Speaker 1: The Innocence Network is an informal collective of independent organizations
Speaker 1: that advocate on behalf of the wrongfully convicted, and every
Speaker 1: year they gather along with a growing number of those
Speaker 1: whom they've helped free. Our team was honored to join
Speaker 1: them for their twenty two gathering in Arizona. The stories
Speaker 1: we heard were both heartbreaking and inspiring, and some of
Speaker 1: those incredible people were willing to record with us. On
Speaker 1: January tenth, nineteen seventy five, there was an open house
Speaker 1: party in Suffolk County, Long Island, attended by seventeen year
Speaker 1: old Keith Bush and fourteen year old Sharis Watson. Over
Speaker 1: twenty alibi witnesses confirmed that Keith Bush was with them
Speaker 1: in the house around one thirty am, which Sharise was
Speaker 1: believed to have gotten into a red sedan, never to
Speaker 1: be seen alive again. The following day, Terize's parents frantic
Speaker 1: search for their daughter included a visit to Keith Bush,
Speaker 1: who had told them about how he last saw her
Speaker 1: inside the house party. Later that evening, her body was
Speaker 1: discovered in the field near that house, having been strangled
Speaker 1: to death. Her us were partially on zipped and there
Speaker 1: were multiple groupings of small puncture wounds on her back. Curiously,
Speaker 1: the wounds had not bled. Biological material and clothing vibers
Speaker 1: were gathered from her fingernails, and hair pick was found
Speaker 1: near her body. Two witness statements emerged alleging that Keith
Speaker 1: was the last person scene with Charisse. Ignoring a more
Speaker 1: promising lead, investigators instead tortured Keith in the police station
Speaker 1: until he relented and signed a statement he hadn't even read.
Speaker 1: It was a false confession riddled with inconsistencies, including an
Speaker 1: impossible hair pick stabbing scenario that said Keith away for
Speaker 1: twenty years to life. DNA testing, independent autopsies and witness
Speaker 1: recantations proved Keith's confession was false, Yet Suffolk County authorities
Speaker 1: and the Parole Board were not so easily convinced. This
Speaker 1: is wrongful confection. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. Here we're
Speaker 1: recording at the Innocence Network conference in Phoenix, and what
Speaker 1: you're about to hear combines junk science. A false confession,
Speaker 1: police and prosecutorium is conduct on a scale that is staggering,
Speaker 1: lying witnesses, incentivized witnesses. It involves so many of the
Speaker 1: causes of wrongful convictions that we see again and again,
Speaker 1: all wrapped up into one. Keith Bush, Welcome to wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you for having me. You know, I
Speaker 1: always say I'm sorry you're here because well, the reason
Speaker 1: why we're interviewing it today. But I'm very honored to
Speaker 1: have you here. I appreciate being here. And your story
Speaker 1: is important for us to tell because a lot of
Speaker 1: the reasons that I've already laid out. But before we
Speaker 1: do that, what I really want to do is talk
Speaker 1: about the young and Keith Bush. The young teenager Keith
Speaker 1: Bush growing up in Long Island. Well, I was born
Speaker 1: in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I was kind of raised in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Speaker 1: My mother and my father they separated when I was young.
Speaker 1: My mother has her roots in Long Island. Her grandparents
Speaker 1: were born on the Indian reservation. So she used to
Speaker 1: take us back and forth to Long Island from Bridgeport, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: and then she eventually moved to Belport, New York. Got it.
Speaker 1: And from what I understand, you were a fine young man.
Speaker 1: You weren't in any sort of trouble. Would you say
Speaker 1: that you were on the right track growing up? I
Speaker 1: was basically like most kids. I played sports, you know,
Speaker 1: I went to school, went to parties and did basically
Speaker 1: what you know kids normally do growing up. Sounds like
Speaker 1: a nice childhood right in the ferry, back and forth.
Speaker 1: Everything was fine more or less right. Everybody has their
Speaker 1: ups and downs, but everything was fine until this terrible
Speaker 1: incident that happened at a party in Suffolk County, Long Island.
Speaker 1: And we know the Suffolk County unfortunately has been a
Speaker 1: hotbed of police corruption and misconduct for generations. Of course,
Speaker 1: we've covered the Marty Tankliffe story on this podcast, but
Speaker 1: your story is as powerful as any, so let's get
Speaker 1: right into it. So this crime we're talking about January eleven,
Speaker 1: the middle of the winter, and on that fateful day,
Speaker 1: the parents of a young girl named Sharie Watson called
Speaker 1: the Suffolk County Police Department and they were worried because
Speaker 1: their daughter hadn't come home from a party in a
Speaker 1: friend's house just a few blocks away. This would be
Speaker 1: a cause for concerns. She's fourteen, it's the wee hours
Speaker 1: of the morning, and they began looking for Sharis. Now,
Speaker 1: about a hundred people had attended this party, and you
Speaker 1: were one of them. Right Saturday, the eleventh of January,
Speaker 1: Terise's mother and her effort of trying to locate her daughter.
Speaker 1: She was trying to go around finding all the people
Speaker 1: that her daughter had come into contact with. They came
Speaker 1: to my home and she had quiet about, you know,
Speaker 1: Charice Watson, did she come home with me? Did she
Speaker 1: leave with anybody or whatever? And I told her, I
Speaker 1: don't know, because the last time I talked to her,
Speaker 1: she walked out the front door and said I see
Speaker 1: you later, But she didn't indicate that she was going
Speaker 1: home or even coming back. And she said, well, if
Speaker 1: you hear anything, could you give me a call. Later
Speaker 1: on in the evening, they came back Terise's mother and
Speaker 1: her father to my house. That's when they came with
Speaker 1: the police officer. And this time they obviously hadn't you
Speaker 1: heard from her? And you're talking about five or six
Speaker 1: o'clock in the afternoon. I think it's every parents worst nightmare,
Speaker 1: right missing it's a young girl. I think that adds
Speaker 1: a layer of fear, you know. But her body was
Speaker 1: found in the field nearby where the party had been.
Speaker 1: Helped brace yourself for this because it's it's hard to
Speaker 1: hear but she was faced down, her pants were partially unzipped,
Speaker 1: and there were numerous small punctures on her back. That's
Speaker 1: an important detail, as we'll see as we go along,
Speaker 1: And autopsy would later say that she had been strangled
Speaker 1: with enough force to snap the hyoid bone in her
Speaker 1: throat near her body, another important detail which becomes the
Speaker 1: subject of misconduct of a type that would be comical
Speaker 1: if it wasn't so terrible and so serious. But near
Speaker 1: her body, police also found a black plastic hairpick and
Speaker 1: a white hat. You know, it's important to note that
Speaker 1: that night they found Sherris Watson, my cousin, and another
Speaker 1: friend that came to my house with this elder gentleman Vietnam.
Speaker 1: That this guy named Robert Stewart, and I didn't know him,
Speaker 1: but my cousin, George goldsonnew him, and he seemed to
Speaker 1: be a concerned person in the community, and we were
Speaker 1: talking about what happened, and he wanted to try to help,
Speaker 1: like a lot of people in the community, to find
Speaker 1: out what happened to Cheris. So he had asked us,
Speaker 1: if you know, we were willing to help find out.
Speaker 1: Some of the people who was at the party really
Speaker 1: find out who did this, and so I agreed that,
Speaker 1: you know, I wouldn't help in any way that I
Speaker 1: couldn't and um, we had met over to this guy's
Speaker 1: house two nights. He had said that, you know, there
Speaker 1: was having some problems with the names of people who
Speaker 1: was at the party. They didn't know how to connect
Speaker 1: the names to the faces, and that may be that
Speaker 1: we can kind of help connect them because these people
Speaker 1: can probably provide some information about what really happened. The
Speaker 1: only thing we knew at that time was that Terse
Speaker 1: Watson had came out the house and got into a car,
Speaker 1: a stolen red car with three individuals, and drove off.
Speaker 1: We heard that these individuals were from Riverhead in Suffolk County,
Speaker 1: which is another town over, but I never knew who
Speaker 1: these persons were, and no one would really revealed it
Speaker 1: at that time. So there's this whole red sedance scenario
Speaker 1: right and compelling alternate suspects. In fact, in Man, which
Speaker 1: was a few months after the murder, but critically before
Speaker 1: You're wrong for conviction, a guy named John Jones had
Speaker 1: given a statement the police which placed him at the
Speaker 1: crime seed and he admitted that the hair pick at
Speaker 1: the scene was his. Now we can only speculate that
Speaker 1: Jones wasn't pursued any further and the state was hidden
Speaker 1: from over four decades simply because police had already decided
Speaker 1: that you were the guy. Right, of course, that had
Speaker 1: dire consequences and not just only for you, But we'll
Speaker 1: get to that in a minute. But back to the
Speaker 1: mediate aftermath. So you knew shereise, and you had joined
Speaker 1: Robert Sewart's effort with your cousin George Golson and your
Speaker 1: friend Chuckie Corbin. Um, my understanding is you told police
Speaker 1: what you told Teresa's mother write the same thing, that
Speaker 1: you had seen her walk out of the party sometime
Speaker 1: around one am. Now, over twenty alibi witnesses placed you
Speaker 1: at the party before you left around three in the morning. Now,
Speaker 1: police claimed to have learned that Therese had left the
Speaker 1: party around one thirty am, and that a little while
Speaker 1: later people heard screaming and shouts of rape coming from
Speaker 1: the field near the party where her body was eventually bound.
Speaker 1: So on its face, it seems very weird that no
Speaker 1: one from the party looked into these alleged shouts of rape.
Speaker 1: And then I also say that police claimed to have
Speaker 1: learned this because wasn't Sharisse said to have left in
Speaker 1: a red Sudan Now. Police also interviewed a girl named
Speaker 1: Brenda Carlos, who said that she had last seen Sharie
Speaker 1: talking to you around one fifteen am, but left the
Speaker 1: party before Sharise, so it doesn't seem like her statement
Speaker 1: is very relevant. Brenda Carlos was introduced to me by
Speaker 1: Shterise Watson that night. For my understanding, Brenda Carlos was
Speaker 1: a little older than Sharis and she was supposed to
Speaker 1: walk her home and make sure she had got home.
Speaker 1: And Brenda Carlos had said that she was going home
Speaker 1: and Sharise Watson told her that she wasn't going to
Speaker 1: go home, so she said, okay, I'll see you later
Speaker 1: and she left. That was her statement to police, which
Speaker 1: was kind of insignificant in terms of the crime itself.
Speaker 1: But at trial when she testified, she kind of altered
Speaker 1: that statement, and the pivocal part of her testimony then
Speaker 1: became when she asked her where you're going home? She
Speaker 1: said no, Kippy was going to walk home, and Kippy
Speaker 1: was supposed to be me Keith Bush. Even still, this
Speaker 1: would be circumstantial evidence, even if her second story was true. Right.
Speaker 1: What they were doing is kind of painting a picture.
Speaker 1: Her statement might not have been relevant within itself, but
Speaker 1: her statement becomes relevant when she's mentioning my name, and
Speaker 1: then there's other evidence of suggestion that kind of points
Speaker 1: to me now. Police interviewed a teenage girl, fifteen year
Speaker 1: old girl the vaccine Bell. She had recently run away
Speaker 1: from her foster home. I was living in an abandoned building.
Speaker 1: She knew Charise as well as you, Keith right, and
Speaker 1: many other people at the party from when I guess
Speaker 1: she had attended the same school as you did at
Speaker 1: one time. So the statements she gave police, she said
Speaker 1: that she was standing outside the party for several hours
Speaker 1: and had seen you and Cherise leaving together quote unquote
Speaker 1: hugged up. That's what she later testified, with your arms
Speaker 1: cradling Charisse around the neck. I wonder if somebody told
Speaker 1: her to say that, I'm just saying, what can you
Speaker 1: tell us about this young girl? They had got two
Speaker 1: statements from him. But in that first statement that Monday,
Speaker 1: which was the thirteen of January nine, she alleges that
Speaker 1: Terise Watson comes out the house with me, and when
Speaker 1: the Carlos. Later, she backtracks. She testifies that Terise Watson
Speaker 1: came out the house with me hugged up, and she
Speaker 1: asked her that you know you want me to walk
Speaker 1: you home, and then Terise allegedly told and know that
Speaker 1: you know I was going to walk her home, and
Speaker 1: she alleged that she left us standing there. That was
Speaker 1: the last time, you know, she had seen Cherise, and
Speaker 1: she had holitude that I'll call you tomorrow and she said, okay.
Speaker 1: That was her testimony, and that made me, according to
Speaker 1: the police, a suspect in the case because that testimony,
Speaker 1: it was inconsistent with the original statement I gave to
Speaker 1: police about my activities on the night of the party. Right,
Speaker 1: what you've always maintained about your activities on the night
Speaker 1: of the party was that you stayed inside the party
Speaker 1: when Sharise left. And again over twenty alibi witnesses did
Speaker 1: confirm that, and some of them later even testified despite
Speaker 1: pressure from the police, But police used this statement from
Speaker 1: Maxian Bell, alleging that you were the last person seeing
Speaker 1: with Sharisse in order to establish probable cause. Now, she
Speaker 1: tried to recant this statement as early as nine eighty
Speaker 1: and eventually admitted into two thousand sixteen Davit that the
Speaker 1: statement was made out of fear of the police and
Speaker 1: that she chose to just confirm what they already believed.
Speaker 1: And when our audience, here's what happens next to you,
Speaker 1: we can only imagine what kind of pressure and terror
Speaker 1: was brought down on Maxine Bell, this young female at
Speaker 1: risk runaway, in order to evoke that false statement. So
Speaker 1: on January fourteen, things started to spiral even further downhill.
Speaker 1: You were at school and detectives were with your investigative
Speaker 1: Chucky Corbin, George Golson and the Vietnam vet Robert Stewart,
Speaker 1: and the cops didn't just come and grab you first.
Speaker 1: The two younger guys were sent to get you from school,
Speaker 1: but when the school said that they needed an adult
Speaker 1: to come and get you, Robert Stewart came instead. You
Speaker 1: were released to him and he brought you to his
Speaker 1: house where you thought that you were still just helping
Speaker 1: with this lead on the stolen red Sadan. Now apparently
Speaker 1: there was a guy named Michael Christian who might have
Speaker 1: known something about the guys in the red car, and
Speaker 1: you thought you were just going to look at some
Speaker 1: pictures and help the police in any way that you could.
Speaker 1: So you got back to Mr Stewart's what happened next.
Speaker 1: That's when the police officers came in and they started
Speaker 1: interviewing us about you know what we knew a novice league.
Speaker 1: I was the one that was at the party. George
Speaker 1: Gholston wasn't Chucky Corbin had leupt earlier. So they were
Speaker 1: mainly asking the questions towards me, and then they asked
Speaker 1: if I can show them where Michael Christian lives. And
Speaker 1: this was a guy that supposed to had heard something
Speaker 1: from these guys the next day that was in that
Speaker 1: red car. That was something that's supposed to be incriminating.
Speaker 1: I know Michael Christian and I knew where he lived.
Speaker 1: But now actually what they did is when I showed
Speaker 1: him where he lived, they rolled past the house. So
Speaker 1: I asked them where they were going, So they said, oh,
Speaker 1: we have to go. We're going to the precinct to
Speaker 1: get the list of names. We thought we had them,
Speaker 1: but we don't have them. To that you can look
Speaker 1: at them and go over. But before they got there,
Speaker 1: and they had spoke to two detectives that was in
Speaker 1: another car behind them, got back in the car. They
Speaker 1: took me to the fifth Precinct and patch you all,
Speaker 1: which is the town over, and then they brought me
Speaker 1: down into a basement. When it brought me down to
Speaker 1: the basement, they walked out, and two detectives walked in,
Speaker 1: Detective Dennis Rafferty and Detective August Stall. They walked in
Speaker 1: and took over the investigation. And that was the last
Speaker 1: time I've seen the outside world. Yeah, and this interrogation,
Speaker 1: it probably won't surprise people who are regular listeners to
Speaker 1: the podcast, but disinterrogation resulted in your false confession after
Speaker 1: they punched and kicked and abused you in ways that
Speaker 1: had to be beyond terrifying. I mean, on top of
Speaker 1: the fact that it was sort of a surprise attack
Speaker 1: because you weren't even brought there as a suspect. Now
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you're in the basement. That's scary enough, right,
Speaker 1: like kind of almost like a dungeon scenario. Right. As
Speaker 1: we find out later, at least one of these detectives
Speaker 1: was so racist that he was throwing the N word around.
Speaker 1: So tell us about the interrogation itself. Let me just say, um,
Speaker 1: you know, in the forty four years, I've been battling
Speaker 1: with this effort to exonerate myself the encounter in the precinct,
Speaker 1: particularly with the physical abuse, the psychological. Of all the
Speaker 1: efforts that I made to exonerate myself, the most painful
Speaker 1: part of that whole experience, at least sits there. What
Speaker 1: they did to me was something I would have never
Speaker 1: imagined from a person of that status, because obviously, when
Speaker 1: you're young, you're taught to believe that law enforcement represents
Speaker 1: an authority that's equivalent to your parents. So when they
Speaker 1: begin to question me, in spite of the fact that
Speaker 1: I maintained my innocence, they didn't really want to hear that.
Speaker 1: They were only concerned with trying to get me to
Speaker 1: confess to the crime and to sign a confess and
Speaker 1: you know, with promises that they can help me. You know,
Speaker 1: I was a young kid, you know, things happen. I
Speaker 1: just wanted to get laid. And then they started to
Speaker 1: tell me about this statement they had from this witness,
Speaker 1: which is why they said they know that I committed
Speaker 1: the crime because I was the last person to be
Speaker 1: seen with her alive. And they went on and on
Speaker 1: with this for maybe about an hour and a half
Speaker 1: and then they decided to move me to Hogpog, which
Speaker 1: is the headquarters for homicide squad. Now, I constantly asked
Speaker 1: them could I call my mother. I felt the pressure
Speaker 1: of confinement, of being trapped. Today I can articulate it
Speaker 1: as in Communicato. There was no way, you know, they
Speaker 1: was letting me out of here, and I had to
Speaker 1: figure out how to get out of there. You know.
Speaker 1: I found out that my cousin and Mr Stewart and
Speaker 1: Chucky Corbin had came to the precinct two to four
Speaker 1: times looking for me, and they told him that I
Speaker 1: wasn't there. So obviously they had no intentions of it
Speaker 1: ever letting me get past that phase. No, they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have let Jesus and if he showed up to try
Speaker 1: to help you at the right and their intentions was clear.
Speaker 1: They wanted me to confess to this crime. And once
Speaker 1: they took me to Hogpop they kept drilling me, one
Speaker 1: officer coming in after another, and you know, they kept
Speaker 1: going through that whole process, the good guy, bad guy tactic,
Speaker 1: and I kept telling them over and over I didn't
Speaker 1: commit the crime. I wanted to call my my mother,
Speaker 1: called somebody, but you know, they just continue the process
Speaker 1: until all of a sudden, six or seventies guys came
Speaker 1: running in and grabbed me from all over and just
Speaker 1: started pounding me, hit me upside the head with the
Speaker 1: phone book and stop and trying to make me sign
Speaker 1: a confession. And I kept telling him I didn't do it.
Speaker 1: Then they would start back up, stop, start. You know
Speaker 1: they're fretting, and know we're gonna make you still you'll
Speaker 1: never have kids, and you know you're not going nowhere
Speaker 1: to you sign this bill, beat you to f and
Speaker 1: you know they're going on and on, and at some point,
Speaker 1: you know, I just you know, I got scared. I
Speaker 1: lost my focus and um, when I signed that confession,
Speaker 1: I mean I signed my life away. I know I
Speaker 1: signed something. I didn't know what the confession said or
Speaker 1: what what I signed said. I never set it out
Speaker 1: my mouth. I just signed the paper. When I first
Speaker 1: came to the County jail, I was in sick Bay
Speaker 1: for maybe the week to two weeks, and that's when
Speaker 1: I first you know, read and found out what I
Speaker 1: had allegedly said to them do the signing of the confession.
Speaker 1: You quickly recanted your confession and saying that the detectives
Speaker 1: wouldn't accept your denials or even let you call your mother.
Speaker 1: And importantly, this confession said that when she pulled your
Speaker 1: hand away from her pants, that she had refused your
Speaker 1: sexual advance to them. When she pulled your hand away,
Speaker 1: you started stabbing her with her hair pick, and that
Speaker 1: when she screamed and strangled her to keep her quiet.
Speaker 1: So they provided the narrative, but even what they said
Speaker 1: was obviously provably not true and not possible scientifically, because
Speaker 1: the victim didn't bleed, which means of course that she
Speaker 1: was dead before whatever it was that punctured her skin
Speaker 1: punctured her skin. That was a fabricated confession constructed by
Speaker 1: them before the facts were cleared. Them, whatever they had
Speaker 1: at that particular time, they used to try to paint
Speaker 1: a picture of me committing this crime, and they got
Speaker 1: it wrong. Now, the hairpick is so important in this scenario.
Speaker 1: First of all, it's a ridiculous concept. The hairpick, unless
Speaker 1: it's made out of steel, is going to break if
Speaker 1: you start stabbing somebody with it. And you don't have
Speaker 1: to be the scientist to figure this out, or an
Speaker 1: expert in plastic did you even carry a hairpick at
Speaker 1: the time, Keith is ball these days, so I don't
Speaker 1: know what your hairstyle wars back then. Yeah, I wore
Speaker 1: an afro. Back then, we all carried picks. They were popular.
Speaker 1: During the interrogation, they had showed me a black plastic
Speaker 1: pick that wasn't a plastic bag. And I didn't know
Speaker 1: that the pick that they found was from the crime scene.
Speaker 1: And they asked me, was that my pick? I said, no,
Speaker 1: that wasn't. But I don't I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what she had puncture wounds in a
Speaker 1: lower back. How would you know? You weren't there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know none of this now. They executed a
Speaker 1: search warrant on your house on January fourteenth, and they
Speaker 1: recovered or claimed to recover several items, including a metal
Speaker 1: hairpick that would be introduced to trial as the weapon
Speaker 1: that left the punctures on Charies's back, but it would
Speaker 1: later be revealed, against surprise surprise, that the pick the
Speaker 1: police seized didn't belong to you. They wasn't going to
Speaker 1: leave my home until they found a metal pick. That
Speaker 1: it didn't matter what kind, what style, or whatever, and
Speaker 1: when they didn't have my pick. They called my cousin, George.
Speaker 1: He came over and he gave them his pick because
Speaker 1: my brother to him, they ain't gonna leave until they
Speaker 1: get a pick. But the detective try to testify that
Speaker 1: they got to pick from my brother, and my brother
Speaker 1: said it was my pick, which was a lie. There's
Speaker 1: no real way to describe this other than that they
Speaker 1: planted the evidence. They didn't even bother the planted themselves.
Speaker 1: They had to have somebody else come and bring me
Speaker 1: so incredibly twisted so that pick that they alleged was
Speaker 1: used to create those puncture wounds on a lower back
Speaker 1: that when clusters of threes, four and five, and they
Speaker 1: had one that went so deep that it almost hit
Speaker 1: the liver. And you know, obviously today we have these
Speaker 1: medical experts sore saying that it's impossible for that pick
Speaker 1: to have caused those puncture wounds. You don't have to
Speaker 1: be an expert to know that that's not possible. It's
Speaker 1: not possible because it's not possible. It's plastic and it's dull.
Speaker 1: With the experts are saying today is like, you know,
Speaker 1: even an expert back then should have drawn that same conclusion.
Speaker 1: They said, I confessed it to a crime that was
Speaker 1: impossible to have happened. But the medical examiner testified in
Speaker 1: his opinion that these pick calls those punctual wounds. But
Speaker 1: you're not only the medical examiner who was either completely
Speaker 1: wrong or lying. You have a Suffer County detective who's
Speaker 1: there saying that the victim who fought for her life
Speaker 1: scratching her assailant had your jacket under her fingernails, as
Speaker 1: if they test eavy jack that was ever made and determined,
Speaker 1: you know, the the particularities of those fibers or whatever.
Speaker 1: But there was no science to back it up. Right,
Speaker 1: when we talk about junk science again, I have to
Speaker 1: laugh to keep from crying. I mean, it's so ridiculous
Speaker 1: that a fourth grader should be able to figure out
Speaker 1: that this was not possible. But of course a jury
Speaker 1: is going to be susceptible to testimony from people like
Speaker 1: this who are supposedly quote unquote experts. So on April eighteen,
Speaker 1: this is important. There's not a logical suspect. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about this guy John Jones. A few months after the crime,
Speaker 1: they arrested a guy named John Jones on a charge
Speaker 1: of unauthorities of a vehicle. Now, no one really knows
Speaker 1: how he came to the attention of the homicide detextas,
Speaker 1: but he was questioned about Teresa's death and given a
Speaker 1: polygraph that was said to be inconclusive. He was interviewed
Speaker 1: again on May nine, short time after, and this time
Speaker 1: he gave a more expansive statement. I got another red flag.
Speaker 1: He said he was at the party, got drunk and
Speaker 1: started to walk to his sister's house, even though she
Speaker 1: lived east to the party, and the body was found
Speaker 1: to the west. Red Black number two Jones. This character
Speaker 1: said that he stumbled over Charies's body in the field
Speaker 1: and in the process dropped his hair pick. He said
Speaker 1: he didn't know that the girl was dead until he
Speaker 1: heard about the death on the news. Keep him out.
Speaker 1: We never knew nothing about this guy to like forty
Speaker 1: years later. You know, at the time they interviewed him,
Speaker 1: they kept this hidden. We do know that the district
Speaker 1: attorney was intimately involved in it, be because when they
Speaker 1: did the polygraph tests, it was sent to him and
Speaker 1: the person who took the statement from him was Detective Rafferty.
Speaker 1: John Jones also admits to the guy that when that
Speaker 1: showed him the black pick. He said, yeah, that looks
Speaker 1: like my pick, and he places himself at the crime
Speaker 1: scene around the time frame that the experts estimate the
Speaker 1: cause of death. But they had already threw the crime
Speaker 1: on me. They had already claimed that I voluntarily confessed
Speaker 1: to the crime, and they didn't have the integrity or
Speaker 1: dignity to step back and say we made a mistake
Speaker 1: and open up that avenue of investigation. So they protected
Speaker 1: this guy, who they had every reason to believe was
Speaker 1: a vicious killer of a young child. They allowed him
Speaker 1: to ring free. On In February sixteenth of nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: he was arrested in charge with third degree rape after
Speaker 1: he impregnated a fifteen year old girl. But two weeks
Speaker 1: after Jones's arrest, ronically, two weeks later, on March first,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, your trial began in the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: of the State of New York for Suffolk County. You
Speaker 1: had a paid attorney named Harold Selligman, the prosecutor was
Speaker 1: Gerald Sullivan, and the judge was Mervin town Abound. The
Speaker 1: state's case, of course, was built around Bell's testimony your
Speaker 1: false confession immediately recanted and the quote unquote forensic and
Speaker 1: physical evidence, which we now know was just a pack
Speaker 1: of lies. So Dr Edelman of the Suffolk County Medical
Speaker 1: Examiner's Office, as you mentioned, he said that the punker
Speaker 1: wounds on Teresa's back were consistent with the arrangement of
Speaker 1: the times on the hair pick found at your house,
Speaker 1: but the plastic pick was not entered into evidence of trial. Wow,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of lies just in that sentence alone.
Speaker 1: There's like three or four lies. It's incredible. A Suffol
Speaker 1: County detective predictably testified that the three fibers recovered from
Speaker 1: beneath Teresa's fingernails quote did contain unquote fibers taken from
Speaker 1: a denim jacket that you wore. That would be laughable
Speaker 1: if it wasn't so serious. And when this sick fuck
Speaker 1: Raperty testified, he denied any wrong doing during your interrogation.
Speaker 1: Also predictable, he claimed that you freely and voluntarily gave
Speaker 1: your statement. Seligman had no knowledge your lawyer, right, had
Speaker 1: no knowledge of John Jones, as you mentioned, Keith or
Speaker 1: his statement to the police when he crossed examined Rafferty.
Speaker 1: He said to the detective quote, Officer, was there other
Speaker 1: suspects on the day you interviewed my client? Sullivan? The
Speaker 1: DEA objected and the jury was excused while the two
Speaker 1: sides had a conference in the judges chambers. According to
Speaker 1: investigation by Newsday, Sullivan said there were no other suspects.
Speaker 1: He told the judge that quote there was nobody else
Speaker 1: who was connected with the crime with any evidence end quote.
Speaker 1: That is an incredibly bold lie. Sullivan said that if
Speaker 1: Seligman took Raffrey down that path, that would open the
Speaker 1: door to him asking the detective about all sorts of
Speaker 1: raw evidence that might be damaging to you, Keith, and
Speaker 1: Seligman backed off. He was preventing my lawyer from opening
Speaker 1: up lines of questioning as to other suspects in this case.
Speaker 1: Detective Rafferty was the one who took the statement from
Speaker 1: John J. Jones, and this was three weeks after he's
Speaker 1: sitting at a Huntly hearing determining the voluntarily or involuntarily
Speaker 1: nous of the confession. This guy has given testimony and
Speaker 1: he's pretending like I'm the only person of interest. So
Speaker 1: now when he testifies that trial, when we did not
Speaker 1: question him in that area, we did not get an
Speaker 1: opportunity for him to go on the record, and I
Speaker 1: mean obviously been lying all throughout, but to continuously lie
Speaker 1: by concealing exculpatory evidence, and the existence of Jones as
Speaker 1: an ultimate suspect was hidden from us, you said, Keith
Speaker 1: for four decades, forty long years. And you also had
Speaker 1: multiple albi witnesses. Some of them testified again under oath,
Speaker 1: that you would stay at the party until three am,
Speaker 1: an hour and a half after the murder took place.
Speaker 1: Others testified that they never saw a bell outside the party,
Speaker 1: But several alibi witnesses didn't testify, And of course it
Speaker 1: comes out later and they say at this an affidavis
Speaker 1: that the police threatened them with the rest if they
Speaker 1: helped you with your defense. So that's what the police
Speaker 1: were doing. While they were letting this Jones guy walk
Speaker 1: the streets. They were out there paying visits to the
Speaker 1: people who wanted to do their duty, who wanted to
Speaker 1: be honest and forthright and come to your defense, as
Speaker 1: they knew you weren't the guy that did it. You
Speaker 1: did testify in your own defense denying killing her, of course,
Speaker 1: but when you testify about the brutal being that you
Speaker 1: endured in the interrogation room, the prosecution attacks you. Tell
Speaker 1: me if this is wrong, Keith. They asked how many
Speaker 1: times you had been hit, and when you responded, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I wasn't counting, but I know it was
Speaker 1: a lot of times end quote. That was enough for
Speaker 1: them to say, well, see that he doesn't even know
Speaker 1: how many times he was hit. What the hell are
Speaker 1: they talking about. That's the position they try to take.
Speaker 1: But everybody should have seen through that you were acquitted
Speaker 1: of intentional premeditated murder, but convicted of second agree murder,
Speaker 1: an attempted sexual abuse and sentence the twenty years to
Speaker 1: life in prison. I was withdrawn. I was in a
Speaker 1: state of confusion, and it threw me into a deep
Speaker 1: state of shame of hurt because I was ashamed at
Speaker 1: myself for allowing them to do that to me, like
Speaker 1: I trapped myself in hell. Obviously, I've seen the world
Speaker 1: looking down upon me, and the hate fit that people
Speaker 1: had for me was the direct result of me allowing
Speaker 1: those detectives to do that to me, and not bothered
Speaker 1: me to the extent that I hated them, I hated
Speaker 1: the system. I just felt the sense of anger, almost
Speaker 1: like it was borne out of me, like an entity
Speaker 1: on my back. I had a sense of anger that
Speaker 1: may have served as a few and all I wanted
Speaker 1: to do was fight back. And for forty four years,
Speaker 1: I just kept fighting back in every way I could,
Speaker 1: and fight back you did. So let's talk about the
Speaker 1: appellate process and how you got here. So initially, you
Speaker 1: didn't go after all of the issues of innocence that
Speaker 1: we've already laid out so far. Rather, the first appeal
Speaker 1: was focused on whether or not it was legal for
Speaker 1: them even to have detained you in the first place,
Speaker 1: and a Supreme Court decision had come down in the
Speaker 1: nineteen I believe, called Dunaway versus New York, which addressed
Speaker 1: issues relating to the Fourth and fourteenth Amendments. Now, the
Speaker 1: fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searchers or seizures and sets the
Speaker 1: guidelines for the issuing of warrants, and importantly here that
Speaker 1: warrants must be justified by probable cause. Now, after hearing
Speaker 1: your arguments, the Pelic Division found the police used deception
Speaker 1: and trickery to illegally to team you, but if there
Speaker 1: were significant evidence to show probable cause, it would cure,
Speaker 1: so to speak, the illegal detention. Your defense was ready
Speaker 1: to argue that police did not have probable cause even
Speaker 1: with the statement of Maxine Bell was just about to recant.
Speaker 1: Maxine Bell had left Bell put after my conviction because
Speaker 1: she was having problems with kids in the community, and
Speaker 1: it was how did you lie on him? And so anyway, um,
Speaker 1: to our surprise, the prosecutor had sent Maxine Bell a
Speaker 1: plane ticket from Alabama to come back to testify. But
Speaker 1: when she came back, she had told the district attorney
Speaker 1: that she's going to tell the truth that she lied
Speaker 1: and none of this really happened. That kind of like
Speaker 1: knocked out the key argument of probable cause. But instead
Speaker 1: of the judge ruling in favor of the defense based
Speaker 1: on the recantation of Maxine l and the fact that
Speaker 1: there wasn't sufficient evidence to support the illegal detention, he
Speaker 1: concluded that Maxine Belt's trial testimony is chewing, that her
Speaker 1: recantation is false, and he rendered in the determination that
Speaker 1: from the trial she was a sympathetic and appealing figure.
Speaker 1: Now she has grown into an immature adult, but the
Speaker 1: extent of her disturbance is not fully described. So he
Speaker 1: denied the probable cause hearing, so I had went back
Speaker 1: on a clatter attack to argue against the judges fact findings.
Speaker 1: And I argued that pro se. So I argued that
Speaker 1: obviously she had matured into a disturbed a doubt. But
Speaker 1: this girl, after she testified against me I was convicted,
Speaker 1: she was home crying thinking about what she did during trial.
Speaker 1: She was pregnant and she had a baby boy, and
Speaker 1: three months after her baby was born, the baby just died.
Speaker 1: So she thought God was punishing her for what she
Speaker 1: did to me. She tried to commit suicide. She had
Speaker 1: to seek psychiatric care. So I said, obviously there is
Speaker 1: some disturbance in this girl, but all that disturbance relates
Speaker 1: to her given false testimony against me. And I asked
Speaker 1: the judge if he would order that a professional in
Speaker 1: that psychiatric field can examine her and assist the judge
Speaker 1: in his fact finding determination, because this judge concluded that
Speaker 1: her disturbance is not fully described. He denied that too,
Speaker 1: and you received denial after denial, first as a pro
Speaker 1: sayltic in filing and federal habeas and then even with
Speaker 1: the help of since you're in ministries, and the denials
Speaker 1: continued through, which is when you became eligible for parole.
Speaker 1: Of course, the Parole board denied you I think it
Speaker 1: was five times because you refused to admit guilt and
Speaker 1: register as a sex offender. And later the Department of
Speaker 1: Corrections went so far as to impost policies that further
Speaker 1: punished you for your refusal to admit guilt, and in
Speaker 1: response to that, you took them to court with a
Speaker 1: pelling argument, which was that since you swore on the
Speaker 1: Bible and proclaimed your innocence at trial, for them to
Speaker 1: penalize you and discriminate against you if you didn't break
Speaker 1: that oath, that sounds like a violation of your right
Speaker 1: to religion, and a judge determined that you had a
Speaker 1: constitutional question of law that was entitled to review. It's
Speaker 1: actually brilliant. Meanwhile, you had also been pursuing DNA testing,
Speaker 1: and in two thousand and six Secn County DA started
Speaker 1: a DNA review project to look at old cases that
Speaker 1: had biological evidence that previously couldn't be tested. And so
Speaker 1: it finally looked like this could get you around the
Speaker 1: Borough Board entirely. They tested my d n A against
Speaker 1: the finger nail scraping is that they found there was
Speaker 1: a male profile and two female but the male profile
Speaker 1: did not match me. But at that time they didn't
Speaker 1: tell me that. And when my attorney Held Seligman, looked
Speaker 1: into it for me, they wrote me a letter telling
Speaker 1: me that they haven't got decision yet. They haven't heard
Speaker 1: nothing yet, but when they do, they would notify me
Speaker 1: and that I go to the parole board and I
Speaker 1: will be released in two thousand and six. Now I
Speaker 1: go to the parole board and I maintain my innocence.
Speaker 1: I refused to take a sex offend. My stance don't change.
Speaker 1: They released me from prison, but they labelized me as
Speaker 1: a sexual predator, and they sent me back to the
Speaker 1: community with that stigma. Then they make my life twice
Speaker 1: as hard to transition because of that stigma for the
Speaker 1: next twelve years. All that time, my release from prison
Speaker 1: wasn't nothing but a transfer to another institution like a
Speaker 1: bigger prison's a bigger picture of my life was institutionalized.
Speaker 1: I read an incredible quote from you, Keith. Somebody must
Speaker 1: have asked you about why you refused me up guilt
Speaker 1: and probably would have opened the prison doors and set
Speaker 1: you home right, I would have you would have been
Speaker 1: paroled earlier, and you said, I refuse to let them
Speaker 1: do to me as a man what they did to
Speaker 1: me as a boy. I mean that that hits hard.
Speaker 1: So there you are out in the quote unquote free world,
Speaker 1: but unable to use the internet, to live within a
Speaker 1: thousand or feet of a school, even try to rebuild
Speaker 1: your life, try to get meaningful employment. All those doors
Speaker 1: are totally closed to you. So the punishment continues, and
Speaker 1: then it gets worse again because, on top of all
Speaker 1: the other indignities, that you were supposed to pay a
Speaker 1: monthly fee to allow officials to monitor your online activities. Okay,
Speaker 1: so with the money that you can't make because they
Speaker 1: won't let you really get a job because you're registered
Speaker 1: sex offender, you're supposed to pay them to do the
Speaker 1: job that they're supposedly doing, monitoring your your online activities. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's a whole lot wrong with that, but we're gonna
Speaker 1: jump to the next. So, during an inspection of your home,
Speaker 1: officials found that you had been working on your niece's
Speaker 1: computer writing your memoirs. Right, not doing anything wrong the
Speaker 1: farthest thing from it, but the computer had Internet access.
Speaker 1: Sure enough, they use this as an excuse to send
Speaker 1: you back to prison for a freaking year because you
Speaker 1: were trying to write your memoirs on a computer that
Speaker 1: had Internet access. When you're living under these types of
Speaker 1: stringent regulations, you basically live in the life of a
Speaker 1: slave Ereegarless to whether they would have violated me or not.
Speaker 1: You know, it would have made no different because I
Speaker 1: wasn't going to stop fighting for my innocence. No, you
Speaker 1: would not, And you were able to get one of
Speaker 1: the one of the real grades in this field to
Speaker 1: take your case. I'm talking about it, dal Bernhardt from
Speaker 1: the Innocence Clinic at Pace Law School and later New
Speaker 1: York Law School's Post Conviction Innocence Clinic as well. So
Speaker 1: she was able to get the courts to allow DNA
Speaker 1: testing and to confirmed with suff and County already knew
Speaker 1: that your DNA was excluded from the fingernail scrapings and
Speaker 1: the plastic pick bounded the scene. That, along with the
Speaker 1: report criticize and the tactics of Detective Rafferty and others,
Speaker 1: should have been more than enough to overturn the conviction.
Speaker 1: But Subfolk County still had the confession, the false confession
Speaker 1: that was signed under torture, police torture, and they argued
Speaker 1: that the report was little more than a quote unquote
Speaker 1: fishing expedition, and that the fingernail scrapings could have been contaminated,
Speaker 1: and somehow that that was enough to get your motion denied.
Speaker 1: And then next you went after the false confession, and
Speaker 1: in order to prove that it was false, A Dell
Speaker 1: got the renowned forensic pathologist Dr Michael Bodden to assess
Speaker 1: the autopsy and other physical evidence to show that the
Speaker 1: statement they wrote for you to sign did not match reality.
Speaker 1: That the pattern and spacing of the pick did not
Speaker 1: match up to the puncture wounds. The punctures were in
Speaker 1: groups of three rather than ten like the pick. And
Speaker 1: in addition, some of the wounds were too deep to
Speaker 1: have been made by the pick without the neighboring wounds
Speaker 1: being equally deep. Now, how the wounds were made, we
Speaker 1: have no idea, and according to this alleged statement, needed
Speaker 1: did you. But anyway, By also pointed out that without
Speaker 1: bleeding around the wounds, they must have been made posthumously,
Speaker 1: which contradicted the statement in which the stabbing happened before
Speaker 1: she was strangled to death. Now you already had the
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen AFFI David from Vaccine Bell recanting saying
Speaker 1: that quote, I was scared of the police. This is
Speaker 1: a direct quote. I was scared of the police. I
Speaker 1: believed I was doing the right thing by confirming what
Speaker 1: they already believed and quote. Then in two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: that's when you found out about this insane Brady violation,
Speaker 1: with John Jones having admitted in nineteen seventy five, before
Speaker 1: your trial and before a rape. The Jones committed in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six that he admitted to being at the
Speaker 1: scene and that the pick was his. Adele also obtained
Speaker 1: Affidavid's from witnesses at the party, stating that they had
Speaker 1: been discouraged from helping you. And discouraged that's not a
Speaker 1: strong enough word, because we know what these motherfucker's were doing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I forget my language, but this is it's
Speaker 1: it's just sick. Then in two thousand eighteen, Adele presented
Speaker 1: all of this to the new DA in Suffolk County,
Speaker 1: Timothy Cinny, who had just opened a Conviction Integrity Bureau,
Speaker 1: And when the Suffix c IB did their own investigation,
Speaker 1: they agreed with Dr Boden's findings, as well as that
Speaker 1: the detective testimony about the fibers was also unsubstantiated. They
Speaker 1: furthermore suggested that John Jones, who died in two thousand six,
Speaker 1: appeared to be quote and again I'm quoting directly the
Speaker 1: most viable suspect in Sharie Watson's murder and quote. And
Speaker 1: while they couldn't confirm the physical abuse during the interrogation,
Speaker 1: they agreed that even in absence of that, the tactics
Speaker 1: were psychologically coercive enough to produce a false statement from
Speaker 1: a scared teenager. And while Rafferty would only communicate through
Speaker 1: his lawyer, his partner August Stall, sat down for an
Speaker 1: interview in which he stated, quote that fucking blank did it.
Speaker 1: So I don't think we need to say anymore about
Speaker 1: what Unfortunately, it is not a surprising statement for Detective Stalled.
Speaker 1: So finally, it took forty four years of fighting, forty
Speaker 1: four years, but the Suffolk County the I issued in
Speaker 1: order to vacate your conviction on May nineteen, rightfully, so
Speaker 1: you then filed suit against them and the State of
Speaker 1: New York settling in Now no amount of money could
Speaker 1: ever be enough for what they put you through. But
Speaker 1: I'm glad that at least you can live out the
Speaker 1: rest of your days and some you know, reasonable physical
Speaker 1: comfort and the comfort of having your name cleared. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm sure members of our audience would like to keep
Speaker 1: up with you, like I already do. So what's a
Speaker 1: good way for them to do that? You know, I'm
Speaker 1: not really on the social media. I got on TikTok
Speaker 1: as a little you know, so we did. I did
Speaker 1: a couple of little skids on the plan on taking
Speaker 1: some of my own poems and then tournament to skits
Speaker 1: and threw them out there. Amazing. Well, I'm already following
Speaker 1: him at Katie Bush five. That's Katie Bush, like the
Speaker 1: plant five number five. We'll have that linked in the bio.
Speaker 1: And by the way, you mentioned your poetry, and I
Speaker 1: understand that you have a few books out, so what
Speaker 1: can you tell us about all that stuff? Now? I
Speaker 1: just I had did a book, a poetic book, um
Speaker 1: Poetic Rays, Visioneer and Magnetic, and that was some of
Speaker 1: the poems that I kind of wrote when I was
Speaker 1: in prison, and it represents, you know, different stages of
Speaker 1: my development, the transitions I went through, the anger, parts.
Speaker 1: There were amicable parts, you know, just the different phases
Speaker 1: that I went through. But I'm in the process so
Speaker 1: completed the memoir. I just got to get it published.
Speaker 1: And then there's another book that I had wrote on
Speaker 1: the African American self reparation concept that I had kind
Speaker 1: of developed. But um, I want to try to get
Speaker 1: these two books out this year and you know, probably
Speaker 1: within months. Okay, we'll, we'll, We'll put a link to
Speaker 1: it in the biou. And now, Keith, we have a
Speaker 1: tradition here at Wrong for Conviction. We closed the show
Speaker 1: the same way every time, and it's my favorite part
Speaker 1: of the show. And here's why, because it works like this.
Speaker 1: It's called closing arguments, and it works like this. Again.
Speaker 1: I thank you for being here, taking your time and
Speaker 1: sharing your story. And then I'm gonna turn my microphone off,
Speaker 1: leave yours on. I'm just gonna kick back in my
Speaker 1: chair and listen for any final thoughts you want to
Speaker 1: share with me and our amazing audience. Okay, first of all,
Speaker 1: I you know, I gotta give the highest praise to
Speaker 1: my mother. You know she is you know, she's my
Speaker 1: Earth goddess and no one has fought on my side
Speaker 1: with me all the way, persistently, even when I got tired,
Speaker 1: that she had motivated me and she was there to
Speaker 1: see me exonerate myself. And I also know that my
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters never they never doubted my innocence and
Speaker 1: it was always there for me. And there are family
Speaker 1: members who also supported me, friends and a lot of
Speaker 1: people in the community. But doing prison time also changed
Speaker 1: the way I see the world, and there were some
Speaker 1: of them prisoners who were my teachers inspired me to grow,
Speaker 1: and I engaged myself and movements that led to educate
Speaker 1: a whole lot of other prisoners by teaching them what
Speaker 1: they need to learn in order to improve themselves. Because
Speaker 1: it's not only the innocence that's a victim to the
Speaker 1: criminal justice system, but it's the perpetrators who victimized that
Speaker 1: create the feeding of the criminal justice system, and it
Speaker 1: eats or victimization. And I spent my time in prison
Speaker 1: wisely by investing in my personal development and giving back
Speaker 1: and helping some of these guys to change their lives
Speaker 1: around so that day can return home as an asset
Speaker 1: as opposed to a liability. But my journey, it's a
Speaker 1: difficult journey, and it is not one worth living again.
Speaker 1: But one thing I can say that once I place
Speaker 1: my faith in God, which is very important to my spirituality,
Speaker 1: then I was able to draw those things that represents
Speaker 1: god like righteousness right people to me and they helped
Speaker 1: me to open this door. So I'm eternally grateful not
Speaker 1: only to the innocent projects with a down and all
Speaker 1: the other people who fight for the innocent, but for
Speaker 1: the integrity units who have the dignity to stand up
Speaker 1: when something is wrong and say that it's wrong, and
Speaker 1: to on you in that fight for your generation. That
Speaker 1: makes it easier. So you know, there is a debt
Speaker 1: that I paid. My debt to the righteous, all those
Speaker 1: who do right things and help us create a better
Speaker 1: world for ourselves in spite of the things that we
Speaker 1: go through. Because our world is balanced on polarity good
Speaker 1: and evil, and there's always going to be a battle.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad to be on that right side. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank
Speaker 1: our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Claver, and Kevin Wardis.
Speaker 1: With research by Lila Robinson. The music in this production
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time Oscar nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
Speaker 1: wrong Convictions, as well as at Lava for Good. On
Speaker 1: all three platforms, you and also follow me on both
Speaker 1: TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason flam Rainval Conviction is
Speaker 1: the production of Lava for Good podcasts in association with
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number one