John Brown, Middle Island private detective who helped victims groups, dies at 77

Most private investigators do not have lives like in the movies. But private eye John Brown, of Middle Island, had an entire life like a movie in itself:

Born in postwar Prague. Child of a Holocaust survivor. Never knew his father. Immigrated to the United States in Ellis Island’s waning days. Served in Vietnam. Joined the Port Authority Police Department. Became a financial-crime investigator, then a private detective. Volunteered with victims organizations.

"He had the most caring and empathetic way when he met a family," said Barbara Connelly, of Shirley, director of Parents and Other Survivors of Murdered Victims Outreach.

At one vigil, she recalled, "so many victims’ families had questions, had stories, had things that maybe he was able to help them with. He just wanted to mingle with the families and find out if there was anything possible that he would be able to do to help make their journey easier."

"He helped a lot of people out," agreed his friend Michael Salem, of Manhattan, who also works with groups supporting victims’ families. "I introduced him to organizations and he talked to people, et cetera, and didn't charge them — he was pro bono. He did a lot of good stuff."

Brown died Aug. 12, age 77, at Stony Brook University Hospital of cardiogenic shock following diagnosis of a glioblastoma brain tumor.

John Louis Brown was born July 30, 1948, in Prague, capital of Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic. He was the second child of a police officer father, also named John, who died in an auto accident around the time his son was born, and mother, Jessica. The family’s original last name was lost in the midst of a Europe reconstructing itself after the devastation of World War II.

Arrival in United States

"Brown" comes from an uncertain source, said his son, Keith Brown, of Seaford. "We’re not really sure. It might've been that of the guy who brought him to the U.S." with his mother and his older sister — Ashkenazi Jews who had "spent a little time in a German concentration camp." The birth certificate does not list a surname. "It only had his mother’s first name, believe it or not. It doesn't have his father listed. I mean, 1948 Prague. ... We're just lucky to have the document."

Ellis Island records show John Brown’s arrival from Southampton, England, on the Queen Elizabeth on June 29, 1950, when he was younger than 2 years old. He and his sister were raised in Brooklyn by his single mother, and in the mid-1960s he graduated from Erasmus Hall High School, now part of the Erasmus Hall Educational Campus comprised of five high schools

Enlisting in the U.S. Army, John Brown served in Vietnam in the Signal Corps, said his son. Upon his discharge, he returned home and met Linda M. Egbert, whom he married in the early 1970s. Living in Flushing, Queens, he began his police career around the same time.

Per the Port Authority Retired Police Association, he retired in 1992, a date his son disputes. "He was at the '93 World Trade Center bombing [investigation]," Keith Brown said. "So I would think he retired in '93."

Working first at the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, John Brown later was stationed at Kennedy Airport, investigating cases of "cargo crime," said his son. "He became a detective, went to Internal Affairs for a year, and then the Port Authority Bus Terminal," where he closed a police career encompassing everything from homicide to property crimes.

Upon his retirement from the force, he worked for Prudential Securities from August 1993 to May 2002, as an assistant vice president with the fraud control unit, managing and supervising investigations of check and credit card fraud. He then entered private investigation, often working with defense attorneys. "I don't think he ever actually retired" from this, said his son.

He and his wife, who died in the mid-2000s, had moved to Massapequa Park in the early 1990s and Middle Island in the early 2000s, Keith Brown said. As a family, they often vacationed in the Adirondacks, particularly in Lake George. In semiretirement, Brown and his wife regularly traveled the East Coast in an RV.

A fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers as a child, before the team famously decamped to Los Angeles in the late 1950s, John Brown switched his allegiance to the New York Mets. "He could never root for the Yankees," said his son, "because they used to beat up his beloved Dodgers."

In addition to his son, he is survived by a daughter, Dawn Smith, of Sevierville, Tennessee; a sister, Victoria Niklov, of Florida; and seven grandchildren.

Visitation and a religious service were held Aug. 15 at Giove Funeral Home in Selden. Brown was buried the following day at Washington Memorial Park in Mount Sinai. /