It’s the world’s worst game of telephone: a man calls the eme­­rgency line operator and tells her vital information about a murder. The operator calls police dispatch and relays the tip. When the dispatch calls an actual officer to relay the information, she mixes up the information—and leaves out the part about a woman’s possible murder altogether, which would prove a fatal mistake.

Upon hearing the information from psychologist Noam Koenigsberg 911 call with a murder tip from one of his New York patients, the responding emergency dispatcher, presently unidentified, nearly died of laughter herself and then promptly misreported the given information to her police contacts.

The New York Post obtained a recording of the phone calls. “This man said that— “she laughs” —he had a DREAM…. I can’t even talk right now,” the dispatcher can be heard saying on the call with the police officers.

The psychologist called the emergency line after being told by patient Robert Friedfertig’s brother, Menacham, that Robert had confessed to having a vision in which he stabbed his girlfriend, Yvonne Geffner. Robert was unsure whether he had stabbed Geffner in his dream or in real life.

However, when the dispatcher relayed the information, she mistakenly reported that Friedfertig had possibly been attacked by his brother a week ago. She gave no information concerning a girlfriend or a fatal stabbing perpetrated by Friedfertig—the thought of psychiatric patients having visions was just too hysterical, apparently.

When the block of Avenue N near East 14^th Street was quiet as cops visited and knocked on the door to no response, they thought little of it. But unfortunately, Friedfertig hadn’t dreamed about his attack on his girlfriend: police returned to the apartment four days later after reports of a “stench” to find Yvonne Geffner’s dead body rotting behind that closed door.

A note was left on the body, reading, “I killed my wife—she was casting spells on me.”

Perhaps if police had received the correct information on May 30 and knocked down the door after hearing no response, Geffner’s life could have been saved. At the very least, Friefertig could have been apprehended much sooner.

A source within the New York Police Department said “[The police] are pissed, and they’re trying to get to the bottom of it.”

The police found Friedfertig in Kings County Hospital Center, where he was recovering after throwing himself in front of the Q train. He awaits arraignment on murder charges.

Though the dispatcher was never identified, an NYPD spokesperson said that she, and everyone involved in this tragic case, is being investigated.