The murder of Nadal Haq
Paterson, Passaic County, New Jersey · 1997
Overview
On March 30, 1997, in the South Paterson section of Paterson, New Jersey, Nadal Haq was shot to death execution-style and a second man, Isaam Atsham, was killed later the same day, with a third man, Adnan Ali, wounded in the leg. The weapon was a .38 caliber handgun. What made the case historic was not how it was investigated on the street but how the gun itself was traced: investigators ran the ballistic evidence from the Paterson shootings through the Essex County Sheriff's Integrated Ballistics Identification System (IBIS), an early computerized ballistics database, and the system matched the Paterson casings and bullets to a separate execution-style killing thirteen days earlier in New Britain, Connecticut, where a restaurant owner had been shot during a robbery. It was the first time IBIS had ever linked a New Jersey crime to an out-of-state crime, and the firearms match tied the same gun, and ultimately the same shooter, Gino Gentile, to both scenes. On February 19, 2000, Gentile was convicted of murder in what authorities describe as the nation's first case to obtain a murder conviction using IBIS-generated ballistics evidence. He was sentenced to 40 years for the two Paterson homicides and was later convicted in the Connecticut killing and sentenced to 100 years.
How it was solved
The Paterson shootings of March 30, 1997 left two men dead and one wounded, but proving who fired the gun, and proving it to a jury, was the harder problem. A central piece of the case rested on showing that a single firearm connected the violence, and on connecting that firearm to Gino Gentile. The decisive evidence was ballistic. Investigators used the Essex County Sheriff's Office Integrated Ballistics Identification System (IBIS), a then-new computerized system that digitizes the microscopic toolmarks a gun stamps onto the cartridge cases and bullets it fires and searches them against stored images from other shootings. When the spent casings and bullets recovered from the Paterson scene were entered, IBIS returned a match to a shooting roughly two weeks earlier and across state lines: the March 17, 1997 execution-style killing of restaurant owner San Chiu Wong during a robbery in New Britain, Connecticut. According to the Essex County Sheriff's Office, this was the first time IBIS would link a New Jersey crime to an out-of-state crime. The Connecticut State Police Forensic Laboratory was later able to prove conclusively that the same handgun was used in both the New Jersey and the New Britain homicides. That .38 caliber handgun had been in Gentile's hands, and the ballistic chain placed the Paterson gun and the Connecticut gun as one and the same weapon. On February 19, 2000, after a jury trial, Gentile was convicted of murder, aggravated manslaughter, attempted murder, aggravated assault and related weapons offenses for the Paterson shootings, in what authorities characterize as the nation's first murder conviction obtained using IBIS-generated evidence. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the two Paterson homicides. He was subsequently convicted, with co-defendant Edgar DeJesus, in the New Britain robbery and slaying of San Chiu Wong as a result of a Connecticut cold-case investigation, and was sentenced to 100 years.
Sources
- Ballistics Laboratory
“On March 30, 1997, a .38 caliber handgun was used to kill both a Paterson youth and man and to wound another man; through the Essex County Sheriff's IBIS computer, law enforcement determined that the .38 caliber handgun used in the Paterson incidents was the same weapon used in the Saint Patrick's Day execution-style killing of a restaurant owner in New Britain, Connecticut, the first time IBIS would link a New Jersey crime to an out-of-state crime; on February 19, 2000, the suspect was convicted of murder in the nation's first case utilizing IBIS generated evidence.”
- Cold Cases - Arrests and Convictions
“Gino Gentile and Edgar DeJesus were both convicted in the March 17, 1997 robbery and slaying of San Chiu Wong; firearms experts from the Connecticut State Police Forensic Laboratory were able to prove conclusively that the same handgun was used in the New Jersey and New Britain homicides; at the time of his conviction Gentile was serving a 40-year prison sentence for two homicides in Paterson, New Jersey, and he was sentenced to 100 years in prison on his Connecticut convictions for Murder, Robbery in the First Degree and Conspiracy to Commit Robbery in the First Degree.”
- State of New Jersey v. Gino Gentile (2007)
“On March 30, 1997, a group including Nadal Haq and Isaam Atsham approached Gentile and Louis Muniz near Main and Robert Streets in South Paterson; Gentile fired at Adnan Ali, hitting him in the right leg, then approached Haq, crouched behind a car in a fetal position, and fired two shots execution style into the back of his head; later that day Atsham was found shot twice in the torso in the Madison Diner restroom; ballistics tests revealed that spent casings and bullets from the Connecticut incident matched the casings and bullets retrieved from the March 30 shooting in Paterson.”
- State of New Jersey v. Gino Gentile (2011)
“On March 30, 1997 the defendant fired multiple rounds from a handgun, initially at a group of individuals on the street; ballistic testing revealed that the gun used in Connecticut, where the defendant had shot and killed an individual in the course of robbing a restaurant thirteen days prior, was the same gun that was used in Paterson; the defendant was convicted of the murder of one victim, the attempted murder of another and the aggravated manslaughter of a third.”
- State v. Gentile (2000)
“The defendant was charged with murder, attempted murder, second and third degree aggravated assaults, and various weapons offenses arising from the March 30, 1997 shootings of Nadal Haq, Isaam Atshan and Adnan Ali; police recovered a knife which was fashioned to resemble a handgun at the crime scene.”
- State of New Jersey v. Gino Gentile (2011, second appeal)
“Approximately two weeks before the March 30, 1997 shooting the defendant was in Connecticut when he fired the gun, and ballistics tests revealed that spent casings and bullets from that incident matched the casings and bullets retrieved from the Paterson shooting; the defendant was arrested in Connecticut on April 4, 1997 and, after a jury trial, was convicted of multiple offenses.”
- Program Profile: Integrated Ballistics Identification System (IBIS)
“The Integrated Ballistics Identification System (IBIS) captures and compares digital images of the microscopic toolmarks left on fired cartridge cases and bullets, allowing examiners to link firearm evidence across separate crime scenes that would otherwise appear unrelated.”