American Honor Killings

by David McConnell

  Meanwhile, Hood was driving around Baltimore in his gray Dodge Avenger (a sexy limited-edition model named, incredibly, “Stormtrooper”). In the bucket seat next to him sat Curtis McClean. Despite the huge wings tattooed across his back, McClean wasn’t a member of the 92 Family Swans. (“That guy was so big he didn’t have to bother about gangs,” a detective later explained to me.) Hood got a phone call and told McClean, “I gotta pick my boys up.” The agreed-upon spot was the Royal Farms store.

  So there were four of them in the sporty Avenger. Presumably, team killing demands team debriefing or team congratulations. Not a happy slap on the butt so much as a grave, “You did what had to be done.”

  They drove downtown to the Bentalou-Smallwood neighborhood of southwest Baltimore. Christian Street is a drab-looking stretch of cheap old brick and clapboard town houses, several with fake stone siding. Dead quiet during the day, the street is home to a couple of bars. One, on the corner of Payson, has no sign except a neon Open in a tiny window. Across the intersection is a shabby, gray-painted place called Incognito. Open Seven Days and Package Goods are stenciled under a tar-paper overhang. The four boys went into one of these bars.

  They drank. They must have reassured each other in the stiff, terse way of boys and men. You can imagine Hood drunk with fascination about what had happened but careful not to show weak-seeming curiosity.

  At some point Loco and Woo left. Perhaps they went to Woo’s place where the pants and phone were supposedly later seen. They were just the instruments of murder, which were now put away. For Hood the evening wasn’t over.

  * * *

  If Hood arrived at the bar at five thirty or six, he had a long time to get grimly and pleasantly dizzy about the murder he’d ordered. Several others joined him and McClean. Michael Fitzgerald is the only one who’s been identified. The next time we hear about the group it’s around two thirty a.m. Hood, McClean, and Fitzgerald (plus the one or two unknowns) drove to Baltimore and South Streets. They parked two cars, Hood’s and an old red Saturn of Fitzgerald’s, in a parking garage on the northeast corner of the intersection.

  This is the heart of downtown Baltimore. The ’80s Chamber of Commerce building stands across Baltimore Street from the parking garage. City Hall is a block north and east. From here South Street runs a couple of blocks into the Inner Harbor and the berth of the museum ship sloop-of-war USS Constellation.

  Catercorner to the parking garage is the handsome American Building, the old home of the long-defunct Baltimore American newspaper. The building has an ornate cast-iron façade painted dark green, which now frames the windows of a twenty-four-hour 7-Eleven. The garish red and green 7-ELEVEN sign makes for a jarring contrast to the faded gilt of the Gothic black-letter Baltimore American above it.

  At two thirty, the fluorescent-lit 7-Eleven must have been the brightest place around. The entrance is at the corner of the building, a vestibule with glass doors opening onto both South and Baltimore Streets. Three guys happened to be waiting near the South Street entrance: Jermaine Kelley, Brandon Sanders, and, just across the street, Christopher Webster. They were waiting on Howard and Davon Horton, who were picking up a few things in the store. The kids were dressed a little ghetto—Gucci sunglasses, diamond studs—but they weren’t gang members.

  From the garage across the intersection comes a group of black guys, strung out like wolves. Hood, McClean, Fitzgerald, more. One of this group, unidentified except that he was wearing a white baseball cap, walks up to Webster. He lifts the front of his shirt to show he’s carrying a handgun. He takes it out.

  Brandon Sanders, who was nearest the 7-Eleven entrance, ducked inside and told Howard and Davon, “Guy got a gun on your cousin, man!”

  Howard looked out the window and saw Webster leaning against the granite footing of the Chamber of Commerce building across the street. Some guy in a white hat was talking to him, but it didn’t look like a robbery.

  So Howard steps out to find out what’s going on. As he does, he sees his cousin taking off his shoes (to prove he has no money hidden), and he sees the guy in the white cap slip the gun back into his “dip area,” as they call it in Baltimore.

  Before he can react, Michael Fitzgerald, one of the guys who’d joined Hood and McClean, grabs Howard’s arms from behind. “Empty your pockets!”

  Howard figured this guy had a gun as well, so he fished four or five dollars from his front left pocket. Fitzgerald meanwhile slipped a hand into Howard’s right front pocket and took Davon’s car keys (Howard had been driving his brother’s car), before ordering him, “Push it down the street!”

  All this happened so quickly, Jermaine Kelley was still standing there at a complete loss. Fitzgerald swung toward him and grabbed the Cincinnati Reds cap from his head. Curtis McClean approached and ordered Jermaine to take out his diamond earrings. “Gimme your wallet and glasses!” Fitzgerald added. And after Jermaine gave them everything, Fitzgerald shouted, “Get the fuck out of here!”

  While this was happening, Davon slipped out of the 7-Eleven and hurried down South Street. Not fast enough. One of the attackers (unknown) demanded his watch. Davon refused.

  Someone yelled, “Just shoot him! Just shoot him!” This could have been Hood’s second fiat for murder that day, but nobody knows who did the yelling. In any case, the attacker dutifully shot Davon three times—chest, shoulder, hip. Each bullet went clean through him. (Davon lived, barely.)

  The shooter ran down South Street. The rest of them backtracked to the parking garage, where it happened a plainclothes detective was working that night. A police car was also sitting two blocks east on Baltimore Street. It made a U-turn and got to the intersection in seconds. The plainclothes detective caught Fitzgerald by his car. After more police arrived and the garage had been sealed off, officers approached a Dodge Avenger with tinted windows. Both seats were laid out flat. Two people were hiding. On the passenger’s side: McClean. A hollow point bullet fell from his pants when he responded to the order to get out. Lying flat in the driver’s seat: Hood. What was on that motionless, serious boy’s mind as he ended his career as a leader in a shabby robbery like this?

  * * *

  Something rare happened in this case. Despite the baby faces involved, despite the nice Randallstown families, this was an authentic gang murder. Loco and Woo were caught easily enough, but neither they nor anyone else would name names because of the gang connection. Detectives Gary Childs and Joseph Caskey (who ran the case from the beginning) simply didn’t believe Loco and Woo’s gay story at first. The detectives were probably too grown-up or too sophisticated to understand or remember the bizarre, boyish ideal of impeccable manliness. Indeed, the gangs frequently mystified them. Childs shook his head when he told me about a boy who admitted shooting somebody simply because “he was mugging me,” Baltimore slang for staring at him.

  Woo, with his shaggy dreads, his raggedy beard coming to a point, with a heaviness around his hips that gave his thuggish appearance a trace of cowlike gentleness, eventually told his father everything—the gang, the order to kill. His father had no advice except a halting, automatic, and insufficient, “You gotta do the right thing.”

  If he cooperated with prosecutors, Woo would have to worry for the safety of his grandmother Bercille, his father, his entire family. He’d have to serve his time in protective custody. Out of genuine remorse, apparently, he finally did talk. He talked about the birthday party and the meeting at Mondawmin Mall and the order, mentioning a name detectives had never heard and would never have known: Hood, Timothy Rawlings Jr., a kid in jail in the city for some 7-Eleven robbery.

  In an uncanny moment before Hood was sentenced to life without parole, he was permitted to review the “pre-sentencing report”—a private document full of victim impact statements and mitigating information about the defendant. Sitting at the defense table, the small, self-possessed boy bent forward studiously and turned the pages very slowly with a steady hand.

  As I watched him, the q
uestion came to mind, Is he really reading? His lawyers whispered between themselves. The aristocratic, white-haired Judge Robert Dugan waited impassively. A court officer reminded people to keep their cell phones silent. This was mainly directed at the six gang members in the last row on Hood’s side of the room. They’re children, basically, slight of build and posturing in their seats with an impudence that looks as stylized as that in West Side Story. Yet these boys will kill.

  Still, Hood turns the pages, keeping the whole courtroom waiting without any sign of self-consciousness. He hasn’t been sentenced yet, but he must know what’s coming. Two teachers, a ponytailed white guy and an African American woman, guide their black students—mostly girls in white sweaters—into the courtroom. The students and their teachers all wear an uplifting button that reads: Live Your Dreams. But as Hood continues turning the pages, reading his own life, the teachers whisper and the students are—a little disruptively—led out again. Hood keeps turning the pages.

  His mother Tereia, the corrections officer, will heave herself to her feet and say her son isn’t the monster he’s been painted to be. “But I want to apologize for my son’s alleged actions.” She’ll turn to address the Parrishes directly with lawyer-tutored formality.

  Michelle Parrish will also go forward to speak from the prosecution table. She’ll start uncertainly, then berate Hood like any mother. During her furious remarks, the gang members will suddenly be led from the room by Childs and Caskey. The detectives will explain to me later that the kids were making intimidating hand signals.

  For now, Hood turns the pages, delaying his sentencing and seemingly in complete mastery of time itself.

  * * *

  Michelle Parrish saved her greatest venom for Loco, Steven Hollis, the best friend. His sentencing came several weeks later. The prosecutor phoned for an extra court officer in case gang members showed up again, but Loco’s side of the courtroom was entirely filled by his somber relatives led by his father, a slight man in an orange shirt and a boxy pale-green suit.

  The Parrishes, with one set of grandparents, sat behind a couple of reporters on the prosecution side. Though Michelle had sobbed and Steven Sr. had toyed obsessively with his BlackBerry before Woo’s sentencing (Juan Flythe, who’d cooperated) and before Hood’s (Timothy Rawlings Jr.), this morning the Parrishes appeared more relaxed. It was their third time, after all. Everybody was waiting for Judge Dugan and the prisoner.

  A minor flutter arose among the Parrish family when Steven Sr. found he’d misplaced his free-parking ticket. As he searched his jacket pockets, laughing softly at his own forgetfulness, one of the grandparents leaned in and joked, “This happens when you get to be the over-the-hill kind.” More whispered chuckles all around.

  Michelle’s attention crossed the aisle only once. She put her arms on the back of the bench in front of her. She leaned forward and cocked her head pointedly at the crowd of Hollises on the other side of the room. Through her stylish narrow glasses, she gave them a good long look, which none returned.

  When it came her time to speak, Michelle tugged at her yellow sweater and strode forward, confident-seeming. She was wearing slacks for the first time. “I need to make sure my son . . .” And she immediately broke down. She wept. After gathering herself, she spoke faster, and her voice quickly rose almost to a shout. “I can’t believe how somebody’s best friend could kill them! To have someone you claimed to love as a brother, someone you knew was not gay . . . You knew he was not!” Many of the Hollises stifled sobs. “That’s not love. That’s hate. And no amount of sorrys can make it better.” She turned to Judge Dugan: “I do not want him out!” And back to Loco: “I want every time you see me to remember that’s why you’re in there, because of what you did! I will never forgive you! You have ruined my life!”

  Steven Hollis Sr. spoke on behalf of his son. He had a halting, preacherly eloquence. He clasped his hands together when he faced his old friends. “Michelle, I am so sorry. Steven was my son. Steven is my son. Don’t let that hatred sit in your heart. If I could take it back I would. I warned him about hanging out with a gang . . .”

  Mr. Hollis shifted his weight. In his effort to remain poised, he seemed to lose track of his plea for a moment. “This is his family.” He gestured toward the Hollises. “And this is his family.” Shyly, he extended his cupped hands toward the Parrishes. He recalled Thanksgivings and family gatherings they’d all shared. Soft-spoken, he wondered aloud, “If there was any way to . . .” Terribly diminished after his speech, holding onto a bare shred of formality, he finished, “It’s all such a waste.”

  Loco had none of his father’s gift for speaking. When he finally stood and turned, he looked more confused than ever under his frightening frown. He was no longer the 190-pound football player he used to be. In prison he’d been gradually losing weight, ten, thirty, fifty pounds. He was gaunt now. He was being eaten up. I thought of the way a wasp larva devours its host from the inside with instinctive care to keep the meal alive till the last possible moment.

  Loco pressed the tips of wonderfully long, slender fingers on the defense table. They bent backward. In a voice as soft as his father’s but gruffer, clumsier, he said, “I just want to make my apologies to Ms. Michelle. I hope that one day you can forgive me . . . Steven is gone, but he’s still my best friend.”

  As if this were a Baptist church, the Parrish grandparents couldn’t repress a muted response. “Hm-mm, hm-mm,” they disagreed. With hushed precision they said, “No, he is not.”

  7

  GANGS AND LONERS

  Violence by groups, no matter how grisly or perverse, feels different to the participants. Soldiers and executioners aren’t murderers. They’re respectable participants in the state monopoly on violence—at least they’re supposed to be. In reality, executioners have always been regarded with unease, and soldiers returning from a war, especially in our ultrapeaceable society, are subject to almost unbearable alienation.

  If things feel ambiguous to individuals when the state has an accepted right to its monopoly on violence, they become even more desperate psychologically under a criminal regime. The delusions of ex-Nazis and ex–Khmer Rouge are well-known and grotesque.

  Most group violence takes place at a much smaller scale than the state. Though “gay panic” crimes are usually one-on-one, like Jonathan Schmitz and Scott Amedure, it’s interesting that Matthew Shepard, Steve Domer, Billy Jack Gaither, and Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder were all killed by pairs of murderers. Some kind of minimal group sensibility was in play. Two may be the most dangerous number, but killings by larger groups and mobs occur as well. The gay man Michael Sandy was escaping four attackers when he was hit by a car and killed in Brooklyn in 2006.

  When we talk about gang violence, though, we mean something other than just a larger number of people were involved. As in Parrish’s case (and he was actually killed by a pair, as well), there can be the simulacrum of a trial. The participants engage in a pretense of civilized behavior. They’re conscious of communal honor. A decision is made, an order is given. There’s at least a sham of “state” authority.

  That authority is part of the attraction of gangs, and it may be the reason that gang members sometimes seem more recoverable than other criminals. Maybe they are. Maybe all it takes is growing up to reorient loyalty or to learn compassion. Hollis and Flythe (Loco and Woo) were pretty good kids, and who knows how they would have turned out if they’d been able to resist the pointless murder of a friend?

  That’s not to say gangs don’t harbor psychopaths. But the relative “normality” of some of the participants and the sense of criminal justification gangs offer make their values paradoxically more terrifying to outsiders than those of an ordinary killer. They have real power. Probably the most famous gang of all is the Sicilian Mafia, a criminal state-within-a-state for much of its existence. Mafia values, including an obsession with honor, “Family Over Everything,” and a particular loathing for homosexuality, are stamped all o
ver this book, though it’s unlikely anyone I’ve written about knows much about the actual organization.

  It’s fitting to mention the case of Leonardo Vitale. In Italian, what we call a “Mafia turncoat” is a pentito. Whatever you call them, they’re usually people trying to save their own skin. But in Vitale’s case (as with Juan Flythe), actual repentance was involved. He showed up at a Palermo police station in 1973 and spontaneously announced that he was a Mafia captain (capodecino) undergoing a spiritual crisis. He confessed to a kidnapping and two murders and described as much of the Mafia organization as he was privy to. He’d been raised by his uncle, who became his capo and who introduced him to murder gently by ordering him to kill a horse, first, then a man. (Exactly the old story of the knight inuring his son to slaughter.)

  Because his behavior after turning himself in was so erratic, Vitale was deemed seminfermità mentale, and no one believed most of what he said. In 1977, after a trial based on his confessions, twenty-six defendants were released for lack of evidence. Only Vitale and his uncle went to prison. Vitale spent most of his incarceration in a mental institution. After his release in ’84, everything he’d said was confirmed by a much higher-ranking pentito. A few months later, in December of ’84, coming out of Mass with his mother and sister, Vitale was shot twice in the head. The famous Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone, who was assassinated himself in ’92, wrote an article called “The Importance of Leonardo Vitale,” and the case of the “crazy” mafioso, the first pentito, the one no one believed, has been made into a book and movie in Italy.