Edition: U.S. / Global

A Quick-and-Easy Murder Case Proves to Be Neither and Leads Nowhere

Published: April 27, 1997

When it began 13 months ago with the discovery of the body of a slain businessman in a midtown office building, the homicide investigation now known as the Coffee Bar Case had all the signs of one of those easy-to-solve murders that detectives call ''ground balls.''

Howard Pilmar, owner of King Office Supply and Philip's Coffee Bar, was found on the floor of a hallway near his office on March 21, 1996, his body stabbed repeatedly in the chest, back and neck.

There was no sign of forced entry into the building or the secured portion of the hallway where the attack occurred, according to police reports. Neither Mr. Pilmar's wallet nor the $200 inside it was taken, so burglary was ruled out. He was apparently killed shortly after the security guard's normal quitting time, a classic sign that the killer might have been acquainted with the victim's business and routines.

Most significant, an autopsy showed that Mr. Pilmar, who opened the city's first office supply store and coffee bar in 1992, had been stabbed 27 times, in the kind of brutal attack that usually points the police toward a drug user, a person with a history of mental illness or someone with close emotional ties to the victim.

But more than a year after the killing, the homicide remains unsolved, frustrating detectives, causing bitter divisions among Mr. Pilmar's survivors and fueling a court fight for $200,000 in benefits from Mr. Pilmar's life insurance policy.

Guardian Life Insurance has refused to pay the $200,000 to his widow, Roslyn Pilmar, according to papers filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Although another insurance company has already paid $2 million to Mrs. Pilmar and other relatives from a separate life insurance policy, Guardian's lawyer, Terence J. Lynch, filed an affidavit stating that a detective and a district attorney had both described Mrs. Pilmar as a suspect.

New York State law forbids beneficiaries to collect life insurance if they are found criminally responsible for the insured person's death, and on that basis, Mr. Lynch argued that the policy should not be honored.

Mrs. Pilmar, 36, declined to be interviewed, but her lawyers deny that she was involved with her husband's death. One of her lawyers, William F. Dowling, has filed a motion on her behalf, seeking to force the company to pay the benefits. Another lawyer, Robert Gold, said it was unfair for the insurance company and the police to treat Mrs. Pilmar as a suspect because there was no evidence against her.

''There isn't one bit of evidence from the scene that would make Mrs. Pilmar a suspect, or anyone else for that matter,'' Mr. Gold said.

In some respects, it is surprising that the police have found no witness to an attack in one of the city's most heavily traveled places -- in the shadow of the Empire State Building.

Mr. Pilmar, who was 40, had worked at King Office Supply, at 14 East 33d Street, from the age of 4 when his father, Frank, first let him sweep the aisles. As an adult, Mr. Pilmar eventually took over the business, helping his father fend off competition from national office-supply chains and, after a trip to Seattle in 1992, creating the combined store and coffee bar.

He named the coffee bar Philip's, after his own 4-year-old, and it grew so successful that he soon opened a second Philip's, on West 56th Street.

''That was my son Howard, always thinking about how to keep ahead of the crowd,'' the elder Mr. Pilmar said. ''The kid was one of a kind.''

On the evening he was killed, Mr. Pilmar was in his office at about 6, when he was visited by his wife and Evan Wald, her brother. Mr. Wald, 21, said he and Mr. Pilmar went to a nearby gym to work out; later, Mr. Pilmar returned to his office and Mr. Wald and Mrs. Pilmar left.

At 5:45 the next morning, when the company's controller opened the office, he found Mr. Pilmar lying on the floor about 40 feet from his office, fatally stabbed, his wallet in his pocket and only his watch missing. Robert Gillon, the chief executive officer of the King Group, said the police told him the time of death had been between 8 and 9 P.M.

Mr. Wald said he was taken to the Midtown South station house that night and questioned by detectives. After leaving the station, Mr. Wald said he and Mrs. Pilmar decided to contact lawyers because they were unhappy with the tone of the detectives' questions. ''The police are harassing the family,'' said Mr. Wald, who works at the Philip's on West 56th Street. ''They're treating us like we're suspects instead of looking for the real killer. There are a lot of people who might have motivations, people with something to gain by his death.''

Detectives from the Midtown South Precinct declined to discuss any evidence or suspects. Nor would they say whether they had classified Mrs. Pilmar as a suspect, but the investigators insisted they were making slow but steady progress.

''We still haven't hit a dead end,'' Lieut. Roger Parrino, the precinct's commander, said. ''It's unusual to say that in a case more than a year old. But this one is different. We're still developing leads in it.''

Robert Gillon, who bought the business from Mrs. Pilmar last July, four months after the killing, said all of the store's employees and many of its vendors and customers have been questioned by investigators. Mr. Gillon said detectives told him that he was a suspect himself for a while but was cleared.

Early this month, detectives returned to the store to take prints of the fingers, palms and hands of 30 employees. Mr. Gillon said the detectives wanted to compare them with prints from the murder scene. ''What makes this case so hard is that the detectives suspect that it was somebody who knew Howard and Howard knew them,'' Mr. Gillon said. ''So even if their fingerprints are found at the crime scene, so what?''

In the meantime, the case has become something of a crusade for Frank Pilmar. Having worked closely with his son for decades, he cannot bear the thought of Howard's killer remaining on the streets. Mr. Pilmar has called all of the business's suppliers and customers who knew his son and has raised more than $80,000 to post as reward money. The company has also become a sponsor of the New York Marathon, because Howard was a long-distance runner, and it plans to sponsor a 10-kilometer run in Central Park in his memory.

But Mr. Pilmar said the pain of his son's death had been compounded by the conflicts it caused within his family. Roslyn Pilmar has refused to let him visit his 10-year-old grandson since the killing, he said, and declined to donate to the reward fund.

''I lost my son, and I've lost the ability to see my grandson,'' he said. ''How do you get over that? How can I rest when the person who did this is still out there?''

Photo: A year into what seemed an easy case, the police are stumped by Howard Pilmar's murder. (Ruby Washington/The New York Times, 1995)