You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
February 22nd 1996
I’ll never forget that day, 17 years ago.
It was my 4th day on the job.
4 days on the job and I had all ready covered something like 9 deaths.
“What the hell’s wrong with this town?” I wondered out loud as I kept knocking on the door of dead people.
Many of my news days blend together.
But February 22nd 1996 is clear in my mind.
The day started with me working on a cab driver who had been murdered.
I came back to the station and began putting the package together.
Suddenly, Charlie Scott, an avuncular old time radio announcer working our assignment desk screams.
WE GOT TWO WOMEN STABBED!
I’ll never forget it.
WE GOT TWO WOMEN STABBED!
His voice was deep and resonant and it echoed off the walls.
I was new to channel 2, but I saw a lot of my friends get out the door.
We were scrambling in live trucks and news vans.
The dead cabbie story was a memory. Suddenly I was racing to 18th and Church Street.
When I arrived at the scene, there was chaos. It was a seedy part of town. It’s undergone a rennovation over the years, but back then, it was a denizen of nehrdewells and homeless. The people out here didn’t like the bright light of news crews or the blue lights of the police.
I got there just as the crime tape was going up.
I quickly learned from sources at the scene that it was a blood bath inside.
I am thinking about this story for 2 reasons.
Just last week, the Metro Police cold case unit announced an arrest.
17 years later, almost to the day, the police say the killer was in a prison in California, charged with another crime.
So I am in the boiler room at the station cleaning out an old filing cabinet and I came across hundreds of my old reporter note pads.
They were a little yellow from the passage of time, but like a well preserved artifact they were reasonably well kept.
The note books were almost laid out chronologically, with the oldest in the front.
It was a golden memory, like a clue to my journalistic life.
The front of the note pad simply says.
CABBIE MURDER
DBL STABBING
Wow.
The way they talk about this cold case now, it’s almost legendary;
the sadness, the mystery, the passage of time.
Young reporters listen to the old newsmen in our office with wide eyes as we tell the story about this day.
And now I am holding my notes to that very moment.
Back in 1996, computers weren’t prevalent in news like they are now. Back then Digital was a pipe dream. Back then pens and paper were king.
I’m thumbing through the pages written in dark magic marker.
My reporter notes are scribbled unevenly across the page. Words like Albion and 25th Ave North. 3am. 2 black males, victim in his 40’s, a black male. Crystals fast food. Dumpster.
Wow. These are my notes. It is definitely my hand writing. This is a life time ago. But it seems like yesterday.
I see my lead in:
Police say the driver of this Diamond Cab was shot multiple times with a small caliber weapon….
The driver’s name, Hiawatha Bennett. Wow. What a flashback.
I start turning pages.
2:17pm. 2 people shot. 1805 Church Street. Exotic Tan for Men.
Sgt confirms two dead. 2 women stabbed, multiple times.
For some reason I have circled the names of 2 detectives who are now legends in Nashville.
These cops were part of Metro’s elite Murder Squad.
Mike Roland and David Miller.
I have words written like WHY? and MOTIVE?
I have written 2 w/f’s meaning white females.
I wrote one is clothed and the other is not. I scribbled down
“THEY ARE IN THEIR 20’S.”
17 years ago.
Just last week the 2 mothers of the 2 dead girls took the podium at the police station.
The mothers cried and thanked the cold case unit for solving the murders.
I pulled a bunch of these note pads from the filing cabinets. They contain a treasure trove of memories that represent my career.
Most of the people who could appreciate them are no longer here.
But my friend and photographer Al knows what they mean. He lived a lot of these stories with me.
I dump a random sample on his desk and he chuckles out loud.
You know why? because they represent a different time of journalism.
They are days in our life.
Some people make widgets. We tell stories.
One note pad said Fort Campbell chopper crash.
Many soldiers died that day and a citizen who shot the crash sold it to the highest bidder.
What a scum bag.
My note pad represents this.
Another note pad is labeled missile launch.
I love that one. Al was the only camera man without a tri pod.
“I’ll catch it,” he says proudly.
And you know what, that damn missile took off at a million miles an hour like a bottle rocket tied to a nuclear fuse.
While every photographer with a tri-pod missed the shot, Al got all upside down and twisted, and followed it into the wild blue yonder.
He’s always been proud of that.
The filing cabinet of memories.
wow.
And that is crazy.™