Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Season Five Home for the Holidays 3
138 Plays17 days ago
In Today’s Episode, we put together our Home for the Holiday cases.
This podcast was made possible by www.labrottiecreations.com Check out their merchandise and specifically their fun pop pet art custom pieces made from photos of your very own pets. Use the promo code CRIMEXS for 20% off a fun, brightly colored, happy piece of art of your own pet at their site.
Music in this episode was licensed for True Crime XS by slip.fm. The song is “No Scars”.
You can reach us at our website truecrimexs.com and you can leave us a voice message at 252-365-5593. Find us most anywhere with @truecrimexs
Thanks for listening. Please like and subscribe if you want to hear more and you can come over to patreon.com/truecrimexs and check out what we’ve got going on there if you’d like to donate to fund future True Crime XS road trip investigations and FOIA requests. We also have some merchandise up at Teepublic http://tee.pub/lic/mZUXW1MOYxM
Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Graphic Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
The 1983 Double Murder Case Overview
00:00:22
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
00:00:29
Speaker
So we're diving a little deeper into our holiday episode. And I like doing these. I like doing holiday episodes where we have a chance to talk about something that's unusual. I will say this one's pretty dark. this is um It is a murder case. Now, one of the things that's interesting about this is this is a double murder.
Victim's Background: Susan Homwe and Daughter Shane
00:00:51
Speaker
And it takes place in 1983, down in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. So on November 8th of 1983, there's a 38-year-old woman named Susan Homwe, and she's found stabbed to death in her home off of Poinsettia Drive in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. So that's Broward County. I say like ah it's ah it's a homicide, but it's also technically a double homicide.
00:01:23
Speaker
I get there in kind of a weird way. Her 18-month-old daughter, Shane, is found dead from dehydration in her crib. Now, Susan had just moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida from Aspen, Colorado. She had divorced her husband, Paul. From what authorities could tell from what the medical examiner gathered and what the police could put together,
00:01:53
Speaker
it looked like Susan had been stabbed to death on November the 4th. So based on autopsy information, the authorities decided that the baby had probably survived for around 72 hours.
Police Investigation and John Gordon Purvis' Confession
00:02:11
Speaker
On November the 9th, so one day after they've discovered Susan and Shane's bodies, police question a 42 year old neighbor. He lives with his mother three houses away. Other neighbors had said that they saw Susan ah being openly sort of harassed or bothered by this neighbor.
00:02:37
Speaker
Now, this 42-year-old, his name is John Gordon Purvis. So, it was well known in the neighborhood that John Purvis was a schizophrenic. When the police talk to him, he says, I didn't do anything, and they say, well, these we have witnesses that are your other neighbors, and they say that you were bothering her and that she told them about it.
00:03:10
Speaker
Purvis continues to deny having anything to to do with Susan and Jane's deaths, but the police began to surveil him. And two months later, in January of 1984, they're following him and John goes into a drug store and he buys a reader's digest.
00:03:34
Speaker
The police decide to pick him up, so they pick him up for questioning and they take him down to the Fort Lauderdale police station. They don't put him in with detectives right away. They put him in with a psychiatrist. say The psychiatrist does a long interview with John Purvis.
00:03:55
Speaker
And he comes out and he tells the police that John Purvis admitted killing Susan because Susan had rebuffed his romantic advances. At this point in time, two detectives come in and they take over the interrogation. They obtain a detailed statement and they record it.
Questioning the Confession: Schizophrenia and Coercion
00:04:21
Speaker
On the tape, John Purvis can be heard saying that he knocked on Susan's door. And when she answered the door, he stabbed her in the chest. He stabbed her so hard and so frequently that the knife broke off. He said he then took her and removed her clothing. And on the kitchen floor, he had sex with her while the knife blade was still in her chest.
00:04:53
Speaker
In the tape, Purvis' exact words are, she didn't like me, so I killed her. I stabbed her with a knife, I stabbed her in the heart, and I strangled her with a cord, and then I just left the baby. According to this confession, John Purvis says that he told his mother what he had done, and his mother got rid of the bloody clothing that he was wearing. John Purvis gets charged,
00:05:23
Speaker
with two counts of murder and one count of sexual assault. I'm gonna pause there for a second so we can talk about this. I know that like people who have a the more extreme disorders psychologically get sort of held out there as like criminals. I have not come across as many cases where someone who has schizophrenia is accurately confessing to a crime like this. Have you? Wow, that could open a whole can of worms there. um I don't think so. I think this is more of a situation ah where confirmation bias is taking the lead because it appeared that he was the only likely suspect.
00:06:09
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's what's happening here. I do think Purvis is probably pretty suggestible at this point. I think so too. And so this is another early eighties case. I don't know if it's timing or if it was legitimately an era of time that, you know, late seventies, the eighties, where we've got the super cop syndrome where like, we don't know if these detectives were like,
00:06:38
Speaker
legitimately trying to close a case if they really thought that they had solved the case. Like we don't know what the motive here was, right? Yeah. Looking back, it's very easy for us to say, um, yeah, you totally coerced that confession. In this case, the confession was not admissible. So it wasn't, it's not like completely, you know, 40 year late or hindsight,
00:07:05
Speaker
is the only way that it seemed that that was you know not a great move, right? Right. I feel like the fact that he had schizophrenia or whatever else he suffered from, I feel like he might have been a little bit more of a target to pen it on, so to speak. But I think that anybody in that general vicinity that they could have made a story about could have possibly been subjected to the same treatment.
00:07:38
Speaker
I tend to agree with you there. So yeah just to clarify, like the from the National Registry of Exonerations, so this is two counts of murder. This is a sexual assault. The crime was reported in 1983. We're dealing with a white male who's 42 years old, and he has made a confession to this crime. This is in January of 1984 that he's making this confession.
00:08:06
Speaker
Now, less than 24 hours after he first makes this confession, he attempts to take it back. In fact, he does recant the confession. Later on, a lawyer will describe John Purvis as a man who would tell anyone anything that they want to hear. Now, one of the arguments that ends up being made throughout this case is, Purvis is not read his Miranda warnings.
Purvis' Background and Neighborhood Interactions
00:08:34
Speaker
which I always find that to be kind of interesting. I guess that's why the confession was not admissible. Yeah. So let's talk about John Purvis for just a minute. So Purvis was born in 1942. His parents were married, but his father goes off to World War II as a U.S. Marine. And he dies on February 20th, 1945, when John is ah approximately two years old.
00:09:04
Speaker
It had a huge effect on John Purvis. It had a huge effect on Emma Joe Purvis, his mom. She had like physical problems and she had basically a breakdown after her husband died. Purvis was observed very early. um I've seen reports of five years old, six years old, seven years old, that he would cry and he would be terrified to go into the school.
00:09:32
Speaker
and that he would stay at home with his mom. At school, he would sort of get parked up front by the teacher and he would be set off by the smallest things. If an argument broke out or a fight between students, he would cry and he would avoid conflict.
00:09:53
Speaker
As he grew up, he had trouble keeping up with his classmates. Academically, he did not do well. Socially, it is reported that he had troubles with relationships with, quote, friends, but it's also reported that he had ah trouble developing relationships with girls. Early on in life, a doctor diagnosed him with potentially having chronic undifferentiated schizophrenia.
00:10:21
Speaker
Most of the time, he would sit at home and watch television. He could be seen out and about in Fort Lauderdale with his mother, and his mother does get remarried. So he ends up with a stepbrother, a guy named Mike Bartlett. Several times throughout his childhood and his adolescence, it's reported that Purvis would have panic attacks. And people started to observe these, and he got a reputation for being a little weird.
00:10:52
Speaker
In fact, the police detectives that we're going to talk about in a second, and they felt like he was enough of a weirdo, quote, weirdo, to bring in and question him. So here's kind of how all of this went down in terms of Susan's murder.
00:11:11
Speaker
She had moved out of an abusive relationship but with Paul. Paul was ah was a Vietnam vet. He was known to drink and he was known to have like a difficult personality. Susan had a friend named Karen Beebe. And Karen Beebe had told Susan early on, don't get involved with Paul. But Paul and Susan end up essentially hooking up from from all accounts. And Susan gets pregnant from that hookup. Paul had made her sign a prenuptial agreement that required him to pay her nothing on divorce. Shortly after their marriage, Shane, their daughter, was born.
00:12:00
Speaker
And upon the divorce proceedings, that prenup had been declared void. It had been recognized by the court to have been made under duress. So if you're in a situation where someone is essentially holding a knife or a gun to your head, even if it's an emotional one or just It's anything that could be perceived as a threat or. Anything but ah completely willingly. Correct. So Paul ends up being ordered to pay a large amount of money to Susan for essentially what would be child support. John Purvis meets Susan by just walking up and saying hi. He's just hoping to establish friendly contact.
00:12:48
Speaker
And I don't i don't know like if people have had this experience before. When I was growing up, there was an adult in the neighborhood who had been in an accident. And he frequently, although he was much older than myself and like the kids in the neighborhood that I would play with, he would frequently want to like be a part of things. And he would come up and talk to us if we were playing kickball or sometimes we would play a little baseball.
00:13:17
Speaker
flag football, he would want to be on one of our teams, and he would just want to talk to us. John Purvis has described pretty much how I remember that person in my life. He was unusual, but he was very friendly. And he did make Susan uncomfortable. And she told her neighbors that like something about him made her uncomfortable. But she didn't flat out say to him, like go away.
00:13:45
Speaker
And so do you wonder in that situation, like now, um having this information, do you wonder if maybe the neighbors said like, oh, well, there's this guy in the neighborhood that makes me uncomfortable sometimes. And like they put that on to her without possibly her have ever even saying it.
00:14:07
Speaker
Yeah, they could have. like I don't have a good report in here. When I went through, there are some court documents in this case, and there's some early police reports. it There's nothing that specifically names him as having done like a conscious act that is being called out where Susan said,
00:14:26
Speaker
He won't stop coming to my house. He calls my phone all the time.
Media Pressure and Missed Evidence
00:14:30
Speaker
He ah was staring through my windows. There's nothing like that about John Purvis. It's literally just he's the weirdo. Right, and that makes me think that it's a self, or not a self, but like a auto-generated lead, right? It kind of is, and it's probably a little projection based on like the neighbor's perceptions of of John.
00:14:53
Speaker
So November 1st comes around. Susan has a phone call from a friend, and after this phone call, nobody hears from her again. The neighbors started to wonder what had happened when they didn't see her. November the 8th, we've already discussed, her body is found.
00:15:12
Speaker
She's been stabbed, the knife is broken off, and she's been strangled with a phone cord. And then Shane is found to have died from essentially neglect because her mother was murdered. The police detectives that are walking the beat at the time is a guy named Rick Rice and a guy named Rich Martin. They're both from the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, and they do their job of canvassing the neighborhood.
00:15:39
Speaker
The problem comes in that this being a fairly safe area, the local papers and television put a lot of pressure on the Fort Lauderdale police to solve this case or come up with some type of explanation as to what's happened. This media pressure, because this case is a woman stabbed in her home and her daughter dies, it leads them to look harder at the neighbor's statements related to John Purvis.
00:16:10
Speaker
Now they send him in, they have this first psychiatrist interview. When the cops get in on this and the psychiatrist sort of confirms their theory, they start yelling at him and they intimidate him during the interrogation. John Purvis' mother is sitting outside the entire time and she hears them doing this. So his mother steps in,
00:16:34
Speaker
And while it's all going on, she tells him to stop talking to the police. The detectives at the time start to get back information that today's world would be considered forensic investigation materials, forensic evidence.
Reinvestigation and New Evidence: Detectives Bronson and Williams
00:16:48
Speaker
This evidence shows that John Purvis was not at the crime scene, but they decided they needed his full confession. They have arrested him in January when he goes in for this Reader's Digest.
00:17:01
Speaker
because they want him kept separate from his mother. And that is how they get his confession. When his attorney comes along, who's a guy named Richard Kirsch, at trial, he gets the judge, who is a guy named Thomas Coker, to declare that this taped confession is not admissible.
00:17:24
Speaker
It's not usable at all. In spite of that fact, the jurors end up declaring John Purvis guilty based on this confession he had made to the original psychiatrist, a guy named Joel Klass, and they sentenced him to life in prison. So this whole process brings us to 1985.
00:17:45
Speaker
Now, Richard Kirsch stays on John Purvis's case, but he loses every single appeal. So from 1983 to 1985, John Purvis is in the Broward County Jail. And in 1985, he gets sent to prison. According to a New York Times article I found,
00:18:09
Speaker
Sometime during John Purvis's prison sentence, a detective named Gary White, he comes forward and he says that in Aspen, Colorado, he has a case where a woman has been beaten by a man named Robert Wayne Beckett. She tells Gary White that Robert Wayne Beckett is a junior And he has been bragging about the fact that Robert Wayne Beckett Sr., his father, had killed a girl in Florida. Gary White, because of the connections that Susan had to Colorado, he remembers her. He reaches out to a private detective named Barbara Barton, and he asks, can she go and check out if that case was taken care of?
00:19:05
Speaker
Barbara Barton reaches out to Rick Rice and Rich Martin. She wants to know how that case went down and if there's any possibility that Robert Wayne Beckett Sr. is involved. They're not interested in hearing anything to do with John Purvis not having committed the murder of Susan Homley and Shane Homley. Two new detectives though, Tim Bronson and Bob Williams,
00:19:30
Speaker
are assigned to the homicide section of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department. They began looking at some older cases and they were shocked when they found that the two detectives, Rick Rice and Rich Martin, had never fully investigated the Robert Beckett Jr. story about his father, Robert Beckett Sr., killing a girl in Florida. They decide that maybe they should take another look at the Susan Homwe and Shane Homwe murder investigation. So if these guys, it's like, this drives me a little crazy. If these guys don't pick up this tip, then John Parvis would still be in prison today, right? ah Maybe DNA, but yeah.
00:20:12
Speaker
Well, I will say that according to the National Registry of Exonerations, this is the ah Michigan Law School page. They say the DNA doesn't contribute here. So you're right, like there is another chance down the line that somebody maybe would have figured this out. But let's go back in time and like, let's just look at what these two guys see. So Tim Bronson and Bob Williams, they open up the case file.
00:20:40
Speaker
to this double homicide where John Purvis is convicted in prison, and they scroll back through. So in the court records, they find that the defense had filed a motion to bar Purvis's statements to the original psychiatrist, who is Joe Klass, and the tape recorded confession. So in August of 1984, they see that a hearing had been heard on that motion.
00:21:04
Speaker
And that there were two psychiatrists who came in and basically said that Pervis was what's known as psychologically coercible. And that in their opinion, he had been coerced into giving this confession. He's a people pleaser.
00:21:23
Speaker
So he wanted to say whatever could go on there. He was afraid and he wasn't with his mom. So Purvis, under those circumstances, would say whatever they wanted him to say. And this is according to Dr. James Jordan.
00:21:39
Speaker
And the specific quote he testifies to is that John Purvis, quote, he's a very suggestible guy. Now, Thomas Coker rejects the defense motion to suppress the statements to Joe Klass. The judge ruled that though he may not have had his Miranda warning or his rights read to him when he told Joe Klass that he had killed Susan, he was not yet formally in police custody and therefore the statements would be considered voluntary.
00:22:09
Speaker
but he did rule out the use of the tape recorder confession because of not having the Miranda warning. Let's pick this apart for a second because they're saying when they pick him up and they take him into the station for questioning from the drugstore where he's buying his Reader's Digest to play the games in the back, that's not police custody.
00:22:30
Speaker
Right? I disagree with that, but okay. No, no, I'm saying that's what they're saying. They're saying that he wasn't Mirandized. Okay, but what I'm saying is the hair we're splitting here. Well, they relied on the doctor's testimony, right? All I'm saying is, what is your opinion on when they pick him up from the drugstore while he's getting his Reader's Digest and he's not around with his mom?
00:22:52
Speaker
Is it your opinion that because they take him in to sit down with a psychiatrist, he's not in police custody? Is it your opinion? No, all of this is he's in police custody from the moment he is interacting with the police.
00:23:07
Speaker
right Without his mother there, he is not of sound mind too. I would say that even people of sound mind, unless you're just really on the offensive or defensive, I guess, like you go along with the police, right? yeah Especially like when they're like, hey, we need your help with something, right? You're like, okay, how can I help? And the next thing you know, it's 10 years later, you're still in jail.
00:23:35
Speaker
Yeah. So that's what catches Tim Bronson and Bob Williams eyes. They're wondering, like, should the judge have done this? And they can't really question that. So they want to take like a deeper look. So they pull out all of the evidence that was put up at trial. And guess what they find? Nothing. Nothing. There's no physical evidence leaking John Purvis to this crime scene. They had even found that there were fingerprints that had been taken from the murder scene.
Trial and Conviction: Witnesses and Psychiatric Influence
00:24:03
Speaker
Digging deeper, they find that two neighbors testified that they heard voices inside Susan's house early on the morning of November the 4th of 1983. This was the day that the prosecution was saying the medical examiner and the police had determined that Susan had been killed, but it's four days before her body and Shane's body are discovered. There's a woman in here named Amy Rude.
00:24:28
Speaker
Amy Rude said that she heard a man who she identifies as having the voice of John Purvis asking, what do we do with the baby? And Amy Rude also testified before the jury that she had heard a woman say, don't touch the knife. The prosecution's theory was that Amy Rude had heard Emma Jo Purvis, who had a new last name at the time, and John Purvis talking about the crime scene.
00:24:59
Speaker
Now, when the detectives review the psychiatrist's testimony, he testifies that when John is brought into the police station in January of 1984, he showed John Purvis some picture cards using a standard psychological test, and that John had become tense and almost angry when he was shown two of the cards. According to Joel Closs,
00:25:22
Speaker
One of the cards should be interpreted as showing a violent scene. The other card would be a sexual scene. In class says to the jury, there was an immediate denial of what was happening on the card. He kept saying it was just people on the card. There was no recognition of the obvious.
00:25:39
Speaker
Class said that John stood up and said several times, you think I did it? Class said he asked what he meant and John Purvis said, killed that woman. Class then said Purvis said, I killed her, I liked her. According to Joe Class's testimony, John Purvis became totally relaxed as if he was unburdening himself. And then he made several stabbing motions with his right hand. And he said, I stabbed her in the heart. Another Fort Lauderdale neighbor was a former Ohio policeman named Earl Ross. Earl Ross testified for the offense that he saw Susan and Shane alive on the evening of November 4th, 1983. This is 11 hours after the prosecution claimed that Amy Rude overheard Purvis and Emma Jo inside the house talking about the crime. Ross testified, I saw Susan and what appeared to be Shane walking hand in hand in the little front yard. I'm positive it was on November the 4th. Now, a Miami psychiatrist named Dr. Sanford Jacobson, he had been sent to interview John Purvis in jail, and he testified for the defense that John would respond to questions by police or anyone else saying what he thought they wanted to hear. He doesn't think about the consequences of his answers or how they're linked to reality, said Jacobson. John Purvis testified in his own defense, and he denied having any involvement in the crime.
00:27:04
Speaker
He said he confessed because it was his thinking that they would let him go home if he told them what they wanted to hear. Instead, he said, they shook my hands and said, congratulations for confessing to the murders, John. Now you're going to spend the rest of your life in jail.
00:27:19
Speaker
This is taking place in March of 1985. On March 14th, the jury has convicted Purvis. He gets sentenced to life in prison. Basically, he gets sentenced for first degree murder and a sexual assault on Susan, and then second degree murder for having contributed to the death of Shane. These are the records that are upheld on appeal, and this is what the two detectives see. Now, when they start scrolling through all of this,
00:27:48
Speaker
they decide that they wanna talk in December of 1992 to Robert Beckett, senior. When they get to Robert Wayne Beckett, senior, they find out that he is not in the best of health. And he says to them that he is born again, meaning he has decided to accept the Christian faith and that this is gonna be important for the last part of his life. I guess that's essentially finding Jesus That's a come to Jesus moment.
Exoneration: Robert Beckett's Confession
00:28:18
Speaker
So what they say to Robert Beckett is that they need a confession and they will work out a deal between all the lawyers involved here if he will tell them the whole story of what happened. He hints to the prosecutors through the attorneys that there is someone else involved. What the cops don't know at the time is that there's two someone else's involved. They give him immunity from prosecution.
00:28:42
Speaker
And Robert Beckett confesses that he and another man named Paul Sarrio, they killed Susan, but they had been contract killers.
00:28:53
Speaker
On January 13th of 1993, Fort Lauderdale detective, including Tim Bronson and Bob William, they travel to White Settlement, Texas, and they charge 47-year-old Paul Sario with the murder. He tells them his story, and the following day, detectives in Aspen, Colorado arrest 46-year-old Paul Hamley, who is Susan's ex-husband, and they charge him with murder. According to Robert Beckett,
00:29:23
Speaker
Paul had paid them $14,000 to kill his ex-wife because he was trying to avoid that massive divorce settlement. John Purvis gets released from prison on February 24th of 1993. His conviction is vacated and the charges are dismissed. This is one of those rare cases where we do know kind of what happened. Now Beckett, Robert Beckett, he has immunity.
00:29:51
Speaker
But in March of 1994, a jury convicts the two Pauls, Paul Hamlin, Paul Serio, a first degree murder, and they are sentenced to life in prison in Florida. Okay. What do you think of all that happening? I think that it's unfortunate that the detectives didn't do their job in the first place. Yeah. It's very strange that John Gordon Purvis gets involved in this from the jump, but it does, I mean, it sort of makes sense.
00:30:18
Speaker
I feel like they should have completely cleared the husband first. You're gonna be hard pressed to find a situation ever where, how much? Let's see. Paul was ordered to pay between 150,000 $180,000 to Susan at the time of their divorce for um child support. Yeah, that was gonna be the long term, yeah. You're gonna be hard pressed to find somebody more ripe to be plucked as a suspect than someone who was just ordered to pay a large sum of money to the victim.
Post-Exoneration Legal Proceedings: Accountability and Settlement
00:30:57
Speaker
Yeah. I'm not sure all the ins and outs there as far as like why that didn't happen. It seems like maybe there was a proximity situation, but you you know, the baby died from neglect because her mother had been murdered. And so the baby clearly would have a father, right? Yeah.
00:31:16
Speaker
I assume that they could figure out she had been married and there was like this whole thing happening but as it turns out the detectives concocted a work of fiction. They really do and the prosecutors just jump on it. This next part is brought up in court documents. Here's how this runs down. This is interesting to me because All right, according to all of this, John Purvis is not even competent to represent himself in anything. He is a guardian. So Joanne Long, she ends up as his guardian filing a complaint against the prosecutor. The prosecutor at the time was a guy named Michael Satz. What you can get your hands on online isn't under Purvis's name. It's actually under Joanne Long, and they get a bunch of lawyers involved here. It makes its way through the appellate courts in Florida.
00:32:06
Speaker
and the holding is not great in terms of ah John Purvis. Now, they have a few different roles here from the other sources, so I wanted to pull a little bit from this because it's pretty simple. Now, if you take something to the appellate courts, depending on what level of parent appellate court you're at and what jurisdiction you're at, they will review everything de novo, but they're going to take it from the record that has developed in the case so far.
00:32:33
Speaker
Now, where we're picking up here, this is one of the appeals. It's the shortest thing I could find to explain all of this, but I thought it was worth talking about here because it gives us a little more insight into this case.
00:32:44
Speaker
So it says, we take the facts from the complaint. In November of 1983, Susan Homwe was found murdered in her home. As a result, her infant daughter, Shane, was left unattended for several days and died from dehydration. During the course of the investigation, it was learned that Paul Homwe, who was the victim's ex-husband, had a motive for the murders.
00:33:06
Speaker
The investigation had focused solely on John Gordon Purvis, who was a neighbor of the victims. Purvis was a mentally disabled adult diagnosed as a non-violence schizophrenic. Purvis had been charged with murder in the first degree and murder in the second degree as a result of the deaths of Susan and Shane. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in April of 1985, and he appealed.
00:33:29
Speaker
In May of 1985, shortly after sentencing, and while Purvis's direct appeal was pending, the state's attorney's office and all of the defendants they have named here, they received information. So this is May of 1985. They're saying the first tip about this came in. A man named Robert beckcker Beckett Sr., who's a close associate of the victim's ex-husband, had committed the murders.
00:33:54
Speaker
Depending on where you read about this, guys, I see that as happening in May of 1985 and as late as 1991. Because it's a court document, I am stating exactly what it says. Michael Satz, the state's attorney, and Barbara Barton, who was his investigator, conducted some additional investigation, and they learned that Robert Beckett Jr.'s girlfriend had told a detective in Colorado that Robert Beckett Beckett Jr. had implicated his father in the murder of Susan Hombly. Notwithstanding this information, Robert Kearney, who was a prosecutor in the state's attorney's office, instructed Barbara Barton to close her investigation. At that time, none of his exculpatory information was disclosed to Purvis, to his guardian, or his attorney.
00:34:43
Speaker
Purvis remained in prison for approximately nine years. Ultimately, this exculpatory information was discovered and a subsequent investigation established that John Purvis was innocent. On a joint motion of the state in Purvis, a circuit court judge set aside Purvis's conviction in 1993 and Purvis was freed. The actual murderers were then prosecuted and convicted.
00:35:09
Speaker
So in November of 1996, in the procedural background, Joanne Long brought suit under the 42nd US Code 1983.
00:35:21
Speaker
on behalf of John Purvis, and she alleged that Michael Satz, individually and as state attorney, Ralph Ray, Robert Kearney, and Barbara Barton, had violated Purvis's Brady rights by not turning over exculpatory information. The complaint alleges that Michael Satz was a state's attorney for the 17th Judicial Circuit in and for Broward County, Florida. Ralph Ray and Robert Kearney were alleged to be assistant state's attorneys, and Barbara Barton was alleged to be an investigator for Satz.
00:35:51
Speaker
In November of 1996, the defendants filed a motion to dismiss, grounded upon, prosecutorial immunity, failure to state a claim, and various other defenses. In response, the plaintiff argued that the defendant's failure to disclose the exculpatory evidence was independent of and subsequent to their prosecutorial function, and thus they were not entitled to absolute immunity.
00:36:13
Speaker
The plaintiff's memorandum included a request for leave to amend should the court be inclined to dismiss. The memorandum stated, recent discovery responses obtained by plaintiffs clearly illustrate the end of the prosecutorial efforts by defendants, and should the court be inclined to dismiss the case on the basis of absolute immunity, plaintiffs would respectfully request that leave.
00:36:34
Speaker
to amend, be granted so that additional facts now available to the plaintiffs may be alleged demonstrating that the functional analysis to be employed does not support a grant of absolute immunity under the facts of this case. In March of 1998, the court dismissed the complaint concluding that the defendants were entitled to absolute immunity by virtue of having been engaged in the prosecutorial function.
00:36:58
Speaker
The court's order stated, the plaintiff asserts in her opposition to the motion to dismiss that she has information that the defendants were serving in an investigative, non-prosecutorial capacity when they received the exculpatory information. However, no such information could be found in the complaint.
00:37:16
Speaker
plaintiff has not attempted to amend the complaint to incorporate such highly relevant information, nor does she divulge the substance of this promised information in the opposition itself. In her opposition memorandum, plaintiff alleges that the defendants were no longer engaged in prosecutorial functions and had no direct involvement with the pending appeal. So they go back and forth a little bit here, but the holding is, even when the amended complaint comes in, that They conclude that the defendants are entitled to absolute immunity. They also conclude that the district court didn't abuse any discretion denying the plaintiff leave to amend this complaint. ah She should have put it in when she filed, is basically what they say. What did you think of that ruling? It's legally sound, but... Sad. I have questions with regard to... um I don't know that the full...
00:38:14
Speaker
intent, the full congressional intent behind the US code 1983 has been recognized. I got you. It's very clear in the wording of it that they want the power of the state to act appropriately and to not act inappropriately. Right.
00:38:43
Speaker
I think that there's a lot that could be, I think there is a lot that will be squared with it at some point within the law. We just haven't gotten there yet. But the thought behind it is that yes, prosecutors have absolute immunity. you know We elect the district attorney who selects who they have prosecute cases, right? Yeah.
00:39:13
Speaker
So it's a people powered decision, right? I mean, in theory, like, I feel like you could ask a lot of people before you would find somebody who even knows who the district, the elected district attorney and their district is, right? Yeah.
00:39:28
Speaker
That's the thought behind it. And so, you know, the thought is, well, the people elect this person. And so if somebody is doing something wrong, certainly they will just, you know, elect somebody else. But we know that that's not really how that works ah in reality. Right. I do think that there's more to be explored here, you know, in A criminal trial, ah you know the Brady violation would be a sanction to have the charges dismissed. right um Contrary to that, this is a this is a civil action for damages.
00:40:05
Speaker
right yeah and barring the fact that the Brady violation requires once the court has found certain findings of fact um and made their conclusions of law that you know Brady violations actually occurred, they must dismiss um the criminal ah the criminal allegations against the defendant. Beyond that, we haven't had a whole lot of cases yet where barring some sort of settlement, which of course would not conform to any finding of law, right? yeah We haven't really had a whole lot of guidance and structure that has actually like seen what I think the possibility behind that law
00:40:53
Speaker
that was enacted to rein in the power of the state to do. I don't know that we've gotten there yet. Unfortunately, this is a legally sound case as far as you know saying that they are absolutely immune, but I feel like it's wrong.
00:41:15
Speaker
Yeah, I tend to agree with you. I feel like it's wrong. And so luckily, the city of Fort Lauderdale, representing the police department, and as opposed to Broward County, they recognize some of this, and they do end up settling with John Purvis.
Conclusion: Acknowledgments and Promotions
00:41:29
Speaker
And in February of 1995, they settle with him for a million dollars. John Purvis, if he were alive today, would be he would be 82 years old.
00:41:38
Speaker
But unfortunately, December 16th of 2016, he passed away. but He outlived his mom by 10 years. ah She had passed away in August of 2006.
00:41:53
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.
00:44:00
Speaker
One day it will be my baby and me
00:44:52
Speaker
The 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 dot.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.
00:45:23
Speaker
This is just a reminder that we are part of the Zincaster Creator Network. And I've put a link in the show notes if you guys want to check it out for your own podcasting needs. um I've always enjoyed using Zincaster. Their quality is great. And we we were able to join their Creator Network at kind of a key time in in their history. um I have enjoyed it. you know I've considered a lot of other ah places to record and a lot of other ways to put together and host and distribute our podcasts. But I've stuck with Zincaster the longest. We've been with them for hundreds of episodes now. And I'm putting a link in the show notes where you can check out ah what they have to offer and see if it's something you would want to use.