ST2.11 | "Fragments of a House"
PROMPT: Every town has a legend of a haunted place, and in most cases, those legends and haunted places involve a crime. This month, we want stories about legends, real or imagined, the crimes that inspired them, and the way those legends affect those living in their shadows. Make it dark. Make it gothic. Make it undeniably Stone’s Throw.
FRAGMENTS OF A HOUSE
by Mike McHONE
“We’ve been going back and forth all day. You’ve gotta stop this. Hear me? I got two dead deputies, Jason. Two. You can’t put the whole town in this mess.”
“There wouldn’t be a mess if the town would’ve done what was right.”
“Jason, you and I—”
“I’m not coming out, Will.”
“Then we’re coming in.”
“Good luck.”
Excerpt of the official phone record of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department.
***
On the morning of August 7, 2023, a homeless man by the name of Danny James decided to shoplift blue jeans at the Kohl’s on Telegraph Road in Frenchtown Township, Michigan. After store security noticed he’d picked up three pairs of Levi’s 501 jeans, Danny, 29, ran from the store and headed toward Elkton Drive in the Arbor Creek subdivision about a mile and a half away. When he saw a sheriff’s cruiser at the end of the block, Danny panicked. He noticed the door to the attached garage of a nearby house was open. He darted inside. He tried the door that led into the house and discovered it was unlocked.
The house was owned by a widow named Samantha Scott. Samantha was working in the flower garden of her backyard and didn’t notice Danny until she went inside to grab a glass of water. She tried to run, but James grabbed her by her arm. Samantha screamed. She fought against her invader, but he was too strong and far too desperate.
Ben Wilson, a retiree who lived next door, heard the scream and saw Samantha trying to pull away from a strange man in her kitchen. Wilson called 911.
Within thirty minutes, a dozen sheriff’s cruisers had arrived on Elkton Drive. A negotiator came soon after, and tried to bargain with James, asking him repeatedly to surrender. He refused. However, at noon, the unexpected happened. James yelled out of an open window that he would let Samantha Scott go, since, in his words, she didn’t “look too hot.” Samantha made it outside, collapsed on the front lawn, and was rushed to the hospital.
Upon Samantha’s release, Danny refused to speak to the authorities any further.
Seeing no alternative, Sheriff Will Borman ordered his deputies to enter the house. Windows were broken and smoke grenades were tossed inside. Police kicked in the back door, made their way through the home, and found Danny James in the spare bedroom at the back of the house. In his hand was what the sheriff’s deputies initially believed to be a gun.
They fired.
When deputies inspected the body, they discovered the object in James’ hand was simply an antique bottle of cologne in the shape of a flintlock pistol. Samantha’s son, Jason Scott, said in an interview with detectives, the bottle had belonged to his deceased father. Both his parents were avid antique collectors. Sheriff Borman would not speculate as to why James picked up the bottle. It is reasonable to assume, however, that perhaps James, with a criminal record that extended over a decade and the possibility he’d be put away for the rest of his life because of the standoff, saw no way out and had a death wish.
It was, however, not to be the only death that day. Samantha Scott died later in the ProMedica Regional Hospital emergency room of a massive coronary. She was 70.
The bill for Samantha Scott’s funeral was just under $6,000. The damage to the home due to the broken windows and drywalling and repainting to cover up the bullet holes was estimated to be $4,000. The cost of the blue jeans stolen from Kohl’s amounted to a little over $200.
When Jason Scott filed the insurance paperwork after his mother’s funeral, he found out the policy would only cover part of the bill. When he asked for a reason, it was explained that once the insured reaches 70 years of age, the payout is reduced by half. Samantha’s policy was for $10,000. Her birthday was six days prior to her death.
No one from the township council or the sheriff’s department attended Samantha’s funeral.
When Jason filed paperwork at the same insurance company to get money for the repairs on his mother’s home, they refused to pay, saying the damage was caused by “government intervention” and they were not legally bound to cover the costs. It was, they said, the responsibility of the sheriff’s department to pay for the damage.
He took his concerns to numerous township representatives. Every reply was similar. The township was not obligated to pay for the damages considering the sheriff’s department was within their right to utilize whatever force they deemed necessary to neutralize the threat Danny James posed to Scott’s mother and the community at large. The first conversations Jason had were polite, if tense, but eventually, every encounter would devolve into yelling and screaming, leading deputies to escort Jason from the building.
Over the ensuing weeks, Jason sought legal counsel, but no lawyer would hear his case, stating the legalese in the insurance paperwork and the township bylaws was clear.
Having lost his job at the recently shuttered Gorman Steel factory, and with his savings dwindling fast, recently divorced Jason Scott, 38, had no idea what to do or where to turn.
An excerpt from Chapter One of Small Town Fury: The Two Standoffs at Arbor Creek by true crime podcaster and bestselling author Edward Keck
***
“He moved in a couple two, three months after his ma passed. I heard he couldn’t afford his apartment anymore after his ex cut out on him, so he moved in here. He was quiet. Kept to himself. I guess he just spent a lot of time trying to patch up them bullet holes inside, and repainting. I never had no trouble with him in the seven, eight months he lived there.
“Until that one morning . . .
“I was in my living room cleaning, had the windows open, and I hear these people arguing. I look and I see Jason going at it with two deputies. Deputies tell ‘em the windows need to be fixed, else he’d get a fine. Jason had some wood slats duct taped over ‘em. They said the windows needed glass, not wood. Jason says he can’t afford it. Tells them the township should pay for it. They say the township shouldn’t have to. It went on like that for a while, screaming, hollering, they threaten to arrest him. Finally, Jason just says, ‘Okay,’ goes inside, and he . . . He came back out with a pistol and started shooting. Just . . . snapped right out there in the daylight, started shooting. He shot that younger fella in the head like it was . . . like it was nothing. He hit the other one in the back, but I heard from somebody later that he made it to his car and was able to, uh, call for help before he . . . ya know.
“I ain’t proud to say it, but it scared the hell out of me. As soon as I saw him shoot those guys . . . I ran upstairs, and I, uh, stayed in my bedroom for a bit. I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I knew I should’ve called 911 but I just couldn’t. That day when that, uh, whatchacallit, that shoplifter came, I didn’t think twice about calling, but . . . seeing that one boy’s head just . . . I felt like if I called anybody, hell, if I did anything, Jason would find me and . . .
“I know it sounds stupid, real stupid, but that’s what I thought.
“Anyway, it started to get dark, and the rest of the department showed up again.
Taken from an interview with neighbor Ben Wilson
***
“yall did him dirty. outta be ashamed.”
“2 dead cops. Lol. Good start”
“the government shoulve cleaned up their mess.”
“F**k him. He does something like that, he gets what he deserves.”
Comments from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Facebook page regarding the incident.
***
“I don’t want to do this, Jason. Let’s end this peacefully.”
“I ain’t coming out. I already said.”
“Listen—”
“I’m hanging up, Will. You wanna talk more? Walk your ass in here.”
-click-
Excerpt of the official phone record of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department.
***
After disconnecting the call with Sheriff Borman, further attempts to reach Scott went unanswered.
At seven pm, Borman ordered tactical teams to move into the house with the express order that Scott was to be taken alive. As it was with the deadly standoff with Danny James, a series of smoke grenades were tossed into the home through the wooden slats covering the windows.
Scott did not exit the home.
Two teams moved in. Team A entered through the front, Team B through the back. The main floor of the home was swept.
Scott was nowhere to be found.
Team A checked the attic while Team B moved toward the basement. Sergeant Ramona Ariza took point. As the team made their way into the stairwell, Ariza saw something at the bottom of the stairs.
The body of Jason Scott.
He was in a fetal position, his Colt .38 resting inches from his body. From her vantage point, Ariza saw no blood, and no one claimed to have heard a gunshot. She assumed at first Scott was, as she stated, “playing possum,” but as she descended the stairs, she noticed Scott’s neck had an odd shape. She looked closer and saw a bone had broken through the back of his neck.
It was then Ariza discovered a board on a center step on the stairs was loose. She surmised that once the Sheriff’s Department tossed in the smoke grenades, Scott tried to make his way to the basement. He stumbled on the loose step, pitched forward, hit his head against the concrete wall, and snapped his neck.
An excerpt from Chapter Twenty of Small Town Fury: The Two Standoffs at Arbor Creek.
***
“We can sit here all day and go through the whole fucking thing, but it won’t change what happened. Should those deputies’ve gone out and threatened him with a ticket? Not in my opinion. But they weren’t stepping over their bounds either.
“And it’s not like they were ordered to go out there. They drove by, saw the house in the shape it was in, decided to stop and talk to the owner. I mean, they were young, new to the department. They probably didn’t know what happened with that shoplifter. They were just doing their job.
“You’ve got to look at it both ways. If we would’ve helped him pay for the repairs, it would’ve opened the door to all kinds of yahoos coming in, wanting to get their places fixed up. That’s what our lawyers said, for the most part.
“But on the other hand, it was—what?—three, four grand to fix it up? We spend more than that on advertising for the fucking county fair, and we couldn’t figure out a way to shuffle a few dollars around?
“When you get down to it, just because we were obligated to turn him down, doesn’t mean we should’ve.
“I mean, Christ, if I’d have known three grand would help avoid all this, then, shit, I’d have gone into my own pocket and paid for the repairs myself.
“All this over some broken windows . . .”
From an interview with an anonymous Monroe County employee.
***
I’m sorry for everything. I don’t blame you for leaving. You always said I need to control my anger. You were right. As always.
I love you forever. You were my world.
A note addressed to Jason Scott’s ex-wife Linda, found on the kitchen counter in his mother’s house.
***
“I heard the Sheriff knew him somehow. I don’t know how. He comes in here a lot. I asked him about it once. He said he didn’t wanna talk about it.”
Lori, a server at The Grafton Bar and Grill.
***
“Borman needs to step down.”
“wasn’t the sheff’s fault his ma died.”
“thoughts and prayers.”
Comments from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Facebook page.
***
“No comment.”
Sheriff Borman after a request for an interview.
***
Jason,
Glad to be graduated. Finally! Ha! Loved playing b-ball with ya all these years, my man. You’re the best three-point shooter ever. Can’t wait to see what happens next.
Call me. Lets hang sometime.
-Will
An inscription found inside Jason Scott’s high school yearbook.
Mike McHone’s (on Twitter / X @mike_mchone) fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Dark Yonder, Mystery Tribune, Mystery Magazine, Rock and a Hard Place, the Anthony Award-nominated anthology Under the Thumb: Stories of Police Oppression, Edited by SA Cosby, and elsewhere. A former journalist, his articles, op-eds, and humor pieces have appeared in the Detroit News, the AV Club, Playboy, and numerous other outlets. He is the 2020 recipient of the Mystery Writers of America’s Hugh Holton Award and placed twice on Ellery Queen’s Annual Readers List. He lives in Detroit.