On September 26, 1969, Johnny McCabe, age 15, turned up dead in a vacant lot on Maple Street, in Lowell, Massachusetts. Bound at the wrists and ankles, the young man was strangled with rope, with tape placed over his eyes and mouth. For forty-one years, William McCabe, the young man's father, scrawled notes and fragments of memories in a notebook. "Don't look at the back," he told the reporter. "There's stuff in there that I'm going to give to the police." Mr. McCabe was the sort of dedicated and mourning father that police sometimes come to view with tragic affection. Over the course of four decades, Mr. McCabe called the police station regularly, sometimes nightly, asking about the case, reminding them of his dead fifteen year-old sone, and passing them anything he found that remotely resembled a clue. The kind of thing that drives cops nuts sometimes, but they haven't the heart to put a stop to. Forty one years. In 2009, Detective Gerry Wayne, who had carried the case for over a decade, passed to cancer. In January of this year, Detective Linda Coughlin received the files and took up the investigation anew. She began with Allan E. Brown, a 59 year-old retired Air Force reservist. Last month, in the days before Easter, Lowell Police arrested three men—Walter Shelley, age 60, a box-maker form nearby Tewksbury; Michael Ferreira, a forklift driver from Lowell; and the "weak link" in the group, Allan Brown—and accused them in the murder of fifteen year-old Johnny McCabe some forty-one years ago. The men were teenagers themselves at the time — tough boys, some of Johnny’s friends have told the McCabes — but much older now, their faces weary after the passage of four decades, after years of work, marriages and divorces, stints in the military. Weary also, perhaps, from the strain of hiding a terrible secret for so long. All three, the McCabes realized, had attended Johnny’s wake and signed the guest book laid out for mourners .... ..... The Lowell police had long had suspicions about Mr. Shelley and Mr. Ferreira but did not have enough evidence to arrest them. Then, in 2009, Mr. Ferreira mentioned a new name, Mr. Brown’s, saying he had been with him that night, according to the police .... .... Eventually, the police report said, he told them how he and two other teenagers had driven around that night in Mr. Shelley’s 1965 maroon Chevrolet Impala, drinking and planning what they would do to Johnny McCabe. They found him hitchhiking his way home and dragged him into the car, “punched and intimidated” him and then pulled him out, pinning him to the ground, Mr. Brown sitting on his legs, he told the police. They tied him up and left him on the ground struggling. A few hours later when they returned, Mr. Brown told the police, Johnny was dead. The motive? Johnny, Mr. Brown told the police, had flirted with Mr. Shelley’s girlfriend, and they wanted to “teach him a lesson.” (Goode) Such cases are the stuff of American legend; the 83 year-old William McCabe's notebook an American treasure. Forty-one years ran this chapter of the tragedy, and one might pick among the myriad paths the story offers, and consider according to their inclination. There are the virtues of patience; certes, four decades is a long wait, but the good guys always get their man. There is an aspect of conscience: Who can carry for over forty years such a burden as knowing knowing one has murdered? And the obvious question of justice: What is fair? To what toll is society entitled, for either safety or vengeance? And there is also a comparison that we might stick into international politics: Indeed, many might criticize the excesses of our society, but in many places around the world forty-one years is enough time for blood vendettas that would kill how many people, obscure the original crime and its evidence, and offers no reasonable assurance that the right people will be punished. What, then, do we say of a society in which one might endure such torment in pursuit of justice, when it probably would have felt better to find someone or something to kill? It is not a question of whether one form of society is superior, but, rather, what does it take to suppress our instinctive impulses? And how important is it that, even after four decades, our reason for such suppression proves true? "It was a proud moment," explains Detective Coughlin, "just to be able to say to this man who had pushed so hard for so long, 'We finally have some answers'." District Attorney Gerard Leone Jr. agrees, calling Mr. McCabe "very appropriately pushy". Police Captain Jonathan C. Webb reminds that, "if Mr. McCabe hadn't been so dedicated in always reminding us about the case, it would probably be a couple of boxes in a back room". And Mr. McCabe keeps writing in his book, having wept anew as wounds reopened as the McCabe family relives their horror and sadness. All three accused have pled not guilty, though Brown, who has essentially confessed, has threatened to kill himself and his wife, saying that his upcoming trial could "only end in death". There are pages left to write. Mr. McCabe, for his part, puts it succinctly: "Perhaps the murderer will read this and say, 'I thought it was just another punk kid that I strangled to death'. It wasn't. He was very special to us, so we have written this book about him." The wheels of justice, it is often said, turn slowly. Still, though, they turn. Forty-one years might seem a long time, but compared to no justice at all, perhaps it is soon enough. ____________________ Notes: Goode, Erica. "Persistence of a Father Brings News in a Killing". The New York Times. May 8, 2011; page A15. NYTimes.com. May 7, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/us/08lowell.html
