When police carried his uncle?s lifeless body to a coroner?s van, Roger Clay stood across Brookfield Street in Baltimore watching in disbelief as a crowd gathered on the sidewalk. “All I could think was that someone did him wrong,” said the 32-year-old aspiring rap artist.
Now, nearly a year later, Roger Clay stands on the same street staring at the boarded-up windows of the former headquarters of Robert Clay Inc. He struggles to find answers about a death that haunts him.
“My uncle is not that kind of man. He was a fighter,” Clay told The Examiner. “Let me ask you this: Why would a man with so much to live for kill himself?”
For those closest to Clay, the answer does not come easily.
Billy Murphy, a former Baltimore City Circuit Court judge, said something doesn?t smell right about the suicide ruling. “I?m not happy about it all,” said Murphy, a lawyer who represented Clay?s business. “He never expressed suicidal thoughts, and he was not suicidal. It was not a suicide, I know that much.” A six-page autopsy report and several police records reviewed by The Examiner do little to convince Clay?s family and friends that it was a self-inflicted wound. Yet it?s not what?s in those reports that disturbs Clay?s family and friends, but what is left out.
Missing is a suicide note. Missing is fingerprint analysis of the office. Missing is the bullet or fragments in his skull that ties it to the stolen gun police found under Clay?s body.
All of it, however, police appear ready to explain. Suicide notes are not always written. Fingerprints are rarely recovered. As for the lack of a bullet, Baltimore police spokesman Troy Harris said, “Bullets ricochet and end up all over the place.”
“As tragic as it may be, all aspects of the case point to suicide,” said police spokesman Matt Jablow. “We did a gunshot residue analysis, and it indicates suicide.”
Adding to the mystery is that much of the police report provided to the family is blacked out. Jablow said that?s because it contains personal information about Clay. The available portions of the report contain details of Clay?s prior arrests more than two decades ago ? one for attempted murder in connection with a man visiting his wife and another for murder involving a neighbor dispute. He was acquitted of attempted murder and charges were dropped in the murder case after a witness changed her testimony, according to court records.
The report also said the gun found on his body was stolen from Frederick, and not much else. The report has many blank pages that refer to a “secure synopsis.” In police parlance, this means “top secret.”
But why is most of the report blacked out even to the family?
Clay?s daughter, Sharon, 41, said police seemed more interested in closing the case than looking for answers.
“My father was right-handed,” she said. “Why would he shoot himself in the left side of the head?”
She points to death threats that her father simply shrugged off at the time and never took seriously. She remains dumbfounded as to why her father was in possession of a Smith & Wesson Special six-shot revolver that was reported stolen from Frederick County.
The location where Clay?s body was found was strange, acknowledges Medical Examiner Ann Rubio. Sharon Clay found her father in the front hall of his office near the front door, not in his office as police initially had reported. He was lying near the entrance with “one foot on the stairs,” according to the autopsy.
Rubio told The Examiner the body location was “unusual” and said she requested that the case be sent back for further investigation. However, seven days later, she changed her mind. She wrote in the report on May 23, 2005, that “analysis of the scene photographs, examination of the blood and tissue splatter and DNA studies are indicative of a self inflicted wound. Thus the manner of death is suicide.”
Sharon Clay refuses to believe it.
“She told me she wasn?t fully satisfied and she wanted the police to do more,” Sharon Clay said. “They shut the crime scene down in a couple of hours. I think they jumped to conclusions. Because of my father?s prominence, one would think they would leave no stone left unturned.”
“At the very least, I know [he] wouldn?t have wanted his own daughter to find him” said Roger Clay.
“My father was not the type of man to kill himself. Everything stinks to high heaven,” Sharon Clay said.
A demand for answers
Baltimore Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-7th District, said he believes that the facts are incomplete: “Many people have questions about what happened, and they should be answered,” Cummings said. “He was the last person in the world I would think would do that,” Cummings said. He said authorities should take another look at the case and answer the left-over questions.
The police are not budging.
The day before Clay was found dead, he spoke with Robert Harris, vice president of the Maryland Minority Contractors, an organization that Clay founded. “We had this wonderful conversation. He was so happy we were going to be working together,” Harris said, referring to a new construction contract they had just landed.
Roger Clay said no one in the family saw any signs that his uncle wanted tocommit suicide. “He got up, dressed himself, went to the office and then killed himself. How much sense does that make?”
Roger Clay?s words appear to reflect the thoughts of many members of the community who feel that the death of his uncle is symbolic of deeper, more sinister malaise that speaks to the very core of the city?s darker character. Did Clay kill himself after being convinced that minority contracting had failed in the city, or did something else happen?
Ask those who knew him best: Who killed Robert Clay?
Roger Clay provides a possible answer.
“Maybe some people just don?t want anyone to know.”
