Bail bondsman Ralph Hall was killed during an execution-style murder.
In the parking lot of Baltimore’s KIPP Academy, Hall, the owner of Muscles Bail Bonds, was found lying facedown with a gunshot wound to the back.
His cell phone was missing. His money clip empty.
On his clothing were clues that pointed Baltimore homicide detectives in two directions: Handcuffs and Hall’s Fugitive Recovery Badge; and 41 admission tickets to Club Eldorado, where Hall was promoting a party.
Though they’ve followed leads down both paths, police have yet to make an arrest, leaving Hall’s pregnant fiancee, Faaizah Seals, begging for answers.
Who wanted Hall dead? Was it rivals from the club scene? Rival bondsmen? A criminal he happened to cross?
“I’m due in 30 days,” Seals said from the Bel Air Road office of Muscles Bail Bonds. “The way he went down was tragic. I understand death comes to people. But why did he have to go that way?”
Hall’s July 30 slaying, like the large majority of this year’s homicides, remains unsolved.
Throughout August, detectives worked Hall’s case and others, solving two of the month’s 22 killings. Detectives have solved 47 — or 32 percent — of this year’s 148 homicides. Investigators have also solved 21 cases from prior years for a 46 percent clearance rate.
That closure rate has frustrated Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld, who was sworn in Wednesday night to a new six-year term.
“I’m not happy with our homicide clearance rate,” Bealefeld said. “I’m not sitting on my tail on that. We made a leadership change there. Terry McLarney, a career homicide man, is now running homicide. I’m optimistic about what he can do there. We brought in a new shift commander, Lenny Willis, to run one of the shifts and, again, I’m optimistic.”
The commissioner said he would consider a 50 percent clearance rate “a good start” from the city’s nationally known homicide unit, which has been featured in books and television shows.
Bealefeld has also made personnel changes in the investigation of nonfatal shootings, where he said closures were also slow to come.
“I’m not happy with what I was seeing there — and I expect, and I think the city deserves, better results,” he said.
Slow summer for killings
Though disappointed with the agency’s homicide and nonfatal shooting closure rates, Bealefeld pointed to a reduction in killings this summer — and this year — as proof the department’s crime prevention strategies are working.
August’s 22 homicides were lower than last August’s 25 — as were June and July’s killings.
“June through August, 18 fewer people were killed,” Bealefeld said. “What the naysayers like to say is, ‘It’s the weather. The weather is keeping people indoors,’ I’m not from the National Weather Service, but I’ve got to tell you there was some stretches of really beautiful weather this summer. I’ll let people be their own judge about what a mild summer we had.”
Even so, the month’s slayings, including a home invasion shooting of 16-year-old Mathew Scarborough, on Aug. 8, and the strangulation of 19-year-old Kiuna Jackson, found in Herring Run Park, on Aug. 15, show Baltimore remains a severely violent city.
Jackson was the sixth woman strangled this year in Baltimore.
Bealefeld said investigators are waiting for DNA results to help solve those cases.
“We’re waiting for some scientific evidence to come back. We want to be very thorough,” he said. “I’m confident. McLarney worked ahead of all of us to assemble a team. When I was considering a period of time to review cases, he had expanded the review to encompass a far greater reach. Those kind of things make me optimistic. When people are taking initiatives in their jobs, it’s encouraging.”
Still, Seals said she was holding out hope that detectives will solve her fiance’s case.
“I didn’t want to believe it,” she said of Hall’s killing. “We had no conflict with any of our clients. He always had a good vibe on everybody. We never had any problems. He must have been around the wrong people at the wrong time.”
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AUGUST HOMICIDES
- Aug. 5: Jeffrey Alston, 23, 1700 block of W. Fayette St.
- Aug. 6: Robert Buckner, 19, Club Rios parking lot, 1300 block of Bloomingdale Road
- Aug. 8: Mathew Scarborough, 16, 500 block of Castle Drive
- Aug. 8: Rudy M. Guzman, 22, 3300 block of E. Fayette St.
- Aug. 8: Shawn L. Weaver, 38, 1000 block of Shellbanks Road
- Aug. 9: George Blain, 30, 1700 block of N. Bradford St.
- Aug 12: Michael Little, 28, 4100 block of Barrington Ave./3700 block of Eldorado Ave.
- Aug. 12: Michael Sewell, 29, 1000 block of Brantley Ave.
- Aug. 13: Vernon Paige, 21, Patapsco Avenue and Savoy Street
- Aug. 14: John Doe, 23, 2800 block of Oakley Ave.
- Aug. 15: Kiuna Jackson, 19, Herring Run Park
- Aug. 18: John Person, 17, 2900 block of Garrison Blvd.
- Aug. 19: Eric Brown, 1000 block of Edmondson Ave.
- Aug. 22: Tavon Garrison, 28, 2400 block of E. Lanvale St.
- Aug. 26: Floyd Jones, 56, East North Avenue and North Port Street
- Aug. 28: Clarence Hamlett Jr., 22, Laurens and North Stricker streets
- Aug. 28: Wilbert Flowers, 31, 800 block of E. 43rd St.
- Aug. 29: John Doe, 23, 900 block of Valley St.
Died 2007; declared homicides in August:
Javon Thompson, 2, 3200 block of Auchentoroly Terrace
Eddie Van Kirk, 45, 320 block of S. Parrish St.
