Gorman's Grab Bag

Demolition Row

It must have been recent. The plowed up ground looked fresh but the crime scene tape that was hung up when six people were killed, four of them children, in Youngstown's worst mass murder was still on the telephone pole, although it was faded and frayed.

I had so much invested in that story -- which is probably the biggest story I ever covered -- that it's hard to believe the house is no longer there. For two weeks it took up just about all my working hours and I thought about it off the job a lot as well.

Its hard to believe there was ever anything there when you look at the empty lot, yet earlier this month the defense attorneys said they had seen the home and had no use for it any longer, so it was ready to be demolished.

Perhaps it is fitting. Someone is still living in the home where Flip Williams murdered those four people in the '90s. When I was there to take a picture for a story on his execution, the grass was cut and there was a swingset in the backyard.

Also, a couple of years ago, there was a triple homicide in a home on New York Avenue that was the scene of a double homicide the previous decade.

Why anyone would live in these homes now, I have no idea, but its best the Crawford home is gone. No one else could probably ever make that space a home.