Relentless Pursuit

Just after midnight, the BMW enters the Northeast Washington neighborhood of River Terrace. Aptly named, it sits above a river, the Potomac, just across a bridge from Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, home of the Washington Redskins. On autumn Sunday afternoons the air in River Terrace is charged with crowd noise from the nearby stadium, but on this late spring evening the stadium is dark and deserted. As the car rolls down the narrow streets, it passes row houses handed down from generation to generation of black middle- class families for more than half a century. Like every other pocket of the city, River Terrace has in recent years been touched by a crime plague that shows no signs of letting up, and drug dealers move about sporadically in some of its parks and parking lots. But in a city pockmarked by decaying slums and projects, this community- with its tree- lined streets, tidy dwellings, and backbone of longtime inhabitants- is notable for its relative normalcy. For those of a certain age who live in this neighborhood, or even walk through its streets on a late spring day, River Terrace serves as a poignant reminder of the way things used to be. Even its name evokes its place in the city, if only by accident: on a plateau, above life's ebb and flow.

It's too quiet, thinks Mike Harwood, one of the BMW's passengers, as he and his friends drive through River Terrace. The car itself makes more noise than anything else nearby; needing a new muffler and probably more, it announces its arrival from at least a block away. The car slows to a stop in front of a row house in the center of River Terrace. It discharges Harwood and leaves, its engine rattle dwindling to a buzz and then to nothing. The house, 3461 Eads Street, is a regular way station for Harwood in his travels around town. He's twenty- eight years old, small and wiry, with large, wary brown eyes and a small mustache, and he has a coiled energy and a swagger fashioned over years of having to assert himself against larger people. Once adrift, caught up in petty crime, he is now a success story: a rehabilitated ex- offender, working two jobs. For this he credits his parents, Malcolm and Jean Harwood, both staid working people and contributors to the community, and the other members of his extended family- especially his aunt, Diane Hawkins, in whose house he is looking forward to laying down his head for the night.

His parents actually own the house. They bought it thirty years ago and now lease it to his mother's sister, forty- two- year- old Diane. The house sits at the end of a block. To its left is an alley; to its right an adjoining house, vacant for some months, which in turn is attached to another vacant house. Across the street is a small, lushly foliated park said to be home to some dope peddlers but empty this night. Inside the tiny house at the end of Eads Street live, virtually on top of one another, Diane Hawkins and five of her six children: Reco, age twenty; Shante, age fifteen; Katrina, age thirteen; Rasheen (also known as Rock), age nine; and Kiki, age twenty- two months. A seventh person lived in the house until recently: Diane's boyfriend, Skeeter, evicted when their romantic relationship ruptured. Mike Harwood is a frequent visitor to the house, as are many members of his family; it's a center of activity for them as well as for Diane Hawkins's wide circle of friends.

So it's with some trepidation that Mike Harwood regards the house, which on other occasions has seemed to rock on its foundation with activity but which this night is dead still. He notes the time: 12:10 a.m. He'd wanted to arrive at his aunt's house before midnight, but now he's late. As he approaches Diane's house, he sees that while the outside and downstairs lights are off, the upstairs lights are on. This makes him even more anxious, maybe because he isn't used to seeing the lower level look so dark.

Of course, if the outside lights were on, he might see the trail of blood drops leading from the front door and down the walk, and if the downstairs lights were on, he might see the crimson smudges on the door frame, and he might run for help and never go inside the house.

Instead, not seeing these things, he walks up to the front door and finds it not only unlocked but ajar. It isn't Diane's way to leave her door open after midnight. Harwood pushes the door inward and enters the living room. The sofa is overturned. Perhaps his aunt upended it while cleaning or painting the room. He doesn't see that the sofa's beige brocade pattern is red- smeared. He takes tentative half steps toward the staircase immediately to his right. As he makes his way to the stairs, the merciful darkness spares him the sight of another bright red smudge on the white foyer wall, a series of circular red spots already sinking into the plain living room rug, and a piece of human flesh sitting on the living room floor. And he's also oblivious to the still form lying supine in the dining room less than ten feet away.

He continues up the stairs and into the house's lighted upper half, makes a hard right into a bathroom on the landing, and stops to relieve himself. Somewhere in the distance he hears a baby crying. He doesn't react to the sound until it becomes a scream, and he realizes it's coming from his two- year- old cousin, Kiki. He walks toward the sound, to a bedroom down the hall that he knows from his many past visits is his aunt Diane's. But she's nowhere in sight. He enters the bedroom and sees the baby poised unsteadily on the bed, looking over the side and wailing hysterically. He navigates his way around considerable clutter, including an ironing board and a basket overflowing with laundry, to a wall that's bare but for a framed, fading photograph of Diane and a small child. Beneath the photograph, lying on her back wedged between the bed and a jumbo box of Huggies brand diapers, is the same child now on the brink of adolescence: Mike's thirteen- year- old cousin, Katrina. Her hands are resting on her chest, her head propped up against the wall. Her eyes are closed and her expression serene. In fact, it's fair to say that Katrina Harris in the immediate aftermath of her violent death looks as if she's just fallen asleep on the floor, except for two things: Her head rests against her chest at a grotesque angle, and her clothing is soaked in blood so thick and fresh that it catches the light.

He comes close to Katrina, stares at her, but doesn't touch her. He thinks to himself that he needs to get out, that he needs to get help, even that the killer might still be in the house. He doesn't have any notion that he can save his cousin's life. He has seen the angle of her head and the blood on her clothes, and he knows.

The baby is still wailing, but Harwood, afflicted with his own form of hysteria, doesn't pick her up. He runs down the stairs, not seeing the long blood streaks on the wall and molding, and runs out the front door, not seeing the body in the dining room. He goes to the house two doors down from the Hawkins house and pounds on the door, shouting gibberish. But the house is vacant and his cries go unheard. He runs down the block until he finds a house with its lights still on, and here his pounding and yelling are answered. Harwood manages to tell the woman at the door that he has come upon something terrible in the Hawkins house.

At 12:21 a.m. on May 26, 1993, a police dispatcher receives a call from a female: "3461 Eads E- A- D- S. There's a whole lot of blood all over the house. There's blood everywhere and people laying down, and we need an ambulance."

The dispatcher fumbles for words, and the caller continues: "Yes, 3461 Eads Street E- A- D- S. It's in River Terrace. It's a private home on an alley. . . . It's the house the police have been watching for some time."

The dispatcher broadcasts a bulletin that is heard by officers on patrol in the vicinity. Two officers are close to Eads Street, and they drive straight to the house, arriving in minutes. Two other officers, Sergeant James Williams and Officer Elizabeth Sharp- Hamlet, are farther away from the scene when they hear the summons and drive into the area just a few minutes behind the others.

Meanwhile, Harwood is running back toward his aunt's house and sees his cousin Shante- sister of Katrina and daughter of Diane- as she rides up to the front of the house. Shante is fifteen years old and has recently begun spending more time outside the house than in, running with company that her mother has viewed with suspicion. Shante was with several friends early in the evening, staying near her home but being made ever aware that her mother was keeping watch over her comings and goings. Several times, Diane came out on her porch to make sure she was still nearby. She even asked Shante to stay in the house with her, and the look on her face was furtive and fearful. It was a look that will stay in Shante's mind for months to come. Following one of her brief visits to the house, and chafing under her mother's attention, she left to go for a drive. It was about 11:30 p.m. On her way out, she passed her brother Reco, driving away from the house in the opposite direction.

It's shortly after 12:20 a.m. when Shante returns alone and sees Mike Harwood at the curb. In an instant, Harwood shatters her world and then preserves a piece of it: He tells her what he has seen in the house, then he holds her back from going inside, saving her from a vision that will long cloud the memories of those not similarly spared.

After surrendering in her struggle with Harwood, Shante goes to find her brother Reco. She thinks to look first at the home of one of his best friends, Eric Fisher. Shante's hunch is sound; Reco is in the backyard of Fisher's house with him and two other friends. They're doing what they do many nights, which is not much of anything. All are in their late teens or early twenties, and none has a particular direction in life. (One will be dead a little more than a year later, a victim in a murder unrelated to the events of this May night; another will find himself a defendant in yet another unrelated murder.) They're like countless youths in every American city: living aimless lives on the fringes of illegality, losing their potential to poverty and listlessness. Reco is an especially frustrating case: a tall, handsome young man with a diffident manner that conceals a keen intellect and an abiding loyalty to those closest to him.

Shante runs up to Reco and tries to tell him what Mike Harwood has told her, but all she can say is "Blood is everywhere, blood is everywhere," over and over. Reco races to his house, with Shante and his two friends trailing behind, and sees Mike pacing in circles outside. The police and paramedics are on their way but haven't yet arrived. Reco runs through the front door, now open wide following Harwood's rushed exit. The downstairs lights are still off when he goes into the living room. Unlike Harwood, Reco sees the prone form lying in the semi- darkness as soon as he enters the room, and sees it's his mother.

He looks down at the woman who brought him into the world and whose buoyant spirit has filled the only home he's ever known. Even in the dim light he can see that she's dead; worse still, if that's possible, he can see that she's been mutilated.

Reco takes it all in. Questions of who or why haven't yet occurred to him. Reco knows that his mother is dead, but he still shakes her leg and says, "Mom, Mom," as if trying to wake her. Then he rises from the body, stumbles upstairs, and finds Trina lying in the bedroom.

Reco runs from the house, then returns with several of his friends. Rumors are already spreading outside about the murders at 3461. Reco's friends huddle first around Diane and then go upstairs to Katrina. Moments later, paramedics arrive on the scene, followed by the police and members of the Hawkins family who live nearby and have received word that something is very wrong in the house on Eads Street. No one touches either body. Paramedics hang back in a cluster. A police officer walks in, sees Diane Hawkins's body, pivots, leaves the house, and vomits. Tomorrow, before reporting for work, he'll request psychological counseling.

In the midst of all the confusion, one person has been forgotten: twenty- two- month- old Kiki, moving around the house and crying softly for her mother. A police officer picks her up and searches for someone in the family to take care of her. The girl becomes quiet, then falls asleep.

Meanwhile, Reco and his companions have left the house and are running down Dix Street, one block away from his home. They're seen by Sergeant Williams and Officer Sharp- Hamlet, who are driving in a marked car toward Eads Street. To a police officer, no one appears as suspicious as a group of people running from the scene of a murder. Sergeant Williams decides to stop the group.

The young men are wild, out of control. One, the tall youth who will later become known to them as Reco Hawkins, is in worse shape than the others. He's weeping incomprehensibly for several seconds as the officers try to calm him down. Sergeant Williams is a veteran officer with considerable experience in handling situations such as this; Officer Sharp- Hamlet, while junior to her partner, is also trained in crisis control. But they have their hands full with the Hawkins boy. He continues to wander back and forth in the street, saying over and over: "I know he did it. I know he did it. He killed them. He killed them. He killed them both." And then, about Katrina: "He didn't have to kill her. He didn't have to kill her. He didn't have to kill her. She was just a baby." And then he cries some more and circles around the officers, rebuffing all their entreaties. Sergeant Williams says several times, with increasing impatience, "What are you talking about? Who did what?" Williams and Sharp- Hamlet figure that the boy is referring to the murders on Eads Street and know they need to detain him long enough in one place so they can get his story from him. But every time the officers get close to him, he either moves back or swats away their proffered hands. Finally they handcuff him, simply to sit him still and get a logical account from him.

The tactic seems to work. Reco struggles to think of the name of the person he's talking about but draws a blank- this man he has known for most of his life- and he waves his cuffed hands around in front of him as if trying to conjure the name from the air. His friends are still around him and try to help. Reco appears to the officers as if he might be about to hyperventilate. He finally makes some reference to his "mother's boyfriend." One of his friends chimes in, "You mean Skeeter?" referring to Diane Hawkins's ex-boyfriend, the one who recently moved out of the house. "No, no," he says, finally remembering. "Norman. Norman! He'd just left."

At this moment, the police have their first leads. They now need to find out more about Norman, and Skeeter as well.

* * *

At about 12:45 a.m., the second wave of police personnel arrives at the Hawkins house: plainclothes detectives. Some go inside the house; others go door- to- door to try to locate anyone who might have seen or heard anything suspicious in the last several hours. Without exception, all those interviewed claim to have been oblivious to the commotion, the yelling and screaming, which had to have accompanied the murders.

Inside the house, homicide detectives Herman Johnson, Dean Combee, and James Johnson tiptoe through the premises, jotting down detached observations in dog- eared notebooks. These notes, memorialized in formal police reports, will capture the scene with dry objectivity. But they won't capture the emotions of the men and women who are here this night. Detective Herman Johnson, for one, has been a detective for twenty- three years, a homicide detective for eight. He has been on thousands of crime scenes and hundreds of murder scenes, and has long since concluded that his job can offer him no more surprises- until tonight, when he walks through the Hawkins house and says to himself and anyone nearby, over and over: "This is the worst."

Two other homicide detectives drive up to the Hawkins house but don't linger there for long. Detectives Dan Whalen and Eric Gainey are told at the front door about the state of the bodies inside, and can see that there's no shortage of law enforcement personnel handling the scene. They decide that their time might be put to better use elsewhere and drive over to Dix Street, where they've heard by police radio that uniformed officers have a potential witness detained.

Indeed, Reco Hawkins has calmed down enough that Sergeant Williams and Officer Sharp- Hamlet have removed the handcuffs from his wrists. The young man is still acting as if he's in a daze, walking aimlessly in the street, and Sergeant Williams is relieved to see the homicide detectives arrive so that he can turn this witness over to them. Whalen and Gainey approach Reco to ask if he can get into the backseat of their car to take a drive with them, and he agrees. All the detectives know at that point, from their conversation with Sergeant Williams, is that someone named Norman was with the victims before they died, that Reco can take them to his house, and that he seems to believe very strongly that Norman had something to do with what happened. Why, the sergeant doesn't know. Well, they have to start somewhere.

* * *

At about 1:00 a.m., three crime scene search officers- evidence collectors- arrive at the crime scene. All are on a permanent midnight assignment, meaning that their tour of duty coincides with the peak hours of violent crime throughout the town. Their job: sifting through the wreckage of lives lost to brutality, night after night.

Responsibilities for various duties are divided at the start. Officer Lamont Allen will draft a diagram of the floors of the house where the bodies were located; Officer Curtis Lancaster will photograph the scene and gather evidence for later use; Officer A. P. Holmes will take a video of the house's interior. The video has been requested by the homicide detectives, who decided upon entering the house that this was such a vivid scene that mere still photographs, while helpful, wouldn't suffice to capture the many details that might prove significant.

Outside, a crowd gathers.

Among Diane Hawkins's living relatives are seven sisters, three brothers, six aunts, two uncles, fifty- nine nieces and nephews, and many, many friends who are just like family to her. Many keep in regular contact with her and with each other, at least by telephone and often in person. Now they're linked in tragedy. Some are still awake when they hear the news; others are roused from a sound sleep, the last moments of peace they would enjoy for some time to come. Understandably, given the circumstances, these initial reports sometimes garble the facts. Carlene Hawkins, one of Diane's many nieces, is among the first to arrive at the house, bursting onto the scene as Reco is fleeing down Eads Street. Carlene has received a telephone call from a cousin, telling her to hurry over to River Terrace because "somebody's sprayed Diane's with gunfire and they're all gone." The same erroneous report, passed on by a different source, summons Barbara Harwood, Diane's sister and landlord. But unlike Carlene and many others, Barbara and her husband, Ty, don't rush to Diane's house. They tarry in getting ready and then take such a leisurely and circuitous drive to River Terrace that they get there well after the rest of the family, even though they were among the first to hear the news and didn't have far to travel. In months to come, they will have only a hazy memory of the trip, recalling it as one might a sleepwalking episode. But they will know the cause of their lethargic meandering: It was a psychological contrivance to delay the inevitable, even for a little while.

Barbara and Ty join the crowd milling about outside the Hawkins house. Those who have risen from bed to answer the call in the night are readily distinguished by the nightgowns and pajamas peeking out from their coats and trousers. Rumors are already spreading through the crowd about who the killer might be, and some in the anguished group angrily vow retaliation. The truth is that no one in the group has anything but a private hunch to rely on at the moment, and cooler heads among them- the older family members, primarily- prevail on the others not to rush to judgment. Many are crying loudly. None of the group is being permitted past a certain point by the police, who are concerned about tainting the crime scene. But the fact that family and friends aren't able to see the remains of their loved ones, combined with the rumors that are circulating about the state in which the bodies were found and the sense of powerlessness that they all feel, makes the experience all the more excruciating for those on the outside.

Someday, some will ask investigators if they can see the police photographs of Diane and Katrina, so they can achieve some sort of emotional closure. Incredibly, as gruesome as the photographs are, those family members who view them will invariably say that they imagined the slaughter to have been even worse.

One member of the Hawkins family is riding through the streets of D.C. in the back of a police cruiser.

Homicide detectives Whalen and Gainey have decided that the only way that they can hope to get anything from Reco Hawkins is to take him away from the neighborhood. As the detectives drive farther away from River Terrace, with no destination in mind, Reco becomes calmer, the hysteria now dulled into numbness. His thoughts are beginning to come together as well, and as the wave of shock that hit him earlier recedes, his memory of the events of a few hours before- it already seems as if years have passed- becomes clearer. While Detective Gainey drives, Detective Whalen asks questions- gently, without persistence, letting Reco answer as he can. Gainey and Whalen are physical opposites- Gainey is a tall, light- skinned black male, Whalen a shorter, fair- skinned white male with Irish features- but they share a low- key approach to situations such as this. Within minutes, the detectives have the full name of the person whom Reco referred to earlier on the street: Norman Harold, a former boyfriend of Diane. They learn other identifying information as well: that he's a black male, thirty to forty years old, about six feet four to six feet six, stocky, brown skinned; that his nickname is Danky or Dank; that he generally drives a brown and tan Ford pickup truck with a camper shell on the back; and that he was last seen earlier that night wearing a blue jacket with a hole in the back, blue work uniform pants, a white T- shirt, and black boots. They also learn something else: that if Norman isn't the actual killer, he may have been the last adult except for the killer who was with them. Reco tells the detectives that when he left his house a short time before the bodies were discovered, he left behind his mother, Katrina, two- year- old Kiki- and Norman. There is, of course, another possibility: that this Norman is a victim himself, that he was taken from the scene, alive or dead. Detective Whalen presses Reco on whether he knows where Norman lives. Reco does not know the exact address, but he can take them there. Finally, the detectives have a destination, after some minutes of aimless driving. It is now 1:15 a.m.

They travel down Central Avenue, which runs directly east- west from the U.S. Capitol into Maryland. Gainey is driving away from River Terrace, toward the state line. Five minutes from the Hawkins house, Reco tells them to take a right onto A Street, then to the 4600 block. He points to a freestanding brick house at 4615 A Street and says, "That's where he lives." The detectives go to the door and knock. No one's home, and the brown and tan truck isn't in the driveway. Two other vehicles are on the side of the house: an abandoned automobile and a blue Dodge van that Reco says Norman regularly drives. Whalen writes down the tag number on the Dodge van for future reference. The detectives decide that Reco should be taken to the MPD homicide office to give a formal written statement.

First, though, they need more information on the pickup truck, which is at that moment missing, along with its owner. Gainey drops Whalen off at a police station not far from the A Street address and continues riding with Reco on the slim chance that they can locate Norman in the area around his residence. At the station, Whalen signs on at a computer terminal and punches in the identifying information on the Dodge van parked at 4615 A Street. On the screen pops up the name of the registered owner of the vehicle: a Norman Harrell, not Harold; black male; date of birth January 1, 1949; living at 4615 A Street, SE. Now that Whalen has Norman Harrell's full name and other identifying information, he can find out if any other vehicles are registered in that name- including, he hopes, the brown and tan pickup truck. In less than a second, the following flashes on the screen:

harrell, norman roderick
vehicle registration record
tag: 935181 type: passenger expires: 11/ 28/ 93
vin: fi5hndc3679 veh: 79 ford pk
owner: harrell, norman roderick dob: 01/ 01/ 49
address: 4615 a st. se wash dc 20019

This is the vehicle they need to find. Whalen immediately radios the MPD dispatcher and gives a description of Harrell and the truck, which is then broadcast across police channels throughout the city and in neighboring jurisdictions. It is 1:30 a.m.

The chase is on.