Читать книгу Betrayal In Blood - Michael Benson - Страница 7

CHAPTER 1

Penfield

The story takes place in and around Rochester, New York, along the south shore of Lake Ontario, about fifty miles east of Buffalo. Rochester is what’s called a medium-sized city, with a population of approximately 250,000. It is the third largest city in the state, behind only New York City and Buffalo.

Rochester grew where it did because it was a prime location. That’s where the Genesee River flows into Lake Ontario. Later, it became the spot where the Genesee River crossed the Erie Canal. Rochester was a hub of water transportation. The land that was to become the city of Rochester was first settled in 1803 when Colonel Nathaniel Rochester, Colonel William Fitzhugh, and Major Charles Carroll purchased a one-hundred-acre tract on the west side of the Genesee River. The original settlement was near the falls that now marks the city’s downtown area. It was only a few hundred yards from the courthouse where the trial in this case was held. The location was not immediately popular; it was largely swamp with dense forest, and swamp fever, later known as malaria. But the swamp was cleared and buildings were erected. The city took root and grew outward.

The Erie Canal was moved to a new route south of the city, and its name was changed to the Barge Canal. Rochester was no longer there because of water transportation. It found a new raison d’être in cutting-edge technology. Eastman Kodak, Xerox, Bausch & Lomb all made their homes in Rochester. In addition, Wegmans, one of the country’s top grocery-store chains, was headquartered in Rochester.

Like many cities in America, during the middle of the twentieth century, suburbs surrounded Rochester as old-time Rochesterians moved out and were replaced by newcomers, often poor minorities, who took their place in the city proper.

Though the city itself had shrunk in population, from 350,000 to 250,000, the metro Rochester area (which included most of Monroe County) had grown by 2003 to a population of close to 1 million. The crime rate in the suburbs was only a fraction of that which law enforcement had to battle in the city. There were, however, lower-middle-class suburbs and middle-class suburbs where the county sheriff’s office was kept busy. While crime within the city limits of Rochester was under the jurisdiction of the Rochester Police Department, crimes in Monroe County, but outside the city, were investigated by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. Despite the boundaries of jurisdiction, the sheriff’s headquarters and the Monroe County Hall of Justice, the courthouse, were in Downtown Rochester.

On the other hand, there were sections of Monroe County where crime was practically nonexistent. One town that rarely experienced violent crime was upscale Penfield. The murder profiled here made large headlines, in the beginning, not because of the fascinating tale behind the crime, but because of its location. There hadn’t been a murder in Penfield in years. The biggest problems facing town officials were more commonly: where to install new sidewalks?

The murder occurred in the jurisdiction of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. That year, the sheriff’s office would handle 12,080 crimes, about thirty-five crimes a day. That’s not bad when you consider the office patrols thirteen towns, and a population of greater than five hundred thousand. Penfield was not contributing its fair share of those twelve thousand crimes. The murder happened in the unlikeliest of spots: on the main floor of a beautiful two-story home not far from Penfield’s country clubs, Shadow Lake and Shadow Pines.