At 8:45 p.m. on April 22, 1987, a 52-year-old Black grandmother in Chicago called 911 and tried to explain something that sounded impossible. Someone was pulling the medicine cabinet out of the wall next door. And they were coming through. Ruthie Mae McCoy gave the dispatcher her address. Apartment 1109. She was alone, frightened, and asking for help. Police reached her door that night, but the key they were given would not open it. They left. The next day, neighbors were still worried. She was still inside. Nearly two days after that first desperate call, someone finally drilled through the lock. Ruthie was found dead inside her apartment, shot four times. Then they looked at the bathroom wall. The medicine cabinet was gone. Behind it was a narrow maintenance passage connecting the apartments. Residents already knew people could crawl through those openings. Some were so afraid that they pushed furniture against their bathroom doors before going to sleep. Ruthie had not imagined what was happening. She had described it while it was happening. Years later, that terrifying detail would help shape part of the horror in Candyman. Millions would remember the nightmare of something coming through a bathroom mirror. Almost nobody remembered the woman who called 911 because someone really was coming through hers. Ruthie's life had already been difficult long before that night. She was a mother and grandmother who had spent years dealing with poverty and mental illness while still trying to build a more stable life. In 1983, flooding forced her out of a basement apartment in Humboldt Park and into emergency public housing. She had specifically asked not to live in a high-rise, but she was offered apartment 1109 on the 11th floor of the Grace Abbott Homes. Her building was one of seven 15-story towers in the Grace Abbott section of Chicago's ABLA development. By the late 1980s, residents were living with broken elevators, dark stairwells, empty apartments, crime, and maintenance problems. When reporter Steve Bogira later investigated Ruthie's death, 42 of the building's 148 apartments were vacant. Some of those empty units could be broken into or used to reach apartments where families were still living. One of those routes was hidden behind the bathroom medicine cabinets. The space behind them had been built so maintenance workers could reach plumbing, but people had learned that the cabinets could be removed and the openings were wide enough to squeeze through. Residents said break-ins through those openings had been happening for at least a year. Some people pushed furniture against their bathroom doors at night because they were afraid someone might come through. Ruthie's daughter said her mother had been burglarized through the medicine cabinet the year before and had reported it. The Chicago Housing Authority later said it could find no record of the complaint. Ruthie already knew her apartment did not feel safe. Housing records showed her lock had been changed at least twice, and she had repeatedly asked to be moved to a lower floor or a row house. She never received the move she wanted. Instead, she remained in apartment 1109 while trying to change other parts of her life. Ruthie had begun attending Mount Sinai's outpatient psychiatric center three times a week. She joined group sessions and activities and enrolled in a GED program. When she entered the program, she was testing at about a seventh-grade level. By April 1987, she had worked her way up to roughly the ninth-grade level. Her teacher believed another six months might have been enough for Ruthie to earn her certificate. She also remembered Ruthie as someone who stood her ground and became almost like a mother to some of the younger women at the center. Ruthie was talking about what she wanted to do next. She hoped to earn her GED, find work, become a nurse, and move out of public housing. Money had made leaving difficult for years. Her apartment cost $46 a month while she was receiving only $154 a month in general assistance. In early 1987, Ruthie was approved for Supplemental Security Income and her monthly income rose to $340. She also received $1,979 in retroactive payments and planned to use much of that money to move. She bought some clothes and a few inexpensive things for her home. The bigger plan was to leave apartment 1109 and find somewhere safer. On April 22, while coming home from Mount Sinai, Ruthie told another woman that someone had threatened her life. A few hours later, she was inside her apartment trying to explain to a 911 dispatcher that people were taking down the cabinets next door. She gave the dispatcher her exact address and apartment number. She even said the elevator was working, an important detail in a building where elevators could not always be counted on. The dispatcher asked whether someone was trying to break into her apartment. The police assignment was still sent out as a disturbance involving a neighbor. At 9:02 p.m., another caller reported gunshots coming from Ruthie's apartment. Two minutes later, a second neighbor called about gunshots and shouting. Officers reached the 11th floor at about 9:10 p.m. They knocked on Ruthie's door, called her name, and heard her telephone ringing unanswered inside. They eventually received what was supposed to be the key to apartment 1109. It would not open the door, and at 9:48 p.m. they left. The following evening, Ruthie's neighbor Debra Lasley called because she still had not seen her. Police returned with housing security guards, and some officers wanted to force the apartment door open. The guards warned that breaking the door could leave the apartment unsecured afterward. They left without entering. Lasley kept asking someone to check on her neighbor. The next day she contacted the project office, and around 1 p.m. a housing official arrived with a carpenter who drilled through Ruthie's lock. They found her in the bedroom. The medical examiner determined that Ruthie Mae McCoy had been shot four times. Her bathroom medicine cabinet was missing. Behind it was the opening into the pipe chase toward apartment 1108, matching the danger Ruthie had tried to describe during her 911 call. Three emergency calls had been connected to apartment 1109 on the first night. Police had also come to the building on two separate nights before Ruthie was finally found on the third day. Afterward, serious questions remained about the response to those calls. Bogira later reported that the Chicago Police Department did not conduct a formal departmental investigation into how officers handled the situation or why they left without entering Ruthie's apartment. Her killing also received little attention from Chicago's major daily newspapers at first. The Black-owned Chicago Defender covered the case, while the Chicago Tribune initially gave it only brief attention after a suspect was arrested and the unusual way of entering the apartment became known. Steve Bogira continued investigating Ruthie's death and the conditions inside the building. In September 1987, the Chicago Reader published his report under the title "They Came in Through the Bathroom Mirror." Two men, Edward Turner and John Hondras, were later charged in connection with Ruthie's killing. Their cases went to trial in 1990, but neither man was convicted. Investigators had recovered some of Ruthie's property, but there were no useful fingerprints from the crime scene. The gun was never recovered, the missing medicine cabinet was never found, and the prosecution's main witness changed his story in court. Turner was acquitted by a jury, while Hondras was acquitted by a judge. Ruthie Mae McCoy's murder ended without a criminal conviction. Her daughter Vernita continued fighting after the criminal case failed to bring an answer. In April 1988, she filed a $1.5 million civil lawsuit against the Chicago Housing Authority. The lawsuit argued that the dangerous access through the medicine cabinets should have been addressed before someone was killed. The case ended in a settlement in 1992, with the amount kept private and the housing authority admitting no liability. A few years after Ruthie's death, British director Bernard Rose was working on an adaptation of Clive Barker's fictional story The Forbidden. Rose moved the story from Britain to Chicago and began researching the city's public housing developments. During that research, he came across Bogira's reporting about Ruthie. The real detail of people entering apartments through spaces behind bathroom medicine cabinets became part of the world he created for the 1992 film Candyman. The film included a fictional murder victim named Ruthie Jean and a newspaper headline similar to Bogira's article. Ruthie's murder, however, was not the original story behind Candyman. Candyman came from Clive Barker's fictional work. Ruthie's case influenced parts of the Chicago setting and the disturbing idea of someone entering an apartment through the space behind a bathroom mirror. Away from the movie, Ruthie had been trying to finish school. She wanted to become a nurse, find work, and move somewhere she felt safer. She had a daughter and grandchildren. She was making plans for a life beyond apartment 1109. On the night she died, she picked up the telephone and called for help. She gave her address, explained what was happening, and tried to make someone understand the danger behind her bathroom wall. The danger was already familiar to people living in the building. Residents had known for months that the openings behind those medicine cabinets could be used to get from one apartment to another. Ruthie's story is now included in the history preserved by Chicago's National Public Housing Museum. A salvaged medicine cabinet has also been used to show how the buildings were constructed and what those narrow openings actually looked like. For decades, the image of something coming through a bathroom mirror became part of one of America's best-known horror films. Ruthie Mae McCoy remained the woman in apartment 1109 who had tried to tell someone that the danger on the other side of her wall was real. She had been studying, saving money, and thinking about becoming a nurse. At 52 years old, she was still trying to build the life she wanted when that chance was taken from her. I put a lot of effort into researching and sharing stories that matter. If you'd like to support the work, here's the link: https://ko-fi.com/blackhistoryremembered Your support is deeply appreciated!