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Ten years ago today, Camden Sylvia and Michael Sullivan left their rent-stabilized loft in downtown Manhattan, went for a jog, rented a video and were never seen again. Today, the Daily News revisits the mystery and speaks to Sylvia's mother. Laurie Sylvia says, "I want to know what happened. Each year that goes by I think, maybe this year. I never imagined I would be doing that for 10 years."
Sylvia, then 36, and Sullivan, then 54, were paying $304/month for a 1600 square foot apartment at 76 Pearl Street. On November 7, 1997, Sylvia had given her landlord a letter which announced, according to the Village Voice, "that she and other tenants would withhold rent as long as he withheld heat," leading the police to question the landlord, Robert Rodriguez who ran a locksmith business on the ground floor.
He went missing as well during the investigation, but eventually turned up and was investigated by the police. The Manhattan DA's office couldn't justify a warrant to search Rodriguez's upstate property, so the NYPD used helicopters to search over the home as well as search dogs to sniff around the property. But police the managed to find evidence that led to Rodriguez's 5-year imprisonment on federal and state tax evasion and credit card fraud charges. In 2001, police divers searched the Hudson River for the couple's bodies after an anonymous tip. Nothing was found. In 2002, the NYPD's homicide division gave the case to the Cold Case squad. One detective told the Tribeca Tribune in 2002, “This is the most important missing persons case I’ve worked on in my career—because we haven’t solved it yet, because there’s no closure.”
Lauren Sylvia said that the anniversary made her hopeful that the public might have more information for the police, but closure is another story: "Closure? I don't believe I'll ever get that. There's always going to be a piece of me missing. I know I'll grieve forever." And in 2005, Toni Schlesinger spoke to the loft's current resident, now paying $3,200 a month.
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The landlord killed them. It's simple. The Cold Case detectives would have solved this by now.
Maybe they felt so guilty paying that little for 1600 square feet that they offed themselves to stop the pain.
Easy way to prevent crimes like this - abolish rent control. All it does is make New York a national laughingstock.
this is why you need to booby trap your home
X-files "Home" style.
homicide dropped the ball on this one, it's so obvious. Still, it would be interesting to know what actually happened. He had to have accomplices, one guy can't make two people disappear very easily all by himself. Someone else knows the truth.
what a sad story. How that can happen to two people is just mind boggling.
the landlord ran a locksmith business... hrm.
Come on gothamist, think harder! You can solve it! The clues are there!
To Tgirl:
There must have been a third man!
The Manhattan DA's office couldn't justify a warrant to search Rodriguez's upstate property...
I think we may have solved the case. He either shot or poisoned the tenants, had an accomplice help him bury the bodies upstate.
they could be fish food, it would be dumb (fella)of him/them to bury them
maybe he sold them into white slavery
Easy to joke when it's not your parents missing...
$3200 a month
or
$304 a month
lets say i was a landlord...
thats worth 2 bodies!!!
esp if the 2 bodies were 2 self centered trouble makers who tried to organize a rent strike in my money maker!
At $2/ft/mth, it's still cheap.
I'll gladly go $410 on the space with a ten year lease. Is it still available?
Can I bring my own locksmith in to change the keys? Are space heaters allowed and is electric included?
if the mother really wants this solved. hire someone to beat the andlords ass and i'm sure he'll tell the truth.
The landlord went "missing" after the couple disappearance, of course he did. During that time he took the bodies to his upstate home and buried them or dumped them in a unknown and unpopular lake or pond, then he reappears after a month or so. The police search the Hudson River, that is just to obvious, of course he didn't dump the bodies there. The police have the clues, just not enough to do a search of his property. This is not a cold case, more like a luke-warm case. I known nothing about this until I read it here, and after reading it and hearing about it for the first time in my life I'm sure the landlord killed them. The motive is if they was still alive he would be out of lots of money, so kill them so they won't encourage the other tenants not to pay. Damn, I lived ten years of my life and never heard of these people while they been dead somewhere and somehow.