Woman's Death Perplexes Kin

By STEPHANIE SAUL
nynewsday.com


"Who is Pie?"

"Organized, neat, meticulous, appearance-conscious."

The question and answer are written on a poster, hung on the wall of her uncle's dining room in Maspeth. And they provide a clue to what might have cost the investment analyst her life.

For 10 months, the room had been headquarters for the family's search for missing Maria Cruz, nicknamed Pie as a child because she was so cute.

The posters — bearing "to do" lists and leads for police — were still there last Monday as the family gathered for Cruz's funeral. On Feb. 11, her body was found buried in concrete in the garage of a Newark home. Police believe she was the victim of a medical procedure gone awry, performed by a con man with no medical training who entombed her to hide his mistake.

Though their search has ended, the family remains bewildered. "I had various scenarios in my mind," said sister Teresita Lara, a dentist in Manila, who traveled with other relatives to America to search. "This was not one of them."

Smart and ambitious, Cruz, 35, seemed like the last person who could have been duped. She specialized in researching health-care companies in the high-yield bond industry. "I trusted her with multimillion-dollar decisions," said her boss, Hans Christensen.

"She would never have gone to anyone who didn't have a license. She was very picky about her doctors," said Lara. "If she was fooled into thinking he was a doctor, this guy must be really good. There are people on earth like that. They can be charming and appear good."

How could Maria Cruz have been deceived?

In a world of blurred lines between medical clinics and "spas" where Botox and skin peels are performed along with waxing and manicures, the man police suspect in Cruz's death first came to the attention of authorities in 1998.

Dean Faiello was working in the skin-care office of a SoHo dermatologist, who accused him of stealing prescription pads and suspected he was illegally performing laser surgery.

He grew up in New Jersey, dropped out of college and, instead, learned waxing, electrolysis, and laser hair removal. He developed a large clientele in a niche market — men who wanted their beards removed so they could appear to be women. The extensive hair removal required for transsexuals to "pass" was painful.

One former client, Manhattan computer consultant Dana Friedman, said Faiello worked under the auspices of several different physicians and dentists so he could give his clients lidocaine injections. The painkiller made the beard-removal process much less painful.

An electrologist who worked with Faiello said she believed he was competent, and never represented himself as a doctor.

As Faiello's client base grew, he leased expensive laser equipment and set off on his own, launching a Gramercy Park skin clinic called "Skin Ovations."

A handsome man who wore a white tunic, Faiello gave the air of legitimacy. "This was not some cheap place," said Jose Navarro, Cruz's uncle. "This person had a nice clinic in an expensive area."

Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office felt it had insufficient evidence to charge Faiello following the 1998 complaint. But by fall 2002, after he had opened "Skin Ovations" and several more complaints came in, authorities were ready to prosecute.






Pushing for excellence

By 2002, Cruz's family believes, she was already having aggressive treatments for a disorder, called black hairy tongue, that embarrassed her. Her appointment book shows several visits to Faiello.

"She had been to many doctors," said Lara. "In December, she mentioned that she had found this really good doctor on the Internet. ... She was very happy. He did meticulous work."

Christensen said it wouldn't have been in Cruz's nature to see a doctor based on an Internet search. "She would have done some checking and research before she showed up," he said.

Black hairy tongue is an overgrowth of the papillae on the tongue, a condition sometimes caused by diet or antibiotic use. It can range from a small discoloration to a grotesque growth of hairy-looking fungus.

"A surgical procedure for this is a procedure of last resort, not without its downside or risk. It certainly should be in the hands of someone who is qualified," said Dr. Roy Geronemus, a Manhattan dermatologist who never treated Cruz but has seen others who allegedly were duped by Faiello.

"It's hard to speculate what happened," Geronemus said. A medical examiner's report will not be complete for six to eight weeks.

But Geronemus said such a procedure would require some type of anesthesia.

"If a tongue swells from lidocaine ... you could have an obstruction of the airways and difficulty breathing," Geronemus said, adding that fatal reactions are rare.

Black hairy tongue is considered benign. It often clears up through brushing the tongue with a toothbrush and eventually goes away by itself. But Cruz's treatments left her temporarily unable to talk, according to co-workers.

The way Maria Cruz attacked her tongue condition was not uncharacteristic for a woman who pushed herself to excellence.

The daughter of an upwardly mobile Filipino family who was at the top of her class at a university in Manila, Cruz came to the United States on her own in the early 1990s, and got a job working for Runner's World magazine, her family said.

She borrowed money to get her MBA at Fordham, studied while she worked, and lived frugally at St. Joseph's Immigrant Home on W. 44th Street, a comfortable dormitory-style residence, run by nuns, for 96 women that imposed a strict curfew and allowed no overnight male visitors.

Acquaintances at St. Joseph's and family members said Cruz was preoccupied with work. "We saw her only occasionally. She was always busy with her job," said her aunt, Helen Navarro. "She was always surrounded by piles of newspapers, always reading," said Lynne Matriano, who lived down the hall at St. Joseph's.

By 1998, Cruz had obtained her master's degree in business from Fordham and landed a job at Citibank as an investment analyst.

Her boss at Citibank, Christensen, described Cruz as "very smart, very dedicated, a wonderful hard worker" who later followed his team from Citicorp to Barclays. In a field — junk bonds — that is often rough, tumble, sharp-edged and profane, she was none of those, yet she excelled, Christensen said.

"She was polite, tenacious ... and she could face off against people who would be rude," he said.

Cruz pushed herself personally, as well. Only 5 feet tall, she weighed 90 pounds, and strove to maintain her dress size: O. She kept a three-day-a-week workout schedule at Crunch gym on W. 59th Street. She also ran in Central Park.

Worried about her appearance, Cruz had breast implants and liposuction on her round cheeks, but her sister said he was not obsessed with her looks.

"You could put her on the vain side," said Lara, who still lives in Manila. "She wanted to look good, but she's not going to be like Michael Jackson. If you get breast implants, it doesn't mean you have an image problem. She was very self-confident."

By fall 2002 Cruz was earning $180,000 a year and had paid off all her college debts.

After nine years at St. Joseph's, and a year after breaking up with her boyfriend, she finally decided to move into her own apartment on W. 50th Street in December 2002. The rent was $2,000.


Tragic search begins

When her sister and brother arrived at JFK from Manila to visit the new apartment on Good Friday 2003, Cruz didn't show up to meet them as planned. She had last been seen the preceding Sunday, April 13, after attending Mass. That was the day of her last visit to Faiello, police believe.

"When we got here, we didn't know she was missing," Lara said. They contacted the police and visited every trauma center in the city, then remained here with relatives to continue their search.

Faiello had been arrested Oct. 8, 2002 and moved out of his fancy clinic. A news release by Spitzer's office at the time said he had been offering procedures that clearly crossed the line between aesthetic skin care and medicine — injections of anesthesia, removal of skin lesions and blood vessels.

Yet even after he was arrested, police believe he set up a makeshift office in an apartment on W. 16th Street, the last place Cruz saw him.

Clearly, family members said, she didn't know about the arrest.

As police and family members mounted a search for Cruz, posting a $25,000 reward and plastering her pictures throughout the city, Faiello pleaded guilty last June to the unauthorized practice of medicine, a charge unrelated to Cruz's disappearance.

On Thursday, Faiello was captured in Costa Rica, where police said he fled Sept. 19, prior to his sentencing for practicing medicine without a license. He was found on a beach in Samara, on the Pacific coast, the state attorney general's office said. Authorities hope to return him to New York in the next several days.

Last Monday, the day of Cruz's funeral, her family invited reporters to share dinner in the dining room at their house in Maspeth.

"We wanted to get the word out, so that we could warn people," said Navarro. "That's the reason we're doing this."