by John Luciew
A MISSING MOTIVE: From the outset of the Ewalt investigation, detectives and prosecutors are hung up on finding a motive for the murder. A key question revolves around who would have known Darlene Ewalt would be on her patio at 2 a.m. For answers, they look to family members, specifically husband Todd Ewalt and, to lesser extent, son Nick. Meanwhile, budding serial killer Adam Leroy Lane is picking victims purely on the basis of opportunity. He attacks whatever woman he can gain access to while on late-night prowls near truck stops. In his three years in prison since then, Lane has never satisfied investigators by providing a motive.
AN UNSEEN PATTERN: With the July 17, 2007, attack on Patricia Brooks in York County, two women living within a 25-mile radius are stabbed in the span of four days. At least one state police detective theorizes a connection between the Brooks attack and the Ewalt murder. But prosecutor Marsico rejects the notion. As late as mid August and despite two more similar crimes and the July 30 arrest of Adam Lane in Massachusetts, investigators here fail to piece together a solid connection. It takes DNA results showing Ewalt’s blood on Lane’s knife to finally break the case in late August.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Dear Reader,
Thanks for downloading this e-book. If you enjoyed this story, please let others know by recommending SUSPECT/VICTIM in the Kindle community. And please look for my other titles in the Kindle Bookstore. They include, ZERO TOLERANCE, KILL THE STORY, SECRETS OF THE DEAD and FATAL DEAD LINES.
All Best,
John Luciew
Harrisburg, Pa.
Aug. 3, 2010
Special Bonus Material:
I am pleased to present two long-form narrative nonfiction pieces on life inside Pennsylvania’s juvenile justice system, both first published in The Patriot-News, Harrisburg, Pa. This journalism directly influenced and informed my juvenile justice-themed thriller, ZERO TOLERANCE. See how with an extended excerpt of Zero Tolerance, also included, that shows how the facts inspired the fiction. Enjoy!
DOING “SCHAFFNER TIME”
Rhonda is having a bad hair day. And she’s going to pay for it.
Known for constantly fooling with her hair, the 18-year-old went too far this time. She tried to pull back her hair and fasten it with a homemade scrunchie, one she manufactured with elastic pulled from a pair of shorts.
This fashion faux pas will cost her. For most of the next 72 hours, she’ll be confined to her 8- by 11-foot room in Dauphin County’s Schaffner Youth Center, located on the outskirts of Harrisburg, Pa.
Inside this secure juvenile detention facility, there can be no slaves to fashion. Bans on rubber bands, bobby pins, scrunchies and hair implements of any kind are among the hundreds of rules that define life at Schaffner.
As county officials crack down on juvenile crime, and school districts deal sternly with school violence, an increasing number of young people are learning those rules.
Schaffner, located in Swatara Twp., is where youths charged with crimes await juvenile court hearings and decisions on whether they will be released, put on probation or placed in residential programs that range from maximum security juvenile centers to boot camps.
This is the story of life at Schaffner. It is based on the observations of a reporter who was granted permission to spend several days at the center last month, and on interviews with dozens of staffers and juveniles.
The 112 youths who came to Schaffner in May ranged in age from 10 to 18. They are white, black, Hispanic. Almost a quarter of them are girls. The crimes they committed run the gamut, from rape and aggravated assault to theft and vandalism.
Many are victims, too, insist center staffers and directors. There are bed wetters, 13-year-old pregnant girls, victims of sexual abuse, kids who’ve been physically abused and others who have been so neglectfully raised they don’t know how to use a toothbrush.
The first thing they have to learn on arrival is that Schaffner is all about rules.
-- Instant obedience
Vernell and Gary are locked in a chess game, an intense grudge match that has claimed any number of pawns, knights, rooks and bishops.
Yet at a single call from a Schaffner staffer, they walk away, leaving the outcome unresolved, and fall into line for dinner. The plastic pieces are wiped from the board without a groan or word of protest.
That’s just the way it is at Schaffner. The staff lays down the rules, and these juvenile offenders bend to them.
They line up for everything and do so in the exact order listed on a roster kept by the staff. They keep their pockets turned out to show they’re empty. They submit to “pat downs” by the staff after every meal to ensure they’ve not pocketed a plastic fork.
They don’t talk at the dinner table. They’re in and out of the shower within four minutes. They’re in bed before sundown.
And they actually vie for the right to do chores, such as sweeping floors or passing out milk cartons during lunch. Such duties are privileges to be earned, a chance to rack up points that can be exchanged for extra phone calls home, a later bedtime, or even a movie night, complete with ice cream.
Defy the rules and the staff will resort to an age-old punishment: sending the offending party to his or her room. In this case, that’s a cell with a bed, a sink, a toilet and little else, save for a Gideon Bible and a Schaffner rule book.
Watching over these juveniles are youth program specialists -- masters of the pods, the four detention units where almost all life at Schaffner takes place.
The pod masters never strike or physically punish the youngsters. If a youth is out of control and in danger of hurting himself or another, the staff is schooled in safe physical restraint, which is akin to putting someone in a great big bear hug or taking them down to the floor until they calm down.
Although Schaffner is a detention center, the main focus is not on locking up the juveniles. The staff and directors talk over and over about their mission of care and custody.
They keep the children safe. They feed them a whopping 3,400 calories a day. They get them medical and dental care, and if circumstances warrant, the youngsters are seen by psychologists and psychiatrists and put on medication for mental health problems.
“Someone complained to me that the kids are not afraid to come here,” said Schaffner’s director, Albert R. Hooke Jr., dismayed at the criticism.
“I don’t want the kids to be afraid to come here. Their freedom is going to be taken away, but they shouldn’t have to fear getting beat up physically or that something sexually is going to happen. We’ve got to show them that we, as a society, still care about them.”
To keep order, then, the only thing Schaffner has is its rules. The youths there call it doing “Schaffner time.”
Everyone “blameless”
“They found a gun on me,” says Adrianne, a sweet-looking 13-year-old standing in a fenced-in Schaffner playground.
The way she talks, it’s as if the handgun magically appeared in her backpack only to be discovered inside a city school.
All the kids talk this way. They didn’t do anything. The person who caught them did.
“They said I did this . . .” is the way almost every such conversation begins. Make no mistake, however. The youngsters know why they’re here.
“We know what we’re doing when we do something,” said Rhonda. “It’s not the way you were raised. Sometimes, it’s not your environment. It’s who you are. It’s mostly you.
“You want to do something bad just to get out of the humdrum of life,” she added. “I don't think life is as exciting as people want it to be.”
In theory at least, Schaffner is there for the worst young offenders.
Schaffner gets its share of accused rapists and sex offenders. There are auto thieves. But most of the detainees are charged with crimes such as theft, burglary, criminal conspiracy or drugs.
Lately, more and more young people are there for fighting in school, a result of the county Juvenile Court’s “Zero Tolerance to School
Violence” policy that recommends such incidents of school violence be treated as crimes. Or, in the post-Columbine-shooting era of school sensitivity, some are inside for making threats or pulling ill-conceived pranks.
Others are there for minor probation violations. This is under a strict policy by Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence F. Clark Jr. that any probation violator will land back at Schaffner, no questions asked, according to staffers. The judge will then sort things out when the juveniles appear before him after about 10 days at the detention center.
All this helped increase the number of Schaffner admissions to a record 1,023 last year. The center, which must take any youth sent to it by the judge or juvenile probation officials, routinely exceeds its 48-bed detention capacity by as many as 15 to 20 juveniles.
When business booms at Schaffner, A pod -- the intake quarters where everyone entering the center stays initially -- feels the heat.
The pod’s phone rings in rapid bursts. Two are coming in.
Staffers Karen Bomgardner and Mike Attivo study the pod room chart to see who they can double up in rooms designed for one.
With the stroke of a marker, Vernell, 13, loses his private room and trades a bed for a mattress on the floor.
The phone rings again -- another one is coming. This time, with the population at 15 in a pod built for 12, Attivo and Bomgardner will move someone off of A pod. It will begin a room reshuffling throughout all four Schaffner pods.
Once out of A pod, boys 14 and older go to B and C pods. The younger boys, s 10 to 13, and all girls head to D pod, the center’s only co-ed pod.
“Anyone who’s old enough to want to go to D pod to be with the girls doesn’t go to D pod,” says a staffer.
Julius, 16, in on a gun charge, has quickly learned the ebb and flow of Schaffner.
“They come in every day,” he says. “We’ve got to make room.”
No personal contact
Amber is touching people again. Standing in one of the many lines at Schaffner and waiting to walk down the hall, she can’t keep herself from touching the hair of the boy in front of her.
The staff scolds her, but they know why she does it.
“Amber, you can’t touch him, remember?” reminds a staffer. “Amber, hands down at your side.”
It’s another one of those Schaffner rules -- no personal contact for anybody, staff or residents.
That Amber, 14, can’t seem to abide by it is a symptom of a larger problem. She’s been sexually abused and has some of the severest problems of anybody at Schaffner.
She wets the bed, is prone to profanity-laced outbursts and has been diagnosed with a laundry list of syndromes, including Turrets, attention deficit disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The fact that she is so “huggy,” as the staff puts it, stems from her history of sexual abuse.
“She wants attention,” said Danielle Myers, the case management specialist who keeps track of the problems of all kids at Schaffner. “It makes her feel secure.”
That’s a telltale sign of sexual abuse. Victims of physical abuse, on the other hand, often flinch at sudden movements or recoil when someone gets next to them.
Myers also must deal with children’s depression -- lots of it. Especially when they first arrive.
Complicating matters, nearly 70 percent of all Schaffner admissions have “hot urines,” meaning they test positive for alcohol or other drugs upon entering the center.
It seems that every kid who comes to Schaffner has some kind of problem.
“You feel sorry for them,” said Hooke. “There are days I’m driving home and I think about some of the kids, and I get tears in my eyes. They’re so damn needy.”
Sometimes, they’re just woefully neglected.
They come in with undergarments so full of holes and dirt that they can’t be washed. The center keeps a big box of sneakers for use by the kids during recreation time because many lack them. Deodorant is a foreign substance. Teen girls don’t know what feminine products are for.
Others have something special and are wasting it.
Darin, 16, is as fluid and natural a basketball player as you’ll find. Staffers have tried again and again to get him on the right track. They laid out the path to success: get on a high school team, get a college scholarship. But here he is, back on a probation violation.
Schaffner staff have seen many teens like Darin.
“It’s such a waste,” says pod master Juan Ramos. “With a good education and the sports, they could go a long way.”
Mark, 17, has a girlfriend and, in three months, he’ll have a baby. His role as a family man got sidetracked when he was taken down -- literally -- for a gun charge. He said the police shoved his face into the sidewalk, and he has the fat lip to prove it.
“It’s not the place you want to be,” Mark says of Schaffner. He wears a look of worry usually seen on someone much older, and says he’s interested in just one thing: getting out.
“I got to stay to myself,” he says. “I think about a lot of stuff. I’m thinking about whether I’ll be out in time to see my baby.”
Ryan, on the other hand, has no illusions. The 17-year-old is headed for placement in a juvenile center for a good six to eight months. And security will be tight, because he’s already escaped once.
The latest charges against him include aggravated assault on a police officer and resisting arrest. The toughest blow, though, was dealt by his dad.
“My dad doesn’t want to see me any more,” Ryan says. “I’ve been in trouble too many times. He says he’s done with me.”
Tears come to his eyes. Ryan was a boy when he started down this road. He was in eighth grade when he got nabbed for retail theft. He’s been in the system ever since.
Ask him why.
“I don’t know,” he says.
All seeking attention
There is an attention deficit at Schaffner. Everybody wants some, but there’s not enough to go around.
The pod masters sometimes seem like harried parents as they are peppered with questions from 15 or so kids. “Can I do this? Can I do that?”
Everybody wants to be the one to pass something out. Doing a chore is a big deal around Schaffner.
Each pod has its own roster of designated helpers.
At Schaffner, life revolves around the pods. Each one has a dozen very small rooms, where the youngsters sleep. Each is a self-contained world, and within that world there is much work to be done.
At meals, one youth is assigned the task of getting the drinks and food for the pod’s occupants, who are seated at tables of four in the small dining room. To maximize efficiency, the server -- a position of extreme trust and respect -- tosses the half-pint milk cartons to those seated at the tables.
He asks only one question: plain or chocolate. “He tossed me the wrong one,” complains one boy. In another quick exchange of milk cartons and one-handed catches, the controversy is settled.
That’s the only food you’ll ever see flying in a Schaffner cafeteria.
After each meal, someone else gets the honor of doling out each person’s hygiene kit. The kit is nothing more than a Ziploc bag with a comb, toothbrush and deodorant. Another youth has the job of going around with a tube of toothpaste and squeezing a little on everyone’s brushes as they hold them out from the doorways of their rooms.
At night, another juvenile trusty gets a taste of the ultimate in power and authority at Schaffner: He or she gets to regulate the Schaffner showers.
Each youngster is allotted four minutes under the water. The shower master calls residents from their rooms one by one to enter one of two private shower rooms in each pod. Then, he or she carefully watches the clock. The only frustration comes when showering juveniles pretend not to hear the shower master’s call, “Time’s up.”
Others get their attention quotient by simply being caught up in the juvenile justice system.
Adrianne is fingering the important-looking documents with her name printed all over t
hem. She gets them out of her folder at the pod’s main desk. That’s where all such items are kept. Nothing of the sort is allowed in the kids’ rooms.
She looks over the documents, which inform her of her court date and outline the charges against her. She flips through them, not really reading them but seeing her name in bold type.
Tomorrow morning, she will be taken to the county courthouse, another important building. She will sit in a large courtroom with tall ceilings and solemn phrases about justice written on the walls. And the whole thing will be about her.
It’s probably the most attention Adrianne can ever remember getting, and she wants her mom to be there. That’s why she’s calling her at 8:30 p.m., a phone call courtesy of “points” earned doing chores.
She whispers, “I hope she’s there,” as one of the pod staffers dials the number.
“Hi, Mom,” she says shyly into the phone.
“I have court at 8 in the morning. Are you coming?”
After the call, she announces that her mother will, in fact, be there. She even gave her mom directions to the building, “the big white one on Front and Market streets.”
Adrianne will be taken there by her favorite staffer, Denise Brock, who is seven months pregnant and now only works on the pods occasionally. But when she does make a visit, she’s like an old friend to whom all the girls respond.
“I'll see you in the morning,” Brock says.