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And I'm Elena. And this is morbid. This is morbid. Oh my God, we're in a silly goofy mood today.
Hey, R, it's Monday. It's Monday. It's Monday. What day is it though?
It's Monday. Monday. Monday. Yeah, and usually Mondays we're feeling a little like, whirr, whirr, because it's the start of the week, you know, that always sucks for everybody.
Yeah. But today I'm feeling goofy. You are. I think you are.
You are. You don't make me laugh, but I'll stick. And I will start like, I will start like mucus everywhere. I won't do that.
I'll be very serious. Good. This is a wild case though that I'm going to tell you today. Oh.
It's what else is new? It's wild. It's got twisties. It's got turnies.
It's got, um, not Sarah turnies, but we love Sarah turnies. You should listen to her podcasts. You shouldn't listen to her podcasts. Voices for justice and also disappeared.
Is there a new podcast? You should listen to it. It's a really good one. Yeah.
I mean, they're both fantastic. I'm just shout out to Sarah Turnie with a guitar. So raw. So raw, but there are some twisties and turnies in this one.
It's like a lifetime of the world wind. It is like this. This is a movie like this entire thing is a, it's from the 40s. So yeah.
So that's. So swanky. Exactly where, you know me. I do.
I know my whole life. I'm like anything past 1950. I don't know her. I know her.
Yes, 1970 and above and above. Yeah, which is good. all things. I have a couple old ones coming up on the roster.
You know what's spooky season? It feels like old time you make sense. Correct. But yeah, this is from the 40s.
It's very 40s. It's got some really inept detectives in it. Yeah, that's 40s. Which is always fun and very 40s of us.
And it's in New York. Oh, oh my god, I'm working on a New York one right now too. Look at that, East Coast. What's up?
What's up? So again, this is a story about lies, some stalking, and attempted murder. Oh, and there's tons of twists. Oh, but attempted.
So does nobody die? Someone dies. Oh, you said that interestingly. I did.
You said that with a little twist in your try to. All right, I'll let you just go girl. I'll go. I was literally hoping you would do that.
I'm gonna let you go. The girls that get it. Yeah, I was gonna say I don't even know if I should I should explain that one. It's all you need to know is VPR.
Ick yack yack. Okay, I just lost my tab. Okay, so we're gonna talk first of all about the person that's kind of there's two people at the center of the story. Okay, there's a woman named Olga and a woman named Pearl.
I love the name Pearl and they were both put into situations that are unthinkable, to be quite honest. So let's start by talking about Pearl because we're gonna kind of follow her story first and then we're gonna talk about how Olga plays into this. Okay, so in the fall of 1946, 19 year old recent high school graduate Pearl Lusk left her father's home in Quakertown, Pennsylvania for New York City. The big apple, where she was just determined.
She was gonna start this whole new life. She was gonna be a big city gal. She was ready for it. Oh, girl.
And of course, and think about like 1940s New York. Oh, fuck yeah. That was a bit of wild scene. Everyone was looking all fabulous.
That's the thing, no matter what, even though like old, timey stuff, you're like, yeah, like the shit that was going down in the day. We don't want to be around for it. It was not like a time to be alive, but this fashion, a time to be alive. Why don't we dress like that?
Yeah, like men wearing three-piece suits, you know, women wearing like these really cool just like hats and layers. I love a layering moment. There was a lot of cool layers. There was and the jackets that women wore.
I immediately thought of the jacket. The jacket of it all. Yeah, it all hair styles. Yeah, it gives me, I mean, I reference this all the time, but it gives me, I think of Peaky Blenders and how everyone looks fucking amazing and Peaky Blenders.
I want to look like that. I want to go to that. I want to go to there. But yeah, so 1946, she's off to New York City to start any life.
And of course, she didn't really have a ton of to her name at this point. She's 19 years old. I said, yeah, she just graduated high school. So she spent the first month or so living with her mother and stepfather in their apartment in Brooklyn.
Cool. She was just kind of staying there to get herself on her feet, find a job. And it wasn't long until she did find a job as a sales girl at the Oppenheim Collins department store in Manhattan. Oh, sounds cool.
And luckily, this was what gave her the ability to get her own furnished room in a building on the upper, the city's upper West side. Okay. So now she has a job, she's got some income, she's got a cool place to live. She's feeling like the move was worth it.
Like she's, she's on her way. She's like, let's go big city. She's like, life is just beginning. Let's go.
But now with some cash money flowing in, she's also able to decorate her apartment to her liking, make it like her personality. But she's also able to like kind of upgrade her own look. Yeah, she ended up trading in. She had like a very girlish aesthetic like a girlish aesthetic at first.
She was a high school student after all. Makes sense. But now she's, you know, 19. She's moving into her 20s.
She's like, I want to be like a little more mature in my style. She got a new hairdo. Of course. A woman that changes her hair is about to change her life.
There you go. I chopped my hair recently. I hope you don't change your life too much. Hopefully it's like an like a dish to my life.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. New hair, new book.
Let's go. Now also, Pearl's job at the department store gave her a lot of social opportunities because she's around people her age. She's meeting all these people and soon she's taking lunches with friends and co-workers and she's having dinner dates at the cafeteria with men. She met working at the store.
She's like, it's like sex in the city. I was just going to say she is sex in the city again. Like let's go. I wonder who she is.
She's arriving. I wonder which one. Arriving. It sounds like she is.
And I'm so worried for her because I hate when everything starts off. Yeah. It's not going to keep that way. She was doing the damn thing.
She was on a path that everyone hopes to be on when they moved to the big city. Very honest. You got, you had somewhere to stay to get on your feet. You got on your feet.
Things are going well. You're meeting new people. You're going on dates. Everything's great.
And on Thanksgiving day that year she was approached by a stranger while riding the subway on the way to visit her mother for Thanksgiving day. She was a little busy. She got stuff. Her social calendar is full.
She's working. She's getting busy. She's got shit to do. She's not her way to see her mom.
So she was not really in the space to like appreciate that somebody was like, you know, hitting on her essentially. Okay. In like good for her. She was like, I'm just not, I don't have time.
You don't have to appreciate every man or woman that hits on you. No, of course you don't. And that's the thing. She also just was here's the thing.
She was a little interested. She said the man who introduced himself as Alan LeRue was polite. He was charming. And she said he was among the most handsome men she had ever seen.
So it wasn't that she wasn't interested. She just was like, you know what, I got a lot going on. I don't have the band with to accept this right now. So she just kind of was like, you know, I got a lot of stuff going anyways.
I'm going on a lot of dates. I'm hanging out with a lot of people. I got a life. I'm working.
And she was like, you know, I'm not really desperate to expect. I'm not going to accept a date from a stranger when I don't have to. That was her feeling about the whole thing. Good for her.
She was like, I already got some lined up. But like whatever. Yeah. So she didn't even she wouldn't give her a dress and she wouldn't give her name when she was asked.
She was like, oh yeah. So Pearl, she's like, let's play a long game. She said whatever. But she was like, oh, you were good to look at.
So thank you for that. Yeah. Thanks for the, you know, so she leaves. She has a great time at Thanksgiving.
You know, I imagine. And then, oh, because just one month later, Pearl's entire confidence and happiness was shaken a little bit because after just three happy months working at the department store, she and a ton of other sales girls were laid off when the holiday season ended. So now she has no job, no income, no social opportunities. They're kind of dwindling down because she's not around these people anymore.
So she's very much in a more vulnerable state to this point. And that's when she ran into Alan LaRue again. She ran into him. How strange in the big city.
She meets him on the subway by happenstance. And then she meets him a month later on the train back from Brooklyn the day after Christmas. So, oh, and weird that it was like, holiday. Yeah, exactly.
Now she's feeling down at this point. She's kind of run a bad luck. Like this isn't, this isn't a good time. But like I said, she's feeling vulnerable.
She's feeling like she's desperate to get some income. And so she, you know, at this point, she's like, my social calendar is not full anymore. I'm not working. You're still hot.
You're still good looking. So she's like, you know what? Sure. She agrees to join him for a drink at a bar in Times Square.
Because he approached her again. Yeah, he approached her again. And she was like, I'll go out with you in Times Square. It's busy.
Yeah, lots of people. Now during their mini date, he was very sympathetic to what she was saying. He listened to everything. And he was like, Oh my God, that sucks.
Like I know how that feels. And later, she told the assistant district attorney, he seemed interested in me like any other man at first. But the more I talked, the more I felt like he had some different kind of interest in me. Huh.
So it turned out that Pearl, her intuition was right on. Listen to your gut, baby. Alan did, did think she was beautiful. He did like her find her charming.
But he also had something else in mind for her because after they talked to more, he said, you know what? It's kind of like, you know, it's serendipitous that we would run into each other now again. Because he said, you're down on your luck, you're looking for income. And he's like, as it turns out, I have a job that needs to be done and it's yours if you want it.
And she was like, wow, this is very fortuitous. You don't even know my fucking credentials, buddy. Right. But you know, they've talked on the state.
So he's like, you seem, you seem chill. I'm gonna take a chance on you. Well, so he explained to her, he said, I'm a private detective, and I work for an insurance company. And this insurance company specializes in ensuring jewelry.
Okay, which is all seems pretty valid of something. You know, this isn't too far fetched at this point. And he said he his job was the guy basically they relied on him to investigate and find any stolen jewelry. And he's like, so when somebody steals jewelry, I have to do the whole investigation, I find a way to get it back so the insurance company doesn't lose out checks.
So according to Alan, he said that there's this young woman named Olga, and she worked as a secretary for the Croydon Hat Company. And she had stolen some jewelry from a client of their insurance company. And he had reason to believe that Olga still had the jewelry and was holding it like carrying it on her person like that was wearing the jewelry. Now here's the rub though.
Olga had figured out who Alan was and that he was following her. So she would immediately recognize him if she saw him again and she would just take off with the loop. So he said the other issue here is I can't go right to the police with this because I haven't technically proven her guilt. This is what I'm supposed to do is investigate this stuff.
And he's like, so I can't go to the police yet with this. I have to like prove the guilt first. So this is why he needed a random very unassuming person like Pearl who could go close enough to Olga to obtain a reputable evidence of her sticky finger guilt. Now as a lover of detective stories and dime store novels at the time, Pearl thought this sounded great.
She's like in her hair. She gets to be. She's like, I get to be part of like an investigation, like a detective thing a private eye. This is exciting.
Like this is what I moved to New York City for like this kind of fun stuff. And it's not something that where it's like they're investigating like this heavy. It's like a jewelry thief. It literally sounds like a detective story or dime store novel.
Like literally also detective luru, LOL. There you go. So so she not to mention this was also going to help with her loss of income at this point. He was like, I'll pay you.
Like absolutely like you'll be on the payroll. Okay. So she was like, hell yeah. I will absolutely help with this.
So he was like, this is great. You're gonna be great. She's not gonna suspect a thing. You know, he's like, you're a woman.
She's not gonna be scared of a woman or like feel like you're following her for some nefarious reason. Sure. So the next morning Pearl met Alan outside a building on West 39th Street. And it was there that he explained, okay, this is the first phase of the plan.
He said, you're gonna go into the offices of the Croid and Hat Company where Olga works as like one of the secretaries. And what she was gonna do was she was going to go up to the secretary and hope it's hopefully it was Pearl or Olga or excuse me, Olga, thank you. And asked to speak with another secretary who goes by the name of Sadie White. Okay.
And he said, there actually isn't anyone working their name, Sadie White, but you're gonna go up there and you're gonna get a good look at Olga, because you're gonna talk to her, you're gonna be right there in front of her face. And he said, while you're talking to the receptionist, you'll get that chance because that's gonna be Olga. Right. So he said, I need you to know her when you see her.
You need to be very clear of what she looks like. So he gave Pearl a photo of Olga. And he said, make sure you find her that secretary. And he's like, go study her, make sure you're able to recognize her.
And he was adamant that she recognized her even in a crowd, like in a subway crowd. Like, I want you to be able to point her out. Because I don't want you to be obvious about you trying to see if she has the jewelry. So Pearl did it.
She went in, she talked to Olga, and she returned back to Alan. And she said, oh, I've memorized her. Like I memorized her face. I know her clothing.
I could pick her out. And Alan told Pearl to take the rest of the morning off and then to meet him at his apartment on East 17th Street later afternoon, and they would go into phase two of the plan. Okay. And he's like, take this time, keep looking at that photo, get to know her.
This is so bizarre. I have no idea where we're headed. That's the thing. Like, you cannot have any idea where this is headed.
You really can't know. Now Pearl just kind of spent the time, like she looked at the photo. She knew who it was. Like, she was like, I was standing right in front of her.
So she went to see a movie. And she talked to some friends before meeting Alan at his apartment at around 3.30 p.m. When she went in the apartment, he was holding what he said was an x-ray camera. And this was the key to catching Olga and retrieving those jewels.
Okay. According to Pearl, the camera looked like just an ordinary shoebox wrapped in brown paper. Like he would carry out of a department store. But he said, she said, on one end, there was a hole in what looked like a camera aperture.
And on the other end, there was a short piece of wire loop that hung out at the bottom of the box. Okay. So you would like pull that, it would take the photo. Remember we're in the 40s, so it's not like.
And so this is what didn't seem like totally out of the ordinary here. And he explained to her, all you do is point this at her and pull the wire. And he said, the x-ray photo would capture if she was wearing the jewelry hidden somewhere. Okay.
And he was very serious when saying he said, this is what this is what we need in order to go to the police and say, look, she has the jewelry. Sure. And he was very serious saying, but don't snap the picture where she can see you do it. Take it when she gets off the train in Brooklyn.
That's where she lives. You want to be right behind her when you follow her out of the train, so you can take it at close range. You want to be only two or three feet away from her when you snap the photo. Okay.
And she was like, all right. Now Pearl left Alan's apartment. She went back to the Croydon hat company building and she waited for Olga to come out. She finally saw Olga come out of the building after work and begin her commute home.
So Olga came out a little after five and she made her way towards the Times Square station and caught a train to Brooklyn. Pearl followed her onto the train, not too close, but she did sit across from Olga on the train. Okay. And again, she looks like she's just holding a package.
Right. It's a wrapped in brown paper. Pearl then aimed the camera at Olga and pulled the wire and she was like, I think I got a good photo. Like that's it.
So she got off the train. She went to the bar in Times Square where she met Alan again. And she was like, everything went awesome. Like, Alan was like, shit, like how close were you to her?
Like, you know, had she noticed you were following her? Like, did anything go wrong? Did she seem suspicious? And Pearl explained that Olga had only been a few feet away from her and she took the picture.
She didn't seem to notice her. Everything seemed like going great. So Alan was like, that's amazing. I'm going to get the picture developed tonight and I'll meet you next tomorrow morning and I'll let you know how it turned out.
Yeah. Now when they met the following day, he was like, bad news. The picture wasn't good. Why did I suspect that?
So he told Pearl that he believed it was the camera to blame. He was like, it's not you. You did great. Like, good job.
But he was like, you know what, I'm going to get us a better one. Like, I was kind of like, not great anyways. Like, I'm going to make sure we get a better one. Like, give me a few days and I'll be able to get a better one.
Okay. So she'll So a few days later on December 31st, 1946, Pearl, you're seeing the holidays. They really do. You're right.
Pearl called Alan at his apartment and he said he was able to get a new x-ray camera. And he said, meet me at the laundry mat near Union Square, which she did a little after 8 a.m. Now, Pearl said when he handed this camera to her, it was much different. It was bigger.
It was heavier. And it wasn't wrapped in brown paper now. It was wrapped in Christmas paper to make it look like a Christmas present. Yeah.
And Alan explained Pearl was to take the camera, go to the train station in Brooklyn, follow Olga from there. Once they were on the train, get close to Olga, not too close. Take that picture just like you did before. Same old things.
Keep the same chill way you did it. And he said, but he added, remember to aim it low at her waist. Okay. And she was like, why?
And he was like, I think that's where she's probably carrying the jewels pinned inside her dress on her waist. That's what we've gotten information that that's what she does. Why would anyone keep jewels pinned to their waist? And not real sure.
But Pearl did exactly what Alan told her to do. She caught the opposite Olga on the train. And they began de-boarding the train. She decided to wait until they were getting off the train because he had told her to do that initially and she didn't do it the first time.
Okay. So they began getting off the train and Pearl was standing a few feet behind Olga. She aimed the camera at Olga's lower body, pulled the wire to take the picture. And she said the camera jerked in her hands and made a loud explosion happen.
Oh, this caused immediate confusion and panic and chaos everywhere. Yeah. And when Pearl looked up, because she was just stunned at like what the fuck just happened. Like she looked at this camera just blow up.
What the hell happened? Pearl looked up. Olga was laying on her back on the platform holding her leg and her leg looked as though it was nearly blown off. Oh my God.
Just shattered completely ruined. Seconds later, a security guard rushed over to Pearl because Pearl was splattered in Olga's blood and holding that box. Uh-huh. And security guy was like, what the fuck?
Yeah. And I guess Pearl answered, I just took a woman's picture and somebody shot her. And Pearl told the security guard before she was grabbed by police, she was like, I just took her picture. She was like, I don't who shot her?
Like she had no idea. Like what happened? What the fuck? So police officers took her.
They ripped open the parcel that she was holding. That's not a camera. But inside was a sawed off shotgun, 12 gauge shotgun mounted between two cream cheese boxes. What?
Yes. And if you look it up, it is the most wild picture when you see what it actually looked like. Let me see. Like, oh my God.
I'm just look up Pearl Lusk guys. Like, we'll post some of these photos so you can see. But the actual photo of the sawed off 12 gauge shotgun. What the fuck?
I'm at a loss. No, like truly at a loss. I'm at a true loss for like that. That must have been a heavy package.
So this motherfucker like just made like cream cheese boxes are wooden, by the way. They're not like Philadelphia cream cheese box. Immediately what I pictured. You are not alone.
I'm here with you because I also thought of the Philadelphia cream cheese cardboard box. I was like, wow, why would they be between that? But that must have been really heavy. And she said that it was heavier than a lot of times.
She said it was much heavier and much bigger. So I wonder what he had done in that first box. Yeah, I know. Like, because it was smaller.
She said it was like a shoe box. I'm like, did you just put a handgun in there? And it just didn't work. Or was he just trying to like, was there nothing in there?
Like really? Yeah, I don't know. And he was just trying to see if like she followed protocol. That's what I wondered initially was, is he testing her to see if there was actually, but then I'm like, I don't know.
But it makes sense though, like that he was testing her because when she came back to meet him, he was like, how to go? Did she suspect you? Right close to her? We had a lot of questions.
He wanted to see like, did you do it right? Can I trust you to actually do it this time? Like that kind of thing? I could see that be case.
We will never know. Pearl looked down at Olga and then looked at the gun in her hands at this point. And she was like, Holy shit, I'm the one who shot her like she had no idea. Oh, and as she was being pulled away by the police officer, she looked down at Olga and was starting to cry her eyes out.
And she said, I'm awfully sorry I shot you. There was a new job you see. And I thought I was taking your picture with an x-ray camera. Like she started to try to explain it to this woman who's like, is blown off.
I know like that timing Pearl, but I get it. Like I get your trying to not be to shoot you. Oh my God. I guess Olga looked at Pearl and then looked away and said, this time he got me.
He can have me now if he wants me. I'm a cripple. What happened to the police? I called them, but he was too smart for them.
Oh, no. So she knew like exactly what happened here. What the fuck is happening right now? I'm about to tell you.
So Pearl was immediately taken into custody where she explained her side of the story and said she was an avid reader of detective and confession stories quote unquote. Right. And that was one of her the reasons that she was helping this man, Alan LaRue. When detectives showed Pearl a photo of Olga and her husband, Alphonse Al Rocco, taken several months earlier in a New York City nightclub, she said, that man's Alan LaRue.
So this was Olga's ex-husband? Yes. What? And she said, that's the man who hired me to shoot Olga.
What? And she said, he even has the same clothes on. Oh my God. That's him.
That's creepy. So detectives questioned Pearl in a separate set of investigators where the hospital taking a statement from Olga. And she explained that the man Pearl thought to be Alan LaRue was in all likelihood her ex-husband, Al Rocco. And she said they had been married in May 1945 and divorced a year later.
Oh, wow. So that was a bad marriage. So let's talk about them. So Olga Trapani met Al Rocco in the spring of 1944.
And after one year of dating, they married in May 1945. Okay. Now despite their daughter having dated him for a year before getting married, Olga's parents told reporters that they really didn't know Al. Like, even though they like were around him, they met him, they spent time with him.
They were like, he was a mystery. Like, we still don't really know him. That must have creeped them out. Yeah.
And by the winter of 1947, the most they knew about him was that he was of Italian ancestry and of average height and weight. That's what they could say about him. They didn't even know like what he did for worker anything about him. A reporter for The New York Times wrote that they knew nothing of his work.
Sometimes he disappeared for months. Occasionally, he returned with lots of money and just as often with none. Why? Okay, he's a sketchy fucking character.
Yeah. And others who knew Rocco seemed to know just as little about him, like his landlord. He was like, he was the quiet guy. Like, that's all I know.
Like, I don't know. I guess he was Italian is all I could say. Like, I don't know. And although they didn't know a lot of details about him, Olga's family did not like him.
Well, yeah, I'm sure that really like not knowing anything other guy that your daughter is going to marry, you're not going to like that. Yeah, they all got a vibe that he was a bad person. Like, all of them are like, something's off here. And after their divorce a few months before Olga was shot, they saw him get even worse.
They saw very bad side of him. So according to Olga's mother, once the marriage was annulled in early November 1946, so the only months before, Al became very verbally abusive. And she said, quote, had constantly annoyed her daughter threatening to kill her ever since their separation. Oh my God.
So it didn't take long for it long for detectives to learn. Not only had the couple had an abusive relationship and a very, very aggressive and hostile separation. But this was not the first time that Al had tried to kill Olga. What on one occasion, this is where the detectives and police in this case failed fucking miserably.
Like shame on this one shame. Well, that's that makes sense because she said like he finally got me finally got me and he was like too smart for the police. And it's true. Yeah, he got away with so much.
When you hear all the shit he did that everyone just ignored. Oh, for years. On one occasion in mid-October, after the couple had separated already, like they were separated not divorced. Al confronted Olga the train station in Times Square.
He took out a switchblade knife, forced her into his car and drove her to a motel in Poughkeepsie. Once they were there, he forced Olga to undress, hid her clothes, threatened to kill her and said, if you don't come back to me, I'm gonna murder you. Um, what? So she spent two days in that motel room being terrorized by him while he was trying to force her at knife point to come back to him.
Somehow she managed to convince Al to bring her back to New York. And once there, she fled, she ran away from him back to her parents home in Brooklyn. And a few weeks later on November 1st, just before the couple's marriage was annulled, Al then shot at Olga through an open window in her mother's kitchen. Jesus Christ!
She was a bullet struck her in the right thigh and left her with a 45 caliber slug in her thigh and a permanent limp. Oh my God. Now you would think after those two incidences of, um, attempted murder, assault and attempted murder, you had just those few things maybe you should be arrested or talked to, perhaps? Sold it.
They were both reported to the police, both those incidents and Olga made thorough statements. But from the looks of things, nothing was done to follow up or arrest Rocco. What? Yes.
He just terrorized her with no consequences. And like the way that he terrorized her, you literally kidnapped her and held her hostage and then shot her in the leg. And they're like, yeah. And actually a few weeks later Olga went back to work and she got a threatening call from Al immediately.
She told detectives, he said he was watching me, he knew everything, he knew when I went to work and that he did not aim the, he did not aim right the first time, but that when he would aim again, he would kill me. So he literally was like, I didn't aim for your leg. I just aim wrong. I meant to kill you.
Oh my God. So Olga reported it to the police. Who told her? Don't worry.
Don't worry. Don't worry about it. I have a permanent limp and a slug in my leg. Yeah.
Fuck right off with that. Now in this case, it's unclear whether they followed up on anything, but I couldn't find anything to say that they did or didn't. Sounds like they did not. In the days that followed that threatening phone call Olga received daily threatening calls from Al Rocco and regularly saw him in the crowd at the train station and on city streets following her.
Oh my God. In each time, every day, she reported the incident to detectives at the 66 precinct, precinct precinct. And they didn't do shit all about it. Nothing.
One day just after Christmas, she was going. This is even this is the saddest one. I think she was entering the Times Square station and she saw Al following her very closely behind her. So she panicked and she paid for her train fare and then she went up to the subway guard on the stairway leading to the platform and she said, I'm being followed by my ex husband.
He's very dangerous. He's threatening me. I'm very scared. Can I just stand with you until he's gone?
And the guard said, no, you can't. He said she could not stay there because of the people that were going down the steps at that time. So he was like, tough. What a fucking asshole.
Like, like she's like, can you imagine the panic in her voice when she's a shit subway guard? Stand with me. No, you can't stand with me. Oh my God.
Look out there, I guess. Poor Olga. Now the last time that Olga had heard from Al was three days before the shooting on the train. So three days before he shot her when he came to her family's home to confront her and the family members were like, what the fuck?
And they heard him shout, I'll kill you and kill myself. Jesus. And also reported the incident to the police like she had all the fucking others of them. And on the evening of December 30th, detectives did come to her house to finally take a statement.
And Olga told the detectives that after everything she'd been through over the past few months, she was afraid. She was like, he's going to kill me. Like, it's very clear. He's trying to.
She said they told me that I should not be frightened and that they were going to protect me and that they would guard me when I went to work. So it's like, okay, he's already shot her and she shouldn't be frightened. Well, and it's like, okay, like, cool, they're saying they're going to protect you and like, escort you to work. Clearly they didn't.
And she gave the statement from their hospital bed after being shot. When she left for work the next morning on the 31st, she said there was no detectives anywhere. And the only escort she had to the train station was her sister. So bravo detectives, bravo.
These people are fucked. And you know they're not making any like written reports of this because at this point, this guy would have had a stack like three inches thick. Yeah, they're just the amount that they did is zilch zero, goose egg zero. Now when Olga and her sister got to the platform at the station in Brooklyn, she said she noticed the woman carrying what appeared to be a medium sized Christmas present because she probably, I wonder if she's hard before she might have and she said she was carrying a box, a rather large box and it was wrapped and it had something that protruded protruded at one end of the box.
And I'm assuming that is the handle of the sawed off shotgun, which I'm still a little confused by. Yeah, but did Pearl like pull a string or did she pulled a wire of some kind that trigger? That pull trigger. Okay.
But I'm wondering how the part of like, because it was a sawed off shotgun shorter, but I'm like that handle like not the barrel but the handle of the shotgun that's like on the other side. Was that wrapped too? Because you can't it's hard to tell in the picture. It looks like it might have been, but it's hard because it's all unwrapped and like dissembled, you know.
Yeah. Now despite the bizarre details of what Pearl was saying happened that day, like, you know, that does sound insane. Like that sounds wild. Detective said they were inclined to accept as truth the story to Fantastic to be fiction, which like, I guess like someone making that up is pretty wild.
And Olga's statement like on the scene, I'm sure it really helps. Yeah. Now after taking statements from Olga Pearl and Olga's family members, investigators said that it was very clear that once his wife was not going to come back to him, Al Rocco had concocted an elaborate scheme to kill her because if he couldn't have her, no one else was going to have her either. Now, while Olga is laying in Roosevelt Hospital in critical condition with a literal quote mangled left thigh, detective started finally searching for Al Rocco.
Now in January 1st, the day after the shooting, investigators learned that quote, an unidentified man had called twice at Pearl's rooming house asking to speak with her. What? So they were hoping they could intercept him because they were assuming he would call for another time when he couldn't get a hold of her. So they brought Pearl back to the rooming house and had her sit there with them a little after 5 p.m.
They waited for several hours, but he didn't call back. Damn it. So detectives continued their interview with Pearl Lusk and other investigators began looking for Al Rocco, like through his background. Yeah.
What they learned, they learned a lot about him, but they learned that the 28 year old, by the way, he's 28 years old. Yeah. He had served a year in the Bronx, Bronx County Jail a few years earlier for auto theft and he had a bunch of arrest for disorderly conduct, car theft, all kinds of stuff like that. Things they should have known when he was doing this all about.
Exactly. But the thing is, when they were looking at his criminal record, they were like, none of it, detectives were calling him a diabolical genius. And they were like, when you look at his record, you're like, nothing really lends itself to that. He's just a car thief.
Yeah, and like that's it. And like disorderly conduct, you know. But, and in fact, an evaluation conducted at Bellevue Hospital in 1938 of Rocco labeled him as a man of average intelligence. He's not normal, not below, not above.
But they had opened up to tips from the public at this point. And the first tip came in around 11 a.m. on the morning of January 1st. That's when a Brooklyn resident saw a man on Brighton Beach who disrobed completely and just entered the water.
Okay. According to the witnesses, they said the man quote, shed a gray tweet overcoat, a brown suit, a blue tie and a white shirt, then wearing gloves, underwear, shoes and socks, he plunged into the icy surf, headed out to sea and disappeared. I was wearing gloves. Oh, like, oh, is he the Loch Ness monster?
Like what's going on here? He just headed out to sea? Like just, you know, you mean, please, please search the water for hours. And they couldn't find anybody in there.
And they showed the clothing that they did find. They showed it to Olga for identification. And she said, no, like that's not his. So it was just a random unrelated incident.
And this just goes away. And I'm like, where's that man that just went out to sea? And they don't know where like we all just forgetting that that happened. Or like, did that even happen?
Or did the guy sound like that's a strange story to tell. Very strange. But and I mean, it did happen because there was clothing found. Yeah, they found the guy's clothing.
Like the same clothing that this man had described. Weird. Now on January 3rd, Olga's condition took a turn for the worst. Oh, no.
She had actually had never like amputated. And it left her and what doctor said was a fight for her life. Oh, no. That same morning, Pearl Lusk appeared in general sessions court, which was a court mostly for misdemeanors at the time.
She was sobbing, like beside herself. She's like, how the fuck did I find myself in this situation? Yeah, she was explaining to them. I was just upon an Al Rocco's plan.
And she's like, I genuinely believed his story about being a private investigator in pursuit of a jewel thief. Yeah, I literally did. And the assistant district attorney Jacob Kermet noted that investigators did believe Pearl was telling the truth that none of them believed she was lying. But they said they wanted her held as a material witness because when they captured Rocco, hopefully, who he referred to as an arch fiend an arch fiend, they wanted her to be there as a material witness.
So the judge agreed, like, yeah, and set Pearl's bail at $10,000 and then remanded her into the custody of the Florence Critenden, Critenden home, which was a home for Unwood Mothers. Interesting. I think that's just where they were like, because they were like, we got a track of the deal because I could see why they would want to keep her because she would want to get as far away from the ship as possible. And you want to hear exactly what the sky told you, right?
Tell me more, tell me more. Yeah. Did you get very far? Like what happened here?
And so detectives finally figured out what their job title was at this point and started working to find Al Rocco. So imagine that. Good job. Fantastic.
Because now they that, you know, he actually almost killed Olga. Now's the time to do their job, I think. Yeah, once somebody is almost dead. Yeah, they questioned several people and they all said like acquaintances, people they thought might have seen him and they all said they had not seen or heard from Al Rocco in weeks.
But now the big break came on January 6 when a neighbor and this is this story is a little hard to follow. Okay, so I'll do my best. Al is a little hard to follow, I guess. Truly.
So a neighbor of Al Rocco's first cousins. So his cousins neighbor. Yes. Reported his car had been stolen by a man who introduced himself as Alan Lamontae.
Okay. According to the neighbor Dominic Rizzo, the man introduced himself as a friend of Mrs. Rizzo's brother James Capazole. I think it is.
Capazole. So he's saying he knows this guy Dominic's wife's brother got it and her sister's cousin's best friend's brother twice removed. Exactly. Now Alan Lamontae explained he had recently come into possession of a large number of tools with instructions to give them to James Capazole.
Okay. Both the tools were in Cairo, which is a small town in the Catsgills. I know I thought Egypt was like he's going all the way to Egypt. I also thought your face.
I was like, you thought that. I sure did. I was like, this motherfucker's borrowing your card. I would go to Egypt.
This is just a small town in the Catsgills. So and he said his car had broken down. So he had no way of getting there. So I need your help.