I first heard of Edna Buchanan from my knight-ridder friends at the herald. So I was interested when her entry landed in front of me at the local reporting jury, but the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 Joel Kramer and I were both on that jewelry and I was blown away Edna rights my kind of cop journalism short sentences dramatic as someone said about Edna drop dead sentences for drop dead victims. I defy you to be bored by an Edna Buchanan story like the guy who tried to murder his wife by filling the house with propane and let the match before he got outside.Police arrived and found a breakup lot at neuroses are the father who was killed while attending a surprise birthday party thrown by his 30 children bewildered officials reported a riot at the emergency room at NE wrote. It was no Riot. It was just the immediate family try this one. There was music and some light is the paddle wheeler Dixie Belle turned North on Indian Creek Thursday. The water shimmered in the wind was brisk and then the passengers noticed that the people in the next boat were dead those big eyes have Edna's take in all the detail when an angry wife smashed. Her husband's skull with a frying pan while he was watching television. Edna was the only reporterI did notice that he was watching Family Feud it's time those kind of stories wanted another Pulitzer Prize. It wasn't the big page one dramatic stories. That was the eight to ten inchers daily inside stories that were compellingly written stories. Nobody forgot but I got to give some facts. So okay. She grew up in Paterson New Jersey listening to her polish grandmother reader the tabloids. She started work at 12 and before newspapering worked his at the sock counter in Woolworths the baby counter at Grants and a Candle factory a dry cleaning shop and is a finisher in a Coat Factory and then in an inspired move, she and her mother moved to Miami in the 1960s and Edna got a job writing Society for the old Miami Beach Sun. She didn't stay there long because she hates secrets and she loves to cover cops. This is Edna. The police be is the only one in the paper where you can learn about people sex greed violence lust passion. It's all there and then never took a journalism course and she says she snuck in the back.Thor just at the end tail end of old-time journalism, she's one tough lady she can talk her way past a police line. She can cover a disaster dispassionately but she can also deliver a passionate speech to Fourth Graders about why they ought to read newspapers and a friend of hers told me that the easiest way to dump a cat in Miami is in Edna's front yard because you know, it'll be taken care of and those are only from The Herald right now to write two books a novel and a sequel to her best-selling the corpse had a familiar face you can buy one outside and I can't imagine any Fiction more bizarre than white Edna writes about on the copy Edna. I'm carrying a plea from your city editor John brecher who told me that you have built your life around driving him crazy brecher. Send Retro by the way says Anna likes him because she knows she can walk all over me Brett. You're says Edna. We miss you when you're not here a part of our soul is missing after 23 years in theBusiness I have very few hero Heroes and this one of them. Thank you. I guess it's you know, I cover crime for the Miami Herald and and I really miss Miami because recently my publisher Random House sent me out on a nationwide book tour and believe me. I've never loved me more than when I was being slept through all these other cities. I think most of them are pretty pale by comparison and being on the book tours sort of like being a prisoner of war with excellent accommodations because your life is just totally out of your control in Pittsburgh. I said at one point that I wanted to stop and visit the restroom and they said no no, you can't you're behind schedule now and to talk shows later. They said it was okay and I could go so it was good to finally get back home to Miami. And now it's Deborah said I'm on a six-month leave to work on a new book a novel. But before I took this Levi was back out on the police beat again for a while and some of the news stories. The that I worked on recently included the to high school ROTC members who were killed by a claymore landmine that one of them had brought home to keep in his bedroom. It destroyed the entire house and the one-legged suspect who escaped from the police on foot leaving behind his artificial leg which was ripped off in the struggle and the police said they could have caught him if he hadn't had a car parked down the street but he sort of out hopped them and got away and then there was a young man who for no apparent reason gun to his car right off of sea wall into the bay to commit suicide and the young police officer who drove in to try to save him the rescue failed and when the cops surfaced he realized that somebody in the crowd that had gathered to watch had stolen his shoes there really is no place like Miami to cover the cops. I was the first to report on the death of Arthur Lee McDuffie in the first to report that there may have been no motorcycle accident that his fatal injuries may have been inflicted during a beating by police which they were I've never understood young reporters who considered covering the cops. The least desirable beat the entry-level beat to avoid if possible because it's Debra mentioned it is all about people. It's about what makes them tick what makes them become heroes or homicidal Maniacs what brings out the best in them or drives them berserk? It has it all greed sex violence comedy and tragedy and you learn more about people than any other newspaper beat. I think the crime be is a bit more respectable made. So in recent years by Watergate which grew out of a police blotter burglary and to a lesser degree by the 1986 Pulitzer Prize, I was the first woman journalist didn't Florida to cover crime full-time. Excuse me. I've got a bad cold, which I caught Miami just before I left of all places. When I joined the herald almost 18 years ago a few women were assigned to Major crime stories and I think editors have now realized that all women can cover crime in the streets as well. If not better than a man and I would like to say that I have never used my sex to get a story or to beat out the competition but that's not quite true. I was the first reporter in the first woman to step willingly into Albert Brooks torture chamber. Albert rust was a mild-mannered Dade County housing inspector who lived quietly in the suburbs until the day that young housewife next door ran out to snatch her wash off the clothesline during a storm. She happened to take a closer look at bras to was reclining on a lounge chair in his backyard. There was thunder and lightning it was starting to rain and Bruce did not move and then it occurred to this busy young woman that her neighbor had not moved in two days. So she called the police and brought it mixed himself a milkshake laced with cyanide. He had committed suicide over. A housekeeping problem. You see he had kidnapped two teenage runaways. He killed the boy cemented his body into the bathtub covering it up and several days later. He drove the girl to Fort Lauderdale and let her go and she went straight to the police and they of course did not believe a word that she told them and send her back home to Indiana. But meanwhile brust who was an Immaculate housekeeper had somehow miscalculated the cement did not seal the body began to decompose in a terrible odor permeated the entire house and the only answer was to use a jackhammer to excavate the body which would then have to be disposed of Elsewhere, you know, a messy job a lot of stomach-churning work. So brust took the easy way out and left the hard work for the police. So they arrived they found his corpse in the backyard and what seemed like almost routine suicide case became bizarre when they found that the walls of his house were padded and soundproofed that there was a specially outfitted torture chamber with psychedelic lighting and of course something awful riding away under the cement in the bathtub. So the press and a crowd gathered outside is the poor homicide detectives worked inside with the Jackhammer and we're newspaper wire service radio and TV reporters there dozens of them all of the men except me. It took hours for police to recover the body and find out exactly what they had. Meanwhile, we all waited in the hot sun outside and my deadline was approaching fast. Finally. The detective said they would take members of the press inside one at a time which could take hours to tour the inside of the house and the torture chamber for their stories. I was pushing deadline. I still had to drive all the way back downtown to the herald to write my story. So without even thinking instinctively in desperation. I yelled ladies first bing. Being the only woman in the mob I got to go first made my deadline and file the nation's first story on this classic case of murder and Madness and I did not feel guilty. Although I did ask myself later was that being aggressive which is considered good in this business or sexist, you know, which is bad and there is a fine line. I think that's as close as I've come to it. I don't think it was unethical or unprofessional under the circumstances. Excuse me. A crime reporter can't expect to be loved. I've been threatened with arrest threatened physically had rocks thrown at me get threatening letters subpoenas and obscene phone calls some of them for my editors. We are often unwelcome Intruders people blame us for the bad news. It's human nature were just the bad news Messengers, but the Greeks used to Kill the Messenger and some people would be delighted to revive the custom. But a big satisfaction is that our stories often produce results, they do make a difference and one of the joys of this job is that we can be catalysts for Change and even bring about Justice in cases where it would never Triumph. Otherwise often the cops hands are tied often judges are inept corrupt or incompetent. Sometimes we are all the victim has got half a million informed readers can often be far more effective forces for change for good then a couple of indifferent or preoccupied cops on the case. It's great. Sometimes it can make you feel like Wonder Woman or Superman to the rescue because we can and do find missing kids lost grandmothers and misplaced corpses people who fall through the cracks can be fished out by a reporter story can rescue people caught in the Hopeless Maze of government and bureaucracy. Sometimes we are the only people on Earth who can really slash through all that that red tape and fuzziness with one story. We can get victims donations of blood vital organs money Wheelchairs and when them public support and sometimes Justice it's a brutal fact of life that a case with major media attention is better investigated by the police in better prosecuted and it may make the difference in whether it is solved or not police stories do make a difference. Sometimes the laws even changed because of them. I discovered some years ago that a Miami Beach man who been convicted of two murders and sentenced to two life terms. He'd been released on parole after five years that's two and a half years for each homicide. So as a result, I researched and wrote A series on the meaning of life in prison and Dade County in Florida, and the number of people that we had in the Miami area who'd once been sentenced to spend the rest of their natural lives behind bars and who were now in surprisingly short periods of time walking around free and often committing new and terrible crimes in their next session the legislature passed a law that defendants convicted of first-degree murder must serve a mandatory. Minimum of 25 years before parole there has been a move afoot recently to change that because of sympathy for some convicted Killers. But as of now the law does still stand public Enlightenment is the Forerunner of justice and I feel privileged to work for a great newspaper like the Miami Herald and of course all of us know that literally millions of people read our stories and of course, they have got to be right and you've got to be accurate and fair and very very careful particularly in crime reporting a new story mentioning. Somebody's name can ruin their lives or come back to haunt them 20 years later. It's there in black and white on file. It's like a police record. You never outlive it when it's in the newspaper. It's forever and we're dealing with lives reputations and careers and it's a very heavy responsibility. You can do terrible damage in Fort Lauderdale a reporter irresponsibly identified an elderly man as a suspect in a vicious murder of a young mother and her two children and he didn't kill them, but he did kill himself. He committed suicide after the story was published and he Not live with the thought that he was even suspected of such a terrible thing and he wasn't it was a mistake. He'd been ruled out by the police that the suspect long before the story appeared. So you go the distance and a little bit further you knock on one more door. Make one more phone call ask one more question because it could be the one that counts questions are the tools of our trade and it was a simple question that changed the course of my whole life. If there ever was a lackluster scholar. It was me. My mom was a teenager when I was born and my father took off when I was seven. I was clumsy nearsighted terrible at Athletics and didn't really get to mingle with kids my own age because I had to take care of my younger sister and everything else. Well, my mom worked two jobs. I was always the youngest girl in the class. Unfortunately also that always the tallest girl I was self-conscious and very gawky. I hated school and a few unkind teachers did add to the burden an elementary school math teacher that I'll never forget told me once in front of the entire class that I would never be. Thing not even a good housewife because I would be unable to count my change at the supermarket or figure out the measurements for a recipe everybody laughed and I was so humiliated that I never forgot what she said and of course it's turned out. All right in the end because recipes never have been my strong suit and I don't have to count my change at the supermarket. I write checks, but when I was in the sixth and seventh grades, it was so bad that I dreaded Sunday nights because Monday morning meant school and covering murder Mayhem were riots since it's just been a breeze by comparison. There were two bright spots in my early School career one was reading. I was hooked on newspapers by age 6 and the other with my seventh grade English teacher. Mrs. Tunis Edna Mae Tunis, and she thought that I could write and she encouraged me and asked me the question that changed my whole life. She asked in front of the whole class and again later in a little note in the question was will you promise to dedicate a book to me someday and that just sort of blew? Eleven-year-old mind and to all sorts of fantasies by the end of that term. I was trying to sell stories to the Saturday evening post and I showed mrs. Tunis my first rejection slip and I was astonished no mrs. Tunas that I could write. So I didn't they buy my story and she explained that this would be the first of many rejections, but that I should never ever let them discourage me or give up because someday I would write and sell books and she was right the corpse had a familiar faces in its fifth printing it will be published in England in Japan later this year Disney has optioned the film rights, which I was sort of I was sort of surprised too. But I always thought of Disney is Bambi and Snow White but Disney does do a lot of adult films like Good Morning Vietnam and Outrageous Fortune or three men and a baby and You know, so they do some of these grown-up movies and is those of you who have read it may have noticed the book is dedicated to Edna Mae tone us and unfortunately, she never got to know about it because she died when I was still in the eighth grade. She was only 48 and mrs. Thomas has been dead for more than 30 years, but she is very much alive to me her words stayed with me gave me the courage and the confidence to keep trying and I've reported more than 5,000 violent deaths and covered kidnappings mass murders plane crashes and other terrible catastrophes and it can be a burden it can even affect your personal life some years ago a date took me to see Jesus Christ Superstar Miami Beach Auditorium and as we came out we heard sirens, which is not unusual in Miami beach, but there were a lot of them and some seem to be coming across the causeways, which means that Miami Beach which has an absolutely super fire department called other cities for help under the mutual Aid pact that means major disaster, so I got to the nearest Telephone found that a deranged man had walked into a cafeteria always crowded with senior citizens dumped a pail full of gasoline and lit it the place exploded in Flames. The lights went out and people were trapped couples who'd never been apart for 50 years were separated in the dark and the Panic a number of people were injured. I think about 30 several died later. They were heart-stopping rescues and fantastic heroics by firemen police and Busboys and it was right on our deadline and I rushed there called The Herald to make sure that photographers were on the way. I'll talk to the fire and police chief Scott as much as I could and then called it in from a phone booth across the street then keeping the phone line open. So nobody else could tie it up, especially other reporters. I had my date Roundup eyewitnesses people who'd escaped police and firemen who helped and he heard them over to me. So I could interview them and pass their quotes describing what happened directly over the phone to the city desk. We had a good complete page one story the next morning and oddly. I Can't Remember To This Day anything about the performance that we had seen at the auditorium earlier that night because of all the all the traumatic things that I saw after it just erased it totally for my mind and come to think of it. I haven't seen that day to this day either. I guess it wasn't exactly the type of exciting evening he had in mind but as I said, sometimes the results of stories can be very rewarding is in the case of the bird Road rapist. The police have been quietly trying to catch him for two years when I heard about it and started putting together a story and the police were Furious there Lieutenant even called my editor insisting that we keep it out of the newspaper the police have a peculiar attitude when it comes to rape cases. They insisted that if the rapist is tipped off that the police are looking for him. They will never be able to catch him and I don't understand their logic I never will because somebody was out there robbing and raping and abducting is obviously aware that the police would like to speak to him and I felt that if the police have been unable to stop him for two years at least women in that area should be warned that he is out there so they could protect themselves if the police couldn't in particularly in this case because he had a very distinctive Mo he would drive behind lone woman motorists in the Bird Road area at night and he would flash his headlights persistently some thought that he was a plainclothes police officer others trying to pull them over others thought that he was someone that they knew or that he was a good Samaritan motorist trying to warn them that there was something wrong with their car so they would pull over and as he came running up they'd roll down their window to hear what he had to say and he would stick a 45 caliber automatic in their face. So over police objections, we put the story in the Sunday newspaper and the rapist was in jail by Thursday because half a dozen new victims came forward after reading it and each had thought that she was the only victim had been too embarrassed or ashamed or afraid to report her encounter with him and then among them were victims with more accurate descriptions of the man and of the cars that he had access to. Even seen him two weeks after the rape and the gas station. So based on that information the detectives were able to identify and arrest him and these women were among the best Witnesses against him in court and he was sentenced to multiple life terms. So you would think that that would change the detectives way of thinking but no the very next time I heard about another serial rapist that they were looking for they were Furious. They didn't want it in the newspaper. They said if the rapist was tipped off, they'd never catch him, but putting it in the newspaper does work. There are two dozen police departments in Dade County alone and often there's little communication between them so cases can often be linked or even solved because the story is in the newspaper. Sometimes the reporters personally drawn into a case young girl on a bicycle was struck by a hit-and-run driver who backed up yank turned the bicycle out from under his car and threw them into a ditch where she died. She was 12 years old in the police worked the heck out of that case and they solved it two days before the statute of limitations would have let him go free forever. Brought him in to headquarters in handcuffs and the TV cameras were waiting outside and I was waiting in the police station Lobby. So I jumped onto the elevator with the suspect and the two detectives who are not crazy about me joining them, but they were gentlemen and they didn't want to be seen struggling with me in front of the TV cameras. So on the brief ride to the second floor homicide office. I only had the chance to ask one question. Do you remember the accident? And he said yes, I remember it very well when I put that in my story he confessed to the detectives that day but later he got a sharp defense attorney repudiated his confession and it was ruled inadmissible by the court. He pleaded not guilty and I got subpoenaed to a pre-trial hearing and of course Harold policy is thumbs down on reporters testifying for obvious reasons, but this time was different. This guy might actually go free and I wouldn't be testifying to anything. That was not my story. All I would swear to was the accuracy of what I wrote. So I did testify that I was boring press identification carrying a Just notebook and had identified myself to him as a reporter from the Miami Herald. So he did not think I was a police officer. So although his confession to the police was ruled out what he said to me was not based on that the defendant his attorney decided to change his plea to guilty rather than have a jury hear that testimony. It's saved the taxpayers the expense of a trial and from the possibility that some jury might have let him off. I testified on a few other occasions. We had a police radio on my desk in the office of small my meat Beach newspaper where I worked before joining The Herald and one afternoon. It said it was a robbery in progress at a South Beach liquor store and I jumped in my car and raced over there and it's like I got there the owner of the store a couple guy who been robbed five or six times and was Fed Up came running out the front door down the street toward the first approaching police car and he sort of waved at me and I waved back and ran into the store to see what happened and there was an entire rack of broken whiskey bottles the middle of the floor and crouched in the far Corner was the man trembling and panicky. And I rushed over I asked if he was all right. Got out. My notebook and asked him what happened and he was a terrible interview. He kept rolling his eyes and saying I don't know man. I don't know nothing and I thought the poor guy was in shock and I kept asking you. Did you see the robber? What did he look like, you know what happened? And I looked up at that point and the owner and three police officers had their noses pressed against the plate glass window and they were beckoning me to come out and I tried to ignore them because they have a habit of whisking away the witnesses before I have a chance to interview them and I still hadn't gotten anything worthwhile from this man. So I kept asking him questions and he was a lousy interview and finally I looked up again and this time the police looked angry and they were waving their arms and demanding that I come out. So I gave up trying to get any quotes and walked out onto the sidewalk the police ran past rushed inside tackled the guy and handcuffed. Mmm. He was the robber. So I got subpoenaed his trial by the defense. They wanted me to testify on his behalf that he was a perfect gentleman while I was there. So I did testify but it didn't do him much good because the judge was a woman who was referred to by the prisoners in our jail as the time machine because she gives them so much time Behind Bars and I testified that he was a perfect gentleman but allows the interview and she gave him 20 years for late Mayor Chuck Hall is the reporters dream. He was photogenic accessible and quotable and once he bought a very plush new yacht very expensive. He had it just a few days not even long enough to ensure it when a cloud came sailing along stopped right over the boat and it was a cloudburst. It didn't rain anyplace else, but it flooded the mayor's new boat and sank it so we heard about this. And I brushed over there with a camera and I was too late the mayor had hired half a dozen husky workers. They've been pumping all morning and they had resurfaced the boat and I was disappointed and I said Gee mayor we want to get a picture of it while it was still under water. He said no problem and he went over and he talked to the workmen who started shaking their heads and squirting hoses refilling the boat with water and they sank it again so I could take the picture and I was new in this business at the time and I was worried and I said mayor is this ethical and he said, of course, it's ethical were only recreating the scene. He was a terrific Sport and he's sorely missed by every reporter in town. And I've also learned to trust no one not even fellow workers with information on a story once I was going on a Narcotics raid with the Opa-locka police. There was a pool room where they believe there was Heavy dealing in drugs going on and I told my editors and they had a young intern named herb monitor the Police radios and pay special attention to that. And he would let my editors know if the shooting went down or anything happened to make it a bigger story someone out there with the police and we were all crouched in the bushes watching the pool room until all the people they suspected arrived meanwhile herb had his ear to the radio and he heard nothing. This was his first assignment and he was afraid that somehow he had missed it. So kept calling the Opa-locka police asking if they raided the pool room yet and that's a No-No because the police are very paranoid about that sort of thing and they didn't know who he was and they wouldn't tell him a thing. Meanwhile, we were still hiding in the bushes watching the places and swatting mosquitoes and back at the office herb got desperate. He was afraid he had missed it. So he called the pool room and asked if the police had arrived yet. So we're still crouched out there when all of a sudden people came barreling out of the pool hall that came out the doors the windows you could hear the toilet inside flushing Non-Stop and the police moved in fast when they realized what happened and they found a lot of Narcotics on the floor people. Threw it But they couldn't arrest anybody because they couldn't prove who it belonged to the police never did find out how they made us but I had a suspicion and asked her band. He confessed. I don't have the sort of job where I can often dress up and come to fancy luncheons because you can never really plan ahead. The job is too unpredictable. I've worked 12 or 14 hours or longer when a major story is breaking once I worked 36 hours without going home when a plane crashed. It was a plane crash that helped make my final decision not to become a TV news reporter local station had offered me a dream job at a salary much more than I was making it the Harold at the time. I think it was a hundred and thirty seven dollars a week more to start then I was making it I even told the herald on a Friday that I would probably give them two weeks notice on Monday, but at the last minute I couldn't do it and I think that in part it was because of the memory of the l-1011 crash in the Everglades. I don't have any of you remember it happened the week between Christmas and New Year's and I was called at midnight to get out to a hospital where they were are lifting in survivors. We were right on Final deadline. Some of the people that Choppers were bringing in were badly hurt and shocked many of them died later. One of the first passengers. I talked to was a young woman in a wheelchair. She was not badly hurt, but she was just absolutely beside herself. She'd been holding her baby in her arms during the flight and on impact the baby flew out of her arms into the swamp. It was Pitch Black out there and she couldn't find him stewardess came in on the next helicopter carrying the baby. She had found the baby in the dark her room crying and picked him up and he was not hurt the mother and baby were reunited there in the emergency room. And our first priority of course was to find out if we had major loss of life out there because naturally the Choppers were only bringing in live victims Eastern public relations people who were well aware of our deadlines were hopefully saying that since there were so many survivors. It was possible that no one was killed is it turned out later about a hundred lived in about a hundred died. But the man I talked to next was a terrific witness the next New York City Cop who is now a private detective on his way down to Miami on a case. And this was a man. Like the average citizen who would not go into shock and denial and who knew a dead body when he saw her felt one and he had suffered a back injury. He was lying on a table in the emergency room and he told me that he wanted to run from the plane because he was afraid it would explode but he couldn't stand up because of his back so he crawled away from the wreckage. And when he did he told me that he crawled over bodies lots of bodies and I asked him how many were lots and he said 20 or 30 and that was our first pretty credible eyewitness word that we did have a lot of dead people out there. So I call that into the desk and even at that early juncture we were trying to piece things together and find out what happened. Was it pilot error did a bomb go off with the plane hit by lightning and the next man. I talked to had a clue. He was a black middle-aged longshoremen who been flying down to Miami to visit a married daughter and he was badly hurt and in shock but not feeling any of the pain of his injuries and he told me that he'd seen the lights of the city and my airport below is the plane approached for landing, but then the plane apparently swung back out over the Everglades and your mark The man next to him just moments before impact. Where did the city go? It's all dark down there and he was right on the mark. That's exactly what happened reporters were scattered out there all over that night feeding bits and pieces of information back to our desk to put together. And as we talked to the man began to come out of shock felt the pain of his injuries and he groaned loudly and the electronic media had arrived by then the TV and people were Milling around in the emergency room and they stampeded across the room and a heard microphones extended to pick up this poor man's groans to send coast to coast and is they ran with their lights and cameras and wires trailing? They almost knocked over two nurses who were running with plasma to save someone's life and we can be kinder and more subtle and talking with victims of tragedy instead of blinding them with light bright lights or hitting them in the mouth with a microphone despite some bad moments. I haven't regretted staying with print journalism. I was the first to write about Arthur McDuffie and the first to suggest that there may have been no motorcycle accident. He was fatally beaten. On a Monday December 17th, and I got a call from a source on Friday December 21st saying that a black motorcyclist have been chased by the metro police who attacked him and then faked an accident to explain his injuries. My source said that the man was either dead or dying and I called the medical examiner's office and asked if anyone of that description of black motorcyclist injured in a parent accident being chased by the police can come into the morgue and they said no but he'll be here in about half an hour. He just died at Jackson Memorial Hospital. So I called the Metro Police Internal Affairs and their investigation was routine. They investigate every case in which someone is injured during an encounter with the police and they said their investigation was completed and they were satisfied that there was nothing amiss. I went to the medical examiner's office and looked at mcduffie's helmet the chinstrap looked more as though it had been cut and torn and at the towing company I examined his motorcycle and I'm no accident investigator, but it did seem odd that every piece of glass and plastic and the speedometer the Ages the lights, you know were shattered and some of the gouge marks on it seemed unusual also later. We found out the police drove their cars over it and strut blows to break all the glass in the plastic out of the accident scene. I couldn't find anything that the motorcycle at hit back at the Emmy office. They wouldn't let me watch the autopsy, but I did attend a meeting afterwards with the doctors and the police and the doctor said that the Fatal skull injury was typical of a motorcycle crash when the rider hurdles headfirst over the handlebars and strikes a solid object such as a polar Bridge abutment with his head. So there were other injuries possibly from blow struck to subdue him after the accident and often the doctor said of an already fatally injured person will come up swinging and have to be subdued I went to see the McDuffie family and we talked at length and I promised his mother Eula Mae that I would if I could find out what really happened to her son and back at the police department. I listened to the tape of the Chase and got somebody to show me the accident report and from that I got the names for the first time. Of the police officers listed as Witnesses the officers involved and it was very interesting because some of them just jumped off the page. They were familiar to me from a series on police brutality that we had done a year earlier despite the medical examiner's assurances. So I was still concerned and late Saturday night. I called an assistant police chief the man in charge of the division at home and I asked him about Arthur McDuffie and it drew a blank. He had never heard of Arthur McDuffie six days after the accident. He was so concerned when I told him what I thought that he called the homicide captain at home to ask him about the case and the captain's line was busy. So he just jumped in his car and drove over there and the homicide Captain had never heard of Arthur McDuffie either and they called me had one on each extension and they asked me questions and our first story appeared on Christmas Eve and the homicide investigation began that day and that day a Miami police officer who witnessed the beating but didn't take a part in it told one of his superiors at the accident was a Vacation on Christmas Day some of the officers involved were relieved of Duty pending an investigation the next day the officer who was the author of the fake accident report confessed Wednesday night for the first time medical examiner's estate attorneys investigators went to the scene of the alleged accident nine days after it happened. They lit up the scene with high intensity Fight Fire Department lights and discovered that there was nothing there. No abutment no pole no concrete pillar on which Arthur McDuffie could have struck his head and that night the case was officially declared a homicide on Friday the 28th of December 5 metro police officers were arrested in one of them was the husband is the husband of a police woman who'd been my friend for years and who was pregnant at the time at the trial the following May in Tampa all were acquitted by an all-white jury. And of course all hell broke loose in Miami, you know, what happened then shortly after the arrest of the officers in the McDuffie case. I was talking with some Metro detectives who were lamenting the past year about all the terrible things that had happened to them and all the Is that were in trouble and at least I said hoping to cheer them up? No policemen have been charged with rape this year. And one of them said wait a minute. What about the highway patrolman who attacked a little girl and I said what highway patrolman yo a little girl and he said the one who molested the little girl in his patrol car and I didn't we didn't remember any such case. I knew that no such case have been reported. Although I went and searched the files and I found that the incident had been disposed of months earlier very quietly and I was curious about how it had slipped. So neatly through the system with no media attention at all in the Metro rape Squad as usual did not want to talk about it or give me the Troopers name and the detective said it was a difficult name to remember and they could not recall it finally after I insisted on hand searching through their log for the entire year. They gave me the name it was Jones and warned me to let well enough alone. The case was closed. And of course, they also told my editors called him and said this was closed case no point in stirring it up. It was old news, but I poured through the court records to see what happened and the trooper had received. Um probation and withholding of an adjudication of guilt on the condition that he undergo treatment and pay for the 11 year old girl psychiatric here. The judge had wished the trooper quote a lot of luck on the record and even said that he might terminate the probation early. Nothing was mentioned about the little girl. I tracked her and her mother down. They were in Columbia South Carolina where the mother was finishing College. They had no telephone but I got a message to them and they call me. I also talk to the little girl psychiatrist and they had never received a dime from the trooper for her treatment. I found the trooper had been pronounced cured after a few free group rap sessions at Jackson Memorial Hospital. The little girl's mother had been told by the police and prosecutors at the trooper had been fired. He wasn't his file and Tallahassee reflected that his record was excellent in that he resigned to go into private business. That is what any would-be employers would including police departments would be told on checking his references. The little girl's family had been urged by prosecutors and police to keep this story quiet for her protection, although it. To be actually for the Troopers protection needed a trooper nor his attorney would talk to me the little girl's mother. However felt pleased and relieved that someone was looking into the case because she had never felt right about the way it had been handled. The child had been in route home from school in the afternoon when he stopped her he was on duty and uniform in a patrol car. He told her that she was suspected of stealing candy and he would have to search her and he took her to a desolate area for the search this little black girl who was sexually molested by a white policeman was questioned only by white male police officers, and she was never taken to the rape center. I wrote the story and the judge who handled the case was Furious. He called yellow journalism and castigated me in open court and he assigned highly respected former State Attorney to investigate the handling of the case. He wanted it proved that it was all properly done and at the trooper was handled just like any other defendant after three month investigation the former State Attorney reported that we were right he called the case a tragedy and a miscarriage of Justice. He said that two judges have been overtly lobbied to be lenient with the trooper and at the prosecutor a former police officer and the detectives work to protect the defendant not the victim the judge apologized to me in open court and said the facts have been misrepresented to him by the prosecutor and the detectives and he turned the report over to a Federal grand jury for investigation the Federal grand jury indicted the trooper on charges of violating a little girls civil rights. He was released in his own recognizance pending trial and he fled he disappeared abandon his family and took off and he was a fugitive for two years and just a while back surrender. Pleaded guilty. I know we're hurting for time here. Right? So I'm going to whisk through some of this other stuff get to the end here. Sometimes Justice does triumph. There were these terrible rape cases in downtown Miami on consecutive Saturday night's young couples out on dates were accosted to the same traffic light by 628 men led by youth with a gun and the couples were robbed in the men beaten the women raped one of the women was raped 10 times and was also sexually assaulted with the wine bottle and I wrote a story about the attacks the police had no leads and I got a call from a frightened and angry reader a woman who lived in the neighborhood and she saw the second crime take place. She was afraid to talk to the police, but she would talk to me and she gave me the street names and the addresses of several of the hoodlums. She also described the victims in their car in detail and I checked with the police and her description was accurate. So I pass the information along and then it ranged from my informant to meet with a detective. I knew who could be trusted to keep a confidence and they met away from her neighborhood and away from the police headquarters. And as a result, the attackers were arrested their fingerprints were matched to those left on a victim's car cars in the victims positive. Identify their mug shots and they were sentenced to Thirty thirty years Thirty Year terms all except the man with the gun. He got 90 years. So it does work, you know putting it in the newspaper and was going to mention two sometimes people ask us how we won the Pulitzer and I always tell them that first I got hired by The Herald and it took me five years and the day I got the job as I was saying goodbye to the city editor who hired me. He said haven't you forgotten something and I couldn't imagine what he was talking about and I had never asked the salary. I just really wanted to work for the Miami Herald and I think we won the prize by just doing the same thing that I've done at the newspaper for the past 17 years. The entry was made up of ten unrelated stories of the 200-plus that I had done that year five had been on the front page for we're local page stories and one was on 4D the obit page and I drove I-95 looking for the highway robbers and height through Coral Gables looking for the pillowcase rapist. And as a result of our stories the governor and the state's top ranking cops Crackdown rounded up the highway robbers and we're still looking for the rapist. But at least we know a lot more about him and he hasn't struck now in more than a year since, you know the rash of stories about him. I spent a lot of time down Homestead looking for the killer of the Mrs. E woman named Evelyn since my sister who was shot to death in her own home with a gun who did have been smuggled out of a prison Arsenal and I think I found the killers in the police privately agree, but they still haven't put anybody in jail and they did make an arrest after our story about the Widow elk and whose unfortunate husband's kept dying or mysteriously disappearing. Her most recent spouse is Deborah told you had been had his skull bashed in with an iron skillet as he sat in his armchair watching Family Feud and police did arrest the Widow after our story and she was convicted and I went past the sex toys that they sell instead of popcorn the lobby of the gaiety theater. Miami Beach porno house to do the story about Charles Griffith. I fumbled around in the dark looking for the door to the projection booth. Is this Technicolor orgy was taking place up on the screen and holding my hand and shouting don't look don't look was John 3:16 a Street Preacher who was Griffith spiritual advisor? And of course, I looked anyway Griffith was a broken-hearted young father who was shot to death is three three year old daughter Joy in her Hospital crib. She was in a hopeless coma and had been for nine months after a tragic accident with a reclining chair. She had tried to climb into the chair to watch TV cartoons. Somehow she got her head caught in that space between the chair and the footrest her weight lowered the footrest strangling her and cutting off the oxygen to her brain. The young father was the projectionists at the gaiety and I wanted to see the niche where he had worked and more importantly borrow for the Herald's age a few of the Dozen pictures. He'd hung on the wall thereof him and his beautiful little girl. It was the morning after the murder and griffith was stripped naked in a safety cell on a suicide watch John. 3:16 is his Keenan was the only person allowed to visit him in jail. So he did get to him and delivered my message urging him to call me and he did that afternoon. My telephone rang. The caller said this is Charles Griffith. I killed my little girl and he started to cry and that was how we got our first person jailhouse interview with Charles Griffith telling us how and why he killed the thing that he loved most in the world and incidentally Griffith was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to that mandatory 25-year term and I don't think any of us are any safer, you know URI on the street because young Charles Griffith is locked behind bars for the next 25 years and I think I found out why a former boxing champion fell into Despair and committed suicide hanging himself from a tree in a Miami Park and because of our story a bag lady who died in her sleep on the steps of a Miami Church in downtown the downtown area did not go to her grave unmourned. Like I said writing police stories is never dull. You can't learn as much about people in any other newspaper beat and putting it in the newspaper does work. Because I knew that mrs. Tune is my seventh grade English teacher had a daughter who was a year or two younger than I am and I want to find her and tell her about the book and it was dedicated to her mother. I just wanted somebody to know and I couldn't find her and assumed it was because she was now married had a different last name and I had no idea where she was. So while I was on the book tour, I told a reporter in New Jersey about mrs. Tunis and he mentioned it in his story and the next day. Mrs. Thomas his daughter called him. She was crying and we've talked twice since I'm hoping to get together in person. But as I suspected she grow up to be an English teacher just like her mother and she's now the chief guidance counselor for the Fair Lawn New Jersey school system. So the power of the press really works. I don't think I would have found her any other way, you know, it can be a joy. Thanks.