The Hit Man

Smoke rose from the floors. The walls and ceilings were black. It was still hot inside and we could barely see. Our throats tightened as my fellow prosecutor, Stuart, and I wound our way toward the back bedroom of the single-story development home. We had been summoned from the Superior Court, much to the judge’s dismay to respond to an emergency. Outside the courtroom, B.A. Davis, our lead secretary, was waiting. She urged us to get right over to Rodney Village. An apparent murder was discovered by firemen there in the embers of a fierce fire.

“Going to the scene” was office policy for the Attorney General’s staff. All prosecutors took their turn wearing the “murder beeper” for a week at a time. If you were summoned by police via the beeper, the case became yours to prosecute. I was wearing the beeper that morning and that’s why our secretary had come to the courtroom. Stuart and I jumped in our old Chevy Caprice, a piece of crap state vehicle, and headed off to the Village, a blue collar neighborhood about five minutes south of Dover. We drove into the development and slid to a stop at the curb behind fire engines. The State Police had parked their cars in the middle of the street and a crowd of gawking neighbors was growing on the sidewalks.

Stu and I were waved on into the home by a small group of firemen and detectives milling around in the front yard. They knew who we were and why we were there. Detective Bob Shayes of Dover P.D. handed me a flashlight and directed us. “Go on back to the bedroom. It’s safe enough to go in now and the M.E.’s Office is on the way. Just don’t touch anything, please, guys.” As we wound our way back through the house, I couldn’t imagine what might be touched. Even with many years behind me as a prosecutor, I had never been to a scene so fresh. I was soon to learn why the cops preferred to stay out on the lawn.

Crouching down to avoid the smoke, we reached the back bedroom and saw a woman lying on the floor, facing the ceiling…eyes wide open. She wore slacks and a paisley top. Every inch of her white skin appeared to have a charcoal covering, particularly black around her nostrils. Stu remained standing next to the body and I squatted down near her. The handle of a knife stuck out of her chest, perpendicular to her splayed body. From close up, I could see what appeared to be defensive wounds crossing her hands and forearms. A piercing light penetrated the smoke through a single window nearly six feet from the bedroom floor. Stu and I found ourselves mumbling out loud as we observed these things. What we had just seen was bad enough. What came next was worse.

We both turned our attention toward a closet at the back of the room. What seemed to be several rag dolls in dresses were falling out of the closet onto the floor. Two of them had long hair, hanging down in charred blonde ringlets. There was another with shorter hair, its head twisted into the other dolls’ dresses. We approached them slowly. It soon became obvious that they weren’t dolls but children: three dead children; two girls and a boy. We were stunned. All we could do was shake our heads and curse. I vividly recall doing something else there, choking with anger, with the bodies of those innocents at our feet. I swore that I would do everything in my power to avenge this woman and those kids. Stu’s face told a similar story.

In the following weeks, the dead woman’s husband, Larry, was arrested and charged with four counts of murder first degree. They had recently separated and he was living in his mother’s home, just a few blocks from the murder scene. Nearly a month before the murders Larry and his wife, Anne, had been in Family Court. She sought a protection from abuse order and an order denying the husband any visitation with their children. She requested these orders because, among other things, her husband had threatened to kill her. The court granted Anne’s requests for relief in a sternly-worded mandate. No contact would be permitted at all until such time as the respondent, Larry, would undergo psychiatric evaluation and counseling. Larry, who had a history of violence but had never amounted to a serious threat, didn’t take the decision well. Weeks later, in the hours before the fire, he bought a can of gasoline at a local gas station. He was determined to have his revenge.

The case came to trial about a year later. During that year we discovered that one of the child victims was not one of the family; he was a kid who was being babysat that day. We also learned that Ann had tried to push the children out through the bedroom window but that the monster, Larry, had remained outside and prevented their exit. We went to trial and the jury, using its Kent County common sense, found him guilty. No one was surprised. The same jury was seated for a penalty hearing. This time their task was to pick one of two possible recommendations to the judge: either life in prison without parole or death by lethal injection. They were to weigh aggravating factors presented by us against mitigating facts presented by the defense and then submit their final vote to the court. We knew of the judge’s strong aversion to the death penalty and wondered if this aversion would be what ultimately decided the penalty, no matter what the jury vote might be. By law, the judge was obligated to give the jury’s recommendation “great weight” but he nevertheless would have the final word.

During the penalty phase we presented evidence that in the weeks leading up to the hearing Larry had assaulted his cellmate, hogtied him with rope and left him in a corner of the cell with a handkerchief stuffed in his mouth. He had attacked the guy over some perceived slight or another. The guards soon found him and untied him. In our closing argument, I presented the jury with three pool balls with the ages of the children on them, numbers four, six and seven. The fourth ball was the cue ball and it stood for the weight to be given to Ann’s murder. The four balls were placed on one side of a scale of justice. I then put marbles on the other side of the scale and counted off one for each of the mitigating factors that the defense had ably presented. My plea for death was a simple inquiry: “Where is the weight of the evidence? Ladies and gentlemen, the answer is on the tipping scale in front of you.

Several years later, near midnight, I rode a dilapidated green school bus through a light rain at the Delaware Correctional Center. There were about twenty of us on that bus; legislators, Larry’s two lawyers and other citizens called as witnesses for his execution. It was a somber ride with very little conversation. The bus pulled to a stop outside a small block building and we were asked to exit. I was one of the last off and followed the line into the building as rain wet my uncovered head and dampened my coat. We were herded into a bright white room that was twenty feet square. I recognized several reporters in the tightly packed group. They pushed up toward the plate glass window at the front of the room that had a curtain drawn behind it. The assembled witnesses were murmuring to themselves. Larry’s lawyers and I stood behind the press group. The sight reminded me of children in grade school, anxiously waiting the curtain to open for a puppet show.

In a few minutes, the curtain was pulled open to reveal Larry, who was on his back, strapped to a white-sheeted gurney with his head up close to the witnesses. He was on a 45 degree angle to the window and his left arm stretched out onto an extension and had IV’s sticking in it that would be delivering lethal doses of drugs in just minutes. The warden was there as well, along with several of the medical technicians responsible for the execution. His sleeves were rolled up. He had a few final words with Larry that we could not hear. When they stopped talking, Larry made eye contact with me, peering over his right shoulder and through the reporters up front. His eyes held no fear. Instead, I felt that he was attempting to stare me down; to have some final taste of one-upmanship. The stare lasted for ten long seconds, as the technicians busied around the gurney. In that brief time, I thought back to my discovery of Ann and the children and my eyes never left his stare. There was hatred in the killer’s eyes and something else; a certain resignation mixed in heavy doses with the defiance.

Sodium pentathol shut Larry’s eyes long before the breathing ended. His chest heaved in the last breath. Without comment or warning, the curtains shut in our faces. The phrase “the state has a monopoly on the legal use of deadly force” repeated in my mind as I turned and shuffled with others toward the exit.

Now, when I introduce myself to high school students on career day, I tell them that I was a “hit man”. I tell them that the job paid well and that considerable personal satisfaction can come of it. That does get their attention quickly. I then go on to explain that their parents paid the fee for my hits…through payroll deductions. They always wince on hearing that but, on balance, it’s really not that far from the truth.

Story ID:	3361
Written by:	jim rambo (bio, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Local History
Location:	Dover Delaware U.S.A.
Year:	1980
Person:	"Larry"