Donnie Andrews

Andrews grew up in a housing project in West Baltimore, Maryland. He was physically abused by his mother and became addicted to heroin, easily obtainable in the crime-ridden environment of his childhood, at a young age. As a 9-year-old boy, he witnessed a man being beaten to death over 15 cents.^[2]

Andrews became an armed robber who robbed drug dealers,^[3] but who also adhered to a code of ethics that included never harming either women or children.^[3] He was known to police for an extensive record of armed robbery, assault, and trafficking in stolen narcotics throughout the 1970s and early 1980s in Baltimore. In 1986, local drug kingpin Warren Boardley hired Andrews (who by this point was stealing largely to support his heroin addiction) to back up Reggie Gross, an enforcer tasked with the contract killing of two associates, Zachary Roach and Rodney "Touche" Young. Filled with guilt, Andrews surrendered himself to Ed Burns, a homicide detective with the Baltimore Police Department.^[4] Working with Burns, he agreed to wear a covert listening device, which he used to implicate Boardley and Gross in the killings.^[3]

In 1987, Andrews received a life sentence for the murders of Roach and Young. He was denied parole on his first few attempts, but continued to study, ended his addiction to heroin, and helped other inmates by running an anti-gang workshop.^[3][5]

While Andrews was in prison, Burns introduced him to Fran Boyd, whose family was prominently featured in The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, a 1997 book by Burns and David Simon. Andrews and Boyd's first conversation came in January 1993, when Boyd was still using drugs;^[4] Andrews used his own experiences to encourage Boyd to get clean.

Andrews was paroled from prison in 2005.^[6] He married Boyd in 2007.