Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #358 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Dixmoor 5

Transcript

#358 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Dixmoor 5 · Wrongful Conviction

0:04
Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's Laura today. I have some pretty great
0:07
Speaker 1: news to share with you. Back in season one of
0:09
Speaker 1: False Confessions, Steve and I brought you the story of
0:13
Speaker 1: the Dix Moore Five, a group of teenage boys who
0:16
Speaker 1: were interrogated for hours without lawyers or parents present. One
0:21
Speaker 1: by one, they were each implicated in the crime and
0:23
Speaker 1: ended up spending about twenty years in prison. Their confessions
0:28
Speaker 1: were in the Forum of Science Statements. There was no
0:30
Speaker 1: recording of their interrogations, but one of the reasons they
0:33
Speaker 1: confessed was because the police lied to them. This is
0:37
Speaker 1: common in police interrogations and it's something we've seen over
0:41
Speaker 1: and over on the show. Police will falsely promise leniency
0:44
Speaker 1: in order to get a confession, or they'll lie that
0:47
Speaker 1: they have evidence they don't really have. This is a
0:50
Speaker 1: horrible practice and it's one that's clearly not working to
0:53
Speaker 1: get real criminals off the streets. Using lies and deceptive
0:57
Speaker 1: interrogation tactics is a huge risk factor for false confessions,
1:01
Speaker 1: and as we know, false confessions are one of the
1:04
Speaker 1: leading causes of wrongful convictions. They occur in about thirty
1:07
Speaker 1: percent of cases that have been overturned by DNA evidence.
1:11
Speaker 1: It's just plain wrong and it needs to end. But
1:15
Speaker 1: here's the good news. In an incredible step towards justice,
1:18
Speaker 1: Illinois became the first state in United States history to
1:22
Speaker 1: adopt a law in twenty twenty one that bans police
1:26
Speaker 1: from lying to children during interrogations. I cannot tell you
1:30
Speaker 1: how huge this is. If this law had been in
1:32
Speaker 1: place back in nineteen ninety one, the Dixmore five would
1:36
Speaker 1: never have gone to prison and had twenty years of
1:38
Speaker 1: their lives stolen a way. This is a reform that
1:41
Speaker 1: was sorely needed, especially here in Illinois, the false confession
1:45
Speaker 1: capital of the country. In our state alone, there have
1:48
Speaker 1: been over one hundred wrongful convictions based on false confessions.
1:52
Speaker 1: I am so proud to be part of this work
1:54
Speaker 1: and that the cases I helped defend are themselves helping
1:57
Speaker 1: to pass new laws, creating a few with fewer wrongful convictions.
2:02
Speaker 1: But we can't stop here. This kind of law should
2:05
Speaker 1: exist in every state, and it should apply to everyone,
2:08
Speaker 1: not just kids. We now have the data and the
2:11
Speaker 1: experience to know that when police lie to a suspect
2:15
Speaker 1: during an investigation, that does more harm than good. There
2:18
Speaker 1: are much better ways to solve crimes we need all
2:22
Speaker 1: interrogations to be videotaped, and we need better protections for
2:26
Speaker 1: everybody who winds up inside that room. It's only with
2:29
Speaker 1: reforms like these that we can live up to one
2:32
Speaker 1: of the founding principles of our justice system. Innocent until
2:35
Speaker 1: proven guilty, Welcome to wrongful conviction, false confessions. I'm Laura
2:46
Speaker 1: and I writer.
2:46
Speaker 2: And I'm Steve Drusen.
2:49
Speaker 1: Today we're going to tell you about a case out
2:51
Speaker 1: of Chicago, the story of a violent and tragic crime
2:54
Speaker 1: that took the life of a young girl. But there's
2:57
Speaker 1: a larger reason why we want to talk about this
2:59
Speaker 1: case because of what it also took from not one,
3:02
Speaker 1: but five innocent teenage boys and from their families and communities.
3:08
Speaker 1: This case happened during what we now call the super
3:10
Speaker 1: Predator era the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. The news
3:14
Speaker 1: media was saturated with stories of urban crime, drugs and gangs,
3:19
Speaker 1: and in particular, sensationalized stories about black and brown youth
3:24
Speaker 1: committing violent crimes in groups. This narrative is often associated
3:28
Speaker 1: with New York City. It drove the wrongful prosecution of
3:31
Speaker 1: the so called Central Park five wolf Pack, but it
3:35
Speaker 1: didn't stop there. Today, we're going to tell you about
3:38
Speaker 1: a group of teenage boys whose false confessions transformed them
3:42
Speaker 1: into Chicago's own wolf pack. They're known as the Dixmore Five.
3:57
Speaker 2: Now Chicago may be called the second city comes to
4:00
Speaker 2: false confessions. We don't take a back seat to anybody,
4:04
Speaker 2: not New York or any other jurisdiction for that matter.
4:08
Speaker 2: We're home to more false confessions than any other city
4:10
Speaker 2: in the United States. We're home to more juvenile false confessions.
4:15
Speaker 2: And we're also the home of more cases in which
4:17
Speaker 2: there are multiple false confessions. And over the years, the
4:22
Speaker 2: Center on Wrongful Convictions has obtained exonerations in many of
4:26
Speaker 2: these cases, all of which were from African American teenagers
4:31
Speaker 2: in the Chicago area.
4:32
Speaker 1: Marquette Park four, Uptown seven, Englewood four, Dixmore five. These
4:37
Speaker 1: numbers start to add up, and the thing is each
4:40
Speaker 1: one of these cases involves innocent African American teenagers in
4:43
Speaker 1: groups confessing to crimes they didn't commit.
4:46
Speaker 2: Of course, the most famous case like this was New
4:49
Speaker 2: York's Central Park five case. In April of nineteen eighty nine,
4:54
Speaker 2: five teenage boys were charged with the sexual assault and
4:59
Speaker 2: the tempted murder of a female jogger in New York's
5:03
Speaker 2: Central Park. The boys falsely confessed to beating this woman
5:08
Speaker 2: within an inch of her life and leaving her in
5:11
Speaker 2: the woods to die. The Central Park five confessions were
5:16
Speaker 2: driven by race Wolfpax. Wilding was a whole new language
5:23
Speaker 2: to describe groups of African American and Latino teenagers, and
5:27
Speaker 2: it created a level of fear in New York City
5:30
Speaker 2: and around the country that I had never seen before.
5:34
Speaker 2: So when we began to look at the Dixmore case,
5:38
Speaker 2: the case of the Central Park five was ringing in
5:41
Speaker 2: my years.
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Speaker 1: It was November of nineteen ninety one and fourteen year
5:47
Speaker 1: old Kateresa Matthews was in the eighth grade. She lived
5:50
Speaker 1: with her mom and Dix Moore, a suburb on the
5:52
Speaker 1: South side of Chicago, surrounded by a tight knit extended
5:55
Speaker 1: family and community. Every day after school, Kateresa followed the
5:59
Speaker 1: same routine. She'd walk to her great grandmother's house, where
6:03
Speaker 1: she'd do her homework, tuck on the phone, and do
6:05
Speaker 1: whatever fourteen year old girls do. After school, she was
6:08
Speaker 1: waiting until her mom came home from work to go
6:11
Speaker 1: back to her own house. Kateresa followed this routine religiously
6:16
Speaker 1: until November nineteenth, nineteen ninety one, when she doesn't show
6:19
Speaker 1: up at her great grandmother's house after school. Her family panics.
6:23
Speaker 1: They call the police and a search begins, but for
6:27
Speaker 1: three weeks there's no sign of Kateresa until December eighth,
6:31
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one. That's when Kateresa's body is found lying
6:36
Speaker 1: in a wooded field next to the Interstate Highway that
6:38
Speaker 1: runs through Dixmore. She's on her back, partially undressed, with
6:42
Speaker 1: her pants draped across her lower body. On her chest
6:46
Speaker 1: is a spent casing from a twenty five caliber bullet.
6:50
Speaker 1: She's been shot once in the mouth. Even though Kateres
6:54
Speaker 1: had been missing for three weeks, the medical examiner concludes
6:58
Speaker 1: that she's been killed recently, right around the time her
7:00
Speaker 1: body's found. There are several reasons for this. For one thing,
7:04
Speaker 1: rigor mortis is present when she's found that usually disappears
7:08
Speaker 1: about twenty four to forty eight hours after death. Her
7:11
Speaker 1: body is also still bleeding when she's discovered, which you
7:14
Speaker 1: wouldn't expect if she'd been killed much earlier. And also
7:18
Speaker 1: when a body's been lying outside for a long time,
7:21
Speaker 1: there are usually signs like animal or insect bites. There's
7:24
Speaker 1: nothing like that here. And the medical examiner finds something
7:28
Speaker 1: else too, semen on Kateresa's body. She's been raped.
7:33
Speaker 2: This was an awful crime.
7:34
Speaker 1: It's the worst. I mean, it's every parent's nightmare to
7:36
Speaker 1: have this happen to their child.
7:38
Speaker 2: You know, when you think of a crime like this,
7:40
Speaker 2: you don't think of it as something that teenagers would do. Typically,
7:44
Speaker 2: teenage crimes are impulsive crimes. There's not a lot of
7:48
Speaker 2: planning or premeditation. They happen in the spur of the moment.
7:52
Speaker 2: But this crime clearly required some forethought.
7:56
Speaker 1: For eleven long months, the investigation into Kateresa's death goes
8:00
Speaker 1: nowhere until fall nineteen ninety two, when a teenage boy
8:03
Speaker 1: tells police that he saw Kateresa getting into a car
8:06
Speaker 1: with some friends around the time of her disappearance. Police
8:10
Speaker 1: decided to question those friends, starting with Robert Vel on
8:14
Speaker 1: October twenty ninth, nineteen ninety two. Now, Robert's fourteen years old,
8:18
Speaker 1: but he has pretty severe intellectual limitations that make him
8:21
Speaker 1: think more like a five year old. He's questioned for
8:25
Speaker 1: hours without a parent or a lawyer present, off camera,
8:28
Speaker 1: and in the end he signs a confession prepared by
8:31
Speaker 1: his interrogator, and the story in this confession is brutal.
8:41
Speaker 1: Robert says he and four other African American teenage boys
8:44
Speaker 1: kidnapped a girl they knew from school. They gang raped
8:48
Speaker 1: her as she pleaded with them to stop, and then
8:50
Speaker 1: they shot her once in the mouth. It was a
8:53
Speaker 1: story of an animalistic group of black teenagers attacking their
8:58
Speaker 1: classmate for sport.
9:02
Speaker 2: The level of depravity in this story was so out
9:06
Speaker 2: of bounds that it made me question whether it was true,
9:10
Speaker 2: But it also had an eerily familiar ring to it,
9:13
Speaker 2: and for me, the significance was as I was seeing
9:16
Speaker 2: the same explanations in different cases, which made me begin
9:21
Speaker 2: to feel that like maybe there was a script that
9:24
Speaker 2: was getting passed around among Chicago police officers.
9:28
Speaker 1: Only hours after Robert Veil confesses, police bring in one
9:31
Speaker 1: of his supposed co perpetrators, fifteen year old Robert Taylor.
9:36
Speaker 1: He's a kid from a loving and protective family, but
9:38
Speaker 1: his parents didn't know he was at the police station
9:40
Speaker 1: being interrogated. Hours later, his signature appears on a confession too,
9:46
Speaker 1: and that confession tells a similarly vicious story. The same
9:50
Speaker 1: five African American teenagers lured Katresa into a car, then
9:55
Speaker 1: raped her and shot her in a field.
9:57
Speaker 3: The super Predator era was a period of of pronounced
10:01
Speaker 3: moral panic in the United States that focused on young people, race,
10:08
Speaker 3: and crime.
10:09
Speaker 1: That's our colleague and friend, Perry Moriarty. She's a professor
10:12
Speaker 1: of law at the University of Minnesota and an expert
10:15
Speaker 1: on juvenile justice and the era of the super Predator.
10:18
Speaker 3: The front end marker is more than likely the Central
10:22
Speaker 3: Park five case that was April of nineteen eighty nine,
10:26
Speaker 3: and that began an era when, in the name of
10:30
Speaker 3: public safety, in the name of being tough on crime,
10:33
Speaker 3: law enforcement authorities dropped any pretense of treating children as
10:37
Speaker 3: children and prosecuted them as adults. If they were black
10:42
Speaker 3: and brown children, they were adultified, either by law or
10:46
Speaker 3: by connotation, and certainly by the media. A jogger murdered
10:50
Speaker 3: in New York Central Park, a little girl gunned down
10:52
Speaker 3: in her family's car.
10:53
Speaker 2: And Los Angeles, a.
10:55
Speaker 1: Judge has sentenced two boys for killing another child who
10:58
Speaker 1: refused to steal candy for them. There's a tidal wave
11:01
Speaker 1: of juvenile violent crime right over the horizon, and some
11:04
Speaker 1: who study it say the worst is.
11:06
Speaker 3: Yet to come, terms like wilding, beast chill, predatory. In
11:13
Speaker 3: New York City newspapers alone, the term wilding appeared one
11:16
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty six times in articles over the eight
11:20
Speaker 3: years following the Central Park five arrests. To put it
11:24
Speaker 3: in perspective, just a few months after the Central Park
11:27
Speaker 3: five case, a large group of Italian and Irish predominantly
11:32
Speaker 3: teenagers in benson Hurst, Brooklyn, chased down and killed a
11:36
Speaker 3: young Black teenager named Yuseph Hawkins. And the headlines did
11:40
Speaker 3: not say wilding. They did not say beasts chill, They
11:44
Speaker 3: did not even say gang. They said a group of
11:48
Speaker 3: white teenagers.
12:00
Speaker 1: Now the police have two confessions that implicate the same
12:02
Speaker 1: five teenagers, but they're not done yet. Next up is
12:06
Speaker 1: Cheyenne Sharp, seventeen years old, the third supposed co perpetrator.
12:11
Speaker 1: He's questioned for nearly twenty four hours before he also
12:15
Speaker 1: confesses and implicates the other four. And it's the same
12:19
Speaker 1: brutal story, a group of African American teenage boys terrorizing
12:23
Speaker 1: their classmate for fun.
12:26
Speaker 2: Now you have to understand how these confessions are taken.
12:30
Speaker 2: These confessions are scripted, usually by a prosecutor from the
12:36
Speaker 2: State attorney's office. Sometimes they're written by police officers, and
12:40
Speaker 2: these scripts contain a narrative, including character development. Kids are
12:46
Speaker 2: described as thugs. There's usually references to gang membership. Women
12:52
Speaker 2: are called bitches and hoes. The scriptwriter in these cases
12:57
Speaker 2: is doing two things. He's painting the suspect in a
13:00
Speaker 2: way that nobody can ever think of them as teenagers.
13:04
Speaker 2: And he's also painting them in a way that nobody
13:09
Speaker 2: and that means nobody in the public and nobody on
13:12
Speaker 2: the jury can have an ounce of sympathy for them.
13:18
Speaker 2: And in doing so, he's making a script that is
13:21
Speaker 2: about as rock solid as a route to conviction as
13:25
Speaker 2: one can imagine.
13:28
Speaker 1: So far, the police have confessions from three of the
13:31
Speaker 1: Dixmore five, and within days they bring in the two
13:33
Speaker 1: remaining teenagers for questioning two brothers, seventeen year old James
13:38
Speaker 1: Harden and fifteen year old Jonathan Barr. The boys are
13:41
Speaker 1: interrogated for hours, but their father had always told them
13:45
Speaker 1: never sign anything prepared by the police. Somehow a miracle
13:50
Speaker 1: they remember these words and they don't confess, but they're
13:54
Speaker 1: still named in the other three teenagers' statements, so all
13:57
Speaker 1: five are on the hook.
13:59
Speaker 3: In part because because they were arresting and prosecuting kids
14:02
Speaker 3: in mass in groups, law enforcement became very adept in
14:07
Speaker 3: that period at pitting kids against each other during the
14:10
Speaker 3: interrogation process and using kids against each other to extract
14:16
Speaker 3: false confessions.
14:17
Speaker 2: When you look at these cases of multiple false confessions,
14:20
Speaker 2: you see a similar pattern. First of all, the police
14:24
Speaker 2: usually start with the most vulnerable, most naive, most gullible
14:29
Speaker 2: of the suspects, and they focused in this case on
14:32
Speaker 2: Robert Field. He was the weak link. Then they get
14:35
Speaker 2: a confession from Robert Veel, and what do they do
14:39
Speaker 2: with that confession They use it as a battering ram
14:43
Speaker 2: to plow over all of the other defendants. This is
14:47
Speaker 2: how it works. The first suspect comes in and the
14:50
Speaker 2: police officers tell them that they know that he was
14:53
Speaker 2: involved in this crime and nothing that suspect can say
14:57
Speaker 2: is going to change their mind. But they don't think
15:00
Speaker 2: he was the one who actually raped anybody or killed anybody.
15:04
Speaker 2: He was just a follower. The suspect is pressured into
15:08
Speaker 2: adopting a story in which he is a passive participant
15:12
Speaker 2: to the crime, and which he fingers his co defendants
15:17
Speaker 2: as the more active participants. Then once that suspect confesses,
15:23
Speaker 2: they bring that confession to the next in line and
15:26
Speaker 2: they go over the same thing again. We don't think
15:30
Speaker 2: you committed the crime. He's telling us that you committed
15:34
Speaker 2: the crime. We know you were there, but maybe you
15:37
Speaker 2: just held down her arm while they were raping and
15:40
Speaker 2: killing her. Each suspect is vying for the least culpable role,
15:47
Speaker 2: and at the end of the day, this is a
15:48
Speaker 2: very effective way to get confessions from multiple suspects.
15:53
Speaker 1: In this case, the dominoes are falling and each one
15:56
Speaker 1: of them eventually agrees to a story in which James
15:59
Speaker 1: Harden is the one who actually places the gun inside
16:02
Speaker 1: Kateresa's mouth and pulls the trigger. It's no coincidence that
16:06
Speaker 1: James is one of the last ones questioned here.
16:09
Speaker 2: That's right. And at the end of the day, please
16:11
Speaker 2: got confessions from Robert Field, Robert Taylor, and Cheyenne's Sharp,
16:16
Speaker 2: but they couldn't get James Harden and Jonathan Barr to confess.
16:22
Speaker 1: Based on the confessions, all five teenagers are charged with
16:26
Speaker 1: the assault and murder of Kateresa Matthews, and the Dixmore
16:30
Speaker 1: Five are transformed into Chicago's own wolf pack. Pretty soon, though,
16:38
Speaker 1: it becomes apparent that this case has major problems for starters.
16:41
Speaker 1: The teenager's versions of what happened are wildly inconsistent. They
16:46
Speaker 1: can't agree on how they met up with Katsa, what
16:48
Speaker 1: the group did before they ended up in that field
16:51
Speaker 1: by the interstate, or who assaulted Kateresa, and in what order.
16:55
Speaker 1: In fact, one of the only things they do agree
16:57
Speaker 1: on was that Kateresa had been murdered the day she
16:59
Speaker 1: did disappeared, November nineteenth. But remember this was contradicted by
17:04
Speaker 1: the medical examiner, who determined that she'd been killed three
17:07
Speaker 1: weeks later, around the time her body was found. And
17:11
Speaker 1: then here comes the biggest problem. After all five teenagers
17:15
Speaker 1: were charged but before trial, DNA testing from the seaman
17:19
Speaker 1: left on Katrese's body excludes all five suspects. Instead, this
17:25
Speaker 1: DNA belongs to a single unidentified male.
17:29
Speaker 2: This is might drop evidence, the kind of evidence that
17:32
Speaker 2: should have resulted in these cases being dismissed before.
17:36
Speaker 1: Trial exactly these confessions had been proven false. But instead
17:40
Speaker 1: of dropping its case, the state offers deals to two
17:43
Speaker 1: members of the Dixmore Five, Cheyenne Sharp and Robert Veale.
17:47
Speaker 1: If the boys agree to testify against their co defendants,
17:50
Speaker 1: they'll receive much shorter sentences. Syenna and Robert decide to
17:54
Speaker 1: take the deal, while the state moves forward with trials
17:57
Speaker 1: for the other three, and those trials of are based
18:00
Speaker 1: on the stories told in the confessions. Despite the DNA.
18:04
Speaker 2: You talk here about tunnel vision. This is what happens.
18:08
Speaker 2: The police officers lock into a story. They become invested
18:12
Speaker 2: in this notion of a gang rape, and they can't
18:15
Speaker 2: get out of.
18:16
Speaker 1: That box exactly. And you see this when they have
18:19
Speaker 1: to deal with the DNA and the prosecutor addresses it
18:22
Speaker 1: during closing arguments.
18:23
Speaker 2: And what does the prosecutor say? He explains the presence
18:26
Speaker 2: of DNA as the work of a necrophiliac.
18:30
Speaker 1: Now, Steve, if this isn't exactly a household term, what
18:32
Speaker 1: is a necrophiliac?
18:34
Speaker 2: It's someone who has sex with dead bodies.
18:37
Speaker 1: I knew you know that. This is officially the most
18:39
Speaker 1: batchitt theory I think I've ever.
18:40
Speaker 2: Heard, By the way, I couldn't agree more.
18:42
Speaker 1: So, let's get this straight. The theory here at the
18:44
Speaker 1: Dixmore viv trial was that five teenage boys sexually assault
18:48
Speaker 1: this victim. They don't leave a trace of themselves behind.
18:52
Speaker 1: Then here comes this wandering necrophiliac who comes across the
18:56
Speaker 1: body and decides to defile it. I mean, we've heard
18:59
Speaker 1: a lot of excuse us for DNA in our time,
19:01
Speaker 1: but this one may take the prize.
19:03
Speaker 2: It's unbelievable that they would even present this to a jury.
19:07
Speaker 2: It's that insane. But you have to understand in the
19:12
Speaker 2: context of a climate of fear, the irrational becomes rational. Now,
19:19
Speaker 2: in the opening statement in this case, the prosecutor said
19:22
Speaker 2: that these men, pointing at the five teenagers, these men
19:27
Speaker 2: came from a world where so called friends were turned
19:31
Speaker 2: into a pack of jackals hunting down their prey, and
19:34
Speaker 2: then they were done with it, killing it for sport jackals.
19:38
Speaker 1: Can you believe that this really is Chicago's own wolf pack?
19:44
Speaker 3: Again, it's a lot easier to fathom locking up a young, beastial,
19:50
Speaker 3: feral thing than it is a child, which is in
19:53
Speaker 3: fact what we were doing.
19:55
Speaker 2: And when you talk about children as if they were animals,
19:59
Speaker 2: it becomes so much easier to throw away their lives.
20:03
Speaker 1: To just not worry about doing that last bit of
20:05
Speaker 1: DNA testing, figure out whose DNA it was actually left on.
20:08
Speaker 1: Katries and Matthew's body.
20:10
Speaker 2: It becomes easier to try them as adults. It becomes
20:12
Speaker 2: easier to sentence them to life sentences or even the
20:16
Speaker 2: death penalty. It becomes easier to just lock them up
20:21
Speaker 2: and throw away the key.
20:36
Speaker 1: The dehumanizing story embedded in these boys confessions. While it works,
20:40
Speaker 1: each of the Dixmore five is convicted, and the three
20:44
Speaker 1: who don't cut deals, Robert Taylor, Jonathan Barr, and James
20:47
Speaker 1: Harden are sentenced to life in prison. Cheyenne Sharp and
20:51
Speaker 1: Robert Veale serve their time and are eventually released with
20:54
Speaker 1: murder convictions on their records, But the other three languish
20:58
Speaker 1: behind bars forgotten people.
21:02
Speaker 2: But they were not forgotten by their parents or their
21:05
Speaker 2: loved ones. You know, I'll never forget learning that Jonathan
21:09
Speaker 2: Barr and James Hardin's dad would literally drive around with
21:14
Speaker 2: boxes full of files regarding their cases in his trunk,
21:18
Speaker 2: trying to get lawyers interested in taking his son's cases,
21:23
Speaker 2: and Robert Taylor's family did similar things. They would write
21:26
Speaker 2: letters and letters and letters to lawyers begging them for help. Finally,
21:32
Speaker 2: in twenty ten, we learned about the case of the
21:35
Speaker 2: Dixmore Five. Our colleague Josh tepfer knew a public defender
21:41
Speaker 2: named Jennifer Blagg who had represented Robert Taylor on appeal.
21:45
Speaker 2: She referred the case to Josh and we agreed to
21:49
Speaker 2: take Robert's case.
21:50
Speaker 1: By this time, Robert was in his early thirties.
21:53
Speaker 2: That's right, he had served over fifteen years of his sentence.
21:57
Speaker 1: Robert Taylor grew up with his parents, sister, and in Harvey, Illinois,
22:01
Speaker 1: right next to Dixmore. From day one, Robert's dad, a
22:05
Speaker 1: Navy vet, was his strongest defender. Robert Senior refused to
22:09
Speaker 1: be broken by the fact that his son had gone
22:11
Speaker 1: to prison because of the words he'd signed his name to.
22:14
Speaker 1: When the Center on Wrongful Convictions agreed to take Robert's case,
22:17
Speaker 1: his dad became a major presence in our lives. I
22:20
Speaker 1: can still remember the smell of his leather jacket when
22:23
Speaker 1: he hugged us and welcomed us to his family's struggle.
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Speaker 1: Around the same time, organizations like the Innocence Project and
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Speaker 1: Exoneration Project got involved in representing other members of the
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Speaker 1: Dix Moore five. Our collective first priority was identifying whose
22:37
Speaker 1: DNA had been left at the crime scene.
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Speaker 2: We had a new tool called CODIS the combined DNA
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Speaker 2: index system, and over the time frame since the advent
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Speaker 2: of DNA testing in the late nineteen eighties, that database
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Speaker 2: had grown, and so the chances of finding the identity
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Speaker 2: of the person who raped and killed Katsa. Matthews had
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Speaker 2: grown exactly.
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Speaker 1: I mean, let's remember for a moment that we're talking
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Speaker 1: here about DNA that was taken from the semen left
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Speaker 1: on a rape victim. You cannot ask for better evidence
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Speaker 1: than that, and it's just sitting there forgotten. How can
23:11
Speaker 1: you not want to know whose DNA that was? Isn't
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Speaker 1: that the most important question in this case had been
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Speaker 1: sitting there unanswered for fifteen years?
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Speaker 2: But where was it sitting? That was the first challenge.
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Speaker 2: And after a year of searching, we found the DNA
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Speaker 2: in some warehouse or in some trailer, and we then
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Speaker 2: had to get permission from the court to test the DNA.
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Speaker 2: We then sent the DNA off for testing to a lab,
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Speaker 2: and we waited and a lab extracted a profile, and
23:44
Speaker 2: when that profile was extracted, it was run through the
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Speaker 2: code ISS database. A miracle of miracles, in March of
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Speaker 2: twenty eleven, we got a hit and the hit was
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Speaker 2: to a man, not a boy, a man named Randolph.
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Speaker 1: Now Willy Randolph, was a troubled guy. He was much
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Speaker 1: older than Kateresa or the Dixmore five. When Kateresa disappeared,
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Speaker 1: he was thirty three years old, more than twice her age.
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Speaker 1: Willi had been in and out of prison his entire
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Speaker 1: adult life for all sorts of different offenses. In fact,
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Speaker 1: he'd been paroled only a few months before Kateresa was
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Speaker 1: killed to a house within a mile of where she lived,
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Speaker 1: and Willie Randolph had previously been accused of rape in
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Speaker 1: that very same field by the interstate where Kateresa's body
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Speaker 1: was found. This is a person with a history of
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Speaker 1: these kinds of attacks, and his DNA and no one
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Speaker 1: else's was present at the crime scene. Finally, it all
24:44
Speaker 1: made sense.
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Speaker 2: When we learned the identity of Willie Randolph, when we
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Speaker 2: investigated his background, when we learned the history of abusing
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Speaker 2: and sexually assaulting women, including young women, teenagers, we thought
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Speaker 2: this case was over. We thought we are going to
25:01
Speaker 2: get these boys out tomorrow.
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Speaker 1: Exactly, there's no relationship at all between Willy Randolph and
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Speaker 1: any of the Dixmore five. He's not mentioned in any
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Speaker 1: of their confessions.
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Speaker 2: And why would there be a relationship. This is a
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Speaker 2: man with a long history of violence in his record,
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Speaker 2: and none of these boys had a history of violence.
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Speaker 1: Right, He's twice their age. When they were growing up
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Speaker 1: in the neighborhood, he was in prison.
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Speaker 2: Willy Randolph is the guy who did this to Katersa Matthews.
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Speaker 2: The DNA proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
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Speaker 2: Now we had to convince the prosecutors to do the
25:35
Speaker 2: right thing.
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Speaker 1: But as incredible as it sounds, the state wouldn't let
25:39
Speaker 1: go of their necrophilia theory, and the case dragged on
25:42
Speaker 1: for months.
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Speaker 2: You know, old habits die hard. The state actually suggested
25:48
Speaker 2: again that maybe Willy Randolph was their mystery necrophiliac.
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Speaker 1: This is an unbelievable thing. Still they're clinging to this
25:55
Speaker 1: theory that five teenage boys assaulted Katersa Matthews, left no
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Speaker 1: trace of their DNA behind, and here comes Willie Randolph,
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Speaker 1: the older man, the man of the history of assaults
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Speaker 1: and violent crime and rape in that very field, and
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Speaker 1: just happens to defile her body. It beggars belief.
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Speaker 2: It still took six to seven months to investigate whether
26:16
Speaker 2: there was any link between Willie Randolph and any of
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Speaker 2: the Dicks more five, there wasn't one.
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Speaker 1: Meanwhile, we were coming back to court every few weeks
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Speaker 1: to get an update on the state's investigation and to
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Speaker 1: ask the judge is today the day of exoneration? And
26:32
Speaker 1: for six long months we were disappointed. I remember coming
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Speaker 1: home after those court dates and crying with frustration that
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Speaker 1: I was able to go home, but Robert Taylor, our clients,
26:42
Speaker 1: had to go back to a prison cell.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. I remember pulling out my hair and I had
26:47
Speaker 2: hair back then.
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Speaker 1: That's where it all went.
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Speaker 2: That's where it all went because we had the best
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Speaker 2: possible evidence of their innocence, and not only were they
26:58
Speaker 2: refusing to our clients, Willie Randolph was on the street.
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Speaker 2: He was out of prison on parole, and he could
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Speaker 2: be doing this to somebody else. It was driving me crazy.
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Speaker 1: Every time before we walked into that courtroom, I remember
27:14
Speaker 1: watching Robert hold his whole body just taught. His muscles
27:18
Speaker 1: would be tense, and you could see those twenty years
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Speaker 1: of trauma that he had endured and the toll it
27:24
Speaker 1: had taken on him. He couldn't relax into the possibility
27:28
Speaker 1: that it was going to be his day that day,
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Speaker 1: and it wasn't his day.
27:31
Speaker 2: For months until it finally was.
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Speaker 1: On November third, twenty eleven, Robert Ville Cheyenne Sharp, James Harden,
27:42
Speaker 1: Jonathan Barr, and Robert Taylor were exonerated. Their convictions were
27:46
Speaker 1: thrown out nearly twenty years to the day after Kateresa
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Speaker 1: matthews disappearance, The Dix Moore five had wrongly served a
27:54
Speaker 1: total of more than fifty years in prison. Eventually, Willie
27:58
Speaker 1: Randolph was charged with the attack on Kateresa Matthews based
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Speaker 1: on DNA evidence. He's still a waiting trial today. We're
28:06
Speaker 1: proud to have helped free the Dixmore five, but as
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Speaker 1: our colleague Josh Tepfer put it, this is not justice.
28:12
Speaker 1: Justice would have happened a long time ago.
28:17
Speaker 2: Hello, hey, Robert, Stephen Laura A long time.
28:21
Speaker 1: I'll see too long.
28:23
Speaker 2: Too long.
28:24
Speaker 1: Good to hear your voice. What's going on with you
28:26
Speaker 1: these days, Robert, I'm hanging in now. How's your son doing?
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Speaker 2: He's all right. I got picked boy. You got to
28:33
Speaker 2: take him up to the school. Yeah, I'll pick him
28:35
Speaker 2: up every day.
28:37
Speaker 3: Hold your point seven going away?
28:40
Speaker 1: What's your favorite thing to do with your son?
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Speaker 2: Robert I'd like to see him smad. I.
28:44
Speaker 1: So you can't give those twenty years back to Robert
28:49
Speaker 1: or to any of the Dicks, Moore five, or any
28:50
Speaker 1: of the guys we're going to talk about on this podcast.
28:52
Speaker 1: You can't give that time back. But what you can
28:55
Speaker 1: do is make the years decades that they lost means something.
29:00
Speaker 3: One of the greatest tragedies in my opinion, and I've
29:04
Speaker 3: been teaching about the Central Park five case for years
29:07
Speaker 3: and to this day. When I introduced the case in
29:10
Speaker 3: my criminal law classes, the one thing that people don't
29:13
Speaker 3: know about the case is that the kids were innocent.
29:17
Speaker 3: So few people knew that even after Matthias Rayes confessed,
29:21
Speaker 3: even after these kids were let out of prison, even
29:25
Speaker 3: after they were compensated. It is the footnote in this
29:28
Speaker 3: story that gets lost in our collective consciousness. Maybe not anymore. Finally,
29:33
Speaker 3: there is attention being brought to who they actually were
29:36
Speaker 3: and what they suffered.
29:38
Speaker 1: And that's a big part of how Steve and I
29:39
Speaker 1: approach these cases. Right It's about of course getting them
29:43
Speaker 1: out of prisent fighting for them, opening up those doors,
29:45
Speaker 1: but it's also about telling the stories. It's about making
29:48
Speaker 1: it meaningful. It's about saying their name. It's about not
29:51
Speaker 1: forgetting what happened to them and changing it so it
29:53
Speaker 1: doesn't happen again. Like the Central Park five, the story
30:00
Speaker 1: of the Dixmore five is about convictions that were driven
30:03
Speaker 1: by prejudice rather than proof. But the injustices of the
30:07
Speaker 1: super predator era or not just a New York City
30:09
Speaker 1: thing or a Chicago thing, And although we may want
30:12
Speaker 1: to think so, they're not even really a nineteen nineties thing.
30:15
Speaker 1: In times of great fear or moral panic, prejudices can
30:19
Speaker 1: distort the search for the truth. Mistaken assumptions, faulty investigations,
30:25
Speaker 1: and flawed evidence are all still real, and they still
30:28
Speaker 1: cause wrongful convictions across the country. Every day. We tell
30:32
Speaker 1: these stories so that we can learn from them, so
30:35
Speaker 1: that one day there won't be any more Dixmore fives.
30:40
Speaker 1: To all the Dixmore five, but especially to our client
30:43
Speaker 1: and friend, Robert Taylor, You've endured years of injustice while
30:47
Speaker 1: remaining a pillar of strength and resilience. To you and
30:51
Speaker 1: your families, we wish you all the best. Thanks for
30:54
Speaker 1: letting us tell your story. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is
31:04
Speaker 1: the production of Lava for Good podcasts in association with
31:07
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number One. Special thanks to our executive producer
31:11
Speaker 1: Jason Flamm and the team at Signal Company Number one.
31:15
Speaker 1: Executive producer Kevin wardis Senior producer and Pope, and additional
31:19
Speaker 1: production and editing by Connor Hall. Our music was composed
31:23
Speaker 1: by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram or
31:26
Speaker 1: Twitter at Laura Nyrider and.
31:28
Speaker 2: You can follow me on Twitter at s Drizzen.
31:32
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com
31:36
Speaker 1: and be sure to follow the show on Instagram at
31:38
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on
31:43
Speaker 1: Twitter at wrong Conviction