Juan Monroy

A guy gets stabbed in New York City and dies from his wounds. That’s what happened to Tony Ciccarello. He died in September 2014 from what the medical examiner attributed to “complications of a bowel obstruction ‘due to ventral hernias due to remote exploratory laparotomy for treatment of stab wound of torso.'” He was stabbed, he had an operation to repair the wound, and he died from the attendant complications.

As ordinary as this might appear, there is one major twist. Ciccarello was stabbed “sometime in the late 1950s,” and died over fifty years later.

when he died in September, the unsolved and mostly forgotten crime took on elevated importance in the eyes of New York City. The medical examiner determined his death, at 97 years old, was connected to the stabbing five decades before.

It’s a homicide, and the police have launched a murder investigation.

I understand that from a medical perspective he died from that decades-old wound, but he was also 97 years old. He presumably outlived everyone involved in this case: the surgeons, his murderer, and just about anyone who could have been involved.