Good Cop/Bad Cop. Rebecca Cofer - Dartt
Harris family tragedy and its aftermath takes us beyond the edge of evil into the heart of darkness that shows us how a depraved man can act and how that brand of wanton terror can leave us with permanent scars of suspicion and vulnerability. The story and all its horror reflects many of contemporary society’s problems—racist attitudes, friction between the poor and wealthy, as well as humanity’s oldest sins of mendacity, lust, and revenge.
When I started gathering material, this was to be the story of the Harris family murders, how they sent terror through our quiet college town in upstate New York two days before Christmas in 1989, and how the crimes were solved by the state police in only six and a half weeks. But just as I finished my first draft of the manuscript, a completely unexpected revelation came to light which dramatically changed the thrust of the story. The case was catapulted into widespread notoriety, exposing the deception of one primary police investigator and his partner. Their duplicity put the Harris investigation and the practices of police everywhere into question.
GOOD COP/BAD COP is a primarily factual account of events as they evolved from December 1989 to December 1992. The incidents and dialogue are based upon over fifty interviews with police, lawyers, educators and the neighbors, friends and family of the characters, as well as input from numerous court records and newspaper articles.
Shirley Kinge, Sallie Reese, and Joanna White refused requests for interviews. Since Michael Kinge was dead, information was obtained from those willing to talk with me, officials and public documents.
Only in a few instances have the names of individuals been changed to protect their privacy. Additional incidents and dialogue have been deduced from known facts, interviews with police, lawyers, educators and neighbors, friends and family of the characters, as well as input from numerous court records and newspaper articles.
The randomness and brutality of the murders plunged Ithaca into a new era. No longer do we leave our doors unlocked or freely offer help to strangers. The Kinge case, the Harding case, and their aftermath have changed our assumptions about the criminal justice system. The lies of police officers are a firm reminder that individual integrity forms the core of our faith in any law enforcement organization and when it is corrupted, faith fails.
Real justice finally prevailed only after a tortuous journey through specious justice, public cynicism, racism, mass disillusionment and private burdens. We witnessed an example of clumsy democracy in slow-motion. Not pretty, but better than the alternatives.
Rebecca H. Cofer
Tony Harris woke up Friday, December 22, to the loud scraping of a snow plow’s blades as it roared along Ellis Hollow Road. It was a familiar early morning sound in the winter that could be heard for miles around. Tony strained to hear the 6:45 weather report coming over WHCU: “Currently five degrees in Ithaca with more snow predicted for today and tonight. Fifteen below zero tonight. Snow flurries on Saturday with a high of six degrees.”
That meant it was probably colder in Ellis Hollow, because the temperature dropped lower in the outlying valleys. Tony was accustomed to getting up early, preferring not to hurry. During the week he left the house around 7:30 in order to be at the office by 8:00, unless he had to drive to the branch office in Gaithersburg, Maryland, or catch a plane for Raleigh or Atlanta, in which case he left earlier. He slept a half-hour later this morning, having retired later than usual, about 12:30, after watching the Syracuse-Georgetown basketball game. Marc, their eleven-year-old son, had taped the game for him earlier, but he hadn’t found time to sit down and watch it until then.
As he shaved, Tony reviewed his plans. This should be an easy, relaxing day, and he was even going in a little later. Not much going on the day before Christmas break except the scheduled afternoon office party. Dodie usually stayed in bed a few minutes longer than Tony, rising in time to set breakfast on the table before Shelby, their fifteen-year-old daughter, and Marc came downstairs.
Tony was a family man. He never let getting ahead in business interfere with what he considered the most important part of his life. Filled with ambition, he wanted to excel in his career yet maintain a solid family life. Now, at thirty-nine, Tony had achieved both. He was near the top of his company as director of marketing and sales on the East Coast for the Deanco Corporation, an electronics distributor based in Ithaca. Jim Felton, the Deanco manager who had hired him in 1974, had lured him away from an insurance firm in Syracuse after Tony sold him a million dollars of business and personal insurance. Felton knew that anyone who could sell him that much insurance would be an asset to Deanco. Tony started as a salesman in charge of the Syracuse area and in three years had expanded his territory to cover New York state.
Growing up in Mattydale, a predominately Catholic, blue-collar neighborhood in North Syracuse, Tony’s family lived in a modest, one-story frame house, like many that cluster together on the orderly grid of streets off Route 11, a commercial district near the airport. It was the kind of place where folks regularly displayed the American flag in their front yards or on their porches.
His father, an industrial pattern maker, abandoned the family when Tony and his brother and sister were preschoolers, forcing his mother to support the family on the low wages she earned as a cook in the school cafeteria. Mary Harris, a strong, perceptive woman, made sure her children knew what the important things in life were and how to stick to them—keeping their religious faith, helping others whenever they could, and staying in school. She believed strongly that education was the way to get ahead and to better themselves.
Tony learned the lessons well. Very soon he also figured out that in order to get ahead he had to use his head and his will. That determination was coupled with a strong sense of responsibility. As the eldest boy, he thought of himself as the man of the family. At twelve, Tony started a neighborhood paper route, getting up before 6:00 A.M. to deliver the Syracuse Post-Standard. In a few months he had doubled his route, partly as a result of close attention to customers. Each morning Tony placed the paper at their doorstep, rang the bell, and wished them good morning. A week before Christmas in his first year as a paperboy, Tony politely requested customers to give him tips early enough for him to buy presents for his family; the extra hundred dollars bought jackets for the children and a lined raincoat for his mother.
A short while later he convinced his mother of the idea first and then a local merchant—to sell him a snowblower on time. Tony would put some money down and then pay the rest off week by week, allowing him to expand the snow removal business he’d started in the neighborhood. The blower paid for itself before the winter was over, and Tony made a small profit.
By the time he was a teenager, people who knew Tony Harris assumed he had a bright future; he had all the attributes which contribute to success. For instance, Tony’s self-confidence enabled him to tackle new tasks and to be inventive in transforming mundane ones. Tony convinced his tenth-grade English teacher that making an oral report about Walt Whitman was as acceptable as writing a composition about him. He loved speaking in front of people, but writing was another matter. Other students who preferred talking to writing followed suit and the teacher was pleased too; it meant fewer papers to grade.
Tony intended to become a math teacher, having been encouraged by his instructors at North Syracuse High School before entering Onondaga Community College. But Tony was so turned off by the unruly and lackadaisical students he saw on a visit back to his old high school during his senior year, that he changed his career plan. Taking a course in public relations and marketing was exciting. Tony discovered he had a natural bent toward public relations and in a sense had been practicing the art of persuasion for years. Before graduation in May 1971, he landed a job selling insurance for Mutual of Syracuse. The same summer Tony married Dodie Lake, who had grown up on the east side of Syracuse; a pretty brunette with a sensitive nature that he appreciated. Tony felt he was a lucky man.
This morning, dressing in jeans,