Police responding to the scene of a gruesome murder in Harlem more than a quarter century ago found the lifeless body of a young woman. She had been strangled and brutally abused. In the apartment with her was a 5-year-old boy. All night he had lain next to his dead mother’s body, his clothes soaked in her blood. Despite his fear and stunned grief, the little child managed to utter five chilling words that haunt the victim’s family and police to this day.
“Ninja Mike killed my mother,” Tyriek Gladney told them.
That was on May 15, 1999 – and “Ninja Mike” has still not been identified. But NYPD Cold Case Detective Ryan Glas hopes fingerprints and DNA evidence will help him finally arrest the man who killed 22-year-old Tyisha Gladney.
“Hopefully this will lead to closure for the family,” Glas said. “They’ve been through a lot.”
An arrest can’t come soon enough for the victim’s mother, Annie Mae Lynch, 64, who said that when police knocked on her door to tell her what happened, she felt like she was in an episode of ‘Law & Order’ sat.
“When that happened, I couldn’t believe what the police were telling me,” Lynch told the Daily News. “My family is completely confused here. I can’t sleep at night. I’m sick and I’m tired.
“But the Lord will hold me for a while to see who did this.”
Lynch said she visited her mother in Far Rockaway the previous Sunday, Mother’s Day, with Tyisha and Tyriek attending the family celebration.
At one point, Lynch said, a man called the house and asked for Tyisha. They spoke, Lynch recalled, and then her daughter quickly picked up Tyriek and their belongings and left.
She thought little of it at the time, but that turned out to be the last time she would see her daughter alive.
Glas said the victim had been strangled, possibly with a telephone cord, and that although she had not been raped, the bleeding between her legs indicated she had been raped with a weapon.
The killer, Lynch said, forced Tyriek into another room.
“He told him, ‘Don’t come out, stay inside,’” Lynch said. “I can’t imagine what was going on [Tyriek’s] mind. When it became quiet, he came out and lay next to his mother all night.”
Finally, Tyriek mustered up enough courage to leave the apartment — on W. 135th St. near Broadway — and knock on a neighbor’s door with a surprising statement: “Ninja Mike killed my mother,” Glas said.
When the police arrived, Tyriek, who had tried unsuccessfully to wash the blood from his own clothes, said the same thing.
“He knew who was in there,” Glas said, “and he knew who his mother was with.”
Tyriek, whose father had been shot dead in Queens a few years earlier, was never the same.
“He’s been through some pretty tough stuff,” Lynch said. “He needs closure and I need closure. The killer is found and I want to look at him. I already know what kind of person he is.
“I am a godly woman and I know that was Satan.”
Shortly after police arrived at Gladney’s apartment, her boyfriend showed up with a video they wanted to watch.
His alibi was checked and years later DNA testing further exonerated him, Glas said. The boyfriend has now passed away.
Glas said another man named Mike, but without the nickname, was also ruled out as a suspect.
The detective is now pinning his hopes on a new round of DNA testing that could provide a gender, age and race profile and match the person whose fingerprints were found at the scene.
At that point, a warrant for “Ninja Mike”’s DNA would likely be needed. But even then, Glas is hoping for tips from the public, because “Ninja Mike” has likely been to the apartment before, meaning it’s not unusual for his prints and DNA to have been found.
Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS. All conversations are strictly confidential.
