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Author: Grumpy
Senior citizen sentenced to 4-years after shooting mugger faces the grim truth: ‘I might not come out’
Yes, New Yorkers, we can finally rest easy. We got him. And by him, I mean a 67-year-old man who poses no danger to society.
Foehner is a retired doorman with the gift of gab, a devoted wife, and a habit of saying “groovy.” He spends his time watching naval history videos on YouTube.
While there are many violent criminals with rap sheets the length of a CVS receipt walking our streets, Queens DA Melinda Katz decided to throw the book at this senior citizen, after he pleaded guilty to owning unlicensed guns.
“The only way I can get out of bed in the morning is to not think about [going to prison],” Foehner told me as we sat in the living room of his Pennsylvania townhouse, where he moved a year ago.
As sun sets on his freedom, Foehner is trying to summon the energy to call the prison consultant, who will prepare him for his grim next chapter.
“I’ve got to really give him a buzz, but I’m so shut down that it’s hard to get anything done. You think, ‘okay, I am going to call’ and the day goes by and I haven’t done it.”
Instead, he’s spending time with his devoted wife Jenny Foehner-Speed and his 8-year-old dog, Biscuit, who was recently diagnosed with cancer. He’s making plans to see loved ones and friends. One of whom is suffering from various maladies.
“I don’t know if he’s going to be here in three, four years when I get out. I have friends in Queens who might move. Or they might be dead. I mean, I might not come out,” he said.
He doesn’t know where he’ll be serving his time, but he has one objective: “Survive.” He’s trying to make a plan for his imminent confinement.
“I wouldn’t mind learning to weld. I’d like to become a tutor. I always thought I would be a good teacher.”
Well, the way his case has been handled by Katz has certainly been instructive. And it should enrage anyone with a sense of justice or proportionality.
Foehner first collided with our criminal justice system in May 2023 when he went out for a pack of cigarettes in the early hours of the morning. Crime in his Kew Gardens neighborhood became a problem after a now-shuttered seedy hotel had opened up in 2017, so Foehner took a revolver with him as protection.
In an eerie twist, Foehner had complained to this very paper about the disorder in 2020.
“This isn’t our nice little neighborhood anymore,” he told The Post at that time, noting the brazen drug deals taking place.
But on that fateful night, he returned from buying smokes and saw an unhinged man banging on the door of his building. It was Cody Gonzalez, who then menacingly approached Foehner, demanding a cigarette and his phone.
“He kept coming closer and clearly he was going to attack me.” Foehner said he pulled out a gun and pointed it at the ground. But Gonzalez didn’t stop. He motioned toward Foehner’s neck with an object and his instincts kicked in. Foehner shot the man dead. The ordeal was caught on security camera.
“I didn’t want to hurt anyone. He left me no choice,” said Foehner.
He called 911 and cooperated with authorities.
Gonzalez had at least 15 priors dating back to 2004 and a history of mental illness. Conversely, Foehner had no criminal history. But he is a lifelong gun enthusiast and a doomsday prepper, who had amassed a stockpile of approximately 26 weapons the police found. Only a few were licensed.
“Until that night, I never pointed a gun at anybody. I never had to. I’m not a gun bully…I don’t want power over anyone,’ Foehner said, adding “I believe in the social contract.”
He wasn’t charged in the death of Gonzalez, which was deemed justified, but the DA threw the book at him for criminal weapons possession.
Instead of undergoing a costly and ultimately risky trial that could have sent him to jail for 25 years, he took a plea deal.
Foehner’s attorney Thomas Kenniff, who also represented acquitted subway hero Daniel Penny, blamed the city’s “draconian” gun laws that made it difficult for law abiding citizens to legally obtain guns for protection.
Clearly, Katz insisted on exacting maximum pain onto Foehner.
In fact, she heartlessly requested he spend the last few months in Rikers, but the judge granted one last mercy and allowed him to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas at home.
I cannot imagine how anyone in that office believes justice is being served here. Why are we spending tax dollars to let this good man rot in jail? Give him an ankle bracelet, probation or community service.
Foehner acknowledges he should receive some sort of punishment.
“I said to Tom [Kenniff], If they want me to, I’ll start at the Triborough Bridge and I’ll clean to Grand Central Parkway all the way to the Nassau border. As long as I don’t have to go to jail.”
He calls it a political case. A checkmark for Katz that will allow her to boast about getting guns off the street.
Meanwhile, “They’re ignoring the dangerous people committing crimes every day.”
People like David Mazariegos, who beat Nicola Tanzi to death in October after he kindly held a door open for him in the subway. Despite having two open felony cases, Mazariegos was given taxpayer-funded art “diversion” program for repeat criminals.
Or William Credle, who in 2023 sexually assaulted a 14-year-old but was ordered to undergo mental health treatment, only to go on to allegedly rape a 15-year-old in eerily similar circumstances in November. That case is yet to come to trial, but the examples could easily fill this page.
Even worse, Foehner’s social security benefits will stop while he’s in jail, and his wife of 20 years was just laid off from her job at a publishing company after 12 years. They have an online fundraiser to help defray the cost of his defense, but everything still feels so uncertain.
“We’re just sad and devastated,” Jenny told me. “It’s hard to grasp.”
Indeed, Foehner’s cruel and usual punishment is extremely difficult to wrap one’s head around.
Governor Hochul could pardon him, but Foehner has no hope in that. He does, however, still feel guilt.
“Whatever the circumstances are, a guy is dead because of me. Maybe I should have taken the beating [that night], but who knows where the beating stops.”
Let’s be honest, Foehner has been taking a beating from the system since he was arrested in 2023.
This isn’t justice. Sending a man like Foehner to prison is a crime in itself.
The Man is just amazing and the next time I am in the UK. I am going to buy a bottle and see how good it is! Grumpy
The Colt M1911 automatic pistol remains a competitive defensive tool even today. Back in 1934, it was a paradigm-shifting design.
Baby Face Nelson’s handgun of choice was the Colt M1911. Some were.38 Super, while others were .45 ACP. He used both the stock version as well as full-auto conversions made by famed mob gunsmith Hyman Lebman.
Some folks just come from the factory broken. How much of it is nature versus nurture has occupied psychologists for ages. Oftentimes, those broken people live out their lives until they do something sufficiently egregious as to earn incarceration and anonymity. Others can be a bit flashier.
Lester Joseph Gillis, aka Baby Face Nelson, was tragically born without a conscience. Photo: Public Domain
The Origins of the Monster
Lester Joseph Gillis was born in December 1908 in Chicago. He shot his first man at age 12. Gillis happened upon a handgun and popped a buddy in the jaw over some perceived slight or other. He spent the next year in reform school but stole his first car immediately upon his release. This earned him another year and a half behind bars.
Such aberrant behavior has a name these days. Had Lester Gillis been born in the Information Age, he would have been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorderand put on all sorts of psychoactive medications. He then still would have pursued a life of crime and spent most of his adult life in prison.
As it was, Lester Gillis represented an odd convergence in the human species. A loving father, an affectionate husband and a born leader, Gillis was also a psychopath who came of age amidst the Great Depression. All that stuff synergistically combined to make him a legend.
Gillis learned his craft as part of a gang of “strippers.” Their MO involved stripping the tires off people’s cars and selling them on the black market. In his early 20s, he graduated to armed robbery.
His gang secured their victims with tape before ransacking their homes. They became known as the Tape Bandits in the press.
In a single hit on a magazine executive named Charles Richter in January of 1930, the Tape Bandits made off with $205,000 in jewelry. That would be about $3.6 million today. Once Gillis got a taste of the good life, he couldn’t stop.
One of his armed robbery victims later said of Gillis, “He had a baby face. He was good looking, hardly more than a boy, had dark hair and was wearing a grey topcoat and a brown felt hat, turned down brim.”
Gillis’ mates called him Jimmy. However, newspapermen coined the nom de guerre “Baby Face” Nelson. He carried that name with him to his grave. Thanks to his sordid profession, that didn’t take long.
The M1921 Colt Thompson got all the press, but Depression-era gangsters used a wide variety of weapons. Many of them came from Hyman Lebman’s San Antonio gun shop.
The M1921 Colt Thompson submachine gun was the ideal tool for the professional bank robber who was not overly concerned with collateral damage. When equipped with a 50-round drum, the Thompson was a devastating close-range weapon.
The Monster Comes of Age
What really set Nelson apart from his peers was his willingness to just blow people away as the need arose. He killed his first man, a robbery victim named Edwin Thompson when he was 22.
In 1933, during a getaway from a bank robbery in Brainerd, MN, Nelson sprayed a crowd of bystanders with his Thompson submachine gun. The following year he got cut off in traffic by a paint salesman in Chicago and shot the man to death.
Normally such a fulminant temper and congenital lack of conscience would be a bad thing. However, once Nelson met John Dillinger, he weaponized his psychopathy into something altogether marketable.
In April of 1934, Nelson, Dillinger, Dillinger’s best mate Homer Van Meter, John “Red” Hamilton, Tommy Carroll, Pat Reilly, Nelson’s wife Helen, and three bits of female arm candy descended upon the Little Bohemia Lodge in Manitowish Waters, WI, for some down time.
Emil Wanatka owned Little Bohemia. While playing cards with Dillinger, he noticed his holstered handgun and informed his wife. She had a friend call the feds. Legendary G-Man Melvin Purvis gathered a few FBI guys and hit the place. The end result was a bloodbath.
Eugene Boisneau, John Hoffman and John Morris were just three normal guys who had dropped by for the famed Little Bohemia $1 Sunday night special.
They were climbing into their 1933 Chevrolet Coupe just as the FBI agents arrived. It was dark, and somebody squeezed a trigger. Boisneau was killed outright. His two pals were shot to pieces but survived. Tragically, the gunfire also activated Dillinger and company.
Everyone but Nelson fled into the woods. Nelson just snatched up his Thompson and charged out the front door, exchanging fire with Purvis himself. His audacious assault bought him enough time to escape.
Nelson subsequently hijacked several cars and took a total of seven hostages. He winnowed the crop down to three and was climbing into yet another stolen vehicle when FBI agents Jay Newman and W. Carter Baum, along with local constable Carl Christensen, arrived. Nelson embraced the fog of war, confidently approaching their car and asking the men to identify themselves. The G-Men did so, and Nelson hosed them down with a full-auto M1911 pistol.
The Colt Thompson and the Colt M1911 pistol (below, center) made for a smart match for many a Depression-era criminal.
Gunsmith to the Stars
Hyman Lebman was a San Antonio gunsmith who serviced an eclectic clientele. He sold hunting weapons, cowboy boots and saddles upstairs in his shop at 111 South Flores Street.
However, he kept the really good stuff in the basement. Back before the 1934 National Firearms Act, there were literally no rules governing firearms. Machine guns were available over the counter, cash and carry. You didn’t have to show a driver’s license because nobody had a driver’s license. Lebman thrived in this space. More than a few Chicago gangsters vacationed in San Antonio as a result.
Lebman sold Thompson submachine guns as the opportunities arose. He was also known for two custom weapons in particular. He converted the Winchester M1907 rifle to full-auto and added a Cutts compensator, extended magazine and the vertical foregrip from a Tommy gun.
Homer van Meter used a Lebman M1907 to kill patrolman Howard Wagner during a bank robbery in South Bend, IN, in 1934. His masterwork, however, was what he called his baby machine gun. Hyman Lebman’s full-auto 1911 pistols raised the bar on concealable firepower.
Lebman offered these converted 1911 machine pistols in both .45 ACP and .38 Super. Some were selective fire, while others were full-auto-only. At one point, Lebman was testing an early prototype in his basement and shot a row of holes through the floor above, narrowly missing his son Marvin.
The guns could be had with a modified Cutts compensator, the foregrip from a Thompson submachine gun and an extended magazine packing either 18 or 22 rounds, depending upon the caliber. These Lebman mini machine guns cycled at more than 1,000 rpm.
In 1933, Nelson, his wife, Helen and their son, Ronald, along with infamous gangster Homer Van Meter, had Thanksgiving dinner with the Lebmans in their home. Nelson subsequently left with five full-auto babies in .38 Super, four standard Colt 1911 pistols in .45 ACP and a pair of Thompsons. Nelson gave $300 apiece for the Thompsons — 50% above retail.
The Colt M1911 pistol was concealable, reliable, powerful and accurate. It was a common weapon for the motorized bandits of the 1930s.
1930s-era criminals preferred handguns like these for their concealability and firepower.
This is the bulletproof vest Baby Face Nelson wore
during his bank robberies. Photo: FBI
The Death of the Monster
Following the demise of Dillinger and Van Meter at the hands of police, Nelson became the FBI’s Public Enemy Number 1.
On November 27, 1934, Gillis and John Paul Chase engaged in a shootout with federal agents Samuel Crowley and Herman Hollis at a turnout in Barrington, IL. Nelson killed the two G-Men with a Colt Monitor BAR but caught eight buckshot in his legs and a single .45 ACP bullet to the belly for his trouble.
The .45 ACP round punched through his liver and pancreas. Baby Face Nelson bled out and died later that evening in his wife Helen’s arms. He was 25 years old. It seems a fitting end for the serendipitous psychopath.
Hyman Lebman, for his part, had to stop his machine gun business after the passage of the 1934 NFA. However, he worked as a gunsmith in San Antonio into the 1970s. His son Marvin later described the visiting gangsters as “men in nice suits and hats.” Hyman Lebman, the unofficial armorer to the mob, eventually succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease in 1990.