The Fence - Dick Lehr [171]
NOTES: The second “time” for Kenny Conley at the Florian Hall in January 2007 was unabashedly celebratory, unlike the first that was held soon after Kenny’s indictment. It was a time for Kenny to thank his supporters. Those who spoke included Massachusetts Congressman William Delahunt and Kenny’s Washington lawyers Robert Bennett, Saul Pilchin, and Jonice Gray Tucker.
Following are updates on other police officers.
The three sergeants who’d botched the scene at Woodruff Way all went their separate ways. Isaac Thomas, for one, left the gang unit and went to work in the police station on Blue Hill Avenue in Mattapan. Daniel J. Dovidio and David C. Murphy eventually ran afoul of either department regulations or the law.
Dovidio, despite his obvious malfeasance at Woodruff Way, held on until 2001 when he reached the mandatory retirement age of sixty-five. Even so, a thirty-one-year career ended in disgrace when the department finally got around to holding him accountable. He spent his final days serving a forty-five-day suspension for neglect of duty—for ordering Williams and Burgio to file false reports and for failing to investigate the scene properly when he insisted he never saw Mike’s blood on the trunk of a cruiser. The lies, noted the department, “interfered with the ongoing investigation” into the Cox beating.
Murphy made lieutenant but then had his own difficulties. He was charged in April 2007 with assaulting his girlfriend in a bar in Baltimore. The couple had gone to the James Joyce Pub after watching the Red Sox play the Orioles in Camden Yards. Murphy “arched his right hand and punched the white female in the face,” according to the Baltimore police report. He fled to his nearby hotel, where he was arrested, police said. One month later, the Boston police lieutenant pleaded guilty in a Baltimore court to punching his girlfriend. He was sentenced to eighteen months of probation.
It turned out not to be Murphy’s first arrest for domestic violence. The prior fall he’d been charged with assaulting his girlfriend in their home in Quincy, Massachusetts, but the case was dismissed when the victim did not want to pursue criminal charges.
For his troubles, Murphy barely skipped a beat at the Boston Police Department. He was given a thirty-day suspension, of which he served only five days.
No question the police department has worked in mysterious ways. Richie Walker, for all of his verbal contortions, never faced any scrutiny or second looks by the department about the discrepancies in his testimony. He went back to work, was promoted to detective, and was reassigned from the station in Mattapan to the one in Hyde Park. In March 2006, he was off-duty at a nightclub near Blue Hill Avenue when he heard gunshots outside. Walker ran out and saw a gunman running in his direction. They traded gunfire before Walker captured the man. It turned out the gunman had just shot two people. Walker received a departmental award for bravery.
Meanwhile, Kenny’s partner, Bobby Dwan, who, like Kenny, had consistently cooperated with investigators but was nonetheless swept up in Ted Merritt’s investigation, waged a fifteen-month fight to regain his place