NEW YORK — The accused Queens “duck sauce killer” denied gunning down a restaurant deliveryman and said he was committing suicide because he didn’t want to be sent back to the notorious Rikers Island jail complex.
In a long, rambling suicide note he wrote before he fatally shot himself on Aug. 5, suspect Glenn Hirsch called his case “very winnable” and said he had actually been looking forward to his day in court — but not to being locked up again.
“After my edifying monthlong stay on Rikers Island, I have elected not to return to the jail for the next two years pending trial,” Hirsch wrote in the note, filed in Queens Criminal Court on Monday. “I did however enjoy playing chess, but as a practical matter, the accommodations left much to be desired.”
Hirsch was freed on bail for the April killing, a turn of events that sent shockwaves through the Briarwood community where well-liked restaurant worker Zhiwen Yan, 45, was killed on April 30.
Suspecting his return to jail was imminent, Hirsch outlined his logic in a six-page rant he described as his “dying declaration.” The angry screed took aim at prosecutors, detectives and the media, including a Daily News reporter whom he falsely accused of unethical reporting.
He even took issue with the owner of the Great Wall Restaurant, where employees were still mourning the death of their co-worker.
Hirsch also expressed outrage over his nickname in the headlines.
“I was given the absurd moniker of ‘the Duck Sauce killer,’” he complained.
Hirsch spent much of his last written message defending his wife, Dorothy Hirsch, 62, a nurse who was charged with hiding her husband’s weapons in her apartment.
Hirsch and his wife lived apart.
Queens prosecutors have already dropped the most serious charges against her, but her lawyer, Mark Bederow, was appealing to prosecutors to introduce the suicide note as evidence to a grand jury to help clear her for the rest.
“Glenn is unavailable to testify,” Bederow said. “He was aware at the time he wrote the note that his admission to his exclusive possession of the firearms was against his penal interest.”
Authorities say that Glenn Hirsch became enraged that he did not receive enough duck sauce with his take-home order from the Great Wall restaurant in Forest Hills on Nov. 30. Repeated confrontations at the restaurant culminated in April, when Hirsch allegedly stalked and then fatally shot Yan, the well-liked deliveryman, prosecutors say.
Hirsch, 51, was busted June 2 and released on $500,000 bail two weeks ago, alarming neighbors at his co-op building.
