THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, November 6, 1995 TAG: 9511060083
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ANGELITA PLEMMER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: Long : 173 lines
Earl Alexander Harris Jr. was shot point-blank in the back of the head as he walked to a downtown store near Washington Park in April. While more than a dozen witnesses watched him die on the sidewalk, a man slipped through the crowd and rifled through his pockets, stealing his money.
Harris, 25, was slain in Portsmouth, where six out of 10 murders go unsolved. His aunt, Gloria Branton, was determined that Harris' case not become part of that daunting statistic.
Every day for three months, Branton left her comfortable Virginia Beach home for the unfamiliar streets of Portsmouth, sidling up to bums, winos, drug dealers and junkies, looking for her nephew's killer.
Some days, she wore disguises - a curly black wig, a large floppy hat, sunglasses, dark makeup. She used aliases - Lisa, Barbara or Dolores - when canvassing Washington Park and nearby streets.
She tacked up posters offering a $1,000 reward to any witness who could give information leading to the killer's conviction. She sweetened the deal for one witness: She told him she would relocate him to Virginia Beach, find him a new job and pay his moving expenses and rent.
But the witness refused, saying many of his family members would still live in the same neighborhood as Harris' killer and he feared for their safety. Branton could not afford to move them all.
Her sleuthing helped police make an arrest, but the charges were dropped because no witnesses were willing to testify.
Today, nearly seven months later, Branton, with some bitterness, has resigned herself to the brutal reality that her nephew's killer has not been brought to justice and never may be.
``This was the most important thing in my life - finding out who killed Earl,'' Branton said in an interview last week. ``After all of the nights trying to come up with some kind of plan and walking and talking and putting the money out, I still have been unable to find anybody to come forward and convict anyone.''
Portsmouth is not unique in its battle with poverty, drugs and violent crime - the plague of urban America. But Portsmouth officials are faced with another obstacle: witness intimidation on a scale apparently unequaled in any other Hampton Roads city.
Branton, 42, knows firsthand. And it is a matter that troubles the city's chief prosecutor.
``People don't want to get involved,'' said Commonwealth's Attorney Martin Bullock, who cites witness intimidation as a major roadblock in the successful prosecution of violent crimes. ``People don't care . . . until one of their loved ones is the victim.''
Gloria Branton felt uneasy. Something was wrong.
One night in mid-April, she awakened from a nightmare, shaking. She had dreamed Earl Harris' brother had been shot and killed in a setup. The next day, Branton picked him up and, as he sat in her car, told him of her dream.
She warned the wrong nephew. A week later, Earl Harris was dead.
Harris was raised in Washington Park, which in 1994 had the highest violent crime rate of the 24 public housing communities in South Hampton Roads. He served time for drug charges when he was in his early 20s. When he got out of jail, he left Portsmouth to live in an upper-middle-class section of Virginia Beach with Branton and her husband. Two years later, he had become a different young man, discarding his old lifestyle, relatives said.
He had a car, a job as a shipyard welder and a new outlook on life, relatives said.
He was gunned down just as his new life was beginning.
On Harris' funeral day, Branton could not watch as pallbearers lowered his casket into the ground. Anger and sadness rose as she wept in the back seat of the funeral home limousine parked at the gravesite.
The night she saw his body on the street, she made a vow: She would find his killer.
The day after Harris was buried, Branton and her mother and niece went to Washington Park. By 7 a.m., Branton had begun posting and circulating 500 fliers in Washington Park and nearby Ida Barbour.
The fliers, asking for clues about Harris' murder, offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to a conviction. Branton made certain she posted fliers at the spot where Harris was killed.
She tacked the signs to utility poles and trees. She put them inside screen doors. Unknowingly, she even stuck a flier through the screen door of the rooming house where one of her nephew's alleged killers lived.
Some people took the signs down. Others asked if they could have fliers to carry with them. A few wanted to know who she was.
The posters got results. People who knew about the shooting began talking to her, but none wanted to get involved or snitch on their friends.
``I guess it's like you're dropping a dime on someone you knew all of your life,'' Branton said.
Days later, police had gotten a few responses from the first flier, but not enough for a solid case.
Branton continued her daily drives to Portsmouth, canvassing neighborhoods and stopping to ask ``corner boys'' - groups of men loitering on street corners - for information.
Once she bought a $9 bottle of wine for a wino who named her nephew's killer, but he refused to go to police with his story.
``Everybody told me the same story,'' but no one was willing to tell it to police, she said. ``Everything I learned on the streets, I was writing it down and I was turning it over to (police).''
Detectives working the case joked that she was putting in more hours than they were and coming up with names and information they couldn't get.
Most days, she would tell her husband she was going to run errands in order to slip off and do her detective work. She didn't want her family to know how obsessed she had become.
``I just didn't have any fear in me. . . between the anger and being upset,'' Branton said. ``I had a purpose.''
Finally, her persistence paid off when she met a young man who had overheard her asking questions about Harris.
``He stopped me and said he knew my nephew and liked him,'' Branton said.
The man said he heard the shooting as he stood behind a nearby apartment and saw the alleged killer running away from the scene.
``I asked him would he tell this to the detectives,'' Branton said, ``but he was kind of reluctant.
``I said, `I'll pay you, I'll pay you out of my own pocket.' ''
He told her he would think about it, and they made plans to meet at the same spot the next day. Excited that she had finally gotten a lead, she returned the following day, but the man was not there. Another ``corner boy'' said he had just driven off with some friends.
Two days later, she found the young man at the same hangout and he agreed to ride with her to the detective bureau to talk with police.
That's when she made the offer to relocate him to Virginia Beach.
He declined her offer, and gave her a warning: ``Look, homegirl, you're going to have to be careful out here.''
That witness and others familiar with the killing told Branton the same story: Harris had been the victim of a murder-for-hire. The shooting had stemmed from a five-year-old grudge. When Harris lived in Prentis Park, he was inadvertently caught in a shooting match and, in self-defense, shot another man.
Harris later apologized to the man he shot. But the man apparently did not take the apology to heart. Five years later, he allegedly paid a man $100 to kill Harris, who was visiting his girlfriend in Washington Park.
``He thought everything was over with,'' Branton said. ``It's no way he would have been in Washington Park if he thought the grudge was still on.''
Frustrated, Branton designed another poster - this one naming the alleged killer and the man who hired him. The large black letters read:
``It's only $100.00 if you want someone killed. See ------ (and) ------.''
Armed with hammer and nails, she started posting the new fliers in Washington Park one morning at 6 a.m. But this time, she was met with resistance.
As she finished hanging fliers, the sister of the man who allegedly planned the murder-for-hire approached her.
Cursing Branton loudly, the woman threw several books at her. A small crowd formed as as another angry relative spotted the flier. Branton quickly got inside her car and drove away as the woman threw more books.
Branton's efforts led to the arrest of a man named Herbert Foster, 22. But a murder charge against him was dismissed and he was freed when witnesses failed to show up at a preliminary hearing in May. The hearing was never held.
But Branton's police work continued, even after Foster's release.
``I didn't stop until I got all of the information I thought I could off the streets,'' she said.
``I knew I was so close,'' Branton said. ``I could just see our day in court, but it never came about.''
``I'm at a crossroads now. There's nowhere else I can turn.''
She visits Harris' grave regularly. She's still waiting for police to return the rest of his belongings. And her religious faith and convictions have become stronger.
There are ``a lot of Earls out there who are laying in somebody's cemetery right now, and their parents may never find out who killed them,'' she said. ``I know we're not alone.
``All we need is one success story. . . I hope I'll be the next one.'' ILLUSTRATION: CHARLIE MEADS
The Virginian-Pilot
[Color photo of Gloria Branton]
by CNB