Woman says allegedly violent
ex-cop claimed he's 'untouchable' - Is he?
STEPHANIE FARR, DAILY NEWS
STAFF WRITER
IN JANUARY 2012, Candida
Mulligan, a police dispatcher, wrote a letter to Philadelphia Police
Commissioner Charles Ramsey about Lt. George Holcombe, her ex-boyfriend and the
father of two of her children.
She outlined her fears that
Holcombe might commit violence against her or her children. The last words
were: "I have made my fears and concerns known to family and friends in
the event that something tragic happens to any of us."
She also filed three
protection-from-abuse petitions against Holcombe. But he continued to work as a
police officer.
"He's 'untouchable,' as he
likes to say. He's said that to me, he's said that to the kids," Mulligan,
41, told the Daily News recently. "So
he knows that he's going to get away with everything - which he does."
That is, until Holcombe was
arrested in November for allegedly
threatening to kill Mulligan in front of one son during a custodial dispute
and for allegedly assaulting a police officer who responded to the scene.
The incident was captured on
camera by Mulligan's husband, John.
"I'm going to jail right
now because I'm going to kill you," Holcombe can be heard on video saying
to Candida Mulligan. "I'm going to f---ing kill you."
Holcombe, 42, was charged with
aggravated assault, simple assault, resisting arrest, terroristic threats,
endangering the welfare of children, harassment and disorderly conduct.
And he was fired by the Police
Department.
Candida Mulligan thought her
troubles might be over.
"I breathed a momentary
sigh of relief," she said. "John kept saying, 'This should be it. We
have it on video. You can't deny what's on video.'
"That's what everyone
thought," she added.
But everyone was wrong.
On
Jan. 5, in a move that shocked the Mulligans and the District Attorney's
Office, Judge James Murray Lynn dismissed all charges against Holcombe at his
preliminary hearing except disorderly conduct.
Now the Mulligans worry that
Holcombe will get his job back in arbitration and that he'll regain custody of
the kids. And they fear for their lives.
"I
only got one favor to ask," John Mulligan told the People Paper. "If
we die, please run the story."
'Hiding in the bedroom'
Holcombe and Candida Mulligan
met at the Police Administration Building in 1998 and dated from then until
2010. Their two sons are 13 and 5 years old.
Mulligan said that Holcombe was
verbally and physically abusive
during their relationship and that he has a drinking problem. She vividly
remembers one night when she says he threatened to burn the house down.
"Me and the kids were
upstairs hiding in the bedroom and he was downstairs lighting papers on fire.
He told us he was going to burn us," she said. "I just remember
praying."
In 2010, she got the courage to
leave. "I ran out of there like a bat out of hell," Mulligan said.
Following the breakup, Mulligan
said, the two entered into a verbal custody agreement. But after she met her
husband, "all hell broke loose," she said, and Holcombe insisted on
getting a court order granting full joint custody. Mulligan said the threats
and harassing behavior also became more intense.
"It's a lot of verbal,
mental and emotional harassment," she said.
She filed several complaints
with the local police district and Internal Affairs, none of which went
anywhere, she said.
In January 2012, Mulligan filed
her first of three protection-from-abuse orders against Holcombe for threats
and harassment.
A temporary PFA was granted for
a few months, but as with the two subsequent PFAs she filed, when she went back
to court to make the order permanent, a judge - the same one each time -
dismissed it.
A new judge even refused to
grant Mulligan a permanent PFA against Holcombe after his recent arrest,
although she has a temporary one against him now.
Mulligan said she believed that
Holcombe received special treatment because he was a cop.
"Basically, every time
we'd go to court I was getting reprimanded because I'm making all these
complaints against him," she said. "That was his defense every time
we'd go: 'She's trying to get me fired.' "
Police investigated
Lt. John Stanford, a police
spokesman, confirmed that "a number of PFAs" were filed against
Holcombe, but he declined to say how many.
He said that each was
investigated by Internal Affairs but that when the courts threw out the temporary
PFAs, Internal Affairs was "forced to conclude [its] investigation as not
sustained."
Stanford said that whenever a
cop is served with a temporary PFA, the officer's guns are reclaimed by the
department, the cop is placed on desk duty and an Internal Affairs
investigation is initiated.
But if a permanent PFA is
granted, the officer is terminated from the force, he said.
The PFAs were not Internal
Affairs' only dealings with Holcombe, who became a cop in 1991 and most
recently worked in the Neighborhood Services Unit.
In
1997, the city settled a fatal shooting case against him for $750,000, and in
2009, a woman filed suit against him for allegedly kicking in her door and
punching her in the head.
After numerous court hearings
and investigations that went nowhere, Mulligan felt helpless. Cops told her to
go to the press.
"I've had officers
literally come up to me and hold my hand and say, 'You need to go public with
this. It's the only way something is going to get done,' " she said.
A September 2014 Daily News
study showed that in the previous five years, domestic-abuse complaints were
filed against 164 cops, only 11 of whom were terminated and charged. Of those,
only three were found guilty. Most of the others got their jobs back in
arbitration.
'Erratic behavior'
In November, Mulligan was
awarded primary physical and legal custody of the kids.
In her order, Judge Diane
Thompson said the Department of Human Services had substantiated that the boys
were left alone while in Holcombe's care and were often late for school. She
also wrote that Holcombe failed to follow through on court-ordered counseling
and that the children expressed concerns about his abuse of alcohol.
Holcombe attributed his
"erratic behavior" to diabetes, the judge wrote.
The custodial exchange
following the new custody agreement that week did not go well and ended in
Holcombe's arrest.
The Mulligans showed up at
Holcombe's house to pick up the boys at the scheduled 6 p.m. time. The older
boy came outside but said Holcombe would not let the 5-year-old out of the
house.
The couple sat in their car and
as Candida Mulligan calmly called 9-1-1, John Mulligan, a suburban fire chief,
began filming.
It was only when cops arrived
that Holcombe came out of the house, shirtless, leaving the 5-year-old alone
inside.
John Mulligan had gotten out of
the vehicle to speak with the cops, but Holcombe went directly to the car for
Candida.
"F--- you. Guess what,
Candy? You're a piece of s---," Holcombe can be heard on the Mulligans'
video yelling in front of the 13-year-old.
As the responding cops tried to
calm Holcombe down, he went off even more on his ex-girlfriend.
"I'm going to jail right
now because I'm going to kill you," he can be heard saying on the video.
"I'm going to f---ing kill you. OK? How about that?"
At that point, according to the
Mulligans, Holcombe tried to go after Candida and ended up allegedly assaulting
one of the officers instead.
"It was like WrestleMania.
He broke the mirror clean off my truck," John Mulligan said.
The video ends with Holcombe
being handcuffed on the ground, Candida Mulligan sobbing and her son trying to
comfort her.
"Everything just came
back, it was a flood of emotions," she said.
Congrats from cops
After Holcombe's arrest,
Candida Mulligan said, cops congratulated her.
"I received messages from
officers saying. 'Thank God, they finally got him. Finally someone is
listening. Finally, something is going to be done,' " she said.
But when the preliminary
hearing was held before Judge James Murray Lynn on Jan. 5, Lynn dismissed all
charges except for the summary disorderly conduct.
"The judge basically
stated that it was sad and disgusting when a child dislikes the other parent
and that's only caused because of the things I say and do," Candida said.
John Mulligan was stunned.
"Of course, it's not that
the child hears from his father that 'I want to kill you, your mom and your
stepfather,' " he said.
The reasons behind Lynn's
ruling remain a mystery. He did not return several requests for comment for
this story.
But the Mulligans weren't the
only ones who thought the judge had made the wrong decision.
The District Attorney's Office
has refiled all charges against Holcombe, and he's slated for a new preliminary
hearing before a different judge Feb. 9, said John Delaney, deputy district
attorney for the trial division.
"Let me say this: We
believe the evidence was sufficient to prove our burden at the preliminary
hearing," Delaney said. "We believe Judge Lynn was in error when he
dismissed the charges."
Holcombe's attorney, Jeremy
Alva, disagrees.
"I believe Judge Lynn made
the correct ruling," Alva said. "The government has a right to try
their case as they choose, and if they believe a refile is necessary, that's
their decision."
Alva said he told his client
not to comment for this story.
Fraternal Order of Police
President John McNesby said the FOP is not covering Holcombe's costs on this
case, but if he is acquitted the union might reimburse his court fees up to
$9,000. He said the union is waiting to see what happens in the case.
Now, Candida and John Mulligan
worry that if the system betrays them yet again, Holcombe will regain his job
in arbitration, regain custody of his children and get the current PFA tossed.
"I have a 13-year-old son
who doesn't trust cops because even though he sees great cops, his experience
isn't that," Candida said. "We constantly have to remind him that not
all cops are bad,but it's hard because he's living with one who thinks he can
get away with anything."
Gerry Hyland killed police oversight after the cops gunned down unarmed citizens...you elected him now toss him out.
