Has cold case been solved?

His wife, Ann, ran outside when she heard a car horn honking, and saw two men jump into a tan van, which would later be recovered and identified by police as a stolen vehicle. When she looked into Samuel�s car, she saw her 54-year-old husband slumped in the front seat with a bullet wound in the left
side of his chest.
Now, nearly 23 years later, Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice has announced that a prosecutor from her office and a Nassau County homicide detective have cracked the cold case and charged two Brooklyn men with second-degree murder.
Using DNA evidence and wiretapped conversations, a secret grand jury indicted the two men, Lewis Slaughter, 60, and Roger Williams, 48, who are believed to have been part of a crime crew that targeted businesses on payday, according to the district attorney�s office. Both men refused to enter a plea in Nassau County Criminal Court in Mineola, and said they wish to defend themselves. Judge James McCormack entered not-guilty pleas on their behalf on June 17 and said he would consider their desire to represent themselves at their next court date on June 30. For the time being, however, the court appointed two attorneys to represent them.
Slaughter is serving a sentence of 25 years to life for another murder during a botched 1986 robbery at a Queens Nabisco Factory. Williams was convicted of dealing drugs in 1999, and was scheduled to be released last week after a six-month sentence for violating his parole.
A third man, Clifton Waters, who is believed to have shot Quentzel, died in an apparent accidental shooting in his Brooklyn apartment building four months after the murder, at age 33. The men were described as �career criminals� by Rice, who said that officials believe Quentzel was killed in a robbery attempt gone wrong. Police found $2,500 in Quentzel�s pocket after his murder.
�For 22 years, Samuel Quentzel�s murder has gone unsolved,� Rice said at a June 17 press conference. �Tonight, for the first time, his family will go to sleep knowing their father�s killers are behind bars.�
When police recovered the stolen, burned-out van, officials said, detectives found four cigarette butts, a coffee cup, a bullet and Quentzel�s checkbook. The cigarette butts were submitted for DNA testing in 2003, when the technology was more readily available. It wasn�t until December 2007, after Ann Quentzel and her son Andrew asked the district attorney�s office to look into the case, that the DNA on the butts was found to match Williams�s. (The state Legislature passed a bill in 2006 allowing more criminals to be listed in the state�s DNA database, which included Williams.)
James Hendry, a Nassau County Police Department homicide detective who was assigned to the case along with Executive Assistant District Attorney Meg Reiss, discovered that Williams lived two blocks from Quentzel�s Bedford-Stuyvesant plumbing-supply company, and that Williams sometimes worked with his father-in-law, a contractor who purchased supplies from the store. After securing a warrant to allow the wiretapping in March, the investigators set up a meeting in a NCPD interview room between Williams and Slaughter.
�The two men spoke about this crime and other crimes they�ve committed,� Reiss said. �It was quite a reunion.�
The investigation
After Quentzel�s murder, police began searching for clues in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood where the Harry Quentzel Plumbing Supply, named for Samuel�s father, still operates. Lt. Shaun Spillane, then the commanding officer of the NCPD Homicide Squad, concluded that Quentzel had been followed home by his killers from the store, because the tan van they used to escape was later recovered in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and had been reported stolen nearby two weeks earlier. Quentzel apparently resisted the robbery attempt by honking his horn and yelling, Spillane added.
The investigation centered on the plumbing-supply shop, where police interviewed people who were or had been connected with the business. They also searched for suspects with prior robbery convictions who lived in the area. If Williams and Slaughter are found guilty, the investigators� hunches will prove to have been correct, given Williams�s connection.
In the weeks after Quentzel was killed, his family posted a $10,000 reward for information that would lead to the arrest and conviction of the killers. Detective Thomas Allen of the NCPD Homicide Squad said a month after the murder that he was �very optimistic� that an arrest would be made. He added that the investigation took some time because of the �high concentration of known stick-up people� in the area.
The police department never closed the case, according to the district attorney's office. It remained an active investigation.
�A good soul�
�Nothing will bring back my father or make up the years we�ve lived without him,� said Andrew Quentzel, who stood with his mother and his sister Michelle at the June 17 press conference. �Justice is going to be served, and the system will deal with it.� Andrew, who was 25 when his father was killed, added, �The family continued holding out hope. We knew there had to be something or someone out there.�
Arthur Quentzel, Samuel�s younger brother, recalled getting a phone call on Sept. 4, 1986, and hearing screaming. He rushed to his brother�s home from his house in Cedarhurst and saw Samuel slumped in the front seat of his car. �It was unreal � it wasn�t real,� Arthur recalled. �I was pretty much a basket case.�
Samuel�s funeral service was led by Rabbi Arnold Marans of the Sephardic Temple in Cedarhurst at Boulevard Riverside Chapel in Hewlett the week after the murder, and many friends and family members attended. �He was the salt of the earth,� Arthur said. �He was ah gute neshoma� � Yiddish for �a good soul.�
Despite the new developments in the case, Arthur added, �My niece said, �I feel empty,� and I said I feel the same way. There is no closure.�
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