We’ve published his criminal record and noted that he was not deported despite being sentenced to jail more than 30 times. We’ve also made it clear that Perez’ own vices fueled a downward spiral in his life, one that ended with him living the life of an alcoholic vagrant who called a patch of wooded area behind the A&P supermarket in Mount Kisco his home.

But many readers have taken offense at the extent to which we have covered Perez’ case. Some have tied the paper’s coverage to the immigration debate. Others have suggested that we are attempting to make a case against the three Mount Kisco police officers who are part of the investigation into Perez’ death.

In fact, the paper’s coverage stems entirely from the circumstances of the case, as I have repeatedly told readers who have taken issue with parts of our coverage. Perez arrived here 15 years ago with all the intention of being productive and hard-working. Within several years, he was a homeless alcoholic. The night he disappeared, he was driven out of Bedford by police and into Mount Kisco.

Several hours later, he made a drunken 911 call to Mount Kisco police. Within the hour, he was found dying in Bedford. His death was ruled a homicide and included the impounding of two Mount Kisco squad cars, although no suspects have been identified by investigators or by the paper, for that matter. The DA took a lead in the case, and the FBI announced it would keep tabs on it all.

The circumstances are certainly newsworthy. That’s what we see. If Perez were of another race or ethnic group, or if his residency status were different, those circumstances would still warrant news coverage of his death and the resulting investigation. The case, not the man, drive the story. We’ll stay on it.

After all that media attention, the entire episode came to an end on Friday, when Ciarcia “was sentenced to state prison”:http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007703310392 in the case. She had pleaded guilty to manslaughter, vehicular manslaughter and DWI on Jan. 5, and was sentenced Friday to 16 months to 4 years in prison.

Ciarcia wept as she read a lengthy apology to Westchester County Court Judge Robert DiBella. Also looking on was her 15-year-old daughter, Alexa, and Carol Cornish, the mother of teenager Emily Cornish, the girl killed in the crash. Nearby sat Ed Cook of Yorktown, a U.S. Navy veteran and Con Edison worker whose 1994 Honda was hit head-on by Ciarcia.

If anything is evident from this case is that there were no winners. Carol Cornish lost her only child. Alexa Ciarcia and her siblings lost their mom for a period of time. She will likely not return as the same person. Mr. Cook, I suppose, was left scarred, if not physically then possibly emotionally by the horror of being seriously injured and trapped in his car for what must have seemed an eternity.

And I was struck by Carol Cornish’s words at the sentencing. She had written a statement, but was “too emotional” to read it herself, so she asked Westchester Assistant District Attorney Christine O’Connor, whose hands shook as she read, to do so for her. After speaking of the painful loss of her own daughter, Cornish turned her attention to Ciarcia’s daughter:

“Alexa will always have the memory of what happened that night and of trying to revive Emily before the emergency services arrived, and also that her mother caused this. No one deserves that, especially at the hands of the parent whose job it is to protect them. That night, Ann Marie also voluntarily took on the job of protecting my precious Emily.”

Ann Marie Ciarcia sobbed while the statement was read. Both women seemed fragile and broken, as did the crash’s surviving teenager. Her mom has probably seen her name in headlines for the last time — at least for a while. The story caught on, in part, because Ann Marie Ciarcia seemed to be reliving her youth. She had a home page on myspace.com, where she raved about her love for clubbing and punk bands from her younger years. It’s also where the name “RoccerMom” came from, a witty play on words that suddenly seemed to be made for tabloid headlines.

Several months ago, following the crash, Ciarcia put restrictions on her myspace.com site so it could only be accessed by invitation. Too many reporters had logged on after the crash and quoted from it. But one thing that is still visible to anyone who logs onto the site is that the name was changed. RoccerMom is now RocBottom.

I emailed the company to inquire if they were part of an official law enforcement agency. The response from their customer service department was that it was a private company, but that all the information is based on individual states’ sexual offender registry. Their site includes the following “about us” information:

Steve Roddel, founder of FamilyWatchdog.us, began a 25 year career in Information Technology as an 18 year old computer programmer in the United States Marine Corps. He was been employed and consulted to some of the largest corporations and government entities in the world, which prepared him for the challenges presented by FamilyWatchdog.us. He is married and has three children and one grandchild.

FamilyWatchdog.us was formed as a result of the senseless murder of Jessica Lunsford. Mr. Roddel, concerned about the safety of his own family, tried to locate sex offenders in his own neighborhood. Using his state’s sex offender registry, he was unable to locate 4 sex offenders in his immediate area, one that was about 600 feet from his house. Using his knowledge of Information Technology, Mr. Roddel successfully mapped offenders from his state’s registry, and was able for the first time to present a map of sex offenders – where they lived, and where they worked. Initially, Mr. Roddel was simply going to create a map of sex offenders for his own state, but upon discussions with other people in other states, decided to set the goal of mapping offenders across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. FamilyWatchdog.us is proudly the only sex offender registry in existence that is able to map registered sex offenders from all states.

It’s an easy to search database, although I don’t know how complete or up-to-date the information is. With that disclaimer, see what you come up with yourselves. And don’t forget you could always look up the state “sex offender registry”:http://criminaljustice.state.ny.us/nsor/search_index.htm yourself. You simply need to sign up and you can search that site by zip code or municipality.

Police in White Plains today reported that human skeletal remains were found shortly after noon in a wooded area in front of Bloomingdale’s department store. You can check out the preliminary details in reporter “Rich Liebson’s story”:http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070327/NEWS02/703270427 on LoHud.com. He’ll have more on it in tomorrow’s editions of The Journal News.

White Plains detectives were joined at the scene by a forensics team, which will hopefully help identify the remains. The Westchester County Medical Examiner’s Office is also at the scene. I’m sure police in Mamaroneck don’t wish their frustration thus far on their counterparts in White Plains. Hopefully, both sets of remains will have a name attached sometime soon.

See, we’ve been tracking developments in Yonkers that still seem to have more questions than answers. Namely, two federal subpoenas have now been served on City Hall, with few clues because the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys Office won’t confirm or deny that there’s an investigation, although everyone in Yonkers has been speculating over what it’s about — not that it exists. We know the first subpoena, served March 2, sought Yonkers City Council records dating to 2004. A source close to the federal investigation told The Journal News that the feds were poking around the council’s handling of Ridge Hill Village, the $600 million mega-project slated for an 81-acre chunk of land along the New York State Thruway in Yonkers.

The second subpoena, served one week ago today, asked for financial disclosures filed with the Yonkers Board of Ethics by Zehy Jereis, chairman of the city’s Republican Committee. Turns out Jereis never filed any. There’s some dispute as to whether he ever had to, but wide agreement that he didn’t need to after the beginning of 2006 because of a change in city law. So the feds came up empty on that one.
Of course, the whole thing has fueled a raucous political fight like only Yonkers can stage, with GOP Mayor Phil Amicone squaring off against Jereis, a staunch rival since Amicone and others in the party tried to block Jereis from the leadership post in 2003. Turns out Jereis’ wing in the party had enough juice to carry the day. Now our politics blog, our emails and our phone lines have begun to hum with back-and-forth banter between the two camps.

Anyway, the point is that none of this evokes stereotypical images of late-breaking, rush-to-the-scene, high-drama crime reporting. There’s often no body, no chalk outline, not even handcuffs, nor a chilling confession caught on videotape.
Crime reporting, in fact, can be mundane for much of the hunt. I covered the Bronx County Courthouse for six years, and can dispel the myth that covering criminal trials is thrilling and exciting. In real life, you sit in a courtroom for six hours to get 15 minutes of gripping testimony — on a good day.
We actually spend a good deal of time searching for indictments, lawsuits, subpoenas, arrest reports, etc. — anything on paper that advances or makes the story. So, much as we do our share of hoofing it to crime scenes, we also spend a good deal of time looking through old manila folders. The thrill, of course, comes when you find the document you sought, or, better yet, the one you didn’t expect to find. Even if, as my colleague Jon Bandler says, “there’s not always a smoking gun.”

Now we’ll see what it leads to in the present Yonkers situation — if anything comes of it. But it won’t be for lack of a paper chase.

Thus far, police have been frustrated in their attempts to identify the woman, although there are periodic leads here and there. Leslie picked up another update today, which you “can read about here”:http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070312/UPDATE/703120381 . Hopefully, there will be more to come.

As those of you who have followed the story know, the probe is focusing on a tattoo above the woman’s right breast. I have a photo of it on my desk, which I’ve shown to tattoo artists and others as part of my own research. Today, a colleague asked me to keep it out of sight because it disturbed him to see it day after day as the story lingers.

Obviously, I did as he said. But it struck me that the photo has a necessary effect for me, as it serves as a reminder that, whoever this woman turns out to be, she was very much alive once and very much a real person. She chose to get that tattoo — two cherries with two green leaves and a long stem — for some reason. Perhaps it was based on her nickname, or a private joke with a friend. Maybe she got drunk and got the darn thing one night while out with the girls. Whatever the reason, that two-inch tattoo is a link to the person she was, and hopefully a clue to her identity.

For me, the point is never lost. As a crime reporter, you can never forget that you’re dealing with real people and real lives.

One such story for me is the case of Eli Wilson, a 3-year-old boy from Pittsburgh who nearly drowned Aug. 19 during a family outing at Putnam Lake. His aunt, Gladys Mendoza, drowned saving Eli’s life. I’ve updated this story several times over the past few months, and anyone who has read them knows Eli is doing amazingly well. Doctors at the Children’s Institute in Pittsburgh were pleasantly surprised at the speed of his recovery, considering life-saving measures were required to keep him breathing at the outset.

Well, Eli was back in town this weekend. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t learn in time to get out there and see him and write about it. His parents said they took him to visit with Patterson firefighters on Saturday, and to visit nurses and doctor’s at the children’s hospital at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla last night. Turns out little Eli has become something of a celebrity in places that played a role in saving his young life.

The way I see it, better a celebrity than a victim.