Who Hasn’t Caved To Police Interrogators While Hungover?

The main suspect in the 500 gazillion-alarm Greenpoint Terminal Market fire has recanted his confession, claiming he was hung over when the police interrogated him:

Looking rested and even cheery during a jailhouse interview yesterday, the man accused of starting a blaze that destroyed a warehouse complex on the Brooklyn waterfront last month denied that he had confessed to starting the fire and insisted that he had been in upstate New York when it occurred.

“I never told them I did it,” said the man, Leszek Kuczera, speaking in a crowded visiting room at Rikers Island. “They must have misunderstood.”

Mr. Kuczera, who spoke through a translator, retraced in varying detail his movements since April, saying he had been out of town until May 14 or 15. He said that two Polish-speaking detectives and others who interrogated him after his arrest had misunderstood what he acknowledged were his own confusing words to them.

Saying he was “hung over” when he was arrested, Mr. Kuczera said he told detectives about a fire at the warehouse complex, called the Greenpoint Terminal Market, on June 3, 2005, nearly a year before the one he is charged with starting. That fire also started when some homeless people salvaging metal started a bonfire, singeing a roof and the floor of one of the warehouses, he said.

Mr. Kuczera said he remembered the date of the fire because it occurred on his name day. The name day is a Polish tradition that celebrates certain names on dates that are usually tied to patron saints. He said he had been outside the warehouse when the fire started and had called the Fire Department.