Solving Murders--Long, Tedious Work : Detectives Find No Glamour Battling Rise in Homicides

As doctors worked frantically and futilely over the teen-ager’s bullet-torn belly, Los Angeles Police Officer Lionel Robert hovered nearby in the emergency room at Morningside Hospital and felt himself losing it.

His job that night 20 years ago was to jot down anything the mortally wounded youth might utter. Instead, Robert, after 10 years in uniform, was battling a powerful urge to flee. As waves of nausea and lightheadedness engulfed him, one of his hands instinctively thrust itself out and came gently to rest on the boy’s warm, sticky torso. That act, the feel of flesh on flesh, inexplicably caused the sick feeling to disappear.

In that instant, Robert lost his revulsion for the sight of death.

As robed women in hair curlers stood silently on their porches,straining to see the body sprawled backward across the seat of the parked pickup truck, Detective Lionel Robert strode purposefully back and forth inside the yellow-taped police lines, hardly giving the corpse a second glance.

His bespectacled eyes were trained instead on the asphalt under the dead man’s dangling feet, where Robert hoped to spot a shell casing or some other bit of evidence that would lead to whoever had pressed a gun barrel into the man’s upper, right chest and blasted a hole in it as big as a silver dollar.

It was shortly after 3 a.m., and Robert knew he would have plenty of time to get a closer look at the body. Robert and his new partner, Evangelyne Nathan, would spend more than three hours at the murder scene and another 13 hours at the office before being able to catch a few hours of rest.

The two are homicide investigators, part of an army of 120 murder specialists employed by the Los Angeles Police Department to painstakingly piece together bits of sometimes meager evidence that they hope will lead them to murder suspects.

All the clues, interview transcripts, photographs from the murder scene, even hastily scribbled notes are kept in Blue Books, bright-colored loose-leaf binders, one for each case. At the end of two weeks, the Blue Book for the man murdered in the truck would be full. Although Robert and Nathan expressed confidence that the killing would be solved, there would be no immediate resolution of the case.

The pattern is typical for homicide investigators whose hours are grueling and whose work is far less glamorous than what is portrayed on television. This year, the work is also much more plentiful.

As of Aug. 7, the most recent date for which citywide statistics are available, 596 deaths have been classified as homicides. If the killing continues at this pace, Los Angeles’ year-end total will fall just three short of the record set in 1980, when the city had 1,028 homicides.

In the LAPD’s South Bureau, where Robert and Nathan are assigned, there had been 226 killings as of Aug. 19 in a jurisdiction that stretches from the Santa Monica Freeway on the north to the Harbor District on the south and from as far west as La Brea Avenue to the city’s eastern border. It is roughly an average of one homicide each day, the second highest total among the department’s four bureaus.

Of these, 72 were gang related and 70 others involved robberies or drugs. The remainder were committed during burglaries, domestic violence, disputes and the like. Seven were shootings by police officers.

Statistics indicate that 70% to 72% of these cases will be solved. Citywide, the clearance rate is 70.7%

Like the man in the pickup truck, most often the victims--and the perpetrators--are anonymous to the outside world.

Tuesday morning is roll call day for Robert and Nathan and 19 other teams of detectives who, with a support staff and supervisors, make up South Bureau Homicide.

The city’s three other bureaus have separate homicide operations in each of their station houses, but all of South Bureau’s homicide investigators work out of a donated suite of offices in the Crenshaw-Baldwin Hills mall.

The centralization occurred 16 months ago, spearheaded by Deputy Chief William Rathburn, the bureau’s commander, to improve efficiency and make it easier for officers to share information gathered on the street.

Much of the information swapping is done at roll call, where teams describe--often with gallows humor--the cases they have been assigned during the previous week.

On Aug. 14, the day before the pickup truck murder, Robert, a 30-year veteran of the force who has been investigating homicides for nine years, and Nathan, a nine-year veteran who is being trained on the homicide beat, sat in the back of the roll call room laughing with the others as Detective Joe Lewis held forth.

The case involved the drive-by shooting of a recent parolee who apparently would not be missed by many.

“Seems like everybody in the neighborhood had a motive,” Lewis declared drolly. “There were several outstanding citizens around, otherwise known as ‘creatures of the night.’ ”

He said a friend of the victim, who once had been robbed by the dead man, called the victim a “do low,” a newly coined insult that cracked up the room.

A few minutes later, the mood turned somber as another detective described the shootings of a 6-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy at a birthday party. The girl died instantly, the boy a few days later.

“The little girl’s mother wanted to come in and see (the dead child), so we cleaned her up and let her,” the detective said. Everyone assured him that he and his partner had done the right, compassionate thing.

Robert and Nathan mostly listened because they had no new case. They had been on call since 7 a.m. and would “catch” the next killing, no matter where in the bureau it occurred during the 24-hour period.

Eighteen hours later, as they both slept, the man in the parked truck, a Mexican immigrant, was shot. Within an hour they were on the scene.

“The best chance of solving a homicide,” Robert says as he surveys the murder scene, “is in the first 24 hours. Too much after that and you start to lose evidence, people start losing their memory.”

He is flipping through a stack of field interview cards handed to him moments before by a uniformed officer who already had walked door to door along the dark street interviewing residents.

A few neighbors remembered hearing one or more shots. Most said they had heard and seen nothing.

“Nobody ever sees anything,” Robert says, with a hint of understanding in his voice. “They’re scared and they don’t want anybody to know they are telling the police something.”

A woman who was in the truck with the shooting victim had already told uniformed officers that the vehicle had been parked only minutes when a man approached the driver’s side and yanked the door open. At the same time, she said, a woman approached from the passenger’s side.

As the female robber frisked her, the woman said, her accomplice exchanged words with the driver. Suddenly, a gun fired. The woman said she bolted, but not before the female robber snatched her purse.

Hours later, Nathan would sit in a tiny interview room as a Spanish-speaking detective interrogated the woman, who speaks no English. That interview yielded nothing useful, but that is not always the case.

Robert, who has gained a reputation for cajoling information from interviewees by befriending them, is not above using just about any means short of physical force to get information he needs to solve a case.

Sometimes, “I trick them,” Robert says, smiling devilishly. “I make promises that I can’t keep if I have to. That’s legal. Nothing wrong with that.”

To gain additional leverage, detectives run records checks on interviewees, hoping to find an outstanding warrant to hold over their heads. Lacking that, they comb through the California Penal Code looking for a law that the person may or may not have broken, which can be used as a threat.

None of that is used on the Spanish-speaking woman. A few fingerprints had been lifted from the truck’s doors, which give Robert and Nathan a day of hope, but the prints turn out to belong to the dead man and his wife.

For the first time in his nine years as a homicide detective, Robert must notify a family of a death by telephone rather than deliver the news in person.

Such notifications are always delicate affairs. Robert, like many homicide investigators, would rather beat around the bush, hoping the relative will figure out the message before he actually has to deliver it.

“ ‘Dead’ is such a final word,” Nathan had explained earlier that morning.

On the phone, Robert tries to avoid the word by repeatedly identifying himself to the dead man’s wife as a homicide detective, putting special emphasis on the word “homicide.”

Fifteen minutes into the conversation, it is clear the woman is not getting the hints. He squeezes his eyes shut and tells the woman that her husband has “expired.”

She still does not understand.

The eyes squeeze shut again.

“Your husband is dead ma’am,” Robert says gently.

Even after investigating hundreds of homicides, Robert has no pat theories on why people kill each other. He does think he has a clue as to why they seem to be killing with increasing regularity in Los Angeles--the ready availability of guns.

“There are so many guns out there it isn’t even funny and any kid can get one if he wants to,” the detective says.

To prove his point, he has a colleague display four handguns confiscated in a single case. Among them is a wicked looking .44 magnum Desert Eagle, an Israeli-made weapon that sells for about $950.

The police were led to the guns by a group of teen-agers, one who had tossed a .38-caliber handgun he thought was empty to the floor a few days earlier, causing it to go off and kill a 14-year-old. The dead boy, who had been lying across a bed, was struck in the head.

Where would a kid get a gun like the Desert Eagle?

“Probably in a burglary,” Robert says.

The two detectives had not expected to attend the autopsy of the man in the truck until Friday, Aug. 16, but the call came the day before, giving them about an hour to get to the coroner’s office in Boyle Heights.

In California, autopsies are performed on all homicide victims and anyone else who dies and had not been under a doctor’s care in the previous 30 days. The purpose is to establish the exact cause of death.

Robert estimates that he has attended about 200 autopsies; Nathan a handful.

“I like autopsies,” Robert had said one morning. Then, noticing the surprised looks the comment elicited, he offered an explanation:

“What I mean is I think they are very interesting, finding out how people’s organs can be damaged. Maybe you can learn how to help someone when they are hurt.”

Protective paper garments--smocks, shoe covers, plastic gloves and a face mask--are made available. Nathan always covers herself carefully to avoid splashes, but only one thing really bothers her about the procedure.

“I can’t stand it when they make the first incision,” she says. “I usually just turn away when they start, then I turn back around and I’m all right.”

Robert, however, stands close throughout the autopsy, leaning in to get a better view. He wears a face mask but one hand keeps it pulled away from his nose and mouth.

“Fogs up my glasses,” he says.

There are six other corpses in the room. Many others lie on gurneys in the hallway.

Robert says he long ago got used to the smells, which are as much chemicals as anything and not as overpowering as the odors at homicide scenes where bodies have badly decomposed.

Nathan said she has more than once burned an entire outfit after wearing it to a homicide scene.

“I never burn anything,” interjects Robert, a shameless skinflint. “I might hang them outside or put them in the cleaners.

“I bet those (cleaners) wonder to themselves, ‘Where’d this guy get these stinky clothes?’ ”

It is a week after the shooting of the man in the truck. There has been no break in the case, but the victim’s Blue Book is growing fat.

If a trial results from the case, a copy of the file is turned over to the prosecutor and the defendant’s lawyer. At the South Bureau homicide office, the rows of desks are strewn with Blue Books. One entire wall of cabinets is full of them, as is a storage room in another part of the suite.

Almost every day, Robert and Nathan add a page or two as they re-interview residents on the street where the shooting occurred and the woman who was in the truck with the victim.

They also interview a female robbery suspect who was arrested nearby with a male companion a few hours after the shooting. They come up dry.

Because residents have told him that crack cocaine is openly sold along the street where the shooting occurred, Robert theorizes that the murder suspects are crack users who happened upon the parked truck.

He plans to have an undercover narcotics officer make a buy on the block, then put the squeeze for information on whoever is arrested.

That strategy is put on a back burner when new witnesses suggest that the pickup truck driver may have known his assailant.

“We have a good chance of solving this,” Robert says.

Meanwhile, when they are not working on that case, Robert and Nathan are doing what they can on old cases.

Before the week is out, they are back on call--waiting for another case.