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Halloween night in New York City, 1981: A photographer and his young girlfriend are fatally shot execution-style chelsea apartment. There is no forced entry, no obvious suspect and no apparent motive.
For more than four decades, the heartbreaking double murder of 39-year-old lovers Ronald Sisman and 20-year-old Elizabeth Platzman has remained a mystery. Any clue in the case has remained cold for a long time.
Nevertheless, the case remains open, due to rumors of cult involvement, a never-recovered murder weapon, and a connection to the infamous “Son of Sam” serial murders.
Now, with the help of a retired NYPD Cold-case unit sergeant, Independent Sisman-Platzman reviews the murders – and learns what may open the case.
a halloween horror show
Whereas new yorkOn October 31, 1981, as the streets were filled with people celebrating Halloween trick-or-treating, police were called around 7:50 p.m. to a terrifying scene inside an apartment building at 205-207 W. 22nd St. in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.
Inside, officers discovered Sisman. And Platzman’s bloodied body. The couple were brutally beaten and each was shot in the back of the head execution style.
Sisman was an up-and-coming photographer who operated his own two photography businesses. chelsea apartment. His girlfriend, about 20 years his junior, Platzman of Roslyn, Long Island, was a student at Smith College, Massachusetts, who was visiting for the weekend. Platzman had met the photographer through a relative the previous summer, new York Times Reported at that time.
The apartment was ransacked and the furniture was torn down, as if someone was looking for something new York Times Informed. The couple’s IDs were stolen and the .25-caliber handgun registered to Sisman was missing. There was no sign of forced entry.
Former commanding officer of the Bronx Cold Case Squad, retired NYPD Sergeant Joseph L. Giacalone explains that the attack was deliberate, as if someone knew where to go and what to take. Independent.
“Let’s put it this way – whoever wanted to harm them knew what they did and knew it would be easy to gain access,” Giacalone said. “Because he’s a photographer, he has people coming in all day long – probably paying people for photos and headshots and everything that goes with it during the day.”
Giacalone said it was the execution-style bullet to the back of each head that was strange to him. “Who kills like this?” the retired officer asked.
Answering his own question, he added: “The short list – organized crime or drug dealers. Rarely do you see execution-style killings involving people who have disputes.”
A few days before the murders, Sisman had applied for two gun permits, and told friends he thought his apartment had been burglarized. During the murder investigation and search of the apartment, a small amount of cocaine was found, leading detectives to suspect a drug-related robbery.
But no evidence confirmed this theory. Despite tireless efforts by the police at the beginning of the investigation, no one was arrested. And soon, wild theories took hold.
Before his death, Sisman’s name had already appeared in the tabloids. In 1980, actress Melonie Haller claimed that she had overdosed after injecting drugs in her apartment. But his story was later refuted by his own mother new York Times Informed.
A month before the incident, Haller was allegedly sexually assaulted by Long Island film producer Roy Radin, whom she met through Sisman. She claimed that she was beaten and raped during a party at Radin’s home in the Hamptons; Radin said he agreed.
Radin himself would be murdered two years later in the infamous “Cotton Club” affair. In 1983, he traveled to Los Angeles to meet with Hollywood producer Karen Greenberger, who also accompanied Lenny Jacobs, about financing a film produced by Robert Evans and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. cotton clubBut there was reportedly a dispute over a potential profit split from the film and Greenberger hired a hitman to kill Radin that same year.
After being missing for a month, Radin’s body was found in a dry creek bed. Like Sisman and Platzman, he was shot in the back of the head. A stick of dynamite was stuffed into his mouth and detonated.
A year later, Greenberger married her seventh husband, Larry Greenberger, second in command to Carlos Lehder of the Medellin Cartel. Los Angeles Times. In 1992, Karen Greenberger was convicted of kidnapping and second-degree murder in Radin’s death and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole at the age of 43.
Journalist Maury Terry, in his 1987 book on the convicted son of Sam serial killer David Berkowitz, ultimate evil, There was speculation that the two cases were linked, with Sisman and Radin being part of an underground drug trafficking ring and a suspected cult.
‘Son of Sam’ and Satanic cult theory
The most infamous theory involving the Chelsea murders came when a prison informant claimed that Berkowitz, who had terrorized New York a few summers earlier, had predicted the Sisman-Platzman murders just weeks before they occurred.
Between July 1976 and August 1977, Berkowitz, a postal worker from Yonkers, went on a shooting spree that horrified New Yorkers. He roamed working-class neighborhoods in the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn, targeting long-haired women, many of whom were shot while they sat in parked cars with their boyfriends.
He was eventually arrested in August 1977 after killing six people. Berkowitz confessed to the murders and claimed that he was following the orders of a demon who spoke to him through his neighbor’s dog.
Terry, who corresponded with Berkowitz during his time at the Attica Correctional Facility, said he received a letter from the son of Sam’s killer that read: “I am guilty of these crimes. But I didn’t do it all.”
The journalist revealed that Berkowitz blamed a Satanic cult for some of the murders and that in October 1981, a few weeks before the Chelsea murders, he told a fellow inmate, a man named Vinnie. oxygen.comThat the same group would soon kill Sisman because he had footage of Berkowitz’s murder of Stacey Moskowitz on July 31, 1977. The prisoner claimed that Sisman was allegedly planning to turn this evidence over to the police.
Terry’s claims were revisited in a 2021 Netflix documentary, The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness, But none of the allegations were ever proven. After being sentenced to six concurrent life terms in state prison for the “Son of Sam” murders, Berkowitz recanted his cult statements. Nevertheless, doubts remain, especially since Berkowitz hinted at the involvement of “others” before retracting.
As Giacalone said, such theories flourish when concrete evidence is lacking.
solving the coldest cases
The former cold case investigator says the case can still be solved with modern forensic tools, but only if the evidence is present.
“We don’t know whether that’s really the case or not dna He was found,” Giacalone said. “You don’t take anything for granted – even if they said they found hair follicles or fingerprints and they said they submitted them, you resubmit everything.”
He told how his cold case team conducted such investigations.
“We will conduct a thorough review of the case file, including all photographs of the crime scene,” he said. “Sometimes the clue was somewhere inside the file – a little piece of paper, what we called pocket trash. Sometimes what ended up on the cutting room floor was really important.”
In other words: The answer may already be hidden in the paperwork. But the retired sergeant also noted the difficulties.
“At this point, unless a person, you know, makes a deathbed confession, it’s a long shot,” Giacalone said. “Or if someone is in jail for something else and they realize, hey, this case was never solved — maybe they can use that as a get out of jail card. That’s still possible.”
Independent has contacted the NYPD’s Cold Case Squad in Manhattan, which is handling the case, to ask whether evidence still exists, and whether there have been any new leads in the case over the past 44 years.
a terrible legacy
Nearly half a century later, the murders of Sisman and Platzman remain one of New York’s most horrific unsolved crimes.
But you’ll find no mention of this dark history in the description of the third-floor apartment, which was listed for sale in August 2025 with a $6.5 million price tag.
The duplex, which has 12 bedrooms, six bathrooms and two half-bathrooms, hit the market “for the first time in generations.” As per the listing, Joe describes a home that “truly embodies the essence of ‘love where you live’.”
But for Giacalone, a double murder is the kind of unsolved crime that lives on long after it hits the headlines — and which NYPD officers and longtime New Yorkers never fully forget.
“When there’s a murder in Manhattan, I mean, these kinds of stories keep going on,” he said.
As years go by without a solution, he says the public can play an important role.
“In a case like this, if there are no fingerprints, no dnaOr anything at the crime scene that can be re-examined, the only thing that can be used to solve this case is a confession — and at that point, I think you’re talking like a very partial chance of solving it,” he said.
If anyone has any information about the case, even if it seems insignificant, it may provide a missing piece of the puzzle.
“You’re expecting someone who was afraid to come forward with information, now almost 40 years later, they’re not so afraid anymore,” he explained. “This may provide the answer we were looking for.”
Anyone with information about the crime is encouraged to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS.