Man who jumped out of freezer, threatened people with knife was suspected cold-case killer, police say

NEW YORK – A man who jumped out of a freezer and threatened employees with a knife at a New York City brunch spot and then died was a suspected cold-case killer who had just been released from jail in Boston, authorities revealed on Monday.

Carlton Henderson screamed “Away from me, Satan!” as he rushed out of the walk-in freezer at Sarabeth’s on Manhattan’s Upper West Side Sunday morning, police said. Kitchen employees stripped away the knife and took him to the floor, police said, and he went into cardiac arrest.

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Henderson was facing murder charges in the 1988 shooting deaths of 26-year-old William Medina and 22-year-old Antonio Dos Reis.

Henderson, 54, of Cave Creek, Arizona, got out of jail last Wednesday when a judge threw out key evidence in the pending double-murder case and ordered him released on his own recognizance.

Judge Janet Sanders said Henderson’s 1993 statements suggesting his involvement in the 1988 killings were inadmissible because he and investigators had an understanding that they couldn’t be used against him.

Henderson was looking to trade the information for a reduction in his 15-year prison sentence on drug and gun charges, Sanders wrote, and investigators treated him as a co-operating witness – not a target or a suspect – in his 55 hours of questioning.

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Prosecutors argued such an informal immunity agreement, known as a proffer, would have been made in writing and no corroborating paperwork has been found.

Police arrested Henderson in St. Louis, Missouri, in June 2017 after bullets from the Boston killings were matched to a gun recovered in a fatal shooting in Miami in 1993.