One Murder On 9/11 Remains Unsolved



On Sept. 11, 2001, just as the workday was getting underway, New York City descended into chaos, the piercing bright blue sky filling with smoke above the screams. Nearly 3,000 people died in the city that day, with all but one of the deaths connected to the World Trade Center attack. That one death is the only one that remains unsolved. A Polish immigrant named Henryk Siwiak was shot to death in Brooklyn a few hours after the two planes struck the Twin Towers, and today his death remains a mystery. Not only is the killing unsolved 23 years later, but authorities have never even identified suspects. Det. Mike Prate and fellow officers suspect Siwiak was the victim of a botched robbery, but they have no evidence to prove it. Ewa Siwiak, Henryk’s widow, was still in Krakow, Poland, with their two children, 10 and 17. Because Henryk’s TV was broken, Ewa filled him in by phone on the 9/11 terror attack and urged him to stay home that evening. Because he was working two jobs to bring in more money so he could return to Poland, he headed out to his second job at a Pathmark supermarket in Brooklyn. Unfortunately, he got off the subway at the wrong station and wound up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, an area known for heavy drug use and gang involvement. That’s where Siwiak met his gruesome end. Because the police department was stretched to the limit because of 9/11, little investigation was done on Siwiak’s case. Years went by and the NYPD never found any concrete leads or made any arrests. Det. Prate said if it had not been for 9/11, they would have had a better chance of solving the case. "It's going to be finding that one person who was a witness out there,” said Det. Prate. “I really do believe there were a lot of people out there. It's just a matter of, are they willing to step forward?”
 
Lucyna Siwiak holds a photo of her brother Henryk