When the city streets grew quiet at night, 29-year-old James Hallenbeck found peace walking in the darkness — often with a can of Genesee, and with headphones planted firmly on his ears.
His friends and family say his nightly strolls through his PLEX neighborhood were an escape from everyday life, his way to reflect and unwind since he was a teenager.
But his ritual of quiet contemplation ended in tragedy on Aug. 21, 2022, when someone approached Hallenbeck just before 2 a.m. and, after some kind of altercation, shot him once in the chest. He died in a grassy verge on Olean Street, about a half-mile from his home on South Plymouth Avenue.
Police believe his death was a random crime of opportunity and could’ve been a robbery. His phone was not taken, and Hallenbeck didn’t carry cash. His credit card was the only item not found at the scene, but it’s unclear to detectives if it was taken by the killer or someone else.
Hallenbeck’s homicide is one of more than 500 in Rochester that have gone unsolved since 1969, the earliest date for which the Rochester Police Department has records. That’s about a quarter of all homicides during that time.
Some have suspects, but with too little evidence to make an arrest. Others, like Hallenbeck’s, are a true mystery.
Rochester Police Department detectives Matt Klein and Mario Correia were first to respond to the scene of Hallenbeck’s killing. They hesitate to call it a cold case given it just happened last year.
But leads are scant, and new information has been elusive since the early hours of the investigation.
“To this day, nobody has come forward with any additional information,” Klein said. “Mario and I both believe that there is somebody out there that has more knowledge that they can share with us, to get some leads and solve this case.”
A credit card and pointed fingers
Klein receives a phone call from Hallenbeck’s mother, Carol Hallenbeck, every Friday, like clockwork. He rarely has anything new to say.
Hallenbeck’s death has produced just one promising lead. An examination of his bank transactions showed his credit card had been repeatedly used at the Two Eagles Smoke Shop and Gasmart in Basom in the two days after he was killed.
Klein and Correia tracked the transactions to four city residents who the investigators believe used the card to buy gas for people in exchange for cash.
“We thought it was going to be a pretty decent lead, but we kind of exhausted that with really no positive results,” Correia said. “These were drug users that pointed the finger at each other saying that he or she had the credit card.”
Correia said he doesn’t believe the four people using the card had been directly involved in Hallenbeck’s death. However, charges for credit card fraud are possible in the future, and there is hope that that possibility may spur someone to talk more in detail.
“That might help jog some memories, but other than that, we have not gotten any cooperation,” Klein said. “One of the individuals has since died from an overdose, which doesn’t help.”
With that lead exhausted, Correia has repeatedly turned to the only documentation of Hallenbeck in the moments leading up to his death in search of any missed detail.
Video footage from Ring doorbells and security cameras captured Hallenbeck’s route that night through Corn Hill and back to the South Plymouth Avenue area. But they do not show anything amiss. Just Hallenbeck casually strolling with a can of Genesee in his hand.
“Nobody was following him,” Klein said. “It appears to be a crime of opportunity. Wrong place, wrong time.”
Who was James Hallenbeck?
Stephen and Carol Hallenbeck are wrought with grief over the loss of their son. The wounds are tender, and keeping hope for closure is an everyday challenge.
Through intermittent tears, Carol Hallenbeck reflected on who James was.
“He was very unassuming. He was down to earth. He was very kind, generous,” she said. “Everybody was worthy of his respect and consideration.”
Her husband added: “He was very supportive of social justice, and he didn’t like to conform to trends.”
Hallenbeck has been described by friends and family as a man of many passions.
He was a metal musician who made ends meet with a day job at Small World Foods in The Refinery building on Exchange Boulevard, where he worked as a fermentery and marketing manager. A mural of Hallenbeck playing an accordion, his signature instrument, now adorns the rear wall of the building.
Hallenbeck could often be found at the Rochester Public Market offering samples of his fermented concoctions, from unassuming pickles to more outlandish dishes. His parents keep a collection of his off-kilter projects, some of which never quite made it to market, sealed in glass jars and growlers.
“He made some whiskey barrel-aged sauerkraut, which I can tell you tasted great,” Stephen Hallenbeck said. “But it didn’t pass inspection because of the alcohol content.”
Hallenbeck’s life was inseparable from music. He picked up piano in the first grade, and later the accordion in his teens. In his twenties, he became a fixture on the Rochester metal scene, playing in bands like experimental black metal group Nazgûl —under the pseudonym Jeckel Hellnback—and the folk metal group Throne of Wilderness. At the time of his death, he was in the black metal fusion group Eternal Crypt.
Zane Knight played with Hallenbeck in Eternal Crypt and had been close friends with him since 2015, when they met outside a fellow bandmember’s parents’ home.
On a table in Knight’s apartment sits a stack of round fabric patches, each embroidered with a two-tone likeness of Hallenbeck and the words “James Hallenbeck Our Archangel” circling the perimeter.
“One of the first things I noticed about him, that pretty much anyone who knew him will tell you, is that he’ll sit there and listen to you, and at first it seems a little bit awkward because he doesn’t respond right away,” Knight said. “But that’s because he’s listening to every single word you say and really internalizing them. It was something completely unique to him.”
To those close to Hallenbeck, he was somewhat of an enigma. Warm and inviting, yet deeply introspective. He was the sort of person who would, say, throw a party for all his friends and then quietly slink off alone to the backyard firepit.
Cayley Landsburg became friends with Hallenbeck around the same time as Knight. They both remember him as constantly embroiled in eclectic hobbies.
There was his flask of homemade ouzo, a type of Greek liqueur flavored with anise, that he would regularly have on hand. Or his metal calendar, featuring a different band for every month of the year and, as some sort of esoteric joke, German R&B group Milli Vanilli was always featured in February.
“He was just a very special person,” said Cayley Landsburg said.
Landsburg remembers him as much for his cooking as his extensive knowledge of metal.
“He’s the one who made me like mushrooms, which I had never previously liked,” Landsburg said. “So, I blame him for that.”
Hallenbeck served stuffed mushrooms at the release party for his 2021 record, “Enemy of the Rose.” If anything could offer insight into Hallenbeck’s artistic flame, it is that album.
It is a frantic, symphonic piece of music, that borrows as much from circus soundtracks as it does from any black or folk metal notes to create a completely distinct musical stew. Its themes are both ominous and poignant considering Hallenbeck’s death.
“If I am worth life, why do others die before their times in dim-lit buildings hung with neon lights?” are among the lyrics.
Like many who suffer the untimely loss of a loved one, the Hallenbecks have found a path forward through their faith community at Pittsford’s Edgewood Church.
But they struggle to reconcile with a slaying that Carol Hallenbeck called “senseless” and “did not benefit the murderer in anyway.” She said her son’s “only crime was taking a late-night walk.”
Two months before his death, Hallenbeck and his parents set out to bike from Buffalo back to Rochester via the Erie Canal trail. They made it as far east as Medina, where they spent the night and awoke to a rainstorm that stymied plans to finish the trip. James’s grandfather came and gave them a ride home.
Finding the next good day to finish the route became a regular conversation among the family. But the weather and life kept getting in the way.
For the Hallenbecks, the trip never taken stands as a grim, regretful reminder of loss.
“I mourned that, that it had been more than a month since I had seen him when he died, and I kept putting off this bike ride because it was too hot,” Carol Hallenbeck said, with a choked, resigned laugh. “Too hot to ride my bike on the canal.”
If you have information about the death of James Hallenbeck, please contact the RPD's Major Crimes Unit at 585-428-7157 or majorcrimes@cityofrochester.gov, or WXXI News reporter Gino Fanelli at 585-775-9692 or gfanelli@wxxi.org.
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