Robert Spahalski was convicted in 2006 of murdering four people in Monroe County, New York, across fifteen years. Three of the deaths, of Moraine Armstrong in December 1990, Adrian Berger in July 1991 and Charles Grande in October 1991, had stayed unsolved even though police had spoken to him in connection with each of them at the time. The fourth, of Vivian Irizarry, came in November 2005. A few days later he went to the Monroe County Public Safety Building in Rochester of his own accord, told the officers at the front counter that he had killed someone, and, over the course of one long day of interviews, confessed to all four.
A jury found him guilty of five counts of murder in the second degree, and the Appellate Division, Fourth Department, affirmed the judgment in June 2017. Before trial, a Monroe County Court judge ruled on his motion to suppress his statements in a decision that traced the 1991 investigations and the day of his surrender hour by hour. The writer Michael Benson later corresponded with him in prison and wrote about him and his twin brother.
Spahalski was one of a pair of identical twins. In a 2016 article for the Rochester magazine 585, Benson wrote that both brothers became killers: his twin brother killed a man in Elmira in 1971, and Robert's killings, which Benson described as similar in kind, came years later in and around Rochester. In a 2018 interview with WXXI News, Benson said the brothers had gone their separate ways, one in Elmira and one in Rochester. The two cases were separate, and neither brother was charged in the other's crimes.
Benson recounted a story from Spahalski's teenage years that Spahalski himself told him: he shot his father's favorite pig, and when Benson asked whether he had been angry with his father, he answered no, and joked that he had wanted pork chops. Benson described a long decade after 1991 in which Spahalski, by his own account, took part in street prostitution and drug dealing, became addicted to crack cocaine and learned that he was HIV positive. A 1990 police report that Benson quoted gave his full name as Robert Bruce Spahalski and his age at the time as 36.
Moraine Armstrong died in Rochester in December 1990; Rochester police began investigating her death on December 31 of that year. Little else is known of her life. During a neighborhood check after her death, Spahalski spoke with Investigator Campione on December 31, 1990 and again on January 1, 1991. He told the investigator where he lived and said he did not know the victim. Nothing at that point marked him as a suspect, and the court later found that he had not been in custody during those conversations. The case went unsolved for almost fifteen years.
Adrian Berger was Spahalski's girlfriend. Her death in Rochester came to police attention on July 21, 1991, and the 2017 appellate decision dates the killing to July 1991. Her surname also appears as Burger.
On the afternoon of July 22, 1991, Investigator William Barnes asked Spahalski, as the dead woman's boyfriend, to come to the Public Safety Building to talk about her death. He agreed. He rode in the police car without handcuffs, was interviewed, and was driven home afterward. The same day a witness who had seen someone leaving the house where she lived was shown a six-photo array by Barnes, with Investigator Borriello present, and picked out Spahalski's photograph. He was not charged. Years later the County Court found that a reasonable innocent person in his place would not have thought himself under arrest during the 1991 interview: he had come voluntarily, the questioning was not long or accusatory, and he was released when it was over.
Charles Grande was killed in October 1991 in the Town of Webster, a suburb east of Rochester. Benson wrote that he was beaten to death. Webster police, with Investigator Partington leading the work on the death, took up the case.
Spahalski came into the Grande investigation by way of a separate matter. In early October 1991 Rochester Investigator Sheridan was working a criminal impersonation case, and on October 6 two witnesses in that case, a civilian and a Rochester police officer, John Pinkitis, each picked Spahalski out of the same six-photo array. On October 7, at the Public Safety Building, Partington showed a computer photo array to a witness in the Grande death who had seen a man driving the victim's car. The witness said that the neck of the man in the fifth photograph, Spahalski's, looked like the neck of the driver.
At that time Spahalski was represented by the Monroe County Public Defender's Office on unrelated charges in Rochester City Court and Gates Town Court. His lawyer there, Assistant Public Defender Richard Marchese, learned that Rochester police were questioning him about the Grande killing. On October 9, 1991, Marchese stopped the interrogation and told police not to question him, and on October 10 he sent letters to the Rochester and Webster police departments saying his client was not to be questioned without him. Neither letter said that Marchese represented Spahalski on the Grande matter. On November 9, 1991, at about 4:25 p.m., Spahalski was arrested to be charged with criminal impersonation and criminal mischief, and Investigators Campione and Coleman walked him to intake at the Monroe County Jail. The charges Marchese had been handling were dismissed in 1992. No one was charged with Grande's death.
Spahalski crossed paths with Rochester police at least twice more before 2005. On July 13, 1992, officers came upon him on a city bridge. He was annoyed and somewhat hostile and made remarks about murder and robbery; he was held briefly in a patrol car while a records check ran, then both he and the officers went on their way, and a field report was filed. On July 23, 1998, officers looking into the sale of a camera stopped him on foot. He told them he was in drug rehabilitation and was "not into hurting people," and they let him go. The County Court found that neither encounter was custodial.
Vivian Irizarry was killed in Rochester in November 2005. Benson described her as his friend and wrote that she was strangled. Her surname also appears as Irrizary.
At about 10:40 a.m. on Tuesday, November 8, 2005, Spahalski walked into the Public Safety Building in downtown Rochester without an appointment and asked Officer Maria Graves to let him speak with a homicide detective. He insisted at least three times. He told her he had killed someone. Graves knew of no homicide at the place he named. Officer Lourdes Baez came to the counter, and he told her that he had killed Vivian Irizarry. He said he did not remember why or how it had happened, and that he had been high. Baez passed the information to the dispatcher and kept him talking.
Investigator Glenn Weathers recognized him, introduced himself, and asked whether he would talk. He took Spahalski up to his office on the fourth floor without handcuffs, and Spahalski thanked him for that. From about 10:47 a.m., Investigator Thomas Cassidy sat with him in a waiting room, where he made statements nobody had asked for. At 10:48 a.m., at the request of Investigator C. J. Dominick, he signed a consent-to-search form, and asked not to be present for the search. At 11:00 a.m. he was moved to an interview room; he said he was claustrophobic, and he was moved again to a larger conference room.
At about 11:13 a.m. Weathers read him his rights from a printed card. Spahalski said he understood them and was willing to talk: "Yes, that is why I came down here." He told the investigators that he suffered from post-traumatic stress, took medications for illness and sometimes heard voices, and that he could read and write. The interview about Irizarry began at about 11:34 a.m. His handwritten statement was read back to him and he signed it at about 12:18 p.m., with Weathers and Investigator Benjamin as witnesses.
He was left alone for about 45 minutes and turned down food. At about 1:15 p.m. he admitted killing Charles Grande in Webster. A written statement began at about 1:40 p.m., he made two grammatical corrections, and he signed it at about 2:30 p.m. Afterward he ate a cheeseburger and drank a soda. Medications were brought from his home, and he identified each one and what it was for. After about an hour alone, questioning resumed at about 3:15 p.m., this time about Adrian Berger. He asked whether they meant the woman who had lived on a particular street, and a statement about her death began at about 4:20 p.m. and was signed at about 4:45 p.m.
When the investigators turned to Moraine Armstrong, he denied any part in her death, said he did not know her, and said he did not want to be known as a serial killer. That round of questioning ended at 5:21 p.m. At 6:40 p.m. Weathers and Benjamin tried again, and found him sullen and less talkative. At about 7:00 p.m. Cassidy and Dominick told him that police had found Irizarry's body. He said he remembered nothing. He also said Armstrong looked familiar. He was given sodas and chips. At about 8:50 p.m. questioning stopped, and he said he might remember better if he were allowed to meditate. At about 9:05 p.m. Weathers came back to the Armstrong case, suggested that he close his eyes and try to remember, and answered a question Spahalski asked him about the case. Spahalski then confessed. A written statement began at about 9:50 p.m. and he signed it at about 10:20 p.m.
Webster police followed the day from a distance. At about 1:50 p.m., Lieutenant Simonetti told Investigator Guy T. Storrs that a man had turned himself in and might have confessed to the Grande murder. Storrs went to the Public Safety Building, spoke with Captain Johnston at about 2:09 p.m., read the four-page written statement shortly after 2:35 p.m. and returned to Webster. He came back at 9:00 p.m. and was told at about 10:30 p.m. that the interviews were over. Storrs and Officer Fosdick then took Spahalski into custody and drove him to Webster.
At about 12:19 a.m. on November 9, 2005, he was arraigned in Webster Town Court before Judge Corretore on a charge of murdering Charles Grande, and a plea of not guilty was entered. Without being asked anything, he then said, "I'm guilty. I just want to get this over with."
A Monroe County grand jury indicted him on five counts of murder in the second degree arising from the four deaths (Indictment No. 05-0958). District Attorney Michael C. Green's office prosecuted the case, with Assistant District Attorney Kenneth C. Hyland handling it in court, and Joseph S. Damelio, a Rochester defense lawyer, represented him.
The defense moved to suppress the 1991 photo identifications and everything he had said to police from 1990 through 2005. It argued that the photo arrays had been unduly suggestive; that Marchese's 1991 letters had given him a lasting right to counsel on the Grande case, so that the 2005 questioning about Grande was barred; that some of his statements had been made in custody without warnings; that his 2005 statements were involuntary; and that the remark on the walk to booking in 1991 and the remark at his arraignment in 2005 had been prompted by police.
Judge Patricia D. Marks denied the motion in all respects in a decision dated August 22, 2006. She found that each array had used six photographs of men with similar features and that no officer had steered any witness. On the right to counsel, she found that the officers who questioned him in 2005 had no actual or constructive knowledge of the 1991 letters, that he had never asked for a lawyer, that no court had assigned counsel on the homicide, and that none of the 1991 officers worked on the 2005 Grande inquiry. She found that he had not been in custody during the contacts from 1990 to 1998, the July 1991 interview, his first statements at the front counter, or his remarks to the investigators before he was warned. His statements after the warnings, she held, had been voluntary beyond a reasonable doubt: he understood his rights, agreed to speak, was given food and drink, and was not threatened, promised anything or physically intimidated. The 1991 remark on the walk to booking and the 2005 remark at arraignment were spontaneous and admissible.
The four homicides were tried together before a jury in Monroe County Court, with Judge Stephen R. Sirkin presiding. The jury convicted him of five counts of murder in the second degree under Penal Law section 125.25, subdivisions 1 and 3, which cover intentional murder and felony murder. The judgment was rendered on December 12, 2006. In 2016 Benson described him as serving a life term in prison.
His appeal, argued for him by Donald M. Thompson of the Rochester firm Easton Thompson Kasperek Shiffrin, was decided by the Appellate Division, Fourth Department, on June 9, 2017. District Attorney Sandra Doorley's office, through Assistant District Attorney Leah R. Mervine, answered for the People. Justices Whalen, DeJoseph, NeMoyer and Curran heard the case.
The court first rejected his claim that the 2005 questioning about Grande violated his right to counsel. Under New York law the indelible right to counsel attaches when a person in custody asks for a lawyer, when a lawyer enters the matter under investigation, or when a criminal proceeding begins. Marchese's 1991 letters did not show that he had entered the Grande case, since neither said he represented Spahalski on that matter, and Marchese testified at the hearing that he had never represented him on any homicide. The right also lapses when the charges on which a lawyer represents a client are dismissed or end in conviction, and those charges had been dismissed in 1992. Because Spahalski was not represented in 2005, the court did not have to decide whether the police knew of any earlier representation.
The court also held that the trial judge had properly refused to sever the counts for separate trials. He had not shown good cause under the Criminal Procedure Law, nor made the convincing showing that he had important testimony to give on one incident and a strong need not to testify about the others. Finally, the court held that the sentence was not unduly harsh or severe. The judgment was unanimously affirmed.
Benson came to Spahalski while researching the killings of women in Rochester in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the period of the Arthur Shawcross case. By then Spahalski was in prison, and the two became pen pals; they wrote about music, and Spahalski asked Benson to tell his story. Benson put both brothers into his book Killer Twins. Joe Damelio, the defense lawyer, has been described by Rochester's CITY magazine as a lawyer whose clients over two decades included Spahalski.
Accounts differ on how long Irizarry's death preceded his surrender. The 2017 appellate decision says he went to the Public Safety Building a few days after the killing; Benson's 2016 article dates her death to November 8, 2005, the day he walked in, and also says he turned himself in the following Tuesday. The County Court decision puts his arrival on November 8. The courts' rulings do not describe how any of the four died; the causes of death for Armstrong, Grande and Irizarry come from Benson.
1971: His twin brother kills a man in Elmira, according to Michael Benson.
December 31, 1990: Rochester police begin investigating the death of Moraine Armstrong; Spahalski speaks with an investigator during a neighborhood check and says he did not know her (again January 1, 1991).
July 21, 1991: Police begin investigating the death of Adrian Berger in Rochester.
July 22, 1991: Spahalski, her boyfriend, is interviewed at the Public Safety Building and driven home; a witness picks his photograph from an array.
October 1991: Charles Grande is killed in the Town of Webster.
October 6 and 7, 1991: Photo identifications in a criminal impersonation case and in the Grande investigation.
October 9 and 10, 1991: Public defender Richard Marchese stops a police interview and writes to the Rochester and Webster police.
November 9, 1991: Arrested to be charged with criminal impersonation and criminal mischief.
1992: The charges Marchese handled are dismissed.
July 13, 1992 and July 23, 1998: Brief street encounters with Rochester police.
November 2005: Vivian Irizarry is killed in Rochester.
November 8, 2005: He walks into the Public Safety Building at about 10:40 a.m. and confesses to the four killings in interviews that end after 10:20 p.m.
November 9, 2005: Arraigned in Webster Town Court on the Grande murder at about 12:19 a.m.
August 22, 2006: Judge Patricia D. Marks denies his motion to suppress.
December 12, 2006: Judgment of conviction on five counts of murder in the second degree, Monroe County Court (Judge Stephen R. Sirkin).
June 9, 2017: The Appellate Division, Fourth Department, unanimously affirms.