Police responding to the scene of a grisly Harlem murder more than a quarter century ago found the lifeless body of a young woman. She had been strangled and savagely violated. There with her in the apartment was a 5-year-old boy. All night long, he had lain beside his dead mother’s body, his clothes soaked with her blood. Despite his terror 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 Mommy,” Tyriek Gladney told them.
That was on May 15, 1999 — and “Ninja Mike” still hasn’t been identified. But NYPD Cold Case Detective Ryan Glas hopes fingerprint 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.”
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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.”
“When that happened, I couldn’t believe what the police were telling me,” Lynch told the Daily News. “My family is all messed up behind this. I can’t sleep at night. I’m sick and I’m weary.
“But the Lord is going to keep me just a little longer to see who did this.”
Lynch said that on the previous Sunday, Mother’s Day, she visited her mother in Far Rockaway, with Tyisha and Tyriek joining the family celebration.
At some point, Lynch said, a man called the home asking for Tyisha. They spoke, Lynch remembered, then her daughter quickly gathered Tyriek and their belongings and left.
She thought little of it then — but that turned out to be the last time she would see her daughter alive.
Glas said the victim was strangled, possibly with a phone cord, and that while she wasn’t raped, the bleeding between her legs suggested she had been violated 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 in [Tyriek’s] mind. When it got quiet, he came out and lay down next to his mother all night long.”
Eventually, Tyriek summoned up enough courage to leave the apartment — on W. 135th St. near Broadway — and knock on a neighbor’s door with a startling pronouncement: “Ninja Mike killed my Mommy,” Glas said.
When police arrived, Tyriek, who had tried in vain 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, has never been the same.
“He’s been through some pretty rough stuff,” Lynch said. “He needs closure and I need closure. The killer’s going to be found and I want to look at him. I already know what kind of person he is.
“I’m a God-fearing woman and I know that was Satan.”
Shortly after police got to Gladney’s apartment, her boyfriend showed up with a video they planned to watch.
His alibi checked out and DNA tests years later further cleared him, Glas said. The boyfriend has since died.
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” had likely been to the apartment in the past, meaning it’s not unusual that his prints and DNA were found.
Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS. All calls are strictly confidential.
