Commonwealth v. Brown

Twelve persons lived in a second-floor, six-room apartment at 203 Columbia Road in the Dorchester district of Boston: Carol Joseph Headley and her three children; Carol’s brother Carlton Joseph, his wife Louise, and their five children; and a friend, Ian Wade, whose house had recently “burned out.” About 7:30 p.m., January 29, 1986, with all present in the apartment, there was a knock on the door, Carlton opened it, and three armed men, two of them masked, pushed their way in. The man without the mask, later identified (as we shall see) as the defendant, Maurice Brown, went through the rooms…