Why dangerous fugitives turn themselves in to Russ Ewing - television news broadcaster in Chicago, Illinois - Interview

Ebony, Feb, 1993 by Douglas C. Lyons

A record number of suspects--101 and still counting--surrender to Chicago TV reporter

At first glance, Chicago's Russ Ewing doesn't look like a person who made his reputation on the mean streets of urban America.

For starters, he plays the piano, flies airplanes and owns a dairy farm. Not exactly skills one learns on the corner. He also works as a television newsman, a high-profile job that puts him in touch with many of the city's affluent movers and shakers.

But Ewing's claim to fame is far from highbrow. He chronicles the city's seamier side of life: armed robberies, rapes, child molestations, murders and gang-style executions. For the past 23 years, he has gained a reputation for doing work best left to the police--convincing dangerous fugitives to turn themselves in to authorities.

"It was a little embarrassing at first," says LeRoy Martin, the former police superintendent of Chicago. "Here's a major city police department with all this technology and armament, and here's this unarmed guy with nothing but a microphone who brings in more major criminals in his career as a reporter than most of the police chiefs combined. It was embarrassing at first, but after you get to know him, you're thankful and proud that he's doing it."

At last count, the man with the microphone has brought in 101 fugitives, about 20 more than those turned in by another legendary journalist, Chuck Stone, a longtime Philadelphia columnist. Ewing has other cases pending, including a request from Canadian officials to help find a man accused of killing a 6-year-old girl in Edmonton.

A heavy-set man with graying hair and an easy smile, Ewing doesn't look like a guy who can successfully chase criminals. For one thing, he's "60-something," an age that makes him an oddity in local television news and street reporting. "I stopped counting after 50," he says, offering no further specifics on his exact date of birth.

But he does chase criminals and report the news very well, and his feats lead many to wonder how he manages to pull it all off.

"If I learned anything important, I learned it from the streets and the people who adopted me," he says. "They taught me to treat everybody right. That's it. You can succeed just by treating everybody right."

Ewing's equal treatment extends to everyone. His best sources, he says, are the people too often overlooked by society and many reporters--bus drivers, beat patrolmen, government clerks, prison guards, nurses, gangbangers and an occasional prostitute. "People in the streets are good sources," he says. "If you let those people know that you like them and respect them, you'll get some of the best stories in the world."

Some of Ewing's best stories could very well come straight out of a television episode of America's Most Wanted. On one occasion, for example, he and Gus Savage, a former congressman, allowed themselves to be exchanged for hostages taken by a pair of robbers who eventually surrendered.

Acting on a tip that a bank was about to be robbed, Ewing had a TV crew on hand to film the heist and the criminals' capture. He even won the trust of convicted mass-murderer John Wayne Gacy during his murder trial by sending him chicken sandwiches. The sandwiches led to a series of interviews and a book on the controversial killer.

Bank robberies, hostage situations, murder--the work isn't exactly safe. While admitting to being cautious, Ewing says he's never felt real fear. "If I did, no one ever knew that," he says. "Any reporter worth his salt knows how to keep his mouth shut."

If not outright fear, Ewing has had his tense moments. One fugitive, for example, pulled out a gun while talking to Ewing and began shooting at the ceiling. "I wasn't afraid for what he would do to me, but the guy had been drinking and was shooting a loaded gun," Ewing recalls. "So I said, 'Hey, that looks like fun. Let me try it.' I was trying to get rid of the bullets."

Once Ewing got the gun, he shot up the remaining bullets and a short time later, the man turned himself in.

Another harrowing situation almost turned Ewing into a felon. The case involved a woman, he says, who was wanted for two murders. After hiding in a Chicago housing project for five years, she agreed to surrender, if Ewing would first arrange for her to see her two children in Alabama.

"So I put her in my airplane, and we flew to Alabama," Ewing says. "She met her children, got all emotional and decided not to come back. Now, I'm sitting there realizing that I've taken this fugitive across not one, but four state lines, and that I just might be in some [legal] trouble."

The story, he says, had a happy ending. He spent the next four days with the woman, and she returned with him to Chicago. "She still writes me," he says. "She's up for parole this year, and I believe she's going to get out now."

Ewing's methods haven't changed much since 1969 when he first asked police if he could talk to a man holding hostages in an apartment at Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes projects.