It was a savage crime that struck into the heart of New York.
An innocent man was brutally murdered as he worked hard, providing for his family.
The case ran cold for two decades, but the truth had been staring the investigators in the face all along – even the victim wouldn’t have believed it until he saw the flash of the knife.
It was 21 March 1996 and businessman Howard Pilmar, 40, had just finished work at his Manhattan office and was packing up his things to leave.
He stepped out into the hallway just after the building security guard had gone off duty.
It wasn’t unusual for Howard to be the last one there – his success was down to his hard work.
Howard was the owner of an office supplies business.
He’d worked his way up since he was a teenager, and eventually took over the family firm.
It was worth an estimated $14 million and the company was doing well.
Howard had come up with the idea of opening a coffee shop at the front of the store.
At the time, this was innovative, and took the business to another level.
Howard named the cafe Philip’s, after his 10-year-old son, and his wife Roslyn helped run it.
Soon, he’d been able to open a second cafe, and Roslyn’s brother Evan Wald helped out too.
The night Howard was working late, Roslyn had dropped by the office near the Empire State Building with Evan.
Evan and Howard had gone to the gym together, before Howard had returned to do some more work.
But Howard never made it home.
The next morning just before 6am, a colleague arrived at the office and was horrified to find Howard dead in a pool of blood in the hallway.
He’d been stabbed the night before, and had over 40 wounds to his neck, chest and back.
His throat and larynx had been slashed so he wouldn’t have been able to scream.
His heart and lungs were pierced, while some of the stab wounds had been inflicted after he’d taken his last breath.
Even his hands were shredded from where he’d desperately tried to fight off his attacker and failed.
When officers saw how frenzied the attack was, they were convinced it was personal.
There were no signs of forced entry, and it had happened just as the security guard had gone home, so police believed the killer was familiar with his routine.
Howard also had around $200 cash in his wallet that wasn’t taken, so robbery wasn’t the motive.
Police went to tell Howard’s wife Roslyn that he’d been murdered, and young Philip had lost his dad.
Howard had two large life insurance policies, so Roslyn inherited all his businesses and $1.2 million.
There was also an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and a summer home.
It was a huge responsibility to take on as a grieving widow, but her brother Evan was on hand to help her with the decision to sell the business months after Howard’s death.
It turned out that the money would come in handy, as Roslyn was in serious financial trouble.
She had been caught stealing $160,000 from the dentist’s office where she had worked as a hygienist.
Plus, in the days leading up to Howard’s death, Roslyn had received phone calls about her debt, including contact from the tax office about $14,000 in unpaid taxes.
The government was threatening to shut down the coffee shop she was running for her husband.
When Roslyn was cornered about the embezzlement at the dental practice, she’d promised to pay the money back, but she’d kept it all a secret from Howard, and she would’ve had to have confessed everything to get hold of that kind of cash from their assets.
Now Howard was dead, she didn’t have to ask his permission.
Three years after the murder, Roslyn pleaded guilty to grand larceny in the embezzlement case and repaid the money she stole before she was sentenced to probation.
The case was over, but Howard’s murder, which was known as the Coffee Bar Case, remained open.
Crucial evidence
Investigators struggled to find suspects, but they kept coming back to Roslyn.
All her money problems had disappeared when her husband died.
They also found out that Howard had consulted a divorce lawyer and was considering ending their marriage.
But there was no way Roslyn could have killed Howard alone.
When her brother Evan was questioned about that fateful night, he was wearing a bandage on his left hand to cover a cut.
The coroner determined that Howard had been killed by a left-handed attacker.
As they dug deeper, they discovered the relationship between Howard and Evan was fraught.
Evan thought Howard was too critical of him and he was protective of his sister.
They both knew the marriage was in trouble.
But there wasn’t enough evidence to charge either Rosyln or Evan.
For more than 20 years, the case remained unsolved.
Then in October 2017, investigators finally closed in.
Roslyn, then 61, and Evan, 45, were both charged with second-degree murder.
A drop of blood at the crime scene matched Evan’s DNA and, along with the other circumstantial evidence, it was time to see if the jury would convict the siblings.
Howard and Roslyn’s son Philip was now a prosecution lawyer, and he publicly stood by his mum and uncle.
It was a trap
At the trial this January, the prosecution portrayed Roslyn and Evan as greedy and full of hate, saying they’d killed Howard for the money.
They’d requested keys to the building that contained Howard’s office, and made enquiries about where the video cameras were in the lobby.
It was claimed the pair had ambushed Howard in the hallway, but without the murder weapon or CCTV, it’s unclear how he was killed.
‘They planned it as a trap, and they set it up as a trap,’ the prosecution said.
‘He didn’t stand a chance.’
They’d carried on the attack even after Howard’s heart had stopped pumping.
At least five of his wounds could have killed him, including a chest injury that flooded his lungs with blood.
They pointed out that Roslyn was in a financial mess and Howard was talking about leaving her.
‘She owed the money and she had to find it quickly,’ the lawyer said.
Prosecutors believed Evan had threatened to kill Howard if he harmed his sister – but the defence said it was ridiculous that he would announce he was going to kill someone, then do it.
They also claimed Evan had cut his hand cleaning up a broken plate he’d dropped, and that the focus on Evan had meant the real culprit was never pursued.
In March this year, the jury found both Roslyn and Evan guilty of second-degree murder, two decades after Howard was killed.
Howard’s stepmum Carol sobbed as she hugged his dad Frank, now 90, who had never given up fighting for justice.
At the sentencing, Roslyn’s son Philip pleaded with the judge to go easy on his mum and uncle.
He said although his dad’s death was an ‘unimageable horror’, his mum was kind and his uncle had always shown him love.
But Howard’s dad Frank told the court he’d never got over the horror of his son’s death.
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