[ominous music]
- This is Mike's first apartment in New York City!
- That's right. - Ow!
* *
- The online dating scene was still pretty new
and fairly unregulated.
- I've been single for, like, five years.
I've lived on Long Island forever.
All of a sudden, I'm in Brooklyn, I move,
and everyone's like, "Oh, what are you doing?
"Do you want to hang out?
I thought you'd want to hang out."
You know, it's like, no, I can't hang out.
I'm in Brooklyn.
You know, I moved here to find a husband.
[laughter] - Stop!
[sirens wailing]
- Numerous calls come in to 911
stating that someone's been struck
by a vehicle on the Belt Parkway.
* *
Those last seconds of his life
were seconds that he didn't deserve.
- I was just shocked.
Just kind go through this point of disbelief.
- It was Michael Sandy. It could have been anyone.
They weren't looking for a Black man,
they weren't looking for a white man,
they were looking for a victim.
* *
- You can feel how he must have felt
when he saw these guys coming down,
and then running for his life.
- Imagine the sheer terror that he was probably feeling.
* *
- This guy was lured to his death.
- We had a rogue device on this wireless network.
So the idea was, all right, well, where are they?
- Kind of just feel your whole body collapse in that moment.
It takes your breath away.
[tense suspenseful music]
* *
[soft upbeat music]
narrator: July 2006. Brooklyn, New York.
28-year-old Michael Sandy is on top of the world.
He's just landed a job as a designer for IKEA
and is finally pursuing his dreams in the big city.
- This is my new apartment.
- This is Mike's first apartment in New York City!
- That's right. - Ow!
narrator: And his best friend, Patrick, is by his side.
- Michael was really excited
about his first Brooklyn apartment.
I mean, he was all joy.
He had a laugh that could, like, carry a room.
- [chuckles] I think it's cool.
* *
- Press play.
- Well, it's a wrap. We finished the bed.
Made much more space out of this tiny, little room.
It looks wonderful.
I'm glad my hair has changed.
- It's rocking.
- [laughs]
Oh, my gosh.
I mean, what did we look like there, right?
We were just absolute best friends,
um, comfortable.
Really comfortable with each other.
He was that friend that would, like, do anything for you.
Loyal, sensitive, compassionate.
* *
[shakily] And those people don't come around very often.
narrator: Life hasn't always been easy for Michael
growing up as a young, gay Black man
in conservative Bellport, New York.
- His struggle with being gay in Long Island
was definitely a thing.
* *
Some parts of it was because he wasn't necessarily, like,
out to his parents, but I think that they all
had this beautiful kind of unspoken understanding.
- I've known Michael Sandy since we were kids.
And Michael spoke very closely with his friends
about who he wanted to make connections with.
And being in a small town, a conservative town
and a conservative family,
these things were kind of hard to explore.
He wanted to work in Brooklyn, live in Brooklyn,
breathe Brooklyn.
So I think what was very attractive to him
was really that social element
and to really find a connection, to find love.
I feel like he had to make that move to survive
and to express who he was
and to be who he was meant to be.
[upbeat music]
* *
narrator: Michael is now living his dream
in hip Williamsburg, Brooklyn, an artsy neighborhood
just a quick subway ride from Manhattan.
- Michael, he's very agile,
and he made everything he did look very easy.
Okay.
* *
Yeah, that was great.
But he was a very natural dancer.
[bittersweet music]
So that was Michael dancing in a parking garage.
Actually, I was filming this.
We were, "One and two and three and punch,"
and, you know, "turn and spin."
So we had it all choreographed.
* *
You know, it's tough to kind of think
about the last time you see someone.
But it was a good last in-person memory.
* *
- As much as he was so gregarious and outgoing,
personally, he was very shy.
He had never dated anyone in 11 years of me knowing him,
never had a boyfriend.
- He was on the hunt to find love.
* *
narrator: In the early fall of 2006,
just a few months after moving to Brooklyn...
[suspenseful music]
Michael goes out with Patrick and a small group of friends.
Another friend captures a lighthearted moment on video.
- I've been single for, like, five years.
I've lived on Long Island forever.
No one ever wanted to take me to dinner.
No one would ever go out. All of a sudden,
I'm in Brooklyn, I move, and everyone's like,
"Oh, what are you doing? Do you want to hang out?
I thought you'd want to hang out."
You know, it's like, no, I can't hang out.
I'm in Brooklyn.
What happened five years ago?
[laughs] Right?
It's insane.
You know, I moved here to find a husband.
[laughter] - Stop!
* *
The last time I hung out with Michael was
very close to the time that he had died.
[inhales deeply] So...
* *
[sirens wailing]
- On the evening of October 8, 2006,
numerous calls come in to 911 stating that someone's
been struck by a vehicle on the Belt Parkway.
narrator: It's 10:00 p.m.,
and the scene is a dark section of the highway
near Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn,
in an area known as Plumb Beach.
- That car never stopped.
It was a hit and run.
Very serious car accident.
From injuries, he's unconscious.
narrator: The victim, a young, Black male
gravely injured but still clinging to life,
is rushed to Brookdale Hospital.
- We have a victim. We don't know who he is.
We don't know necessarily how he got there.
Now we have to figure out why this occurred.
narrator: Investigators questioned witnesses
at the scene.
- This incident occurs at night
when it's dark and everyone's vision is limited.
No one really has a good description of the vehicle
and/or the license plate.
narrator: Police search the area
and soon make a crucial discovery.
- They come across a vehicle
that's parked in a parking lot across the highway.
The car was still running.
narrator: Police recover a photo ID from the vehicle.
It's an unmistakable match
with the man gravely injured on the parkway.
- And through the documentation that they find,
they come to find out that this vehicle is owned
by a young man by the name of Michael Sandy.
* *
So we have a victim.
We know his address.
And we wanted to know why
he would have driven from Williamsburg
to the other side of Brooklyn at night in the dark.
- Plumb Beach is just a dead stretch of sand,
kind of a weedy beach where nobody really takes the sun.
And it's just a quiet, little stretch of beach.
- So something's not adding up here.
What's going on?
narrator: Later that night,
some eyewitnesses reveal a disturbing detail.
- So some of the accounts that the officers are getting
are stating that this young, Black male is being chased
by a number of white males from the parking lot
along the Belt Parkway
and then being struck by a vehicle as he's being chased.
So based on witness accounts,
these young men now start to pull him off the highway.
- His body got dragged back to the side of the road.
They rifled through his pockets before running off.
And witnesses saw that.
- Given the races that people are specifically noting,
we're wondering, is this something racially motivated?
You know, this may have been a targeted attack.
[tense music]
narrator: A new detail about Michael's final moments
comes to light.
- The computer logged into America Online,
and the conversation was visible on the screen.
narrator: The more police learn,
the more personal and tragic the case becomes.
- It all is a thing to me
that stems from his willingness and wanting connection.
* *
- He left pointers. He left the breadcrumbs.
And like, that "I'll see you in 20 minutes"
[tense music]
narrator: Eyewitnesses tell police
they saw Michael Sandy being chased
by several unidentified white men
alongside a New York City highway
before he was struck by a hit and run driver.
Hours later in the early morning,
Michael lies in a coma
at Brookdale Hospital in Brooklyn.
- He's unconscious, so he can't speak to us
to tell us how this all went down.
* *
narrator: Meanwhile, word of the shocking incident
is slowly spreading among Michael's loved ones.
- I got a phone call,
and I don't believe anyone knew the full details.
I didn't really receive any information
other than the fact that
he was in the hospital on life support.
[somber piano music]
- One of my good friends called,
and he said, "Michael was in a pretty severe accident."
Like, I just felt my whole body
fall to the ground hearing that.
Then you started seeing it on the news.
[sirens wailing]
* *
- I was working as a reporter for the "New York Post"
when this happened.
We were told that he was still alive,
he was in critical condition,
and he was unable to communicate to police
exactly what happened.
[suspenseful music]
- We're talking to the family,
kind of getting a clearer picture as to who Michael is.
You know, they find out that Michael is 28,
soon to be 29-year-old male,
and he was an interior designer
and was just a super nice guy.
Probably had zero enemies.
And we wanted to try to figure out
why he may have suddenly found himself in a conflict
with other people.
* *
- When I was at the hospital,
his parents were just desperately trying
to find any resource and help that they could.
[somber music]
- It wasn't until I spoke with Mr. and Mrs. Sandy
to really know the severity of the impact.
They were holding up.
They had wonderful support with their family,
but it was hard to see them hurting
the way that they were.
- We were able to see him.
And he looked rough.
I mean, his head was completely swollen.
* *
And you know, being on life support,
there was very little,
kind of, hope in the outcome.
And I was just shocked.
Yeah, you just kind of go through
this point of disbelief.
- All the machines beeping and blaring
and all the hustle and bustle in the hospital to begin with,
it was hard to fully absorb what was happening.
But it was tough to see him in that position.
It feels like a dream happening, a very bad dream.
Um...
[tense music]
narrator: Detectives have little
to explain the attack on Michael,
other than the vague possibility
it was racially motivated,
so they head to Michael's apartment in Williamsburg,
hoping his roommates can shed some light
on his plans that evening.
- So the investigators are now looking
to interview his roommates.
Want to find out if he has any problems.
Did he have a beef with somebody?
Was he looking to settle a score?
You know, we need to figure out why he may have gone
from Williamsburg to Sheepshead Bay
and to see, maybe, is there any conflict
that was occurring that evening?
narrator: His roommates don't recall anything
out of the ordinary that evening,
but they mention that they saw Michael
chatting on the internet earlier in the night.
They chalk it up to some innocent online dating.
- We are hearing from Michael Sandy's roommates
that he is single.
And like many people were doing
when this whole online dating thing
was starting to really take hold,
he was going out and talking to people online
and going out to meet them.
* *
- The internet really emerged when we were young adults,
and this is one way where we could connect
to people of our age and have that social interaction,
even if it was a digital form of connection.
* *
- So back in 2006, the online dating scene
was still pretty new and fairly unregulated.
So you were talking to people online
and not really knowing who was on the other end.
* *
narrator: Now investigators begin to question
if race had anything to do with the crime
or whether Michael's innocent search for love online
may have led him down a dangerous path.
- Every new thing has its benefits and its drawbacks,
and we had seen, certainly by 2006,
that the online environment was one that was being used
pretty heavily by gay men in particular.
And one of the drawbacks of the internet and online dating
is that people will use them as avenues to target others.
* *
- So now we potentially want to look
at Michael Sandy's computer
to see if that is going to give us
any investigative evidence to corroborate that.
narrator: Investigators find Michael's laptop
in his bedroom.
- Now we start to shift our attention to,
did Michael Sandy maybe talk to somebody online
and went to go meet them,
and maybe that scenario went wrong?
* *
narrator: To explore the possibility
that a crime may have originated on the internet,
investigators reach out to computer specialist,
Denise Dragos.
- The New York City Police Department had one
of the very first computer crime units
in the country.
It was called CIT back in those days,
Computer Investigation and Technology unit.
Eventually, it became the Computer Crime Squad.
[suspenseful music]
The detective squad, they needed assistance
to actually handle the laptop as evidence
and preserve what was visible on the screen
and whatever else may be on that computer.
So I got my kit together,
which we would bring out to digital crime scenes--
hard drives, USB drives, other tools, potentially,
that may come in handy, and we responded.
The computer was logged into America Online,
and a conversation was visible on the screen.
[tense music]
narrator: New York City police believe a computer chat
may have lured Michael Sandy into an attack.
As Michael lays gravely injured in the hospital,
NYPD computer specialist Denise Dragos
discovers that Michael's computer
is still logged into a chat room on America Online.
- The chat conversation happened
the evening of the 8th before the incident.
Basically, it's two users,
FishEYEFox, and a second account,
which went by the screen name Drumnbass007,
which is Michael's account.
[suspenseful music]
They're having a conversation.
They're talking about potentially
smoking marijuana together.
And, you know, they say how old each of them are,
what they look like.
* *
- So in the initial conversation
that Michael Sandy's having with this FishEYEFox,
they agree to meet up.
They talked about meeting up in Plumb Beach, Brooklyn,
which is where he is struck by a vehicle.
* *
narrator: They make plans to meet there at 8:00,
but it's clear that things didn't go as planned.
- So searching through Michael's AOL chat history,
when they meet up, FishEYEFox is not alone.
There are other people around,
which makes Michael Sandy feel uneasy.
So he gets spooked and he leaves.
* *
narrator: By 8:45, Michael returns to the chat
from his apartment in Williamsburg.
- And he goes back to his computer,
and FishEYEFox is saying, you know,
"Hey, what happened to you?" and, "Why'd you leave?"
And Michael Sandy says,
"Well, I thought we were meeting one-on-one,
"and there were other people around,
so it just felt weird, so I left."
* *
And now FishEYEFox is trying to convince him,
"Oh, yeah, I don't know who those guys were,"
or, you know, "We can just meet one-on-one.
"It'll just be the two of us.
So come on back out, and we'll meet up again."
* *
narrator: By 10:00, Michael is found
by the side of the Parkway,
just yards from the Plumb Beach parking lot.
- It all is a thing to me
that stems from his willingness and wanting connection.
* *
Like, so much
went out of his brain for that possibility.
And the real hard part is that
he just didn't listen to his instinct that day...
and he went back.
* *
- Looking back, I got the impression that
he might have had an idea of what he was doing
was potentially risky.
I don't think it was an accident
that he left his computer on with the chat window open.
He left pointers. He left the breadcrumbs.
And like, that "I'll see you in 20 minutes"
was his final moments as he walked out the door.
[somber music]
[suspenseful music]
narrator: Police now believe this online chat
between Michael and FishEYEFox is a key piece of evidence,
and they're hoping it may lead them to a suspect.
- We started doing live system analysis at the time,
just to preserve the information that was there.
So even without touching it-- it's a little old-school--
took pictures, traditional pictures of it,
just to make sure that even if it crashed,
at least we had that.
We were running special software
on the machines which copied out all of the system memory
to an external drive, so in that case,
we were able to get a lot of information
and preserve it, forensically, in real time.
* *
narrator: For investigators, it's now imperative
that they track down the man Michael was chatting with,
who goes by the screen name FishEYEFox.
But due to privacy laws,
that will require a court order.
- You have to remember back in 2006,
the internet was a very different place.
Some of these social media companies
were not necessarily forthcoming
with information about their clients.
* *
- We started doing the process to subpoena America Online
to see who owns this FishEYEFox account,
if we could, you know, identify that person.
* *
narrator: On October 9th,
a day after Michael Sandy was struck on the Belt Parkway,
the Brooklyn district attorney's office
issues a subpoena to America Online
to disclose the name of the individual
who goes by the chat handle FishEYEFox.
* *
- So in the investigation, we come to find out that
FishEYEFox is a screen name that is owned by someone
by the name of John Fox...
* *
Who has an IP address that comes back to Brooklyn.
And thus, the investigators now go
to that address in Brooklyn
where the ping of this IP address is coming back to.
narrator: The address on Brigham Street
is just a few blocks from Plumb Beach
in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, where Michael was struck.
- It was rowhouses on this block on Brigham Street.
We pretty much set up a surveillance operation
with numerous detectives in different cars.
And as, you know, all the teams are sitting there,
somebody shows up at that house
and walks up to the front gate.
All of the police cars, you know, come screeching up,
and you know, the detectives jump out
and approach the individual.
We identified ourselves as being detectives, NYPD.
* *
And he says, "What's going on, guys?"
[tense music]
narrator: NYPD detectives have tracked the source
of a computer chat room message
they believe was used to lure Michael Sandy
to a vicious attack.
Based on the IP address linked to the message,
they descend on a house in Brooklyn.
- The gentleman who lived at that address, he said,
"I just got off work."
You know, "Can I help you guys?"
So we asked him his name.
narrator: The chat room message was from a user
called FishEYEFox, who police have identified as John Fox,
but that is not the man's name
and there's no one named John Fox
who lives at his address.
- So that was a little bit of a pucker moment.
You know, like, "Oh, crap."
We asked, "Do you have internet service?"
He goes, "Yeah, as a matter of fact,
I just got a new router."
* *
So we're like, "All right, can we come inside
and talk to you about a situation?"
He goes, "Yeah." You know, "Come on inside."
* *
As soon as we walk into the kitchen,
right there on the kitchen table,
we can see a brand-new wireless router.
narrator: So new that no security has
been set up on it yet.
Detective Dragos realizes that means
anyone could have tapped into this internet service,
and a quick check reveals her theory to be correct.
- It appeared that now we had a rogue device
on this wireless network.
The homeowner just had a new router,
and it wasn't secured and was logged into surreptitiously
by this FishEYEFox user.
narrator: Detective Dragos knows that
if the rogue device is logged into this router,
it must be close by, within range of the Wi-Fi signal.
- All right. Well, where are they?
They have to be within a stone's throw.
So let's try and figure out where they are right now.
So I'm like, I can try to talk to them
and stir the pot and see what happens.
So I have an undercover account,
and I'm like, "Hey, what's up?"
It was just a shot in the dark to see, you know,
if I could figure out where the heck this computer was.
I get a response from FishEYEFox.
So now I'm talking to FishEYEFox myself.
And so I'm like, "Hey, what's going on?
How you been? When we getting together?"
And he's, "Ah," you know, "I'm back at school."
* *
So we're confounded right now.
narrator: Detective Dragos reaches out to her contact
at America Online, who is able to determine
that John Fox, AKA FishEYEFox,
is now chatting from a different location entirely.
And we're like, "Well, what's this other location?"
They said it goes back to SUNY Maritime...
which is State University of New York, Maritime College,
which was a college in the Bronx.
* *
narrator: A check with the campus security office
reveals there is a sophomore enrolled at SUNY Maritime
named John Fox.
- It was after midnight, I'm sure, at that point.
And basically, we all responded
in a caravan from that location.
Everybody drove out to the Bronx
to go and talk to John Fox.
* *
narrator: The investigators coordinate
with SUNY campus police to locate John Fox's dorm room.
- It's 1:00 a.m. in the morning,
and now you're going to talk to someone
whose part in this whole thing is still unclear.
* *
We do know that John Fox is connected to the screen name
that Michael Sandy was talking to.
So everyone's antennas are up.
* *
narrator: When the 19-year-old student comes to the door,
he appears surprised, but his demeanor is calm.
- So the investigators are now talking to John Fox
at his dorm, and they're asking him,
"What was your weekend like?"
And he proceeds to tell them,
"Well, I was just hanging out with some friends
"and we were just drinking some beers,
"just chilling out for the weekend.
Just a few friends having a good time."
During this interview, John Fox starts to get nervous.
And his answers start to contradict themselves.
This is going from an interview turning into an interrogation.
[dramatic music]
narrator: John Fox agrees to accompany the detectives
to the 61st Precinct in Brooklyn.
* *
- John Fox is saying in his statement
that he and Anthony Fortunato and Gary Timmons
and the Russian kid, Alex,
are hanging out by a local deli.
They decide to go back to the house,
where John Fox logs into the computer.
And he admits that FishEYEFox is his screen name...
but that his friends must have been using his screen name
to have a conversation,
'cause he knew nothing about this conversation.
But then he starts to turn around and say,
"Well, you know, we were just looking to have a little fun."
* *
What does that mean?
What does it mean that we're looking to have a little fun?
And he starts to basically incriminate himself.
And he claims Anthony Fortunato is the one
who sort of hatched this scheme
to go into a gay chat room,
talk with someone who's looking to meet up
with another man,
and then meet up with that person
to rob them under the assumption
that the gay man won't go to the police.
- The reality that some folks
actually feel a certain amount of shame,
and so they would be less likely to report.
They would be less likely to make a complaint.
- It's a very powerful set of facts.
There was something particularly chilling
about how this man was lured
out to his death, basically.
* *
- It could have been anyone.
They weren't looking for a Black man,
they weren't looking for a white man,
they were looking for a victim.
[tense music]
narrator: John Fox admits to NYPD detectives
that he, Anthony Fortunato, and a group of their friends
used the screen name FishEYEFox in a chat room
to set up a meeting with Michael Sandy
under the guise of a date
with the intention of robbing him.
[ominous music]
- So they met on the street.
John Fox and him had a brief conversation.
And Fortunato and then a couple of their other friends
actually were in the area.
So Michael got spooked.
You know, his Spidey Sense was tingling.
He left. All was good.
narrator: Detectives believe that
while Michael returned home,
John Fox and his friends didn't want to give up.
- They start drinking beers again,
and they say, "Oh, maybe we can find somebody else."
You know, in the interim, Michael reaches back out.
Said "Hey, I just want to hang out with you.
"I don't to do a group thing,
so let's just me and you hang out."
So John was like, "All right, cool.
We'll do that."
So he came back.
* *
- They all get to Plumb Beach,
and they approach a blue Mazda,
which is Michael Sandy's car.
Alex starts to assault Michael Sandy.
Michael Sandy breaks away from the assault,
and they start to chase him.
* *
- Where was he going to go?
If they were going to prevent him
from getting into his car...
* *
He's going on to the highway.
- Imagine the sheer terror that he was probably feeling
when he's chased onto a busy highway
running for his life...
and running into a speeding vehicle.
Those last seconds of his life
were seconds that he didn't deserve.
* *
- That car takes off. Never stops.
Then the men, they drag him to the side of the road.
One of them goes into his pockets,
empties everything, and they take off.
- John Fox, he says, they all fled the scene.
And then they all went back to the house.
And they were all shaken up by this whole scenario.
- It's almost like classic, stupid kids,
but there was a coldness about it as well.
* *
narrator: Police begin to investigate the friends
John Fox says took part in the scheme,
and when they learned the home address of Anthony Fortunato,
the pieces of the puzzle start to come together.
Fortunato's house is next door to the Brooklyn home
the detectives visited the night before
where a rogue computer was logged into the Wi-Fi.
- So they go to Anthony Fortunato's house
to talk to him, and he claims,
"Yeah, I'll come talk to you.
"I'm just going to get a lawyer
and I'll come down to the station to talk to you guys."
* *
narrator: But Fortunato never shows up
at the precinct as promised.
* *
[phone ringing]
- Then suddenly, we get a call from his mother,
stating that, "Well, Anthony can't
"come talk to you because he's in the hospital.
He tried to kill himself."
* *
However, John Fox has implicated two other people,
Gary Timmons and this other kid
known as "the Russian kid," Alex.
So the investigators, looking through Myspace
with the information given to them by John Fox,
find out the Russian kid's true identity is now revealed
by someone by the name of Ilya Shurov.
So now investigators can go talk to them.
* *
narrator: Fox, Timmons, and Shurov
all confessed to their roles in the attack,
pointing to Fortunato as the mastermind of the plan.
[somber music]
* *
Meanwhile, at Brookdale Hospital,
Michael Sandy's family is facing a terrible choice.
- So Michael Sandy's in the hospital, unconscious.
He's dying.
He's not going to recover.
The doctors know this.
Doctors make the family aware of this.
And he will never be the person that he was.
* *
narrator: On October 12th,
Michael Sandy spends his 29th birthday
with his family holding vigil in his ICU room.
They know they are spending their final moments with him.
- They wanted to wait
so that he didn't die on his birthday.
[heart monitor beeping]
- So the day after his 29th birthday,
his family made that awful, awful decision.
* *
- I received a call from Mrs. Sandy and said,
you know, "We took Michael off life support."
[somber music]
So just always thinking that this can't be true,
but you know, these--
these emotions just kind of come over you,
and I'm still trying to process it.
But...
you know, you kind of go through those moments
when you can and be supportive for the family, but...
you kind of just feel your whole body
collapse in that moment.
It takes your breath away, you know, in that moment.
* *
- You need to let him go.
You feel robbed, you know?
You really...
Especially when it comes with an act
that has such malice
for anything of joy and life and love.
[tense music]
* *
narrator: Investigators now have statements
from three of their suspects,
but they still can't speak with Anthony Fortunato,
the alleged mastermind of the scheme,
who remains hospitalized after his suicide attempt.
While they wait for his condition to improve,
they execute a search warrant at his home.
* *
- We go back out to the location,
and when law enforcement gets there, they said,
"All right, you're looking for computers.
"Here's our computer.
This is the only computer we have."
But we're able to actually look at the computer
and immediately say, "No,
that's not the computer we're looking for,"
because you know, it is mapped to the manufacturer.
And in this case,
we knew we were looking for a Dell computer.
The computer that they happened to, like,
pull out of a hat and say was
the only computer in the house was not a Dell,
so we're like, "No, try again."
And they didn't have any other computers
that they were willing to voluntarily turn over,
so a search of the residence commenced
as authorized by the search warrant.
Hidden in the basement was a Dell laptop.
That was the computer that was connected to the IP address
that was connected to FishEYEFox during the crime.
So we knew we found what we were looking for.
It basically was the smoking gun.
narrator: By the time Fortunato is released
from the hospital, Kings County prosecutors
are prepared to act.
They now have everything they need to file charges
of attempted robbery and manslaughter,
but they're also considering
a unique enhancement to the charges
that's rarely been tried before.
- This was a real social problem
that people were being targeted as victims of a crime
because they belonged to certain groups.
* *
And in this case,
they were looking to select a gay person,
and that's what they did.
[ominous music]
narrator: Four men are facing charges
in the attack that killed Michael Sandy.
And prosecutors are prepared to also try them
on a rare and untested set of charges.
- This was one of the first cases I can recall clearly
where the hate crimes enhancement was actually used
in New York state for an anti-gay murder.
* *
And I think it was important for the community
for this to be called what it was.
It had a lot of meaning for people.
[tense music]
narrator: On October 25, 2006,
John Fox, Ilya Shurov,
and Anthony Fortunato are indicted on charges
of second-degree murder, attempted robbery,
and manslaughter as a hate crime.
That same day, Gary Timmons,
who was a minor at the time of the crime,
pleads guilty to attempted robbery in the second degree.
- You want to make sure
that when a case is tried as a hate crime,
it has to specifically plug into the statutes
of the hate crimes law.
And the sentence that is usually handed down
is a much heavier sentence.
[suspenseful music]
narrator: But as the date of trial approaches
in October 2007, nearly a year to the day
from the attack on Michael at Plumb Beach,
Anthony Fortunato's attorney mounts a stunning defense
to the hate crime charges.
- Fortunato tried to pull a rabbit out of the hat
and said, it can't be a hate crime,
because he came out of the closet himself.
He identified himself as being a gay man
and said that because he's gay, it can't be a hate crime
because you can't hate gay people if you're gay also.
- It was an extremely flimsy defense legally,
because hate is not an aspect of the crime itself.
That's not something that the prosecution
has to establish in order to establish
somebody's guilt of a hate crime.
He could have mixed motives,
but it doesn't get him off the hook.
From the get-go,
the whole plan was based on targeting a gay person.
[somber music]
* *
narrator: John Fox and Anthony Fortunato
are acquitted of murder, but convicted of manslaughter
and attempted robbery as hate crimes,
receiving sentences of seven to 21 years.
A month later, Ilya Shurov pleads guilty
to the same charges and receives a sentence
of 17 1/2 years.
Gary Timmons, who testifies as a prosecution witness,
receives a four-year sentence.
* *
- When they were found guilty,
it was a natural release
to have some vindication.
But I don't know about the justice part.
- I absolutely cannot say
as to whether or not justice was served in this case.
Maybe it's for Michael's parents
to answer that question,
for Michael's soul or spirit to answer that question,
even, in an odd way,
for his perpetrators to answer that question,
because I would have a hard time feeling
that justice was served if they did not come
to understand the gravity and tragedy of what they did.
- This case sort of impacted me on a personal level...
'cause back in 2006,
I was a single, gay man on the internet,
talking to people and meeting up with people.
For all practical purposes,
I could have been Michael Sandy.
* *
narrator: Michael Sandy's closest friends
are left with nothing now except their memories
and a few artifacts of his last days,
like this video from the fall of 2006
when he enjoyed a final evening out
in Brooklyn with his friends.
[soft dramatic music]
- Can I put my glasses on?
- I've been single for, like, five years.
I've lived on Long Island forever.
No one ever wanted to take me to dinner.
No one would ever go out.
You know, I moved here to find a husband.
[laughter] - Stop!
* *
That is too much.
Um, you heard his laugh.
- You know, I moved here to find a husband.
[laughter] - Stop!
* *
- He was a wonderful human being from head to toe.
- It's wonderful.
- It's rocking.
- He exudes this wonderful light that shines
and magical laughter and smiles.
And he loved life to the fullest.