For nearly a year, the Harvey Police Department’s investigation into the murder of Willie Darling was going nowhere.
Then on Wednesday, records and evidence related to dozens of unsolved murders in Harvey were seized by the Cook County state’s attorney’s office and investigators from the Illinois State Police and the Cook County sheriff’s police. A pattern in weapons used in violent crimes had become evident, said Joe Kosman, deputy supervisor of gang prosecution for the state’s attorney’s office.
“When we found enough of a connection, we thought our investigation was to the point where we needed to see all the evidence,” Kosman said. Prosecutors secured a subpoena for the Harvey Police Department.
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Darling’s case was among the seized files. A day after the raid, Brian Barry, 23, was arrested, and on Saturday he was charged with first-degree murder in Darling’s death.
Darling was one of about 50 homicides in Harvey in the last five years, with the city as a battleground for warring gangs, investigators said. Arrests have been made in only a dozen or so cases.
His case may signal more to come. “I think it says that a lot of these cases are solvable,” Kosman said.
Darling was killed in late February last year outside Barry’s home in the 200 block of West 154th Street in Harvey. Authorities said the two men had been playing dice and Barry was losing money. About 4:30 a.m., they went outside and Barry allegedly shot Darling in the head.
Kosman said the case was assigned to Harvey Detective Hollis Dorrough, who left the force after being charged with a felony in August. He was charged with official misconduct, accused of returning a gun from police evidence to a relative of Anthony Reynolds, a Harvey man accused of shooting at two Harvey police officers.
In the Darling file, there was ballistic evidence tying the bullet recovered from the shooting to a gun linked to Barry, as well as lab reports that matched blood found on Barry’s shoes to the victim’s blood, a law enforcement source said.
Kosman said it is too soon to know whether Dorrough might face criminal charges in his handling of the Darling investigation.
“Is it incompetence or is it official misconduct?” Kosman said. “There are so many other things that we’re looking at, that right now I can’t comment on whether he may be charged.”
The probe that led to the charges against Barry began after Reynolds was charged with attempted murder last year in the shooting of police officers. He then was accused of fatally shooting a man at a South Holland carwash while he was out on bail. He is charged with murder in that case.
When prosecutors tried to move forward with the first shooting, they discovered that the gun was missing from the Harvey police evidence room. “A lot of these things started with the missing gun case involving Anthony Reynolds,” Kosman said. “Through our investigation of Reynolds, we noticed a series of murders and major crimes in the south suburbs. And as we started to get ballistics results on some of these murders, some of the assistant state’s attorneys working in the gang unit said, `There seems to be a connection between a number of the cases.'”
Sources said the seizure of Harvey police records was, in part, an effort to determine whether gang influence has stymied the investigation of major crimes in Harvey.
Factions of the Gangster Disciples, the Vice Lords, the Black P Stones and the Shorties Taking Over have been fighting one another in the city for years.
Kosman said the primary focus is closing the dozens of unsolved cases. “But we’re not closing our eyes to any other things that may pop up in our investigation of these cases,” he said.
The Harvey police spokeswoman could not be reached for comment Saturday.
Barry was expected to appear in Bond Court on Sunday morning at the Markham Courthouse.
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