MURRAY HILL — Michael Abruzzi worked thousands of homicides during his 20-year career as an NYPD detective, but one case that still haunts him is the murder of Gail Mark.
No one has ever been charged with her killing — even though Abruzzi said he believes he had enough evidence to arrest her husband, Franklin Mark, with the Dec. 30, 1982 crime.
“I thought we had enough," Abruzzi said. "I don’t know what else you needed unless he said he did it."
NYPD detectives are taking a fresh look at the murder after DNAinfo New York exclusively reported earlier this month that Franklin’s own sister recently said she and her family believe he was responsible for the murder.
Gail Mark (Family of Gail Mark)
Abruzzi said that from the moment he walked into the grisly crime scene of the 28-year-old mother, he suspected her husband was involved.
Abruzzi was the lead detective on the case and one of the first investigators to see Gail's body lying on the floor of her bedroom.
The assailant had repeatedly stabbed her with a 10-inch kitchen knife and strangled her with a cord.
The stab wounds and the pools of blood on the bed and carpet pointed to a crime of passion. But the telltale sign was a pillow placed over her face — an indication that the killer knew the victim and wanted to avoid looking at her.
The case, however, was tough to crack.
There were no witnesses except for the Marks' 3-year-old daughter, whom the killer, wearing the girl's "E.T." mask, had locked in the bathroom. Franklin Mark was interviewed twice by detectives but denied any involvement and never made incriminating statements.
Franklin Mark has not returned repeated requests for comment from DNAinfo.
But Abruzzi said he believed the police had a very strong case.
Records showed Franklin had a history of violence with his wife and that she had feared he would stab her. And Gail, who had filed for divorce from Franklin years earlier but never followed through, was again planning to leave her husband.
In fact, the day after Gail's murder made front-page news, detectives received a call from a New York divorce lawyer who was vacationing in Florida. He told police that the women pictured in the news had just visited his office a few days before she was killed, sources said.
Franklin's alibi was also weak, Abruzzi and other detectives and prosecutors who worked on the case told DNAinfo New York.
Franklin told detectives he left his apartment at 6 a.m. on the day of the murder to get a haircut and go to work at his father's business in the Garment District. He said he left the business and returned home at 11 a.m. to meet a serviceman for a scheduled appointment. That's when he discovered his wife's body and rescued his daughter from the bathroom, he said.
Dawn and Franklin Mark (Facebook)
Abruzzi said he thought it was odd that Franklin, who was known for putting in long hours at his dad's business, had left early.
The detective, who now works as a private investigator on Long Island, said he was also suspicious of a gash on Franklin's hands that he noticed when Franklin showed up with a lawyer three days after the murder to be interviewed. Franklin told Abruzzi that he had cut himself on a truck at work.
Abruzzi said that, despite the strong circumstantial evidence, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office didn't think a conviction was obtainable. One former assistant district attorney who worked on the case agreed.
"We did not have an eyewitness, no fingerprints and no admissions," said the ex-prosecutor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Abruzzi said part of the reason the murder languished was that at the time there were so many homicides in the city that prosecutors quickly moved on to more winnable cases.
The city had 1,668 murders in 1982. The number of murders in the city in 2014 was 328.
"We were catching homicides right and left back then, when there were 1,800 homicides a year, and unless you had a near slam dunk, they had dozens of other cases to prosecute,” Abruzzi said.
Abruzzi hopes that the new investigators will crack the case and give him peace of mind.
He recalled how in 2000 he eagerly briefed NYPD detectives when the unsolved murder was first re-opened. That probe ended yet again with the police and prosecutors deciding not to file charges.
"We were close, but we did not have enough," recalled Daniel Bibb, a former assistant district attorney who worked Gail Mark's cold case in 2000.
Abruzzi hopes that the latest investigation will bring justice for Gail Mark, whose gruesome death remains a haunting memory.
"I saw a lot of unpleasant things back in those days," the retired detective said. "But I'll never forget her crime scene."
