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when I was a kid I was scared of Candyman he was the killer from this old horror movie from 1992 that became a
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cult classic Candyman had a hook for a hand and he gut you with it for no other reason than that you said his name five
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times into a bathroom mirror candyman candyman candyman and there was something about Candyman that seemed
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more real like more dangerous than any other movie villain I mean there were no white guys
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that looked like the slasher from the Halloween franchise walking around my Southside Chicago
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neighborhood like I didn't see a lot of dudes with hockey mask either so those weren't as scary to me but
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Candyman he looked like somebody I might actually bump into this brother was 65 with this Eerie
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baritone deep voice what's blood for if not for shedding and he wore this Creepy
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Black trench coat and one of my big cousins knew I was scared of him so he used to try to
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lock me in the bathroom with the lights off to prank me so needless to say I avoided watching this movie for years
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even though it set in my hometown but not too long ago I finally sat down to watch it and when I did I realized
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Candyman is about so much more than a murderous herban Legend see this movie is actually about a dark chapter in the
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history of Chicago it lowkey shows us what happens when a city refuses to care for its own residents and it's about who
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gets to feel safe in their own homes in this country even today Candyman is set in a public
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housing project called Cabrini Green there's this graduate student named Helen who is studying urban legends and
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she's dead set on finding out more about this one in one of the early scenes Helen is in an empty classroom at her
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University listening to a tape recording someone's describing one of the candyman's
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murders a janitor who's cleaning the room overhears the recording in True Hollywood fashion the
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janitor just so happens to know someone who can tell Helen more about Candyman I
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think her name was Ruthie Jean and and she heard this banging and smashing like somebody was trying to make a hole in
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the wall so Ruthie called 9911 and she said there's somebody coming through the walls and they didn't believe her they
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thought the lady was crazy right Helen does some research and found out that a woman was killed by someone who came in
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through her bathroom mirror so she and another grad student visit the high-rise apartment in the
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projects they go upstairs to the murder victim's apartment it's unlocked they both walk in and go into
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Ruthie Jean's bathroom it's Eerie after all whoever killed her got into the apartment this same way Helen
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opens the medicine cabinet killer or killers they don't know which smashed their way through the back of this
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cabinet see there's no wall there the story of Candyman is fictional of course we all know that saying
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Candyman five times in the bathroom mirror doesn't actually conjure up a killer ghost but the murder of Ruthie Jean in
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the movie shares horrifying similarities to the killing of a real person that woman's name wasn't Ruthie
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Jean but Ruthie May McCoy it must have been a couple of years after Candyman came out somehow I hadn't heard of it
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and people told me hey you know there's there's stuff in here that seems to be from the story you wrote that's Steve
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begira he's a reporter who followed the case of the real murder for years in the
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movie The they showed a Chicago dispatch headline what killed Ruthie Jean life in
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the projects which was almost identical to the headline of the story I wrote Steve wrote a series of investigative
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pieces about Ruthie May McCoy's murder for a weekly newspaper called the Chicago Reader
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[Music] in 1987 after she died he visited Ruthie May's apartment it was on the 11th floor
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of a highrise in one of Chicago's housing projects there happened to be a janitor who was cleaning up in her
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apartment uh the door was open and I was able to go in whoever murdered Ruthie May McCoy somehow entered her apartment
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through her bathroom mirror she had heard The Intruders coming and it called 911 in this podcast we're taking another
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look at the true nightmare that inspired a major film franchise they just cast her like she
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was nobody they didn't care it was just like another black person just got murder oh okay we go to the next one now
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when we talk about crime we talk about violence there's this thing where we do a presumption that the people and not
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the conditions are responsible but what if the conditions in the projects and Ruthie May's killers are both
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responsible you're supposed to feel safe at home but back then and even now that's not always the case and sometimes
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the danger in our own homes comes from the very people who are supposed to protect
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us why didn't 911 get her the help she needed and how had Ruthie May's medicine cabinet become a point of
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entry I'm Dom Pungo from 48 hours this is Candyman the true story behind the bathroom mirror
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[Music] murder episode one left high and dry on April 22nd 1987 Ruthie May McCoy
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called 911 it was 8:45 at night Ruthie May was a 52 2-year-old grandmother who lived alone when she called police to
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report and attempted Breakin we're told the original recording no longer exists but we do have a transcript so we've
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asked actors to read it I'm alone and I I live at 1440 was 13th Street and some people living next
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door have pulled their cabinets out what are they doing they they want to break in on this side where I live at Ruthie
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May tried to explain they want to break in yeah they they throw the cabinets down they threw the cabinets down where
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I'm in a project they come on the other side but you can reach my bathroom and they want to come through the bathroom
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now it's unclear if the dispatcher got this part of what Ruthie May was saying she's telling them that The Intruders
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were coming in through the bathroom 1440 West 13th Street Apartment 11:09 okay the elevator working 11:09 uhhuh all
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right what's your name ma'am Bruce McCoy all right I'll send you the police okay
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the dispatcher assigned a patrol car but classified the call as a disturbance with the neighbor not a
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robbery that crucial difference likely impacted what happened next Ruthie May when she's making the 911 call she
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sounded very scared back in 1987 Steve buira had listened to Ruthie May's actual call for help but together enough
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to report to the police that she's in the projects the elevators are working so you know there it kind of underscores
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the fact that the elevators often aren't working police may not come if the elevators aren't working Steve was 33
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when Ruthie May was killed at that time he focused his reporting on telling the stories of low-income black residents
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who lived on Chicago's South and West sides he' covered plenty of stories in the projects but for Ruthie may he wrote
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two long stories 22,000 words in total for the Chicago Reader I tried to not just write about murder but about um
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other aspects of people's [Music] lives the night Ruthie may call 911 dispatchers also talked to two of her
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neighbors one after the other had called to report gunshots so three calls for help were made when police came they got
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there in about 20 minutes and were there about a half hour they knocked on her door and called out to her got no answer
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they tried to open the door if it wouldn't open it was locked they asked uh for a key to the apartment they
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secured the key that was supposed to be to the apartment it didn't work officers
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wrote in the police report that the door was locked and that there didn't appear
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to be any signs of a Breakin despite the two neighbors calling and Ruthie May herself the officers made a controversal
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decision to not break the door down so after about a half hour they just left it took another neighbor's call the
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next day to get someone to take action the next evening they got a call police got a call from 11 floor neighbor named
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Deborah lley yeah I'm the one they got them to open the door Deborah lassle lived down the hall from Ruthie may we
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recently caught up with Deborah on the phone you'll hear the connection was a little rough and at times you can hear
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children in the background but this was the only time she was available and she knew Ruthie May well we had to talk to
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her Deborah lived in apartment 11:01 and Ruthie May was in 1109 they looked out for one another she was my best friend
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in the building cuz I had never lived in the project neither and me and her to get the hang of it together when they
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met they were both new to the 11th floor of the Grace Abbott homes which is a part of a public housing complex Deborah
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in her 30s was a mother of seven and her living situation was cramped but she may
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do as best she could Ruthie may help helped her manage and would keep an eye on her kids sometimes we both to each
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other every day all during the day she watched my kid and we stand in the hallway and talk Ruthie may had one
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daughter and two grandchildren she never married and lived on her own in Abbott Holmes her daughter verita was in her
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mid 20s by Van according to her autopsy Ruthie May stood 5'9 and weighed a little over 250 lb she had black hair
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mixed with a little gray Deborah said Ruthie May was sweet but that she was also the kind of woman who
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wasn't scared to keep the kids in the building in line so she was like a grandmother to my kids and my kids they
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know the respector cuz she tell them to get in the house that me get in the house the night Ruthie may call 911
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Deborah heard gunshots but didn't think anything of them yeah we heard it but over there you heard shots all the time
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there was a lot of territoriality so gangs fighting over Turf that led to more violence that led to more
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guns um and that was the situation in the Abbott homes uh at the time Ruthie May was killed Steve wrote that Abbott
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Holmes was the territory for a gang called the black Gangster Disciples at the time the bgds they monitored the
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Halls elevators and the stairs and the buildings often turned into a Battleground between the bgds and
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another game gang the Vice Lords Steve found that in 1986 a year before Ruthie May's murder
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residents in the projects experienced killings rapes and attacks more than twice as often as the rest of the city
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gangs fighting over Turf that led to more violence that led to more guns that's why Deborah didn't question the
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gunfire until the following morning when Ruthie May didn't come to visit like she
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normally did and I kept saying it's something wrong but she would have knocked on my door and told me she was
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going Ruthie May normally stopped at Deborah's apartment at least twice a day she let Deborah know when she was
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leaving and when she got home but that day she never knocked it was shocking cuz she's going to go to the store every
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day she's going to go to that store for the first time Ruthie May didn't follow her routine this was a bad sign and I
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knocked on her door and I didn't hear nothing and then I just sh that said something's wrong it's not like
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her Deborah marched downstairs out of the building and down the block to ask the building's management if they could
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check on her friend see they would have a key and she didn't the Chicago Housing
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Authority known as cha managed Abbott I went to housing and they told me I had to see again you know check again and
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see do she come she might be went somewhere she's hard to understand stand here but she's saying that the cha told
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her to check on her friend again that maybe she stepped out Deborah said the manager warned her that they could get
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in trouble for opening Ruthie May's apartment without her permission when she couldn't get through the management
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she called the cops I didn't feel like nobody care cuz it took me all day long to get the police to come it took me all
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day long the police hadn't come back on their own since the night before Deborah's calls convinced them to
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try again the security guards from the Sha Housing Authority met them at Ruthie May's door Steve said officers came
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ready to break down the door this time the police wanted to go in they say um and check on Ruthie May and the chicag
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Housing Authority security Force said well if you break down that door the tenant May sue you
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for whatever reason the police and ch again disregard that the tenant herself had called 911 afraid because Intruders
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were breaking into her apartment through the mirror despite that Steve said that
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the guards only offered reasons not to break in also if you break down that door somebody's going to have to secure
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it we don't want to do that so they kind of talked the police out of entering the
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apartment of course the police could have entered the apartment then it wasn't up to the cha security staff for
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a second time the Chicago Police left without checking to see if Ruthie May McCoy was okay we wanted to know why so
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we reached out to the current cha spokesperson they told us that due to how long it's been since this happened
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they have to refer us back to how the cha answered these questions at the time back then when Steve called the
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Cha's head of security to asked why they advised police not to break down the door the director said quote I don't
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have any answers two days after Ruthie May was shot Deborah finally got someone from the
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Chicago Housing Authority to open her friend's door it was somebody from cha who did
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break into the apartment and found Ruthie May lying on her side in a pool of blood
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decomposing and when they open the door you could smell it so bad the man from the Housing Authority asked
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Deborah to wait by Ruthie May's door out in the hallway but then they came and told me we had to call the police Ruthie
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May was found in a bedroom according to the medical examiner she'd been shot four times and one of the gunshots one
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of the bullets had severed her pulmonary artery so he didn't believe she would have lived
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long we all want to believe that when we call authorities help will be on the away Ruthie May was left high and dry
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and why that happened would be the subject of a lot of debate for months and even years after her
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murder murders reportedly happen so frequently in the projects that it wasn't always newsworthy Ruthie May's
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murder would have fallen Into Obscurity or it would have been overlooked like so
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many others if not for one curious detail the fact that she had been killed by someone who came in through the hole
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in the wall where her medicine cabinet usually was the Chicago Tribune wrote a short news story a few weeks after the
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murder it was amazing to me that people had access to other apartments through the medicine cabinet
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in the adjacent apartment Steve buira saw that brief article in the Tribune and had a bunch of questions I thought
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how could the Tribune not be intrigued enough to ask more about these circumstances Steve
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worked for the prestigious Tribune out of college before shifting to a legendary weekly paper the Chicago
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Reader it's kind of like Chicago's Village Voice and had a reputation for solid journalism I wanted to be
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downwardly mobile but seriously because uh I felt the Tribune was more interested in
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stories that appealed to the kinds of people they wanted to advertise to people who lived along the lakefront in
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healthier neighborhoods and in the suburbs but at the Chicago Reader Steve was free to write the kinds of stories
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he wanted to write about folks like Ruthie mcoy I was interested for for one thing in whether this medicine cabinet
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break-in was unique and I was also interested in how police could leave like they
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did more than a month after Ruthie May McCoy's murder Steve beira drove to abbid homes the project building was
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massive in the center there was this big open area with some trees lining the sidewalk seven 15-story highrises
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surrounded the oversized Lawns made of brick they all look the same Abbot homes were first built in
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1955 and while they might have been nice then by the late 80s residents said maintenance rarely fixed anything
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burnt out light bulbs broken elevators and backed up toilets this was all a part of life when Ruthie May moved in
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many of the walls and ceilings were crumbling Steve was used to visiting Chicago's projects for his stories but
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as a thin white guy in his early 30s who obviously wasn't from the neighborhood Abbott's residents who were 90% black
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would give him the side eye this guy must be a social worker or a cop or look looking for drugs and
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eventually they would believe me that I was a reporter Steve stopped at Ruthie May's building I went up to the 11th
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floor not knowing if I'm going to be not thinking I'm going to be able to get into her apartment you said a janitor
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happened to be in the apartment cleaning up the door was open and I was able to go in just like Helen the graduate
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student in the first Candyman movie Steve wanted to see the hole in the bathroom wall for himself I do remember
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going into the bathroom and looking at where the medicine cabinet was supposed to be and there was a rectangular hole
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in the wall why wasn't her cabinet even on the wall after Ruthie May was killed her
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family and friends realized that there have been clues that there was something about her apartment that scared her her
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brother had visited her a couple of months before and she said that her medicine cabinet was loose and he had
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put a couple of pieces of wood in there to try to fortify it she didn't tell him
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anything about medicine cabinet break-ins he says if she had he would have you know done he what what he could
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to get her out of the project Ruthie May's friend Deborah has a daughter named Mary they Liv down a hall from
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Ruthie May and Mary used to hang out in Ruthie May's apartment not long before the murder Mary noticed that Ruthie May
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kept a stick on him one heavy enough to be a weapon she had a stick that that was sitting from her door her be door to
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the bathroom door right there Mary remembered that one particular day when she was visiting she went to use the
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bathroom but Ruthie May stopped her she like no no no touch it don't touch it door get back over here she like use
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right here she pointed to a bucket that's when Mary realized she been using a bucket to relieve herself that's how
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scared she'd been in her own home it was [ __ ] in bucket she had carage bag sitting
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there and she had used it and every day we never know that we see her walk from house to the cerat she was throwing that
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bag away neither Ruthie May's best friend her daughter or Steve said they knew of Ruthie May ever explicitly told
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anyone why she was afraid here's Steve again I was struck by both how spooky it was but also how outrageous it was I
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mean I knew from other stories I had done reporting in the projects in high-rise projects
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that uh people were living with great insecurity great fear but usually it was of uh you know people could break
00:22:06
through my front door the idea that people could also break into their apartment through their bathroom I mean
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that was really that that really seemed awful to me for people to have to live with that Deborah and Mary both remember
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seeing young men coming in and out of the apartment next to Ruthie Mays Steve learned there was a connection between
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that apartment and the murder hers was apartment 1109 the adjacent apartment was
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1108 and uh the State's Attorney's Office had confiscated the medicine cabinet in the other apartment as
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evidence the medicine cabinet in Ruthie May's apartment was never found when he visited Ruthy May's
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apartment Steve picked up some of the papers that had been left on the floor in disarray of course I looked at them
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and found the connection to the Mount siai Psychiatric Center that's when he learned more about why people might not
00:23:05
have believed Ruthy May apparently she had struggled with her mental health in the past but lately
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she'd been responding to treatment and started pursuing her GED it was a tragedy what happened to her regardless
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but it seemed to be especially tragic considering that she was making really good steps with her life
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Ruthie May went to a year of high school and quit after that and she started showing signs of mental illness in her
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early 20s so could have been schizophrenia that was never totally clear uh but she was definitely
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paranoid and she would would be heard talking to herself in the street Steve said this was in 1986 a year before
00:24:05
Ruthie May's murder her treatment at the Psychiatric Center was outpatient which
00:24:10
means she still lived at home while receiving care she was known in the project as Miss May and she was she
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would like curse strangers sometimes but uh she got connected with this Psychiatric Center at Mount Si after
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going to the Psychiatric Center Ruthie May was taking high school equivalency classes it was a sign that she was
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looking toward the future she was in arts and crafts projects group therapy most of the other clients in
00:24:36
this Center were also project residents the director of the center said they were all dealing with the stress and
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deprivation of living in that project the conditions that Steve learned about and the system's failure to help Ruthie
00:24:51
May led him to pose a provocative question in one of his headlines it read what k Ked rufie May
00:24:59
McCoy a bullet in the chest or life in the projects that headline is very close to
00:25:07
the one that shows up in the Candyman movie in 1992 in the movie they showed a Chicago dispatch headline what killed
00:25:16
Ruthie Jean life in the projects Steve noticed how close it was to his own headline but he didn't overthink it
00:25:23
after all in the movie's credits it says that Candyman is based on a fictional story called The Forbidden written by
00:25:28
Clive Barker in 1985 Clive Barker's story depicts a graduate student named Helen
00:25:35
investigating an urban legend who hunts a dilapidated housing project in Liverpool England it wasn't like they
00:25:42
were doing a movie that was totally about the story I wrote they had a different
00:25:49
agenda they were tying this real story to urban legend Bernard Rose who wrote and
00:25:58
directed Candyman decided to set the story in the Chicago housing projects instead race didn't play a role in Clive
00:26:05
Barker's story but Rose made it a central theme of Candyman in the movie Candyman is actually Daniel robati a
00:26:15
black man from the late 1800s who was lynched for having a relationship with a white woman here's the director himself
00:26:23
Bernard Rose the candy man is kind of a Golem you know he's he's in avenging Angel as much as he's anything how did
00:26:31
that backstory become a part of his narrative the point was that he was wealthy and that he thought he was
00:26:37
assimilated and he thought he was accepted but he wasn't and they killed him and so now he's he's he's there out
00:26:46
there not exactly looking for vengeance but looking for something looking to just haunt them it's visceral and maybe
00:26:56
that's why Candyman still has this whole on us it is served as the basis for four
00:27:01
films honestly I didn't watch the 1992 movie until after I saw the newer 2021 Candyman movie this is Morgan KY she's a
00:27:10
field producer at 48 hours and she's actually the one who came up with the idea for this podcast and after watching
00:27:16
that movie I was just really hooked so I decided to do a little bit of research and I learned that Ruthie may had
00:27:22
suffered this horrible fate and I just wanted to know more about why yeah her death sounded crazy to me too the first
00:27:29
time I heard it it kind of pissed me off to be honest with you right it just felt
00:27:33
like she didn't have to die exactly and and that's what I wanted to do this podcast just to understand how The
00:27:38
Intruders could have killed Ruthie may get to the bottom of why she died and how her circumstances contributed to
00:27:45
what happened so doti when you were a kid in Chicago how large did Candyman loom for you I mean it was huge I was
00:27:52
scared of Candy Man I mean the fact that all you have to do was say your name into a bathroom mirror and they could
00:27:58
pop up to be honest I didn't even watch the film in it in full until you brought
00:28:02
it to me really I didn't realize that no facts facts and Steve buir is like me he
00:28:08
didn't see the film until much later not because he was scared of Candyman like a
00:28:12
young Doma but it was because he wasn't a fan of horror films he said that his biggest takeaway when he finally did
00:28:19
watch the movie wasn't the commonalities between his story and parts of the film
00:28:25
I was struck by the fact that what is a nightmare to white people was reality to
00:28:35
people who were living in in the projects I'll admit that sounds dramatic but let me tell you he is really not
00:28:41
exaggerating here I'd find out that a lot of that first Candyman film came from real life not just Ruthie May's
00:28:50
murder Ruthie May lived in taxpayer funded housing with conditions bad enough to inspire a horror film but how
00:28:59
is it that people's living conditions were ever allowed to get this bad in America why weren't residents better
00:29:07
protected and why weren't Ruthie May's calls for help taken more seriously good part of my reporting dealt with the
00:29:14
police response or lack of response which as many residents in the project told me was not
00:29:22
surprising there were all kinds of factors that Steve and those close to Ruthie may belied contributed to the tra
00:29:28
maybe if police came in right away there was nothing they could do for her anyway
00:29:33
we'll never know while they didn't break into the apartment police did start a hunt for who killed Ruthie May and Steve
00:29:40
went on a search of his own to find out how unusual it was for an intruder to come through the bathroom mirror at
00:29:46
Abbott Holmes there hadn't been another murder through this kind of an entry but there
00:29:53
had been numerous burglaries through the medicine cabinets this wasn't the first time criminals had
00:29:59
prayed on residents like this coming up we're going to look at the conditions residents like Ruthie May we're living
00:30:06
in if you really believed in tough on crime then you wouldn't make it easy to crawl into medicine cabinets and kill
00:30:15
our women what explanation did authorities have for not immediately helping ruy May there are a lot of calls
00:30:22
to 911 from the projects that are hoax calls phony calls what made her a Target in the first place if people think you
00:30:29
have money yes they will try to rob people we'll follow the murder investigation and talk to one of the
00:30:35
lead detectives and I said Jesus Christ look at this and there was no medicine cabinet on the other side and we'll talk
00:30:43
to the writer and director of Candyman who has long downplayed the connection between Ruthie May's death and the story
00:30:50
that made it to the big screen you take things from the world around you and put
00:30:56
them into new forms that's really what fiction is luy May McCoy was murdered in Spring of 1987 in her apartment and the
00:31:03
circumstances around her killing didn't make sense from the very [Music] beginning Ruthie May tried to explain
00:31:12
the break-in during the 911 call but the dispatcher didn't seem to grasp what she
00:31:17
was really saying they want to break in yeah they they throw the cabinets down she said they threw down her cabinet
00:31:25
Ruthie May was likely trying to tell the dis dispatcher that Intruders were coming in through her bathroom mirror
00:31:32
which to be fair does sound absurd the dispatcher might have been confused I wondered if that was the reason they
00:31:39
didn't take Ruthie May's 911 call more seriously you know you lock your front door somebody could still try to break
00:31:47
in but you feel some sense of security reporter Steve beira discovered that even though Ruthie May might have been
00:31:54
the first person murdered this way at least that we know about this was not the first time criminals entered through
00:32:01
a bathroom mirror in the Chicago projects there had been numerous burglaries some residents even said they
00:32:07
caught a few thieves red-handed one person told me that she was watching TV with a friend and all of
00:32:18
a sudden a kid runs out of her bathroom through her apartment and out the door and she goes into the bathroom and
00:32:25
there's another kid stuck in the pipe chase the second kid who was a little bit heavier was having a hard time
00:32:31
getting through so they caught him and called police and he confessed that um yeah they were trying to sneak in the
00:32:38
apartment that way believe it or not the fact that the medicine cabinet could come off the wall wasn't by accident
00:32:46
this was by Design the Grace Abbott homes opened in 1955 during the planning of this
00:32:58
building The Architects added a space called a pipe chase this space was just wide enough for a person the adjacent
00:33:07
Apartments had medicine cabinets that were backto back with a pipe Chase in between that is an area where janitors
00:33:16
could work on the plumbing if they took down the medicine cabinet that was the upside for a janitor the problem is it
00:33:23
will become the perfect entry point for criminals and a potential nightmare for residents why didn't the Chicago Housing
00:33:33
Authority do anything to stop these break-ins in the 8S what responsibility did they have for Ruthie May's
00:33:40
murder I'm domati Pungo from 48 hours this is Candyman the true story behind the bathroom mirror
00:33:52
murder episode two deadly design when 911 gets a call they've got to decide how urgent a situation is that
00:34:04
April night A desperate grandmother was reporting that strangers had broken into
00:34:08
her home but the dispatcher logged Ruthie May's call as a disturbance with a neighbor later much later the police
00:34:17
would acknowledge that if the call had been labeled a robbery they would have likely responded it differently
00:34:23
journalist Steve begira questioned the Chicago Police Department at the time and asked why Ruthie May's call for help
00:34:29
didn't generate a faster police response or at the very least convinced cops that
00:34:33
they had to break down her door to help her this is what they told him there are
00:34:38
a lot of calls to 911 from the projects that are hoax calls phony calls they get
00:34:44
to the project and they check into it and nothing's happening Steve said that after so many false alarms officers
00:34:52
approach calls with a little skepticism they maintain that this is had to be a uh factor that the responding officers
00:35:03
took into account when they decided not to break into Ruthie May's apartment to see what was going on that was the
00:35:09
official response there haven't been any studies showing that calls from the projects are more likely to be hoaxes
00:35:19
now if you ask the residents they said that police are afraid of the projects just like we are and that the residents
00:35:27
also said police just don't care about people here we're all poor why should they care about us so that was the
00:35:33
feeling that they had about why police responded the way they did to Ruthie May Steve couldn't find much to back up
00:35:42
the official explanation he wondered if some of the hoax calls were actually complaints made by residents who then
00:35:49
backtracked because they were scared it probably didn't want people knowing that
00:35:53
they were talking to the police back in 1987 the police department Department wouldn't let Steve
00:35:58
speak to the officers who actually responded to the call in the past few months we've reached out to those who
00:36:04
are still alive but haven't heard back Steve said he did talk to the Police Superintendent at the time of the murder
00:36:11
and said that he defended his officer decision not to enter Ruthie May's apartment he at least acknowledged it
00:36:18
was a close call as he put it it was a coin flip that maybe they should have gone in but he said you you have this
00:36:26
information in hindsight you know that somebody got killed there these officers didn't know that they didn't hear
00:36:32
anything they had uh at least one household on the 11th floor who said they hadn't heard
00:36:40
anything Steve still didn't think that seemed like a good enough reason not to break in and I thought that was more of
00:36:46
a an excuse than a a valid reason and again I did I felt it was like is this how you would respond if it was a white
00:36:54
middle class neighborhood where a woman called and reported that somebody had broken in on her in any form would you
00:37:01
get there and knock and if nobody answered just leave especially when you had other calls reporting gunshots would
00:37:10
police just leave because it might be a hoax that's just not just policing it's not
00:37:22
fair Steve quickly figured out that that response time wasn't the only way that the police and the Chicago Housing
00:37:28
Authority or cha might have neglected Ruthie May well according to Ruthie May's daughter Ruthy may had had one
00:37:37
attempted Breakin through the medicine cabinet route the previous year and had reported it and Cha had done nothing
00:37:46
about it when Steve asked about it the cha claimed that they had no record of this complaint so Steve started digging
00:37:55
I started hearing about these break-ins that people were doing and these break-ins had been
00:38:02
reported to the Chicago Housing Authority the cha tried to minimize how many there were it turns out other
00:38:10
residents complained to the Cha about break-ins through their medicine cabinets I remember the spokesperson
00:38:16
told me in the 18 months before Ruthie May was killed they got reports of at most 10 probably only seven break-ins
00:38:26
via medicine en cters seven break-ins through bathroom mirrors sounds like a lot to me but
00:38:34
Steve says that he was told that that count is still probably too low the police commander in the district said
00:38:41
well you have to Triple whatever the reports are because so many break-ins don't even get reported to us so if you
00:38:48
take the police Commander's advice and triple the number of break-ins there was between 21 and 30 in the 18 months
00:38:57
before Ruthie May was killed and what had the Chicago Housing Authority done about this nothing and the longer this
00:39:04
security problem went unchecked the more common place these break-ins will become
00:39:09
if you're in your apartment you take down the medicine cabinet Crawl Through the pipe Chase kick in the other
00:39:15
medicine cabinet and do the burglary and that's the route that apparently was not
00:39:22
uncommon in 1987 Steve wondered what it would take to fix these medicine cabinets to
00:39:29
protect residents a janitor I spoke with in the project said it wouldn't be hard
00:39:36
to secure these you'd have to bolt the cabinets to each other it would make it harder for plumbers to work on the
00:39:42
plumbing but at least people would be safe from that kind of an intrusion the cha didn't do that the janitor said well
00:39:49
I'm not surprised we can't even get light bulbs from the agency we have so many backed up toilet and crumbling
00:39:58
ceilings and there's been so much deferred maintenance that they're not going to work on a problem with undue
00:40:06
haste Steve questioned how the Housing Authority could let these conditions go on for so long knowing that their
00:40:12
neglect made it easier for drug dealers to deal out of apartments and for intruders to run rampant throughout the
00:40:19
building why wouldn't the cha protect its own residents the Chicago Housing Authority was not anym committ committed
00:40:27
to keeping the projects open they were eager for their demise I think so they weren't in a rush to get a legal tenant
00:40:35
into these [Music] apartments Ruthie May McCoy never even wanted to live it Abit she asked
00:40:56
specifically an to the cha that it not be in a high-rise project Steve said that she asked not to
00:41:02
be in a high-rise because she didn't want to have to walk up so many stairs she only moved in after her apartment
00:41:08
and another project flooded she got a response that there's apartment available to you on the 11th floor of a
00:41:16
highrise the Abbott holes that's all that was available Chicago public housing is offered to low-income
00:41:23
residents she was on welfare which then paid $140 or $150 a month the project apartment would cost $46 a month she
00:41:35
simply couldn't afford anything else which was why she moved into the abot homes this is when she met Deborah
00:41:42
lassley who said she moved on to the 11th floor with her kids she had a total of seven Deborah moved in about 6 months
00:41:50
before Ruthie May for a heartbreaking reason my husband had committed suicide I left my home I could stand there no
00:42:00
more both Deborah and Ruthie May felt public housing was their only choice in fact the day Deborah moved in the
00:42:07
elevator broke so me and my kids had to walk ourselves up now I wasn't used to that but we made
00:42:15
it maintenance in the building was so slow to respond that Deborah taught herself how to fix the plumbing I didn't
00:42:21
know how to do it at first but every time you would call them and say the toilet stopped up or what it might be a
00:42:28
month before they come and do it I mean come on a month to fix a toilet two years after Ruthie May was
00:42:34
killed 48 Hours gave viewers a firsthand look at these poor conditions the Chicago Housing Authority has been such
00:42:42
a notorious failure that in 1987 the US Department of Housing and Urban Development currently swept up by its
00:42:50
own scandals threatened an outright takeover Harold da was the reporter covering the story the scale and
00:42:57
Precision is that of a military operation but this is Chicago and these cops are launching an attack on one of
00:43:05
the city's own housing developments I'm in a police state now you think look like a bunch of happy campers there it's
00:43:13
called operation sweep and it's Chicago's high-powered high-profile approach to cleaning up public housing
00:43:20
he even got gang members to agree to be interviewed what uh what kind of drugs does your gang sell here uh C Joe is a
00:43:28
high-ranking member of the king cobras he's been in the gang for 20 years you a gang heavily armed mhm what kind of
00:43:36
weapons do you guys automatics revoles the whole work the baddest game out today is the dope game brothers killing
00:43:44
brothers over you know over drugs the original goal of public housing wasn't to turn into this
00:43:53
nightmare but how were these problems allowed to persist finding that answer involved turning to
00:44:00
people who know Chicago's history I reached out to Sherman Thomas or as everyone calls him Dilla hello here for
00:44:09
the tour y h AB board great thank you y yeah Dilla is an urban historian who posts popular videos online he's got
00:44:19
over 100,000 followers on Tik Tok and offers bus tours of the city through his Company Mahogany they we're going to go
00:44:26
to a very proud American neighborhood called pson D is well aware of Ruthie May's
00:44:32
story she was living in something that was rushed to be built she was living in something that wasn't structurally sound
00:44:41
the horrible conditions he and the residents describe are actually the opposite of the vision laid out by the
00:44:46
Chicago Housing Authority for these projects the Chicago Housing Authority was supposed to provide like real
00:44:53
quality housing for those who just needed a stepping stone the Chicago Housing Authority
00:45:01
opened its doors in 1938 to mostly low-income white people that was before the war before the mass migration of
00:45:09
rural Negroes from the south then the racial pattern of the city changed and so did the kind of public housing that
00:45:15
was built this is Chicago solution for the poor the early units built in the first half of the 20th century weren't
00:45:22
high-risers they were built with green space and M right so they had these big huge Courtyards and each each unit had a
00:45:30
backyard where you'd be able to plant your own garden and your own vegetables in fact when I'm going through newspaper
00:45:36
archives both of those housing projects would win the Citywide Garden competitions Dill said things started to
00:45:43
change in the 1950s as Chicago's African-American population grew segregation is literally etched in the
00:45:50
fabric of Chicago right like how we Define our 77 neighborhoods what what separates full apart Park from
00:45:58
Bridgeport is the fact that black folks couldn't pass that particular street from 1910 until the 1970s nearly 6
00:46:07
million African-Americans had moved North in what is referred to as the Great Migration I think there was a lot of
00:46:13
push back about a lot of black families moving into Chicago hadn't been there before that is Sue Popkin Popkin has
00:46:21
written four books about Chicago public housing and understands the system like the back of her hand I mean at one point
00:46:27
she had information no one else in city government had access to for a while I had the only list of uh addresses
00:46:35
housing auth already had she's now at a think tank called the urban Institute and still studies you guessed it Chicago
00:46:43
public housing she said the government began funding housing projects during the Great
00:46:48
[Music] Depression but these architectural dreams were met with the realities of
00:46:56
fing and the realities of the Chicago political machine man-made jungles of concrete conceived and administered not
00:47:04
by people who live in them but by political appointees most of whom live elsewhere again here's the historian
00:47:10
Dilla that was built rushed right with shoty material and with cheapness in mind and so as it relates to Plumbing
00:47:20
sometime if you have a plumbing issue plumbers got to come in cut a hole in your wall and then put a hole new wall
00:47:27
up well cha didn't want to have to go through that and be spending money on drywall of all things right or plaster
00:47:35
Hopkins said that funding started to dry up after World War II when the federal government provided fewer subsidies for
00:47:41
public housing while funding was an issue she said that in Chicago corruption played a part in cheapening
00:47:48
the buildings from the very start they W built very badly there were all kinds of
00:47:52
deals with the unions despite the infamous winners in the city she said there were high Rises where they didn't
00:47:57
even enclose the hallways which then almost immediately created a hazard both the danger of people falling and people
00:48:06
throwing things off of them and so then they enclosed those with Gates basically
00:48:11
with fencing so they look like prisons free people living in housing that looked like a prison it was a lot
00:48:21
[Music] the mayor of Chicago Jane burn is causing quite a stir with her latest move the move from one apartment to
00:48:39
another an apartment 10 blocks from her present one but it isn't how far the mayor's moving it's where from a luxury
00:48:46
apartment to a housing project known mainly for crime and gang Warfare in 1981 Chicago's mayor at the time Jane
00:48:55
burn moved her herself and her husband into Cabrini Green for 3 weeks in hopes of drawing attention to the conditions I
00:49:03
am really not afraid over there at all and I think what you have to prove is that you don't have to be afraid and I'd
00:49:09
like to stimulate that with the people that live there if people want to say that it's vote getting or whatever they
00:49:15
want to say then I would suggest that whoever says it take the next Department some called it a brave move While others
00:49:21
called it a publicity stunt well not long after her move in the Chicago Housing Authority did get more national
00:49:29
attention the then chairman of the cha Charles swel who was also a major fundraiser for the mayor was accused by
00:49:38
the US Department of Housing and Urban Development of corruption here's Su Popkin again Charles swel who uh took
00:49:46
the money that was supposed to go for maintenance H funneled it through the flat janitor's Union and used it to
00:49:51
build Marina city which is a luxury highrise along the river the US Department of Housing and Urban
00:49:56
Development or HUD accused Charles swell of making deals that benefited people he
00:50:02
dealt with in his private real estate Ventures instead of prioritizing the needs of the
00:50:07
cha in fact HUD threatened to withhold millions of dollars unless he was removed SW Bell never admitted any
00:50:15
wrongdoing and was never found guilty of crimes connected to the cha he resigned
00:50:20
from his chairmanship after 19 years and died in 1990 hkin said whether the money was
00:50:28
lost due to policy decisions or corruption the residents on the receiving end got the message loud and
00:50:35
clear I think that it was never about what was good for the tenants or the families right a lot of that robbed us
00:50:44
of our sense of deserving of nurture of kindness of the minimal that you could give us to make us safe Kim Fox lived in
00:50:56
the Chicago projects when she was growing up you know don't have access for people into our homes through our
00:51:04
medicine cabinets Fox is now the Cook County State's Attorney the Chicago area's top prosecutor before she ever
00:51:11
became part of law enforcement Fox grew up in Cabrini Green while Robert Taylor Holmes was the largest project Cabrini
00:51:20
Green is the most famous thanks in large part to TV and movies it was a highrise
00:51:26
not much different than Abbott Holmes and it was used in the opening credits of the TV show Good Times and would
00:51:31
later be used to horrify audiences in [Music] Candyman did you see Candyman when it
00:51:39
first came out in 92 I did do do you remember going to the show to see it and what what your thoughts
00:51:48
were the fact that it said was said kabini I will tell you I initially was like what's this right like what what is
00:51:57
this I wasn't enthused about the backdrop yeah like and and that the backdrop to a horror
00:52:06
film to horror she was in college at the time in another part of Illinois and this film was her friend's introduction
00:52:13
to where she grew up and so I felt I'm gonna be honest I felt some kind of way and you're about to equate my childhood
00:52:20
with horror and this is now going to be what you at a cocktail party the first thing you say was it like that k him did
00:52:27
you know were you scared like that instead Kim prefers to talk about the folks who lived in Cabrini Green the
00:52:33
people were amazing where we were living was not Fox lived there in the 1970s and
00:52:41
1980s and even when she moved much of her family remained you were trained as a young girl not to get on elevators
00:52:49
with just with men by yourself or darkened elevators and so many times you know we'd have to walk up eight flights
00:52:57
of stairs or 10 flights of stairs that there would be literally feal like that be in Corners in in the stairwells that
00:53:06
presence of like disgust physically was there she talked about how the building was in disrepair like how the
00:53:15
incinerators on each floor couldn't even burn the trash you'd have the smell of trash or it would catch fire um and you
00:53:23
would have the smell of fire it probably comes as no surprised that growing up in
00:53:27
that kind of environment takes its toll on you when it is baked into every layer
00:53:32
of your existence like not built in physically built into the architecture of your existence that we will find ways
00:53:41
to make you vulnerable and know it and do nothing about it that hardening is survival that's Survival that's survival
00:53:52
Instinct the need to take care of yourself because the authorities won't help is what led Deborah to fix her own
00:53:58
plumbing and it's likely why Ruthie May used a bucket as a toilet Fox wasn't surprised that the Chicago Housing
00:54:05
Authority ignored Ruthie May's complaint about the bathroom mirror she said none
00:54:09
of the residents thought the cha or the police would be helpful and so it was just this weird dynamic like people
00:54:17
didn't rock with the police and people were also scared people were also wanting to be safe but there was never a
00:54:26
sense that we had that the police were going to do that for us never she said you had to rely on your crew like
00:54:33
Deborah did for Ruthie may my cousin like became a really good electrician we were building
00:54:40
[Music] Carpenters reporter Steve begira did what he could to hold the cha accountable after he written his story
00:54:48
about Ruthie may he kept asking about the medicine cabinets I was still calling them asking what they were
00:54:54
doing and their spokesperson said yeah we've got it on the agenda to secure these medicine
00:55:04
cabinets but I knew some of the residents who lived in these apartments at the end of the hall where they had a
00:55:12
vacant apartment next to them and and so I could check with them you know have they done anything
00:55:19
yet Steve's first story about Ruthie May came out September 3rd 1987 sometime after that they fixed the problem
00:55:27
while Steve was asking questions about policy police were focused on building a case who could have been in that vacant
00:55:33
apartment next to Ruthie Mays who did investigators suspect came through that bathroom
00:55:41
mirror when Steve went to visit Ruthie May McCoy's apartment he walked into her bathroom and could see a hole where the
00:55:48
medicine cabinet would normally be I could see that route through the pipe chase that the that the killers
00:55:53
apparently had taken he could poke his head through and see the narrow walkway Steve said they never found Ruthie May's
00:56:00
medicine cabinet but they did find the one in the adjacent Department according to the police crime lab technicians
00:56:06
dusted that one for Prince and inventor the cabinet into evidence during his visit to Abbott other residents told
00:56:13
Steve that they will put things up against their bathroom doors to protect themselves at night this woman told me
00:56:18
about somebody running out of her bathroom one night and after that she was putting furniture in front of the
00:56:25
bathroom door at night when she went to bed and I heard that from other tenants as well people who wanted to make sure
00:56:31
nobody if they broke into their bathroom they wouldn't get any further than that the police interviewed Deborah
00:56:38
lassley and Ruthie May's daughter Vita who would have been in her mid 20s in 1987 during their investigation the
00:56:46
police asked verita if her mom was having problems with the neighbors and she told them she didn't know police
00:56:52
noted that Vita told them that Ruthie may had 219 in TVs but on the scene they only found one her rocking chair was
00:57:02
also stolen police found one bullet casing from a 9mm cartridge behind the bedroom
00:57:08
door detectives talked to Ruthie May's neighbors and interviewed residents in the building I'm sure they were hearing
00:57:15
dozens of stories about how this crime had occurred Ruthie May's autopsy revealed brutal details of what happened
00:57:23
Ruthie May according to the medical examiner had been shot four times the medical examiner wrote that
00:57:31
Ruthie May was shot in her arms her chest abdomen and leg investigators took photos blood samples and recovered one
00:57:40
spent Bullet at the scene one of the bullets had severed her pulmonary artery so he didn't believe she would have
00:57:48
lived long maybe if police came in right away there was nothing they could do for
00:57:53
her anyway we'll never know if you asked Deborah with you May's neighbor her friend's murder was
00:58:05
preventable I was lucky that's why I kept telling my mother I'm lucky Deborah's apartment was not at the end
00:58:11
of the hall which meant it couldn't be accessed through the bathroom mirror but after Ruthie May's death she still told
00:58:19
her kids that they needed to move understandably she was spooked how can they come through a mirror and go in
00:58:26
there and do that kids in the building nicknamed Deborah Mother Teresa both because she'd give food away but also
00:58:34
cuz she would blare gospel music as a way to keep teens from wanting to hang out on the 11th floor you play a lot of
00:58:40
music that they don't like but I didn't care Deborah was cautious about living in the projects so she never took the
00:58:47
time to get to know many of her neighbors on the floor she kept to herself that's why she didn't stop and
00:58:52
think about the group of boys who would be going in and out of the apartment next to Ruthie Mays the people Deborah
00:58:59
saw or heard in that hallway the ones that she scared away using loud music might have been customers stopping at
00:59:07
apartment 11:08 to buy drugs so there were people in and out and the night before there was a lot of
00:59:18
this traffic as well reporter Steve begira said that the police wanted to identify any of the people seen coming
00:59:24
and going from that apartment cops said they asked a lot of residents and they all gave the same names hress and Turner
00:59:32
were the only names that kept coming up police heard the names John hondras and Edward Turner from residence hondras was
00:59:41
25 Turner was 19 both were young black men who had been seen spending time in the apartment that could connect to
00:59:48
Ruthie Mays the police had found key witness who claimed he saw both of them go into her apartment and they believe
00:59:56
they discovered a reason Ruthie May might have been a Target there was the impression that word had gotten out that
01:00:03
Ruthie may had a little money in that apartment from day one it was clear Ruthie May McCoy's murder wasn't going
01:00:12
to be an open and shut case reporter Steve bagira who wrote for the Chicago Reader recognized early on
01:00:22
that making sense of what happened that night in April 1987 was going to be difficult for
01:00:27
detectives it's a tough case for police in large part because the relationship between police and the residents at
01:00:37
these projects most residents already had a fraught relationship with the police but even for the ones who were
01:00:43
willing to talk how could they be sure detectives would protect them from retaliation finding Witnesses would be a
01:00:51
challenge but that wasn't the only reason the motive itself was a mystery of the thousands of residents at
01:01:00
Abbott hommes why was this grandmother killed was this random or was she targeted to find Clues detective started
01:01:12
digging into where Ruthie may spend her time Steve bogira said she suffered from
01:01:17
severe paranoia so she got connected with his Psychiatric Center at Mount Si Ruthie May got enrolled in an outpatient
01:01:25
treatment facil faity through the hospital to take care of her mental health and after a lifetime of struggle
01:01:30
Ruthie May was finally beginning to make Headway she started taking high school equivalency classes to get her GED and
01:01:38
the Psychiatric Center even helped her take a big step toward moving out of the projects the people at that Center
01:01:47
realized that she qualified because of her mental illness for supplemental security income according to Steve
01:01:56
that increased her social security checks from about $150 a month to about 350 this would allow her eventually to
01:02:06
get out of the project which was what she wanted she wanted to be able to get back out there in private housing and
01:02:11
she couldn't afford anything extravagant but she could afford to live outside the
01:02:17
project this new income ended up being a [Music] windfall the first checks she got
01:02:26
included some retroactive pay retroactive to the time she had applied so she got a check for
01:02:33
$1,979 I believe it was which I believe she cashed and kept the money in her apartment she bought herself a couple
01:02:40
nice things a plain winter coat and couple of other things which unfortunately also made her a Target
01:02:49
detectives came to feel that people in the project probably noticed and thought she had some money in the apartment and
01:02:55
that may be the reason that they broke in on her listen when you're hungry anyone in the comeup starts to look like
01:03:02
food and the community at abbit homes was starving in a phone interview Ruthie May's neighbor Deborah lassley
01:03:10
remembered when her friend got that check she went to the mailbox I know she said she was going down there and she
01:03:17
was happy she said that Ruthie May wasn't too loud when she told her about the check but that it is possible that
01:03:23
someone heard so detectives began thinking that ruie May's big payday might have been a
01:03:32
motive for murder so it could be that the thing that the Psychiatric Center did to help Ruthie may possibly move out
01:03:40
of the project got her killed instead but what detectives felt and what they could
01:03:46
prove were two different things the stories changed several times my partner and I very seldom took notes the first
01:03:55
time around because they were always usually lies I'm Dom Pungo from 48 hours this is Candyman the true story behind
01:04:05
the bathroom mirror murder episode 3 The suspects next [Music] door I was upset that she had to lay in
01:04:19
her own apartment for two days before somebody found her nobody deserves that former detective Anthony Manina
01:04:29
investigated the murder of Ruthie May McCoy it was our case uh myself Ry loer and Bill Wright back in 1987 Manina
01:04:40
would have been in his early 40s I was a detective in homicide from uh 1985 to 1995 when I retired he's from Chicago he
01:04:51
grew up on the west side as a matter of fact the projects that were talking about
01:04:56
were very close to where I lived he and detective Ray loer were partners for nearly 8
01:05:03
years we used to have our own way of doing things the ability to think alike and to know what each other is thinking
01:05:14
just with a look the detectives were assigned the case soon after Ruthie May's body was found Manina had worked
01:05:21
many cases out of Abbot Holmes and was very familiar with it there were a lot of good people that lived in them
01:05:27
projects but even as they approached the brick highrise they stayed on high [Music]
01:05:35
alert when you were going in you had to be very careful looking up at the windows because people be D dropping
01:05:42
stuff on you all all day long garbage at you or throwing different things out the
01:05:48
windows at you they also avoided the elevators at the time good policemen never used the elevator in them
01:05:57
projects for lack of a better term they were moving urinals and hardly ever worked right so it was a dangerous
01:06:07
situation Manina wasn't one of the responding officers but he put the blame on the Chicago Housing Authority and the
01:06:13
cha security for being difficult about opening Ruthie May's door the project manager for Ruthie May's building later
01:06:20
said she didn't know why the first key given to police didn't work that really upset
01:06:28
me I was ranting and raving against the cha police at that time because of that fact he says that there were a lot of
01:06:36
hoax calls that came into the police department but says he still didn't believe that that was a good excuse for
01:06:43
the slow response when he was trying to get in with a key and couldn't do it hey go back somewhere and get a
01:06:51
lockmith and get in there he didn't want the police to let Ruthie May down again
01:06:55
and here this poor woman got killed in her own apartment not bothering anybody so we worked our butts off to
01:07:04
try to clear that one and we did within two days the city of Chicago that particular time had over
01:07:12
900 homicides for the year so I mean it's it's like we were working a different homicide every day so
01:07:20
therefore you couldn't hand the case off to other detectives because they were busy going on another one 24-hour shifts
01:07:28
happened regularly we were considered area 4 that was the entire West Side the detectives started asking everyone they
01:07:37
could find what they knew about the night Ruthie May was killed then we found Witnesses doing a canvas that
01:07:44
heard the shots they heard three or four shots and they started talking about who
01:07:50
was in their apartment the witnesses repeated the same two names Edward Turner who was nicknamed
01:07:58
monifi and then John hondras who went by white boy they were both named the stories changed several times which was
01:08:08
you see my partner and I very seldom took notes the first time around because they were always usually lies the
01:08:17
detective strategy was to go around talk to everyone and then repeat all the questioning again and want you Cor
01:08:25
several lies then you started getting to the basic facts and the truth the detective's key witness turned out to be
01:08:32
20-year-old Tim brown brown was described as a scrawny guy back then he told police that he saw Turner and
01:08:40
hondras come in and out of Ruthie May's apartment with a TV and a rocking chair Manina and his partner had Brown come
01:08:48
meet with an assistant States Attorney to create a written record of his version of events Steve buera has a copy
01:08:55
of Brown's written statement Tim Brown said that he was with some friends that night that afternoon and
01:09:04
that evening leading up to the time when Ruthie May was killed Brown told the detectives that he regularly hung out in
01:09:11
the apartment next to Ruthie Mays 11:08 and this day was no different there were
01:09:17
young men primarily men but sometimes women were in the apartment as well getting high and they were selling drugs
01:09:24
from this Tim Brown told the police that he'd been there with a friend earlier in the day
01:09:30
in that afternoon they moved some weights from another apartment up to 11:08 to work out Brown's girlfriend was
01:09:37
there too she left at 600 to go to her grandmother's house while Brown and his friend stayed sitting around and
01:09:44
listening to the stereo Tim Brown said that Miss May as he called her had asked him earlier in the year if they could
01:09:54
keep the noise down from the apartment a number of guys W 1108 pretty late into the
01:10:00
evening Brown told the police who had come through that night John hress Edward Turner and a friend
01:10:09
nicknamed Bo at one point as the night wore on he said Bo wanted to show hres what he learned about the medicine
01:10:18
cabinets in Abbott homes Bo told hondras that the bathroom mirror open to the next apartment to apartment 1109 and
01:10:29
then that was how people broke into Apartments it would be that easy to get into the neighboring apartment where
01:10:35
Ruthie May the woman with the nice things lived so uh little later that evening hondes and Turner were back in
01:10:45
the bathroom according to Brown and hondes pulled the mirr in 1108 out with his hands Edward Turner was a teenager
01:10:53
who lived in Abbot hommes his family knew Ruthie May Turner had grown up I believe in the projects Hondas had spent
01:11:00
some time there as well John hondras the man who allegedly pulled the mirror out
01:11:06
in 1108 was 21 and an Exon he was a tough character the other guy was more of a thief than anything
01:11:16
[Music] else HR had done time in an Indiana prison for robbery and auto theft that night after the medicine cabinet
01:11:28
was removed hondras and Turner could allegedly look straight into Ruthie May's apartment and it looked to them
01:11:35
like maybe the apartment next door was vacant in a statement to police Brown claims that he warned hress that Miss
01:11:42
may live there but the apartment at least at first looked empty Hond said back to Brown according to Brown that he
01:11:49
didn't think anyone was home and then he climbed on the sink and went through the
01:11:54
hole Brown said that he then heard a lady say who's there after hearing the voice
01:12:02
Brown then claimed that he heard the front door to Ruthie May's apartment 11:09 open and then a knock on
01:12:12
11:08 and so he answers the door and hondras tells him to throw him a jacket his jacket so Brown gives him his
01:12:24
jacket it was a black knighte on jacket HR threw it over his head and went back into
01:12:30
1109 through the front door this time so by now one suspect was in Ruthie May's apartment that's what ground told the
01:12:38
cops he also said he saw the second suspect Edward Turner go through the hole in the wall and that's when things
01:12:46
supposedly went off the rails and he heard Turner say get down and then Brown said he heard four shots
01:12:55
four shots then silence five or 10 minutes later he said both Turner and hondras left Ruthie
01:13:08
May's apartment but Brown said they didn't leave empty-handed he saw Turner come out with a TV and hondras come out
01:13:17
with a rocking chair Brown claimed that both of them took the stolen property and made a run for it detectives talked
01:13:23
to a couple of of women who lived on the sixth floor of the same building who said that hress and Turner came to them
01:13:35
with the TV in the rocking chair one of the young women in the apartment that night Lynette Fitch was Tim Brown's
01:13:42
girlfriend she told the police that hondras wanted them to stash the stolen items at her place he had come into her
01:13:49
apartment and tried to leave the rockan chair and the TV in her apartment and she allow it and she suggested that they
01:13:58
try another woman who lived on the first floor of another Avid highr and they ultimately took the TV and racking chair
01:14:06
to This Woman's apartment she acknowledged the T to the police that she had agreed to take the TV in the
01:14:12
rocking chair to hold it for hress a turn after they found a place to hide the stolen goods Brown said that they
01:14:21
came back to the 11th floor according to Brown state two or three hours later hron Turner knocked on
01:14:30
11:08 and when Tim Brown answered HRA said they needed to go back to miss May's apartment to get the shells from
01:14:38
the gun Brown didn't want them to crawl back through the bathroom mirror so he told the police he said no they went
01:14:45
into her apartment through the front door and came out about 5 minutes later Andress told Brown they had found three
01:14:54
of the shells they locked the door behind them and then ran down the hall cops found one
01:14:59
shell casing behind the bedroom door but other parts of Brown's statement didn't entirely match what
01:15:06
police officers experienced see brown claimed this happened after 11:30 at night but police had already shown up to
01:15:13
Ruthie May's apartment after she called 911 at 8:45 and when they showed up the front
01:15:20
door was locked not unlocked the way Brown described the police never recovered the
01:15:28
gun or any fingerprints police didn't have this physical evidence and they also had
01:15:36
given a head start to the offenders to get their stories solid but Brown's statement and the statements of the
01:15:43
other Witnesses made detectives confident that hondras and Turner were their Prime suspects there was testimony
01:15:51
saying they went in there and come out with with three bullet casings and the TV and the set and the
01:15:59
rocking chair were found at the one guy's mother's house come on detective stopped at Turner's house and spoke with
01:16:06
his mom Altha Turner we left business cards and and I kind of talked her into calling us when he returned home a while
01:16:17
later she called us that they were waiting for us so we went back to the 1407 troop and that's when he was placed
01:16:25
in the custody he was arrested on April 25th his 19th birthday meanwhile hondras
01:16:32
the ex-convict managed to avoid arrest for more than a month police finally caught up with him
01:16:39
on June 8th 1987 both hondras and Turner denied being involved in the murder of Ruthie
01:16:47
May Manina remembers Turner giving a couple different stories as to how he found the TV the story said that he had
01:16:56
found the TV up by the incinerator then the next story was he found it outside the
01:17:03
door until we finally got him to admit that he got it out of the apartment the prosecution planed to rely on their key
01:17:11
witness Tim Brown who was adamant that hress and Turner were the culprits who was within two days that we s that hress
01:17:21
and Turner each fac charges of burglary and murder Mur and would have to wait years for their day in court they both
01:17:28
pleaded not guilty in the meantime Ruthie May's family pursued another kind of Justice
01:17:36
they believe she might still be alive if the Chicago Housing Authority had designed the medicine cabinets
01:17:41
differently so verita McCoy Rim's daughter wanted the cha to pay for what happened so she got herself a lawyer
01:17:50
well her mother died and her mother died by way of uh Bazar ire set of facts and
01:17:56
Mr Peters can you help me and I said I don't know but I'll try the day after Ruthie May called 911
01:18:18
her daughter Vita tried getting in touch with her she called Ruthie may not realizing that her mom was already
01:18:26
gone Bita said her aunt was the one who eventually broke the news she didn't understand nor did I how the hell
01:18:35
something like this happened and was permitted to happen that's attorney Randy Peters he'd
01:18:42
eventually end up representing verita when she sued the Chicago Housing Authority Randy also grew up in Chicago
01:18:49
while I was still figuring out what I wanted to do I saw a movie called all the President's Men All the President's
01:18:57
Men tells the story of two Washington Post reporters who uncover the details of the Watergate scandal their reporting
01:19:04
helped lead to president Richard Nixon's resignation and that movie for whatever
01:19:09
of the reasons may have been just got me interested in law my father is a uh factory worker was a factory worker
01:19:19
mother was a housewife no no lawyers in our family but that movie really touched
01:19:24
me me so I decided that maybe uh give it a shot he was in his mid-30s back in 1987
01:19:34
and still pretty new the law at that point in his career Randy said he took on several cases against the Chicago
01:19:41
Housing Authority and one of his clients was Vita McCoy she since died but Vita was just 25 when she lost her mother I
01:19:50
just assured her that I would do everything I can in Randy said he agreed to take the case because he was
01:19:58
horrified by the circumstances Ruthie May was living in the bizarre facts of what happened I mean how how many people
01:20:04
do you know that live in a an apartment building or a condominium have the worries and concerns about the adjoining
01:20:11
unit being able to crawl through your medicine cabinet to get into your unit absolutely bizarre Randy knew that in
01:20:19
order to win this case he needed to prove that there was a problem long before Ruthie was murdered you have to
01:20:26
show notice of whatever the event was that caused in this particular case a death and to be able to develop evidence
01:20:36
to show that it was preventable it was foreseeable and preventable and as Randy started looking at the way the housing
01:20:42
projects were designed he realized the medicine cabinets were not the only problem where she was living was a cha
01:20:51
project that was not conducive to safety too often elevators didn't work incinerators didn't work and without
01:21:01
incinerators burning up trash the hallway smelled and residents worried about an Ever growing fire
01:21:09
hazard there was also this problem of access for emergency vehicles see the high-rises had these huge Courtyards
01:21:16
that didn't allow for through traffic which meant police and ambulances couldn't quickly drive up to the
01:21:21
buildings so in other words if someone wants commit a crime in that area the crime is committed and they're gone
01:21:29
before the police can get to the location it was a mess but Randy needed to prove that the Chicago Housing
01:21:37
Authority purposely neglected these buildings and that specifically they did nothing to make Ruthie May's apartment
01:21:44
safer for his investigation he did a couple of things Randy filed a court order to get access to the police report
01:21:51
and the names of the officers who reported to the scene but then he went a step further he brought in an architect
01:21:59
to explain how the design of the buildings themselves posed a risk to Residents I for the life of me couldn't
01:22:06
figure out how somebody in Unit A could call crawl through a medicine cabinet into Unit B he said that the architect
01:22:14
looked at the structure of Abbott Holmes and the way they built the pipe Chase to
01:22:18
give janitors that easy access to the pipes my architect was shocked when uh he saw how this was created literally
01:22:27
shocked and not only shocked at that but also shocked by the fact that the record
01:22:33
showed that the cha was on notice that this type of activity was happening and nothing was done
01:22:43
structurally to remedy uh that hazard [Music] at the time the cha told Steve begera
01:22:56
that they received quote only isolated reports of such break-ins they estimated fewer than 10 Randy thought the evidence
01:23:04
made this case a slam dunk the police report and the architect gave him what he needed and with those facts then it
01:23:12
gave me the opportunity to show that there was negligence on the part of the cha by
01:23:21
permitting this ease of access to continue reny believed the cha had multiple ways to safeguard the projects
01:23:31
and certainly the medicine cabinets and it was easily preventable by way of either altering the design of the
01:23:38
medicine cabinets by hinges and nails and locks or whatever to prevent them from removing it from the wall Andor
01:23:47
number two because of the history of this type of activity occurring to have adequate secur security that was present
01:23:56
as a deterrent neither of which they had Randy said the cha denied having any liability at the end of the day Randy
01:24:05
thought that all of this came down to one thing money once Randy thought he had a strong case the question became
01:24:14
what's it worth we have to take a look at uh how we could maximize the amount of recovery for any individual whether
01:24:24
they black white rich [Music] poor in April 1988 he sued the Chicago Housing Authority demanding $1.5 million
01:24:39
for the death of Ruthie May McCoy she was somebody's mother and she was loved and she was respected for who she was he
01:24:47
didn't actually expect to win $1.5 million in these kinds of lawsuits the amount you get depends on the number of
01:24:53
factors a person's assets their social status if they have dependence and Ruthie May didn't by then verita was an
01:25:01
adult unfortunately Ruthie May was unemployed issues with mental handicaps not married poor and it comes down to uh
01:25:12
unfortunately lawyers have in these types of case have to put a value on a life but Randy said that this case
01:25:18
wasn't about money this was about accountability it didn't become a a question in my mind of I'm going to make
01:25:27
a lot of money on this case because I knew I wasn't his goal was to get the cha to admit it had failed by way of
01:25:36
getting the estate compensated to some degree to show them that there was some remorse and some sorrow so to speak of
01:25:45
what they were experiencing and some restitution for the people that Ruthie May cared for
01:25:51
while she wasn't technically a dependent at 26 years of age Vita did have hardships and Randy tried to argue that
01:25:58
Ruthie May would pitch in however she could with the limited resources she did have she was there to help her daughter
01:26:05
with her grandchild and to me that was more important than anything else but even outside of trying to get
01:26:12
the family compensated Randy just wanted the cha to actually fix the remaining medicine cabinets I just kept looking at
01:26:19
the facts of this case it's this just isn't right I mean if if I don't do something about this
01:26:24
uh and at least try to get them back on track to get their act together this is just going to keep on happening and
01:26:32
other people are going to be murdered according to Steve B's conversations with officers the mode of Entry was well
01:26:38
known in the McCoy matter the vulnerability came by way of the police learning that and me learning that there
01:26:47
was a pattern of this type of activity happening and you know it was only only a matter of time until Ruthie May became
01:26:56
a victim by the way a spokesperson for the cha had told Steve begira that they had no record of Ruthie May complaining
01:27:04
about her medicine cabinet still Randy was going to make his case and the question for him was would the cha pay
01:27:12
for what he and Ruthie May's family saw as their fatal neglect the family's lawsuit against the
01:27:23
C was happening at the same time prosecutors were building their case against Ruthie May's alleged Killers for
01:27:30
Randy the criminal investigation was key to proving his case because the police report showed a
01:27:38
pattern I didn't hire the police department to do their investigation I didn't even speak to them I didn't even
01:27:44
know about uh what their findings were until I got their papers but they were quite helpful remember the cha admitted
01:27:52
they knew of some break-ins the the detectives on Ruthie May's case said it was common knowledge among residents
01:27:58
here's detective Anthony Manina I had talked to several people at the time and they say well there's a designing flaw
01:28:04
in there and that's what the burglar are using to climb in the different apartments that was in conversation with
01:28:12
several either informant or or uh other people that that just wanted to stick their two cents in so to speak the fact
01:28:21
that Randy's case was built on information that invest investigators gathered themselves made it that much
01:28:27
stronger in court Randy filed in April 1988 but the case didn't resolve until 1992 however it never came before a
01:28:37
judge or a jury instead the Chicago Housing Authority decided to settle you have to
01:28:45
understand in a criminal case it's beyond a reasonable doubt that's not the premise in a civil case such as my case
01:28:55
in my case the burden of proof that needs to be established is what is more probably true than not Randy said he no
01:29:07
longer has his files from this case since it's been more than three decades since they
01:29:12
settle we filed a freedom of information request with the cha for the settlement
01:29:17
amount but that hasn't turned anything up yet the cha explained that most records from that time have been
01:29:23
destroyed destroyed however Randy was confident that they did not get the 1.5 million he demanded when he first filed
01:29:31
no no no no absolutely not that I can tell you with certainty but I can't tell you how much we did get he also said the
01:29:39
cha never admitted liability I spoke with Venita McCoy's daughter key but she didn't share how
01:29:46
much money the family got in the settlement either back in the ladies Steve agira
01:29:55
wondered if the lawsuit contributed to the cha finally fixing the remaining medicine cabinets he' still been asking
01:30:02
about them even after his first article was published I was still checking but they all said that there hadn't been any
01:30:10
attempt to fix the medicine cabinets I think they probably made attempts after verita Ruthie May's daughter filed her
01:30:19
lawsuit but it sure took time for them to do something about it the Cha's public affairs director told Steve that
01:30:26
the cha desperately wanted to provide better security but it was hampered by years of deferred maintenance costs she
01:30:33
said they were trying to solve it step by step while Steve wrote about the lawsuit for a story his Focus was on the
01:30:41
impending Trials of John hondras and Edward Turner detectives had believed that the social security check Ruthie
01:30:47
may receive contributed to the robbery however that money wasn't mentioned in the statement given by the prosecution's
01:30:55
key witness Tim Brown and Steve who followed the case for years didn't think the criminal case was as much of a slam
01:31:02
dunk as the lawsuit there was not proof Beyond a reasonable doubt in my [Music] mind in the early 90s Ruthie May's
01:31:15
family continued to mourn their loss as they waited for the suspect's trials meanwhile in England a director
01:31:23
was trying to get his his new horror movie off the ground it was one of those weird pieces of kind of
01:31:30
kismi Bernard Rose decided to set his next film Candyman in the Chicago projects but how did the details of a
01:31:40
real murder barely covered in the Press make their way into his scrip I'll tell you this much it's not because he called
01:31:46
and reached out to the family so what actually happened next time on Candyman the true
01:31:55
story behind the bathroom mirror murder I'm not a fan of horror movies reporter Steve beira didn't know how
01:32:03
details from his stories made their way into the original Candyman film until after it was
01:32:10
released his first article came out in 1987 they came in through the bathroom mirror a murder in the
01:32:18
projects the two suspects John hondras and Edward Turner had been arrested years passed before they finally got
01:32:26
their day in court and while they were awaiting trial a British director was developing a new movie we're going to
01:32:33
step away from the pursuit of Justice in Ruthie May McCoy's case and focus for a
01:32:38
moment on how her story made it to the big screen I had actually gotten either a phone call or a letter back when
01:32:46
people wrote letters from somebody in Hollywood saying we're doing this movie that's based in housing project in
01:32:56
[Music] Chicago back in the early 90s reporter Steve begira got an ask from Hollywood
01:33:04
he doesn't remember the person's name but the Hollywood rep asked Steve to be their guide when they visited Chicago we
01:33:11
understand that you're an expert on the projects and could you show us around when we come to town to film and we'll
01:33:19
give you I don't remember what it was but it was like a couple hundred dollar in a green credit the last thing Steve
01:33:26
wanted to do was support a movie that made light of the Project's living conditions or that trivialized the
01:33:31
murder of Ruthie May he'd been pitched before about turning Ruthie May's story into a movie but at that first meeting
01:33:38
Steve was told that the main character of the film couldn't be Ruthie May or someone in the projects the person
01:33:46
making the pitch thought that the protagonist would have to be white for the film to even have a chance at
01:33:51
getting made Steve wasn't a fan of that idea he'd gotten to know Ruthie May's family and spent years trying to hold
01:33:59
the police and the Chicago Housing Authority accountable for her death he wasn't going to trust just anybody so
01:34:06
when the second Hollywood type reached out I said send me the script and if it's not an exploitive
01:34:14
movie I will probably help you out ultimately Steve never helped anyone put Ruthie May's story on the big screen but
01:34:23
her St story still became part of a coat classic what Steve didn't know was while
01:34:29
he was following the prosecution of the two men arrested for killing ruy May production on the first Candyman film
01:34:36
was already in gear it must have been a couple of years after Candyman came out somebody told me hey you know there's
01:34:43
stuff in here that seems to be from the story you wrote that's when I watched the movie he noticed that a young
01:34:50
Virginia Madson with curly blonde hair was the lead she ended up playing the Curious
01:34:56
graduate student who parachutes into the projects the main character was a white
01:35:02
woman and this story I had done at least was about a black woman how did a movie about the horrors
01:35:14
of a black housing complex end up censoring on a white Outsider and how did elements of Ruthie
01:35:21
May's story end up in the Candyman film this period after her death and before the trial is when writer and director
01:35:31
Bernard Rose started working on Candyman he was the only person who could really answer my questions we
01:35:39
reached out and waited then one June afternoon we finally got the chance to talk it's always a pleasure to talk
01:35:51
about Candyman from a different angle Rose told me how he found out about Ruthie May's story and didn't shy away
01:35:58
from defending himself to critics I can see why people think oh why why are they
01:36:03
taking these details from this but you know I mean look that's what fiction is I'm Dom T Pongo from 48 hours this is
01:36:11
Candyman the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder episode 4 based on a true
01:36:22
story I wasn't trying to make a thesis I was trying to make an entertaining horror film Bernard Rose wrote and
01:36:28
directed the original Candyman that came out in 1992 he's talking to me on a zoom from
01:36:34
West Hollywood wearing glasses and an all black shirt rose has a grain goatee and an easygoing Vibe he told me he
01:36:43
would have never predicted that his Candyman would still have an audience decades later it feels like it has a
01:36:49
much bigger Shadow now than then before I asked him about Ruthie May MC Bo and how parts of her story ended up in his
01:36:55
movie I wanted to know how he got the idea for a Candyman in the first place you'll remember the movie's primary
01:37:03
source material and the work that's officially credited in the film is Clive Barker's short story called The
01:37:10
Forbidden I knew Clive Barker I knew him socially actually when I I'd been doing
01:37:15
another film of pine with Studios according to Rose he met Barker for lunch while they were both working at
01:37:20
the same Production Studio critics liked Rose's first feature film paper house it was a dark fantasy and he
01:37:28
was looking for a new project when he came across Barker story The Forbidden I read that and I thought you know what
01:37:35
this actually really works as a story this is a great an interesting story Rose now in his 60s is originally from
01:37:44
London if you didn't catch that accent he told me that he'd always thought that a horror film needed a supernatural
01:37:51
element that's what appealed to him about forbidden which is about a graduate student named Helen who
01:37:57
investigates urban legends it's set basically in a district of just outside of Liverpool called Kirby which is very
01:38:05
full of low-income housing and what they call in England Council housing as Helen
01:38:11
visits the council housing she conjures up Supernatural forces while working on a research paper I liked the fact that
01:38:18
its heroin was an intellectual and she wasn't kid all of this sounds familiar to anyone who has seen
01:38:28
Candyman but what I found really interesting was the reason Rose took a liking to this story the director told
01:38:36
me that he loved how Helen approached this undertaking from an analytical perspective not an emotional one she was
01:38:43
interested in this phenomenon of urban legends and and what was going on in this housing project but her interest
01:38:51
wasn't to help people it was was to write a study and I liked the kind of arrogance of that he actually liked that
01:38:59
Helen had little empathy for the community she was researching you thought that arrogance made the story
01:39:05
work you know I think it's much more interesting to follow somebody who's flawed and I think there's always an
01:39:11
element of punishment in a horror film that that she gets into trouble and it's like there has to be something that
01:39:17
she's done wrong in a sense and the thing that she's done wrong is she's poked her nose in where it wasn't really
01:39:23
once you know for his movie he kept this aspect of Helen the character Virginia Matson plays is a middle class woman
01:39:30
essentially parachuting into a low-income neighborhood it was exactly the opposite of what they would have
01:39:36
made you do in a kind of movie of the week TV film where she would have been trying to help people she's never trying
01:39:42
to help people she makes no effort to help anybody in the film he said that's a big part of the
01:39:50
conflict she didn't understand and and was actually in a weird way exploiting the interaction she just wants to write
01:39:59
a paper and and get praised for it you know Rose was inspired and thought this could be his next movie his original
01:40:07
plan was to keep the setting the same as Clive Barker's story until the author himself suggested otherwise Barker had
01:40:15
also directed the film Hellraiser and he had learned that American movie Distributors sometimes balked at movie
01:40:21
stars with thick accents the film was set in Liverpool and and Liverpool accents were just like Beyond The Pale
01:40:28
for them so they decided to make the characters American so according to Rose if Hellraiser hadn't had a distribution
01:40:37
problem then Rose might never have set Candyman in Chicago and in a way I wouldn't be here talking about Ruthie
01:40:45
May McCoy today in his first draft Rose hadn't thought of Chicago yet he hadn't even
01:40:53
set Candy Man in any particular city was just a Midwestern City it could have been anyway it could have been St Louis
01:41:00
I don't know it could have been milwauke his approach to the story changed after
01:41:04
he decided to actually visit locations I wanted to go Scout somewhere and do some
01:41:08
research and I ended up going to Chicago mostly cuz I'd been there and I remembered how spectacular the buildings
01:41:16
were I mean it was that shallow you know it's a spectacular looking city right yeah and and it's bi but I agree it's a
01:41:25
city of Architects really it is it and it's and it's a city where architecture is very important his interest in the
01:41:30
architecture stood out to me since how the projects were designed is so crucial to how Ruthie May died and to the movie
01:41:40
itself Rose might not have clocked that yet but when he went to Chicago he started on a journey that would lead him
01:41:46
to hearing about the murder of Ruthie May McCoy Rose wanted to visit the projects the people people from the
01:41:53
Illinois film office were nervous about taking me there see they weren't just nervous they were downright
01:42:01
terrified and their fear would end up becoming a big part of the original Candyman
01:42:08
[Music] movie for people who have seen Candyman it's odd to think Bernard Rose's first
01:42:18
script didn't mention race at all the conflict was just about class originally which might make sense for someone
01:42:26
writing from a British perspective where race and class might not be as inextricably linked but in America you
01:42:33
can't talk about class inequities without talking about race too and definitely not in the highly segregated
01:42:39
City of Chicago in the final version of rose's script Helen has a black friend who is also middle class that goes with
01:42:48
her to visit the projects she's feels as alienated from the people in the projects as as Helen does except that
01:42:54
she's more embarrassed at Helen's Behavior because she understands that it's embarrassing to behave this way
01:43:01
race takes center stage and Rose his movie whether he intended it that way or not Janet massin of the New York Times
01:43:08
put it this way in her review she writes the horror unfolds inside a housing project and plays out provocatively
01:43:17
against the backdrop of racial Injustice in the movie The Killer is a Reincarnation of a well-to-do black man
01:43:24
who was tortured and lynched by a mob in the 1800s Daniel robotized crime was dating
01:43:31
a white man's daughter the mob hunts him down beats him chops off his hand and smears his battered body with honey
01:43:42
before bees sting him to death the lynching is [Music] graphic but all of those plot details
01:43:52
were only added after Bernard Rose went to Chicago I contacted the people who were at the Illinois film office and
01:44:01
certainly in that era if you said you wanted to come in and potentially shoot a film in a city they would show you
01:44:07
around and they would always ask you for a list of locations as to what your film needed
01:44:14
and you know I top of the list was housing projects the first place they took me was Cabrini Green he said they
01:44:22
also took him to another project but not Grace Abbott where Ruthie may had lived
01:44:26
I know I don't think I ever went there Rose was surprised by how nervous the people from the Illinois film office
01:44:32
seemed as they took him to visit Cabrini Green which was the closest project to downtown no project is more notorious
01:44:39
than Cabrini Green the 23 high-rise buildings of Cabrini with their 15,000 residents are described as a chamber of
01:44:47
Horrors the occupants are terrorized Day and Night by vandals and teenage gangs 7,000 families are on a waiting list for
01:44:55
public housing in Chicago but 400 units at Cabrini Green have been vacated by families trying to escape the
01:45:03
lawlessness those CBS news reports were from 1970 by then between media attention and
01:45:10
its depiction in TV shows Cabrini began to have quite the reputation in Cabrini Green at the time there was a police
01:45:17
station in the middle of the project and I think we had to go there and and we were escorted around the
01:45:24
place by an officer you know and they didn't think it was safe to go there otherwise that was their attitude were
01:45:31
you taken back by that yeah extremely to be honest with you I was shocked and of
01:45:36
course when somebody has that kind of drama around going so into what is basically
01:45:42
just an apartment block I mean it's not really any more complicated than that it's a bunch of apartment blocks he said
01:45:49
the upper floors were empty and he had to admit the buildings were creepy there was an atmosphere there of fear but the
01:45:57
fear was not from the people who lived there the fear was the people from the Illinois film commission and the cops
01:46:04
and and that that really kind of shocked me I thought wow there's something here
01:46:11
because one of the one of the first key tenants of making a successful horror film is having a scary setting I thought
01:46:19
these people are scared of going here did they tell you anything about what about why they were so scared of this
01:46:25
community they basically said there were groups of gangs that held the neighborhood hostage during his visit
01:46:32
Rose was able to talk with cops Who police the buildings on a day-to-day basis I learned that actually the danger
01:46:37
was exaggerated and that that in itself was heart of the racism that surrounded the place and what is the primary
01:46:46
component of racism is fear right Outsiders were afraid of the people who lived there afraid of what could
01:46:53
happened there their Prejudice stoked Their Fear what the cop said to me is if you're a a white person walking around
01:47:00
here they're not actually going to bother you at all because they're going to assume you're a social worker or a
01:47:05
cop Rose worked these details from his own experience into the script in Candyman Helen gets mistaken for a cop
01:47:14
when she's seen in the projects when I rewrote it I rewrote it set as about kabini green and I just used everything
01:47:22
I'd seen and heard that decision to replicate these fears on screen is a choice that has sparked
01:47:28
debate debate from Scholars like Robin means Coleman what 30 or more years that we've been having a
01:47:36
conversation about race in class in this movie colan is a professor at the University of Virginia and a media study
01:47:45
scholar she's written two books on black people in horror films and turned one into a documentary both books horror
01:47:52
Noir and the black guy dies first mention Candyman there are two films that I watch a lot it's the 92 Candyman
01:48:03
and the thing she's been debating Candyman for the last 30 years and she understands
01:48:09
that not everyone gets the controversies around this movie we've got to address the Skeptics who are like it was just a
01:48:16
movie and he saw a headline and it was you know a narrative vehicle to get her into cabrina green how else are we going
01:48:23
to do that but Ruthie May McCoy is a real life person her family are alive and out there and what we have are
01:48:34
entertainers who snatch someone's story real life horrific murder for entertainment purposes back when she was
01:48:44
writing the first edition of her book horor Noir Coleman wanted to pick a real life story turned into film she wasn't
01:48:52
sure whether to write about Ruthie May or Jeffrey dmer and if you read the first edition of the book I go with
01:48:58
Jeffrey dmer Ruthie May felt I think at that time I was writing it it felt too close to home it
01:49:08
felt like Ruthie May m may as they called her that could have easily been me my mother my grandmother Coleman and
01:49:17
I talked about how Candyman doesn't actually grapple with the horror of people's Liv lives and the projects with
01:49:24
Nuance I mean even without knowing the director's intentions a lot of black folks watching this movie could tell
01:49:30
that the conversations about race were a bit of an afterthought back in 1992 when the film
01:49:38
was released colan said critics reviews were mixed there were two responses to Candyman and one I remember was from
01:49:47
Carl Franklin Carl Franklin is a black filmmaker famous for the Denzel Washington movie Devil in a blue dress
01:49:54
and Carl Franklin said seriously we're doing the black Boogeyman brutal Buck Trope in this movie again where the
01:50:04
obsession is over this white woman who were sort of putting on a pedal stool in this critique Candyman is of course the
01:50:12
black Boogeyman it's a Trope that seizes on fear by perpetuating a portrayal of black men as violent and menacing often
01:50:20
chasing white women like the candy man chases Helen the Trope goes all the way back to Hollywood's first Blockbuster
01:50:28
film The Birth of a Nation which depicts the KKK and is blamed for inspiring a spike in real life lynchings and race
01:50:38
riots do we need yet another movie that glorifies that kind of stereotype that kind of Trope Roger
01:50:45
Ebert who was white had a different opinion based in Chicago Ebert was a well-respected movie critic Roger eert
01:50:56
on the other hand said you know like if I if you have to do horror this is the kind of horror you want to see right
01:51:04
eert is saying I do like the sort of social issues social Consciousness horror something that leaves me thinking
01:51:13
and reflecting what's interesting is that Bernard Rose told me he didn't go into
01:51:19
this film wanting to send any kind of mess M but there were signs that he knew that what he was making touched a nerve
01:51:29
I was in post production on cyman at the time it was April 1992 parts of Los Angeles were on fire in Los Angeles the
01:51:37
deadly aftermath of the Rodney King verdict violence arson and anguished cries a disgrace it don't make no riots
01:51:46
broke out across the city after white police officers were acquitted of excessive force the public outrage stem
01:51:53
from the fact that these officers were caught on videotape brutally beating this black motorist his name was Rodney
01:51:59
King we were supposed to have a test screening somewhere that week and the riot started happening and people got
01:52:06
very frightened and I was mixing in a stage in Hollywood and the mixer was grinding through the scene with the dog
01:52:14
and the blood and all this Rose is describing a gruesome scene where a Candyman had cut off a dog's head in a
01:52:21
project apartment and I said oh I'm not happy with that you need to go back and change something and he went he said no
01:52:26
I'm not going back I'm not changing it because I'm not looking at this film anymore Rose was warned that the film
01:52:33
might be quote a bit too much and that test screening never happened and then the film got released without it which
01:52:41
is probably a good thing cuz who knows what they might have made me take out what he did include he told me largely
01:52:48
came from his visits to Cabrini Green during his first visit with the Illinois film office he connected with the woman
01:52:59
who lived there we bumped into a lady who was had her kid in a stroller whose name was Henrietta Thomas who was like
01:53:08
asking us what we were doing basically he explained how he was working on a movie I told her it was about this sort
01:53:14
of mythical kind of monster that haunted the place kind of thing and she was basically saying oh yeah well you know
01:53:23
that that's true by the way and what was she talking about uh she said oh there are like ghosts and demons that haunt
01:53:29
this place the director realized Candyman could hunt a place like this too this idea went back to something
01:53:37
from clyve barers they're forbidden so really the whole thesis that Clive had that people who live in situations which
01:53:45
make them uncomfortable it's not uncommon for them to create something that's worse and more uncontrollable cuz
01:53:52
in a weird way it makes him feel safer during his visits to the projects with the Illinois film office Rose asked the
01:53:59
tenant he'd met Henrietta if he could come back to Cabrini Green on his own I thought okay I'm going to just call her
01:54:07
after we've left and just go there on my own and see what really happens the two
01:54:11
had dinner and he got to see Cabrini Green from a tennis perspective Rose decided to hire Henrietta to be a
01:54:17
consultant on the film and based a character on her too the character's name is anarie and in the movie A major
01:54:25
plot point is when Candyman steals an Marie's child as for the real person she had a
01:54:32
young kid and it was just a place that she lived that honestly she liked living because it was near downtown Chicago
01:54:39
Rose said that she was actually the first person to bring up the details of Ruthie May's murder it was she who T me
01:54:45
the story about the medison cabinets and that somebody had been killed in another
01:54:53
home that had a similar design with the floor with the medicine cabinets and you
01:54:57
could get in and out the PS and if someone had broken in and killed somebody she told me that story and said
01:55:03
that that was something that that Disturbed her it was the kind of violation that was visceral and
01:55:11
memorable I thought all this detail is so so rich and it just it grounds the film and you know if you want to make
01:55:20
something scary it has to be [Music] recognizable but when the art is that recognizable when the art represents
01:55:31
real trauma it has to be handled with care we might be having a different conversation even if at the end of the
01:55:39
film it said in memory of Ruthie May right or read more about and we've got models for this she pointed to Steve
01:55:52
buira as one of those models when he's writing his article and he writes subsequent articles he doesn't point
01:56:00
back to his own journalism he says learn more about housing projects learn more about how this
01:56:07
happened meanwhile the director wanted to unnerve people and knew that he was parachuting into the projects just like
01:56:14
his movie's protagonist Helen so I was essentially doing what Helen does in the film I was like walking around Gathering
01:56:22
things for my own benefit but where did he gather so many details about Ruthie May's murder he said Henrietta told him
01:56:30
that someone came in through a medicine cabinet and killed a woman but that's not how he learned Ruthie May's name
01:56:38
what does he have to say to folks who believe that his film exploited Ruthie May's killing it's not the same
01:56:45
murderers as that Mur that was an entirely unrelated event it's just the really the only thing that's taken is
01:56:51
the detail of of the the bathroom [Music] cabinets it was one of those weird pieces of kind of kismet I think I was
01:57:10
in the hotel and I literally opened the Chicago Reader and there was an article about IT director Bernard Rose had come
01:57:19
to Chicago to visit kabini green and the tenant had told him about this murder where a killer or Killers came in
01:57:26
through a medicine cabinet he happened to be visiting the city just when Steve beira's second
01:57:32
article about Ruthie May McCoy's life and murder was published July 1990 if you missed that issue of the reader
01:57:41
there was you unless you had gone to a library and looked it up on a microfilm you would never find it so in his movie
01:57:49
that's what Helen the blonde grad student does she goes to the library and looks it up
01:57:56
on a microphone do you remember the title of the article that you read that that caught your attention I mean it's
01:58:02
very similar to the the depiction in the movie something like what killed whatever the lady's real name was life
01:58:08
in the projects with a question mark I think that was it that lady was of course Ruthie May McCoy I reached out to
01:58:16
her granddaughter key but she declined to talk to us for this podcast based partly on her past experience es with
01:58:23
media key had seen her family story misrepresented in the news before she said while a film was being made that
01:58:30
mentioned Ruthie May's killing her mom Vita was dealing with the real life aftermath of Ruthie May's death and I
01:58:37
mean obviously the actual murder itself has nothing to do with Candy Man somebody came in and shot her right yes
01:58:42
yes but but there is the character of Ruthie Jean that is the name in the film which is obviously very similar to
01:58:49
Ruthie May was that a conscious ision I mean it probably was yeah it's always very complicated when something's a true
01:58:57
story I look at these parallels with Ruthie May story and you know you think about the family or wuy May's daughter
01:59:06
and they looking at the film and feeling like these elements are reminiscent of what happened to Ruthie May uh but they
01:59:15
felt like they weren't a part of the process what would you say to that critique I mean I think that's valid
01:59:22
Rose said that he never considered making one of Ruthie May's relatives a consultant on the film and points out
01:59:29
that his movie is about candy man not Ruthie May it's not about that person not about the real person at all you
01:59:35
know and it is ultimately a fictitious fantasy they uses some authentic details in part but it's not about any
01:59:47
real person at all I'm going to push back a little bit and forgive me Bernard but when you go back and look we went
01:59:53
and checked out and Marie in the Forbidden her last name isn't McCoy so McCoy comes only in the Candyman film
02:00:01
and that and that seems part of the lineage of Ruthie May who again the movie is Ruthie May Ruthie Jean and then
02:00:07
you got amarie the resident who's amarie McCoy so then you see these names kind of play into it and and I know you know
02:00:14
that's I assume you to describe it as a dotted line not a straight line connection between the real murder but
02:00:19
if I'm the family I'm looking and I'm seeing these connections and I feel as though I should at least be a part of
02:00:27
the process I mean I can see how you could feel like that if it was a film about what happened to her you know the
02:00:35
real person but this clearly is not to be honest he's right in some respect I mean this movie isn't solely
02:00:44
about Ruthie May she's a plot point to get to the story of Candyman but I'm not sure that he understands why turning her
02:00:52
into a plot Point can be considered by some as dehumanizing instead he tries to argue
02:00:59
that that's how movies like his get made you take things from the world around you and put them into new forms that's
02:01:08
really what fiction is it's not any clever than that Rose didn't have any memory of ever reaching out to Steve
02:01:15
PIRA either he said it's possible The Producers contacted him but he was never made aware I have no direct memory or
02:01:23
knowledge of that because as I said we I had already hired Henryetta as the consultant so it's entirely possible
02:01:30
that someone suggested him Rose didn't set out to make a racially charged movie that included Inspirations from real
02:01:36
people and events it just ended up that way the film has been criticized at different times over the years for
02:01:44
saying you know it's this it's that it's got the wrong perspective blah blah blah
02:01:49
he's talking about the criticisms Coleman mentioned about the movie feeds into anti-black stereotypes I think that
02:01:55
yes it is uncomfortable in places and I think if it wasn't it wouldn't have lasted if
02:02:01
something ceases to create debate it [Music] dies I asked how he decided the line
02:02:09
between inspiration and exploitation his answer again reminded me a little bit of how he described the
02:02:17
character Helen's approach well I think that if you take anything whatever you do with it there's an element of
02:02:25
exploitation and you have to just accept that's what you're doing the only way to
02:02:30
really be non- exploitative is not to do anything because we're all to some degree you know driving past car
02:02:37
accidents and staring at them his argument is that this is the messy part of making art Rose thinks anyone who
02:02:45
claims to feel guilty for taking their inspiration from The Real World is probably lying do they feel guilty about
02:02:52
it and they might pretend they do I don't think they do it I think there is a little difference when you're
02:03:00
dealing with actual victims of actual crimes that that's really what you're talking about but even then I don't know
02:03:09
they'd never have sold a newspaper if it wasn't for Crime the True Crime genre gets a lot of
02:03:18
criticism for exploiting other people's tragedies for entertainment some of the same reasons we've been
02:03:24
challenging Rose and in True Crime like this podcast we are sharing the details of Ruthie May's life in fact we're
02:03:30
sharing more than Bernard Rose ever did but the key difference to me is that our
02:03:36
ultimate goal is to inform and to help people understand how tragedies like these can happen to put them in their
02:03:44
proper context so I try to ask myself whenever I'm reporting how would this victim's family feel how would I feel in
02:03:51
fact a lot of times I'm reporting on my own Community I may even be connected to
02:03:56
the victims in some way so I do my best to be accurate and respectful that said I have to admit
02:04:02
that a part of me feels like Candyman does a disservice by not properly acknowledging these real
02:04:11
tragedies Coleman wasn't surprised by what the director told me he's a filmmaker he's like look I did I made an
02:04:18
entertaining movie he's you know this is what he does but I mentioned it's important to go
02:04:25
back to Steve Steve Bugera she brought back up the story about Steve meeting with an actor who told him the
02:04:32
protagonist would have to be white for the film to get made and they do exactly what Steve cautions them against
02:04:41
doing at times Steve felt strange in general about being a white man writing about people of color I totally
02:04:49
understand the feeling that it's wrong that people who are poor and in this case black at that time at least the
02:04:57
stories were told by white people but he also knew these stories were being overlooked by mainstream Outlets I
02:05:05
always felt like it was better that I was told by someone and that I would do my best to
02:05:11
Faithfully represent what their experience was like for Rose keeping Ruthie May's story alive is now part of
02:05:19
the film's Legacy so there is a memorial realizing effect and that's got to be positive but but you know look I can't
02:05:26
imagine that how traumatic it is for family members to have to deal with someone in their family that's murdered
02:05:32
it's it's it's almost like what the Candyman says what's worse is is it worse to be forgotten or to be
02:05:38
remembered well the candy man he he kills so not to be forgotten that's his whole
02:05:47
motivation he sheds innocent blood to keep people talking about him if people remember what
02:05:54
happened that can never be bad in my opinion I think when things have forgotten or Deni that seems the
02:06:01
unhealthy thing to me keeping Ruthie May's memory alive also means that the failed housing policies of Chicago's
02:06:09
past can't be swept under the rug the the heart of any problem was that the Housing Authority had allowed these
02:06:16
buildings to rot to Rose's point there is a chance I wouldn't be talking about Ruthie May's
02:06:26
murder if not for this film and while Candyman turned me on to the case her murder and the trials of the two men
02:06:33
arrested for her killing are what will cover next Edward Turner and John hondras pleaded not guilty to the
02:06:41
charges of murder and robbery their names had come up repeatedly as police talked to the residents of the project
02:06:48
building where Ruthie May was killed I can understand that from it detective's point of view that you would hone in on
02:06:54
the two people who are mentioned regularly but of course that doesn't mean that they did it Steve mcira
02:07:02
attended the trial the State's Attorneys had a little bit more evidence against Turner so they made it technically a
02:07:11
death penalty Case prosecution's Case relied heavily on a six-page statement from a witness named Tim Brown their
02:07:20
plan was to have him take the stand and repeat the chain of events the state's attorney wrote down when they
02:07:27
interviewed him but suddenly Tim Brown wasn't so sure what he saw that night he got on the stand and flipped on the
02:07:37
State's Attorneys that's next time on Candyman the true story behind the bathroom mirror
02:07:44
murder Ruthie May McCoy died in the spring of 1987 a month later just summer was
02:07:52
heating up hondras and Turner were indicted they were charged with murder armed robbery home invasion residential
02:08:00
burglary and armed violence it took three years for Edward Turner and John hondras to go on trial
02:08:08
after their arrest for the murder of Ruthie May McCoy they didn't have physical evidence to help them no useful
02:08:14
fingerprints were found at the scene Ruthie May's medicine cabinet was missing plus investigators never
02:08:20
recovered the gun and got a late start securing the crime scene another problem with the police not going in to the
02:08:28
apartment originally is that by the time they got back there the place had been wiped
02:08:33
clean the case largely hinged on the prosecutions star witness Tim brown brown told police that he saw hress and
02:08:42
Turner go into Ruthie May's apartment the two suspects spent all three years waiting behind bars Steve
02:08:51
begira found out that hress lost three relatives while he was waiting for his trial in this case first his
02:08:58
grandfather then his mother died of cancer and just two days after her funeral a police officer shot and killed
02:09:06
hr's 16-year-old brother authorities told hr's family that he was too dangerous to be released for the
02:09:13
funerals so he never got to say goodbye John hress was in his mid-20s and he'd been in prison before he he was
02:09:21
convicted of auto theft and robbery detectives were told he had only been a free man for less than a week when
02:09:28
Ruthie May was shot Edward Turner was just 18 when Ruthie May was killed in the past Turner
02:09:35
a high school senior had been charged with unlawful use of a weapon his mother Altha Turner said that
02:09:43
he liked to listen to the radio with friends and never gave in when other young men pressured him to join a
02:09:49
gang she said Turner never would have hurt Ruthie may they knew her and used to live in the same
02:09:57
highrise the two suspects chose to have their Fates decided differently Turner went to the jury of his peers while
02:10:05
hondras went with the bench trial so a judge would decide whether he was guilty or innocent when they finally went to
02:10:11
trial reporter Steve begira was still on the case even though Turner had opted for a jury and hondes was going to have
02:10:20
his fate determined by by the judge Michael Getty but they're going on at the same time so you have a lot going on
02:10:27
they both had judge Michael Getty and each suspect had pleaded not guilty the court decided to have both trials at the
02:10:36
same time in the same room now if there was a moment that was specific to only H's case they would escort Turner's jury
02:10:44
out of the courtroom temporarily there were some relatives and Friends of the defendants the only person there on
02:10:56
behalf of ruie May was her brother Willie will McCoy Steph Willie often talked while Court was in recess I
02:11:04
really enjoyed talking with Willie McCoy he was a born again Christian who said he had had his problems before he was
02:11:12
born again he was messing with drugs at the time of the trials Willie was 57 even though he was Ruthie May's older
02:11:21
brother he said sometimes she would help him with his school work back in the day
02:11:26
he said his sister was generous Willie told Steve that she would have given you the Sho strings off her shoes if you
02:11:33
needed them he clearly loved Ruthie May and that came across and he was like a lot of people who do come in support of
02:11:43
the victim he was not all about vengeance like we got to get these people convicted
02:11:51
Steve said Willie had mellowed out with age he witnessed an example of this in the courtroom a friend of Edward
02:11:57
Turner's family asked Willie Point Blank if he thought Turner had really killed Ruthie May McCoy Shrugged and the friend
02:12:05
said I'll tell you truthfully I don't believe he did but if he did do this I hope he burns because if someone did
02:12:12
this to my mother they wouldn't be here in court I'll tell you that Steve is reading from his own reporting and
02:12:18
Willie McCoy then smiled and he said I know what you mean I used to feel that way too but I've grown
02:12:25
some I understand the friend said and then McCoy told me that he wasn't always as forgiving as he is
02:12:34
today had his sister been murdered like this when he was younger he told me I would have gone over and tore the whole
02:12:40
West Side Up I'd have found the people who did it and blew their brains out and kept
02:12:46
walking Willie came to almost every day of the trials I liked what he had to say
02:12:52
because he was ambivalent uh because he knew how the world worked Steve and willly understood
02:13:00
there was no guarantee these suspects would be convicted he was not naive and yet he also had this compassion this
02:13:09
understanding of what life is like how people can get messed up in things that they don't want to get messed up in no
02:13:16
one not Steve not the loved ones of the suspects and certainly not the prosecution could have predicted what
02:13:24
would happen next the prosecution was hanging this case on the statement that Tim Brown had given them the
02:13:31
prosecution's star witness changed his story I'm Dom Pungo from 48 hours this is Candyman the true story behind the
02:13:43
bathroom mirror [Music] murder episode 5 the wavering witness no other reporter has followed
02:13:58
what happened to Ruthie May McCoy more closely than Steve buira I feel like I got to know Ruthie May somewhat in spite
02:14:05
of her death stepen I spent hours on a zoom one Wednesday afternoon she came here from Arkansas when she was young
02:14:14
Steve was thin with white hair and was wearing a button-up shirt just off screen he had several stacks of his old
02:14:20
notes occasionally he'd pause the interview grab his glasses and read through his
02:14:26
reporting to make sure he was getting the story right in his decad spent reporting in Chicago he' covered plenty
02:14:33
of Trials the Cook County criminal courthouse now known as the Leighton courthouse is commonly known as 26 in
02:14:41
California that's where it is on the southwest side of the city and it's the biggest and busiest felony courthouse in
02:14:49
the country the courthouse stood seven stories adorned with cement colored neoclassical
02:14:56
stone columns and the place had a chill to it fluorescent lighting Gruff security guards a tense screening
02:15:05
process there was a sense of for booting in there just thinking about the decisions happening behind each set of
02:15:12
doors it's not a pleasant place to be it's a courthouse where white people if they experience it at all it's because
02:15:19
they got jury duty whereas a lot of poor black people know the place pretty intimately they know where their Coke
02:15:26
machines are thankfully I can count on one hand the number of times I've been to 26 in California and none were
02:15:32
pleasant the most recent was in 2018 when I was reporting on the trial of a white police officer found guilty of
02:15:39
fatally shooting a black teenager 16 times a lot of people also just want to stay away from 26 in California if they
02:15:46
can bad things happen down there that's how people look at it so as odd as it might sound I'm not surprised only a
02:15:54
small group watched the Turner in HRA trials very few people were respecta watching her or there in support of the
02:16:03
defendants were there for the victim Edward Turner's mother Altha was there and Ruthie May's Brother Willie
02:16:11
too no other reporters covered the trial according to Steve there wasn't broad interest in
02:16:20
this case in public were you struck at all that it was just Willie who attended on the part of Ruthie May yes I
02:16:30
absolutely was Ruthie May's daughter Bernita for whatever reason did not attend I have seen situations where
02:16:38
sometimes just to relive in the court case the the pain of it all can be a lot for people but you know yeah I think a
02:16:44
lot of people can think what good is GNA do uh for me to see what happens in the
02:16:51
trial might not be what I'd like to have happen then I'll just get hurt worse on March 27th 1990 the two
02:17:01
defendants Turner and hondras arrived in court wearing dark suits Turner 21 by then was clean shaven with a short
02:17:10
haircut Steve wrote that he sat stiff and expressionless at the defense table by then hondras was 25 he wore
02:17:19
wire rimmed glass and had his hair pulled back into a ponytail because HR had three prior felonies he faced up to
02:17:26
80 years if convicted Turner faced an even more serious punishment the State's Attorneys had a little bit more evidence
02:17:35
against Turner so they made it technically a death penalty case multiple people told detectives that
02:17:43
Turner had admitted he shot a woman the night Ruthie May was killed now he hadn't said outright it
02:17:50
was Ruthie may but his alleged confession was the reason Turner faced the death penalty Turner's lawyers
02:17:57
argued that he didn't shoot anyone and that he was just a teenager lying to impress
02:18:05
[Music] someone Willie mcoy was called To The Stand he identified his sister's TV and
02:18:19
rocking chair after him the Chicago Housing Authority project manager who finally opened Ruthie May's door
02:18:28
testified she didn't know why the key the police were given for Ruthie May's apartment hadn't worked the prosecution
02:18:34
also brought Sonia Moore up to the stand she had lived in Abbott homes and at the
02:18:39
time of the trial she told Steve she was Turner's girlfriend she testified that Turner came to her place the night
02:18:45
Ruthie May was murdered at around 10:30 that evening he sat in her Liv room with
02:18:51
her her sister and her sister's boyfriend they were just hanging out when Turner started confessing that he
02:18:57
shot a lady who had a daughter that's what Morris said on the stand this alleged confession was notable because
02:19:05
it happened before anyone had opened the door to Ruthie May's apartment or found
02:19:10
her bullet riddled body that night Moore said she pressed Turner she testified that she asked
02:19:18
Turner where this woman lived and did she have any kids he told her that she had a daughter
02:19:25
but then as fast as he made the claim Turner backtracked and said that he wasn't
02:19:31
serious in court Turner's attorney argued that he'd only made that claim to try to impress more and he says that he
02:19:41
saw that it wouldn't impress her then he said no I didn't really shoot anybody and his testimony was that he really
02:19:48
didn't shoot anybody he was just bragging but Turner hadn't just boasted Moore also said that hondras and Turner
02:19:57
came back to her apartment and asked her to hide a black handgun she refused now if Turner was only joking
02:20:08
about shooting a woman why did he need help hiding a gun on top of that other Witnesses claimed they'd seen both of
02:20:17
the alleged accomplices after the shooting the pair of them detectives talked to a couple of women who lived on
02:20:26
the sixth floor of the same building who said that hress and Turner came to them
02:20:34
with the TV and the rocking chair one of those women was Lynette Fitch Tim Brown's girlfriend Fitch said that hres
02:20:44
wanted them to stash the stolen items at her place she refused and she suggested
02:20:50
that they try another woman who lived on the first floor of another Avid HR and they ultimately took the TV and
02:20:58
rocking chair to This Woman's apartment hr's attorney was a man named Alan senx he admitted that his client
02:21:10
did move the rocking chair to another apartment but argued that hress was only offering Turner a helping hand in other
02:21:17
words he was trying to say hondras the excon might look like he was in charge but actually the high schooler was
02:21:25
according to sencx and in an effort to take suspicion off his client sinx argued the obvious saying that any of
02:21:32
the people who hung out in the vacant apartment 1108 could have murdered Ruthie May McCoy including in his words
02:21:41
quote some of those who will testify what he's basically suggesting here is that Tim Brown the state's star
02:21:49
Witness could be pointing the finger at hress and Turner to hide the identity of
02:21:55
the real killer or Killers the police did not get a confession from anyone and so the prosecution was stuck with the
02:22:05
statement of Tim Brown the prosecution needed Tim Brown to take the stand and reiterate everything he said in his
02:22:13
signed statement and he did not that's when the case against Turner and hondras fell apart it was Tim
02:22:22
Brown's word against the accused and brown would no longer say they did it in fact he would make a damning allegation
02:22:31
against the [Music] police prosecutors often say we don't choose our Witnesses you know we have to
02:22:40
go with what we got that's Steve again talking about Tim Brown he isn't the kind of guy we choose as a witness but
02:22:46
that doesn't mean he wasn't telling the truth [Music] Brown was 24 years old and a key witness
02:22:54
for the prosecution 3 years before he would testify in court Brown had signed a six-page statement the state's
02:23:01
attorney noted that it was taken in the dead of night at 400 a.m. on April 26 1987 Just 4 days after Ruthie May called
02:23:11
911 there were challenges to Brown's credibility as a witness Tim Brown had a couple of felony convictions which were
02:23:21
relatively minor as I recall I think they were possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver but
02:23:29
that's the kind of thing that's defense lawyers can make a lot of saying oh he's
02:23:34
a drug pedler you can't trust him when prosecutors called him to the stand they wanted him to share how Turner and
02:23:41
hondras were in Ruthie May's apartment when he heard four shots and how the pair had allegedly come back to the
02:23:48
crime scene to collect the shell cases the statement that police and the State's Attorneys had from Tim Brown was
02:23:56
what's called a handwritten statement so at trial Tim Brown said I didn't really
02:24:01
say that the police abused me uh they grabbed me between the legs Brown didn't only backtrack he
02:24:08
denied giving the police the statement at all and accused them of coercing him into signing
02:24:14
it it's clear that the case had fallen apart for the state when Tim Brown did that he claimed police threatened him
02:24:25
and they said they might charge me as an accomplice former detective Anthony Manina one of the investigators Brown
02:24:32
was accusing blew off the idea that brown was coerced he said it was common for a witness to backtrack and accuse
02:24:39
the police of misconduct that was a standard procedure you got jail house lawyers that they're constantly trying
02:24:47
to get kid people off of their cases the assistant States Attorney who took Brown's statement was Linda wersan she
02:24:55
testified at the time that no officers were in the room when she wrote down Brown's statement and that brown had
02:25:01
said he was treated well by officers when we talked to her 30 years later she told us she didn't remember this case
02:25:09
but she did say that it was common practice for her to ask officers and detectives to leave the room when she
02:25:15
took a witness's testimony Brown's news story shifted the blame away from Turner the
02:25:23
teenager he now said that Turner didn't even go through the bathroom mirror it was hondras but the other guy was a guy
02:25:32
named Bo remember Bo was another one of the friends at the apartment next door to Ruthie Mays he was never arrested for
02:25:39
this crime and brown said that when he heard the gunshots Turner was still in 1108 sitting on the couch in the living
02:25:46
room Tim Brown and his friend Cory Flor first told police they weren't even in apartment 1108 the one next to Ruthie
02:25:55
Mays the night of the murder one of them said that they stayed at somebody's house and the other one said they stayed
02:26:02
in a motel afterwards and so detectives used the inconsistency when they reined Brown
02:26:10
eventually Brown and floro admitted that they were actually in that apartment and
02:26:16
that's when they got the statement that yeah I was there and yeah Hond Turner did it or once who went into the
02:26:22
apartment former detective Manina described having to repeatedly rein witnesses as part of the job he said it
02:26:30
was rare for someone to tell the truth the first time around we told him what he said the first time and he' make a
02:26:36
different lie so by the time he got through a three or four he didn't remember what he said you eventually
02:26:41
wound up with the truth so Brown gave at least three different stories his first
02:26:48
story to Detectives His official statement and now this new one that he was giving in court but let's talk about
02:26:57
that handwritten statement for a second Steve pointed out that when you hear the
02:27:00
phrase handwritten statement the Assumption might be that brown handw wrote the statement but actually the person being
02:27:11
questioned in Chicago at least is just writing his signature it's a state's attorney who's with felony review
02:27:20
who is called to the station when detectives feel they have somebody solid ready to give a
02:27:26
statement so Tim Brown only signed the statement once the prosecution finished their line of questioning the defense
02:27:34
got their [Music] turn there wasn't a lot that the defense lawyers really had to do because it was
02:27:43
clear they had enough to impeach Brown I mean he was saying one thing at one point and they're at another Point while
02:27:52
we were talking through the case on Zoom Steve turned to one of his stacks of papers and grabbed a write out of when
02:27:57
John hr's attorney Allan syx cross-examined Tim Brown originally Brown claimed a different friend named
02:28:04
Bo was involved in removing the medicine Captain attorney Alan sinx said did you
02:28:10
tell any of the police officers that Bo was one of the ones who did this and Tim
02:28:15
Brown says yes sinok says you told him that Bo was the person who came through that hole
02:28:22
and may have committed this crime yes how many times did you tell them that Tim Brown says I don't know it
02:28:30
might have been just once they asked so many questions day after day that I don't
02:28:35
remember Brown took his denial a step further and claimed he didn't even know Ruthie May McCoy in his statement he
02:28:42
said he had told hress that an old lady named Miss May lived in 1109 but on the stand he said that besides his
02:28:49
girlfriend friend he didn't know the names of any of the women Steve read from his reporting how Brown
02:28:56
contradicted even the most fundamental claims he made in his statement he said he had no idea you
02:29:03
could break into apartments in the building via the medicine cabinets until the KN McCoy was killed which
02:29:09
contradicted what he had in his statement he said that the music they were listening to that night wasn't loud
02:29:15
at all because quote we got neighbors up there we give our neighbors our respect
02:29:20
it's not fair to him to say that he flipped for sure because we don't know exactly what he told police and State's
02:29:26
Attorney but none of Steve's reporting suggested the police actually abused Brown the detectives who were involved
02:29:34
in this case investigating this case and the State's Attorneys who took the statement did not have a reputation for
02:29:42
coing confessions I think that's an important factor in this case even though it was a handwritten statement it
02:29:49
was a little more trustworthy than some other H statement the so you say the these detectives in this state's
02:29:54
attorney don't have a history of of doing that kind of thing right to my knowledge that's true in the majority of
02:29:59
murder cases I don't think detectives are physically abusing suspects I think there's a lot of trickery that goes
02:30:08
around goes on and there's a lot of leaning on people so you know Tim Brown said they grabbed him between the legs
02:30:16
and you know could have happened but I doubt it again the assistant State's attorney
02:30:24
said no officers were in the room when she took the statement and while coercion may not have happened in this
02:30:30
case the Chicago PD during this time did have a notorious reputation for abuse and even torture of black men and women
02:30:39
the United Nations has repeatedly condemned the US and Chicago for not doing more to fix the problem he said
02:30:45
that they were threatening that he might be an accomplice they might charging as
02:30:50
an accomplice that's more believable to me leaning on a suspect that way now we don't know why Tim Brown might have
02:30:58
changed his story but the damage was done the prosecution was stuck with the statement of Tim Brown so when he backed
02:31:08
off of that statement the case was gone the defense had questioned Tim Brown and
02:31:13
made their point but at least Turner's attorneys thought hearing directly from the accused could help their case so
02:31:22
they called Turner himself to the stand he saw that the door to her apartment was open and so he peaked in and he saw
02:31:32
Ruthie May's body I can understand that from it his point of view that you would hone in on
02:31:52
the two people who are mentioned regularly but of course that doesn't mean that they did it just because their
02:31:59
names kept coming up Steve watched the defense called Edward Turner to the stand where the young man would make his
02:32:05
own case during the trial Steve hadn't only gotten to know Willie McCoy he also met relatives of the two accused men
02:32:12
hress and Turner his mother Altha Turner said that dur in one of the recesses when I talked with her she said there
02:32:19
have been so many lies they take a truth and they wrap it up in a lie then they take a lie and they wrap it up in a
02:32:25
truth my son wouldn't be here if it weren't so many lies they said they were taking him for questioning they kept him
02:32:33
three years for questioning he read straight from his reporting she said I know he did not kill anyone he wouldn't
02:32:40
do something like that I know he wouldn't because I whooped his ass when he was coming up his last ass whooping I
02:32:47
gave him he was 18 years old Turner used to get into a lot of fights in school when he was younger that's how
02:32:55
he got his nickname monifi it was a reference to Mona fiori which used to be an alternative school in Chicago for
02:33:01
kids who struggled with learning and discipline Altha Turner did not want to record an interview but we talked to her
02:33:07
for over an hour she said her son knew her neighbor Ruthie may she said he wouldn't hurt her and that she didn't
02:33:15
let her son run the streets like other teens in the project she was especially strict with Edward she said during those
02:33:22
years I didn't like him having any dealings with the young men's in this area he was in church
02:33:30
[Music] mostly as she argued her son's innocence Altha said Turner didn't easily give in
02:33:38
to peer pressure they would always threaten him to join a gang but he never did let that bother him every time they
02:33:44
asked him what he was writing what gang he was with he'd tell them he was riding
02:33:49
Jesus Christ and they didn't understand that Turner's mom said that when he turned 18 she
02:33:54
loosened up a bit when police contacted her in April 87 and told her they wanted
02:33:59
to question her son she thought they might want him propelling drugs his mom Altha didn't think that he could be
02:34:07
connected to a murder in fact the week this all was happening was normally a happier time for their family both Altha
02:34:14
and Edward Turner's birthdays were coming up it didn't come up at trial but I think it was a according to a witness
02:34:20
that Turner said that he called his mom and said he was going to give her a color TV after he had taken the TV from
02:34:29
either Miss May's apartment or hallway upside of it when they did call Turner to the stand he admitted that he was in
02:34:37
Ruthie May's apartment that night she was killed but he said that he did not pull the trigger Turner later testifies
02:34:44
that yes he took the TV that he saw was sitting outside of apartment 1109 later that night sitting
02:34:56
next to the prosecution table was a 19in RCA TV and the rocking chair that belonged to Ruthie
02:35:05
May on the stand Turner claimed that when he saw a light on in 1108 from outside he went back up to the 11th
02:35:13
floor when he got there he saw someone named belder you haven't heard him mention yet anyway Turner now said he
02:35:22
saw belder leaving apartment 11:08 the one next to Ruthie Mays belder had the rocking chair and asked Turner to grab
02:35:31
the TV turner testified that's when he noticed the door to Ruthie May's apartment was slightly open he kicked
02:35:40
open the door took a few steps in and could see Ruthie May's body in the bedroom she saw a woman's body laying in
02:35:49
the apartment and then he left with the TV and went downstairs this is inconsistent with what the cops saw when
02:35:56
they showed up at Ruthie Mays there were no signs of forced entry and the door was locked but that was turn of story he
02:36:04
admitted that he didn't call for help Altha acknowledged her son looked into the apartment saw Ruthie May lying
02:36:14
there and did nothing and he hadn't reported it to the police it just taking the TV so she said where I live at in
02:36:22
the projects the rule is and she put a finger to her lips Alisa then turned and pointed at Willie McCoy sitting on a
02:36:30
bench behind her he knows about that projects at that point McCoy nodded and said yes I know about them projects they
02:36:39
would have probably hurt him Steve told me that Altha walked up the aisle of the
02:36:44
courtroom to the bench where Willie McCoy was sitting and put her hand on his shoulder she said my son should have
02:36:51
done something about her meaning Ruthie May if he seen her laying like that but I understand why he just left with that
02:36:59
TV he did what he had to do if I see somebody shoot you I cannot run and tell police because you see I got to live
02:37:08
there if they can't see that they should come live in the projects like we do I feel satisfied now she went on I wanted
02:37:16
to know did my son have anything to do with the Killer and now I know he didn't to this day
02:37:23
Altha Turner says her son was innocent just as she felt back then the question was would a jury
02:37:34
agree coming up in the final episode of Candyman the true story behind the bathroom mirror
02:37:41
[Music] murder in the spring of 1990 a judge and jury considered whether John Hond and
02:37:50
Edward Turner were guilty of killing Ruthie May McCoy their attorneys argued they were innocent but throughout the
02:37:57
investigation their names came up most frequently as suspects and when the time came for the prosecution's key witness
02:38:04
to take the stand he changed his story at the last minute now their Fates were up in the air we're talking a lot about
02:38:13
Ruthie may now but back then her murder got very little attention not a lot lot of folks came to the trial and it's
02:38:21
thanks mostly to the doggedness of Steve beira that we're talking about Ruthie May's case now and we aren't the only
02:38:28
ones turning our attention to Ruthie May a new Museum set to open later this year
02:38:33
will highlight her story We Tell The Good the Bad and the Ugly Lisa youngan Lee is the executive director of the
02:38:41
national public housing Museum they renovated a three-story public housing building in Chicago the
02:38:48
museum will showcase how Apartments looked decades ago the objects and artifacts that we have found that have
02:38:56
we've saved and salvaged and that people have given to us one object they salvaged from back then was a medicine
02:39:03
cabinet Lee knows that there's no Story related to those medicine cabinets that's more well known than Ruthie Mays
02:39:11
for many people one of the like most famous stories in public housing they'll hang a cabinet on the wall and then on
02:39:19
each side of the cabinet they'll put two different portrayals of life in public housing so on one side this medicine
02:39:26
cabinet tells the story of really incredible health programs and medical care that was always available in public
02:39:37
housing complexes and then on the other there's the story of Ruthie McCoy which is also true about this medicine
02:39:47
cabinet to Lee the tragedy of Ruthie May's death holds lessons for how the country approaches public housing today
02:39:54
housing precarity being what it is today it's like one of the biggest issues facing all of us this history is
02:40:01
incredibly relevant and even as history reminds us of its failures Ruthie May's story still
02:40:07
shows us some of the valuable things that public housing can do for people she had a consistent place to stay after
02:40:14
her home flooded and was provided access to a psychiatric center where she received care
02:40:19
despite so many challenges Ruthie may use public housing to set a path toward a better life we're asking people to
02:40:27
take a moment and to care to look a little more deeply the medicine cabinet exhibit is called care to look it's a
02:40:35
capacious history history is big and never again will a single story be told as if it's the only one for how big
02:40:44
history is Ruthie May's story manages to stay relevant for Generations I think I wrote a lot of stories that
02:40:53
really shed light on what poverty was like in Chicago in the 80s and 90s here's reporter Steve beira but people
02:41:01
don't pay attention to most of those stories but this one is kind of revived so that people do pay attention to it
02:41:08
more than three decades later he credits Candyman for generating attention around
02:41:13
Ruthie May's Legacy but plenty of real life events get mentioned in movies there's something deeper at play when we
02:41:20
remember Ruthie May Ruthie May's experience was concentrated poing It's a combination uh deep poverty and racial
02:41:30
segregation what is her Legacy what has come of these public housing projects today and were her Killers ever brought
02:41:38
to Justice you never know what a jury is going to do I'm Dom Pongo from 48 hours
02:41:45
this is Candyman the true story behind the the bathroom mirror murder episode 6 Rie May's
02:41:58
reflection Ruthie May McCoy's Legacy will forever be intertwined with the 1992 Candyman film I mean mainstream
02:42:06
stories and myths have a lot of power Lisa youngan Lee from the national public housing Museum believes the film
02:42:13
and its sequels have kept Ruthie May's story alive but each one has also done something different I think the original
02:42:21
Candyman contributed to inscribing some terrible racialized stereotypes about these places and on the flip side I kind
02:42:33
of feel like the remake of Candyman actually did something very different in 2021 fans of the franchise got to see
02:42:41
Candyman in a new light it was the first time a Candyman film was written and directed by people of color director Nia
02:42:47
dasta used the Remake to challenge stereotypes around public housing and historically black
02:42:54
neighborhoods it'll take a minute and then people will be studying over and talking about her film for years to come
02:43:01
remember Robin means Coleman she's a media professor at the University of Virginia she told me that this more
02:43:08
recent film is part of a movement to use horror to examine deeper issues within American society especially about race
02:43:17
so inevitably that that that real life horror is going to inform entertainment horror and the social issues appear in
02:43:26
lots of horror films but they're particularly acute in Black horror films the fourth Candyman is set in 2019
02:43:34
decades after the original Helen the graduate student who investigated Candyman for her research paper and died
02:43:41
in a bonfire is referenced but is not the film's focus instead of a white protagonist the central character is
02:43:49
black he's an artist named Anthony McCoy the kind of connective tissue is like trauma it's violence the Candyman is
02:43:59
sort of violent Cabrini is violent the government is violent there structural violence that sends people to where they
02:44:09
are in these films a reference to the details of Ruthie May's murder is in the fourth film too the main character
02:44:16
Anthony starts researching Candyman and gets a tape recorder from the library as
02:44:21
he becomes more obsessed with Candyman there's a scene where Anthony is vigorously painting and listening to a
02:44:27
recording of two women from the original film as they retell the murder of a woman named Ruthie so Ruthie call 911
02:44:36
and she said there's somebody coming through the walls and they didn't believe her they thought the lady was
02:44:42
crazy right so she called 911 again and they still didn't believe when they finally got there and
02:44:49
she was [Music] dead by 2019 Cabrini Green and the Abbott homes where Ruthie May lived were
02:44:58
long gone in the movie and in real life the high-rise projects had been demolished many low-income residents of
02:45:07
the neighborhood were forced to leave their homes were replaced by new development and housing designed to
02:45:14
attract wealthier residents I should warn you if you haven't seen the movie yet there are going to be some
02:45:24
spoilers as we get into the differences between the fourth and the first Candyman I think that the chief
02:45:30
difference is now certainly there's the absence of Helen and a focus on black communities black families black
02:45:39
relationships extended families that's the other thing in the 92 movie you're like where are these people's kin it's
02:45:47
revealed that Anthony the painter was the baby that Helen the blonde grad student from the first Candyman saved
02:45:55
from the fire in the original film at the end of the 2021 film Anthony becomes Candyman and this movie makes some big
02:46:06
changes to the lore surrounding the Candyman character's history the police gunned down the character ay McCoy at
02:46:13
the end of the most recent movie keep in mind this film was released only a little a little more than a year after
02:46:20
George Floyd's death and his murder was weighing heavy on America at the time but in the movie Anthony gets his
02:46:27
revenge once he's Candyman he kills the officers who murdered him even though Anthony is turning into
02:46:40
something he's an unwilling martyr to the kind of black pain and Trauma that we see Coleman read me something the
02:46:47
director Nea dasta once said so Nia says I love this quote can I read this quote
02:46:54
absolutely he says Candyman at the intersection of white violence and black pain is about unwilling
02:47:04
Martyrs the character Anthony McCoy is an unwilling martyr in the 2021 film the police kill him the original Candyman
02:47:14
character Daniel robati was an unwilling martyr he was tortured and lynched by an
02:47:21
angry mob and in a way Ruthie May was an unwilling martyr too she's remembered for how she died remembered for how she
02:47:32
was let down when we talk about speaking names and saying names and reminding about Justice denied we do want to say
02:47:41
Ruthie May McCoy's name and keep saying her name because it isn't just about her
02:47:48
murder that's a core to how we know her but Ruthie May McCoy symbolizes all of the sort of failures
02:48:00
one of the reasons Ruthie May's story still resonates today is we're still Reckoning with these failures a lot of
02:48:06
us can relate to not feeling safe in our own homes worrying that when a call for
02:48:10
help is made no one will come in the 2021 movie a black woman summons candy man for protection which
02:48:20
is much different from the original and that subtle change makes saying the name Candyman an act of
02:48:30
empowerment rather than victimization Coleman thinks that that idea Echoes the real life movement to keep the names of
02:48:38
victims of Injustice alive so in saying candyman's name in 1992 doesn't get us Justice in this
02:48:46
candy man you say his name because we're asking for justice for Coleman Ruthie May is on a
02:48:54
long list of names that she intends to say out loud Ruthie May McCoy is a real life
02:49:00
person her family are alive and out there back in 1990 Ruthie May's family was still waiting for justice they were
02:49:10
about to learn whether the two men accused of killing Ruthy May would be found guilty her older brother Willie
02:49:16
McCoy had watched the whole trial unfold finally after 3 years he was about to find out what would happen to
02:49:23
the two young men accused of her murder he wanted to make sure that the right people got
02:49:39
convicted Steve begira was there as the prosecution and the defense made their closing arguments I always feel it's
02:49:46
pretty poignant to see these cases where there's an awful lot on the line and there's there's so little interest but
02:49:56
that is quite common in Chicago the family of the defendants and Ruthie May's Brother Willie McCoy were there to
02:50:03
watch John hondras had chosen a bench trial where judge Michael Getty decided his fate while Edward Turner had chosen
02:50:11
a jury both trials were taking place simultaneously Turner's attorney focused his closing argument ments on the
02:50:19
circumstances of Turner's life and the choices available to him like the choice not to call the police he argued that if
02:50:26
Turner had called 911 police might have thought he was a suspect or his neighbors could consider him a snitch
02:50:33
putting his life in danger Steve said the jury left the room and came back with the verdict in less
02:50:41
than 4 hours Turner was sweating as he looked down at the table Edward Turner told me that he was scared when the jury
02:50:48
came came back he said I would have went off if they told me I was guilty I wouldn't have known how to take that
02:50:53
garbage life in prison for something I didn't do the clerk read the verdict on the charge of first-degree murder not
02:51:03
guilty Steve remembered someone in the court cheered to which the judge threatened jail time the clerk continued
02:51:11
reading off three more verdicts not guilty not guilty not guilty [Music] the jury decided Turner had not
02:51:21
committed armed robbery or invaded Ruthie May's home Beyond A Reasonable Doubt and even though Turner had
02:51:28
admitted on the stand that he had taken Ruthie May's TV the jury also found him not guilty of
02:51:36
burglary he was free to go back in April 1990 Steve watched Turner sit back in his chair and smile
02:51:48
his ordeal was over Steve said Turner told him back then he didn't know who killed McCoy and he didn't regret any of
02:51:56
his actions on the night she was killed not even his failure to call police after he saw McCoy's body if he had it
02:52:04
to do over he said to me I would have seen it and didn't seen it just like I did I wasn't going to jeopardize my
02:52:11
family's life Willie had spoken to family members of the accused Edward Turner's mother Letha
02:52:19
repeated something to Willie that she'd said to Steve the fact that Edward Turner wouldn't call police when he saw
02:52:27
Ruthie May lying in the apartment his mother I think said he should have he should have called police but if he did
02:52:34
he would have been suspect number one um so she could understand how in the milu of the projects that would be a
02:52:44
a an understandable response and Willie was okay with that explanation he said that he felt the defendants aren't the
02:52:54
only ones that should be on trial he said that the people who designed these projects should be on trial will he
02:53:01
showed his understanding once again when he walked past Turner's family on his way out of the courthouse in the hallway
02:53:08
outside the courtroom Turner's mother is screaming my child's coming home and crying and Willie McCoy walked past the
02:53:17
relatives and he looked relieved not disappointed and he told me maybe he was innocent but
02:53:24
even if he wasn't you can't convict an individual on such little evidence Willie left and didn't return
02:53:34
to hear the verdict in John hr's case he wanted Justice for Ruthie may but he also wanted the right people convicted
02:53:41
if anyone was going to be convicted Steve wrote that in the closing arguments of hr's case the prosecutor at
02:53:48
admitted Tim Brown had been a flawed witness but argued the detectives had conducted an honorable investigation he
02:53:56
said quote they didn't choose their Witnesses and neither did we but the detectives wouldn't be the focus of
02:54:03
Judge Michael Getty's frustration he was upset with the responding officers the night Ruthie May died well this was a
02:54:11
veteran judge he knew how police were supposed to work so to him it was uncon questionable that the officers didn't go
02:54:21
into the apartment that night that they got that call not just from Ruthie may but from two neighbors reporting
02:54:28
gunshots that they could somehow leave without going in and seeing what was up in that
02:54:35
apartment judge Getty said quote this case was lost not by the State's Attorneys this case was not even lost by
02:54:43
the detectives who got the only evidence that they got in a damaged and sanitized
02:54:49
crime scene this case was lost by the Patrol Division of the Chicago Police Department who stood by with a deaf ear
02:54:59
to the multiple reports of gunshots being fired in 1109 they just couldn't be bothered with
02:55:06
the hassle of entering a locked door so they let them get away with it end quote
02:55:13
went on to say about John hondras this defendant may or may not be guilty but the state has clearly failed to
02:55:20
establish guilt Beyond a reasonable doubt this court must accordingly find the defendant not
02:55:28
guilty he's discharged and with that no one would be held accountable for Ruthie's
02:55:38
murder hres never spoke to Steve for a story back in the day and never responded to our attempts to reach out
02:55:44
to him either but Steve did speak with hess's half brother who had attended the trial his half brother Darnell deed told
02:55:53
me in the hallway I feel good about him getting out but there's no reason to celebrate he wanted the truth to come
02:55:59
out as he did but everyone over there meeting in the projects knows who killed that lady just ain't nobody at Liberty
02:56:07
to say but it wasn't John Willie McCoy hadn't come back to hear the Hond ruling prosecutors had already told him that
02:56:15
hress was going to walk as well Steve decided to call Willie and tell him the prosecutor's prediction was
02:56:22
correct his sister's killer or Killers whoever they were Got Away the first thing McCoy did was lean on his
02:56:30
religious faith I thought it was a travesty former Chicago detective Anthony Manina thought
02:56:41
it was a travesty that the two men he arrested for Ruthie May's murder were acquitted judge Getty uh you know he
02:56:47
gave a fair statement of what he believed and his statement was that it wasn't on the the detectives and you
02:56:54
know it was he even claimed it was on the Patrol Division but in actuality I also add that to the cha police in a
02:57:02
phone call he reiterated that he believes the cha police not the patrol officers are the ones at fault for not
02:57:10
letting Patrol officers into Ruthie May's apartment sooner how could you show up in an apartment with a wrong key
02:57:16
and then say I'll be back tomorrow from his perspective the patrol officer's hands were tied even though police
02:57:23
regularly break into private property he simply doesn't think the patrol officers
02:57:27
had enough cause in this situation they were on cha property and the cha did not
02:57:33
want to break down the door it's a cha property the cha would have to give the okay he said this might have been
02:57:41
handled differently if the police had permission to break in from a relative but that wasn't the situation
02:57:48
plus to Manina at least they ultimately arrested the right men he doesn't consider this a Cold Case a cold case is
02:57:57
a case that occurred where the offender was not caught and the case is still pending but cold in this circumstance we
02:58:06
believed we had the right guy so therefore it's it's already in the courts so with that fact it's not a cold
02:58:15
case as far as I'm concerned again this is for former detective mana's opinion hondras and Turner were found not guilty
02:58:21
of killing Ruthie may still for Manina as far as we were concerned we cleared this case clearing a case means that the
02:58:31
officers met the criteria to consider the case solved once cops say a case has been cleared that means from their
02:58:37
perspective they don't have to reopen it as for Willie McCoy Ruthie May's brother he dealt with the fact that the
02:58:49
criminal justice system failed to catch his sister's killer his reaction wasn't that's so
02:58:55
unfair there was as often happens in these cases some meeting of the minds between family and friends of the
02:59:06
defendants and in this case uh the relative Willie Steve said that Willie relied on his religious
02:59:16
Faith he said God will take care of them eventually I believe that the killers are free but they're not free in spirit
02:59:24
they know what they did and it's always going to be in their mind they can boast
02:59:28
they can say oh man we beat it but that's just going to open a trap door for them they'll think they can get away
02:59:34
with something again but sooner or later the axe will fall as their conversation
02:59:39
went on Willie did let some of his anger seep out here's Steve again reading straight from his notes if that would
02:59:45
have been a white woman that called police like my sister did you know they would have gone in her apartment you
02:59:51
know it this whole system we're living in is corrupt he said he tries not to dwell on the injustices in it if you do
03:00:00
you will explode you will explode he said Steve didn't stay in touch with Willie and we tried different contact
03:00:09
information for him but never heard back from anyone if he's alive he'd be in his
03:00:14
'90s according to Edward Turner's mother Altha her son went on to have a good life he died in his 50s from cancer but
03:00:24
John hondras was arrested again about a year after his acqu in Ruthie May's case
03:00:30
in 1993 he was convicted of second degree murder for a different [Music] killing Steve begira was the one who
03:00:43
posed the question what killed Ruthie May a bullet in the chest or life in the projects the
03:00:51
answer was both I do think that things are much better because Abit homes no longer exists nor does the highrises at
03:01:03
Cabrini and Robert Taylor and Stateway everything was knocked down around the year 2000 now at Ruthie May's old
03:01:11
address was a resource center for unemployed adults it's next to an empty field Steve has written a book and retired
03:01:20
from the Chicago reader for his book courtroom 302 Steve spent one year in a Cook County courtroom he said that way
03:01:29
back when he wrote his stories about Ruthie may his intention was never to write an indictment of all public
03:01:34
housing the concentration of deep poverty in my mind was the more important factor people can get along
03:01:41
just fine and highrises and with back-to-back medicine cabinets but because concent ated poverty leads
03:01:49
inevitably to more violence filling those high-rises with the deeply poor is a recipe for disaster a disaster that
03:01:57
the buildings themselves then exacerbate and then the violence worsens physical and mental health and the residents are
03:02:04
caught in a downward spiral Deborah lassley Ruthie May's neighbor blames those circumstances for her friend's
03:02:11
death and when asked the question what killed Ruthie May McCoy she blamed the projects and the people who used to run
03:02:19
him so to me the people that work for the project and because the project didn't get their together they didn't
03:02:27
care cuz they wasn't living there the way whoever killed Ruthie May entered her apartment can make any of us
03:02:34
question whether something could be lurking behind our own reflection Ruthie May's reflection is
03:02:41
her Legacy and that we say her name all these years later we retell again and and again how she died and it's not that
03:02:50
different from how the 2021 Candyman explains the ghost's relevance in the 21st century but a story like that a
03:02:59
pain like that lasts forever that's Candyman in the same way the latest film helped to change the narrative maybe
03:03:14
this telling of a story does too the SC Fest part is that the film is fictional but not the
03:03:22
[Music] horror from 48 hours this is Candyman the true story behind the bathroom
03:03:37
mirror murder I'm your host and co-executive producer Doma Pungo Judy igard is the executive
03:03:45
producer of 48 hours Jamie Benson is the senior producer for Paramount audio and morira
03:03:52
walls is the senior story editor development by 48 Hours field producer Morgan KY recording assistance from
03:04:00
Marlin polycarp and Alan Pang special thanks to Paramount podcast vice president Megan
03:04:06
Marcus Candyman the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder is produced by Sony Music Entertainment it was
03:04:13
reported written and produced by Alex Schuman our executive producers are Katherine St Louis and Jonathan hirs our
03:04:20
associate producer is summer tamod theme and original music composed by Cedric Wilson he sound designed and mixed the
03:04:28
episodes we also use music from APM fendle Fon is our fact Checker and our production manager is Tama balance
03:04:38
kassi if you enjoyed this series please take a moment to rate and review the show on Apple podcast or wherever you
03:04:45
get your podcasts [Music]