Just before dawn on Feb. 27, 2004, five shots rang out in the middle of a Coney Island rail yard, killing Luigi Sedita and Clives Patterson in cold blood.
The two MTA supervisors were seated in their trailer office on the vast, desolate lot at the time.
There were no signs of a struggle and both had their wallets on them when the bodies were found.
There were no witnesses to the slayings. No one apparently heard the 9 mm bullets being discharged into the crisp winter air; if they did, 911 was never called.
And no murder weapon was ever found.
But there was a suspect: Darryl Dinkins, a disgruntled former subway train cleaner who’d been fired three months earlier after being caught playing dominoes on the job and spitting at his boss Sedita.
Sedita had written Dinkins up for disciplinary infractions several times earlier.
So within hours of the homicides, cops were at Dinkins’ housing-project door in Brooklyn.
Detectives would later testify that Dinkins, then 40, confessed to the crime-though not before changing his story.
He first said he’d gone home after a night of guzzling booze and snorting cocaine. But after hours of questioning, that account included shooting his supervisors.
Dinkins was arrested the next day and jailed without bail. A month later, on April 29, 2004, he was charged with first- and second-degree murder and related weapons counts.
Four days ago, a Brooklyn jury pronounced Dinkins not guilty, leaving two brutal murders unsolved.
Now the widow of one victim – “devastated” by what she calls a “terrible injustice” – is asking, What happened?
Maria Sedita says Dinkins’ swift acquittal “was an absolute shock” to her family in light of the wealth of circumstantial evidence against him – and the fact that no other suspect has ever been identified.
“We’re so devastated. We haven’t even had time to think about what to do next,” she said.
Maria Sedita, 62, also slammed Assistant DA Mark Hale for “not telling us anything” about the case since Dinkins’ acquittal.
Dinkins’ confession allegedly laid out how the deadly mixture of alcohol, drugs and fury led him to confront Sedita, 61, and Patterson, 46.
“You f – – – d me,” Dinkins told Sedita, according to an unsigned statement. “How can you live with yourself?”
Sedita shot back with more profanity, and Dinkins allegedly told detectives, “It got dark, like the lights went out.”
“He said he was bouncing, he was sweating and he was mad,” said Detective James McCafferty.
Dinkins’ defense team contended that the oral confession – which he neither wrote nor signed – was fabricated by overzealous detectives.
But the bullets that killed Sedita, 61, and Patterson, 46, were matched to shells found near Dinkins’ apartment four years earlier following an unrelated incident.
“Justice has not been served,” said Maria Sedita.
TRIAL AND ERROR
Nov. 4, 2003: Subway cleaner Darryl Dinkins fired for playing dominoes on the job and spitting at supervisor Luigi Sedita (pictured with wife Maria)
Feb. 27, 2004: At around 5 a.m., Sedita, 61, and another MTA supervisor, Clives Patterson, 46, were shot to death in their Brooklyn office
Feb. 28, 2004: Dinkins arrested for slayings; jailed without bail
April 29, 2004: Dinkins arraigned; charged with murder and weapons possession
Sept. 25, 2006: Two-week trial begins in Brooklyn
Oct. 11, 2006: Dinkins acquitted on all charges