Bloodsworth by Tim Junkin

and their neighbors in the apartment complex were all sought out by reporters. During one interview, Thomas Hamilton held in his hand a Ziggy cartoon Dawn had drawn for him. She had scribbled
I love you for all the world
in the corner. Hamilton leaned against the apartment wall heaving sobs. The words “pain . . . sorrow . . . hate . . .” came through. He covered his face with his free hand. He waved the cartoon at the sky. “If he wants to pick on a little child,” he cried, “let him pick on me . . .”
    The funeral was held July 28. Sympathy and support poured in from the community. Afterward Thomas Hamilton wrote that Dawn’s death was the most horrifying thing that a person could live through. He went into a deep depression, developed a drinkingproblem, and tried to find new friends. Hamilton found it difficult to be around anyone who knew what had happened.
    Dawn’s mother, Toni, spoke to reporters outside her flat in Baltimore City. Fighting back tears, she cursed her daughter’s killer, saying he should be tortured and slowly killed. “She couldn’t even fight back,” she cried. “I just hope she didn’t feel any pain . . .”
    Parents in communities all around Fontana Village huddled with their children indoors in fear. The Baltimore County Police Department promised to spare no resource in tracking down the monstrous person responsible. Five two-man teams of homicide detectives and numerous teams of police officers from the Fullerton precinct were assigned to assist in investigating the murder, and the FBI would lend its expertise both in forensic testing and psychological profiling. Officers going door to door interviewed every resident of Fontana Village. Neighbors from adjacent communities; merchants from nearby Golden Ring Mall; employees from the local 7-Eleven, the Dunkin’ Donuts, and other eateries on Rossville Boulevard; representatives of Essex Community College; and the manager of the Trailways bus station all were questioned. Even before the composite sketch was broadcast on Friday, the leads were substantial in number. Once the picture of the killer was shown on television and in the newspapers, calls flooded in. A hotline was set up for tips, and Metro Crime Stoppers offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and indictment of the murderer. By Monday, July 30, the police department had received over two hundred telephone reports. Over the following week, the number would more than double.
    Neighbors gave varying accounts of seeing strangers in the area with descriptions running from short to tall, stocky to thin, men on foot, men in cars, men wearing long pants, men in shorts. Some tips coming from different sources seemed to point to the same suspect; sometimes the reports seemed random, isolated, unhelpful.
    On the day of the murder Officer Lionel Weeks interviewed William Adams of Fontana Village, who reported that a man named Bob, six feet tall, with blond curly hair, wearing a black cowboy hat and western clothing, and possibly driving a cream-colored Chevy van, had two weeks before been offering money to the neighborhood children to buy ice cream. Donna Hill, of Gemini Court, had seen a heavyset man in a cowboy hat hanging around the complex. Once the composite was released, Shannon Wooden, of Capella Court, said that the sketch resembled the man she’d seen wearing a cowboy hat and giving out money to children. He was driving a green-and-white car. And Robert Krue told Detective Ramsey of a man named Bob, six feet two inches tall, with blond curly hair, who resembled the composite.
    The afternoon of the murder, Patricia Ruth claimed to have seen a man in light-colored shorts come running out of the woods at half past eleven that morning. He appeared exhausted and gave her an angry look.
    Patricia Logan, of 8860 Fontana Lane, told Detective Ramsey that she’d seen a white male on the path near Fontana Village