Life On a Homicide Squad

Oct. 24, 2002 -- Why would anyone want to be a big-city homicide detective? They work terrible hours for little pay, on a diet of coffee, fast food and leftovers. They have to deal with lying witnesses and an often-suspicious public. And their work gives them day-to-day contact with the worst side of human nature.

Detectives at the Philadelphia Police Department's homicide division have plenty to complain about, but they say they wouldn't trade their job for anything. They see it as a ticket to the greatest show on Earth.

"What you report, we see firsthand," Detective Richard Bova told Primetime's Diane Sawyer, who followed the division's work over a two-year period.

Bova's colleagues agree. "We're right there," said Tim Bass, who has been a homicide detective for six years. "We're in the rooms with these people," echoed Chuck Boyle, a 25-year veteran with seven years on homicide.

Bova broke it down: "Let's face it. You know, to do this job ... you want to be where the action is."

The Office

The Philadelphia Police Department investigates more than 225 homicides every year — a workload that means each of the homicide division's detectives handles about 20 cases at any given time. Despite uncooperative witnesses, false leads, heavy workloads and long waits for forensic results, they say they solve more than 80 percent of their cases.

The detectives work from a cramped, rundown office with outdated equipment and a lack of basic supplies like phone books. Equipment like flashlights, walkie-talkies and even squad cars must be checked out on an as-needed basis. "It's embarrassing," said Boyle. "What are we now, the fourth or fifth largest city in the country?"

The detectives don't even have their own desks, and have to work wherever they find an empty space. "You go to some of these other police departments, the smaller ones, and detectives have their own desks and pictures of their family," said Boyle. "If you brought a picture of your family and put it on a desk — the untold horrors that would happen to that photo!"

Man's Indifference to Man

But it is the subject of their work — homicide — that takes the greatest toll on the detectives. They see the product of human violence and weakness every day, at gruesome crime scenes around the city and in the cold halls of the county morgue.

One of the worst scenes the Philadelphia detectives remember was a second-floor apartment in the city's Hunting Park neighborhood where the decomposing body of a 5-year-old girl was found in August 2000, five days after she was abducted from her home a block away. The body was discovered after the owner of the store below smelled a foul odor and saw liquids seeping through the ceiling.

"It's hard to get used to — when you see how carelessly people take life for granted," said Detective Joe Bamberski, who is still seeking the girl's killer — believed to be a drifter who uses the name "Carlos" — two years later.

Another gruesome scene was in an apartment in the Port Richmond area where the body of a young man was found in August 2000. He had been bound and gagged with duct tape, stripped and brutally beaten, and finally shot in the head. "It tells you there was a torture going on," said Bova. A woman who was with the man survived — even though the attacker poured drain cleaner down her throat. "I couldn't imagine what she went through," Bova said.

Lying Witnesses

Uncooperative witnesses often make the detectives' jobs harder. Police officers are often treated with suspicion in the poorer neighborhoods where many of Philadelphia's homicides are committed. "They don't get alarmed when with criminals in the building. They're just alarmed when the police come in the building," Bass said ruefully as he was canvassing the neighborhood looking for leads in the drain cleaner case, talking to friends and family of the victim. "We're out here trying to find out who killed their friend, their loved one, and they don't want to help us," he said.

Getting witnesses to give a truthful account is one of the hardest part of their jobs, the detectives say. "They always lie," said Bass. "Every single day," agreed Bova, adding, "Nobody tells us the truth the first time ... They lie about their names as soon as they come in."

Sometimes witnesses start out telling the truth, but change their story when they get to court. The main witness in the drain cleaner case — the woman who had the substance poured down her throat — initially told Bass and Bova that she believed the assailant was a local drug dealer. But when it came time to testify in court, she changed her story. Fortunately for the detectives, the jury believed their testimony and not the witness, and they convicted the drug dealer of second-degree murder.

The detectives say they develop an instinct for knowing when someone is lying — and sometimes have difficulty turning it off when they leave work. "You go to a party and you listen to people talk and you're thinking, listen to this guy here — bullshit. What a liar," laughed Boyle.

Work Is Work, Home Is Home

The detectives generally try to keep their work separate from their life at home. "I don't bring anything home with me because I don't want them exposed to that," said Bamberski.

The long, unpredictable hours detectives put in on stakeouts and at crime scenes can put a strain on their family life. The divorce rate for police officers is as much as 50 percent higher than for the general population. The detectives in Philadelphia sometimes find themselves working for days without going home, living off scraps from the break room refrigerator instead of home-cooked meals. "Sometimes I go home and I feel like I'm the outsider, because they've just had to live their life without me around," said Bass.

Like his colleagues, Bass admits that his work sometimes makes him feel cynical about human nature. "I wonder to myself sometimes if society is ever going to change for the better," he said.

He knows one thing for sure: that he does not want his 13-year-old son to follow him into the world of homicide. "Let him live out there in the gated communities with all those bleeding hearts, OK? Let him believe what he believes now."