Dimitry Sheinman in Inwood Hill Park with his daughter and his dog in 2004. (Photo: TheSheinmanSource.com)

Dimitry Sheinman is an author, painter, self-proclaimed clairvoyant and, most importantly, a suspect in the brutal 2004 killing of Juilliard student Sarah Fox.

In June, after several years in Africa, Mr. Sheinman returned to New York to deliver police information that he claimed he obtained through psychic visions—and to shop around a book about his experience with this still-unsolved Manhattan murder mystery.

About a month after Mr. Sheinman’s re-emergence, the Fox case sprang back into the headlines when an unnamed official told reporters that DNA from a discman found near Fox’s body matched a chain that Occupy Wall Street protesters used to hold open gates at subway stations to provide commuters with free rides. A day later, another unnamed official revealed the DNA match was the result of an error: evidence from both cases was tainted by a lab worker.

In 2004, then-DA Robert Morgenthau said that Mr. Sheinman was the “number-one suspect, but there is not enough evidence to charge him.” Police and the district attorney’s office declined to update that statement, and the investigation is still open.

The Observer sat down with Mr. Sheinman at a Midtown bar earlier this month. Accompanied by his wife, Jane, who has stood by him since he was named as a suspect in the Fox case, he was unassuming, with closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair and well-muscled arms poking out of a tight T-shirt.

Mr. Sheinman, who was born in Moscow, spoke rapidly, with a thick Russian accent, fixing his wide blue eyes intently on us throughout the conversation. As a demonstration of the existence of psychic “sensitivities,” he asked us to hold our arm across the table.

“This might be a little strange for you, but look at this, I’m not going to touch you,” he said, passing his fingers over our skin and ever-so-slightly grazing the arm hairs that rose up as he moved. “Here you’re starting to feel what I’m doing, and at first you didn’t, but then you did. And so, I was pulling a little bit on your flesh. I can go more deeper, then I know things about you. It’s like a computer, 0-1-1-1-0-0. That just shows me your amount of sensitivity; people sometimes block it. Like, I also—I know what you feel, it sounds creepy to regular people.”

Indeed, Mr. Sheinman’s claims do sound disturbing to some. According to Mr. Sheinman, detectives began suspecting him in the Fox case after his first psychic vision, which occurred while he was being questioned in the police precinct. He details the experience in the third chapter of his manuscript.

While looking at a map of Inwood Hill Park, where Ms. Fox was found naked, strangled and surrounded by tulip petals, Mr. Sheinman writes that he was “transported to the murder site, suspended from above,observing the nightmare unfolding below,” with Ms. Fox “hovering over the crime scene” beside him. Mr Sheinman said he shared his observations with the police in an attempt to help them solve the crime.

“I had a vision of the killer grabbing her and punching her and, as a result, smashing her ribs. So I said maybe she has a broken rib,” Mr. Sheinman remembered.

A question from the police provoked another psychic revelation, he said.

“They asked if he f--ked her. ...You know, they tried to speak in that kind of a tone to, like, strike up camaraderie between sick minds,” said Mr. Sheinman. “I saw her clothes neatly piled up ... and her tampon, on top of the clothes. So I thought, my God, she had the period. Probably not, that’s what I said.”

After he was questioned, police asked Mr. Sheinman to return to the 8precinct again. During this visit, he made another observation about the crime. However, Mr. Sheinman said he’s not sure whether it was genuine clairvoyance.

“This one big-shot detective was insinuating a stick, so I don’t even think it’s a clairvoyant vision ...Then they go, ‘Did he put a stick into her?’” Mr. Sheinman said. “Then he was showing me with his hand, and then maybe clairvoyantly, or whatever, I thought maybe he did, but I’m not sure that’s pure clairvoyance.”

Whether it was clairvoyance or not, Mr. Sheinman said his three revelations about Ms. Fox’s death all proved correct. Since they also all involved facts investigators hadn’t revealed to the public, Mr. Sheinman became the police’s main suspect.

Mr. Sheinman steadfastly maintained his innocence and refused to have further discussions with detectives.

Both the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office have declined multiple requests to comment on this case.

Prior to his trance at the precinct, Mr. Sheinman’s neighbors brought him to the attention of the police. Mr. Sheinman often walked his dog in the park where Ms. Fox’s body was found, and he admits he regularly got into minor altercations when people questioned him about why the large Rhodesian Ridgeback wasn’t on a leash. In his book, Mr. Sheinman
detailed the “unpleasant” experience of being “pestered every other second” by people concerned by his dog.

One year after Ms. Fox’s murder, Mr. Sheinman got into another confrontation in the park that resulted in him being charged with
assaulting another man and spending 59 days on Riker’s Island. Ms. Sheinman claims the incident occurred after the other man’s dog jumped on her and that the man was clearly aware of Mr. Sheinman’s status as a suspect in the Fox case.

“He punched someone whose dog jumped on my belly. I was eight months pregnant lying in the meadow in Inwood Park,” Ms. Sheinman said. “My husband pulls the dog off, and suddenly the owner is right there screaming ‘You bloody murderer!’ And he punched him.”

According to The Daily News, law enforcement sources said Mr. Sheinman’s assault prosecution was “part of a psychological squeeze on Sheinman as the anniversary of Fox’s slaying approache[d].” However, Mr. Sheinman’s arrest yielded no new information about the Fox killing, and the experience convinced the Sheinmans to get out of the country and move to Cape Town once he served his sentence.

While in South Africa, Mr. Sheinman began writing his book. He said he used his psychic abilities to travel to the past and review the events surrounding the murder as they happened.

“I had to go back in time and see how the whole thing was happening,” Mr. Sheinman said. “I literally felt what the police ate, how the coffee bubbled up in their stomachs.”

Mr. Sheinman also said he has gotten in touch with other professed clairvoyants to work on solving the Fox case. Along with four other alleged psychics, Mr. Sheinman said he had visions about the murder that led him to focus on the name of a man that he believes may have been involved in the murder.

When he arrived back in New York City last month, Mr. Sheinman delivered the police a letter with information gleaned from himself and his fellow clairvoyants. Mr. Sheinman invited the press to wait outside as he brought the envelope into the precinct. Law enforcement sources told the news site DNAInfo they were “unable to question Sheinman further because he still has an attorney of record dating back to when he was originally questioned in the case. Mr. Sheinman’s letter named a former teacher of Ms. Fox’s at Juilliard who was reportedly ruled out as a suspect eight years ago.

Mr. Sheinman dismissed reports that the police wanted to question him about the case beyond the information in his letter.

“The police, when they said that they want to talk to us or whatever, that was like their form of harassment, because I made sure all the information that I know of is in the letter,” said Mr. Sheinman. “If I have any information—new information that I think would help police to catch—my God I want to catch the guy, I would give them immediately that information, obviously.”

Mr. Sheinman reported he and his wife were planning to head back to Africa in mid-July. As of press time, calls to his U.S. cell phone went unanswered.

hwalker@observer.com

You know that people care about something when they're willing to sit in sweltering heat for it. (Jess Schiewe)

Last Friday morning, Felix Guzman woke up early, grabbed his fishing pole, and headed over to the East River for some catch and release fun. For 40 years he has lived in the same building on Academy Street in Inwood and in that time he has “seen a lot.” So when he got back to his apartment around 11 am and saw that his street was teaming with newscasters, elected officials, cameramen, and local community members, he wasn’t surprised. They’d been there before. “It’s always been tough here,” Mr. Guzman said. “I’m glad they’re doing something about it.”

The building in question was 552 Academy Street, a crumbling 72-unit brick building located across the street from Mr. Guzman’s apartment. A year ago he had stood outside and watched as dozens of tenants dragged their belongings onto the sidewalk, confused and frightened and wondering where they would relocate to next.

The building, the city told them, was unsafe, which was why they had to vacate the premises. Although Mr. Guzman had never been inside, he heard rumors that at times the units lacked gas, running water, and electricity. “This is what happens when you get these slumlords and all they care about is the money,” Mr. Guzman said, referring to the building’s landlord, Rachel Arfa, whom the City blames for the hazardous conditions.

With the help of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the tenants—31 families in total— were relocated to temporary apartments around the city, in neighborhoods like Hillside, Thayer, and Elmwood.

But on Friday, many of the tenants were back in their old neighborhood, rubbing shoulders with the suits and construction workers who were there to announce the good news: 552 Academy Street would be rehabilitated and open for residency in the next 18 months. As part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s New Housing Marketplace Plan, the structure has received $21.1 million in funding that will be used to rebuild, stabilize, and improve the old, defunct building.

“This is a really big step for us,” said Iris Bertoni, a representative of the building's tenant association who had lived in the same apartment on the third floor for 50 years. "We're coming back home."

In addition to improved mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems, the building, which was formerly a walk-up, will be redesigned to include an elevator line, a community room, and new kitchens, bathrooms, and laundry room. The renovations, which will modernize the building and bring it up to code, are the result of a lengthy  battle between the City and Arfa for possession of the building. According to the Department of Building's website, Arfa was charged with allowing "structural stability and egress issues" to develop over the last ten years, and has since been removed as the building's owner.

"This building has a history that is unfortunately not as uncommon as we would like," HPD Commissioner Mathew Wambua said,"but one thing that it has in its favor is a support network equal to no other." The rehabilitation of the building, Mr. Wambua said, as well as the selection of a new owner, will be spearheaded by the Community League of the Heights (CLOTH) and Alembic Development Corporation.

Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez, who donated $1 million to the project from his discretionary funds, was at the event on Friday, donning a plastic hardhat and black suit. “I feel great,” he said minutes after plunging a golden shovel into a pile of dirt as part of the symbolic groundbreaking ceremony. Not only was he glad that the tenants would be able to return to their former homes, he said, but he hoped that the event would serve as a warning to inept landlords throughout the city. “We have no tolerance for negligence,” he said. “This is a message to any other landlord who doesn’t reflect what they are supposed to be doing in terms of providing decent living situations for their tenants.”

The new units, which will not only be affordable, but top quality, also excite Mr. Rodriguez who hopes that it will encourage more people to move to the Inwood neighborhood. In the last 10 years, “we have lost 18,000 residents,” he said. “People can’t afford to pay the rents.” The average annual income of residents in the neighborhood is $30,000 a year, he said, adding that he hopes the revamped and reasonably priced 552 Academy Street building will be the start of a new housing trend.

Across the street, wearing a black “I Love Inwood” tee shirt, Mr. Guzman mused about the past, present, and future of his neighborhood. “A lot has changed,” he said, referring to the demographics and socio-economic levels of his community. Inwood has had its ups and downs, he said, and although he still loves it (hence his shirt), the neighborhood is due for a change. Improving the conditions and affordability of the residences is a first step, but Mr. Guzman hopes to see more improvements.

“For one thing,” he said, leaning on his fishing pole, “it would be nice if some of these people hired the people in the neighborhood to do some of the work, like labor and construction. A lot of us are unemployed and it would be nice to be a part of the community.”

Things ain't looking up in da Heights. (Bridge and Tunnel Club)

The folks in upper Manhattan have been voicing their concerns lately: residents of West Harlem can't stand dog doodoo and residents of Washington Heights and Inwood are protesting the lack of affordable housing options. A group of residents and community gathered over the weekend to speak out against Department of Housing and Preservation neglect, DNAInfo reports.

The residents called for more affordable housing in the neighborhoods, citing that only 139 of the 43,922 new units and 1,363 of the 85,299 preserved units under Bloomberg's administration have been in either Washington Heights or Inwood.

Community leaders pointed out that their residents have the greatest need, but the least attention.

HPD Spokesman Eric Bederman spoke to DNAInfo, telling them that "the department was united with the community in its fight but limited in its resources." He further noted that construction is a matter of resources, opportunity, and history:

HPD does not own any land in Community Board 12’s district, he noted.

The housing stock in CB 12 largely remained in the hands of landlords and tenants during the 1970s and 1980s when residents were fleeing the city, while in Harlem — in community boards 9, 10 and 11 — the city was able to purchase significant numbers of properties.

Much of the new construction throughout areas like Harlem, the South Bronx or East Brooklyn, is derived from land acquired through tax foreclosure during that time.

If it isn't HPD, then it is Columbia University.

mewing@observer.com

The project first popped up in 2009, and the architects, Peter Gluck & Partners, have just filed a new set of plans, pushing the project from seven to eight stories. Not exactly 32, like Bruce Ratner has planned, but it shows the potential on mid-rise sites, especially when the ambitious scope of the project is considered: According to Curbed, the plan is to build the modules in the span of three months in Pennsylvania, ship them in and erect it all in the course of eight days. Can you imagine a developer would not be interested in that kind of turn around?

The future is finally now.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Not everybody had shown up yet. It was still early. The Catholic schools were open despite the holiday. They were making up for the snow days. Ms. Cronin was at her office nook at the end of the bar, cheek-jockeying the pay-phone receiver, barking orders or bets on horse races. She had a little snifter of whiskey, two sips left at all times. Ms. Cronin owns the place and holds sway in the neighborhood. She’s “the Mama Grizzly of Inwood,” a man told The Observer. But Ms. Cronin said they call her lots of things.

It was the Irish Brigade Pub, at the top edge of the island, 2 p.m., on St. Patrick’s Day.

“I’m turning up the volume,” said the owner. “It’s the only day I can get away with this.

Jean the barkeep kept asking The Observer if he’d like another after he polished off the dregs, and he did, and she wiped down the bottle sweat from the Bud with a shamrock napkin. Jean called him honey, hon or darling. “It’s a nice Irish bar, you’ll like it,” she said. The rebel music and grunted conversation meandered around and lingered like a stench.

“Take the empire by surprise!” went the song on the jukebox.

“Some say the devil is dead … more say he rose again—and joined the British army.”

“Take the empire by surprise!”

Bill Caula, who lately got laid off from a construction crew, was at the bar reading The Portrait of Dorian Gray. He also had Tristram Shandy. He’s stocky and short-fused and very much against the unions.

“It’s not gonna be long until me and my brothers band together and start choppin’ trucks up and shit like they used to do in the early 1900s,” Mr. Caula said. “Quote-unquote. William J. Caula Jr.”

Jack used to live in the East Village. Now he lives up here and temps as a security guard. He’s happy, and he likes the Cloisters.

“He met a, well, a lady of the night, and now there are a thousand descendants—including me and me kids,” said a bearded patron of one of his Irish ancestors.

“Shoulda been here in the ’80s—there were bars everywhere. …” said an older fellow down the bar. “You shoulda been here when there was like 100 bars—it was deadly.”

The older fellow was a lifer. He knew Ms. Cronin from the old days. At home he had yellowed Polaroids from a hunger march. Him and Barbara. He wore a button that said “England Get Out Of Ireland.” He was drinking a Jameson on the rocks that Jean bought him. A man in a suit ordered a round for the house, and as extra coasters slid in front of half-done beers, the crowd all thanked him in nods.

People were missing. Jim the Pirate had phoned Barbara, said he felt awful rotten, all sick and tied up in bed, and would be in sometime in the next hour. Heineken Joe was present in the guise of cheap streamers that he bought to festoon the back deck, snaking around the bobbleheads of idols, news clippings from whenever the regulars make it in the papers and axioms of the old country (invariably whiskey toasts). Nowhere were Father Moore and the nuns. And of course the guys with the food—bangers and mash, steamed cabbage, a temple of stacked-up corned beef sandwiches, their gray-pink innards spilling out from the folded wedges of rye bread. And a tub of violent horseradish mustard. They were on their way.

Where was Gene? “Right outside, he’ll be here in a minute. …”

And that guy with the GTO? “Haven’t seen him in 20 years, worked at a gas station. …”

And—um, um—Eric? “Died of cancer, hid it from everybody. …”

Also missing was the swath of Irish once dominant nearby. When the adjoined building went up in the 1930s, a pub soon followed, and this is the Irish Brigade. Why change? Yes, Jerry wanted a cup of Black Bush. Yes, the men’s bathroom is labeled “Clergy.” And when Jean told a man he looked familiar, he did—it had been 20 years, but he thanked her, he thanked Jeanie.

“The tradition is,” said the dignified gut plopped on a stool next to The Observer, “if you don’t live in the neighborhood anymore, you come back for Saint Pat’s.”

“Been on the wagon a month—I’ll have a beer today,” said a 50-something man in a hat.

The Observer lured the boss away from her corner to the outside at a break in the races. The customers could handle the rebel music themselves. Ms. Cronin had on pink glasses and a kelly green pageboy cap. She chewed her words. She has been the proprietress of the Irish Brigade for nearly 30 years.

“The neighborhood changes; we have a lot of Spanish,” she said. “We used to have a lot more Irish, you know, like all the neighborhoods change. But they’re cool, most of them.”

Other non-Irish were coming around, too. The day before, men from the BBC had come to tape a special on the Irish Brigade. No one talked about it. Why change?

“It’s nonsense,” Ms. Cronin said of the BBC’s interest in her modest Irish pub. “I don’t pay no mind to any of this crap.”

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

People ask, "Has Inwood arrived yet?" said Lisa Castro, a broker, who moved to the neighborhood in 1993. "No, it hasn't."

Unfortunately the recession arrived before Inwood could. Now few are willing to make a Sunday outing to the last stop on the A-train, and the land of spacious one-bedroom co-ops with a Manhattan zip code remains largely a local secret.

At a sixth-floor one-bedroom for $334,000 at 91 Payson with views of Inwood Hill Park and the Cloisters, Suke and Loretta Cerulo came in flip-flops and jeans from their apartment on the second floor. They were looking for a retirement place for her mother, who lives in the suburbs with her own yard and is still on the fence about the lack thereof in Manhattan's high- and low-rises.

"There's peace of mind," in Inwood, said Mr. Cerulo.

"It's not as clustered," Ms. Cerulo added. It has its own mini-Central Park, but "you don't have to fight for a spot."

Ms. Cerulo, 35, who works at the Museum of Natural History, and Mr. Cerulo, 38, who teaches guitar, took the subway to the last stop two years ago out of frustration. They were renting in Hell's Kitchen and spent nearly five years looking at dozens of places in midtown that they couldn't afford to buy.

They kept their praise of the neighborhood quiet, fearing too many adjectives would attract the crowds they left behind at the Times Square station.

Dee McMillen rents in Inwood and had looked at three apartments to buy so far that day, including 91 Payson, with its herringbone floors and a tin ceiling in the kitchen.

"When we first moved we were looking at money, and this was just less money," said Ms. McMillen. Now she won't live anywhere else. She's fallen in love with the "wide-open spaces," which remind her of home in the South. "It's beautiful."

LATELY MORE THAN JUST a neighborhood with a park, Inwood seems poised to be the new Park Slope. "There are so many people walking around pushing strollers," said Ms. McMillen, who works in the Financial District and whose husband is a freelance musician. "I think I need a child to live here."

But in Inwood, gentrification shuffles along like the rumpled Irishman in the lobby who says he's lived at 91 Payson for 60 years. The artists and musicians that initially grabbed $50,000 apartments also remain here. There are posters on apartment doors for off-Broadway plays and a parade of black cases at dusk when musicians head toward the subway for Lincoln Center.

At a $357,000 one-bedroom at 100 Park Terrace West, broker Ms. Castro waited patiently for a potential buyer to arrive. Quiet open houses have been the norm all over the neighborhood in the last couple years, she said.

Still, an old Irish card shop has made way for a pet store, a smattering of health food stores, and the Indian Hill Cafe, where Sunday brunch is served to the tune of mildly experimental jazz.

With space to divide the living room into a second bedroom, the apartment calls out to a twosome soon to be three.

"We have our own stroller brigade now," said the broker, who has two children, 10 and 12. "If you don't know someone through kids or dogs, well, that's unusual.

"Is the island of Manhattan going to get any bigger?" said Ms. Castro. Absent a miracle, she predicts people will eventually have to come explore the northern tip of the island.

Corey and Marion Hayes, who are selling their own sunlit one-bedroom apartment at 270 Seaman Avenue for $349,000, were enjoying a peaceful—perhaps too peaceful—Sunday afternoon open house.

Ms. Hayes, 38, and Mr. Hayes, 44, hopped from Williamsburg to the Upper West Side, then finally to Inwood, in search of quiet.

"The only thing we hear is the Canada geese in the morning," said Mr. Hayes. 

Ms. Hayes, a former teacher who works in finance, and Mr. Hayes, a freelance photographer, say the neighborhood still has the kinds of people long ago driven out of Manhattan and gentrified Brooklyn. "You still have teachers, blue collar workers," Ms. Hayes said. "It's like living in the old New York."