Chapter 1
Kirk Nizer and Tommy DeSarro were both shit-faced as they headed south on Halsted in Chicago’s Boystown neighborhood. It was a little after three a.m. The streets, festive and crowded a few hours before, were now quiet.
The two men had spent the evening hopping from Sidetrack to Roscoe’s and, finally, unsatisfied and still horny, they ended up at the Cell Block, where even with the raunchier atmosphere and the smell of beer and poppers permeating the dimly-lit back room, they struck out once again.
During their bar tour, each had consumed about half a dozen beers and a couple of shots given to them by a flirty bartender at North End. Tommy had shared a joint with Kirk too, so they were definitely pain-free, loose-limbed, happy.
And now, the beer was demanding payment because, as both men knew, one can only rent beer.
Tommy veered off Halsted and onto Cornelia Avenue. “There’s an alley up ahead,” he whispered to Kirk even though he didn’t need to. “We can take a piss there and then head back to my place.”
The two were like brothers, having been each other’s wingman for years.
More and more, they were becoming a couple, not out of love, but out of familiarity, proximity, and habit.
They often ended up spending the night at one or the other’s apartment, often in the same bed, yet nothing sexual ever happened.
That would have felt way too much like incest.
“Okay, okay. Hope I can make it that far.” Kirk’s hand pressed against his denimed crotch, not in a suggestive way, but as a barrier to the stream.
The moon was bright that June night (or early June morning, if one wanted to be technical), three-quarters full.
It gave everything a shimmery silver opalescence.
There was a stillness beneath the chirp of crickets, the whispering of new leaves, and the occasional sound of a vehicle making its way along Halsted’s relatively busy thoroughfare.
The air was prescient with the smell of rain, which both knew would arrive before morning light.
Kirk stumbled a bit as he watched Tommy enter the mouth of the alley just ahead of him. He was about to follow when something stopped him. His heart started to race.
Tommy screamed, loud and shrill.
At first, the shriek elicited a chuckle from Kirk. Tommy was always the joker and was most likely trying to scare him.
Kirk was too drunk and too exhausted to be bothered, though. He rolled his eyes. “C’mon, man, it’s too late for this shit. I am too tired and—”
Kirk cut his own words off as he entered the alley and saw what had prompted Tommy’s scream. Despite the warm air, Kirk shivered and an electric chill ran up his spine. He was sober all at once.
Near a dumpster, on the brick surface of the alley, lay a dead man.
He was sprawled out, head hidden by the green metal of the dumpster. Dark splotches stained his white T-shirt and jeans. Blood pooled beneath him. In the dim light, it appeared black.
Kirk would have screamed too, if he could have found his voice. Instead, he gripped the brick wall of an apartment building to stop himself from falling. His stomach roiled and bile splashed the back of his throat. It took all of his effort to keep the contents of his stomach down.
Tommy, a step or two ahead, was also visibly heaving. Don’t throw up, bud, you’ll leave DNA at the scene. Kirk immediately chastised himself for the thought, but all he could think of was, what can we do? He spoke the question in his head aloud. “Should we call 911?”
Tommy turned to him, his eyes noticeably wide, even in the gloom of the alley. “I don’t know. What if we get blamed?”
“We had nothing to do with this. We just happened to find him.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that and you know that. But what about Chicago cops? They’ll take the easy way out, blame the messenger.
” Kirk had read enough true crime and watched enough TV shows on the topic to know law enforcement’s desire to close a case could sometimes supersede a real resolution or sincere justice.
“You got a point. But we can’t just leave him laying here, can we?
What if that was one of us? Would you want the person who found us to just walk away, pretend they hadn’t seen us?
” Kirk sniffed the air. “It’s gonna rain soon.
” There was something protective in Kirk that he knew was illogical.
Yet he wanted to spare this man, this victim, the additional indignity of getting rained on.
The victim was a brother of sorts and the image of him lying butchered in the rain caused the empathy to rise in him.
“Of course I wouldn’t want someone to leave me, but really, though, man, what good will reporting it do?
That dude is dead.” Tommy rubbed his forehead.
“Reporting this to the cops won’t bring him back.
And I don’t think he’s gonna be upset about getting caught outside without an umbrella.
” He chuckled, but the laugh was giddy, bordering on hysteria.
There was no doubt about the guy being dead—no need for the checking of a pulse. The poor man had been savagely stabbed many times, even though neither friend was inclined to count the creepy black wounds.
Kirk pulled his flip phone out of his pocket.
Tommy eyed him. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m calling 911. It’s the right thing to do.”
“Well at least go into settings first and block your number,” Tommy said.
Kirk shook his head. “You really think that’ll stop them from finding out who I am? Seriously, man.”
“I don’t know. It’s better than nothin’.” Tommy sighed and leaned against the wall, a hand shielding his stomach.
Kirk punched at the tiny keyboard with a trembling finger. When a dispatcher answered, he reported the crime and told her they would wait with the body.
“You’re nuts,” Tommy said. “I ain’t waitin’ nowhere.”
“Leave if you want, man. That’s on you, but I’m staying here.” Kirk turned away, not believing his friend would actually go, but the sound of Tommy’s footfalls on the brick pavement, leading away, proved him wrong. “Fuckin’ coward.”
Kirk managed to hold it together until the sirens pierced the early morning, until Chicago police cars blocked the entrance to the alley. He tried to stop shaking as car doors slammed. The squawk of police radios made the whole situation seem surreal, something out of a cop TV show.
This was a life-changing moment for so many reasons.
*
Podcast transcript, “Meat Locker: Cold Cases” Episode No. 42 (2024)
True Crime Audio Presents: The Case of the Unsolved Hate Crime
(Opening Credits and intro music)
Bailey Anderson, Host: On its website, the US Department of Justice defines a hate crime as:
…a crime motivated by bias against race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability.
That same site hastens to point out:
Under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, people cannot be prosecuted simply for their beliefs.
People may be offended or upset about beliefs that are untrue or based upon false stereotypes, but it is not a crime to express offensive beliefs, or to join with others who share such views.
However, the First Amendment does not protect against committing a crime, just because the conduct is rooted in philosophical beliefs.
Using this rather dry definition, we can safely conclude that the 2013 murder of Reginald Baker, known to his friends and family as Reggie or Mr. B, was a hate crime.
Reggie Baker’s body was discovered in the early Sunday morning hours of June 22, 2013 in an alley near Halsted Street, the epicenter of Chicago’s gay gathering spots, referred to by locals as Boystown.
Baker’s body was discovered by two men, Kirk Nizer and Tommy DeSarro, who were on their way home from a local leather bar a couple of blocks north, the Cell Block.
DeSarro had wandered into the alley off Cornelia Street to relieve himself around three o’clock in the morning. When his companion, Kirk Nizer, heard him scream, he rushed into the alley. There, they found Reggie Baker lying near a dumpster in a pool of blood.
Baker had been stabbed more than twenty times. The media called the murder “a crime of passion” and surmised that the depth, number, and savagery of the wounds indicated a “great rage” on the perpetrator’s part.
This was personal.
But was it a hate crime?
At first, that particular classification, despite the homicide taking place in an area well-known for its same-sex establishments and residents, was not even considered.
That was a reasonable conclusion because the crime, in spite of its colorings of hate and rage, could have been a simple robbery gone wrong.
Or it may have been the work of a psychopath who chose his target for any number of reasons, including the very simple—and terrifying—idea that Baker was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Or it may have been a crime of passion.
Predators don’t need a logical reason to kill.
It wasn’t until the Chicago Police Department began investigating the homicide that the hate crime label became more likely.
And the reason for that was because the person who became the CPD’s prime suspect was not someone known for hating Baker, but ironically, for loving him.
We’ll introduce you to that suspect after these messages.
(Music outro and ads)
Announcer: Welcome back to Meat Locker. Here’s Bailey Anderson.
Bailey Anderson: The wisdom among homicide investigators often goes that you look at the person closest to the victim to either rule them out as a suspect or examine the possibility of their being involved more closely.
The wife did it.
The husband did it.
The girlfriend or boyfriend did it.
You hear it over and over and for those of us with a finger on the pulse of things like murder, the supposition often is borne out as true.
It aligns with the principle of Occam’s Razor, which says: Other things being equal, explanations that propose fewer entities, or fewer kinds of entities, are to be preferred to explanations that propose more.
In other words, usually the culprit is most often the one who looks the most likely.
And the person closest to elementary school teacher Reginald Baker was his boyfriend, Joshua Kade. The couple had been together for a little over a year.