Hazelwood massacre

Police believed that one of the victims, heroin dealer and pimp Robert Gardner, was the target and that the others were killed to avoid leaving witnesses.On June 14, 1971, shortly before 4:30 a.m., eight persons were shot in the living room of an apartment at a red-brick house located at 1970 Hazelwood Street in Detroit.They also received a call from the wife of Robert Gardner, who reported that she entered the house, found her husband had been shot, and drove him to Henry Ford Hospital.[1] Three other occupants of the apartment, two women and one man, escaped by breaking through the rear window of a sun porch and fleeing down an alley.[4] Police also found packets of a substance believed to be heroin, as well as paraphernalia, including spoons, tin foil, and hypodermic needles.[1] One of the victims, Lloyd Tyler, had multiple felony convictions, including a 1968 robbery of a jewelry store that ended in a shootout with police.He was a heroin addict who had been ordered to enter a federal narcotics treatment center in Kentucky as a condition of probation, but it rejected him due to his "anti-social behavior".[1] He added that they were mystified at the "sedentary", even placid, positions of the seven bodies, noting that one man was found with a cigarette in his hand and dollar bills on his lap.[2][1] In the days immediately following the shooting, police rejected the notion that the massacre was a robbery, as the perpetrators left both money and drugs untouched at the scene.The revenge theory was supported by the discovery in the apartment of a quantity of a substance that was initially thought to be heroin but which proved to be milk sugar and quinine.He had also traveled to New York City, but was reportedly lured back to Detroit by a phone call from Williams advising Gardner of a potentially profitable drug deal.