Thirty-six-year-old Bernard Sowells lived in a home on Van Siclen Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife Irene, the couple’s three children, Irene’s sister and brother-in-law, and a cousin. Bernard had lived a life of petty crime when younger and had spent some time in prison before the birth of his third child, but by 2000, he had largely gotten his life together, working a decent job at a fabric company in New York’s garment district.
At around eleven p.m. on July 20th, 2000, Irene came home in a cab after shopping and saw her husband sitting on the stoop outside their house, clearly somewhat drunk. She asked him what he was doing, and he said, “Nothing.”
Moments later, a man came down the sidewalk, and Bernard asked the man, in a somewhat accusatory tone, if he knew Irene. This irritated Irene, as Bernard had a habit of jealously assuming random men were after her. Irene would later report that she had never seen the man before and didn’t think her husband knew who he was either.
The unidentified man then got into a parked car across the street, rolled down the window, and said something else to Bernard, though Irene couldn’t hear what he said. Bernard replied, but Irene didn’t catch that either. She asked her husband if he was going to come into the house, and he said he would be in shortly.
Only minutes later, Irene heard gunshots. She rushed out the door, only to see her husband lying in a bloody heap on the street, the victim of a single shot to the head. The man Bernard had spoken to earlier was standing over him. She later described the suspect to police as a broad-shouldered black male in his mid-twenties with dreadlocks. The car he fled the scene in was a blue Honda.
According to witnesses in the neighborhood, the shooting had been the result of an argument over a parking space. But there were other rumors circulating, that perhaps Bernard had been executed because of drugs or stolen money. There was even gossip that Irene’s brother Leroy was somehow involved. Leroy, in fact, was shot in the head during a robbery in Utica, New York, two days before Bernard Sowells was murdered. Leroy survived the attack but lost his eyesight. He was questioned by police but claimed he knew nothing about his brother-in-law’s slaying.
The case stagnated not long after it occurred, and though it is still open, no significant progress has been made in the investigation.
Crime Immemorial 