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Season Five Home for the Holidays 23
41 Plays34 minutes 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 and Content Warning
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.
Case of Wrongful Convictions
00:00:28
Speaker
We had a couple of cases where we talked about like multiple exonerees and multiple people being involved. I think this case, which is somewhere in the teens for us in terms of Home for the Holidays, is ah an interesting one in that there's multiple co-defendants early on and they end up all being convicted. And then later we we find out it wasn't the case that they should have been. Do you have something to say there?
00:00:56
Speaker
This goes along with my three man situation. I was going to say that. Okay, so I'm actually starting to have a bias. Obviously, when we're covering exonerations, these people have been exonerated, right? I realize now I don't know if it's I don't know if I'm a victim of my own confirmation bias or not.
00:01:19
Speaker
Okay. You just mean from the perspective of like you, you have the idea and I feel like every single case that has multiple defendants, it especially three, okay. It needs to be reevaluated. Well, I mean, that's, it's a formula that was used by investigators to wrongfully convict people. I would,
00:01:43
Speaker
tend to agree that it might have been, ah it's it's either a formula or it's like a byproduct of a bad pattern. Right, right, right. I'm not saying that they set out to do it. I'm saying that like when you have three guys, okay, for some reason that's a magical number. You can get the qualities necessary to get a conviction with three for whatever reason. I'm gonna go with probably hardly any crimes are ever committed by three people.
00:02:12
Speaker
i Yeah, especially this type of crime, I think we could look at it from the perspective of like I think we could say like certain bank robberies and things like that are like three people make sense there. With these three folks, we end up in sort of a ah strange case here. but We've got a 17-year-old black male, an 18-year-old black male, and a 20-year-old black male. This is all taking place in 1975 in Ohio.
00:02:45
Speaker
ah Cuyahoga County is the the county here, and we have a murder charge attempted murder charges, robbery charges. They're all going to be convicted in 1975. They're all young black men. The contributing factors to their convictions are perjury or false accusation and official misconduct. There is no DNA, interestingly enough, that contributes to these exonerations.
00:03:13
Speaker
And these cases are a little backwards in a couple of different ways.
Acid Attacks Overview
00:03:18
Speaker
ah The sources for today are the National Registry of Exonerations. We've pulled some old CVS information. Something called Advanced Media was in here. The Cleveland Scene had articles about these guys, as well as the plane dealer, ah the Cleveland News at Cleveland dot.com. and and MSN News had a couple of articles in here. and I also pulled from StoryCorps a couple of stories about this particular case and just kind of used them to double-check the background on some of them. We're talking about a case from May 19th of 1975. A 59-year-old man named Harold Franks, who is described as a money order salesman, which I guess you could only do in 1975. I don't know that that job exists today.
00:04:04
Speaker
He left a neighborhood grocery store in Cleveland, Ohio off of Fairhill Road, and he was confronted by two men demanding his briefcase, which would have had his livelihood inside of it. He was confronted by two men who demanded his briefcase, which would have had his livelihood inside of it. When Harold Franks resisted the two men, they clubbed them on the head with a piece of pipe, and they splashed acid in his face.
00:04:32
Speaker
One of the robbers then shot him twice in the chest and fired a shot through the store's glass front door. Harold Franks died. And the 58-year-old co-owner of the store, a woman named Ann Robinson, she was shot once in the neck, but she survived. The two robbers, they fled with the briefcase, which contained about $425. They got into a green car that was parked down the street and they escaped from the scene. So let's just start with this crime here. Because this is kind of unusual in terms of crimes that we talked about. We haven't talked about many
00:05:08
Speaker
acid splashes to the face, have we? no I, over the years, have found that, like, that's more of a terroristic kind of crime. There was a place in time where it was popular to hear about acid splash crimes kind of in Europe and around the U.S. But we don't hear about them as much anymore. So one of the things I did Talking about this was I went back and looked at different asset attacks that had occurred It is the strangest type of crime and I was like this very rarely happens And then I was proven wrong from 1999 to 2013
00:05:46
Speaker
More than 3,512 people in Bangladesh were attacked with assets. In India, they have a reported 300 attacks per year. These are very, very violent attacks. The motivation of perpetrators, according to the collective that I've read, were the intention of the attacker to cause shame or pain rather than to kill the victim. And in Britain, such attacks, particularly those against men, which are actually believed to be vastly underreported,
00:06:14
Speaker
So, as a result, many of them are not in any official statistics. But the motivations of perpetrators there ah included personal conflict related to intimate relationships and sexual rejection, sexual related jealousy, revenge for refusal of advances, proposals of marriage, and gang violence, rivalries of a romantic or other nature, including business or conflicts over land ownership, farm animals, ownership of housing or ownership of property. So that makes asset attacks one of the weirdest things I've ever thought about. Well, it actually you just sort of by presenting the statistics, you sort of illustrated the barbaric nature of it, right? Yeah, it's very barbaric.
00:07:04
Speaker
Because when you have disagreements, a lot of the disagreements, like what you were just talking about, land, property, whatever, I mean, those are not things you could splash acid on somebody for in a civilized society. Right. Correct. So the US doesn't even rate in acid attacks. That's how rare it is here. I was going to say, do you have any idea like what they're counting as acid?
00:07:30
Speaker
So it could be any kind of caustic substance that is thrown on people. Well, my immediate thought was like, does it include like a glass of wine to the face? No. Okay. It's so the very generic definition that they give for like this type of vitriol attack is a form of violent assault where it involves the act of throwing acid or a similarly corrosive substance onto the body of another person.
00:07:59
Speaker
So generally, it's just a corrosive liquid of some time. So acid is kind of a misnomer a little bit. It included um ammonia, caustic acid, hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, and nitric acid, among other things. Do you think that it is availability?
00:08:16
Speaker
It could be, yeah, it could be that like they're looking for some way to do damage to someone as opposed to a gun or a knife. It's possible somebody could get their hands on, especially like ammonia or something like that, far easier than a gun, right? Yes.
00:08:33
Speaker
Now, the odd thing about this particular case, they slash acid, but... But then they also shoot. Right. And so to me, splashing acid was almost like a diversion or or something. Yeah. I wondered if there wasn't some kind of dual nature to this. like to catch him by surprise, and then maybe it didn't go the way they thought, and so that's why he was shot? Well, you've got a pipe, you've got acid, and you've got a gun, so like they came armed for bear for this. I pulled up acid attacks around the world like just kind of in general. The more interesting ones don't happen in the U.S., but some of the ones I looked at in the U.S. were there's a ah broadcast journalist who specialized in like union and labor issues,
00:09:17
Speaker
In April of 1956, when he's leaving a restaurant called Lindy's in Midtown Manhattan, he was attacked and left blind as a result of that attack. Now, allegedly, this attack was motivated by his reporting on the influence of organized crime on certain corrupt labor unions. That was a different kind of attack than most of what I read about.
00:09:40
Speaker
Now in 1959, an attorney hired a man to throw lye, which is an alkaline as opposed to an acid substance, but it still has corrosive effects, ah into the face of his ex-girlfriend. She was left blind and permanently scarred. ah The attorney ended up getting 14 years in prison for the incident. in August of 2006, a 22-year-old single mother living in Detroit, she was attacked, and the attack left her with third and fourth degree burns on her face, throat, and arms, and it left her blind, and it caused one ear to have to be removed. She was also pregnant at the time, and she miscarried. We have another asset attack in Chicago, Illinois, in July of 2008.
00:10:27
Speaker
it's a young woman is just walking out of her apartment she's headed to her job and three teenagers poured cups of battery acid on her head on august 30th 2010 in vancouver washington a woman there made national headlines after she claimed that a stranger who she described as a generic african-american woman approach her on a walk and through a cup of acid in her face resulting in serious burns but she ends up admitting that she had lied about the attack she attributed her actions to some kind of disorder a mental disorder that she had and she admitted that she had poured the acid on herself
00:11:06
Speaker
I was going to say, I felt like a woman doing it is weird. Yeah, she ended up charged with three counts of second-degree theft related to donations she'd received, and she ended up charged with lying to police. I believe the second-degree theft charges were later dropped because she gave the money back, and she ended up having to have some mental health treatment.
00:11:28
Speaker
There was a 17-year-old girl attacked in Dallas in 2017, and in Wisconsin in November 2019, a man there was attacked. There was another attack of a student at Hofstra University in April 2021, and that student suffered injuries to her face, arms, and throat from a battery asset attack. But a lot of these assailants were never caught.
00:11:52
Speaker
which is that's one of the interesting things about these types of attacks. Well, I was going to ask you, so the lawyer who hired somebody to throw it on his ex, was he, did he hire somebody to murder her or did he hire somebody to throw acid on her?
00:12:05
Speaker
ah So the story with him, his name is Burton Pugis, and he was known as Burt Pugis. He's a New York city-based attorney. The deal is he was seeing this woman, Linda Riss. At the time that he was seeing her, I think he would have been 29 or 30 years old. She was 21. And she found out that Pugis was married. So Burt's married. He not only has a wife, but he also has a daughter. And Linda Riss breaks up with him. He had already threatened to kill or hurt her if she left him.
00:12:35
Speaker
It was one of the situations where his like the the statements that he gave were and to her and to his friends and other people. Basically, if I can't have her, no one can. And then he had specified that statement to her in writing, saying, when I get through with you,
00:12:52
Speaker
no one else is going to want you. Now, Linda Riss had gone to the New York Police Department and they ignored her. She moves on from her life and she ends up getting engaged to a guy named Larry Schwartz. Her leaving him put him pretty far out there, but when he found out she had been engaged to someone else, he hires three assailants to attack her. The specification of the attack wasn't to kill her, it was to maim her. They throw this lie in her face and she's basically gonna be permanently disfigured. He ends up being convicted of the crime, assault with a deadly weapon with the intent to kill or inflict serious injury, and conspiracy, assault assault with a deadly weapon, intent to kill or inflict serious injury. He spent 14 years in prison for this. He wrote her a letter every day. He was subsequently disbarred. He gets out of prison in 1974, and guess what happens? They got married.
00:13:50
Speaker
The two of them get married. Yeah, that's true love, man. So in 1976, they end up co-writing a book called A Very Different Love Story. But in 1997, Burt is accused again of threatening a woman with whom he had been having an affair that if she left him, he was gonna do something to her. Yeah, so Burt's got some problems. yeah or they can do they Are they still married today?
00:14:16
Speaker
No, Linda Riss died of heart failure January 22nd of 2013 and Burt died on December 24th, 2020. They both still lived in New York and they were attached to each other. Linda Riss was 75 when she died. And I want to say when Burt died, he would have been 93 years old. Oh, so they just basically died of old age. Yeah, essentially.
00:14:42
Speaker
But yeah, Sarah, that's really interesting that, okay, so certainly in the case of the attorney, crime of passion, right? Absolutely a crime of passion. And it falls into what I was saying in terms of rejection. Right. And so that makes it, so I agree with that um because the act of throwing, now,
00:15:05
Speaker
it it didn't necessarily have to be in the face, right? It was just crimes involving acid, right? Yeah, yeah, the the acid to the body, the face, whatever was sort of irrelevant. The whole idea was that they were trying to physically disfigure another human being. Okay, and so that would be what I would assume is the motive behind it, but that does not explain that flies in the face of the assailant rarely being caught.
00:15:33
Speaker
Doesn't it? A little bit like a lot of those cases that I just kind of ran through in the U.S. are still unsolved assaults even to this day. But you're right, it charges rarely being brought, rarely being caught, rarely being resolved or adjudicated, I guess would be the words. It's just hard to find a lot of the like, here's the thing.
00:15:58
Speaker
ah Some of the other asset attacks I didn't mention in the United States had other things that were more important to adjudicate because someone did end up dying in a different way. Like in the in the course of it, some of these people who were attacked were later attacked again, but the person kind of finished the job. So that was what the crime that like we can go and read about is that there was a murder, but then you go back through it and there were other things leading up to it.
00:16:23
Speaker
So, I mean, the the actual attacks themselves being adjudicated or, quote, unsolved, usually it's because it's random or because something else has happened. There were a couple in Europe and the US where the person who had either perpetrated the attack themselves or arranged the attack, they killed themselves. So, you know, this is a weird one when we're linking this to Ohio in 1975 for a robbery.
00:16:51
Speaker
That's all I was getting at with the whole acid attack thing. No, yeah, I agree. I agree. It is very weird. So within a week of this murder of Harold Franks and attempted murder of Ann Robinson, who was in the store that Harold Franks had walked out of, police get a statement from a 12 year old boy.
False Testimony and Its Impact
00:17:12
Speaker
The 12-year-old boy is a kid named Eddie Vernon, and Eddie Vernon says that the gunman was an 18-year-old boy in the neighborhood named Ricky Jackson. And Vernon also told police that 17-year-old Ronnie Bridgeman, and Bridgeman's 20-year-old brother, Wiley, like W-I-L-E-Y, who drove the getaway car,
00:17:33
Speaker
he says that they were all together and that they did this together. So I would have to say that the only thing better in a three perpetrator combo story than police fashioning the story out of their own imagination would be when a 12 year old does it for them. Yeah. Yeah. The police run with this and Ricky Jackson, and Ronnie Bridgeman, and Wiley Bridgeman, none of whom has any kind of criminal record or much of a history with police, they're all arrested on May 25th, 1975. They're charged with aggravated murder, aggravated attempted murder, and aggravated robbery. So over the course of the next couple of months, they're all tried separately in Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas. There is nothing linking these kids to the crime. No physical evidence, no forensic evidence, nothing.
00:18:28
Speaker
The prosecution's cases against these three kids rest almost solely on the testimony of Eddie Vernon, who to his credit had turned 13 by the time he testified in court. Eddie Vernon's testimony was all over the place.
00:18:44
Speaker
He initially tells police that he was on the school bus coming home and that he had seen two men attack Mr. Franks as he got out of his car and walked towards the store. But by the time he gets to trial, and he's testifying on these kids' trials, Eddie Vernon tells the court that he had already gotten off the bus when he saw these attacks, and that the attack occurred as Harold Franks emerged from the store. Now, Anne Robinson testified that she was shot in the neck by a bullet that had gone through the store's front door. She was not able to identify any of the people involved. There's a 16-year-old neighborhood girl that testifies for the defense, that she had walked into the store just before the attack, and she saw two men outside the store. And she said that neither of those two men were
00:19:32
Speaker
any of the three defendants. It wasn't Ricky Jackson, it wasn't Ronnie Bridgeman, and it wasn't Wiley Bridgeman. Several of Eddie Vernon's classmates testified that when they heard the gunshots, Eddie Vernon was on the bus with them and they couldn't see it because they were too far away from the robbery. On August 12th, 1975, a jury convicts Wiley Bridgeman. On August 13th, 1975, a jury convicts Ricky Jackson.
00:20:02
Speaker
And then September 27th, 1975, a jury convict from Ronnie Bridgeman. All three of them stuck to the story that they were not involved in this crime. All of them presented witnesses who said that they were somewhere else at the time it occurred. The idea being they lived close enough to the store that they did see the hubbub related to this. And after this murder and robbery shooting had occurred, there was a crowd of about 100 people gathered in the streets around this store.
00:20:33
Speaker
So they're all convicted, and they're all sentenced to death. Okay, I want to address this just for a second. This crime happens in May of 1975. Before October 1, 1975, these kids have all been convicted of this murder and attempted murder with a robbery.
00:20:51
Speaker
stashed in there. And they have all been sentenced to death. We're sentencing an 18-year-old, 17-year-old, and a 20-year-old to death on the word of a 12-year-old boy. Within what? Six months? Within six months.
00:21:05
Speaker
I feel like that may be, I can't really tell, um but it may be a sign of the times. I know there's a lot happening in the judicial system. There is, but man. No, it's bad. Like all of it's bad. All of it's bad. And we've talked about it on the show before, young black men were disproportionately sentenced to death, right? are I don't even know that they had to be young, but there was a whole thing, right? Yes. So because of that, we should bring up a couple of different things here. The first thing is their sentences end up being commuted. So for people who don't know what a commutation is, it's when, for whatever reason,
00:21:43
Speaker
Either the death penalty is not available or it's considered to be too harsh a punishment for a particular crime. And in this instance, the death penalty doesn't stay on the table. In fact, life with parole ends up being the the sentence that all of them get. Now in 2002, so years later, 27 years later, Wiley Bridgeman is granted parole. He's living in a shelter in Cleveland, Ohio, and he has an accidental encounter with Eddie Vernon. Eddie Vernon was working at the time as a security guard at the shelter. This was in within weeks of Wiley Bridgeman being released on parole. After this encounter, Eddie Vernon's supervisor asked him what happened, and Eddie Vernon explains that he had been the witness
00:22:31
Speaker
who basically convicted Wiley, Ricky, and Ronnie. The supervisor advised Eddie Vernon that he should report that he had had contact with him to Wiley Bridgman's parole officer because the contact was prohibited by the terms of Wiley's parole. So Eddie Vernon does this. He kind of reaches out to contact his parole officer, and Wiley's parole is revoked. And he had only been out at the point in time that he has his revocation hearing for about three months.
00:23:00
Speaker
and he's sent back to prison. In January 2003, Ronnie Bridgeman is released from prison on parole. In 2011, Cleveland Scene magazine, they do a deep dive into this case, and they highlight the fact that Eddie Vernon's testimony is inconsistent and really makes no sense.
00:23:20
Speaker
They also point out in the magazine the absence of any evidence linking Ricky Jackson, Ronnie Bridgeman, or Wiley Bridgeman to the crime. And then they point out that Eddie Vernon had been paid $50 by Anne Robinson's husband to testify at the trial. This is crazy to me the way they say it in the Cleveland scene set up, but This isn't mentioned in Eddie Vernon's trial testimony, but I can't imagine asking a 12 or 13 year old about that on the stand. Can you? I can't imagine that happening. What? The paying $50 to testify? It's insane.
00:23:52
Speaker
in It is. I mean, $50 for that kid was probably a lot of money. Oh, it's a huge amount of money. And in 1975, it's huge. And it's completely illegal to pay a witness that is not testifying, like a witness that is testifying to what they so they witnessed as opposed to an expert, right? Yeah. And I mean, like, if he hadn't been paid the money, would he have not testified? I i don't know the answer to that question.
00:24:21
Speaker
Well, at the very least, it should have been displayed. Well, so the Cleveland Sea doesn't exist anymore. So I pulled an article that I wanted to share. It's more of a book book review or a book report. It's by Mark Whitaker from the Washington Post. He's talking a little bit about Kyle Swinson, who was the reporter for the Cleveland Sea. And the title of this review, which I think I pulled from the Chicago Tribune, even though it's a Post article, it says racial strife and political dysfunction. And I want to talk about this a little bit.
00:24:50
Speaker
In 2011, Kyle Swinson was a 25-year-old cub reporter from the Cleveland scene, a small alternative newspaper, when he received an unexpected phone call. It was from a former convict named Kwame Ajamu, who claimed that he and two other local black men who were still in prison had spent decades behind bars for a murder they didn't commit. Originally, Ajamu had approached Terry Gilbert, who was a crusading civil rights lawyer,
00:25:16
Speaker
But Terry Gilbert was swamped with other cases that involve DNA evidence, the most convincing path to proving wrongful convictions. And just to be clear, there's no DNA evidence in this case. So Terry Gilbert suggested that Ajamu contact Swinson, figuring that if there was anything to the story, a newspaper's investigation might help the call. When the skinny white reporter from the Cleveland suburbs met the burly product of the city's predominantly Black East side. He was skeptical despite the thick file of supporting documents that Ajamu brought to their first encounter at a downtown Starbucks. Swinson needed fresh copy, and once he dug into the story, he became convinced of the three men's innocence.
00:25:58
Speaker
He wrote an exhaustive expose that eventually helped to exonerate Ajamu, who had converted to Islam and changed his name from Ronnie Bridgman. And to win freedom for the two other defendants, Ronnie's older brother, Wiley, and his best friend, Ricky Jackson. So, Kyle Swinson goes on to write a book called Good Kids, Bad City, and that's what they're describing in this review. It says, on a hot Monday afternoon in May of 1975,
00:26:23
Speaker
a white money order salesman named Harry Franks made the next to last stop on his rounds to collect commissions from convenience stores on Cleveland's East Side. It was too late to get in the bank to deposit the $429.55 cash payment. So Franks headed straight to his last stop with the money and a leather briefcase. As Franks was leaving the fair amount cut rate, two young black men jumped him. When Franks resisted, they attacked him with a pipe and threw acid in his face.
00:26:51
Speaker
One of the youth fired several shots, leaving the salesman to bleed to death as they ran away and jumped into a green car driven by another man. Several witnesses agreed on these details. But only one, a quiet but near-sighted 12-year-old neighborhood kid named Edward Vernon, identified Ricky Jackson, 18, as the shooter, and Wiley and Ronnie Bridgeman, 21 and 17, as his accomplices.
00:27:16
Speaker
Never mind that the three had strong alibis, that Vernon's story had inconsistencies, and that multiple tips pointed the police to other suspects. Police and prosecutors built an entire case around the boy's testimony, winning double murder and robbery convictions that the put the three other youth on death row. But the saga of cruel twists and providential turns was only beginning.
00:27:38
Speaker
Two years later, Wiley Bridgeman won a retrial but was convicted again based on Vernon's single, Say So. So this kid doesn't end up once convicting Wiley Bridgeman. He comes back and testifies and convicts him twice.
00:27:53
Speaker
Wiley was slated for execution by old Sparky, the state's electric chair. But on the scheduled date, the date of his execution, it was announced that the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down Ohio's death penalty statute, and its pending capital sentences were converted to life with a 15-year minimum. Does it make sense what happened? Yeah, on the day he was going to be executed, they struck down the law.
00:28:16
Speaker
Right, so these sentences don't just get converted to life, they get converted to life where after 15 years, these people are now eligible for parole. Well, I don't know that that's what it said. So, okay, the US Supreme Court had struck down Ohio's death penalty statute and its pending capital sentences were converted to life with a 15-year minimum. So, at the 15-year mark,
00:28:42
Speaker
people just under this one set of capital sentences, they could be considered for parole. The likelihood of them getting it depends on the case, but it's life with the possibility of parole after a 15-year minimum sentence. So according to this article and the book, Ricky Jackson kept his head down in hopes of winning parole But by the time he became eligible, a tough new practice of adding 10 more years to former death sentences, which prisoners called the super flop, had taken effect.
00:29:18
Speaker
Ronnie Bridgman finally got out in 2003 and discovered that a prison clerical error had altered one digit in his new social security number. So with a clean ID and a Muslim name, Kwame Ajamu, he started over. He gets a steady job. He has a new wife. He could have walked away from all of this, but he refused to give up on proving his innocence and getting his brother and his friend out of jail. So they do point out here that Edward Vernon had a hellish fate waiting for him. That's their words, not mine. He says as an increasingly troubled teen, Vernon sampled booze and pot and graduated to harder stuff. Just as crack cocaine began flooding America's inner cities, he fell down a 20 year well of living in cracked ends and sleeping in cars on the street. He finally found religion and got sober, but that only made it harder to escape the prison of the guilty conscience.
00:30:16
Speaker
At late night prayer visuals at his church on the east side, Vernon would suddenly break into loud and unexplained wailing, but refused to discuss what was tormenting him with his word pastor, even after he suffered a stress induced stroke. So Kyle Swenson is going down this road investigating their case. After months of digging, he hoped that he could find a scoop that would break the case wide open yet again. But when it was published, nothing happened. So the Cleveland scene publishes this amazing expose that Swinson has put together. Swinson becomes so depressed and angry, he leaves Cleveland and moves to Florida. um At the time of this article, he was writing for the Washington Post.
00:31:02
Speaker
Yet unbeknownst to Kyle Swinson, once Ricky Jackson read the article in prison, he started working with lawyers for the Ohio Innocence Project. Those lawyers tracked down Eddie Vernon. They get him to recant his false testimony and to provide details of how he had been coerced and coached by police and how his classmates recollections of what they were saying for the defense was true. They were all on the bus when when this robbery and shooting had happened.
00:31:30
Speaker
Based on this evidence, Jackson, Ricky Jackson and Wiley Bridgeman, they're finally free in 2014. At that time, they had served the longest terms of exonerated prisoners in US history. Now, you and I have talked about the fact that that number kind of shifts and changes a little bit. Well, it depends on what is being qualified, right? Because I believe the other number we had was 43 years.
00:31:57
Speaker
Yeah, but I think it was the longest who was then exonerated by DNA evidence. Right, like they you're right. They do put different qualifiers on it and it changes things. Right. So I'm not, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of longest, but usually if you dig down, you can find whatever the detail is that distinguishes them, right? Right. So when Swinson was trying to talk to Eddie Vernon, he refused to talk about the case. So Swinson did an in-run on it. He talked to his pastor and Eddie Vernon's pastor, Arthur Singleton, he mentioned to Eddie Vernon that a reporter would like to talk to him.
00:32:33
Speaker
And Eddie tried to brush the passer off and told him to ignore him. Months later, Kyle Swinson's article makes its way to Arthur Singleton. And he asked Eddie Vernon about it. Again, doesn't want to talk about it. In 2013, Arthur Singleton goes to pay a visit to Eddie Vernon when Eddie Vernon's in the hospital. And he ends up telling the lawyers involved with the Innocence Project, and it's for an affidavit.
00:33:00
Speaker
that he asked Vernon about the article and he says, Edward Vernon told me that he lied to the police when he said he had witnessed the murder in 1975. And in his opinion, he had put three innocent men in prison for murder. He told me that he tried to back out of the lie at the time of the lineup that he went in for, but he was only a child and the police told him it was too late to change his story without getting in trouble himself. And Arthur Singleton described Eddie Vernon breaking down and crying and Singleton said, I could see the weight being lifted off his shoulder. So, with its recantation, Brian Hall and Mark Godsey, who were attorneys for Ohio's version of the Innocence Project, they filed a petition for a new trial on behalf of Ricky Jackson. Later on, petitions will be filed for Kwame Ajamu, who was Ronnie Bridgeman, and for Wiley Bridgeman.
00:33:48
Speaker
When the Ohio Innocence Project starts digging into what the Cleveland scene had uncovered with Kyle Swinson, they do a full re-investigation of the case. And they uncovered evidence that when Eddie Vernon had attempted to take back this identification, police intimidated him into testifying falsely. The police never disclosed this to the the defense attorneys for the three defendants that in the three different trials that Eddie Vernon is,
00:34:15
Speaker
testifying to, that Eddie Vernon was attempting to set the record right by recanting his accusation. So that's why this trial is also happening so quickly because we're going to lose Eddie Vernon if we don't convict these kids. Police reports obtained by the Ohio Innocence Project showed that police considered two other men, Paul Gartenshire and Ishmael Hickson, as suspects in the crime. But during their investigation of those two men,
00:34:42
Speaker
They decided to focus in on Jackson and the Bridgeman brothers because of Eddie Vernon's identification of them as better suspects. The license plate on the car seen speeding away from the crime scene It ended up being matched to Ishmael Hickson, whose police record included a robbery and a shooting a year before this happened. And in 1976, which would have been a year after ah Harold Frank's murder, Ishmael Hickson pled guilty to more than a dozen counts of aggravated robbery. So November, 2014, Judge Richard
00:35:18
Speaker
McMoneagle, he has a hearing on Ricky Jackson's motion for a new trial. Eddie Vernon testifies that police gave him details of the crime. He says that, I don't have any knowledge about what happened to the scene of the crime. Everything I said was a lie. They were all lies.
00:35:33
Speaker
He also told the judge that he was on the bus when he heard two pops that sounded like firecrackers. The bus was close to the store where the crime occurred, but not close enough that he could see anything that took place. Based on a rumor that he had heard from another person around the neighborhood, Eddie Vernon said he went to the scene and that was where he told police that Ricky Jackson and the Bridgeman brothers had committed this crime.
00:35:58
Speaker
He said, I was thinking that I was doing the right thing. I told the officer there that I know who did it. And then according to Eddie Vernon's testimony, he tried to recant, but the detectives took him into a room and told them that he was too young to go to jail so they would arrest his parents for perjury if he backed out or tried to back out.
Coerced Testimony Revelation
00:36:19
Speaker
So Eddie Vernon agreed to testify at all three trials.
00:36:22
Speaker
Right. And so like, that's why you don't have 12 year old witnesses. Can you imagine? what I mean, Sue, don't get me wrong. I'm angry at Eddie Vernon for going and telling the officer. He was 12 years old. Right. I'm more angry at the detectives for saying,
00:36:41
Speaker
we're going to arrest your mom and dad What in the world? Well, there's a variety of reasons why people insert themselves as witnesses. Mainly for attention, right? That would be my guess. It sounds like, and and who knows if he was just testifying to this, but it sounds like he thought people knew and they just didn't wanna speak up. And so he- They weren't gonna say anything, right? And so he wanted to speak up, right? And he was wrong. I don't feel like he had like, I mean, it might've been dishonest. I don't think a 12 year old's gonna have like that type of malicious intent. Yeah, it's not gonna be malice.
00:37:25
Speaker
But I mean, I guess that's possible, but it honestly wouldn't really matter because no matter why a witness is coming forward, police or investigators on the receiving end of the witnesses statement, they certainly should not be coercing them.
00:37:41
Speaker
No, they certainly should not be threatening them or their parents. It undermines everything, right? Why would they want him to testify under a threat as opposed to the fact that he came forward initially? I mean, he essentially tanked his entire life because he suffered. He put himself through suffering because he was aware that at the very least he wasn't sure that it was them. Yeah, he had repeated a rumor and didn't realize how serious it was going to get for him. made the You're absolutely right. It made the rest of his life a living hell. At 12. And so it's not just, like, for the sake of a police officer's case. Like, there's a reason you don't have children testify. There are consequences to testimony. and
00:38:29
Speaker
you know it's all well and good if it's accurate and it puts the right person away but you can't trust that and you can't even trust that in adults really it's just like we're okay with adults facing the guilt behind you know having testimony like that.
00:38:45
Speaker
children should not be subjected to that sort of objectively. We're not going to allow children. I mean, there are cases where it has to happen, and I understand that, but for the most part, this would not have been an ideal witness. I'm not sure based on the circumstances that have been put forth why they thought he, as opposed to the busload of children he was with, would be a good witness.
00:39:10
Speaker
Well, he was the one that came up and like talked about it as though he had seen it. And then the police started to like, he starts out with, I know who did it. And the police wanted to turn that into, I saw it happen. Those are two vastly different statements. And I would argue this is entirely the cop's fault. like It's his bad thing to come up and repeat a rumor and say, I know who did it. But like they're the ones who massage that into testimony at four trials, because he testifies that they're three separate trials. And then he comes back and testifies again at Wiley's second trial. So... But then he also gets the parole verveau. What the hell is wrong with him? He was an adult at that point, right?
00:39:57
Speaker
He was an adult, he was an adult security guard and like this is 25 years after the trials had all taken place. Yeah, so that was his bad, right? I mean, honestly, that was a little too much, but I could understand why he might be concerned about his safety. I find a lot of exonerees to be exceptionally gracious.
00:40:19
Speaker
Right. And perhaps it's their experience. I don't know. Well, he hadn't been exonerated at that point. He had just been put in a position where he was on parole. No, no, I understand. I understand that. But what I'm saying is I can see why a witness that lied or at least spoke without There was no way that Eddie knew that these three guys should go to jail because he his story was bolstered, right? I can see why he would have been afraid. My point is in the situation, it was not a good idea for him to in turn go to get his parole revoked. Yes, I agree. Because he was in the wrong there, right? I mean, I'm saying like he would have actually had a reason to be like, dude,
00:41:09
Speaker
Right? Right. Okay. And so to me, that doesn't really add up. And then it makes me wonder though, like 100% why under the circumstances where they massage this like eyewitness account out of it, when you have people, you have other witnesses saying, well, no, he didn't see anything different than we did because we were all together when it happened. Right. Well, okay. So we're in the hearing.
00:41:39
Speaker
Eddie Vernon is given testimony before this judge saying it was all BS. And on November 18th of 2014, The Cuyahoga County prosecutor named Timothy McGinty, who was on the state side here, he said that the state was no longer going to contest the motion for a new trial. And he said the state can seize the obvious. That's the quote from him that popped up in the media. He points out that between losing Eddie Vernon and the fact that Ishmael Hicks had lined up better for this crime, there was they were not going to be a part of chasing these three guys any longer.
00:42:17
Speaker
So the judge adjourned the hearing on November 18th. He comes back on November 21st and at that time he granted motions for a new trial that had been filed by Ricky Jackson and by Wiley Bridgeman. And then he vacated both of their convictions. At that time the prosecution decided they were going to dismiss those charges. So Wiley Bridgeman and Ricky Jackson are released.
00:42:42
Speaker
At that moment, which we referenced a little earlier, Ricky Jackson had served 39 years, three months and nine days, making him the longest serving exoneree in U.S. history. Now, and when I say that that can change, it's based on like who gets exonerated and when they get exonerated that that number bounces around a little bit. So on December 9, 2014, kind of tying it to the holiday season here, the final conviction is vacated and the prosecution dismisses the charges against
00:43:18
Speaker
Ronnie Bridgeman, who's now known as the Kwame Ajamo.
Compensation and New Charges
00:43:23
Speaker
December 2014, the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office puts out a statement and says that they will not be opposing compensation awards for these three because they believe the men are factually innocent, which means they're actually innocent. And in February of 2015, just a few months later, they were declared innocent by a judge.
00:43:42
Speaker
Now, right off the bat, Ricky Jackson has preliminarily awarded a million dollars in compensation, pending a final commutation by the Ohio Court of Claims. In 2016, the Court of Claims awards Wiley Bridgeman $2.4 million dollars and they award Kwame Ajamu $1.98 million. dollars In April 2016, Ricky Jackson settles a lawsuit against the state of Ohio for $2.65 million. dollars The lawsuit that the three of them had against the Cleveland Police Department, it gets dismissed in 2017. But the US Court of Appeals in the Sixth Circuit, which we don't talk about the Sixth Circuit a lot on here, they end up reinstating it in March of 2019. And in May of 2020,
00:44:26
Speaker
The three men all settle the lawsuits involved here, and Ricky Jackson gets $7.2 million, dollars and then the brothers, they each get about $5.4 million. dollars Sadly, in June of 2021, Wiley Bridgeman, he dies of complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. And that's sort of the end of this story overall. I just thought this one was crazy, but it does line up almost perfectly with your three man theory, except we do have this 12 year old boy throws himself in the middle of it all.
00:45:05
Speaker
That's the only reason he's not one of them. Yeah. Yeah. I read somewhere that in April 2019, Wiley Bridgman was charged again with a vehicular homicide. I don't know if you saw this in connection with a crash that took the life of a construction worker in you University Heights. And it was stuck in a weird spot on one of the exoneration profiles. And I was like,
00:45:28
Speaker
why did they include that um there is a documentary about ricky jackson called lovely jackson that was released in 2022 i've not seen it and if you want to try and find the article about this that kyle swenson wrote ah it's part of a series for the cleveland scene in june of 2011 And I think you have to find it on Internet Archive, but it's called What the Boy Saw. You might be able to like just type in what the boy saw, Swinson, S-W-E-N, S-O-N, and it'll come up. It's a very interesting read.
00:46:01
Speaker
I think that they mentioned it based on, like, recidivism. Oh, you mean, like, he would have been... Okay. Yeah, well, it is... Well, I don't think that a vehicular homicide has anything to do with his previous crime, but a lot of times you'll see any instance of a re-arrest, right? Yeah, they do stuff like that. You know, there's sometimes it's notable. In this instance, it didn't... I mean, I'm i'm sorry that someone else lost their life, but...
00:46:28
Speaker
ultimately. There's a whole situation there because I mean ah sometimes I don't know if he had a DUI right but I would say that you know the 30 plus years he did in prison for a crime he didn't commit might have led him to drink. It would have led me to drink for sure. Or well no kidding that's what I'm saying there because vehicular homicide means it was in the course of a car accident right somehow yeah it's not a it's not a murder. Correct.
00:46:54
Speaker
Okay. And so to me, I don't know that I would have included that, but I do see where somebody that is just trying to get, you know, the the clicks and likes and attention to them. I think that any sort of further criminal charges could be considered to be recidivism by somebody who's not paying attention. Right. And that's see, that's that's my problem is I don't consider that recidivism because they didn't do the first crime they did the time for. They just technically went through the process and had to do the time because of this 12 year old kid being used by the police and the prosecutors. Well, right. But I'm saying like I wouldn't have even included a vehicular homicide. It would have to be like another like murder. It has to be a robbery. Right. But that's just my opinion. But I do see where people, a lot of times, there's not a distinction made, right? Yes. Yes. And this is rampant in the justice system and in society, where, I mean, occasionally, you can distinguish a white-collar crime. But like there's a huge difference when we're talking about acid-splashing robbery, right? Yes.
00:48:09
Speaker
and then something happening to somebody in the course of driving a vehicle. yeah right We don't know what the circumstances are, but these are two completely different crimes for anybody considering it. That's why I think they included it though. I don't think it's relevant. I think that these cases are essential to put out there. However, I feel like sometimes it's low blows through like dragging everything out for somebody who's already been raked over the coals, right? It is. It is what it is. I mean, crimes are public record, right?
00:48:40
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And all this is well documented in other media. I mean, I talk about these cases because I talk about a lot of these cases because if I hadn't read everything I've read on these cases, I would not believe some of them.
Critical Thinking on Justice
00:48:52
Speaker
No, great. And it's a greater understanding of it's just trying to impart like critical thinking skills, considering even if a journalist has put it out there, is vehicular homicide really a sign of anything relevant to an exoneration? Right. Right. You know, everybody can think about that.
Podcast Promotion and Conclusion
00:49:12
Speaker
Special consideration was given to True Crime XS by LabratiCreations.com. If you have a moment in your favorite app, please go on and give us a review or a five-star rating. It helps us get noticed in the crowd. This is True Crime XS.
00:51:19
Speaker
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00:52:12
Speaker
True Crime XS is brought to you by John and Meg. It's written, produced, edited and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through patreon.com or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at truecrimeaccess.com. Thank you for joining us.
00:52:52
Speaker
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