*When the body of prominent judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam, 65, was found near the Hudson River, the NYPD pretty much concluded it was an open and shut case of suicide.
Now, after protestations by Abdus-Salaam’s husband and family, police are now opening an investigation into her death. Here is what we know so far. The judge went for a walk alone on the evening of April 11, locking the door to her Harlem brownstone, leaving her phone and wallet at home, for some unknown reason.
As a judge on the state’s highest court, she had called in sick that day and hadn’t gone to work. Video from surveillance cameras spaced over several hours showed the judge walking alone toward the river wearing sweat pants and white sneakers.
The last video of her walking was captured after midnight. The next afternoon, her body, dressed in the same clothing, was found at the edge of the river in an area popular with joggers and bicycle riders, according to the police report.
Initially authorities said her death appeared to be suicide because there were no obvious signs of trauma to her body. Perhaps they police were also influenced by reports that her family had a history of suicide … her 92-year-old mother had taken her life during the Easter holiday in 2012 and her brother two years later. However, her family is disputing those stories, saying in a statement that Abdus-Salaam’s mother died naturally of old age and her brother of terminal lung cancer.
Additionally, Gregory Jacobs, an Episcopal priest who become Abdus-Salaam’s third husband when they married last year, also challenged the portrayal of his wife as suicidal.
“Reports have frequently included unsubstantiated comments concerning my wife’s possible mental and emotional state of mind at the time of her death. Those of us who loved Sheila and knew her well do not believe that these unfounded conclusions have any basis in reality,” read a statement Jacobs released Wednesday.
So now, what at first looked like an open-and-shut case to police has been assigned a special team of investigators by the NYPD, which is now treating Abdus-Salaam’s death as suspicious. The police on Tuesday put out a poster asking for information, accompanied by a picture of the judge, photographed, as always, impeccably dressed, this time in a cream-colored jacket and pearls with wire-rimmed eyeglasses.
Perhaps the suspicions about Abdus-Salaam’s death were fueled in part by the death of another African American judge the day before in Illinois. Cook County criminal court Judge Raymond Myles was shot April 10 outside his home in Chicago in what police are calling a robbery.
Abdus-Salaam’s death has attracted much speculation on social media and in the New York tabloids.
“She was a black woman in an age of anti-blackness and white supremacy. She was a woman in an age where violence against women is too often dismissed,” wrote political commentator Shaun King in a column Tuesday in the New York Daily News. “Sheila Abdus-Salaam may have very well chosen to check out of this world. That was her decision to make, but the troubling reality is that we live in a time where many ugly forces of evil could’ve also seen her as a threat and killed her.’’
You can read/learn MORE about the Abdus-Salaam case at LA Times.
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