Monica Yant Kinney: Kaboni Savage, man of no regret

The murder of Ciara "CeCe" Savage wasn't big news in these parts, since the 9-year-old was caught in the crossfire of rival gangs in York, Pa. If the third-grade victim's last name sounds familiar, it's because her father is Kaboni Savage.

U.S. Attorney Laurie Magid says that, from 1997 to 2007, Savage led "perhaps the most violent drug gang ever seen" in Philadelphia. Deputy Police Commissioner Richard Ross prefers a two-word shorthand: "pure evil."

"Pure evil" is already serving a 30-year drug sentence in Colorado, but will be in town Friday to be arraigned on murder, drug-dealing, and conspiracy charges from a vicious 2004 firebombing.

If you read the indictment and hear his voice, you'll see Savage's savagery went way beyond witness intimidation.

It was witness extermination.

"Without the witnesses," he bragged in prison trash talk, "you don't have no case."

If he couldn't silence the witnesses, their kids would do. On the secretly recorded FBI tapes, Savage repeatedly fantasized about killing "mouse" - the children of "rats."

Federal marshals will transport Savage cross-country to face new charges in a death-penalty case, but not let him attend his daughter's funeral. Talk about karma.

To a normal parent, being unable to say goodbye would be heartbreaking. But does a father this heartless mourn a daughter killed exactly as he dreamed of killing other fathers' children?

The pending prosecution, as my colleague George Anastasia has reported, could be called "Kaboni Savage in His Own Words."

The case is built upon conversations captured on a listening device hidden in Savage's cell five years ago. He's charged with ordering the 2004 firebombing of the North Philadelphia home of Eugene Coleman, a drug dealer helping authorities.

The attack killed two adults and four children, including Coleman's 15-month-old son. On one prison recording, Savage celebrates the job well done by saying he'd like to take barbecue sauce and "pour it on them burnt [expletive]."

Ciara was just 4 years old at the time. Savage justifies his rage by saying his children have suffered because of his imprisonment.

"Their kids," he said of foes, "got to pay for making my kids cry."

"He's got a daughter down my way," Savage said another time of another snitch. "I gonna blow her little head off. She like 5."

Again and again, he takes aim at children guilty of nothing besides being born into urban chaos.

"I had dreams about hitting 'P' daughter. . . . Opening her head, wide open with 40s's, dum-dums, man," Savage said, using slang for hollow-point expanding bullets.

"That's all I dream about. . . . I wanna erase his whole family tree."

Ciara Savage was York's first homicide of 2009, but Mayor John Brenner knows she will not be the last. The town of 40,000 averages eight to 10 homicides a year.

Ciara, who lived in Lancaster, was killed playing outside on a visit to see relatives. Police don't see a direct connection to Savage. Two 19-year-olds surrendered in connection with the shooting.

"What we know is that on a bright, beautiful Mother's Day afternoon, these young men went flying down a very busy street, exited their car, and started to fire," a shaken Brenner told me. Ciara was shot in the back, reportedly after using her body to shield her 4-year-old sister, Iyana.

"It may be that she gave her life to save her little sister."

If Ciara acted heroically, instinctively, it must come from her mother's side. It's hard to imagine Kaboni Savage risking so much as a paper cut for anyone, flesh or not.

"I don't love nothing, man," he once declared, "nobody love me."

And as for summing up his life?

Even behind bars, Savage boasted, "I ain't got no regrets."

That was then. What about now?