I was in the car when I got the call. Not driving. Just sitting there, and then the news came: Michael was seriously hurt in a car accident. He was on life support.
That didn’t make sense. Michael was supposed to be with me that night. We had plans for me to come down into the city and hang out. I canceled.
I had a decent reason, it wasn’t like I was blowing him off for someone else. But I canceled, and the last moments of his life were filled with sheer terror. I first met Michael when I was working in Long Island. I had a night off and thought I’d go to this bar.
I wasn’t sure there were a lot of people I was interested in speaking with, but Michael just had this glow about him. This was back in the ’80s. He had these beautiful, large glasses and a beautiful smile. We shared many things along the way.
I know more about Paula Abdul because of Michael. He was a super fan of Patti LaBelle. He had all his memorabilia laid out, records and tapes and pictures covering the full length of a room wall to wall. I’m not sure we ever had a disagreement.
In ten years, I don’t think we ever disappointed each other. We gave each other a lot of grace and empathy. One of the purest, most dedicated friendships I’ve ever had. He was a ride or die, as they say today.
Growing up, Michael and I lived in a very small, rural town. He lived with his parents in Bellport. There was very little opportunity to meet people who were not only gay but younger, especially compared to an urban area like New York City where every neighborhood had a gay bar. His dream was to live in Brooklyn.
He had never really lived on his own, and Brooklyn was one of the cooler places to live. When Michael moved to Brooklyn, he was working as a designer at IKEA alongside his long-time friend Rebecca. They did the displays for the showroom, visual merchandising. He was already on a very special team that opened IKEAs around the country.
Sometimes he helped me decorate for special events on weekends. I was designing a lot of events at that time, from weddings to nonprofit galas, from the flowers to the lighting to all the decor. He had a natural ability to make anything look beautiful. He was like the person on that crew that never stopped.
But he was lonely. Michael was always on the search for that perfect person he could share his life with. It was the early days of social media and chat rooms. Simple, open-page websites were the new way for people to connect online.
He’d be on the computer, in chat rooms, speaking to people to meet up perhaps for a date or some like-minded recreation. A common site was AOL, and within that domain was a subsite known as M4M, male for male. A niche page used almost exclusively by gay men looking for dates. He did what he was most comfortable with.
He went online, went on AOL M4M, and saw if there was anyone out there. Back in 2005 and 2006, America Online was one of the biggest internet providers. People would dial in. The whole online dating scene was still almost taboo.
People didn’t really take it seriously. First of all, no one in New York City used the chat rooms because there were like 35 or 40 gay bars. When he came into the city and hung out with me, we would bop around. But in Long Island, his outlet was the computer.
He had relatively decent experiences with AOL M4M. The mode of meeting someone was, “Let’s go to the ocean and smoke a joint, and then we’ll see where life takes us. ” It was pretty safe. So when he moved to New York City, I think it was habit.
A professional matchmaker could understand the excitement of going into an AOL chat room. Back in the day, that’s how I met people. I’m from a smaller town; I totally understand how hard it was to meet people. The places we were left to were parks, cruising in parks, AOL chat rooms, bathhouses, secret bars.
Especially in smaller towns, there was hardly any place to find gay men. Then, for the first time, anyone could meet someone new from the privacy of their own home. Creating possibilities for people all too used to living on the fringe. When AOL chat came out, you’d think, “Oh my god, I can meet other gay men online?
I thought I had to go through Target or the grocery store and see if anybody moved their hand a certain way so I could figure out whether they were gay or not. ” To actually have this access, you just wanted to go in right away and meet somebody because you didn’t have that opportunity back then. Tinder and Grindr, those apps have their DNA in those types of chat rooms and websites. With online dating in the new millennium, you don’t necessarily know for sure who’s on the other end of that computer until you actually meet up with them.
Michael was looking for love, but his assailants wanted a target. The chain of events for Michael that evening is mind-boggling. Ultimately, I was supposed to come down into the city. I was living in Massachusetts at the time and we had made plans for me to come down and hang out.
I canceled. The difference with this time in his life is that I do think he really was at an all-time desire for connection, wanting to meet someone, wanting a boyfriend. There are so many of us desperate for validation, to feel loved, to feel accepted. We know as gay men, we have an inherent sense of loneliness, especially during holidays or major events.
It hits a lot harder for us. Everyone is coupled up and you’re not because you’re either in the closet or you just haven’t found that mutual connection. Michael Sandy was in a chat room speaking to someone with the screen name Fish Eyed Fox. They decided they wanted to meet up.
They started making plans to hang out, smoking weed together, getting high. It was supposed to be a one-on-one. There was some banter and back and forth, some very graphic descriptions of things they were going to do as consenting adults. At some point, they chose a time and a location.
Michael Sandy went to that location. But while initially meeting up, he saw some other guys hanging out in the background and it made him uneasy. He decided he wasn’t really down for meeting up at this point and he left. There were two people there instead of just him.
Michael was like, “Eh, I’m not really interested in two people. I want to meet one person. ” So he turned around and went home. He and Fish Eyed Fox re-engaged in conversation.
Fish Eyed Fox wondered why he took off, and Michael Sandy said, “Well, I felt a little uncomfortable. I felt a little uneasy. ” And they decided to make a second attempt at meeting. I have no idea why he would entertain conversation with them other than the fact that they were able to trick him even more, give him all the things he was actually looking for.
It’s going to be different this time. There’s just going to be me. So he went again. This desire for love and connection completely clouded him, removed all his red flags, and he went willingly.
I would say gay men are uniquely vulnerable to scams, catfishing, and emotional manipulation on dating apps. I don’t think it’s because they’re naive. It’s because of our history, culture, and the way queer connection has been forced to adapt for decades. Because of that scarcity, when someone shows interest, they go for it.
It creates impulsivity. There’s not as many of us out there to choose from. The reason gay men are more vulnerable online is because we had to meet in secret before. It was in anonymous chat rooms, behind closed doors.
We wouldn’t tell friends or family what we were doing. With his concerns front and center, Michael was reassured the meeting was one-on-one. He agreed once more to drive across town to meet. This time they chose a more secluded location.
A location known as Plum Beach, in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. At night, this park is deserted. There are very few lights. It’s a tiny sliver of land.
There’s a parking lot, but the park isn’t lit. Arriving alone at the isolated park, Michael was approached by not one, but four men. Like anyone who realizes they’ve just gotten themselves into something very dangerous, he tried to flee. As he tried to flee, the assailants caught up with him at his vehicle.
They were looking for money, potentially for marijuana. They were assaulting Michael Sandy with the intention of stealing from him. They full-on started to beat him up. When assailants are attempting to rob someone, they don’t necessarily like resistance.
Michael Sandy resisted them more than once. I don’t necessarily think Michael came out swinging, but he ran, and they caught him, and he got away again, and they caught him again, and then he got away again. Michael Sandy was able to break away from that initial assault, and now he was being chased into and across a very busy highway known as the Belt Parkway. Vehicles were moving at extremely high speeds.
A dangerous place, somewhere you would not want to be. During the chase, the assailants caught up with Michael Sandy again, and there was another struggle in which Michael Sandy was shoved into the westbound lanes of the Belt Parkway. He was struck by a vehicle. That car never even stopped.
Michael Sandy was laying in the roadway, and two of his assailants dragged him off the roadway into the dirt, where they rifled through his pockets. They got whatever they found, and then they left him on the side of the road to die. The wild part is that traffic really didn’t stop at that point. “911, what’s your emergency?
”
“I just saw this guy get hit by a car. These guys were dragging him off the Parkway. ”
Motorists called police, and police responded to the scene. Michael Sandy was taken to Brookdale Hospital in critical condition.
Coincidentally, the commanding officer of the Hate Crimes Task Force happened to be driving on the Belt Parkway. It became a really big task force really quickly. There was the Homicide Squad, the Hate Crimes Task Force, the Precinct Detective Squad, and my squad. Four different units working on the case, trying to identify who the attackers were and trace their steps back to figure out what had happened.
In New York, back in 2000, they enacted a hate crimes law. If a criminal attacks someone either partly or wholly because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion, whatever crime they’re indicted for, they would do double the jail time if convicted of that crime as a hate crime. We believe Michael was selected as an easy mark by the young men who did this to him because they believed he either wouldn’t try to defend himself or he’d be too ashamed to report it if they got away with it. In a case like this, where they lured someone off the internet to a secluded location, assaulted him with intent to rob, used a lot of force on him twice, then left him basically for dead, it’s a classic hate crime.
As Michael lay dying, his case turned from car accident to something far more sinister. Targeted, chased, beaten, and hit by a car, Michael Sandy was in a coma fighting for his life. We all got phone calls pretty shortly thereafter. The news came along that Michael was seriously hurt in a car accident and on life support.
One of the most devastating things was that his parents were in almost a calm, quiet state, but 100% in a sort of manic cycle of “what if” and “can we” and “who can we call. ” It was deep. Potentially even more sad because there was nothing you could do. Police, however, had plenty to do with a sudden turn of events.
Investigators found the parked vehicle in the parking lot. Then they found Michael Sandy’s wallet with his identification. Then they found out where he lived. Eventually, they got a subpoena for his laptop.
Once they got a hold of his laptop, that opened up a treasure trove of information. Detective Denise Drago sent her computer crime squad to search Michael Sandy’s computer for clues. His home computer in his bedroom was on. He was logged into some type of chat room.
There was an AOL instant message conversation still on the screen live. The conversation led directly to the last person Michael had contacted. The person he planned to meet with twice that night. An AOL account named Fish Eye Fox.
Detectives had to race to find digital clues linked to the account, gathering data, physical addresses, and ultimately the actual computer the messages were coming from before the trail was lost. With the account name Fish Eye Fox, the computer crime squad could determine an actual location for this person. They raced out in pursuit. Just like you would see on TV, all the cars pull up, screech, all the detectives jump out.
But they arrived at the home of a fellow policeman. He immediately stopped what he was doing, fully cooperated, and identified himself as an off-duty police officer who worked in one of the precincts in Brooklyn. That was an “oh crap” moment. God forbid there was any police officer involvement; that would make a horrible thing that much worse.
The stakes were high to establish the facts and fast. He started asking, “All right, do you have internet connection here? ”
I said, “Yeah, absolutely. Why, what’s going on?
I know it’s safe and secure because we literally just bought a brand new router last night and got antivirus for it. ”
For Detective Drago and the computer crime squad, this was an important clue. When I heard it and my commanding officer heard it, we know that statement doesn’t make sense from a technology standpoint. The policeman was either lying to cover his tracks, or another person was somehow involved.
I’ve had other cases where people intentionally leave their wireless open as an alibi. “Somebody must have hacked my wireless, wasn’t me. ” I’ve heard that so many times. I connected my computer to the router.
There were four computers listed as connected. Mine that I was using, a police department computer, the computer that belonged to that house, and a fourth one, basically a rogue device. The device that was connected to the FishEye Fox account. Whoever FishEye Fox was, they’d hacked into the police officer’s Wi-Fi without him having a clue.
So I started doing something more technical. It’s called sniffing the network. I started doing some technical commands, something called ping, where you kind of poke at that computer to see if it answers back. No response from it.
We were sitting there scratching our heads. I said, “All right, I’m going to contact this FishEye Fox account and see if they respond. ” A few seconds later, I got a response. I started talking to this FishEye Fox account.
We didn’t know who they were or where they were. We thought they were in the vicinity because the wireless can only go maybe 100 feet in any direction. We’re like, “We’re here. They’re online.
We’re talking to them, but they’re not here. ” There was no traffic coming back from that IP address. “What the heck is going on here? ”
The police needed further cooperation from AOL.
Back in the early to mid-2000s, they were somewhat reluctant to give up that information. But there was a pretty big public outcry. Are you looking to protect criminals? Then America Online revealed that while they were still at the location, the account was also connected from another location.
“Why didn’t you tell us that in the first place? ”
“Well, cuz you didn’t ask. ”
Fish Eye Fox was now logged in through a different device in a different location. So I’m talking to them.
“Hey, what’s up? How’s it going? ” And they’re like, “When are we going to get together? When are we going to hang out?
” And he goes, “I can’t tonight. I’m back at school. ”
These new clues and data from AOL gave detectives another location to search. A single dorm room at the New York State University, SUNY Maritime.
Investigators found that John Fox was going to SUNY Maritime up in the Bronx, so they went and paid him a visit. They brought him in for questioning. Literally within 24 hours, we already had somebody identified. With one suspect in custody, police needed to find the others.
John Fox became uneasy once he realized the jig was up. He realized he might be the one paying the price for the actions of four different people. So he decided to give information about his friends involved in the case. The first person he talked about was Anthony Fortunato.
John Fox gave names and an address to a new house in Brooklyn, just two doors down from the police officer’s home they’d searched less than 2 days before. They went out to that second location on the block. They called up to the door. That person had already retained an attorney.
They had a lawyer at the house already, waiting for the cops to show up. The lawyer said something to the effect of, “I can save you guys a lot of time. This is the computer they have here in the house. This is the only computer.
That’s it. I understand you’re probably looking for a computer. ”
How they knew that already was interesting. Detective Drago was quickly able to check if this was the computer they were looking for.
“No, this is not it. Let’s try again. ”
A thorough search of the residence proceeded. In the garage, downstairs, under a whole bunch of stuff, another computer was found.
They opened it up and it’s the same exact MAC address that had been connected to the router two doors down at the police officer’s house. It was literally a digital smoking gun. That was the computer used to talk to Michael Sandy. Arraignments were possible today in Brooklyn’s Plum Beach attack, being treated as a bias crime.
19-year-old John Fox was the first of three young men arrested. They were charged with luring a gay man, Michael Sandy, with the promise of sex, but with the intent to rob him. Michael’s attackers were 19-year-old John Fox, 20-year-old Anthony Fortunato, 20-year-old Ilya Shurov, and 17-year-old Gary Timmins. All but Timmins were held at New York’s Rikers Island prison without bail.
Once they all started crisscrossing against each other, they were giving us the puzzle pieces that, coupled with the evidence collected off the computer, showed the conversation taking place, what they were talking about, where they were going to meet, what time, and why. That just sort of wrapped all of this up in a bow. Now we had the people we were looking for. We were able to levy charges against them, place them under arrest, and work with the district attorney’s office to try to get this case prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
But Michael’s parents were running out of hope for their son, who was still unconscious and on life support. Their initial thought was to wait it out and see if he would come out of it. It took a while for the reality to set in that he was not going to come out of that. There was just nothing to do other than allow his parents to get to a place where they were okay with saying goodbye.
I believe it was the day after his 29th birthday when they took him off life support. And that was it. Michael’s tragic death sent shockwaves through New York’s diverse communities. It was on the lead page of the New York Times.
It rippled through not just Long Island but all of New York City. Michael was given a dignitary burial. It was an incredible motorcade, led by dozens of motorcycles. They blocked off the Long Island Expressway.
There was not another car allowed on it. They stopped traffic at intersections. It was something I had truly never experienced before. Attending his funeral memorial service, by the end of that event you felt as if a very strong, positive member of society had been ripped from us.
A dignified funeral was one thing. But for Michael’s family and friends, seeing his killers face justice still lay ahead. After Michael’s death, Fox, Fortunato, and Shurov were charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime and attempted robbery also as a hate crime. I went to the trial every day and sat with his mom and his dad.
They just sat there and listened. It was almost like going to three different trials because each one was tried separately. It was an extensive amount of time. Months.
You can’t even get a break. Can you imagine hearing the details of your son’s death three separate times? It’s tough. Timmons, who was underage at 17, pled guilty to second-degree attempted robbery as a hate crime and was sentenced to 4 years in prison.
Gary Timmons was the youngest of the four. Because of his age, his record, and the fact that he turned state’s evidence against the other three, it made sense he would get the lightest sentence, which he did. The other three got sentences ranging from a half dozen years up to 17 or 18 years. I don’t believe we saw vulnerability with these kids.
I’m not sure we saw remorse. In my opinion, they all should have served life sentences, especially since they were charged with multiple felonies as a hate crime. But the charges raised complex questions in court. Was it a hate crime if a defendant claimed they were gay?
Was that irrelevant if the victim was targeted because he was gay? To commit a crime such as this because of the fact that they were targeting him because of his sexual orientation, and all the felonies they committed as a hate crime, should have put them in jail for the rest of their miserable lives. They got off very easy. Fox was sentenced to 13 to 21 years for two hate crimes, attempted robbery and manslaughter, not murder.
Fortunato, 7 to 21 years for manslaughter. And Shurov, the only defendant accused of actually beating Michael Sandy, was sentenced to 17 and a half years for manslaughter and attempted robbery, also as hate crimes, slightly less than the maximum sentence. Shurov’s plea bargain for manslaughter meant the charge of murder, which could have carried a life sentence, was dropped. My own life lessons from this experience are extraordinary.
It shaped me and changed me. This was a pivotal moment in my life. Did it make me a better person? Yeah.
But at a huge expense. It’s been 20 years and I still—Yeah. This crime, which happened just before the rise of social media, brutally exposed the dangers of dating online. Lessons that reverberate to this day.
Most people aren’t really pre-screening and making sure the person is who they say they are. This was a wake-up call to the general population looking to meet people online. And a double wake-up call to those in the LGBTQ community. It was his desire for connection and love that made him forget and ignore his instinct.
Because his instinct said, “No. Don’t go. ”
At the time, I was single. I was on the computer meeting people.
As a gay man who just happened to be a police officer, this struck a chord with me personally because quite frankly, that could have been me. What he was doing was not much different than what I was doing at the time as a single gay man in New York City. I kept thinking to myself and friends of mine who were doing the same thing that there are people out there looking to do things for nefarious reasons. It just really shook me to my core.
It was really interesting how this case unfolded because there were so many new aspects to it. After that, we changed our investigation protocol. Anytime we had to do any type of search warrant or investigation, we incorporated wireless site surveys into our reconnaissance steps. It’s very important that you go to the right place with a search warrant.
Going to the wrong location or the wrong door is just a horrible situation all around. Almost 20 years ago, the field wasn’t as mature as it is nowadays. There were forensic tools, but cybersecurity in general has matured so much since then. This was literally like the cutting edge, like the wild wild west.
To be honest, I’m still processing it. I still speak with his mom. I still feel his presence. I still celebrate his birthday.
Michael’s my angel. He’s still an everyday part of my world, even all this time after. I want to say it comes in waves. I feel his joy and his presence in where I am today.
To be able to take some time to talk about him in a truly authentic and beautiful way is really special. I’m just forever grateful that Michael was a part of my life.
