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Joseph Cardero is the main antagonist of the Homicide: Life on the Street episode "Heartbeat". He was portrayed by the late Kevin Conway, who also portrayed Conrad Straker in The Funhouse, John Flynn in Law & Order, Frank McNare in Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and King Leo in Black Knight.
Biography[]
Joseph Cardero was a poet turned drug dealer and addict. Cardero was a fan of legendary poet and fellow Baltimore native Edgar Allen Poe, going out of his way to both mimic his writing style and sell drugs on the street where Poe lived. Cardero kept a poetry collection of Poe's work, which he prized dearly. Fellow junkie Eugene Elwin stole the collection in order to blackmail Cardero into giving him free drugs. Cardero instead knocked Elwin out and, taking inspiration from Poe's The Cask of Amontillado, sealed him behind a brick wall in the basement of an abandoned apartment building and left him to die.
Ten years later, Elwin's corpse was discovered by Baltimore Police Department Homicide Detectives John Munch and Kay Howard. The two quickly suspected Cardero to be responsible, and Munch took advantage of Cardero's love of Poe by evoking the late author's iconic poem The Telltale Heart in an effort to get him to confess. Cardero refused to confess, but he was wracked with guilt over murdering Elwin. Suffering a mental breakdown, Cardero returned to the basement where he murdered Elwin and sealed himself behind the brick wall so he would meet the same fate as his victim. Cardero was last seen reciting The Telltale Heart to himself before blowing out a candlelight.
