The satisfaction of solving a crime in the pages of his fourth book and latest crime novel, "The Dark Side of Blue," is not lost on former Baltimore Police Department homicide detective-turned-author, Dick Ellwood.
In real life, as the Timonium resident knows, crimes don't always get solved.
That's especially true of the still-unsolved February 1981 murder of Sebastian Russo, a family physician with a thriving practice in the Hamilton section of Harford Road in Northeast Baltimore — a case Ellwood worked diligently.
Ellwood, 72, a third-generation Baltimore cop, wrote about the case in his memoirs of a 26-year career in law enforcement, "Cop Stories: The Few, The Proud, The Ugly," which was published in 2010 and was his first book. The book contains Ellwood's recollections of everything from walking the beat in his old neighborhood, near Greenmount Avenue and Preston Street, to investigating city homicides for 11 years.
He published his first detective novel, "Charm City's Blue Justice," the story of two Baltimore buddies who enter the Baltimore Police Department at the same time but take different measures to deal with crime and criminals, in 2012.
Elwood then embarked on a different path, penning a children's book, "Secret Zoo," about kids who live near the zoo and their pursuit of Captain Corky, who talks to the animals.
"The Dark Side of Blue," which appeared this year, is Ellwood's tale of corrupt cops, murder and the FBI working at odds with underhanded federal justice officials while trying to infiltrate the New Jersey mafia.
As Ellwood has discovered, the realities of real investigative police work are a world apart from the solving of fictionalized crimes.
"In real life, you have so many things to deal with," Ellwood said of investigating homicides. "Number one, and most important, you have a family that just lost someone and they want to know what's going on. Then you have the witnesses, tips and forensics to deal with. If you're the sergeant, you have the lieutenant, the captain and the colonel who want to know what's going on."
He added that, although a writer can solve a crime by the stroke of a pen or a keyboard in a novel, making fiction about crime ring true to life is a must.
"I just can't put anything in a story," Ellwood said. "There are law enforcement people and readers that mostly read about crime, so you have to know what you're writing about or it won't be believable."
Elwood acknowledges that the Russo case is one that he cannot forget, yet not necessarily one that motivated him to author crime novels.
"Not sure if the Dr. Russo case has affected my writing," he said. "I think that my time working murder investigations gave me a propensity to make sure my writing has clear and accurate details."
An unforgettable case
The case remains a puzzler 35 years later.
"I think of all the cases I worked on, that's the one case that sticks with me the most," Ellwood said of the Russo case, after visiting the murder site in July for a Towson Times photo shoot. "To go back in that room after 35 years brought back a lot of memories."
The case, Ellwood recounted, was a strange one because more than a dozen people were sitting in Russo's small waiting room when a man walked into the adjoining doctor's office and came out five minutes later, as if nothing was amiss.
No one heard shots, but Ellwood said when a person in the waiting room went in to see why Russo was taking so long to call in the next patient, the physician was found lying in a pool of blood after being shot in the chest from point-blank range.
According to Ellwood, when the initial investigation that night was botched by shoddy detective work, including the body being moved at least three times to be photographed, he was chosen to lead a special five-man task force to take over the case.
Even after a composite sketch of the alleged gunman was distributed throughout the city and one other piece of evidence — a green windbreaker that was found stuffed down a storm drain — had been recovered, investigators came up empty during the three weeks the task force worked exclusively on the case. Police said at the time that they believed the killer had been looking for drugs.
Russo, who was nicknamed the "$5 Doc" in the community, was known for his low fees and was purported to have seen as many as 75 patients in a day, according to Ellwood. Baltimore Sun stories from the time of the killing quote Russo's neighbors and acquaintances describing him as a hard-working, generous man who often charged his patients only what they could afford and still made house calls. Russo usually had cash on hand in his office, although it was never ascertained if any money was taken during the fatal attack.
Ironically, the small row house in which Russo, a 57-year-old Italian immigrant, practiced has remained a doctor's office almost from the time of the killing. Since 1981, Frank Palmisano, who is also a family physician, has operated the office.
Although he had heard about the murder at the time, Palmisano said in July that he was looking to begin his own practice and needed office space.
"He was killed Feb. 27, and I came here at the end of May," said Palmisano, a Loyola High School, Loyola College and University of Maryland Medical School graduate. "I felt funny — I was a little leery at first — but I haven't had any trouble. Most of his patients never came back.
"On one of the first days I was here a homicide detective came in and was looking for bullet holes," the Stoneleigh resident added. "He told me that they thought they knew who did it, but that they didn't have enough evidence to prove it. I never heard more from anyone else about it."
Russo's office had been robbed several times prior to his killing, Palmisano added.
"People would hide in his cellar," he said. "They knew he had narcotics in the office."
Time on his hands
Ellwood eventually left the city's homicide division for its arson unit.
"He was a good supervisor and investigator," said his former boss in the arson unit, Don Kent, a Calvert Hall graduate and Timonium resident. "He was well respected by his men and by men in other departments. Dick is very proud of his years as a police officer."
After retiring from the Baltimore police department in 1990, Ellwood had an 18-year career as the mid-Atlantic Fraud Division manager for Nationwide Insurance.
Retiring for a second time in 2008, he completed "Cop Stories" in 2010 before penning "Charm City's Blue Justice" and "Secret Zoo."
Ellwood said he never nurtured a lifelong ambition to become a writer — although he noted that he had plenty of practice writing in-depth reports for prosecutors during his tenure in the homicide unit.
"When I retired from the department, I had a lot of time on my hands," he said. "I like to write, but I wanted to write about what I know and stick to the genre I know."
His wife and editor, Sharon, said that her husband used to like to recount stories of his days as police officers to family and friends before deciding to write "Cop Stories."
"I think he wanted to get the stories out there while they were still vivid in his mind," said Sharon, a retired educator. "After he wrote the first book, I think he got the bug because he enjoyed the process so much. And then from there, he just went to fiction."
"The Dark Side of Blue" is his fourth self-published book, each of which took as many as two years to write.
"I love to write in the winter when it's cold and rainy or snowy," Ellwood said. "I can start at 10 o'clock at night and keep writing until four in the morning. And then I'll lie in bed and I can't sleep. I keep thinking about the story and the characters."
"Cop Stories," he added, was the easiest of his books to write, considering that all of the 38 stories in the book — including his arrest of Hall of Fame baseball player Mickey Mantle for public drunkenness — are true.
Other vignettes in "Cop Stories" include Ellwood arresting an underage drinker in a bar the novice cop used to frequent in his old neighborhood, yanking a prostitute's prosthetic leg off during a bar brawl, and being pummeled by a pimp.
He sells his books through the Internet, at local book stores and at fairs and festivals in Baltimore and Ocean City.
The memoir is his most commercially successful, with sales approaching 4,000 copies.
"That one was the most fun to write because it brought back so many memories of my time on the department," Ellwood said. "As I was writing the book, it was like reliving the moments in the story. It was amazing how, when I started a new chapter, it just flowed as if I were back in time. ... I could have written many more stories, but I had to cut it off at some point."
While it might have crossed his mind to write a novel about the Russo slaying, Ellwood said he won't do so.
"Dr. Russo was a real person and I would not feel comfortable writing about a murder that has not been solved," he said. "I would not want to assume anything in my writing, and it would not be fair to the legacy of Dr. Russo or to his family."
The Russo case does not haunt him, Ellwood said.
"However, I do think about it often," he added. "During my time in the homicide unit, there were other murders that were not solved and I think about them, too. I guess the Dr. Russo murder kind of hit home with me. I lived in the Hamilton area and my dad went to Dr. Russo. Dr. Russo was so good to so many people that you would want to find out who would commit such a crime."
To that end, he has called Baltimore police to inquire if a relatively new method of extracting DNA — by using a sterile wet vacuum called an M-Vac — could be used on the green jacket.
"Over the years, I have checked in with some friends in the homicide unit," Ellwood said, adding that he has yet to receive a response from the department. "I know it's a long shot, but maybe they still have the windbreaker and could possibly get a match with DNA."
Baltimore Sun research librarian Paul McCardell contributed to this article.