“We don’t give a damn how they do it in Minneapolis-St. Paul!” : William “Black Crow” Ringler-Johnson, Jr.
William “Black Crow” Ringler-Johnson, Jr.
William “Black Crow” Ringler-Johnson, Jr. didn’t put much stock in reports of dead bodies. Radissonville had a number of them every year but they were mostly from automobile accidents or drug overdoses. There had been a few shoot-‘em-ups back in the 1930s, one that left a bank guard dead — or was it two? — but other than that the last bona fide homicide had been a drug deal gone bad in Duluth and the dying gangbanger had made it across the city line into Radissonville. Almost. The gangbanger died against a building that stretched across the city line. The corpse’s feet were in Radissonville so the Duluth Sheriff said, just like in football, the feet were “in bounds” which made the cadaver Radissonville property.
The name William “Black Crow” Ringler-Johnson, Jr. could lead one to assume that he was of Negro and Indian stock. This was what the City Council of Radissonville thought when he had been hired in absentia. The City Council was in error. He was lily white as was his father, William Johnson, Sr. His wife was the former Josephine Ringler, a feminist activist from Duluth who wanted to make absolutely, positively clear that the family name Ringler was not going to vanish from the face of the earth just because she had three siblings, all sisters. It had been her family that had had pressed for William, Jr. to be hired as the Radissonville Chief of Police.
The American roots of William, Jr. were soggy. At some long-forgotten date in the 1800s at least one ancestor had been aboard a ship bound for Virginia when it landed unexpectedly off the coast of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The landing, unfortunately for the first Johnson in America, had been in several hundred feet of saltwater. Fortunately the ship had broken apart in a storm and there were more than enough floating timbers for him to make it ashore. Once on dry land he married into the population of pirates and smugglers and his progeny intermarried, in sequence, Confederate deserters, AWOL Union soldiers, gun runners, rum runners, moonshiners and other reputable disreputable folks who would only be considered the cream of society on an island like Hatteras. Escaped slaves resided on the next island to the south, Ocracoke, and the only Indians were the locals who dressed in loincloths for the annual Jamestown revival, a tourist attraction in Manteo since the 1930s.
William, Jr. had left Buxton after high school and went to Yosemite University in California where he majored in law enforcement and coeds. It was there he met Josephine Ringler who was getting her Master’s in Social Work. The pair was hired right out of college to work on a joint venture between a Blackfoot nonprofit in Montana and a Navajo health collective in New Mexico. Funded by a multi-ethnic grant from the federal government, the focus of the work was to use a portion of the gambling profits from an intertribal gaming venture to cure substance abuse. William was hired as a tribal police employee and Josephine as a social worker. William was required to adopt a Native sobriquet which he did, “Black Crow.” That name was duly placed on his records and five years later after he had risen to Deputy Tribal Police Chief — in a force of four — he applied for the job of Chief of Police of Radissonville, a force of 12. The name “Black Crow” was on his commendations and letters of reference, thus the sobriquet arrived in Radissonville ahead of him and was placed on all legal documents, business cards and his desk plaque.
William “Black Crow” Ringler-Johnson, Jr. had been on the job in Radissonville for a little more than two years when the desiccated cadaver of John Doe landed on his desk, metaphorically speaking. The body had been discovered by a salvage crew that was clearing away piles of garbage from the boiler room of one of the dilapidated structures in advance of destruction to clear the way for the construction of a new legislative office building. The coroner’s report was succinct. The body was male, Native American, 5’2” in height. Living, the individual weighed in the neighborhood of 90 pounds. His eyes were blue, hair brown and he had a scar on his right arm running from the shoulder half-way to the elbow. He had been about 50 at the time of death. His organs were unremarkable and there was no sign of drug use. He had been in good health at the time of his death though he had significant tooth decay and showed signs of malnutrition. Both hands were missing along with a significant portion of his brain which had been blasted out of the back of his skull by a large caliber weapon, most likely a .357 pistol. The autopsy had a forensic crime scene analysis attached which stated that there had been a significant blood splatter pattern where the body had been found proving that the boiler room was the scene of the crime. The hands had been removed long after the time of death. The level of decay was consistent with body lying in state for at least a year. No identification was found with the body. The only clue to his identity was a tattoo which read “An Loc 1972.”
An Loc meant zero to “Black Crow.” But then again he had been born in 1976. His parents had not even been married in 1972. He didn’t have much to go on. He had a body which had been lying in an abandoned building for at least a year with no fingerprints because it had no hands. There were six dozen missing males of that build, age and ethnic persuasion in the Dodge/Radissonville/Duluth area along and ten times that many in the combined northern Minnesota/Wisconsin database.
Black Crow punched up An Loc on Google and found it referred to a 66-day battle in Vietnam 90 miles north of a city then-called Saigon and now-called Ho Chi Minh City. It had been a brutal campaign. Three divisions of VPA (Vietnam People’s Army) and a contingent of Viet Cong, about 30,000, had hit An Loc and trapped about 7,500 American and ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) in the city. The American and ARVN forces were not only vastly outnumbered but they were also vastly outgunned. The VPA artillery was pounding the city at the rate of 7,000 shells a day — that was one artillery shell hitting the city every 12 seconds! The bombardment was so ferocious that no one ventured out of the bunkers. After a month the VPA and Viet Cong attempted an armed invasion of the city using tanks. The fighting was ferocious and enemy forces were only driven back by American air power. Operation Arclight required the use of almost every B-52 in Southeast Asia. America gave as good as it got. Over a 30-hour period, May 11 and May 12, 170 B-52s pounded VPA and Viet Cong positions. That was a bombing mission every 55 minutes. Reinforced by the First Airborne Brigade and the 81st Airborne Commando Group, the VPA and Viet Cong were finally pushed back into the jungle. But it had been a costly battle. American and ARVN losses were about 2,300 killed or missing. VPA and Viet Cong casualties were estimated at 10,000.
It wasn’t possible to get a list of the wounded from the An Loc campaign because it involved so many units — Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines — but it was possible to get names of the injured by date. For the entire theater. Fortunately the names could be linked to an ethnic status, height and weight. Unfortunately there were more than 12,500 injured men in all units from April 13 to July 20, 1972. Of these were 876 men labeled as “Indian” and 227 were 5’ 2” in height. 126 were between roughly 18 and 20. Of these, 87 were making payments to Social Security, receiving some form of retirement or had received Medicaid within the past year. Of the 39 left, 18 had deaths listed on Ancestry.com. Six popped up as being in federal prison. On a hunch, the names were run through AFIS and the DNA data base and got six hits. They were in state prisons. That left 9 none of whom had a driver’s license or identification card in Minnesota or Wisconsin.
But at least he had nine names. He then took the names to both Minnesota and Wisconsin state offices to see if any of the nine were on public assistance, receiving food stamps, in an assisted living home or long-term care facilities. He got zip. He checked with homeless shelters, free clinics, tribal assistance programs, drug rehabilitation programs, church dormitories and flop houses. He was told to bug off. This was not because he was being nosey but because homeless people did not use their real names. Or didn’t have any identification. Or couldn’t remember who they were. Or didn’t want anyone to find them. Or a hundred other reasons for dropping off the grid.
Perhaps the single most significant stumbling block to murder is that in law enforcement there must always be an “end of the story.” Vandals, scofflaws, burglars, exhibitionists and spray paint artists come and go. Some are arrested but most simply slip through the cracks in the legal establishment. Burglaries with few clues get “lost in the system,” but murders and rapes are solved or remain in “the cold files.” They never close.
So “Black Crow” did not have the option of putting the case of John Doe possible veteran of An Loc into a cold file.
And this case was red hot.
Following procedure, as a good cop he cordoned off the boiler room where the body had been discovered. The Radissonville forensic squad of one surveyed the scene, asked for help from the Radissonville FBI forensic team of one, and then sealed off the “crime scene.” That was the problem: a room of 501 square feet in the basement of a high rise was going to stop a $100 million Legislative Office Building. The crime had to be resolved before the crime scene could be released. And the structure could not come down until the crime scene was released. And the destruction of all 12 structures on Chippewa Meadows had to come down together. That was how it was budgeted.
The murder had to be resolved for the Chippewa Meadows project to move forward.
[This story is from Steven Levi’s “WE DON’T GIVE A DAMN HOW THEY DO IT IN MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL!” available on Kindle.]
