From the archives: Jailhouse justice? 5 inmates charged in assault on Colin Ferguson

This story was originally published in Newsday on March 26, 1994.

Five inmates - including one convicted of attacking a woman in a Westbury junkyard and leaving her handcuffed to freeze to death - were charged yesterday in the Nassau jailhouse assault on accused LIRR gunman Colin Ferguson.

The inmates, whose resumes include criminal charges ranging from burglary to kidnaping and murder, were charged with assault for allegedly setting upon their 35-year-old cellblockmate as he was walking back to his quarters Tuesday. Ferguson suffered a broken nose and an eye injury.

At their arraignment in District Court yesterday in Hempstead, Judge John M. Galasso used the occasion to reprimand the five inmates.

"Few people feel sorry for the complainant of this case," Galasso said. "In fact, most people would say and feel he deserves any misfortune that befalls him. It is not wrong to feel that way, because of the heinous acts he is accused of committing.

However, there is a line between feeling that way and actually doing something about it . . . To allow anyone on their own to cross that line would be to throw law and justice out the window. There would be no need for courts, lawyers or prosecutors, and all matters would be handled by the next available tree and rope."

Attorneys for Ferguson, charged with killing six passengers and wounding 19 others Dec. 7 on a Long Island Rail Road train approaching the Merillon Avenue station in Garden City, welcomed the arrests but renewed assertions that correction officers had sanctioned the attack.

"The important thing is to go after the people who give the orders," said Ronald Kuby, who along with William Kunstler is representing Ferguson.

In a jailhouse interview Thursday, Ferguson said the officers were fully aware of what was happening to him. Officials of the correction officers union scoffed at the allegation.

"The allegations are ridiculous," said Thomas DeStefano, president of the union. "William Kunstler made a master legal maneuver in setting up this incident . . . We have nothing to gain. This kind of thing only makes us look bad."

Ferguson, a Jamaican immigrant, is black, and his attorneys said he acted out of "black rage" in shooting whites, Asians and what he described as "Uncle Tom blacks." Four of his alleged assailants are white and one is Latino.

Authorities said yesterday that an investigation by the internal affairs unit of the sheriff's department is continuing into whether the correction officers played any role in the incident. "The matter is being investigated," said Lt. Robert Anderson, a spokesman for the jail. "There is nothing at this particular time to substantiate the allegations as true."

Nassau police Det. Thomas Washington said his own investigation had determined that the only correction officer on the cellblock when the attack occured was at the far end of the tier. "The people responsible have been arrested, and the assault part of the investigation is closed," he said.

Ferguson's attorneys also said they were pursuing efforts to have their client transferred to the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a federal holding facility in Manhattan. Kuby said he believes that even though Ferguson has been transferred to an area of the jail off the lobby where correction officers are assigned, he is still in serious danger. In an interview, Ferguson spoke of an "assassin" lying in wait for him at the jail.

At the arraignment, they sat in a group behind a Plexiglas barrier and, hands cuffed behind their backs, were escorted one by one before Galasso.

The first was Frank Cordero, 36, awaiting sentencing for the 1993 murder of Marie Dominique Voltus, a Haitian emigree who taught church school and worked as an aide to the blind. Cordero, who worked and lived at the junkyard, attacked Voltus when she came to get her windshield repaired. He handcuffed her, stabbed her in the neck with an icepick and then left her in an unheated trailer.

Also charged with the assault was inmate Edward MacKenzie, a 38-year-old Massapequa resident who has been at the jail six times since 1979. He kidnaped a woman from an East Meadow parking lot and forced her to go to New York City. The woman escaped from the car in Times Square and told police. MacKenzie is awaiting transfer to state prison, where he is to serve a sentence of 25 years to life.

Also charged were Marcos Flores, 30, of the Bronx; James Doukas, 23, of Floral Park; and Robert Drobyshewski, 24, of Manhattan. Flores is being held on multiple burglary charges. Doukas, who has been in the Nassau jail five times since 1988, is being held on charges of parole violation and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. Drobyshewski is awaiting trial on assault charges, and was already sentenced to 4 to 8 years on another assault charge.