The Murder of Menachem Stark | The Christmas Killings hosted by Nancy Grace | Forensic Files

New York City 2014. 2 days after New Year's, a picturesque snowstorm turns into a dangerous white out.
There's basically a blizzard in uh New York. A local Jewish businessman was kidnapped less than a month from
Hanukkah. What happened to this father of seven? Why would he have been kidnapped? Was it
his family? Was it something personal? To say it created a firestorm would be an understatement.
As a community grows angry, they turn their frustration toward police. The holidays present a lot of issues for
police in general. There's a lot of anti-semitism events that actually do happen.
We end up getting notified by the Nassau County police that they found a body. It's one of New York's first homicides
of the year. Detectives are overwhelmed with leads. Why? What did he do? This looked like a targeted
attack. 40 million is a lot of money. And what occurred on on this video was horrifying.
[Music] [Music] Hello, I'm Nancy Grace. New Year's in New York City. It conjures up visions of
the beautiful glittering ball dropping in Time Square, bustling bars, crowded restaurants, and streets filled with
merry makers. 2014, the city and its burrows are still dealing with the New Year's
Eve hangover when they're hit with a crippling snowstorm. Monakam Stark, a committed family man, is at the office
in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. He's not concerned by the weather. He plans to work late, then head home.
[Music] Right after New Year's, people start to come back to work. They start to get
back into their normal routine. And January 2nd, again, day after New Year's, the city got hit with the first
big blizzard that day. 2014 has begun with an extreme blast of winter weather. A huge storm has been moving across much
of the country, bringing with it freezing temperatures and lots of snow. It was snowing pretty hard. I mean,
people couldn't see it. There was no visibility if you were driving in the streets. It was coming down hard. There
weren't a lot of people out on the streets. Well, Monakam Stark was working in his
office. He always came home the same time every night. In fact, when he spoke to his
wife earlier in the day, he mentioned that he would be home around 11:30. Now, it's
11:40. His wife doesn't hear from him. She's very nervous. She calls the phone and somebody hangs
up. Now, she's very nervous. It's close to midnight when Monakam Stark's brother-in-law checks his office.
There's no sign of the reliable family man. Then they make the phone call to 911. They report he hasn't shown up
home. This is out of character for him. His office is not far from home. So, we're not thinking an accident, you
know, ran off the road somewhere, doesn't have his cell phone. were thinking there could be more to this
than just a missing person's case. Detectives went to his office and the office seemed to be, you know, closed
[Music] up, but they did notice that his car was outside and that was very strange that
he wasn't there and the car was. It's bitterly cold January 3, 2014. Detectives from the 90th precinct canvas
the neighborhood around Monakam Stark's office building. There was a video camera positioned right in front of the
building and we found the video footage and what occurred on on this video was [Music]
horrifying. We noticed him locking up the office and he was walking to his car when a very large male grabbed him and
Manakam started fighting with him. Manakam Stark put up a very big uh fight. I don't think these guys expected
to him to put a fight like that. They were struggling for 3, four, five minutes and another male came from the
car and helped him and they threw him in the back of a light colored minivan and he was still fighting as
they put him in the van and then they drove away. When police watch the footage, they
realize their missing person's case is now a kidnapping. The weather makes leads hard to come
by because of the snow, because of the the brightness, I guess, of the snow, it blurred the videotape itself. So, we
were having trouble. We couldn't even identify at the time the type of minivan it was. We couldn't identify the race of
any of these two abductors. All we had was one of them looked like a larger male. The other looked like he was
smaller. We could absolutely see that there was a struggle, but there was no way to get a license plate. There was no
way to do a facial recognition to identify either one of the people we were going to end up looking for.
The NYPD releases the surveillance video to the media. The case quickly grabs the
attention of the public. [Music] I received a phone call that said a local Jewish businessman was kidnapped
as he left his office shortly before midnight. And I remembered this was less than a month from
Hanukkah. The holidays present a lot of issues for police in general. There is normally an uptick in crime. It's
robberies. It's shootings um right before the holidays. Whether it's because of a lack of money, whether it's
family issues, family disputes. Thank God people aren't abducted off the streets of New York City. That's a
strange event no matter who. But when somebody's taken off the street, an acidic male in that tightknit community,
it doesn't happen. I actually reached out to a couple of people who lived and work in Williamsburg to see what they
heard. there. Everything spreads like wildfire within the community. So, everybody in
the community had heard what happened that night. You had to then start digging in to see who this person
was. You have to find what the next layer. You have to dig what the next layer is. Why was who who is who is this
person that was kidnapped? So, you have to find out who he is before you could find out why. When we investigated uh
Manakam Stark's background, we knew that he was a loving husband and a loving father. He had seven kids. We knew he
was in the real estate business. The neighbors we spoke with, um the people from the temples we spoke with, you
know, reinforced that he was a good person. He was a family man. Everybody that came out publicly said, uh what a
great guy he was. Uh he always were helping the down and out. that rarely do you find
individuals who give away their money. And if they don't have their money, they go out there to ensure to knock on some
people's door who has money in order to respond to a person in need. Approximately 400 p.m. January 3, police
get a phone call from a gas station attendant out on Long Island. In a kidnapping investigation, you're always
waiting on whether somebody's going to ask for ransom or is somebody going to just drive him around, have him take
money out of ATMs. We don't know what their intentions were when they took Monakam
Stark. That's what creates angst for the family. And then we end up getting notified by the Nassau County police
that they found a body of a male dressed in traditional acidic garb half burnt in a uh dumpster
at a Getty gas station in Great Neck, Long Island. The gas station attendant when he
arrived for work that morning saw the smoke coming out of the dumpster. Approached the dumpster said it was a
foul smell coming out of the dumpster. Called the police and called the fire department. Started smelling a burning
like like a like you know a burning flesh kind of smell and he just saw smoke coming out of the dumpster because
the lower half of the body had been burned and the upper half hadn't been burned as badly. Nassau County
detectives that responded realized that this was somebody that belonged to the hetic community.
That's some 30 miles away from the scene where Manakam was taken and put into a van and driven away. Monakam Stark's
family praying for a miracle. They head to Long Island hoping the body in the Moore belongs to somebody, anybody else.
The body that was found in the dumpster was in fact Monakam Stark. Welcome back. The 90th precinct
in Brooklyn rings in the new year 2014 with a grizzly homicide investigation. The half burnt body of a man dressed in
traditional hidic clothing found over 30 miles from his office in Brooklyn. He is
identified as the kidnap victim. Manakam Stark, a well-known businessman in his community and a beloved family
man. when you're trying to celebrate and now all of a sudden you get like a heinous crime like this senseless
murder, you know, it just makes people stop and say like like we were just celebrating, we were just having a good
time and then all of a sudden you get hit, you're back to reality. Saturday, Nassau County police found the
39-year-old ultraorththodox man's body in a dumpster at a Great Neck gas station. Now, we know we're dealing with
a homicide. And one of the confusing points of the case initially was that the body was found in Long Island.
Normally, if something happens in Brooklyn, it doesn't wander out to Long Island. It doesn't wander too far out of
the burrow. Because of the blizzard, many of the roads were closed. And uh one of the major thoroughares over in
that area is the 495, the Long Island Expressway. and that night was closed to any traffic. So, it was a little unusual
how Mr. Stark was in one location and then his body discovered in a dumpster in uh Great
Neck with all this weather related road issues. It was a little curious how he got
there. I mean, if you were looking to dump a body, there are many places in Brooklyn,
Queens, you know, is a bigger story now. You know, you go from a kidnapping to a
[Music] murder. According to Jewish religious law, a body must be buried within 24
hours after the person dies. So in this case, the pressure is on the medical examiner to quickly perform that autopsy
and release Monakam Stark's body to his family. The autopsy is basically done. They find out that it was a chest
compression and asphyxiation, which basically means that uh you couldn't breathe because somebody
was sitting on your chest. Just imagine you're laying on the floor and somebody's sitting on your chest and it
can't expand and you're basically suffocating. It shows a sign of a, you know, a violent
[Music] struggle. It's a horrible way to die. Manakam Stark's brutal murder frightens
the community. But that community pulls together and a show of support for Monakam's family.
The community came out in mass to mourn his death. There were thousands of people that came. I mean, the hesetic
community is a very tight community, but I hadn't seen anything like that before.
the murder of Manakam Stark. Uh it shocked the community. People were, you know, uh very upset and very nervous and
and rightly so. You know, everybody's guessing, but they had no idea why he was killed.
It seems nearly incomprehensible anyone within the Hidic community could commit such violence on
one of their own. Investigators turned their attention to where Monakam Stark's life intersected outside that close-knit
community. We went to the family to try and find out is anything going on with the
business? Is anything going on with the neighbors? Is anything anything unusual that might have happened just prior to
to the night he was kidnapped? They basically said no. And then we uh were directed to go out and interview the
tenants in the buildings that he owned. Well, Stark was actually a a landlord on quite a few
buildings. Real estate, it would appear, was his primary source of income. We looked into his real estate
holdings. We found out that he started buying buildings in the area around 2000. And by 2008, he had spent uh over
$61 million on 37 buildings, which is a significant real estate portfolio. Nakamark owned
17 vacant or druginfested buildings in Brooklyn, Queens. those buildings had racked up 233 complaints and 148
violations. So while detectives were doing a canvas, you know, talking to people in the neighborhood, especially
people who live in his buildings, they came across more than their share of tenants who were not happy with Monakum
Stalker as a landlord. Talking to the tenants, we're finding out that uh I don't have hot water, my ceiling's
leaking, I don't have heat. When you hear about that, it would be, you know, an obvious motivation for
somebody to harm Mr. Stark. A guy that had over a thousand tenants that you're not going to have a few unsatisfied
parents. There's no such a thing. Police wonder if a resentful or unhinged tenant could be responsible for Monakam
Stark's murder. Passions run high in New York's tough rental market. But could those passions actually add up to
murder? When you're in the real estate business, there's always tenants that are going to love you, and then they're
going to be tenants that hate you. Some of the tenants had withheld rent, but again, it didn't get us to the
point where we were thinking a tenant possibly did this. It that to us didn't make sense to the detectives
investigating the case. There was no clear-cut person that stuck out that, you know, wouldn't want to do harm to
this guy. We kind of came to the conclusion that we this wasn't where we were going with the case.
On the surface, Monakam Stark appears to be a successful, wealthy real estate owner. When investigators dig deeper
into finances, they are shocked by what they find. There were a lot of outstanding loans.
There was a lot of money that he owed. We found out that his company was in debt for almost $40
million. The name of Monakam Stark's company was Southside Associates. Southside Associates was
going south. We found out that Southside Associates was facing foreclosure on almost half of their buildings. 40
million is a lot of money. And if it's owed out to the wrong people and the Russian mob was
involved, now we're kind of getting to where there might have been a motive. New York 2014. During a bitter
snowstorm two days into the new year, a citic businessman Monakam Stark is kidnapped outside his office and then
brutally murdered. His body is set a fire and left in a Long Island dumpster. Detectives from the 90th precinct are
deep into the investigation of their first murder of the new year and they're examining the finances of the victim.
Once the financial stuff came back, we kind of went in a different direction. It's kind of like, okay, wait a minute,
maybe there is something here. We started doing different interviews. We were interviewing business
partners. Once we got into the finance end of this, um, his wife lawyered up. They were very guarded on the finance
end of it. We probably did one or two interviews, but after that, it was talk to my attorney. Manakam Stark's company,
Southside Associates, is deeply in debt. It's facing foreclosure on half of its buildings. In the days before his
murder, Stark argues with his partner, Israel Pearl, who is also known as Sam. When Sam found out that Monakam was
taking large sums of money out of the count, he confronted him. He was not happy during those times. Their
relationship became tense. They had joint accounts. They both had access to the accounts. Initially, we thought that
they didn't really have to talk too much about removing money, but interviewing his partner Sam, we found out, well, not
exactly. They had had a loud confrontation. They had argued days before the homicide.
There was a joint account that Monakam Stark took $300,000 out of without letting him know. When he went to look
at the account, he thought there was a lot of money in it and there was no money left in there. And of course, he
was I rate like anybody would be I rateate if they saw that much money was gone. Does business partner Sam
Pearlmutter have a motive for murder? The murder of Monakam Stark? Speaking with Mr. promoter. Initially, I got a
little bit of a sense that I wasn't getting that full cooperation that I was looking
for. He wasn't being, I don't think, as forthcoming as he should have been, knowing that Mr. uh
Stark was murdered. Sam Pearlmutter's reluctance to cooperate also makes police suspicious.
Money is kind of a motive in a lot of homicides. was definitely something that had to be looked at.
Although he didn't fit the profile or the stature of the guy that abducted him, could he in theory have hired some
big goons to kill him? Yes. Police soon determined Sam Pearlmutter's behavior seems like someone who is also afraid
for his own life. He was afraid for his life. He hired bodyguards. He had people sit outside
his house. He avoided the social events. He was keeping pretty low key, not being
seen too much in the area. We asked him where his whereabouts were that night and his alibi checked
out. His real pearl mutter. He was a he was a real estate businessman. He wasn't
a killer. So after I believe it was two interviews, we kind of said, "All right,
this isn't who we're looking for." Police cannot link Monakam Stark's financial problems to his murder. So for
now, they must consider Manakum Stark is targeted solely because of his faith. There's a lot of anti-semitism events
that actually do happen in the Hidic neighborhood. You know, rare, but it does happen. They came to pray and hate
greeted them at the synagogue door early Friday morning. People in this tight-knit hidic community saw these
symbols of hate spray painted all over the neighborhood. But it didn't seem to be a hate crime. It wasn't like somebody
was walking by somebody and then just, you know, punched them for no reason or said something in regards to their
religion. This looked like a targeted attack. It it it appeared to be a planned event.
Investigators dig deeper into Monakam Stark's financial affairs. They discover he was having trouble borrowing money
from legitimate banks. It got to the point where he had to go and borrow money from the Broadway bank in Chicago,
which everybody knew was a mob run bank. But that's how desperate he got. He ended up owing the bank $1.5 million,
which he never paid. and that $ 1.5 million contributed to the bank closing and going out of business.
The intense press coverage generates many, many tips. It turns out it's not just a mobbacked bank to which Monakam
Stark owes money. We received something on Reddit. Somebody posted that the Russian mob killed Monakam Stark. What
we had found out from sources in the community is that the Russian mob had made loans to the Hida community. There
was deals made between the two. But once the Russian mob was mentioned, now it's kind of like, okay,
wait a minute, maybe there is something here. The Russian mob, they're going to come and break a couple of legs. They're
going to break an arm. They're going to threaten. They want their money. Manakov Stark's downward financial
spiral does not end with the Russian mob. We know that he borrowed money from Russian mob members and then he also
borrowed money from Lone Shark in the Hidic community that apparently he lent money to Monakam to pay back the Russian
gangster. Angry tenants, underworld bankers, Russian mobsters, a lone shark. The list of people who have potential
issues with Monakam Stark keeps getting longer. And it's all summed up in an outrageous headline from our friends at
the New York Post. Who didn't want him dead? Well, when that paper hit the stands, to say it created a firestorm
would be an understatement. The Hidic community was up in arms. They were calling the switchboard at the New York
Post. They were complaining, "How could you write such a thing?" Jewish community leaders and elected officials
are outraged after the New York Post controversial coverage of a man's murder. In America, if you are a bad
landlord, you go to housing court, not the mall. None of the tenants would say that I would have killed him. No, they
would have not have killed him. You know, most of the times uh you know, we have a case, it's one little article and
something else happens and that case sort of goes to the back burner. This case, it seems like it was, you know, it
was coming out of a fire hose. The detectives in Brooklyn North homicide, the bosses are yelling at
them, "When are we going to solve this? When are we going to solve it?" and they
just put their head down and they just continue to to grind and grind and grind. The suspect pool expands because
of the financial investigation. Detectives begin zeroing in on Manakam Stark's dubious lenders. Starting with
the Russian mob, we actually located that Russian mobster and first of all, he wasn't in the
country at the time of the murder. And then when we did interview him, he says that he did lend money to Monakam Stark,
but it was paid back. And then in further investigation, there was another male, Abe Hoffman, who was a lone shark
in the acidic community. Then obviously we looked at Abe Hoffman, and he just recently lent
the money to Monakam, and he's like, he's not even defaulted on the loan yet. like why would I kill him if he hasn't
passed the due date yet? We quickly dismissed him as a subject in the homicide. Pretty much everywhere we're
going, we're coming up with nothing. So, we are under pressure from the police department. We're under pressure from
city hall. We're under pressure from the DA's office. And we're just we're not coming
up with anything solid. We had eliminated the tenants. We had eliminated the business partner. We had
eliminated the Russian mob. So now it's becoming frustrating. The detectives investigating the case when we started
to say, you know, we got to rethink this a little bit. Police return to the scene
of the kidnap. They canvas the area around Monakam Stark's office once again. It's routine investigative work,
but it's about to pay off. We send out people that do verbal canvases where you know, did anybody see anything? Did
anybody hear anything? Also video canvases. And that's when we found that piece of video. Now it's game on.
In 2014, New Yorkers demand justice. They are mesmerized when a hidic businessman is kidnapped during a New
Year's blizzard and then violently murdered. The investigation leads police on a wild goose chase of low lives. From
Russian mobsters to notorious lone sharks, detectives are stuck with a real life who done it. That's until they take
another look, a careful look at the surveillance cameras that were operating the night of the murder. There's a lot
of video that's available to us from all different places. It's a matter of just
going out there and looking for it. We received video from down the block from NAM Stark's office and what it
showed was a light colored minivan. They look very similar to the minivan that abducted Manakam
Stark. By bringing some of the stills to Autoprime, they were able to make the model year of the minivan. So now that
really kind of gives us something else to explore. That's solid. We know it's that van. It's a 2002 light colored
Dodge Caravan and it's been parked near Monakam Stark's workplace for 6 hours before the kidnap. We needed to figure
out how they were keeping track of Monakam's movements and how they would have known on a snowy night at 11:30 at
night he was going to be in his office. They're wondering there's something more
whoever kidnapped Monakam did he have another way of tracking him? We theorized that there was a tracking
device in Manakam Stark's car. January 10, 7 days after the murder, detective Sam Monakam Stark's vehicle to
their lab for analysis. They put it up on a lift and there it was. There was a cell phone
that was uh taped to the gas tank of the car. That's where the investigation really, really took off. The cell phone
planted on Monakam Stark's car is a gamecher. [Music] And now we do subpoenas on the cell
phone. We find out the owner of the cell phone is a man named Jeff Cely. This guy's got to be
interviewed. And when we went to speak to Jeff Cely and he's like, "Yeah, it's a phone that's on my family plan." I'm
like, "Well, any idea why it was stuck to a murder victim's gas tank?" The story that he tells us is
that one of the guys that work for him asks him to get him a cell phone. The reason he needs a cell phone is because
he feels that the girl he's dating is cheating on him and he wants to be able to track her through the Sprint family
tracking plan through the phone. It was too good of a story to to make up. He's like, "Oh, last time I gave that phone,
I gave it to a friend of mine, Erkstein, Felix." So once we have Erkstein, Felix's name, does anybody in his family
or does he own a white van that's similar to the one that was used in the abduction?
And it turns out that his father, Philip Felix, was the one who was registered to
a van that looked just like the car that was used in the Manakam Starks abduction. That's a solid piece of
evidence. We know that that van was involved. If we can find the van, then that's going to help us out.
So then when we ran the van, we noticed the numerous tickets on it. We impounded
it for tickets. The van is impounded. NYPD forensics examined the vehicle for evidence and
it's a gold mine. We found cash check duct tape and we found zip ties and we also found a substantial amount of blood
in there. And ultimately after a DNA analysis we found out that it's Monakum Snarks. So now we know we have the van,
we have the cell phone, and now we got kind of a good idea where we're going with this.
Philip Felix actually came in looking for the van. And he wanted to know, you know, why did you take the van and can I
get it back? And he's like, I don't use the van. My sons use the van. They use it for construction. We need the van
back because that's how they make their money. During the course of the interview, Mr. Felix explained to me
that he did have some type of dealings with Manakam Stark, that he was involved in
construction himself as well as his son, and they in fact had worked for Monakum
at some point. Police obtain a subpoena for Erskin Felix's phone records and they discover he contacted his brother
Kendall and his two cousins, Kendall Felix and Irvin Henry. Police subpoena their phone records as well. We were
able to pinpoint where those phones were at that particular night of the Monakam
Stark murder. We were able to put them in the vicinity of the crime on those specific night.
Phones are very big when it comes to homicide because everybody has their phones now. Like it's the new smoking
gun. The decisions made that we're going to pick them up individually and take them into different
precincts. So this way there's no chance of putting a story together. There's no
chance of listen, this is what I'm going to say, this is what you should say. We're we're going to get a story from
each one of them and then we'll compare the stories and try and figure out who's
possibly telling us the truth and who's not. Two suspects brought into the 90th precinct in Brooklyn. Two are brought
into the 79th precinct. Stein Felix, he denied everything. We confronted him with the phone. We said
to him, "Oh, do you know Manakam Stark?" And he's like, "Yeah, I love Monaco. You
know, I I treat him like a dad. In fact, I protect him from people that are trying to hurt him because he's got a
lot of money and tenants don't like him." Stein said he was with his girlfriend all all night. There's no way
he could have killed Monakam Stark. His phone wasn't with his girlfriend. It was
pinging right where the abduction took place. We know that it was [ __ ] but he kept with his story that he had nothing
to do with it. Erskin Felix's brother Kendall and his cousins Irvin and Kandell are just as
tight lipped. Detectives know they don't have enough evidence to make arrests. It's all circumstantial at this point.
They need one of the suspects to crack. Kendelle is the youngest of the four. from experienced detectives. Usually the
youngest of the four might be the weakest link. We spent probably an hour just talking to him about his background,
sports, just to kind of break the ice to get him to feel comfortable with us. So it was about 6:30 and we knew
that Kendall hadn't had dinner. And he looked at me, he said, "You know, I really just want to go home and eat my
mother's cooking." And I kind of looked back at him and I said, "Uh, I don't think that's going to happen anytime
soon." And from his facial expression and his body language, I knew I I had hit a nerve. I knew something was up.
Kendall, uh, he was the driver of the the van that night. He actually he broke. He said, "Listen, it was all
Erkstein's plan. He owed us $20,000." Erskin was having problems with Mr. Stark. Erskin had not been paid for a
job or some type of construction work. The night of when this kidnapping took place that he told Kendall,
"Tonight is the night that we're getting paid." He gave us everything. Christmas 2013 places too much financial
pressure on construction worker Erskin Felix. He doesn't want to be broke over the
holidays. During a New Year's snowstorm, Felix thinks he can safely shake down businessman and landlord Manakam Stark,
who owes him money. When Stark's half burned body is found in a Long Island dumpster, it's a grim sign of a New
Year's gone very wrong. Kendall laid the whole thing out. Appeared to be a robbery that went
wrong. The dispute started to escalate sometime in November. The phone was placed on the
car sometime in late November. At that point they were tracking him. Monakam had owed Erskin the money for
some time and Erskin was getting frustrated uh to the point of he was now actually getting mad. Erskin needed
money to have a Christmas for his family. Finally, right after New Year's, Erskin had reached a boiling point.
So Manakob Stark was behind in paying these guys about $20,000 for their work. And they came up with a plan. If he's
not going to give him the money, we're going to take it from him. They decide to do it on a snowy night right after
New Year's. They thought, you know, with all the snow, the cops weren't going to
be out. It would have been a good night to get away with something like that. They didn't expect him to fight as
violently as as he did, and the plan just went really bad from there. Kendall said that he was the driver.
Erskin was out in the snow with him fighting. Erskin told him, "You got to put hands on him, too. Let's let's go."
They were able to get him into the van. At that point, Mr. Stark was still fighting Erskin in the back of the van.
As they pulled away from the office, at some point, Stark stopped fighting. Stark stopped breathing. There was panic
in the van. Kendall didn't know what to do. Erskin and Kendell Felix are also part of a close-knit family who are
immigrants from St. Lucia. When they panic, they recruit Erskin's brother Kendall and cousin Irvin Henry.
Henry at the time said that he opened up the van and saw the body in there. He's
like, I, you know, I want no part of this. And and he left. The three of them along with Mr. Stark drove back near the
location of uh Mr. Stark's office and uh Kendall indicated at that point uh the block was uh closed off and there was uh
police activity over by Mr. Stark's uh office at that time. The Felix family is desperate to remove evidence at the
scene. The cell phone they used as a tracker on Monocus Stark's car. Erstein ordered them to stop a couple blocks
away from the murder scene. That's when he got out of the car and he tried to go
see if he could retrieve the phone from underneath Monakam Stark's car. He said it was too hot, too many cops around. So
then he never got back to the van. He called up Kendall and told him to drive the body out to Long Island and dispose
of it. It was never really explained why uh that location was picked, but they they
drove uh Mr. Stark's body and it seems that they just picked this gas station and deposited Mr. uh uh Stark's body in
that dumpster and they were able to obtain some gasoline and then uh took that gasoline that they purchased and
went back to the location and ignited the dumpster on fire and drove back to Brooklyn that
night. Kendell Felix is arrested on murder charges. He says he'll never testify against family in court. Without that
testimony, detectives won't have a case against Erskin, Kendall, and Henry Irvin. Although he implicated other
people, um you can't just arrest people based on what they call a co-conspirator
statement. So, unfortunately, we had to let uh everybody go except for Kendall. It was an empty feeling, but you know
that happens sometimes when you're investigating murders. Like you have to have patience. You can't just throw
somebody in jail because you think they did the murder. You have to have a prosecutable case against them. So you
sometimes it takes a little longer to gather that evidence to put those people on trial.
Kandell Felix spends 11 months in jail, but then he finally decides to testify against the others in exchange for a
lenient sentence. Originally, Kendelle, he told them what had happened that night. He said he
would not testify against his relatives. when he was getting ready to go to trial, his lawyer told him like uh if
he's convicted of murder, he would be facing 25 years to life. At that point, he decided to cooperate police and uh
testify against his relatives, but he did give us a good story of who was involved and who went
where. And everything that Kendall told us was corroborated through other means uh electronically and forensically to
piece together this crime to make it a solid case. Erskin Felix is charged with murder and kidnapping. Kendall is
charged with hindering prosecution and tampering with physical evidence. Their arrest come nearly 3 years after the
crime. Kendall Felix and Erskin Felix are both convicted of Manakam Stark's murder. Erskin sentenced to 24 years to
life behind bars. His brother Kendall pleads guilty to conspiracy and hindering prosecution. He's sentenced to
2 and 12 to 7 years. Cousin Kandell given a reduced sentence of 15 years to life. Irvin Henry pleads guilty to
tampering with physical evidence and a sentence to just 3 months in jail. We cannot bring you back. Well, definitely
the family will always be broken and our family will never be the same as it was
in the past. Whether it's Hanukkah, Christmas, New Year's, Thanksgiving, you know, whatever holiday it is, if you
lost a family member right before any holiday, I don't think it's something you forget. It's something that you're
going to be reminded of every year. In the end, the murder of family man and businessman Stark is supposed to be a
smaller crime which goes horribly wrong. Its lurid details captivate the city of
New York with its real life drama of crime and a tragic way to ring in the new year. I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for
joining us here on the Christmas killings. [Music] Heat. Heat.

Local Hassidic businessman Menachem Stark is kidnapped right in front of his Brooklyn office. When his half-burnt body shows up in a dumpster out on Long Island days later, police find themselves facing a holiday whodunit.

Hosted by Nancy Grace, The Christmas Killings is a true crime docuseries that blends merry with mystery as it delves into holiday-season homicide investigations.

Brief Summary

Monakam Stark was kidnapped and murdered in 2014 due to financial disputes, leading to a complex investigation and eventual arrests.

Key points

Monakam Stark Kidnapped. A local businessman is kidnapped during a blizzard, raising community alarm.
Body Found. Police discover a body in a dumpster, leading to a homicide investigation.
Community Mourning. Thousands gather to mourn Monakam Stark, highlighting the impact of his murder.
Financial Troubles. Investigators uncover Monakam Stark's significant financial issues, hinting at possible motives.
Russian Mob Involvement. Rumors of the Russian mob's involvement in Stark's murder surface, complicating the investigation.
The Outrageous Headline. The New York Post's coverage ignites outrage in the Hidic community.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

40 million is a lot of money.

1:11WatchApr 22, 2025

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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