Speaker 1: On the morning of August first, two thousand, a woman's
Speaker 1: partially burned and decomposing body was found behind a middle
Speaker 1: school in Mayfield, Kentucky. Eighteen year old Jessica Current had
Speaker 1: last been seen playing cards with friends on the previous
Speaker 1: Saturday night, leaving a nearly three day gap where no
Speaker 1: one claimed to have seen her. The crime was investigated
Speaker 1: by local and state police, but after a couple of
Speaker 1: years the trail went cold. Then, prompted by his citizen's
Speaker 1: investigation conducted by a local housewife, one of Jessica's friends
Speaker 1: came forward with a bizarre tale. In it she and
Speaker 1: a group of friends had partied with Jessica that night,
Speaker 1: then kidnapped, beaten, and raped her, and finally killed her.
Speaker 1: The ringleader, she told police, was Quincy Cross. Quincy had
Speaker 1: been at a party in Mayfield that night, but he
Speaker 1: claimed never to have met Jessica or any of the
Speaker 1: others involved. Still at trial, when others testify to the
Speaker 1: events of that night, they two pointed to Quincy as
Speaker 1: the murderer. But this is wrongful conviction, So welcome back
Speaker 1: to wrongful conviction. I'm Maggie Freeling, host of wrongful conviction
Speaker 1: with Maggie Freeling and I'm so excited to be sitting
Speaker 1: in for Jason Flamm today and to share this story
Speaker 1: with you today. I have Quincy Cross with me and
Speaker 1: I also have Miranda Hellman, his attorney from the Kentucky
Speaker 1: Innocence Project. Miranda, thank you for being here.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Quincy, Hey, how you doing?
Speaker 1: I am well. How do you feel about telling everyone
Speaker 1: your story today? I know you haven't done that much.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of things that I've been owing in
Speaker 3: for a long time.
Speaker 1: Well, let's get to it. I want to hear your
Speaker 1: story in detail, and usually I just like to start
Speaker 1: with your life growing up? What was that like?
Speaker 3: I grew up with sisters and brothers on both sides
Speaker 3: my family, my mom's side, you know, my dad's side,
Speaker 3: on my stepmom's side. You know what I'm saying, very old,
Speaker 3: protected by my sisters, all of them, provider, protector, somebody
Speaker 3: that they can come talk to, have the conversations that
Speaker 3: they can't have with other people. And they know that.
Speaker 3: And uh, and we have real good times. You know,
Speaker 3: as kids, we did other things together. We used to
Speaker 3: catch turtles and snakes and all that. We used to
Speaker 3: go frog gigg We used to have you know, just
Speaker 3: do what young kids do. I grew up in Union
Speaker 3: City and I grew up in Willer Mills, Tennessee. So
Speaker 3: you know, I'm a country guy, all right.
Speaker 1: You got to explain that to me, though, Quincy, I
Speaker 1: grew up in New York City. What is growing up
Speaker 1: in the country.
Speaker 3: Like, Okay, country is a whole. That's a whole lot
Speaker 3: of love in the country. You know. It's like we did.
Speaker 3: We did small things like play tag and play baseball,
Speaker 3: and you know, we just did it as a small community.
Speaker 3: Then you got to tighten their family because it's a
Speaker 3: lot of older people that raised you. They cooked for you.
Speaker 3: You know, you wash their cars like more, their yaards
Speaker 3: and things. Because we was tightening. There was a whole
Speaker 3: lot of love in the community.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, Quincy, When you were younger,
Speaker 1: what did you what did you want to do with
Speaker 1: your life? What were your hopes and dreams?
Speaker 3: Sports was my thing. I wanted to be a good
Speaker 3: football player. That's what I wanted to do. I want
Speaker 3: to go to college and play football and help the
Speaker 3: older people in my community. Look up. You know what
Speaker 3: I'm saying and say he did something with his life,
Speaker 3: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So what was going on in your life in two thousand?
Speaker 3: It was up and down. Two thousand was up and
Speaker 3: down because matter of fact, we had just had my
Speaker 3: grandmama sueneral on Mother's Day of ninety nine, and I
Speaker 3: went through a spiral after that, you know, because that
Speaker 3: was that was my heart.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by spiral? What did you what
Speaker 1: was that like?
Speaker 3: I got off in the drugs, basically got off in
Speaker 3: the drugs and using the man telling them I was
Speaker 3: doing both what.
Speaker 1: Kind of drugs?
Speaker 3: Cokaine?
Speaker 1: So wondering if before the summer of two thousand did
Speaker 1: you have any run ins with the law at all
Speaker 1: when you were selling drugs, dealing drugs whatever it was.
Speaker 3: Well, it was like small, small, petty client like marijuana,
Speaker 3: ca you know, cocaine case some day wouldn't get you
Speaker 3: no time, you know, some thirty day, ninety days, you know,
Speaker 3: some smile like that.
Speaker 1: So Quincy, that summer you were living in Union City, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: just south of the border between Tennessee and Kentucky. But
Speaker 1: the crime that you were ultimately convicted of occurred in Mayfield, Kentucky,
Speaker 1: which is about thirty five minutes away by car. So, Mirinda,
Speaker 1: can you tell us a bit about what Mayfield was
Speaker 1: like in two thousands so listeners can kind of get
Speaker 1: the feel for it.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 2: So, Mayfield, Kentucky was and still is a very small
Speaker 2: town in rural western Kentucky, a very predominantly white community.
Speaker 2: The black population and minority population live on one side
Speaker 2: of town, where you know, the white population lives in another.
Speaker 2: So the police and really the city government in Mayfield
Speaker 2: has had a few scandals throughout its time. The one
Speaker 2: that I think is most connected to this case would
Speaker 2: be the assistant police chief, Ronnie Lear.
Speaker 1: At the time of Quincy's drug arrest, Ronnie Lear had
Speaker 1: already been under investigation for some time because of allegations
Speaker 1: that he and some of the other police officers had
Speaker 1: been selling confiscated drugs. Lear was later indicted for misconduct
Speaker 1: charges after crack cocaine was found in his desk drawer.
Speaker 2: He was fired essentially from the Mayfield Police department some
Speaker 2: time after this case occurred, and it appeared to be
Speaker 2: a theory of the defense at the time of Quincy's trial.
Speaker 2: Even in two thousand and eight that Ronnie Lear was
Speaker 2: just a crooked cop and that this may have been
Speaker 2: connected to it in some way.
Speaker 1: Okay, So Quincy, can you tell me about the night
Speaker 1: of July twenty ninth, two thousand. Who were you with
Speaker 1: and how why did you wind up in Mayfield?
Speaker 3: Were in Yana City. We had a party set.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: We was conning the house up for this party, and
Speaker 3: Travis Jackson, Carlos Saxton and Gregg Store had pulled up.
Speaker 3: So I've been knowing Travis before he could walk. So
Speaker 3: he come down there looking for some drugs. So I
Speaker 3: told him, you know, I could help him out.
Speaker 1: Quincy, Travis, Carlos, and Greg drove around for a while
Speaker 1: looking to score and picked up some drugs near his
Speaker 1: hometown of Woodland Mills around nine point thirty. They stopped
Speaker 1: at a liquor store, then headed back to Union City.
Speaker 1: On the way, Travis suggested they head up to Kentucky.
Speaker 1: He knew some folks that could sell to in Mayfield,
Speaker 1: just over the state line.
Speaker 3: I'm like, man, I don't know nobody in Kentucky. Man,
Speaker 3: I don't want to go to Kentucky. He was like,
Speaker 3: come on, man, if you go, we'll bring you back
Speaker 3: later on.
Speaker 1: It took some convincing, but eventually Quincy agreed and they
Speaker 1: headed up to Kentucky.
Speaker 3: And the process to that, we hit these back so
Speaker 3: many of these different back roads to where I don't
Speaker 3: even know where we at.
Speaker 1: We pop up in Mayfield around midnight. They ended up
Speaker 1: at a party on Chris Drive, somewhere on the outskirts
Speaker 1: of town.
Speaker 3: They got their girlfriends or whatever hanging out out there,
Speaker 3: so we selling drugs out there, that's all. I don't
Speaker 3: know nobody out there.
Speaker 1: I'll you here later on, a number of other people
Speaker 1: who were involved in Quincy's case were alleged to have
Speaker 1: been at this party on Chris Drive, including Carlos Saxton,
Speaker 1: but the only one of them who was actually there
Speaker 1: was Carlos. The night wore on and Quincy's friend showed
Speaker 1: no sign of wanting to leave the party.
Speaker 3: But I keep asking them to take me home. I'm like, man,
Speaker 3: I'm ready to go home. So I've used the phone,
Speaker 3: the hel phone, but I called him uponder them back in,
Speaker 3: said letting them know that I'm trying to get home,
Speaker 3: and I know they waiting on men. You know.
Speaker 1: By now, the sun was starting to come up Quincy
Speaker 1: was getting hungry, so he borrowed Greg's car to drive
Speaker 1: into Mayfield to get something to eat, but he got
Speaker 1: lost on the way downtown and ended up driving in
Speaker 1: circles around the back roads. Finally, around seven in the morning,
Speaker 1: he ran out of gas. Quincy found a gas can
Speaker 1: in the trunk of the car and was about to
Speaker 1: pour some into the tank when someone drove by and
Speaker 1: stopped to help out. It happened to be the Mayfield
Speaker 1: deputy jailer on his way to work.
Speaker 3: This guy, he's standing right beside me, so he seen
Speaker 3: me drop a couple of drops of gas on my
Speaker 3: parents laid But he's in the hareway to get to
Speaker 3: work because he's late. So stay Trooper with Mike Perkins
Speaker 3: pulled up. So now he smelled the gas, but he
Speaker 3: gave me a ride back to Chris Drag about a
Speaker 3: mile up the street, and from now he dropped me off.
Speaker 3: And then he said he went back to the car
Speaker 3: and he's seeing marijuana, which was which was some some
Speaker 3: black and mile and mile. It wasn't even marijuana, it
Speaker 3: was black and man.
Speaker 1: So you encountered Officer Perkins the morning of the thirtieth
Speaker 1: and so when he found what he said was weed.
Speaker 1: I know you said it was black and miles like,
Speaker 1: which is like a cigar kind of thing. What happened
Speaker 1: from there?
Speaker 3: So he come back to the to the house asking
Speaker 3: me if he can search a car, Tell him the
Speaker 3: car ain't mine. Then I got two empty baggage in
Speaker 3: my pocket that I meant to throw away but day
Speaker 3: in my pocket and then stay of Kentucky two forms
Speaker 3: of prayer for negative automatic possession. So and two empty
Speaker 3: baggies is what got me arrested.
Speaker 1: In all, ten of the people at the Chris Drive
Speaker 1: party were arrested that morning for drug possession, including quincy.
Speaker 1: He spent the next two years in the Kentucky Department
Speaker 1: of Corrections as a result. So Miranda, this drug arrest
Speaker 1: happened on the morning of July thirtieth. Meanwhile, a young
Speaker 1: woman named Jessica Curran had been seen at a different
Speaker 1: gathering with friends the night before, and then she went missing.
Speaker 1: Her body was found a few days later, on Tuesday,
Speaker 1: August first. So do we know what happened in the
Speaker 1: time between.
Speaker 2: The timeline is difficult to nail down, and we don't
Speaker 2: have a time of death, even a day of death.
Speaker 2: For Jessica, partly because of the mishandling of the crime
Speaker 2: scene and the autopsy medical examination. So Saturday night, which
Speaker 2: would have been July twenty ninth, was the night that
Speaker 2: Jessica was last seen. So through looking at the witness interviews,
Speaker 2: I have the most accurate account of her leaving a
Speaker 2: small get together with her cousin Vnesha around eleven o'clock
Speaker 2: that night on Saturday.
Speaker 1: And according to the witness statements, this was just a
Speaker 1: few women playing cards at one of their friend's houses,
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the party on Chris Drive.
Speaker 2: So we know for certain that evening she was alive.
Speaker 2: She was in Mayfield, and she left a small get
Speaker 2: together at a friend's house. No one aside from Venetia
Speaker 2: and Victoria Caldwell saw her anytime after eleven o'clock.
Speaker 1: But Venetia and Victoria Caldwell were to become major players
Speaker 1: in Quincy's case. We'll hear more about that later. By
Speaker 1: Sunday afternoon, Jessica's parents, who were watching her baby son, Zion,
Speaker 1: were concerned. It wasn't like Jessica to not be up
Speaker 1: and ready for chure. They started calling around, but they
Speaker 1: didn't find anyone who had seen her since the night before.
Speaker 1: By Tuesday, August first, nearly three days after Jessica had
Speaker 1: last been seen, her parents filed a missing person's report
Speaker 1: with the Mayfield Police.
Speaker 2: So as the missing person's report comes in, it's almost
Speaker 2: at the exact same time that the call that this
Speaker 2: body's been found behind the middle school comes in. So
Speaker 2: the Mayfield Police dispatch out the Assistant Chief, Ronnie Lear,
Speaker 2: and then the lead detective in this case, Tim Fortner.
Speaker 1: Tim Fortner was a beat cop who had just been
Speaker 1: promoted to lead detective. This was his first day on
Speaker 1: the job. He'd never investigated a murder before, and the
Speaker 1: investigation was disorganized from the start. So, Miranda, can you
Speaker 1: describe the crime scene? What did the investigators find?
Speaker 2: So, Jessica's body was found pretty severely decomposed and burned.
Speaker 2: She did not have clothing on. It was pretty clear
Speaker 2: she had a dress on and just most of it
Speaker 2: was burned off of the top, but there were pieces
Speaker 2: of it underneath of her body. Her shoes were found
Speaker 2: at the scene, but they weren't on her feet. She
Speaker 2: had some jewelry on that was not burned off, and
Speaker 2: that was actually how her mother identified from photos of
Speaker 2: the jewelry that she was wearing.
Speaker 1: Was there anything else found at the scene that they
Speaker 1: thought was significant.
Speaker 2: The majority of the items that they attempted to test
Speaker 2: or to look for evidence on were just so badly burned.
Speaker 2: The fire had basically burned out, so there was very
Speaker 2: little left at the crime scene that wasn't you know, charred.
Speaker 2: And then additionally, they decided at autopsy they wouldn't keep
Speaker 2: her clothing and they said it was too badly burned.
Speaker 2: There was a small piece of a braided belp found
Speaker 2: pretty close.
Speaker 1: To the body.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna guess is about two to four inches long.
Speaker 2: It's not on her, but it is in the grass
Speaker 2: next to her, and it does have a buckle still
Speaker 2: attached to it. So those were collected and still remain
Speaker 2: in evidence.
Speaker 1: So there were two things that were later alleged to
Speaker 1: connect Quincy to the crime. First the fragment of braided
Speaker 1: belt and buckle, even though that style of belt was
Speaker 1: common at the time. And second, the fact that the
Speaker 1: body had been found partially burned. Coupled with the smell
Speaker 1: of gasoline that had spilled on Quincy's pants.
Speaker 2: There was definitely an accelerant used and the police follow
Speaker 2: the assumption that it was gasoline and they connected that
Speaker 2: just by the word gasoline to Quincy, who was found
Speaker 2: that next morning pouring gas out of a gas can
Speaker 2: into the car that had no gasoline in it. The
Speaker 2: deputy jailer saw that happen. He actually watched Quincy dump
Speaker 2: the gas on himself and down the side of the car,
Speaker 2: and that's why he pulled over and asked him for help.
Speaker 1: While the police were attempting to collect evidence, the crime
Speaker 1: scene was getting more and more chaotic.
Speaker 2: Are really starting to show up at the middle school
Speaker 2: where they put tape up. It still wasn't a super
Speaker 2: secure scene. In looking at the video that they made
Speaker 2: that day. People are really coming and going.
Speaker 1: And one of those people was a local housewife named
Speaker 1: Susan Galbreath.
Speaker 2: She describes herself as an overweight stay at home Why
Speaker 2: know who solved a crime? So Susan Gailbrith was at
Speaker 2: the scene the day Jessica's body was discovered. From her
Speaker 2: own writings, she says that she was at a diner
Speaker 2: in downtown Mayfield having breakfaster lunch and that she felt
Speaker 2: a higher power calling her to the middle school because
Speaker 2: she felt that there was a tragedy there, so she
Speaker 2: becomes essentially obsessed with this case.
Speaker 1: Tim Fortner headed up the Mayfield Police investigation, working with
Speaker 1: the Kentucky State Police. Initially, the authorities had two main suspects,
Speaker 1: both of whom were arrested in two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: One was Carlos sa one of the guys who had
Speaker 1: been to the Chris Drive party along with Quincy and
Speaker 1: who had been dating the victim, Jessica Currn around that time.
Speaker 1: The other was Jeremy Adams, the father of Jessica's son.
Speaker 1: Jeremy's mother was a close friend of Susan Goalbreth's, so.
Speaker 2: Once Jeremy's arrested, Susan Galbreth turns into kind of a
Speaker 2: private sleuth, wanting to put the case together and figure
Speaker 2: it out. So she's I mean, she's deeply involved and
Speaker 2: very intertwined in the story, to the point she's almost
Speaker 2: acting as a fourth investigating agency, you know, alongside the
Speaker 2: city police, the State Police, and the Bureau of Investigation.
Speaker 1: And Susan was getting inside information from one of the
Speaker 1: State Police investigators on the case.
Speaker 2: That was Jamie Mills. They were exchanging information pretty freely,
Speaker 2: so Jamie was actually giving this private citizen that wanted
Speaker 2: to solve this crime information.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Jamie and her other connections, Susan had access
Speaker 1: to not only the police files, but also to Jeremy
Speaker 1: Adams's entire attorney file. And in one of the police
Speaker 1: files there was a mention of the drug arrest on
Speaker 1: Chris Drive.
Speaker 2: There is a notation in Quincy's file about him being
Speaker 2: booked in and him smelling like gas, and I think
Speaker 2: she starts to weave the stories together. I believe that
Speaker 2: that's why she started turning to Quincy. He was a
Speaker 2: pretty easy mark as well. He was an outsider, which
Speaker 2: I think is incredibly important to this case. He was
Speaker 2: not from Mayfield, he had very few ties to Mayfield.
Speaker 2: It was easy to point the finger at him because
Speaker 2: he was kind of a nameless, faceless person that was
Speaker 2: not her best friend's son.
Speaker 1: So, Quincy, when did you first hear the name Jessica Curran?
Speaker 3: First time I ever heard her name, I was locked up.
Speaker 3: I was already locked up. We was in the back
Speaker 3: of the jail and we ate bought a newspaper backer
Speaker 3: and he found the body, a body behind the school.
Speaker 3: I was like, man, that's bad. Man. How they did her? Man?
Speaker 3: Somebody they need to convicte somebody.
Speaker 1: While Quincy was still incarcerat in Mayfield on the drug charge,
Speaker 1: he became acquainted with Tamra Caldwell, the sister of a
Speaker 1: fellow prisoner. After his release in October of two thousand
Speaker 1: and two, he began seeing Tamra and eventually moved in
Speaker 1: with her in Mayfield. Tamra was the cousin of Victoria Caldwell. Then,
Speaker 1: in February of two thousand and three, the two suspects,
Speaker 1: Jeremy Adams and Carlos Saxton, both had their indictments dismissed
Speaker 1: because of discovery violations by the Mayfield Police Department and
Speaker 1: the local prosecutor. Although they had not been excluded from suspicion,
Speaker 1: it was the police and prosecutor not responding to discovery
Speaker 1: requests from their attorneys that led to their release. The
Speaker 1: case went cold for a few years before it was
Speaker 1: eventually picked up by the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation or KVII. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Susan Galbreath was still hard at work on her citizen's investigation.
Speaker 1: She had teamed up with a TV documentary production company
Speaker 1: and was still being fed information by Jamie Mills. She
Speaker 1: had also started a MySpace page of the case, publicly
Speaker 1: calling out some people she thought were involved, including Quincy Cross,
Speaker 1: which is how she drew the attention of Victoria Caldwell.
Speaker 1: Victoria told Susan Goalbreath that she knew who had killed
Speaker 1: Jessica because she had been there when it happened. Victoria
Speaker 1: and Venetia had never met Quincy until he began seeing
Speaker 1: Tamra in two thousand and two. Yet the pair wove
Speaker 1: a bizarre story that implicated Quincy, Tamra, and an acquaintance
Speaker 1: named Jeffrey Burton, and that ultimately became the basis of
Speaker 1: the States case against Quincy.
Speaker 2: So the ultimate theory that gets presented at trial by
Speaker 2: Victoria and Venetia is that they were walking around in Mayfield, Victoria,
Speaker 2: Venetia and Jessica, and that a car picked them up.
Speaker 2: The car changes, the driver changes constantly. It's very hard
Speaker 2: to pinpoint who this was supposed to be in the car.
Speaker 2: It's supposed to be jeff Free Tamara, Quincy, Victoria, Venetia
Speaker 2: and Jessica, and that Quincy was like making advances on
Speaker 2: Jessica and she was not wanting those advances, they end
Speaker 2: up at the party at Chris Drive.
Speaker 1: According to witnesses from the party, none of these people
Speaker 1: were ever at the Chris Drive party except for Quincy
Speaker 1: and Carlos, who had driven up together from Tennessee. Yet
Speaker 1: at some point Victoria and Venetia folded Carlos into their
Speaker 1: own narrative. Since those two were the people last seen
Speaker 1: with Jessica, and since Carlos was seeing her at the
Speaker 1: time and was a suspect in her murder, all three
Speaker 1: of them had every motive to deflect suspicion from themselves,
Speaker 1: which is likely how their stories ended up merging together.
Speaker 1: Carlos Saxon later testified at the trial that at the party,
Speaker 1: Quincy was seen swinging a brown braided leather belt around
Speaker 1: like a rodeo writer, but this fact could have been
Speaker 1: fed to him by the investigators to account for the
Speaker 1: charred fragment belt found near Jessica's body and to fabricate
Speaker 1: another connection between Quincy and Jessica. Victoria and Venicia's stories
Speaker 1: get more outlandish from there.
Speaker 2: Somehow they get from Chris Drive to Jeffrey Burton's house
Speaker 2: back into town, and when they got there, Quincy knocked
Speaker 2: Jessica out in the car, they carried her body in.
Speaker 2: She was still alive, but they carried her body in,
Speaker 2: put her in Jeffrey's bedroom, and they essentially had an
Speaker 2: orgy where everyone was kind of coming and going in
Speaker 2: and out of this bedroom while Jessica was coming in
Speaker 2: and out of consciousness on the bed. Then they say
Speaker 2: that some time after that, after she woke back up,
Speaker 2: that Quincy hit her in the head. Again. They almost
Speaker 2: exclusively say it's with a baseball bat, like a miniature
Speaker 2: souvenir baseball bat, until they can't find the baseball bat
Speaker 2: and they find something else.
Speaker 1: According to Victoria, she had buried the bat in her
Speaker 1: sister of Rosy Christ's backyard, but when they searched the backyard,
Speaker 1: the investigators could not find it. Instead, they uncovered an old,
Speaker 1: rusty ratchet, and at that point Victoria's story suddenly changed.
Speaker 2: And she says, Oh, it wasn't a bat, it was
Speaker 2: a tool that makes a clicking noise. And they collect
Speaker 2: the item and there's literally no evidence on it, nothing
Speaker 2: that connects to the crime at all whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Nevertheless, that item later showed up as evidence at trial.
Speaker 2: Victoria gets on the stand and says, it's the murder weapon.
Speaker 2: I buried it in the backyard along with some clothing,
Speaker 2: and they never find the clothing. They never find the
Speaker 2: baseball bat. They only find this ratchet, and it becomes
Speaker 2: a key piece of evidence against Quincy.
Speaker 1: So, without a physical connection to the crime, and despite
Speaker 1: the cause of death being undetermined at autopsy, this ratchet
Speaker 1: was alleged to be the murder weapon based solely on
Speaker 1: Victoria's word. The theory became that Quincy had allegedly hit
Speaker 1: Jessica repeatedly in the head with not a bat but
Speaker 1: this ratchet, and Victoria and Venetia's absurd tail continues after
Speaker 1: Quincy supposedly delivered the final blow.
Speaker 2: They say that that final blow is what killed her,
Speaker 2: and that they continued to have this orgy after she
Speaker 2: had passed away, where Quincy forced everyone to perform sex
Speaker 2: acts on Jessica after she had passed away. From there,
Speaker 2: they say that morning broke they took her body and
Speaker 2: put it in the garage, wrapped in a blanket and
Speaker 2: just left it there for a few days, and it
Speaker 2: wasn't until a smell started occurring that they decided they
Speaker 2: were going to move the body to the middle.
Speaker 1: School where it was found the following Tuesday morning, August first,
Speaker 1: and autopsy was performed on Jessica's body, but as with
Speaker 1: most of the investigation, it was badly botched and inconclusive.
Speaker 1: Because the body was so badly decomposed and burned, the
Speaker 1: medical examiner was unable to determine when or how she died.
Speaker 1: In addition, items of her clothing had been discarded, and
Speaker 1: no one thought to save a sample of her DNA
Speaker 1: to potentially compare it with profiles found on other crime
Speaker 1: scene evidence. So in two thousand and five, Jessica's body
Speaker 1: was exhumed and re examined. Kentucky State Police hoped that
Speaker 1: DNA samples would corroborate her alleged connection with Quincy, who
Speaker 1: is by now their main suspect.
Speaker 2: One of the main pieces of evidence that they were
Speaker 2: looking for was something that would have her DNA sample
Speaker 2: in it. They had all of these items from the
Speaker 2: crime scene that they wanted to use to connect Jessica
Speaker 2: and Quincy together. They tried very hard, and they were
Speaker 2: never able to do that.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Susan Golbreath continued with her campaign to throw suspicion
Speaker 1: off Her best friend's son, Jeremy Adams, and onto someone else.
Speaker 1: And by two thousand and seven, thanks to her citizen
Speaker 1: detective theories, the weak threads of circumstantial evidence being used
Speaker 1: to connect Quincy with the crime scene, combined with Victoria
Speaker 1: and Venetia's absurd narrative, the state believed that they had
Speaker 1: enough to make an arrest. By then, Quincy was living
Speaker 1: with a woman named Melissa, who had two young boys.
Speaker 1: One night, he and Melissa were lying in bed watching television.
Speaker 3: In my face stop up on the news, said like newsworm,
Speaker 3: I'm considered armed in dangers, so the first thing I
Speaker 3: think about is in keyds. So she gave me a
Speaker 3: look like Babe, what you gonna do? I said, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna get the hell up out her here because I
Speaker 3: don't want to bring no guns up here.
Speaker 1: When he sees it, Quincy's friends and family immediately started calling,
Speaker 1: urging him to get out of town. One friend offered
Speaker 1: to drive him to California, another to Mississippi, but Quincy
Speaker 1: didn't want to go on the run. He went to
Speaker 1: his dad's house to find the police had already been
Speaker 1: there looking for him.
Speaker 3: So I tell my dad, I'm like, look, man, I'm
Speaker 3: going to tell myself he and iigman Kentucky because I
Speaker 3: ain't gonna do no running because I ain't need nothing.
Speaker 3: But they got me considered armed in dangers. I know
Speaker 3: they won't try to kill me. I think that they
Speaker 3: wanted me dead so they can try to er up
Speaker 3: and close his tase so they can just say, well,
Speaker 3: we got the person that did and he's dead. And
Speaker 3: you know that's what I think. So these these guys
Speaker 3: from the so cappin Tucky brew up investigation on Lee,
Speaker 3: Wires and O'Neill come to take me up from the
Speaker 3: from the Apeman County jail and they take me to
Speaker 3: a hotel room at the Duka and then Terry gave
Speaker 3: me the whole time from about from about let them
Speaker 3: that twelve that night till about sixty seven that morning.
Speaker 3: When I keep telling them to take me to the jail, man,
Speaker 3: I don't want to talk to y'all. Take me to
Speaker 3: the jail.
Speaker 1: Did you ask for a lawyer, Quincy, I did ask
Speaker 1: for a lawyer twice, and they never gave you a lawyer.
Speaker 3: They never even act like they heard me say that
Speaker 3: They had just told me that I was arrested anyway,
Speaker 3: That's what they were telling me. I was arrested for
Speaker 3: the murder of Jessica Karring.
Speaker 1: From the time that Jessica's body was found in two
Speaker 1: thousand until Quincy was arrested in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: the case went through several different investigations and a mind
Speaker 1: boggling number of suspects. We don't have time to go
Speaker 1: into all of that, but let's take a moment for
Speaker 1: a little recap. So the case was investigated first by
Speaker 1: the Mayfield Police Department, resulting in the arrest of Jeremy
Speaker 1: Adams and Carlos Saxton. After their charges were dropped due
Speaker 1: to discovery violations, neither suspect was ever recharged or went
Speaker 1: to trial. When Susan Golbreth got involved, working with Jamie
Speaker 1: Mills and the Kentucky State Police, she was the one
Speaker 1: who pushed Quincy forward to the exclusion of Jeremy and Carlos,
Speaker 1: as well as several alternate suspects. Then the KBI picked
Speaker 1: up the case, using Victoria and Venetia to solidify their
Speaker 1: theory of the crime. This led them to Quincy, Tamra,
Speaker 1: and Jeffrey, who were all charged with kidnapping, rape, murder,
Speaker 1: and abuse of a corpse.
Speaker 2: The prosecution's theory wasn't super clear. When you look at
Speaker 2: this case. There are four different investigations that end in
Speaker 2: four different outcomes with four different defendants, and so I
Speaker 2: see why it was very difficult for them to figure out,
Speaker 2: how are they actually going to try him for this
Speaker 2: murder and let alone get a conviction.
Speaker 1: Nevertheless, the trial began in March two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2: So for a capital murder case to go to trial
Speaker 2: in less than one year is to me unheard of.
Speaker 2: I don't see how anyone could be prepared to go
Speaker 2: to a capital trial in one year, especially in light
Speaker 2: of the massive amounts of discovery that the prosecution was
Speaker 2: dumping on them continually.
Speaker 1: The state, led by Special Prosecutor Barbara Waley, built its
Speaker 1: case largely around the outlandish and inconsistent stories told by
Speaker 1: Victoria and Venetia. Both women had pleaded guilty to corpse
Speaker 1: abuse and evidence tampering, but as the prosecution star witnesses,
Speaker 1: their sentencing was delayed until after they had testified in
Speaker 1: Quincy's trial. After telling their stories in front of the jury,
Speaker 1: Victoria Caldwell was sentenced to five years, but ultimately served
Speaker 1: just under three months. Venisiha's Doublefield got a total of
Speaker 1: seven years, but ended up serving only six months. Along
Speaker 1: with their trial testimonies, which was the only direct evidence
Speaker 1: against Quincy, the state presented a diary that Victoria had
Speaker 1: supposedly written during the time of the murder, in which
Speaker 1: she implicated Quincy.
Speaker 2: So this diary is supposed to be a document that
Speaker 2: helps lend some truthfulness to the story that Victoria and
Speaker 2: Venicia come up with. One of the entries essentially says
Speaker 2: they found Jessica's body, Oh my god, what am I
Speaker 2: going to do? And she says the phrase Q is
Speaker 2: nowhere to be found.
Speaker 1: Which is really odd. Remember, according to Quincy, Victoria did
Speaker 1: not know him in two thousand. They didn't meet until
Speaker 1: over a year later when Quincy was dating her cousin Tamra.
Speaker 1: The prosecution also presented testimony from the medical examiner who
Speaker 1: had performed the autopsy. Despite the burnt and decomposed condition
Speaker 1: of the body, he said that he believed the cause
Speaker 1: of death could possibly have been either strangulation or blunt
Speaker 1: force trauma, but his theory appeared to be based more
Speaker 1: on the evidence presented by the prosecution the piece of
Speaker 1: belt and the story about the ratchet than on actual
Speaker 1: medical evidence. In defense, Quincy's attorney Vince Eustace brought up
Speaker 1: the former Chief Medical Examiner, doctor George Nichols as an
Speaker 1: expert witness, but his testimony was also inconclusive.
Speaker 2: He essentially was just a witness to say they truly
Speaker 2: can't say when this crime occurred. They can speculate as
Speaker 2: to strangulation, they can speculate as to blunt force trauma,
Speaker 2: but because of the decomposition the bach medical exam, together
Speaker 2: with just the condition of the body, they absolutely, with certainty,
Speaker 2: cannot tell you that this occurred here in this way
Speaker 2: or that this was what actually caused her death.
Speaker 1: There was no medical evidence that Jessica had even been raped.
Speaker 2: There was no semen found anywhere, there was any any
Speaker 2: other evidence of sexual assault. Maybe because it didn't happen,
Speaker 2: maybe because of the fire, but we just certainly do
Speaker 2: not know it.
Speaker 1: Carlo Saxon testified about seeing Quincy swinging the belt around
Speaker 1: at the Chris Drive party, and Victoria's sister Rosie Christ
Speaker 1: took the stand for the prosecution to answer questions about
Speaker 1: the ratchet found in her backyard.
Speaker 2: She's very quiet. She answers yes and no, she doesn't
Speaker 2: say too much. She's a prosecution witness, but not super cooperative.
Speaker 1: And in fact, Rosie later returned to the stand to
Speaker 1: testify for the defense, recanting her previous testimony.
Speaker 2: Saying, they threatened me. They said they'd take my kids away,
Speaker 2: I would go to prison for murder, and then they
Speaker 2: paid me money to do it. And it really just
Speaker 2: falls on deaf years and it gives us a little
Speaker 2: bit of insight into exactly how the prosecutors and police
Speaker 2: were treating the witnesses in this case, with their threats
Speaker 2: and with their payments. And that was essentially the case.
Speaker 2: Quincy did not testify. They they did very little to
Speaker 2: cut a Victoria and Venetia's story and it just at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, I don't think it swayed
Speaker 2: the jury. It wasn't enough to show that what they
Speaker 2: were saying was a lie and that it was a
Speaker 2: provable lie.
Speaker 1: Here's the question, Quincy, didn't you have an alibi for
Speaker 1: the time she was killed?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I did. My lawyer never used it. I was
Speaker 3: on Qruze Draft. I never left Chris Draft that night,
Speaker 3: and everybody in the house. They continued, I never left
Speaker 3: that house, and it's all came up.
Speaker 1: And then from Sunday morning on, you were in the
Speaker 1: Mayfield Jail for weed possession. Correct.
Speaker 3: I couldn't sort the records. That's what it say is
Speaker 3: I was already locked up. The first time I heard
Speaker 3: Justica's name, I was locked up.
Speaker 1: I think some people might hear this. You didn't know Jessica,
Speaker 1: you don't even know your co defendants, and some people
Speaker 1: might just beel like how did this happen?
Speaker 3: I still one of that, But I know how I know.
Speaker 3: Now that I've been in concrated, you see a whole
Speaker 3: lot of things that don't happen nowhere else but Kentucky,
Speaker 3: in West Kentucky. Here. As long as I've been going
Speaker 3: through from penitentiary to penitentiary, I've been letting other people
Speaker 3: look at my paperwork, and they asked me the same thing, like, bro,
Speaker 3: how had you even walked up? Like how you locked up?
Speaker 3: And I'm like, man, I can't even explain it because
Speaker 3: I don't even know. I don't know how I'm locked up.
Speaker 1: So when you're at trial Quincy, it's wrapping up. They're
Speaker 1: given closing statements and then you you hear you're convicted.
Speaker 3: I cried, man, I cried with my dad and I
Speaker 3: kept telling my daddy, these people gonna have the audacity
Speaker 3: to asked me to lie on camera. And Jeffrey, they
Speaker 3: kind like they came to me with a deal. They came,
Speaker 3: they came to me with a deal, a fifteen year deal.
Speaker 3: I just told my do that I ain't that type
Speaker 3: because because I know they innocent. The reason I know
Speaker 3: they're innocent because I know I'm innocent. So I didn't
Speaker 3: I didn't even ask him what they wanted me to say,
Speaker 3: none of that, because I ain't that type of person.
Speaker 1: So you were like, I will take a life sentence.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie about these people, right.
Speaker 3: You're exactly right, I will, And that's what I did.
Speaker 1: Tamra and Jeffrey both took Alfred please and were given
Speaker 1: ten and fifteen years, respectively, but Quincy refused to plead out,
Speaker 1: and on May twenty first, two thousand and eight, he
Speaker 1: was convicted of capital kidnapping, capital murder, rape, sodomy, and
Speaker 1: abuse of a corpse. He was sentenced to life without
Speaker 1: the possibility of parole.
Speaker 3: They rushed me straight out of the court room. They
Speaker 3: had a race that a locked my leg because because
Speaker 3: they thought I was gonna run. As soon as the
Speaker 3: first person said guipy, I didn't even hear what all
Speaker 3: the charges were. They rush They rushed me up out
Speaker 3: of the court room. M hm. I was very very angry,
Speaker 3: very very angry. It's just what can I do but
Speaker 3: make my own time hard? Understand what I'm saying, because
Speaker 3: there was a lot of different things going through my brain.
Speaker 3: But I don't want to react to make everything harder
Speaker 3: than it was. Man, it's it's it's it's it's hell
Speaker 3: for real and every in every aspect, any any any
Speaker 3: person that you can think of that in hell. I'm
Speaker 3: surrounded by them every day. But just imagine that. Imagine
Speaker 3: being innocent and going through that though, imagine being an
Speaker 3: innocent person going through the same going through hell. So
Speaker 3: now you got to adjust to it. I have to
Speaker 3: adjust to it. So now I have to raise the
Speaker 3: little help my fail in order to so for other
Speaker 3: people not to bother me. I have to raid the
Speaker 3: little hell of my fail because you got to adapt
Speaker 3: to it. If you don't adapt to it, you know,
Speaker 3: you become a man of a mouse. At that period.
Speaker 3: Ain't nothing between in my world.
Speaker 1: Over the next ten years, Quincy filed a number of
Speaker 1: appeals with the trial court and with the Kentucky Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: All were denied, and then in twenty eleven, he received
Speaker 1: a letter from an unlikely source, Jessica's father, Joe Curran.
Speaker 3: That he sent a message to me and told me
Speaker 3: to write him a letter about how I was feeling
Speaker 3: about everything that I was going through, and he wanted
Speaker 3: to get with me, and he wanted to get a
Speaker 3: better understanding about you know, what I'm going through and
Speaker 3: what I feel because he knows that I'm in it him,
Speaker 3: and he seemed the facts of the case, and he
Speaker 3: knew that I didn't have nothing to do with it.
Speaker 3: Because you want to the actual person that murdered his
Speaker 3: daughter in prison, I will want him too. I want
Speaker 3: to know who did it. I'm paid for it, but
Speaker 3: it is. It's gonna haunt me to my grave if
Speaker 3: I don't find that.
Speaker 1: And Joe has continued to believe in Quincy's innocence and
Speaker 1: to advocate for his release.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a win for me though, by my fil
Speaker 3: that's just from the outside, from the inside looking out.
Speaker 3: That's a win right there period. So so that means
Speaker 3: he knows everything that I know, understand what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And Joe Current wasn't the only one who believed in Quincy.
Speaker 1: The Kentucky Innocence Project had started to work on his
Speaker 1: case in twenty thirteen, but unfortunately they had to shelve
Speaker 1: it a few years later due to funding concerns. Then
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, Miranda Hellman joined the Kentucky Innocence Project,
Speaker 1: right around the time that the country found itself in
Speaker 1: the grip of a worldwide pandemic.
Speaker 2: As COVID was hitting. I didn't have much else to do,
Speaker 2: so I just started going through old dusty box and
Speaker 2: I found this massive case. It had fourteen eighteen boxes
Speaker 2: sitting on a shelf. It was very messy, it was
Speaker 2: not in any order. I couldn't tell what I even
Speaker 2: had to look at. So I started digging, and I
Speaker 2: think probably from the first thirty minutes and looking in
Speaker 2: the box and reading these memos from past staff, I
Speaker 2: knew there was something to it.
Speaker 1: So the KIP team began seeking out documents on the case.
Speaker 2: It took us well over a year to get state
Speaker 2: police documents and start to try to locate evidence. The
Speaker 2: high profile nature of this case and the massive amount
Speaker 2: of very well known and high ranking people that were
Speaker 2: involved in it, from the investigation, through the prosecution, even
Speaker 2: into the post conviction litigation made it very difficult for
Speaker 2: us to get anything. So we fought for about a
Speaker 2: year and a half to get records, and it's taken
Speaker 2: about two and a half years just to try to
Speaker 2: lay my eyes on the majority of what we have.
Speaker 2: The prosecution did what I would call in civil litigation
Speaker 2: and a document dump, where they bury you in boxes
Speaker 2: and boxes of paperwork so you can never get through it.
Speaker 2: So we have about forty thousand pages of discovery from
Speaker 2: the trial attorney file that we still to this day.
Speaker 2: I go through every day just trying to pull out
Speaker 2: what I think that we're going to need for post
Speaker 2: conviction litigation.
Speaker 1: One detail that caught their attention right away was the
Speaker 1: sketchy history behind Victoria's diary.
Speaker 2: So Victoria told the KBI officers that she kept diaries
Speaker 2: her whole life, She wrote in them every day, and
Speaker 2: she kept every single diary she ever wrote. So supposedly
Speaker 2: KBI found parts of these diaries in the trash can
Speaker 2: behind her apartment that she was living in in California.
Speaker 2: It's a spiral bound notebook written in a combination of
Speaker 2: pencil and blue ink. They're dated in two thousand, and
Speaker 2: they only give eleven pages of this time period exactly
Speaker 2: when the crime happens, late July to early August of
Speaker 2: two thousand, so she dates these as two thousand, but
Speaker 2: there is one entry that looks as if it was
Speaker 2: two thousand and one or two thousand and seven that
Speaker 2: she goes back and fixes and puts a zero over it.
Speaker 1: It turns out that prior to trial, the prosecution sent
Speaker 1: the diaries to the Secret Service in Washington, DC for analysis.
Speaker 2: So the Secret Service comes back and says, we don't
Speaker 2: have this ink in our library. So that means either
Speaker 2: it's a really rare ink that we just have never collected,
Speaker 2: or it's so new we haven't collected it yet.
Speaker 1: So it's not likely to be an ink that could
Speaker 1: have been used in a two thousand diary entry. Yet,
Speaker 1: despite its dubious authenticity, the diary was presented at trial
Speaker 1: as evidence that Quincy was with Victoria and the others
Speaker 1: that night.
Speaker 2: So in post conviction, a motion that will be filed
Speaker 2: is a request of a reanalysis of that ink, either
Speaker 2: by the Secret Service or by a private lab.
Speaker 1: So we mentioned the diary. Is there anything else, you know,
Speaker 1: points that you guys are making out of these forty
Speaker 1: thousand pages that you've read.
Speaker 2: Well, somehow forty thousand pages didn't even tell the whole story.
Speaker 2: So since I've come onto the case over the last year,
Speaker 2: we've been able to obtain new documents that weren't part
Speaker 2: of the original discovery or part of the initial investigation.
Speaker 2: A lot of that is centered around Susan Galbrath. She
Speaker 2: was communicating quite a bit with TV producers, friends, family,
Speaker 2: and now we have those written documents, so we can
Speaker 2: really show this missing piece. This investigation wasn't what it
Speaker 2: looked like, and here's why it ended up where it
Speaker 2: ended up. She was the person who put Quincy Cross
Speaker 2: in prison. She's the person who handed the police their theory,
Speaker 2: their investigation, and their star witnesses who had been prepped
Speaker 2: and paid to give the testimony she wanted them to give.
Speaker 1: So Rosie Christ wasn't the only witness who was being
Speaker 1: paid for testimony.
Speaker 2: Both Victoria and Venisia received money from the KBI out
Speaker 2: of a state fund that is set aside for witness protection,
Speaker 2: and Victoria was moved from California to North Carolina. Her
Speaker 2: living expenses were paid for about a year, and then
Speaker 2: she was brought back to Kentucky and basically traveled all
Speaker 2: on the dime of the state. She had told many people,
Speaker 2: including her sister and Venetia that all testified that she
Speaker 2: had said this, that they could make money by giving
Speaker 2: these statements. So the combination of this payment to witnesses
Speaker 2: how Susan was moving behind the scenes. We also have
Speaker 2: a couple pieces of forensic evidence that could be tested
Speaker 2: today that were never tested at the time of trial.
Speaker 2: So that includes some items found at the crime scene,
Speaker 2: some cigarette butts, a drink bottle that may or may
Speaker 2: not have had accelerant in it. But until we find
Speaker 2: out if there's a DNA profile on any of these
Speaker 2: items that were found with her body, we really can't
Speaker 2: say for certain. So much like asking for the release
Speaker 2: of the diary, we're going to ask for really of
Speaker 2: items of evidence to do some DNA testing.
Speaker 1: Miranda and the KIP team are hopeful that all of
Speaker 1: the new evidence and information they're now presenting will spur
Speaker 1: the courts to take a look at what the jury
Speaker 1: never got to see, and that.
Speaker 2: Really is going to be the beginning of a new
Speaker 2: chapter of litigation for Quincy.
Speaker 1: So meanwhile, for listeners who want to know what can
Speaker 1: they do to help, there are a.
Speaker 2: Few petitions online that all support Quincy's innocence and call
Speaker 2: officials to review the case, including the governor and the
Speaker 2: Attorney General. I would strongly suggest anyone who wants more
Speaker 2: information about the case look at those petitions. The information
Speaker 2: that's been given.
Speaker 1: Awesome, so we will link to those in the bio
Speaker 1: so listeners can find them and also follow the case
Speaker 1: for any updates. So now is the part of the
Speaker 1: show we call closing arguments. I want to thank both
Speaker 1: of you guys for joining us. Quincy, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for sharing your story and Miranda for being here
Speaker 1: helping out to tell it. And we'd just like to
Speaker 1: ask your final thoughts, any takeaways, anything that you want
Speaker 1: to share with listeners. Miranda, do you want to start
Speaker 1: off and then we'll let Quincy finish.
Speaker 2: Quincy's case and the murder of Jessica Kurrn are some
Speaker 2: of the worst examples of official misconduct that I have
Speaker 2: seen in any innocence cases that I've worked on. I
Speaker 2: think that what is so unique about his case is
Speaker 2: the long investigation, the many people involved in the investigation,
Speaker 2: and the mishandling by an ept and untrained police officers
Speaker 2: that led to his arrest and ultimate conviction.
Speaker 1: And Quincy, what about you? What do you want to
Speaker 1: say to listeners?
Speaker 3: I want them to know an that I'm anything person,
Speaker 3: you know, and I want them to look at the
Speaker 3: fag that again. I want them to look at everything,
Speaker 3: everything about this case. And that's what I want the
Speaker 3: world to be because you know, I don't been through
Speaker 3: I don't been through some heal trying to get the
Speaker 3: truth out, and now that I got the opportunity to
Speaker 3: get it out, it makes everything a whole lot better. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it makes everything a whole lot better for me. That's
Speaker 3: what I want the world to know. That I'm a
Speaker 3: bad plus I'm a better person, believe it or not.
Speaker 3: For a prison made me a better person. I have
Speaker 3: a whole lot of love in my heart. That's one.
Speaker 3: That's the biggest thing I want to know.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
Speaker 1: to this and all Lava for Good podcast one week
Speaker 1: early by subscribing to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank executive producers Jason Flumm, Jeff Kempler,
Speaker 1: and Kevin Wurtis for inviting me to sit in today,
Speaker 1: and thanks to our production team Connor Hall and e Chelsea,
Speaker 1: Lela Robinson and Kathleen Fink. The music in this production
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms
Speaker 1: at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can
Speaker 1: also follow me on all platforms at maggie Freelink. Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
Speaker 1: association with Signal Company Number one