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Former NYPD Detective Randy Jurgensen walked a beat in Harlem all the way into Hollywoodās greatest crime dramas of all time.
He is known as the cop who killed Sonny Corleone in The Godfather.
His walk of fame started when William Friedkin, the director of The French Connection, asked Jurgensen to demonstrate how to put a suspect against a wall for the āpat down.ā
Friedkin hired Jurgensen as the filmās technical consultant to advise him on how to realistically show the gritty side of heroin trafficking in the 1960s.
It became Jurgensen’s job to turn actors Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider into narcotics detectives.
Jurgensen turned out to be a natural on camera and was given the role of an NYPD Sergeant in the film.
He appears on the poster for The French Connection, flanking Gene Hackman.Ā
Jurgensen had been on the periphery of an undercover narcotics investigation that netted a legendary seizure of heroin.
Robin Moore, the author of The Green Berets, wrote a book about the case titled The French Connection.Ā
In those days, heroin flowed into New York City from Marseille, and the book was made into a movie.
A long list of credits includes Jurgensenās work as a technical advisor on Die Hard with a Vengeance, a cop in the first Superman movie with Christopher Reeve, and a role in Frank Sinatra’s first made-for-TV movie, Contract On Cherry Street .
A few days after celebrating The French Connectionās Oscars, Jurgensen became embroiled in the most notorious case in the history of NYPD.
Jurgensenās book titled Circle of Six details his determined effort to bring to justice the murderer of Police Officer Philip Cardillo, who was killed in a Harlem Mosque in 1972.Ā
Fasten your seatbelts!
