The above quote in the summary was, I thought, an interesting comment on the case profiled here in Miami, Fla., in which a 66-year-old homeless man was gunned down on a sidewalk one day. It turns out the man was a Cuban refugee from the "boat days" of 1980 and had no family. The cop, Det. Fernando Bosch, had sympathy for the man despite the fact the drifter was a drug user. That's who killed him: some pusher. Bosch felt that people who get into trouble with drugs or alcohol and have no family there for them, as a backup or support system, are sad creatures and more liable to wind up with unhappy endings to their life.
The man was killed in a very tough section of town called Overton, where drug dealers abound. The police don't have a lot to go on but enough to figure out that the murderer was a guy only known, appropriately, as "Killer." Eventually, they find out he's Dedrick Glenn.
There was a witness to the crime and Mr. Glenn apparently had threatened him so much that the witness fled to Georgia. It was there that he told police what they needed to know.
The other crime story takes place in Dallas where police are led to a gruesome scene of a man wrapped in a thick blanket who has been dead for awhile. A poor, starving little dog is next to him. Although decomposing had erased much of the man's fingerprints, there is enough to finally ID him. He's 28-year-old Amos Rattler, so the detectives go question his ex-girlfriend, friends and family.
We see several of these people interviewed. Some are obviously lying, but they do get a couple of suspects that they pursue. This isn't a case solved in 48 hours but it is solved. It's amazing how some people, even close family members, eventually wind up giving police what they need.
In an odd kind of twist, two guys are sentenced in this case but since the victim was actually planning to rob them, they don't wind up with a lot of jail time. This is one of those cases where almost everyone connected with it was a criminal. The key people here were inmates together, but obviously not friends!
The man was killed in a very tough section of town called Overton, where drug dealers abound. The police don't have a lot to go on but enough to figure out that the murderer was a guy only known, appropriately, as "Killer." Eventually, they find out he's Dedrick Glenn.
There was a witness to the crime and Mr. Glenn apparently had threatened him so much that the witness fled to Georgia. It was there that he told police what they needed to know.
The other crime story takes place in Dallas where police are led to a gruesome scene of a man wrapped in a thick blanket who has been dead for awhile. A poor, starving little dog is next to him. Although decomposing had erased much of the man's fingerprints, there is enough to finally ID him. He's 28-year-old Amos Rattler, so the detectives go question his ex-girlfriend, friends and family.
We see several of these people interviewed. Some are obviously lying, but they do get a couple of suspects that they pursue. This isn't a case solved in 48 hours but it is solved. It's amazing how some people, even close family members, eventually wind up giving police what they need.
In an odd kind of twist, two guys are sentenced in this case but since the victim was actually planning to rob them, they don't wind up with a lot of jail time. This is one of those cases where almost everyone connected with it was a criminal. The key people here were inmates together, but obviously not friends!