Dennis "Cutty" Wise - Origins

Origins

George Pelecanos is given credit with creating the character of Dennis Wise, based on unused notes from his novel Drama City, about a man getting out of prison after almost two decades. The idea reflected the "reform" theme of the third season, so the character was added. David Simon's books Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets and The Corner (written with Ed Burns) both mention the real Dennis Wise. He is described as one of the two most infamous contract killers active in Baltimore during the late 1970s - Vernon Collins being the other. Police were frustrated by the fact that no witnesses could be found against either man. Neither Wise nor Collins would break under intense police questioning, refusing to say anything other than to request a lawyer. Dennis Wise was eventually sentenced to life in prison in 1979 for a contract killing. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Psychology while in prison. In 1999, Maryland Correctional officials transferred Wise to an Arizona prison in Yuma because he was allegedly leading an influential prison gang. Wise wrote a novel called The Wolf Trap while in prison.

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