Homicide: New York Revisits 2 Teenagers’ Roles In A Central Park Murder

In addition to his enduring Law & Order franchise, producer Dick Wolf’s latest project is Homicide: New York. The new Netflix docuseries, which premiered on March 20, revisits several murder cases from the past three decades through the lens of the people who investigated them.

Episode 2, “Central Park Slaying,” focuses on the 1997 murder of Michael McMorrow, whose body was found in the Central Park lake with multiple stab wounds and his abdomen cut open. It was “overkill,” according to Barbara Butcher, a since-retired death investigator with the New York City Medical Examiner’s office.

Michael McMorrow’s Murder

Daphne Abdela and Christopher Vasquez, both 15, were arrested in connection with the real estate agent’s murder. In the docuseries, Rob Mooney, a retired detective with the New York Police Department, said the teens had been drinking with McMorrow and a group of people in the park.

McMorrow was “in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Mooney said, sharing Abdela’s account of the evening: She and Vasquez had gone swimming, and McMorrow reportedly put his arm around Abdela to warm her up, which Vasquez perceived as him trying to make “advances.”

She said Vasquez was the one who attacked McMorrow until she acknowledged evidence that confirmed she kicked him, which “rendered him helpless,” as Butcher put it.

Daphne Abdela & Christopher Vasquez Today

Abdela pleaded guilty to manslaughter as part of a plea bargain in which she didn’t have to testify against her friend. Vasquez was separately found not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter like Abdela. “One of the biggest problems was that Daphne Abdela was not available and there was nothing to guide us through it,” an anonymous juror told The New York Times in 1998. “We just felt that we couldn’t be sure what happened and were not 100% positive that he committed a murder.”

Both Abdela and Vasquez were released in 2004. McMorrow’s brother, Charles, said in Homicide that his “brother’s life was worth a lot more than six years in prison.” The investigators, too, expressed frustration with the case — specifically that they still don’t know exactly what led to McMorrow’s murder.

“I don’t feel like justice was done. I know, it’s the system, and that’s the law, and they were kids, and that’s what happens. But it just doesn’t feel fair,” Butcher said.

Former Assistant District Attorney Richard Planksy said he was “not aware” of Vasquez reoffending, but Abdela went back to prison after violating her parole with an assault, according to the docuseries.

The last update about Abdela came from the New York Post and New York Daily News, which both reported in 2009 that she’d filed a lawsuit about injuries sustained in an alleged car accident.