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The Confessor: Dennis Logan is the unassuming Pittsburgh detective who gets murder suspects to speak the unspeakable
Sunday, October 29, 2000 By Michael A. Fuoco, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Through force of will, Dennis Logan chased away the vision relentlessly gnawing at him.
Maybe tomorrow, perhaps the next day, possibly the day after that would be the right time to mourn for Scott Drake. But on this September day, only 24 hours since the 11-year-old's mutilated body was discovered, the veteran Pittsburgh homicide detective could not -- would not -- allow the specter of a murdered child in a North Side lot cloud his focus.
He had a job to do, another interview with a potential suspect to conduct. Should it begin to bear fruit, any display of emotion would prevent him from doing what he does better than anyone else -- persuading a killer to give a human voice to his own inhumanity
There would be time to remember Scott Drake, but not now, not as he opened the door to Interview Room No. 2 in the homicide squad offices, smiled and greeted the bearded, disheveled, homeless man sitting at the metal table.
"I'm Detective Logan."
"I'm Joe Cornelius," the man responded, smiling and shaking hands with the detective.
Are these the hands that strangled the life out of a defenseless child? Logan wondered. Are these the eyes of a killer?
Eighteen hours later, he would know. But the journey to that revelation began long before then, decades before he became a homicide detective, when his life was first touched by murder.
Searching for answers
Logan, who turned 40 this month, can easily recall the moment. In his mind, he can see the black and white 12-inch television, can hear the reporter's voice saying, "Betty Jo Harbor, dead at age 10."
He was 12 then, visiting a cousin in the Morgan housing complex in South Fayette. Betty Jo Harbor was his "puppy love" girlfriend.
But that can't be her, he thought, even as the TV report showed the charred ruins of her firebombed home, not far from the Logan family apartment in St. Clair Village, a public housing complex near Arlington.
Even today, 28 years later, Logan still shakes his head in disbelief.
"I remember that feeling of who, what, when and why. First of all, 'Why?'" he recalled. "It wasn't my sister, it wasn't my mother but that pain...it's hard to describe.
"When someone dies, it's one thing. When someone is murdered, it's different."
Years later, while Logan was attending the Pittsburgh Police Academy, a homicide detective who had investigated the Harbor killings -- the girl's brother was also killed -- referred to it in a lecture. Logan approached the instructor in the hallway to tell him of his connection to the case.
The instructor was Cmdr. Ronald Freeman. Five years later, he would become Logan's mentor in the homicide squad.
The encounter -- hearing how the case was solved, listening to the way Freeman and other detectives doggedly pursued leads -- deeply affected the police recruit. He knew firsthand the balm an arrest can bring to those grieving.
"I'm not sure an arrest gives you closure but it gives you an answer. The wound is always going to be open but at least you can stop looking around because otherwise you're always wondering 'Was it him? Or him?'"
An intimate encounter
In the hours before he first met Cornelius on Tuesday, Sept. 26, a day that was to have been the start of a week's vacation, Logan and other city, county, state and FBI investigators involved in the Scott Drake case met to discuss their progress -- or lack of it.
Some North Side regulars had already been questioned that day, among them Cornelius, 47, who had been known to panhandle in the area. All had denied having had any encounter with Scott on Sunday evening when the boy disappeared.
But after Cornelius was taken back to his "home" -- the porch of an abandoned house in Beechview -- witnesses including an off-duty Pittsburgh police officer called the homicide squad to report having seen Cornelius and Scott together at 7 p.m. on East Ohio Street on the day in question. And a tow truck driver said he saw Cornelius emerge later that evening from the lot where the child's nude and mutilated body was found Monday night.
Detectives decided to bring Cornelius in for another chat, this time with Logan, the squad's most skillful interviewer.
Logan didn't have a strong feeling one way or the other about Cornelius when he sat down in the stark 10-by-10 interview room--windowless and bare with the exception of a table and three mismatched chairs. Witnesses, however well-intentioned, can be wrong. On the other hand, if the witnesses were right -- and the off-duty officer had said he knew both Cornelius and Scott by sight -- why would Cornelius deny having seen Scott if he had done nothing more than talk with the child?
Other than having Cornelius sign a rights waiver to speak with him, Logan initially avoided bringing up the Drake case. As he always does in his interviews, he needed to get the measure of the man, to see the best way to get him talking, to develop an intimacy that would allow Cornelius, if he were indeed the killer, to tell him what he had done, to reveal to him something he had revealed to no one else.
These encounters are not the brow-beatings seen on TV shows like "NYPD Blue." Instead, they are subtle, careful, seductive. More one-night stand than scared straight.
What Logan wanted to know was: "Did you kill Scott Drake?" What he said was: "Did you watch the Steelers game Sunday?"
Cornelius, gangly and unkempt, and Logan, muscular and professionally attired, chatted like two men shooting the breeze over beers. They talked about the Steelers' loss two days earlier to Tennessee, about women, about Cornelius' drinking and homelessness, about his life.
At first, they were separated by the table but Logan soon moved his chair and got close to Cornelius. A quiet, low-keyed man who speaks softly in normal conversation, Logan lowered his tone even more, causing the men to move even closer together, bonding them by proximity if not yet by intimacy. Logan's head was bowed as he listened, appearing to be priest to a penitent.
Cornelius was talkative and polite, cooperative and jovial, intelligent and well-informed about current events. Logan deftly steered the conversation to the Drake case. Cornelius wouldn't bite -- he hadn't seen the child. He was adamant.
He said that on that Sunday he had taken the T from Beechview to Downtown, had walked across the Ninth Street Bridge to the North Side and had gone to a bar to drink during the Steelers game. Afterward, he said, he went right home.
No, he said, he had had no contact with Scott Drake.
OK, Logan responded with a smile, not yet sure whether to believe him. He directed the conversation to unrelated subjects, allowing him to gain more insight into Cornelius.
After the men talked for about 90 minutes, Logan decided to call it a night. He was getting tired and so was Cornelius.
And, besides, Logan knew where he would find him the next day. Detectives had learned that Cornelius was wanted for not appearing at a hearing on a charge of obstructing traffic by panhandling on East Ohio Street, so he would be spending the night in the county jail. Moreover, he knew Cornelius, a heavy drinker, would not have the opportunity to have a drink beforehand.
Logan asked if they could talk again the next day, Wednesday. Cornelius remained upbeat even knowing he would be going to jail.
"C'mon down," he said with a chuckle. "Where am I going to go?"
Forging a life and career
In a different context, in a different era, Logan had asked himself the same question.
"Where am I going to go?"
He had just graduated from Carrick High School, class of '78, where he had been a football and track star. He married his high school sweetheart, Dayle, and they had had a baby daughter, Denytra.
Despite those major life changes, he hadn't gone far -- still in the housing project, only across the street from the St. Clair Village unit where he and six siblings had been raised by their mother, Lucille. She was a strong woman who wouldn't allow her children to use poverty or the absence of a father as excuses not to succeed. Hers was the biggest influence on his life.
"She made us understand that no matter how poor you are, you can clean your body, you can present yourself much better than your surroundings suggest," Logan said of his mother, who died in 1991.
"She made sure you respected yourself. Respect yourself and people around you and you won't have too many problems."
Lucille chose Carrick as a high school for her children over South because Carrick had more white students. She believed if her children were going to succeed in life they would have to interact with a white majority.
At the time, Logan would look at the houses that surrounded St. Clair Village, private homes that weren't that fancy but to the young man seemed as unattainable as those in Beverly Hills. He dreamed of having his own home, of having his own yard.
Committed to supporting his family, to moving them out of poverty, Logan took every test for every apprenticeship he could find. He worked at a number of jobs including as a plumber's apprentice -- and hated it. But he kept doing it. He had to.
A second daughter, Da'Keya was born in 1981, the same year he took the test for the Pittsburgh Police Bureau.
And then murder touched his life again. A 9-year-old St. Clair Village girl, Olivia Rice, was reported missing. Sixteen days later, her body was found. A St. Clair Village man was charged in the killing.
That cinched it.
"I have to get my kids out of here," he thought. "I have to."
Scraping together enough money from his jobs, he moved his family to a house in Knoxville. It wasn't Beverly Hills but it would do.
And then, in 1983, the police bureau called.
A steady job. Good pay and benefits.
Logan didn't squander the opportunity. He rose from uniformed officer to detective, first in burglary -- where he began to hone his interviewing skills -- and then, in 1988, in homicide, considered throughout the country's police departments as the elite unit.
In homicide, his skill at interviewing came to the fore one day in March 1991 -- his first day back on the job after the death of his mother. Several other detectives had talked to a man suspected of killing a woman in front of her 3-year-old child. The man wouldn't talk and Logan, the newest detective in the squad, was assigned to drive him back to jail.
But before doing so, Logan engaged the suspect in a conversation. Shortly thereafter, the man confessed to Logan how he had killed the woman. Logan's supervisors, including Freeman, the squad's commander, took note.
He began to get more and more assignments to interview suspects. As his family grew -- a son, Dennis Jr., was born in 1992 -- so, too, did his professional stature. Eventually, he became the squad's pre-eminent interviewer.
Modest by nature, Logan attributes his interviewing skills to Freeman, also an expert in the field. Freeman will have none of that. In short, he feels Logan is the best interviewer he's ever met.
"You can teach some of it, but not to the degree that he's developed his expertise," Freeman said. "I don't know where it comes from. It comes from somewhere within."
Stunning information
Hours after he bid Cornelius good-bye, Logan was driving from the Investigations Branch in East Liberty to his home in the South Hills. In the quiet of the car, the events of the last few days began to creep into his consciousness.
A child strangled. His genitalia cut off. How could such a crime happen in Pittsburgh? Who could have done this? Is it Cornelius? Could it be someone from out of state who had attended the Steelers game and then gotten on the interstate near where the body was found?
He fought the urge to think of Scott Drake, to picture his face, to acknowledge his suffering. Later, he kept thinking, later. His focus needed to remain sharp.
But even at his home, usually his sanctuary from the worst the world has to offer, Logan couldn't escape the case. Dayle was awake and when he climbed into bed she commented that he smelled of smoke.
"I was talking to some guy in the interview room and he smoked like crazy," Logan explained.
Dayle nodded. "I heard on the news that homicide was talking to some homeless guys and I thought it would be you."
"What?"
"They were talking about the case -- that the victim's genitalia were cut off and they were missing and his abdomen was cut."
Logan was stunned. He hadn't known that such pertinent details of the crime had been released to the media. As the detective most likely to interview suspects, he knew it would make his job that much harder because he needed a suspect to reveal to him specifics of a crime that only a killer would know. He didn't want someone seeking perverse notoriety simply reciting to him details that had already been reported.
But after quizzing Dayle about the content of the TV report, Logan realized there were some key details that hadn't been made public, among them the fact that Scott's pants were missing, the exact position of the silver bicycle he had been riding and specifics about what had been done to the body.
Those would be crucial to his interviews. As he drifted off to sleep at 3 a.m. he hoped they would remain secrets until the killer told them to him.
A moment of fear
After awaking at 6:30 a.m., Logan got Dennis Jr. off to school, savoring the minutes he could spend with his 8-year-old son after not seeing him for more than a day because of the investigation.
Before he could return to the Drake case he had to testify in a murder trial at the county courthouse. There he met Detective Richard McDonald, his partner, friend and confidant. If Logan is considered the star interviewer of the squad, McDonald, 31, is seen as a fast rising star in his own right.
Logan and McDonald are the squad's "closers" -- the detectives who close cases with confessions.
They gladly accept their roles but say every homicide investigation is a team effort. Some detectives excel at canvassing, others at forensics and some at finding those who don't want to be found. Their skills happen to be interviewing.
They hoped all of that would fall into place in the Drake case. But when they didn't get out of the trial until 1:30 p.m., it appeared the breaks weren't going their way -- a telephone check with the jail indicated Cornelius had been set free.
Logan's heart sank. "I blew it. I blew it," he thought to himself as he pleaded with a guard on the other end of the line to check again. When the guard returned to the line, he reported that Cornelius was there after all.
The detectives were relieved. They weren't yet sure he was their guy, but if he were, they sure didn't want him on the street.
They took off for the jail to pick up Cornelius and drive him back to the station.
Death in East Hills
Logan tries desperately to separate his work and his life but two years ago they merged in an East Hills house.
Near the end of the 4 to 12 shift, homicide detectives were requested by uniformed officers to investigate the unexplained death of a man in his girlfriend's home. Logan was the "initial" on the case, the detective in charge of the investigation. He asked fellow homicide detectives Jill Smallwood and Cynthia Smith to conduct interviews.
"I'll take the body," he told them.
Logan pulled off the sheet covering the body lying on the floor and felt a sinking feeling. The face looked familiar but he wasn't sure who it was because of tubes sticking in the man's mouth, left there by medics who had tried to save his life.
For some reason, he turned to his left and looked at a picture on the mantle. It was a photograph of his lifelong friend Joe Davis. He looked back at the body, then back at the picture.
"Is this Joe Davis?" he asked no one in particular.
"Yes, that's him," someone responded.
Logan was stunned. His biggest fear -- that he would be called to investigate the death of someone he knew -- had been realized. It was like finding a family member.
He hadn't seen Davis for several years, but they had been inseparable from middle school through Carrick High School, where Davis had been the guard who blocked for Logan, the star tailback. Everything they did in those days, they did together.
Davis had moved out of state and then back to Pittsburgh. Now, Logan was investigating his death.
The subsequent investigation and autopsy showed that Davis hadn't been killed -- he had had complications from diabetes -- but for Logan, the experience only solidified his protective nature.
Just ask his daughters. They're successful young women attending prestigious universities -- Denytra is a senior majoring in pre-law, and Da'Keya is a sophomore studying to be a pediatric physician -- but their father still hovers when they're back home.
"As soon as I come home from school I hear, 'Well, there's been shootings in such and such a place, so you can't go here, you can't go there,'" Da'Keya recounted with a laugh.
A strategy found
On the way to the Investigations Branch in the unmarked police car, not a word was spoken about the Drake case. Logan, who was driving, and McDonald and Cornelius, both in the back seat, talked about football and women, about how Cornelius had gotten to this point in his life. Again, Cornelius was jovial and talkative, seemingly without a care in the world.
Was he hungry? the detectives asked.
He was, so the trio stopped at McDonald's on Penn Circle West and grabbed some food for Cornelius. He ordered a Quarter Pounder with cheese, fries and a Coke and Super Sized it. Next door, in the Investigations Branch, Cornelius was taken to the third-floor homicide squad offices and again was put into Interview Room No. 2.
McDonald returned to the trial. Cornelius ate his burger. And Logan thought about how next to approach him. Head down, hands in his suit pockets, he paced around the homicide squad room, crowded with the investigators working the case. How should he get the conversation going today? How could he find out if Cornelius was being truthful or evasive?
And then it hit him.
Painful memories
Logan's success at getting killers to "flip," or confess, has come at a cost.
On the witness stand, he is regularly accused of lying by defense attorneys whose clients have recanted their confessions.
And while he is proud of the confessions he has gotten, he dwells on the ones he didn't get. Sometimes he has run into murder suspects who are walking the streets because he couldn't persuade them to talk. They may smirk but Logan doesn't respond, confident that justice will prevail somehow, some day.
For different reasons, he also steers clear of the families and friends of homicide victims when he spots them in malls, theaters or on the street. While he may have solved their loved one's case and provided them some closure, he feels that seeing him only will bring back their most horrible memory.
"It's like I'm the grim reaper," he said.
Pictures worth 1,000 words
Logan opened the door to the interview room and handed Cornelius another paper that explained his rights. Cornelius signed that he understood his rights and waived them. Then Logan sat close and in a low voice asked how he liked his food. It was 2:30 p.m.
"We talked yesterday and you know I checked out everything you told me," Logan said, looking for a response.
"Hmm-hmm," Cornelius said, finishing his meal.
Then Logan began his strategy which was based on Cornelius' extensive knowledge of local news.
"You know about the cameras they put up on East Ohio Street," Logan began. "There are cameras everywhere. You'd be surprised the things I can find out about different people."
"They're in the business district," Cornelius shot back.
The dynamic had changed. No longer jocular, Cornelius now was solemn. He slouched in his seat. His face sagged and went blank.
Logan didn't miss a beat -- even though he was bluffing.
"They're not just in the business district," he said. "Do you think we're going to tell you where we're pointing the cameras? There's that camera up on Channel 11 Hill. You can see Downtown Pittsburgh, the North Hills and anything in between."
A pause. Would he begin to change his story?
"Well, I did stay after the game and panhandled on East Ohio Street for awhile and then I caught the T and went home."
Logan didn't dare blink or change his expression in any way.
"But you didn't say that yesterday," he said matter-of-factly. "But don't worry about it because we're here to get this straightened out."
The tree was teetering. Logan knew it would take more for it to topple. All Cornelius had said to that point was that he didn't go straight home. An inconsistency, yes, but far from an admission of guilt. Logan needed more.
"You knew I was going to go back to PAT and interview every driver who was on the T. You're a distinctive looking guy. If you get on my T, I'm going to notice you, right?"
"Well, you're right."
"What do you think I found out?"
Cornelius hesitated. And then: "I didn't take the T home."
There it was, right out there, a second lie revealed. Both men knew it. And even though it hadn't yet been said, Logan now strongly suspected that there was but one reason for such inconsistencies.
Still, he only nodded his head in reassurance. He patted Cornelius on the knee.
"Man, don't worry about it. We're here to clear this up," he gently said. "I know you're embarrassed about what happened. All I want you to do is to tell me the truth. I know the truth."
"I was with that kid," Cornelius said. Logan fought the urge to react.
Cornelius paused for a time. He looked right into Logan's eyes, only a foot away.
"I didn't mean to kill that kid."
Coldly, matter-of-factly, to the point. Cornelius never blinked.
"I got you!" Logan thought. Softly, in a sympathetic voice, he said only, "OK. You understand you're under arrest."
It was no surprise to Cornelius. The time was 3:15 p.m., 45 minutes after they had begun that day's discussion.
"Let's go on from here," Logan said. "You don't look like a bad guy to me but we got to talk about this. You've got to be honest."
As happy as he was to get to this point, Logan could show no such emotion. He couldn't let his guard down. He had to have Cornelius tell him exactly what he had done. Disgust for the killer, sympathy for the victim wouldn't accomplish that. Instead, he had to continue to feign understanding and sympathy for a man who had just admitted killing a child.
He needed Cornelius to tell him specific details of the killing that only the killer would know. Only by having Cornelius speak the unspeakable would Logan be certain that he had the right man.
"I know everything that happened," Logan said. "I want to hear it from you to make sure you're being honest with me."
Cornelius said he strangled Scott and cut off his genitalia. But the story was too generic, the details those that had been reported by the media. It was the situation Logan had worried about early that morning when his wife told him about the TV report.
He commended Cornelius for his honesty but told him he needed more. He needed specific details, he said. Spare nothing, he told him.
Cornelius did just that over the next 30 minutes.
Slowly and in detail he described how he had encountered Scott that Sunday,, gave him $5 for sex and had gone into the lot with him. He described how and where Scott had put down his bike. That's key, Logan thought to himself, never changing his expression, because only the killer would know that.
Cornelius continued. He said they had engaged in sex acts, and, when he thought Scott was going to steal his black $4.99 AM-FM radio, he knocked the child to the ground, straddled him and strangled him. And then he took back the $5.
Cornelius' voice never cracked, never showed any emotion. He had expressed so much pain and regret when he talked about a girlfriend who died of cancer, Logan thought, but now, as he recounted a child's killing, no emotion was surfacing.
Cornelius continued, explaining how he then went to a bar and drank to think about what to do. How he got the idea to make it appear to be the work of a pedophile by stripping Scott, laying him on his back with his hands behind him, cutting off the child's genitalia and slicing open his abdomen.
And how he wiped the blood from his hands on Scott's pants and put them, the genitalia and the radio in a bag that he tossed off the Ninth Street Bridge.
The pants! Logan thought. The pants! Nothing about the pants had been revealed to the media. How would Cornelius know they were missing if he hadn't been there?
Logan never flinched. He continued to look deep into Cornelius' eyes, now certain they were those of a killer.
Another witness
Freeman worked the phone in the homicide squad room, unaware of how Logan was doing behind a closed door only 10 feet away.
Near Freeman's left hand was the ledger in which all homicide cases are recorded, opened to the page listing the Scott Drake case -- H-31-00, the city's 31st homicide of 2000. Soon, the empty space under the category "Suspect" would be filled in. But not just yet.
Logan walked out of the interview room and the dozens of detectives in the squad room snapped their heads to see if anything had happened. Logan remained inscrutable as he approached Freeman. He wanted another witness to hear Cornelius confess.
"He's giving it up," Logan said quietly to Freeman. The men walked to a nearby hallway for privacy. There, Logan explained what had happened, that he wanted Freeman as a witness.
"Nice job, Denny," Freeman said softly, consciously understating his emotion at the moment because now he, too, had to face Cornelius.
The detectives went back in the room and Cornelius told his story again, adding that he first met Scott the previous day and paid him $5 for a sex act. This time, Logan took notes and Cornelius read and signed them.
And then he agreed to tell his story one more time, this time confessing to the same information on audio tape, adding only that after he killed Scott he tried to revive him with CPR.
At 6:41 p.m., Cornelius was arraigned at the coroner's office. The charge: Homicide in the death of Scott Drake.
The mourning after
Eight hours later, during the ride home, Logan could think of nothing but Scott Drake.
Since joining the homicide squad, he had been involved in more than 600 investigations of killings. All were troubling in their own way, but some had affected him more than others. This was one of them.
He was pleased to have gotten the confession, of course, but every time he thought of it he was sickened by how coldly, how matter-of-factly Cornelius had described the brutality.
Sometimes killers cry when they confess. Most say they're sorry for what they've done -- even if they don't mean it. But not Cornelius. The lack of remorse, of any emotion related to the crime, was frightening to Logan.
How much more frightening had it been to Scott? Logan shuddered at the thought of it -- Cornelius straddling the child, putting his hands -- the ones he had shaken -- around the boy's neck.
Logan pictured the people and buses and cars on East Ohio Street going about their business only 150 feet away from where Scott struggled with a man more than twice his size.
And then he flashed upon Cornelius' eyes -- the eyes that the petrified child had gazed into as he died, the eyes he himself stared deeply into only hours before.
He thought of how terrified Scott must have been.
The tears came. He no longer had to fight them.
Now. Now was the time to mourn for Scott Drake.
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