‘He was real bad news for her’

She watched a drug habit torment her mother to the point that she and five
siblings were placed in foster homes by the time she was 13. But the fixation
that brought Swann back to these streets time and time again was of a
different sort, according to friends and family.

From age 14 onward, they say, she was addicted to the companionship of
Nathaniel Broadway – seven years her senior and also from a family torn apart
by narcotics.

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By age 15, she and Broadway had a child of their own. By 17, she was
pregnant with their twins, although by the time she gave birth, their first
child was living elsewhere, joining Swann on the rolls of the city’s foster
children.

Broadway, now 24, was often elsewhere, too, either in jail or with other
women, sometimes driven away by Swann’s foster mother and other surrogate
parents. Yet, by all accounts, her dependency on him never wavered.

But, for all the scorn this bond elicited from those who cared for Swann,
no one anticipated anything even close to the disastrous ending that came to
pass 12 days ago, in the unlighted basement of an abandoned home about 30
blocks northeast of their usual haunts.

There, in a room with a crib and a bed but no electricity or running water,
emergency medical workers found the month-old twin girls – Emonney and Emunnea
– cold and lifeless. Each had a fractured skull and broken ribs. Police
charged Swann and Broadway with murder.

It was the sort of shocking case that the city more commonly associates
with the drug-ridden lifestyles of Swann’s mother and Broadway’s late father,
and left friends wondering how things could have spiraled into something so
terrible.

The only clue to emerge from the couple is a note from Broadway to Swann’s
mother Donna Brown, 41, who received it in the mail last week at her apartment
in the 1800 block of Guilford Ave.

The handwritten note, a denial of guilt, said plenty even as it said
little. Its rough grammar and misspellings seemed indicative of a young life
spent more on the streets than in the classroom, with a blunt style cutting
straight to the heart of the matter:

you no the Kids past away

they charge me in Sierra with

murder for what I don’t no

she is over here to

we got no Bails

we go to the court June 8

for trial We Don’t now How

in why they past.

Swann’s friends and relatives are quick to blame Broadway in the deaths.
They do so even though some of them say they vividly recall instances in which
Swann struck or otherwise abused her first child, Nairra, who shortly before
her second birthday was taken away by the Department of Social Services after
exhibiting signs of malnourishment and physical harm.

“What turned [Swann] around was Nate,” said Kathryn Lewis, a foster mother
to Swann for several months after Nairra was born in early 2002, and also for
a period last summer. “He influenced her to the point where she didn’t think
for herself. All she wanted was love.”

“He was real bad news for her,” said Vernedia “Shawn” Southers, 33, who
acted sometimes as a surrogate mother to Swann. “He kept her away from
everybody who tried to get her to do better.”

Broadway is at a disadvantage in the eliciting of neighborhood opinions.
Those inclined to back him are wary, even hostile, toward questioners.

But Damion Champ, 33, a friend, said of Broadway: “He was a nice guy. He
was cool. He was well-mannered. He never tried to start nothing in the ‘hood.”

An only child

Broadway’s parents are dead. So is the grandmother he lived with a few
years ago on East 30th Street. He was raised as an only child, and the two
stepbrothers and two stepsisters who grew up elsewhere apparently have little
contact with him. His two uncles are deceased, and the aunt who recounted
these family details, Anita O’Neal, said she has never met Broadway.

It is not clear how he was making a living. During his bail hearing, he
mentioned a fast-food job, and Champ described him as a “petty hustler.”

The 700 block of E. 20th St. is an apt point of departure for the story of
Broadway and Swann. It is apparently where they met, just as she was turning
14 and he was 21.

Southers’ daughter, 15-year-old Maranda Walker, said that Swann began
dating various men from 20th Street when she was 13 but that before long
Broadway was the only one willing to show her attention.

Southers, who lives on nearby Cokesbury Avenue, said she wasn’t surprised
to hear of Swann’s fast-moving lifestyle at such an early age, especially down
at Boone and 20th.

“It’s only a few blocks away, but it’s really a different world,” she said.

That, too, is a tale heard all over the city; of streets where homes are
well kept, yet everyone out on the steps knows of a rundown lane only a few
blocks away, where houses are boarded, and crime and young people tend to
gravitate.

By the time Swann met Broadway, she was living in foster homes. Social
workers split up her family after Swann’s mother gave birth to an infant
addicted to crack cocaine.

Broadway’s father also battled drug addiction, dying in 2000 of an overdose
at 44, according to his sister, O’Neal, who said he had been addicted since
age 19. Afterward, Broadway lived with his grandmother, although by then he
had left school, quitting the city’s Fairmount-Harford High School at 18.

Swann also left school early, apparently by hoodwinking city school
officials, whose records indicate that she transferred out of the state from
Northwestern High in February.

Broadway is hardly a threatening presence, standing about 5 feet 6 inches,
with a slight build. It was his attitude that rubbed Lewis the wrong way.

“He was very arrogant, very controlling,” Lewis said, “and he knew I didn’t
like him.”

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Lewis’ house on Flowerton Road, a trim street in a relatively tranquil
neighborhood, seemed to be the perfect place for Swann to get a fresh start as
a young mother. In Northwest Baltimore, it’s miles from Boone and 20th.

She arrived there three days after Nairra was born. “During that time, you
couldn’t have found a more attentive mother,” Lewis said of Swann. “I would
have trusted Sierra with anything.”

Lewis quickly set down a rule for Swann: No overnight visits from Broadway.
But that didn’t keep them apart.

When Swann asked one day for money to buy baby supplies, Lewis said, she
handed over her bank card and told her to withdraw $200. Later, Swann
telephoned her from the Red Shed, a Greenmount Avenue store across town near
Swann’s old neighborhood. “She said someone had stolen my card,” Lewis said.
But when Lewis went to the store to investigate, the manager told her that a
young couple had used the card to buy $500 worth of men’s clothing. “Then he
described Sierra to a T,” she said.

Lewis kicked out Swann, who again began spending a lot of time at Southers’
house on Cokesbury Avenue. As Nairra grew older and the months passed,
Southers and her daughter Maranda were alarmed by Swann’s parenting.

They said Swann taught Nairra not to climb the stairs by placing her
halfway up, then letting her tumble to the bottom. Southers said that when she
asked about a small burn mark on Nairra, Swann told her she had purposely
burned the tot with a hot hair curler so that the child would learn to not
touch the curlers. Maranda said she once saw Swann pour vodka into the baby’s
milk, in hopes of getting Nairra to sleep.

Focus on Broadway

Swann’s main focus, they said, was still Broadway, who was barred from the
house but would visit on the porch, sometimes drinking cognac as he sat out
front. When he disappeared with other women for several days at a time,
Southers said, Swann would grow deeply depressed. He would return saying that
such flings meant nothing, and that he loved only Swann.

When Nairra cried, the Southerses said, Swann patted her on the back,
trying to lull her to sleep. When that failed, the pats sometimes escalated
into thumps, and when the thumps intensified, Maranda ran to Southers, saying,
“Mom, she’s beating on the baby again.”

Swann moved back for a while with Lewis, pleading, according to Lewis,
“Things aren’t going right. Can I please come back?”

Lewis never saw Swann abuse Nairra, but she said her youngest daughter and
a neighbor told her of episodes of the child being thrown to the floor and
slapped in the face. She said she reported them to Swann’s social worker, Ila
Ham. “But Miss Ham told me that since I hadn’t seen it, that it couldn’t be
verified,” she said.

But she did see other things that disturbed her, she said. Large meals
mysteriously vanished. She began smelling cigarette smoke from the basement
room where Swann slept. A neighbor reported seeing a man leave the house one
morning by climbing through a basement window. She suspected Broadway but knew
that to get into the basement bedroom he also would have had to get through a
padlocked door. When she checked, she found that Swann had broken the padlock
and bent back the hasp.

The next time she smelled smoke, she called police, who found Broadway
downstairs. Lewis again kicked out Swann. That was last fall. By then, Swann
was pregnant. Lewis suspected as much, but Swann said nothing.

Not long afterward, Swann fled her next foster home.

“Her plan was to stay in hiding until she was 18,” Southers said. Then she
would be able to do as she pleased and move in with Broadway, although he was
apparently living with friends, according to the address he gave police when
arrested.

A report last Sept. 30 from her social worker, Ham, listed Swann as “on
runaway” at the time, with a stated goal of having her recommitted to a foster
home by March this year.

But late last year, Southers saw that Nairra, still not 2, had several
teeth knocked out and bite marks on her body. Southers called social services,
which investigated and took custody of the child. At the time, Broadway was in
jail. When he got out, Swann made up a story that Nairra was staying with
relatives, Southers said. She said that he beat Swann once he found out she
was lying.

After losing custody, Swann stopped talking to Southers and Maranda. Lewis
heard from Swann once more, in a phone call in March. “She asked me for Miss
Ham’s phone number. That’s all she said,” Lewis recalled.

Fearing the worst

News accounts have fully described what happened the next month, when Swann
gave birth to the first twin while on the way to the hospital, with the baby
lodging in the leg of her sweat pants. The second birth was at Johns Hopkins
Hospital.

Also well documented is the way Swann, Broadway and their two babies then
slipped through the cracks of the social welfare safety net, a system that
should have resulted in the newborns of an accused child abuser – and foster
care runaway – being taken into protective custody.

Based on what happened later, Swann and Broadway must have decided to stick
to her plan of avoiding social workers until her 18th birthday in October.
They moved into the abandoned basement on East 31st Street. The next time
anyone in official circles heard from them was May 11, when Broadway phoned
911 to report that the twins weren’t breathing.

Police have not said who is suspected of delivering the fatal blows. But
according to court documents, “Both defendants admitted to being the primary
care givers for the babies and having joint exclusive care and custody for
both children on or about the time of their deaths.”

Now, even many of those close to them fear the worst. All, perhaps, except
Swann’s mother, Brown, who has endured her own agonies over losing children to
the authorities.

“She was a beautiful mother,” Brown said of Swann, “and nobody could tell
me no different.”