May 28, 2024 • 23 mins
Steve and Dax’s team unearth 30-year old audio recordings of Teresa Gomez making a statement to an assistant district attorney about a murder she claims to have witnessed. Teresa Gomez is arguably the single person most responsible for Louis Scarcella’s rise, and fall as an NYPD detective.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, Steve Fishman here, creator of The Burden as well
as the number one true crime podcast, My Friend The
Serial Killer. For those of you who liked The Burden,
I have good news. Season two starts August seventh. It's
a series called The Burden Empire on Blood and it's
the director's cut of the true crime classic Empire on Blood,
(00:22):
which reached number one on the charts when it debuted
half a dozen years ago. Then the fat cat funders
abandon it. I wrangled it back and now I'm thrilled
to share this story of a man who fought the
law for two decades, fought against the Bronx's top homicide
prosecutor and a detective sometimes known as the Louis Scarcela
(00:44):
of the Bronx. It's all coming to you August seventh,
wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
I'm Dax Devlin Ross and I'm Steve Fishman.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Welcome to a bonus episode of The Burden. We call
this one Teresa Gomez speaks and it's a special.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
One, which, as you know, we say for each of them,
but this one is special. Teresa has been a crucial
element of the Scarcella story, a cause of both his
rise and his fall. So, if you recall, Teresa Gomez
was Scarcella's go to witness. She seemed, for a period
(01:34):
in time at least to be everywhere all the time,
witnessed eleven murders. According to Scarcella, she helped him solve
cold cases, and that helped propel him to first grade detective.
But she was also a crack addict who had a
fair amount of trouble keeping her story straight on the
witness stand. Remember in episode four we read from that transcript,
(01:58):
and in one trial she said she because she basically
was in a bad mood. She was so unreliable that
the district attorney later moved to overturn three murder convictions
in which she was the sole eyewitness. And yet Detective
Scarcella was an unwavering believer.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Teresa Gomez is a motion picture extravagance, or in herself
a story. Her story is unbelievable, and I believed every
word she said.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
But are we believers? A jury and a judge decide
on credibility in large part by hearing a person speak
Teresa's been dead for thirty years, and we Steve and I,
we never had an opportunity to hear her voice.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
And since she died, neither has anyone else until now.
Speaker 5 (03:02):
This is Kenneth Arthur Rigby, Assistant District Attorney King's County
District Attorney's Office, and I'm presently at the inside the
video room at ecabin and also present as as a
civilian who will be giving an audiotape.
Speaker 6 (03:17):
Stigle momentarily, and.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Your name is.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
This is tape that came to me in an email
from Nathan Tempe, who's our dogged researcher, And in that
email was a link to audio of Teresa Gomez giving
it an account of the killing of a friend of
hers named Deborah Allen. She was the sole eye witness
(03:43):
in that case too. We're going to play a bunch
of this tape. I'm gonna say upfront, I was stunned
by Teresa's account and the way she presented it. I mean,
what was your first reaction to her voice, her presentation.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
My first reaction to Teresa's voice is that she's buried
in New York. It didn't expect her to have such
a strong, like New York like Brooklyn accent. I didn't expect.
I don't know why I don't know why, and it
was like, why was this surprise to me? But the real,
the real reaction I had was, you know, you listen
(04:20):
to her, You're like, Oh, she's just a little more
credible than I think it might otherwise appear.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
We'd love to know what you think. Please let us
know by calling eight three three eight Burden.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
We got our ace researcher Nathan into the studio to
assess Teresa's statement to an assistant district attorney the night
her friend Deborah was shot and killed.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Nathan introduced yourself.
Speaker 7 (04:56):
My name is Nathan Tempey. I'm a journalist and a
criminal defense investigator.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
I want to mention that this particular case is very
significant to Detective Scarceller because he's told us many times
that this case shows that Teresa was a truth teller.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
We'll evaluate that claim later, but let's first go to
the night of the crime. Like many Scarcella stories, this
one begins with a dead body, please.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Stop, break, please try to come in. Throw the woman
under my window. And what happened to I'm making I
don't know. She was screaming.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
It makes shut she's dead under my window.
Speaker 6 (05:45):
She's dead.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Yes, she leaned in a pool of blood.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
All right, calm down.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Here's Scarcella's recollection of what happened the night of the murder.
Speaker 8 (06:00):
Old Win Tonight seven to seventh precinct is how to
be eighty three, eighty four or eighty five. I'm sleeping
in the dorm, tired.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Get a call.
Speaker 8 (06:12):
Come on, Louis, you got a fresh one, I says Jesus.
Debrah Allen, a light skinned black girl from California, A
beautiful girl.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Here she is, lion.
Speaker 8 (06:26):
I believe it was Bedford Avenue. No witnesses, just a body.
So here I am saying, Oh God, here I go
another one. I got nothing.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
A light goes off. Teresa lives around the block. Hey,
what the hell? Go around? I ring the bell.
Speaker 8 (06:49):
I could still hear it. Teresa comes down. She opens
the door.
Speaker 9 (06:58):
She says, gun smoke. He shot my baby. He shot
my baby, says Teresa. Who she said, Glenn? I said, Teresa,
are you there?
Speaker 8 (07:12):
She said, gun smoke? Did she have a crack pipe
in a left pocket? A five hour bill in our
right pocket?
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Go back?
Speaker 8 (07:19):
Sure enough she does.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Okay, So what really happened?
Speaker 7 (07:33):
I'm gonna preface this by saying we've gotten a lot
of information on this case. We have the DD five's,
the police reports, we have Glenn Monstercue's appeals, we have
the Conviction Review Unit report when the Brooklyn DIA's office
went back twenty five years later and looked at this
case because Teresa Gomez and Luis Garcela were involved. So
(07:54):
I feel like we do have a pretty thorough picture
at this point. We've looked for Glenn Monskue, we couldn't
find him. And I could go through some points of
Scarcela's story. You know, he says cold winter night is June.
It's not eighty three, eighty forty five.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah, it's thirty years ago.
Speaker 7 (08:09):
Sure, but there's definitely some artistic license happening. Here's June second,
nineteen eighty seven. It's three something in the morning, Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
Deborah Allen's shot four or five times in the chest
and head. Louis comes out eight am according to his
own DD five. And so he does bring Teresa Gomez
into the case, and she is an important witness and
(08:32):
she has a whole, very involved account of what happened.
She seems to have known Deborah Allen really well. They
both used crack together. They ran in the same circles,
they lived in the same area, and it sounds like
they were together that night.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
All right, Dax, that's the night of the murder.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
So Scarcella brings Teresa in to give a statement to
the district attorneys.
Speaker 6 (08:58):
Do you know anything about the sense? Yes? I do.
Well you see another victim? Yes?
Speaker 1 (09:04):
I do.
Speaker 6 (09:04):
And how do you know her? Okay? And how long
do you know her? I don't know, for like five
six years? And did you see her today? Yes? I did?
And when did you first see her? Notions and thrilling? Okay?
Speaker 5 (09:20):
And what did you do?
Speaker 10 (09:21):
I called out to her and she says she wanted
to take a smoke. She came, she bought something. Then
she came on my place and she smoked I crack
and I smoked the rifa.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
So let's walk through the case. Now, Teresa gomes a story.
Speaker 7 (09:40):
Is that a guy she knows as Glenn, who turns
out to be Glenn Monsque, had dated Deborah Allen. They
had a child together, they had broken up. She apparently
was using more crack and had gotten custody of the
child and was maybe prostituting herself, supposedly leaving this child
(10:01):
in dangerous situations while she went out and did drugs
and some combination of jealousy and anger. Over all of
this prompted Glenn to come after her.
Speaker 6 (10:14):
He says, no, I.
Speaker 10 (10:15):
Just got to teach her a lesson because she's gonna,
you know, ridiculous. She had the baby taken away from
me and left leave the kid in now. So at times,
I'm just to go out with different men's and different hotels.
Speaker 6 (10:27):
This was the way he was describing.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
I think she's so. According to he says that he's
looking for Debra.
Speaker 10 (10:34):
So then he says, well, I'm looking for that bitch.
I want to lay her, lay her out. So he said,
you're gonna lay her out?
Speaker 6 (10:44):
I said, leave the girl. You know, he told himself, pus,
he has an little face on it. You know, you
can get himself another girl.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
But that night he comes to the apartment.
Speaker 7 (10:52):
According to Tresa Gomez, they're having this big argument in
the apartment.
Speaker 6 (10:58):
This is no, I'm not.
Speaker 10 (10:58):
Gonna have this ship on my place. You leave my place, please.
Then he finally goes downstairs. She goes downstairs behind I said,
deb He's not gonna trouble talk to the fucking means,
is I said John crazy because you are in love
with each other.
Speaker 7 (11:15):
She thinks that they are in love and they need
to talk this out, but not in her apartment because
it's a little loud, and so they all go downstairs.
Deborah tries to bring a kitchen knife with her. She
wants to bring it downstairs. She's scared of Glenn. Teresa
takes the kitchen knife, and so Deborah settles for a razor.
(11:37):
One of the first d D five's notes that Deva's
lying there dead. She has a razor clenched in her
left hand, so this is definitely corroborated. Glenn's outside in
the area. They're yelling back and forth.
Speaker 10 (11:48):
She says, I'm not going down there because it's gonna
hurt me. He's gonna hurt me.
Speaker 6 (11:53):
I know him. He's gonna hurt me. He says, Debah,
give me angry.
Speaker 7 (11:58):
And she says, I know you. You're gonna hurt me.
This is all kind of like a moving argument. At
some point it comes to a head.
Speaker 6 (12:05):
She broke picked up a broken bottle and broken in
the street. She says, before I see him hit me,
I'll kill him. I'm kill him. That's all she kept saying.
So she's shotted, backing up away from him with a
broken glass in her hand.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Did she still have the right black?
Speaker 10 (12:22):
She still had the little money to play in the
hand in one hand and the.
Speaker 6 (12:25):
Bottle and the other uh huh.
Speaker 7 (12:26):
Deborah breaks a bottle of wild there's rose, or finds
a broken bottle. So now she's got a razor in
her left hand and a broken bottle in her right hand.
Speaker 6 (12:34):
Says, I'm gonna give you one one hands, never start
the same. I don't want to kill you. I don't
want to kill you. She kept telling her mom, kill you.
She was coming.
Speaker 10 (12:43):
Towards her face and before and I just like went
inside cool started flying shots.
Speaker 6 (12:50):
Then I seemed devil go down.
Speaker 7 (12:53):
And so in Teresa's story, in her final moments, Deborah
Allen is coming at this Glenn with the bottle and
the razor, and then she's shot once in the chester abdomen,
and she's still swinging at him as he shoots another
few times in her chest and head.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Can you invite them? What part to buy a perky
shot at case.
Speaker 6 (13:28):
Crowd?
Speaker 4 (13:30):
Think I can get you a brush?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
A female shot in chests two times?
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Okay?
Speaker 8 (13:42):
The female be awaken.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Okay, Now this is interesting.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
There was a second witness looking out a window in
an apartment above the murder scene.
Speaker 7 (13:56):
So there's a guy in the building above where this
is happening. His attention is called to his window by
this ruckus outside. He hears this woman saying I don't
want to have to kill you, and there's a lot
of shouting back and forth. So he looks out his
window he sees the woman with a bottle in her hand.
From the available paperwork, I haven't looked at the autopsy,
but there's like a police worksheet where they have a
diagram of the human body and roughly where the bullets
(14:19):
went in. And also there's a note on that sheet
saying that she had powder burns and gunpowder residue on her,
suggesting that she was shot at close range, which in
Teresa Gomez's statement to the DA, she says that Debora
Allen was close enough to Glenn Monsky to cut his
face and was trying to do so at the time
that he shot her. So that all kind of lines up.
Speaker 6 (14:43):
How many times stay? Four times? You're gonna stop a minute?
Speaker 2 (14:59):
How does her voice strike you? Do you hear any
particular emotion.
Speaker 7 (15:04):
She's clearly distraught and clearly feels very upset about the
loss of her friend Deborah. It would be hard to
listen to that and say that anything else is motivating
her in the short term. It's like a pretty raw
account of really bad night. She's upset, yes, but also
you know she could be on drugs. But whether or
(15:27):
not she is, she's definitely someone who's not well sounding.
Would you agree with that?
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Well, I actually hear upset more than I hear anything else. Okay,
I mean, listen, I could be.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Wrong, but I hear her like real connection to Debra Allen.
I mean, do you believe her listening to her? Yeah,
I mean the substance of it.
Speaker 7 (15:50):
Yes, as far as we can tell from what we have,
it seems like, to use a Scarcella term, she got
it right.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
So, in short, you find her to be credible in
this one instance.
Speaker 7 (16:03):
I'm not making any grand pronouncements about Teresa Gomez broadly, Here's.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
What I'm wondering.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
We're familiar with Teresa's testimony on the witness stand months
after the crime, and it was wildly incredible, to say
the least, what we're hearing here in this audio is
an account within hours of the killing. It's also worth
noting that this is an account Scarcilla would have heard
(16:36):
as well. And I gotta say, in this account, Teresa's
sounds credible.
Speaker 7 (16:45):
And so yeah, I think it's very possible that she
was reliable in this case in unreliable in others. I
don't think that there's anything to groundbreaking that idea, and
I would caution anybody to into totally black and white
thinking when it comes to dealing with people who are complex.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Last thing Nathan about the crack pipe, Scarcela says was
in Debra Allen's pocket.
Speaker 7 (17:13):
Scarcella said the thing about the vial of crack in
her pocket, which there was.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
One in the list of vouchered items. There was a
crack pipe and a crack vial. So now to why
Scarcella sees this case as so significant.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
So Scarcella claims that this case offers evidence that Teresa
was a truthful witness. Just look at what happened in
the courtroom.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Says Scarcela.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
It's months later and Glenn Monsacue is about to go
to trial. Montacue pleads not guilty. It's the eve of
jury selection, before the jury has chosen, Scarcella says, something
happened with Monsacue.
Speaker 8 (18:00):
We go to court. Teresa Gomez is the only witness.
Teresa Gomez goes in court the bad guy Orsitar turns
to his attorney, he coped out.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
All right, Nathan, what really happened? So forget about Scarcela's story.
Speaker 7 (18:24):
There's not a Eureka moment where Teresa Gomez emerges from
the back and he pleads guilty on the spot.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
But she was part of the leverage.
Speaker 7 (18:32):
Presumably, the DA is going to Glenn Monscue's defense attorney saying, yeah,
we've got this great witness on deck.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
We're ready to go. You know, if you don't take
this plea right now, we're going. The original offer is
seven and a half to fifteen years for manslaughter. He
doesn't take it. Earlier in the year.
Speaker 7 (18:49):
Now the offer is seven and a half to twenty
two for manslaughter. It's plea or go to trial, and
his lawyer tells him, you have to take this right now.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Montacute takes the deal, and almost immediately he regrets it.
Speaker 7 (19:07):
So he spends much of his seven years in prison
writing a series of appeals based on his problems with
his lawyer's representation.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
In his appeals. He argues that he was pressured to
take a deal he didn't want to take. After all,
even Teresa said that Deborah was charging him with a
razor blade in one hand and a broken bottle in
the other, he might have had a compelling self defense
argument to make a trial.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
But let's get back to Teresa's audio count, which you know,
really surprised me. I expected somebody who, like the person
in the transcripts, can't keep things straight and has like
a laybile personality and her emotions appear from the transcripts
(19:54):
to be all over the place, and this felt like
a real person. I listened to that statement, and I
hear what you're saying about corroborating evidence. I believe her,
And frankly, that kind of shocks me because she has
completely dismissed as a credible witness. I mean, wouldn't you
(20:15):
agree that the kind of cross the board dismissal of
her as a credible witness seems belied by this particular
case and the statement.
Speaker 7 (20:27):
From what I have in front of me, it sounds
like what she said is roughly what probably happened.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
So Nathan, share with me, what were your thoughts as
you were listening to her statement.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
I felt very sad listening to that.
Speaker 7 (20:47):
It definitely makes it feel like less of an academic
exercise to assess her truthfulness or her role.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
In all these cases.
Speaker 7 (20:55):
I feel like there are a lot of Teresa Gomez's
in the world, and it's rare that we dig this
deeply into their lives.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
The CRU, the Conviction Review Unit, they examine this case
because of the involvement of Scarcella and of course Theresa,
but they didn't move to overturn the conviction.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Why does the cru not overturn it.
Speaker 7 (21:19):
They have the second witness, they have the guilty plea,
and then also him acknowledging guilt at the parole boards.
It's a very serious thing the system that the DA's office,
the judges don't want to disturb a conviction if they
can avoid it. I think that at the end of
the day, this type of crime, the general public does
(21:40):
not care, which is very callous to say, but people
in Deborah Allen and Glenn Monsky's position in our society
are not. It's not making a splash when Debora Allen
is murdered, so just the fact that the system is
humming away in the background and that someone's being held
accountable is enough for a lot of people and homicide
detective if they want to make their arrest. So this
(22:03):
seemed like a pretty easy case for them. They want
their pound of flesh. They're not gonna let them walk
away after shooting somebody.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Thanks for listening again, we'd love to hear what you
think of Teresa Gomes's credibility. One eight three three eight Burden.
We've got more bonus episodes coming, at least.
Speaker 6 (22:28):
Eight of them.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
If you're a subscriber, please subscribe on Apple Podcast by
going to the show page and clicking on True Crime Clubhouse.
Speaker 6 (22:37):
It's just two.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Ninety nine a month. You get everything early and ad free,
plus all the bonus episodes. Again, it's only to ninety
nine a month, less than a cup of coffee in Brooklyn.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
At least, which is we admit, really messed up.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
This episode was produced by Drew Nellis. Our associate producer
and production coordinator was Austin Smith. Sound design was provided
by Bianca Salinas. And then there's me, Dax, Devlin Ross
and Steve Fishman, your hosts. The Burden is a production
of Orbit Media.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Season two of The Burden Empire on Blood will be
available everywhere you get your podcasts on August seventh. All
episodes will be available early and ad free, along with
exclusive bonus content on Orbit's newly launched True Crime Clubhouse,
our subscription channel on Apple Podcasts. It's only two ninety
(23:36):
nine a month.
Hi, Steve Fishman here, creator of The Burden as well
as the number one true crime podcast, My Friend The
Serial Killer. For those of you who liked The Burden,
I have good news. Season two starts August seventh. It's
a series called The Burden Empire on Blood and it's
the director's cut of the true crime classic Empire on Blood,
(00:22):
which reached number one on the charts when it debuted
half a dozen years ago. Then the fat cat funders
abandon it. I wrangled it back and now I'm thrilled
to share this story of a man who fought the
law for two decades, fought against the Bronx's top homicide
prosecutor and a detective sometimes known as the Louis Scarcela
(00:44):
of the Bronx. It's all coming to you August seventh,
wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
I'm Dax Devlin Ross and I'm Steve Fishman.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Welcome to a bonus episode of The Burden. We call
this one Teresa Gomez speaks and it's a special.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
One, which, as you know, we say for each of them,
but this one is special. Teresa has been a crucial
element of the Scarcella story, a cause of both his
rise and his fall. So, if you recall, Teresa Gomez
was Scarcella's go to witness. She seemed, for a period
(01:34):
in time at least to be everywhere all the time,
witnessed eleven murders. According to Scarcella, she helped him solve
cold cases, and that helped propel him to first grade detective.
But she was also a crack addict who had a
fair amount of trouble keeping her story straight on the
witness stand. Remember in episode four we read from that transcript,
(01:58):
and in one trial she said she because she basically
was in a bad mood. She was so unreliable that
the district attorney later moved to overturn three murder convictions
in which she was the sole eyewitness. And yet Detective
Scarcella was an unwavering believer.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Teresa Gomez is a motion picture extravagance, or in herself
a story. Her story is unbelievable, and I believed every
word she said.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
But are we believers? A jury and a judge decide
on credibility in large part by hearing a person speak
Teresa's been dead for thirty years, and we Steve and I,
we never had an opportunity to hear her voice.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
And since she died, neither has anyone else until now.
Speaker 5 (03:02):
This is Kenneth Arthur Rigby, Assistant District Attorney King's County
District Attorney's Office, and I'm presently at the inside the
video room at ecabin and also present as as a
civilian who will be giving an audiotape.
Speaker 6 (03:17):
Stigle momentarily, and.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Your name is.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
This is tape that came to me in an email
from Nathan Tempe, who's our dogged researcher, And in that
email was a link to audio of Teresa Gomez giving
it an account of the killing of a friend of
hers named Deborah Allen. She was the sole eye witness
(03:43):
in that case too. We're going to play a bunch
of this tape. I'm gonna say upfront, I was stunned
by Teresa's account and the way she presented it. I mean,
what was your first reaction to her voice, her presentation.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
My first reaction to Teresa's voice is that she's buried
in New York. It didn't expect her to have such
a strong, like New York like Brooklyn accent. I didn't expect.
I don't know why I don't know why, and it
was like, why was this surprise to me? But the real,
the real reaction I had was, you know, you listen
(04:20):
to her, You're like, Oh, she's just a little more
credible than I think it might otherwise appear.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
We'd love to know what you think. Please let us
know by calling eight three three eight Burden.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
We got our ace researcher Nathan into the studio to
assess Teresa's statement to an assistant district attorney the night
her friend Deborah was shot and killed.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Nathan introduced yourself.
Speaker 7 (04:56):
My name is Nathan Tempey. I'm a journalist and a
criminal defense investigator.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
I want to mention that this particular case is very
significant to Detective Scarceller because he's told us many times
that this case shows that Teresa was a truth teller.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
We'll evaluate that claim later, but let's first go to
the night of the crime. Like many Scarcella stories, this
one begins with a dead body, please.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Stop, break, please try to come in. Throw the woman
under my window. And what happened to I'm making I
don't know. She was screaming.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
It makes shut she's dead under my window.
Speaker 6 (05:45):
She's dead.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Yes, she leaned in a pool of blood.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
All right, calm down.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Here's Scarcella's recollection of what happened the night of the murder.
Speaker 8 (06:00):
Old Win Tonight seven to seventh precinct is how to
be eighty three, eighty four or eighty five. I'm sleeping
in the dorm, tired.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Get a call.
Speaker 8 (06:12):
Come on, Louis, you got a fresh one, I says Jesus.
Debrah Allen, a light skinned black girl from California, A
beautiful girl.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Here she is, lion.
Speaker 8 (06:26):
I believe it was Bedford Avenue. No witnesses, just a body.
So here I am saying, Oh God, here I go
another one. I got nothing.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
A light goes off. Teresa lives around the block. Hey,
what the hell? Go around? I ring the bell.
Speaker 8 (06:49):
I could still hear it. Teresa comes down. She opens
the door.
Speaker 9 (06:58):
She says, gun smoke. He shot my baby. He shot
my baby, says Teresa. Who she said, Glenn? I said, Teresa,
are you there?
Speaker 8 (07:12):
She said, gun smoke? Did she have a crack pipe
in a left pocket? A five hour bill in our
right pocket?
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Go back?
Speaker 8 (07:19):
Sure enough she does.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Okay, So what really happened?
Speaker 7 (07:33):
I'm gonna preface this by saying we've gotten a lot
of information on this case. We have the DD five's,
the police reports, we have Glenn Monstercue's appeals, we have
the Conviction Review Unit report when the Brooklyn DIA's office
went back twenty five years later and looked at this
case because Teresa Gomez and Luis Garcela were involved. So
(07:54):
I feel like we do have a pretty thorough picture
at this point. We've looked for Glenn Monskue, we couldn't
find him. And I could go through some points of
Scarcela's story. You know, he says cold winter night is June.
It's not eighty three, eighty forty five.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah, it's thirty years ago.
Speaker 7 (08:09):
Sure, but there's definitely some artistic license happening. Here's June second,
nineteen eighty seven. It's three something in the morning, Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
Deborah Allen's shot four or five times in the chest
and head. Louis comes out eight am according to his
own DD five. And so he does bring Teresa Gomez
into the case, and she is an important witness and
(08:32):
she has a whole, very involved account of what happened.
She seems to have known Deborah Allen really well. They
both used crack together. They ran in the same circles,
they lived in the same area, and it sounds like
they were together that night.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
All right, Dax, that's the night of the murder.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
So Scarcella brings Teresa in to give a statement to
the district attorneys.
Speaker 6 (08:58):
Do you know anything about the sense? Yes? I do.
Well you see another victim? Yes?
Speaker 1 (09:04):
I do.
Speaker 6 (09:04):
And how do you know her? Okay? And how long
do you know her? I don't know, for like five
six years? And did you see her today? Yes? I did?
And when did you first see her? Notions and thrilling? Okay?
Speaker 5 (09:20):
And what did you do?
Speaker 10 (09:21):
I called out to her and she says she wanted
to take a smoke. She came, she bought something. Then
she came on my place and she smoked I crack
and I smoked the rifa.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
So let's walk through the case. Now, Teresa gomes a story.
Speaker 7 (09:40):
Is that a guy she knows as Glenn, who turns
out to be Glenn Monsque, had dated Deborah Allen. They
had a child together, they had broken up. She apparently
was using more crack and had gotten custody of the
child and was maybe prostituting herself, supposedly leaving this child
(10:01):
in dangerous situations while she went out and did drugs
and some combination of jealousy and anger. Over all of
this prompted Glenn to come after her.
Speaker 6 (10:14):
He says, no, I.
Speaker 10 (10:15):
Just got to teach her a lesson because she's gonna,
you know, ridiculous. She had the baby taken away from
me and left leave the kid in now. So at times,
I'm just to go out with different men's and different hotels.
Speaker 6 (10:27):
This was the way he was describing.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
I think she's so. According to he says that he's
looking for Debra.
Speaker 10 (10:34):
So then he says, well, I'm looking for that bitch.
I want to lay her, lay her out. So he said,
you're gonna lay her out?
Speaker 6 (10:44):
I said, leave the girl. You know, he told himself, pus,
he has an little face on it. You know, you
can get himself another girl.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
But that night he comes to the apartment.
Speaker 7 (10:52):
According to Tresa Gomez, they're having this big argument in
the apartment.
Speaker 6 (10:58):
This is no, I'm not.
Speaker 10 (10:58):
Gonna have this ship on my place. You leave my place, please.
Then he finally goes downstairs. She goes downstairs behind I said,
deb He's not gonna trouble talk to the fucking means,
is I said John crazy because you are in love
with each other.
Speaker 7 (11:15):
She thinks that they are in love and they need
to talk this out, but not in her apartment because
it's a little loud, and so they all go downstairs.
Deborah tries to bring a kitchen knife with her. She
wants to bring it downstairs. She's scared of Glenn. Teresa
takes the kitchen knife, and so Deborah settles for a razor.
(11:37):
One of the first d D five's notes that Deva's
lying there dead. She has a razor clenched in her
left hand, so this is definitely corroborated. Glenn's outside in
the area. They're yelling back and forth.
Speaker 10 (11:48):
She says, I'm not going down there because it's gonna
hurt me. He's gonna hurt me.
Speaker 6 (11:53):
I know him. He's gonna hurt me. He says, Debah,
give me angry.
Speaker 7 (11:58):
And she says, I know you. You're gonna hurt me.
This is all kind of like a moving argument. At
some point it comes to a head.
Speaker 6 (12:05):
She broke picked up a broken bottle and broken in
the street. She says, before I see him hit me,
I'll kill him. I'm kill him. That's all she kept saying.
So she's shotted, backing up away from him with a
broken glass in her hand.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Did she still have the right black?
Speaker 10 (12:22):
She still had the little money to play in the
hand in one hand and the.
Speaker 6 (12:25):
Bottle and the other uh huh.
Speaker 7 (12:26):
Deborah breaks a bottle of wild there's rose, or finds
a broken bottle. So now she's got a razor in
her left hand and a broken bottle in her right hand.
Speaker 6 (12:34):
Says, I'm gonna give you one one hands, never start
the same. I don't want to kill you. I don't
want to kill you. She kept telling her mom, kill you.
She was coming.
Speaker 10 (12:43):
Towards her face and before and I just like went
inside cool started flying shots.
Speaker 6 (12:50):
Then I seemed devil go down.
Speaker 7 (12:53):
And so in Teresa's story, in her final moments, Deborah
Allen is coming at this Glenn with the bottle and
the razor, and then she's shot once in the chester abdomen,
and she's still swinging at him as he shoots another
few times in her chest and head.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Can you invite them? What part to buy a perky
shot at case.
Speaker 6 (13:28):
Crowd?
Speaker 4 (13:30):
Think I can get you a brush?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
A female shot in chests two times?
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Okay?
Speaker 8 (13:42):
The female be awaken.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Okay, Now this is interesting.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
There was a second witness looking out a window in
an apartment above the murder scene.
Speaker 7 (13:56):
So there's a guy in the building above where this
is happening. His attention is called to his window by
this ruckus outside. He hears this woman saying I don't
want to have to kill you, and there's a lot
of shouting back and forth. So he looks out his
window he sees the woman with a bottle in her hand.
From the available paperwork, I haven't looked at the autopsy,
but there's like a police worksheet where they have a
diagram of the human body and roughly where the bullets
(14:19):
went in. And also there's a note on that sheet
saying that she had powder burns and gunpowder residue on her,
suggesting that she was shot at close range, which in
Teresa Gomez's statement to the DA, she says that Debora
Allen was close enough to Glenn Monsky to cut his
face and was trying to do so at the time
that he shot her. So that all kind of lines up.
Speaker 6 (14:43):
How many times stay? Four times? You're gonna stop a minute?
Speaker 2 (14:59):
How does her voice strike you? Do you hear any
particular emotion.
Speaker 7 (15:04):
She's clearly distraught and clearly feels very upset about the
loss of her friend Deborah. It would be hard to
listen to that and say that anything else is motivating
her in the short term. It's like a pretty raw
account of really bad night. She's upset, yes, but also
you know she could be on drugs. But whether or
(15:27):
not she is, she's definitely someone who's not well sounding.
Would you agree with that?
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Well, I actually hear upset more than I hear anything else. Okay,
I mean, listen, I could be.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Wrong, but I hear her like real connection to Debra Allen.
I mean, do you believe her listening to her? Yeah,
I mean the substance of it.
Speaker 7 (15:50):
Yes, as far as we can tell from what we have,
it seems like, to use a Scarcella term, she got
it right.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
So, in short, you find her to be credible in
this one instance.
Speaker 7 (16:03):
I'm not making any grand pronouncements about Teresa Gomez broadly, Here's.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
What I'm wondering.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
We're familiar with Teresa's testimony on the witness stand months
after the crime, and it was wildly incredible, to say
the least, what we're hearing here in this audio is
an account within hours of the killing. It's also worth
noting that this is an account Scarcilla would have heard
(16:36):
as well. And I gotta say, in this account, Teresa's
sounds credible.
Speaker 7 (16:45):
And so yeah, I think it's very possible that she
was reliable in this case in unreliable in others. I
don't think that there's anything to groundbreaking that idea, and
I would caution anybody to into totally black and white
thinking when it comes to dealing with people who are complex.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Last thing Nathan about the crack pipe, Scarcela says was
in Debra Allen's pocket.
Speaker 7 (17:13):
Scarcella said the thing about the vial of crack in
her pocket, which there was.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
One in the list of vouchered items. There was a
crack pipe and a crack vial. So now to why
Scarcella sees this case as so significant.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
So Scarcella claims that this case offers evidence that Teresa
was a truthful witness. Just look at what happened in
the courtroom.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Says Scarcela.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
It's months later and Glenn Monsacue is about to go
to trial. Montacue pleads not guilty. It's the eve of
jury selection, before the jury has chosen, Scarcella says, something
happened with Monsacue.
Speaker 8 (18:00):
We go to court. Teresa Gomez is the only witness.
Teresa Gomez goes in court the bad guy Orsitar turns
to his attorney, he coped out.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
All right, Nathan, what really happened? So forget about Scarcela's story.
Speaker 7 (18:24):
There's not a Eureka moment where Teresa Gomez emerges from
the back and he pleads guilty on the spot.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
But she was part of the leverage.
Speaker 7 (18:32):
Presumably, the DA is going to Glenn Monscue's defense attorney saying, yeah,
we've got this great witness on deck.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
We're ready to go. You know, if you don't take
this plea right now, we're going. The original offer is
seven and a half to fifteen years for manslaughter. He
doesn't take it. Earlier in the year.
Speaker 7 (18:49):
Now the offer is seven and a half to twenty
two for manslaughter. It's plea or go to trial, and
his lawyer tells him, you have to take this right now.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Montacute takes the deal, and almost immediately he regrets it.
Speaker 7 (19:07):
So he spends much of his seven years in prison
writing a series of appeals based on his problems with
his lawyer's representation.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
In his appeals. He argues that he was pressured to
take a deal he didn't want to take. After all,
even Teresa said that Deborah was charging him with a
razor blade in one hand and a broken bottle in
the other, he might have had a compelling self defense
argument to make a trial.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
But let's get back to Teresa's audio count, which you know,
really surprised me. I expected somebody who, like the person
in the transcripts, can't keep things straight and has like
a laybile personality and her emotions appear from the transcripts
(19:54):
to be all over the place, and this felt like
a real person. I listened to that statement, and I
hear what you're saying about corroborating evidence. I believe her,
And frankly, that kind of shocks me because she has
completely dismissed as a credible witness. I mean, wouldn't you
(20:15):
agree that the kind of cross the board dismissal of
her as a credible witness seems belied by this particular
case and the statement.
Speaker 7 (20:27):
From what I have in front of me, it sounds
like what she said is roughly what probably happened.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
So Nathan, share with me, what were your thoughts as
you were listening to her statement.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
I felt very sad listening to that.
Speaker 7 (20:47):
It definitely makes it feel like less of an academic
exercise to assess her truthfulness or her role.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
In all these cases.
Speaker 7 (20:55):
I feel like there are a lot of Teresa Gomez's
in the world, and it's rare that we dig this
deeply into their lives.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
The CRU, the Conviction Review Unit, they examine this case
because of the involvement of Scarcella and of course Theresa,
but they didn't move to overturn the conviction.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Why does the cru not overturn it.
Speaker 7 (21:19):
They have the second witness, they have the guilty plea,
and then also him acknowledging guilt at the parole boards.
It's a very serious thing the system that the DA's office,
the judges don't want to disturb a conviction if they
can avoid it. I think that at the end of
the day, this type of crime, the general public does
(21:40):
not care, which is very callous to say, but people
in Deborah Allen and Glenn Monsky's position in our society
are not. It's not making a splash when Debora Allen
is murdered, so just the fact that the system is
humming away in the background and that someone's being held
accountable is enough for a lot of people and homicide
detective if they want to make their arrest. So this
(22:03):
seemed like a pretty easy case for them. They want
their pound of flesh. They're not gonna let them walk
away after shooting somebody.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Thanks for listening again, we'd love to hear what you
think of Teresa Gomes's credibility. One eight three three eight Burden.
We've got more bonus episodes coming, at least.
Speaker 6 (22:28):
Eight of them.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
If you're a subscriber, please subscribe on Apple Podcast by
going to the show page and clicking on True Crime Clubhouse.
Speaker 6 (22:37):
It's just two.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Ninety nine a month. You get everything early and ad free,
plus all the bonus episodes. Again, it's only to ninety
nine a month, less than a cup of coffee in Brooklyn.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
At least, which is we admit, really messed up.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
This episode was produced by Drew Nellis. Our associate producer
and production coordinator was Austin Smith. Sound design was provided
by Bianca Salinas. And then there's me, Dax, Devlin Ross
and Steve Fishman, your hosts. The Burden is a production
of Orbit Media.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Season two of The Burden Empire on Blood will be
available everywhere you get your podcasts on August seventh. All
episodes will be available early and ad free, along with
exclusive bonus content on Orbit's newly launched True Crime Clubhouse,
our subscription channel on Apple Podcasts. It's only two ninety
(23:36):
nine a month.
Hosts And Creators
Dax-Devlon Ross
Steve Fishman
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