Mike Ebaugh won similar success. His labors ensured that Nicoh Mayhew’s grand jury testimony was entered into evidence during the 2014 prosecution of Mayhew’s nephew Brian “Block” Mayhew for the 2011 slayings of Sean Ellis and Anthony McKelvin. Brian Mayhew was ultimately convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. To Ebaugh’s consternation, however, Brian Mayhew’s codefendant, Kenan Myers, was acquitted of all charges, in part because the prosecutors were not able to persuade a judge to allow them to use Nicoh Mayhew’s testimony during Myers’s separate trial.
Ebaugh charged six people in Nicoh Mayhew’s killing, including Brian Mayhew and his girlfriend. For her role in arranging the calls that led to Nicoh Mayhew’s death in December 2012, the girlfriend pleaded guilty to conspiring to retaliate against a witness. Ebaugh did not charge Kenan Myers in Nicoh Mayhew’s murder because the detective was never able to establish a link between the suspect and the crime. Charges against two of the other suspects were dropped. In June 2015, prosecutors took Brian Mayhew, Anthony Cannon, and Stanley Winston to trial. But after a series of surprising rulings that limited the evidence the prosecutors could present in court—including a decision that prohibited any mention of the key recording in which Winston appears to have informed Brian Mayhew that his uncle had been slain—the jury failed to reach a verdict on any charges. Prosecutors have pledged to retry the case.
While continuing to investigate the Nicoh Mayhew case, Ebaugh caught a fresh killing on February 23—that of Nicolas Gonzalez, a thirty-four-year-old El Salvadoran day laborer who was hacked to death with a machete early one morning in front of the house where he lived. The detective quickly linked the murder to the notoriously violent gang Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13; as Ebaugh knew, the gang’s members often wielded machetes. Federal authorities soon became involved, and in 2014, U.S. prosecutors unsealed an indictment alleging that nine MS-13 members played roles in the killings of Gonzalez and four other men in Prince George’s County. Among those men was eighteen-year-old Meyder Bladimir Yuman, the final murder victim in February 2013. A third case involving Hispanic gangs, the fatal shooting of twenty-year-old David Avelar on February 24, was also solved, and Avelar’s killer pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and is awaiting sentencing.
Ebaugh’s work on the Mayhew case earned him the respect he had been seeking from his superiors and his fellow detectives. But his outlandish personality sometimes continued to grate, as when he made a show of dousing his thinning hair with growth formula or bragging about achieving a very high score on the written portion of the sergeant’s exam in 2014. His comeuppance came during the exam’s oral assessment: while he was being drilled on how to respond to a multicar accident, a fire alarm began sounding in the classroom. It wasn’t part of the test, and Ebaugh grew so frustrated that he screamed, “Fuck!” His colleagues teased him relentlessly for losing his composure, and he was later passed over for promotion.
Even the best investigators can be stymied by a challenging case, and two of the Homicide Unit’s most respected detectives failed to solve the murders of Aaron Kidd and Andre Shuford. Billy Watts and Ben Brown worked the case assiduously through February and March, tracking down witnesses and persuading a particularly reluctant one to identify the suspected killer. That witness, as well as several others, told Watts and Brown that a teenage armed robber had been responsible for a number of holdups in the neighborhood. In the days before the double homicide, the robber had ridden his bike into the apartment complex and tried to mug Kidd and Shuford. According to the witness, the two friends spotted the robber a few nights later; after confronting him, they got into a fight with him and then were fatally shot.
In early March, Watts brought the seventeen-year-old suspect into homicide and questioned him for hours. But the teen would not confess, and it was later determined that his DNA did not match blood drops recovered near the scene, a puzzling development. Even so, Watts remains convinced that the teenager—now an adult—did indeed kill Kidd and Shuford, and he continues to plug away at the case.
Over the next two years, Watts became increasingly burned out, and in 2014 he decided it was time to put investigations behind him. He studied hard for the sergeant’s exam and scored high enough to win a promotion. He expects to remain in the Homicide Unit, as does Brown, who is also due to become a sergeant soon. Both men look forward to imparting their knowledge to fresh investigators while no longer bearing the direct responsibility of speaking for the dead.
Jonathan Hill survived his rookie season and remains in homicide, where his love of video games and Star Wars continues to vex his veteran colleagues. He also managed to identify the victim of the police-involved shooting on February 8. Her name was Tonya Buggs; she was the forty-three-year-old daughter of the apartment’s leaseholder, who had moved to New York City to care for her own mother.
After tracking down Geraldine McIntyre’s stolen television, Andre Brooks charged James “JuJu” Ward, a heroin-addicted handyman, with fatally stabbing the seventy-one-year-old homebody. Successfully prosecuting Ward will be difficult: Brooks and evidence technicians discovered no forensic evidence linking him to the murder scene. Further, the suspect’s lengthy interrogation was thrown out by a judge after Ward alleged that he had been roughed up by Brooks during a break in the interview. This is not an uncommon allegation—most judges view it skeptically—and Brooks vigorously denies it. Prosecutors also dispute the claims and are appealing the judge’s decision to disallow the interrogation. Even if they win the appeal, Brooks’s session with Ward may be of limited value at trial, since Ward admits only to having walked past McIntyre’s house on the day of the murder.
In the two years following the McIntyre case, Brooks’s luck did not improve, and he became known as the detective who caught the saddest cases. A few months after McIntyre’s death, he investigated the murder of a toddler. In 2014, he arrested a mother who killed her one-year-old son and three-year-old daughter by wrapping their heads in plastic bags. Brooks says the murders of so many innocent victims took a toll, making it nearly impossible for him to distance himself from the more routine violence and emotional tumult that accompanies his job. After twenty-five years on the force, he claims he is finally ready to retire.
Spencer Harris and Greg McDonald were correct to be wary of Tayvon Williams, the first witness they interviewed in the murder of fifteen-year-old Charles Walker Jr., shot for a pair of new pink Timberland boots. Although Williams’s information helped detectives from the unit round up the four other men in the white van that night, they later determined that Williams had been the triggerman. Williams pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and is awaiting sentencing. The four other men have all pleaded guilty to various charges stemming from the robbery and shooting.
In late 2014, with the murder rate holding low and steady, commanders decided to eliminate Harris’s squad, M-90, and scatter its detectives to other assignments. Harris and McDonald were transferred to the cold-case squad, and they now spend most of their days digging through dusty case files and answering calls from relatives curious about the status of investigations.
The detectives of M-40 have remained as intense and jocular as ever, though the tight-knit group has broken up. Sergeant Joe Bergstrom retired a few months into 2015; Joe Bunce won promotion to sergeant and is expected to lead a robbery squad. Allyson Hamlin charged Kimberly Smith with the murder of Charles Blyther Jr., her mother’s ex-boyfriend; Smith pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to five years in prison. Hamlin continued to devote much of her spare time to football, and in 2015 she led her team, the D.C. Divas, to victory in the league championship.
Jamie Boulden, after investigating scores of natural deaths and seven slayings, says he finally feels like he belongs in homicide. Whenever he runs into Trasee Cosby at a scene, he teases her just like any other veteran, and they still joke about their first encounter shortly after her examination of the overdose victim.
Mike Crowell
is eyeing retirement in late 2016 so he can focus his prodigious energy on growing his security business and spending more time with his very understanding wife. As the winter of 2013 went on, he stuck with his pill-assisted diet and lost twenty pounds; later that year, however, he put fifteen back on. Over the past two years, Crowell has investigated everything from gang-related disputes to the beating death of a nine-month-old boy.
* * *
ON A HOT summer evening in August 2013, Sean Deere returned to Chartsey Street in Kettering and knocked on door after door, still seeking evidence in the murder of Amber Stanley. Sweating heavily in his dark blue suit, Deere hoped to turn up a new clue by interviewing Amber’s neighbors, but he was not optimistic. The subdivision had been canvassed and recanvassed since that tragic night a year earlier, and Deere knew that not a single doorbell had been left unrung.
In truth, Deere’s visit to Chartsey Street was not so much a canvass as a theatrical appearance. His audience consisted of half a dozen journalists who were filming him and his fellow investigators as they talked with neighbors and passed out flyers. Deere was more than happy to play his part in this scene: a story on the evening news might bring in a tip that could ultimately lead to the honor student’s killer.
By the first anniversary of Amber Stanley’s death, Deere had ruled out the possibility that his first solid suspect, Jeff Buck, was involved in the murder. He had spent several months learning as much as possible about David Upshaw, the alleged serial rapist he and Crowell had questioned well into the final morning of February. Deere had examined Upshaw’s cell-phone records, questioned dozens of fellow jail inmates, searched his mother’s town house, reviewed scores of social-media postings, and interviewed the two women he had been charged with raping. But despite all that work, Deere had failed to uncover a single fact that linked Upshaw to the killing.
That fall, Deere was elated when he was finally permitted to return to the murder rotation. Not long after he became the at-bat detective, he caught and quickly solved the fatal shooting of a motel clerk in an armed robbery. But the Amber Stanley case remained his first priority, and in September he and Crowell visited Denise at her mental-health facility in the Midwest and interviewed her again. When presented with a photo array of mug shots, she identified Upshaw as her rapist. Deere was on the verge of charging Upshaw with sexual assault when he learned that the judge responsible for the case had reviewed a handwritten motion submitted by Upshaw and thrown out one of the two existing indictments against him.
When state prosecutors told Deere they felt confident that the judge’s ruling would not stand, Deere decided to hold off on charging Upshaw. In late 2013, Upshaw pleaded guilty to second-degree assault in the robbery he was accused of committing; he was sentenced to eight years in prison. And in July 2015 the Maryland Court of Special Appeals reinstated the indictment that had been thrown out by the judge.
Deere expects to charge Upshaw with Denise’s rape soon; after he does, he intends to bring his suspect back to homicide and take a final run at him in the box.
Del Quentin Wilber, August 2015
NOTES
Chapter 1
1. Not his real name.
2. Not her real name.
3. Not his real name.
Chapter 2
1. Not his real name.
2. Not his real name.
Chapter 3
1. Not his real name.
Chapter 6
1. Not his real name.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
My lifelong fascination with police work most likely started in grade school when I began swiping crime novels off my father’s nightstand. It continued during two long stints as a crime reporter in two of America’s most violent cities, first in Baltimore for the Baltimore Sun and then in Washington, DC, for the Washington Post. In particular, I was drawn to the work of detectives, especially those who investigated murders. A major influence on my reporting career was Homicide, a singular book by David Simon, a former Sun reporter who chronicled a year (1988) in the life of Baltimore’s vaunted homicide unit.
In late 2011 I began looking into the ways that detective work had changed in the two decades since Homicide’s publication. I soon decided to focus my research on a place that would be at once foreign and familiar: Prince George’s County, Maryland. In early 2012, I approached PG County’s police chief and asked if he would be willing to let me embed with his Homicide Unit. Chief Mark Magaw, a veteran officer who believes in transparency, told me I could write about whatever I saw as long as I allowed his department to review the manuscript before publication. This would give PG police an opportunity to question the inclusion of any information that might harm a witness or a prosecution, though I would retain full editorial control and the final say on what was published. This arrangement made sense to me, so we agreed to go forward.
I began my reporting in November 2012 and soon was trailing detectives as they interrogated suspects, finessed witnesses, delivered death notifications, and toiled at their desks. Within two or three weeks I knew I had gotten lucky: it was obvious that PG County’s homicide detectives were as competent as they were colorful. In particular, I remember feeling fortune’s warm touch on the afternoon I watched Andre Brooks arrive at the scene of a murder, snarl at a corpse, and then venture into a side room, whereupon he spotted a guitar, picked it up, and began strumming a tune.
Twenty-five detectives worked in PG County’s Homicide Unit during the months I was reporting this book, so naturally I couldn’t be everywhere at once. My firsthand observations provided the grist for most of the scenes in these pages; when necessary, I re-created events I didn’t personally witness after conducting extensive interviews of the investigators who were present at these events.
Due to space constraints, I was not able to describe every homicide and police-involved shooting that occurred in February 2013. In particular, I did not write about the murders of Charles Thompson, twenty-seven, shot during an argument on February 8 in Forestville and found dead in a car outside the Ritchie Volunteer Fire Department in Capitol Heights; Stephen A. Rane, twenty-two, slain by his University of Maryland roommate (who then killed himself) on February 12 in College Park; and Eric Walker, twenty-seven, killed by a deranged PCP addict on February 19 in Temple Hills.
After reading a complete draft of the manuscript, PG County’s police department raised only a handful of concerns. All dealt with the protection of witnesses, and I addressed each issue accordingly. None of the resulting minor changes altered the character, tenor, or scope of the book. Even before showing the manuscript to the police department, I decided to give pseudonyms to five witnesses and two suspects interviewed by PG detectives, thus obscuring their identities. Otherwise, every name used in the book is real.
For the record, I did not originally intend to write an account of a single month in the life of PG County’s Homicide Unit; in fact, as I started into my research I wasn’t at all sure how the book would ultimately begin or end. I only knew that a compressed and particularly intense period of time inevitably tests the mettle of those who live through it, and I hoped to stumble upon a story that fit that mold. After nearly six months of exhaustive research, however, I had scores of notebooks filled with terrific stories, but I was struggling to find a cohesive narrative arc.
One day in April it struck me that I had actually been a firsthand witness to precisely the sort of crucible I hoped to find: the twenty-eight days and nights of February 2013. Why it took me so long to perceive a narrative architecture that now seems obvious remains a mystery to me. Perhaps it was sleep deprivation; the pace of events that February was so demanding that one night I nodded off while waiting at a red light; another time I fell asleep while pumping gas. Only later did I realize that the bloody month of February had been brutal and exhilarating, frantic and revealing—and that it provided exactly the arc I had been looking for. By June I stopped reporting and started writing, and the result is this book.
HOMICI
DES IN PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY
FEBRUARY 2013
FEBRUARY 4: Salaam Adams, age twenty. Killed in a drug-related shooting in the 2600 block of Oxon Run Drive, Hillcrest Heights.
FEBRUARY 8: Charles Thompson, age twenty-seven. Shot during an argument in the 2500 block of Timbercrest Drive, Forestville; found dead in a car in the parking lot of the Ritchie Volunteer Fire Department at 1415 Ritchie Marlboro Road, Capitol Heights.
FEBRUARY 9: Geraldine McIntyre, age seventy-one. Stabbed to death during a robbery in her home at 1209 Chapel Oaks Drive, Capitol Heights.
FEBRUARY 12: Stephen A. Rane, age twenty-two. Shot to death by his University of Maryland roommate at 8706 Thirty-Sixth Avenue, College Park.
FEBRUARY 18: Charles Walker Jr., age fifteen. Shot to death in a robbery in the 4000 block of Twenty-Eighth Avenue, Hillcrest Heights.
FEBRUARY 19: Aaron Kidd, age eighteen, and Andre Shuford, age eighteen. Killed in a double shooting in the 3700 block of Donnell Drive, Forestville.
FEBRUARY 19: Eric Walker, age twenty-seven. Shot and killed by a deranged PCP addict at Branch Avenue and Colebrooke Drive, Temple Hills.
FEBRUARY 21: Charles Blyther Jr., age fifty-one. Stabbed to death during a domestic altercation at 1116 Kennebec Street, Oxon Hill.
FEBRUARY 23: Nicolas Gonzalez, age thirty-four. Hacked to death during a gang-related attack at 8109 Riggs Road, Langley Park.
FEBRUARY 24: David Avelar, age twenty. Shot to death during a gang-related dispute at 9137 Baltimore Avenue, College Park.
FEBRUARY 28: Meyder Bladimir Yuman, age eighteen. Shot to death in a gang-related dispute at Fordham Street and Twenty-Fourth Avenue, Lewisdale.
A Good Month for Murder Page 26
