Metro

Prime suspect in ‘72 NYPD cop slay had been under FBI investigation

The prime suspect in the 1972 murder of an NYPD cop at a Harlem mosque was under FBI surveillance for at least seven years before the slaying, The Post has learned.

Louis Dupree, who was charged twice in the killing Officer Philip Cardillo, 31, had been in the cross-hairs of at least six federal informants before the mosque shooting, according to bureau files obtained by The Post.

Cardillo, a father of three was gunned down inside a Nation of Islam mosque, 40 years ago this Saturday. No one has ever been convicted of the crime.

The shocking FBI documents reveal that least two of the informant’s identities were so sensitive, the bureau believed releasing their names could compromise national security. Another notes that several of the FBI’s informants within the Nation of Islam had “furnished reliable information in the past.”

Their names and other identifying material are blacked out.

The FBI files also contain a detailed file on Dupree, which documents at least nine years of surveillance by agents and informants who noted his attendance at 181 separate meetings at Nation of Islam mosques in Queens, The Bronx, and Brooklyn between 1965 and 1972.

One of the documents obtained by The Post also appears to contradict assurances from former FBI Director Clarence Kelly made four years after the shooting that the FBI investigated the mosque only had only after Cardillo had been killed.

In 1976 Nation of Islam lawyer, Saad El-Amin, wrote to the U.S. Attorney General Edward H. Levi about “the suspicion that there was indeed FBI involvement in this case,” before the shooting.

FBI Director Clarence Kelly, wrote back to Amin, assuring him his fears were unjustified.

“Neither the FBI nor any FBI source or informant was in any way connected with the confrontation or events leading up to the confrontation,” he wrote.

Such discrepancies have led the Cardillo family and many law enforcement officials — most notably, lead detective, Randy Jurgensen, as well as two former assistant district attorney’s directly involved in Dupree’s prosecution — to insist that the FBI knew far more than they were saying at the time.

Dupree, now 72, was twice charged with Cardillo’s murder. But a Manhattan Supreme Court jury deadlocked on a verdict at his first trial and Dupree was acquitted in a second trial, a result many attribute to the NYPD being delayed for years in processing the crime scene and other tactical blunders that arose due to racial sensitivities attached to the case.

Investigators believe that if FBI documents had been made available at the time of Dupree’s 1974 trial would likely be behind bars for the murder.

“Had we had this information [the FBI documents] prior to going to trial, it would have been terribly, terribly helpful,” Jurgensen said yesterday.

Critics insist that flawed tactical decisions doomed the prosecution of Dupree and possible accomplices have made the case one of the most embarrassing chapters in NYPD history.

At Dupree’s East Elmhurst home yesterday a woman who identified herself as his daughter said she was tired of reading about him in the newspapers and said he was not home.

Cardillo was shot inside the Nation of Islam Mosque No. 7, on West 116th Street while responding to a phony 9-11 call for an officer needing assistance.

He died of his wounds a week later.

Cardillo’s family members and law enforcement officials have urged that the Justice Department step into the case, particularly since the NYPD last month closed down a five-year re-investigation by the Major Case Squad of the case that found no new leads.

Additional reporting by CJ Sullivan


philip.messing@nypost.com