E-Mail This Article to a Friend Coming home (continued)

The momentum

There seems little in Drumgold’s early years to indicate that there would be any "wicked ways." His family life, certainly, doesn’t fit the accepted ghetto-child mold of crackhead mother, absent father, domestic turmoil, neglect, physical and emotional abuse. Shawn was born on June 2, 1965, in a two-story house just off Columbus Avenue in the South End, the fifth of six children. His mother, Juanda, worked in human resources; his stepfather, Herbert — who died while Drumgold was incarcerated — was a mechanic. Juanda, an intelligent, driven woman, pushed her kids to do well in school, to partake in after-class activities. "We did cooking, arts and crafts," Drumgold says, "homework tutoring."

Juanda, while acknowledging that Shawn wasn’t a stellar student, remembers him as a happy, curious kid who loved animals and insects. Some of her son’s happiest times, she says, were when he went on field trips away from the city. "He did bird watching in Nantucket," Juanda recalls. "He loved that." In the mid ’70s, however, a house fire forced the Drumgolds to move to Dorchester. It was here that Shawn Drumgold’s problems began. "I was 12, going on 13," he says. "I started hustling, selling drugs. Just hanging, basic hanging. Just being around people that did stuff like that."

Before long, Drumgold had established his own little niche in the local drug trade. "You could make a few dollars," he says. "You know, if you hung out for five or 10 minutes you’ve got 50 dollars. It wasn’t like I saw this and said, ‘Ooh-wah! That’s what I want to be. That’s the type of career I want to make.’ It was just something that was happening outside of my household." Needless to say, Drumgold’s mother wasn’t too enamored of her son’s newfound business acumen. "It’s not like I told her, ‘Ma, I’m hustling,’ " he says. "But if she heard I was out there doing something I wasn’t supposed to, she would come and get me. If she had to be physical, she would be physical. If she had to shout, she would shout."

But there are limits to a mother’s reach, even one as energetic and resourceful as Juanda Drumgold, and by the time he was 18, Shawn Drumgold had started to get in serious trouble with the law. In 1985, he was convicted of drug possession and sent to the old Deer Island Correctional Facility for 10 months. When he got out, Drumgold says, he was determined to go straight. He got a job as a baggage handler at Logan Airport, a position that paid $172 a week — a fraction of what he could have earned working the street. "Once you start making money, you grow accustomed to it," he says. Within a year of his release from Deer Island, Drumgold was inside again.

Drumgold sometimes wonders what would have happened to him if he’d continued along the path he started on in his teens. "Eventually, enough would have been enough," he says. "But at that time, I’d have still been selling drugs, I’d have still been running the street. I know one thing, when I got arrested [for Tiffany Moore’s murder], I was up for a drug offense, 26 bags of heroin, possession with intent to distribute. So I definitely would have gone to jail for that." And yet there was a difference in Drumgold’s life at that time. He had a baby daughter, a woman with whom he was "deeply in love." It was starting to occur to Drumgold that going in and out of prison was no longer a viable option. "I think somewhere along the line," he says, "my life would have changed."

Nobody, of course, could have predicted the life changes he would eventually face.

‘It’s over, you can go home’

Shawn Drumgold remembers, in vivid detail, the day he was convicted. Throughout his trial, his family, his lawyer, and Drumgold himself were convinced that he would be acquitted. "I still believed in the system," he says. "I didn’t understand. I thought they was coming at this in good faith." The instant the jury returned from its deliberations, however, Drumgold’s belief resolved into horror. "They brought the court officers in and blocked the doors," he recalls. "So I knew." As the guilty verdict was read, Juanda Drumgold screamed. "I was trying to comfort my mother," Shawn says. "My lawyer kept telling me, ‘Don’t respond.’ He was trying to calm me down and I was trying to tell him this is wrong. ‘You’ve got to explain to these people. They’ve got the wrong person.’ After that I was numb. I knew I wasn’t going home."

At 23 years old, Drumgold weighed about 125 pounds. He was, as his mother puts it, a "short, scrawny kid." The prison he was remanded to, meanwhile, was not the kind of place a short, scrawny kid would necessarily want to find himself. "There was a lot of stabbings and stuff when I went to Walpole," Drumgold says. "They had this wall, this 20-foot or 30-foot wall, big slamming metal doors. There was a lot of noise. There’s a lot of different things that happen in prison, drugs, guns, gambling, violence, fighting. The guards were saying, ‘Oh, there goes another child killer.’ I was scared."

That night, Drumgold says, "I cried, I prayed. I asked God to have mercy on me. I asked God to forgive me of things I’d done in the past. And I asked Him to bring the truth out. I didn’t do this crime. I asked Him to hear me." He guesses that it was six months before he had a full night’s sleep. And then one day, talking to an old man, another lifer, Drumgold had something of an epiphany. "I said to myself, ‘Hey, I’m not dying in prison,’ " he remembers. "I started reading a lot of law. That’s what I needed to get out of prison. My objective was to get out of prison."

The turning point came in 1991, when Juanda Drumgold approached an up-and-coming young attorney named Rosemary Scapicchio about handling her son’s appeals process. Though the family didn’t have nearly enough money to cover Scapicchio’s fees, Juanda is a notoriously persuasive character, and Scapicchio agreed to represent Drumgold. Over the next 13 years, Rosie, as the Drumgolds call her, filed four appeals on his behalf. Four times they were denied. But Scapicchio is also not one to be easily deterred. Today Drumgold calls his attorney "a blessing from the sky."

Still, the succession of disappointments took their toll. Each failed appeal, Drumgold says, drove a wedge deeper into his marriage — "Man, he ain’t never getting out of jail" — until the distance between Drumgold and his wife, Rachelle, grew to be unbridgeable. "I lost a lot of people while incarcerated," he says, "people that meant the world to me, family members, people I grew up with." Currently, he and Rachelle are in the process of getting a divorce. "We’re learning to be friends," Drumgold says.

The thing that hit him the hardest, though, was being separated from his daughter Kiara. "I remember one time I was holding her in my hands," he says. "I was looking at her and thinking, ‘I’m going to get out before you turn one.’ It didn’t work. The next time she was going on three, and I was trying to make it out for her third birthday. Then it was, ‘Man, I didn’t make it out for her third birthday, but I’ll make the fourth.’ My years passed by trying to make it to her. It got to the point where I didn’t even want to know her age. One minute she’s five and the next she’s nine. It just seemed the years were going by too fast."

And then one day last month, Drumgold was awakened in his cell by a correctional officer. "You need to call your attorney," the officer was saying. "You need to call your attorney." Drumgold didn’t know what to think. "First I thought I was dreaming," he says, "because that’s not his job; the case workers normally come get you with information pertaining to lawyers." When Drumgold got through to Scapicchio, she told him to sit down. Then she gave him the news: he’d be free before the week was out. "I was um, um," he says, losing his composure a little. "The only thing was, I was trying to stop from not being able to stand, because my legs were rubbery. I was trying to make sense of it: ‘It’s over, you can go home.’ "

The road back

It’s a sunny Thursday afternoon, and Shawn Drumgold is standing on Humboldt Avenue, near the spot where Tiffany Moore was shot, across the street from where he used to ply his drug trade. On the way here, Drumgold was cheerful and chatty — "There’s where I got my last haircut before I went away"; "There’s the church my brother got married" — but now he seems jittery, eager to leave. "I don’t want to keep you out here too long," he says. "This area’s still hot." He says something about "cops," then points out a teenager riding by on a small bike: "He’s hustling."

But it’s not just gang members and police officers Drumgold’s trying to avoid — you get the sense that he is made uncomfortable by the prospect of being seen here, as if standing at the location of Moore’s murder is an affront of some sort. Or maybe it’s the fact that he’s standing here with a notebook-toting white guy. To make matters worse, we’ve pulled up here in one of my father’s large moving trucks — I hadn’t been able to get hold of a car. "At least we’re inconspicuous," I joke, but Drumgold, usually quick to laugh, maintains his grim expression. "Let’s get out of here."

Just then, a car screeches to a halt a hundred yards or so up the street, and reverses rapidly back to where we stand. It’s unclear why, and for a moment or two I share Drumgold’s unease — this is, after all, Humboldt Ave. The car stops. A guy with dreadlocks gets out, walks over to where Shawn stands, and gives him a big hug. As Drumgold and his friend chat, another car pulls up, this one containing a woman and some kids. The woman starts shouting, wagging her finger. "Don’t stop like that in the middle of the street! You could’ve killed my children! You should think with your brain instead of your dick!" The dreadlocked guy seems about to argue, but Shawn steps in, palms raised like a boxing referee, and the woman speeds away.

A few moments later, a mailman comes along and starts emptying the mailbox, Tiffany Moore’s mailbox. He looks at Drumgold. "You’re going to be okay, man," he says. "The Lord is on your side, baby." The dreadlocked guy leaves, and the woman in the car reappears, this time without her children. "I shouldn’t have yelled like that," the woman says, "but what he did was dangerous. He could have killed my kids!" She is getting angry again, her voice rising in pitch and volume. Once more, Drumgold plays the role of peacemaker. "Hey, we’re just getting out of prison," he says. "We’re just trying to figure things out." The woman stops shouting. "Are you Shawn Drumgold?" A smile spreads across her face. Eyelashes are batted. "Hi, Shaaaawn!"

Drumgold’s been getting this sort of thing a lot since his release from prison. He is, after all, something of a celebrity these days. People on the street want to hug him, journalists want to interview him, friends and family members want to make him meals, he has speaking engagements to attend, and black-tie functions. Three weeks after his release, it’s starting to wear a little thin. "I need to get away, basically," he says. "The excitement of everybody knowing I’m home, and then wanting to be a part of me, coming to see me. So right now, my anxiety is too high. I need to say enough is enough, stop the presses. I need to just relax a bit. I need to be quiet."

The quiet times will come soon enough. The curbside hugging will peter out, as will the calls from the media. It is then that the hard work will begin. The challenges Shawn Drumgold faces today range from the mundane, such as learning how to use a cell phone, to the profound, like dealing with his divorce. He’ll need to start making money — he’ll do carpentry, hairdressing, anything, he says. Then there’s the question of his long-term plans, and what effect the CORI law will have on them.

The biggest challenge facing Drumgold right now, though, may be confronting the emotional side of what has happened to him.

Much has been made in the media about Drumgold’s refusal to express ill will towards those who put him away. While this may be commendable, it also points to a refusal to face up to the storm that must be brewing in his chest right now. There are times — when asked about his feelings toward Tiffany Moore, for instance — that Drumgold will retreat into the mumbo-jumbo of legalese. Over and over, he will veer away from difficult questions, speaking of "affidavits" and "reconsideration motions," the very things that insulated him from sorrow while he was in prison. At some point, Drumgold is going to have to find something to replace his long struggle.

"No," he says. "I need to clear my name. I will never stop until it’s done. This is a part of me, like a leg, an arm, an eye, an ear. It’s a part of me. It’s never going to go away."

Chris Wright can be reached at cwright[a]phx.com