Search a database reviewing homicides from 1997 to the present, view interactive graphics and videos of interviews with family members of victims:

“The impact goes far past the victim in all of these crimes,” the police chief says.

Violence claimed more than 500 lives in Tulsa during a decade’s time.

The families of more than 500 homicide victims buried their loved ones. Police tracked more than 500 murderers on the city’s streets — often multiple killers for individual slayings.

By examining police, state Medical Examiner’s Office and state Health Department records, the Tulsa World reviewed homicides during the last 10 years: 1998 through 2007. The analysis showed that 507 people were slain in Tulsa during that time.

The city averaged 41 killings per year between 1998 and 2002 and 60 per year between 2003 and 2007, records show.

The youngest victim was an unborn child who died when her mother was repeatedly stabbed during a domestic attack; the oldest, a 96-year-old woman who was shot to death in a murdersuicide at a Tulsa cemetery.

Three out of four of those slain were men. Fifty-nine of the victims were juveniles.

And every killing has a farreaching impact on families and the community, Police Chief Ron Palmer said.

“It does not just touch one person — the victim,” Palmer said. “The impact goes far past the victim in all of these crimes.’’

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Lynchard ranks homicide as the most traumatic death experience for families to endure, with suicide and fatal fires second and third.

“It is so unexpected. It’s not natural for that to happen,”he said. “It destroys their world, and they no longer live in a safe world anymore.

“All the things they live their life based on are challenged — even their faith in God.’’

The killing pace

A look back over the decade shows Tulsa’s sporadic pace of homicides, which police say is one reason killings are hard to predict and prevent. In 2002, for example, the city saw 35 homicides, but the next year the total nearly doubled. Sixty-nine people — the largest number in Tulsa’s recorded history — were killed that year.

Sometimes the city will go weeks without a homicide; other times detectives literally go from scene to scene.

The longest period without a homicide during the decade was the 72 days between Sept. 27 and Dec. 8, 1999.

The deadliest day occurred nearly 10 years ago — a day Maurice King said he remembers like it was yesterday.

On the morning of Feb. 12, 1999, his sister Markita King was preparing her children, Ebonie, 4, Essynce, 2, and Marjonna, 8 months, to be picked up by their father, Edwin Bell of Oklahoma City.

Fleeing an abusive relationship, the 22-year-old woman had left Bell three months earlier and moved to Tulsa to live with her aunt.

Bell, 23, arrived that morning along with his mother, Linda Farris, 45. Sometime before 10 a.m., he killed Markita King, all three girls and his mother and then turned the gun on himself in the Kings’ apartment at 1925 N. Gary Ave.

Markita King’s sister went to the apartment about 10:30 a.m. to check on the family because she had known that Bell was coming and feared for their safety. She saw a motionless baby on the floor and fled to call the police. Chilling police radio dispatches revealed the discovery of one body after another.

Police said it was the largest mass killing attributed to one person in recorded Tulsa history.

Maurice King, who was 21 at the time, had to drive several miles to the scene after learning that four members of his family had been killed.

“It was hard getting there, but the thing that hit me was when I got to Pine and Harvard and I saw all the news trucks and all the people,’’ he said.

As he walked up, a police officer met himand took him closer, where he saw that the door to the apartment was ajar.

“I could see my little niece’s legs where she was lying on the floor. That is when I really lost it,’’ he said.

Maurice King, now a probation officer in Dallas County, talks to people he supervises about the impact of his family’s domestic violence- related slayings.

“I have had a couple of guys who were doing the same kind of thing. I told them about what happened, and they really seemed to turn their lives around,’’ he said. “As much as I can, I really try to share what I know about the situation. If I don’t share, I am not doing anybody justice.’’

Every city is different

A city’s homicide total for a decade is difficult to put in context nationally because many demographic factors come into play, police say. From 1998 through 2007, St. Louis, Mo., had 1,213 homicides, while 141 homicides occurred in Arlington, Texas.

The Minneapolis homicide total during the decade —502 — was very similar to Tulsa’s.

Those cities range in population from about 340,000 to 385,000 residents, while Tulsa has about 384,000, according to Census estimates.

The nationwide homicide rate for cities with populations between 250,000 and 500,000 is 12.9 murders per 100,000 people, according to the most recent information available from the FBI.

In comparison, Tulsa’s murder rate from 1998 through 2007 ranged from a low of 8.4 murders per 100,000 people in 2000 to a peak of 17.8 murders per 100,000 in 2003.

Palmer said that although people often base their perceptions of how safe cities are on their homicide rates, many other factors could be better gauges. Even if they have similar populations, cities’ demographics differ in one way or another, and that affects the number of homicides, he said.

“If you look on past the raw figures and look at the demographics, poverty levels and other crimes and what goes on there, you get a little bit different picture,” he said. “It is hard to do an apples to apples comparison between, I think, any city … because each one is different; each one has its own personality, and, seemingly, each city kind of has its own level of what they will tolerate in regards to that number.’’

Solving cases

When looking back at the homicides over the years, Palmer said he first considers the kinds of cases the city faces.

Most homicides in Tulsa involve people who know each other, he said, adding that “there are not a lot of stranger-on-stranger deaths in Tulsa.’’

“I don’t think, in a lot of cases, we can prevent what people do to other people. That is just a bad trait of humanity in general,’’ Palmer said. “How we end up with the cases on our desk, and what we do with it after that, is what I look at. I think we are right up there at the top in regards to our solved rate, and that speaks very favorable of the PD.”

A historical look at homicides in Tulsa shows that the clearance rate — or percentage of cases solved —hasbeen consistently greater than the national average, Homicide Unit Sgt. Mike Huff said. He said about 90 of the 507 homicides from 1998 through 2007 remain unsolved.

Homicide detectives take a retrospective look at murders, he said, primarily with one goal in mind: solving more cases.

“It does not matter whether it is one death, 10 or 20 or 500. These families, these survivors, expect us to solve it, and there is no room for error,” Huff said.

The Homicide Unit has two current projects focusing on open homicide cases and missing-personinvestigations during the past 10 years.

“There is no statute of limitations on homicides,” Huff said. “Our goal is to put murderers in jail, period. That’s it. If they are in jail, where they belong, they are not going to hurt anybody else on the streets.’’

Nicole Marshall 581-8459
nicole.marshall@tulsaworld.com

Curtis Killman 581-8471
curtis.killman@tulsaworld.com