Markana Harris Capitol

Capitol Investigation #304

-Multiple residents of Ninth Street and Baron Drive have reported disturbances of their homes.
-Items are found out of place, showers wet from use, food missing from fridges and cabinets, and security systems down.
-Three residents of ninth street have reported seeing a mysterious person in a neighbor's yard fleeing the seen.
-Two residents have been knocked out by said person.
-Burglary's are evenly spaced but seem to have no definite pattern.
-We have made a detailed description of the felon no known as the Catfooted House Burglar through the accounts of the few residents who have seen the culprit.
-This is an ongoing investigation

Collective Description of the Catfooted House Burglar

The felon is female, she is 5'6". She has a skinny physique and fair skin. She has lean, long legs. Her arm muscles finely toned. She is in good shape and can run fast without making a sound. Her eyes are dark, presummably dark brown. Her hair is shoulder length and wavy. It is also a dark brown. She has almond shaped eyes, a straight nose, and big lips. Her face is oval shaped.

She wears her hair down. Usually seen wearing a black leather jacket and dark colored jeggings. Her feet are covered by black toe shoes. She is seen with a dark duffel bag. She is also seen wearing fingerless grippy gloves. She doesn't wear a mask or hood.

*Noteable Features*
Her left eye opens more than the right. She has dark arched eyebrows and she has a cut in her left eyebrow. She is missing the nail on her right index finger. It is an angry red and looks rough to the touch.

Suspect

Name:

[/color] Markana Harris
Age: 18
Gender: Female[/center]

She fit the physical description of the Catfooted House Burglar perfectly and was brought in to the detention center.
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The Capitol Weekly

The Catfooted House Burglar Revealed

The infamous Catfooted House Burglar has been caught and taken to the detention center. Markana Harris (age 18) has been breaking into the homes of Ninth Street and Baron Drive for the past six months stealing food, and of all things using their showers. This is known to be one of the richest neighborhoods here in the Capitol, known for it's complex security systems. But somehow this eighteen year old has managed to disable them.

We were unable to speak with the Catfooted House Burglar herself due to her incarceration but we have been able to get the inside scoop from her victims and family.

Her first victim wishes to remain anonymous but has allowed us to interview them. "When I heard a noise coming from the first floor I got up to see what it was...She was standing by the stairs headed toward our back door. I called out to her, was going to scare her off but she came at me and tried to strangle me with a choke hold. I blacked out and came to the next morning." Similar stories are told by her other victims, they are only knocked out with minimal to no damage on their person.

"She was running through the yard when I saw her, a black blur in the night, almost as if she didn't exist." One resident comments.

Another tells us, "She stood before me for one second, her eyes shining with mischief. In the next second she put her left hand on my neck, the index finger on her right hand going to her lips as if to quiet me. That's when I noticed her finger, there was no nail there. I was about to scream in surprise but then everything went black, when I woke up she was gone."

We spoke with the culprit's uncle, her only living relative and asked if he would tellus about the missing nail on her finger. But he just rubbed his face and shook his head.

Markana was seen by a few people in the neighborhood, but a majority of them didn't realize she had broken into their home until morning when they noticed food missing, their bathrooms out of order, and showers still damp. "She doesn't really hide her tracks once she's inside." Commented one of the residents, "Outside you can't tell that anything happened, but when you look inside and go into the bathroom or the kitchen you notice that something's not right."

"She isn't the type to do something like this." He told us earlier on in our interview. "She was a little rough around the edges after her parents died but she'd never do something like this."

After a little investigation we found out that Ms. Harris' parents were murdered when she was seven years old and at this same time Markana was kidnapped. No one was convicted for the murders of her parents, or for her abduction. We wonder if this is why Ms. Harris chose the path of a criminal, because she didn't have a normal childhood.

"Markana is a very intense person, she works hard and doesn't give herself any time to take a break. She wasn't the same after what happened to her and her parents." Her uncle tells us, "She's stuck living in the past. It's not that Markana is a bad person, it's just that she's been hurt by bad people."

We asked him if he would tell us about the kidnapping, and the circumstances of his brother and sister-in-laws death but he declines. "It's not my story to tell," He explains. "It's Markana's, and she's wouldn't want me telling it. She's a private person, we both are. The last thing she would want is for people to know about her past."

We respect his wishes, but we still hope that we might get the story. If we knew Ms. Harris' past better we would be able to explain the reason for her criminal life.

We've been told that Markana started taking karate classes at her Uncle's school after the murder. She was top of her class, practiced at night after everyone had left. "She had a thirst to know more about fighting, or more importantly, self defense." Which is to be understood after what happened to her. "She didn't stop at Karate, she kept picking up other things, gymastics, martial art, boxing. We didn't have a lot but wasn't going to deprive her of what she wanted to do-especially since she was so good at it."

"Before the murder Markana was a normal little girl, she did what was asked, played outside, she was a happy child even though her parent's didn't have it all." Indeed her father was in heavy debt before he was killed. "After her parent's were murdered Markana wasn't a kid anymore, she had seen some horrible things, you can't go back to innocent play after you've gone through what Markana did."

"She didn't make a lot of friends, she kept to herself and tried to be the least bothersome as possible." He says, "She's the closest thing I have to a daughter, the only family I have left. She's a wonderful daughter."

We asked if she still lived with him and he told us no, "No, she doesn't, she moved out as soon as she was done with school. She didn't want to be a burden." He says with a far away smile. "She could have stayed, I wouldn't have minded, but she was determined to make it on her own. She comes back on the weekends, and a little here and there, but she doesn't stay for very long."

It's interesting to see this part of a criminal's life, to get inside their heads even if we aren't talking to the criminal herself. We don't just see her as a catfooted burglar, we see her as a victim, a daughter.

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Some people have normal childhoods, they're raised by two loving parents, make plenty of friends in school. Some people, but not me.

The beginning of my childhood was normal enough. I had two parents who loved me, a roof over my head, a backyard to play in and find trees to climb. But we weren't rich, we didn't have everything, or the luxury to buy whatever we wanted, or wear whatever we wanted. I didn't mind, I had all I needed.

It wasn't enough for my dad, and he borrowed money from people to get us luxuries. It would be the biggest mistake of his life, trying to keep us happy. He borrowed money from his boss, a really rich guy who lived in the best neighborhood, a guy with a gang of shady characters at his disposal. They came in handy when people owed him money, when lower class people like my father were late on paying him back.

I remember the day like it just happened yesterday. They took my mom and me while my father was away at work. Three men broke down our front door and hauled us out of the house, blindfolds over our eyes.

They brought us to an abandoned building, tied us to chairs, told us that if we said anything they'd kill us. They told my dad that if he didn't repay his boss in three days they'd hurt us until he did. We all knew he didn't have the money.

On the third day they took our blindfolds off, Mom's chair was ten feet away from mine. In front of me there was a video camera set up and one of the kidnappers standing behind it. The first thing I saw when I looked up was it's little red light. The man that had taken my blindfold off had a pair of pliers in his hands. From the look on his face I could tell something bad was going to happen.

He grabbed my right hand tightly and held it down on the arm of my chair and started pulling on the fingernail of my index finger. I started screaming, and so did my mom. I heard her begging him not to. It hurt more than anything I had ever experienced. I remember the excrutiating pain, the glaring red light, the look of determination and pleasure on the man's face, the thud of my heartbeat in my ears. I don't know if it was minutes or hours but it came off in a torrent of blood. I could feel my heartbeat where my nail used to be, it ached and bled without relent. Blood had dripped and stained the jeans I wore. When I looked at it I felt sick and blacked out from the sight and the pain.

I wondered what they would do next, afraid of the answer. But I was glad it had been me that they'd hurt and not my mom, she was safe.

They sent the video to my dad, proof that they would make good on their threats. Three more days passed before my dad came to the abandoned building. He begged for more time, for them to free my mom and me.

The men asked for the money he had and as soon as he gave it to them they untied my mom, just her, and that's how I knew things weren't over yet. The guy who had pulled my finger nail off forced my mom to kneel on the ground. He took a gun out from under his jacket. "You didn't think we'd let you off that easy did you?" He asked.

Dad tried to get to her but the othe men held him back, restrained him. He was yelling and begging, I was screaming and crying. The man pulled the trigger and Mom's body slumped to the ground, blood pooling quickly around her, seeping into her shirt. Dad was half yelling, half gagging, "No, Barbara, no!"

The man turned to me next, but he didn't shoot me. Instead he put his gun away and untied me. The moment he did he started punching me, slapping me, shaking me until I saw stars and fell to the ground. I heard Dad's desperate cries as the man began to kick me and the world around me started faded in and out. Blackness shrouded my vision and after a while I wondered if maybe I was blind.

After a while he must have thought I was dead because he stopped beating me. My mind was fuzzy and I could hear him saying something but I couldn't make out what. The shot that rang out next sliced through me, through the blurred edges and confusion. The sound of my dad's body hitting the floor echoed in my ears.

The men started talking, saying something about telling their boss that they had taken care of things. I stayed still, praying that they would just leave my there, assume that they had killed me too. I waited a long time after they left before I tried to move.

Blood covered my clothes, a mix of my blood and my mom's. Her body not too far away from mine, the pool of blood spreading over to me. The feel of the sticky liqid n my clothes and face made me sick but I tried to ignore it. All I could think aboutwas getting help, and getting away from here.

I half crawled halfed dragged myself to the door, going through the mingling pools of my parent's blood, trying not to gag. Pain shot through me with every move I made, my chest hurt and one of my legs wouldn't work right.

When I got to the door a started slipping in and out of conciousness, I managed to pull myself up and open the door before stumbling in an alley. It was cold, and there was garbage everywhere in the alley. I tried to get through it, to go further but it was so cold a started shaking and couldn't get any further.

I layed in the alley for a long time before someone went by, it was a peacekeeper, I recognized the uniform. I tried to call out to him, to tell him about my parents, but the second he saw me he looked away and just kept walking.

I passed out after a while, the last thing that went through my mind was the look on my dad's face after Mom was shot.

I woke up in the hospital, my uncle Jack sitting in a chair beside me. He told me that someone had found me in the alley barely alive and brought me to the hospital.

He asked me where my parents were and I told him that they were dead, that they were in the abandoned building.

I had few broken ribs, a broken leg, and a fractured arm. But it didn't hurt, it might have been because of the pain medicine, but I think it was because I was numb, because I couldn't feel anything anymore now that my parents were dead.

I moved in with my Uncle Jack when I was released from the hospital. Jack tried to get justice, to get the peacekeepers to investigate. They didn't, apparently my dad's boss had his finger wrapped around the peacekeepers too. It was that injustice that kept me going. After I was healed I begged my Uncle to let me take Karate classes at the Karate school he ran. I worked hard to do the best, to be the best.

I thought of what I would do if I ever met those men again, of how I'd be able to take care of myself if I were ever in trouble again. I didn't stop at Karate, I learned every method of fighting and self defense that I could, I took gymnastics to learn flexibility, learned about pressure points and how to knock people outby just added pressure to a certain spot on a person's neck. I took up boxing when I was ten.

I knew that I'd be able to take down those men if I had to. That if I was ever in that situation again I would be left practically dying on the floor, they would be. And that made me feel good, it helped me sleep at night.

My fingernail never grew back, something about too much nerve damage. But that didn't matter to me, after a few years it stopped feeling tender when it touched anything, I put layers of band aids over it when I was learning Karate or practicing. And it was a reminder of what I had once been, of where I had come from. It reminded me that there was still a score to settle.

I was good in school, I wasn't the best but that didn't really matter to me. But I made it through. I didn't have friends in school, in fact I tried my hardest to avoid people, to keep my distance from the people I had once knew. My life revolved around getting stronger.

I moved out after I finished school, Jack wasn't very happy about it but he knew he couldn't stop me. He understood that I needed to be on my own. I earned some money in an underground boxing ring. I was the best, no one could beat me.

I started breaking into rich people's houses a few months after I moved out. I was getting tired of sleepin outside, of showering only at the closed down gym where the underground boxing ring was hidden. I had money, I could have gotten a decent apartment but this seemed more reasonable. After all the people were rich, they had more things than they knew what to do with while people like my parents just barely made it by.

My dad had owed money to a rich man and he owed me for what he had taken from me. Stealing a little food and taking a couple showers were nothing compared to what the rich had taken away from me and deprived me of.

I got away with it, people didn't hear me slip in and dismantle their security systems. Most of the time anyway. There were a few exeptions, but they weren't anything I couldn't handle, it didn't take much to knock them out. I hardly laid a finger on them.

But I was stupid, because of course the peacekeepers would do something about the break ins if the rich were complaining, if they were the victims. And I didn't try to hide my identity, very stupid. The scar on my eyebrow and my missing fingernail gave me away, they were like custom tattoos that no one else had. So of course I got caught and taken to the detention center.

It was strange being there, seeing peacekeepers everywhere, reminding me of the night my parents were killed. Being in the detention center only made me stronger though. If anything I'm even more determined to take things from the rich, to disobey the capitol and their enforcers. Why should I listen to any of them? What have they ever done for me other than take everything I had? If they can take whatever they want from me why shouldn't I be able to take what I want from them?



Codeword: Odair
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