Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/092192/0921995.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 5KB | 113 lines

                                                                                SOCIETY, Page 55

A Savage Story


Suburbia is not immune to the ugliest crimes, like this mother's
death in a carjacking

By TED GUP/WASHINGTON


    For a week Pamela Basu worried about how well her
22-month-old daughter Sarina would adjust to her first day at
school. Basu told her supervisor she might be late to work that
day, but not to fret: she would just need a little extra time
to comfort her daughter and ease the separation. When the day
arrived, Basu secured her daughter in the car seat, climbed
behind the wheel of her pale gold BMW and drove off, edging to
a halt at a nearby stop sign. At that moment, the peaceful town
of Savage, Maryland, lost the irony of its name.

    Two strangers appeared at her window, forced her out of
the car and sped off. Basu, her left arm still helplessly
tangled in the harness strap of her seat belt, was dragged
facedown across the coarse pavement until there was nothing left
of her clothes but the bloodstained blouse on her back.

    Three-quarters of a mile away, Marianne Pfeiffer, the
principal at Forest Ridge Elementary School, was waiting to help
tardy students cross the street. She stared in horror as the BMW
raced through the school crossing, Basu's battered body dangling
from the driver's side. "From the beginning to the end, I
couldn't believe it," says Pfeiffer. A thousand feet from where
the two had commandeered the vehicle, the driver stopped, got
out and pitched the little child, strapped into her car seat,
to the side of the road. Then off he drove again, still dragging
the mother behind.

    As the car came to a hairpin curve, he careened against a
barbed-wire fence, trying perhaps to scrape off Basu's body.
Several hundred feet farther, the thieves stopped and dumped her
mutilated remains in the road, punctuating a trail of blood and
skin. A motorist came upon the baby and rescued her from the
roadside. An hour later, the two suspects crashed the car in a
cornfield and were, at last, arrested.

    In so courteous and manicured a community, midway between
Baltimore and Washington, the sheer barbarity of the crime
stunned, then frightened, then outraged residents. More than 400
people came to a meeting in a local grade school; the mere
mention of Maryland's death penalty by a police spokesman
brought tumultuous applause.

    Next door, in the nation's capital, the police chief
resigned in tears the same day, having failed to bring down a
murder rate that has claimed more than 2,000 lives in the past
five years. In a brutalized city, where those who can afford it
escape the inner city each night to suburban safety, the
cold-blooded slaying of Basu touched nerves long numbed by
statistics, destroying any notion that only a life of vice could
lead to such a death. Pamela Basu, 34, was an award-winning
research chemist with W.R. Grace & Co. The Indian-born scientist
is described by colleagues as a vibrant and outspoken
intellectual who doted on her daughter. They recall the endless
obstacles she and her husband Biswanath overcame to adopt the
little girl named Sarina.

    Following the tragedy came the revelations of how the
justice system had failed. One of the suspects, Rodney Eugene
Solomon, has a history of violence and drugs. A week earlier,
Solomon, 26, had been released from a District of Columbia jail
where he was being held on charges of distributing heroin.
Solomon's next arrest, this time for Basu's murder, triggered
a round of finger pointing between federal prosecutors and D.C.
Superior Court Judge Reggie B. Walton. Each side blamed the
other for failing to keep Solomon behind bars despite fears that
he was a danger to the community. Walton, ironically, is a
get-tough judge and a former prosecutor who served last year as
the White House's chief adviser on crime. Before that he was an
associate director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy
under drug czar William Bennett.

    Howard County police have vowed that the two suspects,
Solomon and 16-year-old Bernard Eric Miller, will pay for the
countywide crime spree. "The suspects expressed no remorse, I
can tell you that," said Lieut. Daniel Davis. As Solomon was
being booked for first-degree murder, robbery and kidnapping,
he muttered to himself and blew kisses at a female officer. For
their protection, they were held in solitary cells, where late
last week Solomon was found with bed sheets tied around his
neck. Jail officials were uncertain whether it was a bungled
suicide attempt or an effort to get transferred to a hospital,
from which escape would be easier.

    Even as Basu's hideous death was added to the soaring
number of carjackings nationwide, Congress was meeting to
discuss how to clamp down on the crime. But it was little solace
to her family and friends, mute with grief and occupied with the
chores of loss. At W.R. Grace, supervisor Nicholas Spencer
cleaned out Basu's desk, packed up a dozen snapshots of Sarina,
collected her books and removed her coat from the back of the
office door. In a drawer he came upon what was to have been a
midday snack -- an orange and some crackers. Three boxes in all,
they were set aside until the day Basu's husband can bring
himself to go through them.