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Season Five Home for the Holidays 7
162 Plays15 days ago
In Today’s Episode, we put together our Home for the Holiday cases.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
Recommended
Transcript
Content Warning & Podcast Introduction
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.
Cuyahoga County Case Discussion
00:00:28
Speaker
We're a couple of episodes in for the holidays, but ah this one was interesting in being tied to like a bunch of other stuff. And I don't i don't really look at this area. This this is out of Cuyahoga County up in Ohio. I don't really look at this area that much. This is the Cleveland area. But when I do, it's always like something interesting. And there's multiple people from Ohio that come up with this episode.
00:00:55
Speaker
But I wanted to like look at it from the perspective of like how weird mistaken identity can
Raymond Tower's Wrongful Conviction
00:01:02
Speaker
be. So today's sources are primarily the Dispatch, Cleveland dot.com, the National Registry of Exonerations,
00:01:11
Speaker
There's several court documents in here and ah there's an Esquire piece that's like a post release piece that i I put that together when I was looking at all the materials that were available in this case. This is about a guy named Raymond Tower. Have you ever heard of him? This is a 1981 crime. Trial happens in 1981 as well. The exoneration occurs in 2010. He had been serving a life sentence and Raymond Tower, who is the the accused in this case originally. He's a black male that's 24 years old. The most serious crime here is child sex abuse. And then the additional convictions were for assault and kidnapping. The contributing factors to all of this were mistaken witness identification.
00:01:57
Speaker
and false or misleading forensic evidence. And just to reiterate, this is at a Cleveland, Ohio, Cuyahoga County habit.
The Crime & Public Perception
00:02:05
Speaker
So the crime itself is that on May 24th of 1981, an 11-year-old girl and her 12-year-old cousin, who's male, they're walking their bikes in a Cleveland park when a man in a wooded area within the park lures him over claiming that he's found a an injured deer in the trees and that he needs their help to help this deer. And as soon as he gets them out of the sight of the public, the man pulls out a gun and he assaults the boy. He makes the little boy lie on the ground and he rapes and sexually assaults this 11 year old girl. This is one of those crimes that first of all, it involves children. And second of all, in my opinion, this is either a stalking act or a random. Would you agree with that?
00:02:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's but it's all kind of unusual for things like this to happen. This is the stranger danger kind of thing. doubt this case was very publicized, right? As far as like what happened. I don't know about you, but it was my belief that as long as I was with somebody else, nothing was going to happen to me, right? And that this seems to kind of undo that.
00:03:13
Speaker
because there was a, you know, a boy and a girl and I don't know if they were playing together. her does happen to me Like, I don't know the further circumstances. Obviously they were children. So.
00:03:25
Speaker
We could probably find their identities, but why would we want to do that, right? But anyway, so there was a whole lot of it to me that it seemed thats kind of surreal, I guess would be a good way to put it, because like how on earth did this occur when I was a kid and I walked to my friend's houses, like we walked each other halfway because we needed to be together. And so in this case, this completely undid that.
Flawed Identification & Trial
00:03:57
Speaker
yeah Yeah, it doesn't do that. The investigation into this is a little weird. For like three weeks, this crime receives very little publicity, except that the police are looking for someone. Roughly three weeks after the crime, Raymond Howler is near this same Cleveland Park when he runs a stop sign in his car.
00:04:15
Speaker
So because he's run this stop sign, a park ranger here pulls him over and he notices that Raymond seems to resemble the composite sketch of the person who had attacked this 11 year old girl and her 12 year old ah cousin. it This sketch arose from interviews with the children. The park ranger brings Raymond Towler into the police station.
00:04:39
Speaker
And at the police station, they take his picture. And over the course of the next couple of days, so almost a month out from these attacks, both the boy and the girl pick Raymond Tower out from a photo array. It was reported that the boy took nearly 10 minutes to pick out this photo. and that the girl took almost 15 minutes to pick out the photo. There were two other witnesses in the park that day. They also chose Raymond Towler's photo. So based on these identifications in June of 1981, Raymond Towler is arrested and he's charged with rape, assault, and kidnapping. This case goes to trial. It's it's not a murder trial. There's not a lot of discovery evidence that is put on. It goes to trial and the two victims come in and they testify that Raymond Tower was
00:05:28
Speaker
the person who had attacked them. Then the prosecution put on both witnesses from the park that day who they also testified and they identified Raymond Tower as the person they had seen. One of the witnesses testified that she saw the perpetrator three times on the bike trail the day of the crime. He was alone the first two times and the third time that she saw him, he was accompanied by two small children. The other witness testified that he only saw the perpetrator walking by himself on the bike trail and He had passed them by on the trail. The only physical evidence that we see at Raymond Towler's trial, it comes in from a forensic analyst who is from the Ohio Bureau of Identification and but and Investigation named James Wooster. So James Wooster said that he had microscopically examined a hair that had been combed from the victim. He testified that the hair appeared to be a pubic hair and was a quote
00:06:29
Speaker
Negro hair in EGRO. The female victim was white. This analyst further testified that to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty that the hair had the same microscopic characteristics as Raymond Tower's hair, and he therefore testified that the hair, quote, could have come from the defendant. However, he also testified that hairs do not possess the sufficient number of unique individual microscopic characteristics to be positively identified as having come from a particular person to the exclusion of all other. Okay, so just right there for a second. We've gotten into forensic hair cases before. From the characteristics or the appearance of the hair, you and I both know
00:07:15
Speaker
There's no way to know specifically who it came from you can get pretty close with the idea that like there's a particular coloring but you're really not able to do that now we do know that advance technology today.
00:07:30
Speaker
can identify DNA in a number of ways from hair, but hair fiber evidence is kind of weird. Would you agree with that? And you know, like I think I've given the example before, like if you're talking about like a dark coarse hair, clearly that's probably not going to belong to somebody who has like fine light hair, right?
00:07:54
Speaker
So like you could make these distinctions. However, it was used in a much more conclusive and definitive way than I think would have ever been proper. And I have no idea if the people doing it had any idea that that was the case. I'd like to think that they didn't and they were literally just using the best that they could.
00:08:24
Speaker
Yeah.
Breakthrough with DNA Evidence
00:08:25
Speaker
Well, so for his part, Raymond Towler does what an innocent person will typically do and he gets on the stand and defends himself. He testifies he didn't come commit these crimes and his defense presents multiple alibi witnesses who corroborate that Raymond Taller was at home in his home with other people when the crimes took place. So even though Taller has an alibi, and there's no real physical evidence tying him to this crime, he's convicted. And the law at the time
00:09:01
Speaker
had mandatory sentencing, which required the judge to sentence him a certain way because the victim was under 13 years old. He gets life in prison. The sentence is stacked as a 12 to life sentence with two consecutive sentences for the crimes against the little boy that run from 12 to 40 years, but they had to happen after the other sentence.
00:09:24
Speaker
This is all in 1981. In 2003, Ohio starts allowing for DNA testing in very limited circumstances. So this is 20 years after this crime. But Raymond Towler, he fits the circumstances.
00:09:41
Speaker
that there's DNA evidence and the DNA evidence could point towards a potential specific perpetrator. In a lot of instances, that should be it. That should be how this all goes. The Innocence Project, they help him file an application for DNA testing. He gets access to the testing in 2004. Shortly thereafter, the prosecutors are asked to send the pubic hair and other evidence from the crime scene to the lab. The envelope shows up at the lab and guess what's in it? Nothing. It's it's an empty envelope. So a month later, the prosecutors get together with the defense and they say that they were mailing material that was from under the victim's fingernails. Again, this evidentiary envelope from the prosecutor arrives at the lab and it's empty. A judge finally orders that some of the clothing worn by the victims gets sent to the lab.
00:10:35
Speaker
So the clothing is examined, and there's no semen or other bodily fluids found on the clothing, and they close out testing. In 2008, so four years have gone by, the Columbus Dispatch runs a series on Ohio prisoners who were seeking DNA testing that could potentially prove their innocence. At first, this has nothing to do with Raymond Tower. In fact, if you go and look this up, he's a blurb that pops up July 6, 2007,
00:11:03
Speaker
and then is referenced later on. That blurb in the Columbus Dispatch is very short. It just says that he was born in June of 1957. His charges are rape, kidnapping, and felonious assault. He was convicted in Cuyahoga County on September 18, 1981, and he was sentenced to life in prison.
00:11:21
Speaker
It gives a summary, which is basically like ah a redo of what I just mentioned. It says, Taylor was convicted of assaulting a young boy and raping a young girl in Cleveland. The children were coaxed into a wooded area on May 24th, 1981 by their attacker.
00:11:37
Speaker
Both victims identified Tower. A witness who saw the children with a man also picked Tower from a lineup. A DNA test was granted, but hair and fingernail scrapings mailed to a lab were missing from their evidence envelope. Available DNA evidence were clothing and underwear. The rationale for testing was this. Potentially faulty witness identification. A prior unsuccessful test of the underwear could yield results.
00:12:02
Speaker
Using the latest techniques and then they point out that as far as prior convictions or criminal record Raymond tower had none one of the things they did that was very interesting here is they gave us a timeline of what happens next after this is put up and it says the dispatch reviewed three hundred and thirteen cases. in which an Ohio inmate sought DNA testing. They realized that only 14 instances had been granted. So the dispatch went through and identified what they thought were the 30 best prospects, meaning journalists have looked at it and gone, we think these are the 30 best of those 313. So 10% of those cases, roughly. So the dispatch researched each applicant's prior felony convictions. They did point out that privacy laws prevent certain types of comprehensive criminal background checks.
00:12:50
Speaker
and they identify Raymond Fowler. They put this out in July of 2007, and then in February of 2008, Raymond Fowler again requests DNA testing. April of 2008, the prosecutor tells the judge of their intent to proceed with the testing. September of 2008, a judge orders that evidence be sent to the DNA Diagnostic Center for examination, and that lab report finally says there is sufficient semen on the victim's underwear to obtain a DNA profile.
00:13:16
Speaker
the dna diagnostic center They warned the court that this sample going into the testing process will be used completely. There will be no sample left. On October 29, 2008, the judge orders them to proceed with the testing on the victim's underwear. November 5th of 2008, so six days after the tests were ordered, DNA Diagnostics Center reports that they found DNA from two men on this 11-year-old girl's underwear. She's not 11 in 2008, obviously, but she was at the time of the crime. The DNA is is conclusively ruled out as having come from Towler, and the way they stated in court is that the DNA could not have come from Raymond Towler. So the Ohio Innocence Project, again, says that these results support Towler's claims of innocence. But prosecutors say the presence of two profiles indicates evidence contamination.
00:14:10
Speaker
and that the DNA could have come from someone who came into contact with the underwear before or after the attack. And they'd leave him in prison. On May 4th, 2010, so a year and a half after that ruling, new DNA tests prove that Raymond Towler was a not the person who assaulted the little boy or raped the little girl.
Exoneration & Unanswered Questions
00:14:32
Speaker
And it was expected that he would be released by May 5th, 2010.
00:14:37
Speaker
His charges get vacated when he spent 29 years of his life in prison for a crime that he didn't commit. There's a little more to this, but what did you think of this? It's an unfortunate case. He had, I mean, what I would consider to be at least not a concocted alibi. Ultimately, I believe that they were able to, they determined that sperm cell DNA, which is consistent with a rape, exonerated him as the, or he was excluded as being the contributor. So it wasn't just contamination, right? Correct.
00:15:11
Speaker
It's really unfortunate that witnesses identified him. It's also, it's really unfortunate for them. It's really unfortunate for him. I actually, I don't know if it's ever come out who it was. um In the case that, I'm not sure that there would be anything they could do at this point.
00:15:31
Speaker
ah Because I'm pretty sure in
00:15:57
Speaker
right He had not, well, no, he had not gotten parole. And i he had this weird sentence where like it's technically a real life sentence, but like it also has this other stuff stacked on the back of it. It reads in his Department of Corrections record that he would have had a 12 to life, meaning I think the way that the judge set it up, and this is just me, I'm speculating, so I could be wrong. It almost looks like each sentence that he had, because there's One charge with the girl and two charged charges for the boy. and then one kind of So it's like rape and kidnapping for the girl. All is one thing. And then an assault and and a kidnapping on the boy. it It's almost like he had to serve 36 years, meaning consecutive 12-12-12. And then he would really be eligible for parole.
00:16:46
Speaker
like beyond that. it that's how That's kind of how it reads from a legal perspective. It's really weird. The whole situation and going through it the way that it did, because they found sperm cell DNA day that excluded him, makes it pretty clear he's not he didn't do it, right? Right. Because of the statute of limitations having more than likely not been applicable to a new perpetrator. Now, they you know some stuff has happened to change some of the laws.
00:17:15
Speaker
with regard to like DNA testing and stuff like that. But I i still don't think it would apply based on his exoneration in 2010 and the crime having been committed in 1981. So here's what I would be interested to know though. Did the DNA match anybody? And did that person look like him? That's what I would want to know. I don't know the answers to that. I know that they ruled him out conclusively, but I don't know why. And I don't know who they stuck in there kind of in place of him.
00:17:42
Speaker
Right. And what I was saying was I'm not sure that that would even come up because I don't know they can prosecute the new perpetrator. Right. right Yeah. So they're not going to do the work on it is what I'm saying. But I would like to know like, OK, so what caused this? Right. Because without the DNA evidence, he never would have been
Media & Innocence Project's Role
00:18:01
Speaker
exonerated for this. He had multiple. He had both victims and then like two end independent witnesses identify him. Yes.
00:18:11
Speaker
Right. And so I wonder what it was about his case that made the newspaper interesting. Well, I think it was his lack of criminal record and the fact that DNA evidence, like they were sort of at that time, they were piggybacking off the law change in Ohio, where the statutes now allow for DNA testing under certain circumstances. So in their reporting of those circumstances, they found cases like I think they went in and went, well, how many people have benefited from this law? And they were like, well, 315 people have applied or 313 or whatever the number was. And we've only looked at 14 of those cases. And what happened? Well, we don't know yet. Right. and there And I also read somewhere and I didn't get very far into it, but part of the reason they started
00:18:56
Speaker
their own investigation was that they weren't following like this newly enacted legislation where they had if they denied it, they had to give a reason and they weren't giving reasons. right and so The journalists were trying to help bring some cohesiveness to how it was being applied. The idea is that ah except for the fact that it costs money that you know inmates don't have, the idea is what's the harm in testing the DNA, right? Correct. The worst thing that's going to happen is it's going to just affirm what's already happened and you know when you have the technology to do that and there's any question especially somebody who has I mean to my he was convicted quickly yeah yeah in this case and but to my knowledge he has never
00:19:42
Speaker
confessed or he he's always maintained his innocence. It was just at the time in 1981, having two victims and two independent witnesses identify him, that was evidence, right? It was, yeah. It was convincing. And you know I'm not sure it it shouldn't have been convincing. The the issue is like, well,
00:20:04
Speaker
if he was DNA exonerated all those years later, what was the mix-up, right? why Why was he identified? That's what I would want to know, I think. That's exactly what all the new DNA laws about that time, like the going into the single-digit 2000, that's exactly what they were trying to do. And I think it's interesting that it played out the way it did. Yeah, it did. So I went back through this particular case.
00:20:34
Speaker
And I went with the idea of what you just said. Now, one thing I remembered, and this is a, it's a publication, but it's pretty short. People can go find it. It's from the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law. And I don't remember the exact edition it is, because I have clippings from it. But it's by a guy named Mark Godsey, G-O-D-S-E-Y. He has this like long article that is a review of ah Book now the book is by Jim and Nancy Petro. It's called false justice eight myths that convict the innocent It's by Jim and Nancy Petro But the article is written from the perspective of Mark Godsey and he called it false justice and the quote true prosecutor a memoir a tribute and commentary and he writes it from the perspective of having been the director of the Ohio Innocence Project and And at the time he was watching Jim Petro go from a prosecutor to being elected the Attorney General of Ohio. And Jim Petro was kind of known for being, he was known for being ahead of the curve in terms of statutes that could benefit the wrongfully convicted. I read this article. It had multiple cases that it talked about. and I wanted to look at one more. So Raymond's case is kind of short. The way that all of his wraps up is the Ohio legislators had put wrongful imprisonment compensation into state law. He was gonna receive about 41 grand a year for every year of wrongful imprisonment, which would have been about um a million bucks, 1.1 million. He was able to file on the idea of lost wages and damages. So Raymond was a musician leading up to this.
00:22:18
Speaker
From what I understand, he was a fairly talented guy who played multiple instruments. I don't know exactly how all of it took out, but I can tell you that they end up giving him $2.5 million dollars in compensation from the state of Ohio, and they do it quickly.
Compensation & Prison Projects
00:22:33
Speaker
So he gets out in May of 2010, and he was 52 years old on the day of his release. By mid-2011, he gets awarded $2.5 million dollars in compensation from Ohio, and his attorneys file a federal civil rights lawsuit that it goes on for a little while, but in 2012, they settled that for $4.7 million. dollars so He got some level of compensation. He had an interesting thing happen in 2006 I was going to bring up as well.
00:23:04
Speaker
the state of ohio Was producing a children's CD? Have you heard about this? Yeah, that's actually, I think, what I heard about him in passing. So in this children's CD, inmates were performing lullabies and doing sing-alongs, and the inmates were giving parenting tips. So, Tower was an accomplished musician.
00:23:23
Speaker
But he is not allowed to perform on the ah on the album because he has one a conviction of a sex offense and two a Conviction of a crime against children so even though he's not allowed to perform on the album He didn't have getting credited as a technical advisor and as a consultant to the different artists But this at one point, this was a big deal because people protested this within and outside of different organizations in Ohio. But basically, like the people that get behind in things like DARE and Safe and Drug-Free Schools, depending on where you live, they're called different names, these organizations. But they protested on the basis that like this was a contradiction. Well, it sort of all is, right? Yes, it is. i mean
00:24:12
Speaker
putting aside the fact that he's ultimately exonerated, right? It's creepy for inmates to seem lullabyed. It's all quite weird. We have parenting tips and like it's a whole weird situation. I don't know what somebody was thinking. that Well, I don't either, but from from the perspective of Mark Godsey, where I was reading this review, which is, it's ah it's a cool read if you want to go find it. Again, it's False Justice and the True Prosecutor, a memoir, a tribute, and a commentary by Mark Godsey. And you can find it pretty easily on the OSU ah websites. This is just like a random publication where it's like part of ah the Journal of Criminal Law up there. And I would give you the page numbers, but there's something crazy like,
00:24:59
Speaker
That particular issue was maybe 4,000 pages, I think, if I remember correctly. And his is like from page 800 to page 900. He's got 26 pages in there that you can read. But I pulled another case that was also a contradiction from that time period that goes with what
Clarence Elkins' Case Introduction
00:25:15
Speaker
you're saying. And that's the case of Clarence Elkins. Have you ever heard of him?
00:25:19
Speaker
No, I hadn't, ah but I did when- Yeah, it's kind of connected. The two are connected together. So because Raymond's case was fascinating to me, but it was it's sort of, honestly, even the court documents are not very long, I coupled Clarence Elkins with him because I looked at it and I was like, is this all happening at the same period of time?
00:25:44
Speaker
And it kind of is, but it had a more satisfying conclusion to it, so I thought you would appreciate that part. The crime here occurs on June 7th, 1998. Early that morning, a woman named Judith Johnson in Barberton, Ohio, which is in Summit County, she is beaten, raped, and killed. Her six-year-old granddaughter was staying at her home.
00:26:11
Speaker
Her granddaughter is also beaten, raped, and left for dead.
00:26:19
Speaker
But it turns out that the granddaughter, which I think she's identified at different places here, I'm just not gonna use her name, ah but I'm just gonna call her the granddaughter. The granddaughter regains consciousness in the middle of the morning, and she dials the number on one of the neighbor's phones, but the neighbor's not home.
00:26:40
Speaker
So the granddaughter ends up leaving a message saying someone has killed my grandmother. She then picks herself up and she walks to a different house and she gets a ride home and the police are called. So while the police are interviewing this little girl, she tells them that the killer looked like her uncle Clarence. So Clarence,
00:27:09
Speaker
is Judith Johnson's 35 year old son-in-law, a guy named Clarence Elkins. None of the physical evidence from the scene connects Clarence Elkins to the crime. Limited DNA testing that was done showed that hairs found on Judith Johnson's body did not come from Clarence Elkins. Nevertheless, he goes on trial, and in 1999, a year later,
00:27:40
Speaker
Clarence Elkins is convicted of rape and murder, and he sentenced the life in prison on the basis of his niece, this little girl's identification, which when she was called to testify, she repeated that the attacker had looked like her uncle Clarence. Three years after this crime, when this little girl was nine years old, she changes her account of what had happened.
00:28:08
Speaker
And she says now she remembers that the killer had brown eyes and uncle Clarence had blue eyes. And she said that she had been wrong when she identified Clarence Elkins. So based on this statement, Clarence Elkins lawyers asked for a new trial. All right. So this is a white guy for murder, attempted murder, rape and assault.
00:28:30
Speaker
With a crime occurring in 1998, he's convicted in 1999. His sentence is listed on his DOC record as 55 to life. He was 35 at the time this crime occurred. The contributing factor is mistaken witness identification. And did DNA contribute to the exoneration? and The answer is yes. I don't feel like um it was mistaken witness identification. And the reason I say that is A child is going to be very honest, and she never said it was Uncle Clarence. She said it looked like Uncle Clarence. She said that it looked like Uncle Clarence, and if it had been Uncle Clarence, she would have said it was Uncle Clarence. Right. yeah
00:29:23
Speaker
You see the difference. I mean, she was six years old, but at the same time, the fact that they jumped on that as opposed to trying to narrow it down to somebody proximity-wise that, you know, fit the capability of that kind of crime yeah in the area. To me, it was very relevant that she said it looked like Uncle Clarence. She was making the best description that she could for without being you know because she had gone through a trauma, she lost her grandmother. And it's weird to me when cases like that happen because you would think that that would be something they would immediately pick up on. yeah The fact that like she didn't say it was Uncle Clarence, but we're looking for somebody who has his same general characteristics. right And I feel like this is that's a really important point.
00:30:17
Speaker
and And nobody was paying any attention. And of course, a six-year-old doesn't have, well, a six-year-old victim doesn't have the wherewithal to say, hey, you idiots, I didn't say it was Uncle Clarence. And she's trying to get justice for her her grandmother and herself.
Witness Testimony & Appeals
00:30:33
Speaker
And so the information she's giving, she's literally just going through the motion. And in her mind, she's doing the best she can with it, right? Yeah. It's really sad. The whole situation is really sad.
00:30:44
Speaker
It is and this is a particularly violent attack on this six year old. And when you have something like that happen to a child, I'm not saying I think I agree with you. This is not like false identification by a witness. This is just like police not understanding like what is happening.
00:31:04
Speaker
so I think they were like, we'll seal this right up. Yeah, they basically, they basically did. Yeah. It's unfortunate because somebody paying attention would have said, Oh, well, clearly it's not uncle Clarence because she just said it looked like him. And if it was somebody that she could, I just feel like a six year old would have said, it was my uncle Clarence. If that were the case, yeah not, it looked like him. For Clarence Elkins part, his wife, Melinda believed him. He told the police that he had been drinking with friends until about 2.40 in the morning. Melinda testifies that she saw him when he came home and she knew that he was still there because she had been up all night caring for one of their children who was sick. Right. And so this would have been her mother. Yeah, this is her mom. And so murder she essentially is the one
00:31:56
Speaker
who gets involved here, and I hate to say it this way, but she saves Clarence's ass. Brooke is trying to take back her testimony, so to speak. She's trying to recant. This is later. Right. What they discover is that the family, including the Elkinses,
00:32:18
Speaker
they have attempted to get as much information out of Brooke as possible. And one of the things that they did was they had her hypnotized. So the prosecution, when Clarence Elkin's lawyers bring up, they want a new trial based on this recantation from the little girl, the prosecution says that because of this coaching, there's there's no way this is like real, her taking this back.
00:32:47
Speaker
I don't feel like she's taking it back. I feel like she grew up and she realized what happened and was trying to clarify. I think you're right. I mean, she even says in materials that you can find now, she says that the chief prosecutor at the time came to her and was like, you have to do this. And like it was, she only came in and talked to her because the person that was first chair on the case, guy named Michael Carroll, he knew that this girl was the only way to get Clarence Elkin convicted.
00:33:14
Speaker
It took her time and maturity but because, and so I, this is just what I imagined. I imagine this child is doing what she's been told. She's been through a traumatic event. These are the officials that are going to take care of it. You know, I want to get justice for grandma. I want to get justice for myself and I'm going to tell them, you know, what I've said and like, they'll figure it all out. Right. Yeah. She gets older. She realizes like, Oh, uncle Clarence went to jail for this. Well, you know,
00:33:43
Speaker
It wasn't actually Uncle Clarence. I never said it was. I said it looked like him. Right. right And so there's this divide. And so i I see what the prosecutors are saying, right? But to say that it looked like Uncle Clarence, because I'm making a firm distinction here because you don't have a child giving a description except in relating it to someone she knows, okay? That's exactly what she's doing, yes. now
00:34:18
Speaker
that to me is actually like directly not identifying him, right? It's actually saying that like while it looks like Uncle Clarence, she never says it was him. And to me like that is just really missed. And so It seems like the prosecution, I see what the prosecution is doing here, but, you know, to say that like, oh, there's pressure been put on the witness now, and to go back through it and realize, oh, well, she never actually said it was him. And that's exactly what she would have done if she could have, right? Yeah, I see it. But at the same time, it's it these types of things are infuriating because
00:35:05
Speaker
to have a young, because she lost her grandmother and she was attacked. I don't feel like there's an any amount of pressure in the world that could be put on a victim who's been through that that would cause them to ah recant ah under, you know, false pretenses. She wasn't recanting. She was clarifying. Yeah, I agree with you. But nevertheless, this petition for a new trial, it gets back in front of the same judge who had been there presiding over Clarence Elkin's conviction in the first place three years earlier.
DNA Revelations & New Suspect
00:35:39
Speaker
And he denies the petition for a new trial in 2002. Two years go by and the Ohio Innocence Project gets involved in 2004.
00:35:50
Speaker
There is multiple evidence in this case. There's a lot of biological material on the body and in the body of Judith Johnson. And there is material from collected from the little girl, her underwear and her body that night. And they they test traces of biological material from three of those locations. And it reveals that the same male DNA profile shows up in all three locations.
00:36:16
Speaker
So the indicator is it wasn't multiple people, it's just one dude who did this. But that DNA does not match Clarence Elkins. The prosecutors continue to deny that that's possible. And they basically say Clarence Elkins is guilty.
00:36:31
Speaker
Why do you think that that happened? Got to double down, man. I guess so. Got to double down. And this is, ah now keep in mind what we were just talking about with Raymond Towler, this is that same time period where we've got that, those, the law has changed. So now this DNA testing, the prosecutors are basically saying, look, this is just mistakes being made at the lab. It's not possible. Like he's guilty.
00:36:55
Speaker
So in July, 2005, a new judge again denies a motion for the new trial. He rules that the original verdict was based on the little girl's identification of Clarence Elkins rather than on DNA evidence. So this new scientific evidence had it been presented to the jury would not have changed that outcome of him being found guilty. So the defense investigation focuses in and on the and at this point in 2005, they focus on a neighbor.
00:37:25
Speaker
who had driven the little girl home after the attack and left her on the porch, waiting for someone to find her for 30 minutes instead of calling the police. They wanted to know why this woman had done it. This woman is in a common law marriage. So for people who don't understand what a common law marriage is, which I think that everybody should understand it at this point,
00:37:52
Speaker
You've lived together to the point in time that the law recognizes the two of you as husband and wife or whatever your relationship is. And this person had just recently been released from prison at the time of the attack. He had been convicted and imprisoned for assault on other little girls.
00:38:18
Speaker
So over the next, year, give or take. This guy ends up being transferred to the same prison and then on to the same cell block as Clarence Elkins. Clarence Elkins, encouraged by his wife, he collects a cigarette butt that this guy has discarded.
00:38:45
Speaker
He flattens it out and mails it to his attorneys and they conduct DNA tests on the the DNA from the saliva on the cigarette butt. That DNA matches the DNA profile obtained from the crime scene evidence. Despite this match, identifying this man, the prosecution still says no to joining anything related to Clarence Alkin's conviction being overturned and him being released. So that man is Earl Mann. Have you ever have you ever looked him up? He's gotten an interesting ah pass, if you want something to do later in the day, people. Earl Mann is ah ah not great at all. I have, just for this ah particular situation, because I wanted to see the
00:39:39
Speaker
Granddaughter is not wrong. Yeah, they do. Oh, yeah. Did you pull him up for that? Yeah, that's what I was going to tell you his DLC. They do look similar. like Well, yeah, but because that was my whole thing with the other case, right? Like, did the, you know, whatever the DNA profile yielded was that person um Their hairline and their eyes are different, but the rest of like the shape of their face and I think at the time their facial hair was similar and there were some other things about it. I remember looking at their pictures and going, oh yeah, I understand what that little girl was saying. Right. She said he looked like Uncle Clarence. Yeah, just big white. Earl Mann certainly resembles Uncle Clarence. He just wasn't him.
00:40:23
Speaker
Right, so the police actually had like a relatively good description if they would have just gone with it from the perspective of what does Uncle Clarence look like, they would have been okay. i don't I don't see why they didn't do that. To me, if you're speaking with a child, if they say it looks like Uncle Clarence, they're not identifying Uncle Clarence. They would have said it was Uncle Clarence.
00:40:49
Speaker
It's very different to me and that's just a lack of communication in my opinion. and Well, so at this point in time, when they, when they match Earl Mann's DNA to the DNA from the crime scene, they then have to like dig even deeper into this case.
00:41:09
Speaker
Now, Earl Mann, for his part, he's a Florida guy who had moved up to Ohio. He had a terrible criminal record. I think he had what today would have constituted a hate crime on his record. He had been accused of various robberies. And in 2002, he had been convicted of molesting his own three children who were all little girls under the age of 10.
00:41:33
Speaker
Right. And don't you think if they had done a more thorough investigation and this guy wouldn't have been hard to find yeah his girlfriend or whatever, his partner, she was ultimately charged with those crimes, like as an accessory, part of it. She drove the granddaughter home, right? Yeah. Yeah. She just, she drove the granddaughter and dropped her off on the porch where she sat and waited. Yeah. Now, I i presume, okay, I don't know, but they took the fact that she said, oh, that guy looked like Uncle Clarence. And maybe she was shy. She didn't tell the neighbor why she needed a ride home except like that they should have asked the neighbor, why did you take this little girl
00:42:16
Speaker
Home randomly. Well, so Melinda and Clarence having got this DNA match they've sort of like teed up another suspect that's way more likely for this crime even though the prosecutors is not looking at it the Break in this case is weirdly a barberton police officers a guy a guy named Gerard Antonucci he brings to the attention of the prosecutor that is in hard conflict with Elkins' defense attorneys, that he wrote up a statement in 1999. So this is four months before Clarence Elkins is convicted of the murder of Judith Johnson and the assault on her granddaughter. Antonucci had arrested Earl Mann for a robbery, completely unrelated to what was happening. But during the process of arresting him,
00:43:10
Speaker
Earl Mann was so drunk that he asked Antonucci if he was being arrested for robbing and killing Judy Johnson. So per the police department policy at the time, Antonucci wrote it up. He wrote it up as a narrative report and he sent it over to the detectives who were working on Judy Johnson's murder.
00:43:40
Speaker
This statement was never disclosed to the defense. It was never included in any of the evidence, which it's a Brady violation, but you know you never know if it's going to be something you can use or not.
Ignored Evidence & Renewed Investigation
00:43:54
Speaker
Well, right, but that's like tunnel vision, though, right? Correct. Like, why wouldn't you? Because he never, Clarence never confessed. He never, like, he maintained his innocence. His wife, who was the daughter and aunt of the victims. She is on his side.
00:44:10
Speaker
right she maintained the innocence and she had like a reason for maintaining the innocence she saw him when he came home he hadn't killed anybody it boggles my mind why that would be so easily discarded because he was in a vulnerable position of being intoxicated and he says are you arresting me for the murder and like why wouldn't somebody look into that Yeah, I mean, he wrote it up, he handed it off. that like Even he saw the connection, right? Yeah, I, you know, I don't know, what is that guy gonna do? Is Antonucci supposed to, like, look up their pictures and see how similar they are and understand what's happening? No, he did what he should have done. Yeah, still... It's the detectives that have the tunnel vision, because honestly, at that point, they're not going to they're not going to do a U-turn in this case. They were, because you said it was like four months before his conviction. Yeah. I don't see... I mean, it would take somebody that it wouldn't have done gone this route to begin with to do a U-turn here. Because, you know, once you get so far in... Yeah, you double down. yeah they They do incredible things to maintain these ridiculous cases, right? I think. I've seen examples where it really gets driven off the road and they just keep going.
00:45:26
Speaker
right And so in this case, that statement was ignored, not produced because it would have driven them off the road. Of course, it would have driven them back into the right direction, but they chose to not go with that. And so to me, they once they have gotten to the investigative phase where they're making their case against Uncle Clarence, nothing that doesn't have to do with that is going to be part of what they're investigating.
00:45:52
Speaker
Yeah. and So at this point in time, we're in, we're in 2005. We're like, he's been in jail for years. But what does happen here that's interesting is that memorandum coming up, it makes everybody take a look at it. And they go back and they interview Tanya. This is the woman who took the little girl home.
00:46:17
Speaker
And they, they want to get her statement. So she admits when detectives come talk to her that Earl Mann had come home early that morning. So after the murder and he had deep scratches on his back. And when she tried to ask him about it, he claimed that he had been with a quote, wild woman. So according to her, when the little girl knocks on the door, Earl became angry.
00:46:44
Speaker
and told Tanya not to let her in, not to call the police, and not to talk to her. At this point, authorities began to suspect that Earl Mann had been trying to rob Judy Johnson and had killed her and attempted to kill the little girl because of this. If you go and read like ah interviews with the wife,
00:47:09
Speaker
Melinda Elkins, she states that she suspects that Tanya may have tried to influence the little girl's like identification of Clarence by like pointing out ah the possibility that it was him. I don't know for sure, but I do see in the testimony here that Tanya says, the little girl said that Clarence was the perpetrator. So she is involved in it. I don't know to what degree.
00:47:39
Speaker
um But them reinvestigating this and talking to Tanya, that's ultimately what works out in favor of Clarence Elkins being released. So the guy who wrote the book that I was talking about, he's Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro in October of 2005. He actually had no authority over the case.
00:48:07
Speaker
But he decided to hold a press conference and point it out. He doesn't do it in a negative way, but he puts a lot of pressure on the local prosecutor to dig deeper. The prosecutor goes back and they do another round of testing, even though we've identified all of this. in this And when they do this next round of testing,
00:48:29
Speaker
they are using hairs from the crime scene. These hairs from the crime scene also match Earl Mann's DNA. So now we've got, we've doubled down on it, but when we doubled down on it, we have now confirmed what we said couldn't be possible. So December 15th of 2005, the charges against Clarence Elkins are dismissed and he gets released.
00:48:55
Speaker
And he goes to town filing lawsuits, which he should have at this point, by the way. Don't you think? Absolutely, like because they caused a lot of grief. I'm kind of zeroing in on the the wife and the granddaughter niece. It caused a lot of problems. And there was so much information here that investigators could have used to put this together. And you know Uncle Clarence never would have been involved.
00:49:23
Speaker
Exactly. so They settle for him ah being wrongfully imprisoned for um a million and chains, but he files a lawsuit for like just that reason. and A judge ends up ruling that Earl Mann's statement to Gerard Antonucci, that's the problem. Not disclosing that to the defense,
00:49:45
Speaker
Like it basically sent the defense down a rabbit hole, not having another good suspect. But at that point in time, they would have noticed the proximity of Earl Mann living there. And they would have been able to put him together with Tanya, who had had contact with this little girl right after the attack. And then man would have been examined and his DNA might have, it was like right on the cusp of maybe they would have been able to identify him by DNA back fat, like. Well, they could have at least asked the little girl if it was him. Exactly. They could have like they could put him in a lineup and said the same thing. So he does end up settling with the Barbara 10 police as well for five or $6 million. dollars It's a shame though, because that gives all, that meat that undermines law enforcement.
00:50:37
Speaker
um because of just everything that was happening there. Yeah. I mean, if it weren't for Ohio ah passing, I think Bill 262 is passed after this, but if it weren't for them having these protections for inmates who had DNA cases, which is always crazy to me because not every case has DNA that would help. You know what I mean?
00:51:02
Speaker
Well, I know. Plus, it's it's always goingnna it's almost always going to be, unless something new comes up, it's almost always going to be these older cases, right? Because it its was the lack of testing something that did have DNA that gives them the right to have it tested now, right? Yes.
00:51:20
Speaker
and we're actually sort of um Obviously, it's case specific. I'm pretty sure just about every state has one of these laws based on you know retesting scientific evidence in the case of people who are convicted without it. and so It's always interesting to me though because I guess we'll come it'll come a point where there are no more of those cases.
00:51:46
Speaker
right whether you know the defendant, the
Earl Mann’s Sentencing
00:51:50
Speaker
person convicted of the crime dies or like whatever, but it's because we're on this precipice of ah cases having underwear kept, having swabs kept, having stuff kept for whatever reason, which has always fascinated me, right? um They have stuff kept, there's a questionable conviction, and they said, hey, we've got this, you can test it. I do see where sometimes it's weird how they figure out whether they're gonna do it or not. I personally think, and I and i know it'll get to this point, it'll get to a point where we may be there now, I don't know, it's not that expensive to do these tests, and you know they should just make sure, just make sure that if it's the right person.
00:52:41
Speaker
It is amazing though that anything ever turns up. I think in this particular case, I would have much rather seen a confirmation of Earl Mann having done this later because he should have been the suspect. Yeah. So, all right. So Earl Mann in 2008 is, so you're talking 10 years after the murder of Judy Johnson, he is convicted.
00:53:10
Speaker
um Basically, a plea agreement is put in place so that he can avoid the death penalty. He plead guilty to aggravated rape and aggravated murder for for Ms. Johnson's death and then for aggravated rape of the granddaughter. He wasn't charged with what was probably the precipitator crime, which is robbery, um because at that time, the statute of limitations probably would have been seven years, I think, and that would have expired. So he ends up with this agreement where he's convicted in this plea agreement. He ends up being sentenced to 55 years in prison, and he won't be eligible for parole. I looked him up for some reason, like this last week, something else I was looking at, but he's not eligible for parole until he's like,
00:53:58
Speaker
91 if he lives that long. Yeah, he he'll never get out. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't feel like people who are convicted with DNA evidence, right? Right. They don't ever make parole.
Impact of Wrongful Convictions on Law Enforcement
00:54:13
Speaker
Well, and this guy, that was a particularly brutal crime and like he was, you know, he's just one of those people. I've seen his story, I've seen the Earl Mann story pop up in a couple of those and true crime kind of collector shows. And yeah, he's not like, he's just a bad dude. Like he just, he's not a super interesting criminal either. He's just like terrible in terms of like his personality and everything he did in his life.
00:54:42
Speaker
Well, right. But I think this case, the reason um it kind of sticks out is because you've got sort of this, i I don't want to say like confession, but maybe proclamation from this attorney general, right? Yeah. Well, that's the other thing. Like what happens if, you know, Melinda Elkins thinks that her husband killed her mom and doesn't, you know, stick to this. What happens if like they don't pay any attention to the little girl when she's talking, you know what I mean? in The thought that Tanya influenced her, right? that's That's kind of weird. I don't know that that happened. I do think though that like the very first thing they should have said was like, well, you know, why would you have taken this child home? She's about her grandmother's and you have no idea anything's happened to her grandmother. So why would you just randomly do this, right? Yeah.
00:55:29
Speaker
that starts the suspicion, right? And it's almost like they just overlook all of that. It's a weird thing, but I just, I don't know. And and so if she had just said, I don't know who it was, right? Yeah. The little girl, if the if the granddaughter had said, I don't know who it was, would Clarence have even been on the list? Huh.
00:55:56
Speaker
but Yeah, he wouldn't have. He would have been too far away. they wouldve been They would have looked more locally.
Ohio's Legal Changes & Their Impact
00:56:01
Speaker
Well, right. And that's why it's kind of like, in looking locally, it would have led them to this proximity, right? Yeah, across the street, basically. but I mean, it's close enough the little girl could walk there. Oh, right. and and And the woman took her home.
00:56:20
Speaker
Exactly, without a word. Like without calling the police, without... I mean, why why would you take a six-year-old home without going taking her back? like why are you know Why are you here? Grandma's killed, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you just take her home and leave her on the porch? What are you doing?
00:56:40
Speaker
That doesn't make any sense, right? No, it doesn't make any sense. It's very clear cut to me. And so she had never said like, Oh, it looked like Uncle Clarence, then like they would have had to investigate like, Hey, why did you take this little girl home? Well, my ah partner was irritated. She was here. Well, okay, let's talk to him. Hey, where were you last night, right? yeah at Grandma's dead. Why don't you go to grandma's house or call the police to grandma's house to see if that's real? Or if you don't believe the little girl, take her back over there and drop her off with grandma who you think is alive. That's what I'm saying. Like, it doesn't make any sense that they went that direction. It almost seems it to me, it seems like they they had to have almost purposely ignored some really obvious things. I guess there's something that she could have said to make it seem OK that she just drove this child home. I don't know.
00:57:34
Speaker
I don't either but to me it would be very strange that you just took a child home and you didn't investigate the circumstances of which you were doing that as opposed to her continuing to be where she was or you know getting help for the reason why she's not there anymore, which would be that her grandmother was dead. Right. It's weird. Yeah, it is a weird one. And I thought so I tied these two together and I thought they would make for a good home for the holidays episode because it was such a strange like series of terrible things that had to happen to these guys for them to both end up in one way, it's strange for them to end up convicted.
00:58:21
Speaker
But then it's also strange for them to both end up exonerated. Well, it is. But i my concern is, now, this is 14 years out ah from Clarence's case, right, about? but From his exoneration in 2010, you mean? Yes, that's what I mean. I'm sorry. The case happened in 1998. What I'm saying is like this retesting of possible exculpatory scientific evidence, right? Because that's the law is just about DNA.
00:58:50
Speaker
Correct. Yeah. It's not opening it up to anything else. It's a pretty conclusive but high standard that they have. And the evidence has to have been there. Otherwise, you're getting into a whole different situation when you're trying to get a new trial based on something new, right? So this is evidence that was already there. It just wasn't tested because it wasn't the testing wasn't being done at that time. Correct. Like we were talking about with the dispatch.
00:59:18
Speaker
getting involved and saying, okay, these would be the best cases to do that with, right? Right. yeah So it is weird, but it also goes along with the timing of like the changes that were happening, right? It does. And to me, i'm ah it makes me more sure that there's like more cases like this. Yeah, it definitely makes me sure that there's more cases like this. I agree with you.
00:59:44
Speaker
And I wonder sometimes like, you know, all it takes, I think in both of these cases, because I read through when I was looking at Ray Taylor's case, like he had, like you had to not believe a lot of people with regard to like,
01:00:01
Speaker
his ra count of yeah ah His account of where he was and like how he couldn't have done it, they had to just think everybody in his life was lying. Right. And you know obviously, they weren't. But to me,
01:00:19
Speaker
and and there was the eyewitness testimony from not only the victims and you know these children were attacked but they weren't murdered which is why you have the accounts of what happened but you also have these other independent witnesses and so they are they're similar but different i don't know i would like to think that they they after hearing from because there was a number of people who came into just normal contact with him indicating he couldn't have been at the scene, right? Right. And once that happened, it seems like they had to discount a lot of information. And I would never say in this particular situation that like, oh, there's no way there's anybody else that looks like him. Yeah, I mean, I like I'm more open minded than that. I like to think I
01:01:09
Speaker
i I would like to think so too, but I wonder because the witness testimony is compelling if you don't have any preconceived notions about it, right? Correct. Well, but I find myself a lot of times, like the ones I worry about are some of the other cases we covered where the evidence has been destroyed because of time or whatever else. Those are just, law I mean, because to me, without, you know, once somebody's been convicted,
01:01:34
Speaker
Without that solid DNA evidence coming forward, it's very, very, very difficult. yeah right even i mean we've had There's been some blatantly obvious cases right that it it's a it's hard it's hard for me to even stomach and there's always a possibility that I'm wrong um and I accept that but a lot of times it's pretty clear that I'm not wrong and you know it is a wrongful conviction and yeah the evidence has been destroyed there's never going to be a definitive exonerate overturning of the conviction or exoneration, right? Or reconviction of the right person Which is exactly what I was gonna say. That is one of the hardest things to sort of wrap your head around. it You know, it does it's awful that that a de defendant stays in jail for a crime they didn't commit, but it also was stomach-turning that somebody got away with something. Yeah, yeah. It is, and they're out walking around. Yeah, and they will be, I guess. Well, they may be in jail for something else.
01:02:46
Speaker
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01:04:53
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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