In the fall of 1990, nearly 11 years to the day of the assassination of Phoenix Mayor William Hawkins, two FBI agents met with a veteran federal prosecutor to discuss the unsolved case.
But Special Agents Roger Griggs and Ivan Harris III of the bureau`s suburban Tinley Park office had more on their minds than the Hawkins case. A much wider net had been cast by the agents, known to colleagues as methodical and patient diggers.
Thomas Scorza, the assistant U.S. attorney, was something of a bulldog himself. He and the agents were on familiar terms, having worked together before.
Their chemistry was good. They had solved the Dianne Masters murder case, putting her husband and two corrupt Cook County sheriff`s police officials behind bars.
Last week, what they had talked about in 1990-a strategy to solve the 1979 Hawkins murder and expand the inquiry-began to unfold in U.S. District Court and at the Cook County state`s attorney`s office.
It had taken almost 13 years to figure out who was involved and why. Finally murder charges have been filed in the vexing case, with some surprising results.
At a news conference, State`s Atty. Jack O`Malley identified the accused, saying former Phoenix Police Lt. Thomas ”Tony” Childs had gunned down the south suburban mayor. He charged that a second officer, Sgt. Bobby Joe Anderson, stood by to drive the getaway car, an unmarked village police cruiser.
Meanwhile, a key piece to the puzzle had fallen into place at the federal perjury trial of Michael Stoudemire, a neighbor of Hawkins who was accused of lying when he denied witnessing the shooting.
Stoudemire was acquitted Friday night, but Scorza, in prosecuting Stoudemire, told the U.S. District Court jury that Hawkins` murder had been ordered by the then-police chief of Phoenix, Christopher Barton.
Barton denies any wrongdoing and accuses the government of unfairly dragging his name into the alleged murder conspiracy. No formal charges have been placed against him.
But Scorza was unmoved. The mayor and the police, he suggested to the jury, quarreled over the division of money the officers got by shaking down criminals in town.
But it was the testimony of agent Griggs that was the most telling, and the forum again was the Stoudemire trial.
Not only had the FBI pursued answers in the Hawkins case, he said, but agents have also since 1988 quietly and painstakingly been compiling evidence of a suspected alliance of crooks and cops in several suburban areas.
Griggs named the police departments of Harvey and Phoenix, saying each was a focus of the inquiry in which he and agent Harris were involved, with Scorza`s help.
He also said the FBI was looking into the conduct of some officers of the Cook County Sheriff`s Police Department, but gave few specifics.
In the Hawkins murder investigation, however, the government and the Sheriff`s Department pooled their findings. Much of the credit for that went to two county sheriff`s sergeants assigned to the Hawkins homicide, Mark Baldwin and James Houlihan.
Rifle fire had killed Hawkins, 57, in his sixth year as mayor and popular among voters for speaking out against entrenched crime, drugs and vice in the village. He was a steelworker, like many of them, and a family man of 40 years who had known his wife since first grade in Mobile, Ala.
Hawkins was shot in the well-lit driveway of his home in the tiny, impoverished village at about 10 p.m. after returning from work at the Interlake Steel Works in Riverdale. But no one in town came forward to provide evidence that night, or in several years after the assassination.
Sergeants Baldwin and Houlihan had given the case their best shot over the years, but they had little to show for it. They were among the original detectives sent to Phoenix to find the mayor`s assassin.
In the 1980s, authorities got two big breaks in the case. Information on the murder itself and on someone who witnessed it narrowed the focus of the investigation, which had always been concentrated on the Phoenix police.
In 1983, sheriff`s police learned from Eugene Wright Jr. that he and Stoudemire had seen Childs shoot Hawkins that October night four years earlier.
And in 1985, Anderson literally walked into the picture, surrendering himself to Phoenix police for killing his girlfriend. While awaiting sentencing for that murder, Anderson was approached by federal agents and agreed to cooperate in the Hawkins investigation.
After that, much of the probe involved the tedious grand jury process of nailing down testimony by questioning witnesses under oath in secrecy. The investigation was proceeding. Barely.
Authorities were aware that if Hawkins` killer or killers could be prosecuted, corroborating witnesses-not theories-had to be found.
But as one former county prosecutor remarked, communication between agencies wasn`t the best.
”The right hand didn`t always know what the left was doing,” he said.
That is where Scorza bridged the gap.
”Until Tom Scorza came along, nobody felt confident enough to (go into court and) win a murder trial,” said one prosecution source.
Sheriff`s police Houlihan and Baldwin gave federal agents their detailed crime-scene findings along with the names of potential witnesses and others to interview.
And by 1990, Griggs and Harris had their plan for prosecution.
The next year was spent before the grand jury and in attempts to woo reluctant witnesses.
Phoenix Police Chief William Mozelle, who joined the force in 1989, said citizen reluctance to come forwrd was a big factor. But he added, ”If you had seen members of the police department commit a hideous crime, who are you going to go talk to?”
Hard work led to a December 1991 federal indictment of Stoudemire for allegedly lying to the grand jury about what he saw the night of the shooting. That same year, O`Malley`s office reopened the sheriff`s findings in the case and, working with Scorza, prepared murder charges against Childs and Anderson. The sealed Cook County indictment was not made public until the jury had been chosen for Stoudemire`s trial Wednesday.
Why it took so long to bring charges is a question whose answer may not be known until the actual murder trial of Childs and Anderson, and anyone else who might be charged.
O`Malley, asked about the years of work that seemed to bear little fruit, said, ”I don`t think any of the people who have worked in (this)
office for the past 13 years had any interest other than to bring these murderers to justice, and whoever else was involved.
”It`s frustrating when you have strong beliefs that someone committed a vicious crime, but you can`t bring them to prosecution until you have the evidence.”
U.S. Atty. Fred Foreman said he would withhold comment until the conclusion of the Stoudemire case.
Reasons behind delays range from the mundane to the unexpected, according to sources familiar with the case.
A major difficulty, demonstrated in many cases, including the Dianne Masters investigation, arose from a situation of police investigating police. As with Masters, slain in a murder conspiracy that involved her husband and his high-ranking police friends, the Hawkins murder points up the problems law officials and officers on the street have investigating ”brother officers.” And many prosecutors, unwilling to take on a ”loser,” shy away from prosecuting police officers when the primary witnesses are criminals themselves.
The passing of time also hurt, dimming memories and sapping the enthusiasm of some investigators.
Turnovers at the executive and street level among law enforcement agencies inadvertently hobbled the inquiry. Shifting crime priorities and plenty of other cases to work were contributing factors.
Phoenix is almost entirely black and poor, and those who worked or directed the murder investigation have, for the most part, been white officers. Whatever informants they have aren`t likely to live in Phoenix.
”You tell us why it took so long,” replied Elenora Cole, a Phoenix grandmother. ”That`s what`s wrong with our justice system. They only move on the things they want to move on.”
Some Phoenix residents who didn`t want to give their names expressed the opinion that solving crimes in poor and black communities is usually at the bottom of the list of most law-enforcement personnel.
Phoenix is also a place where people keep to themselves and keep their mouths shut, especially to outsiders.
”You can have someone killed on a corner and six people sitting across the street watching the whole thing and no one will have seen anything. That`s just how it is here,” said Tom Palma, a Chicago firefighter who volunteers with the Phoenix department on his days off.
The long years of questioning, re-examining and cajoling are now about to pay off. But those most involved with the effort saw the solution as far from impossible.
Asked in 1991 what was taking so long, Houlihan replied, ”This is a dead-bang case. I can tell you that they are finally moving on it.”
