Still Unsolved: the 1995 Murder of Keri Sirbaugh

2015 will mark the 20th awful anniversary of the brutal murder of college student Keri Sirbaugh at her Northeast Baltimore home on June 21, 1995. Three years later, I wrote the article below, one of a number of articles written through the years about this very frustrating cold case.

As they say, someone knows something. There are thoughts that have been nagging someone about something another person said or what seemed a slip of the tongue, or even about the behavior of somebody they know.

With advances in technology as well as science -- and with someone speaking up -- it is very possible this horrific crime could finally be solved by 2015. Keri and her family deserve justice.

A Facebook page has been created to help spread the word so that someone somewhere might come forward:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Justice-For-Keri/470362289761892?ref=nf

http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/murder_unsolved.html

Homicide Investigation Fails To Catch A Killer

Everything went wrong from the beginning. As Fran Sirbaugh, the victim’s mother, says, “All the luck was toward the killer that night, and none was toward Keri.”

     It started with a 911 call from Keri Sirbaugh’s downstairs neighbor, alarmed over hearing a man’s voice, a woman’s voice, a scream outside her Northeast Baltimore apartment. But during the call, the neighbor indicated to the dispatcher that she did not want to be identified. Therefore, police didn’t respond to her address.

     About an hour later, after having heard more noises, the neighbor called 911 again and asked that police come to her apartment, the first floor of a square brick building on Everall Avenue--a dead-end. When they arrived, police failed to check Keri’s apartment upstairs. But by then, she probably had already been dumped in the adjacent thick woods, where her father would find her battered, lifeless body the next day-- June 21, 1995.

     Six weeks shy of 22, Keri Sirbaugh had just completed her junior year as a journalism major at American University. Lively, hopeful, driven, she was a spark ready to ignite, a young woman just finding her voice. She wrote articles for classes and school publications--essays on equal rights, sexual harassment, rape, abortion, and birth control.

     Possessing street-smarts and savvy, Keri knew the hazards of being a young woman in Baltimore, of being a woman in any city. She had escaped uncomfortable, even dangerous, situations before. Yet neither dangers nor serious issues had doused her jubilant spirit with disillusion. In fact, says her mother, Keri’s joy often erupted with “a big belly laugh.” Tall and strong, with fiery hair and a radian presence to match, Keri, at 5’9” and 160 lbs., left her parents unable to grasp how someone could “take her down.”

     But take her down the killer-- or killers--did, leaving a family desperate for answers.

     “Bill called me at work,” Fran Sirbaugh says of her husband, “He wanted to know where Keri was. I said, ‘What do you mean, where’s Keri?’ She’s at work.” But he had picked up a message at home from a co-worker of Keri’s: She hadn’t shown up at her waitressing job at Louie’s Bookstore Café on Charles Street. He blurted, “I’m going to her apartment,” and hung up.

     Later, says Fran Sirbaugh, her husband came to her office to get a copy of their daughter’s apartment key. He had already been to Keri’s place and found her Volkswagen parked in the driveway, but he could get no answer at her locked door. It was then he knew something was terribly wrong. The couple drove to Everall Avenue, where Fran called police after entering the empty apartment and finding evidence that Keri had been there the previous night.

     “When we came down the steps [outside the apartment], we were supposed to be showing the officer Keri’s car... I think Bill was drawn to the woods because he was so frightened there was something wrong. I remember turning around and going, “What are you doing?” and he just kept walking [into the woods], and the next thing I knew he was screaming.” After that, Fran says, everything was a blur.

     Lack of information: Although news reports indicated Keri was beaten and strangled, the police will not verify this information. Even the family has never been told exactly what happened to Keri. Police will not say publicly whether or not Keri was sexually assaulted. In fact, they will say very little about the case, citing the “ongoing investigation.”

     They will not say if there are any similarities between this murder and the unsolved 1989 murder of Bridget Phillips, a Hopkins student bludgeoned to death in her Charles Village apartment. They won’t say whether outside agencies, such as the FBI, have ever offered help with the case, and if so, whether such help was accepted. And they won’t respond to the question of whether or not the Baltimore City Police Department has looked into a reported 450-plus hotline calls about this case.

     Now a “cold case”: What they will say is that they have made no arrests, and that the case is now in the hands of the “cold case” squad after passing through two groups of homicide investigators.
     But if the trail has gone cold, the family wonders why. The Sirbaughs wonder why three years have passed and no one has been charged with Keri’s murder. They wonder why they have been left out, particularly since they have always taken such an active role in trying to find out who killed their daughter: They raised $25,000 for information leading to the arrest of Keri’s killer, and they set up and now operate a hotline, handing over caller information to the police.

     Unwelcome help?: Fran Sirbaugh says she has interviewed over 30 of Keri’s friends and acquaintances; the family has provided police with tag numbers and “anything and everything we thought was important [information].” But, says Mrs. Sirbaugh, police have not been supportive of these efforts. “Any idea I had, they thought was taboo,” she says, adding, “My husband and I really have no rights, and Keri has no rights.”

     The Sirbaughs, like many families, feel the criminal justice system works better for the criminals than for the victims and their families. The family feels victimized not only because they feel ignored and left tormented by wondering what happened, but also because they do not believe their murdered daughter is getting the treatment she deserves. “This has been a nightmare no family should have to go through,” says Mrs. Sirbaugh.

     But, apparently, many families go though just this--left not only to deal with the violent deaths of their loved ones, but then to grapple with never encountering justice, never learning the identity of the killer, and never knowing why.

     Why do homicides remain unsolved?: Police inexperience, Fran Sirbaugh believes, is one reason these families do not meet justice. And it is this inexperience that a 1996 City Paper article attributes to Baltimore being named one of the worst cities in the nation for solving homicides. According to third district City Councilman Martin O’ Malley, who is conducting a study of Baltimore’s homicide clearance rates, things are getting worse. He says clearance rates are dropping while the number of homicides is rising.

     In addition, police rotation--Police Commissioner Thomas Frazier’s policy of transferring officers to different units to ensure that most officers do not remain in the same job for more than four years-- almost guarantees that less experienced investigators take on homicide cases. Intended to revive police department morale and create more well-rounded officers, this rotation policy has been highly criticized. As Fran Sirbaugh says, “Do you want a rookie looking into your child’s murder?”

     The inexperience problem is compounded: “Major Patek [Commanding Officer, Crimes Against Persons] acknowledged a clearance rate problem which correlates with a lack of supervision,” reports Councilman O’Malley.

     Breakdown of accountability: While police aren’t acknowledging publicly that these problems exist, a memo written earlier this year to Commanding Officer Major Kathleen Patek from Sergeant Mark Tomlin refers to a homicide clearance rate in need of improvement. Tomlin writes, “...it is clear that a breakdown of accountability between supervisors and detectives has caused many cases to be left unattended, or simply pushed to the side.” The memo goes on to say that, as new cases come into the unit, “...the first cases are stale, unworked, or at worst completely forgotten.”

     “Completely forgotten.” A woman’s life, radiating youthful hopes. A voice silenced, then placed aside. A family waits to hear answers.

 
Copyright © 2003 The Baltimore Chronicle and The Sentinel

Where are the birds going to go?

Several years ago I lived on a property where gnarled, overgrown bushes reached out from the back edge of the yard toward my vegetable garden. Beyond the mass of crooked, tangled limbs, my yard ended in a sharp drop down to the alley that bordered neighbors’ backyards.

Many small birds – I don’t know what kind they were – would seasonally sit deep among the arthritic limbs of the bushes and in one motion emerge together and fly to a nearby tree. They would chirp excitedly, then, in one returning swoop, fly back to their bushes, to invisibility. Their activities were entertaining to watch – so many birds traveling a short distance as one shape, moving back and forth in what seemed to be a ritualistic game that would go on for hours. But my thoughts always came back to how ugly and overgrown the bushes were. I wanted to take them out. In fact, I needed to put up a fence where the bushes stood, so, really, they needed to go.

About a week after removing the bushes, a neighbor from across the back alley, someone with whom I had never spoken, much less seen, yelled up to my yard, “What did you do with your bushes?” I replied that we took them down because they were so ugly and overgrown, and we were replacing them with a fence. She asked, hardly containing her anger, “Where are the birds going to go?” Immediately, I felt a wave of indignation sweep over me that this…stranger…would dare question my action on my property. I replied with a “Who cares?” type of reaction and walked away.

While it might have been nice for the neighbor to have chosen to have a conversation with me long before registering a complaint – or at least to have introduced herself – her words haunted me several years later when I began to recognize that we humans in general are taught not to care “where the birds are going to go” because we view our property – or the property where the newest shopping center or housing development is going up – as ours, as if no other breathing, eating, breeding being lives there or even deserves to live there. We don’t want to share. We paid to live on or use the property. It’s our right to evict whatever else inhabits the area.

I realized that these must have been the thoughts and feelings of the people associated with a nearby community property where a huge osprey nest had been comfortably and expertly wedged among lights positioned on a cement pole. This was certainly not the most convenient place (for the lights or the people) for the nest to have been built, but the osprey was apparently quite happy there for years. So, I was surprised last fall when I saw that the nest, as well as the lights, had been taken down. The cement light pole, of course, remained.

“Where are the birds going to go?” I worried.

I left messages for the people associated with the property. Having a fundraising background, I planned to offer to help raise money, if necessary, for a platform to be installed nearby so that when the osprey pair returned for the coming breeding season, there would be a place to nest.  Ospreys return to the same location to breed each year. If a nest is removed and there is no suitable location nearby to rebuild, they will not breed that year. While these birds are federally protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, land owners can get permits to remove inactive nests that are causing problems. But replacement structures must normally be erected in the immediate area.

When I realized no one was going to return my calls concerning the local nest, I approached a man who appeared to be the property caretaker and asked him what happened to the nest. He replied that it “…came down.” I asked him who I could speak with about it, and he gave me the name and number of the person I had already attempted to contact.

By then, breeding season here in Florida was upon us. I contacted the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in hopes that they might convince the people at the property to install a platform. The officer called me back a few days later and said that the people associated with the property said the nest blew down, that it blows down every year and the bird rebuilds it. I laughed and told him that no osprey can build a nest that size each year – this was years of work that came down. The officer asked me if I could provide him before and after pictures. I did.

The Fish and Wildlife Commission contacted me about a week later. The people were sticking to their story. The officer investigated, asking others, including a maintenance crew, about the situation. Even though 2012 was a pretty mild year storm-wise – much milder than years when osprey nests withstood extremely high winds and days of pounding rain – everyone agreed that the nest blew down. No one mentioned that the lights on which the nest had been built had been removed, too – a strange coincidence.

The Fish and Wildlife Commission officer said the people did volunteer to erect a platform. By now, neighboring ospreys had already met their mates for the season and were busy with their nests. This particular male osprey returned to his nest site and perched himself on the empty cement tower where his home had been. He made some fruitless efforts at building a nest on nearby light posts.

It was disheartening to witness a protected bird’s home destroyed regardless of the law. Therefore, a few weeks later, I felt elated to see that a platform had been installed, and within a few days, the osprey got to work building his nest there. I watched with anxiety the next several days during early morning walks as the male osprey began his displays to the sunrise each morning: He would shoot high in the air, flap his wings, suspend his body and call loudly, seeking the attention of his/a mate. Then he would swoop sharply down, to shoot back up again and repeat his display. I was probably reading too much into it, but his calls sounded forlorn and desperate. I was still worried.

Shortly thereafter, the female – or a female – returned, and the breeding season at this nest began. While I was happy, I soon learned that not everyone else was. It was around that time that a woman associated with the property followed me as I walked near the property to check the nest. She approached me and angrily told me to stay off the property. Within a week, I began to find strange things in my backyard. The first was a snake – a black racer – that appeared to have been chopped in half. I thought it was odd that a snake would enter a small fenced area where two dogs live when there is so much land and greenery outside of the fence. I also couldn’t understand why my dogs would bite a snake cleanly in half and leave the two pieces lying there.

A week later, something much worse was hurled over my fence: a badly decomposing cat. It smelled so awful that the person who threw it used an old pillow case (and, I hope, gloves) to chuck the animal over the fence, so that the pillow case landed in the yard, too. Thankfully, our dogs left the dead animal alone. Even better, they did not grab it and bring it into the house. Long after the animal’s removal, the stench remained.

I made a police report, and allowed the police to say it first: this was very likely done in response to my report to the Fish and Wildlife Commission. I found it pretty incomprehensible. Then I thought back to the indignation I felt when asked by the old neighbor where the birds in my yard were going to go after I cut down my bushes. While my response to my old neighbor was not quite as pathological as throwing dead animals into her yard, I saw the connection: it is the sense among so many of us that birds, or any wildlife, just don’t matter. These are our yards, our gardens, our lights, things that matter so much to some people that they will break the law to try to intimidate their neighbors into minding their own business. We break the law, remove nests illegally, lie about it and then dare anyone to say anything about it.

Although I was rattled by the thug-like behavior in reaction to me looking out for the ospreys, the whole situation showed me how far we still have to go when it comes to our attitudes and thoughts about wildlife, about the earth itself. I recognized even more how the birds and other wildlife hardly stand a chance against these attitudes, and since they don’t speak, they need more of us to ask, and to ask more loudly, “Where are the birds going to go?” Even when others don’t like hearing that question. Even when we ourselves are uncomfortable with it.

Crazy Imperfection

On November 13, 2012, I put down my dog, Scout, after having him for 9 years. He was 11. I am very sad, but not sad for the same reasons I was when my other dogs died – the other dogs who hung out with me, who chased sticks and balls, who aimed to enjoy and to please. I am sad because, of course, I will miss Scout’s presence. He was a part of our day-to-day lives for many years.  I’m sad because he won’t enjoy his walks, one of the few things in life he really loved. I’m sad because he liked our new neighborhood and seemed calmer here, the place with less noise – no student pilots circling and circling overhead, no cars flying by, no neighbors with fireworks. I’m sad because I will miss Scout, and our younger dog Layla will miss him even more. He was her rock.

But I’m also sad because Scout didn’t live up to his abilities, and I take some of that blame. I didn’t learn until he was 7 that he would have made a great air scent or cadaver dog.  By accident, we learned this when he freaked out at least 200 yards away from the exact spot a woman’s body had been dumped. Scout dragged us to the location, luckily after the police had already found the body. When I looked into air scent training, I was told that they didn’t train dogs age 7 or older. So, I let that go. Another dog whose talents or special skills I didn’t recognize until it seemed too late.  You wish they could talk and tell you these things early in life. Then again, there is the time factor, always the factor of time. 

Scout wasn’t my best friend, but he was my friend and he was a family member. He was a distant observer unable to fully break out of his shell and trust. I tried luring him to me repeatedly when he was young, but he wasn’t ready and, unfortunately, food was of little concern to him, so I couldn’t bribe him with pieces of chicken or steak. I took him to dog obedience classes, hoping that would help us bond. I would sit in one room of the house and call him. At most, he'd dart by like a ghost.

I finally decided to step back and stop pushing, figuring he would come around when he was ready. But Scout would never be fully ready. He made progress through the years, progress so slow that others recognized it (and were sometimes in awe of it) when I barely did. I saw progress when I returned from a trip to Belize (I had left the dogs home with a pet sitter), and watched as Scout trailed behind the other dogs to greet me at the door, standing back, curious but too timid to fully approach. I thought I noticed a look of relief in his eyes when he saw me. Then there was the year of the hurricanes, in 2004, when we all packed up and went to my aunt’s house in Florida's Panhandle. At her rural property, Scout let down his guard. He ran off leash, came when called and even jumped in bed with me although the alpha dog, Morgan (“The General”), was present with her second in command, Jasmine. Even after The General died, Scout stayed in his shell.

At home, he was most comfortable in a closet – a place with the least visual and auditory stimuli. I finally gave in and put his bed in there. When he did want company, he was most comfortable entering the room when no one was looking, approaching from behind and finding a corner to settle into for a brief period. He normally didn’t approach to be petted, and never once rolled on his back for a tummy rub. Scout didn’t know what tummy rubs were about.  He didn’t understand play unless it was with the other dogs when he was pretty sure no humans were looking. He didn’t trust. My heart broke a little more when our dog Jasmine died, and I would return home, but no one would come greet me at the door – Scout remained in his closet. 

Scout’s story was that he was bred to be shown in conformation. He was truly gorgeous – a white German shepherd dog who looked like he was suspended in air when he trotted. His fearful behavior was attributed by various people to a variety of factors: his breeding, the treatment he received while being shown, “the white gene,” and to witnessing the mysterious death/murder of his sister, who he was very close to, when he was 2, before he became my dog. Whatever the reason, his breeder, being responsible, saw him at a show with the woman to whom she had sold him and some of his litter mates, didn’t feel he and the other dogs looked healthy, and took them back. She found me, or I found her, through a white German shepherd rescue group. And there began our 9 years of a less-than-ideal dog-human relationship.

When Scout was younger, he was so nervous he would bolt whenever he had the slightest opportunity. Luckily, he would run to the nearby woods rather than the heavily traveled road, and he would come home when he was ready, usually after I had spent a few hours frantically searching for him. Although he loved his walks, he loved them, like he loved anything, only on his terms – alone or with his dog-mates in areas where there were no other people or animals. Common dog walking places, even the beach, were not comfortable places for Scout, but I still felt cruel not taking him places due to his misery in public.  Scout seemed like he was on sensory overload all the time; there was just too much going on in the world.

I talked to my vet about him. We did the obedience classes. I tried various tranquilizers on him, particularly during thunderstorms or on the Fourth of July. Medications that would knock out the other dogs seemed to have absolutely no affect on Mr. Metabolism. Through the years, as I waited for Scout to decide to come to me and be my friend, I told him I would never hurt him, that I would never be mean to him, even when he would try to scramble past me so quickly (as if someone was chasing him) that he’d dig his claws into my bare feet or knock into my knee with his hard head. He wouldn’t come when called for the first seven years I had him – except that time at my aunt’s property; therefore, my other shepherds would herd him into the house for me. It was our daily, somewhat amusing, ritual.  

After Jasmine died, I decided to take a chance and let Scout off-leash in the woods. He did great. He was eight-years-old and mellowing. Finally, there was something he relished – just us in the woods. He could be trusted to come to me when I called him. He was more than gentle with other animals, once alerting us to a wounded baby raccoon. He still lived in a closet most of the time. But when he was in the back yard, he was still often pacing, pacing, pacing. Or standing at the door  longingly staring in (to get into his closet), unless I walked toward him, which would cause him to take off again. I often said that in the years I had him, I would have more successfully tamed a wild animal.  

Scout wouldn’t play with the other dogs if he thought or knew anyone was watching, so it was especially fun peeking at the dogs carrying on in the yard. He wouldn’t eat if he thought anyone was looking. He'd poke his head out of his closet and wait until I was out of sight before beginning his meal. He had stomach issues his entire life, issues likely associated with his general nervousness, and he was usually on medication.  

At the age of 11, I thought Scout would have great difficulty with a move we made – new house, new neighborhood. We moved November 1. Something changed. He liked it. He loved his walks, even though his back legs wouldn’t always cooperate, and he would stumble and fall. He actually seemed happy to see us when we came home, and began to approach us head-on to be petted. I thought:  Finally! Old Scout is happy.  The difference was our new neighborhood was quiet.  There are no planes flying directly overhead, there is very little traffic. And there are fantastic woods to explore every day with the smells of many wild animals.  Scout died 13 days after we moved.  

There would probably be over a million words of advice for me, as there have been over another dog we have who has special needs and whose issues are on the other end of the spectrum – pure obnoxiousness rather than shyness. There probably are a million things I could have done differently or better with Scout to make him a happier dog and a “better” companion. But the fact of the matter is there are dogs that really aren’t the traditional tear-licking devoted companions we all know, love and expect.  There are dogs that are different, just like people. There are dogs with issues that some of us don’t have the time (because we work) or the resources to handle perfectly. There are dogs that perhaps nobody is able to cure.   

It’s wonderful that we live in a country that is learning to respect animals. And, just like America, so many of us seek absolute perfection in this area, too. I had two nearly perfect dogs before Scout, so I aimed for that experience with him, of course. But added to the pressure we put on ourselves to create the perfect animal companion is also the rigidity and judgment from others out there in the dog world who act as if you don’t do things a certain way when you have a "difficult "dog – that way often equating to feeding raw, constant obedience classes, hiring a behaviorist, paying an animal communicator, constantly exercising, or, better yet, engaging the dog in a regular activity like search-and-rescue, agility or dance – then you are doing a great disservice to the animal, and, well, you suck.

I felt actually run out of an online German shepherd forum when I asked for more input about a different rescue dog of ours -- the obnoxious one with genetic issues. He was not responding well to the usual exercise-them-like-crazy (over-exercise results in seizures with him); I attempted to see if herding might be what he needed to do, but was told I did that all wrong.  Then I made the mistake of commenting that we sometimes referred to this dog as "Corky" because he looks like he has Down syndrome. Most people realize, I think, that you have got to insert humor in difficult situations. Ohhh nooo. I was scolded to never call a dog names like that (I really wondered about the thought behind this, as do you think if I called a Farsi-speaking visitor to our country "Corky," he/she would get what I was saying?  Of course not, but somehow, in the Dog Perfect World, my dog would understand that I was referring to him as a long-gone TV character and he would get more of a complex because of it.) It soon became clear that because I work full-time and was not willing or able to invest an incredible number of hours a week with this dog, along with an incredible amount of money, I was, well, like those dog owners who don’t do the animal justice. Someone finally suggested with disdain that I take the dog to a rescue group and donate money to them so that they could find him a good home. Their view was clear: Do it my way (the perfect way) or don’t do it at all – a message I find astounding in a country where millions of dogs are euthanized in shelters each year.

Experiencing that, and knowing Scout, I began to realize what human moms must go through, with the expectations of doing it all, and doing it all perfectly and creating and forming this perfect, preferably gifted, child who is going to wow the world and make all of us proud. We’ve taken that into the world of animals as well. I witnessed it at a dog show when a German shepherd just didn’t perform the way he was expected to perform and was shoved back into his crate by an owner with a look of pure disgust on her face. We place the ideal of perfection on ourselves, and others feed into that by also expecting it of us.

What I see as we seek perfection in ourselves as parents – human parents or dog parents – is that we lose sight of something incredibly important in life: accepting things, people and animals, sometimes just as they are, seeing potential and striving for that, but knowing when to accept another living being as that being is. When we pretend that all dogs can be perfect companions, we lie to ourselves, and we set up people for discouragement and even shame as we set up dogs for pure failure, failure that too often results in being dumped at shelters.  Maybe the dog just couldn’t get to that perfect spot where the people expected him or her to be. Maybe the people really did try to get him there. Maybe they had jobs and other family activities. And maybe they shouldn’t judge themselves or be judged for that.  Maybe the judgment is in part what causes some people to just give up.

If we learn to accept that dogs, like people, are imperfect, learn to recognize and accept what they are capable of as companions, maybe our lowered or more realistic expectations could result in more dogs staying in homes rather than being given up on and placed in shelters, or maybe it could result in more shelter dogs being adopted and kept.  For life.  In their imperfection. Maybe our attention would be better focused on helping those dogs that have been dumped, and those millions of animals living on the other end of the spectrum, those being abused and neglected.

Scout's death, like most profound experiences in life, caused me to think again of the area where life is really lived, but the place we so often try to avoid:  that non-extreme area between the all-black and the all-white. Scout perfectly taught me that imperfection -- even being odd -- is really ok. I loved him anyway, and I miss him anyway. In fact, I realize, it is his crazy imperfection that I miss most about his blessed spirit.