Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's Laura today. I have some pretty great
Speaker 1: news to share with you. Back in season one of
Speaker 1: False Confessions, Steve and I brought you the story of
Speaker 1: the Dix Moore Five, a group of teenage boys who
Speaker 1: were interrogated for hours without lawyers or parents present. One
Speaker 1: by one, they were each implicated in the crime and
Speaker 1: ended up spending about twenty years in prison. Their confessions
Speaker 1: were in the Forum of Science Statements. There was no
Speaker 1: recording of their interrogations, but one of the reasons they
Speaker 1: confessed was because the police lied to them. This is
Speaker 1: common in police interrogations and it's something we've seen over
Speaker 1: and over on the show. Police will falsely promise leniency
Speaker 1: in order to get a confession, or they'll lie that
Speaker 1: they have evidence they don't really have. This is a
Speaker 1: horrible practice and it's one that's clearly not working to
Speaker 1: get real criminals off the streets. Using lies and deceptive
Speaker 1: interrogation tactics is a huge risk factor for false confessions,
Speaker 1: and as we know, false confessions are one of the
Speaker 1: leading causes of wrongful convictions. They occur in about thirty
Speaker 1: percent of cases that have been overturned by DNA evidence.
Speaker 1: It's just plain wrong and it needs to end. But
Speaker 1: here's the good news. In an incredible step towards justice,
Speaker 1: Illinois became the first state in United States history to
Speaker 1: adopt a law in twenty twenty one that bans police
Speaker 1: from lying to children during interrogations. I cannot tell you
Speaker 1: how huge this is. If this law had been in
Speaker 1: place back in nineteen ninety one, the Dixmore five would
Speaker 1: never have gone to prison and had twenty years of
Speaker 1: their lives stolen a way. This is a reform that
Speaker 1: was sorely needed, especially here in Illinois, the false confession
Speaker 1: capital of the country. In our state alone, there have
Speaker 1: been over one hundred wrongful convictions based on false confessions.
Speaker 1: I am so proud to be part of this work
Speaker 1: and that the cases I helped defend are themselves helping
Speaker 1: to pass new laws, creating a few with fewer wrongful convictions.
Speaker 1: But we can't stop here. This kind of law should
Speaker 1: exist in every state, and it should apply to everyone,
Speaker 1: not just kids. We now have the data and the
Speaker 1: experience to know that when police lie to a suspect
Speaker 1: during an investigation, that does more harm than good. There
Speaker 1: are much better ways to solve crimes we need all
Speaker 1: interrogations to be videotaped, and we need better protections for
Speaker 1: everybody who winds up inside that room. It's only with
Speaker 1: reforms like these that we can live up to one
Speaker 1: of the founding principles of our justice system. Innocent until
Speaker 1: proven guilty, Welcome to wrongful conviction, false confessions. I'm Laura
Speaker 1: and I writer.
Speaker 2: And I'm Steve Drusen.
Speaker 1: Today we're going to tell you about a case out
Speaker 1: of Chicago, the story of a violent and tragic crime
Speaker 1: that took the life of a young girl. But there's
Speaker 1: a larger reason why we want to talk about this
Speaker 1: case because of what it also took from not one,
Speaker 1: but five innocent teenage boys and from their families and communities.
Speaker 1: This case happened during what we now call the super
Speaker 1: Predator era the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. The news
Speaker 1: media was saturated with stories of urban crime, drugs and gangs,
Speaker 1: and in particular, sensationalized stories about black and brown youth
Speaker 1: committing violent crimes in groups. This narrative is often associated
Speaker 1: with New York City. It drove the wrongful prosecution of
Speaker 1: the so called Central Park five wolf Pack, but it
Speaker 1: didn't stop there. Today, we're going to tell you about
Speaker 1: a group of teenage boys whose false confessions transformed them
Speaker 1: into Chicago's own wolf pack. They're known as the Dixmore Five.
Speaker 2: Now Chicago may be called the second city comes to
Speaker 2: false confessions. We don't take a back seat to anybody,
Speaker 2: not New York or any other jurisdiction for that matter.
Speaker 2: We're home to more false confessions than any other city
Speaker 2: in the United States. We're home to more juvenile false confessions.
Speaker 2: And we're also the home of more cases in which
Speaker 2: there are multiple false confessions. And over the years, the
Speaker 2: Center on Wrongful Convictions has obtained exonerations in many of
Speaker 2: these cases, all of which were from African American teenagers
Speaker 2: in the Chicago area.
Speaker 1: Marquette Park four, Uptown seven, Englewood four, Dixmore five. These
Speaker 1: numbers start to add up, and the thing is each
Speaker 1: one of these cases involves innocent African American teenagers in
Speaker 1: groups confessing to crimes they didn't commit.
Speaker 2: Of course, the most famous case like this was New
Speaker 2: York's Central Park five case. In April of nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: five teenage boys were charged with the sexual assault and
Speaker 2: the tempted murder of a female jogger in New York's
Speaker 2: Central Park. The boys falsely confessed to beating this woman
Speaker 2: within an inch of her life and leaving her in
Speaker 2: the woods to die. The Central Park five confessions were
Speaker 2: driven by race Wolfpax. Wilding was a whole new language
Speaker 2: to describe groups of African American and Latino teenagers, and
Speaker 2: it created a level of fear in New York City
Speaker 2: and around the country that I had never seen before.
Speaker 2: So when we began to look at the Dixmore case,
Speaker 2: the case of the Central Park five was ringing in
Speaker 2: my years.
Speaker 1: It was November of nineteen ninety one and fourteen year
Speaker 1: old Kateresa Matthews was in the eighth grade. She lived
Speaker 1: with her mom and Dix Moore, a suburb on the
Speaker 1: South side of Chicago, surrounded by a tight knit extended
Speaker 1: family and community. Every day after school, Kateresa followed the
Speaker 1: same routine. She'd walk to her great grandmother's house, where
Speaker 1: she'd do her homework, tuck on the phone, and do
Speaker 1: whatever fourteen year old girls do. After school, she was
Speaker 1: waiting until her mom came home from work to go
Speaker 1: back to her own house. Kateresa followed this routine religiously
Speaker 1: until November nineteenth, nineteen ninety one, when she doesn't show
Speaker 1: up at her great grandmother's house after school. Her family panics.
Speaker 1: They call the police and a search begins, but for
Speaker 1: three weeks there's no sign of Kateresa until December eighth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one. That's when Kateresa's body is found lying
Speaker 1: in a wooded field next to the Interstate Highway that
Speaker 1: runs through Dixmore. She's on her back, partially undressed, with
Speaker 1: her pants draped across her lower body. On her chest
Speaker 1: is a spent casing from a twenty five caliber bullet.
Speaker 1: She's been shot once in the mouth. Even though Kateres
Speaker 1: had been missing for three weeks, the medical examiner concludes
Speaker 1: that she's been killed recently, right around the time her
Speaker 1: body's found. There are several reasons for this. For one thing,
Speaker 1: rigor mortis is present when she's found that usually disappears
Speaker 1: about twenty four to forty eight hours after death. Her
Speaker 1: body is also still bleeding when she's discovered, which you
Speaker 1: wouldn't expect if she'd been killed much earlier. And also
Speaker 1: when a body's been lying outside for a long time,
Speaker 1: there are usually signs like animal or insect bites. There's
Speaker 1: nothing like that here. And the medical examiner finds something
Speaker 1: else too, semen on Kateresa's body. She's been raped.
Speaker 2: This was an awful crime.
Speaker 1: It's the worst. I mean, it's every parent's nightmare to
Speaker 1: have this happen to their child.
Speaker 2: You know, when you think of a crime like this,
Speaker 2: you don't think of it as something that teenagers would do. Typically,
Speaker 2: teenage crimes are impulsive crimes. There's not a lot of
Speaker 2: planning or premeditation. They happen in the spur of the moment.
Speaker 2: But this crime clearly required some forethought.
Speaker 1: For eleven long months, the investigation into Kateresa's death goes
Speaker 1: nowhere until fall nineteen ninety two, when a teenage boy
Speaker 1: tells police that he saw Kateresa getting into a car
Speaker 1: with some friends around the time of her disappearance. Police
Speaker 1: decided to question those friends, starting with Robert Vel on
Speaker 1: October twenty ninth, nineteen ninety two. Now, Robert's fourteen years old,
Speaker 1: but he has pretty severe intellectual limitations that make him
Speaker 1: think more like a five year old. He's questioned for
Speaker 1: hours without a parent or a lawyer present, off camera,
Speaker 1: and in the end he signs a confession prepared by
Speaker 1: his interrogator, and the story in this confession is brutal.
Speaker 1: Robert says he and four other African American teenage boys
Speaker 1: kidnapped a girl they knew from school. They gang raped
Speaker 1: her as she pleaded with them to stop, and then
Speaker 1: they shot her once in the mouth. It was a
Speaker 1: story of an animalistic group of black teenagers attacking their
Speaker 1: classmate for sport.
Speaker 2: The level of depravity in this story was so out
Speaker 2: of bounds that it made me question whether it was true,
Speaker 2: But it also had an eerily familiar ring to it,
Speaker 2: and for me, the significance was as I was seeing
Speaker 2: the same explanations in different cases, which made me begin
Speaker 2: to feel that like maybe there was a script that
Speaker 2: was getting passed around among Chicago police officers.
Speaker 1: Only hours after Robert Veil confesses, police bring in one
Speaker 1: of his supposed co perpetrators, fifteen year old Robert Taylor.
Speaker 1: He's a kid from a loving and protective family, but
Speaker 1: his parents didn't know he was at the police station
Speaker 1: being interrogated. Hours later, his signature appears on a confession too,
Speaker 1: and that confession tells a similarly vicious story. The same
Speaker 1: five African American teenagers lured Katresa into a car, then
Speaker 1: raped her and shot her in a field.
Speaker 3: The super Predator era was a period of of pronounced
Speaker 3: moral panic in the United States that focused on young people, race,
Speaker 3: and crime.
Speaker 1: That's our colleague and friend, Perry Moriarty. She's a professor
Speaker 1: of law at the University of Minnesota and an expert
Speaker 1: on juvenile justice and the era of the super Predator.
Speaker 3: The front end marker is more than likely the Central
Speaker 3: Park five case that was April of nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 3: and that began an era when, in the name of
Speaker 3: public safety, in the name of being tough on crime,
Speaker 3: law enforcement authorities dropped any pretense of treating children as
Speaker 3: children and prosecuted them as adults. If they were black
Speaker 3: and brown children, they were adultified, either by law or
Speaker 3: by connotation, and certainly by the media. A jogger murdered
Speaker 3: in New York Central Park, a little girl gunned down
Speaker 3: in her family's car.
Speaker 2: And Los Angeles, a.
Speaker 1: Judge has sentenced two boys for killing another child who
Speaker 1: refused to steal candy for them. There's a tidal wave
Speaker 1: of juvenile violent crime right over the horizon, and some
Speaker 1: who study it say the worst is.
Speaker 3: Yet to come, terms like wilding, beast chill, predatory. In
Speaker 3: New York City newspapers alone, the term wilding appeared one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty six times in articles over the eight
Speaker 3: years following the Central Park five arrests. To put it
Speaker 3: in perspective, just a few months after the Central Park
Speaker 3: five case, a large group of Italian and Irish predominantly
Speaker 3: teenagers in benson Hurst, Brooklyn, chased down and killed a
Speaker 3: young Black teenager named Yuseph Hawkins. And the headlines did
Speaker 3: not say wilding. They did not say beasts chill, They
Speaker 3: did not even say gang. They said a group of
Speaker 3: white teenagers.
Speaker 1: Now the police have two confessions that implicate the same
Speaker 1: five teenagers, but they're not done yet. Next up is
Speaker 1: Cheyenne Sharp, seventeen years old, the third supposed co perpetrator.
Speaker 1: He's questioned for nearly twenty four hours before he also
Speaker 1: confesses and implicates the other four. And it's the same
Speaker 1: brutal story, a group of African American teenage boys terrorizing
Speaker 1: their classmate for fun.
Speaker 2: Now you have to understand how these confessions are taken.
Speaker 2: These confessions are scripted, usually by a prosecutor from the
Speaker 2: State attorney's office. Sometimes they're written by police officers, and
Speaker 2: these scripts contain a narrative, including character development. Kids are
Speaker 2: described as thugs. There's usually references to gang membership. Women
Speaker 2: are called bitches and hoes. The scriptwriter in these cases
Speaker 2: is doing two things. He's painting the suspect in a
Speaker 2: way that nobody can ever think of them as teenagers.
Speaker 2: And he's also painting them in a way that nobody
Speaker 2: and that means nobody in the public and nobody on
Speaker 2: the jury can have an ounce of sympathy for them.
Speaker 2: And in doing so, he's making a script that is
Speaker 2: about as rock solid as a route to conviction as
Speaker 2: one can imagine.
Speaker 1: So far, the police have confessions from three of the
Speaker 1: Dixmore five, and within days they bring in the two
Speaker 1: remaining teenagers for questioning two brothers, seventeen year old James
Speaker 1: Harden and fifteen year old Jonathan Barr. The boys are
Speaker 1: interrogated for hours, but their father had always told them
Speaker 1: never sign anything prepared by the police. Somehow a miracle
Speaker 1: they remember these words and they don't confess, but they're
Speaker 1: still named in the other three teenagers' statements, so all
Speaker 1: five are on the hook.
Speaker 3: In part because because they were arresting and prosecuting kids
Speaker 3: in mass in groups, law enforcement became very adept in
Speaker 3: that period at pitting kids against each other during the
Speaker 3: interrogation process and using kids against each other to extract
Speaker 3: false confessions.
Speaker 2: When you look at these cases of multiple false confessions,
Speaker 2: you see a similar pattern. First of all, the police
Speaker 2: usually start with the most vulnerable, most naive, most gullible
Speaker 2: of the suspects, and they focused in this case on
Speaker 2: Robert Field. He was the weak link. Then they get
Speaker 2: a confession from Robert Veel, and what do they do
Speaker 2: with that confession They use it as a battering ram
Speaker 2: to plow over all of the other defendants. This is
Speaker 2: how it works. The first suspect comes in and the
Speaker 2: police officers tell them that they know that he was
Speaker 2: involved in this crime and nothing that suspect can say
Speaker 2: is going to change their mind. But they don't think
Speaker 2: he was the one who actually raped anybody or killed anybody.
Speaker 2: He was just a follower. The suspect is pressured into
Speaker 2: adopting a story in which he is a passive participant
Speaker 2: to the crime, and which he fingers his co defendants
Speaker 2: as the more active participants. Then once that suspect confesses,
Speaker 2: they bring that confession to the next in line and
Speaker 2: they go over the same thing again. We don't think
Speaker 2: you committed the crime. He's telling us that you committed
Speaker 2: the crime. We know you were there, but maybe you
Speaker 2: just held down her arm while they were raping and
Speaker 2: killing her. Each suspect is vying for the least culpable role,
Speaker 2: and at the end of the day, this is a
Speaker 2: very effective way to get confessions from multiple suspects.
Speaker 1: In this case, the dominoes are falling and each one
Speaker 1: of them eventually agrees to a story in which James
Speaker 1: Harden is the one who actually places the gun inside
Speaker 1: Kateresa's mouth and pulls the trigger. It's no coincidence that
Speaker 1: James is one of the last ones questioned here.
Speaker 2: That's right. And at the end of the day, please
Speaker 2: got confessions from Robert Field, Robert Taylor, and Cheyenne's Sharp,
Speaker 2: but they couldn't get James Harden and Jonathan Barr to confess.
Speaker 1: Based on the confessions, all five teenagers are charged with
Speaker 1: the assault and murder of Kateresa Matthews, and the Dixmore
Speaker 1: Five are transformed into Chicago's own wolf pack. Pretty soon, though,
Speaker 1: it becomes apparent that this case has major problems for starters.
Speaker 1: The teenager's versions of what happened are wildly inconsistent. They
Speaker 1: can't agree on how they met up with Katsa, what
Speaker 1: the group did before they ended up in that field
Speaker 1: by the interstate, or who assaulted Kateresa, and in what order.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of the only things they do agree
Speaker 1: on was that Kateresa had been murdered the day she
Speaker 1: did disappeared, November nineteenth. But remember this was contradicted by
Speaker 1: the medical examiner, who determined that she'd been killed three
Speaker 1: weeks later, around the time her body was found. And
Speaker 1: then here comes the biggest problem. After all five teenagers
Speaker 1: were charged but before trial, DNA testing from the seaman
Speaker 1: left on Katrese's body excludes all five suspects. Instead, this
Speaker 1: DNA belongs to a single unidentified male.
Speaker 2: This is might drop evidence, the kind of evidence that
Speaker 2: should have resulted in these cases being dismissed before.
Speaker 1: Trial exactly these confessions had been proven false. But instead
Speaker 1: of dropping its case, the state offers deals to two
Speaker 1: members of the Dixmore Five, Cheyenne Sharp and Robert Veale.
Speaker 1: If the boys agree to testify against their co defendants,
Speaker 1: they'll receive much shorter sentences. Syenna and Robert decide to
Speaker 1: take the deal, while the state moves forward with trials
Speaker 1: for the other three, and those trials of are based
Speaker 1: on the stories told in the confessions. Despite the DNA.
Speaker 2: You talk here about tunnel vision. This is what happens.
Speaker 2: The police officers lock into a story. They become invested
Speaker 2: in this notion of a gang rape, and they can't
Speaker 2: get out of.
Speaker 1: That box exactly. And you see this when they have
Speaker 1: to deal with the DNA and the prosecutor addresses it
Speaker 1: during closing arguments.
Speaker 2: And what does the prosecutor say? He explains the presence
Speaker 2: of DNA as the work of a necrophiliac.
Speaker 1: Now, Steve, if this isn't exactly a household term, what
Speaker 1: is a necrophiliac?
Speaker 2: It's someone who has sex with dead bodies.
Speaker 1: I knew you know that. This is officially the most
Speaker 1: batchitt theory I think I've ever.
Speaker 2: Heard, By the way, I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1: So, let's get this straight. The theory here at the
Speaker 1: Dixmore viv trial was that five teenage boys sexually assault
Speaker 1: this victim. They don't leave a trace of themselves behind.
Speaker 1: Then here comes this wandering necrophiliac who comes across the
Speaker 1: body and decides to defile it. I mean, we've heard
Speaker 1: a lot of excuse us for DNA in our time,
Speaker 1: but this one may take the prize.
Speaker 2: It's unbelievable that they would even present this to a jury.
Speaker 2: It's that insane. But you have to understand in the
Speaker 2: context of a climate of fear, the irrational becomes rational. Now,
Speaker 2: in the opening statement in this case, the prosecutor said
Speaker 2: that these men, pointing at the five teenagers, these men
Speaker 2: came from a world where so called friends were turned
Speaker 2: into a pack of jackals hunting down their prey, and
Speaker 2: then they were done with it, killing it for sport jackals.
Speaker 1: Can you believe that this really is Chicago's own wolf pack?
Speaker 3: Again, it's a lot easier to fathom locking up a young, beastial,
Speaker 3: feral thing than it is a child, which is in
Speaker 3: fact what we were doing.
Speaker 2: And when you talk about children as if they were animals,
Speaker 2: it becomes so much easier to throw away their lives.
Speaker 1: To just not worry about doing that last bit of
Speaker 1: DNA testing, figure out whose DNA it was actually left on.
Speaker 1: Katries and Matthew's body.
Speaker 2: It becomes easier to try them as adults. It becomes
Speaker 2: easier to sentence them to life sentences or even the
Speaker 2: death penalty. It becomes easier to just lock them up
Speaker 2: and throw away the key.
Speaker 1: The dehumanizing story embedded in these boys confessions. While it works,
Speaker 1: each of the Dixmore five is convicted, and the three
Speaker 1: who don't cut deals, Robert Taylor, Jonathan Barr, and James
Speaker 1: Harden are sentenced to life in prison. Cheyenne Sharp and
Speaker 1: Robert Veale serve their time and are eventually released with
Speaker 1: murder convictions on their records, But the other three languish
Speaker 1: behind bars forgotten people.
Speaker 2: But they were not forgotten by their parents or their
Speaker 2: loved ones. You know, I'll never forget learning that Jonathan
Speaker 2: Barr and James Hardin's dad would literally drive around with
Speaker 2: boxes full of files regarding their cases in his trunk,
Speaker 2: trying to get lawyers interested in taking his son's cases,
Speaker 2: and Robert Taylor's family did similar things. They would write
Speaker 2: letters and letters and letters to lawyers begging them for help. Finally,
Speaker 2: in twenty ten, we learned about the case of the
Speaker 2: Dixmore Five. Our colleague Josh tepfer knew a public defender
Speaker 2: named Jennifer Blagg who had represented Robert Taylor on appeal.
Speaker 2: She referred the case to Josh and we agreed to
Speaker 2: take Robert's case.
Speaker 1: By this time, Robert was in his early thirties.
Speaker 2: That's right, he had served over fifteen years of his sentence.
Speaker 1: Robert Taylor grew up with his parents, sister, and in Harvey, Illinois,
Speaker 1: right next to Dixmore. From day one, Robert's dad, a
Speaker 1: Navy vet, was his strongest defender. Robert Senior refused to
Speaker 1: be broken by the fact that his son had gone
Speaker 1: to prison because of the words he'd signed his name to.
Speaker 1: When the Center on Wrongful Convictions agreed to take Robert's case,
Speaker 1: his dad became a major presence in our lives. I
Speaker 1: can still remember the smell of his leather jacket when
Speaker 1: he hugged us and welcomed us to his family's struggle.
Speaker 1: Around the same time, organizations like the Innocence Project and
Speaker 1: Exoneration Project got involved in representing other members of the
Speaker 1: Dix Moore five. Our collective first priority was identifying whose
Speaker 1: DNA had been left at the crime scene.
Speaker 2: We had a new tool called CODIS the combined DNA
Speaker 2: index system, and over the time frame since the advent
Speaker 2: of DNA testing in the late nineteen eighties, that database
Speaker 2: had grown, and so the chances of finding the identity
Speaker 2: of the person who raped and killed Katsa. Matthews had
Speaker 2: grown exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, let's remember for a moment that we're talking
Speaker 1: here about DNA that was taken from the semen left
Speaker 1: on a rape victim. You cannot ask for better evidence
Speaker 1: than that, and it's just sitting there forgotten. How can
Speaker 1: you not want to know whose DNA that was? Isn't
Speaker 1: that the most important question in this case had been
Speaker 1: sitting there unanswered for fifteen years?
Speaker 2: But where was it sitting? That was the first challenge.
Speaker 2: And after a year of searching, we found the DNA
Speaker 2: in some warehouse or in some trailer, and we then
Speaker 2: had to get permission from the court to test the DNA.
Speaker 2: We then sent the DNA off for testing to a lab,
Speaker 2: and we waited and a lab extracted a profile, and
Speaker 2: when that profile was extracted, it was run through the
Speaker 2: code ISS database. A miracle of miracles, in March of
Speaker 2: twenty eleven, we got a hit and the hit was
Speaker 2: to a man, not a boy, a man named Randolph.
Speaker 1: Now Willy Randolph, was a troubled guy. He was much
Speaker 1: older than Kateresa or the Dixmore five. When Kateresa disappeared,
Speaker 1: he was thirty three years old, more than twice her age.
Speaker 1: Willi had been in and out of prison his entire
Speaker 1: adult life for all sorts of different offenses. In fact,
Speaker 1: he'd been paroled only a few months before Kateresa was
Speaker 1: killed to a house within a mile of where she lived,
Speaker 1: and Willie Randolph had previously been accused of rape in
Speaker 1: that very same field by the interstate where Kateresa's body
Speaker 1: was found. This is a person with a history of
Speaker 1: these kinds of attacks, and his DNA and no one
Speaker 1: else's was present at the crime scene. Finally, it all
Speaker 1: made sense.
Speaker 2: When we learned the identity of Willie Randolph, when we
Speaker 2: investigated his background, when we learned the history of abusing
Speaker 2: and sexually assaulting women, including young women, teenagers, we thought
Speaker 2: this case was over. We thought we are going to
Speaker 2: get these boys out tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Exactly, there's no relationship at all between Willy Randolph and
Speaker 1: any of the Dixmore five. He's not mentioned in any
Speaker 1: of their confessions.
Speaker 2: And why would there be a relationship. This is a
Speaker 2: man with a long history of violence in his record,
Speaker 2: and none of these boys had a history of violence.
Speaker 1: Right, He's twice their age. When they were growing up
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood, he was in prison.
Speaker 2: Willy Randolph is the guy who did this to Katersa Matthews.
Speaker 2: The DNA proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Speaker 2: Now we had to convince the prosecutors to do the
Speaker 2: right thing.
Speaker 1: But as incredible as it sounds, the state wouldn't let
Speaker 1: go of their necrophilia theory, and the case dragged on
Speaker 1: for months.
Speaker 2: You know, old habits die hard. The state actually suggested
Speaker 2: again that maybe Willy Randolph was their mystery necrophiliac.
Speaker 1: This is an unbelievable thing. Still they're clinging to this
Speaker 1: theory that five teenage boys assaulted Katersa Matthews, left no
Speaker 1: trace of their DNA behind, and here comes Willie Randolph,
Speaker 1: the older man, the man of the history of assaults
Speaker 1: and violent crime and rape in that very field, and
Speaker 1: just happens to defile her body. It beggars belief.
Speaker 2: It still took six to seven months to investigate whether
Speaker 2: there was any link between Willie Randolph and any of
Speaker 2: the Dicks more five, there wasn't one.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, we were coming back to court every few weeks
Speaker 1: to get an update on the state's investigation and to
Speaker 1: ask the judge is today the day of exoneration? And
Speaker 1: for six long months we were disappointed. I remember coming
Speaker 1: home after those court dates and crying with frustration that
Speaker 1: I was able to go home, but Robert Taylor, our clients,
Speaker 1: had to go back to a prison cell.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I remember pulling out my hair and I had
Speaker 2: hair back then.
Speaker 1: That's where it all went.
Speaker 2: That's where it all went because we had the best
Speaker 2: possible evidence of their innocence, and not only were they
Speaker 2: refusing to our clients, Willie Randolph was on the street.
Speaker 2: He was out of prison on parole, and he could
Speaker 2: be doing this to somebody else. It was driving me crazy.
Speaker 1: Every time before we walked into that courtroom, I remember
Speaker 1: watching Robert hold his whole body just taught. His muscles
Speaker 1: would be tense, and you could see those twenty years
Speaker 1: of trauma that he had endured and the toll it
Speaker 1: had taken on him. He couldn't relax into the possibility
Speaker 1: that it was going to be his day that day,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't his day.
Speaker 2: For months until it finally was.
Speaker 1: On November third, twenty eleven, Robert Ville Cheyenne Sharp, James Harden,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Barr, and Robert Taylor were exonerated. Their convictions were
Speaker 1: thrown out nearly twenty years to the day after Kateresa
Speaker 1: matthews disappearance, The Dix Moore five had wrongly served a
Speaker 1: total of more than fifty years in prison. Eventually, Willie
Speaker 1: Randolph was charged with the attack on Kateresa Matthews based
Speaker 1: on DNA evidence. He's still a waiting trial today. We're
Speaker 1: proud to have helped free the Dixmore five, but as
Speaker 1: our colleague Josh Tepfer put it, this is not justice.
Speaker 1: Justice would have happened a long time ago.
Speaker 2: Hello, hey, Robert, Stephen Laura A long time.
Speaker 1: I'll see too long.
Speaker 2: Too long.
Speaker 1: Good to hear your voice. What's going on with you
Speaker 1: these days, Robert, I'm hanging in now. How's your son doing?
Speaker 2: He's all right. I got picked boy. You got to
Speaker 2: take him up to the school. Yeah, I'll pick him
Speaker 2: up every day.
Speaker 3: Hold your point seven going away?
Speaker 1: What's your favorite thing to do with your son?
Speaker 2: Robert I'd like to see him smad. I.
Speaker 1: So you can't give those twenty years back to Robert
Speaker 1: or to any of the Dicks, Moore five, or any
Speaker 1: of the guys we're going to talk about on this podcast.
Speaker 1: You can't give that time back. But what you can
Speaker 1: do is make the years decades that they lost means something.
Speaker 3: One of the greatest tragedies in my opinion, and I've
Speaker 3: been teaching about the Central Park five case for years
Speaker 3: and to this day. When I introduced the case in
Speaker 3: my criminal law classes, the one thing that people don't
Speaker 3: know about the case is that the kids were innocent.
Speaker 3: So few people knew that even after Matthias Rayes confessed,
Speaker 3: even after these kids were let out of prison, even
Speaker 3: after they were compensated. It is the footnote in this
Speaker 3: story that gets lost in our collective consciousness. Maybe not anymore. Finally,
Speaker 3: there is attention being brought to who they actually were
Speaker 3: and what they suffered.
Speaker 1: And that's a big part of how Steve and I
Speaker 1: approach these cases. Right It's about of course getting them
Speaker 1: out of prisent fighting for them, opening up those doors,
Speaker 1: but it's also about telling the stories. It's about making
Speaker 1: it meaningful. It's about saying their name. It's about not
Speaker 1: forgetting what happened to them and changing it so it
Speaker 1: doesn't happen again. Like the Central Park five, the story
Speaker 1: of the Dixmore five is about convictions that were driven
Speaker 1: by prejudice rather than proof. But the injustices of the
Speaker 1: super predator era or not just a New York City
Speaker 1: thing or a Chicago thing, And although we may want
Speaker 1: to think so, they're not even really a nineteen nineties thing.
Speaker 1: In times of great fear or moral panic, prejudices can
Speaker 1: distort the search for the truth. Mistaken assumptions, faulty investigations,
Speaker 1: and flawed evidence are all still real, and they still
Speaker 1: cause wrongful convictions across the country. Every day. We tell
Speaker 1: these stories so that we can learn from them, so
Speaker 1: that one day there won't be any more Dixmore fives.
Speaker 1: To all the Dixmore five, but especially to our client
Speaker 1: and friend, Robert Taylor, You've endured years of injustice while
Speaker 1: remaining a pillar of strength and resilience. To you and
Speaker 1: your families, we wish you all the best. Thanks for
Speaker 1: letting us tell your story. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is
Speaker 1: the production of Lava for Good podcasts in association with
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number One. Special thanks to our executive producer
Speaker 1: Jason Flamm and the team at Signal Company Number one.
Speaker 1: Executive producer Kevin wardis Senior producer and Pope, and additional
Speaker 1: production and editing by Connor Hall. Our music was composed
Speaker 1: by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram or
Speaker 1: Twitter at Laura Nyrider and.
Speaker 2: You can follow me on Twitter at s Drizzen.
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com
Speaker 1: and be sure to follow the show on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on
Speaker 1: Twitter at wrong Conviction