A source close to the case told FailedMessiah.com that the NYPD has reopened the investigation into the highly suspicious death of Howard Frank, a jewish beggar who was apparently mudered just over one year ago hours after telling people that he was being hunted and that he was going to be murdered.
Howard Frank collecting charity at Chabad's main synagogue, 770 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York
Exclusive: Police Reopen Investigation Into Apparent Murder Of Jewish Beggar Howard Frank
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
It isn't over after all.
A source close to the case has told Failedmessiah.com that the NYPD has reopened its investigation into the highly suspicious death of Howard Frank, a Jewish beggar who was apparently murdered just over one year ago, hours after telling people that he was being hunted down and would soon be murdered.
Frank’s body was found floating in the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn.
Police were quick to label the death a suicide after the haredi organization Missaskim blocked an autopsy without consulting Frank's family, and closed the case – even though friends, acquaintances and Frank’s brother Robert begged them not to.
Last year, a senior-level NYPD officer told the New York Post on condition of anonymity that the case had been closed too soon and had been mishandled.
Suspicion at the time focused on two people: a wealthy New Yorker, Henry Hewes – a minor New York City political figure who is married into the Dupont family. Hewes had loaned Frank tens of thousands of dollars over several years time and had not been repaid, and an eccentric friend of Frank’s, Frank Pohole, who opened his rundown Brooklyn home to the homeless beggar. The two lived in that home, often without heat, hot water or electricity, for several years.
But police dismmissed both as suspects, and argued that the money Howard Frank owed was not significant enought to Hewes to cause him to murder Frank.
But the focus of the investigation now appears to have shifted.
In the weeks leading up to his death, Frank had threatened to reveal damaging information he had gathered about several haredi and Orthodox rabbis, and about a leading kosher supervision organization, unless certain rabbis fulfilled their promises to him to get him the money he needed to pay the $60,000 to $80,000 he owed.
The rabbis had alleged promised they would help Frank but did not, provoking the desperate, eccentric man to threaten them.
Frank owned a photo collection with a potential worth of more than $1 million dollars.
The photos are stills and publicity shots – some exceeding rare – from every television show aired from the infancy of television through the mid-1970s.
Frank eked out a living by occasionally leasing photos from his collection to book publishers, magazines and documentary film producers.
Howard Frank Murder Posts:
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Exclusive: Medical Examiner, Police Refuse To Exhume Beggar's Body.
Video: PIX 11 – The Apparent Murder Of Howard Frank.
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The Last Will And Testament Of Howard Frank.
A Picture Imperfect.