Julio Rivera

Julio Rivera (1961 - July 2, 1990) was a Latino gay man from Queens, New York, by way of Columbia. On July 2, 1990, he was lured into an attack by Daniel Doyle, Esat Bici, and Eric Brown. Rivera was beaten by the three men, and fatally stabbed by Doyle. Doyle, Bici, and Brown had gone out that evening in search of a drug addict or gay man to attack.

Julio Rivera

Rivera, 29, was worked as a bartender, and had lived in Jackson Heights for 10 years.¹⁾ He was the youngest of six children, raised in the South Bronx. He dropped out of school in the seventh grade, and moved to Manhattan as a teenager.²⁾

On the night Rivera was attacked, he had been returning from a friends house in Rego Park to the Jackson Heights apartment he shared with a friend. Rivera was attacked on the Jackson Heights playground at around 3:00 a.m. on July 2, 1990.³⁾

At some point on his way home, Rivera encountered Brown. Brown, a former student at the Art Students League in Manhattan, had been chosen to approach and lure Rivera because his shoulder length hair made his less threatening than Doyle and Bici, whose heads were shaved in skinhead fashion. Brown lured Rivera to the playground, where Bici and Doyle appeared. Bici then hit Rivera in the head with a 40-ouce beer bottle, causing him to double over. Bici then took out a hammer and began attacking Rivera with it. Doyle punched Rivera in the face, kicked him in the stomach, and then stabbed Rivera, delivering the would that would prove to be fatal. At trial the prosecutor claimed that Brown also hit Rivera in the face with a wrench, but Doyle did not mention that in his testimony.⁴⁾

Doyle, Bici, and Brown were affiliated with the Doc Marten Skinheads street gang.⁵⁾ The name caused the gang – which included Black, Asian, and Hispanic members – to be confused with neo-nazi skinheads, and was changed to stand for “Drugs, Money, and Sex.”

Allen Sack, a friend of Rivera's arrived on the scene to find Rivera lying in a pool of blood.⁶⁾

Garzon died of the wounds sustained from the attack in the playground on 77th Street. According to gays in the area, attacks like the one that killed Rivera had been going on in the area for 15 years.⁷⁾ Police found traces of cocaine in Rivera's blood, initially leading them to believe the murder was drug-related.⁸⁾ When police initially refused to classify Rivera's murder as bias-related, gay groups responded with protests and demonstrations.⁹⁾

Rivera's murder galvanized the gay community in Jackson Heights. Queer Nation distributed flyers in Jackson Heights, and 350 peopled joined in a candlelight march from to the schoolyard where Rivera was attacked.¹⁰⁾ Another demonstration marched from Jackson Heights to Gracie mansion, demanding that the police declare Rivera's murder a bias-related crime. The New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project offered a $3,500 reward for information on the case. ¹¹⁾

Doyle, Bici and Brown were arrested in November 1990, on second degree murder and weapons charges. Doyle and Brown were arrested on November 12, and Bici was arrested on November 19. Police also found the hammer used in the attack.

The Queens district attorney announced that he would treated the case as a bias-related incident. Four days later, on December 17, the police department's Bias Review Panel classified the murder as a bias-related crime.¹²⁾

Doyle testified as the main defense witness at the trial of Bici and Brown. Though Doyle said he instigated the attack, and was originally charged with second degree murder, he was allowed to plea to the lesser charge of manslaughter in exchange for testifying against Bici and Brown. ¹³⁾ He was sentenced to 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison.

Doyle said that he, Bici, and Brown had been drinking heavily at a party at his house on the night of the attack. Afterwards, they went out with a claw hammer, a wrench, and a beer bottle, looking for “a drug dealer or a drug addict or a homo out cruising” to assault. Doyle told Brown that he would like to “beat some people up, stretch some people out.”¹⁴⁾ Bici, a high school drop out who had held various part-time jobs, overheard the conversation and wanted to join them.¹⁵⁾ They went to the school yard because they knew it was a place where gay men often went to cruise.¹⁶⁾

During his second day of testimony, Doyle admitted that he did not originally tell police that he, Bici, and Brown set out to find a gay man to ambush. He had originally told police that he was on his way back home after buying beer, when he came upon Bici and Brown already struggling with Rivera. The defense claimed that Doyle changed his story after reaching a plea agreement with the prosecution, which allowed him to avoid a second degree murder charge that carried a potential sentence of 25 years to life in prison.¹⁷⁾

After testimony in the trial ended, the defense argued that the evidence present was not sufficient to send the case to the jury. The judge rejected the defense motions, and refused to dismiss second degree murder charges against Brown and Bici, but said he would consider allowing the jury to consider manslaughter and assault in addition to the murder charges.¹⁸⁾

Bici and Brown were charged with second degree murder, but the judge instructed the jury that they could also consider charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.¹⁹⁾

Bici and Brown were sentenced to 25 years to life in prison – the maximum sentence – for their role in Rivera's murder. Bici and Brown were convicted of helping Doyle lure Rivera to the playground where the three ambushed him. ²⁰⁾

In February 1995, an appellate court overturned the convictions of Bici and Brown, on the grounds that the trial judge had made fundamental procedural errors, which deprived the defendants of their rights. The appellate panel called for a new trial, but added that the evidence presented at trial was sufficient to legally establish their guilt.²¹⁾

On May 13, 1996, Brown pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of first degree manslaughter with a sentence of 5 to 15 years. As part of his appeal, Brown agreed to testify against Bici. When he appeared in court, Brown said that he, Doyle and Bici had agreed to attack a gay man in the schoolyard. As part of the plan, Brown said he engaged Rivera in conversation, and lured him into the ambush by Doyle and Bici. Brown said he ran away when the attack began.²²⁾

On May 14, 1996, Bici failed to appear at a court hearing, causing the judge to revoke his $350,000 bail. Bici remained a fugitive for six years. He was rumored to be in Europe²³⁾, touring with the New York hardcore band Madball, prompting an international manhunt. ²⁴⁾. Bici was featured twice on television's “America's Most Wanted”²⁵⁾

On October 2, 2002, Bici was killed in Tijuana, Mexico in what appeared to be a drug related murder. He had been shot in the shoulder and the head. Bici was initially identified by through a double eagle tattoo he had attempted to have removed. Fingerprints later confirmed his identity.²⁶⁾

Rivera's murder would be remembered when Edgar Garzon, a gay Latino man, was murdered in 2001 – in what was believed to be a hate crime – just a block away from the playground where Rivera was killed.