Here’s an addition to the fateful day that created the “house of horrors”.

Until you wrote the piece of the house along Pulaski Hwy I couldn’t have told you from memory the name of the victim or the person who confessed to the crime to me. I remember working on a city medic unit in east Baltimore that day being dispatched to north Washington Street for a “pedestrian struck”. On arrival the scene was unusual as an Amtrak police officer was on location and the first to provide us with details of the “Pedestrian incident” when we arrived he began saying…  I ran him over.

Waiting for the punch line, the officers told the rest of the story that he was dispatched to check that area of the Amtrak line as a passing passenger train radioed they had struck someone near that location.   When he arrived the man jumped from the train bridge that crossed north Washington Street.  I don’t remember how he ended up being run over by the officer, if he jumped into the path of the officer, or threw himself under the car as he approached. 

So now the story as we were putting it together was that of a man who tried to end it by getting hit by a high speed passenger train(unsuccessful), Jumping off a bridge(unsuccessful) and running out into the path of the police vehicle as a last resort (still unsuccessful) was what we were dealing with.  

Now comes actually interacting with this guy who has went through all this confirmed by witnesses.   You would think he would have large obvious injuries but he kept ranting about “a root”. With no outward massive trauma that you would expect someone like this to have, we still did the same treatment as if he did. All along he kept ranting about “A root” while we were treating him. We were kind of dismissive but humoring his ranting allowing him to continue while focusing on his treatment until he put one entire sentence together, “I had a root on me, she wouldn’t take it off, and that’s why I had to cut off her head."

The district officers that were standing to the rear of the medic unit became silent and attentive.  One of the officers told me off to the side that they have a ongoing call that involves a decapitation. It just happens to be along the same rail line that runs a block north of the Pulaski Hwy incident. I didn’t get the details of how he got there but I assumed that he traveled the rail until a train came along and struck him that caused the remained of events to play out.

We transported him to Hopkins I listened to his same rant thinking to myself this guy thinks he’s dying so I guess I’m listening to a dying declaration. At the time I had to get someone to plant the “root” to me. It was explained as another term for a spell or curse. Until today while reading your story I haven’t heard the disposition of the case and only remember a similar story used for the series Homicide life of the streets. 

I often wondered the details or disposition of the case over the years when passing the house with the porch removed. I didn’t realize it was 15 years ago.

And this:

Your article toady brought back some memories. I was a correctional officer at the Baltimore City Detention Center working the 11pm to 7am shift. I was told to go to the Captain's office. When I got outside his office I was met by a sergeant. He said he was going with myself and  another officer to the hospital to pick up a patient. This was very unusual. It doesn't take two correctional officers and a sergeant to pick up one patient. The Captain spoke to us, he said he wanted to tell us want the patient had done. Correctional officers are not told what crimes a person is accused of committing. Every inmate (or resident as we called them) was to be considered dangerous
so we didn't need to know about crimes they may have committed.

The Captain said that the patient cut off a fortune teller's head. He ran away and jumped in front of a train. The conductor called the police. The police arrived and allegedly he rolled over a police car. He was taken to the precinct (no central booking then). While there he attacked an officer and was subdued by multiple police.  This is why he was taken to the hospital.

When we arrived at the hospital I thought the guy had been seen and was ready to be taken.  Wrong! He was still in the paddy wagon in leg irons and arms cuffed behind his back. The police officers looked like they were about to poop their pants!  We very carefully put the
guy on a stretcher (cuffed to the stretcher, also). After the doctors checked him out, we took the guy back to the BCDC. We took his clothes and gave him and attractive one size fits all paper suit and put him in a isolation room at the BCDC clinic. The next day he was go ing to be sent to Perkins. He started fighting and the tactical team was called in to subdue him. I was told he was given a tranquillizer and rolled out in a wheelchair.

A police officer said the gypsy had a camera in her parlor and this was on tape.  Her funeral service was at the Greek Orthodox church on Eastern Avenue. A friend told me the gypsies left a mess behind. At the funeral, the followed some gypsy custom by pouring alcohol on the
grave. That amounts to alcohol abuse!

You should get a lot of info from that file on Monday. Write a script, this could easily make it on a true crime TV show. I wouldn't be surprised if the gypsy fortune tellers at the North Point Flea
Market knew Sister Myra.