PROVIDENCE — A security guard at Johnson & Wales University spotted the man, dressed in black lying against a chain- link fence near the school’s Harborside campus.

It was Christmas, shortly after 10 a.m., and a cold rain drizzled on the desolate industrial strip off Allens Avenue. In the distance, heaping mounds of rusted scrap metal towered over the banks of the foggy Providence River.

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--- Audio slideshow: Hear Journal staff writer W. Zachary Malinowski talk about the story

The security guard pulled over for a closer look. Less than an hour earlier, he had passed the same spot and noticed nothing unusual.

A pool of blood had settled near the man’s head. He was young, Caucasian and had red hair. He wore black pants, a black sweatshirt and had new white high-top sneakers. The body was still warm, but he appeared dead. Blood trickled from a gunshot wound to the back of the man’s head.

The guard called 911 for help. Within minutes, blaring police sirens and flashing lights had shattered the morning calm as the police department’s top brass and several detectives arrived.

There wasn’t much to go on. No identification on the victim. No witnesses. No murder weapon.

It wouldn’t be much of a holiday for the investigators. They had just responded to the city’s 19th homicide of 2003 and it was time to get to work.

IN PROVIDENCE, there have been 153 murders since Jan. 1, 2000; the detective division has cleared 91 of the cases, about 60 percent. Sixty-two, including the 2003 Christmas murder, remain open and unsolved. In one of this year’s murders, police have obtained an arrest warrant for a man that they have yet to capture.

Thomas P. Shamshak is a private investigator based in Boston but with a Providence office. He is handling the investigation into the murder of Roy Weber pro bono for the mother, Lisa Weber, and sister, Alicia Weber.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

Nationwide, there were 79,951 murders recorded by the Justice Department’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program from 2000 to 2005; approximately 62 percent have been cleared through arrests.

The clearance rate for murders in Providence is just two percentage points below the national average.

The vast majority of murders in Rhode Island take place in Providence. Other big departments, such as the state police, Warwick, Pawtucket, Cranston, Woonsocket, East Providence and Newport investigate a handful each year.

No police department has more seasoned homicide detectives than Providence. The state’s largest police force has 20 detectives who investigate homicides and 9 others who work nights and respond to murder scenes.

Providence Police Maj. Stephen Campbell, who has been involved in about 90 homicide investigations, said that there is no higher priority in police work than a murder. It always has and always will remain that way. No resources, overtime budgets or manpower are spared for homicide investigations.

“When the call comes in, there’s nothing like it,” he said. “The directive and the orders are, ‘Solve the homicide.’ ”

INVESTIGATORS spent Christmas morning searching the crime scene for clues. Detectives checked security cameras on the Johnson & Wales campus. No luck. The placement of the cameras and the foggy, wet weather had clouded whatever images could have captured the killing.

A detective lifted a fingerprint from the dead man’s hand, returned to police headquarters and transmitted the print to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, D.C.

Around 1:30 p.m., the FBI got back to the Providence police. The dead man had had past run-ins with the police and his fingerprints were in a national criminal database. He was identified as Roy Weber, 22, of Newport.

Dan O’Connell was assigned as the primary detective on the case. Working with him were two of the department’s most experienced investigators: Detective Sgt. Vincent Mansolillo and Detective Steve Springer.

In Newport, at Bayside Village, a subsidized apartment complex near the Naval War College, Roy Weber’s mother, Lisa Weber, and his sister, Alicia, sat home and wondered why Roy hadn’t stopped by or called.

“I knew that when he didn’t show up Christmas Eve, something was wrong,” said Alicia Weber recently.

Around 5 p.m., the Webers answered a knock on the door. Detectives O’Connell, Mansolillo, Springer and several Newport police officers arrived with the bad news: Roy Weber had been found murdered in Providence.

After the initial shock, no one was too surprised that Roy Weber had ended up with a bullet in his head. He had lost his life to the streets of Providence long before he lost his life on Christmas Day.

Weber was a crack addict, intravenous drug user and gay hustler. His world was on the fringes of the much-publicized Providence Renaissance. He did whatever he had to do to get his next high.

The family talked openly with the detectives about Roy’s world.

O’Connell, Mansolillo and Springer headed back to Providence, but they were not heading home to spend the holiday with their families. Instead, they skipped dinner and hit the gay bars downtown searching for clues about Weber’s murder.

In the world of law enforcement, Weber was a troubled young man who was known to the police.

“Not in a highly criminal way,” said Campbell, the police major. “But, he was a person who was constantly milling around.”

Providence police reports show that Weber first appeared on police blotters in 1996. At the time, he was just 14 years old and had been living in state group homes on the East Side of Providence. Twice, in a three-month span, Roy had been reported as a runaway.

He was often in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was known to loiter outside an adult video store on Empire Street and get picked up by men who paid him for sex. A bartender at a downtown gay club, 69 Union Street, once filed a complaint with police that Weber was looking to have sex with men in exchange for drinks.

Three times in the months before Weber was murdered, the Providence police arrested him in the downtown area. On May 6, 2003, he was arrested on an outstanding warrant at Lockwood Plaza, a housing project off Broad Street in South Providence, known for its drug traffic.

On July 11, 2003, he was picked up near the rear entrance of the Providence Civic Center for “acting suspiciously.” On Nov. 10, 2003, just a few weeks before he was murdered, he was arrested again, outside the Sportsman’s Inn, a strip club on Fountain Street. He had been wanted on outstanding warrants from courts in Providence and Newport.

Weber did what he had to do to stay ahead of the police. One police report listed six different addresses for him and two dates of birth. His young brother, Ryan Weber, filed a report with the Providence police saying that Roy was using his name.

He also spent a few months in the Adult Correctional Institutions minimum security unit for violating the terms of his probation on a domestic assault conviction. Alicia Weber was relieved: life in prison was safer for her brother than life on the streets.

Weber’s mother, sister and brother knew that Roy had been on a long, downward spiral. As a kid, Roy, who was born outside of San Diego and also lived on Long Island, had a keen interest in science and enjoyed books. After his father, Christopher Weber, left the family, Roy took it hard and started hanging out with a bad crowd. It started with cigarettes, alcohol and marijuana. That led to his placement in group homes and the unraveling of his young life.

He used ecstasy and cocaine through his teenage years.

In February 2001, Weber was arrested for stealing two checks from his ex-girlfriend and cashing them for $350. Two years later, in February 2003, he was arrested for pushing a female cousin and for threatening Alicia Weber, his younger sister.

At the time, Alicia was five months pregnant.

The Newport police report notes that Roy Weber, a crack cocaine and heroin user, rampaged through the apartment, calling Alicia “a whore” and yelling at his cousin’s 4-year old son.

When the police arrived, the report says thatWeber repeatedly told his sister and cousin “to watch what they say to the cops.”

IN THE FINAL MONTHS of Weber’s life, things went from bad to worse. His mother remembers him dropping by her Newport apartment with a badly beaten face and no shoes. He had been jumped and assaulted in Providence.

At one point, Roy called his father to tell him that his life was in danger. He sent the same message to his sister and aunt.

“There was a drug deal that had gone bad,” he said. ``If I go back to Providence, I’m a dead man.”

About three weeks before Christmas, Weber called his family. He told them that he was living with an older man in Massachusetts. Things were better. The paramour had a nice place that included a weight room and exercise equipment.

His mother and sister said that Weber told them that the older man preferred him over another “street kid” who had been living with him. They were concerned that the snub could anger the street kid and cause problems.

Roy Weber spent the last hours of his life with his favorite companion: the crack pipe.

His Christmas holiday was spent smoking rock cocaine and turning tricks with other addicts in a room at the downtown Cathedral Square Apartments, a brick complex across a courtyard from the Cathedral of SS. Peter & Paul.

The night of Christmas Eve and into the early morning hours of Christmas, the police say, the addicts had sex in exchange for money. Every hour or so, an addict would leave the apartment complex and score more crack cocaine on the street.

The addict would return and the group would continue getting high.

Over the years, the Cathedral Square Apartments have been a constant headache for the police. The complex, which is populated with government-subsidized tenants and the elderly, has been the site of stabbings, drug arrests and the capture of suspects involved in bank robberies.

By Dec. 30, five days after the murder, Detectives O’Connell, Mansolillo and Springer first heard talk about Weber’s wild night at the apartment complex. They continued pressing the investigation and confirmed the rumor on Jan. 12.

Over the next month, the detectives slowly identified a steady stream of street people that had stopped by the room to get high or have sex. Several of the visitors lived on the third floor of the complex.

The investigators also gathered some key evidence in the case: images from a security camera that showed Weber in the final hours of his life. One black-and-white photo shows Weber at 6:35 a.m. on Christmas Day talking to a young black man in the lobby. Weber faces the camera; while only the back of the other man can be seen. There also are two images of a middle-aged white man in the lobby at 6:36 a.m. and 6:54 a.m.

Detectives have not been able to identify this man with dark hair and an angular face or question him about the murder.

“We think that Weber was with this guy,” said Major Campbell. “We don’t know who he is.”

Sometime, between 6:35 and 10 a.m., Weber was taken for a ride. It’s about 2½ miles from the Cathedral Square Apartments to Shipyard Street, where his body was found. The police and family members speculate that the killer was someone Weber knew.

After several months, the leads in the case had begun to dry up. At one point, the detectives had a suspect, but the lead never materialized into an arrest. The world in which Roy Weber lived is a difficult one to penetrate. His associates were thieves, drug addicts and hustlers who are wary of the police and reluctant to cooperate. Others who might know something, such as the men he had sex with, may have wives and children. They have too much to lose and don’t want to come forward with information.

Lisa Weber and Alicia Weber, Roy’s mother and sister, have grown frustrated over the years. Mrs. Weber said that, for a while, she checked in with the Providence detectives each month. She said that her calls usually were not returned.

The Webers have been left wondering how much the Providence police care about finding Roy’s killer. Maybe, they think, the Providence police had no use for a crack-smoking gay hustler.

Not so, says Major Campbell. At a recent meeting with a reporter, Campbell produced a three-inch investigative file on the Weber murder. There are reams of police reports, interviews and photos. The three detectives assigned to the case have interviewed dozens of potential witnesses and acquaintances. It’s clear that they have spent hundreds of hours on the case.

A few weeks ago, Thomas P. Shamshak, a retired Massachusetts police chief who heads Shamshak Investigative Services, took an interest in the case after speaking to a Boston television reporter who has a program about unsolved cases in New England.

Shamshak, who also teaches a course for private investigators at Boston University, has met with the Weber family and has agreed to use his resources to take another look at the murder. He is working with several other private investigators and some of his students at no cost to the Webers.

He also has launched a Web site, royweber.com, to draw attention to the case.

The Providence police press on with the case and they are reluctant to call it a “cold case,” because Detective O’Connell, the primary investigator, remains assigned to the murder. Still, as time has passed, the leads have dwindled. The last time there was activity was in May 2006, but the police decline to provide details on what information came their way.

Each time a suspect in some new crime is brought in to Providence police headquarters for questioning, they are asked a series of questions: “What do you know about drugs? What do you know about guns? What do you know about robberies? What do you know about murders?”

The criminals are often looking to trade information to stay out of prison. Major Campbell remains optimistic that someone, someday might walk into the interrogation and talk about Roy Weber.

``We are going to continue to try to solve it,” he said. ``There is always hope in cases like this.”

bmalinow@projo.com