Mystery Swirls as Fatal Shots Fired in Queens Echo in Italy and Beyond

For William Klinger, Queens was the dream. There, life would be free of the frustrations he had known in Italy, where a stalled academic career had left him working in a highway tollbooth.

A job awaited at a college in New York City. So, too, did a new home in Astoria, a neighborhood in the borough that has long been a haven for European immigrants, and for the improbably low price of about $77,000.

All of it, Mr. Klinger’s wife would later say, had been promised to him by a fellow connoisseur of Slavic history named Alexander Bonich. The men had met about a year ago in their native Croatia, she said, and Mr. Klinger had quickly come to trust Mr. Bonich as he would a brother.

And so, as he toured the city late last month, Mr. Klinger, 42, brimmed with excitement.

Within days, though, he was dead, shot in the head and neck in a snowy Queens park with what may — or may not — have been an antique revolver. Soon, Mr. Bonich, 49, had been charged with murder.

The rare killing of a European visitor to New York reverberated across the Atlantic, landing on the front pages of Italian and Croatian newspapers. It was a grim version of a familiar story: immigrant hopes dashed against the reality of city life.

As theories of motive abounded — including suggestions of a mysterious plot linked to Mr. Klinger’s historical study of the Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito — detectives came to believe that a fraud was at the root of the fatal confrontation.

“It seems impossible,” she said. “William was a historian, he worked in archives, he’d never know how to shoot a gun.” She added that her husband had told her that Mr. Bonich was involved in historical recreations of famous events, including some that involved weapons.

Mr. Bonich conceded as much, saying he had participated in such re-enactments in New Jersey. He said he kept Allied and Axis military uniforms as well as “decorative weapons” — old rifles, a Vichy-era sword — in the Astoria apartment.

“Fake, fake, fake,” he said of them.

After several searches, police divers have yet to locate the gun used to kill Mr. Klinger. Its origin remains unknown.

J. David Goodman reported from New York, and Elisabetta Povoledo from Rome.

Go to Home Page »

The New York Times