Young Bronx Woman Stabbed To Death, Dumped in Desolate Lot: "Never Met Anyone Evil Like That Before"
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After failing to make an appointment, 21-year-old Talina Bryant was reported missing on September 8, 2000. 

Detectives Daniel Rice and Leonard Golino, both now retired from the New York City Police Department’s 52nd Precinct, went to Bryant’s apartment building in the Bronx.

“There were three apartments downstairs,” Golino said in the “Bronx Undercover” episode of New York Homicide, which airs new episodes on Saturdays at 9/8c p.m. on Oxygen. “It was just like a college dorm.”

The apartments had a shared kitchen area and bathroom. Detectives observed that in Bryant’s apartment, an area of the carpet and flooring had been cut out. Sawdust suggested that it had recently been cut.

A luminol test for blood was done on the floor and in a utility sink. Both “lit up like a Christmas tree,” Rice said. “We knew there was some type of crime that was committed here.”

The evidence indicated Bryant’s case wasn’t simply a missing persons case, according to William Sean O’Toole, who was then a lieutenant with the NYPD’s Bronx Homicide Squad. 

Bryant’s personal items, including a comb and toothbrush, were collected for DNA analysis.

And police began talking to those with ties to the building. A neighbor reported hearing an electrical saw being used in her apartment on September 7, the day before she was reported missing. Bryant’s landlord told police that her apartment was a frequent source of “loud music … and was a very busy place,” Rice said on New York Homicide

Who was Talina Bryant?

Before moving into her own apartment in 1999, Bryant lived with her cousin Claudette West and her son Dashawn West. Claudette described Bryant as “beautiful and funny,” a young woman who “liked to have fun.” 

Bryant worked as a sales clerk in Manhattan and had plans to enter Monroe College in the Bronx in September of 2000, the New York Daily News reported.

Police tracked Bryant’s movements to establish a timeline. On September 5, a friend “walked her to the bus to go home,” Bryant’s mother told New York Homicide. That was the last time Bryant was seen alive.

Police work to narrow down potential suspects

Bryant had received harassing phone calls from an ex-boyfriend, police discovered. When detectives tracked him down, they observed a suspicious scratch on his face.

At the precinct, the man told investigators that he and Bryant “dated on and off for a while.” He said he made those harassing calls as “kind of a joke,” said Golino. 

The scratch, he added, was made by another woman he was seeing. He agreed to a DNA test and had a solid alibi. He was cleared.

Beef with landlord surfaces 

Investigators discovered that Bryant had filed a harassment complaint against her landlord, the same man who’d previously told police that Bryant was a noisy tenant. 

Golino met with him outside his residence, where the detective observed what appeared to be sawdust in a carport. The landlord claimed the material was from working on a car. 

Asked about Bryant’s harassment complaint against him, the landlord said Bryant had filed that report to get back at him for complaining about her for violating terms of her lease, according to New York Homicide.

Detectives learn Talina Bryant filed complaint against different former boyfriend

Police found that Bryant had filed an assault complaint and got an order of protection against another former boyfriend, James Moore.

Moore told police that the order resulted from a misunderstanding. After failing to appear for a scheduled polygraph, he allowed a DNA sample to be taken. He was excluded as a suspect.

On March 7, crime lab results showed that all of the blood evidence from Bryant’s apartment belonged to only her. “We didn’t really have enough at this point to do anything with the landlord,” said Golino, who was transferred to another Bronx precinct.

Bryant’s case then went cold.

Informant reinvigorates Talina Bryant case

In the summer of 2002, Det. Nicholas Caristo of the NYPD’s 52nd Precinct, took over Bryant’s case. 

On October 18, an informant came forward and claimed that Bryant was murdered. She said that David Mundo, a local man she knew, had been paid to carry out a hit.

Mundo was a “twenty-something-year-old, a real street guy,” said Golino. “He’s not a quiet boy.” The informant said that in the summer of 2000, Mundo had asked her if she knew anyone who could help him carry out the murder. 

“She just threw out a name, Danny, to him,” Caristo told New York Homicide. The source told police that after introducing Mundo to “Danny,” Mundo took her on a scouting run and drove past Bryant’s apartment.

“Talina was outside,” Caristo said. “Mundo turned around and said, ‘That’s the girl I have to hit.'”

The information was a bombshell break. But police needed corroborating evidence to move forward and make an arrest.

Two Undercover Police Officers Pose as Drug Dealers to Catch a Killer

Police focus on alleged hit man David Mundo

Police determined that “Danny,” whose real name was Gilbert Adames, was incarcerated at Rikers Island on an unrelated charge. Knowing that Adames would say nothing incriminating while behind bars, police focused on Mundo.

Caristo recruited the informant to introduce Mundo to undercover officers posing as drug dealers looking to have a hit carried out in Brooklyn. 

Detectives Richie Gonzalez and Jimmy Rivera, each now retired from the NYPD’s Undercover Squad, stepped up for the sting operation. On March 23, 2003, they met with Mundo in a Brooklyn diner. 

Detectives Golino and Caristo covertly recorded the meeting from a nearby van as Gonzalez spun his cover story. “I said somebody had stolen from me, and that I gotta make an example of these guys,” Gonzalez told New York Homicide

David Mundo makes confession about Talina Bryant to undercover detectives

Mundo said he could get the job done. “He started talking about the Talina Bryant case,” said Caristo. In the recorded meeting, Mundo said he had a “secret location” where he made people disappear.

He went on to describe how he’d waited for Bryant in her apartment “and cut her throat,” said Gonzalez.

“I never met anyone evil like that before,” said Rivera. “I still think about it — how cold this guy was.” 

The undercover cops agreed to a price for the hit and arranged for a second meeting on April 8 at the same diner. Mundo was arrested.

David Mundo and Gilbert Adames charged with murder

At the precinct, Mundo denied any involvement with Bryant’s murder. Then Gonzalez and Rivera revealed they were cops. “He knew he was in trouble,” said Caristo. “He wanted to cut a deal.”

An agreement was made in exchange for Mundo’s confession and details of where Bryant’s body was. He described how Bryant had fought for her life. He said he didn’t know who’d cut out the floorboard.

“David said it was Danny who did the stabbing but that’s not what David told the informant,” said Caristo. They bound Bryant’s hands and feet with duct tape, wrapped her in plastic, and dumped the body in a desolate lot in the Bronx

On April 9, Mundo led police to Bryant’s body. Bryant’s mother recalled learning about her daughter’s fate. “I just kind of blacked out,” she said. 

David Mundo says Talina Bryant’s landlord paid him for murder 

The question of who hired the hit on Bryant remained. Mundo claimed that her landlord wanted her out of his building and paid him $8,000 for the murder.

It was explosive information, but there was a hitch. “You cannot convict someone or charge someone with a crime based upon the statement of a co-conspirator without corroborating evidence,” said Paul Rosenfeld, a former District Attorney for Bronx County.

The landlord has never been charged due to insufficient evidence.

Adames was charged with Bryant’s murder while incarcerated. Mundo and Adames pleaded guilty to murder and conspiracy and were sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.

Learn more about the case by watching the “Bronx Undercover” episode of New York Homicide, which airs news episodes on Saturdays at 9/8c p.m. on Oxygen

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