"NYC FIREFIGHTER COMMITS DISGRACEFUL CRIMES"

"BADGE OF DISHONOR"

February 25, 2004

World Trade Center Souvenir Trial Begins

   The Associated Press
   
   New York – A retired firefighter accused of stealing a wedding photo, a smashed fire department radio and other items from the shambles of Ground Zero "came to help" in the post-Sept. 11 cleanup but instead became a souvenir hunter and boasted about it, a prosecutor said yesterday.
 

   Samuel Brandon collected items that had "far greater personal and emotional value to their owners, and he said as much," Assistant District Attorney Judy Salwen said at the opening of Brandon's trial in Manhattan criminal court.
 

   The prosecutor said Brandon, 61, of Pine Bush, "bragged to anyone who would listen, and his bragging was his undoing."
 

   Brandon, who retired from the fire department in 1984, is charged with 11 misdemeanors, each punishable by a year in jail. He is accused of stealing artifacts while a volunteer recovery worker at the World Trade Center site in 2002.
 

   He kept a damaged Motorola walkie-talkie of the type used by firefighters, seven ID cards – two belonging to people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack – a photo of an unidentified couple at their wedding, a key and a quarter, authorities contend.
 

   Defense attorney Ron Kliegerman said the items gathered by Brandon were essentially worthless and the theft charges were based on "an appeal to people's emotions" rather than facts or solid evidence.
 

   Some survivors of World Trade Center victims were angered by Kliegerman's similar remarks earlier.
 

   "This guy [Brandon] is worthless ... a disgrace to whatever uniform he used to wear," said Monica Gabrielle, whose husband, an insurance executive, died in the collapse of the south tower.
 

   Brandon was arrested in June 2002 after a prospective buyer of his home saw a photo of him standing in the trade center wreckage holding what appeared to be a human hip bone and told authorities.
 

   Detective John Curnyn of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey testified that state police later sent two undercover detectives to Brandon's home, masquerading as a couple looking to buy a house. Brandon showed them the radio and the picture, but they did not see the hip bone, he said.
 

   Kliegerman, the defense attorney, said, "He did not take the hip bone, and he never had it at his house."
 

   He said the bone apparently was tagged and turned over to the medical examiner's office along with thousands of other remains.
 

   Police using a search warrant later found the other items at Brandon's home, Curnyn said.

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