Candyman: The True Story Behind the Bathroom Mirror Murder | Full Podcast | Forensic Files

when I was a kid I was scared of Candyman he was the killer from this old horror movie from 1992 that became a
cult classic Candyman had a hook for a hand and he gut you with it for no other reason than that you said his name five
times into a bathroom mirror candyman candyman candyman and there was something about Candyman that seemed
more real like more dangerous than any other movie villain I mean there were no white guys
that looked like the slasher from the Halloween franchise walking around my Southside Chicago
neighborhood like I didn't see a lot of dudes with hockey mask either so those weren't as scary to me but
Candyman he looked like somebody I might actually bump into this brother was 65 with this Eerie
baritone deep voice what's blood for if not for shedding and he wore this Creepy
Black trench coat and one of my big cousins knew I was scared of him so he used to try to
lock me in the bathroom with the lights off to prank me so needless to say I avoided watching this movie for years
even though it set in my hometown but not too long ago I finally sat down to watch it and when I did I realized
Candyman is about so much more than a murderous herban Legend see this movie is actually about a dark chapter in the
history of Chicago it lowkey shows us what happens when a city refuses to care for its own residents and it's about who
gets to feel safe in their own homes in this country even today Candyman is set in a public
housing project called Cabrini Green there's this graduate student named Helen who is studying urban legends and
she's dead set on finding out more about this one in one of the early scenes Helen is in an empty classroom at her
University listening to a tape recording someone's describing one of the candyman's
murders a janitor who's cleaning the room overhears the recording in True Hollywood fashion the
janitor just so happens to know someone who can tell Helen more about Candyman I
think her name was Ruthie Jean and and she heard this banging and smashing like somebody was trying to make a hole in
the wall so Ruthie called 9911 and she said there's somebody coming through the walls and they didn't believe her they
thought the lady was crazy right Helen does some research and found out that a woman was killed by someone who came in
through her bathroom mirror so she and another grad student visit the high-rise apartment in the
projects they go upstairs to the murder victim's apartment it's unlocked they both walk in and go into
Ruthie Jean's bathroom it's Eerie after all whoever killed her got into the apartment this same way Helen
opens the medicine cabinet killer or killers they don't know which smashed their way through the back of this
cabinet see there's no wall there the story of Candyman is fictional of course we all know that saying
Candyman five times in the bathroom mirror doesn't actually conjure up a killer ghost but the murder of Ruthie Jean in
the movie shares horrifying similarities to the killing of a real person that woman's name wasn't Ruthie
Jean but Ruthie May McCoy it must have been a couple of years after Candyman came out somehow I hadn't heard of it
and people told me hey you know there's there's stuff in here that seems to be from the story you wrote that's Steve
begira he's a reporter who followed the case of the real murder for years in the
movie The they showed a Chicago dispatch headline what killed Ruthie Jean life in
the projects which was almost identical to the headline of the story I wrote Steve wrote a series of investigative
pieces about Ruthie May McCoy's murder for a weekly newspaper called the Chicago Reader
[Music] in 1987 after she died he visited Ruthie May's apartment it was on the 11th floor
of a highrise in one of Chicago's housing projects there happened to be a janitor who was cleaning up in her
apartment uh the door was open and I was able to go in whoever murdered Ruthie May McCoy somehow entered her apartment
through her bathroom mirror she had heard The Intruders coming and it called 911 in this podcast we're taking another
look at the true nightmare that inspired a major film franchise they just cast her like she
was nobody they didn't care it was just like another black person just got murder oh okay we go to the next one now
when we talk about crime we talk about violence there's this thing where we do a presumption that the people and not
the conditions are responsible but what if the conditions in the projects and Ruthie May's killers are both
responsible you're supposed to feel safe at home but back then and even now that's not always the case and sometimes
the danger in our own homes comes from the very people who are supposed to protect
us why didn't 911 get her the help she needed and how had Ruthie May's medicine cabinet become a point of
entry I'm Dom Pungo from 48 hours this is Candyman the true story behind the bathroom mirror
[Music] murder episode one left high and dry on April 22nd 1987 Ruthie May McCoy
called 911 it was 8:45 at night Ruthie May was a 52 2-year-old grandmother who lived alone when she called police to
report and attempted Breakin we're told the original recording no longer exists but we do have a transcript so we've
asked actors to read it I'm alone and I I live at 1440 was 13th Street and some people living next
door have pulled their cabinets out what are they doing they they want to break in on this side where I live at Ruthie
May tried to explain they want to break in yeah they they throw the cabinets down they threw the cabinets down where
I'm in a project they come on the other side but you can reach my bathroom and they want to come through the bathroom
now it's unclear if the dispatcher got this part of what Ruthie May was saying she's telling them that The Intruders
were coming in through the bathroom 1440 West 13th Street Apartment 11:09 okay the elevator working 11:09 uhhuh all
right what's your name ma'am Bruce McCoy all right I'll send you the police okay
the dispatcher assigned a patrol car but classified the call as a disturbance with the neighbor not a
robbery that crucial difference likely impacted what happened next Ruthie May when she's making the 911 call she
sounded very scared back in 1987 Steve buira had listened to Ruthie May's actual call for help but together enough
to report to the police that she's in the projects the elevators are working so you know there it kind of underscores
the fact that the elevators often aren't working police may not come if the elevators aren't working Steve was 33
when Ruthie May was killed at that time he focused his reporting on telling the stories of low-income black residents
who lived on Chicago's South and West sides he' covered plenty of stories in the projects but for Ruthie may he wrote
two long stories 22,000 words in total for the Chicago Reader I tried to not just write about murder but about um
other aspects of people's [Music] lives the night Ruthie may call 911 dispatchers also talked to two of her
neighbors one after the other had called to report gunshots so three calls for help were made when police came they got
there in about 20 minutes and were there about a half hour they knocked on her door and called out to her got no answer
they tried to open the door if it wouldn't open it was locked they asked uh for a key to the apartment they
secured the key that was supposed to be to the apartment it didn't work officers
wrote in the police report that the door was locked and that there didn't appear
to be any signs of a Breakin despite the two neighbors calling and Ruthie May herself the officers made a controversal
decision to not break the door down so after about a half hour they just left it took another neighbor's call the
next day to get someone to take action the next evening they got a call police got a call from 11 floor neighbor named
Deborah lley yeah I'm the one they got them to open the door Deborah lassle lived down the hall from Ruthie may we
recently caught up with Deborah on the phone you'll hear the connection was a little rough and at times you can hear
children in the background but this was the only time she was available and she knew Ruthie May well we had to talk to
her Deborah lived in apartment 11:01 and Ruthie May was in 1109 they looked out for one another she was my best friend
in the building cuz I had never lived in the project neither and me and her to get the hang of it together when they
met they were both new to the 11th floor of the Grace Abbott homes which is a part of a public housing complex Deborah
in her 30s was a mother of seven and her living situation was cramped but she may
do as best she could Ruthie may help helped her manage and would keep an eye on her kids sometimes we both to each
other every day all during the day she watched my kid and we stand in the hallway and talk Ruthie may had one
daughter and two grandchildren she never married and lived on her own in Abbott Holmes her daughter verita was in her
mid 20s by Van according to her autopsy Ruthie May stood 5'9 and weighed a little over 250 lb she had black hair
mixed with a little gray Deborah said Ruthie May was sweet but that she was also the kind of woman who
wasn't scared to keep the kids in the building in line so she was like a grandmother to my kids and my kids they
know the respector cuz she tell them to get in the house that me get in the house the night Ruthie may call 911
Deborah heard gunshots but didn't think anything of them yeah we heard it but over there you heard shots all the time
there was a lot of territoriality so gangs fighting over Turf that led to more violence that led to more
guns um and that was the situation in the Abbott homes uh at the time Ruthie May was killed Steve wrote that Abbott
Holmes was the territory for a gang called the black Gangster Disciples at the time the bgds they monitored the
Halls elevators and the stairs and the buildings often turned into a Battleground between the bgds and
another game gang the Vice Lords Steve found that in 1986 a year before Ruthie May's murder
residents in the projects experienced killings rapes and attacks more than twice as often as the rest of the city
gangs fighting over Turf that led to more violence that led to more guns that's why Deborah didn't question the
gunfire until the following morning when Ruthie May didn't come to visit like she
normally did and I kept saying it's something wrong but she would have knocked on my door and told me she was
going Ruthie May normally stopped at Deborah's apartment at least twice a day she let Deborah know when she was
leaving and when she got home but that day she never knocked it was shocking cuz she's going to go to the store every
day she's going to go to that store for the first time Ruthie May didn't follow her routine this was a bad sign and I
knocked on her door and I didn't hear nothing and then I just sh that said something's wrong it's not like
her Deborah marched downstairs out of the building and down the block to ask the building's management if they could
check on her friend see they would have a key and she didn't the Chicago Housing
Authority known as cha managed Abbott I went to housing and they told me I had to see again you know check again and
see do she come she might be went somewhere she's hard to understand stand here but she's saying that the cha told
her to check on her friend again that maybe she stepped out Deborah said the manager warned her that they could get
in trouble for opening Ruthie May's apartment without her permission when she couldn't get through the management
she called the cops I didn't feel like nobody care cuz it took me all day long to get the police to come it took me all
day long the police hadn't come back on their own since the night before Deborah's calls convinced them to
try again the security guards from the Sha Housing Authority met them at Ruthie May's door Steve said officers came
ready to break down the door this time the police wanted to go in they say um and check on Ruthie May and the chicag
Housing Authority security Force said well if you break down that door the tenant May sue you
for whatever reason the police and ch again disregard that the tenant herself had called 911 afraid because Intruders
were breaking into her apartment through the mirror despite that Steve said that
the guards only offered reasons not to break in also if you break down that door somebody's going to have to secure
it we don't want to do that so they kind of talked the police out of entering the
apartment of course the police could have entered the apartment then it wasn't up to the cha security staff for
a second time the Chicago Police left without checking to see if Ruthie May McCoy was okay we wanted to know why so
we reached out to the current cha spokesperson they told us that due to how long it's been since this happened
they have to refer us back to how the cha answered these questions at the time back then when Steve called the
Cha's head of security to asked why they advised police not to break down the door the director said quote I don't
have any answers two days after Ruthie May was shot Deborah finally got someone from the
Chicago Housing Authority to open her friend's door it was somebody from cha who did
break into the apartment and found Ruthie May lying on her side in a pool of blood
decomposing and when they open the door you could smell it so bad the man from the Housing Authority asked
Deborah to wait by Ruthie May's door out in the hallway but then they came and told me we had to call the police Ruthie
May was found in a bedroom according to the medical examiner she'd been shot four times and one of the gunshots one
of the bullets had severed her pulmonary artery so he didn't believe she would have lived
long we all want to believe that when we call authorities help will be on the away Ruthie May was left high and dry
and why that happened would be the subject of a lot of debate for months and even years after her
murder murders reportedly happen so frequently in the projects that it wasn't always newsworthy Ruthie May's
murder would have fallen Into Obscurity or it would have been overlooked like so
many others if not for one curious detail the fact that she had been killed by someone who came in through the hole
in the wall where her medicine cabinet usually was the Chicago Tribune wrote a short news story a few weeks after the
murder it was amazing to me that people had access to other apartments through the medicine cabinet
in the adjacent apartment Steve buira saw that brief article in the Tribune and had a bunch of questions I thought
how could the Tribune not be intrigued enough to ask more about these circumstances Steve
worked for the prestigious Tribune out of college before shifting to a legendary weekly paper the Chicago
Reader it's kind of like Chicago's Village Voice and had a reputation for solid journalism I wanted to be
downwardly mobile but seriously because uh I felt the Tribune was more interested in
stories that appealed to the kinds of people they wanted to advertise to people who lived along the lakefront in
healthier neighborhoods and in the suburbs but at the Chicago Reader Steve was free to write the kinds of stories
he wanted to write about folks like Ruthie mcoy I was interested for for one thing in whether this medicine cabinet
break-in was unique and I was also interested in how police could leave like they
did more than a month after Ruthie May McCoy's murder Steve beira drove to abbid homes the project building was
massive in the center there was this big open area with some trees lining the sidewalk seven 15-story highrises
surrounded the oversized Lawns made of brick they all look the same Abbot homes were first built in
1955 and while they might have been nice then by the late 80s residents said maintenance rarely fixed anything
burnt out light bulbs broken elevators and backed up toilets this was all a part of life when Ruthie May moved in
many of the walls and ceilings were crumbling Steve was used to visiting Chicago's projects for his stories but
as a thin white guy in his early 30s who obviously wasn't from the neighborhood Abbott's residents who were 90% black
would give him the side eye this guy must be a social worker or a cop or look looking for drugs and
eventually they would believe me that I was a reporter Steve stopped at Ruthie May's building I went up to the 11th
floor not knowing if I'm going to be not thinking I'm going to be able to get into her apartment you said a janitor
happened to be in the apartment cleaning up the door was open and I was able to go in just like Helen the graduate
student in the first Candyman movie Steve wanted to see the hole in the bathroom wall for himself I do remember
going into the bathroom and looking at where the medicine cabinet was supposed to be and there was a rectangular hole
in the wall why wasn't her cabinet even on the wall after Ruthie May was killed her
family and friends realized that there have been clues that there was something about her apartment that scared her her
brother had visited her a couple of months before and she said that her medicine cabinet was loose and he had
put a couple of pieces of wood in there to try to fortify it she didn't tell him
anything about medicine cabinet break-ins he says if she had he would have you know done he what what he could
to get her out of the project Ruthie May's friend Deborah has a daughter named Mary they Liv down a hall from
Ruthie May and Mary used to hang out in Ruthie May's apartment not long before the murder Mary noticed that Ruthie May
kept a stick on him one heavy enough to be a weapon she had a stick that that was sitting from her door her be door to
the bathroom door right there Mary remembered that one particular day when she was visiting she went to use the
bathroom but Ruthie May stopped her she like no no no touch it don't touch it door get back over here she like use
right here she pointed to a bucket that's when Mary realized she been using a bucket to relieve herself that's how
scared she'd been in her own home it was [ __ ] in bucket she had carage bag sitting
there and she had used it and every day we never know that we see her walk from house to the cerat she was throwing that
bag away neither Ruthie May's best friend her daughter or Steve said they knew of Ruthie May ever explicitly told
anyone why she was afraid here's Steve again I was struck by both how spooky it was but also how outrageous it was I
mean I knew from other stories I had done reporting in the projects in high-rise projects
that uh people were living with great insecurity great fear but usually it was of uh you know people could break
through my front door the idea that people could also break into their apartment through their bathroom I mean
that was really that that really seemed awful to me for people to have to live with that Deborah and Mary both remember
seeing young men coming in and out of the apartment next to Ruthie Mays Steve learned there was a connection between
that apartment and the murder hers was apartment 1109 the adjacent apartment was
1108 and uh the State's Attorney's Office had confiscated the medicine cabinet in the other apartment as
evidence the medicine cabinet in Ruthie May's apartment was never found when he visited Ruthy May's
apartment Steve picked up some of the papers that had been left on the floor in disarray of course I looked at them
and found the connection to the Mount siai Psychiatric Center that's when he learned more about why people might not
have believed Ruthy May apparently she had struggled with her mental health in the past but lately
she'd been responding to treatment and started pursuing her GED it was a tragedy what happened to her regardless
but it seemed to be especially tragic considering that she was making really good steps with her life
Ruthie May went to a year of high school and quit after that and she started showing signs of mental illness in her
early 20s so could have been schizophrenia that was never totally clear uh but she was definitely
paranoid and she would would be heard talking to herself in the street Steve said this was in 1986 a year before
Ruthie May's murder her treatment at the Psychiatric Center was outpatient which
means she still lived at home while receiving care she was known in the project as Miss May and she was she
would like curse strangers sometimes but uh she got connected with this Psychiatric Center at Mount Si after
going to the Psychiatric Center Ruthie May was taking high school equivalency classes it was a sign that she was
looking toward the future she was in arts and crafts projects group therapy most of the other clients in
this Center were also project residents the director of the center said they were all dealing with the stress and
deprivation of living in that project the conditions that Steve learned about and the system's failure to help Ruthie
May led him to pose a provocative question in one of his headlines it read what k Ked rufie May
McCoy a bullet in the chest or life in the projects that headline is very close to
the one that shows up in the Candyman movie in 1992 in the movie they showed a Chicago dispatch headline what killed
Ruthie Jean life in the projects Steve noticed how close it was to his own headline but he didn't overthink it
after all in the movie's credits it says that Candyman is based on a fictional story called The Forbidden written by
Clive Barker in 1985 Clive Barker's story depicts a graduate student named Helen
investigating an urban legend who hunts a dilapidated housing project in Liverpool England it wasn't like they
were doing a movie that was totally about the story I wrote they had a different
agenda they were tying this real story to urban legend Bernard Rose who wrote and
directed Candyman decided to set the story in the Chicago housing projects instead race didn't play a role in Clive
Barker's story but Rose made it a central theme of Candyman in the movie Candyman is actually Daniel robati a
black man from the late 1800s who was lynched for having a relationship with a white woman here's the director himself
Bernard Rose the candy man is kind of a Golem you know he's he's in avenging Angel as much as he's anything how did
that backstory become a part of his narrative the point was that he was wealthy and that he thought he was
assimilated and he thought he was accepted but he wasn't and they killed him and so now he's he's he's there out
there not exactly looking for vengeance but looking for something looking to just haunt them it's visceral and maybe
that's why Candyman still has this whole on us it is served as the basis for four
films honestly I didn't watch the 1992 movie until after I saw the newer 2021 Candyman movie this is Morgan KY she's a
field producer at 48 hours and she's actually the one who came up with the idea for this podcast and after watching
that movie I was just really hooked so I decided to do a little bit of research and I learned that Ruthie may had
suffered this horrible fate and I just wanted to know more about why yeah her death sounded crazy to me too the first
time I heard it it kind of pissed me off to be honest with you right it just felt
like she didn't have to die exactly and and that's what I wanted to do this podcast just to understand how The
Intruders could have killed Ruthie may get to the bottom of why she died and how her circumstances contributed to
what happened so doti when you were a kid in Chicago how large did Candyman loom for you I mean it was huge I was
scared of Candy Man I mean the fact that all you have to do was say your name into a bathroom mirror and they could
pop up to be honest I didn't even watch the film in it in full until you brought
it to me really I didn't realize that no facts facts and Steve buir is like me he
didn't see the film until much later not because he was scared of Candyman like a
young Doma but it was because he wasn't a fan of horror films he said that his biggest takeaway when he finally did
watch the movie wasn't the commonalities between his story and parts of the film
I was struck by the fact that what is a nightmare to white people was reality to
people who were living in in the projects I'll admit that sounds dramatic but let me tell you he is really not
exaggerating here I'd find out that a lot of that first Candyman film came from real life not just Ruthie May's
murder Ruthie May lived in taxpayer funded housing with conditions bad enough to inspire a horror film but how
is it that people's living conditions were ever allowed to get this bad in America why weren't residents better
protected and why weren't Ruthie May's calls for help taken more seriously good part of my reporting dealt with the
police response or lack of response which as many residents in the project told me was not
surprising there were all kinds of factors that Steve and those close to Ruthie may belied contributed to the tra
maybe if police came in right away there was nothing they could do for her anyway
we'll never know while they didn't break into the apartment police did start a hunt for who killed Ruthie May and Steve
went on a search of his own to find out how unusual it was for an intruder to come through the bathroom mirror at
Abbott Holmes there hadn't been another murder through this kind of an entry but there
had been numerous burglaries through the medicine cabinets this wasn't the first time criminals had
prayed on residents like this coming up we're going to look at the conditions residents like Ruthie May we're living
in if you really believed in tough on crime then you wouldn't make it easy to crawl into medicine cabinets and kill
our women what explanation did authorities have for not immediately helping ruy May there are a lot of calls
to 911 from the projects that are hoax calls phony calls what made her a Target in the first place if people think you
have money yes they will try to rob people we'll follow the murder investigation and talk to one of the
lead detectives and I said Jesus Christ look at this and there was no medicine cabinet on the other side and we'll talk
to the writer and director of Candyman who has long downplayed the connection between Ruthie May's death and the story
that made it to the big screen you take things from the world around you and put
them into new forms that's really what fiction is luy May McCoy was murdered in Spring of 1987 in her apartment and the
circumstances around her killing didn't make sense from the very [Music] beginning Ruthie May tried to explain
the break-in during the 911 call but the dispatcher didn't seem to grasp what she
was really saying they want to break in yeah they they throw the cabinets down she said they threw down her cabinet
Ruthie May was likely trying to tell the dis dispatcher that Intruders were coming in through her bathroom mirror
which to be fair does sound absurd the dispatcher might have been confused I wondered if that was the reason they
didn't take Ruthie May's 911 call more seriously you know you lock your front door somebody could still try to break
in but you feel some sense of security reporter Steve beira discovered that even though Ruthie May might have been
the first person murdered this way at least that we know about this was not the first time criminals entered through
a bathroom mirror in the Chicago projects there had been numerous burglaries some residents even said they
caught a few thieves red-handed one person told me that she was watching TV with a friend and all of
a sudden a kid runs out of her bathroom through her apartment and out the door and she goes into the bathroom and
there's another kid stuck in the pipe chase the second kid who was a little bit heavier was having a hard time
getting through so they caught him and called police and he confessed that um yeah they were trying to sneak in the
apartment that way believe it or not the fact that the medicine cabinet could come off the wall wasn't by accident
this was by Design the Grace Abbott homes opened in 1955 during the planning of this
building The Architects added a space called a pipe chase this space was just wide enough for a person the adjacent
Apartments had medicine cabinets that were backto back with a pipe Chase in between that is an area where janitors
could work on the plumbing if they took down the medicine cabinet that was the upside for a janitor the problem is it
will become the perfect entry point for criminals and a potential nightmare for residents why didn't the Chicago Housing
Authority do anything to stop these break-ins in the 8S what responsibility did they have for Ruthie May's
murder I'm domati Pungo from 48 hours this is Candyman the true story behind the bathroom mirror
murder episode two deadly design when 911 gets a call they've got to decide how urgent a situation is that
April night A desperate grandmother was reporting that strangers had broken into
her home but the dispatcher logged Ruthie May's call as a disturbance with a neighbor later much later the police
would acknowledge that if the call had been labeled a robbery they would have likely responded it differently
journalist Steve begira questioned the Chicago Police Department at the time and asked why Ruthie May's call for help
didn't generate a faster police response or at the very least convinced cops that
they had to break down her door to help her this is what they told him there are
a lot of calls to 911 from the projects that are hoax calls phony calls they get
to the project and they check into it and nothing's happening Steve said that after so many false alarms officers
approach calls with a little skepticism they maintain that this is had to be a uh factor that the responding officers
took into account when they decided not to break into Ruthie May's apartment to see what was going on that was the
official response there haven't been any studies showing that calls from the projects are more likely to be hoaxes
now if you ask the residents they said that police are afraid of the projects just like we are and that the residents
also said police just don't care about people here we're all poor why should they care about us so that was the
feeling that they had about why police responded the way they did to Ruthie May Steve couldn't find much to back up
the official explanation he wondered if some of the hoax calls were actually complaints made by residents who then
backtracked because they were scared it probably didn't want people knowing that
they were talking to the police back in 1987 the police department Department wouldn't let Steve
speak to the officers who actually responded to the call in the past few months we've reached out to those who
are still alive but haven't heard back Steve said he did talk to the Police Superintendent at the time of the murder
and said that he defended his officer decision not to enter Ruthie May's apartment he at least acknowledged it
was a close call as he put it it was a coin flip that maybe they should have gone in but he said you you have this
information in hindsight you know that somebody got killed there these officers didn't know that they didn't hear
anything they had uh at least one household on the 11th floor who said they hadn't heard
anything Steve still didn't think that seemed like a good enough reason not to break in and I thought that was more of
a an excuse than a a valid reason and again I did I felt it was like is this how you would respond if it was a white
middle class neighborhood where a woman called and reported that somebody had broken in on her in any form would you
get there and knock and if nobody answered just leave especially when you had other calls reporting gunshots would
police just leave because it might be a hoax that's just not just policing it's not
fair Steve quickly figured out that that response time wasn't the only way that the police and the Chicago Housing
Authority or cha might have neglected Ruthie May well according to Ruthie May's daughter Ruthy may had had one
attempted Breakin through the medicine cabinet route the previous year and had reported it and Cha had done nothing
about it when Steve asked about it the cha claimed that they had no record of this complaint so Steve started digging
I started hearing about these break-ins that people were doing and these break-ins had been
reported to the Chicago Housing Authority the cha tried to minimize how many there were it turns out other
residents complained to the Cha about break-ins through their medicine cabinets I remember the spokesperson
told me in the 18 months before Ruthie May was killed they got reports of at most 10 probably only seven break-ins
via medicine en cters seven break-ins through bathroom mirrors sounds like a lot to me but
Steve says that he was told that that count is still probably too low the police commander in the district said
well you have to Triple whatever the reports are because so many break-ins don't even get reported to us so if you
take the police Commander's advice and triple the number of break-ins there was between 21 and 30 in the 18 months
before Ruthie May was killed and what had the Chicago Housing Authority done about this nothing and the longer this
security problem went unchecked the more common place these break-ins will become
if you're in your apartment you take down the medicine cabinet Crawl Through the pipe Chase kick in the other
medicine cabinet and do the burglary and that's the route that apparently was not
uncommon in 1987 Steve wondered what it would take to fix these medicine cabinets to
protect residents a janitor I spoke with in the project said it wouldn't be hard
to secure these you'd have to bolt the cabinets to each other it would make it harder for plumbers to work on the
plumbing but at least people would be safe from that kind of an intrusion the cha didn't do that the janitor said well
I'm not surprised we can't even get light bulbs from the agency we have so many backed up toilet and crumbling
ceilings and there's been so much deferred maintenance that they're not going to work on a problem with undue
haste Steve questioned how the Housing Authority could let these conditions go on for so long knowing that their
neglect made it easier for drug dealers to deal out of apartments and for intruders to run rampant throughout the
building why wouldn't the cha protect its own residents the Chicago Housing Authority was not anym committ committed
to keeping the projects open they were eager for their demise I think so they weren't in a rush to get a legal tenant
into these [Music] apartments Ruthie May McCoy never even wanted to live it Abit she asked
specifically an to the cha that it not be in a high-rise project Steve said that she asked not to
be in a high-rise because she didn't want to have to walk up so many stairs she only moved in after her apartment
and another project flooded she got a response that there's apartment available to you on the 11th floor of a
highrise the Abbott holes that's all that was available Chicago public housing is offered to low-income
residents she was on welfare which then paid $140 or $150 a month the project apartment would cost $46 a month she
simply couldn't afford anything else which was why she moved into the abot homes this is when she met Deborah
lassley who said she moved on to the 11th floor with her kids she had a total of seven Deborah moved in about 6 months
before Ruthie May for a heartbreaking reason my husband had committed suicide I left my home I could stand there no
more both Deborah and Ruthie May felt public housing was their only choice in fact the day Deborah moved in the
elevator broke so me and my kids had to walk ourselves up now I wasn't used to that but we made
it maintenance in the building was so slow to respond that Deborah taught herself how to fix the plumbing I didn't
know how to do it at first but every time you would call them and say the toilet stopped up or what it might be a
month before they come and do it I mean come on a month to fix a toilet two years after Ruthie May was
killed 48 Hours gave viewers a firsthand look at these poor conditions the Chicago Housing Authority has been such
a notorious failure that in 1987 the US Department of Housing and Urban Development currently swept up by its
own scandals threatened an outright takeover Harold da was the reporter covering the story the scale and
Precision is that of a military operation but this is Chicago and these cops are launching an attack on one of
the city's own housing developments I'm in a police state now you think look like a bunch of happy campers there it's
called operation sweep and it's Chicago's high-powered high-profile approach to cleaning up public housing
he even got gang members to agree to be interviewed what uh what kind of drugs does your gang sell here uh C Joe is a
high-ranking member of the king cobras he's been in the gang for 20 years you a gang heavily armed mhm what kind of
weapons do you guys automatics revoles the whole work the baddest game out today is the dope game brothers killing
brothers over you know over drugs the original goal of public housing wasn't to turn into this
nightmare but how were these problems allowed to persist finding that answer involved turning to
people who know Chicago's history I reached out to Sherman Thomas or as everyone calls him Dilla hello here for
the tour y h AB board great thank you y yeah Dilla is an urban historian who posts popular videos online he's got
over 100,000 followers on Tik Tok and offers bus tours of the city through his Company Mahogany they we're going to go
to a very proud American neighborhood called pson D is well aware of Ruthie May's
story she was living in something that was rushed to be built she was living in something that wasn't structurally sound
the horrible conditions he and the residents describe are actually the opposite of the vision laid out by the
Chicago Housing Authority for these projects the Chicago Housing Authority was supposed to provide like real
quality housing for those who just needed a stepping stone the Chicago Housing Authority
opened its doors in 1938 to mostly low-income white people that was before the war before the mass migration of
rural Negroes from the south then the racial pattern of the city changed and so did the kind of public housing that
was built this is Chicago solution for the poor the early units built in the first half of the 20th century weren't
high-risers they were built with green space and M right so they had these big huge Courtyards and each each unit had a
backyard where you'd be able to plant your own garden and your own vegetables in fact when I'm going through newspaper
archives both of those housing projects would win the Citywide Garden competitions Dill said things started to
change in the 1950s as Chicago's African-American population grew segregation is literally etched in the
fabric of Chicago right like how we Define our 77 neighborhoods what what separates full apart Park from
Bridgeport is the fact that black folks couldn't pass that particular street from 1910 until the 1970s nearly 6
million African-Americans had moved North in what is referred to as the Great Migration I think there was a lot of
push back about a lot of black families moving into Chicago hadn't been there before that is Sue Popkin Popkin has
written four books about Chicago public housing and understands the system like the back of her hand I mean at one point
she had information no one else in city government had access to for a while I had the only list of uh addresses
housing auth already had she's now at a think tank called the urban Institute and still studies you guessed it Chicago
public housing she said the government began funding housing projects during the Great
[Music] Depression but these architectural dreams were met with the realities of
fing and the realities of the Chicago political machine man-made jungles of concrete conceived and administered not
by people who live in them but by political appointees most of whom live elsewhere again here's the historian
Dilla that was built rushed right with shoty material and with cheapness in mind and so as it relates to Plumbing
sometime if you have a plumbing issue plumbers got to come in cut a hole in your wall and then put a hole new wall
up well cha didn't want to have to go through that and be spending money on drywall of all things right or plaster
Hopkins said that funding started to dry up after World War II when the federal government provided fewer subsidies for
public housing while funding was an issue she said that in Chicago corruption played a part in cheapening
the buildings from the very start they W built very badly there were all kinds of
deals with the unions despite the infamous winners in the city she said there were high Rises where they didn't
even enclose the hallways which then almost immediately created a hazard both the danger of people falling and people
throwing things off of them and so then they enclosed those with Gates basically
with fencing so they look like prisons free people living in housing that looked like a prison it was a lot
[Music] the mayor of Chicago Jane burn is causing quite a stir with her latest move the move from one apartment to
another an apartment 10 blocks from her present one but it isn't how far the mayor's moving it's where from a luxury
apartment to a housing project known mainly for crime and gang Warfare in 1981 Chicago's mayor at the time Jane
burn moved her herself and her husband into Cabrini Green for 3 weeks in hopes of drawing attention to the conditions I
am really not afraid over there at all and I think what you have to prove is that you don't have to be afraid and I'd
like to stimulate that with the people that live there if people want to say that it's vote getting or whatever they
want to say then I would suggest that whoever says it take the next Department some called it a brave move While others
called it a publicity stunt well not long after her move in the Chicago Housing Authority did get more national
attention the then chairman of the cha Charles swel who was also a major fundraiser for the mayor was accused by
the US Department of Housing and Urban Development of corruption here's Su Popkin again Charles swel who uh took
the money that was supposed to go for maintenance H funneled it through the flat janitor's Union and used it to
build Marina city which is a luxury highrise along the river the US Department of Housing and Urban
Development or HUD accused Charles swell of making deals that benefited people he
dealt with in his private real estate Ventures instead of prioritizing the needs of the
cha in fact HUD threatened to withhold millions of dollars unless he was removed SW Bell never admitted any
wrongdoing and was never found guilty of crimes connected to the cha he resigned
from his chairmanship after 19 years and died in 1990 hkin said whether the money was
lost due to policy decisions or corruption the residents on the receiving end got the message loud and
clear I think that it was never about what was good for the tenants or the families right a lot of that robbed us
of our sense of deserving of nurture of kindness of the minimal that you could give us to make us safe Kim Fox lived in
the Chicago projects when she was growing up you know don't have access for people into our homes through our
medicine cabinets Fox is now the Cook County State's Attorney the Chicago area's top prosecutor before she ever
became part of law enforcement Fox grew up in Cabrini Green while Robert Taylor Holmes was the largest project Cabrini
Green is the most famous thanks in large part to TV and movies it was a highrise
not much different than Abbott Holmes and it was used in the opening credits of the TV show Good Times and would
later be used to horrify audiences in [Music] Candyman did you see Candyman when it
first came out in 92 I did do do you remember going to the show to see it and what what your thoughts
were the fact that it said was said kabini I will tell you I initially was like what's this right like what what is
this I wasn't enthused about the backdrop yeah like and and that the backdrop to a horror
film to horror she was in college at the time in another part of Illinois and this film was her friend's introduction
to where she grew up and so I felt I'm gonna be honest I felt some kind of way and you're about to equate my childhood
with horror and this is now going to be what you at a cocktail party the first thing you say was it like that k him did
you know were you scared like that instead Kim prefers to talk about the folks who lived in Cabrini Green the
people were amazing where we were living was not Fox lived there in the 1970s and
1980s and even when she moved much of her family remained you were trained as a young girl not to get on elevators
with just with men by yourself or darkened elevators and so many times you know we'd have to walk up eight flights
of stairs or 10 flights of stairs that there would be literally feal like that be in Corners in in the stairwells that
presence of like disgust physically was there she talked about how the building was in disrepair like how the
incinerators on each floor couldn't even burn the trash you'd have the smell of trash or it would catch fire um and you
would have the smell of fire it probably comes as no surprised that growing up in
that kind of environment takes its toll on you when it is baked into every layer
of your existence like not built in physically built into the architecture of your existence that we will find ways
to make you vulnerable and know it and do nothing about it that hardening is survival that's Survival that's survival
Instinct the need to take care of yourself because the authorities won't help is what led Deborah to fix her own
plumbing and it's likely why Ruthie May used a bucket as a toilet Fox wasn't surprised that the Chicago Housing
Authority ignored Ruthie May's complaint about the bathroom mirror she said none
of the residents thought the cha or the police would be helpful and so it was just this weird dynamic like people
didn't rock with the police and people were also scared people were also wanting to be safe but there was never a
sense that we had that the police were going to do that for us never she said you had to rely on your crew like
Deborah did for Ruthie may my cousin like became a really good electrician we were building
[Music] Carpenters reporter Steve begira did what he could to hold the cha accountable after he written his story
about Ruthie may he kept asking about the medicine cabinets I was still calling them asking what they were
doing and their spokesperson said yeah we've got it on the agenda to secure these medicine
cabinets but I knew some of the residents who lived in these apartments at the end of the hall where they had a
vacant apartment next to them and and so I could check with them you know have they done anything
yet Steve's first story about Ruthie May came out September 3rd 1987 sometime after that they fixed the problem
while Steve was asking questions about policy police were focused on building a case who could have been in that vacant
apartment next to Ruthie Mays who did investigators suspect came through that bathroom
mirror when Steve went to visit Ruthie May McCoy's apartment he walked into her bathroom and could see a hole where the
medicine cabinet would normally be I could see that route through the pipe chase that the that the killers
apparently had taken he could poke his head through and see the narrow walkway Steve said they never found Ruthie May's
medicine cabinet but they did find the one in the adjacent Department according to the police crime lab technicians
dusted that one for Prince and inventor the cabinet into evidence during his visit to Abbott other residents told
Steve that they will put things up against their bathroom doors to protect themselves at night this woman told me
about somebody running out of her bathroom one night and after that she was putting furniture in front of the
bathroom door at night when she went to bed and I heard that from other tenants as well people who wanted to make sure
nobody if they broke into their bathroom they wouldn't get any further than that the police interviewed Deborah
lassley and Ruthie May's daughter Vita who would have been in her mid 20s in 1987 during their investigation the
police asked verita if her mom was having problems with the neighbors and she told them she didn't know police
noted that Vita told them that Ruthie may had 219 in TVs but on the scene they only found one her rocking chair was
also stolen police found one bullet casing from a 9mm cartridge behind the bedroom
door detectives talked to Ruthie May's neighbors and interviewed residents in the building I'm sure they were hearing
dozens of stories about how this crime had occurred Ruthie May's autopsy revealed brutal details of what happened
Ruthie May according to the medical examiner had been shot four times the medical examiner wrote that
Ruthie May was shot in her arms her chest abdomen and leg investigators took photos blood samples and recovered one
spent Bullet at the scene one of the bullets had severed her pulmonary artery so he didn't believe she would have
lived long maybe if police came in right away there was nothing they could do for
her anyway we'll never know if you asked Deborah with you May's neighbor her friend's murder was
preventable I was lucky that's why I kept telling my mother I'm lucky Deborah's apartment was not at the end
of the hall which meant it couldn't be accessed through the bathroom mirror but after Ruthie May's death she still told
her kids that they needed to move understandably she was spooked how can they come through a mirror and go in
there and do that kids in the building nicknamed Deborah Mother Teresa both because she'd give food away but also
cuz she would blare gospel music as a way to keep teens from wanting to hang out on the 11th floor you play a lot of
music that they don't like but I didn't care Deborah was cautious about living in the projects so she never took the
time to get to know many of her neighbors on the floor she kept to herself that's why she didn't stop and
think about the group of boys who would be going in and out of the apartment next to Ruthie Mays the people Deborah
saw or heard in that hallway the ones that she scared away using loud music might have been customers stopping at
apartment 11:08 to buy drugs so there were people in and out and the night before there was a lot of
this traffic as well reporter Steve begira said that the police wanted to identify any of the people seen coming
and going from that apartment cops said they asked a lot of residents and they all gave the same names hress and Turner
were the only names that kept coming up police heard the names John hondras and Edward Turner from residence hondras was
25 Turner was 19 both were young black men who had been seen spending time in the apartment that could connect to
Ruthie Mays the police had found key witness who claimed he saw both of them go into her apartment and they believe
they discovered a reason Ruthie May might have been a Target there was the impression that word had gotten out that
Ruthie may had a little money in that apartment from day one it was clear Ruthie May McCoy's murder wasn't going
to be an open and shut case reporter Steve bagira who wrote for the Chicago Reader recognized early on
that making sense of what happened that night in April 1987 was going to be difficult for
detectives it's a tough case for police in large part because the relationship between police and the residents at
these projects most residents already had a fraught relationship with the police but even for the ones who were
willing to talk how could they be sure detectives would protect them from retaliation finding Witnesses would be a
challenge but that wasn't the only reason the motive itself was a mystery of the thousands of residents at
Abbott hommes why was this grandmother killed was this random or was she targeted to find Clues detective started
digging into where Ruthie may spend her time Steve bogira said she suffered from
severe paranoia so she got connected with his Psychiatric Center at Mount Si Ruthie May got enrolled in an outpatient
treatment facil faity through the hospital to take care of her mental health and after a lifetime of struggle
Ruthie May was finally beginning to make Headway she started taking high school equivalency classes to get her GED and
the Psychiatric Center even helped her take a big step toward moving out of the projects the people at that Center
realized that she qualified because of her mental illness for supplemental security income according to Steve
that increased her social security checks from about $150 a month to about 350 this would allow her eventually to
get out of the project which was what she wanted she wanted to be able to get back out there in private housing and
she couldn't afford anything extravagant but she could afford to live outside the
project this new income ended up being a [Music] windfall the first checks she got
included some retroactive pay retroactive to the time she had applied so she got a check for
$1,979 I believe it was which I believe she cashed and kept the money in her apartment she bought herself a couple
nice things a plain winter coat and couple of other things which unfortunately also made her a Target
detectives came to feel that people in the project probably noticed and thought she had some money in the apartment and
that may be the reason that they broke in on her listen when you're hungry anyone in the comeup starts to look like
food and the community at abbit homes was starving in a phone interview Ruthie May's neighbor Deborah lassley
remembered when her friend got that check she went to the mailbox I know she said she was going down there and she
was happy she said that Ruthie May wasn't too loud when she told her about the check but that it is possible that
someone heard so detectives began thinking that ruie May's big payday might have been a
motive for murder so it could be that the thing that the Psychiatric Center did to help Ruthie may possibly move out
of the project got her killed instead but what detectives felt and what they could
prove were two different things the stories changed several times my partner and I very seldom took notes the first
time around because they were always usually lies I'm Dom Pungo from 48 hours this is Candyman the true story behind
the bathroom mirror murder episode 3 The suspects next [Music] door I was upset that she had to lay in
her own apartment for two days before somebody found her nobody deserves that former detective Anthony Manina
investigated the murder of Ruthie May McCoy it was our case uh myself Ry loer and Bill Wright back in 1987 Manina
would have been in his early 40s I was a detective in homicide from uh 1985 to 1995 when I retired he's from Chicago he
grew up on the west side as a matter of fact the projects that were talking about
were very close to where I lived he and detective Ray loer were partners for nearly 8
years we used to have our own way of doing things the ability to think alike and to know what each other is thinking
just with a look the detectives were assigned the case soon after Ruthie May's body was found Manina had worked
many cases out of Abbot Holmes and was very familiar with it there were a lot of good people that lived in them
projects but even as they approached the brick highrise they stayed on high [Music]
alert when you were going in you had to be very careful looking up at the windows because people be D dropping
stuff on you all all day long garbage at you or throwing different things out the
windows at you they also avoided the elevators at the time good policemen never used the elevator in them
projects for lack of a better term they were moving urinals and hardly ever worked right so it was a dangerous
situation Manina wasn't one of the responding officers but he put the blame on the Chicago Housing Authority and the
cha security for being difficult about opening Ruthie May's door the project manager for Ruthie May's building later
said she didn't know why the first key given to police didn't work that really upset
me I was ranting and raving against the cha police at that time because of that fact he says that there were a lot of
hoax calls that came into the police department but says he still didn't believe that that was a good excuse for
the slow response when he was trying to get in with a key and couldn't do it hey go back somewhere and get a
lockmith and get in there he didn't want the police to let Ruthie May down again
and here this poor woman got killed in her own apartment not bothering anybody so we worked our butts off to
try to clear that one and we did within two days the city of Chicago that particular time had over
900 homicides for the year so I mean it's it's like we were working a different homicide every day so
therefore you couldn't hand the case off to other detectives because they were busy going on another one 24-hour shifts
happened regularly we were considered area 4 that was the entire West Side the detectives started asking everyone they
could find what they knew about the night Ruthie May was killed then we found Witnesses doing a canvas that
heard the shots they heard three or four shots and they started talking about who
was in their apartment the witnesses repeated the same two names Edward Turner who was nicknamed
monifi and then John hondras who went by white boy they were both named the stories changed several times which was
you see my partner and I very seldom took notes the first time around because they were always usually lies the
detective strategy was to go around talk to everyone and then repeat all the questioning again and want you Cor
several lies then you started getting to the basic facts and the truth the detective's key witness turned out to be
20-year-old Tim brown brown was described as a scrawny guy back then he told police that he saw Turner and
hondras come in and out of Ruthie May's apartment with a TV and a rocking chair Manina and his partner had Brown come
meet with an assistant States Attorney to create a written record of his version of events Steve buera has a copy
of Brown's written statement Tim Brown said that he was with some friends that night that afternoon and
that evening leading up to the time when Ruthie May was killed Brown told the detectives that he regularly hung out in
the apartment next to Ruthie Mays 11:08 and this day was no different there were
young men primarily men but sometimes women were in the apartment as well getting high and they were selling drugs
from this Tim Brown told the police that he'd been there with a friend earlier in the day
in that afternoon they moved some weights from another apartment up to 11:08 to work out Brown's girlfriend was
there too she left at 600 to go to her grandmother's house while Brown and his friend stayed sitting around and
listening to the stereo Tim Brown said that Miss May as he called her had asked him earlier in the year if they could
keep the noise down from the apartment a number of guys W 1108 pretty late into the
evening Brown told the police who had come through that night John hress Edward Turner and a friend
nicknamed Bo at one point as the night wore on he said Bo wanted to show hres what he learned about the medicine
cabinets in Abbott homes Bo told hondras that the bathroom mirror open to the next apartment to apartment 1109 and
then that was how people broke into Apartments it would be that easy to get into the neighboring apartment where
Ruthie May the woman with the nice things lived so uh little later that evening hondes and Turner were back in
the bathroom according to Brown and hondes pulled the mirr in 1108 out with his hands Edward Turner was a teenager
who lived in Abbot hommes his family knew Ruthie May Turner had grown up I believe in the projects Hondas had spent
some time there as well John hondras the man who allegedly pulled the mirror out
in 1108 was 21 and an Exon he was a tough character the other guy was more of a thief than anything
[Music] else HR had done time in an Indiana prison for robbery and auto theft that night after the medicine cabinet
was removed hondras and Turner could allegedly look straight into Ruthie May's apartment and it looked to them
like maybe the apartment next door was vacant in a statement to police Brown claims that he warned hress that Miss
may live there but the apartment at least at first looked empty Hond said back to Brown according to Brown that he
didn't think anyone was home and then he climbed on the sink and went through the
hole Brown said that he then heard a lady say who's there after hearing the voice
Brown then claimed that he heard the front door to Ruthie May's apartment 11:09 open and then a knock on
11:08 and so he answers the door and hondras tells him to throw him a jacket his jacket so Brown gives him his
jacket it was a black knighte on jacket HR threw it over his head and went back into
1109 through the front door this time so by now one suspect was in Ruthie May's apartment that's what ground told the
cops he also said he saw the second suspect Edward Turner go through the hole in the wall and that's when things
supposedly went off the rails and he heard Turner say get down and then Brown said he heard four shots
four shots then silence five or 10 minutes later he said both Turner and hondras left Ruthie
May's apartment but Brown said they didn't leave empty-handed he saw Turner come out with a TV and hondras come out
with a rocking chair Brown claimed that both of them took the stolen property and made a run for it detectives talked
to a couple of of women who lived on the sixth floor of the same building who said that hress and Turner came to them
with the TV in the rocking chair one of the young women in the apartment that night Lynette Fitch was Tim Brown's
girlfriend she told the police that hondras wanted them to stash the stolen items at her place he had come into her
apartment and tried to leave the rockan chair and the TV in her apartment and she allow it and she suggested that they
try another woman who lived on the first floor of another Avid highr and they ultimately took the TV and racking chair
to This Woman's apartment she acknowledged the T to the police that she had agreed to take the TV in the
rocking chair to hold it for hress a turn after they found a place to hide the stolen goods Brown said that they
came back to the 11th floor according to Brown state two or three hours later hron Turner knocked on
11:08 and when Tim Brown answered HRA said they needed to go back to miss May's apartment to get the shells from
the gun Brown didn't want them to crawl back through the bathroom mirror so he told the police he said no they went
into her apartment through the front door and came out about 5 minutes later Andress told Brown they had found three
of the shells they locked the door behind them and then ran down the hall cops found one
shell casing behind the bedroom door but other parts of Brown's statement didn't entirely match what
police officers experienced see brown claimed this happened after 11:30 at night but police had already shown up to
Ruthie May's apartment after she called 911 at 8:45 and when they showed up the front
door was locked not unlocked the way Brown described the police never recovered the
gun or any fingerprints police didn't have this physical evidence and they also had
given a head start to the offenders to get their stories solid but Brown's statement and the statements of the
other Witnesses made detectives confident that hondras and Turner were their Prime suspects there was testimony
saying they went in there and come out with with three bullet casings and the TV and the set and the
rocking chair were found at the one guy's mother's house come on detective stopped at Turner's house and spoke with
his mom Altha Turner we left business cards and and I kind of talked her into calling us when he returned home a while
later she called us that they were waiting for us so we went back to the 1407 troop and that's when he was placed
in the custody he was arrested on April 25th his 19th birthday meanwhile hondras
the ex-convict managed to avoid arrest for more than a month police finally caught up with him
on June 8th 1987 both hondras and Turner denied being involved in the murder of Ruthie
May Manina remembers Turner giving a couple different stories as to how he found the TV the story said that he had
found the TV up by the incinerator then the next story was he found it outside the
door until we finally got him to admit that he got it out of the apartment the prosecution planed to rely on their key
witness Tim Brown who was adamant that hress and Turner were the culprits who was within two days that we s that hress
and Turner each fac charges of burglary and murder Mur and would have to wait years for their day in court they both
pleaded not guilty in the meantime Ruthie May's family pursued another kind of Justice
they believe she might still be alive if the Chicago Housing Authority had designed the medicine cabinets
differently so verita McCoy Rim's daughter wanted the cha to pay for what happened so she got herself a lawyer
well her mother died and her mother died by way of uh Bazar ire set of facts and
Mr Peters can you help me and I said I don't know but I'll try the day after Ruthie May called 911
her daughter Vita tried getting in touch with her she called Ruthie may not realizing that her mom was already
gone Bita said her aunt was the one who eventually broke the news she didn't understand nor did I how the hell
something like this happened and was permitted to happen that's attorney Randy Peters he'd
eventually end up representing verita when she sued the Chicago Housing Authority Randy also grew up in Chicago
while I was still figuring out what I wanted to do I saw a movie called all the President's Men All the President's
Men tells the story of two Washington Post reporters who uncover the details of the Watergate scandal their reporting
helped lead to president Richard Nixon's resignation and that movie for whatever
of the reasons may have been just got me interested in law my father is a uh factory worker was a factory worker
mother was a housewife no no lawyers in our family but that movie really touched
me me so I decided that maybe uh give it a shot he was in his mid-30s back in 1987
and still pretty new the law at that point in his career Randy said he took on several cases against the Chicago
Housing Authority and one of his clients was Vita McCoy she since died but Vita was just 25 when she lost her mother I
just assured her that I would do everything I can in Randy said he agreed to take the case because he was
horrified by the circumstances Ruthie May was living in the bizarre facts of what happened I mean how how many people
do you know that live in a an apartment building or a condominium have the worries and concerns about the adjoining
unit being able to crawl through your medicine cabinet to get into your unit absolutely bizarre Randy knew that in
order to win this case he needed to prove that there was a problem long before Ruthie was murdered you have to
show notice of whatever the event was that caused in this particular case a death and to be able to develop evidence
to show that it was preventable it was foreseeable and preventable and as Randy started looking at the way the housing
projects were designed he realized the medicine cabinets were not the only problem where she was living was a cha
project that was not conducive to safety too often elevators didn't work incinerators didn't work and without
incinerators burning up trash the hallway smelled and residents worried about an Ever growing fire
hazard there was also this problem of access for emergency vehicles see the high-rises had these huge Courtyards
that didn't allow for through traffic which meant police and ambulances couldn't quickly drive up to the
buildings so in other words if someone wants commit a crime in that area the crime is committed and they're gone
before the police can get to the location it was a mess but Randy needed to prove that the Chicago Housing
Authority purposely neglected these buildings and that specifically they did nothing to make Ruthie May's apartment
safer for his investigation he did a couple of things Randy filed a court order to get access to the police report
and the names of the officers who reported to the scene but then he went a step further he brought in an architect
to explain how the design of the buildings themselves posed a risk to Residents I for the life of me couldn't
figure out how somebody in Unit A could call crawl through a medicine cabinet into Unit B he said that the architect
looked at the structure of Abbott Holmes and the way they built the pipe Chase to
give janitors that easy access to the pipes my architect was shocked when uh he saw how this was created literally
shocked and not only shocked at that but also shocked by the fact that the record
showed that the cha was on notice that this type of activity was happening and nothing was done
structurally to remedy uh that hazard [Music] at the time the cha told Steve begera
that they received quote only isolated reports of such break-ins they estimated fewer than 10 Randy thought the evidence
made this case a slam dunk the police report and the architect gave him what he needed and with those facts then it
gave me the opportunity to show that there was negligence on the part of the cha by
permitting this ease of access to continue reny believed the cha had multiple ways to safeguard the projects
and certainly the medicine cabinets and it was easily preventable by way of either altering the design of the
medicine cabinets by hinges and nails and locks or whatever to prevent them from removing it from the wall Andor
number two because of the history of this type of activity occurring to have adequate secur security that was present
as a deterrent neither of which they had Randy said the cha denied having any liability at the end of the day Randy
thought that all of this came down to one thing money once Randy thought he had a strong case the question became
what's it worth we have to take a look at uh how we could maximize the amount of recovery for any individual whether
they black white rich [Music] poor in April 1988 he sued the Chicago Housing Authority demanding $1.5 million
for the death of Ruthie May McCoy she was somebody's mother and she was loved and she was respected for who she was he
didn't actually expect to win $1.5 million in these kinds of lawsuits the amount you get depends on the number of
factors a person's assets their social status if they have dependence and Ruthie May didn't by then verita was an
adult unfortunately Ruthie May was unemployed issues with mental handicaps not married poor and it comes down to uh
unfortunately lawyers have in these types of case have to put a value on a life but Randy said that this case
wasn't about money this was about accountability it didn't become a a question in my mind of I'm going to make
a lot of money on this case because I knew I wasn't his goal was to get the cha to admit it had failed by way of
getting the estate compensated to some degree to show them that there was some remorse and some sorrow so to speak of
what they were experiencing and some restitution for the people that Ruthie May cared for
while she wasn't technically a dependent at 26 years of age Vita did have hardships and Randy tried to argue that
Ruthie May would pitch in however she could with the limited resources she did have she was there to help her daughter
with her grandchild and to me that was more important than anything else but even outside of trying to get
the family compensated Randy just wanted the cha to actually fix the remaining medicine cabinets I just kept looking at
the facts of this case it's this just isn't right I mean if if I don't do something about this
uh and at least try to get them back on track to get their act together this is just going to keep on happening and
other people are going to be murdered according to Steve B's conversations with officers the mode of Entry was well
known in the McCoy matter the vulnerability came by way of the police learning that and me learning that there
was a pattern of this type of activity happening and you know it was only only a matter of time until Ruthie May became
a victim by the way a spokesperson for the cha had told Steve begira that they had no record of Ruthie May complaining
about her medicine cabinet still Randy was going to make his case and the question for him was would the cha pay
for what he and Ruthie May's family saw as their fatal neglect the family's lawsuit against the
C was happening at the same time prosecutors were building their case against Ruthie May's alleged Killers for
Randy the criminal investigation was key to proving his case because the police report showed a
pattern I didn't hire the police department to do their investigation I didn't even speak to them I didn't even
know about uh what their findings were until I got their papers but they were quite helpful remember the cha admitted
they knew of some break-ins the the detectives on Ruthie May's case said it was common knowledge among residents
here's detective Anthony Manina I had talked to several people at the time and they say well there's a designing flaw
in there and that's what the burglar are using to climb in the different apartments that was in conversation with
several either informant or or uh other people that that just wanted to stick their two cents in so to speak the fact
that Randy's case was built on information that invest investigators gathered themselves made it that much
stronger in court Randy filed in April 1988 but the case didn't resolve until 1992 however it never came before a
judge or a jury instead the Chicago Housing Authority decided to settle you have to
understand in a criminal case it's beyond a reasonable doubt that's not the premise in a civil case such as my case
in my case the burden of proof that needs to be established is what is more probably true than not Randy said he no
longer has his files from this case since it's been more than three decades since they
settle we filed a freedom of information request with the cha for the settlement
amount but that hasn't turned anything up yet the cha explained that most records from that time have been
destroyed destroyed however Randy was confident that they did not get the 1.5 million he demanded when he first filed
no no no no absolutely not that I can tell you with certainty but I can't tell you how much we did get he also said the
cha never admitted liability I spoke with Venita McCoy's daughter key but she didn't share how
much money the family got in the settlement either back in the ladies Steve agira
wondered if the lawsuit contributed to the cha finally fixing the remaining medicine cabinets he' still been asking
about them even after his first article was published I was still checking but they all said that there hadn't been any
attempt to fix the medicine cabinets I think they probably made attempts after verita Ruthie May's daughter filed her
lawsuit but it sure took time for them to do something about it the Cha's public affairs director told Steve that
the cha desperately wanted to provide better security but it was hampered by years of deferred maintenance costs she
said they were trying to solve it step by step while Steve wrote about the lawsuit for a story his Focus was on the
impending Trials of John hondras and Edward Turner detectives had believed that the social security check Ruthie
may receive contributed to the robbery however that money wasn't mentioned in the statement given by the prosecution's
key witness Tim Brown and Steve who followed the case for years didn't think the criminal case was as much of a slam
dunk as the lawsuit there was not proof Beyond a reasonable doubt in my [Music] mind in the early 90s Ruthie May's
family continued to mourn their loss as they waited for the suspect's trials meanwhile in England a director
was trying to get his his new horror movie off the ground it was one of those weird pieces of kind of
kismi Bernard Rose decided to set his next film Candyman in the Chicago projects but how did the details of a
real murder barely covered in the Press make their way into his scrip I'll tell you this much it's not because he called
and reached out to the family so what actually happened next time on Candyman the true
story behind the bathroom mirror murder I'm not a fan of horror movies reporter Steve beira didn't know how
details from his stories made their way into the original Candyman film until after it was
released his first article came out in 1987 they came in through the bathroom mirror a murder in the
projects the two suspects John hondras and Edward Turner had been arrested years passed before they finally got
their day in court and while they were awaiting trial a British director was developing a new movie we're going to
step away from the pursuit of Justice in Ruthie May McCoy's case and focus for a
moment on how her story made it to the big screen I had actually gotten either a phone call or a letter back when
people wrote letters from somebody in Hollywood saying we're doing this movie that's based in housing project in
[Music] Chicago back in the early 90s reporter Steve begira got an ask from Hollywood
he doesn't remember the person's name but the Hollywood rep asked Steve to be their guide when they visited Chicago we
understand that you're an expert on the projects and could you show us around when we come to town to film and we'll
give you I don't remember what it was but it was like a couple hundred dollar in a green credit the last thing Steve
wanted to do was support a movie that made light of the Project's living conditions or that trivialized the
murder of Ruthie May he'd been pitched before about turning Ruthie May's story into a movie but at that first meeting
Steve was told that the main character of the film couldn't be Ruthie May or someone in the projects the person
making the pitch thought that the protagonist would have to be white for the film to even have a chance at
getting made Steve wasn't a fan of that idea he'd gotten to know Ruthie May's family and spent years trying to hold
the police and the Chicago Housing Authority accountable for her death he wasn't going to trust just anybody so
when the second Hollywood type reached out I said send me the script and if it's not an exploitive
movie I will probably help you out ultimately Steve never helped anyone put Ruthie May's story on the big screen but
her St story still became part of a coat classic what Steve didn't know was while
he was following the prosecution of the two men arrested for killing ruy May production on the first Candyman film
was already in gear it must have been a couple of years after Candyman came out somebody told me hey you know there's
stuff in here that seems to be from the story you wrote that's when I watched the movie he noticed that a young
Virginia Madson with curly blonde hair was the lead she ended up playing the Curious
graduate student who parachutes into the projects the main character was a white
woman and this story I had done at least was about a black woman how did a movie about the horrors
of a black housing complex end up censoring on a white Outsider and how did elements of Ruthie
May's story end up in the Candyman film this period after her death and before the trial is when writer and director
Bernard Rose started working on Candyman he was the only person who could really answer my questions we
reached out and waited then one June afternoon we finally got the chance to talk it's always a pleasure to talk
about Candyman from a different angle Rose told me how he found out about Ruthie May's story and didn't shy away
from defending himself to critics I can see why people think oh why why are they
taking these details from this but you know I mean look that's what fiction is I'm Dom T Pongo from 48 hours this is
Candyman the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder episode 4 based on a true
story I wasn't trying to make a thesis I was trying to make an entertaining horror film Bernard Rose wrote and
directed the original Candyman that came out in 1992 he's talking to me on a zoom from
West Hollywood wearing glasses and an all black shirt rose has a grain goatee and an easygoing Vibe he told me he
would have never predicted that his Candyman would still have an audience decades later it feels like it has a
much bigger Shadow now than then before I asked him about Ruthie May MC Bo and how parts of her story ended up in his
movie I wanted to know how he got the idea for a Candyman in the first place you'll remember the movie's primary
source material and the work that's officially credited in the film is Clive Barker's short story called The
Forbidden I knew Clive Barker I knew him socially actually when I I'd been doing
another film of pine with Studios according to Rose he met Barker for lunch while they were both working at
the same Production Studio critics liked Rose's first feature film paper house it was a dark fantasy and he
was looking for a new project when he came across Barker story The Forbidden I read that and I thought you know what
this actually really works as a story this is a great an interesting story Rose now in his 60s is originally from
London if you didn't catch that accent he told me that he'd always thought that a horror film needed a supernatural
element that's what appealed to him about forbidden which is about a graduate student named Helen who
investigates urban legends it's set basically in a district of just outside of Liverpool called Kirby which is very
full of low-income housing and what they call in England Council housing as Helen
visits the council housing she conjures up Supernatural forces while working on a research paper I liked the fact that
its heroin was an intellectual and she wasn't kid all of this sounds familiar to anyone who has seen
Candyman but what I found really interesting was the reason Rose took a liking to this story the director told
me that he loved how Helen approached this undertaking from an analytical perspective not an emotional one she was
interested in this phenomenon of urban legends and and what was going on in this housing project but her interest
wasn't to help people it was was to write a study and I liked the kind of arrogance of that he actually liked that
Helen had little empathy for the community she was researching you thought that arrogance made the story
work you know I think it's much more interesting to follow somebody who's flawed and I think there's always an
element of punishment in a horror film that that she gets into trouble and it's like there has to be something that
she's done wrong in a sense and the thing that she's done wrong is she's poked her nose in where it wasn't really
once you know for his movie he kept this aspect of Helen the character Virginia Matson plays is a middle class woman
essentially parachuting into a low-income neighborhood it was exactly the opposite of what they would have
made you do in a kind of movie of the week TV film where she would have been trying to help people she's never trying
to help people she makes no effort to help anybody in the film he said that's a big part of the
conflict she didn't understand and and was actually in a weird way exploiting the interaction she just wants to write
a paper and and get praised for it you know Rose was inspired and thought this could be his next movie his original
plan was to keep the setting the same as Clive Barker's story until the author himself suggested otherwise Barker had
also directed the film Hellraiser and he had learned that American movie Distributors sometimes balked at movie
stars with thick accents the film was set in Liverpool and and Liverpool accents were just like Beyond The Pale
for them so they decided to make the characters American so according to Rose if Hellraiser hadn't had a distribution
problem then Rose might never have set Candyman in Chicago and in a way I wouldn't be here talking about Ruthie
May McCoy today in his first draft Rose hadn't thought of Chicago yet he hadn't even
set Candy Man in any particular city was just a Midwestern City it could have been anyway it could have been St Louis
I don't know it could have been milwauke his approach to the story changed after
he decided to actually visit locations I wanted to go Scout somewhere and do some
research and I ended up going to Chicago mostly cuz I'd been there and I remembered how spectacular the buildings
were I mean it was that shallow you know it's a spectacular looking city right yeah and and it's bi but I agree it's a
city of Architects really it is it and it's and it's a city where architecture is very important his interest in the
architecture stood out to me since how the projects were designed is so crucial to how Ruthie May died and to the movie
itself Rose might not have clocked that yet but when he went to Chicago he started on a journey that would lead him
to hearing about the murder of Ruthie May McCoy Rose wanted to visit the projects the people people from the
Illinois film office were nervous about taking me there see they weren't just nervous they were downright
terrified and their fear would end up becoming a big part of the original Candyman
[Music] movie for people who have seen Candyman it's odd to think Bernard Rose's first
script didn't mention race at all the conflict was just about class originally which might make sense for someone
writing from a British perspective where race and class might not be as inextricably linked but in America you
can't talk about class inequities without talking about race too and definitely not in the highly segregated
City of Chicago in the final version of rose's script Helen has a black friend who is also middle class that goes with
her to visit the projects she's feels as alienated from the people in the projects as as Helen does except that
she's more embarrassed at Helen's Behavior because she understands that it's embarrassing to behave this way
race takes center stage and Rose his movie whether he intended it that way or not Janet massin of the New York Times
put it this way in her review she writes the horror unfolds inside a housing project and plays out provocatively
against the backdrop of racial Injustice in the movie The Killer is a Reincarnation of a well-to-do black man
who was tortured and lynched by a mob in the 1800s Daniel robotized crime was dating
a white man's daughter the mob hunts him down beats him chops off his hand and smears his battered body with honey
before bees sting him to death the lynching is [Music] graphic but all of those plot details
were only added after Bernard Rose went to Chicago I contacted the people who were at the Illinois film office and
certainly in that era if you said you wanted to come in and potentially shoot a film in a city they would show you
around and they would always ask you for a list of locations as to what your film needed
and you know I top of the list was housing projects the first place they took me was Cabrini Green he said they
also took him to another project but not Grace Abbott where Ruthie may had lived
I know I don't think I ever went there Rose was surprised by how nervous the people from the Illinois film office
seemed as they took him to visit Cabrini Green which was the closest project to downtown no project is more notorious
than Cabrini Green the 23 high-rise buildings of Cabrini with their 15,000 residents are described as a chamber of
Horrors the occupants are terrorized Day and Night by vandals and teenage gangs 7,000 families are on a waiting list for
public housing in Chicago but 400 units at Cabrini Green have been vacated by families trying to escape the
lawlessness those CBS news reports were from 1970 by then between media attention and
its depiction in TV shows Cabrini began to have quite the reputation in Cabrini Green at the time there was a police
station in the middle of the project and I think we had to go there and and we were escorted around the
place by an officer you know and they didn't think it was safe to go there otherwise that was their attitude were
you taken back by that yeah extremely to be honest with you I was shocked and of
course when somebody has that kind of drama around going so into what is basically
just an apartment block I mean it's not really any more complicated than that it's a bunch of apartment blocks he said
the upper floors were empty and he had to admit the buildings were creepy there was an atmosphere there of fear but the
fear was not from the people who lived there the fear was the people from the Illinois film commission and the cops
and and that that really kind of shocked me I thought wow there's something here
because one of the one of the first key tenants of making a successful horror film is having a scary setting I thought
these people are scared of going here did they tell you anything about what about why they were so scared of this
community they basically said there were groups of gangs that held the neighborhood hostage during his visit
Rose was able to talk with cops Who police the buildings on a day-to-day basis I learned that actually the danger
was exaggerated and that that in itself was heart of the racism that surrounded the place and what is the primary
component of racism is fear right Outsiders were afraid of the people who lived there afraid of what could
happened there their Prejudice stoked Their Fear what the cop said to me is if you're a a white person walking around
here they're not actually going to bother you at all because they're going to assume you're a social worker or a
cop Rose worked these details from his own experience into the script in Candyman Helen gets mistaken for a cop
when she's seen in the projects when I rewrote it I rewrote it set as about kabini green and I just used everything
I'd seen and heard that decision to replicate these fears on screen is a choice that has sparked
debate debate from Scholars like Robin means Coleman what 30 or more years that we've been having a
conversation about race in class in this movie colan is a professor at the University of Virginia and a media study
scholar she's written two books on black people in horror films and turned one into a documentary both books horror
Noir and the black guy dies first mention Candyman there are two films that I watch a lot it's the 92 Candyman
and the thing she's been debating Candyman for the last 30 years and she understands
that not everyone gets the controversies around this movie we've got to address the Skeptics who are like it was just a
movie and he saw a headline and it was you know a narrative vehicle to get her into cabrina green how else are we going
to do that but Ruthie May McCoy is a real life person her family are alive and out there and what we have are
entertainers who snatch someone's story real life horrific murder for entertainment purposes back when she was
writing the first edition of her book horor Noir Coleman wanted to pick a real life story turned into film she wasn't
sure whether to write about Ruthie May or Jeffrey dmer and if you read the first edition of the book I go with
Jeffrey dmer Ruthie May felt I think at that time I was writing it it felt too close to home it
felt like Ruthie May m may as they called her that could have easily been me my mother my grandmother Coleman and
I talked about how Candyman doesn't actually grapple with the horror of people's Liv lives and the projects with
Nuance I mean even without knowing the director's intentions a lot of black folks watching this movie could tell
that the conversations about race were a bit of an afterthought back in 1992 when the film
was released colan said critics reviews were mixed there were two responses to Candyman and one I remember was from
Carl Franklin Carl Franklin is a black filmmaker famous for the Denzel Washington movie Devil in a blue dress
and Carl Franklin said seriously we're doing the black Boogeyman brutal Buck Trope in this movie again where the
obsession is over this white woman who were sort of putting on a pedal stool in this critique Candyman is of course the
black Boogeyman it's a Trope that seizes on fear by perpetuating a portrayal of black men as violent and menacing often
chasing white women like the candy man chases Helen the Trope goes all the way back to Hollywood's first Blockbuster
film The Birth of a Nation which depicts the KKK and is blamed for inspiring a spike in real life lynchings and race
riots do we need yet another movie that glorifies that kind of stereotype that kind of Trope Roger
Ebert who was white had a different opinion based in Chicago Ebert was a well-respected movie critic Roger eert
on the other hand said you know like if I if you have to do horror this is the kind of horror you want to see right
eert is saying I do like the sort of social issues social Consciousness horror something that leaves me thinking
and reflecting what's interesting is that Bernard Rose told me he didn't go into
this film wanting to send any kind of mess M but there were signs that he knew that what he was making touched a nerve
I was in post production on cyman at the time it was April 1992 parts of Los Angeles were on fire in Los Angeles the
deadly aftermath of the Rodney King verdict violence arson and anguished cries a disgrace it don't make no riots
broke out across the city after white police officers were acquitted of excessive force the public outrage stem
from the fact that these officers were caught on videotape brutally beating this black motorist his name was Rodney
King we were supposed to have a test screening somewhere that week and the riot started happening and people got
very frightened and I was mixing in a stage in Hollywood and the mixer was grinding through the scene with the dog
and the blood and all this Rose is describing a gruesome scene where a Candyman had cut off a dog's head in a
project apartment and I said oh I'm not happy with that you need to go back and change something and he went he said no
I'm not going back I'm not changing it because I'm not looking at this film anymore Rose was warned that the film
might be quote a bit too much and that test screening never happened and then the film got released without it which
is probably a good thing cuz who knows what they might have made me take out what he did include he told me largely
came from his visits to Cabrini Green during his first visit with the Illinois film office he connected with the woman
who lived there we bumped into a lady who was had her kid in a stroller whose name was Henrietta Thomas who was like
asking us what we were doing basically he explained how he was working on a movie I told her it was about this sort
of mythical kind of monster that haunted the place kind of thing and she was basically saying oh yeah well you know
that that's true by the way and what was she talking about uh she said oh there are like ghosts and demons that haunt
this place the director realized Candyman could hunt a place like this too this idea went back to something
from clyve barers they're forbidden so really the whole thesis that Clive had that people who live in situations which
make them uncomfortable it's not uncommon for them to create something that's worse and more uncontrollable cuz
in a weird way it makes him feel safer during his visits to the projects with the Illinois film office Rose asked the
tenant he'd met Henrietta if he could come back to Cabrini Green on his own I thought okay I'm going to just call her
after we've left and just go there on my own and see what really happens the two
had dinner and he got to see Cabrini Green from a tennis perspective Rose decided to hire Henrietta to be a
consultant on the film and based a character on her too the character's name is anarie and in the movie A major
plot point is when Candyman steals an Marie's child as for the real person she had a
young kid and it was just a place that she lived that honestly she liked living because it was near downtown Chicago
Rose said that she was actually the first person to bring up the details of Ruthie May's murder it was she who T me
the story about the medison cabinets and that somebody had been killed in another
home that had a similar design with the floor with the medicine cabinets and you
could get in and out the PS and if someone had broken in and killed somebody she told me that story and said
that that was something that that Disturbed her it was the kind of violation that was visceral and
memorable I thought all this detail is so so rich and it just it grounds the film and you know if you want to make
something scary it has to be [Music] recognizable but when the art is that recognizable when the art represents
real trauma it has to be handled with care we might be having a different conversation even if at the end of the
film it said in memory of Ruthie May right or read more about and we've got models for this she pointed to Steve
buira as one of those models when he's writing his article and he writes subsequent articles he doesn't point
back to his own journalism he says learn more about housing projects learn more about how this
happened meanwhile the director wanted to unnerve people and knew that he was parachuting into the projects just like
his movie's protagonist Helen so I was essentially doing what Helen does in the film I was like walking around Gathering
things for my own benefit but where did he gather so many details about Ruthie May's murder he said Henrietta told him
that someone came in through a medicine cabinet and killed a woman but that's not how he learned Ruthie May's name
what does he have to say to folks who believe that his film exploited Ruthie May's killing it's not the same
murderers as that Mur that was an entirely unrelated event it's just the really the only thing that's taken is
the detail of of the the bathroom [Music] cabinets it was one of those weird pieces of kind of kismet I think I was
in the hotel and I literally opened the Chicago Reader and there was an article about IT director Bernard Rose had come
to Chicago to visit kabini green and the tenant had told him about this murder where a killer or Killers came in
through a medicine cabinet he happened to be visiting the city just when Steve beira's second
article about Ruthie May McCoy's life and murder was published July 1990 if you missed that issue of the reader
there was you unless you had gone to a library and looked it up on a microfilm you would never find it so in his movie
that's what Helen the blonde grad student does she goes to the library and looks it up
on a microphone do you remember the title of the article that you read that that caught your attention I mean it's
very similar to the the depiction in the movie something like what killed whatever the lady's real name was life
in the projects with a question mark I think that was it that lady was of course Ruthie May McCoy I reached out to
her granddaughter key but she declined to talk to us for this podcast based partly on her past experience es with
media key had seen her family story misrepresented in the news before she said while a film was being made that
mentioned Ruthie May's killing her mom Vita was dealing with the real life aftermath of Ruthie May's death and I
mean obviously the actual murder itself has nothing to do with Candy Man somebody came in and shot her right yes
yes but but there is the character of Ruthie Jean that is the name in the film which is obviously very similar to
Ruthie May was that a conscious ision I mean it probably was yeah it's always very complicated when something's a true
story I look at these parallels with Ruthie May story and you know you think about the family or wuy May's daughter
and they looking at the film and feeling like these elements are reminiscent of what happened to Ruthie May uh but they
felt like they weren't a part of the process what would you say to that critique I mean I think that's valid
Rose said that he never considered making one of Ruthie May's relatives a consultant on the film and points out
that his movie is about candy man not Ruthie May it's not about that person not about the real person at all you
know and it is ultimately a fictitious fantasy they uses some authentic details in part but it's not about any
real person at all I'm going to push back a little bit and forgive me Bernard but when you go back and look we went
and checked out and Marie in the Forbidden her last name isn't McCoy so McCoy comes only in the Candyman film
and that and that seems part of the lineage of Ruthie May who again the movie is Ruthie May Ruthie Jean and then
you got amarie the resident who's amarie McCoy so then you see these names kind of play into it and and I know you know
that's I assume you to describe it as a dotted line not a straight line connection between the real murder but
if I'm the family I'm looking and I'm seeing these connections and I feel as though I should at least be a part of
the process I mean I can see how you could feel like that if it was a film about what happened to her you know the
real person but this clearly is not to be honest he's right in some respect I mean this movie isn't solely
about Ruthie May she's a plot point to get to the story of Candyman but I'm not sure that he understands why turning her
into a plot Point can be considered by some as dehumanizing instead he tries to argue
that that's how movies like his get made you take things from the world around you and put them into new forms that's
really what fiction is it's not any clever than that Rose didn't have any memory of ever reaching out to Steve
PIRA either he said it's possible The Producers contacted him but he was never made aware I have no direct memory or
knowledge of that because as I said we I had already hired Henryetta as the consultant so it's entirely possible
that someone suggested him Rose didn't set out to make a racially charged movie that included Inspirations from real
people and events it just ended up that way the film has been criticized at different times over the years for
saying you know it's this it's that it's got the wrong perspective blah blah blah
he's talking about the criticisms Coleman mentioned about the movie feeds into anti-black stereotypes I think that
yes it is uncomfortable in places and I think if it wasn't it wouldn't have lasted if
something ceases to create debate it [Music] dies I asked how he decided the line
between inspiration and exploitation his answer again reminded me a little bit of how he described the
character Helen's approach well I think that if you take anything whatever you do with it there's an element of
exploitation and you have to just accept that's what you're doing the only way to
really be non- exploitative is not to do anything because we're all to some degree you know driving past car
accidents and staring at them his argument is that this is the messy part of making art Rose thinks anyone who
claims to feel guilty for taking their inspiration from The Real World is probably lying do they feel guilty about
it and they might pretend they do I don't think they do it I think there is a little difference when you're
dealing with actual victims of actual crimes that that's really what you're talking about but even then I don't know
they'd never have sold a newspaper if it wasn't for Crime the True Crime genre gets a lot of
criticism for exploiting other people's tragedies for entertainment some of the same reasons we've been
challenging Rose and in True Crime like this podcast we are sharing the details of Ruthie May's life in fact we're
sharing more than Bernard Rose ever did but the key difference to me is that our
ultimate goal is to inform and to help people understand how tragedies like these can happen to put them in their
proper context so I try to ask myself whenever I'm reporting how would this victim's family feel how would I feel in
fact a lot of times I'm reporting on my own Community I may even be connected to
the victims in some way so I do my best to be accurate and respectful that said I have to admit
that a part of me feels like Candyman does a disservice by not properly acknowledging these real
tragedies Coleman wasn't surprised by what the director told me he's a filmmaker he's like look I did I made an
entertaining movie he's you know this is what he does but I mentioned it's important to go
back to Steve Steve Bugera she brought back up the story about Steve meeting with an actor who told him the
protagonist would have to be white for the film to get made and they do exactly what Steve cautions them against
doing at times Steve felt strange in general about being a white man writing about people of color I totally
understand the feeling that it's wrong that people who are poor and in this case black at that time at least the
stories were told by white people but he also knew these stories were being overlooked by mainstream Outlets I
always felt like it was better that I was told by someone and that I would do my best to
Faithfully represent what their experience was like for Rose keeping Ruthie May's story alive is now part of
the film's Legacy so there is a memorial realizing effect and that's got to be positive but but you know look I can't
imagine that how traumatic it is for family members to have to deal with someone in their family that's murdered
it's it's it's almost like what the Candyman says what's worse is is it worse to be forgotten or to be
remembered well the candy man he he kills so not to be forgotten that's his whole
motivation he sheds innocent blood to keep people talking about him if people remember what
happened that can never be bad in my opinion I think when things have forgotten or Deni that seems the
unhealthy thing to me keeping Ruthie May's memory alive also means that the failed housing policies of Chicago's
past can't be swept under the rug the the heart of any problem was that the Housing Authority had allowed these
buildings to rot to Rose's point there is a chance I wouldn't be talking about Ruthie May's
murder if not for this film and while Candyman turned me on to the case her murder and the trials of the two men
arrested for her killing are what will cover next Edward Turner and John hondras pleaded not guilty to the
charges of murder and robbery their names had come up repeatedly as police talked to the residents of the project
building where Ruthie May was killed I can understand that from it detective's point of view that you would hone in on
the two people who are mentioned regularly but of course that doesn't mean that they did it Steve mcira
attended the trial the State's Attorneys had a little bit more evidence against Turner so they made it technically a
death penalty Case prosecution's Case relied heavily on a six-page statement from a witness named Tim Brown their
plan was to have him take the stand and repeat the chain of events the state's attorney wrote down when they
interviewed him but suddenly Tim Brown wasn't so sure what he saw that night he got on the stand and flipped on the
State's Attorneys that's next time on Candyman the true story behind the bathroom mirror
murder Ruthie May McCoy died in the spring of 1987 a month later just summer was
heating up hondras and Turner were indicted they were charged with murder armed robbery home invasion residential
burglary and armed violence it took three years for Edward Turner and John hondras to go on trial
after their arrest for the murder of Ruthie May McCoy they didn't have physical evidence to help them no useful
fingerprints were found at the scene Ruthie May's medicine cabinet was missing plus investigators never
recovered the gun and got a late start securing the crime scene another problem with the police not going in to the
apartment originally is that by the time they got back there the place had been wiped
clean the case largely hinged on the prosecutions star witness Tim brown brown told police that he saw hress and
Turner go into Ruthie May's apartment the two suspects spent all three years waiting behind bars Steve
begira found out that hress lost three relatives while he was waiting for his trial in this case first his
grandfather then his mother died of cancer and just two days after her funeral a police officer shot and killed
hr's 16-year-old brother authorities told hr's family that he was too dangerous to be released for the
funerals so he never got to say goodbye John hress was in his mid-20s and he'd been in prison before he he was
convicted of auto theft and robbery detectives were told he had only been a free man for less than a week when
Ruthie May was shot Edward Turner was just 18 when Ruthie May was killed in the past Turner
a high school senior had been charged with unlawful use of a weapon his mother Altha Turner said that
he liked to listen to the radio with friends and never gave in when other young men pressured him to join a
gang she said Turner never would have hurt Ruthie may they knew her and used to live in the same
highrise the two suspects chose to have their Fates decided differently Turner went to the jury of his peers while
hondras went with the bench trial so a judge would decide whether he was guilty or innocent when they finally went to
trial reporter Steve begira was still on the case even though Turner had opted for a jury and hondes was going to have
his fate determined by by the judge Michael Getty but they're going on at the same time so you have a lot going on
they both had judge Michael Getty and each suspect had pleaded not guilty the court decided to have both trials at the
same time in the same room now if there was a moment that was specific to only H's case they would escort Turner's jury
out of the courtroom temporarily there were some relatives and Friends of the defendants the only person there on
behalf of ruie May was her brother Willie will McCoy Steph Willie often talked while Court was in recess I
really enjoyed talking with Willie McCoy he was a born again Christian who said he had had his problems before he was
born again he was messing with drugs at the time of the trials Willie was 57 even though he was Ruthie May's older
brother he said sometimes she would help him with his school work back in the day
he said his sister was generous Willie told Steve that she would have given you the Sho strings off her shoes if you
needed them he clearly loved Ruthie May and that came across and he was like a lot of people who do come in support of
the victim he was not all about vengeance like we got to get these people convicted
Steve said Willie had mellowed out with age he witnessed an example of this in the courtroom a friend of Edward
Turner's family asked Willie Point Blank if he thought Turner had really killed Ruthie May McCoy Shrugged and the friend
said I'll tell you truthfully I don't believe he did but if he did do this I hope he burns because if someone did
this to my mother they wouldn't be here in court I'll tell you that Steve is reading from his own reporting and
Willie McCoy then smiled and he said I know what you mean I used to feel that way too but I've grown
some I understand the friend said and then McCoy told me that he wasn't always as forgiving as he is
today had his sister been murdered like this when he was younger he told me I would have gone over and tore the whole
West Side Up I'd have found the people who did it and blew their brains out and kept
walking Willie came to almost every day of the trials I liked what he had to say
because he was ambivalent uh because he knew how the world worked Steve and willly understood
there was no guarantee these suspects would be convicted he was not naive and yet he also had this compassion this
understanding of what life is like how people can get messed up in things that they don't want to get messed up in no
one not Steve not the loved ones of the suspects and certainly not the prosecution could have predicted what
would happen next the prosecution was hanging this case on the statement that Tim Brown had given them the
prosecution's star witness changed his story I'm Dom Pungo from 48 hours this is Candyman the true story behind the
bathroom mirror [Music] murder episode 5 the wavering witness no other reporter has followed
what happened to Ruthie May McCoy more closely than Steve buira I feel like I got to know Ruthie May somewhat in spite
of her death stepen I spent hours on a zoom one Wednesday afternoon she came here from Arkansas when she was young
Steve was thin with white hair and was wearing a button-up shirt just off screen he had several stacks of his old
notes occasionally he'd pause the interview grab his glasses and read through his
reporting to make sure he was getting the story right in his decad spent reporting in Chicago he' covered plenty
of Trials the Cook County criminal courthouse now known as the Leighton courthouse is commonly known as 26 in
California that's where it is on the southwest side of the city and it's the biggest and busiest felony courthouse in
the country the courthouse stood seven stories adorned with cement colored neoclassical
stone columns and the place had a chill to it fluorescent lighting Gruff security guards a tense screening
process there was a sense of for booting in there just thinking about the decisions happening behind each set of
doors it's not a pleasant place to be it's a courthouse where white people if they experience it at all it's because
they got jury duty whereas a lot of poor black people know the place pretty intimately they know where their Coke
machines are thankfully I can count on one hand the number of times I've been to 26 in California and none were
pleasant the most recent was in 2018 when I was reporting on the trial of a white police officer found guilty of
fatally shooting a black teenager 16 times a lot of people also just want to stay away from 26 in California if they
can bad things happen down there that's how people look at it so as odd as it might sound I'm not surprised only a
small group watched the Turner in HRA trials very few people were respecta watching her or there in support of the
defendants were there for the victim Edward Turner's mother Altha was there and Ruthie May's Brother Willie
too no other reporters covered the trial according to Steve there wasn't broad interest in
this case in public were you struck at all that it was just Willie who attended on the part of Ruthie May yes I
absolutely was Ruthie May's daughter Bernita for whatever reason did not attend I have seen situations where
sometimes just to relive in the court case the the pain of it all can be a lot for people but you know yeah I think a
lot of people can think what good is GNA do uh for me to see what happens in the
trial might not be what I'd like to have happen then I'll just get hurt worse on March 27th 1990 the two
defendants Turner and hondras arrived in court wearing dark suits Turner 21 by then was clean shaven with a short
haircut Steve wrote that he sat stiff and expressionless at the defense table by then hondras was 25 he wore
wire rimmed glass and had his hair pulled back into a ponytail because HR had three prior felonies he faced up to
80 years if convicted Turner faced an even more serious punishment the State's Attorneys had a little bit more evidence
against Turner so they made it technically a death penalty case multiple people told detectives that
Turner had admitted he shot a woman the night Ruthie May was killed now he hadn't said outright it
was Ruthie may but his alleged confession was the reason Turner faced the death penalty Turner's lawyers
argued that he didn't shoot anyone and that he was just a teenager lying to impress
[Music] someone Willie mcoy was called To The Stand he identified his sister's TV and
rocking chair after him the Chicago Housing Authority project manager who finally opened Ruthie May's door
testified she didn't know why the key the police were given for Ruthie May's apartment hadn't worked the prosecution
also brought Sonia Moore up to the stand she had lived in Abbott homes and at the
time of the trial she told Steve she was Turner's girlfriend she testified that Turner came to her place the night
Ruthie May was murdered at around 10:30 that evening he sat in her Liv room with
her her sister and her sister's boyfriend they were just hanging out when Turner started confessing that he
shot a lady who had a daughter that's what Morris said on the stand this alleged confession was notable because
it happened before anyone had opened the door to Ruthie May's apartment or found
her bullet riddled body that night Moore said she pressed Turner she testified that she asked
Turner where this woman lived and did she have any kids he told her that she had a daughter
but then as fast as he made the claim Turner backtracked and said that he wasn't
serious in court Turner's attorney argued that he'd only made that claim to try to impress more and he says that he
saw that it wouldn't impress her then he said no I didn't really shoot anybody and his testimony was that he really
didn't shoot anybody he was just bragging but Turner hadn't just boasted Moore also said that hondras and Turner
came back to her apartment and asked her to hide a black handgun she refused now if Turner was only joking
about shooting a woman why did he need help hiding a gun on top of that other Witnesses claimed they'd seen both of
the alleged accomplices after the shooting the pair of them detectives talked to a couple of women who lived on
the sixth floor of the same building who said that hress and Turner came to them
with the TV and the rocking chair one of those women was Lynette Fitch Tim Brown's girlfriend Fitch said that hres
wanted them to stash the stolen items at her place she refused and she suggested
that they try another woman who lived on the first floor of another Avid HR and they ultimately took the TV and
rocking chair to This Woman's apartment hr's attorney was a man named Alan senx he admitted that his client
did move the rocking chair to another apartment but argued that hress was only offering Turner a helping hand in other
words he was trying to say hondras the excon might look like he was in charge but actually the high schooler was
according to sencx and in an effort to take suspicion off his client sinx argued the obvious saying that any of
the people who hung out in the vacant apartment 1108 could have murdered Ruthie May McCoy including in his words
quote some of those who will testify what he's basically suggesting here is that Tim Brown the state's star
Witness could be pointing the finger at hress and Turner to hide the identity of
the real killer or Killers the police did not get a confession from anyone and so the prosecution was stuck with the
statement of Tim Brown the prosecution needed Tim Brown to take the stand and reiterate everything he said in his
signed statement and he did not that's when the case against Turner and hondras fell apart it was Tim
Brown's word against the accused and brown would no longer say they did it in fact he would make a damning allegation
against the [Music] police prosecutors often say we don't choose our Witnesses you know we have to
go with what we got that's Steve again talking about Tim Brown he isn't the kind of guy we choose as a witness but
that doesn't mean he wasn't telling the truth [Music] Brown was 24 years old and a key witness
for the prosecution 3 years before he would testify in court Brown had signed a six-page statement the state's
attorney noted that it was taken in the dead of night at 400 a.m. on April 26 1987 Just 4 days after Ruthie May called
911 there were challenges to Brown's credibility as a witness Tim Brown had a couple of felony convictions which were
relatively minor as I recall I think they were possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver but
that's the kind of thing that's defense lawyers can make a lot of saying oh he's
a drug pedler you can't trust him when prosecutors called him to the stand they wanted him to share how Turner and
hondras were in Ruthie May's apartment when he heard four shots and how the pair had allegedly come back to the
crime scene to collect the shell cases the statement that police and the State's Attorneys had from Tim Brown was
what's called a handwritten statement so at trial Tim Brown said I didn't really
say that the police abused me uh they grabbed me between the legs Brown didn't only backtrack he
denied giving the police the statement at all and accused them of coercing him into signing
it it's clear that the case had fallen apart for the state when Tim Brown did that he claimed police threatened him
and they said they might charge me as an accomplice former detective Anthony Manina one of the investigators Brown
was accusing blew off the idea that brown was coerced he said it was common for a witness to backtrack and accuse
the police of misconduct that was a standard procedure you got jail house lawyers that they're constantly trying
to get kid people off of their cases the assistant States Attorney who took Brown's statement was Linda wersan she
testified at the time that no officers were in the room when she wrote down Brown's statement and that brown had
said he was treated well by officers when we talked to her 30 years later she told us she didn't remember this case
but she did say that it was common practice for her to ask officers and detectives to leave the room when she
took a witness's testimony Brown's news story shifted the blame away from Turner the
teenager he now said that Turner didn't even go through the bathroom mirror it was hondras but the other guy was a guy
named Bo remember Bo was another one of the friends at the apartment next door to Ruthie Mays he was never arrested for
this crime and brown said that when he heard the gunshots Turner was still in 1108 sitting on the couch in the living
room Tim Brown and his friend Cory Flor first told police they weren't even in apartment 1108 the one next to Ruthie
Mays the night of the murder one of them said that they stayed at somebody's house and the other one said they stayed
in a motel afterwards and so detectives used the inconsistency when they reined Brown
eventually Brown and floro admitted that they were actually in that apartment and
that's when they got the statement that yeah I was there and yeah Hond Turner did it or once who went into the
apartment former detective Manina described having to repeatedly rein witnesses as part of the job he said it
was rare for someone to tell the truth the first time around we told him what he said the first time and he' make a
different lie so by the time he got through a three or four he didn't remember what he said you eventually
wound up with the truth so Brown gave at least three different stories his first
story to Detectives His official statement and now this new one that he was giving in court but let's talk about
that handwritten statement for a second Steve pointed out that when you hear the
phrase handwritten statement the Assumption might be that brown handw wrote the statement but actually the person being
questioned in Chicago at least is just writing his signature it's a state's attorney who's with felony review
who is called to the station when detectives feel they have somebody solid ready to give a
statement so Tim Brown only signed the statement once the prosecution finished their line of questioning the defense
got their [Music] turn there wasn't a lot that the defense lawyers really had to do because it was
clear they had enough to impeach Brown I mean he was saying one thing at one point and they're at another Point while
we were talking through the case on Zoom Steve turned to one of his stacks of papers and grabbed a write out of when
John hr's attorney Allan syx cross-examined Tim Brown originally Brown claimed a different friend named
Bo was involved in removing the medicine Captain attorney Alan sinx said did you
tell any of the police officers that Bo was one of the ones who did this and Tim
Brown says yes sinok says you told him that Bo was the person who came through that hole
and may have committed this crime yes how many times did you tell them that Tim Brown says I don't know it
might have been just once they asked so many questions day after day that I don't
remember Brown took his denial a step further and claimed he didn't even know Ruthie May McCoy in his statement he
said he had told hress that an old lady named Miss May lived in 1109 but on the stand he said that besides his
girlfriend friend he didn't know the names of any of the women Steve read from his reporting how Brown
contradicted even the most fundamental claims he made in his statement he said he had no idea you
could break into apartments in the building via the medicine cabinets until the KN McCoy was killed which
contradicted what he had in his statement he said that the music they were listening to that night wasn't loud
at all because quote we got neighbors up there we give our neighbors our respect
it's not fair to him to say that he flipped for sure because we don't know exactly what he told police and State's
Attorney but none of Steve's reporting suggested the police actually abused Brown the detectives who were involved
in this case investigating this case and the State's Attorneys who took the statement did not have a reputation for
coing confessions I think that's an important factor in this case even though it was a handwritten statement it
was a little more trustworthy than some other H statement the so you say the these detectives in this state's
attorney don't have a history of of doing that kind of thing right to my knowledge that's true in the majority of
murder cases I don't think detectives are physically abusing suspects I think there's a lot of trickery that goes
around goes on and there's a lot of leaning on people so you know Tim Brown said they grabbed him between the legs
and you know could have happened but I doubt it again the assistant State's attorney
said no officers were in the room when she took the statement and while coercion may not have happened in this
case the Chicago PD during this time did have a notorious reputation for abuse and even torture of black men and women
the United Nations has repeatedly condemned the US and Chicago for not doing more to fix the problem he said
that they were threatening that he might be an accomplice they might charging as
an accomplice that's more believable to me leaning on a suspect that way now we don't know why Tim Brown might have
changed his story but the damage was done the prosecution was stuck with the statement of Tim Brown so when he backed
off of that statement the case was gone the defense had questioned Tim Brown and
made their point but at least Turner's attorneys thought hearing directly from the accused could help their case so
they called Turner himself to the stand he saw that the door to her apartment was open and so he peaked in and he saw
Ruthie May's body I can understand that from it his point of view that you would hone in on
the two people who are mentioned regularly but of course that doesn't mean that they did it just because their
names kept coming up Steve watched the defense called Edward Turner to the stand where the young man would make his
own case during the trial Steve hadn't only gotten to know Willie McCoy he also met relatives of the two accused men
hress and Turner his mother Altha Turner said that dur in one of the recesses when I talked with her she said there
have been so many lies they take a truth and they wrap it up in a lie then they take a lie and they wrap it up in a
truth my son wouldn't be here if it weren't so many lies they said they were taking him for questioning they kept him
three years for questioning he read straight from his reporting she said I know he did not kill anyone he wouldn't
do something like that I know he wouldn't because I whooped his ass when he was coming up his last ass whooping I
gave him he was 18 years old Turner used to get into a lot of fights in school when he was younger that's how
he got his nickname monifi it was a reference to Mona fiori which used to be an alternative school in Chicago for
kids who struggled with learning and discipline Altha Turner did not want to record an interview but we talked to her
for over an hour she said her son knew her neighbor Ruthie may she said he wouldn't hurt her and that she didn't
let her son run the streets like other teens in the project she was especially strict with Edward she said during those
years I didn't like him having any dealings with the young men's in this area he was in church
[Music] mostly as she argued her son's innocence Altha said Turner didn't easily give in
to peer pressure they would always threaten him to join a gang but he never did let that bother him every time they
asked him what he was writing what gang he was with he'd tell them he was riding
Jesus Christ and they didn't understand that Turner's mom said that when he turned 18 she
loosened up a bit when police contacted her in April 87 and told her they wanted
to question her son she thought they might want him propelling drugs his mom Altha didn't think that he could be
connected to a murder in fact the week this all was happening was normally a happier time for their family both Altha
and Edward Turner's birthdays were coming up it didn't come up at trial but I think it was a according to a witness
that Turner said that he called his mom and said he was going to give her a color TV after he had taken the TV from
either Miss May's apartment or hallway upside of it when they did call Turner to the stand he admitted that he was in
Ruthie May's apartment that night she was killed but he said that he did not pull the trigger Turner later testifies
that yes he took the TV that he saw was sitting outside of apartment 1109 later that night sitting
next to the prosecution table was a 19in RCA TV and the rocking chair that belonged to Ruthie
May on the stand Turner claimed that when he saw a light on in 1108 from outside he went back up to the 11th
floor when he got there he saw someone named belder you haven't heard him mention yet anyway Turner now said he
saw belder leaving apartment 11:08 the one next to Ruthie Mays belder had the rocking chair and asked Turner to grab
the TV turner testified that's when he noticed the door to Ruthie May's apartment was slightly open he kicked
open the door took a few steps in and could see Ruthie May's body in the bedroom she saw a woman's body laying in
the apartment and then he left with the TV and went downstairs this is inconsistent with what the cops saw when
they showed up at Ruthie Mays there were no signs of forced entry and the door was locked but that was turn of story he
admitted that he didn't call for help Altha acknowledged her son looked into the apartment saw Ruthie May lying
there and did nothing and he hadn't reported it to the police it just taking the TV so she said where I live at in
the projects the rule is and she put a finger to her lips Alisa then turned and pointed at Willie McCoy sitting on a
bench behind her he knows about that projects at that point McCoy nodded and said yes I know about them projects they
would have probably hurt him Steve told me that Altha walked up the aisle of the
courtroom to the bench where Willie McCoy was sitting and put her hand on his shoulder she said my son should have
done something about her meaning Ruthie May if he seen her laying like that but I understand why he just left with that
TV he did what he had to do if I see somebody shoot you I cannot run and tell police because you see I got to live
there if they can't see that they should come live in the projects like we do I feel satisfied now she went on I wanted
to know did my son have anything to do with the Killer and now I know he didn't to this day
Altha Turner says her son was innocent just as she felt back then the question was would a jury
agree coming up in the final episode of Candyman the true story behind the bathroom mirror
[Music] murder in the spring of 1990 a judge and jury considered whether John Hond and
Edward Turner were guilty of killing Ruthie May McCoy their attorneys argued they were innocent but throughout the
investigation their names came up most frequently as suspects and when the time came for the prosecution's key witness
to take the stand he changed his story at the last minute now their Fates were up in the air we're talking a lot about
Ruthie may now but back then her murder got very little attention not a lot lot of folks came to the trial and it's
thanks mostly to the doggedness of Steve beira that we're talking about Ruthie May's case now and we aren't the only
ones turning our attention to Ruthie May a new Museum set to open later this year
will highlight her story We Tell The Good the Bad and the Ugly Lisa youngan Lee is the executive director of the
national public housing Museum they renovated a three-story public housing building in Chicago the
museum will showcase how Apartments looked decades ago the objects and artifacts that we have found that have
we've saved and salvaged and that people have given to us one object they salvaged from back then was a medicine
cabinet Lee knows that there's no Story related to those medicine cabinets that's more well known than Ruthie Mays
for many people one of the like most famous stories in public housing they'll hang a cabinet on the wall and then on
each side of the cabinet they'll put two different portrayals of life in public housing so on one side this medicine
cabinet tells the story of really incredible health programs and medical care that was always available in public
housing complexes and then on the other there's the story of Ruthie McCoy which is also true about this medicine
cabinet to Lee the tragedy of Ruthie May's death holds lessons for how the country approaches public housing today
housing precarity being what it is today it's like one of the biggest issues facing all of us this history is
incredibly relevant and even as history reminds us of its failures Ruthie May's story still
shows us some of the valuable things that public housing can do for people she had a consistent place to stay after
her home flooded and was provided access to a psychiatric center where she received care
despite so many challenges Ruthie may use public housing to set a path toward a better life we're asking people to
take a moment and to care to look a little more deeply the medicine cabinet exhibit is called care to look it's a
capacious history history is big and never again will a single story be told as if it's the only one for how big
history is Ruthie May's story manages to stay relevant for Generations I think I wrote a lot of stories that
really shed light on what poverty was like in Chicago in the 80s and 90s here's reporter Steve beira but people
don't pay attention to most of those stories but this one is kind of revived so that people do pay attention to it
more than three decades later he credits Candyman for generating attention around
Ruthie May's Legacy but plenty of real life events get mentioned in movies there's something deeper at play when we
remember Ruthie May Ruthie May's experience was concentrated poing It's a combination uh deep poverty and racial
segregation what is her Legacy what has come of these public housing projects today and were her Killers ever brought
to Justice you never know what a jury is going to do I'm Dom Pongo from 48 hours
this is Candyman the true story behind the the bathroom mirror murder episode 6 Rie May's
reflection Ruthie May McCoy's Legacy will forever be intertwined with the 1992 Candyman film I mean mainstream
stories and myths have a lot of power Lisa youngan Lee from the national public housing Museum believes the film
and its sequels have kept Ruthie May's story alive but each one has also done something different I think the original
Candyman contributed to inscribing some terrible racialized stereotypes about these places and on the flip side I kind
of feel like the remake of Candyman actually did something very different in 2021 fans of the franchise got to see
Candyman in a new light it was the first time a Candyman film was written and directed by people of color director Nia
dasta used the Remake to challenge stereotypes around public housing and historically black
neighborhoods it'll take a minute and then people will be studying over and talking about her film for years to come
remember Robin means Coleman she's a media professor at the University of Virginia she told me that this more
recent film is part of a movement to use horror to examine deeper issues within American society especially about race
so inevitably that that that real life horror is going to inform entertainment horror and the social issues appear in
lots of horror films but they're particularly acute in Black horror films the fourth Candyman is set in 2019
decades after the original Helen the graduate student who investigated Candyman for her research paper and died
in a bonfire is referenced but is not the film's focus instead of a white protagonist the central character is
black he's an artist named Anthony McCoy the kind of connective tissue is like trauma it's violence the Candyman is
sort of violent Cabrini is violent the government is violent there structural violence that sends people to where they
are in these films a reference to the details of Ruthie May's murder is in the fourth film too the main character
Anthony starts researching Candyman and gets a tape recorder from the library as
he becomes more obsessed with Candyman there's a scene where Anthony is vigorously painting and listening to a
recording of two women from the original film as they retell the murder of a woman named Ruthie so Ruthie call 911
and she said there's somebody coming through the walls and they didn't believe her they thought the lady was
crazy right so she called 911 again and they still didn't believe when they finally got there and
she was [Music] dead by 2019 Cabrini Green and the Abbott homes where Ruthie May lived were
long gone in the movie and in real life the high-rise projects had been demolished many low-income residents of
the neighborhood were forced to leave their homes were replaced by new development and housing designed to
attract wealthier residents I should warn you if you haven't seen the movie yet there are going to be some
spoilers as we get into the differences between the fourth and the first Candyman I think that the chief
difference is now certainly there's the absence of Helen and a focus on black communities black families black
relationships extended families that's the other thing in the 92 movie you're like where are these people's kin it's
revealed that Anthony the painter was the baby that Helen the blonde grad student from the first Candyman saved
from the fire in the original film at the end of the 2021 film Anthony becomes Candyman and this movie makes some big
changes to the lore surrounding the Candyman character's history the police gunned down the character ay McCoy at
the end of the most recent movie keep in mind this film was released only a little a little more than a year after
George Floyd's death and his murder was weighing heavy on America at the time but in the movie Anthony gets his
revenge once he's Candyman he kills the officers who murdered him even though Anthony is turning into
something he's an unwilling martyr to the kind of black pain and Trauma that we see Coleman read me something the
director Nea dasta once said so Nia says I love this quote can I read this quote
absolutely he says Candyman at the intersection of white violence and black pain is about unwilling
Martyrs the character Anthony McCoy is an unwilling martyr in the 2021 film the police kill him the original Candyman
character Daniel robati was an unwilling martyr he was tortured and lynched by an
angry mob and in a way Ruthie May was an unwilling martyr too she's remembered for how she died remembered for how she
was let down when we talk about speaking names and saying names and reminding about Justice denied we do want to say
Ruthie May McCoy's name and keep saying her name because it isn't just about her
murder that's a core to how we know her but Ruthie May McCoy symbolizes all of the sort of failures
one of the reasons Ruthie May's story still resonates today is we're still Reckoning with these failures a lot of
us can relate to not feeling safe in our own homes worrying that when a call for
help is made no one will come in the 2021 movie a black woman summons candy man for protection which
is much different from the original and that subtle change makes saying the name Candyman an act of
empowerment rather than victimization Coleman thinks that that idea Echoes the real life movement to keep the names of
victims of Injustice alive so in saying candyman's name in 1992 doesn't get us Justice in this
candy man you say his name because we're asking for justice for Coleman Ruthie May is on a
long list of names that she intends to say out loud Ruthie May McCoy is a real life
person her family are alive and out there back in 1990 Ruthie May's family was still waiting for justice they were
about to learn whether the two men accused of killing Ruthy May would be found guilty her older brother Willie
McCoy had watched the whole trial unfold finally after 3 years he was about to find out what would happen to
the two young men accused of her murder he wanted to make sure that the right people got
convicted Steve begira was there as the prosecution and the defense made their closing arguments I always feel it's
pretty poignant to see these cases where there's an awful lot on the line and there's there's so little interest but
that is quite common in Chicago the family of the defendants and Ruthie May's Brother Willie McCoy were there to
watch John hondras had chosen a bench trial where judge Michael Getty decided his fate while Edward Turner had chosen
a jury both trials were taking place simultaneously Turner's attorney focused his closing argument ments on the
circumstances of Turner's life and the choices available to him like the choice not to call the police he argued that if
Turner had called 911 police might have thought he was a suspect or his neighbors could consider him a snitch
putting his life in danger Steve said the jury left the room and came back with the verdict in less
than 4 hours Turner was sweating as he looked down at the table Edward Turner told me that he was scared when the jury
came came back he said I would have went off if they told me I was guilty I wouldn't have known how to take that
garbage life in prison for something I didn't do the clerk read the verdict on the charge of first-degree murder not
guilty Steve remembered someone in the court cheered to which the judge threatened jail time the clerk continued
reading off three more verdicts not guilty not guilty not guilty [Music] the jury decided Turner had not
committed armed robbery or invaded Ruthie May's home Beyond A Reasonable Doubt and even though Turner had
admitted on the stand that he had taken Ruthie May's TV the jury also found him not guilty of
burglary he was free to go back in April 1990 Steve watched Turner sit back in his chair and smile
his ordeal was over Steve said Turner told him back then he didn't know who killed McCoy and he didn't regret any of
his actions on the night she was killed not even his failure to call police after he saw McCoy's body if he had it
to do over he said to me I would have seen it and didn't seen it just like I did I wasn't going to jeopardize my
family's life Willie had spoken to family members of the accused Edward Turner's mother Letha
repeated something to Willie that she'd said to Steve the fact that Edward Turner wouldn't call police when he saw
Ruthie May lying in the apartment his mother I think said he should have he should have called police but if he did
he would have been suspect number one um so she could understand how in the milu of the projects that would be a
a an understandable response and Willie was okay with that explanation he said that he felt the defendants aren't the
only ones that should be on trial he said that the people who designed these projects should be on trial will he
showed his understanding once again when he walked past Turner's family on his way out of the courthouse in the hallway
outside the courtroom Turner's mother is screaming my child's coming home and crying and Willie McCoy walked past the
relatives and he looked relieved not disappointed and he told me maybe he was innocent but
even if he wasn't you can't convict an individual on such little evidence Willie left and didn't return
to hear the verdict in John hr's case he wanted Justice for Ruthie may but he also wanted the right people convicted
if anyone was going to be convicted Steve wrote that in the closing arguments of hr's case the prosecutor at
admitted Tim Brown had been a flawed witness but argued the detectives had conducted an honorable investigation he
said quote they didn't choose their Witnesses and neither did we but the detectives wouldn't be the focus of
Judge Michael Getty's frustration he was upset with the responding officers the night Ruthie May died well this was a
veteran judge he knew how police were supposed to work so to him it was uncon questionable that the officers didn't go
into the apartment that night that they got that call not just from Ruthie may but from two neighbors reporting
gunshots that they could somehow leave without going in and seeing what was up in that
apartment judge Getty said quote this case was lost not by the State's Attorneys this case was not even lost by
the detectives who got the only evidence that they got in a damaged and sanitized
crime scene this case was lost by the Patrol Division of the Chicago Police Department who stood by with a deaf ear
to the multiple reports of gunshots being fired in 1109 they just couldn't be bothered with
the hassle of entering a locked door so they let them get away with it end quote
went on to say about John hondras this defendant may or may not be guilty but the state has clearly failed to
establish guilt Beyond a reasonable doubt this court must accordingly find the defendant not
guilty he's discharged and with that no one would be held accountable for Ruthie's
murder hres never spoke to Steve for a story back in the day and never responded to our attempts to reach out
to him either but Steve did speak with hess's half brother who had attended the trial his half brother Darnell deed told
me in the hallway I feel good about him getting out but there's no reason to celebrate he wanted the truth to come
out as he did but everyone over there meeting in the projects knows who killed that lady just ain't nobody at Liberty
to say but it wasn't John Willie McCoy hadn't come back to hear the Hond ruling prosecutors had already told him that
hress was going to walk as well Steve decided to call Willie and tell him the prosecutor's prediction was
correct his sister's killer or Killers whoever they were Got Away the first thing McCoy did was lean on his
religious faith I thought it was a travesty former Chicago detective Anthony Manina thought
it was a travesty that the two men he arrested for Ruthie May's murder were acquitted judge Getty uh you know he
gave a fair statement of what he believed and his statement was that it wasn't on the the detectives and you
know it was he even claimed it was on the Patrol Division but in actuality I also add that to the cha police in a
phone call he reiterated that he believes the cha police not the patrol officers are the ones at fault for not
letting Patrol officers into Ruthie May's apartment sooner how could you show up in an apartment with a wrong key
and then say I'll be back tomorrow from his perspective the patrol officer's hands were tied even though police
regularly break into private property he simply doesn't think the patrol officers
had enough cause in this situation they were on cha property and the cha did not
want to break down the door it's a cha property the cha would have to give the okay he said this might have been
handled differently if the police had permission to break in from a relative but that wasn't the situation
plus to Manina at least they ultimately arrested the right men he doesn't consider this a Cold Case a cold case is
a case that occurred where the offender was not caught and the case is still pending but cold in this circumstance we
believed we had the right guy so therefore it's it's already in the courts so with that fact it's not a cold
case as far as I'm concerned again this is for former detective mana's opinion hondras and Turner were found not guilty
of killing Ruthie may still for Manina as far as we were concerned we cleared this case clearing a case means that the
officers met the criteria to consider the case solved once cops say a case has been cleared that means from their
perspective they don't have to reopen it as for Willie McCoy Ruthie May's brother he dealt with the fact that the
criminal justice system failed to catch his sister's killer his reaction wasn't that's so
unfair there was as often happens in these cases some meeting of the minds between family and friends of the
defendants and in this case uh the relative Willie Steve said that Willie relied on his religious
Faith he said God will take care of them eventually I believe that the killers are free but they're not free in spirit
they know what they did and it's always going to be in their mind they can boast
they can say oh man we beat it but that's just going to open a trap door for them they'll think they can get away
with something again but sooner or later the axe will fall as their conversation
went on Willie did let some of his anger seep out here's Steve again reading straight from his notes if that would
have been a white woman that called police like my sister did you know they would have gone in her apartment you
know it this whole system we're living in is corrupt he said he tries not to dwell on the injustices in it if you do
you will explode you will explode he said Steve didn't stay in touch with Willie and we tried different contact
information for him but never heard back from anyone if he's alive he'd be in his
'90s according to Edward Turner's mother Altha her son went on to have a good life he died in his 50s from cancer but
John hondras was arrested again about a year after his acqu in Ruthie May's case
in 1993 he was convicted of second degree murder for a different [Music] killing Steve begira was the one who
posed the question what killed Ruthie May a bullet in the chest or life in the projects the
answer was both I do think that things are much better because Abit homes no longer exists nor does the highrises at
Cabrini and Robert Taylor and Stateway everything was knocked down around the year 2000 now at Ruthie May's old
address was a resource center for unemployed adults it's next to an empty field Steve has written a book and retired
from the Chicago reader for his book courtroom 302 Steve spent one year in a Cook County courtroom he said that way
back when he wrote his stories about Ruthie may his intention was never to write an indictment of all public
housing the concentration of deep poverty in my mind was the more important factor people can get along
just fine and highrises and with back-to-back medicine cabinets but because concent ated poverty leads
inevitably to more violence filling those high-rises with the deeply poor is a recipe for disaster a disaster that
the buildings themselves then exacerbate and then the violence worsens physical and mental health and the residents are
caught in a downward spiral Deborah lassley Ruthie May's neighbor blames those circumstances for her friend's
death and when asked the question what killed Ruthie May McCoy she blamed the projects and the people who used to run
him so to me the people that work for the project and because the project didn't get their together they didn't
care cuz they wasn't living there the way whoever killed Ruthie May entered her apartment can make any of us
question whether something could be lurking behind our own reflection Ruthie May's reflection is
her Legacy and that we say her name all these years later we retell again and and again how she died and it's not that
different from how the 2021 Candyman explains the ghost's relevance in the 21st century but a story like that a
pain like that lasts forever that's Candyman in the same way the latest film helped to change the narrative maybe
this telling of a story does too the SC Fest part is that the film is fictional but not the
[Music] horror from 48 hours this is Candyman the true story behind the bathroom
mirror murder I'm your host and co-executive producer Doma Pungo Judy igard is the executive
producer of 48 hours Jamie Benson is the senior producer for Paramount audio and morira
walls is the senior story editor development by 48 Hours field producer Morgan KY recording assistance from
Marlin polycarp and Alan Pang special thanks to Paramount podcast vice president Megan
Marcus Candyman the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder is produced by Sony Music Entertainment it was
reported written and produced by Alex Schuman our executive producers are Katherine St Louis and Jonathan hirs our
associate producer is summer tamod theme and original music composed by Cedric Wilson he sound designed and mixed the
episodes we also use music from APM fendle Fon is our fact Checker and our production manager is Tama balance
kassi if you enjoyed this series please take a moment to rate and review the show on Apple podcast or wherever you
get your podcasts [Music]

On April 22, 1987, 52-year-old Ruthie Mae McCoy called 911 to report that someone was trying to enter her Chicago housing project apartment through the bathroom medicine cabinet. Police thought she was imagining things, but when authorities finally checked on McCoy two days later, they found her dead with four gunshot wounds. "Candyman: The True Story Behind the Bathroom Mirror Murder," revisits the real-life account of McCoy's strange death — one of the inspirations for the Candyman horror film. Hosted by journalist and Chicago native Dometi Pongo, this 6-episode limited series — produced by 48 Hours and CBS News — explores why McCoy's desperate calls for help were ignored, the surprising outcome of her murder trial, and the broader systemic issues of racial injustice, housing inequality, and the stigma of mental illness that surround this tragic event.

0:00:00 Episode 1: Left High and Dry 0:31:00 Episode 2: Deadly Design 1:00:12 Episode 3: The Suspects Next Door 1:32:00 Episode 4: Based on a True Story 2:07:46 Episode 5: The Wavering Witness 2:37:45 Episode 6: Ruthie Mae's Reflection

Crime. Social justice. Impact. "48 Hours" investigates the most intriguing crime and justice cases that touch on all areas of the human experience including greed and passion. "48 Hours," which premiered in 1988, has developed a rich history of original reporting and impact journalism that has helped exonerate wrongly convicted people, caused cold cases to be reopened and solved, and along the way changed lives.

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Brief Summary

Ruthie May McCoy's murder inspired Candyman, revealing systemic failures in public housing and justice for marginalized communities.

Key points

Ruthie May's 911 Call. Ruthie May McCoy's desperate call for help went unheard, leading to tragedy.
Ruthie May's Struggles. Ruthie May faced mental health challenges but was making progress in her life.
Neglect by Authorities. The Chicago Housing Authority's failure to address safety concerns contributed to Ruthie May's murder.
Ruthie May's Tragic Murder. Ruthie May McCoy was brutally murdered in her apartment, raising questions about safety and neglect.
The Investigation Unfolds. Detectives uncover witness testimonies and suspect identities in Ruthie May's case.
Legal Battle for Justice. Ruthie May's family seeks accountability from the Chicago Housing Authority after her murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Ruthie May was left high and dry.

A poignant reflection on neglect and tragedy.

16:29WatchNov 20, 2024

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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