The Fence - Dick Lehr [0]
A Police Cover-up Along Boston’s Racial Divide
Dick Lehr
TO KARIN
FOR EVERYTHING
HUNGER ONLY FOR A TASTE OF JUSTICE
HUNGER ONLY FOR A WORLD OF TRUTH.
—Tracy Chapman,
“All That You Have Is Your Soul”
Contents
Epigraph
The Cast of Characters
Map of Boston
Prologue: January 25, 1995
Part One—Two Cops and a Drug Dealer
1 Mike Cox
2 Robert “Smut” Brown
3 Kenny Conley
4 The Troubled Boston PD
5 Mike’s Early Police Career
6 Closing Time at the Cortee’s
7 The Murder and the Chase
8 The Dead End
Part Two—True Blue
9 “8-Boy”
10 No Official Complaint
11 Can I Talk to My Lawyer?
12 Dave, I Know You Know Something
13 Cox v. Boston Police Department
Photographic Insert
Part Three—Justice Denied, Then the Trial
14 The White Guy at the Fence
15 The Perjury Trap
16 A Federal Miscarriage of Justice
17 On His Own
18 The Trial
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note on Sources
Notes
Appendix A: Court Cases
Appendix B: Books; Articles and Special Reports
Appendix C: Boston Police Department Rules and Regulations; Boston Police Department Internal Investigations; Boston Police Department Labor Arbitration Proceedings; Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office; United States Attorney’s Office, District of Massachusetts
Searchable Terms
About the Author
Other Books by Dick Lehr
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
THE CAST OF CHARACTERS
ROBERT “SMUT” BROWN
Mattapan drug dealer and shooting suspect
MATTIE BROWN
Smut’s mother
JIMMY BURGIO
Boston police officer assigned to Dorchester
DONALD CAISEY
Boston police officer in the anti-gang unit
KENNY CONLEY
Boston police officer assigned to the South End
MIKE COX
Boston police officer in the anti-gang unit
KIMBERLY COX
Mike’s wife
IAN DALEY
Boston police officer assigned to Roxbury
WILLIE DAVIS
Conley’s attorney
SERGEANT DAN DOVIDIO
Burgio and Williams’s supervisor
BOBBY DWAN
Conley’s partner
JIMMY “MARQUIS” EVANS
shooting suspect and Tiny’s brother
JOHN “TINY” EVANS
drug dealer and shooting suspect
PAUL EVANS
Boston police commissioner
JIM HUSSEY
head of Boston police Internal Affairs
LYLE JACKSON
shooting victim at Walaikum’s
CRAIG JONES
Cox’s partner
TED MERRITT
federal prosecutor
SERGEANT DAVID MURPHY
supervisor at Woodruff Way
BOB PEABODY
assistant Suffolk County district attorney
INDIRA PIERCE
Smut’s girlfriend
JIMMY RATTIGAN
Boston police officer assigned to Roxbury
STEVE ROACH
Cox’s attorney
GARY RYAN
Boston police officer in the anti-gang unit
BOB SHEKETOFF
Smut’s attorney
ROB SINSHEIMER
Cox’s attorney
JOE TEAHAN
Ryan’s partner in the anti-gang unit
SERGEANT IKE THOMAS
supervisor of the anti-gang unit
RON “BOOGIE-DOWN” TINSLEY
shooting suspect
RICHIE WALKER
Boston police officer assigned to Mattapan
DAVE WILLIAMS
Burgio’s partner
WILLIAM YOUNG
federal judge presiding in Cox civil rights trial
Map
THE NEIGHBORHOODS
Prologue: January 25, 1995
When Kimberly Cox was awakened by the telephone ringing in the middle of the night, the fourth-year medical student had been sleeping hard. She’d slept through the Boston police and ambulance sirens blaring an hour earlier on Blue Hill Avenue two blocks from her home. She was likely used to the discordant sounds; the wail of sirens was not unfamiliar in Dorchester, where she and her family lived, one of the many black families making up the neighborhood.
When the phone rang, she was alone in bed. Her first thought was that her husband, Michael, was calling. Michael was usually home by 2 A.M.; if he was going to be later he would call. Then Kimberly noticed the clock: It read 3:30.
She picked up the receiver.
Mrs. Cox?
Kimberly did not recognize the voice.
The caller identified himself as Joe Teahan, an officer with the Boston Police Department. Kimberly worked to clear her head. The name meant nothing to her. In fact, Teahan was a white officer who worked with her husband in the department’s elite anti-gang unit, composed