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Season Five Home for the Holidays 16
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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
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Introduction to True Crime XS
00:00:22
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
Florida Crime Case Overview
00:00:27
Speaker
This case sort of predates even like the registration of innocence. ah When you go in and look it up, it's an interesting case out of Florida. I was able to pull together ah multiple different sources in this case. Had you heard of this one before? Because It might have come up in terms of like hitchhiking cases that we've talked about. I don't think so. There's an element that comes up that made me think twice about it, but I don't think so. okay If you go looking for this case in terms of the names that we're going to use, you may not find it like ah right off the cuff. I noticed that the ah original charge perpetrator here, is like the name changes depending on on where you read about him.
Delbert Lee Tibbs: Background and Journey
00:01:18
Speaker
This case does not wrap up that I can see, but the person that you're looking for here ah in terms of the wrongfully convicted person is a guy named Delbert Lee Tibbs. Delbert Lee Tibbs was born in 1939 in Shelby, Mississippi. When he was 12 years old, his family moved up to Chicago. This was a part of something that was known as the Great Migration. Are you familiar with this concept in history? Yes. The Great Migration for audience folks who might be interested in it,
00:01:48
Speaker
It's sometimes known as the Great Northern Migration or the North Room Migration or the Black Migration. This was a movement where over a period of about 50 years,
00:02:00
Speaker
roughly six to six and a half million African Americans moved out of the rural southern United States, and they headed more towards the Northeast, the Midwest, and the West. This was substantially due to poor economic and social conditions. And that was brought about by prevalent racial segregation and discrimination in the southern states where what's known as Jim Crow laws had been upheld. One of the biggest driving forces of the Great Migration, which has a lot of irony with what we're talking about today, was that lynchings continued to be but a thing in the United States. Delbert's family is a part of that migration and they move north as well.
00:02:45
Speaker
From 1970 to 1972, Delbert goes to the Chicago Theological Seminary, or CTS. It is a Christian ecumenical american seminary it's located in Chicago, Illinois, and it's one of a group of some seminaries that are historically associated with the United Church of Christ. Now, he does not have a particularly interesting life up to the point that we
Details of the Crime and Arrest
00:03:11
Speaker
meet him. In 1974 in Florida, there is an interesting crime that occurs. A 27 year old man and a 17 year old woman are hitchhiking when according to the young woman who survives what we're about to talk about,
00:03:28
Speaker
They're picked up by an African American man who ends up shooting her boyfriend and killing him, raping her, and leaving her for dead on the side of a secluded road. A few days later, 220 miles north of the area that they were in, which was Fort Myers, Florida, Delbert Tibbs is stopped by police, and he's Hitchhiking, he's questioned about the crime and he's photographed. He did not fit the original eyewitness description. So even though he's been photographed and talked to, he's released. That photograph makes its way to Fort Myers, Florida to the local authorities and the female victim in that case identifies him.
00:04:08
Speaker
So a warrant is issued. And two weeks later in Mississippi, Delbert Tibbs is arrested. He waves his extradition over to Florida. And even though he does not match the original description that the female victim had provided, and for the crime in question and the timeline of it, he had a solid alibi, he is indicted. At trial, in addition to the testimony of the young woman who survived, the prosecution also presented the testimony of a jailhouse informant And they claimed, like all jailhouse informants claim, that Delbert Tibbs had confessed to this crime. So it's Florida. It is 1974.
Tibbs's Trial and Conviction
00:04:47
Speaker
It's going to be an all-white jury. This all-white jury is going to convict Delbert Tibbs of rape and murder, and they're going to sentence him to death. This is sadly a sort of common story. Have you ever heard of the play The Exonerated? I meant to ask you about that before we got on the air. I don't think so. I was actually in The Exonerated years ago. It was a play written by Jessica Blank and Eric Jensen. They wrote it in 2000 and they performed it off-Broadway. It's a first-person narrative that combines the kind of black and white legal records
00:05:22
Speaker
And it tells the story of six wrongfully convicted inmates, including Sonny Jacobs, Kerry Max Cook, Robert Earl Hayes, ah Gary Gallagher, David Keaton, and Delbert Tibbs.
The Exonerated: Stories of Wrongful Conviction
00:05:35
Speaker
It's sort of a bare-bones play that's put on, but it it was used as a tool to get attention in the early 2000s for a lot of these cases where people weren't necessarily paying attention. And we've mentioned this recently, but I'm going to bring it up here. If you didn't have DNA, some of the early Innocence Projects cases didn't want to touch your kick. And with a case like Delbert's, you have some other problems happening. It's not just the DNA.
00:06:07
Speaker
He had been traveling across the country in 1974 when this murder and rape occurred. According to the surviving victim, the assailant in her case was around five, six, or five, seven inches tall with a darker complexion and a very large afro. At the time that they take the pictures of Delbert Tibbs, which you can't tell us how he'd in the photos,
00:06:33
Speaker
Delbert is 6'3", he has a very light complexion and a very tight, small afro. So can that height difference be a mistake? um You said five foot four and six foot three, right? a Five foot six and six foot three. Okay, five foot six and six foot three, okay. It's difficult for me to imagine almost a foot being a mistake, but- Well, because you could certainly illustrate to someone visually how tall a five foot six person is and how tall a six foot three person is, and you would see that that's
00:07:09
Speaker
probably not going to happen. In my opinion, like, so if they're hitchhiking and he picks them up on a truck and then she gets out of the truck with her back to him, I mean, there's like, there's some, there's some ways I could see a little bit of a difference. That's a pretty drastic difference. That's what I think. Unless somebody just doesn't know what five foot six looks like. Well, but that's why you would illustrate it. Yeah.
00:07:37
Speaker
Yeah, if you put them side by side, it seems to me like there are certain things you could remember, you know, and the best thing to do is think about like when you're looking at somebody because you know, instinctively, probably with everybody you've ever met, whether you were looking them straight in the eyes down at them or up at them.
00:07:56
Speaker
Yeah, they've taken four Polaroid pictures of them. So basically front view, left, right profile, and probably like a tall view. oh I mean, im a full body shot. They've taken these pictures and they've sent them down to Fort Myers. Interestingly enough, Delaware-Tibs is traveling from his aunt's house, and he's headed over to Memphis. He gets stopped by a Mississippi patrolman. Now remember, his family is all over Mississippi, even though he his immediate family is migrated to North. He has a letter that is written by these Florida officers, and it states in this letter that they gave him, Delbert Times was not involved in the crimes near Fort Myers or the bolo related to it. In spite of all that, he's arrested for rape and murder.
00:08:45
Speaker
Wait, what? He gets a letter saying that he is not involved in the crimes near near Fort Myers from the officers down in Florida. He's cleared originally because he's six three light skinned. The officers do not believe he's involved, but the woman and like, I know her name is out there, but they kind of avoid using it. that's fine but Okay. Her description is what gets him arrested.
00:09:14
Speaker
even though he originally had a letter from them saying he wasn't involved. Now, her identification is what gets him arrested. That's what I'm saying. Her being able to, her identification of him as the perpetrator is what ends up getting him arrested. Well, sure. It's an eyewitness, right? Except nobody bothered to point out to her the fact that, like, perhaps she was suffering from some characteristic blindness because the other things that she attested to before seeing him don't match. Right. And, you know, it's difficult to, like, to be that way with a witness, but it's the truth in this case that like, it doesn't work out at all. Well, I feel like you could be sort of neutral, right? Yeah. Are you sure? Because he's definitely way taller than the guy that you thought, right? Right. Now, the biggest contradiction to, in my opinion, was the guy was initially, the perpetrator that murdered the guy and attacked the woman was the man driving.
00:10:18
Speaker
Right. That picked up them hitchhiking. Right. Delbert comes into view because he's hitchhiking. Right. So did they just get the wires crossed? You know, I honestly don't know how we end up here when I look at it. um I pulled an appellate document from 1976.
00:10:39
Speaker
Now, this goes up a couple of different ways. I tried to read in here the facts of the case, but there's not much to it. Here's here's how they lay it out. um This is for September 28th of 1976. They're hearing this in the summer of 76, but this is from their ruling. It says, this calls us before us on direct appeal to review the convictions of Delbert Tibbs for rape and murder in the first degree. He was sentenced to both life imprisonment and to death, respectively. But that's a nuance because Florida had a moratorium on the death penalty at the time. So it was like a backup sentence. He had been charged in a three count indictment with rape, the premeditated murder of a man named Terry Milroy, and the crime of felony murder for killing Terry Milroy while he was raping the other victim. So they hold a jury trial.
00:11:32
Speaker
which results in conviction for rape and first-degree murder. The jury recommends, this is an all-white jury, they recommend a death sentence by the jury for murder. So the trial judge imposes the death penalty for the murder. The relevant facts of the crime, which are brought out in this very short trial, goes like this. The victims were hitchhiking to Marathon, Florida from St. Petersburg. They were picked up in Fort Myers by a man who alleged It was alleged he was driving a green truck that had a rounded off hood, black vinyl seats with no door handle, and an oil light that was blinking on and off. They get into the car and this man drives along and then ends up driving into a field. He stops the truck and gets out of the truck with ah Terry Milroy, the male.
00:12:24
Speaker
He requested that Terry Millroy give him a hand with something a minute or so passed by and the female victim gets out of the truck and she goes around to the back to see what's happening. And the driver was holding a gun on Terry Millroy. As he held that gun, he told the female victim to take off her clothes. He then shot Terry Millroy. He walked over to where he was laying on the ground after being shot.
00:12:54
Speaker
Terry Milroy begs that he not kill him. And the man shoots him again, inflicting a fatal wound. At this point in time, the driver proceeds to rape the female victim. He orders her to put her clothes back on and get back in the truck. So they get back in the truck and they drive back from this field to the highway. And then he tells her to get out and walk in front of the truck And she gets out and she starts to walk to the front of the truck, but she's basically able to run and get away from this guy. That's the description that we're dealing with of his crime. So I'm just going to say up front, aside from the victim themselves, we don't have a lot of evidence here. We have a 17 year old girl who's telling us what has happened.
00:13:46
Speaker
In terms of the appellate process, Tibbs attorneys argue here to the court that the totality of the evidence at trial was insufficient to place him at or near the scene of this murder and rape at the time that they occurred. They were unable to establish his identity as the perpetrator beyond reasonable doubt. Specifically, Tibbs attorneys state that there's no evidence to corroborate the testimony of the female victim.
00:14:12
Speaker
Her testimony is riddled with conflicts, so riddled, in fact, that it is inherently unreliable for this conviction and the attended death sentence. So his attorneys feel like the conviction and the death sentence should be reversed.
00:14:27
Speaker
They also contend that no credence should have been given to the testimony of a jailhouse informant from the Lee County jail who had been serving a life sentence for rape to the effect that Delbert Tibbs had confessed to him about this crime.
Questioning Informant Testimony: Reliability Issues
00:14:44
Speaker
And the court even here in their ruling points out that this testimony appears to be the product of purely selfish considerations.
00:14:53
Speaker
So they get into the statutes related to this for the appellate process and they say under section 921.141 of the Florida statutes and the Florida Appellate Rule 6.16B, it is our obligation to review a conviction for which the death sentence has been imposed to determine if the interest of justice require a new trial.
00:15:16
Speaker
Our review of the record of this proceeding leaves us with considerable doubt that Delbert Tibbs is the man who committed the crimes for which he's been convicted. Since the principal testimony against Tibbs came from the female victim, we began with the legal rules governing its reliability. So, I'm just pointing this out because we have this conviction in 1974. They're hearing this in 1976.
00:15:42
Speaker
and they've already decided that there's something wrong with his case.
00:15:49
Speaker
So one of the things that's happened in the meantime after the jury has convicted Delbert Chibbs is the informant that they had, the jailhouse informant, he said that he fabricated his story because he was hoping for leniency in his own rape case.
00:16:08
Speaker
And while the Florida Supreme Court is going to remand this on the grounds that there's considerable doubt that Delbert Tibbs was the man who committed these crimes, I wanted to talk a little bit about how this can all happen where we just came out of a couple of cases where we talked about fabrication from witnesses. And I wanted to know,
00:16:33
Speaker
if you were okay with having a conversation about jailhouse snitches and the history of using them? Sure. Okay. So from the perspective of snitches, what do you think of when you think of an informant, like a typical informant? When I think of a snitch, I think that they get stitches.
00:16:54
Speaker
Snitches get stitches, stands out. Is that what you're saying? Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. I think that, and I can't remember if you were the person I was having the conversation with, but there was like old sayings like thick as thieves. And then there's Let's see, there's loyalty among thieves. No loyalty among thieves or loyalty among thieves? No dishonor among thieves? I'm not sure. on there let's see I can't remember, but basically my point, the reason I thought of that was if you run into somebody doing the same crime you're doing, like you don't turn them in and they don't turn you in, it
00:17:35
Speaker
Like, that's what I saw and what I was looking at. But see, that that would be out on the street, right? Right. I feel like it's every man for himself in prison, right? Yeah. And you literally have no leverage ever in prison. They have absolutely, no matter who you are most of the time, if you're just you know run of the mill and you happen to be you know bunking with somebody who has a case that could use a nudge, right? Right.
00:18:05
Speaker
you could use it to your advantage and it'd be one of the very few things and one of the very few opportunities you might have. Yeah, it is definitely a self-serving type of situation. I pulled up this paragraph because I thought it was interesting. It says that jailhouse informants who report hearsay, so in this instance admissions against penal interest,
00:18:28
Speaker
Typically they're claiming to have heard the accused in pretrial detention having confessed or in some other way incriminated themselves. They're typically testifying in exchange for reductions in sentences or other inducements. They have become the the focus of a particular type of controversy.
00:18:51
Speaker
Now, according to the Innocence Project, so take this with a grain of salt, but it is worth noting that, you know, the Innocence Project is saying this, and it seems to me that there's some evidence to back up what I'm about to say. They have stated that 15% of all wrongful convictions later exonerated because of DNA results were accompanied by false testimony by jailhouse informants.
00:19:14
Speaker
And they say that 50% of murder convictions exonerated by DNA were accompanied by false testimony by jailhouse informants. They seem to be sort of the bottom of the barrel for choice of what you can use at trial, right? Yes. I think that especially when, like in this case, that the witness did identify him, however, it was starkly contrary to what she initially f said. And then you have the gel house snitch. And so I would say that when you get to that point, and if that's about all you have, I don't think I would go there. If it's solely to bolster the case, why do you need them anyway? I mean, if you have enough otherwise. So basically, I think they're a
Case Study: Eddie Conway and Informant Testimony
00:20:02
Speaker
bad idea. Yeah, yeah I think they're a bad idea too and I wanted to bring up a couple of kind of famous situations where we've either talked about these or like they kind of fit into the theme of home for the holidays. I want to talk about them because all of these seem to have a jailhouse since or another involved here. This is from someone who died fairly recently. He died in 2023. Have you ever heard of
00:20:24
Speaker
Eddie Conway? Hmm, I don't know. I don't think so. He was a leading member of the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party. Okay, yeah, now I have heard of him. He was convicted in 1971 for the murder of a police officer and in 1970, but he ends up being released on parole in 2014. And technically his case doesn't fit in what we're doing, but then maybe it does a little bit. So the idea was on the night of April 21st, 1970, a Baltimore police officer named Donald Sager and another Baltimore officer named Stanley Sirikowski, they were shot by three assailants who fired at least eight rounds at the officers during their response to a domestic disturbance call.
00:21:07
Speaker
Officer Sager is killed and Officer Sierkowski was critically wounded. About an hour later, Officers James Welsh and Roger Nolan, they arrest a couple of men near the scene of the shooting. This was based on information they had received over the police radio.
00:21:24
Speaker
The men they arrest are Jackie Powell and Jack Ivory Johnson, and they find two pistols near the location where these two guys are hiding out. The police determined that these two men, Jackie Powell and Jack Ivory Johnson, knew different members of the Baltimore Black Panther Party chapter. Immediately after they're in contact with these two men, Officer Nolan ends up briefly chasing a black man on foot.
00:21:51
Speaker
He tries to make contact with him. The man turns and fires several shots at Roger Nolan and he escapes. Nolan stated that he had previously seen this man on his assigned beat and that he could recognize him, but he didn't know his name. So based on the affiliation of these two suspects with the Black Panther Party in Baltimore,
00:22:11
Speaker
Roger Nolan was shown two photo lineups of different party members. In the first lineup, Nolan claimed but a picture of Marshall Conway, who's known as Eddie, taken seven years earlier in 1963 for a strong resemblance to the shooter. In the second lineup, which is a current photograph of Eddie Conway, Nolan positively identified Eddie Conway as an individual who had shot him.
00:22:41
Speaker
According to the other officer, James Welsh, Conley was the man that he had seen officer Nolan chasing. So the next day, Eddie Conway is at work, he works at the post office. Following an investigation where the ballistics of both shootings, according to the police, were determined to be a match, Eddie Conway is charged with the murder of Officer Sager, the attempted murder of Officer Sirikowski, and the attempted murder of Officer Roger Nolan. According to Eddie Conway, he was at work.
00:23:18
Speaker
And his supervisor and his coworkers said he was here with us. He was at work. One of the weapons that was found with the other two men, Jackie Powell and Jack Ivory Johnson, was also matched through ballistics testing, allegedly. I've never seen this in person, but that's, that's what the court documents say to the murder of officer Sager. So,
00:23:47
Speaker
Conway goes to trial in this case, and Eddie Conway, he is ah represented by Charles Geary. He had asked for Charles Geary or William Kunstler to be his representative. These are two attorneys who were consistently representing Black Panther Party members.
00:24:07
Speaker
Both of these lawyers had offered their services free of charge, but the courts for some reason deny Conway's request and may appoint him a lawyer who performed no pretrial investigation and never met with Eddie Conway. Eddie Conway doesn't want much to do with the January 1971 trial for these murders and attempted murders.
00:24:28
Speaker
Now, Jack Ivory Johnson, he had confessed to the police, but he names Jackie Powell and Eddie Conway as the one who shot Officer Sager and Sirikowski.
00:24:41
Speaker
According to court testimony, Jack Ivory Johnson stated that he had fired into the air because I did not have the heart to quote, kill the pig. But later Jack Ivory Johnson refused to testify against Eddie Conway and he claimed that his statement was coerced. So the state's case is largely based on photo identification by officer Nolan at this point. If they're not going to have testimony from Jack Ivory Johnson, they need to do something else with it.
00:25:12
Speaker
And what do they do to bolster their case, as you say? They find them at jailhouse informant. So the state calls a guy named Charles Reynolds. He testifies that while he was sharing a cell with Eddie Conway before the trial, Eddie Conway for some reason had confessed to him. But Eddie Conway had actually protested when Charles Reynolds got placed in his cell because Charles Reynolds was a known informant.
00:25:40
Speaker
One of the points that the prosecution argued proved the truthfulness of Reynolds was that Reynolds said Conway had told him that he had taken Officer Zierakowski's watch, a fact that was not released by police during the investigation.
00:25:55
Speaker
Finally, the ballistic evidence connecting the weapons to the murders also plays a role in the trial. The jury hears all of this evidence and they can convict Conway of this murder. So he and Jackie Powell are sentenced to life in prison. They both appeal, they go through the whole process. But I wanted to point out we have this informant here where something interesting has happened.
00:26:22
Speaker
he comes up with a piece of information that has not been released to the public. Right, but the police had it all along. Right. So I was going to ask you, I know we're talking about Delaware Tibbs and now Eddie Conway. What do you think about it when the police give information to assist with jailhouse informant getting a ah more detailed confession? Well, that gets a little more complicated.
00:26:53
Speaker
right because if nobody has the information but then the snitch has the information if the cops didn't give it to them and the person who they're testifying against isn't guilty who gave it to them right right okay so i don't think that only the killer could know information i don't think it's as relevant as it once was Yeah, I think DNA and and constant technology has kind of. I think hold backs are dumb to some extent, especially in this type of situation where clearly as everything rolls out, they had to have given the guy the information, right? Yeah. And it's dishonest. And I think that if I sat on a jury, I would ignore any jailhouse snitch testimony. Yeah.
00:27:47
Speaker
And I think I would encourage others to do the same. like Because a lot of times, I i would actually say, especially a jailhouse snitch, that the perpetrator told them something that the public didn't know.
00:28:03
Speaker
You know, um at one point in time, I did like this little study, it wasn't like, it wasn't a big deal. And it was not, it was just me being curious. A lot of things that come up as never before released are not never before released. Like you can typically find them somewhere in the media. Yes. ah Well, today, you can definitely find, you find a lot of stuff today in social media.
00:28:30
Speaker
Well, but you also don't hear the never before, like only the murderer would know this information. Like you don't hear that as much now? I don't think. But I'm just saying that even in old style cases where, you know, oh, he had to have done it because nobody else knew this. Well, a lot of times you can go back and you can find where it was known, perhaps not widely known.
00:28:57
Speaker
Perhaps it's a ah genuine like proclamation that you know nobody knew this detail with regard to the investigator saying it, but you can still nonetheless go find it. Right.
Cameron Todd Willingham: Arson Case Discussion
00:29:11
Speaker
Well, one of the other big jailhouse informant cases for me is one of the saddest cases. I don't think we've ever covered it on here, but I'm sure you're familiar with it. That's the case of Cameron Todd Willingham. Do you know that case? Or can I describe it for you and tell me if you know about it?
00:29:27
Speaker
Sure. On December 23rd, 1991, a fire destroyed the family home of Cameron Todd Willingham in Corsicana, Texas. In the process of that fire, it killed his three daughters, two-year-old Amber Willingham and one-year-old twins Carmen and Cameron Willingham.
00:29:43
Speaker
Willingham escaped the home with only minor burns. Stacy Kucindell, who was, at the time, she was Cameron Todd Williams' wife and the mother of the three daughters, she wasn't at home, she was out at a local thrift shop, and according to her, she was shopping for Christmas presents.
00:29:59
Speaker
Prosecutors ended up charging Cameron Todd Willingham as having set that fire and killed the children in an attempt to cover up him abusing his wife and kids. But there was no overall evidence of child abuse. And Stacy, his wife, she told prosecutors that he had never abused the children. The kids were spoiled rotten. And she had insisted that he would never harm the children. But she did say that she had been abused by him. There's some questionable evidence in that case. One of the big things was after the fire, the police investigation had determined that the fire had probably been started using a form of liquid and accelerant. This evidence was based on char pattern findings in the floor that looked like they were in the shape of of puddles. and Basically, it was used by one of the investigators to say that there were multiple starting points of the fire.
00:30:52
Speaker
And that it was there was a finding that the fire had burned very fast and hot. So this all was used to consider, it was all considered to indicate that the fire had been ignited with the help of a liquid accelerant of some kind. The investigators at the time also found charring under the aluminum front door jam, which they believed was a further indication of some type of liquid accelerant. They had found some positive tests for accelerant in the area of the front door.
00:31:19
Speaker
but there was never a real motive found and William's wife said that the couple had not been fighting at the time. One of the people involved in getting to that execution. was a man named Johnny Webb. So we have this arson evidence that's presented at trial against Cameron Todd Willingham. And we also have a jailhouse informant. His testimony was contentious for a number of reasons, but Johnny Webb claimed that Cameron Todd Willingham had come to him and confessed that he set the fire to hide an injury or maybe the death of one of the girls. And according to the story he weaves,
00:31:56
Speaker
It was Stacy, his wife, who had caused this injury or death. But none of the girls at the time of their death were found to have had physical injuries that were still distinguishable after the effects of the fire. Now, Johnny Webb talks to a reporter for The New Yorker that maybe he got it wrong. He said he had been prescribed a lot of medication at that point was being treated for bipolar disorder.
00:32:23
Speaker
But at William's trial, he offered up what could be considered an explanation for the individual, distinguishable burns that were found on one of the girl's forehead and arms. I don't remember which girl it was right this second. I don't think it was the twins. I think it was the older girl.
00:32:39
Speaker
But he said that todd Cameron Todd William had confessed to burning her with a piece of wadded up paper in an effort to make it appear as though the children were quote, playing with fire. The prosecutor on that case is a guy named John Jackson. And he noted that Johnny Webb was considered unreliable. But after all this goes down, he supported an early prison release for Johnny Webb.
00:33:08
Speaker
Johnny Webb sent a ah motion to recant his testimony to prosecutor John Jackson, which declared in his handwriting, Mr. Willingham is innocent of all charges. So Cameron Todd Willingham's attorneys were not notified.
00:33:28
Speaker
And then later on, we don't know why, but I'm guessing there was some pressure put on him. Johnny Webb recants his recantation. When he's talking to this reporter and at other times, he asked questions that were like, has the statute of limitations run out on perjury?
00:33:47
Speaker
Either way, Johnny Webb and for his part, John Jackson, the prosecutor, they denied that Johnny Webb was offered a sentence reduction in return for his testimony against Cameron Todd Willingham, which you have to tell the jury in the court if you have made some kind of deal. Evidence of this deal would have meant that Johnny Webb should not have been testifying and would have eliminated it.
00:34:10
Speaker
There is a handwritten note that's discovered by the New York Times in February 2014, which is years after Cameron Todd Willingham's execution in February of 2004, 10 years later. and It indicated that they didn't make a deal between the prosecutor's office and Johnny Webb. All of this is to say that jailhouse snitches or jailhouse informants can lead to terrible consequences if they're taken seriously. um And just to be clear, um Cameron Todd Willingham was executed and he has never been exonerated.
00:34:54
Speaker
Correct. That's why he is not one of the people that we talk about in Home for the Holidays, but I did find an opportunity to bring him up and I sort of use an in run to do so because his case is important. And if nothing else, no matter where you fall, it should warn us that bunk science can lead to terrible consequences.
00:35:16
Speaker
I don't really know much about that case. It was a little bit before my time in true crime. The Texas Forensic Science Commission at some point in the 2009 range, um they sat down and they started looking at it from the perspective of putting a panel together. They get as far as the flawed science. If you go and look at it from the perspective of determining what had really happened, they don't do as much there because they sort of end up saying, what are we supposed to do with the investigators that found for this and the people involved here? They never really get around to
00:35:56
Speaker
Hearing it from the perspective of actual innocence or not the trial as it like rolls out They offer him. This is like back in the early 90s. They offer him life in prison He says no, I didn't do it The investigator that testified said that there were three points of origin and that like it had to have been a fire set by human hands. There was burned material that, according to the prosecution, had tested positive for either witch hazel or mineral spirits. And the interpret the interpretation of that by the investigators was that there had been some kind of lighter fluid or something being used as lighter fluid.
00:36:34
Speaker
They said that he escaped the house with bare feet and no burn marks. This is the prosecution's case, by the way, not, you know, this is what they're presenting. So this was, in their opinion, evidence that the accelerant had been poured by him as he ran out of the house. They have multiple witnesses they present, and then they bring in the jails and format. So in 2009,
00:36:58
Speaker
The prosecutor admits that Cameron Todd Willingham had burns, but he said that they were so superficial that they suggested to him that maybe he had just self-inflicted them on the way out in an attempt to divert suspicion from himself. Fire investigators who reviewed the case told David Gran, the reporter for the New York Times,
00:37:21
Speaker
that William's first and so he has first degree and second degree burns and they were consistent with being in a fire ah the moment before everything suddenly ignites in the room. According to John Jackson the condition of the how house was any escape or rescue route from the burning house was blocked by a refrigerator up against the back door. um Any person attempting to escape or run through it couldn't get out. There were two refrigerators in the Willingham house. They were both sitting in or next to doorways.
00:37:53
Speaker
Now, according to Jimmy Hensley, who was a police detective and this guy Douglas Fogg, who's the assistant fire chief, they investigated this fire and they told David Grant, they never believed that the refrigerator was put in the doorway, like John Jackson said, to be like part of an arson plot where no one can escape from this. court And particularly with Douglas Fogg, he said it didn't have anything to do with it. Now, according to Cameron Todd Willingham's interview,
00:38:20
Speaker
He claimed that when he got to Navarro Regional Hospital, they ah they had checked him for smoke inhalation. And Jackson says that Cameron Todd Willingham never inhaled any smoke.
00:38:41
Speaker
But William's statement, meaning Cameron Todd Williams, like story to police and multiple eyewitness accounts detailed him trying to get back into the house and around the fire. And he was the one who ended up being blocked by the refrigerators that were in the weird doorway set up. So the one problem I have with this case is Cameron Todd, Willingham was offered the opportunity to eliminate himself as a suspect by taking a polygraph.
00:39:11
Speaker
His counsel said, don't do it. And his counsel also told him that he should take the life sentence and plead guilty. But he insisted that he would not admit to something that he hadn't done. When it comes to trial time, he does not testify. The defense only calls one witness.
00:39:31
Speaker
They call the babysitter and the babysitter gets up there and says, she does not believe it was possible for Cameron Willingham to have killed his children. This case never really comes back around on appeal. It's denied, denied, denied, no matter what anybody says. And it gets attention again in December, 2004, where people start talking about what was going on with it. The problem is he had already been executed.
00:39:59
Speaker
what What we hear about from the New Yorker, it doesn't come out until 2009. The documentaries don't start coming out, which the first one I watched was in Cindy area that came out in 2011. The rest are like one offs of other episodes, but i i As far as like, is he innocent or guilty? I fall on the side of he's innocent. Like, I think there was an accidental fire in a house that wasn't, you know, gonna respond well to fire. And that's how everybody dies. So I think that maybe that's the um the lunch pen point because
00:40:38
Speaker
Like in other exoneration cases that we've done, you know, somebody was murdered and you know they were murdered, right? And that means somebody murdered them, right? right And so that means there's another guilty party out there. I don't think there was ever any sort of implication that in the event he was ah not responsible for the fire that someone else had said it, right? Right.
00:41:05
Speaker
Okay, and that makes it more difficult because you're literally looking at a situation where a fire happened and three small children died or a man set a fire and killed his three small children.
00:41:19
Speaker
So it varies from like a typical egregious, violent murder that you just have the wrong person. You end up in a situation where you have to, it would make it twice as bad for it to literally be some sort of accidental fire. Yeah. The problem with this case was at every turn there was a contradiction.
00:41:49
Speaker
And it seems like for a period of time from about 2005 to maybe 2011, it was like everybody was out to make money on him having been innocent or not. It's a big deal. It was a huge deal. I don't know that much about this case. I mean, it happened in the early nineties. Yeah. Yeah. It was a long time ago. Like I, I know all about it from the perspective of after he was even dead.
00:42:13
Speaker
Well, one of the interesting things to me was they did present that it was junk science, right? The arson. And I took issue with what I do know about that because fine, there's no evidence of arson.
00:42:27
Speaker
You have used a junk theory to say that this is arson. right What was the cause of the fire? Because the absence of a cause of a fire, it lends towards arson, right? Because there's only so many places in a house that are going to catch on fire. I agree with you.
00:42:44
Speaker
So I kind of derailed everything from Delbert Tibbs for a minute, and we talked about Cameron Todd. For Delbert Tibbs' part, do we want to go back to him for a second?
Tibbs's Release and Activism
00:42:53
Speaker
Sure. Delbert Tibbs, he is an interesting exoneration.
00:42:58
Speaker
You can read about him at Northwestern School of Law. He becomes a writer and an anti-death penalty activist after having this experience. He's indicted and convicted in 1975. He ends up being released pretty quickly. By 1977, he's out of jail. And it takes about five years for the Florida state attorney to dismiss all of the charges, saying they're not going to have a retrial.
00:43:24
Speaker
But based on the documents I was reading early in this episode, the Florida Supreme Court had reversed the decision related to this conviction and death sentence and sent it back down to the lower courts. They had considerable doubt that Develdert Tibbs was the man who committed these crimes. um He did ultimately spend ah several years in prison because of this.
00:43:45
Speaker
And he was released in January of 1977. So after that time, he started campaigning for changes in the criminal justice system, especially limits on the use of eyewitness identifications. And since then, he was totally right. Numerous studies have shown that eyewitness identifications are unreliable and highly flawed. He was also against the concept of a jailhouse informant.
00:44:10
Speaker
He was among the audience when Governor George Ryan of Illinois and other politicians watched the play that I mentioned early on, The Exonerated. In this case in particular, some of the things that baffle me... Okay, so if he picks them up in a truck, whose truck was it? Right. How was he driving it? Those are things that I feel like should have come up in trial, right?
00:44:34
Speaker
I would say, yeah. If he was somebody that like was, he was, he was at least hitchhiking, possibly transient nature. had He was visiting, he lived elsewhere, he had come back. There's all kinds of stuff here that point away from him that I feel like just get skipped over. Oh, it does. I was just going to point out that when George Ryan left office, he commuted the destinences of 167 inmates.
00:44:59
Speaker
from death to life imprisonment, largely because of cases like Delbert Tibbs. But the other thing that bothered me about this, and I know you're saying, like, there's these holes in this trial and and he gets a death sentence based on almost nothing. Why didn't they plug the holes? Like, where's the truck, et cetera? My problem was, at the end of the day, this guy who shot and killed Terry and raped the woman that was with him,
00:45:29
Speaker
He just walked away. All right. That's more disturbing than like anything I can think of that he just literally literally is out there living his life or maybe he got convicted for something else or did something else stupid, but ultimately someone almost was executed. The perpetrator's green truck was never found. According to, I did pull that up because I wanted to try and answer your question with this. If people want reading, there's this thing called the Florida Commission on Capital Cases. Their 2002 edition by Lockbert, the chairman, he wrote a case histories, which is a review of 24 individuals released from death row.
00:46:15
Speaker
Delbert Tibbs is the first page of that, although it's part of something else. So if you find it, it's on the Supreme Court, like the US Supreme Court's website. It'll say like 135 for like the first pages, but they talk about Delbert Tibbs cave and it it doesn't have a lot.
00:46:31
Speaker
to say about it, but one of the things they do point out is that the Florida Supreme Court noted a Florida law which dictates that no corroborative evidence is required in a rape case where the victim can testify directly to the crime and identify the perpetrator. The same law, however, requires extreme scrutiny of the victim's testimony if she is the only witness of the prosecution. Not to mention that's not geared towards a stranger rape. Correct. it's You're 100% right. That is meant to deal with other scenarios of sexual assault and rape. There's two options here for me, and this is terrible for me to say. I don't think we've named the female. I'm not going to name her now, no. Okay. Okay. Well, then I'm going to say this and it's nothing against her. Okay. It's just what comes to my mind. Either she suffers from like, in this case, it would be like a racial blindness, which is where she just said, Oh, he's a black guy. Sure. It's him. Right. And genuinely. Yeah, go ahead. Well, maybe it's called something else, but she just genuinely saw him and thought, yes, that's him. Or there's more to the story and she needs a perpetrator. Just sort of like some of the other cases that we've covered where they automatically say, yeah, that's him. well
00:47:50
Speaker
even though it it doesn't corroborate what they've said previously or the crime is made up or whatever the case may be, right? Well, it could be that you're, so you're indicating that there's the potential that the companion that we have not named for a reason killed Terry Maloria.
00:48:08
Speaker
but to milroy I would say it not because of anything that I know about this case personally, like what actually happened, but the fact that the perpetrator was never caught and she jumped right on maybe the first person they presented as a possible suspect, even though he didn't look anything like what she described. Right. I would i i would agree with that. and In my opinion, that's one of the very first indications that there's a problem with the victim witness, right? Okay, so to follow up with what you're saying, there are five things they include here that back you up 100%. And i think I think he was trying to not say that thing. This is what it says.
00:48:50
Speaker
First, there's no other evidence besides the victim's testimony placing Delbert Tibbs anywhere near Fort Myers at the time of the crimes. In fact, the evidence leans the other way. Tibbs' presence had been established by police in Daytona Beach on February 2nd and 3rd.
00:49:07
Speaker
Right, hence the letter. He was also known to have been in Leesburg, Florida on February the 6th, Ocala, Florida on February the 7th. So, like, he has varying alibis that aren't, you know, if you're, just trust me, if you if you've got six cities that are verifying where you are and you've got receipts and people will remember you.
00:49:27
Speaker
You weren't somewhere else. Second, the perpetrator's green truck is never found. Even with all the details that the victim provides the police an hour after the attack, a car and helicopter search the area never produced ah a vehicle like it. So they're going from the perspective of if this was something that Delbert Tibbs abandoned, we would find it.
00:49:48
Speaker
Third, Delbert Tibbs was never found with a gun or car keys in his possession, nor was a gun ever found, which maybe we can get over that. Fourth, police stopped Delbert Tibbs.
00:50:01
Speaker
on three separate documented occasions based on the victim's description of the perpetrator. He cooperated with the police every single time and there was never any evidence to cast down on his credibility. And the last thing they include here is fifth, since the crime occurred late at night and the victim had been smoking a significant amount of marijuana all day,
00:50:26
Speaker
her ability to accurately identify her attacker would be seriously diminished. So he's politely saying without saying, maybe she's just wrong.
00:50:39
Speaker
or maybe something else is going on here. No, I mean, i she could be wrong. Okay. But it's a pretty serious situation for her to just be wrong, especially under the circumstances presented. yeah It is possible that she genuinely felt like she had identified the correct person. It's also possible that she knew without a doubt, she had not identified the correct person and never would.
00:51:04
Speaker
Well, there were multiple people that spoke out along the way afterwards that they feel like his conviction was just. So if you go reading the stuff that I'm talking about, you'll find this buried, but it is there.
00:51:18
Speaker
they fit What? ah They were against his exoneration? Yeah, that's one of the reasons this case gets in the pile. But like, there's not a lot to it. But like, Raymond Markey, who was out of the Attorney General's office, he said Tibbs alibi that it was in Daytona Beach continuously during the time the crime was committed.
00:51:35
Speaker
was impeached by the receipt from a Salvation Army store that Tibbs had stayed in Orlando the night prior to the murder. The record also demonstrated that the victim's testimony was corroborated by an inmate who was in a cell with Tibbs who testified that Tibbs could- It's just been thrown out. Right. He said the Tibbs case had racial overtones to it. Several South Florida politicians had written letters to the AG wanting us to confess error in the case because Tibbs is some kind of prominent black minister in Chicago. It had generated complaints from black organizations. That was their standard operating procedure. As an aside, I will never forget reading the record, particularly the testimony of the victim.
00:52:15
Speaker
which carried with its own credibility. Defense counsel suggested that she was lying because her own boyfriend had raped her and she was blaming Tibbs. She responded, you have to be kidding. I've been raped so many times by men that I feel like a pincushion. If this was only a rape case, I wouldn't even been here. But he murdered my boyfriend. I called the prosecutor and asked if that testimony was as powerful as it sounded. He told me that all the jurors looked at Tibbs. And as far as he was concerned, the moment she said that, the case was over.
00:52:44
Speaker
The Tibbs case was the most outrageous example of judicial corruption I ever experienced in 25 years that I spent in the Florida Attorney General's office as a criminal appellate attorney. I lost all respect for the judges who participated in the majority opinion clearing him. I would love to know from behind the scenes the story of this one, but like Joe De Los Andros, Tibbs was not innocent of the rape and murder. He was the unworthy recipient of intellectually dishonest judicial office. That's amazing to me.
00:53:14
Speaker
I look, I hate to end on a note like that, but I don't think I can top that. Like that guy saying those things and not seeing the forest for his trees. Like, am I supposed to be convinced and think that like something's going on there? Because that's not what happens. I just think that guy's probably a really mean racist and a terrible attorney. Well, right. And blind to the process I mean, because you've got to respect the process either way. Right. yeah The exonerations, the convictions. You've got to have some respect
Podcast Production and Acknowledgements
00:53:43
Speaker
for it.
00:53:43
Speaker
yeah
00:53:46
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.
00:55:53
Speaker
One day it will be my baby and me
00:56:46
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.
00:57:12
Speaker
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