A killer coincidence

"You hear about that crazy homicide over the weekend Conner?" our crime reporter Mike Conte asks me as I come into work. "Police went into an apartment and found a naked body stuffed into a push cart."

I look down at our cover. The headline reads, "Body stuffed in cart" accompanied by a picture of a red push cart.

"Apparently the cops walked in and the guy's toes were pointing to the ceiling," Mike says.

Although fairly gruesome, the incident is not totally outside the realm of normality here in Jersey City. The next day, a teacher was shot in the head (to read that front page story from very the next day click here). Our part-time photographer / local EMT Bill Bayer added to the conversation about how he once arrived on a scene to find someone high on PCP, stomping a cat to death. Jersey City can a be a violent, crazy place.

Over the next few days, Mike begins to dig up the full story. Carmen Matos, 47, her 17-year-old son and the son's 18-year-old homeless friend, Christopher Gonzalez were partying over at Matos's apartment in Jersey City. The victim, Tyrone W. Counts, 43, was also there enjoying a night of drinking and "possible" use of illegal drugs. Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said at some point, Counts said something that was interpreted as being disrespectful toward Matos, which then inititated the homicidal attack (the "homicidal attack" being Matos and the boys repeatedly stabbing and bludgeoning Counts to death with a knife and baseball bat).

The body was then stripped naked, for reasons unknown, and placed head first into a push cart. These efforts seem to have been made with the intention of disposing of the body, but rather Matos and the two boys continued to drink and party into the night. The next morning Matos walked into the North District police to tell them there was a body in her apartment. Matos and her son were charged and arrested on Friday and Gonzalez was brought in and charged Monday.


That brings me to Tuesday, reading Mike's latest story on my lunch break. Looking down at the front cover and the first released photos of the perps, one of them looks familiar. Looking down at Christopher Gonzalez's mug shot, I know I recognize that face. And than I remember where I met him.

"Ken," I yell, running out of the lunch room, waving the front page at my editor. "Did you guys realize we ran a photo of Gonzalez on the front page for a different story?"

"What?" Ken asks.

"When you sent Paul and I out for the homeless shelter story, Gonzalez was our interview. I took a bunch of pictures of the guy."

Ken pauses and looks down, trying to remember the front page story we ran on a Monday in November. His mouth suddenly drops, and he looks back up at me. "Oh yeah man, that's the guy?!"

Nineteen days before the murder, I had met Christopher Gonzalez on the steps of St. Lucy's homeless shelter in Jersey City. Writer Paul Koepp and I were sent out on a relatively slow news day by our editor, Ken Thorbourne to make a story about how the homeless community was handling the cold. Christopher was a young kid we found smoking outside, and was one of the few homeless people comfortable speaking with us.

What struck me about Christopher was his normality. He was well spoken and polite. His demeanor came across as kind. He was even fairly well dressed and clean, besides a pair of dirty white sneakers. My editors complained that he didn't look homeless enough.

He was unremarkable regarding any perception of violence. I sensed no threats while we talked. I felt no fear when I shook his hand. Thinking back now, I would have never guessed he was capable of such an act from our encounter.

When I cover murders and death, there is a faceless perp. It is usually a grainy mug shot or a vague description of someone acting out evil acts. It is often hard to apprehend someone enacting violence. The experience has left me feeling quite capable of murder myself, as I saw little difference in Christopher and I. He was going in for his first day at a new job last time we met, trying to begin supporting himself at eighteen. The only difference I saw in him and I was a matter of luck. He didn't have a home or family to lean on, something I am lucky enough to have. It seems more a matter of where we started life, rather than of character. While obviously there is a very large gap in our integrity, our potential and capabilities seem no different. It's left me feeling the banality of evil.

"That's a crazy coincidence man," Ken says as we look up the front cover from November. "Did he seem like a crazed, murderer when you guys met?"

Paul and I both reply, "No."

List of stories mentioned (in chronological order):

"COLD COMFORT" by Paul Koepp
"Body found stuffed head-first in folding shopping cart" by Mike Conte
"Third charged in "shopping cart" homicide case" by Mike Conte
"THIS PARTY IS DEAD" by Mike Conte