TRUE CRIME STORIES

in the poorest, most lawless area of the city the poorest, most lawless part is known as "the triangle," a roughly accurate geographical description of the enclosure of three major streets.

a man was found shot dead in his car, balled up on the passenger's seat. his long blonde hair had been caught in the passenger door when it was shut. his blood had flowed down from the passenger seat and out the lower door jam and had trickled into a small puddle on the pavement. one of the man's pants pockets was turned inside out and his wallet and any id were gone. it was clear that the murder had happened somewhere else and the car driven to the location where it was found.

the police ran the tag number and cross-referenced the registered owner with missing person reports and discovered that the victim was a man from the suburbs, who had had a cocaine problem but had been clean for awhile.

speaking to his live-in girlfriend they discovered that the man had gone on a bender the previous night, was jonesing, and had gone to the triangle three or four times to get rocks. there was a well-known drug hole in the parking lot of an abandoned gas station a couple of blocks from where the car had been found.

that's all the police had. no info at all on a suspect. the lead detective was barry donlan. per protocol he and his team did an "area canvass" of the triangle, meaning they went door-to-door and stopped people on the streets and asked for information.

door-to-door canvasses don't work well in the triangle. there aren't a whole lot of doors to knock on and citizen-pedestrians are chary to cooperate with the police because of their own experiences, or anticipated untoward consequences from executives and their salesmen in the local pharmacological trade. barry's assurances to them that he was not investigating, nor would he arrest anyone for their own involvement in, the drug business did not win confidence.

so after two or three days of "i ain't know nothins" barry set upon economic sanctions. he brought a folding chair with him to the drug hole, took it out of his car and set it down right in the middle of the old gas station's parking lot.

as motorists drove up and asked for drugs--"are you holding?"--in the local patois barry approached their vehicles and said, "hello sir, i'm det. donlan, would you like to sign my DARE petition?," DARE being the acronym for a county anti-drug program. the motorists quickly departed and thus the gas station drug hole once again became abandoned property.

the local merchants were put off.

"i'll leave as soon as someone talks to me," barry said. cooperation was not immediately forthcoming but eventually barry's sanctions worked. after a couple of days a local dealer known as "happy knot" took barry aside and, gesturing with his head, said that he had heard that the gentleman standing across the street had done the robbery and murder. "the cracker bumped the jack and jit shot him."

barry waited a prudent amount of time before turning to see the suspect and by that time he was gone.

anytime a murder happens in this area of town the homicide detectives, who handle the murder investigations for many of the smaller municipalities, turn to the local beat officers to help them. these are officers who work the streets every day, sometimes they've grown up there. when they're good, they are proactive. they get to know the people in their districts, they talk to the kids on the streets, they know the families and the dealers and the users. they are like anthropologists. if you need to know what's going on there you have to go to one of these experts.

in this area of town there was only one anthropologist-cop who mattered, "charley." that's how he was known to other cops, that's how he was known in the triangle.

barry had called on charley immediately after being assigned the case. now that he had a nickname for the suspect he called on charley again.

"jit" is a very common street name in poor african-american neighborhoods used to refer to young men, similar in its generality to "black" or “red.” that didn't really narrow the pool of suspects down very much but with the added physical description--height, weight, age, skin-tone, hair style--charley was quickly able to identify the guy. knowing that this jit lived with his grandfather, charley drove up to the house and made inquires. jit was not at home. "tell him to call me, " said charley.

a day or two later charley saw jit walking not far from his grandfather's house. jit avoided eye contact. charley parked his car and got out. "come here," he said.

jit stopped and kept his eyes down. "some homicide detectives want to talk to you about the white guy who got shot in the hole last week. now jit, don't make me run after you. i'm fat and i just ate. i promise you you won't be hurt, i'll take you down there myself. are you ready to go?"

jit asked if he could go to the house and tell his grandfather and charley said ok. charley waited outside and a few minutes later jit came out and got in the back of charley's car.

in interrogating jit, barry used a common and effective police technique. building on what he knew, he deduced what would be probable and presented that to jit as a certainty. barry knew the car had been moved, he knew that the victim hadn't driven it there after being shot. he plausibly believed that the killer had driven the car there. all of those were near certainties and if they were then the killer would know he was the driver of the car too and would know that it was possible that his fingerprints were in or on the car.

that's the part barry lied about. he told jit they had found his prints in the car. this is a long-established, legal, perfectly proper thing to do by the police. it is not considered coercion, which can get a confession thrown out, the theory being, if the suspect was NOT in the car he would immediately deny it and dismiss the possibility that his prints were there.

it's a zero-sum game. if you, as the cop, are wrong, then you've lost all credibility with the suspect. you can't get caught bluffing.

barry was right. after denying involvement, barry hit him with the prints bluff and jit put his head down and confessed on tape. at trial he was convicted as charged of first degree murder and armed robbery.


-benjamin harris