The city of Cleveland has many desirable features. But these tend to be overshadowed by the many macabre criminal stories that have become associated with it that have garnered national and international attention. There were the so-called headless torso serial killings involving at least twelve victims back in the 1930s. Elliot Ness, who later became famous as an FBI investigator was police chief at the time. Then there was the Sam Sheppard case in 1954 that was reportedly the basis of the hit TV series and film The Fugitive.
And then more recently we had the infamous Jeffrey Dahmer cannibalism case, Ariel Castro who kidnapped and kept three young women in a home in a densely populated area for a decade, and the case of Anthony Sowell who murdered and buried as many as eleven women in his house and back yard.
And then this past weekend we had the bizarre case of Steve Stephens, who on Sunday posted on Facebook a video of him randomly selecting an elderly man walking along the street and telling him that he was going to shoot him and then doing so.
Stephens selected his victim seemingly at random as the retired foundry worker looked for scrap aluminum cans along East 93rd Street in the city’s Glenville neighborhood, filmed the shooting and posted it on Facebook, police said.
In the video, Stephens approached Godwin and made him say the name of his own estranged girlfriend. The demand puzzled Godwin, who was shot at almost point-blank range with a pistol.
Stephens reportedly killed himself at around 11:00 am today following a brief pursuit by police after being spotted in a McDonald’s parking lot in Erie, PA. Given that he did not seem to have planned his escape in any great detail, I was surprised that he was able elude detection and capture for nearly 48 hours, even though he and the car he was driving were identified almost immediately.
This case is another example of the dangerous combination that exists when people who are frustrated and depressed and seek to lash out at the world have easy access to guns.
Stephens was described by others who knew him as a funny and quiet man. He had no criminal history outside of a handful of traffic infractions.
However, his financial troubles are far more serious.
Court records show Stephens declared bankruptcy in 2015 and has faced lawsuits from several creditors seeking to collect payments on credit card debt and rent. In January, he was evicted from his Euclid apartment.
Stephens also detailed his affinity for gambling in one of his multiple Facebook posts, stating that gambling had caused him to “lose everything” and left him “out of options.”
“The past year’s been really [expletive] up for me,” Stephens said in a video, shortly before police said he killed Godwin. “You know, being with [his estranged girlfriend] drove me crazy, started making me gamble. I lost everything. I lost everything I have. I don’t have [expletive]. I’m out of options.”
Stephens spent at least part of his childhood living at a house on East 85th Street in Cleveland. Neighbors who knew him then said Stephens did not make much of an impression, other than when he would walk outside with a large pet snake wrapped around his neck.
“As he got older, he got a little more weird, just his mannerisms and the way he carried himself,” neighbor Tony Henderson said.
The bizarre nature of this story garnered international attention and there are going to be plenty of debates about why people use social media to not just vent their frustrations to the world but to also broadcast their intentions about causing harm to others and then also the act of doing so, and whether the existence of this outlet actually encourages such actions.
I’m not surprised he killed himself. I didn’t expect this to end any other way.
I’m sure we can look forward to lots of penetrating deep thoughts from the media about the media’s involvement in crimes that play to the media. They’re really good at thinking and talking about that kind of thing.
Elliot Ness, who later became famous as an FBI investigator …
Tilt!
Ness started out his law enforcement career in the Treasury Department, then moved to the Justice Dept -- not the FBI, but a now-defunct ad-hoc agency called the Bureau of Prohibition.
The BoP sent him to Chicago, where he became famous, then (after Prohibition was Repealed) to Cincinnati, where he pursued moonshiners in three states (still for the Justice Dept). In 1935,
Eventually (a cynic would have to say “inevitably”, but there’s nobody like that around here, is there?), his reputation picked up some tarnish:
There goes Gloria Monday!
Eliot Ness was a real person‽
Learn something new…
Mano,
If Steven Stephens had not posted the murder of Godwin—along with what now looks like the false claim of other murders—to Facebook, we would most likely have never heard a peep out of the local press or the Cleveland Police Department as the death of Godwin was written off to just another Black-On-Black crime.
I would challenge anyone to recite the list of murders in Cleveland so far in 2017, none of which received the attention of Godwin’s.
Facebook is making lots of noise, but nothing will change there as Zuckerberg (and others) tap dance until the next attention grabbing squirrel!-moment comes along.
Stephens just taught the next generation of celebrity-seeking killers how to grab air time.
Cheers,
Jeff
Comments sections, comments sections, *groan* when will I ever learn to ignore them? (that’s rhetoric, ‘k?)
Over on _______news, comments on this story were about half expressing some version of “what a bad man Zuckerburg is for making money off this.” Some even went so far as to say that FB is responsible for the shooting; to which I say, FU buddy, I have no fondness for Facebook, but saying this is just denying that killers have agency.
Meanwhile, there are one or two posts about gun manufacturers being responsible for, and profiting from, human death.
For the gun makers to deny their culpability is a bit like cigarette manufacturers saying “we just make them, it’s not like we’re going into people’s homes and forcing them to actually light the damned things!”
“the”
P.S. What the hell is it with Cleveland?
I grew up, and now work, in a medium-sized city in Canada. As of the end of March, there had been 3 homicides this year. That’s in a city of over 500,000 people -- Cleveland is significantly smaller, and had 30 in the same period; WTF?
(As the Guess Who sang it, “Guns,guns, guns…”)
Cheryl Wheeler wrote a song about that, in 1998 after a school shooting, seems just as pertinent today:
Complete lyrics are:
Of course, that doesn’t explain why Cleveland in particular …