The Toll of an Unsolved Murder

The Toll of an Unsolved Murder

A Family Torn Asunder Yearns for Answers and Finds It Hard to Move On

By Theresa Vargas

Washington Post Staff WriterSunday, July 30, 2006; C01

Kenny Brooks's mother weighs 102 pounds in her clothes, and the loose skin on her face ages her beyond 49 years. She doesn't want to eat most days, doesn't want to live on others. She sleeps on her son's mattress and watches a tape of his funeral, over and over.

His sister, 25, prone to anxiety attacks before he was killed in January, now needs medication just to get through the day. Even then, all she wants to do is sleep. His 7-year-old niece draws pictures of sad faces with angel wings in the sky.

Brooks, a 23-year-old former Marine, was the first person slain in Prince William County this year. A homicide case that looked as if it would be solved quickly now verges on going cold. Once-promising leads in the investigation have suddenly dropped off.

So Brooks's family waits -- and unravels, a bit more each day.

His mother, Rose Brooks, stumbles among all five stages of grief. She still expects her son to walk in the door. Denial. She hates that he is gone and at the hand of someone he probably knew. Anger. She'd give her life for his -- and neighbors come to check on her daily to make sure she hasn't. Bargaining. She no longer leaves the house, and with each viewing of the funeral tape, she knows he's gone and that life must go on. Depression. Acceptance.

"Whoever killed my son has killed each one of us, especially me," Rose Brooks said, crying. "This has destroyed a lot of lives. My family, we'll never be the same."

Killings happen every day, followed by the usual chaos of police cars lining streets, detectives questioning witnesses, reporters knocking on doors. The wake, the funeral, the burial.

Then, for many, comes the quiet. Days in which a family is left alone. No cameras, no flood of relatives, no daily updates from police. Days in which a family can do nothing but wait for an arrest -- wondering if it really would bring closure. The Brookses are here now. Life must go on, they said, but how, without Kenny and without his killer off the streets?

As escalating violence, particularly in the District, comes under increased scrutiny, the Brooks family's story provides insight into the mayhem caused by homicide.

Those who specialize in grief counseling say that homicide creates a mourning like none other. Celia Ryan, a Rockville-based certified grief therapist, said that for relatives, the experience is more about trauma than grief. It is a public loss coupled with the fear that they, too, may not be safe, the real or perceived judgment of others and the inevitable questions, such as why this person, why now?

"The family is amputated," Ryan said. "The whole family is altered." Each family member will mend differently, depending on age, sex and relationship to the dead, she said, but all are forever changed. "It's not about getting better," she said. "It's about learning to deal with what happened."

Kenny's eldest sister, Katrina Brooks, the one with anxiety attacks, said her brother's murderer "killed the spirit of our family."

"It has messed up everyone's lives," she said. "At times I don't want to laugh. I feel I shouldn't be laughing because I don't know who killed my brother."

One of her daughters writes letters about sadness; the other tells her daily she wants to "go where Uncle Kenny is." And her mother, the woman who seemed to hold up so well during the funeral, even as people broke down around her, mostly stays home now, losing more and more weight every day.

"I look like a skeleton with skin," Rose Brooks said.

She was once 270 pounds, nicknamed "Big Duke" by her son. A few years ago, she had a triple bypass, followed by a gastric bypass that failed and forced her to use feeding tubes. She now suffers from four hernias, but doctors said they cannot operate until she gains 20 pounds. Kenny, she said, was the one who would pop his head in the bedroom and remind her that it was time to put in her feeding tube. Now no one does.

"He was a momma's boy," she said. "He was; he still is."

When she winces, it's hard to know whether her bones ache or a memory has stabbed at her. She has moved her son's bed from the apartment in Triangle where he was shot to her townhouse in Stafford County. His television and clothes are there now, too.
"I can't handle too much more of this," she said. "It's killing me slowly."

On a recent humid morning, neighbor Porsha Davis, 41, made her usual hike around the corner and up the block to Brooks's home. Since Kenny's death, this has become her routine -- checking to make sure Rose Brooks is okay.

"It's to the point I walk up here every day. I don't care how hot it is. Once I heard an ambulance was here, and I made her give me a key," Davis said.

"Since Kenny's gone, Rose don't want to be here," Davis said. "I told her just 'cause Kenny is not here, we still need you."

She, like everyone else on this block of aging townhouses, knew Kenny. The real Kenny. The quiet, sweet Kenny and the trouble-prone Kenny.

He was the boy who helped watch the neighborhood children, making sure they didn't stray too far from their homes, but would also sling insults and punches at his peers, sometimes playfully, sometimes not.

Neighbor Jennifer Guinn, who went to Brooke Point High School with Kenny, said he would help her carry her books when she was eight months pregnant. But, she said, it was a rare side of him that many did not get to see.

She and Davis pointed to a yellow speed bump in the road and called it "Kenny's speed bump." It was put there so police would have a chance to catch some of the neighborhood boys who would speed away from them, stopping at the end of the block to make a run for it.

Police said Kenny did not have a criminal record, but they were investigating whether he was a small-time drug dealer when he was killed. Family members said they knew nothing about that.
Those who knew Kenny say he may have gravitated toward trouble as a teenager but that the Marines had changed him. "It was 'yes ma'am,' 'no ma'am,' 'yes sir,' 'no sir,' " Guinn said.
"He was the perfect person when he came back -- he had respect, he opened doors, he wouldn't let a man talk bad about a woman. Before, he didn't care," Davis added.

In Rose Brooks's home, a large picture of Kenny in Marine dress blues hangs over her favorite chair in the living room. Propped above the television is the flag she was handed at his funeral at Quantico National Cemetery. Kenny had just come home last July after four years of being stationed in California, Okinawa and Taiwan. He had recently signed up for classes at Germanna Community College and had just moved into the apartment where he was killed.

"Kenny was in a transitional stage of his life," said his uncle, Mike Baldwin, 44. "He was doing the right thing. He signed up for school, was getting his own place. The right thing."

About 3 p.m. Jan. 13, Kenny was found faceup behind his kitchen counter, shot in the cheek and the top of his head. He was still breathing when police found him -- about two hours after he was shot -- and died hours later at the hospital.

Prince William Detective Paul Masterson is sure there are witnesses who are not coming forward. Recently, Masterson fired 11 rounds from a .22-caliber revolver in the apartment to see if police could hear the gunfire from outside. They could, but no one called police to report it. He said a person also called the tip line three times with information but suddenly stopped talking to police.

"Someone saw something," Masterson said. "Right now, we are just looking for one or two little pieces to come together, and we could make an arrest."
A $5,000 reward is being offered. The family is also pleading.
"If they have any conscience at all," Rose Brooks said.

"Sometimes I feel comforted because I know that person will be punished, but the longer it takes, I get angry. I get more bitter every day," said Katrina Brooks. "If they told me my brother died in a car accident, I'd be just as hurt, but I'd know my brother didn't have to look someone in the eyes and that that person was probably someone he trusted."

Kenny had helped raise her oldest daughter, Niya, and had just met her youngest, Kianna. In his military papers, Kenny named Niya and his mother his beneficiaries.

Recently, grandmother and granddaughter walked together through Quantico to the tombstone reading: "Our sunshine, always loved." They carried their respective memories.

For Niya, it was of the uncle who took her to the dentist and broke down in giggles when a woman fell out of a chair. The one who put on her floaties at the beach, covered himself in seaweed and walked out of the ocean like a monster.

For Rose Brooks, the memories are of a child who would do the "lollipop dance" when he didn't think anyone was looking, the high school graduate who wasn't embarrassed when she kissed him in front of his friends. It was the way he cooked a mean macaroni and cheese and would sing R. Kelly songs to her: "Oh Sadie, don't you know we love you . . . "

"Say anything you want, but don't look down," Rose Brooks told Niya. "He's not there."

"Why did you leave me?" Niya asked, carrying a balloon for him. "I didn't want you to leave."