The Algiers Motel Incident

by John Hersey

  “Greene was then called in,” the synopsis of Greene’s statement to the police said, “and saw that Juli was bleeding about the forehead, a mattress on the floor was bloody, and Karen’s clothing had been torn. Greene was questioned as to his relationship to the girls.”

  “He started asking questions,” Greene told Eggleton, “and asked whether I had intercourse with any of the girls. I told him, ‘No.’ Then he asked me what I was doing there. I told him, ‘I just got discharged. I came here looking for a job. I arrived here Friday.’ And told him what was what, the reason I was there. Then he said, ‘Okay,’ and told me to move out. Prior to me going out, I noticed one of the girls’ clothes was ripped.”

  “Questioned them one at a time,” Karen Malloy told Allen Early. “Who had the gun, who was the sniper, whose camera was it, did they live there? Pushed her out the door and ripped her dress from the back. Pushed her back up against the wall.”

  5. New Language

  “So I came out from A-4,” Greene told Eggleton. “This warrant officer, he spoke up then. I told him that I’d like to go back in the service. He told me, ‘We don’t need niggers in the Army, like you.’ . . . So I didn’t say any more, and I received another blow. And I was struck behind the head. . . . This was with a rifle butt.”

  ——

  Then, according to an account given to me by Charles Moore, a policeman approached Greene and began to rant at the black man who had been discovered with two white girls in his bedroom. Since Moore could not name the speaker, we must guess—and we can guess—which officer would have used language of the sort Moore reported; which officer had begun to dominate action that was shaded now toward some unthinkable finality.

  The officer said to Greene, “You sure you’re not one of these black-ass nigger pimps?”

  Greene, an ex-paratrooper, a veteran of Vietnam, reached in a pocket and pulled out papers warranting his honorable discharge, and held them up for the officer to see. “I just got out of the service,” he said.

  The officer hit him and said, “We’re going to kill all you black-ass nigger pimps and throw you in the river. We’re going to fill up the Detroit River with all you pimps and whores.”

  25

  THE KNIFE GAME

  1. Defend Yourself

  “Threw a knife,” Early’s notes on Karen’s story said, “and told him, ‘Here, defend yourself.’ The knife landed on the floor. Cop told him he’d kill him if he picked it up. Cop told him to pick it up.”

  “So they kept on going up and down the line,” Greene told Eggleton. “So they tried to make this youth pick up a knife. He told him, ‘Pick it up so I can blow your goddam head off.’ . . . The boy wouldn’t pick up the knife. He said, ‘I said, pick it up.’ The boy picked it up and dropped it immediately.”

  “Then they took me off the wall,” Michael testified, “and one of them told me to pick up a knife off the floor, and I told him that I wasn’t going to pick it up. So then they made me pick it up . . . and he hit me, and then he . . . hit me again, and oh, he told me he could shoot me right then and say that I tried to kill him. I told him, ‘Yeah,’ so he told me to drop the knife, so I dropped the knife, and he told me to turn around and get back against the wall, and I got back up against the wall.”

  “The policeman dropped a knife,” Roderick said to me, “and he said, ‘Pick it up.’ The boy said, ‘I won’t do it.’ The policeman beat him till he slid down the wall slowly and picked it up. The police said, ‘Now defend yourself.’ The boy dropped the knife back on the floor and said, ‘You might as well kill me.’ ”

  2. Stab Me

  “So then,” Michael testified, “they called Auburey Pollard off the wall and told him to do the same thing. . . . And they told Auburey to do the same thing, but he started—he wasn’t going to do it, then they started beating him. Then they made him pick the knife up, and they started beating him again, and they told him to drop the knife. When he put the knife down, they took him and put him back up against the wall and were still beating him. Then they came down to Lee. . . .”

  Roderick Davis told this part to a reporter from the News: “ ‘Pick the knife up.’ ‘No.’ ‘If you don’t, we’re going to kill you.’ So the boy reached down . . . and picked the knife up and the police told him to stab him with it. The boy started crying and said, ‘No,’ and dropped the knife. That’s when another policeman hit me in the head and told me to keep my face toward the wall.”

  26

  SKIN SHOW

  1. All of Them Pulled

  “One of the officers,” Lee told me, “he said, ‘We’re going to get rid of all you pimps and whores.’ They asked the girls did they want to die first or watch us die.”

  “Questioned them up against the wall,” Early’s notes said, “& ripped all K’s clothes off & half of Juli’s. Policeman said, ‘Hey, you broads, do you want to die first or see the others & then go?’ ”

  “One of the policemen,” Roderick said to me, “told the girls to take off their clothes. Senak pulled them out to the center of the room. Tore one of them’s dress off—hooked it with the thing on the end of his gun—and made the other one pull her dress off. He said, ‘Why you got to fuck them? What’s wrong with us, you nigger lovers?’ ”

  Sortor testified in court that both girls had their dresses torn. “I seen one, had her clothes—uh—off. . . . I seen the officers pull them off. . . . The policemen . . . and some Army mens. . . . All of them pulled, pulled her clothes off her.” The girl, Sortor testified, wound up naked except “just her panties.”

  “The officers,” the police synopsis on Sortor said, “had pulled their clothes off and all they had on were their panties.”

  2. Watchers’ Feast

  The girls were returned to the wall. “The girls’ dresses were torn from behind,” Dismukes told me. “The dress had fallen off one and was lying around her feet. The other was holding hers up in front.”

  A handful of airborne troops, “men in green uniforms,” Juli testified, “came in as a group after they had ripped our clothes off.” “The soldiers came in,” Karen told Early, “and everyone stood around as if they were waiting for something.”

  The police synopsis of the statement of Wayne Henson, who had entered with Thomas and never advanced beyond the front doorway, said “Henson observed . . . 4–5 airborne police watching.”

  “When they’d stripped the girls down,” Sortor said to me, “they told me and Lee and them to look at them. Said, ‘Ain’t you ashamed?’ ”

  The men in uniform who were not hitting people at the wall, Sortor testified, were “just standing back. Just standing there laughing, you know, all like that.”

  27

  THE DEATH GAME

  1. One at a Time

  “Then,” Lee said to me, “they started killing us one by one.”

  “They were going to shoot us,” Michael testified, “one at a time.”

  2. It Was All Right

  “One of the Detroit officers,” Thomas told the police, “pulled the ‘big man’ ”—Roderick Davis—“out of the line and took him in A-4.” In court Thomas was more explicit. “Officer Senak,” he testified, “took the first man out of the line . . . into the front room, one to the left in front.” “When they went in,” Greene told Eggleton, “he closed the door.” Roderick Davis said to me, “They told me, ‘Lie on the floor face down, and if you make a move or say a word we’ll kill you.’ ” “I followed them to the doorway,” Warrant Officer Thomas testified, “and Officer Senak told the man to lay on the floor and he fired a round through the wall. I seen him point the gun to the other direction. He didn’t shoot him. He scared him. . . . He winked at me. He didn’t say nothing.” “I thought,” Roderick testified, “he shot in the floor because I felt like vibration reaction by my feet.” “In the floor or through a chair or something,” Roderick said to me.

  ——

  ATTORNEY KOHL: “Now, you were in a room with David Senak when he took
a prisoner in there?”

  WARRANT OFFICER THOMAS: “Yes, sir.”

  KOHL: “And is it not true that he told the man to lie down on the floor? He fired a shot but he didn’t shoot at the man, did he?”

  THOMAS: “Definitely not.”

  Senak fired, Thomas testified, “right in the corner.”

  ——

  “He looked at me,” Thomas testified, “and winked, indicating it was all right. . . . When we took the first man in I realized what he was doing. And it was better than letting these people be beaten; seriously. I felt somebody was going to really get hurt seriously, and I felt this was the best thing at the time.”

  ——

  “Then,” Roderick told me, “they said, ‘Don’t budge an inch or you’ll be dead.’ ” And the men left him alone in the room.

  3. Want to Kill One?

  “The warrant officer,” Greene told Eggleton, “came out, and the policeman asked the other officer, ‘Did he kill him?’ And the officer said, ‘Yes.’ ” This was for the ears of the people in the line.

  “This officer . . .” the Thomas synopsis said, “asked Thomas if he wanted to kill one. Thomas said, ‘Yes,’ and took one of the men”—Michael Clark—“into A-4 and fired a rifle shot into the ceiling, forcing the man to remain in the room.”

  “I also took one person into that front room,” Thomas testified. “. . . I used my M-1 rifle. . . . I also told the man to lay on the floor, and fired a round through the ceiling . . . toward the corner so that anybody upstairs wouldn’t get hit. I didn’t think there was anybody upstairs around at the corner of the house.”

  “Let’s see,” Michael testified, “August”—once again he seems to err; even Senak’s lawyer placed Senak in this role—“told the soldier to shoot me or something. Anyway, the soldier told me to lay down. Then he shot. I think he shot out the window or in the hall somewhere. Then he told me just to lay there and be quiet. And he said if I make any noise, he going to come back and shoot me for real.”

  4. Announcement

  “Clark and an unknown man were taken into room A-4,” the Sortor synopsis says of this first phase of the death game, “shots were heard, and the officers returned, saying, ‘We killed those two.’ ” Telling me the story, Sortor said, “And so they said they were going to kill us, you know. They said they were going to kill us niggers, you know, so they picked Michael and this other guy out, so they said they were going to kill these two niggers, so they took them in this room in there, we heard two shots, so the police come out, so he said, ‘I killed them two motherfuckers.’ ”

  ——

  Karen told the detectives “she believed the police killed Michael Clark.” From the synopsis of Juli Hysell’s statement: “They . . . made Hysell believe Clark was dead.”

  5. Rational, Reasonable Explanation

  Thomas testified, “Immediately after the officer shot into the wall, into the floor, or corner, or wherever you want to call it, and laid the man down, they”—the people against the wall—“thought this man had been shot and they were willing to talk. . . . I believe it was one of the girls—I wouldn’t swear to it—said, ‘Why don’t you tell him about the gun? Carl is dead anyway.’ And this is one of the statements I specifically heard to this effect.”

  “One boy spoke up,” Juli testified, “and said that the boy that was dead was the one that had the pistol, and that’s the only thing that was said to my knowledge about the pistol.”

  “One of the persons” Karen told Allen Early, “who had been in A-2 & come up to A-4 said, ‘Go on and tell them anything because they’ve already killed him.’ This was with reference to the blank pistol. This other person then said, ‘The guy in there on the floor’ (referring to Carl in A-2) ‘had a blank pistol.’ Policeman said, ‘Why didn’t you tell us that before we killed the other guy?’ ”

  ——

  Having elicited from Juli, in the conspiracy hearing, an estimate that the ordeal in the hallway had been going on for about twenty minutes before this first mention of the starter pistol, Attorney Kohl asked her, “Now, if in fact there was simply a blank pistol that had been fired, will you advise this Court, please, what rational, reasonable explanation there could be for not telling the police who would have the gun and who had done what for a period of twenty minutes?”

  Juli answered: “Because everybody was scared.”

  6. Next?

  Karen told Early, “The talking policeman then said, ‘Who shall we get next?’ ”

  28

  THE DEATH GAME PLAYED OUT

  1. I Want One?

  “Then the first officer,” the Thomas synopsis said, “asked the officer with the OCD type helmet (who was dark complx w/m), ‘Do you want to kill one now?’ He said, ‘Yes,’ and the first officer gave the shotgun to the second officer, who took a Negro youth from the line. . . .”

  “He said it,” Thomas testified, “loud enough for everybody to hear in the room, ‘Do you want to shoot one?’—or to this effect.”

  Thomas testified that August had not been particularly active along the line-up. “Patrolman August,” he said, “was very refined. He didn’t say anything that I can recall.” But it was August to whom Senak now turned; Thomas testified that Senak handed his shotgun to August and told him “to take a man into the back room or into a room.”

  “Then the guy next to me,” Greene told Eggleton, “they took him to A-4. The officer told him not to take him to A-4. He said, ‘Take him to another room.’ And he took him to A-5, I think it was A-5, that’s the back room there.” (It was A-3.)

  “The game was going on,” Thomas testified, “and I said, ‘You can’t kill any more in here. There are too many now.’ And that is when I believe the other policeman handed Patrolman August the gun.”

  2. A Thing to Scare People With

  Assistant Prosecutor Avery Weiswasser asked Thomas: “Did Senak hand a gun to August?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What did he say when he handed him the gun?”

  “To the effect this was a game. I mean, this is a thing to scare people with.”

  But in other testimony Thomas said, “I can’t recall what was said. I know there was a conversation. I won’t deny this. The idea was to give the impression that these people were being shot.”

  Yet again Weiswasser asked, “Did you know if anybody bothered to tell August it was only a game?”

  “No, sir,” Thomas replied.

  2. Don’t Shoot

  From the Michael Clark synopsis: “Clark then heard someone take Pollard into Apt. #A-2 and heard Pollard yell, ‘Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot.’ He then heard a gunshot.”

  From the Lee Forsythe synopsis: “Forsythe stated he heard Pollard yell, ‘Don’t shoot,’ and a door slam, Forsythe believes in room A-3. A few seconds later, Forsythe heard a shot fired.”

  4. A Brush of Clothing

  “Then I believe Officer August took this man to the rear of the room,” Thomas, who followed August into the room, testified, “and I heard a shot. And Officer August had his back to me. I seen a brush of clothing, and I heard something fall. At this time I got scared.”

  “Did I see him fall? . . .” Thomas asked himself in testimony. “I won’t say that. I seen movement. Officer August was standing between myself and him, and I seen a flash of clothing, what I thought was a flash.”

  Prosecutor Weiswasser asked at one point: “Did you hear any struggle going on prior to that time?”

  “No,” Thomas answered, “I can’t say I did.”

  “I want to be honest with you,” Thomas testified later on. “I have seen the pictures of the room after the two bodies were discovered in there. And I believe the man that Officer August took back there had a shirt on, dark gray shirt. And the pictures don’t show this. And this is why I was confused on this point. You can see something or think you see something and think about it, and you don’t know if you’ve seen it or not. And I thought I seen that flash of clothing.
And it looked like a gray shirt.”

  5. Announcement

  From the James Sortor synopsis: “A shot was heard and an officer returned, saying, ‘That one didn’t kick.’ ”

  From the Robert Greene synopsis: “Then a shot was heard and the Warrant Officer returned, saying, ‘That nigger didn’t even kick.’ ”

  Sortor said to me, “Auburey didn’t lose his temper in that room; he was too scared. I figure if he would have lost his temper, he would have lost it when they was hitting him with the rifle. It was too quick for him to be in there tussling with the guy. It was too quick. He went in there, I heard the shot, and the guy came out, and he said, ‘That one didn’t even kick.’ ”

  6. Strictly Their Business

  “At this time,” Thomas had said, “I got scared. . . . It scared me. I was scared. I will be honest with you. . . . As far as the conversation goes, I believe I told the policeman that this was strictly their business, and I called Henson, who was outside at this time. And there was more shooting in the street. In fact, more shooting, and I told him we were going to leave. . . .”

  29

  OUT

  1. Exodus

  Warrant Officer Thomas was not alone in his impulse to flee after the murder of Auburey Pollard in the game that he, Thomas, had so blithely joined. The hallway was virtually clear of uniformed men in a very short time. Convenient firing was heard not far away; all but a handful ran to do their duty.