Philadelphia Weekly

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Looking more drained than hopeful, a stylish woman sat inside a Criminal Justice Center courtroom holding hands with her ex-husband. She just heard a forewoman say the jury had reached a verdict.

It was a climactic moment for Gwen and Herbert Harvey, who divorced six years ago but remain good friends. That friendship helped sustain them after their 22-year-old son was murdered on the desolate Strawberry Mansion street corner of 31st and Nevada in the wee hours of Aug. 31, 2006.

L’Salle Harvey, an Army vet and aspiring teacher, took five 45-caliber bullets—including one to his head—shortly after he withdrew $20 from a nearby ATM at 2:30 that morning. Since crime scene detectives recovered neither the money nor L’Salle’s registered 45-caliber pistol from his body near his bicycle, they theorized that someone robbed him before shooting him, perhaps with his own gun.

But a year after the crime, no one had been arrested, and Gwen Harvey felt doubly violated. (Gwen was featured in PW on Feb. 6, 2008, becoming this newspaper’s unofficial face for the lengthy roster of Philadelphia mothers whose children’s slayings haven’t been solved.)

Meanwhile, investigative wheels turned. In January 2008, police arrested another young Strawberry Mansion man and charged him with robbing and murdering L’Salle Harvey.

Now, on this chilly April afternoon, Demetrius Wells, a well-composed 23-year-old in a black striped shirt and dark slacks, rose to face his jury. Their decision would clear him or send him to prison for the rest of his life. For the Harveys, it would be another bitter pill or what were certain was justice.

L’Salle Harvey was what his mother called a “front of the line kid,” one who never let his size—he was 5-foot-4 and 130 pounds—stop him from pursuing his goals.

Discharged honorably from the Army in 2005, L’Salle wanted to become a teacher so he enrolled in Penn’s Veterans Upward Bound, a college-prep program for former-service members. He hoped to work in security while attending college, so he purchased a handgun and got a license to carry it.

Diane Sandefur, the Veterans Upward Bound director, says she was certain L’Salle would’ve become a phenomenal teacher, adding that “his smile made you feel like all was right with the world.”

But a year after L’Salle’s murder, all wasn’t right in Gwen’s world.

In August 2007, she sat inside the Center City condo where she worked the graveyard shift as a concierge, and sadly recounted how “Sal” would visit her most weeknights at her job. He’d study or they’d read the Bible together before he’d pedal his Schwinn back to the Strawberry Mansion rowhome where he rented a room from family friends. Tears filled Gwen’s eyes when she noted that he’d followed that same routine on his last morning alive.

Gwen felt bitter toward her ex-neighbors in Strawberry Mansion (she moved from the hardscrabble neighborhood after she and Herbert parted company), who she believed were withholding information.

“Somebody up there knows who did it,” she insisted.

And now it seems she was right.

Around Halloween 2006, police received a letter whose author fingered Demetrius Wells as L’Salle Harvey’s killer. The author used a bogus name for himself, and probably thought he’d never be found out.

But police, who couldn’t arrest Wells on hearsay, lifted a fingerprint from the letter. And when a 23-year-old named Mark Clark-Allen got busted on a drug charge in June 2007, they discovered that his fingerprint matched it. Soon after, they transported Clark-Allen to Homicide for questioning.

After hours of denying writing the letter, Clark-Allen finally admitted it. He told detectives that early on Aug. 31, 2006, he was sleeping upstairs in a house on Dauphin Street near 31st, close to the crime scene. After being awakened by gunshots outside, he overheard his housemate Wells talking about robbing L’Salle of $20 and a pistol, and then running home.

Clark-Allen added that later in the day Wells described walking L’Salle around the corner and shooting him to death after L’Salle followed him home and asked to have his gun back.

“I want to get this off my chest,” Clark-Allen wrote in the letter. Now he’d become a witness.