5414: More of Haitian shooting in Long Island (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JRAuguste1@aol.com

COPS NAB PAIR IN BIGAMY HIT PLOT.

MANHUNT ON FOR THIRD MAN IN BIZARRE GET-RICH-QUICK SCHEME.

IN-LAW HELD IN SLAY BID ON BIGAMIST'S WIDOW.

New York Post
Wednesday, November 1, 2000

Reported by Kieran Crowley, Ikimulisa Sockwell-Mason and Todd Venezia. 
Written by William Neuman.

A Brooklyn man took out a contract on one if his bigamist brother's two 
widows in hopes of cashing in on the dead man's estate, Nassau County police 
said yesterday.

Cops arrested Ali Dominique, a 44-year-old New York City schools employee who 
lives on Avenue I in East Flatbush, and charged him with hiring the two men 
who opened fire early Monday on his sister-in-law.

The woman, Eliette Dominique, 53, as wounded in the shooting in front of her 
Baldwin Harbor home--but miraculously escaped with her life.

Cops also charged one of the alleged gunmen, Alexander Exama, 19, of Newark. 
They were still looking for the second shooter.

"Thanks the Lord," the victim said when she learned from the Post of her 
brother-in-law's arrest. 

"I knew it was him. I'm very happy they got caught," she said from her bed at 
South Nassau Community Hospital in Oceanside, where she is under police guard.

Officials said Ali Dominique hatched the twisted plot in hopes of gaining 
control of the estate of his brother, Jean-Claude Dominique, a former doctor 
at Kings County Hospital.

The 50-year-old Jean-Claude was killed last year in a hit-and-run 
accident--after which it emerged that he had two wives, Eliette and a New 
Jersey woman named Betsy Dominique.

As the two women fought over an insurance settlement and the dead man's 
property, Eliette told friends that she was terrified of her husband's 
family. 

"She told me, 'Whenever I walk down the street I'm so scarred I'm always 
looking to see that someone isn't following me,' " a family friend, who asked 
not to be named, told The Post.

Eliette's lawyer, Charles Sloane, said some of the husband's relatives had 
threatened Eliette and kept her from attending her husband's funeral.

Eliette also told the friend that her brothers-in-law considered Betsy to be 
the legitimate wife because she came from the same town in northern Haiti as 
the Dominique family.

A Nassau County Surrogate's Court judge reached the opposite conclusion, 
however, ruling three months ago that Eliette was the true wife and that 
Betsy's marriage was based on divorce papers bearing Eliette's forged 
signature.

"This is a little more than your average street crime," said Nassau County 
Detective Lt. Andrew Fal.

"It sounds like something you would see in a soap opera, but it's real life.

"Apparently he [Ali] intended to get some financial gain from his brother's 
estate with the wife gone," Fal said.

Cops said Exama and an accomplice fired at least five shots at Eliette as she 
left her house on the way to her nursing job at Interfaith Hospital in 
Brooklyn. She was hit in the hand and grazed on the head -- but managed to 
run back inside her house to safety. 

Exama was nabbed shortly after the shooting when police found him hiding in 
some bushes. 

The Baldwin Harbor house is located in an exclusive section surrounded by 
canals -- and in his panic to escape, Exama ran the wrong way and found his 
way blocked by water, Fal said. 

Police said Ali contracted the would-be-killers through a mutual 
acquaintance, offering them "a few thousand dollars" to carry out the crime.

Fal said the hit-and-run accident, which involved a stolen car, that killed 
Jean-Claude Dominique remains a mystery.

Eliette acted as Jean-Claude's sponsor to help him emigrate from Haiti and 
paid his way through medical school, the family friend said.

They were married in 1980 and lived in a Crown Heights condo apartment.

The friend said Jean-Claude and Betsy, who is 50, had known each other in 
Haiti -- and he arranged for her to follow him here, secretly marrying her in 
1982.

The two-timing doctor eventually moved with Eliette and their son and 
daughter to Baldwin Harbor -- while setting up Betsy and their son and 
daughter in Irvington, N.J.

Eliette knew nothing of her husband's double life until his death.

"I thank God I'm still alive. God was watching out for me," she said. 

Both Ali Dominique and Exama were charged with attempted murder.