(Getty Images)

The City of New York has finally agreed to pay Occupy Wall Street for the property destroyed in the Zuccotti Park police raid on Nov. 15, 2011.

OWS initiated a suit on May 24, 2012, seeking compensation for the destruction of their People’s Library—a collection of over 5,000 donated books. About 3,600 of these were ruined during the early morning eviction of the protest camp.

The City agreed to settle yesterday, awarding $47,000 in damages to OWS and $186,349.58 in attorney fees to their lawyers.

“We’re very pleased with the resolution of this suit,” said Herbert Teitelbaum, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs. “The city acknowledged that what happened in the park on the night of the Zuccotti Park raid was inappropriate.”

According to Mr. Teitelbaum, the City rarely accepts liability when entering agreements such as this one. In collective settlement fees, the City will be coughing up over $400,000—including $75,000 in damage fees and $49,850 in attorney fees to Global Revolution T.V. An environmental nonprofit, Time’s Up, will receive $8,500 for 16 “energy” bicycles that were destroyed in the raid.

Third party defendant Brookfield Office Properties Inc., the owners of Zuccotti Park, will indemnify the City $15,666.67.

“We think that books are important and the destruction of books is a very disturbing thing, particularly when the government does it,” said Mr. Teitelbaum to The Observer.

Kimani Gray.

Walking east along Church Avenue from Nostrand last Thursday afternoon, The Observer counted two police officers on every corner. At New York Avenue, there were five cops and two squad cars. From a row house just past East 35th Street, three men in bulletproof vests and black topcoats emerged. And once we reached Albany Avenue and saw the Police Department’s outsized Communications Division Command Post vehicle, we stopped counting.

“We’re kind of used to it,” one man told The Observer. “In neighborhoods like this, there are always cops around. It’s just more now.”

More, of course, because of the controversial killing of 16-year-old local Kimani Gray, who was shot seven times late the previous Saturday night by two plainclothes officers after allegedly drawing a weapon, and because of the subsequent nights of demonstrations, which resulted in instances of looting and dozens of arrests.

“It was terrible last night—the crowd, the stone throwing. I haven’t seen anything like this,” said Junior Harrison, owner of Island Pride restaurant. “I thought it was L.A. for one minute. It’s getting worse every day.”

Mr. Harrison remembered Mr. Gray as “nice kid” from the neighborhood. “All the kids around here, they always eat here,” he said, standing outside of his store near East 54th Street, less than a block from the vigil site. “The same day he passed away, he had his meal here. I’m going to miss him. He’s a good kid, from my point of view.”

Near where he was shot, a poster hanging in the window of a hardware store called for an independent investigation into the shooting. Inside, there were three men sitting on overturned paint buckets. Asked about the incident, the man in the middle took off his Twin Towers ball cap, scratched at his skull and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have nothing to tell you.”

A variety of media reports have blamed outside agitators for stirring up the community’s emotions. While there were a variety of non-locals at the scene of the vigil even when The Observer visited it, at 4 p.m. on Thursday, it was clear that the community’s emotions were real.

“You can’t just take a life!” said the proprietor of an event hall called Extreme Elegance, who declined to give his full name, as we walked with him back down Church Avenue.

“Right now, if I have a problem with you, I wouldn’t call the police,” he continued. “People come inside here and rob me, and I would never call the police. Never!”

“Eleven shots!” chimed in Kevon Julian.

“He got hit seven times, but they shot at him 11. These kids, they’re terrible. But they get older. To me, they targeted him. Out of the crowd, they see him. They know what he’s about, and they said he had something, but he really didn’t have anything that day.”

A group of young teens stood staring at the posters around the neighborhood, which held grieving testimonials to Mr. Gray’s short life, until one said, “I’m out, son. I can’t see this kid anymore,” while two reporters shoved mics into another young resident’s face and grilled him about Mr. Gray.

“He used to do a lot of bad stuff,” the subject said.

“Were you afraid of him?” one of the reporters asked.

“No.”

Community organizer Shamar Thomas, who rose to YouTube fame with his video “1 Marine vs. 30 Cops,” in which he beseeches police officers to stop physically harming members of the Occupy movement, implored others to be constructive.

“We have to channel the anger,” the Brooklyn resident said. “Everyone is out here egging it on. But going to jail, messing with the cops that are right here. These ain’t the killer cops. We yelling at the regular motherfuckers that are on the street. Organizing is our only weapon. Unity is our threat.”

And then, on cue, Mr. Thomas broke away to calm down a middle-aged man who was not a local and was getting himself very riled up.

“They cornered us into a little group,” the man said, reliving the previous night’s demonstrations. “It was like hundreds of us on top of each other, the way they locked us down. You couldn’t breathe ... Then they started arresting the young ones. They threw me against the wall a few times. I didn’t understand. Grown-ups were getting thrown against the wall and they wasn’t getting locked up.”

Ostensibly all these demonstrations were for Kimani Gray—whom one resident described as “a hood star”—but they were rooted in long-standing tensions between residents and police. Many at the scene of the vigil were wearing anti-stop-and-frisk buttons.

“I don’t like how cops pull over black males for no reason. They don’t stop—no disrespect—white males. And then when kids die, people think it’s not a big deal,” said 13-year-old Iziah McPhatter, who hails from Downtown Brooklyn but was here with his twin brother and his father, a former Bloods gang member who founded an organization called Gangstas Making Astronomical Community Changes, or GMACC.

According to Mr. Harrison, it’s important for the community to have some closure. “They know what they’re mad about—it’s about the shooting,” he said, before adding, almost rhetorically: “Where do we go from here?”

After getting to know a few NYU faculty members, the Illuminator team was asked to partner with them and spread the message on campus. Last night, they hit the street, projecting soothingly clever graphics onto the side of three different structures around campus.

The first target was Bobst Library, where a few students actually bothered to gawk and take cellphone photos before heading off to study. Then came the side of one of the Washington Square Village apartment slabs, where the faculty soon to be afflicted by the campus expansion about to drop into their midst live. Lastly, the illuminator did battle with the already quite illuminated Washington Arch Park at the foot of Fifth Avenue. At least that was the plan; the crew was running behind throughout the evening and there was dinner to attend to.

"We want to get people awareness, to awaken people after the summer," professor and protestor spokesman Bo Riccobon said. "The faculty disengages over the summer. People don't like conflict, and NYU was smart enoug to sneak this thing through the City Planning Commission and the City Council in May, June, July, when everybody was gone. This is not over."

Certainly nothing has been built yet, and murmurings about the fate of university president John Sexton, however unfounded, persist amongst an angry cohort. Then again, the city did vote, and whatever happens, NYU has its millions of extra square feet, whether it wants to build it now, in 2031, or in 2131.

"This helps students, faculty and staff ask questions," Miabi Chatterji, an organizer for the faculty group, explained. "Like, where is our tuition going, is it going where it needs to go? We're some of the most indebted students in the country, Times says we have the sixth most debt, in the middle of a recession. Shouldn't we focus on that, focus on class size, focus on faculty? They're focusing on the largest real estate deal in the Village's history instead."

The light displays were only up for about 20 minutes in each spot, so it was hard to tell what impact they had. "It's cool, yeah," said Sharon, a curly-haired sophmore passing by the Washington Square Village light show. (Hope nobody was home for that bright surprise.)

"They should put something funny up, though," she continued. "It's a little harsh. Not that it's not a harsh thing they want to do, it's a lot of bullshit. But if you want people to do something about it, make it funny."

Lucky Tran, an Occupy education organizer who helped set up the Illuminator, said there was a visceralness to the protest. "The goal here is just awareness," he said from the front seat of the "99%" addorned van onto which a giant digital projector had been mounted, "The Illuminator" (and a Twitter handle) emblazoned on its side. "To illuminate anything effected is very exciting. You're directly communing with the surfaces that you want to change."

Or not change.

In the park, a group of grown men were putting on another light show, dueling with light sabers, apparently unaware, like everyone else around them, of what was taking place two blocks away.

The Occupy mob.

An activist group founded by the notorious Koch brothers is holding a demonstration in Midtown tomorrow to voice its opposition to President Barack Obama's economic policies and to stand up to the "Occupy Wall Street mob," according to a press release.

Activists from Americans for Prosperity plan to protest tomorrow morning outside the Time-Life building as part of group's Failing Agenda Bus Tour, which is devoted to urging President Barack Obama to shun policies that increase the nation's debt. Despite the group's billionaire backers, the AFP describes itself as a grass roots organization. It has more than 2 million supporters nationwide.

In addition to the bus tour, the Americans for Prosperity is launching a $25 million ad campaign in support of Mitt Romney's presidential candidacy next week, according to the Huffington Post. The group has already spent $15 million on ads attacking President Obama.

A spokesman for the group's New Jersey chapter said the demonstration would serve as an opportunity to disavow Occupy Wall Street, the movement that professes to advocate for the 99 percent.

“The Occupy Wall Street crowd is nothing but a fringe element of malcontents bent on mayhem and destruction,”said Steve Lonegan, director of Americans for Prosperity's New Jersey branch. “These are people who despise free enterprise. They are not attacking Wall Street. They are attacking the very freedoms that everyday Americans cherish to pursue their own dreams and succeed.”

Occupy Wall Street commemorated its first anniversary on Monday, staging protests throughout lower Manhattan in "resistance to economic injustice.” According to the NYPD, there were 185 arrests in conjunction with the protests.

“It’s time that someone stood up to the Occupy Wall Street mob,” said Mr. Lonegan in the release, adding that the group would also protest President Obama's economic policies:

“What the American people are really worried about is President Obama’s failing agenda,” he said. “They are worried about a failing agenda that is saddling future generations of Americans with trillions of dollars of debt and leaving them with a bleak future."

Another victory for people! Take that, Wall Street!

If only the Occupiers could tell us what, precisely, they wish to change (other than their clothes).

There’s no question that some of the young people milling around Wall Street have legitimate grievances. Job creation remains stagnant; lots of bright young people—and no small number of middle-aged workers—are out of work or underemployed. The national unemployment rate seems stuck at just over 8 percent. That’s bad enough, but things actually are worse here in New York, where the rate is 10 percent.

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some people are taking their anger to the streets. The problem is that the Occupy movement is steered by folks who are using legitimate grievances as an excuse to demonize the successful, provoke the police and otherwise display their contempt for free enterprise and American capitalism.

That much is obvious in the rhetoric of the Occupy leaders. They don’t have a plan. They don’t have an alternative. They don’t have points to negotiate. They certainly don’t have the ability to turn discontent into political action. (For all the publicity they’ve received, have the Occupiers had any influence over this year’s presidential campaign?)

What Occupy’s leaders lack in specific plans, they make up for in demagogic speeches and publicity stunts. True, they have won the hearts and minds of English and history professors around the country, which ought to be proof positive that they have nothing practical to offer. But for the millions of Americans who are out of work, for the millions who live at the margins, the Occupiers must seem to be absolutely frivolous. What solutions do they propose? What programs do they support? What job-creation strategy do they wish to implement?

The short answer: They have no plans, no strategies, no programs. Oh, they do enjoy thumbing their noses at authority. As they gathered downtown on Monday, some Occupiers demanded that police officers identify themselves by name—“in case you decide to attack me,” as one Occupier put it.

What a charming group. You’d think that given their keen sense of class consciousness they might see police officers—or anybody who works for a living—as comrades of sorts. But that would require them to reconsider their own prejudices and attitudes. And that would be almost unbearable.

So they march and shout and disrupt and hope that they will at least provoke a police officer into arresting them. They can tweet news of their arrest in real time, and know that they are considered heroes in some of the best faculty lounges in the land.

The rest of us will pay them little attention, since they really have nothing to say.

The Winklevoss twins are disrupting the sell side, or trying. After winning a settlement believed to be worth at least $65 million from Facebook, the twins pumped $1 million into SumZero, a social network for the buy side. "We always saw ourselves in careers as entrepreneurs or angels," Cameron Winklevoss told The Wall Street Journal. "My favorite toy as a kid was Legos. I loved building things, and that's what we're doing with SumZero."

Not wanting to be left out of anti-money laundering investigations, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is probing JPMorgan.

Best Buy founder Richard Schulze met with lenders last week as he seeks financing for his bid to take back his old company. Mr. Schulze's plan is not fully baked, a source told The New York Post; in addition to bankers, Mr. Schulze is seeking to partner with private equity firms. 

The Times headed north to profile the most interesting man in the Adirondacks: Sandy Lewis, the son of Bear Stearns managing partner Cy, a man who pleaded guilty to a case of insider trading he committed to prove a point, who once tried to counsel Bill Clinton on the former president's extramarital affairs, and who in retirement, is spending a lot of time emailing journalists.

Wall Street expects weak third-quarter profits across corporate America, says The Times.

Elaine Tettemer Marshall, America's fourth-richest woman, controls almost 15 percent of Koch Industries, according to Bloomberg. Her fortune has been in a "near-constant state of turmoil" since her father-in-law, J. Howard Marshall II, married Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith in 1994.

Chinese billionaires lost one-third of their wealth last year, according to CNBC.

Warren Buffett is done with radiation treatment to combat prostate cancer, the 82-year-old Berkshire Hathaway chairman said on Friday.

TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, who owns the Chicago Cubs and online news service DNAInfo, is going ahead with plans to spend $10 million on ads to support Mitt Romney—turning Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel into a fan of the White Sox.

General Motors is pushing the government to sell the stake in the automaker acquired in a 2009 bailout, according to The Journal, in hopes of escaping the stigma of state-ownership, and lifting restrictions on executive pay. The government is balking, at least until share prices rise.

Russia's favorite pyramid schemer—the "evil genius" Sergei Mavrodi—is at it again.

WHAT STARTED THIS

The profile, titled "The House That Hova Built"—released online September 6, and in print September 9—really started seeing pickup today for this particular line:

He gets a little agitated when the subject of Zuccotti Park comes up: "What's the thing on the wall, what are you fighting for?" He says he told Russell Simmons, the rap mogul, the same: "I'm not going to a park and picnic, I have no idea what to do, I don't know what the fight is about. What do we want, do you know?"

Jay-Z likes clarity: "I think all those things need to really declare themselves a bit more clearly. Because when you just say that 'the 1 percent is that,' that’s not true. Yeah, the 1 percent that's robbing people, and deceiving people, these fixed mortgages and all these things, and then taking their home away from them, that's criminal, that's bad. Not being an entrepreneur. This is free enterprise. This is what America is built on."

Jay-Z's certainly not the first person to criticize the Occupy movement for a perceived lack of direction, but he may be its most famous.

THE RESPONSE

One Occupier has since responded in kind by planning a protest (or "teach-in") outside of his upcoming concerts at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn:

On SEPTEMBER 28th we will arrive at his sold-out Barclays concert to lovingly show Jay-Z what we want and how he can help: by encouraging his fans to take action for social justice in their communities, schools, workplaces, and homes.

Join us September 28 at Barclays at 6pm for an Occupy Wall Street teach-in and musical performance. Let’s be a sincere answer to Jay’s question. In turn we will ask one of him, one Florence Reece wrote in the 1930s and still matters now, “Which Side Are You On?”

THE MIDDLEMAN

Meanwhile, Def Jam Records founder Russell Simmons—who was responsible for bringing Kanye West down to Zuccotti Park last year—published a blog post regarding Jay-Z's comments, in which he both defends the rapper and takes him to task for not knowing better:

Jay-Z's words matter. He was honest enough to say that he didn’t understand it. A lot of Americans don’t. He was also honest enough to recognize that there are some in the 1 percent who "deceiving" and "robbing," so I know in his heart he gets it. I know he is a compassionate person who cares about the poor, so I'm certain if I had two more minutes with him, I could change his mind.

PRECEDENT

Previously, Michael Skolnik—who is the editor-in-chief of Simmons's site, GlobalGrind—published a post about Jay-Z and Occupy Wall Street last November, when the rapper caused a ruckus by debuting a shirt after a Madison Square Garden concert that read "OCCUPY ALL STREETS."

The shirt, sold by Jay-Z's Roc-a-Wear apparel line, was controversial on its debut, as the company explained that it wouldn't be donating profits to the movement that ostensibly inspired the design. Back then, Skolnik and GlobalGrind decried any controversy over the shirt, noting the "factious [sic] media" who had, in his mind, drummed up controversy over nothing, and urged readers not to look too far into the shirt:

The corporate-controlled media is so thirsty for the blood of the celebrities that they try to find silly and frivolous things to separate great messengers from the people. The media, and I am not just talking about the right wing media, needs to give up on this divisive style of journalism and start to support the 99%. You can own your old-school corner of the media, but you cannot own our future. We are sick and tired of the media treating the Occupy Wall Street movement like it is some rag-tag group of hippies who are camped out in a park. This movement has grown so quickly and so widely that it has inspired heroes of ours, like Jay-Z, to spread the message for us.

It would appear, in retrospect, that Jay-Z was never too "up" on the message.

[Ed.: All of this goes without mentioning the fact, of course, that he's an investor in a basketball team playing at a stadium named for one of the largest financial institutions in the world, Barclays Bank.]

What happens now? Well ...

CONCLUSION

1. Occupy will have its musical protest outside the Jay-Z concert. They will likely not come up with anything as good as previous Jay-Z protesters, but here's hoping.

2. It will receive some degree of press coverage, but likely not too much (though more if the protesters are manhandled by security or cops).

3. Jay-Z will make a canny reference about the entire thing in a song.

4. Somewhere down the road, someone will have another opportunity to ask Jay-Z about this entire incident in a future magazine profile.

5. Repeat.

Further Reading:

Shocker: Jay-Z Officially Doesn't Care About OWS [ANIMAL New York]
Jay-Z Says He Didn't Understand Occupy, but That Didn't Stop Him From Profiting Off It With T-Shirts [Gawker]

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

It was, we are sure, a pied-a-terre for the man often called Canada's Warren Buffet counterpart, but like Mr. Buffett, Mr. Flatt apparently has relatively simple taste—a 1,550-square foot loft in Tribeca is nice, but would surely disappoint the fat cat fantasies dreamed up by so many Occupiers. Wouldn't you expect the head of a massive investment company that manages assets valued at more than $150 billion to pick a flashier pad, maybe one with a second bedroom that wasn't "interior"—which is almost certainly broker babble for has no windows.

Nor did Mr. Flatt manage to pull off a particularly stunning sale. Buyers Edward Zelezen and Kelly Norton paid $1.87 million for the third-floor pad. That's a pretty modest profit for Mr. Flatt, who bought the unit for $1.7 million in 2007 and has been trying to sell it on and off for some time now. We suppose that he was distracted with raising funds for a giant global real estate fund to pursue higher-risk real estate investments for higher returns. Selling a two-bedroom co-op sounds kind of dull by comparison.

For its part, the loft checks all the boxes—located in an old coconut processing plant, high ceilings, exposed brick walls, hardwood floors, open kitchen with all the expensive brands. There's an en-suite bath in the master bedroom and "an incredibly sleek second bath" that "features a custom designed floating vanity, European shower guard, Toto toilet and Kohler polished nickel fixtures," according to the listing, held by Town Residential brokers Brett Miles and Susan Green.

The brokers note that the building is located directly on Duane Park and is within blocks of the Hudson River Park, excellent schools, fine dining, shopping and much more. Also, Zuccotti Park is a short walk away.

kvelsey@observer.com

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

Shouting “Election for sale” and “For $50,000, you could be a Koch whore too,” the crowd of approximately 150 people assembled with signs and music behind a banner reading “Mitt Romney Has a Koch Problem,” the event’s unofficial slogan. A similar banner was flown above the nearby beach, towed behind a MoveOn-commissioned plane. That organization also brought its Romney Mobile, complete with fake dog strapped to the roof and company logos such as UBS and Bain Capital Ventures on the side.

More than an anti-Romney protest, the focus was on Koch and the influence of wealth on the electoral system. Signs read “Romney is All Koched Up” and “End Corporate Personhood” while a balloon was scrawled with “Romney = Koch Sucker” (the protestors apparently wanting it both ways, pun-wise, when it came to Mr. Koch’s surname).

Walker Bragman, 24, a freelance political cartoonist who’s been involved with the Occupy movement a year, brought his dog, Darla. “I got involved with Occupy because the way this country is run now is radically different from how it was run even twenty years ago. Money is the most pervasive force in politics today, and David Koch is one of the worst offenders. There’s something very sickening about that.”

Representing Bum Rush the Vote, George Martinez, who ran for Congress in the Democratic primary in New York’s 7th Congressional district, emphasized that the issue extends beyond partisanship. “We need to get money out of politics,” he said. “When Goldman Sachs are fueling the progressive Democrats, we have a problem, and when the Koch brothers think they can buy elections by moving major pieces of media around, we have a problem on all sides of the spectrum.”

Others took an even less charitable approach. Blogger Gail Zawacki of Oldwick, New Jersey, passed out mock hundred-dollar bills bearing the images of Charles and David Koch with the words “Things Die Better With Koch” and “Blood Money.” Spurred by environmental concerns, she held up a banner bearing “Koch Kills” in red. “Koch Industries kills people literally,” she said, citing air pollution and crop reduction. “No matter how much money you have, it’s not going to protect you,” she said. “David Koch himself had cancer, but he didn’t make the connection. He could afford the best of care. If I was a One Percent-er, I’d be thinking about making the world a more equitable place.”

The event was organized by a (seemingly vast) coalition that included Occupy Wall Street, The Long Island Progressive Coalition, Greenpeace, Move to Amend [Brookhaven], ALIGN NY, Art Not War, Strong For All, MoveOn.org, United New York, Occupy Storefront and Occupy Huntington, Long Island, and many protesters were bused free to the Hamptons from Manhattan.

Originally planning to march directly to Koch’s home from Cooper’s Beach, the group was frustrated by barricades blocking the road to the Koch estate.

Undeterred, the crowd chanted and waited for further instructions, greeting cars exiting and entering Meadow Lane with a mix of cheers and shouts of “Buy a vote.” “Get a heart,” was the quick retort to “get a job.”

The group decided to use the public beach to get as close to Koch as they could. “This beats Zuccotti Park,” one said as they trekked through the sand along a largely empty stretch of beach before reaching the back of the Koch home.

With state police looking on, the crowd lightly taunted the onlookers, then cheered as fellow protestor David Intrator played the national anthem on his saxophone.

While the protest didn’t quite manage to “non-violently disrupt” the fundraiser, organizers consider it a success. Reached via email, Danielle Asher, lead organizer of Long Island Progressive Coalition, said, “Today was a wake-up call for David Koch. He is not used to regular people pushing back against his agenda and today he learned we will not be quiet any longer. We may not have billions in the bank but we do have like-minded people across the country who are ready to stand up against his agenda.”

As the protest broke up, and some of the assembled even went for a dip in the Atlantic, we wondered if Mr. Koch—no doubt enjoying his party beyond the hedgerows—heard the wake-up call.