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Season Five Home for the Holidays 9
137 Plays9 days ago
In Today’s Episode, we put together our Home for the Holiday cases.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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Transcript
Introduction to Wrongful Convictions
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:22
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
00:00:29
Speaker
We get to a point in here where I'm not 100% sure how many episodes we've recorded. So this is somewhere nine or 10 N to the episodes that we're covering for Home for the Holidays for 2024. Over the last few episodes, we've talked about like some strange situations, a couple of cases where we couldn't tell like who had done what. One case we felt like maybe they had likely executed an innocent man in California of all places. um We talked about the Virginia cases where all of these people kind of tied back to this one lab analyst.
The Search for Innocence: Paul Henderson III
00:01:07
Speaker
And I wanted to find a case where I could tell a story that I knew for sure somebody was like innocent, innocent, like really innocent, couldn't have done it. And I i was digging through this massive pile of wrongful convictions, which is about the time that I realized It gets kind of scary knowing that you and I could do this every Christmas, 25 or so cases each Christmas, and like I don't think we'll run out in our lifetime.
00:01:42
Speaker
And that ah that bothers me a lot. but I come from like the defense side of things. Even though I'm on that side, I'm kind of critical of what I call the innocence industry. and I know we've talked about that a little bit, but some really interesting people come out of the innocence industry.
00:02:07
Speaker
ah Barry Scheck comes to mind. um Some of the different folks that were involved in early DNA, like they were mentored by him. There's this guy I wanted to talk about. Now he's not the accused, but he wrote about one of them. And he I just want to talk a little bit about his life because he made a huge difference in the case we're going to talk about today.
00:02:30
Speaker
He has passed away. He passed away in December of 2018. Have you ever heard of Paul Henderson III? Yes. Okay, so Paul Henderson III, he was a writer, but It rose to the level of him being pretty much a straight up journalist. He wrote multiple articles for the Seattle Times. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter. And he was also a private investigator. He is personally said to be responsible for winning the freedom of 14 wrongfully convicted people. Nearly all of them are murder cases.
00:03:10
Speaker
This is a guy who was born in Washington DC in 1939. His family had moved to Beatrice, Nebraska as a young child, which weirdly we've, in the last couple of years, we've covered a major case out of Beatrice. um He attended the Wentworth Military Academy and Junior College in Lexington, Missouri. When he's 20 years old, he graduated in 1959. And he goes and does three years in the US Army.
00:03:38
Speaker
When he gets out of the US Army, he goes to Creighton University, and then he finishes his education at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He starts writing for the Council Bluffs Daily Paper in 1962. This is in this small area of Iowa. It's like 10 or 11 counties there. He moved on to write for the Omaha World Herald.
00:04:04
Speaker
And in 1967, he moves over to the Seattle Times, and he's going to write there for basically the next 20 years. While he's working there at the Seattle Times in 1981, he gets a call from a man, tells him this wild story, and he tells ah Paul Henderson that he's about to be sentenced for a rape he did not commit.
00:04:25
Speaker
Well, Paul Henderson looks into this case and he starts writing a series of stories about it. The header for this case was One Man's Battle to Clear His Name. and It took this story, taking part over three or four parts in the Seattle Times, for the local officials to take what Paul Henderson had found and to clear up what had happened in this case. Paul Henderson's writing and what happened with the officials there convinced the judge to overturn this conviction.
00:05:02
Speaker
And in 1982, he wins the Pulitzer Prize for this series. Because this had happened in 1985, Paul Henderson leaves the Seattle Times and he becomes a private investigator full time from 1988 until his death in 2018.
Centurion Ministries' Impact
00:05:20
Speaker
He was an investigator for this group out of Princeton, New Jersey. That was a small nonprofit organization known as Centurion Ministry.
00:05:31
Speaker
Centurion Ministries' mission was to exonerate innocent individuals who have been wrongly convicted and sentenced to either life sentences or to death. They have helped free countless people. So I wanted to talk about Paul Henderson just a little bit to lead into this. um You have heard of Centurion Ministries, right? Because they've come up for us before, I believe. Yeah, I've heard of them. I don't know if we've talked about them on here or not, but yeah, i'm I'm aware of them. Okay, so a little bit about them. They were founded by a guy named Jim McCloskey, who was working on behalf of a prisoner named Jorge De Los Santos in 1983. McCloskey had learned about Oré's case in 1980 when he was a seminary student at the Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey. He used his own funds to investigate De Los Santos' claim of innocence. He located the chief witness against him. That person told him that the trial testimony had been bunked.
00:06:30
Speaker
So then Jim McCloskey, he hires this guy, Paul Castiero, who's a Hoboken, New Jersey lawyer. And Paul writes the writ that brings Jorge's case back into court. A U.S. District Court judge overturned the conviction. And in 1983, after two and a half years of Jim McCloskey working on this case, Jorge De Los Santos was freed. Centurion Ministries has been operating ever since.
00:06:58
Speaker
That's one of those most fascinating origin stories for this kid that's like a seminary student. He's basically going to become a priest or a pastor and all of a sudden he's working in wrongful convictions. Centurion Ministries is the first organization to investigate cases of wrongful convictions in the US and Canada. So the root of wrongful convictions can be traced directly back to them and the work that Jim McCloskey did between 1980 and 1983.
00:07:25
Speaker
In 1987, a woman named Kate Germond, she gets together with Jim McCloskey and they built this organization that, as of this year, I think they have ah secured the release of 89 wrongfully convicted men and women across the United States and Canada. That number may have gone up from the time that we record this to the time that it actually makes it to air around the holidays. ah Two of the big cases were the Jorge de Los Santos case. In his case, he was convicted out of Newark, New Jersey, and he was sentenced to life in prison for the 1975 murder of a a used car salesman there. He had already been in prison for nine years. Jorge de Los Santos had spent almost nine years in prison before he gets freed.
00:08:15
Speaker
But the last three years from 1983, he had been investigated by Centurion
Case Studies of Wrongful Convictions
00:08:23
Speaker
Ministries. He gets freed by former U.S. District Court Judge Frederick B. Lacy in July of 1983. And the judge said that testimony from a jailhouse witness there that convicted De Los Santos, that was used to convict De Los Santos, reeked of perjury, and that the prosecutor at the time had known it. Centurion's investigation into this goes beyond just that recantation and dealing with that particular witness, and it yielded new evidence that ended up freeing Jorge De Los Santos. They also were on the case of Carrie Mex Cook. Now Carrie Mex Cook comes out of Tyler, Texas, and in November of 1997,
00:09:07
Speaker
Carrie Cook was freed after spending nearly 20 years on death row. for a murder that he had no involvement in. This was the moment when Centurion Ministries became huge. It was sort of their crowning moment. They had taken on this case in 1990 and the highest court in Texas, the Supreme Court there, threw out this conviction and they ruled that the state's illicit manipulation of the evidence had permeated the entire investigation of the murder and that the state had gained a conviction based on fraud.
00:09:39
Speaker
and ignored its on duty to seek the truth. We had another case out of Canada where ah the Canadian Supreme Court freed a man named David Billgard on April 16th of 1992. If for 23 years he had been imprisoned,
00:09:54
Speaker
And this is a Saskatoon, Canada case. Centurion spent two years from 1990 to 1992 during a re-investigation of the rape and murder case that he had been convicted of and they established the identity of the real killer. The Supreme Court recognized that the continued conviction of Milgard amounted to a miscarriage of justice. In 1997, DNA testing of physical evidence confirmed that David Milgard was indeed innocent, and it resulted in the arrest of the actual killer. In the late 1960s, Elmer Geronimo Pratt was a leader of the Los Angeles Black Panther Party. And in 1972, Pratt ended up being convicted of a 1968 murder
00:10:41
Speaker
on a Santa Monica, California tennis court. He's since 27 years in prison and they had filed multiple habeas corpus petitions on his behalf, his attorneys have. He's finally granted a new trial and then he ends up being freed in June of 1997 by Orange County Superior Court Judge Everett Dickey.
00:11:02
Speaker
After conducting an extensive evidentiary hearing, Judge Sticke ruled that the state's primary witness was in fact an informant who had significantly lied against Pratt at trial. It took them four years to put together what was done in a multi-day hearing in front of Judge Sticke. Centurion Ministries is 100% responsible for Elmer and Pratt having been released. And one of the other notable cases they have is Daryl Burton. He's out of St. Louis, Missouri. He has a case where, in 1984, there's a shooting at an Amico gas station of a man named Donald Bell. Daryl Burton is convicted based on an eyewitness account by a criminal informant for the St. Louis police. The cashier at the gas station at the time of the shooting, they ended up testifying in 2007 at a post-conviction hearing that they had told the police they
The Story of Steve Titus
00:11:52
Speaker
had the wrong man. She stated that Daryl Burton was very dark-skinned, but the shooter,
00:11:57
Speaker
had a light complexion. Cole County judge in that case, they freed Darrell Burton in August of 2008. They found that the cashier certainty that Mr. Burton was not the killer was clear, credible, powerful, and convincing. The judge also ruled that the informants extensive criminal history had been kept from the defense and had the jury known of it, it would have provided persuasive evidence of the defendant's innocence. So these are just a few of the cases that Centurion Ministries is involved with.
00:12:26
Speaker
But Centurion Ministries is really Jim McCloskey and then later on Paul Henderson. They do a lot of this work. That phone call that Paul Henderson had gotten way back in 1981, where a man had been convicted of a crime, but was trying to tell Paul Henderson that he didn't do it, is our case for today. Today we're pulling from a number of different places. The National Registry of Exonerations has this in their pre-1989 section, and we pulled from the Centurion Ministries website. I actually pulled a little bit of this from some of the press surrounding John Grisham's new book, The Guardians, where they like gave us some dribs and drabs. I pulled heavily from the Seattle Times. They had a lot of coverage on this case. and There was a book that I read called Convicted but Innocent.
00:13:21
Speaker
There were multiple articles that were written by Henderson and other people that were all up for what they call the Pulitzer Prize archive, where they archived the best of the Pulitzer Prizes.
00:13:36
Speaker
There was a New York Times article from Charles Salzberg called Rapist at Large. um There's a Centurion Ministries page on this case. um I think that's everything. oh Seattle Weekly had a couple of articles on this. One of them by it was a guy by a guy named Ricky Anderson.
00:13:54
Speaker
And it was called Washington states wrongfully convicted. It's from May 12th of 2013. I used all of that to put together like our ability to tell this story. And while I started talking about Paul Henderson, it's not really about him. It's about this crime that occurs. So, you know, the stats on this, we can pull them from the University of Michigan's registry of exonerations.
00:14:22
Speaker
This is taking place in Washington state in King County. It's strictly a rape case. The reported date of the crime is in 1980. He's convicted in 1981. He's exonerated pretty quickly because of this work that's done. His sentence is that between the time he's convicted and the time he's sentenced, the sentence is overturned because of this work.
00:14:50
Speaker
ah the race is The perpetrator is Caucasian. He's obviously a male because it's a sex crime, a crime of penetration. And he was 31 years old at the time of this crime. The contributing factors for this wrongful conviction, later exoneration, or overturning of that conviction or mistaken witness ID, an official misconduct. This man's name is Steve Titus. On October 12th of 1980, a 17-year-old girl was raped in an isolated area just south of the Seattle Tacoma Airport. She described her attacker as a white man with a beard who was driving a blue car. That same night, Steve Titus was out in Seattle with his fiance. She was celebrating her 21st birthday,
00:15:34
Speaker
when he was pulled over by the police. Titus, who had no criminal record other than a driving citation, agreed to be photographed by the police after they informed him that a man fitting his physical description who was also driving a blue car had raped a teenager near the airport that evening. Okay, first of all,
00:15:54
Speaker
What do you think they said to him when they pulled him over about getting that picture? They want to eliminate him. Did you actually tell him that he looks like a guy they're looking for for rape? I don't know, but this is part of the quantity of narratives out there that have resulted in the tell as old as time to not speak with police. Because ah an attorney would have never allowed him to do that.
00:16:19
Speaker
Yeah. this not This was a consensual interaction and it is human nature to think to myself, well, I'm just going to go ahead and help them get this cleared up because I didn't do it. Yeah. That's what I i think it had to do have been. now You know, I don't know. I feel like now people would know, like, don't do that. I do feel like that is the instinct to want to help. What did you think that they said? Did you think they tricked him?
00:16:45
Speaker
ah Yeah, I think they tricked him. I think it went like this. It's like, hey, we had something happen out by the airport tonight. You know you kind of resemble the person who would be driving. And your car looks like the car that was at the scene. We just need to eliminate you as a suspect. Do you mind if we take a Polaroid of you and and we'll put you in the lineup. But you know we just need to rule you out. So I think it's a mixture of the two. I think, yeah, they probably told him that. He probably thought that was like realistic. which I don't know what to tell him in that situation because he's really not talking to the cops. They pulled him over. They probably said something like, look, dude, you've already had a speeding ticket or what whatever infraction he had. at now He just says no. What do you mean? Like when they're like, you think you should just say no. Absolutely. You don't ever want to be because I mean, it's not like once they identify you, you could be like, well, yeah, but I was just a felon.
00:17:35
Speaker
Yeah. Well, right. So but pulling fill-ins from traffic stops is not the way that it goes. In case anyone ever wonders, that's not what's supposed to happen there. No, they're actually supposed like it's only supposed to be like an identification where they like actually know there's only one suspect, but the person looking at it, that they don't do that stuff anymore. but like Nobody else. That's what should have gone for a lineup. Yes. They should have pulled police officers that they were aware weren't the perp. It's a physical lineup or they could use a mugshot book and have you know the same background. It's supposed to be something where no one really stands out. Exactly. But also there's only one. They're not supposed to put like all the people it might have been in there. And I did.
00:18:24
Speaker
An identification, right, of a, if they, if he really did look like the guy and he was being positioned for that alone, like not as a felon, they should have had more information. You see? Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you. Okay. Because otherwise, you know, they could have put all kinds of people in there and they could be identified as the perpetrator having nothing to do with it.
00:18:51
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You're not actually needed for that lineup or that photo array. I promise you could just say, no, I'm sorry. I got things to do. So Steve Titus is not concerned by this encounter with the police in the least except for when two days later police officers show up at his office and they arrest him for the rape of the 17 year old girl by the airport.
00:19:15
Speaker
They inform him that Titus has been picked out of this lineup by this young victim who said, reportedly, this one is the closest. It has to be this one. So really what she's saying there is, I don't see someone who matches the perpetrator exactly. Right. And that's a lot different than making identification.
00:19:38
Speaker
Right. That's come up recently for us, too, where it looked like my uncle, but they they weren't saying it it was my uncle. They're saying it looked similar to him. Right. Which, again, I feel like that that little those little semantics right there, I think, have caused a lot of problems. in our Well, I think they're leaving some of the semantics out, too, because if she says it has to be the one, I think that whatever patrolman or detective is like sitting there with her said he's in there, I think.
00:20:08
Speaker
And she says, is he in the lineup or the photo array? And they say, yes. Right. But like, it's almost like they asked her to pick the guy that looked the closest. Which is even weirder. Well, that is a very, it's it's a very strange thing. I would not believe if I hadn't seen all the details of all these different cases, I wouldn't believe that like investigators would be so careless. Right.
00:20:35
Speaker
Yeah, except we know. Except we know that they are. And like, it, it starts with this guy that got pulled over. He, you know, he fit some criteria. They're like, Hey, can we get your picture? He's like, sure. Why not? Because I guarantee you, whoever it was that did it would have said no. Yeah. ah Well, I mean, on the one hand, they're treating rape seriously in 1980. On the other hand, yes.
00:21:01
Speaker
They're approaching this from the perspective of like any person who's guilty of this would have said, no, don't put my picture in your thing that you've got going. Go get something stronger for Evan. Just in the context of life happening, he got pulled over for a a traffic violation, right? Was that what it was?
00:21:16
Speaker
Yeah, he's he's driving a blue car. He's a slightly bearded man. So they pull him over because his blue car matches the description of. Oh, wait, it wasn't so they were actually looking for the suspect. but my eyes So, because to me, I thought it was ah the other way around.
00:21:36
Speaker
they They just happen to think he fit the description of the suspect. And that's why he was pulled, which by the way, that's not actually probable cause. So corrupt just saying. So they wouldn't have even had, so see that would have gotten thrown out on other grounds.
00:21:52
Speaker
It should have. Well, but I don't know what the, I don't know that that was established just yet in 80. Anyway, go ahead. Steve Titus goes on trial for this sexual assault. The victim identifies Titus in court and on March 4th, 1981, despite significant evidence suggesting that he's innocent,
00:22:10
Speaker
He's convicted of first degree rape after his conviction, but prior to his sentencing, Steve Titus puts together a list of 70 discrepancies in his case. And that's when he makes the call to the Seattle time and talks to then 43 year old Paul Henderson.
00:22:27
Speaker
who's a reporter at the time. Paul Henderson is intrigued by Titus's claims and he starts investigating this case. He only has the information at first that Steve Titus has provided, but Henderson is able to discover that a similar rape has occurred in the same location just six days before the rape that Steve Titus is accused of occurred.
00:22:52
Speaker
The victim in that case was a 15 year old girl. And when she was presented with Steve Titus's photo in a lineup, she ignored it. Based on information in Paul Henderson's articles, the local police reopened Steve Titus's case and continue investigating. King County Superior Court Judge Charles V. Johnson, he agrees to delay the sentencing of Titus. And soon police end up arresting a man named Edward Lee King.
00:23:21
Speaker
in connection with both the rapes that have occurred near the airport. And King admits that he committed both crimes. Upon viewing Edward Lee King's photo, the victim who identified Titus began to cry and said, oh my God, what have I done to Mr. Titus? Judge Johnson overturns Steve Titus's conviction and dismisses the charges. But after the dismissal, Titus stated, I lost everything.
00:23:48
Speaker
I lost my fiance. I've changed. I'm not the person that I knew. I lost my job. My family lost their savings. I owe thousands of dollars to my attorney. In 1982, Henderson ends up being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the investigative reporting that he did about Steve Titus' case. And Steve Titus files a $20 million dollars lawsuit against the Port of Seattle alleging wrongdoing that led to his wrongful conviction. The lawsuit accused Port of Seattle officer Ronald Parker of gross negligence with intentional disregard for the constitutional rights of Titus.
00:24:25
Speaker
I will say that even in 1980, being accused of a sex crime like that would put an innocent person in a world of hurt. Would you agree with that? Yeah. well Oh, yeah. I would say, I mean, obviously now too, but any sort of violent crime, even if you're ultimately exonerated, you're never back to how you were. It changes you forever. This guy was an innocent person plucked from obscurity. Yeah. literally plucked from obscurity, charged and convicted. He took an alternative route, which is interesting to me, because I don't think that something like this would happen now, because for one thing, you've got a defendant isolating 70 discrepancies, because he did it himself, right? And like, you just don't see that kind of legwork going into yeah yeah people in this type of position now, right? Yeah, I tend to agree with you. When I pull this up and like look at the summary in the court records, here's what appears to have gone on here. It's really interesting. So this is October 12th, 1980. This girl at 17 years old, who is raped by the airport, she was hitchhiking.
00:25:38
Speaker
So technically the place where she's assaulted is south of the Seattle Tacoma International Airport. It's actually on land owned by the Port of Seattle. So the Port of Seattle police take her report and they put out the bolo. They describe the rapist as being 25 to 30 years old. He is driving a royal blue car, which is a really specific color.
00:26:03
Speaker
She said that on his car, it had temporary license plates and the seats were made of cloth and he had a beard. Based on the timing of what would have happened, the rape would have had to have taken place around 6.45 p.m. The victim is able to walk to a nearby house and after 10 or so minutes of conversation with the owners of the house there. She telephones the police at 7.22 p.m. There are tire prints found near the scene which matched a Michelin XYZ tire. That is a standard tire on 1981 Honda Accord LX cars. And that's a model that was first sold in October 1980. So
00:26:54
Speaker
that's important this is october 1980 whoever has this car really can't have had it for more than four weeks the victim reported that in the car there was a large brown folder and that the rapist who was driving the car wore a three-piece suit I'm just throwing this out there. This is all from Paul Henderson's work, but I'm throwing this out there. This is what he pulled from the court records. How many rapists wear three piece suits? I don't know the answer to that question. I'm throwing it out. And I don't know in 80, like what the difference would be. I think that everybody on the block would have noticed somebody in a three piece suit today.
00:27:33
Speaker
It's weird. When Steve Titus is pulled from this photo array and he is identified in a lineup, he has some similarities here. He had a beard. He had a new car that was royal blue. It was a Chevrolet Chevette though. The car did not have Michelin tire and it did not have cloth seats. The car did have a large round folder which Titus later claimed he didn't know and he believed it had implanted in the car by the police. And one of the more important things was Steve Titus didn't own any suits. So at trial, a psychologist named Elizabeth Loftus is brought up. She argued that the victim had illicit a false memory of the attacker because of the way the police had done the lineup. Essentially she's saying that the lineup was biased from the get go. Which is probably true because the picture they take of Steve Titus probably isn't going to match the rest of them. Right. And also you have to keep in mind once the identification has been made, botched as it may be, you have now planted
Edward Lee King and Legal Complexities
00:28:38
Speaker
that in your head. Right. And you're talking about a 17 year old girl. I would argue that the 17 year old part of that makes that person more susceptible to believe that they're doing the right thing when people in positions of authority are guiding them. If the brown envelope
00:28:56
Speaker
situation is legit you've already got like sort of a strike against like well he's saying it's not his it's there who put it there right yeah because that was one of the key pieces of of evidence with regard to the victim's ah recollection of the crime Yeah, so Elizabeth Loftus, in her testimony, what she says is that the victim clearly initially claimed Steve Titus was the man who looked, quote, the most similar to the attacker, which is something you pointed out and you've pointed out in a lot of the cases we talked about related to. That's not an identification, in my opinion.
00:29:34
Speaker
No, that would be, in my mind, that would be an investigative lead, not an identification. It's either someone to rule out, or you need to find someone who looks like him, or, as she said, the most similar. Right, but if you're looking at something and you say, like, to me, it's it's actually doing the opposite, because you're going, well, this guy looks the most like him. Well, if it was him, wouldn't they just say that was him? Not, this is the one that looks the most like him?
00:30:03
Speaker
I'm with you. I'm going by what's available in these court records and Henderson's writing and the ah the later lawsuits. Now, what Elizabeth Loftus points out here is that when the victim testifies,
00:30:16
Speaker
She says that she definitely knew that it was him. And Elizabeth Loftus believed that her perceptions have been changed throughout the process of going to court and the trial process that's happened over several months through cues by people on the prosecution side, which created a false memory. theyre really meant to reinforce support for a victim, but they inadvertently support her wrongful identification of Steve Titus. Now, another thing that comes up is at trial, different prosecution testimony was changed and evidence of innocence gets explained away by their experts and law enforcement officers. As a result, when Titus is convicted wrongly of this rape in the first degree, this is a crime that carries a mandatory prison sentence. This is not something you're getting probation for.
00:31:08
Speaker
Now, when Henderson dug into this, it's interesting. There's a little bit of a kerfuffle between attorneys here. Titus hires a new attorney named Jeff Jones because he wanted Jeff Jones to pursue an appeal of his conviction. This is before sentencing. But Jeff Jones gets involved when Paul Henderson goes to work and starts talking to the judge about delay. The first approach Jeff Jones takes is he tells the judge that he feels like the attorney that took it to trial had been ambushed by different surprise testimony, which had directly contradicted the evidence that was made available to the defense and the narrative reports and the investigative reports from the Port of Seattle Police Department. Sort of a gift that comes out of all of this is
00:31:56
Speaker
Paul Henderson writing about this, while the delay for sentencing is going on, catches the attention of a local municipal police officer. He had been reading Paul Henderson's work, and he came up with a lead for a new suspect. This guy works for the King County Sheriff's Office, and they end up being involved in in the the investigation that leads to Edward Lee King.
00:32:20
Speaker
Now, Edward Lee King, for those of you who don't know, if you need something to do over the holidays, he is the the person in Jack Olson's book, Predator, which is rape, madness, and injustice in Seattle is the subtitle. If you need another book about this case, that's based off of this. Here's the sculptor evidence in that reporting that was done by Henderson that that caught King County's attention. Now, the timeline was an important factor in this case, and I mentioned it earlier on when we were sort of talking about it just from the registries' perspective.
00:32:48
Speaker
Steve Titus had left his parents' home at 6.10 pm on October 12, 1980. He had been there with many guests at his father's birthday party. At around 6.20, he had been seen by a coffee shop waitress. The waitress at different times thought she had seen him at 6.30 pm or 7 pm. Titus had been home by 7 pm and had made a long distance telephone call from his apartment. I don't know if you remember those days, but this would have been billed to him, so it would have shown up on his phone bill as a separate thing. It's not a call vlog thing. He was probably dialing from, it wouldn't have been rotary, it probably would have been push button, but it would have been a pickup phone. This would have been in his local phone records, that he was dialing long distance.
00:33:31
Speaker
The distance between the scene of the rape and Titus's apartment would have required about 19 and a half minutes, according to Paul Henderson's work. So that's a pretty long drive, would you agree? Yeah, it's not 30 seconds, right? there's It's a substantial drive, yeah. Based on where he ends up and where he's pulled over, he could not have been at the south side of the port of Seattle, below the Seattle-Tacoma Airport, assaulting this girl at the time the crime occurred. So even though he's convicted, these are part of the list of just discrepancies. He did get held in jail for one night after the conviction before his new attorney was able to get sentencing delayed and get him out. Now, I don't know how you feel about this. I'm gonna cover a little bit of Edward King.
00:34:16
Speaker
But I want to say something that's not super holiday related about Steve Titus. You know how his story ends, right? Yeah, I do. So the charges are dismissed and Steve Tye is suing everybody. He sues the Port of Seattle and the Port of Seattle Police Department. And the way that he's suing them is that their officers had changed and planted evidence and had convinced the victim to alter a testimony. It's a big deal. If it happened, it's constitutional violations right and left. It would definitely be a major deal.
00:34:47
Speaker
But just before the case is about to go to trial, even though he's only in his early 30, Steve Titus has a heart attack and dies. I feel like it's come up before. I know we haven't like talked about it extensively or anything, but that is not, I mean, this is, this is probably very close, but like it's not uncommon for stress like this to kill someone or, you know, I've said like, and does it end up being karma? But I feel like the case is a pretty clear case of he really didn't do it. Yeah.
00:35:17
Speaker
And it's hard to believe that the investigation was well-intentioned. I don't see how anybody thought the investigation was well-intentioned. They had quite a few facts that they just ignored. yeah I don't blame the victim, the 17-year-old. You know, you said the narrative says, like, rape conviction is something that you're most certainly going to serve time for. and It's an interesting thing that that distinction has to be made because of course it is, but it hasn't always been that way. I just was pointing it out because I don't know if everyone knows what like mandatory minimums and mandatory sentencing has been like over the years. It's bounced around quite a bit.
00:35:55
Speaker
the reason that sex offenses are they're punished so severely now like with sex registries and you know you have of course if you rape somebody you're going to prison is because it it wasn't always that way and they it's like they it was a I don't want to say backlash, but it was almost like making up for lost time a particularly egregious Sexual assault can get somebody in prison for as long as a murder. Yeah, there's a lot of psychology behind the thinking there, but it's taken very seriously now, which it should be. It absolutely should be. But it's interesting that you're not the one who did it. It's actually like said like, oh, once he was convicted, despite all these flaws in the case, like he was going to do time, right? Yeah, if I remember correctly, I think it was a five to 15 years for first degree rape at that time in that area.
00:36:49
Speaker
We've talked about all kinds of cases where there were very surprising sentences for sexual assaults, right? right They were not life in prison. It's an awful thing to think about, so I don't think about it very often, but it does come up sometimes. But yeah, of course he's going to prison, except it did just the fact that like it comes up like that there to me is very interesting because of I have a feeling then it was rather new, right? Yes.
00:37:18
Speaker
It was a take it or leave it type thing. There were times, and and it's weird because they went almost overboard. And that's why I feel like it's always really important to distinguish violent crimes from like non-violent crimes, right? Yeah. and Because breaking the law, of course, is a crime. But when you have somebody who has you know put their hands on somebody and hurt someone, it warrants a different level of punishment than other things that don't hurt anybody. and that distinction has to be made. Now we've had these, our system is sort of cyclical as far as whether we're having mandatory minimums, three strikes in or out, like all these things that our genius politicians have come up with that ultimately undo themselves eventually, right? yeah because there's certain things. And I feel like just sort of the public at large can look at situations and be like, well, yeah, that person probably shouldn't be in jail for the rest of their life for the three times that they were dealing, what, pot or something. I don't know. I don't know what an example would be, but like something to that effect. Right. And I feel like a lot of times the humanity of it gets lost. And in this case, in particular, there was an implication that the seriousness of this crime is what prompted him to review it himself, get a journalist involved, another attorney involved.
00:38:44
Speaker
In other words, if he weren't going to do time, maybe he wouldn't have done all that. Obviously, a sexual assault is something that deserves to be punished. And this was a 17-year-old victim. Yeah. It's interesting though.
00:38:56
Speaker
but Like why wasn't that conveyed at trial, right? What do you mean? Well, because he was convicted before he like put it forward. I mean, I know he got another. It happens really fast. Like, so he's convicted on in March. This had just happened in October. So it's literally three, four months later, November, December, you got the holidays going on November and December, January and February trials in February.
00:39:23
Speaker
Right, and I guess it was like, so maybe he would, like after the whirlwind happened, he was like, okay, like, I know I didn't do this, so how can I show that? So maybe, but look.
00:39:35
Speaker
My take on him, so this guy is 31 at trial. His girlfriend's 21. I did notice, so after he dies, the estate moves forward with the the trial against Port of Seattle, and they said something interesting in there. He had a teenage son. When he died of a heart attack, he's 35 years old. His son had just become a teenager, so he was 13, and Steve Titus' parents held it in trust. They settled for something like $2.8 million dollars by the time it's all over and done with. I think Steve Titus in his head going to trial is like a hired an attorney. I've got another attorney lined up that I thought about clearly.
00:40:19
Speaker
The system is going to work and see I did not do this. Exactly. That's exactly how I figured it. Like, could you think to yourself, I've done everything right here. This is going to work. They're going to realize it's not me. That's what he was thinking. So you want to know a little bit about the guy? Sure. I pulled this from State versus King. I guess the good part of this is that Edward Lee King ends up going to prison for all of this, even though ah Steve Titus did die. This is like part of a petition, like a court document where the Supreme Court of Washington is hearing in 1996 bits and pieces of this case for some reason. And I was like, what is going on? So Edward Lee King in July of 1981. So what we were just talking about would end in 1981 in terms of that's when Steve Titus
00:41:09
Speaker
conviction is overturned. He's not convicted for very long because Paul Henderson gets involved and Steve Titus has made this list of 70 things and the judge agrees to a delay and he switches attorneys which gives you a little bit of delay so the attorney can catch up. So pre-sentencing his convictions overturned and Edward Lee King gets charged by the King County prosecutor. A lot of kings in here, sorry.
00:41:36
Speaker
with four counts of first degree rape while armed with a deadly weapon. The parties reach a plea agreement, and Edward King pleads guilty to two counts of first degree rape all armed with a deadly weapon, but he admits to raping four victims. The state recommends that he be sent to Western State Hospital for treatment as a sexual psychopath, which is pursuant to RCW 7106 as far as Washington's ah statutes. The court accepts this plea on September 17th, 1981,
00:42:09
Speaker
On October 21, 1981, the court sentenced King to two consecutive 20-year terms. Do you follow all that? Yes. For 40 years, basically. They suspend the sentence for him. He has four rapes that he's convicted with a weapon. He's sentenced to 40 years, but they suspend that sentence with a stack of conditions. The most important condition was that Edward King enter and successfully complete the sexual psychopathy program at Western State University.
00:42:41
Speaker
The court then ordered Edward King to Western State to undergo evaluation for determination of psychopathy. On January 18th, 1982, he comes back into court. He pleads guilty the three additional counts of first-degree rape while armed with a deadly weapon. Before sentencing for those crimes, King is transferred to the custody of the Department of Corrections for Washington State. They return him to Western State for reevaluation of his aminability to treatment at Western State Hospital. In April of 1982, so just a couple months later, hospital staff report to the King County Superior Court that Edward King is a sexual psychopath. The report noted that during an intake assessment interview, King admitted committing five rapes in California, seven rapes in Washington between 1976 and 1981 that he had never been prosecuted or called for.
00:43:36
Speaker
Based on that report, the court found King to be a sexual psychopath and committed him to Western state hospital. The commitment was made subject to sentencing in a Snohomish County case. All right. Let's just talk about this for a second. This guy, he had four victims that he admitted to. They then bring him back in on three more victims. So that's seven. Okay. Yes.
00:44:01
Speaker
We have five more rapes in California, so that's 12, and seven rapes that he hasn't been prosecuted for in Washington. 19 rapes, okay? yeah May 7th, 1982. This is a year after Titus is let off the hook because King is caught. The Snohomish County court sentences King to three consecutive 20-year sentences. So now we've got 60. So King County gave him 40 years. Snohomish County gives him 60 years. But the court suspends these sentences on the condition that King complied with all the conditions set forth in the King County case. This ban now has
00:44:38
Speaker
A hundred years suspended. Have we ever explained what suspended means? ah i I don't know. We can. So suspended sentences are sentences that in lieu of other things, hang over your head until you complete other stipulations. It's like the final straw hasn't fallen yet. Yeah, so you have this sentence, you're gonna do these one hundred years unless you do these five things that the court sets out. Now sometimes, if the court really hates you, they're doing it because something in the statute makes them suspend your sentence. And if that's the case, they're gonna stack so much stuff on it, you're never gonna complete it. But they want you to go through it anyways, because maybe it'll help you. Right, but now a day nowadays, you're not going to have a hundred years worth of a suspended sentence.
00:45:23
Speaker
No, you should not, you should not. Because like we're talking about very small things that get suspended, otherwise you're gonna just go to jail, right? Yeah, so the court recognizes that this is a weird thing. So King County Court and Snohomish County Court and all the prosecutors and all the defenses underneath, they talk and they write up a subsequent stipulation between everybody involved.
00:45:50
Speaker
that Edward King is going to be subject to the jurisdiction of the King County Courts, even when it comes to his Snohomish County convictions. They're basically trying to keep this under one roof because they're looking at this going, this guy has raped 19 victims. We need to take this seriously. Was his attorney involved in that?
00:46:11
Speaker
um I'm not 100% sure. Because I would have to say that they can't like unilaterally do that, like just the state. The defense counsel was involved in that, yes. and it's an agree It's a stipulation between all the parties. Yeah, that's all I was saying. The courts in both sides of the, yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that, because like less mistakes happen. like The more people that are involved, the more mistakes that could possibly occur, right?
00:46:40
Speaker
Right. While he's in this sexual psychopathy program, he's in there for 36 months. He completes all 10 steps. During his treatment, guess what happened? He died? No. He raped somebody? No. He admits to the staff members that in in addition to the 19 rapes he stipulated to, he believes he's committed between 40 and 50 other rapes.
00:47:08
Speaker
that have not been discussed. Despite his completion of this program, the hospital staff is concerned that they may not understand what they're dealing with. And King may not have integrated the necessary changes needed that would impact his character and his personality after only 36 months of this program. Wait, because he's gonna like get out? Oh, yeah.
00:47:30
Speaker
um And so that's why we no longer have a 10-step sexual psychopathy rehabilitation path in our judicial system. Right. So the hospital staff says this is above our pay grade. So they bring in an expert who is a sex offender program consultant. And in February of 1986, the staff at Western State Hospital, they report to the court that while King has received the maximum benefit of the treatment,
00:47:59
Speaker
and should not be recommitted for further treatment under the same program, it is their opinion he may not be safe to be at large in the community. In support of the conclusions, the staff gave the court copies of evaluations performed on King of the hospital's request.
00:48:17
Speaker
The hospital provided a copy of an evaluation prepared a defense counsel's request. In the evaluations, both the defense psychologists and the hospital staff say that King had confessed to approximately 50 more rapes. On April 25, 1986, the King County Superior Court revoked all of the suspended sentences and committed them to the Department of Corrections.
00:48:43
Speaker
The court found that King had failed to successfully complete the sexual psychopathy program, violating the terms and conditions of his probation and therefore his suspended sentences. So the court reinstated original sentences in King and Snohomish counties with credit for time served in the Western State Hospital Program. They ordered the King County terms to run concurrently with the Snohomish County terms. So they have now collapsed the 100 years to 60 years with 40 years running concurrently.
00:49:14
Speaker
Edward King appeals to revocation as an abuse of discretion and a denial of his due process, but the Court of Appeals dismisses the appeal as frivolous and they grant the appellate counsel's motion to withdraw from having anything to do with this case. but Basically, King's attorney comes in and says, I have no idea what's happening. This is just going to keep getting worse. Well, I feel like there's some common sense that's lacking here in that Well, but learned from nonetheless. I don't know how many times this kind of stuff happened, but we now know that like you don't get 100 years for sexual attack, sexual violence against various women who I assume he probably didn't know any of them. I don't really know and get put in a program, right?
00:50:05
Speaker
Right that doesn't happen now granted I don't think that he it should have ever been a situation where he had a suspended Senate I don't feel like now you would you like you might get treatment But like you're not gonna get out after your treatment like you've got to do I would say that like if you're found guilty of rape you're going to do very close to 20 ish years in jail. That's my guess well um What about 50 rapes Well, right. I mean, obviously that would be more, right? Okay. Let let me keep going because it gets weirder. Okay. Well, this is a different time period too. so I agree. Yeah, no, I know. Yeah. ah So in January of 1987, the indeterminate sentence review board, which is part of the Department of Corrections, they conduct an admission hearing and they set King's minimum term at 180 months on count one of his Snohomish County convictions.
00:51:01
Speaker
95 months on each of counts two and three of the Stohomish County convictions, and 84 months on each of the two King County convictions. Now we're just all over the place. But the board maintained that the concurrent and consecutive designations ordered by the trial courts, whereby the minimum terms for each cause, would run consecutive to each other, but concurrently with the terms for the other cause number. The total minimum term at this point would be 370 months.
00:51:33
Speaker
Follow me? Yes. So that's 180 plus 95 plus 95. The board based this exceptional term in part on Western State's 1986 of the previous year report on Edward King as well as the subsequent evaluations of Edward King. The board also noted that King himself stated at this admission hearings, this is taking place after all of that other stuff, okay, that he had upwards of 55 unaccounted for rapes.
00:52:05
Speaker
So we were at 19 plus 50, and now he is saying there are also 55 unaccounted for rapes. In February 1989, King files a personal restraint petition in the Court of Appeals challenging the board's reliance on what they what he claims are uncharged and unproven crimes, to which he is admitted during his therapeutic sessions,
00:52:29
Speaker
in treatment and the admission to the Department of Corrections when setting his exceptional minimum-term Senate. King claimed that his therapist had promised him confidentiality. In October of 1989, the Court of Appeals transferred the petition to King County Superior Court for a decision on its merits, and in February of 1992, King moved to withdraw his guilty pleas.
00:52:51
Speaker
so that's 11 years after he pled guilty. King also moved to vacate the trial court judgments and sentences, his probation revocation, and the board's minimum term.
00:53:03
Speaker
The Superior Court denied those motions and following a fact-finding hearing, they dismissed the personal restraint petition as well. The Superior Court found that King was told in February of 1982 that information he provided Western State Hospital could be made available to the court and that the rules of confidentiality would not apply. The court also found that King was warned that his admissions could be used against him and that he was told that fully admitting his crimes was a treatment. That's kind of a catch-22 there. Well, right, but that's the whole point. It's relevant to whether he has successfully completed the sexual psychopath program, right? Right. Which, a you know, sexual psychopath program. Really? If he has these outstanding crimes, right, that nobody knew about, that haven't come up, but he did speak about it. You have to start questioning the psychopathy there because
00:53:56
Speaker
I don't know that that's really what would happen. He could also be exaggerating it. Who knows? That's part of the whole point is that you've got to speak about it. But none of that stuff is confidential. If you're doing it because you have a suspended jail sentence to be there, you have no expectation of privacy. I am with you. I mean, this whole thing is crazy to me. Look, I just went through a lot of stuff there because it was interesting to me. Ultimately, they kick it all out. And he is still in prison to this day.
00:54:25
Speaker
Of course he is, because that's where he needs to be, right? um it did It ultimately worked itself out. It had a a strange way of getting there. This is the type of person that's very dangerous, right? He's very, very dangerous. He's 72 years old as of the time we're recording this in fall of 2024. And I went back and did some math to what it would have been like. So 2024, he was born in 1952, so he's 28 years old.
00:54:54
Speaker
How can one person commit that many rapes? Well, we don't know what else is wrong with them, right? Like, that's a lot of rapes, especially. That is a lot of rapes. But also, so you have to take into consideration, like, what they're getting out of what they're saying. And I always go back to Henry Lee Lucas, how he was confessing because it made him, like, everybody's best friend.
00:55:20
Speaker
yeah Well, that's why I mentioned that there was a Catch-22 in all of this. He has to like complete the requirements, but I don't know like where he would get the impression that he had been guaranteed confidentiality because the whole point of these programs is to report you back to the court and the prosecutors so they know what they're dealing with.
00:55:39
Speaker
Right, but we could be talking about, um like ah like a defense attorney would take that stance, but we don't know that he took that stance, right? That's true. He could have been, good because those are two different things happening, which is not, it's not unheard of that that occurs. It's just, we don't know what his prerogative was. Not to mention, like this guy clearly has issues, right? I mean... Just from the rapes alone.
00:56:02
Speaker
As many rapes as he supposedly had done at 28 years old, like when did he have time to do anything else? I don't even know. And that's like i'm I'm looking at it. So we start out with these four rapes that from my impression, these four rapes and the ones they come back and charge him with, all but one of them So seven total, not eight, but all but one of them, they look like they have physical evidence linking them to him. And in my mind, seven or eight rapes at 20, whatever years old is a lot. So I have, you get fortune and glory out of stacking 50 on top of that and then more and more and more. I don't think fortune and glory is the right word, but like, why aren't these people reporting the rapes?
00:56:53
Speaker
Well, that's the thing. If you consider this timeframe, rapes were frequently reported and and then not solved. Like this guy is probably a prime candidate to solve like half the rapes in Seattle and wherever he was in California, like on the backlog. Just run him against everything.
00:57:14
Speaker
Possibly, um yeah. And I understand what you're saying like about it. but I guess the potential for it being BS is there too, because if you're crazy enough to commit six to seven rapes and think that like talking about it has given you a reason to make make up numbers, I guess, then yeah, like you're mentally ill enough. Sorry, I said the word crazy, but I think it counts in this scenario. I think it's more than mental illness. I think like psychopathy is the right word.
00:57:42
Speaker
And like if he's that sick, there's no telling like what else he would do for like attention. I agree. And I think that there's no question that somebody that has raped anybody is a psychopath. It is an interesting point of time to see this sort of unfold where we've got this wrongful conviction, but quick sort of overturn, right? Yeah. And then you've got a guy who like, he took the time to say, Hey, I didn't do this. He pointed out a journalist presented to get somebody's attention. it it like all the right pieces started moving. I don't personally see that happening very much, especially not now, because it's really hard to get anything done. No, and and those guys end up taking down a serial rapist who is at least a serial rapist of the crimes he's linked to physical evidence-wise, he might be much more prolific.
Themes and Reflections on Justice
00:58:37
Speaker
I was going to say, if you look at it on a larger scale with regard to all that I just said, where they basically set up somebody to take the fall for it, right it becomes this sort of like, ah you know, what the heck is even happening? Not to mention like, I mean, Washington is where Bundy came out of, right? Yeah. And this would have been that timeframe. Well, right. But remember he didn't get arrested there though. No, you're right. Oh, wow. Yeah, you're right. And so it's almost course seattle it's almost like that you didn't but no but he did he committed crimes in Washington. So we talked about Bundy like a long time ago now, but like a lot of his crimes were completely unadjudicated, which means
00:59:22
Speaker
they didn't suffer through the process with them, right? And so here is a, per like, it would be unheard of and in this type of situation where we never, of course, it's like shameful behavior. So it doesn't come to the forefront. But if we could put that aside, I would love to know, like, did the officers truly believe that this was the perpetrator? Right? Yeah. Did they recognize what they were doing? Did they think that oh it was just fine? Certainly she wouldn't accuse somebody who wasn't the person. So if you could put aside like, okay, you're not gonna get in trouble for this, like we won't even say who you are, like we just need to know why you did these particular steps, right? Because
01:00:04
Speaker
There were a lot of people that were unbiased and individuals that had no reason to lie for him that were able to say like without question he that Steve Titus was not the perpetrator, right?
01:00:19
Speaker
Yeah. Because there's like a whole party going on and the timing was very succinct with regard to the phone records and everything. but We know he's a hundred percent innocent. So in this particular case, like we know also who was purportedly the person who did it. I've never seen where they actually double check that, but somebody had to. what that's Okay. So this is what I was about. Do you have a lot more on this? yeah i I was doing that thing where you're, you said something a long time ago and it stuck with me ever since.
01:00:48
Speaker
You're like, I always wonder what happened in some of these cases. So when I came across all this craziness related to the appeals that just go on for years and years and years, what I was actually looking for is if Edward King had ever like gone, they should test that DNA because I didn't do that. That's what I was looking for was like, did they confirm it for him and be like, yes, you committed all the rapes.
01:01:15
Speaker
And like we know it because your DNA matches. I can't find that ever having happened. I'm not surprised. That's how I found this sexual psychopathy thing is because I was looking to see if like, so at some point did Edward King's convictions get overturned? Because I like to follow that thread for a while. And then I was like following this program and I was like, he just keeps admitting this stuff. Anyways, that's how I got here. I feel like a rapist.
01:01:41
Speaker
just any run-of-the-mill rapist, I guess, could wear it like a badge of honor and they might exaggerate. I don't know what this man looked like. I don't know what his size or stature was. I don't really know much about him. But ah that would be interesting to know because it almost sounds like too convenient.
01:02:01
Speaker
What do you mean, too convenient? Well, because the person that saw the article was an investigator who had worked on another case, but that victim said it was not Steve Titus, right? Right. But it was this other guy. I'm sorry, I got too many names going around. Edward Lee King. Edward Lee King, yeah.
01:02:23
Speaker
And so, I mean, she did identify him, I guess, right? Yeah, he's just a slight white guy with a, you know, parted haircut and a beard when he's arrested. I don't know what he looks like now. I didn't i didn't go in and pull his most recent mug shot or anything. Well, it doesn't matter. I mean, if the victim identified him and, you know, it seemed like um the victim eventually realized that she had was mistaken with Titus, right? Yeah. Yeah, I don't have anything else on this one. This is kind of a downer.
01:02:54
Speaker
It is a downer. I do feel like this is a good example though of the stress killing somebody. I feel like ah if he was very young, right, to die from heart failure or the cardiac event or whatever happened, and we only know that because it comes up in the context of him compensation for having gone through that, right? Well, this is one of those cases where I started to wonder a thing, and I'm gonna mention as the end of the episode, it is not meant for you to like open this can of worms when I say it, but I do want you to think about it. What if Steve Titus dying of a heart attack could lead to a charge of murder for Edward Lee King in a novel prosecution-style argument?
01:03:41
Speaker
I think somebody can make that argument. i also I personally find that to be not really what the justice system is designed for. and so The only thing I would say about that is like as opposed to charging somebody with murder in that context, like just find them to begin with. Find the rapist to begin with, right? Yeah. yeah that's Yeah. I don't think there's a better note to end this on than what you just said. Find them to begin with. his though That's the way to do it.
01:04:14
Speaker
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01:06:21
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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