Investigations that stayed with him. Some closed. Some contested. Some never fully resolved.
Alphabet City was drowning in heroin.
Working as a plainclothes narcotics detective, Mike Codella and his partner entered one of New York's most dangerous neighborhoods and began working their way toward the man believed to control its heroin trade.
What began as street-level narcotics enforcement became a dangerous campaign against an organization that controlled the neighborhood through drugs, violence and fear.
Read the Book →A child disappears.
The investigation begins with a search for one missing boy.
But the deeper the investigation goes, the more questions emerge about the people, institutions and circumstances surrounding the disappearance.
Some answers were found.
Others remain disputed.
Years after the Son of Sam murders, questions surrounding possible occult and cult connections continued to haunt investigators and researchers.
During his own investigations, Codella encountered information that led him toward the Process Church of the Final Judgment and other disturbing allegations.
What he found raised questions that have never been completely resolved.
Where does coincidence end, and something more begin?
Some of the most disturbing investigations of Codella's career involved children.
Hunting predators is different from hunting almost any other criminal.
There is no glamour. No mythology. No gray area.
Only victims, and the people determined to protect them.
Not every investigation ends with a conviction.
Not every question receives an answer.
And sometimes the most troubling cases are the ones where the evidence raises more questions than it resolves.
Case files and street-level evidence from twenty years of investigative work. Write-ups for each exhibit are coming soon.
Subjects from Codella's cases. Names and case details for each file are coming soon.
