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 a 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 testified 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, Thanks for
Speaker 1: having us. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: 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 2: It's a lot of things that I've been olding in
Speaker 2: 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 2: I grew up with sisters and brothers on both sides
Speaker 2: my family, my mom's side, you know, my dad's side,
Speaker 2: on my stepmom's side. You know what I'm saying, very old,
Speaker 2: protected by my sisters, all of them, provider, protector, somebody
Speaker 2: that they can come talk to, have the conversations that
Speaker 2: they can't have with other people. And they know that.
Speaker 2: And uh, and we have real good times. You know,
Speaker 2: as kids, we did other things together. We used to
Speaker 2: catch turtles and snakes and all that we used to
Speaker 2: go frog gig, we used to have you know, just
Speaker 2: do what young kids do. I grew up in Union
Speaker 2: City and I grew up in Wooler Mills, Tennessee. So
Speaker 2: 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, Like.
Speaker 2: Okay, country is a whole It's a whole lot of
Speaker 2: love in the country. You know. It's like we did
Speaker 2: We did small things like play tag and play baseball,
Speaker 2: and you know, we just did it as a small community.
Speaker 2: Then you got to tighten their family because it's a
Speaker 2: lot of older people that raised you. They cooked for you.
Speaker 2: You know, you wash their cars like more, their yaards
Speaker 2: and things. Because we was tightening. There was a whole
Speaker 2: 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 2: Sports was my thing. I wanted to be a good
Speaker 2: football player. That's what I wanted to do. I want
Speaker 2: to go to college and play football and help the
Speaker 2: older people in my community. Look up, you know, what
Speaker 2: I'm saying, and say he did something with his life,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So what was going on in your life in two thousand?
Speaker 2: It was up and down. Two thousand was up and
Speaker 2: down because matter of fact, we had just had my
Speaker 2: grandmama's funeral on Mother's Day of ninety nine, and I
Speaker 2: went through a spiral after that, you know, because that
Speaker 2: was that was my heart.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by spiral? What did you what
Speaker 1: was that like?
Speaker 2: I got off in the drugs, basically got off in
Speaker 2: the drugs and using the man telling them I was
Speaker 2: doing both.
Speaker 1: What kind of drugs? Okay, So wondering if before the
Speaker 1: summer of two thousand did you have any run ins
Speaker 1: with the law at all when you were selling drugs,
Speaker 1: dealing drugs whatever it was.
Speaker 2: Well, it was like small smile, petty client, like marijuana,
Speaker 2: k you know, cocaine case some day wouldn't get you
Speaker 2: no time, you know, some thirty day, ninety days, you know,
Speaker 2: 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 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: So, Mayfield, Kentucky was and still is a very small
Speaker 3: town in rural western Kentucky, a very predominantly white community.
Speaker 3: The black population and minority population live on one side
Speaker 3: of town, where you know, the white population lives in another.
Speaker 3: So the police and really the city government in Mayfield
Speaker 3: has had a few scandals throughout its time. The one
Speaker 3: that I think is most connected to this case would
Speaker 3: 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 3: He was fired essentially from the Mayfield Police department sometime
Speaker 3: after this case occurred, and it appeared to be a
Speaker 3: theory of the defense at the time of Quincy's trial.
Speaker 3: Even in two thousand and eight that Ronnie Lear was
Speaker 3: just a crooked cop and that this may have been
Speaker 3: 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 2: Were in Youngest City. We had a party set up.
Speaker 2: We was planning the house up for this party, and uh,
Speaker 2: Travis Jackson, Carlos, Saxton and Gregg store had pulled up.
Speaker 2: So I've been knowing Travis before he could walk. So
Speaker 2: he come down there looking for some drugs. So I
Speaker 2: 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 2: I'm like, man, I don't know nobody in Kentucky. Man,
Speaker 2: I want to go to Kentucky. He was like, come on, man,
Speaker 2: if you go, we'll bring you back later on.
Speaker 1: It took some convincing, but eventually Quincy agreed and they
Speaker 1: headed up to Kentucky and the process to.
Speaker 2: That we can hit these back so many these different
Speaker 2: back roads to where I don't even know where we at.
Speaker 2: We pop up in.
Speaker 1: Mayfield around midnight. They ended up at a party on
Speaker 1: Chris Drive, somewhere on the outskirts of town.
Speaker 2: They got their girlfriends or whatever hanging out out there,
Speaker 2: so we're selling drugs out there as all. I don't
Speaker 2: 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 2: But I keep asking them to take me home. I'm like, man,
Speaker 2: I'm ready to go home. So I've used the phone,
Speaker 2: the hel home. I call him uponder them back in
Speaker 2: Eystad it letting them know the I'm trying to get home,
Speaker 2: and I know they waiting on me in 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 2: This guy, he's standing right beside me, so he's seen
Speaker 2: me drop a couple of drops of gas on my parents' lead.
Speaker 2: But he's in the hairy to get to work because
Speaker 2: he's late. So Stay Trooper with Mike Perkins pulled up.
Speaker 2: So now he smelled the gas, but he gave me
Speaker 2: a ride back to Chris Drive about a mile up
Speaker 2: the street, and from now he dropped me off. And
Speaker 2: then he said he went back to the car and
Speaker 2: he's seeing marijuana, which was which was some some black
Speaker 2: and mile and mile. It wasn't even marijuana, it was
Speaker 2: black and male.
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 milds like,
Speaker 1: which is like a cigar kind of thing. What happened
Speaker 1: from there?
Speaker 2: So he come back to the to the house asking
Speaker 2: me if he can search a car, Tell him the
Speaker 2: car ain't mine. Then I got two empty baggage in
Speaker 2: my pocket that I meant to go away but day
Speaker 2: in my pocket. And then Betty Kentucky two formed a
Speaker 2: prayer for negi is automatic possession, So and two empty
Speaker 2: 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 Current 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 3: The timeline is difficult to nail down, and we don't
Speaker 3: have a time of death. Even a day of death
Speaker 3: for Jessica, partly because of the mishandling of the crime
Speaker 3: scene and the autopsy medical examination. So Saturday night, which
Speaker 3: would have been July twenty ninth, was the night that
Speaker 3: Jessica was last seen. So through looking at the witness interviews,
Speaker 3: I have the most accurate account of her leaving a
Speaker 3: small get together with her cousin Vnesiha around eleven o'clock
Speaker 3: 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 3: So we know for certain that evening she was alive,
Speaker 3: She was in Mayfield, and she left a small get
Speaker 3: together at a friend's house. No one aside from Venetia
Speaker 3: 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 3: So as the missing person's report comes in, it's almost
Speaker 3: at the exact same time that the call that this
Speaker 3: body's been found behind the middle school comes in. So
Speaker 3: the Mayfield Police dispatch out the Assistant Chief, Ronnie Lear,
Speaker 3: 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 3: So, Jessica's body was found pretty severely decomposed and burned.
Speaker 3: She did not have clothing on. It was pretty clear
Speaker 3: she had a dress on and just most of it
Speaker 3: was burned off of the top, but there were pieces
Speaker 3: of it underneath of her body. Her shoes were found
Speaker 3: at the scene, but they weren't on her feet. She
Speaker 3: had some jewelry on that was not burned off, and
Speaker 3: that was actually how her mother identified from photos of
Speaker 3: the jewelry that she was wearing.
Speaker 1: Was there anything else found at the scene that they
Speaker 1: thought was significant.
Speaker 3: The majority of the items that they attempted to test
Speaker 3: or to look for evidence on were just so badly burned.
Speaker 3: The fire had basically burned out, so there was very
Speaker 3: little left at the crime scene that wasn't you know, charred.
Speaker 3: And then additionally, they decided at autopsy they wouldn't keep
Speaker 3: her clothing and they said it was too badly burned.
Speaker 3: There was a small piece of a braided belp found
Speaker 3: pretty close to the body. I mean a guess is
Speaker 3: about two to four inches long. It's not on her,
Speaker 3: but it is in the grass next to her, and
Speaker 3: it does have a buckle still attached to it. So
Speaker 3: those were collected and still remain 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 3: There was definitely an accelerant used and the police follow
Speaker 3: the assumption that it was gasoline and they connected that
Speaker 3: just by the word gasoline to Quincy, who was found
Speaker 3: that next morning pouring gas out of a gas can
Speaker 3: into the car that had no gasoline in it. The
Speaker 3: deputy jailer saw that happen. He actually watched Quincy dump
Speaker 3: the gas on himself and down the side of the car,
Speaker 3: 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 3: Are really starting to show up at the middle school
Speaker 3: where they put tape up. It still wasn't a super
Speaker 3: secure scene. In looking at the video that they made
Speaker 3: 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 3: She describes herself as an overweight stay at home why though,
Speaker 3: who solved a crime? So Susan Gaalbrith was at the
Speaker 3: scene the day Jessica's body was discovered. From her own writings,
Speaker 3: she says that she was at a diner in downtown
Speaker 3: Mayfield having breakfaster lunch and that she felt a higher
Speaker 3: power calling her to the middle school because she felt
Speaker 3: that there was a tragedy there, so she becomes essentially
Speaker 3: 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 Sack, 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 3: Once Jeremy's arrested, Susan Galbrath turns into kind of a
Speaker 3: private sleuth, wanting to put the case together and figure
Speaker 3: it out. So she's I mean, she's deeply involved and
Speaker 3: very intertwined in the story, to the point she's almost
Speaker 3: acting as a fourth investigating agency, you know, alongside the
Speaker 3: 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 3: That was Jamie Mills. They were exchanging information pretty freely.
Speaker 3: So Jamie was actually giving this private citizen that wanted
Speaker 3: 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 3: There is a notation in Quincy's file about him being
Speaker 3: booked in and him smelling like gas, and I think
Speaker 3: she starts to weave the stories together. I believe that
Speaker 3: that's why she started turning to Quincy. He was pretty
Speaker 3: easy Mark as well. He was an outsider, which I
Speaker 3: think is incredibly important to this case. He was not
Speaker 3: from Mayfield, he had very few ties to Mayfield. It
Speaker 3: was easy to point the finger at him because he
Speaker 3: was kind of a nameless, faceless person that was not
Speaker 3: her best friend's son.
Speaker 1: So, Quincy, when did you first hear the name Jessica Currn?
Speaker 2: First time I ever heard her name, I was locked up.
Speaker 2: I was already locked up. We was in the back
Speaker 2: of the jail and we ve bought a newspaper backer.
Speaker 2: So he found the body, a body behind the school.
Speaker 2: I was like, man, that's bad man. How they did her?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 2: Somebody? Ye, they need to convict 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 Golbreath 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 3: So the ultimate theory that gets presented at trial by
Speaker 3: Victoria and Venetia is that they were walking around in Mayfield, Victoria,
Speaker 3: Venetia and Jessica and that a car picked them up.
Speaker 3: The car changes, the driver changes constantly. It's very hard
Speaker 3: to pinpoint who this was supposed to be in the car.
Speaker 3: It's supposed to be jeff Tamara, Quincy, Victoria, Venetia and Jessica,
Speaker 3: and that Quincy was like making advances on Jessica and
Speaker 3: she was not wanting those advances, they end up at
Speaker 3: 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 3: Somehow they get from Chris Drive to Jeffrey Burton's house
Speaker 3: back into town, and when they got there Quincy knocked
Speaker 3: Jessica out in the car, they carried her body in.
Speaker 3: She was still alive, but they carried her body in,
Speaker 3: put her in Jeffrey's bedroom, and they essentially had an
Speaker 3: orgy where everyone was kind of coming and going in
Speaker 3: and out of this bedroom while Jessica was coming in
Speaker 3: and out of consciousness on the bed. Then they say
Speaker 3: that some time after that, after she woke back up,
Speaker 3: that Quincy hit her in the head. Again, they almost
Speaker 3: exclusively say it's with a baseball bat, like a miniature
Speaker 3: souvenir baseball bat, until they can't find the baseball bat
Speaker 3: 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 3: And she says, Oh, it wasn't a bat, it was
Speaker 3: a tool that makes a clicky noise. And they collect
Speaker 3: the item and there's literally no evidence on it, nothing
Speaker 3: that connects to the crime at all whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Nevertheless, that item later showed up as evidence at trial.
Speaker 3: Victoria gets on the stand and says it's the murder weapon.
Speaker 3: I buried it in the backyard along with some clothing.
Speaker 3: And they never find the clothing. They never find the
Speaker 3: baseball bat. They only find this ratchet, and it becomes
Speaker 3: 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 3: They say that that final blow is what killed her,
Speaker 3: and that they continued to have this orgy after she
Speaker 3: had passed away, where Quincy forced everyone to perform sex
Speaker 3: acts on Jessica after she had passed away. From there,
Speaker 3: they say that morning broke they took her body and
Speaker 3: put it in the garage, wrapped in a blanket and
Speaker 3: just left it there for a few days, and it
Speaker 3: wasn't until a smell started occurring that they decided they
Speaker 3: were going to move the body to the middle school.
Speaker 1: 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 3: One of the main pieces of evidence that they were
Speaker 3: looking for was something that would have her DNA sample
Speaker 3: in it. They had all of these items from the
Speaker 3: crime scene that they wanted to use to connect Jessica
Speaker 3: and Quincy together. They tried very hard, and they were
Speaker 3: 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 with the crime scene, combined with Victoria and
Speaker 1: Venetia's absurd narrative, the state believed that they had enough
Speaker 1: to make an arrest. By then, Quincy was living with
Speaker 1: a woman named Melissa, who had two young boys. One night,
Speaker 1: he and Melissa were lying in bed watching television.
Speaker 2: In my face pop up own the news, said the
Speaker 2: news won I'm considered armed in dangers, so the first
Speaker 2: thing I think about is in keyds. So she gave
Speaker 2: me a look like, Babe, what you gonna do? I said,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna get him up out of here because I
Speaker 2: don't want to know bringing no girls up here, what
Speaker 2: he's keezing.
Speaker 1: Quincy's friends and family immediately started calling, urging him to
Speaker 1: get out of town. One friend offered to drive him
Speaker 1: to California, another to Mississippi, but Quincy didn't want to
Speaker 1: go on the run. He went to his dad's house
Speaker 1: to find the police had already been there looking for him.
Speaker 2: So I tell my dad, I'm like looke man, I'm
Speaker 2: great telling myself he and haig Ma Kentucky, because I
Speaker 2: ain't gonna do no run because I ain't need nothing.
Speaker 2: But they got me considered armed in dangers. I know
Speaker 2: they won't try to kill me. I think that they
Speaker 2: wanted me dead so they can try to er up
Speaker 2: and close his case, so they can just say, well,
Speaker 2: we got the person that did and he's dead. And
Speaker 2: you know that's what I think. So these these guys
Speaker 2: from the so cappin Tucky brew up investigation on Lee
Speaker 2: Wise and O'Neill come to take me up from the
Speaker 2: from the Apeman County jail and they take me to
Speaker 2: a hotel room at the Duka and then Terry gave
Speaker 2: me the whole time from about from about leave them
Speaker 2: that twelve that night till about sixty seven that morning.
Speaker 2: When I keep telling them to take me to the jail, man,
Speaker 2: I don't want to talk to y'all. Take me to
Speaker 2: 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 2: Never. They never even act like they heard me say
Speaker 2: that They had just told me that I was arrested anyway,
Speaker 2: they were telling me I was arrested for the murder
Speaker 2: 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 3: The prosecution's theory wasn't super clear. When you look at
Speaker 3: this case. There are four different investigations that end in
Speaker 3: four different outcomes with four different defendants, and so I
Speaker 3: see why it was very difficult for them to figure out,
Speaker 3: how are they actually going to try him for this
Speaker 3: murder and let alone get a conviction.
Speaker 1: Nevertheless, the trial began in March two thousand.
Speaker 3: And eight, So for a capital murder case to go
Speaker 3: to trial in less than one year is to me
Speaker 3: unheard of. I don't see how anyone could be prepared
Speaker 3: to go to a capital trial in one year, especially
Speaker 3: in light of the massive amounts of discovery that the
Speaker 3: prosecution was dumping on them continually.
Speaker 1: The state, led by Special Prosecutor Barbara Wailey, 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. Venisia'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 3: So this diary is supposed to be a document that
Speaker 3: helps lend some truthfulness to the story that Victoria and
Speaker 3: Venicia come up with. One of the entries essentially says
Speaker 3: they found Jessica's body, Oh my god, what am I
Speaker 3: going to do? And she says the phrase Q is
Speaker 3: 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: belts 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 3: He essentially was just a witness to say they truly
Speaker 3: can't say when this crime occurred. They can speculate as
Speaker 3: to strangulation, they can speculate as to blunt force trauma,
Speaker 3: but because of the decomposition the bach medical exam, together
Speaker 3: with just the condition of the body, they absolutely, with
Speaker 3: certainty cannot tell you that this occurred here in this
Speaker 3: way or that this was what actually caused her death.
Speaker 1: There was no medical evidence that Jessica had even been raped.
Speaker 3: There was no semen found anywhere, there was any any
Speaker 3: other evidence of sexual assault. Maybe because it didn't happen,
Speaker 3: maybe because of the fire, but we just certainly do
Speaker 3: 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 3: She's very quiet. She answers yes and no, she doesn't
Speaker 3: 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 3: Saying, they threatened me. They said they'd take my kids away,
Speaker 3: I would go to prison for murder, and then they
Speaker 3: paid me money to do it. And it really just
Speaker 3: falls on deaf years and it gives us a little
Speaker 3: bit of insight into exactly how the prosecutors and police
Speaker 3: were treating the witnesses in this case, with their threats
Speaker 3: and with their payments. And that was essentially the case.
Speaker 3: Quincy did not testify. They they did very little to
Speaker 3: cut it Victoria and Venetia's story, and it just at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, I don't think it swayed
Speaker 3: the jury. It wasn't enough to show that what they
Speaker 3: were saying was a lie and that it was a
Speaker 3: provable Ee.
Speaker 1: Here's a question, Quincy. Didn't you have an alibi for
Speaker 1: the time she was killed?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did. My lawyer never used it. I was
Speaker 2: on Cruze Draft. I never left christ Draft that night,
Speaker 2: and everybody in the house they continue I never left
Speaker 2: that house till the song.
Speaker 1: Came up, and then from Sunday morning on you were
Speaker 1: in the Mayfield Jail for weed possession correct accord.
Speaker 2: So the records, that's what it say is I was
Speaker 2: already locked up the first time I heard Justica's name,
Speaker 2: 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 feel like, how did this happen?
Speaker 2: I still wanted that, but I know how I know
Speaker 2: now that I've been in concrated, you see a whole
Speaker 2: lot of things that don't happen nowhere else but Kentucky
Speaker 2: and West Kentucky.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 2: As long as I've been going through from penitentiary to
Speaker 2: the penitentiary, I've been letting other people look at my paperwork,
Speaker 2: and they asked me the same thing, like, bro, how
Speaker 2: had you even loked up? Like how you locked up?
Speaker 2: And I'm like, man, I can't even explain it because
Speaker 2: 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 2: I cried, man, I cried with my dad and I
Speaker 2: kept telling my daddy, these people gonna have to audacity
Speaker 2: to ask me to lie on camera. And Jeffrey, they
Speaker 2: came to me with a deal. They came, they came
Speaker 2: to me with a deal, a fifteen year deal. I
Speaker 2: just told my do that I ain't that type because
Speaker 2: because I know they innocent. The reason I know they're
Speaker 2: innocent because I know I'm innocent. So I didn't I
Speaker 2: didn't even ask him what they wanted me to say,
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: Right, 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 2: They rushed me, stayed out of the court room. They
Speaker 2: had a brace that a locked my leg because because
Speaker 2: they thought I was gonna run. As soon as the
Speaker 2: first person said guilty, I didn't even.
Speaker 4: Hear what all the charges were they used. They rushed
Speaker 4: me about the court room.
Speaker 2: M hm. I was very very angry, very very angry.
Speaker 2: It's just what can I do but make my own
Speaker 2: time hard? Understand what I'm saying, because there was a
Speaker 2: lot of different things going through my brain. But I
Speaker 2: don't want to react to make everything harder than it was. Man,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's it's it's hell for real, and every
Speaker 2: in every aspect, any any any person that you can
Speaker 2: think of, that's in hell. I'm surrounded by them every day.
Speaker 2: But just imagine that. Imagine being innocent and going through
Speaker 2: that though, imagine being an innocent person going through the
Speaker 2: same going through hell. So now you got to adjust
Speaker 2: to it. I have to adjust to it. So now
Speaker 2: I have to raise the little hell of my fail
Speaker 2: in order to so for other people not to bother me.
Speaker 2: I have to regular hell of my fail because you
Speaker 2: got to adapt to it. If you don't adapt to it,
Speaker 2: you know, you become a man of mouth. At that period,
Speaker 2: 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 2: That he sent a message to me and told me
Speaker 2: to write him a letter about how I was feeling
Speaker 2: about everything that I was going through if he wanted
Speaker 2: to get with me, and he wanted to get a
Speaker 2: better understanding about you know, what I'm going through and
Speaker 2: what I feel, because he knows that I'm innacing and
Speaker 2: he seemed the facts of the case, and he knew
Speaker 2: that I didn't have nothing to do with it. Because
Speaker 2: you want to the actual person that murdered his daughter
Speaker 2: in prison, I will want him too. I want to
Speaker 2: know who did it. I'm paid for it, but it
Speaker 2: is it's gonna haunt me for my grave if I
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, that's a win for me though by myself. That's
Speaker 2: just from the outside, from the inside looking out, that's
Speaker 2: a win right there. Period. So so that means he
Speaker 2: knows everything that I know understand what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And Joe Curran 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 3: As COVID was hitting. I didn't have much else to do,
Speaker 3: so I just started going through old dusty box and
Speaker 3: I found this massive case. It had fourteen eighteen boxes
Speaker 3: sitting on a shelf. It was very messy, it was
Speaker 3: not in any order. I couldn't tell what I even
Speaker 3: had to look at. So I started digging, and I
Speaker 3: think probably from the first thirty minutes and looking in
Speaker 3: the box and reading these memos from past staff, I
Speaker 3: knew there was something to it.
Speaker 1: So the KIP team began seeking out documents on the case.
Speaker 3: It took us well over a year to get state
Speaker 3: police documents and start to try to locate evidence. The
Speaker 3: high profile nature of this case and the massive amount
Speaker 3: of very well known and high ranking people that were
Speaker 3: involved in it, from the investigation, through the prosecution, even
Speaker 3: into the post conviction litigation made it very difficult for
Speaker 3: us to get anything. So we fought for about a
Speaker 3: year and a half to get records, and it's taken
Speaker 3: about two and a half years just to try to
Speaker 3: lay my eyes on the majority of what we have.
Speaker 3: The prosecution did what I would call in civil litigation
Speaker 3: and a document dump, where they bury you in boxes
Speaker 3: and boxes of paperwork so you can never get through it.
Speaker 3: So we have about forty thousand pages of discovery from
Speaker 3: the trial attorney file that we still to this day.
Speaker 3: I go through every day just trying to pull out
Speaker 3: what I think that we're going to need for post
Speaker 3: conviction litigation.
Speaker 1: One detail that caught their attention right away was the
Speaker 1: sketchy history behind Victoria's diary.
Speaker 3: So Victoria told the KBI officers that she kept diaries.
Speaker 1: Her whole life.
Speaker 3: She wrote in them every day, and she kept every
Speaker 3: single diary she ever wrote. So supposedly KBI found parts
Speaker 3: of these diaries in the trash can behind her apartment
Speaker 3: that she was living in in California. It's a spiral
Speaker 3: bound notebook written in a combination of pencil and blue ink.
Speaker 3: They're dated in two thousand, and they only give eleven
Speaker 3: pages of this time period exactly when the crime happens,
Speaker 3: late July to early August of two thousand, so she
Speaker 3: dates these as two thousand, but there is one entry
Speaker 3: that looks as if it was two thousand and one
Speaker 3: or two thousand and seven that she goes back and
Speaker 3: 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 3: So the Secret Service comes back and says, we don't
Speaker 3: have this ink in our library. So that means either
Speaker 3: it's a really rare ink that we just have never collected,
Speaker 3: 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 3: So in post conviction, a motion that will be filed
Speaker 3: is a request of a reanalysis of that ink, either
Speaker 3: 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 3: Well, somehow forty thousand pages didn't even tell the whole story.
Speaker 3: So since I've come onto the case over the last year,
Speaker 3: we've been able to obtain new documents that weren't part
Speaker 3: of the original discovery or part of the initial investigation.
Speaker 3: A lot of that is centered around Susan Galbrath. She
Speaker 3: was communicating quite a bit with TV producers, friends, family,
Speaker 3: and now we have those written documents so we can
Speaker 3: really show this missing piece. This investigation wasn't what it
Speaker 3: looked like, and here's why it ended up where it
Speaker 3: ended up. She was the person who put Quincy Cross
Speaker 3: in prison. She's the person who handed the police their theory,
Speaker 3: their investigation, and their star witnesses who had been prepped
Speaker 3: 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 3: Both Victoria and Venisia received money from the KBI out
Speaker 3: of a state fund that is set aside for witness protection,
Speaker 3: and Victoria was moved from California to North Carolina. Her
Speaker 3: living expenses were paid for about a year, and then
Speaker 3: she was brought back to Kentucky and basically traveled all
Speaker 3: on the dime of the state. She had told many people,
Speaker 3: including her sister and Venetia that all testified that she
Speaker 3: had said this, that they could make money by giving
Speaker 3: these statements. So the combination of this payment to witnesses
Speaker 3: how Susan was moving behind the scenes. We also have
Speaker 3: a couple pieces of forensic evidence that could be tested
Speaker 3: today that were never tested at the time of trial.
Speaker 3: So that includes some items found at the crime scene,
Speaker 3: some cigarette butts, a drink bottle that may or may
Speaker 3: not have had accelerant in it. But until we find
Speaker 3: out if there's a DNA profile on any of these
Speaker 3: items that were found with her body, we really can't
Speaker 3: say for certain. So much like asking for the release
Speaker 3: of the diary, we're going to ask for really of
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 3: And that really is going to be the beginning of
Speaker 3: a new chapter of litigation for Quincy.
Speaker 1: So meanwhile, for listeners who want to know what can
Speaker 1: they do to.
Speaker 3: Help, there are a few petitions online that all support
Speaker 3: Quincy's innocence and call officials to review the case, including
Speaker 3: the governor and the Attorney General. I would strongly suggest
Speaker 3: anyone who wants more information about the case look at
Speaker 3: those petitions. The information 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 3: Quincy's case and the murder of Jessica Kurrn are some
Speaker 3: of the worst examples of official misconduct that I have
Speaker 3: seen in any innocence cases that I've worked on. I
Speaker 3: think that what is so unique about his case is
Speaker 3: the long investigation, the many people involved in the investigation,
Speaker 3: and the mishandling by an ept and untrained police officers
Speaker 3: 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 2: Want? I want them to know another I'm innocent person,
Speaker 2: you know, And I want them to look at the
Speaker 2: bag that again. I want them to look at everything
Speaker 2: everything about this case. And that's what I want the
Speaker 2: world to be know. I've been through I don't been
Speaker 2: through some heal trying to get the truth out, and
Speaker 2: now that I got the opportunity to get it out,
Speaker 2: it makes everything a whole lot better. Yeah, it makes
Speaker 2: everything a whole lot better for me. That's what I
Speaker 2: want the world to know. That I'm a bad and
Speaker 2: plus I'm a better person. Believe it or not, for
Speaker 2: a prison made me a better person. I have a
Speaker 2: whole lot of love in my heart. That's that's the
Speaker 2: 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 Andy, 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