Thursday, January 15, 2009
News Clearing up confusion over Standard murder
Posted by Scott Henry @ScottTheHenry on Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 12:29 PM
Like many locals, I was shocked and, frankly, a little pissed off when I read in the AJC over the weekend that Atlanta police had unexpectedly changed nearly every important detail that had previously been reported about last week's late-night armed robbery at the Standard and the shooting death of bartender John Henderson.
If Henderson hadn't been killed "execution-style," as the initial AJC headline blared, then why say he had been? Was his female co-worker hiding in a cabinet during the shooting, as WSB-TV had reported, or not? Sometimes, in order to trip up or mislead the criminals, the cops don't tell everything they know about a crime, but it didn't make sense that the public narrative of the event could have been so far off.
After talking to Lt. Keith Meadows, commander of the Atlanta Police Department homicide unit, I've reached the conclusion that the press snafu over the Henderson murder was brought about by a combination of vague, inconclusive information offered by the police and a competitive news environment in which reporters race to make their stories as definitive as possible — often before all the facts are nailed down.
In other words, what we've got here is a failure to communicate.
Meadows conceded that detectives were initially mistaken about how Henderson was killed. (Readers should be warned that some of what follows is fairly graphic.)
"We originally thought he was killed execution-style because a bullet was found in the blood on the floor next to his head," he told me. But Meadows insisted that, when talking to reporters, he had qualified that description as being the prevailing theory, not as certainty.
Only after the medical examiner looked at the body was it confirmed that Henderson had not been shot in the head at point-blank range. Detectives went back to the crime scene and found no indentation in the floor, suggesting that the bullet found in the pool of blood had likely fallen there after having ricocheted off another surface.
Also, a second bullet hole in Henderson's head was determined to be an exit wound, meaning he'd been shot only once in the head, not twice as police initially believed.
As for the female bartender who was with Henderson when the robbery took place, Meadows said he told reporters as little as possible about where she was or what she saw at the time of the shooting because he was concerned that her life could be in danger.
"The less description I give of a witness, the less desperate the criminals get," he explained, adding that he didn't even release her name to the press.
But by the weekend, bartender Ashley Elder had already given two on-camera interviews about her ordeal — to WSB-TV and Fox 5 — so there was no further reason to withhold her name.
Why, however, was it reported she had hidden in a cabinet during the shooting? Surely the killers themselves knew that wasn't true. Meadows said he had initially described her as crouching behind a cabinet. Reporters had asked him if she was hiding. Sure, he told them.
"My hope was to give the impression that she hadn't seen much," he said. Somehow, the description of Elder hiding behind a cabinet was reported as Elder hiding inside a cabinet.
Look, I don't claim to know for certain how the morning-after information about the murder got so distorted. I'm not in a position to lay the blame on the cops or my fellow journalists, but I can say I'm familiar with a reporter's desire to return to the newsroom with as few gaps in his reporting as possible. And I've certainly seen examples when, in the frenzy of debriefing and negotiation between a reporter and his editor (or producer, for the TV folks), sometimes holes get filled in or dots connected that shouldn't be because all the facts aren't yet available. I suspect that may have been what happened in this case.
As terrible and tragic as the current version of Henderson's shooting remains, it cannot be argued that the description of gangs of armed robbers executing their victims in cold blood had an especially chilling effect on the Atlanta community. The police did right to set the record straight over the weekend, even if they came out looking the worse for it in many people's eyes.
Let's hope they're able to catch Henderson's killers soon. Maybe it will help that the reward for turning in these thugs has now topped $21,000.
Comments (12)
Showing 1-12 of 12
Thank you for your fair criticism of the reporting associated with this tragedy. It was well researched, objective, and answered questions that had been on my mind. I'm not happy with most of the changes at CL, but this post would have been a hit piece on the AJC a few months ago. The antidote to poor journalism is good journalism, not more of the same. Keep up the good journalism.
like
dislike
As someone who in his journalism career covered more murders than he ever wanted, you pretty much hit the nail on the head Scott. The competitive, web-driven environment in journalism these days unfortunately leads to a lot of reckless errors being made by journalists and those who are providing them the information. I see this in my current job on the other side of the fence too. Immediacy is trumping accuracy right now and it's not just the journalists who are to blame. To that end, the fact this wasn't an "execution-style" murder doesn't provide me any comfort at all. In the end, they still killed this innocent guy who did everything they wanted.
Thanks for looking into this for all of us Scott. It was definitely something that needed to be explained to the public. Keep up the great work!
Scott - thanks for the info. Correct info is the best way to catch these bastards.
You contradicted yourself by not talking to any of the reporters on the scene -- only Lt. Meadows. You assume that a reporter must have made an error without all the facts nailed down. Of course that happens, but are you certain it happened here? Apparently not.
Ummm... he is still dead... execution or not, he was murdered by robbers in a city where violent crime is becoming an everyday occurrence. Your beef with the press getting their story right does not diminish the horror these two people endured at the hands of armed thugs. Sure facts are facts... but two facts are the most important -- 1. John Henderson is dead. 2. His armed killers are on the loose.
What, precisely, isn't "execution style" about terrorizing people at gunpoint, shooting them repeatedly, torturing them with the threat of death, then killing them? That these were sloppy, inexperienced executioners? That one bullet in the head instead of two makes everything different? Tell that to the victim. Furthermore, the AJC's "correction" of their own reporting spun into a craven effort to downplay the heinousness of the crime. With selective sensitivity, they observed that the assailants didn't kill the female victim after she begged for her life, insinuating an empathy on their part of the killers that they neither deserved nor displayed. The killers did fire shots in the direction of the female victim. They missed. They didn't miss the man beside her. My former neighbors live in fear and real danger. Meanwhile, the mayor fiddles and the AJC prattles about the precise definition of a pop culture term, as if the position of the victim's body matters more than the action of the killers. It's amazing that this has become a debate about the "correct" way to pull off a gangster "execution." Such debate just reveals how invested the media and City Hall is in denying the horror and reality of crime.
I'm compelled to comment again: To get to the bottom of what really happened, ahem, you quote the source who fed the media the wrong information. The rest of your "reporting" is assumption. There's nothing well-researched or objective about it. Again, why didn't you give the reporters involved a chance to answer? Your conclusion plays into the oh-so familiar talking point that the AJC is sloppy and lazy and a dinosaur and corporate and blah blah blah. Thank God we have Creative Loafing around to clarify everything! Let me remind you that it was the AJC who set the record straight regarding the details of the Standard shooting. You just rewrote a press release from an embarrassed cop.
more to the point, what information has been uncovered about the murderers themselves?
I don't see what the AJC/Tim Eberly did wrong here. Every erroneous fact was attributed to Lt. Meadows. The only point in dispute is about where Elder hid. Meadows says he never told anyone she hid inside the cabinet. I'd like to hear Eberly's response. He probably has notes or an audio tape.
Latest in Fresh Loaf
-
'Ex-gays' gather outside Atlanta this weekend 1
Meanwhile human rights groups fight the notion that "ex-gay" is a thing
-
CNN cancels Atlanta debate 2
Everybody cry
-
ARC's new map of transportation-tax projects is suitable for framing 3
Voters will decide 1-cent sales tax measure in July
- More »
Author Archives
-
Top stories of 2011 — APS scandal, cont'd
The Atlanta school cheating scandal morphed into a constitutional crisis involving the school board
-
All the King kids now involved with King Center 7
Bernice King joins her brothers as CEO of MLK Center
- More »
