The Wire is a well fleshed out TV show. It has its own in-universe rumors, urban legends, gossips and superstitions. It is fun to watch how these tales get spread by the word of mouth.
Rumors
If you like, check out this video about rumors in The Wire series on HSvista YouTube channel.
Ku Klux Klan in Howard County
First time we see Donut joyriding, he was in a Cadillac Escalade. All the nearby kids came to admire the vehicle and Namond got inside with Donut. Randy asked from Donut that if it is possible to steal a camper truck, so all of them could go camping in the woods in Howard County. Namond said the Ku Klux Klan live in the Howard County and he know it that for a fact. Michael ridiculed Namond by saying there are no Ku Klux Klan in the Howard County and his aunt is living in Howard County.
Hungry Man’s theory about Marlo and funeral homes
In a co-op meeting Nathaniel “Hungry Man” Manns said that he heard Marlo had a connection with a funeral home at Westport and coffins going in there only need two pallbearers but need eight people to carry them out, insinuating that Marlo is hiding his victims in coffins to disappear them. Slim Charles set the record straight and said that Marlo uses empty houses to hide bodies.
Laetitia’s mother boils cats and serve them
Laetitia is the girl who cut Chiquan’s face with a box cutter in Mr. Prezbo’s classroom. Laetitia seems always angry. Kids were talking about that incident while working out in the boxing gym. Duquan said Laetitia’s father had killed three policemen and her mother boils cats and serve them. Randy said Laetitia lives in a group home in Edmondson and in such places you don’t need to eat cats to make you crazy.
Even though Duquan claimed that he was telling the truth about Laetitia, we have to agree with Randy on this one. We see what happened to Randy after he spent some time in a group home. Those places could really suck out the innocence from young children.
East Side and West Side beef in the Baby Booking
DEU Sergeant Carver caught Namond Brice slinging again despite former warnings. After taking Namond into the police station Carver realized that Namond was afraid to go to the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center aka Baby Booking.
Namond gave his reasons by telling “The East Side be beefing with the West Side in there, and some dudes be getting ra**d and shit. I mean, that’s what I be hearing.”
Carver replied “It’s bad in there. I don’t know if it’s that bad.”
Maybe Namond was onto something here, because according to this Baltimore Sun article Baby Booking could expose minor offenders to harsher peer groups.
Rumor about McNulty closing the deal in a vice undercover operation
Jimmy McNulty and Kenneth Dozerman were on surveillance duty, on a rooftop, staking out Marlo. Dorzerman said to Jimmy that he heard a story about Jimmy while he was in Western District. He said he heard that Jimmy went undercover on a vice operation and instead of pulling out, went ahead and ‘closed the deal’ with prostitutes. And furthermore, Jimmy put that incident on his report.
McNulty did not confirmed or denied the rumor, just replied “You believe everything you read?”
We know this rumor is based on truth and Bunk predicted it after reading Jimmy’s report saying “This report is gonna make you a BPD legend.”
Junebug got killed over a rumor
Marlo gave order to kill Junebug for spreading rumors. Chris and Snoop took Michael for the hit. Michael asked why they are going to kill Junebug. Snoop said they heard a rumor that Junebug had been smearing Marlo’s name. Michael wondered why they are going to kill Junebug without conforming whether he actually did it or not. Chris replied it is not important if he really did it, because the important thing is people believe Junebug did that, so they can’t let it slide.
Sad thing is Junebug died over a double rumor. Even if he really said a bad thing about Marlo, it was just a baseless rumor. Then Marlo acted upon another rumor without actually finding out who really spread the original rumor.
Tall Tales, Urban Legends and exaggerations
Old stevedores’ tales
In the season 2 episode 01, senior stevedores were reminiscing older days where they had to work in 6 degrees cold when everyone else was heading home. According to them they had to manually shovel grain cargo to offload those using wooden shovels to avoid sparks. Also back in the day checkers had to use pencils to keep records.
Then younger stevedores started to mock their seniors insinuating that old stevedores exaggerate their stories.
Bumpy from New York
Cheese’s dog lost an illegal dog fight and got badly injured, so Cheese put it down. But later Cheese’s dog handler, Tree realized that other team had cheated. Tree got revenge by shooting one person from the other team whose name I believe was Jelly.
Right before Jelly got shot he was telling about the baddest gangster of all time to Sherrod and some other boy. According to Jelly, there was a man named Bumpy in New York who did wild things like go up to a police station by himself to scare the policemen. Policemen would hide and beg him to go away.
I think Jelly was talking about Ellsworth Raymond Johnson aka Bumpy Johnson. He was indeed an interesting enough gangster, so that many TV shows and movies have fictionalize versions of Bumpy Johnson. One time he did a sit-down strike in a police station and refused to leave to protest police surveillance on him. I think Jelly was retelling an exaggerated version of this Bumpy Johnson’s strike story.
Violation of the Sunday truce and Omar’s grandmother’s hat
Avon was trying to fight two wars at once and failing because the lack of competent soldiers. One war with Marlo who had better muscle and other one with Omar who was elusive. Slim Charles had to put idiotic duo, Gerard and Sapper to wait on Omar’s grandmother in hope of Omar would visit her. Once a month, Omar would take his grandmother to the church. In such days Omar let loose his guard because there is a traditional Sunday Truce in the Game where gangsters respect each other’s right to visit a church. Gerard and Sapper caught Omar on such day and hesitated to take a shot because they knew about the Sunday truce. But Stringer Bell who always bends the rules green lit the attack. The attack failed and Omar fled the scene with his grandma, only leaving behind his grandma’s best hat aka church crown.
This incident brought ill-reputation to the Barksdale Crew from other gangs and the story of the attack distorted in every retell.
Avon said “I mean, it’s like people is talking on us, the story is getting bigger and bigger. Like I swear to God, Fat Face Rick heard that our people went and shot Omar granny in the ass on purpose, all that and pulled their dicks out, pissed on her crown and shit.”
Omar: An Urban Legend in the Baltimore streets
Many gangsters wanted their name to ring out in the streets, but most of the time their names got forgotten as soon as they get out of the game. Meanwhile the tales of Omar ascended into Urban Legend status, especially the tale of his final fight, nobody wanted to believe that just a stray boy got to Omar and killed him. So people made up stories to make his final moments sound epic.
Outside the perimeter of Omar’s crime scene, few girls were talking about Omar’s death. One girl was reluctant to believe it was true because it was not the first time a rumor said that Omar was dead. But another girl confirmed the news by saying she saw his body, and also said that she heard Omar tried to rob the Koreans and got himself killed.
Michael told Spider it was Kennard who killed Omar and homicide detectives already came three times to Kennard’s house to catch him. But Spider did not believed Michael and said it was Pimlico Boys who killed Omar by using three AKs.
In the final scene of Marlo, he left the party and took a stroll through the empty, night streets. There were two corner boys who were arguing over Omar’s death. One was saying the real story is that some cops killed Omar and staged it to look like the New York boys did it. Other one disagreed and claimed to know the truth. According to him, neither police nor New York boys had nothing to do with the death of Omar. Eight or nine people with hand guns had surrounded lone Omar who was with an AK. But before we could hear the conclusion to his version of Omar’s death, Marlo approached the corner boys and chased them away.
Superstitions
Madame LaRue, the psychic
Detective Michael “Sanny” Santangelo (played by Michael Salconi) was a mole inside Major Crimes Unites who spied for Rawls. He had a lower clearance rate due to back up cold cases, and Major Rawls was holding it as leverage. When Santangelo voiced his concerns about spying, Rawls gave him two choices; either find some dirt on McNulty or solve a cold case.
Sergeant Jay Landsman saw det. Santangelo was desperate to solve a case and decided to play a prank on him. Jay gave a card to Santangelo and told him to get help from a psychic who was going by the name Madame LaRue. Santangelo was skeptical at first, but Jay managed to sell him on the supernatural abilities of the psychic.
Madame LaRue gave Santangelo a questionable plastic figurine claiming it is a figurine of Saint Anthony and asked him to bury it near the victim’s grave, wait a full hour, dig it up, go straight to home, and before go to bed hold it to his ear. He followed the ritual and went to the bed.
In the middle of the night Santangelo got a call from the police station informing him that they caught the perpetrator for one of his cold cases. Even though it wasn’t the case he was working to solve, Santangelo believed Madame LaRue’s ritual worked, so he thanked Landsman for sending him to the psychic. But this time Jay Landsman got serious with Santangelo and pointed out it wasn’t gipsy magic but the hard work of McNulty, Bunk and other people that closed the case and caught the shooter, Bird. So to show his gratitude, Santangelo disclosed about Rawls’s ill intentions to McNulty.
Brother Mouzone’s hex
In the famous Shorty Boyd went and cleaned his all ack up scene, Avon was asking from Slim Charles why he could not round up soldiers.
Slim said “Black Donnie said he ain’t having any of it. Say Brother Mouzone put a hex on all of us.”
Well I’m not blaming Black Donnie for believing that, because after Stringer tried to kill Brother Mouzone, everything went downhill for the Barksdale Crew.
Slim also failed to recruit Peacock, Eggy Mule and Shorty Boyd for different reasons.
Chris is a zombie master
Kids were hanging in a dark ally in the night talking about Lex and other victims of Chris. Namond was trying to scare Randy and swore that he saw Lex was creeping around the playground. Randy did not believe Namond because word in the street is that Lex is dead. Donut chimed in saying there is dead, and there’s special dead. Kenard agreed with Donut by saying that Chris is doing juju on his victims. Namond claimed Chris turns his victims into zombies and that is why he takes them to vacant houses, because he needs time to turn them into zombies. Some of the kids think Lex, Pookie, Byron and all others are now zombies and Chris is there zombie master.
Michael wasn’t believing in voodoo, but he agreed that Chris is doing something because he somehow has the ability to walk his victims up to vacant houses even though his victims were aware of their fate. Michael also thought that Chris must be using his dead victims as spies because that explains how Marlo knows too much.
It is possible that Namond and other kids were messing with Randy to scare him or maybe they themselves believed Chris had some kind of supernatural power over his victims. Duquan is normally full of theories but he kept silent in the entire time because he already knew the truth that Chris’s victims are not special dead, but dead-dead.
Maybe Namond started the story to scare Randy but at the end all of them were jumpy, when a dope fiend stumbled into the alleyway, walking like a movie zombie, all the kids got scared and ran away.
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