The Tulsa Police Department ended 2021 with more open homicide cases than is typical, but detectives say that’s due to the cases being anything but typical.
Sixty-two people were slain within the city limits during the year, and of those 62 cases, nine remain open. But Homicide Unit Lt. Brandon Watkins said detectives expect to whittle that figure down to three — maybe even two.
“We’re ending the year with a lot more open cases than we normally have, but we’re making pretty significant headway on most of them,” he said. “We only have a couple we don’t have solid, good suspects on. We’re just waiting for the return of evidence.”
Investigators were itching for a change after the onslaught of 2020, which saw the city rise near a three-decade high of homicides, but in a strange twist, 2021 has proven more difficult with fewer cases, Watkins said.
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The year’s total falls back in line with the city’s 10-year average of 64 homicides a year, versus 2020’s total of 79. The 83 homicides recorded in 2017 — “the record no one wants to break,” as Watkins has said — stands as Tulsa’s highest annual count in the past 30 years. The Tulsa World has kept record since 1989.
Consistently boasting one of the highest case clearance rates in the country, TPD’s Homicide Unit has been a pride of the department since Watkins joined 25 years ago, he said. But in the chaos of the past couple of calendar years, the number of unsolved cases has quietly ticked higher.
In 2019, there were two at year’s end: the homicides of Elza Riley and Benjamin Montgomery. The next year brought four: those of Marcus Jordan, Imran Mohammad, Angel Beach and Matthew Thomason.
And from 2021 came nine: Derek Brown, Johnathan Short, Marvin McCoy, Daquane Ratliff, Donnie Williams, Jimmie Fuller, Myles Stripling, Shermya Breed and Jennifer Hernandez.
Last year might not have ended with all its cases closed, Watkins said, but the unit will continue to work the open cases until they are solved.
“I always hope that every single one of them gets solved,” Watkins said. “I feel really good about seven of the nine, about getting some kind of resolution on them soon, but it’s hard to put a time frame on this stuff.”
He noted that the pressure to uphold the unit’s reputation must be weighed against “doing the right thing.”
“If you go out there and you take an eyewitness telling you someone did something, but you don’t have any corroborative evidence, the next thing you know you’re a Netflix documentary about what an awful job the Tulsa Police Department did,” Watkins said.
“We want to make sure that we get the right person when we arrest them, and sometimes that takes a little bit longer. This year has been one of those years.”
The cases
Of the nine outstanding cases, Watkins highlighted the three most likely to remain “whodunits.”
The first is that of Derek Brown. Brown, 49, was shot multiple times the morning of April 25 while getting into his car in the parking lot of the Crossings at Midtown, 5541 E. 47th Place. First responders found him by an apartment doorway about 5:30 a.m., and he died shortly afterward at a hospital, according to an autopsy report.
The second came after midnight May 30. Marvin McCoy III, 20, was a passenger in a car involved in a gang-related rolling gun battle in north Tulsa, Watkins said. The dispute ended with a crash near 200 E. Marshall St., where McCoy was found dead of gunshot wounds to his head and neck, according to autopsy records.
Gang-related cases are notoriously difficult to solve due to witness reticence, Watkins said, but in some cases, those involved don’t have an option. The driver of the car in which McCoy was found was shot in his head. Although alive, he is unable to communicate with detectives, Watkins said.
The third difficult case is that of Donnie Williams Sr., who was found bludgeoned on the side of the road in the 4200 block of North Peoria Avenue the morning of Aug. 29, a day short of his 39th birthday. Investigators believe his body was left there overnight.
Watkins said Williams’ case is “trending in the right direction” based on a recent return of profitable evidence, but “we need more.”
Anyone with information on any of the homicides is asked to contact Crime Stoppers at 918-596-COPS (2677), at bit.ly/TCStips or through the Tulsa Tips app, which can be downloaded from the Google Play or iTunes stores.
Tipsters may remain anonymous, and cash rewards are paid for information leading to arrests.
Those closed
For every case that remains open from 2021, detectives have closed about seven others.
Among other trends, the year saw several people left slain on streets, the deaths of two business owners in separate attempts to stop violence, and three deaths from horrific hostage situations.
Watkins remembered the closure of one of the street cases as the type that exemplifies why he’s proud to be a part of the TPD Homicide Unit.
Joseph Brown was found dead of a gunshot wound in the street in a well-off south Tulsa neighborhood about 11 a.m. on a Wednesday in August. Brayden Blough has since been arrested and charged in the 28-year-old’s death.
“You have basically a homeless man who is killed (allegedly) by a kid who … had his problems, over something stupid, and (Brown) was just dumped out in the middle of the street off in the middle of a neighborhood and left to die,” Watkins said.
“It was an incredibly tough case in which the Homicide Unit and the (Fugitive) Warrants Unit worked around the clock several days until we were able to identify our suspect and get him under arrest.”
The rank-and-file pitched in, too. A patrol officer “came up big” in finding an evidence-filled car dumped at a construction site, Watkins said.
Another plus of the year came with the addition of a detective position to the unit, increasing its strength to 10. Despite departmental staffing issues, the Homicide Unit is one that cannot be allowed to fall short-handed, Chief Wendell Franklin said in a recent interview.
Watkins said the reduction in caseload on individual detectives has already been felt, allowing for some catch-up on open cases even in the face of new ones.
“We have worked incredibly hard on every single case we’ve had this year, and these guys have not slowed down even an iota,” Watkins said of the unit’s detectives. “Check with me in six months, and we’ll have a different closure rate.”
