A TRUE crime author says there are still unanswered questions in the decades-old case of a New York real estate worker who was brutally stabbed to death after hanging out with two teens.
So-called Baby-Faced Butcher Daphne Abdela was sent to prison for manslaughter after pointing cops to the body of 44-year-old Michael McMorrow in Central Park in 1997.
The adopted daughter of a food industry executive, Abdela enjoyed all the pleasures of growing up rich in New York City's Upper West Side neighborhood by Central Park.
The teen used her dad's elite status to land a spot in the elite private school Columbia Grammar and Preparatory.
But outside of class, she was nothing but trouble, people who knew her said.
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Abdela was described as feisty and aggressive and would pick fights and drink in the park while her dad was traveling, according to author and ex-neighbor Stella Sands.
"She was just a badass. She was difficult," Sands, who wrote the true crime book Baby-Faced Butchers, exclusively told The U.S. Sun.
"She was tough-looking and would hang out on our street. She was not your sweet lovely little blonde girl."
SHOCK MURDER
On May 23, 1997, Michael McMorrow, a middle-aged professional who lived with his mother on the Upper West Side, was murdered.
Hours before his death, McMorrow hung out with Abdela and her friend Christopher Vasquez, a 15-year-old altar boy who lived across the park in East Harlem and met Abdela through rollerskating.
Although McMorrow and Abdela met in an Alcoholics Anonymous program, they would meet up in the park to drink beer together.
"Every sort of person is in the park at night," Sands, a native New Yorker, said.
"You could be with any group. There would be older people, younger people, Black, white, this, that.
"If you had beer, somebody would be willing to come and sit with you."
Eventually, the trio made their way to the Strawberry Fields section of the park, a landscaped area dedicated to John Lennon.
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Though the night started like any other, it ended with a harrowing 911 call made by Abdela.
The teen called the cops to tell them there was a body in the lake.
A massive search effort was launched.
Crews found McMorrow's corpse with 38 stab wounds and injuries on his face, hands, and neck, detectives who worked the scene said in the Netflix documentary Homicide: New York.
Law enforcement described seeing intestines floating in the water and said stones had been stuffed in his abdomen to try to sink the body.
While detectives investigated the horrific scene, responding officers went to Abdela's building by the park to chat with her and Vasquez.
Helicopters were flying over Central Park, and when something like that happens, you know there's been a murder
Stella Sands
Cops found the pair in a bathroom washing blood off their bodies before Abdela cursed them out and told them to leave.
Later that night, Abdela admitted to knowing what happened to McMorrow and pointed the finger at Vasquez.
Abdela said he "went crazy and killed the guy," but police worked to gather evidence before taking her word as fact, ex-detectives said in the docuseries.
Detectives soon located Vasquez's pocket knife and saw it was covered in dried blood that they confirmed to be McMorrow's.
Evidence pointed to the teen's involvement, but what happened in the moments leading up to the killing remained a mystery.
STELLA SANDS' CONNECTION TO DAPHNE ABDELA
Sands, who gathered information by speaking to those close to the case, remembered the news of McMorrow's murder being on everyone's lips.
"Helicopters were flying over Central Park, and when something like that happens, you know there's been a murder," she said.
"It was like a frenzy, people were stunned."
A fellow Upper West Side resident, the writer was shocked to see Abdela's name make headlines as the teen had grown up playing with her daughter.
Sands said that her daughter and Abdela would play together in the park as toddlers, but ended up going to different schools when they got older.
Though Sands fell out of touch with the family, she got to know more about them by interviewing people from Abdela's school, Columbia Prep.
QUESTIONS REMAIN
After calling the police, Abdela told cops that Vasquez attacked McMorrow after the teens went skinny dipping in Central Park.
She claimed that McMorrow had tried to grab her and kiss her after she got out of the water, causing Vasquez to enter a mad rage.
The teen boy, a Boy Scout and former alter boy, then pulled out a pocket knife and started attacking McMorrow while a horrified Abdela tried to hold him back, she said at the time.
However, she later changed her story in a private meeting with prosecutors and the district attorney.
Detectives questioned how Vasquez was able to overpower a 6-foot-1 man who weighed around 200 pounds and believed that Abdela's allegations didn't align with McMorrow's character.
The medical examiner also found bruises on the real estate worker's body that were consistent with the bottom of Abdela's rollerskates.
All of this evidence was presented to Abdela and her lawyer, and a plea deal was accepted by the teens.
Because a murder trial was never held, there are still questions over what happened that night.
The motivation behind the killing and who took McMorrow's life are both mysteries to this day.
"Three people were there, and two people came out," Sands said.
"So that's the unanswered question. Who actually did it?"
Abdela and Vasquez were both convicted of manslaughter and served six years of their sentence before they were both released.
Neither of them have been arrested since their release.
After Abdela was released, a note was found taped to a park bench near where McMorrow's body was found.
The letter, signed by "D," said, "Rest easy. I tried to save you," the New York Post reported at the time.
"I'm sorry I failed you. I'm sorry for the pain I caused you & your family."
