What Happened to Cynthia Scott?

Cynthia Scott was murdered in the early morning of July 5, 1963, at the corner of Edmond Place and John R Street in Detroit, Michigan. She was 24 years old at the time and would have been around 80 years old today if her life had not been taken by the Detroit Police Department. What exactly happened to her was deeply contested by her companion, witnesses, and the police officers who took her life. Back in 1963, it was the white officials with power whose voices carried the day, regardless of what Cynthia Scott's family, friends, and other African Americans in Detroit had to say. Ultimately, the story of what happened to Cynthia Scott is still being written, and while justice is now impossible, there is still time for the truth to prevail.

This investigation explores what happened to Cynthia Scott fifty years ago using documents that were intentionally suppressed by the same state that covered up her murder. Cynthia's story is not new; as this account will show, many people recognized that Cynthia's murder was deeply unjustified and sought atonement on her behalf. Nevertheless, her name and her story remain largely unknown in public memory.

This investigation is a project of the  Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab , a subset of the  Documenting Criminalization and Confinement  research initiative at the University of Michigan.

The Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab gratefully acknowledges the assistance and collaboration of  Professor David Goldberg  of Wayne State University, who filed the Freedom of Information Act request that secured the release of the DPD's Homicide Bureau file on Cynthia Scott and generously shared this invaluable resource with our project.

During the early morning hours of July 5th, 1963, Cynthia Scott was walking with Charles Marshall. Knowing that it was the middle of the night, Ms. Scott had asked him to walk her home. As they approached the corner of Edmund Place and John R, a police car pulled in front of them and began engaging in their routine harassment of African Americans in downtown Detroit. The two white officers attempted to arrest Scott, accusing her of prostitution and larceny. While Cynthia Scott was a known sex worker, the two officers trying to arrest her had no evidence except for her very existing on the sidewalk with a man.

After the fact, the officer who murdered her, Theodore Spicher, and the officer who helped cover it up, Robert Marshall, said that Cynthia had money in her hand, that she attacked them and then ran away from their attempted arrest. Officer Spicher claimed that Cynthia slashed his finger with a knife. Officer Marshall claimed that Cynthia slashed through his shirt while she lay on the ground dying. However, every non-police witness contested at least one part of their story, and the physical evidence within her autopsy as well as the contradictions in the officers' own statements deeply undermines their flimsy coverup of her murder.

While Cynthia Scott had been provoked and accused by the police many times, this time she did not feel like complying with their harassment. Although Cynthia cannot speak for herself now, a slew of witnesses recounted what happened to her.

Charles Marshall: Cynthia’s friend, Charles, had met up with her after they both spent an evening on the town, maybe celebrating the 4th of July, or perhaps the joy of any other Thursday night. As they walked back to her apartment, Charles saw the patrol car pull onto the sidewalk. Officer Spicher jumped out and started to arrest Cynthia. Although Charles Marshall tried to intervene and tell the officers that he and Cynthia were friends, that he was walking her back to her apartment, he was ignored, searched, and questioned by Officer Marshall. When Cynthia refused the arrest and attempted to walk away, Officer Spicher followed her to the sidewalk and shot at her from behind three times in a row. After the third shot, she fell face down on the ground. Charles Marshall also recalled that Officer Marshall never left his side or the side of the police car.

Robert Lee Farr: Similarly to Ms. Garland, Robert Lee Farr also presented a  testimony  that deeply disputes the testimonies of the police officers involved in Cynthia’s murder. Mr. Farr was walking down Edmund Place, opposite to Cynthia and Charles Marshall. Like Ms. Garland, he heard Officer Spicher yell death threats as Cynthia walked away. While Robert Farr did see a knife in Cynthia’s possession, he recounted that Cynthia never swiped at Officer Spicher. Instead, Farr argued that Spicher shot Cynthia, went to her while she lay dying, took her knife out of her purse, and cut his own hand. Spicher then went back to his patrol car with his partner and inside the car, sliced open his partner’s shirt with the knife he had taken from Cynthia.

However, like Bernice Garland, Robert Farr's statement and accusations of misconduct were dismissed by the investigators from the DPD Homicide Bureau and the Wayne County Prosecutor. Since Farr was a Black man with a minor criminal record, his voice was disregarded.

Four additional witnesses provided statements to the police department about what happened to Cynthia Scott, but like the others, their perspectives were either ruled "too biased" or simply ignored by the prosecuting attorney.

Frances Mae Jones, a black woman who had already been arrested, was in the back of the policemen's car when Cynthia died. She did not see a knife in Cynthia's hand, nor did she recount Officer Marshall going over to Cynthia after she was shot.

Donald Johnson, a Black man, also watched Cynthia's murder from his window on the block when he heard loud voices. He recalled Cynthia receiving the same harassment that Ms. Garland and Mr. Marshall recounted. Like all of the other statements, he confirmed that Officer Marshall never left the police patrol car.

Evans Tims, a Black man, also knew Cynthia and was on Edmund Place when Cynthia was murdered. Like other statements, he remembers Cynthia falling face down to the ground and Officer Marshall staying at the police car after the shooting.

Joseph Maiorano, a white man, was driving down the street when he saw Officer Spicher run in front of his car and shoot Cynthia Scott. He remembered her falling face down to the ground, undermining Officer Marshall's statement that he was slashed by Cynthia after she was shot. Maiorano was the only white witness, the witness with the telling closest to the stories of Officers Spicher and Marshall, and the only witness whose statement seemed to matter to white officials in the brief investigation of Cynthia's murder.

The statements of Officers Marshall and Spicher do not include the same version of events, so much so that Officer Spicher blatantly changed his statement from one telling to the next, clearly on the advice of Homicide Bureau detectives, in order to make them both seem more innocent. Additionally, the prosecuting attorneys made little effort to fully investigate what happened, ignored the significant amount of contradicting and incriminating evidence from the black witnesses, and “completed” their investigation less than two days after the event. From the officers on the ground at Cynthia’s murder, to those in the Homicide Bureau who took the original statements, all the way up to the county prosecutor, all levels of government officials simultaneously and continuously agreed to a miscarriage of justice and a cover up of a young woman’s murder.

Please note, the following section directly recounts the injuries Cynthia withstood during her murder in detail via the autopsy report. To bypass this section, please choose "Protests and Mobilization" in the navigation bar above.

 Click here to view to full autopsy report pictured above. 

Even one of the most liberal and powerful members of the Detroit policing establishment, Police Commissioner George Edwards, intentionally dismissed incriminating evidence and entire witness testimonies in order to protect the reputation of the Detroit Police Department. Edwards, who had been considered a police reformer, instead took to live television to display the knife Cynthia allegedly had in her purse and retell a grossly exaggerated and fabricated version of events from the perspective of Officer Spicher. Edwards deliberately utilized phrases like "waving a handful of dollar bills," and "belligerent, six-foot, 193 pound woman, intoxicated," to justify Spicher's murder of Cynthia Scott.

The NAACP’s response was similarly tempered. While radical groups rallied around police terror, the NAACP was fighting racial discrimination in housing policies and advancing their goals of integration. In the aftermath of the Scott killing, the NAACP maintained that housing desegregation was the most pressing issue in the community. The organization was up against factions of white Detroiters determined to maintain racial segregation, like local homeowners’ associations. These all-white groups  opposed an open occupancy law  that would allow anyone, regardless of race, to purchase a home in any Detroit neighborhood. While the NAACP focused its efforts on housing integration, this issue could not be separated from the police violence imposed on Black Detroiters. This same coalition of white homeowners’ associations supported a resolution that backed police action in the killing of Cynthia Scott and praised Olsen and the police department for their handling of the murder. 

Throughout the summer, GOAL and other radical Black groups continued picketing the police headquarters. Eventually, Michigan Attorney General Frank J. Kelley agreed to investigate the Scott case. The announcement came after Olsen exonerated police in another shooting, when a  white 18-year-old Kenneth Evans was killed  by two police officers. Both Evans and Scott were shot in the back while fleeing arrest. Many groups, including the ACLU, also complained about how Olsen handled the Evans case. But Kelley, a white liberal, ultimately concluded that the Cynthia Scott case did not warrant intervention by the attorney general’s office. While Kelley acknowledged that there were valid concerns about Spicher’s judgement and use of deadly force, the Michigan Attorney General said that he did not find an abuse of discretion in Olsen’s exoneration of Spicher. 

Twentieth century sex workers were not what they seemed or appeared to be. . . . They did not narrowly define their sexuality or sexual experiences. Beyond public perceptions, black sex workers viewed themselves in a variety of ways: as daughters, mothers, and wives; as workers; as pleasure seekers and givers; and as religious and spiritual beings. --Dr. LaShawn Harris, Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners (2016)

The Detroit police establishment worked tirelessly to weaponize coded language in regards to Cynthia Scott's body and presentation in order to justify her murder. However, most of the coverage and discussion of Ms. Scott--even that which sought to speak in service of justice for her--also participated in the shaming of Black female sex workers because of their race, gender, and profession.

These investments in misogynistic, bourgeoise ideals of morality and of race and gender present dangerous contradictions for those seeking to fight for justice on behalf of all African Americans. As is seen in the case of Cynthia Scott and all Black sex workers, if it is justifiable to kill a Black person solely because of what they do, the state will not hesitate to do so freely. When the marginalized decide among themselves whose life has value and whose does not, the job of subjugating and maintaining hierarchical control becomes easier for those who seek to oppress and control.

Newspapers such as the Detroit Free Press hyper-focused on Cynthia Scott's height and weight, as though her stature implied deviance. Nearly all of the descriptions of her in the media involved words like “big” and “tough.” Coverage of her murder emphasized her status as a “known prostitute” and often described her criminal history in detail. (The Free Press also published Cynthia's police mug shot, whereas the Michigan Chronicle, an African American weekly newspaper, obtained a photograph of Cynthia from her mother). These portrayals of Cynthia were undoubtedly intended to justify the actions of Officer Theodore Spicher. The articles often weaponized her reputation as a “known felon” as though it were a death sentence, while they attempted to rationalize Spicher’s use of deadly force. 

Even newspapers that doubted the justification of the officer’s actions engaged in demonization of Scott and her character. While articles in the Michigan Chronicle, a Black newspaper in Detroit, demanded justice for her murder, they often implied that she did not deserve to die in spite of her being a prostitute. Most of the arguments against the exoneration of Spicher vocalized by local Black leaders rested on the grounds that Scott was arrested illegally, and therefore had every right to resist. One article questioned, “What circumstances would give rise to a policeman shooting a woman, even a prostitute?” Remarks like these reinforce the white supremacist ideal that some lives are valuable and some are not. Even in calls for justice, Cynthia’s humanity was never fully recognized.

Black people in Detroit, especially women and those working in underground economies, would havve been familiar with the kind of treatment that Cynthia endured the night of July 5th. Investigative arrests--arrests based not on evidence of a crime but on mere suspicion--were illegal but also  very common in Detroit . It would not be unusual to witness a police officer physically or verbally abusing a Black girl walking home from school, presumed to be loitering merely on account of her presence on the sidewalk. She might then be dragged into a cop car and forced to prove her own innocence. 

For more on Cynthia Scott, police brutality, and Black political thought, please see the website  Detroit Under Fire: Police Violence, Crime Politics, and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Civil Rights Era . This site, a production of the  Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab  at the University of Michigan, includes a more  detailed legal analysis and additional documents  about the Cynthia Scott murder and coverup.

"What Happened to Cynthia Scott?" is an initiative of the  Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab  and  Documenting Criminalization and Confinement .

 Mix Mann  is a Ph.D. student in History at the University of Michigan whose research focuses on the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class in the Americans.  Brianna Wells  received her B.A. in Public Policy from the University of Michigan in 2020, with a minor in Gender and Health, and contributed to multiple public engagement projects during her undergraduate career. Additional editing by  Matt Lassiter , Professor of History at the University of Michigan and the director of the Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab.

For questions about Cynthia Scott and the pursuit to reopen her case with the Wayne County Prosecutor, please contact micmann@umich.edu or mlassite@umich.edu.

DPD Homicide Bureau, "Fatal Shooting of Cynthia Scott Broady," July 10, 1963, DPD Cynthia Scott File A20-02255 (FOIA file)

Box 117, Folder 2, George C. Edwards, Jr., Papers, Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University

note: the above collection includes a scrapbook with dozens of undated newspaper articles from July/August 1963 from the Detroit Free Press, Detroit News, Michigan Chronicle, and Detroit Courier

NAACP Detroit Branch Records, Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University

Detroit News Photograph Collection, Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University

The Illustrated News, Joseph A. Labadie Collection, Special Collections Department, University of Michigan

Angela Dillard, Faith in the City: Preaching Radical Social Change in Detroit (2007)

LaShawn Harris, Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City's Underground Economy (2016)

David Maraniss, Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story (2015)