Murky Waters

Other discrepancies haunt the families. When Willie Mae eventually took possession of her son’s bike, she noticed that the back tire was flat and that the chain had been ripped off the gear wheel. Sean had been so meticulous about that bike. What did it mean? Had the police missed something? The police didn’t think so, especially when two fishermen named Gary Radford and Bernard Wiggs came forward after the boys’ smiling faces appeared on the front page of the Daily News. Radford and Wiggs said they’d been casting for sunfish at Locust Point on Sunday-the day before-when four boys on dirt bikes approached the river’s and stood there, gauging the water. No way, said the smallest of them. I could said the tallest, pointing to the cement embankment on the other side of the some 200 meters distant. "Don’t be foolish," Radford called out. "There’s currents." The boys gave a sour looks turned without a word and rode off.

 The families claim the fishermen lied to get their names in the paper- that the boys played football all day Sunday then gathered on Pearlie’s porch when the rain began late in the afternoon. "Got no reason to lie,” Radford responds, adding that his testimony has brought him grief-and ruined a favorite fishing hole. "I don’t go there anymore, and I don’t even know why. Just like an omen or something. " Even before the fishermen came forward, detectives hypothesized because none were found with shoes-that the boys had waded in together. (Three were found wearing socks.) Presumably, they would have waded off the side of the rock-away from the ledge-which leads to a more gradually descending "beachfront" directly in front of the bushes. Yet the rock’s crumbly top and the slippery coat of moss beneath its high-tide line begged the question: Was it even possible to descend while holding hands-to manage without bracing one’s hands against the rock face? And why would anyone brave the beach-front’s jagged rocks, glass and sticks without shoes?
Additionally, according to police reports that informed the medical examiner’s findings, the low level of the water at the likely time of entry bolstered the "wading" theory. The "beachfront" was exposed and accessible, and the boys could have waded 20 feet out before meeting the of the retaining wall. It made some sense: At low tide, the bulkhead would have been about three feet under water-shallow enough to permit wading but, the murk of the water, deep enough to prevent anyone from seeing the dropoff.

There was, however, one problem: Low tide was not in the mid to late afternoon. In low tide occurred just before I p.m.; high tide around 5. Since the were last seen around 3: 3 0, and at the very earliest arrived around 3:45, the water level was at least three and a half feet above its low mark when they arrived – far too high to permit the kind of descent the police suggested they made to the beach front. Add time for hanging out, making dares, partially undressing, and the water level was even higher, the "wading” scenario even less likely. And three of the boys had pants on; one even had on a jacket. Who wades fully clothed? Originally, Inspector O’Connor incorrectly told reporters that three of the were clad only in underwear, the fourth in underwear and a T-shirt. This aided the police theory-formed almost immediately-that the boys suffered a terrible accident while swimming.

The yellow crime tape sealing the site was ripped away early Wednesday morn- "But the next day," Chanel Ruffin says, "we went down there and found things" -Jamie’s key, Sean’s bike wrench – "that they just overlooked." In the weeks after, when details of the clothes emerged and the families pressed, the police responded this way: Perhaps Kenny, the daredevil, the only one found without his socks on, waded out alone and slipped over the retaining wall while the others watched. In the scramble to rescue him none of the other three bothered to remove pants, shirts, a jacket. The families bought none of it.

 The medical examiner said that the water temperature, a bitter 57 degrees, made hypothermia a cause of death-and also rendered it impossible to determine how long the bodies had been under. Early estimates of five to six hours stretched to 24 to 36 when the coroner’s report was issued two weeks later. The families experienced this and all the other components of the accident theory as a hydra. Whenever they felt they’d quashed the official explanation for this or that, two more would quickly spring up in its place. They waded in together, the police said. But three of them were almost fully dressed. All right, the police said: One waded, faltered, the others tried to rescue him. But why would the others bother to remove their shoes, place them above and behind the rock, and leave on their pants and, in one case, a jacket? Well, there was a panic. And what about Red the man who lives in his truck on South 53rd who says that on October l0th  he saw the neighborhood drug dealers to run the down with a car. His story had holes police said. He was just trying to get the to get the dealers off his back. And so it went, on and on.