The Widow, the Murderer, and the Accessory

Abstract

The Widow, the Murderer, and the Accessory K. Emily Bond (bio) Shortly before 11:00 p.m. on July 22, 2003, Dr. Thomas Gay, a sixty-one-year-old respected family physician, was just returning from work. He pulled his silver Lincoln Continental into the driveway of his stately brick home in the Mitchellville area of Prince George's County, Maryland, got out, and closed the door. When he turned, he encountered Arthur Royal, nineteen, standing a few feet away with his finger on the trigger of a .22 caliber semiautomatic handgun. A few seconds passed. Arthur pulled the trigger, shooting Dr. Gay in the face before robbing him, careful to avoid the blood pooling underneath his twisted frame. Moments after Arthur had fled in a car driven by his friend, Christopher Kargbo, Dr. Gay's cell phone began to ring on the ground next to him. It was a call from his wife, oblivious to what had just happened, waiting for him inside. Ten minutes later, Dr. Gay's son Tommy returned home. He remained sitting in his car for a moment, finishing a cigarette, while an announcer reminded him that he was listening to WPGC 95.5 FM. He clicked the radio off, exited the car, and walked toward the garage, where he heard the beep of his mother's missed call and the strange, rhythmic purr of what sounded like his father's snores. But what Tommy heard was his obstructed breathing, for the bullet had shattered Dr. Gay's nasal cavity and burrowed its way into his brain. Fifteen minutes later, Dr. Gay's American Express card was used to buy sneakers, sports jerseys, and stereo equipment on Footlocker.com and SoundDomain.com. Three [End Page 117] days later his organs were harvested, and he was pronounced dead. Thirteen days later, Arthur and Chris were arrested and charged with murder. Dr. Gay never regained consciousness, the weapon was never found, and his wallet was set alight, its ashes tossed into a garbage can between here and the never-promised land. Jessup Correctional Institute is where Maryland sends some of its worst offenders. For a ten-minute stretch along I-95 (driving north from Washington or south from Baltimore), highway signs tick off its approach until you pass exit 41 and it's gone. Fifteen miles north of Mitchellville and just as many miles from the Beltway, Jessup is far from the edge of the world, but it's where they've been damned—the murderers, rapists, molesters, crack-cocaine and heroin dealers—to sit, stand, sleep, and wait. Arthur Royal is here, too. When I met him in 2008, he was twenty-four years old, although his juvenile face betrayed his age and life sentence. He wore his hair in freshly braided cornrows that fell beneath his shoulders, almost reaching the middle of his back. It had been five years since he shot Thomas Gay in the face, leaving the doctor brain dead at his garage door. Five years, and there was little evidence that prison had profoundly changed him, save for the way he shifted in his chair like a nervous runt in the pound. The change also presented itself in the occasional hardening of his eyes as if recalling a distant humiliation or conjuring up some perverse fantasy, a look that diminished as suddenly as it settled in. My first visit was announced, and he had prepared accordingly; my second visit was not, and he emitted an unlaundered odor that smelled both soiled and sweet. Like everyone else, he wears blue-and-white prison-issue garb, the same color scheme mothers use to swaddle their baby boys. But not everyone wears it the same. The newcomers, trying to approximate something more akin to street style, like to wear it big and loose: baby-blue buttondowns half-untucked over white tank tops; baby-blue baggy shorts slung low, cutting off at midcalf; white knee socks pulled up under white hightop sneakers. The old-timers, on the other hand, wear it like workmen. These are the men who have gone feeble and gray behind bars. Entire wars, elections, and sex scandals pass them while they exist...