Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets

by David Simon

  “I guess,” says Worden, “that you’re real glad to be working with me again, right?”

  Julia Goodin smiles. “It’s always interesting working on your cases, Detective Worden.”

  “Interesting, huh?”

  “Always,” she says, smiling again. “But I won’t get to her for another half hour or so.”

  Worden nods and walks back out into the weighing room with Dave Brown.

  “I’ll bet she’s real happy to see me.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Tiffany Woodhous. The baby case.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  Doc Goodin has only been down at Penn Street for a few months, but already there is a history between her and Worden. It was a clusterfuck, of sorts, and it came three weeks back on a suspected child abuse call from Bon Secours, where the broken body of a dead two-year-old greeted Worden and Rick James in the rear examination room. Tiffany Woodhous had arrived at the hospital as a cardiac arrest case, but when the ER technicians forced a tube down into the child’s stomach, the only liquid they brought up was old blood from an earlier injury. Doctors then noticed that rigor mortis was already developing in the face and extremities. Both detectives noted a large bruise on the right side of the forehead, as well as others on the shoulder, back and abdomen.

  Assuming the worst, the detectives had both parents taken down to homicide, and when they learned that there were three other children at the family’s Hollins Street home, they contacted the Department of Social Services. But after lengthy interviews, both mother and father remained insistent that they had no idea who could have caused those injuries. Then their thirteen-year-old daughter raised a new suspicion by mentioning an incident that had occurred when her ten-year-old cousin was caring for the baby. The daughter said that she was on the second floor of the house when she heard a smacking noise, and when she walked downstairs and asked about it, the younger boy explained that he had only clapped his hands. After that, she told Worden, she took Tiffany upstairs, but the little girl was quiet and listless. She put the infant back on the sofa and watched as she fell asleep.

  Worden and James were both understandably eager to interview the boy, but he was suddenly nowhere to be found. He had been living with his aunt because he had already run away from his grandmother’s house on Bennett Place, and now he had fled from Hollins Street as well. Consequently, when Julia Goodin got her first look at the tiny body at the next morning’s autopsy, all she had to go on was the daughter’s statement and the obvious trauma to the body, which included a severe blow to the head that had caused massive hemorrhaging. That added up to at least a preliminary ruling of homicide-a ruling that was promptly released to reporters.

  Later that same morning, however, the ten-year-old was finally picked up by district officers in the alley behind his grandmother’s house and taken to the homicide unit. In the presence of his mother and a juvenile division prosecutor, he gave a full statement. He told detectives that he had been alone with Tiffany shortly before 1:00 P.M. when she began to cry. He picked her up, played with her until she quieted down, then sat her on the arm of the reclining chair in the living room. But while the boy was watching television, the child fell backward off the chair, striking her head against a bicycle that was lying on the floor behind the chair. The little girl cried uncontrollably and the boy ran outside, looking for his cousin. He couldn’t find her and began to panic. Just then, the thirteen-year-old returned and the two of them noticed that Tiffany’s eyes were rolling back into her head. They put the child on a foam mat in the middle room of the rowhouse and listened to a gurgling noise coming from her throat. Then they noticed that Tiffany was not breathing.

  They tried to resuscitate the child, a frantic and clumsy effort that explained the bruising to the chest, back and abdomen. The little girl began to breathe again and was put back on the sofa. Again she stopped breathing, and again the babysitters tried to revive her, this time by splashing her with cold water. Then they took the child to the middle room and laid her down beside her one-month-old brother. They did not call for an ambulance.

  When the thirteen-year-old girl was interviewed again that same day, she recanted. She had lied in fear of her parents, and both teenagers had been reluctant to seek medical help for the same reason. Only when the parents returned home at eight that evening was an ambulance finally summoned. The children’s behavior was witless and the result was tragic, but to Worden’s mind, this was not by any stretch of the imagination a case of murder.

  But the medical examiner’s office, and Julia Goodin in particular, was not entirely convinced. As the chief pathologist, John Smialek noted that the head injuries were severe, more so, in fact, than a child would be likely to sustain in a fall from a chair. But Worden believed his young witness, who had described the little girl’s fall as a backward flip from the armrest, straight down to the metal handlebars of the bicycle. And when the detectives convinced Tim Doory in the states attorney’s office not to charge the crime, Smialek insisted on a meeting. The ME’s office would not change the ruling, he told the prosecutor, and he was concerned that the case might seem to an outsider to be a cover-up by detectives who were reluctant to charge a ten-year-old defendant in a case that could never be won in court.

  It was a standoff of sorts, and the problem for Goodin was simple: A forensic pathologist can’t be wrong. Not once, not ever. Not even with a preliminary finding. Because it’s a bedrock rule that any mistake by a professional expert in any criminal field-pathology, trace evidence, ballistics, DNA coding-once publicly acknowledged, becomes the domain of every defense attorney in town. Give a good lawyer a single case in which an expert’s opinion is open to criticism, and he can ride that train straight down the track to reasonable doubt. And, more than most cases, the death of a two-year-old girl can always be expected to produce headlines.

  “Death of girl ruled homicide; no charges due,” declared the Sun. The paper quoted D’Addario as saying, “We have the basis for a case, but we can’t say factually what actually took place in the house… We have to stick with the medical examiner’s ruling.”

  Smialek provided some counterweight with the statement that the babysitters’ explanation “is not consistent with the injuries… the child died as the result of an action on some other person’s part.” The ME did concede, however, that the death could have possibly resulted from accidental human intervention, but there was no way to tell. Trying hard for some middle ground, Smialek carefully explained that a medical ruling of homicide does not necessitate a criminal charge of murder. Meanwhile, the police department’s spokeswoman summed things up cogently by telling reporters: “She was not murdered. That is all I have to say.”

  All in all, the Tiffany Woodhous investigation ended awkwardly for Worden, with a standing ruling of homicide for which no criminal charge would ever be filed. It also left the homicide unit and the ME’s office struggling for common ground in the glare of publicity, and it was, in retrospect, about par for the kind of year Worden was having.

  Now, three weeks later, the Big Man is back down on Penn Street with another body. And who but Julia Goodin is waiting for him in the autopsy room.

  The two detectives watch their Jane Doe from Billyland go beneath the overhead camera in the outer room, with Worden asking the attendant for particular attention to the treadmarks on the left arm and upper torso. Fifteen minutes later, they follow their victim into the autopsy room, where the external examination begins in the first available space, which happens to be between a fire victim from Prince George’s and an auto fatality from Frederick.

  Doc Goodin is nothing if not cautious. And after the Tiffany Woodhous mess, she’s now working with even more deliberation. She moves slowly around the corpse, noting the location of the treadmarks, of the bruises and contusions, of every visible injury. She notes each on the top sheet of her clip-pad, which is itself a silhouette of a prone female form. She carefully checks the hands for trace evidence, then scrapes
the fingernails, though she can see nothing in the scrapings to indicate that the victim fought against any assailant. She pays particular attention to the victim’s shins and thighs, looking for telltale bumper marks to indicate that she was struck while standing and then run over. Nothing there either.

  Worden points out the finger-pattern bruising on each arm. “Like she was grabbed first?” he asks.

  Goodin shakes her head. “Actually,” she says, “those are contusions that could have been caused when the vehicle went over her.”

  Worden mentions the earrings, both found on either side of her head along with small clumps of hair. Could they have been pulled out by an angry assailant?

  “More likely they were pulled out when her head was run over.”

  And the torn shorts? The torn panties? No, says Goodin, holding the two together to show that they both tore on the same side, at the point that would be weakest as the wheels rolled over her.

  “The tires could have done that.”

  Worden sighs, steps away, and looks at Brown. Both detectives can now see where they’re going with this thing; they may as well let the good doctor work and adjourn to the Penn Restaurant.

  “Well,” says Worden, “we’ll be across the street and back in a half hour or so.”

  “You could make it an hour.”

  Worden nods.

  The Penn Restaurant is mostly a lunchtime venue, a Greek family-owned establishment that draws most of its business from the hospital complex across the street. The decor is blue and white, heavy on the Formica, with the requisite number of wall murals depicting the Acropolis and the Aegean coastline. The gyros are exceptional, the breakfasts, acceptable, and the beer, cold. Brown orders the steak and egg combo; Worden, a beer.

  “How do you want the steak cooked?” asks the waitress.

  “He’d like it rare,” says Worden, smiling.

  Brown looks at him.

  “Go on, David, get it bloody and show us how it doesn’t bother you.”

  “Medium,” says Brown.

  Worden smiles and the waitress wanders back toward the kitchen. Brown looks up at the older detective. “What do you think?”

  “I’ll give you odds right now she won’t make it a murder,” Worden tells him.

  “Not after what you put her through,” says Brown dryly. “You went and ruined her for the rest of us.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  They eat and drink in silence. Finishing his steak, Brown looks again at Worden.

  “You know what I’m going to have to do?” he says. “I’m going to have to go out with her and show her the scene.”

  Worden nods.

  “You think that’ll help?”

  Worden shrugs.

  “I know it’s a murder, Donald.”

  Brown finishes his coffee and snuffs out his second cigarette. Back in May, he was down to a couple of smokes a day on the Johns Hopkins clinic plan. Now, whenever he coughed, he sounded like a garbage disposal chewing on a spoon.

  “You ready?”

  “Yep.”

  They cross the street, heading down the ramp and up the loading dock entrance, past the bulkhead door that marks the entrance to the decomp room; there the nastiest cases are examined apart from the others to keep life on Penn Street as bearable as possible. Even from the loading dock, there is still the suggestion of unbelievable stench.

  Inside the autopsy room, Julia Goodin is finishing her examination. As expected, she tells the detectives that nothing about the body points conclusively to a homicide. Particularly important, she says, is the absence of any visible contusions on the legs. In all probability, she explains, the woman was already lying down on that lot when she was run over. The toxicology will take weeks, but both Goodin and the detectives can guess that the results will come back positive for alcohol, if not for drugs as well. After all, she’s a billy girl found dead on a Sunday morning; chances are she saw the inside of at least one or two bars the previous night. There’s no semen, no direct evidence of sexual assault.

  How do we know, Goodin argues, that she didn’t just fall down drunk before someone ran her over? And what if one of those tractor-trailers didn’t see her lying there and backed up to that loading dock?

  Worden gives her the traffic man’s opinion on the tires, suggesting that it’s a sports car rather than any kind of truck.

  “If a semi-truck rolled over her,” says Worden, “it’d do a lot more damage than that, wouldn’t it?”

  “That’s hard to say.”

  Dave Brown brings up the missing shoe. If she just fell down drunk, wouldn’t that sandal be somewhere nearby? Intriguing thought, Goodin agrees, but she remains unconvinced, countering that if the victim was drunk, she could have lost the sandal two blocks away from where she eventually fell.

  “Look, guys, if you bring me something conclusive, I’ll rule it a homicide,” she says. “Right now, I have no choice but to pend it.”

  Later that afternoon, Dave Brown returns to Penn Street and collects the good doctor for a tour of the crime scene, arguing once again that the isolated lot just isn’t suited to the ordinary hit-and-run. Goodin listens carefully, scouts the scene and nods her understanding, but still refuses to call the death a murder.

  “I need some solid evidence either way,” she insists. “Bring me something definitive.”

  Brown accepts defeat graciously, and though he is still certain that the case is a murder, he understands on some level that it ought to be pended. Three weeks ago, after all, Goodin called a murder only to be overtaken by new evidence; now, the same bunch of cowboys are asking her to call another one without definitive proof. It’s probably a murder, Brown reasons, but right now it probably should be pended.

  Nonetheless, Goodin’s ruling creates another kind of problem: A case in which the pathologist’s finding is being pended is not, to the police department’s way of thinking, a murder. And if it isn’t a murder, it doesn’t go up on the board. And if it isn’t up on the board, it doesn’t really exist. Unless the primary detective takes it on himself to pursue a pended case, it has every chance of falling through the cracks the moment that detective gets a call that is a murder. If this case goes down, it will go down because Dave Brown somehow managed to follow through, and Worden, for one, has doubts about Brown’s ability to do so.

  Arriving back at the homicide office, the two men find that McLarney has already dispensed with the preliminaries. The paperwork has been given a start and the two billies who found the body are asleep in the fishbowl, their statements completed. And the woman that Brown talked with at the scene has called back; she’s heard a description of the victim on the neighborhood grapevine and it matches her aunt. Brown asks about the aunt’s jewelry and the woman describes both the necklace and earrings. He explains that there’s no need for the family to visit Penn Street for a positive identification; the facial injuries make that impossible. An hour or so later, fingerprint comparisons identify the dead woman as Carol Ann Wright, a young-looking forty-three-year-old who lived not two blocks from where she died. She was the mother of five children, and the last time her family saw her was a little before 11:00 P.M. on Saturday, when she walked over to Hanover Street to hitch a ride to the Southern District, where a friend of hers had been locked up.

  By early afternoon, Brown has confirmed that his victim did indeed pay a brief visit to a prisoner at the Southern District holding cells before leaving for parts unknown. And by late afternoon the family is calling back with the rest of the story. True to Brown’s most fervent hopes, the good country folk of South Baltimore are talking to one another and to the police, spewing out any and all relevant facts and rumors.

  Tracking the tale backward, Brown learns that a short time after the television stations began identifying the victim, the dead woman’s niece got a call from some friends over at Helen’s Hollywood Bar, down on Broadway in Fell’s Point. The bartendress and the manager both knew Carol, and both remember that she showed up
close to 1:00 A.M. with some guy named Rick, who had long, dirty blond hair and drove a black sports car.

  A short time later, the family calls again with more information: Before going to the bar that night, Carol went to a friend’s house over in Pigtown a little after midnight, looking to buy a little marijuana. Brown and Worden roll back out of the headquarters’ garage and drive first to South Stricker Street, where the friend confirms the visit but says she didn’t get a good look at the guy who drove Carol because he stayed in the car. She thinks he was young and kind of greasy looking, with longish blond hair. His car, she says, was blue or green. Maybe like a bluish green. Definitely not black.

  Later that night, at Helen’s on Broadway, the two detectives get little more from the regular patrons and night employees. The guy had blond hair, kind of long and stringy, but with a little curl to it. And a mustache, too. Kind of thin.

  “How tall?” Brown asks the bartendress. “My height?”

  “No,” she says. “Shorter.”

  “About his height?” he says, pointing to a customer.

  “Maybe a little shorter than that.”

  “What about the car?”

  The car. Nothing is more frustrating for Brown and Worden than to listen to these people try to describe the automobile that ran over Carol Ann Wright. The woman on Stricker Street says it was a blue or green compact. The manager of the bar says it was black and sporty, with a T-top and a round insignia on the front of the hood, like a 280Z. No, says the bartendress, it had those doors that open upward, like wings.

  “Winged doors?” says Brown, incredulous. “Like a Lotus?”

  “I don’t know what you call it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I think so.”

  It’s hard to dismiss the employee because she actually went outside at closing time and listened to this guy talk about how he’s a mechanic, a transmission expert, and does his own work on the car.

  “He was real proud of it,” she tells Brown.