Return to Lex Street

Some crimes shouldn't be forgotten.

by Brian Hickey

You corner boys are pretty bad-ass, right? So tough that you wake up, tuck that piece into your waistband and guard corners so your crew can sling bags of God knows what to God knows who. So ballsy that you laugh at the passing cops since you know all about their patrol patterns and pathetic homicide clearance rates. So bulletproof that you'll open fire anywhere, anytime, with little hesitation since you damn well know ain't nobody who's gonna start snitchin' on you.

So you might think.

But Sacon Youk and Hezekiah Thomas have a message for those ears: You ain't tough, ballsy, bulletproof or bad-ass. In fact, you ain't shit in the eyes of a system that'll swallow you whole and spit what's left of you out onto death row without so much a pang of remorse. Whether you deserve it or not.

Yes, it could be you, just as easily as it was "Con" and "Hez," who almost took a lethal needle to the arm for seven murders they didn't commit. Wrong place, wrong time? That doesn't even scrape the surface of a Lex Street Massacre saga that the Philadelphia justice system would just as soon leave in the realm of microfiche and settled lawsuits. That's why two of four men who'd been through their judicial life-or-death wringer went back to the scene of the biggest mass murder in city history last week.

The 800 block of North Lex — near 44th and Lancaster — couldn't have looked any more different than it did the night of Dec. 28, 2000. Once dotted with crumbling properties, it's undergone a PHA whitewashing. The fetid crack den in which a petty beef became an epic slaughter has been razed and replaced by a two-story home. Its porch is blocked off by a white picket fence. The garden has a spigot to water the flowers. But no initiative can erase the memories and ghosts.

As they scan the dramatic shift of scenery with some level of surprise, the men's wounds remain open. The only way to stitch them shut, they say as birds chirp and a boy rides a brand-new bike along a brand-new sidewalk, is to make sure the same thing doesn't happen to somebody else. Somebody whose family couldn't surrender their tax refunds, host fundraising dinners and find the collateral to pay an attorney, for instance.

"I'm passionate about this story being told," explains Con, 26. "Some people thought their reputations were more important than our lives."

Sporting designer-brand glasses and a button-up short-sleeve shirt, he moved out past Royersford to escape the troubles (read: bullets and jealousy) that inevitably find anybody in the 'hood when they pull down a highly publicized $475,000 settlement. This, because the city was keen to settle after dogged lawyering and Theresa Conroy's beyond-the-call reporting at the Daily News made prosecutors realize their case was built on a shaky witness and a lock-someone-up-now mentality thanks to the political pressure. Oh yeah — They also had a confession from somebody else, who'd later plead out.

"Did I think I was done for?" Con asks. "Absolutely."

Hez, a lanky 30-year-old with squinted eyes, moved even further away to central Florida. Potential employers still gingerly show him the door when they look into his past. That adds to the irony of what he says next.

"This is something that I don't want people to forget," he says. "But a lot of people have already forgotten."

They may start remembering soon. Having each served 20 months before being exonerated without an apology — both still want one from Lynne Abraham — they were in town to mark Monday's release of The Lex St. Massacre. It's a straightforward book by South Philly author Antonne M. Jones —complete with a 20-minute DVD documentary —that reads like an extended police-report narrative of the whole saga.

Jones realizes that as a young black man who also frequented places like 811 N. Lex, it could've easily been him. He tells this story not just for Con, Hez, Jermel Lewis and Quiante Perrin, but also for victims who have an even smaller place in our collective memories.

"Their families are still asking me what happened. They still don't know what to believe," says Jones, as several of those relatives watched from across Lex. "There are still too many questions left unanswered."

Still, they remain thankful and acknowledge all cops aren't dirty: "I want to thank the good ones who stepped up to the plate, even though I don't know who they are," says Hez.

But, Con admits, "I still get the shakes if a cop car pulls up behind me. In the back of my mind, once they get me, there's no telling if I'm coming out." He then cautions residents, "When you see somebody on the news, don't automatically think they're guilty."

Which brings us back to the corner boys, particularly those who view the fact that they walked free as a sign that you can get away with murder.

"Look at the murder rate today, it's going up and up. These kids need a wake-up call and we can be that wake-up call," Hez says. "What's in the dark comes out into the light. God's not going to let it go down like that. You are not going to get away with it."

Neither should the city.

(hickey@citypaper.net)