May 6, 2024 • 30 mins
After nearly 20 years with no answers, the Wood family learns that police are investigating a new lead in Aaron’s death.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Hey, it's Jake. Before we get into this episode,
I want to let you know that you can now
binge the entire season ad free. By becoming a Pushkin
Plus subscriber. You can hear all six episodes before they
are released to the public. Sign up for Pushkin Plus
on the Deep Cover Apple podcast show page or visit
(00:39):
pushkin dot fm slash Plus. Your subscription also unlocks more
early and ad free content from other true crime shows
coming later this year, like new seasons of Death of
an Artist and Lost Hills, and a brand new true
investigation called Where's Dia Now under the episode previously Deep Cover.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
So he starts telling us how it went down. That
basically that he and Tommy decided one night to go
and find a black man, to kill that black man
so that they could get their spider web tattoos as skinheads.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
How optimistic were you that you were going to be
able to get them what they needed to solve this?
Speaker 3 (01:37):
I was actually very optimistic because we keep pretty good
records on our dead bodies.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
We have a name, we have a victim.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Last November, I traveled to Philadelphia to meet some of
iron Wood's relatives.
Speaker 5 (02:02):
Hello, my name is Michelle Wood, and Ron Wood is
my uncle.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
It struck me right away that Michelle used the present
tense Aroan is her uncle, as if on some level
he's still alive for her, and he kind of is.
He still looms in her memories, even though Michelle was
just three years old back in nineteen eighty nine when
he was murdered.
Speaker 5 (02:26):
I always get this vision. But I don't know if
it was like me just thinking about what happened, or
if I actually remembered, but I always have this vision
of on my grandmom's living room and everybody like in
a circle, hugging each other and crying.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
For Michelle, this vision, this memory is from the time
that her uncle died, when they all gathered at her
grandmother's house in North Philadelphia to mourn. And you heard
her say, she can't even be sure if it's a
real memory or something that she's just been told about
so many times that it has slowly leached into her
(03:05):
consciousness and become a memory. That vision of her family
was something that she recalled and felt every time she
walked into her grandmother's living room. Growing up. Michelle says
she was very close with her grandmother, Dorothy would Iran's mother, Michelle,
often wanted to ask her grandmother to talk about the past,
(03:28):
to share some stories about her uncle Ran, but Michelle
didn't ask because she'd been warned not to.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
My dad will always say like, if you have any
questions about your uncle, asks me. You know, don't really
try to talk to your Grandmaboudy. So I would just
listen when someone says something, but I didn't ask because
I just felt like it was like a sort topy.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Occasionally Dorothy would talk about Iran. Michelle says back then,
even as a child, she could sense her grandmother's pain,
and she also sensed that her grandmother was trying to
make sense of what had happened, of why had been killed,
because no one had ever been able to offer the
family any explanation, not the police, or the neighbors, or
(04:17):
even Iran's friends, and then not knowing seemed to eat
away at Dorothy.
Speaker 5 (04:24):
I think that when it comes to certain particular deaths,
I think that sometimes we put on the front with
the world like we've gotten over it, because maybe people
feel like they might be taught to hearing about it,
or it's been so long you should be over it.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Michelle remembers that her grandmother often recalled things that Iran
said before he died. Apparently there were certain Bible verses
that Iran liked to paraphrase, like when Jesus said, put
your sword back into its place, for all who take
the sword will perish by the sword. Dorothy wondered aloud,
(05:02):
Why had Iron quoted this particular verse? What was he
trying to tell us? Dorothy puzzled over this and other
things that Aron said, as if these memories, or these
cryptic bits, somehow held the secret to her son's fate.
Speaker 5 (05:19):
I think she was trying to get answers. I feel
like she was, you know, still heartbroke in a body.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
In some ways, Michelle was also looking for answers. She
too wanted to know more about her uncle Iran, But
there was perhaps quite understandably, a sense among some family
members that the past was the past. It was painful,
so best to let it be, best to move on.
(05:45):
For Dorothy, this brokenheartedness, this yearning for an answer, It
continued for a very long time, but there was no movement,
no news, nothing. It seemed possible she'd never know who
murdered her son or why. But then Seventeen years later,
(06:06):
in two thousand and six, the Phillip she showed up
at her house and knocked on her door. These cops
were acting on intel from Scott and Terry's investigation. This
door knock. It would set off a chain of events
that would upend the Wood family and its understanding of
the past, and it would instill in the family another yearning,
(06:31):
entirely a yearning for justice. I'm Jake Calburn and this
(06:51):
is Deep Cover season four, the Nameless Man episode The Yearning.
(07:18):
When I started working on this story, one of the
first things I did was reach out to the Wood family.
I wrote letters, emails, sent a few texts. Initially I
got no response, and then finally I heard back from Michelle.
Right away, she became my ambassador to the Wood family.
She told me that I really needed to speak with
(07:39):
her father and her uncle, Iran's brothers. They were in
their twenties when Ron died. Michelle suggested that I come
down to Philadelphia and that we all get together. The
Wood family had never really spoken publicly about Iran's death,
not in any depth or detail anyhow, so I was
(07:59):
surprised by this invitation. But I can't take any credit
for it. It was all Michelle. She made it happen,
and I got the sense it wasn't even that she
wanted to speak so much as she wanted to listen
to hear what her dad and her uncle had to say.
All these years later, Michelle still yearned to know more
(08:21):
about her own family and her uncle, Aaron, the man
who'd been murdered under mysterious circumstances when she was just
three years old. We all met up in an apartment
that I rented in the Fairmount neighborhood of Philly. It
was me, a producer, Amy, and three members of the
(08:41):
Wood family, Michelle, her dad Michael, and her uncle Tyrone.
The five of us crammed into a tiny shoe box
of a living room. I mean the chairs were jammed
in so tight our feet were practically touching. Dorothy passed
away a few years ago, so sadly she wasn't there
are we rolling on both? Okay, So let's talk about names.
(09:03):
We're gonna pause for a seconds. That's my names, names,
because the first thing you got to know about the
Wood family is everyone has a nickname. Tyrone he's the
youngest child, the baby. He was almost eight years younger
than Iran. His nickname is the Golden Child because as
a kid he got away with everything. But was that, uh, Tyron,
(09:26):
was that like a name that you embraced or were
you like, Oh.
Speaker 6 (09:29):
I embraced it. I embraced it that because I knew
it was true.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
And then there's Michael, the middle child. He's Michelle's dad.
He was six years younger than Iran, and he has
a nickname too.
Speaker 7 (09:44):
Disco aerin from the seventies like that, because when I
started DJ in eighty two, that was still the disco
era was still coming. So that's why a lot of people,
some people I grew up with, they know me as
they'll call me DJ Mike, They'll call me Disco mike
y Yeah, disco.
Speaker 6 (10:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
It was clear to me from the start, just a
few minutes into our conversation that this is a family
that likes to laugh. They told me they've always enjoyed
each other's company. Tyrone the Golden Child remembers Thanksgivings when
he would cook dinner and then cuddle up with his
knees on the couch where he'd fall asleep instantly.
Speaker 6 (10:25):
Yes, we had a you know, football game one because
I cooked it and not all the time, not all
the time. But are you gonna talk about that?
Speaker 5 (10:35):
Okay, okay, that's how I was at my grandma host
to a couch, always fell asleep on couch.
Speaker 6 (10:42):
Oh yeah, that was a sleeping to them. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Well, you guys said something. You guys have a close family.
Speaker 6 (10:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
M At this point, there was a pause in our conversation.
No one spoke for a moment. You could almost feel
a muted sadness creep into the room, like cold hair
through a crack in the wall. And then, totally unpromp
did Michelle said, Uh.
Speaker 5 (11:11):
You know, I often wonder how it would have been
if my uncle was still up, you know, getting to.
Speaker 6 (11:17):
Know him more.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Where does that thought leave you when you go down
that road?
Speaker 4 (11:21):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (11:22):
I guess now, I feel like this would be a
good time to start, you know, bridging the gifts and
stuff with our.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Family, bridging the gaps. Michelle was referring to other relatives
in the family who knew Iran that they'd lost touch with.
But as I saw it, there seemed to be other
gaps too, gaps in memory, things that Michelle couldn't remember
or never knew about her uncle. Iran, and that's really
(11:50):
why we were here to talk about the one brother
who was absent. Iran, of course, had a nickname of
his own, Cat. Apparently it came from the animated cartoon
Top Cat. It was popular back in.
Speaker 6 (12:07):
The sixties Top Cat.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Top Cat was the leader of a gang of alley
cats from Manhattan who were always hustling with get rich
quick schemes. Their plans usually backfired comically, so Iran was
a big fan of the show, and apparently he was
also a smooth operator.
Speaker 6 (12:26):
Oh yeah, he was. He's a smooth, smooth dude. I mean,
you know, he, like I said, he wasn't the biggest guy,
but everybody respected him. I mean they just and they
listened to him. You old cat said, this cat said
that he loved he loved cats. Soon he loved cads.
Speaker 7 (12:43):
I remember, I'm s funny right because I remember he
would when he would kiss the cast, he would kiss
him in theyme off and my mom would say, tell
his girlfriend, I don't know.
Speaker 6 (12:52):
Why you kiss him mine. He'd be kissing them cats
in the mall.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
In the neighborhood. Iran seemed to embrace the role of
top Cat, a little guy with a lot of bluster.
He was a good basketball player and a ladies man too,
a real sharp dresser. In fact, as he got older
and could afford it, Iran had his clothing custom made
by a local tailor. Iran very much played the role
(13:19):
of the big brother, looking out for his siblings, keeping
them safe. When Michael or Tyrone played basketball or hung
out at the park, they never had to worry about
people messing with them. Everyone knew they were cats younger brothers,
and according to Tyrone, this allowed them to remain just
kids much longer than they otherwise would have. Even though
(13:43):
there was crime in their neighborhood, the Woods house never
got burglarized. This was Aron's doing. The brothers told me.
This was his reputation, keeping them safe like a shield,
or so it seemed. In the late seventies and early eighties,
(14:04):
when the Wood brothers were coming of age, Philadelphia was
grappling with an uptick and homicides, and at times the
threat of danger felt very real to the Wood family.
There was one occasion when Iran was in his twenties,
Aram was at the park. Someone shot off a gun
and the bullet grazed at Iran's body. He had to
go to the hospital to get patched up. It was
(14:26):
a close call and reminder that no one was entirely safe.
The brothers say that Iran was the type of young
man who was always testing boundaries, pushing it a little bit,
which sometimes caused tension with their mom, Dorothy. Even so,
Iran helped out. Whatever money he made, he always shared
(14:48):
it with their mom. Here's Michael, I.
Speaker 7 (14:50):
Know he would give him money, you know, whatever various
jobs or whatever he did out on the street like that.
He wasn't no choir boy, you know, because he was
evolving different things, you know, he was. I mean, I
know he was in this, you know, selling drugs and
stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Michael and Tyrone didn't know all the details, but they
understood their older brother was quote no choir boy. By
the time that he was in his late twenties, Iran
ran a local speakeasy and he also sold drugs. But
to his brothers, he was top cat, the lovable rascal
who was always there for them. When it came time
(15:28):
for Disco Mike to go to the prom, it was
Iran who took him to get a snazzy suit at
a men's shop called Today's Man. Later, when Michael wanted
to find work as a DJ, Iran had him spin
records at his speakeasy. Tyrone, the youngest the Golden Child,
remembers fondly being in his twenties and going to Cats
(15:48):
Speak Easy when disco Mike would spin his records.
Speaker 6 (15:53):
He would dj and my brother would you know, run
the place, and you know, at the end of the
night we would go up to he'd count the money
or whatever, give Michael whatever in And that was like
a really fun time for me. It was because it
was a time I got to spend time with both
my brothers at the same time with no no no
(16:15):
drama or no nothing wrong, if just a happy time.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Tyrone smiled when he told this story. You could see
him doing that thing where for a moment you kind
of step away from yourself and go back in time.
It was sweet to watch, but also painful because I
knew what came next. We're gonna take a quick break.
(17:01):
There are single moments in time when fate takes a
jagged turn, like a dog like intersection that dumps you
into a dead end. For the Wood family, this moment
occurred in April of nineteen eighty nine. The Wood brothers
were adults. They had families of their own. Iran was
(17:21):
thirty three, Michael was twenty eight, and Tyrone, the baby,
the Golden Child, was twenty six. It was Tyrone who
got the call from their mother telling him that something
terrible had happened. Their oldest brother had been shot in
the head and left for dead. The police didn't have
a shooter, they didn't seem to have any leads either.
(17:46):
Tyrone and Michael were at a loss. Sure, maybe Iran
was no choir boy, but as far as they knew,
he didn't have any enemies either. As Tyrone recalled.
Speaker 6 (17:57):
Everybody liked him. That's why we was baffled, like, oh,
somebody shot it ron, shout it ron. You can't nah,
no way, And I guess that's what was the most
in the beginning, couldn't figure that out.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Still in a state of shock, the brothers rushed over
to be with their mom. How did your mom? What
state was your mom?
Speaker 6 (18:22):
And at that point, I know she was really out
of it. She was really destroyed. She was really destroyed.
She was in kind of a bad way. So we
tried to just be there for her. I don't know
what can we say you know, that's her oldest son.
(18:44):
You know, I didn't know how to react, especially to
a violent crime like that. I was kind of mad
at God. I was like, how can you do this
to me? I was thinking, well, what do we want
to do now, you know that sort of thing, you know,
how do we how do we go on? And then
because you know that was the first real violence in
(19:07):
my life and that at that time, it took me.
I went to a tailspind. I wasn't myself, you know,
cause I was just in self destruct mode. I guess
day before his funeral, I disappeared. I was drinking and
(19:28):
and you know, ah, as a matter of fact, I
came to my mother's house the day before the funeral, uh,
in the middle of the night, and they made me
go upstairs and go to bed.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
They took away his keys. They didn't want him driving.
They just wanted to keep him safe. A few days later,
Tyrone went to the spot where his brother was killed
on the thirteen hundred block of Stillman Street.
Speaker 6 (19:53):
I actually wanna see, oh where it happened. When the
last place he was at. Yeah, I just wanna see
the last place she was at.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Basically, did he give you any peace or anything.
Speaker 6 (20:11):
No, I wept a lot. I don't even know who
was with me. I don't know if I was by myself.
I don't know. I just know I drove there and
I just cried and cried and just at you know,
but I had to see. I'd see the last place
(20:32):
my brother was here was on earth.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Meanwhile, Michael, the middle brother, he was also struggling. The
night before the service, he went to the funeral home
to see his brother in a coffin, and in this
quiet moment, he kissed Ron on the forehead. What Michael
(20:59):
remembers next is the wake. Everyone gathered at their mom's
house to grieve and pay their respects. Michael was still
grasping for answers. There was still no new information on
who murdered Iran, just rumors speculation about who might have
a motive, but it was all chatter. At some point,
(21:20):
Michael recalls, one of his aunts sat him down because
there was something important that you wanted to tell him.
Speaker 7 (21:27):
She said, you have to forgive the person that killed
your brother. And I don't even know this person is.
I know he's somewhere around.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
I don't know.
Speaker 7 (21:36):
It could be somebody that came in the allowance where
I worked at DJ and stuff like that. I don't
even know who this person is because it was like
all kinds of rumors. Order I think so and so did.
It was he had an incident with this person, he
had an incident with that person, you know, so we
don't even know who the enemy is.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Michael had no idea who'd killed his brother, none at all,
but his aunt was insistent that he needed to embrace
the Lord's Prayer one verse especially.
Speaker 7 (22:04):
Which it says, particularly in the Lord's Prayer that in
order for God to forgive you for your sin, you
have to forgive you.
Speaker 6 (22:09):
And they be some like that.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
But this raises his question of like, how do you
forgive someone that you don't even know who that person is?
Speaker 7 (22:16):
You don't know because you don't. I mean, it's hard,
it's hard. I'm told this, and technically did I forgive
that person at the time. My aunt is telling me
this and is in my mind, But I don't think,
be honest with you, I don't think right dinning, and
I'm not forgiving that person.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
And how could he? How can you forgive a person
you don't know, someone you can't picture someone who has
no face and no name, and this underscores a central
irony and tragedy of this entire story. For the investigators
who are trying to solve this case, the federal agents,
their nameless man was the victim. Until they found him,
(22:59):
they had nothing, no case, and no closure. But for
the Woods, their nameless man was the perpetrator, the murderer,
and until they found out who he was, there could
be no forgiveness nor any peace either. In the aftermath
of Iran's death, everyone in the Wood family struggled in
(23:22):
their own way. Tyrone, the youngest, the golden child, struggled
with alcoholism.
Speaker 6 (23:29):
Basically lost. I lost a lot my first marriage. I
lost that, so I had to basically just built myself
back up again.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Tyrone went to rehab, got sober, and leaned into his faith.
Speaker 6 (23:48):
I started reading the book again and that's basically what
got me back on track. I've realized that what am
I gaining by being mad at God? I mean, it
wasn't God that pulled the trigger.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Tyrone says, It's not like he found all the answers.
He still struggled with the how and why of his
brother's death. Both brothers, Tyrone and Michael did everything they
could to be there for their mom.
Speaker 6 (24:15):
We all just made sure that she didn't feel like
she was alone, you know, so we never let her
be and I think in time she I can't say
she completely got over it, but she she kind of
being sided. She was a Christian. She kind of accepted
(24:35):
it and for what it was, and she just gravitated
towards us.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
She kind of accepted it. Tyrone said, I was reminded
of what Michelle had said from the beginning about her grandmother,
how sometimes it seemed like she put up a front
to the whole world like she'd moved on because that's
what people wanted her to do. But within the immediate family,
they all kind of knew that Dorothy still agonized over
(25:03):
her son's death, in part because she blamed herself for
not doing more to keep her on. See here's Michael
the middle brother again.
Speaker 7 (25:13):
I remember she was always saying that I wish I
could have really talked to him, or or try to
spend more time with him, or try to reach them.
She kind of felt that she felled as a mother
as far as him.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Tyrone, the youngest remembers this too, how their mom kept
blaming herself.
Speaker 6 (25:34):
She wish she could have did things a little different,
but you can't, you can't. And I told her all,
I said, you can't. You can't say that because you
did the best you could what you have and got
told her to say, you didn't slack on him. You
did the best you could under the circumstances. And then
you raised three boys, three men. You've made three boys
(25:57):
in two men. That's not easy. Told I say, you
the best, mom.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Even so, the question remained, who was responsible for herself death?
In truth, they all still wondered about Iran and what
had happened. Late at night, Tyrone found himself at home
on the couch watching true crime TV shows.
Speaker 6 (26:21):
I used to watch the unsolved mischievy shows, and I
often thought about calling because I was like this, this
is not right. How can a person get killed and
no one knows anything.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
It wasn't until one day in two thousand and six,
nearly two decades after Iran's death, that the family thought
they might finally learn the truth.
Speaker 6 (26:49):
A police officer came to my mother's house. He said
that we have a new lead about what happened with
your son in nineteen eighty nine and you know, she
don't open the door for anybody, so she automatically just
told them, she said, look, give me your card. My
son's gonna call you. So she's talking about me because
she said she wasn't able to deal with it.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Tyrone told his mother not to worry about it. He
would call the detectives.
Speaker 6 (27:17):
So I'm kind of nervous, and then I just called.
The detective said we were still investigating. But then we
found out who killed your brother.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
And at first that's really all the police tell the
Wood family, but it was enough to kindle some hope,
to make them believe that maybe, after all these years
of guessing and speculation, that they might finally learn what
happened to Iran.
Speaker 6 (27:44):
We didn't like the speculation the family, and I thought
that this would be good if we found least what
happened to him. Can't do nothing about it, can't bring
him back, but if we would find out the truth,
and the truth will probably help us help everybody in
the family.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
That was the hope that the truth would help them,
heal them, bring them some closure. But it would be many,
many months before they would learn the full extent of
what the authorities at pieced together, and during this time
Scott Duffy and Terry Mortimer, along with the PHILLYPD, they
(28:24):
were hard at work scrambling to gather evidence with the
hope that they might build a strong enough case to
make an arrest and go to trial next time. On
(28:48):
Deep Cover, it was definitely a different type of case.
Speaker 6 (28:52):
You know, a skinhead coming.
Speaker 5 (28:53):
To Philadelphi to kill somebody, a cowardly act.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
We'd say you to Craig, you were there, we weren't.
Perhaps you blocked it out. Let's just drive and unblock
your mind.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
So we're like, police, please get down, get down. And
I'm yelling, others are yelling tough for our lungs. And
he just stands there like a deer in the headlights,
just staring at it, staring at me, staring at them
that I could see in his mind. I can see
in his face he's deciding what to do.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Deep Cover is produced by Amy Gaines McQuaid and Jacob Smith.
It's edited by Karen Schakerji mastering by Jake Gorski. Our
show art was designed by Sean Carney. Original scoring in
our theme was composed by Luis Gara. Fact checking by
Arthur Gomberts. Our story consultant was James Foreman Jr. Special
(29:54):
thanks to Jerry Williams, Sarah Nix, Greta Cone, and Jake Flanagan.
I'm Jake Halper m
Pushkin. Hey, it's Jake. Before we get into this episode,
I want to let you know that you can now
binge the entire season ad free. By becoming a Pushkin
Plus subscriber. You can hear all six episodes before they
are released to the public. Sign up for Pushkin Plus
on the Deep Cover Apple podcast show page or visit
(00:39):
pushkin dot fm slash Plus. Your subscription also unlocks more
early and ad free content from other true crime shows
coming later this year, like new seasons of Death of
an Artist and Lost Hills, and a brand new true
investigation called Where's Dia Now under the episode previously Deep Cover.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
So he starts telling us how it went down. That
basically that he and Tommy decided one night to go
and find a black man, to kill that black man
so that they could get their spider web tattoos as skinheads.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
How optimistic were you that you were going to be
able to get them what they needed to solve this?
Speaker 3 (01:37):
I was actually very optimistic because we keep pretty good
records on our dead bodies.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
We have a name, we have a victim.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Last November, I traveled to Philadelphia to meet some of
iron Wood's relatives.
Speaker 5 (02:02):
Hello, my name is Michelle Wood, and Ron Wood is
my uncle.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
It struck me right away that Michelle used the present
tense Aroan is her uncle, as if on some level
he's still alive for her, and he kind of is.
He still looms in her memories, even though Michelle was
just three years old back in nineteen eighty nine when
he was murdered.
Speaker 5 (02:26):
I always get this vision. But I don't know if
it was like me just thinking about what happened, or
if I actually remembered, but I always have this vision
of on my grandmom's living room and everybody like in
a circle, hugging each other and crying.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
For Michelle, this vision, this memory is from the time
that her uncle died, when they all gathered at her
grandmother's house in North Philadelphia to mourn. And you heard
her say, she can't even be sure if it's a
real memory or something that she's just been told about
so many times that it has slowly leached into her
(03:05):
consciousness and become a memory. That vision of her family
was something that she recalled and felt every time she
walked into her grandmother's living room. Growing up. Michelle says
she was very close with her grandmother, Dorothy would Iran's mother, Michelle,
often wanted to ask her grandmother to talk about the past,
(03:28):
to share some stories about her uncle Ran, but Michelle
didn't ask because she'd been warned not to.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
My dad will always say like, if you have any
questions about your uncle, asks me. You know, don't really
try to talk to your Grandmaboudy. So I would just
listen when someone says something, but I didn't ask because
I just felt like it was like a sort topy.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Occasionally Dorothy would talk about Iran. Michelle says back then,
even as a child, she could sense her grandmother's pain,
and she also sensed that her grandmother was trying to
make sense of what had happened, of why had been killed,
because no one had ever been able to offer the
family any explanation, not the police, or the neighbors, or
(04:17):
even Iran's friends, and then not knowing seemed to eat
away at Dorothy.
Speaker 5 (04:24):
I think that when it comes to certain particular deaths,
I think that sometimes we put on the front with
the world like we've gotten over it, because maybe people
feel like they might be taught to hearing about it,
or it's been so long you should be over it.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Michelle remembers that her grandmother often recalled things that Iran
said before he died. Apparently there were certain Bible verses
that Iran liked to paraphrase, like when Jesus said, put
your sword back into its place, for all who take
the sword will perish by the sword. Dorothy wondered aloud,
(05:02):
Why had Iron quoted this particular verse? What was he
trying to tell us? Dorothy puzzled over this and other
things that Aron said, as if these memories, or these
cryptic bits, somehow held the secret to her son's fate.
Speaker 5 (05:19):
I think she was trying to get answers. I feel
like she was, you know, still heartbroke in a body.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
In some ways, Michelle was also looking for answers. She
too wanted to know more about her uncle Iran, But
there was perhaps quite understandably, a sense among some family
members that the past was the past. It was painful,
so best to let it be, best to move on.
(05:45):
For Dorothy, this brokenheartedness, this yearning for an answer, It
continued for a very long time, but there was no movement,
no news, nothing. It seemed possible she'd never know who
murdered her son or why. But then Seventeen years later,
(06:06):
in two thousand and six, the Phillip she showed up
at her house and knocked on her door. These cops
were acting on intel from Scott and Terry's investigation. This
door knock. It would set off a chain of events
that would upend the Wood family and its understanding of
the past, and it would instill in the family another yearning,
(06:31):
entirely a yearning for justice. I'm Jake Calburn and this
(06:51):
is Deep Cover season four, the Nameless Man episode The Yearning.
(07:18):
When I started working on this story, one of the
first things I did was reach out to the Wood family.
I wrote letters, emails, sent a few texts. Initially I
got no response, and then finally I heard back from Michelle.
Right away, she became my ambassador to the Wood family.
She told me that I really needed to speak with
(07:39):
her father and her uncle, Iran's brothers. They were in
their twenties when Ron died. Michelle suggested that I come
down to Philadelphia and that we all get together. The
Wood family had never really spoken publicly about Iran's death,
not in any depth or detail anyhow, so I was
(07:59):
surprised by this invitation. But I can't take any credit
for it. It was all Michelle. She made it happen,
and I got the sense it wasn't even that she
wanted to speak so much as she wanted to listen
to hear what her dad and her uncle had to say.
All these years later, Michelle still yearned to know more
(08:21):
about her own family and her uncle, Aaron, the man
who'd been murdered under mysterious circumstances when she was just
three years old. We all met up in an apartment
that I rented in the Fairmount neighborhood of Philly. It
was me, a producer, Amy, and three members of the
(08:41):
Wood family, Michelle, her dad Michael, and her uncle Tyrone.
The five of us crammed into a tiny shoe box
of a living room. I mean the chairs were jammed
in so tight our feet were practically touching. Dorothy passed
away a few years ago, so sadly she wasn't there
are we rolling on both? Okay, So let's talk about names.
(09:03):
We're gonna pause for a seconds. That's my names, names,
because the first thing you got to know about the
Wood family is everyone has a nickname. Tyrone he's the
youngest child, the baby. He was almost eight years younger
than Iran. His nickname is the Golden Child because as
a kid he got away with everything. But was that, uh, Tyron,
(09:26):
was that like a name that you embraced or were
you like, Oh.
Speaker 6 (09:29):
I embraced it. I embraced it that because I knew
it was true.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
And then there's Michael, the middle child. He's Michelle's dad.
He was six years younger than Iran, and he has
a nickname too.
Speaker 7 (09:44):
Disco aerin from the seventies like that, because when I
started DJ in eighty two, that was still the disco
era was still coming. So that's why a lot of people,
some people I grew up with, they know me as
they'll call me DJ Mike, They'll call me Disco mike
y Yeah, disco.
Speaker 6 (10:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
It was clear to me from the start, just a
few minutes into our conversation that this is a family
that likes to laugh. They told me they've always enjoyed
each other's company. Tyrone the Golden Child remembers Thanksgivings when
he would cook dinner and then cuddle up with his
knees on the couch where he'd fall asleep instantly.
Speaker 6 (10:25):
Yes, we had a you know, football game one because
I cooked it and not all the time, not all
the time. But are you gonna talk about that?
Speaker 5 (10:35):
Okay, okay, that's how I was at my grandma host
to a couch, always fell asleep on couch.
Speaker 6 (10:42):
Oh yeah, that was a sleeping to them. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Well, you guys said something. You guys have a close family.
Speaker 6 (10:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
M At this point, there was a pause in our conversation.
No one spoke for a moment. You could almost feel
a muted sadness creep into the room, like cold hair
through a crack in the wall. And then, totally unpromp
did Michelle said, Uh.
Speaker 5 (11:11):
You know, I often wonder how it would have been
if my uncle was still up, you know, getting to.
Speaker 6 (11:17):
Know him more.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Where does that thought leave you when you go down
that road?
Speaker 4 (11:21):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (11:22):
I guess now, I feel like this would be a
good time to start, you know, bridging the gifts and
stuff with our.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Family, bridging the gaps. Michelle was referring to other relatives
in the family who knew Iran that they'd lost touch with.
But as I saw it, there seemed to be other
gaps too, gaps in memory, things that Michelle couldn't remember
or never knew about her uncle. Iran, and that's really
(11:50):
why we were here to talk about the one brother
who was absent. Iran, of course, had a nickname of
his own, Cat. Apparently it came from the animated cartoon
Top Cat. It was popular back in.
Speaker 6 (12:07):
The sixties Top Cat.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Top Cat was the leader of a gang of alley
cats from Manhattan who were always hustling with get rich
quick schemes. Their plans usually backfired comically, so Iran was
a big fan of the show, and apparently he was
also a smooth operator.
Speaker 6 (12:26):
Oh yeah, he was. He's a smooth, smooth dude. I mean,
you know, he, like I said, he wasn't the biggest guy,
but everybody respected him. I mean they just and they
listened to him. You old cat said, this cat said
that he loved he loved cats. Soon he loved cads.
Speaker 7 (12:43):
I remember, I'm s funny right because I remember he
would when he would kiss the cast, he would kiss
him in theyme off and my mom would say, tell
his girlfriend, I don't know.
Speaker 6 (12:52):
Why you kiss him mine. He'd be kissing them cats
in the mall.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
In the neighborhood. Iran seemed to embrace the role of
top Cat, a little guy with a lot of bluster.
He was a good basketball player and a ladies man too,
a real sharp dresser. In fact, as he got older
and could afford it, Iran had his clothing custom made
by a local tailor. Iran very much played the role
(13:19):
of the big brother, looking out for his siblings, keeping
them safe. When Michael or Tyrone played basketball or hung
out at the park, they never had to worry about
people messing with them. Everyone knew they were cats younger brothers,
and according to Tyrone, this allowed them to remain just
kids much longer than they otherwise would have. Even though
(13:43):
there was crime in their neighborhood, the Woods house never
got burglarized. This was Aron's doing. The brothers told me.
This was his reputation, keeping them safe like a shield,
or so it seemed. In the late seventies and early eighties,
(14:04):
when the Wood brothers were coming of age, Philadelphia was
grappling with an uptick and homicides, and at times the
threat of danger felt very real to the Wood family.
There was one occasion when Iran was in his twenties,
Aram was at the park. Someone shot off a gun
and the bullet grazed at Iran's body. He had to
go to the hospital to get patched up. It was
(14:26):
a close call and reminder that no one was entirely safe.
The brothers say that Iran was the type of young
man who was always testing boundaries, pushing it a little bit,
which sometimes caused tension with their mom, Dorothy. Even so,
Iran helped out. Whatever money he made, he always shared
(14:48):
it with their mom. Here's Michael, I.
Speaker 7 (14:50):
Know he would give him money, you know, whatever various
jobs or whatever he did out on the street like that.
He wasn't no choir boy, you know, because he was
evolving different things, you know, he was. I mean, I
know he was in this, you know, selling drugs and
stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Michael and Tyrone didn't know all the details, but they
understood their older brother was quote no choir boy. By
the time that he was in his late twenties, Iran
ran a local speakeasy and he also sold drugs. But
to his brothers, he was top cat, the lovable rascal
who was always there for them. When it came time
(15:28):
for Disco Mike to go to the prom, it was
Iran who took him to get a snazzy suit at
a men's shop called Today's Man. Later, when Michael wanted
to find work as a DJ, Iran had him spin
records at his speakeasy. Tyrone, the youngest the Golden Child,
remembers fondly being in his twenties and going to Cats
(15:48):
Speak Easy when disco Mike would spin his records.
Speaker 6 (15:53):
He would dj and my brother would you know, run
the place, and you know, at the end of the
night we would go up to he'd count the money
or whatever, give Michael whatever in And that was like
a really fun time for me. It was because it
was a time I got to spend time with both
my brothers at the same time with no no no
(16:15):
drama or no nothing wrong, if just a happy time.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Tyrone smiled when he told this story. You could see
him doing that thing where for a moment you kind
of step away from yourself and go back in time.
It was sweet to watch, but also painful because I
knew what came next. We're gonna take a quick break.
(17:01):
There are single moments in time when fate takes a
jagged turn, like a dog like intersection that dumps you
into a dead end. For the Wood family, this moment
occurred in April of nineteen eighty nine. The Wood brothers
were adults. They had families of their own. Iran was
(17:21):
thirty three, Michael was twenty eight, and Tyrone, the baby,
the Golden Child, was twenty six. It was Tyrone who
got the call from their mother telling him that something
terrible had happened. Their oldest brother had been shot in
the head and left for dead. The police didn't have
a shooter, they didn't seem to have any leads either.
(17:46):
Tyrone and Michael were at a loss. Sure, maybe Iran
was no choir boy, but as far as they knew,
he didn't have any enemies either. As Tyrone recalled.
Speaker 6 (17:57):
Everybody liked him. That's why we was baffled, like, oh,
somebody shot it ron, shout it ron. You can't nah,
no way, And I guess that's what was the most
in the beginning, couldn't figure that out.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Still in a state of shock, the brothers rushed over
to be with their mom. How did your mom? What
state was your mom?
Speaker 6 (18:22):
And at that point, I know she was really out
of it. She was really destroyed. She was really destroyed.
She was in kind of a bad way. So we
tried to just be there for her. I don't know
what can we say you know, that's her oldest son.
(18:44):
You know, I didn't know how to react, especially to
a violent crime like that. I was kind of mad
at God. I was like, how can you do this
to me? I was thinking, well, what do we want
to do now, you know that sort of thing, you know,
how do we how do we go on? And then
because you know that was the first real violence in
(19:07):
my life and that at that time, it took me.
I went to a tailspind. I wasn't myself, you know,
cause I was just in self destruct mode. I guess
day before his funeral, I disappeared. I was drinking and
(19:28):
and you know, ah, as a matter of fact, I
came to my mother's house the day before the funeral, uh,
in the middle of the night, and they made me
go upstairs and go to bed.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
They took away his keys. They didn't want him driving.
They just wanted to keep him safe. A few days later,
Tyrone went to the spot where his brother was killed
on the thirteen hundred block of Stillman Street.
Speaker 6 (19:53):
I actually wanna see, oh where it happened. When the
last place he was at. Yeah, I just wanna see
the last place she was at.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Basically, did he give you any peace or anything.
Speaker 6 (20:11):
No, I wept a lot. I don't even know who
was with me. I don't know if I was by myself.
I don't know. I just know I drove there and
I just cried and cried and just at you know,
but I had to see. I'd see the last place
(20:32):
my brother was here was on earth.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Meanwhile, Michael, the middle brother, he was also struggling. The
night before the service, he went to the funeral home
to see his brother in a coffin, and in this
quiet moment, he kissed Ron on the forehead. What Michael
(20:59):
remembers next is the wake. Everyone gathered at their mom's
house to grieve and pay their respects. Michael was still
grasping for answers. There was still no new information on
who murdered Iran, just rumors speculation about who might have
a motive, but it was all chatter. At some point,
(21:20):
Michael recalls, one of his aunts sat him down because
there was something important that you wanted to tell him.
Speaker 7 (21:27):
She said, you have to forgive the person that killed
your brother. And I don't even know this person is.
I know he's somewhere around.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
I don't know.
Speaker 7 (21:36):
It could be somebody that came in the allowance where
I worked at DJ and stuff like that. I don't
even know who this person is because it was like
all kinds of rumors. Order I think so and so did.
It was he had an incident with this person, he
had an incident with that person, you know, so we
don't even know who the enemy is.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Michael had no idea who'd killed his brother, none at all,
but his aunt was insistent that he needed to embrace
the Lord's Prayer one verse especially.
Speaker 7 (22:04):
Which it says, particularly in the Lord's Prayer that in
order for God to forgive you for your sin, you
have to forgive you.
Speaker 6 (22:09):
And they be some like that.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
But this raises his question of like, how do you
forgive someone that you don't even know who that person is?
Speaker 7 (22:16):
You don't know because you don't. I mean, it's hard,
it's hard. I'm told this, and technically did I forgive
that person at the time. My aunt is telling me
this and is in my mind, But I don't think,
be honest with you, I don't think right dinning, and
I'm not forgiving that person.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
And how could he? How can you forgive a person
you don't know, someone you can't picture someone who has
no face and no name, and this underscores a central
irony and tragedy of this entire story. For the investigators
who are trying to solve this case, the federal agents,
their nameless man was the victim. Until they found him,
(22:59):
they had nothing, no case, and no closure. But for
the Woods, their nameless man was the perpetrator, the murderer,
and until they found out who he was, there could
be no forgiveness nor any peace either. In the aftermath
of Iran's death, everyone in the Wood family struggled in
(23:22):
their own way. Tyrone, the youngest, the golden child, struggled
with alcoholism.
Speaker 6 (23:29):
Basically lost. I lost a lot my first marriage. I
lost that, so I had to basically just built myself
back up again.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Tyrone went to rehab, got sober, and leaned into his faith.
Speaker 6 (23:48):
I started reading the book again and that's basically what
got me back on track. I've realized that what am
I gaining by being mad at God? I mean, it
wasn't God that pulled the trigger.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Tyrone says, It's not like he found all the answers.
He still struggled with the how and why of his
brother's death. Both brothers, Tyrone and Michael did everything they
could to be there for their mom.
Speaker 6 (24:15):
We all just made sure that she didn't feel like
she was alone, you know, so we never let her
be and I think in time she I can't say
she completely got over it, but she she kind of
being sided. She was a Christian. She kind of accepted
(24:35):
it and for what it was, and she just gravitated
towards us.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
She kind of accepted it. Tyrone said, I was reminded
of what Michelle had said from the beginning about her grandmother,
how sometimes it seemed like she put up a front
to the whole world like she'd moved on because that's
what people wanted her to do. But within the immediate family,
they all kind of knew that Dorothy still agonized over
(25:03):
her son's death, in part because she blamed herself for
not doing more to keep her on. See here's Michael
the middle brother again.
Speaker 7 (25:13):
I remember she was always saying that I wish I
could have really talked to him, or or try to
spend more time with him, or try to reach them.
She kind of felt that she felled as a mother
as far as him.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Tyrone, the youngest remembers this too, how their mom kept
blaming herself.
Speaker 6 (25:34):
She wish she could have did things a little different,
but you can't, you can't. And I told her all,
I said, you can't. You can't say that because you
did the best you could what you have and got
told her to say, you didn't slack on him. You
did the best you could under the circumstances. And then
you raised three boys, three men. You've made three boys
(25:57):
in two men. That's not easy. Told I say, you
the best, mom.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Even so, the question remained, who was responsible for herself death?
In truth, they all still wondered about Iran and what
had happened. Late at night, Tyrone found himself at home
on the couch watching true crime TV shows.
Speaker 6 (26:21):
I used to watch the unsolved mischievy shows, and I
often thought about calling because I was like this, this
is not right. How can a person get killed and
no one knows anything.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
It wasn't until one day in two thousand and six,
nearly two decades after Iran's death, that the family thought
they might finally learn the truth.
Speaker 6 (26:49):
A police officer came to my mother's house. He said
that we have a new lead about what happened with
your son in nineteen eighty nine and you know, she
don't open the door for anybody, so she automatically just
told them, she said, look, give me your card. My
son's gonna call you. So she's talking about me because
she said she wasn't able to deal with it.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Tyrone told his mother not to worry about it. He
would call the detectives.
Speaker 6 (27:17):
So I'm kind of nervous, and then I just called.
The detective said we were still investigating. But then we
found out who killed your brother.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
And at first that's really all the police tell the
Wood family, but it was enough to kindle some hope,
to make them believe that maybe, after all these years
of guessing and speculation, that they might finally learn what
happened to Iran.
Speaker 6 (27:44):
We didn't like the speculation the family, and I thought
that this would be good if we found least what
happened to him. Can't do nothing about it, can't bring
him back, but if we would find out the truth,
and the truth will probably help us help everybody in
the family.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
That was the hope that the truth would help them,
heal them, bring them some closure. But it would be many,
many months before they would learn the full extent of
what the authorities at pieced together, and during this time
Scott Duffy and Terry Mortimer, along with the PHILLYPD, they
(28:24):
were hard at work scrambling to gather evidence with the
hope that they might build a strong enough case to
make an arrest and go to trial next time. On
(28:48):
Deep Cover, it was definitely a different type of case.
Speaker 6 (28:52):
You know, a skinhead coming.
Speaker 5 (28:53):
To Philadelphi to kill somebody, a cowardly act.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
We'd say you to Craig, you were there, we weren't.
Perhaps you blocked it out. Let's just drive and unblock
your mind.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
So we're like, police, please get down, get down. And
I'm yelling, others are yelling tough for our lungs. And
he just stands there like a deer in the headlights,
just staring at it, staring at me, staring at them
that I could see in his mind. I can see
in his face he's deciding what to do.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Deep Cover is produced by Amy Gaines McQuaid and Jacob Smith.
It's edited by Karen Schakerji mastering by Jake Gorski. Our
show art was designed by Sean Carney. Original scoring in
our theme was composed by Luis Gara. Fact checking by
Arthur Gomberts. Our story consultant was James Foreman Jr. Special
(29:54):
thanks to Jerry Williams, Sarah Nix, Greta Cone, and Jake Flanagan.
I'm Jake Halper m
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