[dramatic music]
The owner of a world-famous pizzeria leaves work
and is gunned down outside his Brooklyn home.
He was running in, toward his backyard.
[gunshots]
Somebody was shooting after him.
He was yelling out, "I've been shot. I've been shot."
The shooter disappears...
Neighbors saw a male,
white with a black hooded sweatshirt running off.
Leaving behind troubling questions.
Who is this guy? Where did he come from?
Why would he want Lou Lou dead?
When the clues don't add up,
detectives must reach out for help.
I was told that the FBI was offering their assistance
and that we were going to accept it.
A couple of family members
decided to put up a $50,000 reward.
They pull his photo up.
Oh, that definitely could be him.
[uneasy music]
♪
As a resident of Brooklyn,
I can tell you there's
nowhere else in the country
where pizza is more connected
to an area than New York City,
and it boasts 30,000 pizzerias here.
There was one spot my fellow detectives and I
loved to go to the most,
to get not a slice, but a square.
This case will always stand out in my memory,
because the victim was someone we were all friendly with.
He was that gregarious man behind the pizza counter,
Louis Barbati.
[dramatic music]
In June of 2016, Louis was inexplicably slain
in broad daylight.
Because his pizzeria,
L&B Spumoni Gardens, was world-famous,
all eyes were on us to solve this.
And because we investigators were personally invested,
we were doing this for Lou Lou, to get justice for his family.
On June 30, 2016,
a frantic call comes in to 911.
[line ringing]
Ma'am--ma'am--
The victim's wife called 911,
and she was hysterical screaming
and pleading for someone to come to her address
to help her husband, who'd been shot.
Oh, God.
June 30th. I got home, and I noticed my phone.
I had a message from my sergeant.
She said, "We have a murder in Dyker Heights."
Could I come back in to handle it?
Turned out I was in for a very long night.
[distant sirens, indistinct radio chatter]
They learned that the victim was Louis Barbati,
one of the co-owners of a famous pizzeria
in Brooklyn, L&B Spumoni Gardens.
He had been at work,
and he was heading home for dinner with his family.
The backyard was very small.
Lot of bullet holes in the PVC fence.
Some blood.
I mean we knew he'd been shot numerous times.
Even if he was a block away from the emergency room...
he didn't have a chance.
[somber music]
Louis Barbati had been married for 25 years.
He and his wife Joann had two adult sons
who were there the night of the shooting.
My sergeant told me that the victim's wife
wanted to speak to me as soon as possible...
so I went in. I interviewed her.
She had just went through the worst possible moment
of her life.
♪
Joann. She was in the kitchen preparing dinner.
[gunshots]
She thought she heard gunshots, but it was hot that day.
The windows were closed. The air conditioner was on,
and this was a couple of days before the 4th of July,
so fireworks aren't unusual.
And then she heard her husband yelling out for her,
"Help! Help!"
He was yelling out to her, "I've been shot.
I've been shot."
You could tell that,
as he was running in toward his backyard,
somebody was shooting after him.
He's able to get in through the gate,
through about three or four stairs,
which would lead to his back door.
And he had fallen face first on the stairs.
The victim's wife ran through the back door
and saw him laying by the stairs.
By the time Louis' wife got outside,
the shooter was gone.
She tried to aid him, and she got her phone,
and she called 911.
And unfortunately, it was too late.
He--he passed away right in her arms, I would say.
All the detectives, myself included,
knew this was going to be a high-profile case,
because L&B Spumoni Gardens has been featured frequently
on both local and national TV,
and Louis was at its heart.
Louis was famous for his Sicilian slice
with the sauce on top of the cheese.
They have tour buses that come here. Everything.
This is Brooklyn. L&B is Brooklyn.
When you go into L&B Spumoni Gardens,
there's a strong sense of Italian-American pride,
and you know, Louis was definitely part of that.
He was a proud Italian-American.
He loved being behind the counter.
It really was his happy place.
He would meet people. Talk to people.
He had a lot of friends,
and he knew everyone that came in, just about.
People would come in and say, "Listen, I'm a little short,"
and he'd say, "Don't worry about it.
You know, you can pay me when you get paid."
He loved the Giants. He loved the Mets.
He did everything with his sons,
and he had dinner every night with his family.
He exemplified what a good family man is.
I'm a retired NYPD detective.
Over 40 years ago, my cousin married Louis' cousin,
so I actually became part of the family.
We refer to him as Lou Lou.
It was a nickname he was given from when he was young.
We knew him and loved him as Lou Lou.
[police radio chatter, camera lenses snapping]
On June 30, 2016,
I'd gotten a call that there had been a shooting,
and I went right to the house.
[police radio chatter]
It was a very busy crime scene.
I met with some detectives
that I knew from the police force,
but me now being retired, I didn't want to infringe.
I wanted to go into the house
to see Louis' wife and children.
The thing that struck me the most was
if you went into the house at that moment,
the table was set for four people.
And they were waiting for him to walk through the door,
and a few minutes later, they would have had a meal.
And unfortunately, he never got to have that meal.
Louis is pronounced dead on the scene,
and when his body is taken away,
detectives focus on a bag he was carrying
when he was killed.
Mr. Barbati. He had fallen face first on the stairs,
and there was a bag underneath him.
That was one of the first things investigated.
They saw the bag,
but forensic evidence-- you don't touch the stuff.
You just look at the stuff.
Subsequently, we found out that it did contain
approximately $15,000 in cash.
We don't know why.
Coming up...
In that area, we have some families
that had ties to traditional Cosa Nostra, or mafia.
It's possible that this was retribution.
There was money lost, and maybe they took it out on Louis.
[uneasy music]
♪
In the investigation into Louis Barbati's murder,
detectives focus on the $15,000 cash found at the crime scene.
Our main question was
why did he have over $15,000 in a bag?
What was perplexing to authorities, at first,
is the victim was holding on to $15,000 cash,
and there it stayed, you know, next to his body.
Lou was a big guy.
He was over 240 pounds, I believe.
He fell on top of the bag with the money,
a-and he was literally dead weight.
I believe it was a robbery.
The shooter--I don't think he had the time
to either try to go through his pants pocket or the bag.
He just realized he had to get outta there.
Well, since the money was there,
was this a possible assassination, you know?
Usually, when it's a hit they don't take the time
to steal his wallet. Usually.
Detectives consider the possibility
that this much cash left at the crime scene
could indicate a mob hit,
but with Louis dead only a little more than an hour,
it's way too early in the investigation
to get attached to this theory.
Unfortunately, the media has latched on
to the idea of nob involvement and is running with it.
We knew that there were camera crews out that night.
That's not that unusual,
but this seemed to be getting a lot more press.
It was a world-famous pizzeria.
You had the possibility of a mob hit.
It was snowballing.
When a man is gunned down in broad daylight
carrying that much cash,
and the cash stay with the body,
it leads one to think,
"Does this have something to do with the Mafia?"
The Barbatis' neighborhood, Dyker Heights,
has a reputation that's fueling the media's flames.
It's a middle-class to upper middle-class neighborhood.
Well-manicured lawns.
Generally hard-working people
that take pride in their homes.
In that area, you have some families
that had ties to traditional Cosa Nostra or mafia.
Going back 40 years ago, very common.
I saw it as a kid growing up.
The Barbati family, already devastated by Louis' death,
are appalled by this attention
and turn to their attorney Arthur Aidala.
And I can remember the family's frustration.
His wife and his two sons were in the midst of losing him.
They were all in tremendous pain.
Louis lived a very simple life.
There's an Italian expression,
you know, "lavoro, casa, chiesa."
Work. Home. Church.
That's him. He was such a good guy.
What happened, and how could this have happened?
I don't think that there's ever gonna be full closure,
because Louis is gone, you know, he's not coming back.
I mean, I didn't see Louis every day.
I saw him on occasion, but his children and his wife
that saw him every day-- I mean I'm sure
that there is an emptiness for them, you know.
There's a blank spot.
The detectives know they must block out the chaos
caused by the media and start canvassing the neighborhood,
before any possible leads grow cold.
Extensive work has to be done.
Interviews of everybody in the neighborhood.
Call it canvass for witnesses.
Canvass for video surveillance.
Nowadays, a lot of people
have cameras mounted at their houses.
Well, that night they were knocking on everybody's door.
We're looking for eyewitnesses or ear witnesses,
but once it started coming out, "Oh, the Mafia's involved,"
people were politely closing the doors in our face.
They didn't want to get involved in that.
As the night of the murder turns to day,
we have no new leads.
And although we still have no proof of mob involvement,
we need to explore every possible angle,
so we reach out to a special branch of the FBI
known as OCID--the Organized Crime Investigative Division--
and they agree to come on board.
I was told that the FBI was offering their assistance
in the case
and that we were going to accept it.
The FBI quickly unearths an old mafia feud
centered on the recipe for the sauce
on the famous Sicilian slice at L&B Spumoni Gardens.
Years ago, an associate of a mafia crime family
married into the Barbati family.
He claimed that a fellow named Eugene Lombardo,
a member of another crime family,
stole L&B's sauce recipe to use in his own pizzeria.
Mr. Lombardo opened his own pizza joint
across the Verrazano Bridge,
over in Staten Island, called The Square.
His pie was suspiciously like L&B Spumoni Gardens.
Specifically, there was a sign out front that said,
"This is just like L&B Spumoni Gardens' pie."
Although Mr. Lombardo denied stealing the recipe
and L&B Spumoni Gardens played no part in the feud,
there was allegedly a sit-down between two crime families
to settle the dispute over the sauce recipe.
And it's possible that this was retribution,
because there was money lost.
Maybe they took it out on Louis.
Though it happened years ago,
the FBI must carefully look for any connections
between this feud and Louis Barbati's murder.
And this will take time.
From this point forward,
the investigation splits in two.
The FBI will investigate any possible mob activity,
and the NYPD will follow the trail of an attempted robbery.
♪
The first step for detectives--find out
why Louis was carrying $15,000 in a bag when he died.
They start with a visit to Louis' restaurant
L&B Spumoni Gardens.
Louis co-owned the business with two siblings
and three cousins.
At certain times during the year,
the business paid out bonuses to the six co-owners.
We learned that the bonus, $15,483,
was what Louis was carrying home
the night he was murdered.
And every dollar of it was in the bag
found at the scene of the crime.
No one would have known, other than the family member
who actually put the payment for Louis in the safe,
that Louis was leaving that day with the $15,483.
At least, that's what Louis' family believed.
So did someone else find out
he was carrying that much cash?
And was it someone from inside the business?
We spoke to the entire staff.
We couldn't find anybody to say a bad word about Lou.
Everybody said he was the nicest guy.
He was a great boss.
It's been one day since Louis was murdered,
and so far, his employees are coming up clean.
There were no incidents at the store.
There was no arguments.
There was nothing that would stick out.
They said it was just a regular day,
like any other day.
Meanwhile, the canvassing efforts
in Barbati's neighborhood have produced the first real lead.
We interviewed a neighbor who his girlfriend lived
catty-corner across the street from Mr. Barbati's location.
He told us he had pulled in earlier,
and he noticed a white Acura TL on the corner,
by the fire hydrant.
So of course, we're, "Why did you notice that?"
And he goes, "Well, because I park there."
This is our first big lead,
and it's quickly followed by a second
and potentially much bigger one.
There was another neighbor that told detectives
that he saw the shooter fleeing the scene
wearing a dark-colored sweatshirt.
A neighbor.
He was in front of his house when the gunshots rang out.
[gunshots]
He saw a male running, crossing 12th Avenue,
and going towards the white car catty-corner
to where Mr. Lombardi lived.
NYPD investigators have been scanning hundreds of hours
of surveillance footage from the Barbatis' neighborhood.
It's time to see if this guy was caught on tape.
There were numerous places the detectives
collected video from.
Many, many hours of video surveillance, in this case.
[rapidly escalating sounds]
The tale of the tapes doesn't disappoint.
The video surveillance that the detectives collected
showed this white Acura actually
circle Louis Barbati's block three times,
from approximately 5:30 to about 5:45 p.m.
One of the things that we were able to see
is that this particular Acura
had a Christmas tree air freshener
hanging in the windshield.
Now, that's not the most unique thing in the entire world,
but you don't really know what you're looking for at first
in every case.
We can't see the driver of the Acura get out of his car.
But when we checked the footage
captured from another camera on the street shortly after,
a promising figure appears.
It showed him walking.
He kept his right arm still and his left arm moved.
If you see somebody walking like that,
nine out of ten times the guy's got a gun in his waistband.
I've carried a gun for over 30 years.
There have been times where I've thrown it in my waistband
without a holster,
and you self-consciously press against it,
to keep it from falling. So it tells me, "All right.
That guy's probably got the gun on him, at that point,"
and I'm convinced that definitely could be the guy.
[uneasy music]
♪
Detectives are finally able to view footage
from the surveillance cameras
in Louis Barbati's neighborhood,
and they get a hit.
A male who is in a black hooded sweatshirt
and shorts walks basically directly across
from where Lou parked.
This was June 30th. It was hot as hell.
A suspect would wear a sweatshirt
like that in the summer
if they wanted to conceal something unique
about their arms, like tattoos.
We saw that he had a strange walk to him.
It was a limp of some kind.
Before the incident,
the suspect walks down the block in the black hoodie.
And he puts on a glove.
And then he pulls a pistol out of his waistband,
puts it to his side, and walks out of camera view.
[dramatic musical sting]
What the videotapes don't show is the actual moment
of the weapon being discharged.
Who is this guy? Where did he come from?
Who is he affiliated with? Why would he want Lou Lou dead?
♪
Had this mystery killer somehow learned about the cash
Louis was carrying and tried to rob him?
Or was Louis somehow connected to this man?
Questions were asked like, in the middle of the day,
did Lou Lou leave for hours at a time?
No.
Was there any woman who would come in,
and you know, he would, like, go sit in the corner
and talk to in a--[ahem]-- "non-traditional way"?
No.
Did he have any fights with anybody?
No.
You know, what people don't understand,
as a human being, all of us have our secrets.
I've known people that had two families at the same time.
Some people, they go places every day,
and nobody knows about it.
Going through Louis' phone,
we found a photo from Aqueduct Racetrack.
[uneasy music]
One of the "aha" moments in the investigation
was Lou Lou would take off on Wednesdays,
and he said he was "going to the track."
♪
Is he really going to the track,
or is that just an excuse? Because there's plenty of guys
who say they're going to the track,
and they're gonna go do things
that they shouldn't be going to do.
We asked the sons and the wife about it.
She said, "Oh, he goes to the track
once a week with his cousin."
"Could you give us the cousin's name?"
She gave us his name. We called him up and said,
"Would you be willing to come down and talk to us?"
He said, "Of course."
He came right in and said--
he goes, "We went there once a week."
He probably didn't bet over $100 the entire day.
It was just a way for him to relax.
Law enforcement looked into Louis' gambling,
to find out if he was in debt to anyone.
We learned that he was not in debt.
Didn't owe anyone any money.
There was nothing that investigators saw or found
that was leading them to think
that there was anything untoward,
so the gambling part of it and the Aqueduct
and the Belmont part of it went nowhere.
[somber music]
Five days after Louis Barbati is killed,
hundreds of mourners attend his funeral
in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn.
I think that the outpouring that we got from the community
after he was killed
showed us just really how much he was loved.
In my heart of hearts, I saw what this family went through,
and I don't think they'll ever be over it.
They'll never be the same again.
Louis' family must bury him
with no answers about why he was killed.
And the media is increasing their suffering
by running wild with rumors
of connections between Louis and the Mob.
When people talked about
that this was an organized crime hit,
the family were offended, on the highest levels.
The insinuation when you say it's organized crime is,
"Well, Lou Lou's gotta be a member of organized crime."
And that hurt them a lot.
Someone actually sent me a clip
from the "London Mail" newspaper.
That this was in the "London Mail."
Lou Lou followed in their father's,
their grandfather's footsteps.
They ran a very respectable business.
A real American success story.
Lou Lou didn't deserve this.
♪
The FBI continues to investigate the allegations
of mob involvement,
sifting through all the rumors to see if any could be true.
Meanwhile, investigators working with
surveillance footage make another discovery
that moves the investigation forward.
They've been checking the security cameras
at L&B Spumoni Gardens
and have taken note of a particular vehicle.
It's a car that's becoming very familiar.
One of the views we got from the video at L&B--
you see a white car that could be an Acura TL
come down and park behind the restaurant,
well before the incident.
And a short time later, you see a male walk around the corner
towards what would be the back of L&B where Lou had parked.
The suspect is seen at Spumoni Gardens
between 1:05 and 1:10 p.m.,
and that was before Louis Barbati
had gotten to work that day.
We believed he was looking for Louis Barbati.
[dramatic musical sting]
Coming up...
He said, "I have information
about who this person in the video was,
but I want to know about the reward."
And says, "Yeah, there's a reward."
They pull his photo up.
Oh, that definitely could be him.
[uneasy music]
♪
The investigation into Louis Barbati's murder is heating up
due to several hits on surveillance footage.
We saw the suspect park his car and get out
at L&B Spumoni Gardens hours before the shooting.
We also have footage of him walking on Louis' street,
gun in hand, right before the murder happened.
Now, we have to figure out who he is.
It's time to appeal for help from a new source--
the public.
We had a Crime Stoppers reward right away we put out,
which is up to $2,500.
And then the family-- they put up money.
That's independent of the police department.
A couple of family members decided to put up a reward,
a $50,000 reward for the arrest of the perpetrator
in this case.
That same day, at a press conference,
I released the grainy surveillance video of the man
we believed could be responsible for Louis' death.
Neighbors saw a male, white,
with a black hooded sweatshirt running off.
There's 8.6 million people in New York City,
so why wouldn't you see
if someone knew who this person was?
But you have to understand you're going to get
a lot of information, and it all has to be vetted.
When you turn it over to the public,
you obviously run the risk
of getting a false identification.
You're going to run into some accusations
that are unreliable, to say the least.
When we put details out there,
we deliberately don't reveal everything.
Like in this case, the suspect's limp,
or our theory about the hoodie
covering identifying scars or tattoos.
This allows us to weed out the bum tips
from the legitimate ones.
[phone ringing]
The first two tips didn't pan out.
One said this guy had a large tattoo on his leg.
We knew our subject didn't have that,
so we were able to discount him.
The other one--his size and shape weren't right.
[phone rings]
A call comes in from someone
who is positive they can ID the mystery man
on the neighborhood videotape.
Hopefully, this tipster is legit.
Someone called L&B, after seeing the video,
so the L&B Spumoni Gardens personnel called me.
I called the witness back, and he said,
"I have information of who this person in the video was,
but I want to know about the reward."
And I says, "Yeah, there's a reward of $50,000,
but, you know, I need to know if your information
is good and correct." So he was reluctant.
He was worried about his safety and things like that,
but he said to me the name Andy Fernandez.
I contacted the detective in the case and told them
that this individual had given information.
Didn't know if it was good or not.
[dramatic musical sting]
I was sitting at my desk,
and I yelled out to one of my guys,
"Who's got a computer up?"
One of my partners said, "I do."
We find an Andreas Fernandez who can fit the bill.
They pull his photo up.
Oh, that definitely could be him.
Fernandez matched the suspect from the video surveillance
physically to a T.
We have something here. We have a possible.
6'3" over 200 pounds. He fits our mode.
He looks like him.
As we dig deeper, we learn Andreas Fernandez
is a 44-year-old former construction worker.
He was originally from Brooklyn.
Moved out, and he was living on Long Island.
He had a minor criminal record.
And when we look up
what kind of car he drives, we are blown away.
This guy's got a white Acura TL 2013
registered under his name. So I'm like, "All right.
This is definitely the best lead we've had."
And then we get another call. Same information.
And we get another call. Same information.
So now, it's looking like the public has helped us.
They've given us our name.
We knew we'd found our guy.
He's obviously a dangerous person.
We want to get him off the streets as soon as possible.
Now, the biggest unanswered question in my mind is
what made this perpetrator
seek out Lou Lou and murder him?
Coming up...
I couldn't sleep the night before we were gonna do it.
The cell site evidence--it just doubles down on the video,
to show you that he was there.
[pounding on door]
I introduced myself, and then I asked him.
I go, "Do you think it's unusual the FBI
and the NYPD is in your house?"
[dramatic music]
♪
The investigation into Louis Barbati's
shooting death in Brooklyn has finally turned a corner
with the discovery of the suspect's name--
Andreas Fernandez.
We don't have a motive, so we're eager to sit him down
and ask some questions.
But we can't bring him in just yet.
You have to get the DA in line,
ready to say, "Okay."
You only want to go forward against the right person,
in any case, at all, let alone a case like this.
So before you're going to authorize an arrest,
we need to have enough to ensure
that the right person's going to be prosecuted.
We need more proof that Fernandez is the guy
we see in all those surveillance videos.
Chances are he's been carrying around a tracking device--
his cellphone.
So when they got a hold of Fernandez's cellphone records,
the records actually had within them
what's called real-time transmission information.
It allows an expert in this field to map
all of his movements throughout the day of June 30th of 2016.
Armed with a warrant, we are hoping our suspect's movements
on the day of the crime will link him to Louis Barbati.
♪
We have cell site data that we put together
that maps him coming from Long Island...
into Brooklyn.
At about 1:00. you see him on the highway.
This is hitting the cell towers.
He goes directly to the vicinity
of L&B Spumoni Gardens around 1:05 to 1:10 p.m.,
Which matches up exactly with when you see that white car
that looks like the Acura on the video surveillance.
He leaves the area of L&B Spumoni Gardens.
He actually goes to the victim's neighborhood,
earlier than the time of the homicide...
And then returns to the victim's neighborhood
around the time we capture him on video surveillance
doing three loops in the Acura around the victim's block.
His cellphone was in the exact same position
by the Barbati home, right before the homicide.
The shooting happens at 7:01 p.m.
[gunshots]
And right after that, there are cellphone records
showing the Acura start to move away
from the Barbati neighborhood.
And ultimately, the cellphone records pick up and show
the owner of the cellphone moving now out of Brooklyn,
ultimately ending in Long Island,
right at the Fernandez residence.
Finally, five months after Louis Barbati's murder,
we have enough to arrest Andreas Fernandez.
The cell site evidence--it just doubles down on the video,
to show you that he was there.
We still don't have a motive,
but at least now we can bring this guy in
and see what he has to say for himself.
At that point, the feds are still taking the lead.
They were going to execute a search warrant
to arrest Fernandez at his house on Long Island.
We were invited along.
I couldn't sleep the night before we were gonna do it.
[intense music]
The entry team knocked for a few minutes.
He never answered.
They finally made the decision to knock the door down.
So now, maybe we're gonna find out the specifics
of what took place and why Lou Lou was murdered.
One of the first things we notice
when we arrest Fernandez are the tattoos on his arm,
squaring with our theory of why the guy in the video
was wearing a hoodie in June.
I introduce myself, and then I asked him.
I go, "Do you think it's unusual the FBI
and the NYPD is in your house?"
And he said yes,
and then the FBI gave Miranda warnings to Fernandez,
and then he asked for an attorney.
He wanted to speak to a lawyer,
and we did not have the opportunity to speak to him.
No. He didn't want to make any statements.
But even without a confession,
a search around Fernandez's home
gives us plenty of incriminating evidence
to tie him to Barbati's murder.
The white Acura was in his garage.
Even the Christmas tree air freshener
that we saw in the surveillance video is there.
They were looking for clothing
similar to the clothing that the suspect wore on the video.
So they found sweatshirts that were similar in appearance.
They found jean shorts that were similar in appearance.
Those were all collected.
We also discover a business card in Fernandez's wallet
with Barbati's address written on the back.
I knew Fernandez was my shooter,
but this just added another piece.
Here's the victim's home address--
not the business address--
his home address written in this guy's wallet.
The video shows that he was there,
and then the cell site evidence.
But to find that business card in his home
with Louis Barbati's address hand-written
on the back of the business card?
That is icing on the cake.
Now that the NYPD has solid evidence
connecting Fernandez to Louis,
the FBI steps in to see if Fernandez
has any connections to the Mob.
And specifically to the old feud
over the L&B Spumoni Gardens pizza sauce recipe.
This was relative to the prior investigation
of a place in Staten Island called Squares
who allegedly stole the sauce recipe from Spumoni Gardens.
Allegedly, they stole the sauce.
They stole the whole product.
The FBI questioned some people
that had to do with the old L&B sauce case,
because their specialty was the mafia families.
They knew the players.
They have people they can go to.
They also went to talk to Louis' family
and restaurant staff again,
to flush out any connections to the Mob or Fernandez.
The Barbati family cooperates fully with the FBI,
confident that whatever they may find with Fernandez,
there'll be no links between Louis and the Mob.
The FBI agents--they gave me the confidence
that we're just trying to figure out who killed Lou Lou,
so they had unfettered access to everything.
The books. The records.
Every witness they wanted we brought in.
The FBI are tremendous investigators.
We had meetings. We'd come up with a strategy.
And they wanted to see was it the retribution for the sauce?
And then we see, "Okay. What do you got?"
[dramatic musical sting]
[uneasy music]
♪
Louis Barbati's alleged murderer Andreas Fernandez
is in custody.
The FBI has been investigating an old mob feud
over L&B's tomato sauce,
and now, they look to see if Fernandez was involved.
♪
The FBI questioned people involved in that case,
and it turned out that it had nothing to do
with this incident.
Nothing. No one touched them.
No one's involved.
No one's shaking anyone down.
No one's affiliated with any family.
That's all malarky.
Pardon me for using an Irish term.
And of course, Lou Lou had nothing to do
with organized crime.
♪
So the Mafia sauce feud is put to rest.
The FBI was ultimately unable to find any connection
between the Mafia and Andreas Fernandez.
He wasn't working for nobody.
He has a construction accident settlement
that he's collecting on,
and he wasn't doing anything, this guy.
Lives with his mother, I think, too.
I'm glad that any stigma regarding organized crime
and fights over pizza sauce--
that's all been buried,
and that's all been taken care of, and put aside.
And I was so happy for the family
when that was made very clear to them,
and they saw that there was nothing there, as well.
Our detectives have taken the investigation
as far as they can,
and they have no further understanding
of why Fernandez killed Louis.
It's a relief to have him off the street,
but it's so very frustrating that we can't get any answers
about why the murder happened.
From what I know, it was never proven.
We have no real knowledge that the defendant
and Louis ever spoke, ever saw each other,
ever hung out together, ever did anything together.
Law enforcement never found a link
between Andy Fernandez and L&B
other than the video surveillance
that put him there on the day of the crime.
We have to hope that all the circumstantial evidence
against him will be enough to put him away
when he goes to trial--
the eyewitnesses, the surveillance tapes,
the cellphone data and the business card
with Barbati's address.
If he's acquitted, you can't bring him back again to trial,
so you have one shot.
And so you take the best shot you have.
Fernandez is charged with attempted robbery and murder
for the shooting death of Louis Barbati.
And in December 2019, his murder trial begins
at the state supreme courtroom in Brooklyn.
Now, me being a retired detective,
I'd been through a million trials and murder cases
and, you know, maybe I had a thick skin.
I didn't think I would become emotional.
But one of the first witnesses was Lou Lou's wife,
and she started to tell the story,
and she started to break down.
And they played the 911 tape.
I started to become emotional,
and I put my head down like this.
And I started to hear sniffling from family members next to me.
And then I started to hear it from jurors.
And then the perpetrator's family,
there were people crying.
And when I looked over at the perpetrator,
he showed no remorse,
and he sat there like he was sitting on a park bench
watching the birds, twiddling his thumbs.
Andreas Fernandez kept pretty calm in the courtroom.
That changed when the jury returned its verdict.
After they deliberate for less than a day,
the jury finds Andreas Fernandez
guilty of second-degree murder
and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon.
Andreas Fernandez is sentenced to 24 years to life in prison.
The family was broken on June 30, 2016
when this murder took place.
Now there was some solace that they can say,
"Well, we know who the person is that was responsible,
and he's sitting in jail."
And maybe they can move forward a little bit.
Because he was never willing to speak to law enforcement,
it's still a mystery as to why Fernandez shot Louis Barbati.
Never spoke, which is his right.
Fernandez maintains his innocence.
I can tell you,
just on behalf of the L&B Spumoni Gardens family,
they're still tortured by the lack of a motive.
They have no answers as to why.
Even though someone was convicted,
there still is no clear motive why.
During the trial, we did learn a lot.
And the perpetrator was convicted,
and he's probably gonna spend a lot of years
in jail over that.
But me personally, I wanted an answer.
I wanted to know why.
My feeling tells me it was an attempted robbery.
From the minute I walked into the scene
and in the years that I've been doing this,
that's what my investigative gut told me about that.
While it feels great to track down the killer
and see him sentenced,
it's also frustrating when we still have open questions.
But the most important thing is we got Lou Lou's killer.
[somber music]
We always had faith in the system.
We had faith in God and our law enforcement,
to bring justice, and they did.
Justice was served the best it could be served.
I mean there's nothing that's gonna bring Lou Lou back.
I just--I wish I was here. I'd love to give him a big hug.
He was like a big bear.
You know, Louis Barbati--he was a good guy to have around.
I mean he definitely was a huge piece of what made L&B L&B.
When you go in there, you know, there's Lou Lou's picture
in his red L&B hat still hanging on the hook
where he left it that day when he left.
You put the cheese on, and then the sauce.
It's a little different style.
If I could say one thing to Lou Lou now,
I would say you'd be very proud of your family,
so I know you're smiling down from up there and saying,
"Thanks, guys, for doing the right thing."
♪