Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets is a 1991 non-fiction book written by Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon describing a year spent with detectives from the Baltimore Police Department Homicide Unit. The book received the 1992 Edgar Award in the Best Fact Crime category.
The book was subsequently fictionalized as the NBC television drama Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–99), on which Simon served as a writer and producer. Many of the key detectives and incidents portrayed in the book provided inspiration for the first two seasons of the show, with other elements surfacing in later seasons as well. It later also provided inspiration for Simon's HBO television series The Wire (2002–08).
Background David Simon, a reporter for The Baltimore Sun, spent four years on the police beat before taking a leave of absence to write this book. He persuaded the Baltimore Police Department to allow him access to the city's Homicide Unit for calendar year 1988, and throughout that year he shadowed a shift of detectives as they investigated cases, conducted interrogations, executed search and arrest warrants, and testified at trials. Baltimore recorded 234 murders during the year Simon spent with the Homicide Unit.
A total of 567 murders occurred in the city in 1989 and 1990 together, the period during which Simon wrote Homicide. The book was published in 1991, during which Baltimore saw a record 353 murders. Simon said he was particularly interested in the demythification of the American detective. Although detectives are typically portrayed as noble characters who care deeply about their victims, Simon believed real detectives regarded violence as a normal aspect of their jobs.
Content Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets provides a sympathetic but unromantic portrait of crime fighting in a major American city at the height of the late 1980s crime epidemic. The book is notable for the detailed look it gives into the professional lives of police detectives and the mix of quirky, absurd, and sometimes tragic cases they investigated.
Notable cases Latonya Wallace The case of Latonya Kim Wallace, an 11-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted and murdered, is perhaps the most notable case in the book. Tom Pellegrini was the primary detective on the case, which remains unsolved. The Adena Watson case in Homicide: Life on the Street was based on this case, and the travails on it of new Detective Tim Bayliss were based on Pellegrini's experiences. Simon described it as "the spine of the book".
Geraldine Parrish A woman named Geraldine Parrish took out life insurance policies on multiple relatives, including her five husbands and a niece, then arranged for their murders so she could collect the benefits. She eventually pleaded guilty to four murders and was convicted of three assaults, receiving eight life sentences without parole.
Donald Waltemeyer was the primary on this case, which played a large role in his transition from the mindset of patrol officer to that of investigator. His experiences involved two attempts to locate and exhume a Parrish victim, both of which ended with the wrong man being disinterred. The case of Calpurnia Church in the first season of Homicide: Life on the Street was based on Parrish's crimes.
Gene Cassidy Gene Cassidy, a patrolman and close friend of Detective Sergeant Terry McLarney, was shot twice in the head at point-blank range in October 1987. Although initially expected to die or be left completely disabled, Cassidy made a full mental recovery but was left blind and without his sense of smell or taste. Drug dealer Clifton "Butchie" Frazier was eventually convicted of attempted murder in the first degree and sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years. McLarney felt a great deal of disillusionment by the way that the BPD seemed unable to understand or fully help Cassidy in the aftermath of the shooting.
The Cassidy story was worked into the first season of Homicide: Life on the Street and was the largest storyline for the character of Detective Steve Crosetti (Jon Polito). Officer Chris Thormann (Lee Tergesen), a friend of Crosetti, was shot and blinded while on duty; Crosetti took the incident personally and went to great lengths to find the shooter. The case also inspired the character of Blind Butchie on The Wire, a blind Baltimore drug dealer who was soft-spoken and not vicious (a contrast to the real-life Butchie Frazier).
The jury's actions became the basis for a Season 4 storyline in which Bruce Campbell played a cop whose father, a retired officer, was strangled to death by a suspect who was acquitted by an uninterested jury. A passage in Simon's book revealed that the guilty verdict against Frazier came about because two jurors who were convinced of his guilt argued more strenuously to bring the jury to their side than did two who believed he was innocent, while the other eight had no strong opinion either way.
Gary Tuggle, an officer seconded to the homicide unit to help with the investigation, went on to serve in the Drug Enforcement Administration. He returned to Baltimore in March 2018 to take the post of Deputy Police Commissioner, then was appointed Interim Commissioner two months later and served until March 2019.
Butchie Frazier was not presented as being related to Robert Frazier, a drug dealer who was tried and convicted of a different murder detailed in the book.
John Randolph Scott Car thief John Randolph Scott was fatally shot in the back while fleeing on foot from officers. Only one pursuing officer fired his weapon, and the bullet was found embedded in the dirt of a nearby vacant lot. With no clear murder weapon and no cooperation from the other officers on the scene, Detective Donald Worden was unable to close the case, making it the only unsolved police-related shooting in department history. The book notes that several officers, including a primary suspect, were reassigned to administrative positions.
Minor friction resulted between Worden and his sergeant, McLarney, on this case. A civilian suspect was a possibility, but the exposure of this development by a reporter shut down that investigative alley, and infuriated Worden and Rick James, his partner, as they knew that information could only have come from a police officer.
This story was worked into a Homicide: Life on the Street story in which Det. Frank Pembleton investigated a police-involved shooting. Unlike the real case, the fictional story ended with a police officer being arrested and charged with the shooting.Kalat, p. 135
The "Homicide Lexicon" and its rules Throughout the book, Simon frequently refers to 10 informal rules that apply in the majority of homicide cases, as detectives soon learn. They are as follows: Everyone lies. Murderers lie because they have to; witnesses and other participants lie because they think they have to; everyone else lies for the sheer joy of it, and to uphold a general principle that under no circumstances do you provide accurate information to a cop. The victim is killed once, but a crime scene can be murdered a thousand times. The initial ten to twelve hours after a murder are the most critical to the success of an investigation. An innocent man left alone in an interrogation room will remain fully awake, rubbing his eyes, staring at the cubicle walls, and scratching himself in the dark, forbidden places. A guilty man left alone in an interrogation room goes to sleep. It's good to be good; it's better to be lucky. When a suspect is immediately identified in an assault case, the victim is sure to live. When no suspect has been identified, the victim will surely die. First, they're red. Then, they're green. Then, they're black. (Referring to the color of an open case on the board, the money that must be spent to investigate the case, and the color of the solved murder as it is listed on the board) In any case where there is no apparent suspect, the crime lab will produce no valuable evidence. In those cases where a suspect has confessed and been identified by at least two eyewitnesses, the lab will give you print hits, fiber evidence, blood typings, and a ballistic match. To a jury, any doubt is reasonable; the better the case, the worse the jury; a good man is hard to find, but 12 of them, gathered together in one place, is a miracle. There is too such a thing as a perfect murder. Always has been, and anyone who tries to claim otherwise merely proves himself naïve and romantic, a fool who is ignorant of Rules 1 through 9.
Detectives David Simon joined the Baltimore Police Department as a "police intern" in January 1988 and spent 12 months following the homicide detectives of Lieutenant Gary D'Addario's shift. At the beginning of the year, the shift consisted of the following personnel: Lieutenant Gary D'Addario – Shift Commander Detective Sergeant Terrence McLarney – Squad Supervisor Detective Donald Worden ("The Big Man") Detective Rick James Detective Edward Brown Detective Donald Waltemeyer Detective David John Brown Detective Sergeant Roger Nolan – Squad Supervisor Detective Harry Edgerton Detective Richard Garvey Detective Robert Bowman Detective Donald Kincaid Detective Robert McAllister Detective Sergeant Jay Landsman – Squad Supervisor Detective Tom Pellegrini Detective Oscar "Rick" Requer ("The Bunk") Detective Gary Dunnigan Detective Richard Fahlteich Detective Fred Ceruti
Edward Brown and David John Brown were not related, though at one point David jokingly referred to Edward as his father.
Fahlteich and Ceruti both transferred out of the unit during the year; they were replaced by Detectives Vernon Holley and Chris Graul.
The Wire Several detectives described in the book were the basis for characters on the Baltimore-based HBO drama The Wire: Jay Landsman spawned a character of the same name, and the real-life Landsman portrayed real life police named Dennis Mello. Rick "The Bunk" Requer was the basis for Detective Bunk Moreland, and in episode four of season five Roscoe Orman played a veteran named Oscar "Rick" Requer. Gary D'Addario appears as a Prosecuting Attorney Gary DiPasquale on the show, who assists Detective Moreland with various grand jury summonses. Roger Nolan, Terry McLarney and Donald Worden are briefly mentioned as officers in various episodes, and Worden makes a cameo appearance as himself in the fifth season. A 1970s contract killer named Dennis Wise is also briefly mentioned, and Dennis "Cutty" Wise is a major character in the series. Another name used for a character was Roger Twigg, a police reporter who, in the book, is characterized as an annoyance to law enforcement. When the Monroe Street investigation yielded a potential civilian lead, Twigg published an article calling the civilian a potential suspect; although the description was technically true, police believed that the man only witnessed the crime. He subsequently invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to testify, blocking that avenue of the investigation.
Additionally, several traits of various officers can be viewed amongst the characters on the show, and much similar slang is used on the show such as the words "Dunker", "Redball", and "Stone Whodunit" to describe the various cases. Moreover, the police department on the show has the same red/black case clearance and marking criteria.
Finally, a number of small anecdotes in Homicide: Life on the Street worked their way into The Wire: Most notably, the tale of "Snot Boogie", a small-time thief who was shot down after a craps game, was used in the cold open of the series' first episode, providing the "This America, man" quote. When listing the detectives whom he sees himself and the rest of the VCU as being on a par with, McNulty mentions Worden, Ed Burns (who was a homicide detective but was detailed with the FBI for the year), and Gary Childs, a detective on the other shift in the book.
Aftermath
Gary D'Addario