Last week the police called on Markhasev, charging him with the murder and attempted robbery of Ennis Cosby, Bill Cosby’s only son. He could face the death penalty if convicted. The killing had sparked all sorts of theories, but as the Los Angeles police sketched it, the crime was another tragic, random intersection between miscreant and good citizen, an attempted robbery ending in murder.
The break came after nearly two months of fruitless tips and searches. Given the time lag, many legal pundits had thought the crime was unsolvable. Cosby was gunned down shortly after 1 a.m. on Jan. 16, after a flat tire on his $130,000 Mercedes forced him to pull to the side of the San Diego Freeway, near affluent Bel-Air. As it turned out, if it weren’t for Cosby’s fame, police might still be searching for a suspect. The National Enquirer got swamped with calls after it offered a $100,000 reward for information on the killer. One caller, a man from the Los Angeles area, said that a friend had overheard a conversation between what he thought was a Russian gang member and another man. One of them said he’d recently shot a black man. The friend had also overheard the man say he had disposed of the handgun used in the crime, according to the in- formant. (The reward is contingent on a conviction.)
The paper turned the information over to the police, who tracked down the informant. He in turn reportedly led them to the secluded area where the pistol was found, about five miles from the murder. The gun was wrapped in a knit cap similar to the one described by the case’s chief witness, the 47-year-old woman friend of Ennis Cosby’s whose name is being withheld. After ballistics tests matched the gun to the murder weapon, police arrested Markhasev. He had a wispy mustache, but otherwise his face matched the widely disseminated drawing of the suspect.
Police Chief Willie Williams went out of his way to still conspiracy theories that had lingered around the case. He asserted that the killing had been done by a single individual out to rob Cosby, and that Markhasev was not connected to any Russian mob, as the tipster had suggested. Nor, Williams said, was the killing motivated by race or Cosby’s fame. In short, he said, the police confirmed the story given by Cosby’s friend, an aspiring screenwriter. She had told police she had driven to the highway to help Cosby when she was frightened away by the gunman. She returned a few minutes later to find Cosby’s body.
Crucial details: Still, in the LAPD’s new, tight-lipped, post-O. J. Simpson era, the police withheld many key details. How did they trace the gun to Markhasev? Did Markhasev act alone? Police questioned and released a man and a woman at the time of the arrest. The New York Daily News, quoting police sources, said Markhasev was using a pay phone nearby when he spotted Cosby’s car. Williams said no one else was being sought for murder but suggested that others might be aware of what happened. And despite Williams’s denial of a link, heisting expensive cars is something of a specialty of Russian gangs.
If the crime was all too ordinary, the identity of the victim had stirred the nation’s emotions. Ennis was a good kid, a graduate student at Columbia University, a teacher of reading-disabled students–and the son of a beloved entertainer and America’s favorite dad. A Cosby spokesman said the parents feel a ““real sense of triumph, exuberance and something along the lines of a real sense of closure.’’ Peace may take longer.
