The Harlem funeral home director beaten, robbed of his wallet and threatened with a machete inside his office by a pair of crooks pretending to be mourners was left stunned by the brazen holdup.
He’s also astounded by the robbers’ stupidity, he told the Daily News.
“This is a funeral home, not a bodega!” Daniel Wilhelmina, 66, repeatedly told the two men demanding cash during the caught-on-camera robbery last month inside the Daniels Wilhelmina Funeral Home on W. 131st St. near Malcolm X Blvd.
After taking Wilhelmina’s wallet and cellphone, the pair — one of whom was ultimately arrested — only used the credit cards inside the wallet to buy a pair of sneakers and a bottle of liquor.
The funeral director said the thieves could have bought almost anything on his credit cards.
“In my wallet was over $100,000 available in credit and you went out and bought a pair of sneakers and a bottle of liquor?” Wilhelmina asked. “I told the detective, ‘[They] should go to jail just for being stupid.’”
The men entered the funeral home at about 3 p.m. on Feb. 17 claiming they wanted to make funeral arrangements.
Wearing a long overcoat with a gold badge clipped to his belt, one of the suspects asked to see Wilhelmina and was ushered to the back office, where he was caught on video released by the NYPD giving the funeral director a fist bump before sitting across a desk from him.
“The first guy that came in, he was well dressed, white overcoat, black suit with black shirt with a black tie,” Wilhelmina remembered. “[He was] very professional looking. I would have never suspected a robbery based on his appearance.”
But the visit took an odd turn when the thief relayed the story he’d concocted to get into the door. He told Wilhelmina that his brother had died out of state and he had already arranged for the body to be shipped to New York without first hiring a local funeral home to receive the body.
“That’s where the story starts to get a little fuzzy,” Wilhelmina said. “You can’t just put a dead body on a plane.”
The cagey customer also said he had a burial plot for his brother at a Staten Island cemetery, but didn’t remember its name — another red flag for Wilhelmina, a second-generation funeral director. His family’s funeral home has been in operation in Harlem for more than a half-century, he said.
“The average cemetery [cost] is $5,000 and up,” Wilhelmina said. “If your family spent $5,000, you know the name of that cemetery.”
The funeral director was going to give the new customer the benefit of the doubt when everything took a dark turn.
The mourner’s accomplice suddenly burst into the back office sporting a ski mask. At the same time, the man in the long coat bizarrely accused Wilhelmina of watching child porn on his computer while the two talked. The funeral director’s computer screen was blank, he told The News.
“As [the accomplice] approached, I ask the gentleman, ‘Are you guys together? How can I help you?’ He never did respond,” Wilhelmina said. “That’s when the first guy got up to come around my desk and start to attack me.”
The suspect in the long coat flashed his badge, but never identified himself as a police officer as he accused Wilhelmina of watching child porn.
“Now, I can tell you I ain’t never seen child [pornography],” he told The News.
Within seconds, the two suspects were all over Wilhelmina, repeatedly striking him in the face. At one point during the attack, the would-be mourner pulled out a machete from his long coat, he remembered.
“Fortunately he only threatened me with it,” Wilhelmina recalled. “The reason why I think I’m alive today is because I didn’t hit him back.”
Throughout the attack, the suspects demanded Wilhelmina hand over his cash, but the funeral director could only tell them the truth: he had none. Funeral homes are not cash businesses, he repeatedly told the men.
“People pay by insurance, by credit card, or by check. Nobody’s walking in here with $1,000 in cash. Those days are gone.”
The suspects took Wilhelmina’s cellphone and wallet as a consolation prize before running out of the funeral home.
On March 5, Luis Ortega, 50, received a summons for theft of service in the Bronx — when police discovered he was wanted for the funeral home robbery. Detectives also traced Wilhelmina’s stolen cellphone to the Belmont section of the borough, though the device has not been recovered.
Ortega, who cops said was the accomplice of the man in the long coat, was charged with robbery and assault. A judge ordered him held on $50,000 bail following his arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court earlier this month, according to court records.
Cops were still looking for the crook in the long coat. On Thursday, cops released images of the suspect and asked the public for information in identifying him.
Weeks after the robbery, Wilhelmina still doesn’t know why the pair targeted his business.
“How’d you pick my funeral home? It becomes a question that just lingers in my mind,” he said.
When he thinks about it, the true masterminds behind the boneheaded heist run the gamut from former customers and workers to old girlfriends. His ex-wife even made the list, he joked.
But something more sinister came to mind: it could simply be a new crime trend.
“I’ve had funeral homes or directors from Atlanta and various other states call me already out of concern for my welfare,” he said. “Hopefully [they] are taking precautions because if people are that ruthless and are going to come in and pretend to be making funeral arrangements and then rob somebody, I wouldn’t want that to happen to anyone else.”
Anyone with information regarding this robbery is urged to call NYPD Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.