Star Witness In 1990 Murder Case Vanishes

This much is known about Thomas Morales. He is known as Spanky on the street, and also goes by the name Jimmy Rodriguez. He is about 5-foot-8 and in his 40s, thin, wears an earring in his left ear and a mustache.

Thomas Morales was due to testify in court last week.

When he was 11 or 12, he met a younger boy named Joey Pillot, and they grew up to become members of a homicidal drug and extortion gang called C & C, which operated in the South Bronx.

This week, Mr. Morales is wanted as a witness in one of the more notorious and vexing trials of the last 20 years in New York, the murder of a bouncer at the Palladium nightclub on Nov. 23, 1990.

To call him the star witness might be underselling his role. The defense was hoping that he would steal the show by taking the witness stand and revealing that he and his childhood friend, Mr. Pillot, and not the defendant, David Lemus, were the gunmen in the shooting that led to the death of the bouncer, Marcus Peterson, all those years ago.

But, to the astonishment and consternation of all, Mr. Morales has vanished.

He was in court as recently as late October for pretrial hearings. Then last week he stopped answering his mail, and a telephone he used was disconnected just days after opening arguments in the Palladium trial.