Special New York State Prosecutor Maurice Nadjari in 1976. (AP Photo/Suzanne Vlamis)

Last week Maurice Nadjari passed away at the age of 95. To anyone under the age of 50, it's understandable if the name doesn't ring a bell. To anyone from New York over 50 you have no excuse. From 1972 till 1977 before Nadjari crashed and burned in the race for Queens District Attorney, he was in all the headlines.

Nadjari was the leading story on TV news and every opener on 1010 WINS began with "today NYS Special Prosecutor Maurice Nadjari said . . . . ." For half a decade New York State Special Prosecutor Maurice Nadjari was everywhere with a press conference announcing a cure to all of the ills plaguing us, from the police to courthouse corruption.

It all began in 1972 when a New York City Police Officer named Frank Serpico went to the New York Times to tell his story of widespread police corruption. That was a big deal. It was even a bigger deal when Frank Serpico was shot in the head shortly after that.

Then there was the biggest heroin bust of all time known as The French Connection case. Six million dollars in smack stored in the NYPD property clerk's office. The heroin walked out the door and Sidney Lumet quickly made a movie about it and Mayor John Lindsay created a commission to investigate what everyone already knew. That commission was headed by federal Judge Whitman Knapp and famously called the Knapp Commission. New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who spent most of his waking hours figuring out ways to make Lindsay look bad, announced the creation of the Office of the New York State Special Prosecutor. This new office would take on the police and political corruption that the District Attorneys' would not.

Heading the office would be Maurice Nadjari, a career prosecutor whose parents were Sephardic Jews from Greece. Rockefeller wanted a show that would push Lindsay out of the headlines and Nadjari was his showrunner. Nadjari's political corruption crusades began with the indictments of 12 Judges, but, as time went on, 9 of the indictments were dismissed, two cases resulted in not guilty verdicts at trial and the one conviction Nadjari did win was reversed on appeal. Nothing stuck.

Then there was the odd misdemeanor indictment of Queens District Attorney Tommy Mackell. Mackell was convicted and resigned from office, but that conviction was also reversed on appeal. But the strangest one of all was Nadjari's announcement that he would be bringing indictments against the cops who stole the smack in the French Connection case. That was 45 years ago and still no charges. Times changed. By 1975 Lindsay was in exile. Nadjari's sponsor Nelson Rockefeller moved on to the White House and the new governor, Hugh Carey, gave Nadjari six months to wrap things up. Nadjari could not commit to that so Carey gave him till the end of the week. Nadjari went home to Queens and in 1977 ran against the newly installed DA John Santucci in his first race. Santucci, a former city councilman and state senator, knew how to walk the streets and work the neighborhoods. Nadjari was not a natural campaigner. It would be his first and last run for office.

Santucci won by a large margin running on the Democrat, Liberal and Conservative lines. Nadjari ran on the Republican ticket headed by Roy Goodman. Nadjari conceded the race gracefully and was never heard from again.

A decade later a reporter caught up with Nadjari who had built a criminal defense practice on Long Island. When the reporter asked Nadjari about the decade of silence his response was "you can't make money defending innocent people." John O'Hara is a lawyer who lives in Brooklyn.