Using Their Head

3 accused of using corpse head to smoke pot

By PEGGY O'HARE
Houston Chronicle

The Kingwood teenager's story of decapitating a corpse and using the head to smoke marijuana was so outlandish that at first Houston Police Department senior police officer Jim Adkins did not believe it.

Yet, Kevin Wade Jones Jr., 17, appeared almost indifferent as he relayed the bizarre description of his and two friends' activities at an Humble area graveyard, Adkins said.

"I just doubted it because it's very morbid, and I couldn't see anybody doing something like this," Adkins said Thursday.

Not until police went to the home of another Kingwood 17-year-old, Matthew Richard Gonzalez, did the officer believe the tale.

"He regurgitated in his plate of food when I asked him about it," Adkins said. "So I knew there was some truth to the story."

Now, Jones, Gonzalez and a juvenile whose name has not been released are each charged with abuse of a corpse, a misdemeanor. All three were arrested Wednesday night.

Police said a fourth suspect is wanted for questioning.

Houston police believe the teens disturbed the grave of an 11-year-old boy who died in 1921.

The child was buried at an unmarked cemetery believed to be reserved for black veterans and their families, Adkins said.

Under the law, a person can be charged with abuse of a corpse simply by vandalizing, damaging or treating a gravesite offensively — even if the human remains buried there are not touched, Adkins said.

The child's skull has not been found. If recovered later, however, such a discovery will not change the charges filed against the three suspects, Adkins said.

The teens first came to police's attention during a vehicle burglary investigation. While being questioned, Jones told of desecrating the gravesite a month or two ago. Adkins said he believes the tale was intended to distract police from the vehicle break-in.

Jones claimed he and his friends used shovels to dig up the body and removed the corpse's head with a garden tool, Adkins said. Jones also revealed he and the other two boys took the severed head to the juvenile's home, where they used the skull as a "bong" to smoke marijuana, the officer said.

Police made three trips to the heavily wooded, snake-infested graveyard near the Eastex Freeway feeder road and FM 1960 before finding the disturbed grave several days ago.

"The grave was uncovered, and the headstone had been thrown off the grave and broken," Adkins said.

Because the grave is flooded with murky water from recent heavy rains, police have been unable to determine if the child's casket is still in the ground.

All three teens gave written and verbal confessions admitting they tried to dig up a body over a two-day period, Adkins said.

But the boys told conflicting stories about whether they actually severed the head — so police aren't sure if that gruesome detail really happened.

Even so, HPD is working closely with Humble police to try and find any surviving relatives of the child whose grave was disturbed. According to court papers, the grave belonged to Willie Simms.

"The ultimate goal will be to put this body back to rest," Adkins said.

Little is known about the graveyard. The Humble Bicentennial Museum could not confirm that it was reserved for black veterans, but Adkins said he observed "many, many headstones" for black soldiers killed during World War I and World War II.

The three boys, all home-schooled, have also been charged in connection with the vehicle break-in. Jones and the juvenile are charged with credit card abuse, while Gonzalez pleaded guilty to a charge of misdemeanor theft between $50 and $500.

Baby Dropping

Zeke's Party

Sunday was Zeke's bachelor party. We began at Little Havana and continued around Baltimore via limo! Check out the PIX HERE!

From the NEW YORKER magazine:

Baltimore—famous for its harbor, its crab cakes, and its drug trade. Many know it as Charm City, although it’s gone by other names: Monument City, Mobtown, Salty Balty, the City of Firsts (first American umbrella factory, first dental college), Balti-Sore (after the syphilis outbreak of 1996-97). Its official motto used to be “The City That Reads,” until graffiti artists, perhaps aware that Baltimore led the country in out-of-wedlock teen pregnancies, redubbed it “The City That Breeds.” So the mayor offered an alternative: “The Greatest City in America.”

Baltimore is now the setting of two Broadway musicals—“Cry-Baby,” which opens this week, at the Marquis, and “Hairspray.” (There is also “Thurgood,” now in previews, about the Baltimore-born Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.) Both shows are inspired by films by one of Baltimore’s most celebrated sons, John Waters, who based “Cry-Baby” on his boyhood fascination with a local gang called the Drapes.

Don’t think that Baltimore hasn’t noticed the trend. The city has leaped at the chance for cross-promotion. “The thought was, O.K., here’s an opportunity where Baltimore will be on Broadway,” Sam Rogers said last Tuesday, over dinner. He was one of several executives from the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association (their slogan is “Baltimore: Get in on it”) who were in town to attend a preview of “Cry-Baby,” in preparation for a new marketing campaign aimed at theatregoers. Rogers held up an ad that will soon appear in Playbill: “You’ve seen the musical, now visit the set.”

“We’re helping people make that connection and say, ‘Oh, I can go to a place like that?’ ” Jennifer Maguire, who does P.R. for the city, said. “A lot of people think Baltimore is what they see on ‘ The Wire.’ But that’s not the true Baltimore—it’s too gritty.” (Baltimore currently ranks as the country’s twelfth most dangerous city.)

Tom Noonan, the president of the association, added, “People have a dated perception of Baltimore as more of an industrial city than the tourism mecca it is.” Noonan detailed the city’s attractions—the Inner Harbor, the Washington Monument (Baltimore’s came first), an “emerging culinary scene.” He named famous Baltimoreans: Babe Ruth, Edgar Allan Poe, Tom Clancy. He made a map with his silverware to show how easy it is to get around. (Another catchphrase the city is pushing: “In Baltimore, you’re two feet away from everything.”)

The “Cry-Baby” campaign will include a microsite on Baltimore.org, directing visitors to John Waters hot spots—“stores he likes, bars he frequents,” Rogers said. While it may seem odd that Waters, whose most indelible screen image of Baltimore may be of a drag queen eating dog feces, has become the city’s poster boy, he “encapsulates what Baltimore is all about,” Noonan insisted. “Baltimore has a quirkiness to it,” he explained. “You can go down to Lithuanian Hall for the Night of 100 Elvises, then to Hampden for the HonFest, where you’re gonna want to wear your spandex and your beehive hairdo. We’re a city that likes to poke fun at itself.”

“A term you hear quite often is ‘authentic,’ ” Rogers said.

The executives headed over to the theatre. At a reception afterward, they talked about locations in the show that they had recognized: Roland Avenue, the Maryland Penitentiary. (“They escaped right through my neighborhood!”) No one was sure whether Turkey Point, the Drapes’ hangout, was a real place, but Noonan looked it up on his BlackBerry and found out that it is. Nancy Hinds, the association’s vice-president of public affairs, who has lived in Baltimore her entire life, brought up Hutzler’s department store, where one of the musical numbers takes place. She and her sister, she said, used to go there as children and eat at the lunch counter. It doesn’t exist anymore—the area has been redeveloped, and is now the site of a sports complex, chain stores, and a 2,280-seat theatre, where “Hairspray” played not long ago.

“It was fun to go see ‘Hairspray’ in Baltimore,” Noonan said. “Everybody was cheering and yelling. On the line ‘ You’ve won a two-year scholarship to Essex Community College,’ the whole audience laughed.”

Hinds grinned. “If you’re not a local, you wouldn’t get it.” ♦

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