James Ellroy writes some killer crime fiction. LA Confidential. The Black Dhalia. Modern Classics of noir crime genre. He never wrote about the Cleveland Torso Murders, even though you had Eliot Ness and the the flats of Cleveland to work with, mostly because Ellroy writes about LA, and crime, and messy acts of violence and investigation that chase the drama around real life stories And it’s Ellroy at his noirest that I think of when reading about the crime scene investigation of the shooting on Flax Hill. Let’s start with this Hour report:
Police would not release the victim’s name, but evidence discovered at the scene by The Hour indicates the victim is Jermaine Devon Smalls, who is listed in serious condition at Norwalk Hospital.
A piece of mail addressed to a South Norwalk post office box belonging to Smalls and a blank employment application stained with a 1 3/4-inch-long bloody fingermark were turned over to police by The Hour on Wednesday.
So we are to believe that in this modern moment, in real life, crime scenes are not secured, and that roving reporters can discover evidence, and then pick up said evidence to turn over to the Police and casually write about it in the newspaper? No thoughts about chain of custody evidence? After the OJ trial? No thoughts about preserving details about the investigation? And then there’s this passage:
Detectives at the scene would not confirm that Smalls’ attackers fired from, or fled in, a car, but police radio traffic immediately following the shooting alerted patrols to be on the lookout for two suspects in a white, two-door Toyota Scion or a similar-looking sport utility vehicle.
Maybe its just me, but I sort of expect that details be somewhat accurate in the old radio alert lookout stuff. Toyota does indeed own Scion, but Scion is the Make and the model, if we are to believe the sport utility looking vehicle jargon, would be the XB.
Ellroy, knowing nothing about Norwalk, would have a field day.
source:The Hour, Another South Norwalk shooting vexes police , By Amanda Norris, July 3, 2008
