The 100 Block of Seymour Street

I was cleaning out my blog, looking for posts that I never published; I found this.

Cookie (The Cook Shack) and I worked together as cops. We didn't share any assignments but know each other and got along. Cookie was a detective and I was a street cop/evidence technician. Aboout a year ago we exchanged some views on a series of newspaper clippings my brother emailed to me. One of them was this article about a domestic incident resulting in serious injury under rather unusual circumstances; a man had his penis bit off by his epileptic girlfriend..

Cookie replied:

Too bazaar not to be true......but I had something similar at Upstate one night regarding the last news flash. Seems she (59er) was giving head to her 59er boyfriend in the kitchen when she had an epileptic seisure....he wacked her in the head frantically...giving her multiple contusions, abrasions...and a concussion. He lost most of his penis and there was blood all over the Seymour St address...that's right....good old Seymour St.......

Having worked the 59 beat for several years, I knew exactly where Cookie was talking about. And the typical situations (or atypical if you're not a lunatic) one was liable to run into.

Particularly if it involved sex. Some of the weirdest calls involved unnatural acts with whatever happened to be at hand.

Anyway, I replied:

Where else but Seymour? And Shonnard, Oswego, Kellogg, yes there’s always Kellogg. And Gifford, and Merriman, and …

Cookie sends back:

Remind me to tell ya about the Homicide I had on Shonnard St where a Hispanic man stuck a .12 ga shotgun in his girlfriends mouth during a fight and pulled the trigger....that was a REAL cover yur coffee cup scene if'n ya read me....

Well, I remembered this homicide very well. What Cookie refers to here as a "Cover yur coffee cup" scene is a crime scene that is so incredibly messy that body parts are literally dripping from the ceiling. Ergo "cover yur coffee cup" if you don't want to be drinking someone else's body fluids and swallowing little meaty chunks of whatever.

I emailed Cookie back:

That was in Feb of 1980 I think, 152 Seymour, downstairs on the east side of the house? Is that the one? I was in there for three hours. Heh, that was the house Danny Corbett ran outta there. When I walked in the suspect was on his knees in front of Ralph J. begging him to kill him. Ralph is going, “Now, now, now calm down now ...”

You had to know Ralph. He was a farmer or something and had no fuse, none whatsoever. Nothing riled him, he never really got upset. He was talking to this drunk who had blown his girl's head clean off like he was talking to a schoolboy who forgot to bring his homework to class.

Anyway, we were sitting down in the squad room getting ready for roll call just before 2300 when Danny C. and I were called out by one of the platoon sergeants. "Get down to 152 Seymour pronto" he says, "There's been a shooting."

Danny and I were the Evidence Technicians tonight, or ET's for short, and we rolled on all felonies as sort of a mini-crime lab. It was rather unusual that there was two of us working the same unit on the same night.

I worked the ET car on a regular basis and Danny covered for me on my rest days. There was at least one ET car deployed on every shift, sometimes two (units 235 and 236) if there was enough coverage in all the beats. Each car was stuffed with photographic, latent print and evidence collection gear.

The 100 block of Seymour St. was less than a mile from the station so we got there in no time. Cookie arrived a bit later on Seymour St.

Cookie went on:

Being the Sgt in the Lab...I had to be present at all homicides and suspicious death scenes...and they've become a blur in my memory. You are most correct...I stand corrected regarding date and location...but that was an unforgettable scene wasn't it?

Yes it was. This was one of the nastiest messes I'd ever had to process. I had an indication that this could be bad when Danny and I first pulled up. I saw the ambulance crew saunter out of the first floor apartment with an empty gurney and not a care in the world.

Right away I knew that either it was nothing or it was everything. An empty gurney and bored EMT's means that emergency care is not needed or the victim is far beyond any care.

As I passed the ambulance crew I asked, "What is it?" They just shrugged and proceded to stow their gear back on the rig. Danny stayed behind on the sidewalk leading up to the entrance and yelled at me, "I can't stand that stuff, let me know how bad it is."

I just said "Sure," and walked into the scene.

I emailed Cookie:

High speed Velveta cheese all over the wall. A big piece of the top of her skull completely stripped of flesh and hair on the kitchen floor, upside down like a soup bowl. I could look down her throat into her stomach. And she was still holding a glass of beer.

It took a few seconds for the sight to sink in. The victim, a white female approximately 40 years old and not getting any older, was sitting at a small table in a cheap vinyl kitchen chair. She was slouched over the tale on her left side. About three quarters of her head was completely gone. And she was clutching a glass of beer in her left hand.

Gore was everywhere. Brains, hair and blood had painted the wall behind the table and was dripping from the ceiling; much of her head had spattered over the rest of the room after ricoheting off the walls and ceiling.

At the time I imagined that if I shined a flashlight down her throat I could have read a book with the light coming out her ass.

Danny wanted to know what was going on. He called from outside, "Is it bad?"

I have been told I have a sadistic streak.

I answered him, "Nah, it's nothing."

Danny walked into the scene and ran out like a flash. I didn't see him for several hours. I never asked him what he did all that time. I think he was painting the side of the apartment with his dinner.

Cookie has a sadistic streak too.

Cookie emailed me back:

What you may not have seen or heard about that night was what I did to the then Lt. Smith. I found something over in the corner of the kitchen...picked it up with a spoon and went outside to Lt. Smith...who by the way was sick from the scene...and I had the spoon behind my back. I walked up to him and said..."Hey L.T" .....pulled out the spoon from behind my back and put it up to his face and said "Here's lookin at you kid"...it was one of her eyes. Smith lost it right there.....ROFLMAO.....

I wondered where the hell her other eye had gone to! It weren't on the floor.

There is no mercy, even for your wingman. If we find out you have a weak stomache, you'd better get an inside job or carry one of those airplane puke baggie things with you.