The Stuff of Nightmares

Twenty-five years after turning in his papers as a New York City cop Eddie Dreher still feels outrage when the memories of a particularly disturbing series of crimes emerge from his subconscious to haunt him. The crimes, committed on his watch as borough commander of detectives in the Bronx, were indeed the stuff of nightmares.

Police Chief Edwin "Eddie" Dreher

Despite his callused cop psyche, the painful knowledge that the murders of five innocent citizens in a city hospital's Intensive Care Unit (ICU) quietly went away for political reasons still gnaws at him, says Dreher. It still seems as if they happened just yesterday. Particularly galling to the now 79-year-old former deputy police chief was that the perpetrator of these outrages has gotten away with murder. The suspects' identities were never revealed. The killer's identity was never ascertained; nor was anyone ever prosecuted or punished for these heinous crimes. It makes Dreher seethe with anger just thinking about the injustice of it all. But still, there is hope, he ardently believes, that one day the killer will come to justice.

Dreher hates the word "closure." He believes it is an overused word that has been drained of meaning by the members of the media who cover the crime beats and solemnly interview the victim's family. But for lack of a better word Dreher thinks he may attain some sense of that finality by resurrecting the ICU murders, even three decades later. He hopes that a former assistant district attorney (ADA) in the Bronx back in 1977 holds the key to breathing some life into this very cold case.