Out of the Ashes

Neither did the newspapers record the times when Ketrick would drive to the house on Strawberry Trail, which his grandmother abandoned after the fire. He'd back in his car at night, cut off the lights and "just sit there and cry. I felt like they was still there. The crime hasn't been solved; they aren't resting. I felt like I needed to go there and keep them company."

Ketrick eventually moved with his grandmother to Omaha, Nebraska. A rigid disciplinarian before the fire, Mollie Jordan had gone soft and quiet. "All that anger went away," Ketrick says. "She's the sweetest lady in the world." Ketrick graduated from high school in Omaha, then moved back to Dallas in 1998. In February, he married his girlfriend, Marsha, and today they live a quiet life in Pleasant Grove with Marsha's two children. Ketrick is an unusually serene 25-year-old, quick to smile and seemingly without a trace of bitterness from his ordeal. One thing that helps is the fact he can "do just about anything," from driving a car to musing in writing about the fire and its aftermath, despite having lost part of three fingers on his left hand. He wants to record his life story some day.

It all goes back to his brief foray into heaven, he says. He describes it as "a feeling of joy, of happiness, of warmth." When he thinks about his brothers' and sisters' faces in the smoky room, the smell of the acrid smoke and the sound of his little niece crying, he remembers his near-death experience. "I guess what makes me a happy person," he says, "is the talk that the Lord had with me. That's why I keep a joyful feeling in my heart. I'm not like most people in wheelchairs; you ask them what happened, and they get all mad."

Today, Ketrick sees a chance that justice may be done, that his family members can truly rest in peace. Vincent Lamont Thomas' day of reckoning may come soon in a Dallas courtroom, though that can't be said of several of his alleged accomplices in the Strawberry Trail fire. No one, however, seems to escape the vortex of the gangsta life, pop stars and posers notwithstanding.

Dallas police know the identities of murder suspects Curly, Silky and Coolie, but it isn't clear whether they're alive or dead or still in Dallas. Silky reportedly met a violent end here, but police haven't confirmed it. Since the Jamaican gangsters tended to work under numerous aliases, it's hard to track their entrances and exits.

Coolie, the oldest of the crew and a one-time drug kingpin, was charged with an unrelated murder, for which he received probation, a year after the fire. He still may be in Dallas.

Curly appears to have lived in Dallas as late as 1999. Police aren't certain of his whereabouts today, though he showed up in Detective Loboda's database research as a recent resident of Magnolia, Arkansas.

Soldier is still feared on the streets of South Dallas and South Oak Cliff. One witness identified his photo as that of Gregory Allen, a slightly built, light-skinned Jamaican with one feature that sticks in people's minds, bloodshot hazel eyes. Allen has a lengthy criminal history in Dallas. He was charged in connection with a 1988 drug-related murder case and got off when the sole eyewitness refused to testify; he was also the reported instigator of a notorious 1990 shooting in which five teenagers were gunned down in a bathtub at a South Dallas crack house. Allen was never charged with that crime. (See "The Girl Who Played Dead" and "Four Kings," by Julie Lyons, July 17.)

Soldier's alleged involvement lies in the murky background, a few layers above the multitude of workers he reportedly ran out of a motel on Lancaster Road and in other locations in South Oak Cliff. In 2000 and 2002, he surfaced on the streets of West Harlem in Manhattan, where he was nailed on a series of petty drug charges for possession of marijuana and crack cocaine.

As for Freddy Krueger--known to law enforcement in various jurisdictions as Milton Lee Hunter Jr., David Broadbelt or David Wilson--he met his end in New York City in the summer of 1992, just as the Jamaican era was coming to a close with the bust of the Allen family narcotics syndicate in Brooklyn. New York police found him at 3:30 a.m. lying facedown on the floor of a D-train subway car. His body had seven bullet holes--four in the front and three in the back, including one at the base of his neck.

The case has never been solved. Only one thing can be surmised about the unknown killer: He wanted to be absolutely sure Freddy Krueger was dead.

Dallas Observer editorial assistant Michelle Martinez contributed to this report.