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Rewards Need Not Be the Price of Justice

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It doesn’t take much to make John MacDowell think about his brother Tom. Say he’s driving in traffic and notices a BMW. “That does it every time,” he says. Or he’s watching the 11 o’clock news and hears about the latest homicide. That will do it too.

It took him a full year, he says, before he was able to discuss Tom’s murder without being overcome by grief and sometimes by anger. Either way, “it screws up your mind.”

He’s better able to talk about it now that the Los Angeles police have made an arrest.

Fifteen months after Tom MacDowell was shot dead in his BMW in North Hollywood--and less than three months after a press conference trumpeting $50,000 in reward money in the case--an Arleta man named Edward Frias has been arrested in connection with the crime. Frias, at the time of his arrest, was already behind bars, having been recently convicted of second-degree murder. That slaying was rooted in a gang rivalry.

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The MacDowell murder was believed to be the result of an attempted robbery. You may remember it. Among the multitude of murders in Los Angeles, it was judged more newsworthy than most.

The first reason was that the MacDowell murder occurred during a spate of carjackings and seemed to fit the mold. MacDowell also got a bit more ink because he was, as we media types say, “good copy.” It wasn’t as if an insurance salesman had been killed. This was, after all, a Tinseltown tragedy--the tale of a popular young man who had come to Los Angeles with dreams of making it big as an actor or filmmaker, but only made headlines as a murder victim. The TV tabloids liked the sinister angle pushed by Tom’s friends: That maybe Tom wasn’t the victim of random violence. He’d gotten involved with some pretty seedy show biz characters, they said, and maybe Tom was killed because he knew too much.

I, who am paid to pursue and deliver good copy, had previously written about the murder of Tom MacDowell twice, and now a third time. The first, which appeared a few days after Tom’s murder on April 21, 1993, was an account of a visit to the L.A. Cabaret on Ventura Boulevard, the comedy club where Tom worked as a bartender and did his comic Elvis impression. The second concerned a press conference on the anniversary of his murder in which his friends announced that the reward money had been increased to $50,000.

Los Angeles Police Detective Jim Rahm says news coverage of that event--especially, it seems, the part about the $50,000--prompted “several” people to call Los Angeles police with information that ultimately enabled him and his partner, Detective Oscar Carballo, to arrest Frias.

The next step is a conviction. After the grief, anger and sadness, a conviction would solidify the measure of comfort Tom MacDowell’s family and friends feel in knowing that police, at least, are convinced that this crime has been solved. And a conviction would confirm that their own persistence was not in vain.

“A nice article,” Tom’s friend Gil Sotelo suggested, “would be to let people know not to give up. The police are definitely bogged down with a lot of cases and it’s up to us to try to fill in the gaps.”

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Yes, that would be nice. But there was something about this news that didn’t feel nice. Or maybe I’m just not in a nice mood.

It is not nice that it takes the form of blood money--not a sense of moral duty, not a sense of right and wrong--to make people talk to police. It is not nice that people like the MacDowells and Gil Sotelo may have to come up with $25,000. That’s their share of the reward money; the rest was put up by the city of Los Angeles, by order of the City Council. Why is it that a simple “thank you, thank you, thank you” may not suffice?

What bothers you more: A knife salesman selling the National Enquirer a story about you-know-who buying a stiletto? Or somebody who profits from the family and friends of the victim? Or, for that matter, the taxpayers?

The people who loved Tom MacDowell didn’t seem inclined to dwell on the mercenary aspect of human nature. A tipster who calls police in hopes of collecting $50,000 “doesn’t make them the greatest person,” Sotelo said, “but even so, it’s nice to know an arrest has been made.”

John MacDowell said the arrest is “the only good news” since Tom’s murder.

Odd, but it was a homicide detective--a breed that tends to know a lot about the dark side--who made me think a little bit better of my fellow human.

For some, Rahm said, money may indeed be the primary incentive. But for some people, the news coverage seemed to jar memories. People made connections between a story a year after the crime and vague statements they had heard implicating Frias. Also, the fact that Frias was on trial in another murder made people think those statements might be true. And finally, Rahm said, the fact that Frias was locked up eased fears of reprisals.

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Tipsters can apply for reward money after the conviction. Rahm recalled that, in the widely publicized murder of Sherri Foreman, an expectant mother stabbed to death at an automated teller machine on Ventura Boulevard, some of the tipsters who tried to cash in were denied because their leads had led nowhere. And there were some tipsters, he said, who didn’t try to collect--they were satisfied simply to have done the right thing.

So here’s to the hope that nobody tries to cash in this time--or at least that the city’s $25,000 is enough.

But if it isn’t, Gil, I’ll print that address you gave me, telling people how to contribute to a reward fund that shouldn’t have been necessary in the first place.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.

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