Daily News Exclusive
I was so close to evil & didn't know...Brooklyn waitress digests shock of serving alleged mastermind
Sharon Fitzmaurice never dreamed that the man who fingered prayer beads as he ate salmon at table 8 in the Lindenwood Diner would turn out to be the architect of a plot to kill thousands of New Yorkers.
"I was so close to evil - and it never even hit me," Fitzmaurice told the Daily News in an exclusive interview yesterday.
Moments after accused mastermind Russell Defreitas walked out of the diner - without leaving a tip - on Friday night, he was picked up by authorities.
"To get so close to someone with such an evil mind, I have to say it shook me," said Fitzmaurice, a 52-year-old mother of five whose husband is a retired NYPD detective. "It shook me quite a lot."
Defreitas, 63, was charged along with three other suspects of hatching a scheme to blow up Kennedy Airport, nearby fuel tanks and a 40-mile fuel pipeline.
Authorities said their goal was to destroy the airport and burn large swaths of Queens by igniting the pipeline. Experts said the attack could have killed thousands, but noted an explosion at one section of the fuel artery would not cause a chain reaction.
Defreitas was being held in Brooklyn while two other suspects - Kareem Ibrahim, a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, and Adbul Kadir, a citizen of Guyana - were jailed in Trinidad and Tobago. The fourth suspect, Abdel Nur, was still at large last night.
The Muslim extremists were well into the plot, code-named "The Chicken Farm," to carry out an "unthinkable" attack that would dwarf the 9/11 attacks, authorities said. Amazingly, only six years ago, Defreitas seemed as shocked as any other American when terrorists exploded passenger jets into the World Trade Center.
His former friend Trevor Watts recalled that he and Defreitas were transfixed by the scope of the 9/11 attacks as they watched TV for hours in his duplex in Cambria Heights, Queens.
"We couldn't even talk," said Watts, 65. "He was in shock just like I was, just like everybody."
Defreitas, a U.S. citizen who emigrated from Guyana about 40 years ago, sat on Watts' plastic-covered, rust-colored sofa and told his pal that he couldn't understand how terrorists could kill so many innocents, Watts said.
"Can you believe what you seen?" Defreitas asked.
But recalling his now-infamous friend, Watts said Defreitas often changed his outward appearance and beliefs. In the years leading up to 9/11, Defreitas grew dreadlocks and proclaimed himself to be a Rastafarian. He then embraced Islam, Watts said.
Defreitas also came up with a couple of get-rich-quick schemes to ship air conditioners or refrigerators to Guyana. But nothing came of the plans, and Watts questioned whether the terror plot could have been another one of Defreitas' half-baked ideas.
"When I heard he got arrested at the diner, I was wondering who he was swindling," Watts said. "He couldn't even fix brakes. He never built bombs."
But authorities say Defreitas was conspiring with extremists who have ties to the Jamaat al Muslimeen, a radical group in Trinidad and Tobago. He also allegedly claimed he had been taught to make bombs.
There was little indication that mass murder was on Defreitas' mind when he sat down at the Lindenwood Diner with another man, believed to be a government informant, at 7 p.m. Friday.
Defreitas, a former JFK cargo worker, sipped tomato juice and ordered salmon with no spices.
"Sometimes you get a feeling about someone's spirit - I didn't have that feeling," Fitzmaurice said.
The accused terrorist, who wore a traditional brown Muslim tunic, fiddled with prayer beads while his pal ate crab cakes and had cheesecake for dessert.
Everything seemed normal, except the men stopped talking whenever Fitzmaurice walked by their booth.
"They seemed so nice to me," she said. "I really thought they were two gentlemen sitting there talking about religion."
The waitress had no idea anything was amiss until she arrived at work Saturday.
After three decades as a waitress, Fitzmaurice said she is having trouble coming to grips with the reality that anyone who orders dinner could be a homegrown terrorist. "It's unbelievable, really, [that] it's that close," she said. "Now I guess I don't know who to trust."
