Born and raised in New York, Richard Myron has been so much a fixture of the NYPD for the last thirty years. He is the son of a detective, who was the son of a detective, the line of service to the Empire State simply flows in Richard Myron's blood. Even from a young age, the scion of so many lines of police officers had desired nothing more than to be a man in a stylish fedora and trenchcoat, solving crimes and dragging in 'perps.' The cold reality of a cop's life was never truly on his mind, not until his father's untimely passing.
Gunned down while investigating the Civella family in 1974, Paul Myron was a detective with promise and potential, and many though he would eventually rise to police chief, and inevitably find a seat as comissioner. All of that was cut short by the Civella family, and all of that weighed heavily on the mind of his one and only son. The Myrons have a history of service, and a history of dying in that service. There was no small hand in his mother's decision to do whatever she could to dissuade her son from following in the same line of death that her husband and her father-in-law suffered.
Richard, of course, wouldn't be so easily dissuaded. Against his mother's wishes, and against all odds Richard Myron enrolled in police academy after graduating from Columbia University in 1976 with a bachelor's degree in criminal science. Just before the 1970s came to a sputtering close, the young rookie officer was ready and willing to follow in his father's footsteps, no matter where they would bring him.
By the mid 1980's it was clear to most people on the force that Richard wasn't exactly the spitting image of his father. A few botched arrests, followed by a long medical leave when it was discovered he had Type-II diabetes only worsened his odds of staying in the prestigious limelight of his old man. But the force is like a family, and even if the rookie officer was a screw-up and not quite the analytical mind his father was, they look out for their own.
Even then, there is a limit to any family member's patience. Richard Myron was a man with a one-track mind, in no small part thanks to the death of his father. Obsessed with the idea of taking down the Civella family and pinning his father's murder to the notorious crime syndicate, Richard was like a horse with blinders on, unable to see the rest of New York sinking down into deeper and deeper holes around him. By the late 1980s, New York City was considered one of the most dangerous and worst places to live in the United States, and the beleagured NYPD was often hoisted up as the scape goat for these unfortunate times.
Relief came in the 1990s, during the New York Rennaisence under Rudolph Julianni, when Times Square was cleaned up, and the city started to become something to be proud of again. But old money and feigned smiles can only do so much good, and Richard was continuing his single-minded quest to take down the Civellas no matter the cost to himself.
It became an obsession, an entire room in his cluttered apartment filled with newspaper clippings, police reports and photographs of family members. Entire cork-boards covering the movements, activities and rumors of the family. While his devotion to his own private investigation into his father's killers was holding him back, there were gems throughout his career that had ever-so-slowly allowed him to climb up the rungs of office. By 1998, Richard's long-time service to the NYPD was finally rewarded with his life-long dream, promoted to the rank of detective.
It was a height he would never surpass.
Over the next few years, it was becoming increasingly obvious to the NYPD that the Civella family was being pushed into a corner by a growing criminal organization associated with the notorious mobster Daniel Linderman. Despite repeated protests by his superiors, Myron refused to relent from the Civella case, following any possible lead he could up through the devastation of New York in 2001. Even as the world changed around him, Myron was lost in the revenge of his childhood. His health declining over the years, Richard always felt that he was on borrowed time to make his father's death right. What would come in 2006, however, was a tragedy that broke him forever.
The only family Richard had, having forsaken ever obtaining a wife and child due to his single-minded quest, died in the bomb, and with it a large portion of the detective's humanity. When his mother was taken from him in the explosion, along with hundreds of members of his extended police family, Richard Myron snapped. It was diagnosed as a form of post-trauma catatonic depression, a mental condition which forced Richard into institutionalized care for nine months while he slowly, wearily, recovered. Reinstatement onto the force did not come until the middle of 2007, and reinstatement found Richard's jurisdiction having shifted in the aftermath of the world turning upside down and inside out.
Put mostly behind a desk, Detective Myron had resigned himself to wasting away in the offices of Crown Heights while his father's killers managed to avoid what they deserved. For a time, it seemed like the legacy of the Myron family would end behind a desk.
That was, of course, before Mackenzie Myers.
On August 12th, 2008, Detective Richard Myron was given the chance to finally set things right. When Judah Demsky, a colleague he had infrequently worked with over his career emerged with information about a woman named Mackenzie Myers, who was in possession of damning information about Frankie Civella, the world-weary Detective's life was reinvigorated.
Over the next two months, Myron was assigned to the one case that he knew inside and out, assisting the NYPD with building their case against Frankie Civella and following up on the young Miss Myers. While a bit player in the overall collapse of the Civella crime family and Frankie's eventual arrest, it was the fact that Comissioner Lau allowed him to turn what was once seen as worthless wastes of time into invaluable expertise that made his life complete.
But once Civella was in jail, once his father's death had been avenged to the best o fhis ability, there was a certain hollowness to the victory. Unable to sink himself so deep into his work, Myron found himself unwillingly enrolled in the murder investigations of the Marshall murders, which would eventually split open into the Reaper serial killings.
Myron was eventually moved to a Homicide Detective, working closely with the NYPD CSI, following in te wake of the Reaper's murders to what would eventually be a dead end, and an unsolved crime. Now, Myron struggles with his commitment to his work as a Detective, and his growing disinterest with the world around him. A dispassionate, but at his core honorable man, he is trying to find a way to end his police career with nobility and honor, a capstone to a lifetime of service that would make his father proud.
After all, the Myron family has a certain history he's destined to follow.
