The Fence - Dick Lehr [33]
It was nonetheless a message of injustice—and word about the bad cases got around. The worst examples were when the police department’s freewheeling ways with the truth ended not with getting the right guy—even if by questionable means—but in a wrongful conviction. This happened in one of the biggest murder cases of the time. On an August night in 1988, a twelve-year-old girl named Tiffany Moore was perched on a blue mailbox on Humboldt Avenue, long the focal point in Roxbury’s drug world and nicknamed “heroin alley.” The broad street was scarred by burned-out homes, empty lots, and broken-down cars. Cash, clothes, and cocaine dominated its culture.
Tiffany was sitting on the mailbox swinging her legs, talking with friends. Then, from behind, two or three young men wearing Halloween masks ran across a small lot and began firing into the group. Minutes later, the 911 call to the Boston police captured the horror: “Oh, God! Oh, the little girl on the ground, shot.” Blood poured from three bullet wounds. One—to Tiffany’s head—was the wound a medical examiner termed “incompatible with life.”
Tiffany Moore became an instant symbol of the drug-fueled lawlessness rocking the city. The girl was the youngest victim ever in the city’s street gang wars, and her killing made the news around the country. She was collateral damage—the unintended victim of one street gang—Castlegate—seeking vengeance against the Humboldt Street gang, whose members were among the group of kids mingling on the street corner. City leaders sought to calm a public crying out for an arrest and panicked by the soaring murder rate. Some in the community even called for the deployment of the National Guard in Roxbury. Promising results, police launched a massive search.
Two tense weeks later, justice was apparently in hand. Shawn Drumgold, a twenty-two-year-old only a few months out of prison, and a second man were charged with killing Tiffany Moore. Police and prosecutors told reporters Drumgold was a “drug dealer and member of the Castlegate gang” and that “many, many witnesses” told them Drumgold was the shooter. The big problem with the statements was accuracy: They were false. Drumgold was no innocent—a street-corner drug dealer who had shot and been shot at, he surely fit the profile of a possible suspect. But Drumgold was a freelance drug dealer unaffiliated with any gang. Homicide detectives knew this; police kept books listing street gang members and anyone associated with a gang. It was all part of the beefed-up effort to combat the gang violence. Drumgold was not listed in the Castlegate book—or in any gang listing. Even some of the officers assigned to the streets of Roxbury were taken aback when homicide detectives picked up Drumgold as their man. “Shawn was dealing in peace, not bothering either gang,” said one officer based in Roxbury.
But the homicide detectives apparently didn’t want to hear any of it. From the start they focused on Drumgold and his pal, building a case on the backs of youngsters who were intimidated and pressured into providing incriminating testimony, all of which became pieces of the prosecution’s case. Without key physical evidence—the guns and Halloween masks were never recovered—witness testimony was everything.
“I’m just a dumb puppet in there,” one witness confessed later about how he folded under police pressure and agreed with his interrogators’ suggestions that Drumgold was armed and looking for trouble that night. Fourteen months after Tiffany was killed, in October 1989, Drumgold was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole. His associate was acquitted. It didn’t matter that many in the neighborhood knew Drumgold couldn’t have done it, because he couldn’t be two places