Pimp Who Beat Naked Queens Man To Death In 2011 Gets 25-To-Life: DA

QUEENS, NY — A pimp who beat a naked Queens man to death with a baseball bat in 2011 will serve 25 years-to-life, prosecutors said.

Gerald Griffin, 46, was sentenced Thursday for the murder and robbery of Peter Polizzi — a crime that went unsolved for years before the NYPD's cold case unit took it up, authorities said.

"We will pursue justice, no matter how much time has passed," said Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, in a statement.

The case began Sept. 14, 2011 when Polizzi's brother found him naked, badly beaten and stuffed under a couch inside his Clover Place apartment in Ridgewood, prosecutors said. A bloody baseball bat was found in his ransacked apartment, authorities said.

Polizzi died three days later, prosecutors said.

The investigation eventually stalled, but not before detectives found a witness who saw two men, one of whom wore a T-shirt that read "Irving Scrap Metal," leave the apartment, officials said.

When the NYPD's cold case squad took up the case in 2015, they found a woman through phone records who said she was inside the apartment when Polizzi was murdered, prosecutors said. DNA from a wine glass in the apartment also matched her profile, authorities said.

The woman said her pimp at the time, Griffin, had taken her to the apartment, authorities said. Griffin attacked Polizzi with a baseball bat while another man beat him, prosecutors said.

The two men took phones, money, a watch with a diamond-encrusted face and a box containing a white powdery substance, authorities said.

Investigators found a photograph on Griffin's Facebook account of him wearing the stolen watch, prosecutors said. He had also been identified as a customer of Irving Scrap Metal.

Griffin was indicted in 2018 and a jury in May found him guilty of murder, burglary, robbery and other charges.