Pizza-killing confession disputed
By Lauren FitzPatrick
Staff writer
As a video camera was rolling, Adam Titus confessed to holding up a pizza deliveryman with his friend “Meechi” using a gun he had stolen from his girlfriend’s house — then Meechi shot the man, prosecutors said Thursday.
Titus, 20, consented to videotape his statement explaining his role in the accused armed robbery and murder of Charles Gordon in January 2002, Assistant State’s Attorney Shawn Concannon said from the witness stand.
But Titus’ attorney questioned the timing of the tape, some two days after Harvey police took the then 17-year-old into custody, and argued many other conversations with law enforcement were not taped.
The video, which was played in open court before the jury and Judge Frank G. Zelezinski, shows Titus telling Concannon and a Harvey detective he and Demetrius Phipps ordered a pizza from nearby Arnie’s Pizza on Jan. 12, 2002, so they could rob the deliveryman when he brought it to the vacant apartment next door.
Titus, of 2319 W. 156th St., Markham, said on the tape he and Phipps,
aka Meechi, had planned a robbery.
“Which robbery?” asked Concannon while working as a felony investigator.
“The pizzaman robbery,” Titus replied. “We was talking about what time he was coming. We was going to take his money and run.”
Titus said he gave Meechi a .380 semiautomatic handgun he had stolen through the side window of his girlfriend’s house, unbeknownst to her.
Gordon, the 35-year-old pizzaman who got the call, walked up the stairs, knocked on uninhabited No. 4 of a two-flat in the 100 block of West 154th Street and then turned back to his car, Titus said.
Phipps then approached him, saying, “Gimme your stuff,” Titus said. Gordon fell down the stairs, saying he didn’t have anything.
“I went through his pockets,” Titus said on tape. “I took a bunch of dollar bills and some change.”
That’s when the gun went off, Titus said. Gordon, shot in the chest, died the next day.
In her cross examination, public defender Toya Harvey argued that the tape captured only a small fraction of what Titus said while in custody and that he was never a match for an educated detective and prosecutor.
“You never asked if he could read or write?” she asked Concannon, who replied “no.” Harvey also wanted to know why the first 45 minutes of their conversation was not taped.
Late in the afternoon, the defense declined to present evidence and rested, setting closing arguments and jury deliberation in Zelezinski’s courtroom today.
Lauren FitzPatrick may be reached at lfitzpatrick@dailysouthtown.com or (708) 633-5964.
