Colón’s Corner: Finding Danny

The night an NYPD hero was brought home

The search had been strenuous. The winter slowly yielding way to spring, it had been six painful months looking through the remains of the World Trade Center following the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. The time down at Ground Zero lengthy, the noble efforts to respectfully recover the fallen had been incredibly laborious for all involved. For the surviving members of the NYPD Bomb Squad, their effort saw them longingly sift through the rubble specifically to find their brother: NYPD Detective Second Grade Claude “Danny” Richards.

Late on the night of March 29, 2002, their wait concluded. Digging feverishly through the rubble, Emergency Service Unit officers would successfully uncover the 18-year NYPD veteran. Soon, a call was made to the Bomb Squad to come down to the site. A bittersweet conclusion, the fallen 46-year-old detective’s body was respectfully draped in an American flag and carried out by his comrades. No longer would he have to cruelly lie under that melted twisted steel. At last, and at least, there’d be a more dignified final resting place.

What brought Danny down there in the first place on that fateful Tuesday six months prior? A special kind of courage. No, it didn’t just come to him on that day spontaneously, it was built in him from boyhood. Growing up one of seven siblings, Detective Richards enlisted in the Army at 22 years of age in 1977. Before long, he’d end up becoming an Army Airborne Ranger. With dangerous yet unique assignments abroad, Danny would enjoy an equally unique assignment stateside as a member of the Presidential Honor Guard during the Carter administration.

After surviving war zones abroad, he’d soon find himself in a different war zone: the murky 1980’s streets of the Big Apple. A company sergeant in his police academy class, Dan started out his NYPD career in Greenwich Village’s sixth precinct in 1983. Far from the more civil Greenwich Village of today, the village in 1983 when Dan got there was a lot more wild, unpredictable, and dangerous.

Working midnights initially after a stint in the old Neighborhood Stabilization Unit, patrol was no day at the beach, even for an Army Ranger. Yet, he distinguished himself, quickly earning the respect of those around him. It rapidly became clear to everyone that he was a special breed. Squared away, he was what you wanted in a cop.

Eager to do even more for the department, Danny put in for the Bomb Squad and in 1986 after a sterling recommendation from a good friend in?Detective Don Sadowy, who had joined the unit two years prior in 1984, he was accepted. With just three years as a New York City Police Officer, he’d already accomplished so much. Yet, he was just getting started. After performing at a very high level as a rookie bomb technician, he’d pass the rigorously intense EOD school in Huntsville, Alabama and thus became certified as an explosive’s ordinance specialist. Three years after joining the squad, he was promoted to detective third grade in July of 1989.

The 90’s would see him take part in some of the unit’s biggest investigations in their history. From the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the December 1994 firebombing of Lower Manhattan’s Four Train by disturbed extortionist Edward Leary, and the July 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800, he was involved in all of it. Those cases don’t even account for all the suspicious packages he encountered and rendered safe across his 15 years in the unit, such as this one in the summer of 1995:

In September of 1996 however, Danny would extend his service abroad. With 13 years on the New York City Police Department, 10 of them with the Bomb Squad, he’d volunteer for an assignment not many would have the gall to. Upon request from the State Department,?he’d venture off to Bosnia. A member of a UN International Police Task Force, he’d volunteer to defuse land mines in the war-ravaged region while providing the basic necessities to the residents of the region who didn’t have any and we as residents of a first world country so often take for granted. Staying and assisting in the area through October of 1997, he returned to New York City and the NYPD Bomb Squad with both a new resolve and a greater understanding of the ever-changing world around him. In a testament to his character, he even talked of someday returning to the land to continue his humanitarian efforts.

In December of 2000, he’d receive another honor, being promoted to detective second grade. That same year, he was thrust into the role of intelligence coordinator for the Bomb Squad after the retirement of the aforementioned Detective Sadowy just two months prior in October. With 17 years on the job by the winter of 2000, he’d reached the summit. A few years away from retirement, eligible to leave in January of 2003, he’d firmly set his sights on the next chapter, and with his new role as the intelligence coordinator being strictly office based after 14 years out in the field investigating and defusing whatever and wherever within the five boroughs, it seemed his most dangerous days were behind him.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Dan was off duty. With his coordinator’s role, his hours were 10AM-6PM. Not due to report for duty just yet, the longtime Greenwich Village resident was home getting ready to come to work when the first plane struck the North Tower at 8:46AM. Upon the strike of the second plane into the South Tower at 9:03AM, Detective Richards, like every police officer and firefighter in the city that day took right off in a frenzy to get down to the burning towers.

Arriving first at the Bomb Squad’s base on the second floor of the sixth precinct before reporting to the Trade Center, it’d be there that Richards would gather equipment and team up with other members of the squad. Preparing to respond with him were fellow Detectives Mike Oldmixon, Steve Berberich, and Dan McNally as well as Police Officer Joe Dolan. As the men gathered gear to bring to the largest emergency they’d ever respond to, Richards would quip to Dolan as he put-on heavy-duty work boots that he’d gotten following the 1993 attack: “I got these at the last World Trade Center now I’m finally gonna get the chance to wear them!”.

Getting into one of the Bomb Squad vans, the team went lights and sirens screaming down to the scene. Detective Berberich was driving with Detective Richards in the front passenger seat telling him where to go while Detective Oldmixon, Detective McNally, and Officer Dolan rode in the backseat. It was while on their trek down that they witnessed the South Tower collapse. With one tower still standing but fully engulfed, the men now realized this would be no investigation, there’d be plenty of time for that later. This would be a rescue mission.

Mobilizing at the corner of Church and Vesey Street, the men made their way up an escalator and onto the Trade Center’s plaza above street level. What awaited them was a disturbing and surreal sight. Recalled Detective McNally in a January 2003 interview: “The North Tower was fully engulfed. She was peeling off her parts of her facade, pieces of glass were coming down, pieces of light, trim work that surrounds the windows were collapsing, and it was a dangerous place to be at that particular point in time.”

Nevertheless, Richards and the men persisted. Assisting the survivors of the first collapse who were trapped on the plaza following it, they cleared debris and created a pathway allowing those previously unable to flee a safe egress down what is now known as the ‘survivor’s staircase’. Determined to aid whomever they could, they’d responded to the call not as bomb technicians or even detectives, but good street cops trying to do the right thing. “It had nothing to do with the Bomb Squad, we were just police officers that day” said Detective Berberich in a March 2002 interview.

Underneath the protective overhang of 6 World Trade Center, Richards and McNally would continue to evacuate civilians and fellow first responders off of the Austin J. Tobin Plaza and down to safety. Assisting those specifically fleeing the doomed North Tower, the two would soon encounter themselves with a group of Emergency Service Unit cops from both the NYPD and Port Authority Police. Having climbed stairs over the last hour, that group, led by Sergeant Mike Curtin of Harlem’s Emergency Service Squad 2 was fatigued but far from ready to cease their rescue operations.

After asking him what it was that his squad needed, Sergeant Curtin requested Detectives Richards and McNally secure him a backboard. Rushing down to a nearby staging area where several ambulances were congregated, Officer Dolan, tending to an NYPD Emergency Service Unit Lieutenant who’d been injured by a piece falling debris, provided the detectives with one. After heading back up to the plaza, they evacuated a few more survivors before once again teaming up with Sergeant Curtin, who made the order to search 6 World Trade Center, also known as the Customs House where branches of federal law enforcement agencies such as U.S. Customs and the ATF were housed.

The team by this point was comprised of nine men. Detective Richards, Detective McNally, Sergeant Curtin, two police officers from the Port Authority Police Emergency Service Unit, and NYPD Emergency Service Unit officers Mark DeMarco, Bill Beaury, Steve Belya, and John D’Allara. Entering the lobby, their mission was to conduct a final search before exiting the scene and themselves heading off to safety with Detective Richards carrying the backboard and ready to provide aid in case their search yielded a downed victim.

As they did so, the North Tower began to collapse at 10:28AM. Directly adjacent, 6 World Trade Center was in the pathway of the falling tons of steel. Attempting to make themselves as small as they could, the men leaned up against the lobby’s wall, bracing for impact. The steel debris crashing down from hundreds of feet above would create a seismic chasm in the 47-story building. “It was like having a mountain fall on you”?Detective McNally later said of the collapse.

It was there in that terrifying instant that?Officer D’Allara,?Sergeant Curtin, and?Detective Richards?were killed. The men having died doing what they did best: helping others. Detectives McNally, Oldmixon, and Berberich as well as Officers Belya, Beaury, DeMarco, and the two Port Authority Police ESU cops all escaped, though with serious injuries.

For Danny Richards, it was another moment in a lifetime of them that saw him courageously put himself in harm’s way to help those in need. This would be the one time however, that he wouldn’t survive. Of all the men of the Bomb Squad who responded to the Trade Center that morning, he was the only one not to come home. Detective Brian Hearn, who’d worked with Danny on the Bomb Squad since 1995?recalled seeing his friend on the corner of West and Vesey Street for the last time:?“What are you doing here?” he asked. “The [Bomb Squad] office is a loony bin I had to get out!” replied Danny, clad in a Bomb Squad jumpsuit and police helmet.

Detective Kevin Barry, among the first from the unit to originally respond to the terrorist attack, was equally surprised to see Richards. “You’re supposed to be at the office coordinating things!” He kidded his longtime friend and colleague. Danny’s response just as honest as the one he’d given Detective Hearn: “I’m not missing this for the world somebody else can answer the phones!”

Not many would respond that way but to all who knew him, a response like that was not in the least bit surprising. That was Dan. He was different in the best of ways, as all the men of the Bomb Squad are. Yes, he could’ve very easily stayed in the office and coordinated the response from there. That was his job after all. But he’d never been one to cut and run, and on that day, he wasn’t going to start.

A few days later, with the former Army Ranger still missing in the smoldering rubble of the 110-story towers, the decision was made by Lieutenant Jerry Sheehan, the then commanding officer of the Bomb Squad, to enter the apartment from which Danny had left that morning, never to return.

With the intention being to safeguard his belongings, entering into his apartment along with Lt. Sheehan would be Danny’s older brother James Richards, Sergeant Tony Biondolilo, and veteran Detective and longtime colleague of Danny’s, Denis Mulcahy. The apartment was in immaculate condition. Soft music was playing and not a thing was out of place. Everything was exactly as he had left it. Entering his office, the men would open the first drawer of his desk.

Awaiting them was a bone chilling discovery. There in its case was his detective’s shield, number 244. Beneath it, his last will and testament. He’d organized it that way just before he left. “That told me he knew he may not be coming home,”?said Sergeant Biondolilo. Nonetheless, out that door he went anyway, the safety of others way more pressing to him than his own. “Even if he couldn’t save a single person, he was at least willing to go down there and try” added Detective Jeff Oberdier, another colleague of Danny’s who’d worked alongside him since his arrival to the unit in the fall of 1995.

That brings us back to the night of Friday, March 29, 2002. Rescue workers were getting closer to finding Danny. After Sergeant Curtin was recovered a few weeks earlier on Wednesday, March 6, 2002, it was only a matter of time before both Danny Richards as well as John D’Allara would be found too. Among those working that night was Emergency Service Squad 6 Officers Anthony Lisi and Karl Duenzl.

In the wee hours of the morning, the team would after frenzied digging unearth their fallen brother.?Recalled Lisi: “It was in the middle of the night when we found Claude…he had his [Bomb Squad] jumpsuit on”. Orders had come down from Police Commissioner’s office to leave Detective Richards’s body there until they could arrive for a ceremonial removal. For Lisi and the other rescue personnel on scene, such an order was one they opted to rightfully not follow.

“We looked at each other as emergency cops, and said we’re not leaving him here another second, we’re getting him out of here…he’d spent enough time there”.?For Duenzl, the poignant task was equally necessary: “It’s just one of those things that you do, you do your job to the best of your ability and give these guys the respect that they deserve. You feel grateful to have been there to give these guys the proper send off.”

And a proper sendoff was most definitely given to Detective Richards. Escorted out by a sea of fellow first responders including his brothers in the Bomb Squad, Danny was brought by ambulance and full police escort to nearby Bellevue Hospital. Finally, he was home. The mission of his brothers who loved him so dearly to find him now complete.

These days, a plaque hangs in the Bomb Squad’s office honoring Danny. Erected in 2002, it sits on a designated wall besides the plaques of the five other members of the unit who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty over the course of the squad’s history. The corner of Morton and Barrows Street in Greenwich Village where he happily resided for so many years is now known as ‘Detective Claude ‘Danny’ Richards Way’, having been renamed as such in the late detective’s memory in?October 2003.

There’s a lot of things Danny has missed in the two decades plus since he heroically laid down his life. He didn’t make it to retirement. He didn’t get to embark on that second chapter. Without question, his loss is still felt by all who knew and loved him. Also without question is the fact that his legacy of service and sacrifice lives on. Forever a part of the greatest rescue effort the NYPD has ever participated in and forever a fond memory for those fortunate enough to have been in his company, he holds a special place in the hearts of many. Those who had the honor to have known him, and those who have the honor to know of him.

“Dan Richards was the kind of man who knew the difference between right and wrong, and he knew the difference between difficult and easy, but he would never let something difficult stand between him and doing something right. He was a man who was comfortable in his own skin.” – Detective Dan McNally,?Newsday, October 2001

Mike Colón is the host of the Mic’d In New Haven Podcast which can be found on?all podcast platforms?and is simulcast in video form on?YouTube