Halloween night in New York City, 1981: a photographer and his young girlfriend are fatally shot, execution-style, in their Chelsea apartment. There is no forced entry, there are no obvious suspects and there is no clear motive.
For more than four decades, the chilling double-murder of lovebirds Ronald Sisman, 39, and Elizabeth Platzman, 20, has remained a mystery. Any leads in the case have long since turned ice cold.
Still, the case remains open, haunted by rumors of cult involvement, a never-recovered murder weapon, and a claimed connection to the infamous “Son of Sam” serial killings.
Now, with the help of a retired NYPD cold-case unit sergeant, The Independent reviews the Sisman-Platzman slayings — and learns what could crack the case wide open.
While New York’s streets were filled with trick-or-treaters celebrating Halloween on Oct. 31, 1981, police were called around 7:50 p.m. to a grisly scene inside an apartment building at 205–207 W. 22nd St. in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood.
Inside, officers discovered Sisman and Platzman’s bloodied bodies. The couple had been brutally beaten and each was shot in the back of the head execution style.
Sisman was an up-and-coming photographer who operated two photography businesses out of his Chelsea apartment. His nearly 20 years-younger girlfriend, Platzman, of Roslyn, in Long Island, was a student at Smith College in Massachusetts who was visiting for the weekend. Platzman had met the photographer the previous summer through a relative, The New York Times reported at the time.
The apartment had been ransacked and furniture torn apart, as if someone had been looking for something, the New York Times reported. The couple’s IDs had been stolen and a .25-caliber handgun registered to Sisman was missing. There was no sign of forced entry.
The attack looked deliberate, as if someone knew exactly where to go and what to take, retired NYPD Sergeant Joseph L. Giacalone, a former commanding officer of the Bronx Cold Case Squad tells The Independent.
“Let’s put it this way – whoever wished to harm them knew exactly what he did and knew it was going to be easy to gain access,” Giacalone said. “Because he’s a photographer, he has people coming in all day long – probably paying people for photos and headshots and everything else that goes along with it back in the day.”
Giacalone said it was the execution-style bullet to the back of the head apiece that was strange to him. “Who kills like that?” the retired officer asked.
Answering his own question, he continued: “The short list — organized crime or drug dealers. Rarely do you see execution-style homicides in people who just have disputes.”
Days before the murders, Sisman had applied for two gun permits, telling friends he thought his apartment had been burglarized. During the murder investigation and search of the apartment, a small amount of cocaine was found, leading detectives to suspect a drug-related robbery.
But no evidence ever confirmed this theory. Despite exhaustive police work early in the investigation, no one was ever arrested. And soon, wilder theories took hold.
