Oct 12, 2007  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO J  | COMMENTS     

D.C. police are awaiting results of toxicology tests conducted by the city’s Medical Examiner’s office in their investigation into the unexplained deaths of two gay men whose bodies were found four days apart in an apartment in Washington.

The men, who did not know each other, had traveled separately last month from New York City to stay with Steven Saleh, who resides in a one-bedroom apartment at the upscale Envoy Towers at 2400 16th St., N.W., according to a police affidavit in support of a search warrant for the apartment.

Friends said the two victims were acquaintances of Saleh’s, with one of the two, Dean Johnson, 46, having met Saleh in the past in Johnson’s role as an escort, according to one friend. The other victim, Jeremy Conklin, 26, may also have met Saleh through Conklin’s occasional work as an escort, people who knew Conklin said.

The friends have said they are stunned that two men, who appeared healthy at the time of their departure from New York, could turn up dead in the same apartment due to unknown causes.

“Isn’t it a little ridiculous that two people died the same way in the same place within four days?” said John Allen, Conklin’s boyfriend.

Police on Sept. 16 found Conklin lying on his back on the living room floor in Saleh’s apartment, unconscious and “with no signs of life,” the affidavit says. It says police and emergency medical technicians arrived on the scene after responding to a call from the apartment reporting an unconscious person. The affidavit says emergency medical technicians tried unsuccessfully to revive Conklin, who was pronounced dead at Howard University Hospital.

Four days later, on Sept. 20, police found the nude body of Johnson lying on a mattress on the floor of Saleh’s living room, the affidavit says. It says that similar to Conklin’s case, police responded to an emergency call about an unconscious person.

‘Gay legend’

News of Johnson’s death created a stir in New York’s gay community, where friends and fans of the punk rock band he led, the Velvet Mafia, described him as a “legend” in Manhattan’s nightlife scene.

The New York Times, in an Oct. 5 tribute to Johnson, described him as a “rollicking fixture in rock ’n’ roll clubs, gay bars, drag queen circles and poetry readings.”

His friend Dale Corvino told the Blade Johnson’s 6-foot-6 wiry frame and shaved head allowed him to fit into a number of roles, including that of a gender-bending drag queen who never wore a wig, a musician and serious writer of poetry, and, on occasion, a porn star and male escort who specialized in playing the dominant role in “fantasy scenarios of domination, abuse and humiliation.”

With police refusing to comment on the information revealed in the affidavit, Saleh has emerged as a mystery figure in the deaths of the two gay men. Police have declined to say whether he is a suspect because no evidence has emerged that a crime has been committed, police said.

Johnson’s friends have said Johnson told them Saleh is a former federal government employee who sought disability status for what he claimed was a work-related injury. Johnson reportedly described Saleh’s apartment as a “mini pharmacy,” the friends have said, because Saleh was taking a large number of prescription drugs.

The affidavit says Saleh told police he had given Johnson a sleeping pill the night of Sept. 19, when friends say Johnson arrived in Washington, and that Saleh discovered Johnson unconscious the next morning. The affidavit says Saleh told police that Conklin “must have taken some pills,” which, according to Saleh, caused Conklin to lose consciousness in the late morning or early afternoon of Sept. 16.

Saleh has not returned calls to his apartment seeking comment.

Police have declined to provide information beyond what appears in the affidavit, other than to say there were no signs of trauma or injuries on the two bodies and no outward evidence of foul play.

“The Medical Examiner will have to guide us as to whether it’s a criminal matter,” said Sgt. Brett Parson, an assistant to Chief of Police Cathy Lanier and former commander of the police department’s Gay & Lesbian Liaison Unit.

Parson said he could not comment on the preliminary findings of the Medical Examiner, which are based on autopsies performed on the bodies. But he said the Medical Examiner’s office has not listed the two cases as a priority concerning the toxicology tests, a development, according to Parson, that usually means authorities don’t believe a death is a homicide.

Parson said results of ...