Deadly Design | "Candyman" | "48 Hours" Podcast (Episode 2) | Forensic Files

Ruthie 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 cabinet down she said they threw down her cabinet Ruthie May was likely trying to tell the
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 begira 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 build 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 man for residents why didn't the Chicago Housing
Authority do anything to stop these break-ins in the80s 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 differently journalist
Steve begera questioned the Chicago Police Department at the time and asked why Ruthie call for help didn't generate
a faster police response well 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 it 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 asked the residents they said that police are afraid of the projects
just like we are and the residents also said please 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 would 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's 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 Ruthie 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 Breakin
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 cabinets
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 Breakin there was between 21 and 30 in the 18 months before Ru 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 do 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 toilets and crumbling
ceilings and there's been so much deferred maintenance that they're not going to work on a problem with undo
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 residence the Chicago Housing Authority was not anymore 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 AB it she asked
specifically in a letter 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 this apartment available to you on the 11th floor of a highrise the
Abbott Holmes 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 Avid
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 our stff 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 whatever 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 here 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 revolvers
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 off for board great thank you yep
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 Mexican American American neighborhood called Psy Dill 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 a 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 mine right so they had these big huge Courtyard yards 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 Fuller 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 of 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 that
housing Au 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
funding 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 whole new wall
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 were built very badly there were all
kinds of deals with the unions despite the infamous winners in the city she said there were highrises 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 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 SEL who uh took the
money that was supposed to go for maintenance and funneled it through the flat janitors 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 Popkin said 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 Abbot 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 gonna be what you at a cocktail party the first thing you say was it like that Kim 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 flight
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 surprise 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
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 there's 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 n a 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 two 19in 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 withy 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 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 bagira 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 hondras and
Turner were the only names that kept coming up police heard the names John hondras and Edward Turner from residents
hress 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 48 hours this is Candyman the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder I'm your host and
co-executive producer domati Pungo Judy igard is the executive producer of 48 Hours Jamie Benson is the senior
producer for Paramount audio and Mora walls is the senior story editor development by 48 Hours field producer
Morgan KY recording assistance from Marlin polyart 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 to
mix the episodes we also use music from APM fle fton is our fact Checker our production manager is Tama balance
kassi special thanks to Arian coach for playing Ruthie may she also played Trina
in the 2021 Candyman we'll be back next week with another episode of Candyman the true
story behind the bathroom mirror murder in the meantime leave us a rating and review to let us know what you think of
the podcast

Ruthie Mae McCoy wasn’t the only person who reported having someone come through her mirror. Host Dometi Pongo looks at the reality of life in Chicago projects and how the design of her building may have contributed to her death.

Get early, ad-free access to episodes of "Candyman: The True Story Behind the Bathroom Mirror Murder" by subscribing to 48 Hours+ on Apple Podcasts or Wondery+ on the Wondery app. The series is widely available everywhere else you get your podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/candyman-the-true-story-behind-the-bathroom-mirror-murder/id1769281333

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 highlights police negligence and public housing design flaws in Chicago.

Key points

Ruthie May's Tragic Murder. Ruthie May McCoy was murdered in her apartment under mysterious circumstances.
The Flaw in Design. The architects of the Grace Abbott homes created a dangerous entry point for criminals.
Police Response Controversy. The police logged Ruthie May's 911 call as a disturbance, impacting their response time.
Neglect by Housing Authority. The Chicago Housing Authority failed to address numerous break-in reports before Ruthie's murder.
Public Housing Corruption. Corruption within the Chicago Housing Authority led to neglect of residents' safety.
Ruthie May's Tragic Story. Ruthie May was shot four times in her apartment, revealing brutal details of her murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

You don't have to be afraid.

Mayor Jane Byrne's statement about living in Cabrini Green.

1:48WatchOct 10, 2024

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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