Victim whose killing got little public notice

On June 22, 2012, Michael John Fox's roommates found his body behind the closed door of his bedroom in their Bella Vista apartment. The room had been ransacked. The 30-year-old had been beaten from head to toe, his face so badly damaged his family opted for a closed-casket funeral.

In the days that followed, his mother, Diane, waited for reporters to knock on the door of her family's Mays Landing, N.J., home. She was ready. She'd watched television news, she'd seen sobbing families tell their stories. She would do it, too, she thought. Anything to draw attention to her son's slaying, to find his killer.

"Nobody came. Nobody called," Fox recalled recently. "I thought it was because he was killed in the city and we were in South Jersey."

Then, a few weeks later, "another Michael," as she called him, was shot and killed while walking on a street less than a mile away. Police believe Michael Hagan, 32, was the victim of a robbery gone wrong. He was another young, handsome, much-loved man who died senselessly. The only difference was, this case got more airtime.

"He was killed in Philadelphia and his parents were in South Jersey, but the news went to their house and interviewed them," Diane Fox said, "then went back to see if there were any updates."

That's when the Foxes realized it was their job to keep their Michael's case in the public view. Their efforts brought me to them.

I live about four blocks from the apartment where Michael died. For the last year, I've noticed the posters with his face plastered on poles in our neighborhood. The details about the slaying and the $21,000 reward weren't what drew my attention. It was Michael's face. He looked much younger than 30.

I remembered the initial reports of the killing, broadcast as breaking news and garnering a few columns in the newspaper. But they had quickly faded away. I couldn't remember many follow-ups.

A few weeks ago, I met the entire Fox family - Diane, father John, sister Jennifer, and Jennifer's two young children - at a coffee shop near their homes. They said they had reposted signs with Michael's face in the neighborhood twice since his death, including on Oct. 1, his birthday. As they did, Diane said, she couldn't help but think the killer "could be passing us right now. We don't know. We just don't know."

Diane believes Michael's death was viewed as less newsworthy when reporters learned he'd spent a year in prison for robbery.

"Boy, they find out everything. Within hours - it was 10 a.m. - I looked at the computer and the three TV stations had posted information about his police record, and that was it," she said. "They found out he had a record and that was the end of it."

But Michael was living a clean life, bartending and hoping for a career as a hair and beauty stylist, his family said. And, his mother says, the crime Michael was incarcerated for arose from a misunderstanding between roommates.

Regardless of his background, Michael did not deserve what was done to him.

"It was very brutal," Philadelphia Police Detective Jim Burns, a 13-year homicide veteran, said when asked whether there was anything about the case that stood out to him.

The current theory is that Michael brought someone home with him and "something went bad inside the room," Burns said. There were no signs of forced entry. Only Michael's bedroom was in disarray. Only items belonging to Michael were missing.

"Michael was trusting of different people," Burns said. "It looks like he picked up the wrong person."

The Fox family is happy with the time and effort Burns and his team have put into the case, and they realize how many cases he's juggling. Keeping Michael's case in the forefront "is our job now," Diane said.

So they told me the story of the young man on the posters.

He was "the favorite grandson, the favorite cousin," his mother said. He was always funny, a prankster, so Diane initially hoped the news that he was dead was another prank, because "it couldn't be real."

Michael was kind, especially to those targeted for being different, because he knew how it felt to be bullied. He'd dealt with a slight learning disability in elementary school and announced he was gay in high school. His family has memorialized that kindness by establishing a "buddy bench," where lonely students can seek camaraderie, on the grounds of his grade school.

Michael had his quirks, traits that still make his family laugh and smile. He would spend hours styling his hair, even though it was only an inch long.

"We have no idea what he was doing. We're still trying to figure it out," said Jennifer Cressey, Michael's younger sister by 15 months, who is now older than he will ever be.

Did it look good?

"It always looked good. It didn't move, either."

He was just as meticulous when it came to clothing, his mother said, noting he was "the neatest, sharpest dresser," someone who ironed creases into his pants as a teenager.

"I think the only time he approved of my outfit was at my great-grandmother's funeral, which was a few months before he passed away," Jennifer said. "So that's what I wore to his funeral."

Michael was close to his family, spending many weekends in Mays Landing. He and his mother had a routine: Every Friday, she would pick him up at the train station and they would go to the same coffee shop where I interviewed the family.

Michael was fussy about his coffee, Jennifer said, rolling her eyes. "Extra venti soy this and one pump of this and two pumps of that."

"Shaken and not stirred," her mother added. "And he knew if it was wrong."

Diane still stops at that coffee shop every Friday. She buys two coffees, one for her and one for Michael. She then goes to Holy Cross Cemetery and talks to her only son.

"There are times I put the coffee down and I say, 'I know it's not right, but that's your fault. You're not here.' "

Natalie Pompilio is a writer in Philadelphia.