May 8, 2025 • 57 mins
In 1991, Yolanda Thomas’ sister Jacquetta was murdered. A trial followed—conviction, life sentence—all without Yolanda or her family even knowing it happened. Sixteen years later, Yolanda finds herself in an unexpected battle: fighting to free Greg Taylor, the man convicted of killing her sister.
Show Notes:
Healing Justice
https://healingjusticeproject.org/
https://innocencecommission-nc.gov/wp-content/uploads/state-v-taylor/state-v-taylor-brief.pdf
https://triad-city-beat.com/24930-2/
Documentary on Greg Taylor’s wrongful conviction: https://inpursuitofjusticefilm.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Who murders someone and go back to get them the help?
Who does it in good conscience? I don't care if
you will have the night before or not you go
back to the scene of the crime.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Yeah, not, Welcome to the knife. I'm Hannah Smith.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I'm Patia Eton. This week we speak with Yolanda Thomas,
who we met through the Healing Justice Project. Jennifer Thompson's
interview two episodes ago brought us the perspective of a
crime victim in the case of an exoneration. This week,
Yolanda brings us a new perspective, that of a family member.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Yolanda's sister, Jaquetta Thomas, was murdered in nineteen ninety one,
and the search for justice in this case is ongoing.
So let's get into the interview.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Well, my name is Yolanda Thomas. I currently reside in Lyndale, Arizona.
Growing up, it was initially just me and my sister.
My sister Jackana and I were two years apart. Over
time of five boys came.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yolana and her sister, Jaqueta grew up in newbern, North Carolina.
It's a small riverfront city near the coast, maybe most
known for being the birthplace of Pepsi Cola. When Yolanda
was in sixth grade and Chaquetta was in seventh, the
family moved to Raleigh, a much bigger city. Their first
home there was actually a one bedroom apartment, as you
can imagine, a very tight squeeze for the family of eight,
(01:45):
but Yolanda said that living in a safe neighborhood was
extremely important to her mother, who sometimes had to work
two jobs to support them. Still, shortly after the move,
it seems like Chaquetta was beginning to lose her way.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
That's when she started hanging kind of with the crowd
who did the drinking and I would say drugs at
that time, but during that time it was just marijuana,
nothing really heavy. So skipping school and you know, hanging
out during the day with questionable other teenagers. Then came
(02:21):
just lots of running away from home just because she
didn't want the discipline. My mom and stepdad would go
find her, bringing back home every time.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Checquetta was struggling. She eventually dropped out of high school.
She was never able to obtain her ged or diploma
and the distance between the two sisters was growing. Yolanda
graduated and joined the military, which took her overseas to Germany.
She got married and had a son of her own.
She thought about her family and about Jequetta. She worried
(02:51):
about her sister often, but life was really busy. Eventually
she was able to plan a trip to visit. She
knew Chequeta wasn't doing well. She was in the hospital,
but she didn't know. So that's the last time she
would ever see her sister alive.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
I remember going home. My son had been born and
he was not quite a year, so I went home
to visit and saw my mom. Jaqueta was in the hospital.
So when I went to visit her in the hospital,
I remember talking to the nurse and the doctor and
(03:29):
they pretty much told me, you know, if she did
a cocaine again, you know, she would die just from
all the damage that already happened to her heart. And
I remember our last conversation. I was just begging and
pleading with her just to clean her act up, like
you know, your nephew wants to get to know you,
and it's funny. She just kind of looked at me
(03:50):
and said I'm the older sibling here. You don't get
to tell me what to do with a smile. And
I said, well, I want to be able to come
back and see you. So that was that was our
last conversation.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
So tell me about the moment that you learned something
has happened.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
I'm in Germany, so I get this phone call and
it's for me the middle of the night, and you
just know, being a soldier overseas, you get a phone call,
you know something's wrong. And I answered the phone and
all I could hear is my mom crying. In the background.
A good friend of hers is just saying to me
my sister's nickname was Jet, and her saying Jet is gone.
(04:33):
Jet is gone. And I'm like, what do you mean
she's gone? And instantly, for me, I thought, oh, she
was in a bad car accident. She didn't have license,
so I just knew she was with someone and they
got an accident. At least that's what my mind wanted
to believe anyway. And she said, no, they found her.
(04:53):
And now I'm still questioning, what do you mean they
found her? And she said, well, she was murdered. I
can't even just ride the feeling. I just remember sinking
to the floor, just crying, trying to understand, asking how
my mom was, asking how my brothers were. My mom
couldn't talk. It took me a few hours just to
(05:15):
get my composure to reach out to my unit to
say this thing has happened. Of course I need to
go home on emergency lead.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yolanda described the hours and days that followed this phone
call as a blur. She was shocked and heartbroken. For years,
Yolanda had worried about Jehquetta. She knew jaquetta struggle with
addiction might lead her into an unsafe situation, but nothing
could have prepared her to learn that her sister was murdered.
Yolanda and her husband, with their young son, flew from
(05:45):
where she was stationed in Germany to Atlanta. Her mother
had since moved to Atlanta from Raleigh and had planned
Jacqutta's funeral close by.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Her service was held at the funeral home. I remember
where we sat. I remember her son, who's the oldest,
saw me and he came to sit with me. All
the girls were with who they had been placed with
because they had been taken away from her, and my
mom had requested a close casket. For some reason, at
(06:18):
the end of this service, someone decided to open her
casket and her son lost it. Like literally, I'm holding
him to keep from going to his mom. And of
course that caused me to start crying, and so we
had to leave the area. So the service was held
(06:38):
in Newburn, and that's where we both were born and raised.
I remember a lot of people being there, a lot
of classmates or people we used to play with growing up.
But I just remember looking back at my mom and
she just wasn't even crying. Like that was one of
the things that I think stuck with me at the time.
I vaguely remember going to the cemetery.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
At the time of her funeral. Had there yet been
any further conversations about the cause of death beyond that
it was, you know, I foul play or who had
done it.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
We had no information. And after the funeral, you know,
I still had friends in Raleigh, So I went to
Raleigh and spent a few days, and so I went
to the police department. Well, I requested to talk to
the police about her case. I remember the detective he
was consoling me, at least that's what he thought he
(07:37):
was doing, and He just told me that I just
need you to know we we have the individuals who
did this. You don't have to worry. Justice will be served.
But he wouldn't answer my questions. So my question was, well,
how did this happen? Did they even talk to you
and tell you, like, why did they take my sister's life?
(07:57):
The answers I got was, we can't answer the questions
that you have because they will interfere with the investigation.
But if you have the individuals and you're assuring me
that they're going to pay for this crime, then why
can't you answer my questions.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
The two individuals that had been arrested were Gregory Taylor
and Johnny Beck. There would be differing accounts of what
happened that evening, but what is undisputed about the events
of September twenty fifth, nineteen ninety one, is greg Taylor
and Johnny Beck met up, they bought drugs, and then
they used those drugs together until early the following morning.
(08:35):
Later that morning, around six thirty am on September twenty sixth,
the body of Jequeta Thomas is found in a cul
de dezac by a Raleigh police officer. She's lying on
her back facing the sky, and she's been badly beaten.
Her cause of death is later determined to have been
blunt force trauma. Jaqueta Thomas was only twenty six years old.
(08:58):
As police are working the crime scene, twenty nine year
old Greg Taylor shows up. By this time, it's about
eight thirty am. Surrounding this could Dezac is an open field,
and Greg says he's there to retrieve his vehicle, a
Nissan Pathfinder. He says had gotten stuck out there the
night before while he was off roading. Now his vehicle
(09:20):
it happens to be just about one hundred and fifty
yards from where Jaqueta's body had been discovered. From the
moment Greg Taylor shows up at the crime scene, he
becomes a suspect. The state quickly builds a case. They
say there's a witness who can place him with Chequeta
the night she died, and they also claim to have
found blood on his car. Greg Taylor and Johnny Beck
(09:42):
are arrested, all in less than twenty four hours after
Jaquetta's body was discovered. But the police aren't really telling
Yolanda or her family any of this.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
So this first conversation that you have with law enforcement.
You're getting a little bit of like something's not quite
right here.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Absolutely. I just didn't know what the secrecy was, and
that's what it felt like, like it was secresy. And
I remember the detective grabbing my hands, kind of gently
touching my hand and saying, we got this, we got this.
Just ultra confident, right, don't worry, We're going to take
(10:25):
care of this. And I think he thought a little
sorry for me because he could see me standing out
of control, and just let me know that this is
going to be taken care of. You know, this case,
we'll go to trial. It will be a success. We
will get diverted we're looking for, and your family again
will get the justice that they deserve.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
How did you feel in that moment when he said
that to you?
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Oh, in that moment, I was pissed.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Okay, So that wasn't comforting to you at.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
All, No, ma'am. So you never answered my questions the
first first time, which felt like a secret.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
So Greg Taylor was now we know arrested. He's arrested
alongside a man named Johnny Beck. Yes, and you don't
hear a word about it. Until how many months later,
would you say?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Not until it was put in a newspaper. I just
knew that two people were arrested. That's all I knew.
Not until the news article did I learned Greg Taylor.
I saw the name Johnny Beck, but it never talked
about him. So at that time I learned that Greg
Taylor was a white man, and that he used Johnny
(11:40):
Beck to go into this neighborhood to purchase drugs, and
then they decided to do the drugs together. That was
what I was told, but that they picked her up
along the way because she wanted to do drugs too,
and then something went wrong, but the something was never clear,
(12:01):
but that something went well, and then she ended up murdered.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
At first, Greg Taylor was indicted for accessory after the
fact for assisting Johnny Beck and the murder. The state
was going after Johnny Beck. They wanted Greg to testify
against him, but Greg refused. He maintained he was with
Johnny all night and so he knows that neither of
them murdered Jaqueta. Then a few months passed and the
(12:33):
charges change. Now Greg Taylor and Johnny Beck are both
charged with first degree murder after a four day trial
in April of nineteen ninety three, Gregory Taylor is found
guilty of first degree murder. The jury deliberated for only
two hours.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
And were you or any of your family members, anyone
you knew present at that trie.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
No, ma'am, we weren't told. We weren't told.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
No. What did it feel like to know that a
trial had happened without being notified or having the opportunity
to attend.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
I don't think it bothered me at that time. I
went back to life as I knew it right. I
was a soldier, went back to Germany. I was living
my life. I remember getting the news article that told
me he had been convicted. I felt the sense of relief.
He happened to be sentenced on her birthday for the
twentieth and I thought, oh my goodness, look how the
(13:35):
stars have aligned, right, they got them. He even was
sentenced on her birthday. She must be resting. Well, yeah,
that was it for me.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yolanda tries her best to move forward with her life,
but her sister's murder is never too far from her mind.
She returns to Germany, she's busy working and being a mother.
It isn't until years later that questions about Chaquetas does
begin to a rise for Yolanda and reopen this whole
chapter for her.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
So I moved back to North Carolina, and I remember
immediately signing up to be notified if there was any
movement of Greg Taylor in prison. Like I knew, there
was a site you could go to so you can
get notifications for anything. With hindsight is twenty twenty when
I think about that, Why would I want to do that?
(14:30):
If he was going to be in jail for life,
it wouldn't have mattered, right, So that was one of
the first things I did when I moved back to Raleigh.
I just remember six years later, maybe getting a phone
call at my job being told that this was an
attorney that was representing Greg Taylor and that he had
exhausted all of his appeals and that this organization that
(14:54):
she worked for was his last hope and there seemed
to be some discrepants es in the evidence that was
presented at trial, and they were looking into it and
there was a possibility that he could be released. And
I let her get all of that out and I said,
how did you find me? How did you find my number,
(15:19):
and I don't remember her answer. I went on to
curse her out. I did, and told her to forget
that she ever knew my name and to never call
me on my job again. It didn't matter. She kept talking.
She basically said, in so many words, well this is
going to happen whether you like it or not, and
(15:42):
I just felt the need to call you to let
you know. I was kind of taken aback when she
said that, and in that moment I said to her, well,
I've asked you not to call me again, but let
me tell you this. I never believed he did it anyway,
and I hung up the phone.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
We will get into why Yolanda did not believe that
Greg Taylor killed her sister, but this moment, it's important.
This call from an attorney to Yolanda at work shook her.
At this point, it's been more than ten years since
her sister's murder, but this call brings everything back. Her
profound grief. The fact that neither Yolanda nor her family
(16:24):
had been notified of anything related to Jaquetta's case. They
weren't told about the trial, they weren't asked to speak nothing,
and here was this person calling her unexpectedly, with little
care about what it might feel like to be going
about your day and then answer a call and be
reminded of your sister's murder.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
And I just felt, right, that's just not how you
notify someone. Literally, I had to go home. That was
like opening up a won for me, important SALTI in.
I was done for the day. No matter what I
initially thought, whether Greg Taylor did it or not, my
sister was still gone. And now you're rehashing all this
(17:08):
stuff that I was never even a part of. So
that is why I started doing my research because now
I'm like, well, I need to read some transcripts. I
need to see what really happened at Trout because if
you have a question and it's good enough that practically
he could get out, we need to know why. Had
no one else called me and told me this, right?
(17:30):
No one offered anything.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Did you tell your family, the rest of your family
about that phone call?
Speaker 2 (17:36):
I told my mother, And it was funny because I
didn't know how to approach this conversation with her. My
mom struggled with my sister's death for years, and now
that I'm a mom, I get that I've never lost
a child, so I can't even imagine. So I think
as the siblings, we just respected how she deals with
it is how she's going to deal with it. But
(17:57):
my mom had never even said my sister's name anymore
since she had passed, so I was not sure how
to do this. And I remember calling her and I
told her about the phone call, and I said, and
since the phone call, I've been home and I've been digging,
and do you know there's a chance that he may
(18:18):
not have even done this? And she listened and she
said I never believed he did it. And I was like, oh,
you never told me, so I said, well, why didn't
you believe it? And she said because it was a
white man.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
So you both have seem instinct. Yes, And what did
Greg Taylor being white mean to you in this context?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Oh? Greg Taylor did not murder my sister. Let me
tell you. First off, if he was with the black
man to go by drugs, Johnny Beck or anyone else
in the neighborhood would not have allowed him to murder
my sister. You call it the code of African Americans.
I don't know, but there is nowhere you're gonna let
(19:03):
an outsider, and a white man was considered an outsider.
That was why he had to have Johnny Pick to
go buy the drugs in this area.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
For years, Yolanda and her mother had had this same
unspoken doubt around Greg Taylor's guilt. But who would they
have told and would it have mattered. They weren't invited
to the trial, they didn't even know it was happening.
And Greg Taylor had been convicted by a jury, so
maybe he was guilty. It brought some peace to believe
that Chaquetta's murderer had been caught. But the more Yolanda
(19:41):
learned about what happened at Greg Taylor's trial, the more
she wondered if he might be innocent.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
I have always been a researcher. I have always been
someone who would dig define answers. And I don't know
if I just went to the court. I don't know
if I just did a search. But lo and behold,
I found them. I did, and I was reading and
I was done. I was so disgusted when I found
(20:10):
those documents. I saw his appeals first, and so his
first appeal was because he felt he didn't have proper representation.
Of course, that the appeal God denied, and then some
of the things that he was appealing like, it didn't
make sense to me, you know, reading it. I'm no lawyer.
I just know they were denied. But I can tell you,
(20:31):
in reading the documents, for life of me can't understand
how he was convicted.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
As Yolanda looked over court documents, she learned the prosecutions
version of what happened the night of her sister's murder.
The prosecution said that Greg Taylor and Johnny Beck met
Chequetta during this drug fueled night out. They'd invited her
into Gregg's vehicle, that Nissan Pathfinder. They'd done more drugs together,
but then for some unknown reason, Greg attacked Jaqueta kill her.
(21:01):
At the same time that Yolanda is learning the prosecution's
version of events, she's also learning Greg Taylor's version of events,
which importantly had not changed in the fifteen years since
his conviction.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
He said he got off work, he was out drug seeking.
He knew word about the drugs, but he knew he
couldn't go into that neighborhood. He would be suspected of
being a police officer undercover carp Now, I don't know
if he knew Johnny back or if he just met
him that night, but he knew he needed a black
person to go into the neighborhood. And the agreement was,
(21:37):
if you can get these drugs, we'll do them together.
And so they purchased the drugs. They rode from the
neighborhood to this Call de Sack. They got high in
the Call de Sack and then decided, because Greg had
a four by four, to go muddy for reeling. There
(21:57):
you go, yes, yes, and their vehicle got stuck. His
vehicle got stuck. They decided not to call the police
because they were high. They had been doing drugs, and
they decided to walk out of the area. And when
they walked out into the cul de Sacs where they
noticed what they said looked like a rug, That's what
they said. But they both were scared and high, according
(22:20):
to Greg, and they wasn't sure what it was. And
they were like, oh, we're really not going to call
any help now to get my vehicle and stuck, they
talked amongst themselves wondering if it was a body, but
they continued to go out until they met someone and
caught a ride and both went to their perspective.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Homes and that's Johnny Beck's version of events as well, Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
And then I think it's interesting too because Greg came
back the next day. Can you tell us what you
learned about that?
Speaker 2 (22:48):
So I think that was maybe the second thing that
just baffled me. Who murdered someone and go back to
get their vehicle? Who does that in good conscience? I
don't care if you will hide the night before or
not go back to the scene of the crime. Yeah,
not now. I did learn that from the detective. The
person were arrested came back to the scene of the crime,
(23:10):
and he was arrested there, and then later the person
he was with was picked up.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
What are you feeling reading through these documents having had
this lingering doubt since your sister's murder?
Speaker 2 (23:23):
You know, I think my biggest question was why weren't
we invited to the trial? And how could this jury
convict this man on what I was reading?
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Meanwhile, Creig Taylor is incarcerated. How did it feel to
know that was his reality while you were sort of
unraveling the doubts you had in his conviction.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
So I think what was hard for me was how
dare you give this person life. On what I'm reading,
it's still a lot of holes here. Yes, he may
have been guilty of something, but he certainly was not
guilty of killing a sister. And now he had been
taken away from his family.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yolanda started contemplating everything Greg Taylor had lost, and he
had lost a lot. Greg Taylor was a father. Sometimes
he had been the only parent present at his daughter's
pta meetings, and now his daughter was growing up without him.
He had been married to his wife, Becky, his high
school sweetheart, but just a few months after his sentence began,
(24:28):
Becky Taylor filed for divorce. Greg Taylor was also a
beloved son, and his elderly parents were desperately advocating for
his freedom.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
I think one of the things that bothered me the
most was I am not an advocate of the death penalty.
I'm not, And had things looked different or been different,
this man could be gone. So then another life has
been taken. And what was hard for me to wrap
my brain around was what if he had been executed
(25:01):
and someone was just now looking into his case. You're
not going to bring my sister back, but you certainly
couldn't bring back this man who didn't even commit the crime.
So for me, it was a lot going on mentally
with the watercouta shutters and how do we now fix
this for him?
Speaker 1 (25:21):
And how do you now fix this? You have this
attorney who's reached out saying they're trying to exonerate Greg Taylor.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
The next phone call I got was from the people
at the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, and I was
being told that his case was getting ready to be heard.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
The North Carolina Innocents Inquiry Commission was established back in
two thousand and six. They're separate from the appeals process.
The Commission investigates and evaluates credible post conviction claims of innocence. First,
there's an initial review of the case, then a commission hearing,
and finally a three judge panel hearing. The judges at
that final hearing have the power to dismissed someone's charges
(26:01):
and that person can never then be retried for those crimes.
It's a big deal if they're hearing your case.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
When I took that phone call, the young lady immediately
told me who she was. She told me about what
they were investigating or trying to get some answers to
and she said, we're not on Greg Taylor's side. We're
on the side of truth, and we just want to
know what happened to your sister, and I'm gonna tell you. Immediately,
(26:33):
all my guards came down because here's someone who's telling
me they're gonna help me find out what happened, and
if that includes finding out that Greg didn't do it,
then that's even better. So I was invited to attend.
I worked it out to get off work so that
(26:53):
I could go and be a part of that hearing.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
So during this panel of eight and the presentation is
to why Greg should not be in jail for this?
What do you learn during that presentation?
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Girl? So much? Thank goodness I had a friend that
could join me because she could take notes and remember
these things. But I remember the first thing I heard
was the blood splatter that was supposed to be on
his fender was indeed an insect. That was the first thing.
So that was the first thing.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Remember the blood spatter on the fender of Greg Taylor's
Nissan Pathfinder. At his trial back in April of nineteen
ninety three, the jury who had gone on to find
him guilty they were told it was human blood. This
was damning evidence against him, But new tests revealed that
the blood sample wasn't blood at all, it was an insect.
(27:49):
The attorneys who were present on the state's behalf arguing
to keep Greg Taylor behind bars, they said, the positive
test for blood that had been presented at Greg's trial, well,
they got that result from the SBI, the North Carolina
State Bureau of Investigations. So present at this hearing to
talk about it was SBI analyst Dwayne Deaver, and during
(28:13):
his cross examination, Deaver made a shocking admission. The sample
had been tested a total of three times, and two
of those times it came back negative for the presence
of blood. Only one of those tests came back positive,
and that was the test presented to the jury at
Gregg's trial. This was a bombshell moment. The injustice of
(28:38):
what had occurred was palpable. It was reported that all
three judges covered their mouths with their hands, and that
the attorneys on both sides looked shaken by what Deaver
had said.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
The second thing I think for me was nothing, no hair,
no clothing, no fiber, nothing placed my sister inside that vehicle.
So if the state has spawned the story that she
was getting high with them, then why was there no
evidence of her being in the vehicle. And then I think,
(29:15):
listening to bus and pieces of the investigation that happened
around my sister's murder, it just placed too many questions
there that you had three or four different scenarios of
how this could have happened. Just listening to these people.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Did you feel like Chakuda as a person was given
a lot of thought through this investigation?
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Oh no, ma'am. Oh, she wasn't given any thought and
she wasn't even a human being. Her name was listed
in the newspaper from the articles I received in germany
Burg Taylor. You see his name the trial, he's convicted.
Her name is listed when all of this happened. She
was local prostitute found dead.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
Period.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
In every art article, every news media outlet that talked
about it said the local prostitute. Everything that was written
could be a magazine article, newspaper article, whatever, it was,
the local prostitute. And I was like, no, I don't
remember which news outlet I called, but I remember I
(30:19):
was very upset and I called and I said, I'm
ana for you to call every other news station that's
in this local area, but you will not refer to
her as a local prostitute. If you can find me
proof that she was ever arrested for prostitution, then you
can say that. But I already knew she had never
been arrested for that. And so one news station that
I called, he did it was a story. They went
(30:43):
and they looked up her arrest record and law and behold,
she had never been arrested for that. And he apologized
on TV. And I'm taking that. Every other news media
outleok just decided to follow suit because from that coin on,
it was her name that was being said.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
Wow, that's so important, and you were really the driver
of that.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
So I did speak at the end of the eight panel.
I was asked if I wanted to say anything based
on everything I heard, and I did, and so it
was closed. The media couldn't be in the room, and
I expressed all my doubts and my concerns and pretty
much pleaded was please take everything that you have heard
(31:28):
and do what's right, because I think this young man
is innocent.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
Was Greg Taylor present?
Speaker 2 (31:35):
He didn't come before that.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Now, what did your willingness to speak to that panel
mean for his case.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
You know what, I'm just gonna say, I would like
to believe that it meant a lot. And they all
listened and they took their notes, and I remember leaving
out and one of the members on the panel just
stopped me and he said, powerful statement. And that was it,
(32:08):
and that made me feel good. Now I did ask
before I left. I said, before the media talked about
it on the news, could someone please call me and
tell me what they decide. I just because again I knew,
like you said, this is it, this is his last chance,
and I wanted to know first well, aside from his attorney.
(32:32):
And so someone did call me and tell me before
that it truly all Ate had agreed that it would
go before the three judge panel.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
At the center of this case was the brutal murder
of Jequetta Thomas and to have Jaqueta's own sister, Yolanda
there to speak out in support of Greg Taylor's innocence,
it was huge. When Jaqueta was murdered, Yolanda and her
family weren't even an afterthought. They weren't thought of it all.
They weren't told when investigators believed happen that night. They
(33:03):
weren't made aware of the trial, and they weren't asked
any questions. Yolanda was now certain of Greg Taylor's innocence,
but speaking out in support of him came with mixed emotions.
The police had conducted an investigation and felt confident that
Taylor was responsible. He was convicted by a jury, Yet
here Yolanda was trying to free him.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
There was first a sense of betrayal. I really felt
like as much as I wanted to believe in help,
I still felt a sense of betrayal, Like how could
I first off believe that he didn't do it? How
could I even attempt to help in any way, because
then I was betraying my sister. Lots of prayer, just
(33:48):
praying that I was doing the right thing. I went
with my heart. I went with what I believed in
my gut. You know, I can tell you there was
no question in that time as to who killed her.
I was focused on getting him out. It never dawned
on me, well, if he didn't do it, who did not?
Speaker 1 (34:07):
At that time, not in that that came. You were
on a mission, right at that point, Yes, that was
so this panel that you speak to where you know.
One of these judges even go so far as to
stop you and say that was such a powerful statement.
You're notified how many days later that this is going
(34:28):
to move forward?
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Oh, that evening before it hit the news. I got
the phone call.
Speaker 4 (34:33):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
And eventually this all comes to ahead in February of
twenty ten, and Greg his conviction is brought before three
Superior Court judges for a review.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
I sat right there in the room. I sat amongst
his family. I had met his mom and his dad,
his stepdad. Wow. I had met his daughter and her husband.
I had met the family.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Greg Taylor's family understood that for Yolanda to be there
to support him also meant having to relive some of
the most difficult moments of her sister's tragic murder. The
way she'd struggled with addiction, the way her body had
been discarded on concrete, the way she was talked about
by local news who had continued referring to her as
(35:22):
a prostitute.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
I remember meeting them, and his mom just came up
to me and hugged me. She was crying, and I said,
why are you crying? She said, because you've lost so much,
and I said, but so have you, and she just
hugged me tighter. I just told them if their family
(35:46):
member did not do this, he deserves to go home,
and that everything in me was going to do what
I could, and then I was going to be there
to support them to find out the truth. I remember
during this judge panel, there was a time when they
did alert me that her autopsy pictures would be shown
(36:07):
and I was sitting next to his mom and she said,
do you need to leave? And I was like, no,
I'm okay. And when they started placing those photos up,
she grabbed my hand and she was in tears and
she looked at me and she said, are you okay?
And I whispered and I said, that's just a shell.
(36:28):
She's gone, that I'm okay. She hugged me again. When
we took a resist, it felt good. I think I
felt I would say as close as possible to what
they were feeling with the then a family member to
this being what happens if he doesn't get out right now?
(36:49):
I know I had a lot of stake. I felt
like because of my drive and determination that this man
is in it said that he needs to get out
I can't even begin to imagine what that felt out
for them. It was a lot at stage, I think
for both of us, well for all of us sitting there.
And then you said, or what did I think with
(37:13):
all this happening about who possibly did it? I don't
think it was until in that moment, when we're in
those final hours waiting, did it dawn on me Grant
didn't do this. If he goes home today, then I
don't know who murdered my sister. Let me tell you,
(37:39):
there was only one time that I got up and
I had to leave that room. And it had nothing
to do with anything that was being said about my sister.
It had nothing to do with the pictures that were
being shown. It had to do with the lie, the
lie that was told to this jury that convicted this man.
(38:04):
I was physically ill.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
All the way back in nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Three, all the way back the DA swore to this
jury that that was Jeqetta's blood on that fender. I
still get the sick feeling right now. I was so
angry I had to leave.
Speaker 4 (38:23):
I mean to know that.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
I guess I best someone's ability to discern whose blood
that was lazy or incompetent, and at worst they knew
that they were telling the lie.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
They knew, yes, And I know I got up abruptly
because when I got up to go, it caused kind
of a commotion, and they knew. The people in the
room knew that I was there, that I was her sister.
And I do remember when I came back in and
I'm listening very intently and constantly looking at the faces
(38:57):
of these three judges. I felt that one of them
even acknowledged my presence when I came back, and it
just was very calming for.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Me, like you had the sort of innate sense that
they understood that you knew what was going.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
On, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
So what happens next.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Well, next we get the unanimous decision.
Speaker 4 (39:24):
Does it happen right away?
Speaker 2 (39:26):
It happens right away?
Speaker 4 (39:27):
WHOA.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
We did not go home. We left for them to convene.
I remember hearing it was time to go back into
the room. They had made a decision, and we're all
holding hands. They read them off one by one and
they say the judge's name, and that that judge believes,
and when the second judge name was said, and that
(39:50):
he believed it or she believed it. Everybody just kind
of got hopeful, like like we're making noises. And when
that final judge his name was read and said that
they believe without a shadow of a doubt. Oh yeah,
I still get the filling. Now that room erupted.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
All three judges agreed. Greg Taylor had been wrongly convicted
of the murder of Jaqueta Thomas, and after seventeen years
behind bars, he was finally free.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
It was amazing. He immediately looked to eyes with his
daughter and she just couldn't wait to get to her dad.
His parents were crying. It was a beautiful moment.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
It was, I mean, in just so intense. Greg Taylor
had at this point spent seventeen years, seventeen and a
half years, seventeen and a half years of his life,
missed so much of his daughter's life.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
He missed a lot.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
Yes, yes, who from your family was present?
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Just me. I was the spokesperson for us all.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
And so all of this has gone on, but your
sister she's gone. You know, you've had all these years
to process this loss. But Greg gets his life back
as he should. And when does this moment creep up
for you? Of like, Okay, well now the person who
is responsible is still out there.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Let me tell you. It was a long ride home.
It was a long ride home. Him and his family
invited me to come out and celebrate, and I said, no,
this is your moment, and no, no, we want you.
And I was like, no, I need to go be
with my kids. You know, I've been here for the
past few days, been a part of this, and now
(41:42):
I need to go. Hugged everyone and I got in
my car and I cried all the way home. And
that was tears of joy thinking about that his family
gets him back, but then my tears of the hurt.
I think the wound being back open. I cried so
(42:04):
much that night, probably more than I do at a funeral,
because it felt like I was burying her all over again,
and it crept up in fear set in and I said,
I have no clue who murdered my sister. And because
I've been in the news and I've been in the
spotlight right alongside Greg, what now if that person comes
(42:27):
for me and my family?
Speaker 1 (42:30):
And you know, also just now that you've been in
such a public facing role with his exoneration, Yes, who's
going to talk to you?
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Well, no one no one. Because when I went to
talk to the police after all of this and they
didn't want to talk to me.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Did they feel betrayed by you?
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Absolutely? And you know what the DA told me. He said,
we got it right, you let him out.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
That is such a flammatory, inaccurate statement. Because the three
judges they had to unanimously agree, right, it didn't matter.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
I learned what tunnel vision was with this case. They
did shake Greg's hand and congratulate him. But I was
told over and over again, even by police detectives after
he was exonerated, what do you want us to do?
We got it right, you let him out. As if
I was able to make a decision about this man
(43:32):
spending the rest of his life in jail. Wasn't me, sir.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
It was the evidence that is so disappointing and just
unjust there much so, what became of Jaquetta's murder case?
If anything, once Greg Taylor was exonerated.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
Nothing. It is a cold case. The detectives who were
put on her case, they were in touch with me
probably for six months, because I was constantly what is
the status? What's going on? Pluk? I was trying to
get her things back never could get her things back
where to dead end And this was our last conversation.
(44:09):
One said all roads lead to Greg Taylor, and I said,
this will be the last time you will call me
with an update. Now I am done because clearly you're
not going to do anything to find out who murdered
my sister.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
How has this whole experience, I mean, I imagine this will
be a difficult answer to even try to sum up.
But how has it changed you and your family to
have been through this?
Speaker 2 (44:41):
You know, I can't really speak for them, and I
say that because they trusted me to get the answers.
They believed if I was fighting that it was it
was a good fight, and they were supportive. I can
tell you that when Greg was awarded whatever the money is,
when they realized he was wrongfully convicted, they came from
(45:03):
the state. The state needed something from every one of
us before they would pay him. So every one of
my family members had to say that we believed the
decision was correct and that they got it right. Now.
He did get an undisclosed them out from the SBI,
(45:23):
but they didn't need us for that. That was a
separate thing. But whatever came initially from the state for
the wrongful conviction. You know, we all had to sign
something in and say yes.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
Yolanda's story was so powerful and it really hits home
for me the thing that we talk about so much,
which is the ripple effect of crime.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
I think there's no better representation of that in the
story that Greg Taylor's exonerated. But now Yolanda knows that
law enforcement has, in her eyes, turned against her and
is unwilling to continue looking at into the case and
to look for the person who actually committed this murder.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Yeah, it's such a heartbreaking part of Yanda's story that
she's sort of like punished by law enforcement who when
she asked them about her sister's case, they keep saying
everything goes back to Greg Taylor, which is ridiculous because
he's been exonerated.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Yeah, it's not like Yolanda decided to exonerate him, right.
He went through this incredible process with the North Carolina
Innocents Inquiry Commission and sat in front of those three
judges who heard all about his first trial and what
his attorneys have uncovered since. And you know, one of
those really powerful moments during his hearing was to talk
(46:42):
about the blood evidence that was used against him, which
ended up not being blood, ended up being an insect. Right,
And we learned the SBI analyst Dwayne Deaver that testifies
at this three day hearing. He admits that the evidence
was faulty and he didn't give them all the facts.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
Yeah, that's so whid When we were talking about this
and his name came up, I knew that I had
heard it somewhere else. And it's because I had recently
watched the Staircase documentary, which everybody watched years ago, and
somehow I never watched it, but I told you too,
and then you were like, you have to watch this.
(47:19):
What are you doing? And you were right, it's really good.
But because I had just watched it, his name stuck
in my mind because he's in that documentary.
Speaker 1 (47:27):
Yeah, we know now that Dwayne Deaver was actually fired
by the SBI in January of twenty eleven. There was
a major investigation after this three day hearing where he
admitted to a really shady policy that they had about
the way that they communicated lab results.
Speaker 3 (47:42):
Yeah, we talked about it in this episode that with
this case, there were three tests, right, two of them
came back negative. Only one came back positive for human blood.
But then I also read that that test was not
one hundred percent correct all the time.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
It was not, and so that was why what he
should have done, in what the agency should of making
sure was being done, is we tested it three times,
here are the results, and given that information to both
the prosecution and the defense. But instead, the only information
was given to the prosecution that yes, it came back positive.
The defense was not told we tested it three times.
(48:17):
Two of those tests, which is the majority, came back negative.
And the jury heard this information that Greg Taylor had
human blood on the fender of his vehicle that was
located right by where Jaquetta's body was found, and he
was convicted. And who knows if he would have been
if they hadn't heard that evidence that we now know
to have been really faulty. Yeah. Dwayne Deaver, whose name
(48:38):
you recognized from the staircase. He testifies in this trial,
the murder trial where Michael Peterson is accused of killing
his wife, Kathleen Peterson, and Dwayne Deaver testifies at the
trial is later found to have committed perjury. He basically
overstated his training and overstated the work done on this case.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
Yeah, if I recall, he testified that like the way
that the blood spatter was on the staircase, it could
only come from one angle. That then sort of led
into this argument that Michael Peterson could have been the
only one to have, you know, caused that trauma to
her head.
Speaker 1 (49:17):
Dwayne Deaver was fired in January twenty eleven. Well, Michael
Peterson's defense when it was coming out that the SBI
was under investigation for these faulty tests, they were able
to get him a new trial and he ended up
actually just taking an Alfred plea, which is I'm maintaining
that I was innocent, but that you have evidence that
could convict me. And so he is a free man.
(49:39):
He lives in Durham. Again, I think said he just
lives a quiet life in a one bedroom apartment writing books.
And would he have ever been convicted if not for
Dwayne Deaver's testimony.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
It's a good question. It makes me think of something
that Jennifer Thompson said to us in our episode that
came out a couple of weeks ago, talking about wrongful convictions.
She talked about that moment with Ronald Cotton's conviction of
the woman who called and said to have seen him,
and it was this big revelation that that woman had
made that up. Right, So she said though in a
lot of her work dealing with wrongful convictions, there is
(50:12):
often times a bad actor, she said, you wouldn't believe
how many times that happens. And we kind of see
it here too with Dwayne Deaver. He was giving incredibly
misleading information that ended up causing the jury to feel
convinced that there was evidence to convict Greg Taylor when
there was not.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
Yeah, it's like the SBI and Dwyane Deaver were acting
on behalf of the prosecution instead of just processing these
results in their lab. Yeah, in an impartial way. The
investigation that ends up happening into the SBI over this
policy that Duane Diaver mentioned came back to about two
hundred convictions. Those people were convicted based on evidence provided
(50:53):
by the SBI, who had these policies in place that
were always going to be favorable to the prosecution. Three
of those convictions had resulted in the death penalty.
Speaker 3 (51:04):
Oh, that's horrible, horrible.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
That's why it's so important that we have organizations like
the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission in place.
Speaker 3 (51:13):
One hundred percent, which brings us to something that we
really want to talk about today, which is that the
North Carolina Innocence Inquery Commission, which we've been talking about.
We talked about this episode. It's the whole reason that
Greg Taylor ended up getting exonerated. He had gone through
the appeals process, he had been denied, he was at
the end of any available way forward with his case,
(51:36):
and then the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission took a
look at it. It's the only reason that we ever
got justice in that case. Well, the Commission is actually
at risk of being eliminated right now. This is a
really current thing. The North Carolina Senate actually has already
voted to eliminate it from the budget. So before we
talk about that, I just want to kind of talk
about the reason that it was ever created. You know,
(51:57):
the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, it's completely separate from
the appeals process. It's a state funded, state run, but
independent agency, and because of that, they are able to
take an unbiased approach to cases. They've reviewed three thy
eight hundred cases. There have been sixteen exonerations as a result.
Speaker 1 (52:18):
Which I think really speaks to how seriously they take
this work. Like this is not some get out a
jail free card. Thirty hundred cases and sixteen exonerations, they
are really scrutinizing the evidence that's presented to them. These
have to be very, very credible inquiries into someone's innocence
for them to even hear the case.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (52:39):
One of the things that they also do is that
as they're investigating a case, if they find more evidence
that supports the guilty verdict, that also goes into the files,
so they're actually able to confirm convictions as well. When
this commission was formed, it had bipartisan support at the time.
It was actually a Republican Chief Justice I Beverly Lake
who pushed for the formation of this commission, and it
(53:03):
was popular on both sides of the aisle. Another conservative representative,
Paul stam He stated when it was created, quote, the
one thing you won't get out of this commission is
a lot of guilty people being set free. It's just
too hard. That goes to show you their process. One
of the arguments that's happening right now, this is a
(53:23):
Republican led push in the Senate North Carolina Senate. We
should note that prosecutors have been lobbying for this basically
ever since the North Carolina Innocence incret Commission was formed
to defund it, probably because they're overturning some of their cases, right.
But the argument that's happening right now in support of
defunding it is that, well, there are other non state
(53:46):
funded organizations that are essentially doing the same thing, which
is not true. Yes, there are nonprofits that work toward,
you know, supporting people and researching potential wrongful convictions. But
the thing is is they don't have act actual power.
The North Carolina Innocen's Inquiry Commission has the power to
subpoena witnesses to order DNA testing to discover new evidence.
(54:10):
They also have access to investigation files. You know, nonprofits
don't have any of that power. If they wanted to
order a new DNA test, they would have to submit
a court order and that could just be denied. So
actually it's not the same thing at all.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
Yeah, they wouldn't have Jennifer Thompson's organization, for example, Healing Justice.
She can't say, hey, SBI analysts that I think did
a bad job. Come in, we want to talk to you.
And in the case of Greg Taylor, for example, like
bringing him in really showcased not just for those judges,
but for everyone in the room, like all of these
(54:46):
other cases that had been impacted. And a nonprofit doesn't
have the power to do that.
Speaker 3 (54:52):
So what this does is instead of having support for
this sort of independent commission, it just puts all the
power back into the DA's office.
Speaker 4 (55:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
I was reading about an attorney named Mark Rabel I
think I'm pronouncing his name correctly, and he's the director
of the Innocence and Justice Clinic at Wake Forest University,
and he just put it really in a way that
made so much sense to me, where he's advocating that
we do not cut funding to the North Carolina Innocence
Increy Commission, and he said, nobody can dispute the fact
(55:23):
that people are wrongfully convicted. We have a human system.
Humans make errors, so we need to correct them.
Speaker 3 (55:29):
Yeah. I was pretty horrified to hear that this is
at risk of being eliminated because I think it is
a really cool and important program. North Carolina was the
first in the country to create a program like this,
and you know, I was hoping that other states would
start forming them as well, because we are seeing that
it's a success. Currently, it's been voted on the Senate
(55:50):
and we're waiting to see what happens in the North
Carolina House.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
And I just can't help but wonder thinking about like
the settlements that exoneries you know, rightfully obtain when they're
extas honerated, Like, well, are people just trying to protect
themselves from having to pay those Maybe?
Speaker 4 (56:04):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (56:05):
It's a good point. So if you want to learn
more about Greg Taylor's case, there is a documentary in
Pursuit of Justice that chronicles his seventeen year search for justice,
which I enjoyed. And I also wanted to note that
Greg and Yulanda are now friends and on good term,
similar to what we heard with Jennifer and Ronald Cotton.
(56:26):
And we love the work that Healing Justice Project is doing.
You can visit them at Healing Justice Project dot org.
That's it for our episode. We'll see you next week.
If you have a story for us, we would love
to hear it. Our email is The Knife at exactly
Rightmedia dot com, or you can follow us on Instagram
at the Knife podcast or Blue Sky at the Knife podcast.
(56:49):
This has been an exactly right production. Hosted and produced
by me Hannah Smith and.
Speaker 1 (56:54):
Me Paytia Eaton. Our producers are Tom Brifogel and Alexis Amorosi.
Speaker 3 (56:58):
This episode was mixed by Tom bry Fogel.
Speaker 4 (57:00):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport.
Speaker 4 (57:05):
Artwork by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 3 (57:07):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Who murders someone and go back to get them the help?
Who does it in good conscience? I don't care if
you will have the night before or not you go
back to the scene of the crime.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Yeah, not, Welcome to the knife. I'm Hannah Smith.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I'm Patia Eton. This week we speak with Yolanda Thomas,
who we met through the Healing Justice Project. Jennifer Thompson's
interview two episodes ago brought us the perspective of a
crime victim in the case of an exoneration. This week,
Yolanda brings us a new perspective, that of a family member.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Yolanda's sister, Jaquetta Thomas, was murdered in nineteen ninety one,
and the search for justice in this case is ongoing.
So let's get into the interview.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Well, my name is Yolanda Thomas. I currently reside in Lyndale, Arizona.
Growing up, it was initially just me and my sister.
My sister Jackana and I were two years apart. Over
time of five boys came.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yolana and her sister, Jaqueta grew up in newbern, North Carolina.
It's a small riverfront city near the coast, maybe most
known for being the birthplace of Pepsi Cola. When Yolanda
was in sixth grade and Chaquetta was in seventh, the
family moved to Raleigh, a much bigger city. Their first
home there was actually a one bedroom apartment, as you
can imagine, a very tight squeeze for the family of eight,
(01:45):
but Yolanda said that living in a safe neighborhood was
extremely important to her mother, who sometimes had to work
two jobs to support them. Still, shortly after the move,
it seems like Chaquetta was beginning to lose her way.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
That's when she started hanging kind of with the crowd
who did the drinking and I would say drugs at
that time, but during that time it was just marijuana,
nothing really heavy. So skipping school and you know, hanging
out during the day with questionable other teenagers. Then came
(02:21):
just lots of running away from home just because she
didn't want the discipline. My mom and stepdad would go
find her, bringing back home every time.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Checquetta was struggling. She eventually dropped out of high school.
She was never able to obtain her ged or diploma
and the distance between the two sisters was growing. Yolanda
graduated and joined the military, which took her overseas to Germany.
She got married and had a son of her own.
She thought about her family and about Jequetta. She worried
(02:51):
about her sister often, but life was really busy. Eventually
she was able to plan a trip to visit. She
knew Chequeta wasn't doing well. She was in the hospital,
but she didn't know. So that's the last time she
would ever see her sister alive.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
I remember going home. My son had been born and
he was not quite a year, so I went home
to visit and saw my mom. Jaqueta was in the hospital.
So when I went to visit her in the hospital,
I remember talking to the nurse and the doctor and
(03:29):
they pretty much told me, you know, if she did
a cocaine again, you know, she would die just from
all the damage that already happened to her heart. And
I remember our last conversation. I was just begging and
pleading with her just to clean her act up, like
you know, your nephew wants to get to know you,
and it's funny. She just kind of looked at me
(03:50):
and said I'm the older sibling here. You don't get
to tell me what to do with a smile. And
I said, well, I want to be able to come
back and see you. So that was that was our
last conversation.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
So tell me about the moment that you learned something
has happened.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
I'm in Germany, so I get this phone call and
it's for me the middle of the night, and you
just know, being a soldier overseas, you get a phone call,
you know something's wrong. And I answered the phone and
all I could hear is my mom crying. In the background.
A good friend of hers is just saying to me
my sister's nickname was Jet, and her saying Jet is gone.
(04:33):
Jet is gone. And I'm like, what do you mean
she's gone? And instantly, for me, I thought, oh, she
was in a bad car accident. She didn't have license,
so I just knew she was with someone and they
got an accident. At least that's what my mind wanted
to believe anyway. And she said, no, they found her.
(04:53):
And now I'm still questioning, what do you mean they
found her? And she said, well, she was murdered. I
can't even just ride the feeling. I just remember sinking
to the floor, just crying, trying to understand, asking how
my mom was, asking how my brothers were. My mom
couldn't talk. It took me a few hours just to
(05:15):
get my composure to reach out to my unit to
say this thing has happened. Of course I need to
go home on emergency lead.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yolanda described the hours and days that followed this phone
call as a blur. She was shocked and heartbroken. For years,
Yolanda had worried about Jehquetta. She knew jaquetta struggle with
addiction might lead her into an unsafe situation, but nothing
could have prepared her to learn that her sister was murdered.
Yolanda and her husband, with their young son, flew from
(05:45):
where she was stationed in Germany to Atlanta. Her mother
had since moved to Atlanta from Raleigh and had planned
Jacqutta's funeral close by.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Her service was held at the funeral home. I remember
where we sat. I remember her son, who's the oldest,
saw me and he came to sit with me. All
the girls were with who they had been placed with
because they had been taken away from her, and my
mom had requested a close casket. For some reason, at
(06:18):
the end of this service, someone decided to open her
casket and her son lost it. Like literally, I'm holding
him to keep from going to his mom. And of
course that caused me to start crying, and so we
had to leave the area. So the service was held
(06:38):
in Newburn, and that's where we both were born and raised.
I remember a lot of people being there, a lot
of classmates or people we used to play with growing up.
But I just remember looking back at my mom and
she just wasn't even crying. Like that was one of
the things that I think stuck with me at the time.
I vaguely remember going to the cemetery.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
At the time of her funeral. Had there yet been
any further conversations about the cause of death beyond that
it was, you know, I foul play or who had
done it.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
We had no information. And after the funeral, you know,
I still had friends in Raleigh, So I went to
Raleigh and spent a few days, and so I went
to the police department. Well, I requested to talk to
the police about her case. I remember the detective he
was consoling me, at least that's what he thought he
(07:37):
was doing, and He just told me that I just
need you to know we we have the individuals who
did this. You don't have to worry. Justice will be served.
But he wouldn't answer my questions. So my question was, well,
how did this happen? Did they even talk to you
and tell you, like, why did they take my sister's life?
(07:57):
The answers I got was, we can't answer the questions
that you have because they will interfere with the investigation.
But if you have the individuals and you're assuring me
that they're going to pay for this crime, then why
can't you answer my questions.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
The two individuals that had been arrested were Gregory Taylor
and Johnny Beck. There would be differing accounts of what
happened that evening, but what is undisputed about the events
of September twenty fifth, nineteen ninety one, is greg Taylor
and Johnny Beck met up, they bought drugs, and then
they used those drugs together until early the following morning.
(08:35):
Later that morning, around six thirty am on September twenty sixth,
the body of Jequeta Thomas is found in a cul
de dezac by a Raleigh police officer. She's lying on
her back facing the sky, and she's been badly beaten.
Her cause of death is later determined to have been
blunt force trauma. Jaqueta Thomas was only twenty six years old.
(08:58):
As police are working the crime scene, twenty nine year
old Greg Taylor shows up. By this time, it's about
eight thirty am. Surrounding this could Dezac is an open field,
and Greg says he's there to retrieve his vehicle, a
Nissan Pathfinder. He says had gotten stuck out there the
night before while he was off roading. Now his vehicle
(09:20):
it happens to be just about one hundred and fifty
yards from where Jaqueta's body had been discovered. From the
moment Greg Taylor shows up at the crime scene, he
becomes a suspect. The state quickly builds a case. They
say there's a witness who can place him with Chequeta
the night she died, and they also claim to have
found blood on his car. Greg Taylor and Johnny Beck
(09:42):
are arrested, all in less than twenty four hours after
Jaquetta's body was discovered. But the police aren't really telling
Yolanda or her family any of this.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
So this first conversation that you have with law enforcement.
You're getting a little bit of like something's not quite
right here.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Absolutely. I just didn't know what the secrecy was, and
that's what it felt like, like it was secresy. And
I remember the detective grabbing my hands, kind of gently
touching my hand and saying, we got this, we got this.
Just ultra confident, right, don't worry, We're going to take
(10:25):
care of this. And I think he thought a little
sorry for me because he could see me standing out
of control, and just let me know that this is
going to be taken care of. You know, this case,
we'll go to trial. It will be a success. We
will get diverted we're looking for, and your family again
will get the justice that they deserve.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
How did you feel in that moment when he said
that to you?
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Oh, in that moment, I was pissed.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Okay, So that wasn't comforting to you at.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
All, No, ma'am. So you never answered my questions the
first first time, which felt like a secret.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
So Greg Taylor was now we know arrested. He's arrested
alongside a man named Johnny Beck. Yes, and you don't
hear a word about it. Until how many months later,
would you say?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Not until it was put in a newspaper. I just
knew that two people were arrested. That's all I knew.
Not until the news article did I learned Greg Taylor.
I saw the name Johnny Beck, but it never talked
about him. So at that time I learned that Greg
Taylor was a white man, and that he used Johnny
(11:40):
Beck to go into this neighborhood to purchase drugs, and
then they decided to do the drugs together. That was
what I was told, but that they picked her up
along the way because she wanted to do drugs too,
and then something went wrong, but the something was never clear,
(12:01):
but that something went well, and then she ended up murdered.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
At first, Greg Taylor was indicted for accessory after the
fact for assisting Johnny Beck and the murder. The state
was going after Johnny Beck. They wanted Greg to testify
against him, but Greg refused. He maintained he was with
Johnny all night and so he knows that neither of
them murdered Jaqueta. Then a few months passed and the
(12:33):
charges change. Now Greg Taylor and Johnny Beck are both
charged with first degree murder after a four day trial
in April of nineteen ninety three, Gregory Taylor is found
guilty of first degree murder. The jury deliberated for only
two hours.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
And were you or any of your family members, anyone
you knew present at that trie.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
No, ma'am, we weren't told. We weren't told.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
No. What did it feel like to know that a
trial had happened without being notified or having the opportunity
to attend.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
I don't think it bothered me at that time. I
went back to life as I knew it right. I
was a soldier, went back to Germany. I was living
my life. I remember getting the news article that told
me he had been convicted. I felt the sense of relief.
He happened to be sentenced on her birthday for the
twentieth and I thought, oh my goodness, look how the
(13:35):
stars have aligned, right, they got them. He even was
sentenced on her birthday. She must be resting. Well, yeah,
that was it for me.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yolanda tries her best to move forward with her life,
but her sister's murder is never too far from her mind.
She returns to Germany, she's busy working and being a mother.
It isn't until years later that questions about Chaquetas does
begin to a rise for Yolanda and reopen this whole
chapter for her.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
So I moved back to North Carolina, and I remember
immediately signing up to be notified if there was any
movement of Greg Taylor in prison. Like I knew, there
was a site you could go to so you can
get notifications for anything. With hindsight is twenty twenty when
I think about that, Why would I want to do that?
(14:30):
If he was going to be in jail for life,
it wouldn't have mattered, right, So that was one of
the first things I did when I moved back to Raleigh.
I just remember six years later, maybe getting a phone
call at my job being told that this was an
attorney that was representing Greg Taylor and that he had
exhausted all of his appeals and that this organization that
(14:54):
she worked for was his last hope and there seemed
to be some discrepants es in the evidence that was
presented at trial, and they were looking into it and
there was a possibility that he could be released. And
I let her get all of that out and I said,
how did you find me? How did you find my number,
(15:19):
and I don't remember her answer. I went on to
curse her out. I did, and told her to forget
that she ever knew my name and to never call
me on my job again. It didn't matter. She kept talking.
She basically said, in so many words, well this is
going to happen whether you like it or not, and
(15:42):
I just felt the need to call you to let
you know. I was kind of taken aback when she
said that, and in that moment I said to her, well,
I've asked you not to call me again, but let
me tell you this. I never believed he did it anyway,
and I hung up the phone.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
We will get into why Yolanda did not believe that
Greg Taylor killed her sister, but this moment, it's important.
This call from an attorney to Yolanda at work shook her.
At this point, it's been more than ten years since
her sister's murder, but this call brings everything back. Her
profound grief. The fact that neither Yolanda nor her family
(16:24):
had been notified of anything related to Jaquetta's case. They
weren't told about the trial, they weren't asked to speak nothing,
and here was this person calling her unexpectedly, with little
care about what it might feel like to be going
about your day and then answer a call and be
reminded of your sister's murder.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
And I just felt, right, that's just not how you
notify someone. Literally, I had to go home. That was
like opening up a won for me, important SALTI in.
I was done for the day. No matter what I
initially thought, whether Greg Taylor did it or not, my
sister was still gone. And now you're rehashing all this
(17:08):
stuff that I was never even a part of. So
that is why I started doing my research because now
I'm like, well, I need to read some transcripts. I
need to see what really happened at Trout because if
you have a question and it's good enough that practically
he could get out, we need to know why. Had
no one else called me and told me this, right?
(17:30):
No one offered anything.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Did you tell your family, the rest of your family
about that phone call?
Speaker 2 (17:36):
I told my mother, And it was funny because I
didn't know how to approach this conversation with her. My
mom struggled with my sister's death for years, and now
that I'm a mom, I get that I've never lost
a child, so I can't even imagine. So I think
as the siblings, we just respected how she deals with
it is how she's going to deal with it. But
(17:57):
my mom had never even said my sister's name anymore
since she had passed, so I was not sure how
to do this. And I remember calling her and I
told her about the phone call, and I said, and
since the phone call, I've been home and I've been digging,
and do you know there's a chance that he may
(18:18):
not have even done this? And she listened and she
said I never believed he did it. And I was like, oh,
you never told me, so I said, well, why didn't
you believe it? And she said because it was a
white man.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
So you both have seem instinct. Yes, And what did
Greg Taylor being white mean to you in this context?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Oh? Greg Taylor did not murder my sister. Let me
tell you. First off, if he was with the black
man to go by drugs, Johnny Beck or anyone else
in the neighborhood would not have allowed him to murder
my sister. You call it the code of African Americans.
I don't know, but there is nowhere you're gonna let
(19:03):
an outsider, and a white man was considered an outsider.
That was why he had to have Johnny Pick to
go buy the drugs in this area.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
For years, Yolanda and her mother had had this same
unspoken doubt around Greg Taylor's guilt. But who would they
have told and would it have mattered. They weren't invited
to the trial, they didn't even know it was happening.
And Greg Taylor had been convicted by a jury, so
maybe he was guilty. It brought some peace to believe
that Chaquetta's murderer had been caught. But the more Yolanda
(19:41):
learned about what happened at Greg Taylor's trial, the more
she wondered if he might be innocent.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
I have always been a researcher. I have always been
someone who would dig define answers. And I don't know
if I just went to the court. I don't know
if I just did a search. But lo and behold,
I found them. I did, and I was reading and
I was done. I was so disgusted when I found
(20:10):
those documents. I saw his appeals first, and so his
first appeal was because he felt he didn't have proper representation.
Of course, that the appeal God denied, and then some
of the things that he was appealing like, it didn't
make sense to me, you know, reading it. I'm no lawyer.
I just know they were denied. But I can tell you,
(20:31):
in reading the documents, for life of me can't understand
how he was convicted.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
As Yolanda looked over court documents, she learned the prosecutions
version of what happened the night of her sister's murder.
The prosecution said that Greg Taylor and Johnny Beck met
Chequetta during this drug fueled night out. They'd invited her
into Gregg's vehicle, that Nissan Pathfinder. They'd done more drugs together,
but then for some unknown reason, Greg attacked Jaqueta kill her.
(21:01):
At the same time that Yolanda is learning the prosecution's
version of events, she's also learning Greg Taylor's version of events,
which importantly had not changed in the fifteen years since
his conviction.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
He said he got off work, he was out drug seeking.
He knew word about the drugs, but he knew he
couldn't go into that neighborhood. He would be suspected of
being a police officer undercover carp Now, I don't know
if he knew Johnny back or if he just met
him that night, but he knew he needed a black
person to go into the neighborhood. And the agreement was,
(21:37):
if you can get these drugs, we'll do them together.
And so they purchased the drugs. They rode from the
neighborhood to this Call de Sack. They got high in
the Call de Sack and then decided, because Greg had
a four by four, to go muddy for reeling. There
(21:57):
you go, yes, yes, and their vehicle got stuck. His
vehicle got stuck. They decided not to call the police
because they were high. They had been doing drugs, and
they decided to walk out of the area. And when
they walked out into the cul de Sacs where they
noticed what they said looked like a rug, That's what
they said. But they both were scared and high, according
(22:20):
to Greg, and they wasn't sure what it was. And
they were like, oh, we're really not going to call
any help now to get my vehicle and stuck, they
talked amongst themselves wondering if it was a body, but
they continued to go out until they met someone and
caught a ride and both went to their perspective.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Homes and that's Johnny Beck's version of events as well, Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
And then I think it's interesting too because Greg came
back the next day. Can you tell us what you
learned about that?
Speaker 2 (22:48):
So I think that was maybe the second thing that
just baffled me. Who murdered someone and go back to
get their vehicle? Who does that in good conscience? I
don't care if you will hide the night before or
not go back to the scene of the crime. Yeah,
not now. I did learn that from the detective. The
person were arrested came back to the scene of the crime,
(23:10):
and he was arrested there, and then later the person
he was with was picked up.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
What are you feeling reading through these documents having had
this lingering doubt since your sister's murder?
Speaker 2 (23:23):
You know, I think my biggest question was why weren't
we invited to the trial? And how could this jury
convict this man on what I was reading?
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Meanwhile, Creig Taylor is incarcerated. How did it feel to
know that was his reality while you were sort of
unraveling the doubts you had in his conviction.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
So I think what was hard for me was how
dare you give this person life. On what I'm reading,
it's still a lot of holes here. Yes, he may
have been guilty of something, but he certainly was not
guilty of killing a sister. And now he had been
taken away from his family.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yolanda started contemplating everything Greg Taylor had lost, and he
had lost a lot. Greg Taylor was a father. Sometimes
he had been the only parent present at his daughter's
pta meetings, and now his daughter was growing up without him.
He had been married to his wife, Becky, his high
school sweetheart, but just a few months after his sentence began,
(24:28):
Becky Taylor filed for divorce. Greg Taylor was also a
beloved son, and his elderly parents were desperately advocating for
his freedom.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
I think one of the things that bothered me the
most was I am not an advocate of the death penalty.
I'm not, And had things looked different or been different,
this man could be gone. So then another life has
been taken. And what was hard for me to wrap
my brain around was what if he had been executed
(25:01):
and someone was just now looking into his case. You're
not going to bring my sister back, but you certainly
couldn't bring back this man who didn't even commit the crime.
So for me, it was a lot going on mentally
with the watercouta shutters and how do we now fix
this for him?
Speaker 1 (25:21):
And how do you now fix this? You have this
attorney who's reached out saying they're trying to exonerate Greg Taylor.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
The next phone call I got was from the people
at the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, and I was
being told that his case was getting ready to be heard.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
The North Carolina Innocents Inquiry Commission was established back in
two thousand and six. They're separate from the appeals process.
The Commission investigates and evaluates credible post conviction claims of innocence. First,
there's an initial review of the case, then a commission hearing,
and finally a three judge panel hearing. The judges at
that final hearing have the power to dismissed someone's charges
(26:01):
and that person can never then be retried for those crimes.
It's a big deal if they're hearing your case.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
When I took that phone call, the young lady immediately
told me who she was. She told me about what
they were investigating or trying to get some answers to
and she said, we're not on Greg Taylor's side. We're
on the side of truth, and we just want to
know what happened to your sister, and I'm gonna tell you. Immediately,
(26:33):
all my guards came down because here's someone who's telling
me they're gonna help me find out what happened, and
if that includes finding out that Greg didn't do it,
then that's even better. So I was invited to attend.
I worked it out to get off work so that
(26:53):
I could go and be a part of that hearing.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
So during this panel of eight and the presentation is
to why Greg should not be in jail for this?
What do you learn during that presentation?
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Girl? So much? Thank goodness I had a friend that
could join me because she could take notes and remember
these things. But I remember the first thing I heard
was the blood splatter that was supposed to be on
his fender was indeed an insect. That was the first thing.
So that was the first thing.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Remember the blood spatter on the fender of Greg Taylor's
Nissan Pathfinder. At his trial back in April of nineteen
ninety three, the jury who had gone on to find
him guilty they were told it was human blood. This
was damning evidence against him, But new tests revealed that
the blood sample wasn't blood at all, it was an insect.
(27:49):
The attorneys who were present on the state's behalf arguing
to keep Greg Taylor behind bars, they said, the positive
test for blood that had been presented at Greg's trial, well,
they got that result from the SBI, the North Carolina
State Bureau of Investigations. So present at this hearing to
talk about it was SBI analyst Dwayne Deaver, and during
(28:13):
his cross examination, Deaver made a shocking admission. The sample
had been tested a total of three times, and two
of those times it came back negative for the presence
of blood. Only one of those tests came back positive,
and that was the test presented to the jury at
Gregg's trial. This was a bombshell moment. The injustice of
(28:38):
what had occurred was palpable. It was reported that all
three judges covered their mouths with their hands, and that
the attorneys on both sides looked shaken by what Deaver
had said.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
The second thing I think for me was nothing, no hair,
no clothing, no fiber, nothing placed my sister inside that vehicle.
So if the state has spawned the story that she
was getting high with them, then why was there no
evidence of her being in the vehicle. And then I think,
(29:15):
listening to bus and pieces of the investigation that happened
around my sister's murder, it just placed too many questions
there that you had three or four different scenarios of
how this could have happened. Just listening to these people.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Did you feel like Chakuda as a person was given
a lot of thought through this investigation?
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Oh no, ma'am. Oh, she wasn't given any thought and
she wasn't even a human being. Her name was listed
in the newspaper from the articles I received in germany
Burg Taylor. You see his name the trial, he's convicted.
Her name is listed when all of this happened. She
was local prostitute found dead.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
Period.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
In every art article, every news media outlet that talked
about it said the local prostitute. Everything that was written
could be a magazine article, newspaper article, whatever, it was,
the local prostitute. And I was like, no, I don't
remember which news outlet I called, but I remember I
(30:19):
was very upset and I called and I said, I'm
ana for you to call every other news station that's
in this local area, but you will not refer to
her as a local prostitute. If you can find me
proof that she was ever arrested for prostitution, then you
can say that. But I already knew she had never
been arrested for that. And so one news station that
I called, he did it was a story. They went
(30:43):
and they looked up her arrest record and law and behold,
she had never been arrested for that. And he apologized
on TV. And I'm taking that. Every other news media
outleok just decided to follow suit because from that coin on,
it was her name that was being said.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
Wow, that's so important, and you were really the driver
of that.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
So I did speak at the end of the eight panel.
I was asked if I wanted to say anything based
on everything I heard, and I did, and so it
was closed. The media couldn't be in the room, and
I expressed all my doubts and my concerns and pretty
much pleaded was please take everything that you have heard
(31:28):
and do what's right, because I think this young man
is innocent.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
Was Greg Taylor present?
Speaker 2 (31:35):
He didn't come before that.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Now, what did your willingness to speak to that panel
mean for his case.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
You know what, I'm just gonna say, I would like
to believe that it meant a lot. And they all
listened and they took their notes, and I remember leaving
out and one of the members on the panel just
stopped me and he said, powerful statement. And that was it,
(32:08):
and that made me feel good. Now I did ask
before I left. I said, before the media talked about
it on the news, could someone please call me and
tell me what they decide. I just because again I knew,
like you said, this is it, this is his last chance,
and I wanted to know first well, aside from his attorney.
(32:32):
And so someone did call me and tell me before
that it truly all Ate had agreed that it would
go before the three judge panel.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
At the center of this case was the brutal murder
of Jequetta Thomas and to have Jaqueta's own sister, Yolanda
there to speak out in support of Greg Taylor's innocence,
it was huge. When Jaqueta was murdered, Yolanda and her
family weren't even an afterthought. They weren't thought of it all.
They weren't told when investigators believed happen that night. They
(33:03):
weren't made aware of the trial, and they weren't asked
any questions. Yolanda was now certain of Greg Taylor's innocence,
but speaking out in support of him came with mixed emotions.
The police had conducted an investigation and felt confident that
Taylor was responsible. He was convicted by a jury, Yet
here Yolanda was trying to free him.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
There was first a sense of betrayal. I really felt
like as much as I wanted to believe in help,
I still felt a sense of betrayal, Like how could
I first off believe that he didn't do it? How
could I even attempt to help in any way, because
then I was betraying my sister. Lots of prayer, just
(33:48):
praying that I was doing the right thing. I went
with my heart. I went with what I believed in
my gut. You know, I can tell you there was
no question in that time as to who killed her.
I was focused on getting him out. It never dawned
on me, well, if he didn't do it, who did not?
Speaker 1 (34:07):
At that time, not in that that came. You were
on a mission, right at that point, Yes, that was
so this panel that you speak to where you know.
One of these judges even go so far as to
stop you and say that was such a powerful statement.
You're notified how many days later that this is going
(34:28):
to move forward?
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Oh, that evening before it hit the news. I got
the phone call.
Speaker 4 (34:33):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
And eventually this all comes to ahead in February of
twenty ten, and Greg his conviction is brought before three
Superior Court judges for a review.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
I sat right there in the room. I sat amongst
his family. I had met his mom and his dad,
his stepdad. Wow. I had met his daughter and her husband.
I had met the family.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Greg Taylor's family understood that for Yolanda to be there
to support him also meant having to relive some of
the most difficult moments of her sister's tragic murder. The
way she'd struggled with addiction, the way her body had
been discarded on concrete, the way she was talked about
by local news who had continued referring to her as
(35:22):
a prostitute.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
I remember meeting them, and his mom just came up
to me and hugged me. She was crying, and I said,
why are you crying? She said, because you've lost so much,
and I said, but so have you, and she just
hugged me tighter. I just told them if their family
(35:46):
member did not do this, he deserves to go home,
and that everything in me was going to do what
I could, and then I was going to be there
to support them to find out the truth. I remember
during this judge panel, there was a time when they
did alert me that her autopsy pictures would be shown
(36:07):
and I was sitting next to his mom and she said,
do you need to leave? And I was like, no,
I'm okay. And when they started placing those photos up,
she grabbed my hand and she was in tears and
she looked at me and she said, are you okay?
And I whispered and I said, that's just a shell.
(36:28):
She's gone, that I'm okay. She hugged me again. When
we took a resist, it felt good. I think I
felt I would say as close as possible to what
they were feeling with the then a family member to
this being what happens if he doesn't get out right now?
(36:49):
I know I had a lot of stake. I felt
like because of my drive and determination that this man
is in it said that he needs to get out
I can't even begin to imagine what that felt out
for them. It was a lot at stage, I think
for both of us, well for all of us sitting there.
And then you said, or what did I think with
(37:13):
all this happening about who possibly did it? I don't
think it was until in that moment, when we're in
those final hours waiting, did it dawn on me Grant
didn't do this. If he goes home today, then I
don't know who murdered my sister. Let me tell you,
(37:39):
there was only one time that I got up and
I had to leave that room. And it had nothing
to do with anything that was being said about my sister.
It had nothing to do with the pictures that were
being shown. It had to do with the lie, the
lie that was told to this jury that convicted this man.
(38:04):
I was physically ill.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
All the way back in nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Three, all the way back the DA swore to this
jury that that was Jeqetta's blood on that fender. I
still get the sick feeling right now. I was so
angry I had to leave.
Speaker 4 (38:23):
I mean to know that.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
I guess I best someone's ability to discern whose blood
that was lazy or incompetent, and at worst they knew
that they were telling the lie.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
They knew, yes, And I know I got up abruptly
because when I got up to go, it caused kind
of a commotion, and they knew. The people in the
room knew that I was there, that I was her sister.
And I do remember when I came back in and
I'm listening very intently and constantly looking at the faces
(38:57):
of these three judges. I felt that one of them
even acknowledged my presence when I came back, and it
just was very calming for.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Me, like you had the sort of innate sense that
they understood that you knew what was going.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
On, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
So what happens next.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Well, next we get the unanimous decision.
Speaker 4 (39:24):
Does it happen right away?
Speaker 2 (39:26):
It happens right away?
Speaker 4 (39:27):
WHOA.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
We did not go home. We left for them to convene.
I remember hearing it was time to go back into
the room. They had made a decision, and we're all
holding hands. They read them off one by one and
they say the judge's name, and that that judge believes,
and when the second judge name was said, and that
(39:50):
he believed it or she believed it. Everybody just kind
of got hopeful, like like we're making noises. And when
that final judge his name was read and said that
they believe without a shadow of a doubt. Oh yeah,
I still get the filling. Now that room erupted.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
All three judges agreed. Greg Taylor had been wrongly convicted
of the murder of Jaqueta Thomas, and after seventeen years
behind bars, he was finally free.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
It was amazing. He immediately looked to eyes with his
daughter and she just couldn't wait to get to her dad.
His parents were crying. It was a beautiful moment.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
It was, I mean, in just so intense. Greg Taylor
had at this point spent seventeen years, seventeen and a
half years, seventeen and a half years of his life,
missed so much of his daughter's life.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
He missed a lot.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
Yes, yes, who from your family was present?
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Just me. I was the spokesperson for us all.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
And so all of this has gone on, but your
sister she's gone. You know, you've had all these years
to process this loss. But Greg gets his life back
as he should. And when does this moment creep up
for you? Of like, Okay, well now the person who
is responsible is still out there.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Let me tell you. It was a long ride home.
It was a long ride home. Him and his family
invited me to come out and celebrate, and I said, no,
this is your moment, and no, no, we want you.
And I was like, no, I need to go be
with my kids. You know, I've been here for the
past few days, been a part of this, and now
(41:42):
I need to go. Hugged everyone and I got in
my car and I cried all the way home. And
that was tears of joy thinking about that his family
gets him back, but then my tears of the hurt.
I think the wound being back open. I cried so
(42:04):
much that night, probably more than I do at a funeral,
because it felt like I was burying her all over again,
and it crept up in fear set in and I said,
I have no clue who murdered my sister. And because
I've been in the news and I've been in the
spotlight right alongside Greg, what now if that person comes
(42:27):
for me and my family?
Speaker 1 (42:30):
And you know, also just now that you've been in
such a public facing role with his exoneration, Yes, who's
going to talk to you?
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Well, no one no one. Because when I went to
talk to the police after all of this and they
didn't want to talk to me.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Did they feel betrayed by you?
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Absolutely? And you know what the DA told me. He said,
we got it right, you let him out.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
That is such a flammatory, inaccurate statement. Because the three
judges they had to unanimously agree, right, it didn't matter.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
I learned what tunnel vision was with this case. They
did shake Greg's hand and congratulate him. But I was
told over and over again, even by police detectives after
he was exonerated, what do you want us to do?
We got it right, you let him out. As if
I was able to make a decision about this man
(43:32):
spending the rest of his life in jail. Wasn't me, sir.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
It was the evidence that is so disappointing and just
unjust there much so, what became of Jaquetta's murder case?
If anything, once Greg Taylor was exonerated.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
Nothing. It is a cold case. The detectives who were
put on her case, they were in touch with me
probably for six months, because I was constantly what is
the status? What's going on? Pluk? I was trying to
get her things back never could get her things back
where to dead end And this was our last conversation.
(44:09):
One said all roads lead to Greg Taylor, and I said,
this will be the last time you will call me
with an update. Now I am done because clearly you're
not going to do anything to find out who murdered
my sister.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
How has this whole experience, I mean, I imagine this will
be a difficult answer to even try to sum up.
But how has it changed you and your family to
have been through this?
Speaker 2 (44:41):
You know, I can't really speak for them, and I
say that because they trusted me to get the answers.
They believed if I was fighting that it was it
was a good fight, and they were supportive. I can
tell you that when Greg was awarded whatever the money is,
when they realized he was wrongfully convicted, they came from
(45:03):
the state. The state needed something from every one of
us before they would pay him. So every one of
my family members had to say that we believed the
decision was correct and that they got it right. Now.
He did get an undisclosed them out from the SBI,
(45:23):
but they didn't need us for that. That was a
separate thing. But whatever came initially from the state for
the wrongful conviction. You know, we all had to sign
something in and say yes.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
Yolanda's story was so powerful and it really hits home
for me the thing that we talk about so much,
which is the ripple effect of crime.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
I think there's no better representation of that in the
story that Greg Taylor's exonerated. But now Yolanda knows that
law enforcement has, in her eyes, turned against her and
is unwilling to continue looking at into the case and
to look for the person who actually committed this murder.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Yeah, it's such a heartbreaking part of Yanda's story that
she's sort of like punished by law enforcement who when
she asked them about her sister's case, they keep saying
everything goes back to Greg Taylor, which is ridiculous because
he's been exonerated.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Yeah, it's not like Yolanda decided to exonerate him, right.
He went through this incredible process with the North Carolina
Innocents Inquiry Commission and sat in front of those three
judges who heard all about his first trial and what
his attorneys have uncovered since. And you know, one of
those really powerful moments during his hearing was to talk
(46:42):
about the blood evidence that was used against him, which
ended up not being blood, ended up being an insect. Right,
And we learned the SBI analyst Dwayne Deaver that testifies
at this three day hearing. He admits that the evidence
was faulty and he didn't give them all the facts.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
Yeah, that's so whid When we were talking about this
and his name came up, I knew that I had
heard it somewhere else. And it's because I had recently
watched the Staircase documentary, which everybody watched years ago, and
somehow I never watched it, but I told you too,
and then you were like, you have to watch this.
(47:19):
What are you doing? And you were right, it's really good.
But because I had just watched it, his name stuck
in my mind because he's in that documentary.
Speaker 1 (47:27):
Yeah, we know now that Dwayne Deaver was actually fired
by the SBI in January of twenty eleven. There was
a major investigation after this three day hearing where he
admitted to a really shady policy that they had about
the way that they communicated lab results.
Speaker 3 (47:42):
Yeah, we talked about it in this episode that with
this case, there were three tests, right, two of them
came back negative. Only one came back positive for human blood.
But then I also read that that test was not
one hundred percent correct all the time.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
It was not, and so that was why what he
should have done, in what the agency should of making
sure was being done, is we tested it three times,
here are the results, and given that information to both
the prosecution and the defense. But instead, the only information
was given to the prosecution that yes, it came back positive.
The defense was not told we tested it three times.
(48:17):
Two of those tests, which is the majority, came back negative.
And the jury heard this information that Greg Taylor had
human blood on the fender of his vehicle that was
located right by where Jaquetta's body was found, and he
was convicted. And who knows if he would have been
if they hadn't heard that evidence that we now know
to have been really faulty. Yeah. Dwayne Deaver, whose name
(48:38):
you recognized from the staircase. He testifies in this trial,
the murder trial where Michael Peterson is accused of killing
his wife, Kathleen Peterson, and Dwayne Deaver testifies at the
trial is later found to have committed perjury. He basically
overstated his training and overstated the work done on this case.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
Yeah, if I recall, he testified that like the way
that the blood spatter was on the staircase, it could
only come from one angle. That then sort of led
into this argument that Michael Peterson could have been the
only one to have, you know, caused that trauma to
her head.
Speaker 1 (49:17):
Dwayne Deaver was fired in January twenty eleven. Well, Michael
Peterson's defense when it was coming out that the SBI
was under investigation for these faulty tests, they were able
to get him a new trial and he ended up
actually just taking an Alfred plea, which is I'm maintaining
that I was innocent, but that you have evidence that
could convict me. And so he is a free man.
(49:39):
He lives in Durham. Again, I think said he just
lives a quiet life in a one bedroom apartment writing books.
And would he have ever been convicted if not for
Dwayne Deaver's testimony.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
It's a good question. It makes me think of something
that Jennifer Thompson said to us in our episode that
came out a couple of weeks ago, talking about wrongful convictions.
She talked about that moment with Ronald Cotton's conviction of
the woman who called and said to have seen him,
and it was this big revelation that that woman had
made that up. Right, So she said though in a
lot of her work dealing with wrongful convictions, there is
(50:12):
often times a bad actor, she said, you wouldn't believe
how many times that happens. And we kind of see
it here too with Dwayne Deaver. He was giving incredibly
misleading information that ended up causing the jury to feel
convinced that there was evidence to convict Greg Taylor when
there was not.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
Yeah, it's like the SBI and Dwyane Deaver were acting
on behalf of the prosecution instead of just processing these
results in their lab. Yeah, in an impartial way. The
investigation that ends up happening into the SBI over this
policy that Duane Diaver mentioned came back to about two
hundred convictions. Those people were convicted based on evidence provided
(50:53):
by the SBI, who had these policies in place that
were always going to be favorable to the prosecution. Three
of those convictions had resulted in the death penalty.
Speaker 3 (51:04):
Oh, that's horrible, horrible.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
That's why it's so important that we have organizations like
the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission in place.
Speaker 3 (51:13):
One hundred percent, which brings us to something that we
really want to talk about today, which is that the
North Carolina Innocence Inquery Commission, which we've been talking about.
We talked about this episode. It's the whole reason that
Greg Taylor ended up getting exonerated. He had gone through
the appeals process, he had been denied, he was at
the end of any available way forward with his case,
(51:36):
and then the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission took a
look at it. It's the only reason that we ever
got justice in that case. Well, the Commission is actually
at risk of being eliminated right now. This is a
really current thing. The North Carolina Senate actually has already
voted to eliminate it from the budget. So before we
talk about that, I just want to kind of talk
about the reason that it was ever created. You know,
(51:57):
the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, it's completely separate from
the appeals process. It's a state funded, state run, but
independent agency, and because of that, they are able to
take an unbiased approach to cases. They've reviewed three thy
eight hundred cases. There have been sixteen exonerations as a result.
Speaker 1 (52:18):
Which I think really speaks to how seriously they take
this work. Like this is not some get out a
jail free card. Thirty hundred cases and sixteen exonerations, they
are really scrutinizing the evidence that's presented to them. These
have to be very, very credible inquiries into someone's innocence
for them to even hear the case.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (52:39):
One of the things that they also do is that
as they're investigating a case, if they find more evidence
that supports the guilty verdict, that also goes into the files,
so they're actually able to confirm convictions as well. When
this commission was formed, it had bipartisan support at the time.
It was actually a Republican Chief Justice I Beverly Lake
who pushed for the formation of this commission, and it
(53:03):
was popular on both sides of the aisle. Another conservative representative,
Paul stam He stated when it was created, quote, the
one thing you won't get out of this commission is
a lot of guilty people being set free. It's just
too hard. That goes to show you their process. One
of the arguments that's happening right now, this is a
(53:23):
Republican led push in the Senate North Carolina Senate. We
should note that prosecutors have been lobbying for this basically
ever since the North Carolina Innocence incret Commission was formed
to defund it, probably because they're overturning some of their cases, right.
But the argument that's happening right now in support of
defunding it is that, well, there are other non state
(53:46):
funded organizations that are essentially doing the same thing, which
is not true. Yes, there are nonprofits that work toward,
you know, supporting people and researching potential wrongful convictions. But
the thing is is they don't have act actual power.
The North Carolina Innocen's Inquiry Commission has the power to
subpoena witnesses to order DNA testing to discover new evidence.
(54:10):
They also have access to investigation files. You know, nonprofits
don't have any of that power. If they wanted to
order a new DNA test, they would have to submit
a court order and that could just be denied. So
actually it's not the same thing at all.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
Yeah, they wouldn't have Jennifer Thompson's organization, for example, Healing Justice.
She can't say, hey, SBI analysts that I think did
a bad job. Come in, we want to talk to you.
And in the case of Greg Taylor, for example, like
bringing him in really showcased not just for those judges,
but for everyone in the room, like all of these
(54:46):
other cases that had been impacted. And a nonprofit doesn't
have the power to do that.
Speaker 3 (54:52):
So what this does is instead of having support for
this sort of independent commission, it just puts all the
power back into the DA's office.
Speaker 4 (55:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
I was reading about an attorney named Mark Rabel I
think I'm pronouncing his name correctly, and he's the director
of the Innocence and Justice Clinic at Wake Forest University,
and he just put it really in a way that
made so much sense to me, where he's advocating that
we do not cut funding to the North Carolina Innocence
Increy Commission, and he said, nobody can dispute the fact
(55:23):
that people are wrongfully convicted. We have a human system.
Humans make errors, so we need to correct them.
Speaker 3 (55:29):
Yeah. I was pretty horrified to hear that this is
at risk of being eliminated because I think it is
a really cool and important program. North Carolina was the
first in the country to create a program like this,
and you know, I was hoping that other states would
start forming them as well, because we are seeing that
it's a success. Currently, it's been voted on the Senate
(55:50):
and we're waiting to see what happens in the North
Carolina House.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
And I just can't help but wonder thinking about like
the settlements that exoneries you know, rightfully obtain when they're
extas honerated, Like, well, are people just trying to protect
themselves from having to pay those Maybe?
Speaker 4 (56:04):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (56:05):
It's a good point. So if you want to learn
more about Greg Taylor's case, there is a documentary in
Pursuit of Justice that chronicles his seventeen year search for justice,
which I enjoyed. And I also wanted to note that
Greg and Yulanda are now friends and on good term,
similar to what we heard with Jennifer and Ronald Cotton.
(56:26):
And we love the work that Healing Justice Project is doing.
You can visit them at Healing Justice Project dot org.
That's it for our episode. We'll see you next week.
If you have a story for us, we would love
to hear it. Our email is The Knife at exactly
Rightmedia dot com, or you can follow us on Instagram
at the Knife podcast or Blue Sky at the Knife podcast.
(56:49):
This has been an exactly right production. Hosted and produced
by me Hannah Smith and.
Speaker 1 (56:54):
Me Paytia Eaton. Our producers are Tom Brifogel and Alexis Amorosi.
Speaker 3 (56:58):
This episode was mixed by Tom bry Fogel.
Speaker 4 (57:00):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport.
Speaker 4 (57:05):
Artwork by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 3 (57:07):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.
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