela Turner, said to PIX11 Investigates in a recent interview.

Rush was known as a wonderful caretaker and cook, funny and kind.

She also had fallen into hard times.

By the time Tamela was 13 or so, her mother was badly drug addicted and later turned to prostitution to feed her habit.

“You just can’t look at a period in somebody’s life,” Tamela  said to PIX11.  “That’s not her. I know my mom, the person everybody knows….kind, sweet and funny.”

New York State Police Investigator, Michael O’Sullivan, told PIX11, “We’re not really convinced this happened in the area she lived in.”  He told us it’s possible Rush was picked up in Brooklyn, killed elsewhere, and then dumped in the suitcase by the entrance to the Southern State Parkway in North Bellmore.

SEE THE POLICE FLIER FOR TANYA RUSH

The police have pieced together her last movements from about 3 a.m. on Monday, June 23, 2008.

Surveillance footage inside the elevator at 345 Livonia Avenue, where Rush lived, shows her in the elevator with a man and a woman.

Another camera shows them leaving a side entrance of the building.

The man walks to the right.  Rush is seen going to the left, toward the street where the elevated train runs.

Police have interviewed many drug dealers that Rush bought narcotics from, and they’ve turned up no leads from them.

They are now appealing to the public for more information.

Robert Keller, director of New York State Crimestoppers, has offered $2,500.00 for information that leads to an arrest and conviction in the Tanya Rush murder.

People who call get a confidential code number. The NYS Crime Stoppers hotline is 1-866-313-TIPS (8477).

The phone number for the Investigator Michael O’Sullivan at the New York State Police, Troop L, is (631) 756-3300.

Tamela is committed to finding out who killed her mother.  She is currently studying business at Kingsborough Community College and said her mother would want her to move forward.

Her mother’s hard times and gruesome death have taught her some life lessons.

“I don’t think drugs and alcohol solve your problems,” Tamela, now 21, said.  “They just make things worse.”

FRANKLIN SQUARE, Long Island (PIX11) – When Archie Nieman, a former worker with New York City’s Emergency Medical Services, went to check on his old friend, Kerry Aalbue, on May 3, 2014, he wasn’t prepared for the news he received from her estranged husband at their family home in Franklin Square.

“I asked where Kerry was,” Nieman told PIX11.  “He responded, ‘She’s dead. I found her upstairs shot in the chest last night.’”

Aalbue was 50 years old and battling brain cancer and blood clots in the years after Sept. 11. She was discovered on May 1, 2014, in a bedroom used by her husband.

The Nassau County Homicide Squad said it thoroughly reviewed the case and ruled it was a suicide. The gun that was used belonged to Aalbue’s late father-in-law, who was a retired cop.

But a number of Aalbue’s friends refuse to accept the suicide finding and wanted to talk to PIX 11.

“If you’re thinking suicide, wouldn’t you want to talk to the people the woman has spoken to, to get her state of mind?” former colleague and friend Lisa Walker asked.

Albue had started a jewelry business and made “living lockets” that were popular and sold at malls. One of her friends from the jewelry world said she spoke to Aalbue less than 24 hours before her death.

“She was very excited that she had just planned a vacation,” the colleague said, asking that she not be identified. “There was no way from that conversation there was any chance she would kill herself.”

Multiple friends pointed out that Aalbue was fiercely protective of her 5-year-old adopted son. When Aalbue failed to pick the child up at after-school May  1, teachers notified Aalbue’s husband, who then discovered his wife dead in his upstairs bedroom.

Aalbue’s oldest daughter, 22-year-old Jennifer, was very upset that EMS friends continue to question the circumstances of her mother’s death by trying to suggest there was foul play.

“That’s completely unfounded,” Jennifer Aalbue told PIX11 News. “The people that you are talking to didn’t know my mother, didn’t know her state of mind. She  was a very sick woman. She was very sick. It’s not anybody’s business, frankly.”

Friends complained they had made phone calls to detectives, offering information, but received no responses.

Aalbue was in the middle of a bitter divorce and lived in a separate section of the house from her husband, a retired New York City police officer.

A Nassau County police source told PIX 11 that just because someone doesn’t give clues they’re thinking of taking their life, it doesn’t mean they won’t do it.

“This incident was thoroughly investigated by the Nassau County Homicide Squad,” the official statement to PIX11 said.  “And there was no reason to believe it was anything but a suicide.”

Our report on Aalbue comes on the heels of findings from Mount Sinai Hospital this past week, indicating more than 2,500 first responders to the Sept. 11 attacks, including firefighters, police officers, emergency medical workers and construction personnel, have been diagnosed with various cancers  in the nearly 13 years since that tragic Tuesday.

NEW YORK (PIX11) – It was just more than 90 days ago that PIX11 News unveiled the first part of “Below The Radar.” A series of riveting reports on air traffic controllers back in FAA towers or control centers after being involved in deadly crashes.

The stats reported on April 28 were staggering, 15 deadly crashes, 54 deaths and more than one dozen controllers who stayed on the job after contributing to those deadly crashes.

Since the initial report in late April and what was has uncovered, in what is now a 7-month-long investigation, are more crashes, more victims and more controllers on the job.

In Part V, PIX11 News shows you what happened to one controller following a crash and we travel back to Washington D.C. to speak with the FAA’s second most powerful man, Deputy Administrator Michael Whitaker, after a U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Aviation.

The hearing was focused next generation as well as improving aviation safety, yet the FAA had no answers.

LONG ISLAND (PIX11) — August 13, 2010. Friday the 13th. The day changed Bill Evans’ life.

The East Rockaway resident was riding his motorcycle when a car suddenly turned left in front of him. Bill went over the hood.

His left leg had to be amputated at the knee. He’s since had two hip surgeries and more physical therapy than he can remember.

He had a lawsuit going with an attorney who’d been recommended to him, Howard Sklar of Carle Place, Long Island. That just led to more problems. The case apparently just sat and Sklar wound up getting disbarred for mishandling his escrow account.

Bill never got a penny. Then, Medicare came calling. It wanted Bill to be reimburse some $72,000 for his medical care. So Bill, an accident victim, not only lost a leg but also stood to be out of pocket tens of thousands of dollars

Bill tried to get Medicare to see the facts. But his pleas fell on deaf ears. A letter from attorney Sklar admitting that Bill never got any money was basically ignored, even though it suggested coming after his frozen escrow account instead. The feds even seized a couple hundred dollar tax refund Bill was due.

He was desperate and turned to us.

We contacted the agency that collects the debts, the Treasury Department’s Debt Management Services division. They’re on the ball but told us they just collect the debts. So we were referred over to the agency that initiated the debt collection, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Dealing with Medicare directly? In all honesty we expected a long, protracted back and forth effort would be necessary. But we received a really pleasant surprise.

CMS understood the situation right away. In less than a week (and trust us, that is no time at all when dealing with the federal government), Bill received a phone call saying Medicare would stop collection efforts and consider his debt paid.

Great job resolving this by CMS! They deserve a lot of credit on this one. And, Bill, who keeps a remarkably cheery attitude, is pretty happy, too.

“Howie, I wanna thank you from the bottom of my heart,” he told me. “I don’t know how you did it, but you did it! You and your team.”

Howard: We have a good one! What does this mean for you now?

Bill: Ahh…stress off my back. We were gonna cancel our vacation to the Dominican Republic. Now we can go!

And I don’t even mind Bill calling me “Howie.”

NEW YORK (PIX11) — Joyce Smith keeps her records and receipts. That saved her from an even bigger headache than the one she had.

Last month she discovered her paycheck was being garnished for an old debt she’d paid off long ago.  But she says the debt collectors weren’t listening.

“Hey, listen. You owe this from 1998, now you prove to us you don’t owe it.”  That’s the way Joyce described their attitude.

Back in the late 90s, she’d gotten into trouble running up her Discover card. She lost her job and got sued.  But after she got back on her feet, she worked out an arrangement with the law firm collecting the debt, Mel S. Harris, to pay everything off for $3,200.  She gave the cash to the New York City marshal handling the case and got a receipt.

Unfortunately, it appears the firm didn’t file the settlement with the court.

“Well they’re now telling me that now the total balance owed with interest is more than $6,000.” That’s the message Joyce says she got when she called the firm now going after the debt, Kirschenbaum & Phillips, LLC.  They were the ones garnishing her paycheck for about $120 a week!

So Joyce contacted us. She had one big factor on her side: she still had her receipt from the city marshal in 2004 saying the debt was paid in full.

We contacted Kirschenbaum & Phillips.  Attorney Elliot Phillips got right back to us. We sent him Joyce’s receipt. He checked with the marshal. And within an hour or so he sent us an email saying in part, “We are closing our file, as well as the income execution, and having the payments received refunded to the consumer.”

Joyce’s headache was over.

The lesson here: save your receipts!

GILGO BEACH, Long Island (PIX11) — When PIX11 Investigates paid a return visit to Ocean Parkway in Suffolk County recently, to the stretch of road linking Gilgo Beach and Oak Beach we recalled the three, different waves of “body searches” here, starting in December 2010.

When 24-year-old Shannan Gilbert went missing in 2010, her family pressured police to look for the prostitute who once lived in Jersey City.  She used to advertise on Craig’s List, and her last call was in May 2010 out in Oak Beach, Long Island.

In December 2010, a police cadaver dog found the first of four, missing prostitutes who, like Shannan, advertised on Craig’s List.  The four were wrapped in burlap and had been dumped in open brush along Ocean Parkway within 500 feet of each other.

Four months later, the heads of three, other women were discovered near Oak and Tobay Beaches.  The remains of a toddler, linked to one of the women, were also found.  The skeleton of an adult male, wearing women’s clothing and thought to be Asian in ethnicity, was also there in  the brush.  Ten victims in one section of Long Island’s South Shore.

It wasn’t until December 2011 that Shannan Gilbert’s body was found in a mucky marsh in Oak Beach.  Investigators think she accidentally drowned, after frantically calling 911 on May 1, 2010, running from house to house in a gated community, screaming  “they are trying to kill me.”

At least one veteran homicide investigator who studies serial killer cases thinks Gilbert was going to be a target of the elusive, Long Island murderer.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that Shannan Gilbert is linked to those other victims in Gilgo Beach,” said retired NYPD Lt. Commander, Vernon Geberth.  Geberth has written multiple books, including one called “Sex Related Homicide and Death Investigations.”

One of the intriguing developments in the Gilgo Beach case involved the discovery of two, female heads, linked to nude torsos found in Manorville, Long Island years before.

In 2000, the torso of an unknown woman had turned up not far from Halsey Manor Road in Manorville, just north of the Long Island Expressway.

In the spring of 2011, the woman’s head, hands, and legs were found in the brush of Ocean Parkway, nearly 40 miles away.

In 2003, the torso of Jessica Taylor, a 20-year-old sex worker active in Manhattan, was discovered near the LIE and Halsey Manor Road, also in Manorville.

Taylor was only identified, because a police officer in Washington, D.C.,where Taylor was raised, recognized a tattoo that the killer apparently tried to gouge out of Taylor’s body.

In March 2011, Taylor’s skull, hands, and one forearm were found in the brush of Ocean Parkway, nearly 40 miles from Manorville.

Even though the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office has theorized more than one, serial killer could be working on Long Island, Vernon Geberth doesn’t think so.

Referring to the torsos found in Manorville, and the intact bodies wrapped in burlap in Gilgo Beach, Geberth told PIX11 Investigates, “I do say those four bodies and those heads and hands are related to the same killer.”

Geberth told PIX11 it would be unusual for more than one serial killer to be using the same dumping ground.

“If you want my opinion, it’s the same person,” Geberth said.  “He just got more proficient.”

PIX 1 Investigates decided to take another look at the unsolved, Long Island serial killer case, after a Manorville father of two was recently arrested, accused in the “cold case” murders of two prostitutes from more than 20 years ago.

48-year-old John Bittrolff has also been tied to the fatal beating of a third prostitute.  He’s pleaded not guilty to the murders of Rita Tangredi in November 1993 and Colleen McNammee in January 1994.

Bittrolff was linked to the homicides, after his brother submitted DNA to a state database last year, following a conviction for criminal contempt.  The sample showed a “familial link” to the cold case murders from 1993 and 1994.

The Suffolk County District Attorney, Thomas Spota, revealed that Bittrolff “uniquely positioned” the victims when they were left in the Suffolk County woods more than two decades ago.

Bittrolff was living in Shirley when the early 90’s killings took place and later built a large home in Manorville.

But Spota said there’s no evidence linking Bittrolff to the Gilgo and Oak Beach cases.

NEW YORK (PIX11) – The NYPD’s Major Case Squad released video Wednesday to PIX 11 Investigates showing a serial bank robber ditching his disguise in the subway.

Detective Cliff Parks said he believed the images from the Chambers Street subway station on April 19 were clear enough to make the man very recognizable.

“This is the first and only shot we have of him with no hat and no sunglasses on,” Detective Parks told PIX11 Wednesday.

The culprit has hit 13 banks since Jan. 25 — 11 of them in Manhattan, one in the Bronx, and one in Queens.  He’s made off with more than $30,000.

He’s paid return visits to at least three banks.

After the robber hit the Capital One Bank at West Broadway and Chambers Street in Manhattan April 19  at 1:30 p.m.,  he was seen using a MetroCard to go through the turnstile at the Chambers Street station, where commuters can catch the No. 1, 2 or 3 trains.

He was still wearing a New York Giants baseball cap and sunglasses when he entered the subway system. But seconds later, another surveillance camera shows him ditching a sweatshirt, hat, gloves and glasses into a trash can, as he dashes to another turnstile to leave the station.

“What I’m asking for is the public’s assistance in helping identify this suspect,” Detective Parks told PIX 11.

The NYPD Crime Stoppers unit is offering a reward of up to $2,000 to anyone who provides information that leads to an arrest and conviction. Callers receive a confidential code number and don’t have to give their names. The phone number for Crime Stoppers is 1-800-577-TIPS.

Here is the list of banks the robber has hit, since January 25, 2014:

• 1/25/14  Chase Bank at 101 Barclay Street, Manhattan.  Suspect leaves with $6,000 in cash.
• 2/22/14   Popular Bank at 134 Delancey Street, Manhattan.  Suspect gets $1,365.00
• 2/22/14  Capital One Bank at 245 East 34^th Street, Manhattan.  Suspect scores $1,520.00
• 2/28/14  Capital One Bank at 151 East Fordham Road in the Bronx.  Suspect gets $11,000.00 in cash
• 3/8/14   Chase Bank at 69 Fifth Avenue.  Suspect leaves with nothing
• 3/8/14  Citibank at 79 Fifth Avenue.  Suspect leaves with nothing
• 3/10/14  Flushing Savings Bank at 136-41 Roosevelt Avenue in Queens.  Suspect takes $2,000.00
• 3/29/14  Popular Bank at 134 Delancey Street (2^nd visit)  Leaves with nothing.
• 4/8/14  Capital One Bank at 245 East 34^th Street (2^nd visit)  Gets $1,500.00
• 4/10/14  HSBC Bank at 2 Park Avenue.  Scores $1,100.00
• 4/19/14  Capital One Bank at 90 West Broadway.  Suspect gets $3,000 and is CAPTURED ON SURVEILLANCE IN CHAMBERS STREET SUBWAY STATION
• 7/8/14  Capital One Bank at 90 West Broadway (Return Visit)  Suspect gets $2,400.00
• 7/28/14  Capital One Bank at 154 Bleecker Street  Suspect leaves with $1,070.00

Do you recall Cathy Scalia?  Maybe not by her name…but you do recall her. Trust me you can’t forget her no matter how hard you may try.

Cathy got into hot water a couple of years ago for selling hot dogs out of her mobile camper.  Well, not just hot dogs. Police said her version of a condiment was may have involved more than fries with her shake, if you catch my meaning.  She was convicted of turning tricks out of her wienermobile, although she still denies the crime.

Now she’s back in a landlord-tenant dispute.

Robert Perez and his fiancé Caylyn Schaeffer got in touch with us.  They’ve been renting a room in Scalia’s house in East Rockaway since January.  They have a handwritten lease and rent receipts. The only problem is Scalia’s mom owns the house. It’s not clear she knew about the rentals. And now she wants Robert and Caylyn out.

Cathy claims the receipts are fake and the couple says Cathy is making their lives miserable.

All Robert and Caylyn wants is time to move out by August 20th and to live in peace until then.  So I decided to try to play peacemaker.

You really should take a look at the video because my summary and these quotes can’t do the story justice.

“We found out she’s not the owner of the house,” Robert told me about Cathy.

“My mother wants them out! We went to the deed with the court! My mother wants them out of here!  He harasses me every day!” Cathy said.

Caylyn: “I just want her to stop harassing us. I get called a whore, a prostitute everything!” Caylyn said.

“That’s what they call me!” was Cathy’s rebuttal.

You see what I was up against?

I wound up calling the lawyer who represents Cathy’s long suffering mom.  He agreed to try to give Robert and Caylyn until August 20th. All parties wound up going to court this week and working out a settlement.  It gives Robert and Caylyn until late October to vacate. But Robert says he plans to move to his foster parents’ home by August 20th.

We’ll follow up on this. It’s impossible to forget.

FAIRFIELD, Conn. (PIX11) – Detective Kerry Dalling was still in grade school when a dead newborn boy was left in the woods near Lake Mohegan in March 1986.  His face was mutilated and a burlap altar was placed near his body, with fruit and coins tossed on top of it.

“Whoever left this child wanted us to believe it was for a religious sacrifice,” Dalling told PIX 11 Investigates in a recent interview at her detective squad in Fairfield, Connecticut.

“It was an attempt to dehumanize the baby,” Dalling said, “So maybe, in some way, that made the murder easier to accomplish.”

Dalling does not believe the baby’s murder was part of a ritual, and she’s asking for PIX11’s help to solve the case, 28 years after the newborn was discovered near a garbage can.

“We hadn’t had anything like that in the history of our department,” noted Deputy Chief Chris Lyddy, who was a young patrolman in Fairfield, when the baby’s body was found.

The case was cold for many years, until Detective Dalling decided to take a second look at it.  She discovered that initial questions about a drug gang called “Number One Family” led to a home in Bridgeport, Connecticut where foster children were living in 1986.

A review of child welfare records showed the household was troubled.

“We discovered there were a lot of complaints of sexual abuse that were happening in the home” Dalling said.

The Fairfield detectives tried to squeeze more information out of the former foster mother, Dulce Nieves, who adopted a teen girl that lived in the household in 1986.

“I have never had any kind of complaint like that in my household,” Nieves said.

Fairfield detectives have a full DNA profile of the baby’s unknown mother. The mom’s bloody pajama top and bottom were found near the baby at the scene.

When PIX11 asked Nieves if she knew who the baby’s mother was, she responded, “I have no idea.”

BRONX, NEW YORK (PIX11) — Lisa Saenz, 45, slid with great discomfort into a living room recliner, four days after she underwent a hysterectomy.  The mother of three daughters didn’t have the operation to remove cancerous organs.  Saenz said she couldn’t bear the pain any longer from a permanent, birth control device.

“He had to remove my uterus, cervix, fallopian tubes, and right ovary,” Saenz said of the surgeon who performed the operation. “There’s nine thousand-plus of us that are walking around with a lot of issues.”

Saenz is talking about the thousands of women who belong to a Facebook group complaining about side-effects from Essure, a form of non-surgical sterilization that was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2002.

About 750,000 women have had the procedure performed since then.  It involves the insertion of metal coils into the fallopian tubes, which prevent eggs from meeting sperm and causing pregnancy.

Dolly Pena of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn had the Essure device implanted in May 2012.  She was then a mother of four. Three months later, a follow-up showed that her tubes were “occluded”— closed.

Then, Pena got a huge surprise ten months after that, during a routine visit to her gynecologist.

“And he noticed I had a baby in my uterus,” Pena recalled to PIX 11.  “He told me ‘You have a heartbeat and you’re five weeks pregnant,’ and I’m like ‘what?!’”

Pena’s fifth child, Valentina, was born five months ago. Pena is among the growing chorus of Essure recipients who want a safety review done on the product.

The Food and Drug Administration points out a five-year study was conducted by the developer of Essure, before the FDA approved the product in 2002.

It said no form of birth control is 100 percent effective and  “the Essure procedure is 99.83 percent effective, when used according to the approved instructions for use.”

In Pena’s case, doctors later found the right Essure filament was not within her right Fallopian tube—enabling her to get pregnant.

Many of the women complaining about Essure—like Saenz—talk about chronic pain, depression, and weight gain.

Jennifer Reinl of Kings Park, Long Island said after she had the device implanted, she started having flu-like symptoms and a metal taste in her mouth.

She said then she had shooting pains in her legs, back and neck—and didn’t want to get out of bed.  Reinl said she also gained 45 pounds.

“I didn’t want to go to family events,” Reinl—a mother of three—told PIX 11.  “People were like, ‘what’s the matter with her?’—calling me bipolar.”

Reinl said she had vision problems and went for multiple colonoscopies, until she finally had a hysterectomy this past February—with the device removed.

“The pain in my back was gone,” Reinl told PIX 11. “The fog started lifting.”

Dr. Alan Adler—a gynecologist with Mount Sinai Medical Center—said to PIX11 “Any particular device, any particular procedure, always has risks versus benefits.”

The FDA said its own reviews showed no “causal connection between Essure and certain reported problems, such as extreme fatigue, depression and weight gain.”

But a group in Philadelphia has recently filed a lawsuit, claiming the makers of Essure hid negative information from the FDA, during early studies.  Essure is now owned by Bayer Healthcare, which purchased the product from Conceptus, Inc.

The Facebook group has now gained a strong ally from environmental activist, Erin Brockovich, who is calling for a safety review of Essure.

BROOKLYN (PIX11) – Godfrey Robinson said he was master of his “Kool Man” ice cream route for 22 years in East New York, Brooklyn but the Mister Softee franchise finally succeeded in squeezing him out.

“There are Mister Softee ice cream trucks riding around with no permit and no vendors’ badges and they’re harassing my business, and it’s not fair to me when I pay taxes,” Robinson complained to PIX11 Investigates on Blake Avenue in Brooklyn.  “No one’s doing nothing about it.”

Robinson claims the Mister Softee trucks, which come from a depot at 400 Stanley Avenue in Brooklyn, have been chasing his Kool Man vehicle in recent years in a turf war over the ice cream trade.

Even worse, Robinson said, the Softee trucks were selling on Brooklyn streets with stickers from the Nassau County Health Department and no sticker from the New York City Health Department, which covers the five boroughs.

“I’m trying to make an honest living,” Robinson said to PIX11.  “The guy’s working with no permits, and he’s harassing me!”

The guy that Robinson is talking about is Hillary Guishard, who owns the depot at 400 Stanley Avenue.

When PIX11 Investigates caught up with Mr. Guishard this past Monday, he said the trucks with Nassau stickers park their vehicles in his lot but do their business outside of Brooklyn in Nassau.

“The trucks are individually owned,” Mr. Guishard told PIX11.  “They’re allowed to park here and drive over to their routes.”

But Godfrey Robinson provided cell phone video showing the trucks with Nassau stickers were selling in Brooklyn.  And PIX 11 News followed one Softee truck, with the Nassau sticker, traveling down Wyona Avenue in East New York and stopping several times, looking for customers.

At one point, the truck stopped to sell to a girl eager for a vanilla cone with chocolate sprinkles.  When we asked the vendor if he had a New York City permit, he told us to look on the other side of the truck.  When we walked to the other side, the truck quickly pulled away.

Guishard said some of the truck operators may be stopping to make a fast buck on the way to their actual routes:  “They’re gonna run to make some quick money and then run to their route,” Guishard claimed. “But they are not allowed to vend with Nassau County permits in New York City.”

When PIX 11 contacted the New York City Health Department, we were told that ice cream sellers seeking a “Mobile Food Vendor” permit would spend $200 for a license that lasts two years — a license that’s contingent on passing an inspection.  Vendors also pay $53 for a class and $50 for their vendor’s badge.

Godfrey Robinson told PIX11 he’s filed harassment complaints with the NYPD about his Mister Softee rivals.

“He has fifty trucks, I have one truck,” Robinson said, “so how can I pick on him?”

Still, Robinson said, he felt the need to right a perceived wrong.

“I’m the one who went public,” Robinson said, “which everyone wanted to do, but they’re so afraid of the man, they don’t want to.”

THE BRONX (PIX11) –  There are 21,181 licensed and regulated daycare providers in New York State.

One of them, Athena Skeeter, was charged this past weekend with killing a toddler in her care.

In her statement to the NYPD, Skeeter claimed she was “wrestling” with 20-month old Cardell Williamson in her apartment on College Avenue in the Bronx when things went bad.

“I lifted him up by one arm and one leg and threw him to the floor,” Skeeter said.  “The floor was hardwood.  I stepped on his stomach three times.  I didn’t use full force.”

Skeeter told investigators she later threw her own son on top of Cardell and did a few, more wrestling moves.  That’s when she noticed Cardell was “acting different.”  The toddler started throwing up and “his head kept tilting.  He couldn’t walk on his own.”

Skeeter claimed she tried to throw cold water on Cardell’s face.  She put him in the tub and then placed a chair outside the bathroom.  When she looked back in, “Cardell was slumped over with his head in the water and steam was coming out of the water.”

The child lived down the block from Skeeter’s apartment with his father, a recovering addict who was getting training in a job-placement program.

Skeeter had operated the day care home since 2005.

The death left Cardell’s father devastated.

“I lost a big part of my life,” Carlyle Williamson told PIX11 News over the weekend.

Williamson’s nephew, James Joyce, told PIX 11 Monday he had last seen the little boy Thursday, the day before Cardell’s death.

“All he could do, literally, was dance and smile,” Joyce remembered.  “The boy loved to dance.  His father was happy again.”

If you go to the New York State website for Daycare.com, you will find 32 pages of instructions on all the requirements for becoming a child care provider.  There are paragraphs about criminal conviction statements, building safety concerns, and dietary programs.

Joyce, who had met Skeeter, said there needs to be a requirement for a psychological evaluation.

“People can always act one way,” Joyce observed, “but you can find out what’s deep-rooted in them, if you actually ask the right questions.”

Skeeter’s home daycare last received a state inspection in April 2013.  And despite all the requirements, bad things can still happen in daycare.

In September 2013, PIX11 Investigates reported on the Bronx couple operating a large center called Fun World Day Care on Rosedale Avenue.  They were busted for using the center as a “front” for a large drug operation.  Up to 15 children were registered in the facility.  The couple was accused of stashing cocaine and Oxycontin pills in the children’s lunch bags.

Mayor de Blasio’s office said the city was assisting in the investigation this year,  into what happened in Skeeter’s home daycare.  The probe comes too late to help Cardell, who had a growing mound of stuffed toys left outside his family’s house.

There was also a tiny Knicks jersey, a Spiderman balloon, and a “Nemo” fish left in Cardell’s honor — but no child to play with them.

(PIX11) — Torrey Green has a new life.

“I feel incredible,” he told me. “I feel young again. I feel energetic. I feel happy, motivated. I feel inspired.”

The middle school art teacher came to New York last fall to get tests for a desperately needed kidney transplant. He’d been on dialysis for almost 7 years.  He’d had several donors pull out.  But after we did a story on his plight, one of our viewers in New Jersey, Sara Toffoli, stepped up.

“I can’t put it into words. There’s just something about him that I was drawn to email you.”  That’s how Sara put it to me.  And she turned out to be a great match.

Since the transplant in early July, Torrey has gotten stronger every day. He spent time walking along the East River, stopping at favorite cafes and hitting the gym in the hotel where he was staying.  The dad of one of his students paid for the hotel. Other parents and students raised money to cover his stay. And an old high school friend helped nurse him back.

Sara and her husband Greg took Torrey out to dinner and to see one of Broadway’s hottest shows, The Book of Mormon.  She’s thankful she had the opportunity to save a life.

A few days ago, Torrey flew back home.  He had dinner at the home of the parents of several of his students.

“I have life again. I’m not a zombie anymore,” he told his hosts at the dinner table. And a few days after that, he was back where he belongs — in his art class.  He served cupcakes that Sara had sent as a “back to school gift” for his kids.

Torrey Green has a new life all right, thanks to a PIX11 viewer.  He’s grateful and so are we.

If you would like information on saving a life, send me an email to Howardshelpers@PIX11.com

HOWARD BEACH, Queens (PIX11) – What goes up must come down. Unless it’s an elevator at the Dorchester complex in Howard Beach. In that case, the elevator may be going nowhere.

I had to go back out there earlier this month. And I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it.

There are two buildings. Over the winter they had problems in the Dorchester Two. The elevator was out. Senior citizens, including a World War II vet, were forced to use the stairs if they could.

And I ran into two very unpleasant people. A VP of the co-op board and a foul-mouthed secretary in the management office who actually called the NYPD on me. Even though we were invited in by owners, she claimed we had no righto be there.

Imagine that.

Anyway, we helped expedite the long-delayed elevator repairs.

But now the same situation arose in the other building, the Dorchester One. I’m told that secretary no longer works at the complex. But the problem was still severe. Five months without a functioning elevator!

Ina Rothbaum is 91!

Ina: “I haven’t been out for five months! Who can get out? I can’t use the elevator! How can I walk?

Howard: “Have you tried to talk to anybody in management?”

Ina: “Everybody! I got a big mouth.”

Maria Speranza also owns a co-op in the Dorchester One.

“I carry 20 to 27 pounds of laundry per week and that’s why I got this injury! And schlepping two bags of groceries. This is not fair and it is unjust!”

So, I called up Carl, the boss at Prestige Elevator, the company handling the renovation. He said they’d hit some snags but needed another week.

It turned out he was true to his word. About a week later I went back. The elevator was like new.

And the owners feel liberated.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. (PIX11) – When PIX11 Investigates first met 11-year-old Cyon Williams this past June, his mother had pulled him out of Intermediate School 61, three weeks before summer vacation started, fearful for his emotional and physical well-being.

Cyon said he was being kicked and punched by bullies nearly everyday, and they would sometimes spit in his food at lunchtime.

The 11-year-old told us back in June that he’d had thoughts of hurting himself—or others—in order to escape the painful reality of his bullying situation at school.

“There was something wrong with their lives, I guess, so there were just trying to ruin mine,” Cyon said of his tormenters, as we paid a recent, return visit to his home.

Cyon will be starting in a new, intermediate school when New York City students resume classes this Thursday.

His mother successfully fought to get him a “safety transfer.”

“If children don’t feel safe, they can’t be engaged. It’s not supposed to hurt to go to school,” Halcyone Williams, Cyon’s mother, told PIX11 News.

The family had watched coverage of the story about 14-year-old Bronx student, Noel Estevez. Estevez was charged with fatally stabbing a classmate—a former friend.

Estevez’s family said the victim had been taunting Estevez for months, with other bullies. Some of the kids had allegedly urinated on Estevez’s apartment door. The 14-year old’s mother struggled with drug problems, and Estevez had tried to hang himself, a month before he killed his classmate.

Cyon said that he identified with what Estevez was going through.

“Some kids would tell me to kill myself, even though I didn’t do anything to them,” Cyon said.

“Each day, I would see him deteriorate more and more,” Halcyone said of her son. “And I knew when he was pushed to his limit.”

Cyon developed bad stomach problems and anxiety symptoms and was biting his fingernails. His mother sent him to counseling, but she doesn’t want his request for a new school to be considered a medical transfer. It’s a safety transfer, she said, pure and simple.

After a stress-free summer—and a family trip to St. Martin—Cyon told PIX11 News he was feeling better.

“My stomach pains have decreased,” he said. “They still come every once in a while, but not as much.”

Cyon said he also had stopped biting his fingernails.

His mother requested to keep the name of his new school private, but she is very pleased there are less than 500 students enrolled there—and the social environment received an “A” rating.

“I feel I won the fight for my son,” Halcyone said, “but I have concerns for all the other New York City schoolchildren.”

When PIX11 Investigates asked the New York City Department of Education for statistics on safety transfer requests in June, we were directed to send a Freedom of Information request to the United States Department of Education in Washington, D.C.

The federal agency told us the New York School Board would have to provide the information.

This week, PIX11 sent a new request for safety transfer statistics for the 2013/14 school year. We are waiting to see if we will get them from the Department of Education.

(PIX11) – Patrick Bowler wants a life. His is on hold because he’s got a genetic kidney disease that’s going to put him on dialysis unless he finds a kidney donor.

Right now, Patrick says he has about 10% kidney function left. He dreads the thought of dialysis.

“It’s on my mind 24/7. You know it’s a lot. I’m gonna get sick… I just don’t know when…The doctor says I’m gonna get sick. Soon.”

Patrick is 43. His grandfather died at 51. His father died at 51. Both of them had the same ailment: polycystic kidney disease. Patrick has cysts all over his kidneys, squeezing and engorging them so they make his stomach look distended.

“I can actually feel the weight inside of me because they’re huge. You know when I get up in the morning I can feel them inside of me. It’s like having a baby in some sense.”

Patrick, a US Army veteran, is still able to work as a porter and doorman at a building in Yonkers. For how much longer? That’s anybody’s guess.

He sees his doctor every two weeks, takes good care of himself, watches his diet and takes a lot of meds and nutrients. But he’s fighting a lonely battle and he’s faced plenty of disappointment.

“I had a lot of people back out who said they would donate to me but they changed their mind. And they never talked to me again. Or I never hear from them again. And that’s it.”

Patrick is one of more than 120,000 Americans in need of a kidney. All people need is one good one to live just fine. It you think you might be a match, or just want to find out more information about kidney donation, send me an email to our special address: Howardshelpers@PIX11.com.

LONG ISLAND CITY, Queens (PIX11) – Luis Rodriguez is one of four men who recently shared their inside view of Ronbar Laboratories in Long Island City.

The factory off of Van Dam Street is where Rodriguez along with Carlos Vega, Courtney Lloyd and Pedro Hernandez worked for more than a combined 40 years, until they say it just got be too much.

“I was shocked to see what was going on,” said Vega.

“In my opinion, the owner did not care,” Lloyd added. “The safety of the public, his own safety, he did not care.”

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. (PIX11) – Retired NYPD Deputy Inspector, Corey Pegues, was a cop with secrets and now that he’s spilling them, he’s not so sure he’s ready for the media fury.

Pegues’ Mercedes SUV was parked in his driveway, when PIX11 News knocked on his door in Hempstead, Long Island on Tuesday.

But Pegues didn’t answer and didn’t leave his house until we pulled our news truck down the block.

That’s when the 45-year old retired commander, who once wore a pressed uniform and fitted suits, emerged wearing a black baseball cap pulled low over his forehead.

He quickly pulled the Mercedes out of his driveway and sped away, as PIX11 tried to question him.

Pegues made headlines this week when audio from an August podcast on the Combat Jack show was made public.

During the interview, Pegues revealed he sold crack cocaine as a teen in Queens in the 1980’s and once tried to kill a rival drug dealer.

He also said he was childhood pals with one of the men who executed rookie Police Officer Edward Byrne, on February 26, 1988.

“My man, Dave McClary, was one of the people who killed him,” Pegues said during the podcast.

McClary was convicted of pumping five shots, at close range, into the head of the 22-year old Officer Byrne as he sat in a patrol car, guarding the home of a drug witness on Inwood Street in South Jamaica, Queens. His assassination was a rallying cry for the NYPD to take back a crack-ravaged city, block by block.

The news that Pegues’ was once friends with McClary has caused a firestorm among the NYPD’s rank and file.

“For twenty years, he hid the fact that he was bosom buddies with a cop killer,” PBA President Patrick Lynch fumed to PIX11.

But Pegues, who retired with a $135,000 a year disability pension, doesn’t see it that way.

He claims the book he’s writing is meant to teach young people to stay away from the drug trade and thug life.

“Being a father and a family man, I’d first like to say that my heart goes out to the Byrne family,” Pegues said in the beginning of a statement released by his publicist.

“In 1988, Edward died a hero doing the job he loved, and left us much too soon. As a child, I had many friends from my neighborhood, one of whom was named David McClary. David and I chose very different paths in life and went our separate ways in 1987, when I enlisted in the US Army. I was in basic training at the time this crime was committed and have not had any contact with him since. I do not in any way condone the act of assassinating a police officer and find what David did to be both despicable and deplorable.”

As Pegues continued with his statement, he said that he’s a mentor and community activist, and he was telling his story in an effort “to be relatable to the youth that are currently living their lives the way I did (prior to turning 18 and joining the military), and to show them there is another way.”

But Lynch didn’t buy the statement and quoted another part of the podcast. “When he came back to the neighborhood,” Lynch said, “He also said, ‘I was in the Army, I was still going out with my friends, pulling robberies.’”

At one point in the podcast, Pegues talked about his intention to kill a rival dealer.

“And I pulled the trigger—right in his chest! It don’t go off,” Pegues related to the interviewer.

Pegues insisted he turned away from a life of crime, after his son and daughter were born.  His 21-year-old daughter is now a rookie police officer with the NYPD.

“I am grateful to the NYPD for the many opportunities that were awarded to me, based on my merits and professionalism over the years. Although I am retired, I will continue to stand on the side of righteousness for people of all ethnicities and work to motivate and inspire the youth and the community as a whole.”

When Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, was asked about Pegues on Monday, he said that he had just learned about his admissions and would review the time he spent in the NYPD.

“He’s evidently trying to promote a book or movie deal,” Bratton said.

BROOKLYN (PIX11) – PIX11 News has obtained a photo from inside the 67th Precinct in Brooklyn that illustrates the betrayal felt by NYPD officers, who worked under the command of retired Deputy Inspector Corey Pegues.

The cops have removed Pegues’ photo from a gallery of former supervisors, replacing it with a black and white picture of slain 22-year old Officer  Edward Byrne who was killed by a crack dealer in  1988 in Pegues’ home borough of Queens.

The reason the officers at the 67th Precinct are so angry stems from Pegues’ interview on a podcast in August. That’s when Pegues’ admitted he was a teen crack dealer in Queens in the 80’s, that he once tried to kill a rival, and that he was old pals with David McClary, the thug convicted of pumping five bullets into Officer Byrne’s head on February 26, 1988 as the rookie sat in a patrol car from the 103 Precinct, guarding the home of a drug witness.

Pegues has insisted he started traveling on a very different path from McClary, before McClary killed Officer Byrne.

But McClary doesn’t want anything to do with the retired commander, either—telling the New York Post 45-year old Corey Pegues is a liar.

“Corey Pegues ain’t no friend of mine,” McClary told a Post reporter inside a visiting room in Attica State Prison, where he’s doing 25 years to life for killing the young officer.

“This is all for the money,” he said of Pegues, who’s writing a book. “He’s retired and needs another hustle, another paycheck,” McClary said. “Everything he’s been saying about his history is total bull****.”

Since Pegues’ secret life from the 1980’s became public on Monday, the Nassau County Police Department has removed three, registered guns from his family home in Hempstead, at the request of the NYPD.

The New York City Police Department is also reviewing Pegues’ tax-free, $135,000, annual disability pension. Pegues retired last year, after 21 years on the job, saying he hurt his back in the 67th Precinct.

During an appearance this week on CNN “Late Night”, he insisted that he had turned his life around—after his teen days as a crack dealer—enlisting in the U.S. Army when he was 18—and turning away from crime, when his son and daughter were born.

“Let’s talk about the impeccable life I’ve lived for 21 years,” he told CNN. “God gave me a second chance for redemption in life, and I ran with it.”

I’m just not up on some aspects of online commerce. For example, ever hear of “card breaks”? Me neither. But they’re apparently very popular.

Enterprising entrepreneurs buy up cases of unopened packs of baseball and other cards. They charge a fee for people to choose particular teams. Then they open the card packs live online. And each person gets the cards from the team he “purchased.”

Here’s one example:

Go about 7:45 into the video and you’ll see the moment that started all the commotion that wound up with my getting involved.

Will Sullivan of Throgs Neck is a card collector and big Yankees fan. He gets involved in these card breaks from time to time. Back in March he paid 80 bucks to get all the Yankees that came up in a break.

And hit a little jackpot. Up came a Joe DiMaggio relic card that contained a piece of DiMaggio memorabilia. Will was excited.

“It’s like Yankee history,” he told us. “There’s only 15 of ‘em made. There’s probably part of his jersey or maybe even his bat that’s on this card.”

Will didn’t actually get the DiMaggio card itself from the guy running the break. He got what’s called an online redemption card. Will had to rub off the coating on the back to get a code number. Then he had to submit the code online to the Topps Company. And Topps would send him the card.

But Will must have rubbed the card the wrong way.

“It was the third or the fourth letters. Both of them got worn off. So there was no way to read the number so I could enter it into the system.”

So Will called Topps. And the company said it was no problem. Will just had to send in the redemption card.

He mailed it in. But that set off the circumstances that got me involved. Topps never sent the card.

“I’ve spoken to reps maybe 5 or 6 times…They’ve told me that they haven’t received it,” Will told us in August. I have proof that it’s been delivered. I have a signature that it’s been delivered…And now they’re just giving me the runaround.”

So Will got in touch with us. And we soon understood why Will was having such a hard time. We called Topps and left messages for four different people at company headquarters in Lower Manhattan. No one called us back.

So we emailed the CEO and left messages for a couple of other people as well.

That did the trick. We heard from Topps’ top attorney and a marketing person who cared enough to call back. They made sure someone got in touch with Will. And a few days later he had an envelope in his hands.

He opened it for us on camera. Inside was a beautiful Joe DiMaggio card containing a piece of one of DiMaggio’s game used bats.

This venture went extra innings but Will was happy to get the card after five months of wrangling. It could be worth well above the $100 floor Will had estimated before he saw it. So Will’s $80 investment worked out in the end.