NYPD detective Louis Scarcella dubbed ‘the closer’ is accused of rigging DOZENS of murder cases and costing taxpayers $110 MILLION in settlements to wrongly-convicted prisoners

A retired NYPD detective accused of rigging dozens of murder cases has cost taxpayers $110 million in settlements from 14 overturned convictions.

Louis N. Scarcella, formerly known as “the closer,” allegedly coerced confessions and fabricated witness statements to wrongly convict at least fourteen people, some of whom spent decades in prison before being acquitted.

New York City has paid $73.1 million in settlements to people the former detective investigated, and the state has paid another $36.9 million, as reported by The New York Times.

The city is expected to have to pay tens of millions more as three men acquitted last year of burning alive a subway token attendant in 1995 filed lawsuits.

Scarcella, a second-generation cop who smoked cigars, ran marathons, had a part-time job at a Coney Island amusement park and jokingly put “adventurer” on his business card, now spent 72 years working the Brooklyn North homicide squad during the crack epidemic of the eighties and nineties.

After he retired in 1999, he told the Dr. Phil show that he had done “everything I had to do within the law” to get confessions or cooperation

The Navy veteran has been outspoken about lying to suspects and even prayed with them to gain information. In the 1980s and 1990s he received confession after confession. Prosecutors received conviction after conviction.

After he retired in 1999, he told the Dr. Phil show that he had done “everything I had to do within the law” to get confessions or cooperation.

By his own account, he managed at least 175 cases and assisted in another 175.

“The bad guys don’t follow the rules when they kill Mom and Dad,” he said. “I don’t play by the rules, but I play within the moral rules and the rules of arrest in Brooklyn.”

The New York Times notes that no other cop has cost NYC as much as Scarcella; the retired detective’s cases represent about 16 percent of all the money the city spent on overturned convictions between 2014 and 2022.

Throughout his career, defense attorneys accused him of coaching witnesses and coercing false confessions, but the allegations did not emerge publicly until 2013.

Defendants’ confessions in different cases sometimes included identical language and witnesses and often changed stories after meeting with Scarcella, according to The New York Times.

The allegations against Scarcella became public in 2013 when a witness claimed that an unnamed detective, believed to be Scarcella, told him which suspect to choose from the line up for the 1990 murder of a Brooklyn rabbi. The case against suspect David Randa continued to unravel the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.

Scarcella and his partner Stephen Chmil let violent criminals out of prison to smoke crack cocaine and visit prostitutes in exchange for framing David Randa in a murder

Vanessa Gathers, 58, died just a few years after being released from prison, where she had spent ten years following a wrongful manslaughter conviction

Derrick Hamilton received a $6.6 million settlement from the city after serving 23 years in prison for murder

The investigation revealed that Scarcella and his partner Stephen Chmil let violent criminals escape from prison to smoke crack cocaine and visit prostitutes in exchange for framing Randa in the murder.

Randa had already spent twenty years in prison before the murder. He received settlements of $6.4 million from the city and another $2 million from the state.

After the New York Times discovered that Scarcella repeatedly turned to a woman addicted to crack to testify in murder cases, the district attorney’s office agreed to review all of his murder cases.

Those wrongfully incarcerated also included Vanessa Gathers, 58, who died just a few years after being released from prison, where she had spent 10 years. She received nearly $4 million after serving 10 years for manslaughter after prosecutors said it was a coerced confession.

For his part, Derrick Hamilton received a $6.6 million settlement from the city after serving 23 years in prison for murder. His case was re-examined after a witness recanted her testimony.

Scarcella and Chmil, also retired, have now spent years defending their investigations as court hearings and news stories tore their cases apart. Their attorneys say investigators used techniques that are legal and still in effect today, and that prosecutors signed off on every murder charge and vetted all evidence.

Neither has been charged with any crime.