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Police charge ex-boyfriend in double slaying: Man, 56, confesses to killing city woman, new boyfriend
Jul 02, 2009 (The Capital - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
Apparently spurred by jealousy, a 56-year-old boarder has confessed to killing an Admiral Heights woman and her boyfriend, and trying to kill her 12-year-old son, city police said this morning.
Elbert Gardner Jr. lived in the basement of 11 Goodrich Road where his former girlfriend, Lei Tyree Johnson, 38, and her current boyfriend, Samuel Marshall Fowlkes, 49, of Annapolis were found dead early yesterday morning.
Gardner was in the basement around 11 p.m. Tuesday when he heard sounds of apparent love-making upstairs in Johnson's bedroom, according to charging documents.
He grabbed a .38-caliber revolver registered to him and went upstairs, where he found Johnson and Fowlkes in bed. He shot Fowlkes once in the head, then shot Johnson once in the chest, the documents said.
When he came out of the room he found Johnson's 12-year-old son in the hallway. Police said he attempted to smother the boy with a pillow, then put him back in his bed.
The boy, who attends the Phoenix Center, a county school in Annapolis for emotionally challenged students, stayed in his room until he ran across the street to a neighbor's house just before dawn.
Police said they received a call at 5:22 a.m., after the boy went to the neighbor's house. Contrary to previous reports, the child was not covered in blood, police said.
Gardner, who served 22 years in the Navy and had worked various security jobs, was taken into custody around 10 a.m. yesterday. He later confessed to the crime and was charged with two counts of second-degree murder and one count of second-degree attempted murder.
Gardner, who police said had no prior criminal record, was being held at the Jennifer Road Detention Center in Parole Road on $10 million bail. Officers who responded to the house called detectives after entering the home.
After securing search warrants ,the forensic team, clad in white protective suits, entered the beige rambler shortly after 9 a.m. to do their work.
Hours later they came out carrying bags, then boxes of evidence. Around 3 p.m., a nondescript silver minivan backed onto the front yard grass and two technicians loaded first one body, then the second, for a trip to the Maryland Medical Examiner's Office for autopsies.
Meanwhile, police traced Gardner's whereabouts via a home he owned on Chatham Lane in the city. Court records indicate he and his former wife were behind on payments on the home.
Police arranged to meet Gardner at the 7-Eleven store on East College Parkway near Cape St. Claire, where he was taken into custody around 10 a.m.
The woman who owns the home on Goodrich Road said this morning that she rented the home to Gardner, and she knew that Johnson and her son were staying there. She said that Gardner always paid his rent on time and was working three jobs, although she did not know where. 'He's gets a bad rap,' she said. 'He's a very decent guy. Really a decent guy.'
At one point the boy was a suspect in the case. Neighbors and an official at the Annapolis Boys and Girls Club described him as friendly and as having an interest in robotics. Police would not say this morning where the boy was, or in whose care.
Police had first received a call around 11 p.m. Tuesday when a neighbor reported hearing gunshots. Officers cruised the area without finding anything. The quiet, block-long stretch of Goodrich Road where the shootings occurred is lined with trees and simple, middle-class ranchers and split foyers. It sits in the middle of the old section of the Admiral Heights neighborhood near Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.
'Everyone helps each other out, but we don't socialize a lot,' said Jean Paterson, who has lived in her house with husband George Paterson for 41 years.
'We would see them up and down the street ... that little boy walking their little doggie.'
The dog was found in the home in a cage and removed by Animal Control officials.
'It is just so sad,' she said. 'So sad.'
Yesterday, yellow police crime scene tape blocked the street, running from the victim's house across the street. The demarcation line included the house across the street that the 12-year-old reportedly ran to just before sunrise. Neighbors described the slain woman and her apparent boyfriend as nice people. None had heard or seen any potential trouble at the home.
Hours before a grisly scene unfolded in his home, the 12-year-old boy was laughing, excitedly searching for a marker and scrambling to get an autograph from newly signed NFL player Larry Beavers, said Reggie Broddie, the chief professional officer at the Boys and Girls Club of Annapolis & Anne Arundel County. Broddie still has the boy's most recent report card hanging on the wall, in an honored place right next to a snapshot of Broddie with Bill Clinton. The boy had done well in at the Phoenix Center and glowed about his grades, Broddie said.
'He's just a super, super kid,' Broddie said after learning of the killing. 'He's been coming to the club now for about seven months. He's been active in our programs, and he's particularly involved in our robotics program.'
As police yesterday were picking through the crime scene that was once the boy's home, staff at the Boys and Girls Club grew concerned.
It was robotics day, on which teams of children were converting a robot into a working guitar. It was the sort of the day the boy would love, and staffers began to worry when he did not show up, Broddie said.
The night before, the boys' mother had picked him up -- and the boy had an autograph from Beavers, the Carolina Panthers' player who had grown up in Annapolis. Everything seemed normal, Broddie said.
'I'm just blown away,' Broddie said, expressing concern over how the boy could recover from yesterday's events. 'I don't think you ever do, nothing as tragic as this.'
pfurgurson@capitalgazette.com
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