Kriti Mehrotra
When 55-year-old Bruce Blackwood suddenly disappeared from his property without a trace left behind on March 6, 2006, it honestly left the entire state of New York shaken to its core. That’s because, as explored in ‘Cold Case Files: Gone in a New York Minute,’ he had a good personal life, managed an Off-Track Betting location, and owned several rental homes, so there was no reason for him to vanish. His elder brother Edward “Ed” Blackwood had iterated the same to officials back then, only to then work tirelessly himself to ensure justice — he never once gave up hope or the fight.
Ed Blackwood’s Search for Answers Was Ceaseless
Since Ed was reportedly born and raised in a rather stable, supportive household in Queens, New York, right alongside his younger brother Bruce, he still vividly remembers that they were close. “I mean, we were very tight,” he candidly conceded in the aforementioned original production before adding his sibling “always had a lending hand. He helped my mother out quite a lot.” He was thus well aware it was uncharacteristic for Bruce to not only miss work but also go off the radar without prior information, so he approached officials the second he realized no one had heard from him in three days.
After all, the first thought that came to Ed’s mind when he comprehended his brother was missing was “‘Something may have happened to [him].’ Cause Bruse is not that type of a person to just go off and not let anybody know where he was going or what he was doing. The fear started to set in.” He hence filed a missing person’s report on the morning of March 9, 2006, following which he immediately made flyers, organized an extensive search party comprising loved ones, and took to the nearby streets in the hopes of securing any information concerning his sibling’s whereabouts.
But alas, neither Ed’s nor the authorities’ efforts yielded any results — all they were able to uncover was that Bruce’s handyman, Luis Perez, was stealing from him and that they’d even had a heated exchange about a few days prior to the former’s vanishing. Luis was subsequently arrested, convicted, as well as sentenced to two to four years in prison for theft, yet it’s imperative to note he was the prime suspect in the 55-year-old landlord’s presumed homicide too. It was only the lack of any concrete forensic evidence that stopped officials from filing murder charges.
Bruce’s case then went cold, but Ed didn’t waver in his determination to seek justice because he felt as if giving up on his little brother would be like he was giving up on himself. Therefore, by the time 2011 rolled around, he’d confronted the New York City Police Commissioner at a town hall meeting and approached different media outlets to raise awareness about this unique matter. In the end, a comprehensive article in The Daily News inadvertently led to this case’s reopening, which then resulted in Luis’ daughter coming forward with evidence that confirmed he was the killer.
Where is Ed Blackwood Now?
Ed was right there throughout Luis’ September 2015 murder trial in connection with the disappearance-presumed death of Bruce, which is where he learned the details of the latter’s actions. The handyman had choked his employer until his neck had snapped before butchering him “like chicken” with a saw plus a machete and then disposed of him in garbage bags across different dumpsters in Brooklyn with the help of homeless individuals. This is why Bruce’s body had never been found; it’d been truly destroyed — so, the moment the guilty verdict was announced following three hours of deliberations on September 28, Ed broke down in the courtroom and left.
“I didn’t have a body to bury,” Ed said in the episode. “My brother was… chopped up. For him to be stuffed in bags like he was a piece of garbage — to be destroyed like that… that hurt really, really tremendously.” He also added, “Nobody wants to feel somebody they love to be discarded like that… He didn’t deserve this.” Thus, of course, after the court proceedings were over for good, all he told the press with tears in his eyes was, “Justice was finally served for my brother, thank God.”
Coming to Ed’s current standing, it seems like the loss of Bruce still hangs over his head like a dark cloud, yet he’s doing his best to move forward while keeping his memories alive in his heart. This Andrew Jackson High School, Baruch College, and City College of New York graduate is actually a complete family man these days, meaning he prefers to spend most of his free time surrounded by his partner, kids, as well as grandkids.
Ed purportedly used to serve as a professional Physician Assistant in New York itself for the longest time, but it appears as if he retired for good around the 2010s, following which he has only been focusing on his loved ones, his passion for traveling, plus his affinity for exercise — he even used to play tennis until a knee injury left him unable to engage anymore.
