The videotape, now days later, still haunts. And I have so many questions.
I still wonder how long the detectives would have continued had the teenager in blue pants and a white, long-sleeve polo shirt not finally cracked, some five hours after they first started in on him.
Of course they knew, as did everyone watching the 4-year-old videotape, that Rajon Russell was flat lying to them. He had never known or seen Aarone Thompson, he would finally confess, and admit his sister had coached him and put him up to the lies he was muttering.
It is by hour two that you just want to hug Rajon. The detectives are closing in on him, and you can tell he just wants to disappear.
“It would be nice if you would man-up right now, look inside yourself and tell the truth,” they scold.
Rajon Russell at this point has virtually stuffed himself into the far corner of the interrogation room. He finally leans against the wall and begins to cry.
You want to hug him because you realize he is one more child whose life is either lost or has been devastated by the actions of those charged with caring for and loving him and the six other children in Shelley Lowe and Aaron Thompson’s home.
From my seat three rows behind Aaron Thompson — “Big A,” the 15-year-old boy affectionately called him — I noticed the man who now is standing trial on 60 counts, including child abuse resulting in death, never once looked at the courtroom monitors and the boy.
You want to hug Rajon Russell again as he tries to explain why only months after moving in with Aaron Thompson and Lowe he told a school counselor he wanted out of the house, to be placed in “an orphanage.”
The detectives, though, never blink.
“Big A and Shelley ever tell you where Aarone is buried?” they ask.
“She ain’t dead! I seen her,” he sobs over and over. “Stop saying that! I know she was there.”
Hours three and four are better than any detective thriller. Detectives Terrance Allen and Gretchen Fromapfel begin tag-teaming the boy, alternating the classic good-cop/bad-cop routine.
Late into hour four, Rajon is spent. He leans back, almost prone in his chair, his hands covering his face.
“I know what my sister did,” he says calmly through his hands. “But she didn’t kill no kid. If she did, she would have ‘fessed up!”
The end comes fast and furious, the detectives shoving Aarone’s picture at him.
Finally, Rajon Russell is sitting erect, furiously rubbing his legs, and at last looking at Aarone’s picture. He has flubbed answers to Aarone’s favorite toy and color. Pizza as her favorite food? Well, he had just made that up, he softly tells the detective.
“Shelley,” he repeats each time he is asked who told him to tell officers he had seen Aarone the day she was reported missing, to tell them of her favorite colors, food and Halloween costume.
“Don’t you feel better now?” the detective asks the boy, who just stares at the wall. He shakes his head.
“It’s snitching,” he says. “It’s going to get someone in trouble.”
Poor kid.
I look at Aaron Thompson. His face is expressionless. His head is bowed. He never lifts it until the sheriff’s deputies come with his handcuffs.
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
