During a break in his interrogation at Baltimore Police Department headquarters, Elliot Knox approached homicide detectives and began to whisper.
For about two hours, Knox had denied his involvement in the shooting of a Baltimore Police officer and the killing of a man later that same morning. Investigators, though, kept confronting him with different pieces of evidence, including how a license plate reader had picked up his car near one of the crime scenes.
Eventually, Knox indicated that he wanted to tell the truth.
“I never thought I would be in this type of situation,” Knox said in the interview. “Forgive me for lying to you, man.”
Assistant State’s Attorney Kurt Bjorklund played the rest of the video of the interrogation on Wednesday in Baltimore Circuit Court as Knox, 34, of Mount Holly, continued to stand trial on two counts of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and related offenses. He placed himself at the scene of both homicides but denied pulling the trigger.
Knox is accused of fatally shooting Officer Keona Holley, a two-year veteran who had been sitting inside her patrol car on Pennington Avenue near Hazel Street in Curtis Bay, at about 1:30 a.m. on Dec. 16, 2021.
Holley died one week later at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center. She was 39.
Prosecutors allege that Knox and another man, Travon Shaw, shot and killed Justin Johnson at about 3 a.m. while he was sitting in his 1997 Lincoln Town Car on Lucia Avenue near Airy Hill Avenue in Yale Heights. He was 38.
Shaw, 34, of Catonsville, was found guilty in 2023 of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and related crimes in Johnson’s killing. He’s scheduled to appear back in court on March 28.
Knox’s attorney, Natalie Finegar, has argued that her client admitted to being an accessory after the fact to murder but is not guilty of both homicides.
Circuit Judge Jennifer B. Schiffer is presiding over the case, which will continue on Thursday.
Detectives David Moynihan and Ceasar Mohamed questioned Knox for several hours on the same day as the deadly shootings.
Throughout the interrogation, Knox spoke quietly and jumped around in his telling of events.
At 16, Knox said, he was incarcerated. He said he was trying hold down a regular job and stay off the streets since being released from prison.
Shaw, he said, was a childhood friend. Knox said he reconnected with him, though he suspected that he was a member of the Black Guerrilla Family, or BGF, gang.
At one point, Shaw, he said, asked for a ride to take care of some errands. They eventually switched places in the car.
Knox said Shaw told him to “roll with me for a second.” The two walked down the street. That’s when Knox reported that Shaw approached the patrol car and shot Holley.
“Why?” Mohamed asked.
“He never told me,” Knox responded. “I really don’t know.”
Next, Knox said, Shaw indicated that he was going to holler at a man who owed him $100. Knox said he stayed in the car at first but got out and witnessed Shaw shoot Johnson.
While Knox and Shaw were driving on U.S. Route 40, passing several patrol cars, Shaw made a joke about Holley and described a look of surprise on her face, Knox said.
Later, Knox said he dropped off the weapons — a Glock 22 and an Extar EXP-556 — inside two separate backpacks at a home in Windsor Mill. He worked with detectives to find the exact address.
Knox picked out Shaw from a photo array and identified each of them in pictures taken from surveillance video. He repeatedly expressed regret for not intervening in the shootings.
Police, he noted, discussed how the person who ambushed a police officer who could not defend herself was a coward.
“It was even more cowardly of me,” Knox said, “to not step up earlier.”
