By Jackie Hadley Hemingway
It was a warm night in July, 1999 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Two men had been out drinking that fateful night. One, 42-year-old Kenneth Cains, a former Marine Corps veteran, who had served in Vietnam, was walking along Cameron Street at about 10:30pm. The other was 38-year-old Thomas William Druce, Republican member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Cains, perhaps on a bit of a down-on-his-luck period of time in his life; Druce, a rising star in the state Republican Party. These two men couldn’t have been more different…except in one other way. Druce was a white man while Cains was a Black man.
As Kenneth Cains walked along Cameron Street he didn’t see the black Jeep Grand Cherokee approaching him from behind. He had been drinking that night and after lighting a cigarette, he stumbled from the sidewalk out onto Cameron Street and was struck by the Jeep which was being driven by it’s sole occupant, Thomas Druce. Druce had been out drinking at a bar with state capitol coworkers that night. Two very different men, both had been drinking and both experienced very different outcomes that night.
When Druce struck Cains with his vehicle, Cains was thrown violently up and smashed into the windshield with such force that bits of glass lodged in his arm. He rolled off the side of the Jeep and hit the passenger mirror and wheel well before rolling and coming to a stop a number of feet away.
An eye-witness that was traveling in the same direction as Druce saw the Jeep’s brake lights illuminate and the vehicle come to a stop, briefly, before speeding away from the scene of the accident.
Kenneth Cains was pronounced dead at the scene. Druce immediately drove back to the state house, presumably to inspect the damage and was seen by a security guard as he pulled into the parking garage. Coincidentally, the video camera at that entrance to the parking garage was later found to be malfunctioning that night and the old security guard retired soon after.
Not wanting to have a scandal plague his political career, or risk a DUI and leaving the scene of an accident with injuries, Druce concocted a story. He claimed he struck a roadside barrier while driving on, presumably, Interstate 81. However, no such damage would ever be found anywhere that could account for the damage to his vehicle. But that’s getting a little ahead of the story.
The first thing that Thomas Druce did was…nothing! That is, he didn’t report the accident to any law enforcement agency. Instead, he immediately took his state-leased Jeep Grand Cherokee to be fully repaired and repainted, which incidentally, is tampering with evidence. He then filed a false claim with his insurance company stating the fabricated story about striking a barrier on the highway. Then he immediately turned in his leased vehicle with some nonsense about needing another vehicle because the mileage was too high, (apparently he was very concerned about the taxpayers getting their money’s worth on the resale of the Jeep). Then the vehicle was sold at auction to a car dealer who in turn sold it to another party. The truth of Druce’s felonious deed seemingly gone forever.
For six months Druce maintained the lie of his criminal acts that July night and the subsequent lies and coverup.
Fast-forward to Christmastime, 1999. An anonymous Christmas card was sent to the local Crime Stoppers in Harrisburg providing information implicating Thomas Druce in the vehicular death of Kenneth Cains. Initially thought to be a hoax, police slowly uncovered the trail of lies woven by Druce ending with the impounding of his Jeep Grand Cherokee from its new owner.
The vehicle was thoroughly disassembled part by part at the state police garage. Pieces of the shattered windshield were recovered from the space below the windshield wipers. Threads from blue jeans were recovered from the wheel well seams. Most improbably and amazingly, a single human hair was found in the spring-loaded fold in the passenger side mirror.
The retrieved windshield glass was forensically matched to the glass found lodged in Kenneth Cains arm. The blue fibers from the Jeep’s wheel well were forensically linked to the blue jeans Cains was wearing. Most incriminating, the single human hair was matched to the arm hair of Kenneth Cains. They had him!
As the police pieced together their case against Druce, the Republican politico stuck to his string of lies. The walls of justice began to close in on him. He could face many years in prison for the vehicular death of Cains, leaving the scene of an accident and failure to report an accident. The continued lies and insurance fraud would surely catapult this criminal state lawmaker into the big house! Sadly, justice, real justice would never come for the down-on-his-luck former Marine.
Thomas William Druce’s life started to unravel. He did apologize — to the state legislature for all the media attention his illegal actions may have caused his colleagues. An apology to the family of Kenneth Cains would have to wait.
His wife of 15 years would wisely come to divorce him (who wouldn’t?), he resigned in disgrace from his office. However, the real crime was that Thomas Druce was allowed to cop a plea deal to avoid any substantial jail time.
In the end of this miscarriage of justice, Druce would only serve two years (in minimum security at the State Correctional Institution at Laurel Highlands) before being released in 2006. He had been allowed to be released on bail while his case was on appeal, complaining the whole while that his having to wear an ankle monitor and reporting to probation regularly was excessive for him. Apparently getting away with vehicular homicide wasn’t a sweet enough deal for the white-privileged politician.
In the end, Kenneth Cains life, and death, was only worth two years in a minimum security facility.
But…what if??
Imagine this for a moment. It’s a hot July night, about 80 degrees out. It’s humid, sticky humid. Imagine a drunk man is walking down the street, he stumbles into the roadway and is struck by another man who flees the scene, and that man lies and hides his crimes for six months.
Now, imagine that the victim of this crime was white, and the perpetrator who killed him and sped away was Black. Do you honestly think that the Black man would get such a sweet plea deal for his criminal activity?
And that is where the injustice lies…
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Hemingway Ink 
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