Wrestling With a 1952 Murder-File Request

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/nyregion/westchester/29murderwe.html

By DIANA MARSZALEK
Published: March 27, 2009

NEARLY 57 years ago, John Acropolis, the Westchester Teamsters boss who contemporaries said took on the mob, was shot twice in the head as he entered his Yonkers apartment, killed in one of the most notorious crimes in the city’s history.

The case has never been solved. Despite being more than a half-century old, however, it is technically still under investigation by the Yonkers Police Department’s cold-case unit, assigned to work on cases that remain on the books despite the passage of significant time, said Frank J. Rubino, the Yonkers corporation counsel.

“It’s not like these are sitting in a filing cabinet and no one looks at them,” Mr. Rubino said.

Recently, the Acropolis case has been at the crux of a legal dispute working its way through New York State Supreme Court — but not because progress on the case itself has been made.

Rather, Acting Justice James W. Hubert ruled on March 18 that the Yonkers police did not provide sufficient reason last year for denying a request by John Bly of Dallas to review the Acropolis case records for a book he is writing, and, in turn, must reconsider that denial.

Mr. Bly, a retired schoolteacher whose sister was engaged to Mr. Acropolis, is seeking copies of the official death inquest and ballistics reports.

FULL story at link.