Ex-NYPD officer dies a guilty man — maybe — despite decadeslong battle to clear his name for double murder
Ex-NYPD Officer Billy Phillips, decades after his conviction in a 1968 double homicide, went to his grave a guilty man.
Or maybe he didn’t.
Phillips died this past April at age 93, an admittedly dirty cop who insisted to the end that he was framed, convicted and imprisoned for 33 years on a bogus murder rap — even after exposing crooked police colleagues during the Knapp Commission’s probe of NYPD corruption.
A long, futile and ultimately frustrating legal battle ensued on Phillips’ behalf across the decades, with storied defense attorneys William Kunstler and F. Lee Bailey taking up his cause to no avail.
“I had hoped for better,” said Ronald Kuby, another of the ex-cop’s lawyers and Kunstler’s old law partner. “At least Billy outlived almost everyone who put him in a cage, and happily spent many years fishing in peace and quiet.”
Phillips was convicted after cooperating fully with the watchdog commission’s 1971 investigation, his first-hand testimony leading to 30 indictments — including charges against 17 fellow officers.
He was, alongside incorruptible cop Frank Serpico, one of two star NYPD witnesses at the televised hearings. But once the cameras and microphones disappeared, he was accused of gunning down a prostitute and a pimp inside a Manhattan brothel on Christmas Eve 1968.
Phillips’ first trial ended in 1972 with a hung jury after 10 of its members voted for an acquittal. Prosecutors opted for a retrial two years later, with the ex-cop convicted and slapped with a sentence of 25 years to life.
“The bus?” he told the Daily News last September. “They threw me under the train. It was a bitter surprise. I cooperated in every way they asked me to with the Knapp Commission. I didn’t expect that kind of ending.”
Evidence uncovered in the new millennium by an ex-police officer working for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office turned up documents pointing the finger elsewhere in the killings, but the conviction was never reviewed or reversed.
“I remain steadfast in my belief that Bill Phillips was at best the victim of a wrongful conviction and at worst was out and out framed,” said former cop Andy Rosenzweig, whose digging found evidence implicating two other suspects in the killing.
“Bill’s death was sad for Ron and me,” he said. “All we wanted was for them to take on the case and give it a fair shot.”
Phillips was a 14-year NYPD veteran when he testified against his brothers in blue, only to face the murder prosecution where the DA alleged the motive was a $1,000 protection payoff owed to the cop by the pimp.
Facing a 2007 parole hearing, and eager for his freedom, Phillips finally admitted to the killing in the previous millennium to secure his release.
“The only way to end it was to fold and say I did it,” he said last year. “I did what I had to do to get out, otherwise I’d still be in there.”
Rosenzweig last spoke with Phillips about a week or two before his death this past April 18, with the one-time NYPD officer turned inmate given a military funeral before his ashes were interred in Oregon.
“Our calls got away from discussing the merits of the case,” said Rosenzweig. “I knew how he felt, and he knew how I felt. I’m frustrated I wasn’t able to more definitively see his name cleared.”
