EXCLUSIVE By LARRY CELONA
The probe into a college
football star’s murder on his first trip to BrooklynHas taken
a surprising twist --- the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau is investigatinga narcotics detective to see if one of the prime suspects told him what happened, sourcessaid.The veteran Brooklyn detective is a
friend of the family of Antonio Russo. A 17-year-old who is considered one of the suspects in the murder of Mark Fisher, the
law-enforcement sources said.Investigators do not buy the detectives
story that although he spent several hours talking to Russo at his home two days after the slaying --- just before cops arrived
to interview the teen---- he knows zip.“They spent several
hours together. What could they have been tsalking about?” an investigator said.Probers believe Russo called an uncle in California after the slaying ---- and his uncle called his friend the
detective and urged him to talk to his nephew.The Internal Affairs
Bureau is looking into whether the detective, an 18-year veteran, lied when he said Russo told him nothing about the goings-on
at a party last October in a home in Brooklyn where Russo was a guest --- the place where Fisher was last seen alive.The body of Fisher. A 19-year-old sophomore from Andover, NJ and a football star at
Connecticut’s Fairfield University, was discovered Oct. 12, a couple of blocks from the house in the Ditmas Park section.
Fisher had been shot five times.The investigation has run into a
wall of silence put up by the partygoers, including the host, John Guica, 20, cops say.Fisher met Guica while drinking in Manhattan with classmates. The Connecticut group
later went to Brooklyn to party with Guica’s pals.Russo claimed
that Guica bragged about killing Fisher, according to the sources. Cops arrested Guica that week based
on the claim, but let him go hours later and he was not charged, sources said.If the Internal Affairs Bureau concludes that the detective --- whose name is being withheld
by the Post --- knows more than he is telling, he could be fired for lying and lose his pension.Sources say that two days after Fisher’s murder, when Russo was being interviewed by cops, the
detective showed up at the station house to see what was going on.
New York Post, Wednesday, May 5, 2004 nypost.com
