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07.16.06

DNA uncollected, a criminal goes free

Evidence uncollected, crimes undeterred: DNA saga causes families to wonder if crimes could have been prevented

Raymont Hopewell entered the state prison system on April 11, 2004, for attempting to sell $20 worth of cocaine to an undercover police officer. Under Maryland law, authorities should have taken a sample of his DNA to compare against evidence collected from unsolved crimes.

Had the DNA test been done, it would have matched evidence found at the scenes of two unsolved crimes on Baltimore's west side: the 1999 rape and murder of Constance Wills, 60, and the 2002 rape and murder of Sarah Shannon, 88.

But Hopewell's DNA was not taken in 2004, and the matches were not made. Instead, after five months in state custody, Hopewell escaped without providing a sample.

The next year, police say, while Hopewell was free, he would kill three more people, assault four others and rape one woman before he was arrested in September 2005. His DNA was finally taken and, for the first time, police began to connect him to five killings over six years.

Hopewell, 35, will be tried in those crimes in September. He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer would not comment for this article.

A conviction would raise troubling questions. If authorities had collected his DNA in 2004, could the later violent crimes have been prevented? And if the police had performed DNA analysis promptly after a 2005 killing, wouldn't they have known that a serial killer and rapist of elderly women was on the loose in West Baltimore?

Those who survived last year's attacks and the families of those who were killed are asking why Hopewell wasn't arrested and charged sooner. They are upset that the state DNA law passed in 2002 - which required collection of DNA from felons - was not enforced when Hopewell entered prison in 2004.

"If it's mandated they do it ... there's a good possibility that what happened to my mother may not have happened," said Roy Mack, whose mother, Sadie L. Mack, 78, was killed in May 2005. "Maybe a lot of other things he's done wouldn't have happened either."

State officials admit to failures in initial implementation of the DNA law. The Maryland State Police, charged with collecting the DNA, did not have the manpower to do the job. They say they have fixed the problem by enlisting state prison workers to help in collection.

"The bottom line is there was a problem. We saw there was a problem," said Karen V. Poe, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. But before the problem was addressed, she said, Hopewell had escaped custody.

"The reality of life is that we and everyone else wish that these heinous crimes had not happened," Poe said. "But the assumption or the misconception that had his DNA been taken ... nobody knows. Nobody is in a position to predict death."

But criminal justice experts say that prompt DNA testing would have saved lives.

"It's really, really tragic because had they tested early enough, they could have prevented these later crimes," said Lawrence Kobilinsky, a biology professor and associate provost of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. "Unfortunately, this is a case where tragedies could have been averted."

Hopewell's path

Raised near Gwynns Falls Park, Raymont Hopewell was for a time a kid like others, riding bikes and playing hide-and-seek with neighborhood friends. But he dropped out of school in his sophomore year at Forest Park High and, according to a statement he gave police, began a heroin habit that would continue for two decades.

He sold drugs and broke into homes to support his addiction, he told police. His criminal record shows seven convictions since 1989 for battery, drug possession, burglary, resisting arrest, theft and intent to sell drugs.

But authorities say Hopewell did not turn truly violent until 1999, when Constance Wills was killed.

Hopewell had known the family, and in the 1980s he lived with one of Wills' daughters for several months, according to police. He celebrated birthdays and holidays with the family. But Wills' daughter kicked him out after he ran up a phone bill, and the family broke off contact with him about 10 years before Wills' death.

Her body was found the night of Feb. 21, 1999, by a daughter and a neighbor. She was in a bedroom of her home on North Ellamont Street, her face beaten and ligature marks evident on her wrists. The cause of death was asphyxiation.

Three years later, in November 2002, Sarah Shannon's body was found by her niece in her longtime home at the Greenhill Apartments for the elderly and disabled. At the time, Hopewell's mother lived across the hall from Shannon, and Hopewell was frequently seen in the building.

Again, the cause of death was asphyxiation. Wills and Shannon had also been raped, records show. An internal police memo indicates that by June 2003, investigators had made another connection: Seminal fluid found in both women's bodies contained the same DNA.

"Investigation to date has determined the killer of both women left identical DNA samples in both Constance Wills and Sarah Shannon indicating that individual to be one in the same," Detective Chris Jones wrote in an affidavit dated Oct. 14, 2003.

The DNA profile from those killings was entered into state and national DNA databases to see whether it matched any offender on record, but no hits came back. As that investigation continued, Hopewell was in and out of court on another felony charge - drug possession with intent to sell.

He was first arrested on that charge in September 2001, when he offered to sell cocaine to an undercover police officer on Pimlico Road. He was released on $5,000 bail, pending his trial.

In September 2002, he was convicted on the drug charge and sentenced to two years' probation. But he did not fulfill the terms of his probation: He failed to meet with his probation officer or provide proof he was in school or looking for work.

He was arrested again and on April 10, 2004, appeared before a judge who sentenced him to 18 months in prison. Under guidelines adopted by the state in 2002, Hopewell's DNA should have been collected upon his entry into prison.

It was not.

DNA legislation

In 2002, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley and then-Police Commissioner Edward T. Norris went to Annapolis to plead with legislators to expand the list of criminals required to submit DNA samples. At the time, only those convicted of murder, aggravated assault or sex crimes had to give samples.

O'Malley and Norris wanted the list of targeted crimes expanded to all felonies. They argued that DNA evidence often connects people who commit nonviolent felonies to more serious crimes. "Clearly," O'Malley said, "the ability to test all felons would tremendously impact our cold cases."

The General Assembly passed the bill, and it took effect Oct. 1 that year.

But state police and correctional authorities have struggled to implement the law. The statute mandated the collection of DNA from 20,000 state prison inmates serving time for felonies. Additionally, dozens of new felons were entering the system every day, and thousands more were on parole or probation.

The law puts the Maryland State Police in charge of managing the DNA database. But the agency did not have the authority or staff to go into courts and prisons and take samples from every felon. So state police Superintendent Col. Thomas E. Hutchins asked local authorities to help collect the DNA.

"In 2004, when Colonel Hutchins became the superintendent, it became obvious that Maryland State Police was on a daily basis being overwhelmed with this charge," said Poe, of the state corrections department.

A state audit conducted in 2004 reflected the extent to which officials were overmatched. The audit found that 8,300 inmates had not had their DNA collected. An additional 8,200 DNA samples that had been collected over the previous year had not been sent to a private contractor for analysis.

State police spokesman Greg Shipley said the response to Hutchins' plea has been positive: Detention centers, sheriff's offices and circuit courts in 14 of the state's 24 jurisdictions have agreed to take DNA samples from felons upon entry to the system.

Agencies that agreed to help were given training in use of the DNA kits - envelopes that contain a cotton swab used on the inside of an inmate's cheek, and labeling information. The backlog has been reduced to 1,450 inmates waiting to be sampled.

The Circuit Court in Baltimore does not have an agreement with the state police. Instead, state prison officers, trained by the state police, collect samples from felons at the Baltimore Detention Center. The samples are now taken upon arrival.

But in 2004 - when Hopewell entered the system - the top priority was collecting DNA from convicts about to be released, officials said. Those just coming into the system were not the first concern, under the theory that if they were in prison, they couldn't harm the public. And no procedure was in place to take samples from felons immediately after conviction, as is now the case in several Maryland courthouses.

Shipley, of the state police, said Hopewell's DNA "very likely would have been collected while he was serving his sentence, had he served his sentence."

That didn't happen. Hopewell spent nearly three months at the Baltimore Detention Center, from April 11 to July 1, 2004. He was then transferred to the Metropolitan Transition Center, the state prison in downtown Baltimore.

Hopewell was moved again on Aug. 18, this time to Dismas House West, a halfway house in West Baltimore for offenders who were soon to be released. They were allowed to leave for work but had to be back by curfew every night.

On Sept. 2, Hopewell did not make curfew. He was reported as a walk-off, and a fugitive warrant was issued for his arrest.

Asked why Hopewell's DNA was not taken before he was sent to the less secure halfway house, Poe said, "It was the backlog. He was on the list when he was at Dismas House. He was on the list at MTC. He was on the list at the Detention Center. He's always qualified for DNA sampling, no matter where he was.

"We knew we needed to take his DNA," Poe said. "He walked off."

It would be another year before authorities caught up with Hopewell and finally took his DNA. In that intervening period, three elderly people in West Baltimore were killed in their homes.

Samples and solving

It can be done in a matter of seconds: Take the cotton swab out of the package, swipe it against the inside of the cheek and seal it in an envelope. Label the envelope, and you're done.

That's the typical procedure used in Maryland prisons to take DNA samples from inmates. It does not involve drawing blood and is less messy than fingerprinting.

The samples are sent to the Bode Technology Group in Springfield, Va. Bode analyzes the DNA and creates a profile. This takes about 90 days, but the state police are negotiating a new contract that requires a 60-day turnaround. Once the state gets a profile back, it is reviewed by a chemist and entered into the state's DNA database, which contains about 25,000 offender profiles.

The entire process - from the initial swab to entry into the database - takes four months or more, officials said, and costs $92 per sample. But the investment has paid off. Since the database was established in 1994, police say, it has helped solve 263 crimes by matching evidence collected to a profile in the system.

"A fair number of cases would not have been solved were it not for DNA," said Matt Jablow, a spokesman for the city police.

A processing delay

On May 27 last year, Ernest Mack found his mother's body on the bedroom floor in her Sandtown rowhouse. That's where Sadie Mack had raised seven children and cared for 20 grandchildren. Her arms were raised above her head and tied at the wrists with shoestring. She was wearing only an orange nightshirt, pushed up to her chest.

The medical examiner determined the cause of death to be asphyxiation.

"Miss Sadie," 78, as she was known in her neighborhood, spent mornings at Simmons Memorial Baptist Church and afternoons watching soap operas. Her family said cash was missing from her home, but nothing else.

Police sent evidence from the Mack killing to the Bode Technology Group, the same Virginia lab used by the state, to analyze for traces of DNA. The lab received the evidence June 30, more than a month after the killing, and did not report back to police until Oct. 31.

The delay meant that police didn't learn until more than five months after Mack's killing that DNA found on the shoelace used to tie her wrists matched the DNA found at the Wills and Shannon killings in 1999 and 2002. The cases were similar - the three victims were elderly women who lived near each other - but detectives did not initially perceive they were related, said Jablow of the city police.

"We didn't think there was any connection at first," Jablow said. He would not say if police would have investigated differently had they suspected one person committed all three crimes.

Analysis of the Mack evidence was delayed partially because it was sent to a private lab. DNA evidence from homicides in which police have a suspect is analyzed at the city crime lab, with a turnaround time of three to six weeks. But evidence from homicides that have no suspect are sent to outside labs where they are not processed as quickly.

Jablow said the Mack evidence took even longer than usual to be processed by Bode and that investigators "were on them constantly to get it back as quickly as possible."

A Bode spokesman said DNA analysis of a single item can be done in less than 24 hours, but reports typically take 30 days to be returned to police agencies because they must be reviewed. The spokesman couldn't say why the Mack evidence took so much longer than usual.

Two more deaths

Three months after Mack died, on Aug. 21, 2005, Bruce Boulware and D'Twain Holmes-Boulware heard loud noises from above them while watching The Color Purple in their apartment at the Louis M. Foxwell Memorial Apartments for the deaf and disabled on Greenspring Avenue. It sounded like fighting.

The noises were coming from the apartment of Carlton Crawford, 82, who had lived in the building for more than 20 years and was known as "Uncle Bill." The Boulwares notified a security officer, who investigated.

According to a statement the officer later gave police, the door to Crawford's apartment was opened by a young man wearing a black T-shirt and jeans. About the noises, he said, "Oh that. Ahhh ... He just fell." The security officer asked to see Crawford, and the man refused to let her in. She threatened to call the police. He said, "Go [expletive] call them."

When police arrived, the man was gone, and Crawford was dead on the floor. His ankles were tied together and his wallet was on the floor. The medical examiner determined the cause of death to be blunt force trauma to the head and asphyxiation.

Police recovered evidence from the scene - including two soda cans, a cigarette butt and paper towels - that carried DNA that would later be matched to Hopewell.

Nine days after Crawford's death, on Aug. 30, Ivan Wingfield stopped by his parents' house on Mount Holly Street in West Baltimore to check on them and walk their schnauzer, Taylor. The front door was locked, so he walked around back, where he found the door ajar.

"When I walked toward the front door and looked toward the living room, I saw my mother on the floor," Wingfield said. His mother, Lydia Wingfield, 78, had lived in the home for more than 50 years. He found her partially clothed body, wearing only a shirt that had been pushed up to her chest.

The medical examiner ruled the cause of death manual strangulation. Wingfield, a grandmother of 13, also had injuries that suggested a sexual assault.

Seminal fluid collected from Wingfield contained DNA that would later be linked to Hopewell. There was another link: The day of her death, Wingfield had called one of her sons to say she had been visited by a man who called himself "Money."

Hopewell has the word "Money" tattooed on his forearm. He had played with the Wingfield boys while growing up in Sandtown-Winchester but had not been in touch for years.

"If he was in need of something, my mother would have given it to him," said Ivan Wingfield. He is angry Hopewell's DNA was not taken sooner. "I'm very upset because if it was caught earlier, my mother wouldn't have to die the way she died."

Evidence connects

Leads developed from the Crawford and Wingfield killings eventually helped net Hopewell, but not before police say he brutalized others. On Sept. 2, he forced his way into the home of a 63-year-old West Baltimore woman, police say.

"If you don't have money, I will take sex and a TV," he told her, according to a police report. Police say he drank three Diet Cokes and a bottle of apple juice, then raped the woman, tied her up and stole her television.

A week later, police say, Hopewell robbed two homes in Northwest Baltimore and cut four elderly residents with knives.

Police finally caught up with Hopewell on Sept. 20. The security officer from Carlton Crawford's building had identified Hopewell as the man she saw in Crawford's apartment the day he died. Also, a door-to-door canvas of Lydia Wingfield's neighborhood turned up a neighbor who said "Money" was a name Hopewell used.

Police arrested Hopewell on Spaulding Avenue, where he was living, and charged him with Crawford's murder.

Hopewell's DNA was taken - for the first time - the next month. It matched the DNA found at the Crawford and Wingfield killings. Then other hits started coming in. It matched the DNA found on the soda cans at one of the September assaults. It matched the DNA found on the shoestring used to tie up Sadie Mack. It matched the DNA from the seminal fluid found in the bodies of Sarah Shannon and Constance Wills.

Late in December, police announced they were charging Hopewell with one rape, four assaults and the killings of Wills, Shannon, Mack, Crawford and Wingfield. He goes on trial Sept. 14. Prosecutors have until Aug. 14 to decide if they will seek the death penalty.

Survivors and families of the victims are left to wonder what might have been - if Hopewell's DNA had been taken in 2004, if the law had been followed.

"I think the state should have done its job," said Amelia Tabron, a victim of one of the September assaults. "Someone like him shouldn't be on the street. I wouldn't wish what happened to me on my worst enemy."

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