ShareThisWAYNESBURG, Pa. - Almost five years after his son was murdered, Bruce Shipe admitted something to his wife, Jan, for the first time: There are moments when he ponders becoming a vigilante and taking justice into his own hands.
The 67-year-old dentist knows these are crazy thoughts about acts that he would never commit. But he thinks them anyway since his son's killer has never been caught.
Sitting for an interview at his kitchen table in March in this town about an hour's drive south of Pittsburgh, Shipe revealed this fantasy in which he exacts revenge against the unknown person who shot their only son, Greg Shipe, in the face on Sept. 17, 2005, in Washington, D.C., leaving the 34-year-old to die.
"I have a pistol, and I've thought, 'You know, I'm going to go on that street,'" Shipe says. "'I'm going to walk that street at night, daring somebody.' You harbor these thoughts -- it's stupid, I know, really stupid, I know -- but I thought it. I would never do it, but I've harbored those thoughts.
"Is that anger, is that vengeance? I'm not sure. But I don't think anger -- or bitterness -- has ever been our theme. It wasn't his. We weren't raised that way."
To this day, what happened on that Saturday night, in a quiet neighborhood popular with young Washington professionals, remains a mystery. The assailant took no cash or valuables, Jan Shipe, 61, says. All her son had with him was a cell phone and a bag to clean up after his dog, she says.
As the couple near retirement, they still grapple with Greg's death. They've lost hope that their son's killer will be brought to justice. There's no way to make sense of it, they say. There's no one to get answers from.
"It's like having a disease, a debilitating disease like diabetes," says Jan Shipe, describing the pain of losing Greg. "You hate that you have it. You're mad that you have it. You don't want it. But you've got it. And you have to deal with it."
The Shipes are not alone. A Scripps Howard News Service investigation revealed that one-third of the estimated 565,600 homicides in the United States from 1980 to 2008 remain unsolved.
In Washington, D.C., the police have struggled for decades to solve homicides, according to an SHNS analysis of FBI data. The city's Metropolitan Police Department has cleared 53 percent of homicides from 1980 to 2008, well below the national average of 67 percent.
Detective Tony Patterson of the Metropolitan Police Department investigated Greg Shipe's murder. He pursued two leads, but, with little evidence, he recently turned the probe over to the department's "cold case" unit.
The most likely way the crime will be solved is if an individual with knowledge of the case shares information with the police, Patterson says. "I would hope that at some point, someone who knows something will come forward," he says. "I'm optimistic it will close. Of course, I said that three years ago."
Patterson isn't sure of the killer's motive, and says there's little evidence to support any theory of why Shipe was murdered.
But Bruce Shipe can't help but think about the killer's intentions.
"You wonder. The police said it was a botched robbery. It could've been gang bangers saying, 'I get a white kid and I get stripes or whatever.' It could be anything," he said. "It's just being at the wrong place at the right time. Or the right place at the wrong time. You can't make sense of it."
Shipe's murder came as his adult life was just beginning to take shape. A year after receiving an MBA from Vanderbilt University's business school, Shipe had started a new job as an analyst at Ogilvy. He had recently moved into his apartment in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood, and was walking his dog, Otis, when he was shot.
"That's what's so hard -- not seeing what he could have become," says Bruce Shipe, still in the blue scrubs he wears while practicing as a dentist. "He was just really getting started, I think."
(E-mail reporter Isaac Wolf at wolfi(at)shns.com)
(E-mail Isaac Wolf at wolfi(at)shns.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
This is a horrific story on
This is a horrific story on many levels. My family was also affected by a violent crime; a drunken driver killed my parents in the late 1990s. In that case, who did it wasn't a mystery, although the young man who killed them was released from the hospital after my mother's injuries were (incorrectly) assessed as not life threateneing, and he was missing for two days after her death later that night. They finally apprehended him at the bus station; he had found out about my mother's death and was trying to leave town.
The Shipes don't have any closure. They don't know who murdered their son or why, and no one has been punished for the crime.
I speak from experience when I say that, in such circumstances, law enforcement and others view you as a liability -- evidence of a crime they haven't solved. If you ask any questions, want to see what they've done in terms of investigation, want to try to understand what's happened, you're making them spend time on something they are neither paid nor really know how to do: dealing with victims.
Mr. and Mrs. Shipe, I am so sorry for your loss. My 'closure' process was easier because I knew exactly what happened to my parents. And because they were my parents, had lived happy and productive lives to that point and retired, not one of my children, just starting an adult life. For that reason, I don't know if my coping strategies will work, but I offer them anyway: On your son's birthday, celebrate his life, not the manner of his death. Celebrate the time you had with him and the things you did together. Contemplating what might have been -- my father, a geologist and avid hiker, camper and naturalist, would have been a wonderful mentor to my daughter, who hopes to become a wildlife biologist -- is a recipe for pain. Think of good, constructive things your son would want you to do with the time you otherwise would have spent with him, and do those things for him, with love in your heart rather than hate and anger. Live a better life in his honor.
I hope this helps. I know it has helped me, although I don't live up to that standard every day.
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