Article View: dc.general
Article #6408Re: Yard ape stuck in chimney for 28 years
From: Martin.Looter.Kingfish
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 06:19
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 06:19
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16462 bytes
"Byker" <byker@do~rag.net> wrote: Bwa_Ha_Ha; the basal, niggerific lifestyle typified! Now, it needs an improved title. * - All In Dah Nigger Fambly * - Black, Like Usun'z * - The Nigger Bunch (That's the Way We Became the Nigger Bunch) * - Seven [Dead] Is [Still Not] Enough > The Boy in the Chimney > > The examiner believed the youth got trapped. The detective suspected > murder. An answer to part of the mystery left both in disbelief. > > By Hector Becerra, Times Staff Writer > July 20, 2006 > > Inside the chill of the county coroner's office, the detective and the > forensic anthropologist stood over soot-covered bones arrayed on a metal > table. > > Over two hours, Elizabeth Miller provided a running dialogue for each > bone. She picked up one rib after another, studying them for knife > scrapes. > > The bones were those of a boy, perhaps 12 to 15 years old, found in the > chimney of an abandoned building in South Los Angeles. The boy wore > faded and stained tan jeans and a white shirt, but no shoes. > > "I'm sure if we had a photograph, we'd be able to recognize him," Miller > said. > > More than once, Los Angeles Police Det. Chris Barling asked: Was he > killed? > > There was no sign of trauma, Miller said. No self-defense wounds on the > finger bones, no scrapes or damage to other bones. The jaw suggested > major dental work to repair an injury, but that was it. > > That was March 28, 2005, and the homicide detective and the > anthropologist had hunches, nothing more. > > Miller said she thought the boy sneaked into the chimney and died either > of starvation or positional asphyxiation. Perhaps the clay pipe of the > chimney muted his calls for help. Maybe the same pipe carried the smell > of decay up and out. The remains still gave out a waxy, organic odor, > which led Miller to believe that he had probably been dead less than > five years. The boy's two front teeth protruded, and his skull had > strong African American features. > > "I tend to go with weird accidents more," she said. "I prefer to think > weird things happen as opposed to somebody killing and dumping a boy > into a chimney." > > Barling felt differently. > > "Maybe I'm just morbid," he said. "I just had a hunch that it didn't > make sense it was accidental.. My gut is that we're dealing with a > murder." > > The discovery of the skeletal remains at 89th and Main streets in South > Los Angeles had been a fluke. On March 24, 2005, an 11-year-old girl had > climbed on the roof of the abandoned halfway house to retrieve a soccer > ball. > > The girl peered down into the chimney. She ran to her father and told > him she had seen a skull. > > In the following days, stories about the discovery ran in local > newspapers and on the TV news. They focused on Miller's theory: The boy > was probably a runaway, there a few years. > > No one came forward to identify the remains. No grieving parents called > or showed up to dare to ask: Could this be my child? > > Barling started pulling missing person's reports going back about five > years but came up empty. > > That July, forensic artist Marilyn Droz used the boy's skull to draw a > composite portrait. By then, nearly four months had gone by. > > The sketch prompted another flurry of news reports. > > Donna Theus was sitting in her living room watching the TV news when she > saw the drawing. She screamed. The boy, Theus said, looked like her > cousin. She picked up the phone. > > On the other line, 78-year-old Clelia Thompson answered. > > "Babe, did you see that little boy's picture on the TV?" Theus asked her > aunt. "The little boy they found in the chimney? You know, that could be > Robert." > > Robert? > > Her boy, Robert Thompson, 14, had been missing since Christmas Eve. > > Of 1977. > > The investigators could not believe the body had been in the chimney 28 > years. The building, a low-slung, fenced-in wreck, for years served as a > halfway house and had only closed a few years ago. How could a corpse be > there for so long without anyone noticing? > > Still, the Los Angeles Police Department's missing persons unit sent > someone to take a DNA swab from Clelia Thompson's mouth. > > Miller, the Los Angeles County coroner's anthropologist, began to > rethink the circumstances that would have preserved the bones for so > long, and still retained the smell of decomposition. When she talked to > other anthropologists and forensic experts, they were befuddled. Their > best guess was that a combination of odd conditions may have preserved > the remains. > > The bones showed signs of superficial charring, suggesting that the > chimney had been used just enough to stain the remains. This may have > helped preserve them. > > Months passed. Then, on Dec. 28, 2005, a lab in Sacramento came back > with the DNA test results. The boy in the chimney was Robert Thompson. > > Det. Barling now had a name, and identities tell stories. > > Barling, 44, a 20-year LAPD veteran, had been the lead detective on 150 > cases since becoming a homicide investigator in 1993. His mind raced > with questions. Who was last with this boy? Was he trying to burglarize > the building or playing a game of hide-and-seek? Could he have been > trying to recover a ball, much like the little girl who had found his > remains? > > The abandoned building was only blocks from Robert Thompson's home. > Where were the shoes? Did the boy walk there in his bare feet? Or was he > carried there? > > Barling drew up a basic profile of the boy in the chimney. > > Loved ones described Robert Thompson as sweet tempered though > occasionally mischievous. He liked to run barefoot around the house. He > especially enjoyed playing with his other two young brothers, Clinton > and Smith. Though Robert was the third-youngest of Clelia Thompson's > children, in many ways he demanded the most attention. > > Robert was 14, but social workers had diagnosed his IQ as that of a > 6-year-old. > > From at least age 4, according to hospital records, Robert suffered from > grand mal seizures. If he did not take his medication, he could have as > many as three a day. In 1974, a seizure caused him to black out and fall > into a swimming pool. He almost drowned before a sister pulled him out. > > One year later, Robert fell on his face after suffering another seizure, > necessitating dental surgery. It was this work that anthropologist > Miller would observe nearly three decades later. > > Barling remained doubtful that Robert died accidentally. As he delved > into the boy's family history, he found it was heaped with tales of > trauma, tragedy and bad luck that were excessive even by the standards > of a tough South Los Angeles neighborhood. > > Barling decided it was time for a longer conversation with the boy's > mother. > > Barling sat down with Clelia Thompson at her cramped home in the back of > a duplex on East 94th Street. It was clear to him that she had harbored > a dark conviction for decades about what had happened to her son. She > was certain that he had not run away, that someone had taken and killed > him. The only thing she didn't seem to know in her heart was where her > boy's remains were. > > "You don't want to ever face none of your children are dead," Thompson > said in an interview. "But it's worse when they're just gone. You can't > even face it." > > Thompson is thin with toned arms despite her age. She sometimes keeps a > pack of Kool cigarettes in her well-worn white and green apron, and > during the summer, a jar of buttermilk nearby to fend off the heat. > > Her recollection of exact dates is fuzzy, she admits. She keeps death > certificates stored away in a trunk. All seven, for all the children she > lost. > > She lost one daughter when the girl was only a baby. Then she lost six > of her nine remaining children. Only one, Shirley, died of natural > causes. > > Rose, 30, and Benny, 34, were stabbed to death by former partners. > Clinton, 20, and Smith, 19, the two youngest, each committed suicide. > > "It was one right after another. Every year there was a death," Thompson > said. "But it began with Robert." > > It was a rainy Christmas Eve. The whole family had gathered at home for > the holiday - along with an outsider. > > His name was Theodore Van Smith. Theodoric, as he was often called, was > the former boyfriend of Robert's sister, Rose Ann. > > They had a boy together, but the relationship had soured. > > Theodoric Smith was not especially welcomed. But he had a way with the > youngest children, Thompson said. He would offer them hamburgers and > drinks, and sometimes take them away for short spells. > > Some family members said they always heard that Robert stormed off in a > fit of anger because he thought he wasn't getting a bicycle for > Christmas. > > Clelia Thompson said that wasn't right. > > Robert disappeared in the morning, and the family assumed he would > return. His shoes were left behind. By the afternoon, they had started > searching the neighborhood. They even searched the building where > Robert's remains would be found 28 years later. It didn't occur to them > to look in the chimney. "We looked for him all Christmas Day," Thompson > said. "No Robert." > > The LAPD searched an extensive area door to door. TV newscasts aired > reports about the missing boy. > > Almost unnoticed that day, Thompson said, was that after Robert > disappeared, so did Theodoric. He was not seen the rest of the day. > > "But nobody hardly noticed because everybody was concerned for Robert," > Clelia Thompson said. > > Barling reviewed the LAPD's old missing person's case on Robert. It > showed that for the first eight years after his disappearance, the trail > was cold. > > But that changed Feb. 23, 1985. > > In the darkness of the early morning, Clelia Thompson walked briskly > down a hallway of Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center. Before she > got to his room, she could hear the peel of her youngest child's > screams. > > "All I could hear was my child hollering, 'Momma, Theodoric killed > Robert! Momma, Theodoric killed Robert! He told me he killed Robert!'" > > Laying on the bed was the bloody form of 12-year-old Smith Thompson. > Tire marks streaked across his chest and his forehead. He was in intense > pain. > > According to police, Theodoric Smith had driven Smith Thompson to a dark > alley and raped him in the car. A subsequent police report quoted Smith > as saying Theodoric told him: "If you don't make me feel good, I am > going to kill you just like I killed your brother Robert." > > Theodoric eventually threw the boy out of the car and ran over him. > > Two months later, Theodoric Smith pleaded guilty to five felony counts, > including the rape of a child and attempted murder. He was sentenced to > 30 years in state prison. > > Before he was convicted, LAPD Det. Ramiro Argamaniz asked him about > Robert's disappearance. "Suspect did not cop out to the crime, but he > did hint at possibility of his involvement and he did mention his > backyard," his report said. > > Police dug up the backyard of Theodoric Smith's parent's home but found > only dog remains. > > The case of Robert Thompson again grew cold until 1997, when Det. Debra > Kane of the department's missing person's unit took an interest. > > Barling, reading the old case files, found Kane to be something of a > kindred spirit. Like him, Kane felt in her gut that she was dealing with > a homicide case. "Even juvenile runaways turn up eventually. They make > phone calls home," Kane said in an interview, explaining her suspicions. > "Somewhere, someone has seen this person or that person. > > "This kid just disappeared." > > Kane asked Dr. Kris Mohandie, then head of the LAPD's behavioral science > unit, if he could go to Calipatria State Prison, about 150 miles east of > San Diego, to interview Theodoric Smith. "What we really wanted to > know," Kane said, "is where the bones were buried." > > Aided by a prison psychiatrist, Mohandie interviewed Theodoric Smith for > several hours. Mohandie reported that Smith was manipulative and > obsessed with "sexual matters, body parts, and missing body parts." > > "The inmate clearly fits the profile of a sexual predator whose > preferential target is minor males," Mohandie wrote. He and the prison > psychiatrist concluded that Smith "would be capable of the probable > murder and disappearance of Robert Thompson." > > But they didn't get a confession from Theodoric Smith. > > Barling found himself in the same place where Kane left off nine years > earlier, no closer to proving Robert Thompson had been murdered. > > Theodoric Smith was paroled from prison in 2000 but shortly after that > was committed to the Atascadero State Hospital in Central California. > > In an phone interview with The Times from the hospital, Smith, now 47, > said he remembered Robert going missing but denied he had any > involvement. > > "No, I had nothing to do with it, sir," he said. "If they had anything > on me, I'm pretty sure they would come and read me my Miranda rights." > > Barling said he plans to make the trip up north to the mental hospital > sometime in the fall to talk to Smith. > > "Even if I got a full-blown confession from him, I have to compare that > to his mental state," Barling said. "Am I just getting a confession from > someone who is completely insane?" > > For now, Barling said, he plans to make it a goal to keep Theodoric > Smith in the mental institution. > > "I think this is a homicide," he said. "My problem is, can I prove it?" > > On Feb. 8, Clelia Thompson finally laid her son Robert to rest. She > could not afford to bury his remains, so she had them cremated. The > family had a small ceremony at the House of Winston Mortuary. > > Two pictures of Robert greeted well-wishers. One showed him sitting at a > bus stop, a large textbook on his lap as the boy stared away. It was the > photograph that was circulated 28 years ago after he was reported > missing. > > The other was the forensic drawing done for the coroner - the only > close-up rendering they had for the ceremony. > > Clelia Thompson calls the funeral of her boy "the day of the closure." > > "You have to deal with what you have to deal with, ain't no other way," > she said. "And I just try to put it behind me. I did put it behind me, > for a little while." ---------- Know the man, not the myth [be free at last]! http://www.martinlutherking.org/
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