Child Identified After 29 Years in Chimney
DedNdogYrs
New Details On The Boy In The Chimney
The examiner believed the youth got trapped. The detective suspected
murder. An answer to part of the mystery left both in disbelief.
Inside the chill of the county coroner's office, the detective and
the forensic anthropologist stood over soot-covered bones arrayed on a
metal table.
Over two hours, Elizabeth Miller provided a running dialogue for
each bone. She picked up one rib after another, studying them for knife
scrapes.
The bones were those of a boy, perhaps 12 to 15 years old, found
in the chimney of an abandoned building in South Los Angeles. The boy
wore faded and stained tan jeans and a white shirt, but no shoes.
"I'm sure if we had a photograph, we'd be able to recognize him,"
Miller said.
More than once, Los Angeles Police Det. Chris Barling asked: Was
he killed? There was no sign of trauma, Miller said. No self-defense
wounds on the finger bones, no scrapes or damage to other bones. The
jaw suggested major dental work to repair an injury, but that was it.
That was March 28, 2005, and the homicide detective and the
anthropologist had hunches, nothing more.
Miller said she thought the boy sneaked into the chimney and died
either of starvation or positional asphyxiation. Perhaps the clay pipe
of the chimney muted his calls for help. Maybe the same pipe carried
the smell of decay up and out. The remains still gave out a waxy,
organic odor, which led Miller to believe that he had probably been
dead less than five years. The boy's two front teeth protruded, and his
skull had strong African American features.
"I tend to go with weird accidents more," she said. "I prefer to
think weird things happen as opposed to somebody killing and dumping a
boy into a chimney."
Barling felt differently. "Maybe I'm just morbid," he said. "I
just had a hunch that it didn't make sense it was accidental.... My gut
is that we're dealing with a murder."
The discovery of the skeletal remains at 89th and Main streets in
South Los Angeles had been a fluke. On March 24, 2005, an 11-year-old
girl had climbed on the roof of the abandoned halfway house to retrieve
a soccer ball. The girl peered down into the chimney. She ran to her
father and told him she had seen a skull.
In the following days, stories about the discovery ran in local
newspapers and on the TV news. They focused on Miller's theory: The boy
was probably a runaway, there a few years.
No one came forward to identify the remains. No grieving parents
called or showed up to dare to ask: Could this be my child?
Barling started pulling missing person's reports going back about
five years but came up empty.
That July, forensic artist Marilyn Droz used the boy's skull to
draw a composite portrait. By then, nearly four months had gone by. The
sketch prompted another flurry of news reports.
Donna Theus was sitting in her living room watching the TV news
when she saw the drawing. She screamed. The boy, Theus said, looked
like her cousin. She picked up the phone. On the other line,
78-year-old Clelia Thompson answered. "Babe, did you see that little
boy's picture on the TV?" Theus asked her aunt. "The little boy they
found in the chimney? You know, that could be Robert."
Robert? Her boy, Robert Thompson, 14, had been missing since Christmas
Eve.
Of 1977.
The investigators could not believe the body had been in the
chimney 28 years. The building, a low-slung, fenced-in wreck, for years
served as a halfway house and had only closed a few years ago. How
could a corpse be there for so long without anyone noticing?
Still, the Los Angeles Police Department's missing persons unit
sent someone to take a DNA swab from Clelia Thompson's mouth.
Miller, the Los Angeles County coroner's anthropologist, began to
rethink the circumstances that would have preserved the bones for so
long, and still retained the smell of decomposition. When she talked to
other anthropologists and forensic experts, they were befuddled. Their
best guess was that a combination of odd conditions may have preserved
the remains.
The bones showed signs of superficial charring, suggesting that
the chimney had been used just enough to stain the remains. This may
have helped preserve them.
Months passed. Then, on Dec. 28, 2005, a lab in Sacramento came
back with the DNA test results. The boy in the chimney was Robert
Thompson.
Det. Barling now had a name, and identities tell stories. Barling,
44, a 20-year LAPD veteran, had been the lead detective on 150 cases
since becoming a homicide investigator in 1993. His mind raced with
questions. Who was last with this boy? Was he trying to burglarize the
building or playing a game of hide-and-seek? Could he have been trying
to recover a ball, much like the little girl who had found his remains?
The abandoned building was only blocks from Robert Thompson's
home. Where were the shoes? Did the boy walk there in his bare feet? Or
was he carried there?
Barling drew up a basic profile of the boy in the chimney.
Loved ones described Robert Thompson as sweet tempered though
occasionally mischievous. He liked to run barefoot around the house. He
especially enjoyed playing with his other two young brothers, Clinton
and Smith. Though Robert was the third-youngest of Clelia Thompson's
children, in many ways he demanded the most attention. Robert was 14,
but social workers had diagnosed his IQ as that of a 6-year-old.
From at least age 4, according to hospital records, Robert
suffered from grand mal seizures. If he did not take his medication, he
could have as many as three a day. In 1974, a seizure caused him to
black out and fall into a swimming pool. He almost drowned before a
sister pulled him out. One year later, Robert fell on his face after
suffering another seizure, necessitating dental surgery. It was this
work that anthropologist Miller would observe nearly three decades
later.
Barling remained doubtful that Robert died accidentally. As he
delved into the boy's family history, he found it was heaped with tales
of trauma, tragedy and bad luck that were excessive even by the
standards of a tough South Los Angeles neighborhood.
Barling decided it was time for a longer conversation with the
boy's mother. Barling sat down with Clelia Thompson at her cramped home
in the back of a duplex on East 94th Street. It was clear to him that
she had harbored a dark conviction for decades about what had happened
to her son. She was certain that he had not run away, that someone had
taken and killed him. The only thing she didn't seem to know in her
heart was where her boy's remains were. "You don't want to ever face
none of your children are dead," Thompson said in an interview. "But
it's worse when they're just gone. You can't even face it."
Thompson is thin with toned arms despite her age. She sometimes
keeps a pack of Kool cigarettes in her well-worn white and green apron,
and during the summer, a jar of buttermilk nearby to fend off the heat.
Her recollection of exact dates is fuzzy, she admits. She keeps
death certificates stored away in a trunk. All seven, for all the
children she lost. She lost one daughter when the girl was only a baby.
Then she lost six of her nine remaining children. Only one, Shirley,
died of natural causes. Rose, 30, and Benny, 34, were stabbed to death
by former partners. Clinton, 20, and Smith, 19, the two youngest, each
committed suicide. "It was one right after another. Every year there
was a death," Thompson said. "But it began with Robert."
It was a rainy Christmas Eve. The whole family had gathered at
home for the holiday - along with an outsider. His name was Theodore
Van Smith. Theodoric, as he was often called, was the former boyfriend
of Robert's sister, Rose Ann. They had a boy together, but the
relationship had soured.
Theodoric Smith was not especially welcomed. But he had a way with
the youngest children, Thompson said. He would offer them hamburgers
and drinks, and sometimes take them away for short spells.
Some family members said they always heard that Robert stormed off
in a fit of anger because he thought he wasn't getting a bicycle for
Christmas. Clelia Thompson said that wasn't right. Robert disappeared
in the morning, and the family assumed he would return. His shoes were
left behind. By the afternoon, they had started searching the
neighborhood. They even searched the building where Robert's remains
would be found 28 years later. It didn't occur to them to look in the
chimney. "We looked for him all Christmas Day," Thompson said. "No
Robert."
The LAPD searched an extensive area door to door. TV newscasts
aired reports about the missing boy. Almost unnoticed that day,
Thompson said, was that after Robert disappeared, so did Theodoric. He
was not seen the rest of the day.
"But nobody hardly noticed because everybody was concerned for Robert,"
Clelia Thompson said.
Barling reviewed the LAPD's old missing person's case on Robert.
It showed that for the first eight years after his disappearance, the
trail was cold.
But that changed Feb. 23, 1985.
In the darkness of the early morning, Clelia Thompson walked
briskly down a hallway of Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center.
Before she got to his room, she could hear the peel of her youngest
child's screams.
"All I could hear was my child hollering, 'Momma, Theodoric killed
Robert! Momma, Theodoric killed Robert! He told me he killed Robert!'"
Laying on the bed was the bloody form of 12-year-old Smith Thompson.
Tire marks streaked across his chest and his forehead. He was in
intense pain.
According to police, Theodoric Smith had driven Smith Thompson to
a dark alley and raped him in the car. A subsequent police report
quoted Smith as saying Theodoric told him: "If you don't make me feel
good, I am going to kill you just like I killed your brother Robert."
Theodoric eventually threw the boy out of the car and ran over him.
Two months later, Theodoric Smith pleaded guilty to five felony
counts, including the rape of a child and attempted murder. He was
sentenced to 30 years in state prison.
Before he was convicted, LAPD Det. Ramiro Argamaniz asked him
about Robert's disappearance. "Suspect did not cop out to the crime,
but he did hint at possibility of his involvement and he did mention
his backyard," his report said.
Police dug up the backyard of Theodoric Smith's parent's home but
found only dog remains.
The case of Robert Thompson again grew cold until 1997, when Det.
Debra Kane of the department's missing person's unit took an interest.
Barling, reading the old case files, found Kane to be something of a
kindred spirit. Like him, Kane felt in her gut that she was dealing
with a homicide case. "Even juvenile runaways turn up eventually. They
make phone calls home," Kane said in an interview, explaining her
suspicions. "Somewhere, someone has seen this person or that person.
"This kid just disappeared."
Kane asked Dr. Kris Mohandie, then head of the LAPD's behavioral
science unit, if he could go to Calipatria State Prison, about 150
miles east of San Diego, to interview Theodoric Smith. "What we really
wanted to know," Kane said, "is where the bones were buried."
Aided by a prison psychiatrist, Mohandie interviewed Theodoric
Smith for several hours. Mohandie reported that Smith was manipulative
and obsessed with "sexual matters, body parts, and missing body parts."
"The inmate clearly fits the profile of a sexual predator whose
preferential target is minor males," Mohandie wrote. He and the prison
psychiatrist concluded that Smith "would be capable of the probable
murder and disappearance of Robert Thompson."
But they didn't get a confession from Theodoric Smith.
Barling found himself in the same place where Kane left off nine
years earlier, no closer to proving Robert Thompson had been murdered.
Theodoric Smith was paroled from prison in 2000 but shortly after
that was committed to the Atascadero State Hospital in Central
California.
In an phone interview with The Times from the hospital, Smith, now
47, said he remembered Robert going missing but denied he had any
involvement. "No, I had nothing to do with it, sir," he said. "If they
had anything on me, I'm pretty sure they would come and read me my
Miranda rights."
Barling said he plans to make the trip up north to the mental
hospital sometime in the fall to talk to Smith. "Even if I got a
full-blown confession from him, I have to compare that to his mental
state," Barling said. "Am I just getting a confession from someone who
is completely insane?" For now, Barling said, he plans to make it a
goal to keep Theodoric Smith in the mental institution. "I think this
is a homicide," he said. "My problem is, can I prove it?"
On Feb. 8, Clelia Thompson finally laid her son Robert to rest.
She could not afford to bury his remains, so she had them cremated. The
family had a small ceremony at the House of Winston Mortuary. Two
pictures of Robert greeted well-wishers. One showed him sitting at a
bus stop, a large textbook on his lap as the boy stared away. It was
the photograph that was circulated 28 years ago after he was reported
missing. The other was the forensic drawing done for the coroner -
the only close-up rendering they had for the ceremony.
Clelia Thompson calls the funeral of her boy "the day of the
closure." "You have to deal with what you have to deal with, ain't no
other way," she said. "And I just try to put it behind me. I did put it
behind me, for a little while."
Copyright © 2006, The Los Angeles
Times
x
catherine yronwode
Thanks for posting this. Cold cases, foresics, and police artists are
three of my interests, and police incompetence is another -- and this
case has all four; the incompetent search (how can you search a house
and NOT look up the chimney? reminds me of the recent case of the boys
locked in the car trunk, which the police also failed to search),
mediocre forensic work (inability to corectly date the remains,
ultra-slow DNA results (months!!!)), and then an excellent save by the
police sketch artist.
cat yronwode
tiny dancer
"DedNdogYrs" <DedNd...@AOL.com> wrote in message
news:1153649667....@75g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>From the Los Angeles Times
New Details On The Boy In The Chimney
The examiner believed the youth got trapped. The detective suspected
The other was the forensic drawing done for the coroner -
the only close-up rendering they had for the ceremony.
Clelia Thompson calls the funeral of her boy "the day of the
closure." "You have to deal with what you have to deal with, ain't no
other way," she said. "And I just try to put it behind me. I did put it
behind me, for a little while."
Copyright © 2006, The Los Angeles
Times
Thanks for the posting this. Hopefully there will be enough to keep this
lying scum-bag locked up where he belongs for the rest of his life. And now
Roberts mother at least know's where her boy is and is able to lay him to
rest.
td
x
DedNdogYrs
this
> lying scum-bag locked up where he belongs for the rest of his life. And now
> Roberts mother at least know's where her boy is and is able to lay him to
> rest. td
You're welcome and I hope they can somehow prove he killed this child,
who would now be about 43 years old but had all those years taken away
from him. It could be that the child hid in the chimney to get away
from this creep, which could make him guilty of murder even if he
didn't actually kill the boy.
-L.
The entire story is sad. I cannot imagine the grief that Mother has
gone through.
-L.
Chocolic
"catherine yronwode" <c...@luckymojo.com> wrote in message
news:44C373A2...@luckymojo.com...
I wondered about the forensic anthropoligist stating the bones were
possibly five years old (???) and the victim of an accident. Very
wrong on both accounts. They can dig up prehistoric bones and tell
if they are millions of years old, but she couldn't tell if bones were
five or 28 years old? I'd be getting another profession.
Chocolic
Bo Raxo
Chocolic wrote:
>
> I wondered about the forensic anthropoligist stating the bones were
> possibly five years old (???) and the victim of an accident. Very
> wrong on both accounts.
True, sounds like the expert failed to take in to account the
environmental conditions when the chimney was still operating.
> They can dig up prehistoric bones and tell
> if they are millions of years old, but she couldn't tell if bones were
> five or 28 years old? I'd be getting another profession.
>
Well, radioactive decay makes carbon dating a little more reliable than
dating organic material. And there's still room for *some* argument
about datings there.
What puzzles me about the whole tale is that the purported perp's
alleged confession doesn't match up with the body. If he ran over the
child with a car, I would think that would show up as broken bones.
And if there were such broken bones, then the forensics person would
never have concluded it was an accident, with the kid getting trapped
in the pipe and dying of asphyxiation, dehydration, or exposure.
Plus there's the whole improbability of the two circumstances fitting
together: You kill your victim in an alley, you have a car right there
for transporting the body, so you drag the corpse through an occupied
building, up to the roof, to stash the remains in a chimney?
Uh, no.
Doesn't mean that guy didn't do it - he sure looks good for the crime -
but the alley rape/auto homicide story doesn't work.
I'm guessing the forensic person figured if the kid was murdered, it
would have been up on that roof. The likely methods - stabbing,
shooting, manual asphyxiation - would leave likely signs on the bones
in the first two, but not so much the third. Ruling out two out of
three causes was a weak route to coming down on the side of an
accident.
The boy was slow-witted, the building was occupied. Makes me think
someone lured him up there, possibly for a sexual purpose, and
strangled him up there, putting the body in that chimney.
Statistically, in such a scenario it's about a 90% chance it was
someone he knew, such as a family friend or a neighbor. Find the
friend or neighbor who had a link to that building, and you have your
perp.
Bo Raxo
tiny dancer
"Bo Raxo" <fore...@earthcorp.com> wrote in message
news:1153901899....@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
>
snipped>
> What puzzles me about the whole tale is that the purported perp's
> alleged confession doesn't match up with the body. If he ran over the
> child with a car, I would think that would show up as broken bones.
It was the brother he ran over with a car, after he raped him:
But that changed Feb. 23, 1985.
In the darkness of the early morning, Clelia Thompson walked
briskly down a hallway of Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center.
Before she got to his room, she could hear the peel of her youngest
child's screams.
"All I could hear was my child hollering, 'Momma, Theodoric killed
Robert! Momma, Theodoric killed Robert! He told me he killed Robert!'"
Laying on the bed was the bloody form of 12-year-old Smith Thompson.
Tire marks streaked across his chest and his forehead. He was in
intense pain.
According to police, Theodoric Smith had driven Smith Thompson to
a dark alley and raped him in the car. A subsequent police report
quoted Smith as saying Theodoric told him: "If you don't make me feel
good, I am going to kill you just like I killed your brother Robert."
Theodoric eventually threw the boy out of the car and ran over him.
Two months later, Theodoric Smith pleaded guilty to five felony
counts, including the rape of a child and attempted murder. He was
sentenced to 30 years in state prison.
My money is on him raping and killing Robert. A leopard doesn't change it's
spots. And cases like this one and the death row inmate connected to those
other 50 missing women really tend to screw up recidivism statistics.
td