May 23, 2022 • 29 mins
On August 28, 1997, Brian was staying overnight at his girlfriend’s house with his cousin, girlfriend, and girlfriend’s sister in West Philadelphia, PA. 45 minutes away, restaurant owner Gus Boulias was killed in his home. A detective, relying on the questionable analysis of a partial fingerprint, decided that Brian was the killer. Even though the state presented no murder weapon, no witnesses, no motive, and no connection to the victim, Brian was convicted of second-degree murder and burglary and sentenced to life in prison. Maggie speaks to Brian Parnell at SCI Coal Township in PA., Marc Howard J.D., Brian's advocate and Tamara Parnell, Brian's sister.
This episode features a portion of #156 Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science - Fingerprint Evidence with host Josh Dubin released on September 9th, 2020.
For more on the junk science of Fingerprint Analysis, click the link below:
https://lavaforgood.com/podcast/156-wrongful-conviction-junk-science-fingerprint-evidence/
To learn more and get involved, visit:
https://www.justiceforbrianparnell.com/
https://twitter.com/justice4parnell
https://www.instagram.com/justiceforbrianparnell/
https://www.facebook.com/justiceforbrianparnell
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freleng is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
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):
I have a question for you, Jason fire Away. You know,
sometimes when I talk to people after decades in prison,
twenty thirty going on forty something years, how many people
have you experienced that do have such a strong support system,
like they still have their parents, brothers, sisters, connected with
(00:20):
their children that they might have had before present. Well,
I don't know the percentage, but I can tell you this,
For the people that do, it's a literal lifeline. Just
knowing that there's people out there that love you, that
care about you, that are concerned for your well being. Um,
it can be literally the thing that saves people, and
it can be the thing that helps to free them.
(00:44):
It's like a gaping hole. It is if his family
has been conserrated along with him. In other words, we're
doing a time with him. From love of for good
is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today Brian Parnell. On August,
(01:14):
Konstantinos Boullius, also known as Gus, finished closing up his
two pizza shops in the suburbs of Philadelphia. He went
home to his wife, Daphne, and two children. Sometime later
that night, Daphne woke up to a loud bang. She
found Gus lying on the floor, shot in the back.
Daphne and her children tried to help and called nine one.
(01:35):
Gus was taken to the hospital, but by the time
he arrived it was too late. Gus Bullius was gone.
Responding officers took note of evidence at the scene, collecting
hair samples and several partial fingerprints, but after searching the house,
detectives decided, even with nothing actually taken from the home,
(01:59):
that it was robbery gone wrong. Detective Kenneth Beam ran
the prince through databases in Pennsylvania and surrounding states, but
no match turned up. Eventually, the case went cold. Four
years later, Detective Beam took the prince to the FBI
(02:19):
to run them through their national fingerprint system, and suddenly
he had a suspect, twenty nine year old Brian Parnell.
Despite having multiple alibi witnesses, Brian was arrested for murder
on September two. That was a shock. I was really
in shock, like, oh my god, you know, this is like,
(02:42):
oh man, I still feel the emotions. I mean, talking
about it right now, it's making me tear up because
I don't know if you ever been accused of something
that you know you didn't do no affiliation with and
I've been living this nightmare for going into my twenty
or a year. Brian Parnell was born in Philadelphia on
(03:11):
Valentine's Day, nineteen seventy two, to Karin and DeAndre Parnell.
Brian Parnell is a very fun, loving kind of guy.
He's a family very family orientated above all. That's how
Brian describes himself. He grew up in a large, loving family.
His father was a maleman and his mother was a
federal law enforcement officer. His parents divorced when he was little,
(03:34):
but they worked hard to maintain family harmony. And I
was blessed with very very beautiful parents, not just you know,
my biological parents, but also my stepparents. Even though my
dad and my mom went through whatever they went through,
they never reflected that on us. They made sure we
were in, you know, a part of each other's lives.
(03:55):
Because my two younger sisters they have a different mother
than I do. They made sure we all knew we
are you know each other and interact with each other.
So when I say that we were rooted in love,
I'm very rooted in love. Bryan's sister Tamera remembers this
time fondly. Bryant was always doing something. He had like dogs,
(04:19):
growing up, reptiles, frogs, m fish. He was He was
your normal child. But in being your normal child, he
was very caring and concerned. He was compassionate. He had
like a imagination that was just out of this world.
My mother brought him this red outfit and he would
put that outfit on and he would do the Michael
(04:41):
Jackson's Billy Jean and then he would do the moonwalk
or he he had that that dance and that song
down tech. You would you think he was Michael Jackson.
I mean, he just was um Or is a loving, funny, precocious,
curious kid and an adult that to this wonderful man.
(05:06):
Brian's first child, Brian Jr. Was born. When Brian was
twenty years old. I used to take him out to
the park when once River Drive and we would go
to this old big shop and body steal bread and
I would take him out there and we will see geese.
And that was like one of the most beautiful things,
just to see his mind expand at an early age.
(05:29):
You know, being around him, it changed me as a man.
Brian's daughter, Brianna, also brought some surprising changes to his life.
He would do his daughter's hair and I never knew
a man to do a little girl's hair, and he
would fix her hair and it was neat. Tam Or says,
(05:49):
Brian was a great dad, channeling the love and support
his family gave to him onto his children. My brother
was in their life every day until this happened. Right
the time Brian Jr. Brianna, and his son Cameron were born,
(06:11):
Brian was ready to have a career to support his family.
He had a dream of opening an automotive shop because
he always loved cars. He even had his own hot rod,
so he enrolled at Lincoln Technical Institute to pursue a
career in automotive mechanics. Things for the young dad and
future mechanic were going great, that is until September two.
(06:34):
Brian was at school that morning. That morning was one
of the most hands down craziest mornings of my life.
Were setting up in the in the lab. We was
inside the shop and we was getting ourselves together for
that day and Principle comes to the door. He's like,
part now, I want to see you my office real quick.
And when I went in his office, there was two
(06:54):
guys in there, and once I came in, they shut
the door, and it's like four or five cops started
walking up on the door outside the door, and they
started telling me, hey, Mr Partner, we gotta gotta matter
with you, involving a homicide. And I said what, because
I'm I've never been in that type of life, you know,
(07:16):
chilling anybody carrying guns or anything like that. I don't
get down like that. But when they turned around and
said to me, yeah, we have your DNA and we
got your fingerprints at a prime. See you joked this
guy from What's just I said, wait a minute, you
got the wrong guy. Brian denied any knowledge of the
(07:38):
crime or any connection to Gus. Brian explained how he
had only been to the town Gus lived in twice
in his life. He was cooperative with police. You know,
whatever you wanna do. I want to give my hair
and my samples up for DNA testing. I offered all
of that from the gate that approved minuses. I'm gonna
give it to you. Despite his efforts to prove his innocence,
(08:01):
Brian was arrested and charged with the murder of Gus
Bullius and to understand why we have to go back
four years to the night of the murder. Almost exactly
four years earlier, Gus Bullius arrived home after closing his
pizza shop at around two forty am. Gus, his wife,
(08:22):
woke up to the sound of voices in the hallway,
allowed bang, the thought of someone falling, footsteps running out
the house, and the screen door slamming shut. She ran
out of her room, where she found Gus lying on
the floor. She and their two children tried to help him,
but it was futile. Gus died on the way to
the hospital. Detectives Gregory Stone and Kenneth Beam were assigned
(08:47):
to the case. After inspecting the crime scene, they quickly
concluded that this was not a random attack but quote
a robbery gone wrong, although no money or property was
taken from home. At the same time, twenty miles away
from the Bullius home, about forty five minutes away by car,
(09:08):
Brian was in West Philadelphia at his girlfriend Lakisha's house
with Lakisha, her sister Jovita, and Brian's cousin Maurice. According
to Maurice, they were all spending the night. If nobody
else on this planet knows. I know that he was
with me that entire night until the next morning. Brian
(09:29):
had an alibi witness. Brian was with his girlfriend at
the time, the mother of his child. This is Mark Howard.
I'm a professor of Government in Law at Georgetown. I'm
also the director of the Prisons and Justice Initiative, and
I co teach a class informally called Making an Axonoree
with my childhood friend Marty Tankliffe, who was himself an
(09:51):
Axonoree of course, and we have our students reinvestigate possible
wrongful conviction cases and if they feel strongly about it,
to advocate for the persons in a sense and exoneration.
The Making an Exonery program created a partnership with Discovery,
who carefully reviewed Brian's case and concluded that Brian Parnell
did not kill Gus Boullius. Brian did not know the victim.
(10:14):
Brian did not know that part of town. He'd only
been there a couple of times in his entire life.
It was not an area that he frequented. He had
zero connection to the victim. He'd never been to the
pizza shops Brian had zero connection to any of that,
so then why did the police home in on Brian.
At the crime scene, Detective Stone and Beam collected DNA,
(10:35):
a sliced window screen in the dining room, hair samples,
and several partial fingerprints from the window sill, ledge, and screen,
and those fingerprints are what would later lead the police
to Brian Parnell. This episode is underwritten by a i G,
(10:59):
a leading globe insurance company. A i G is committed
to corporate social responsibility and to making a positive difference
in the lives of its employees and in the communities
where we work and live. In light of the compelling
need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of
a i g s commitment to criminal and social justice reform,
(11:20):
the ai G pro Bono Program provides free legal services
and other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. After police
cleared the murder scene, Detective Beam took the partial fingerprints
they had recovered to the Pennsylvania State Police Lab to
(11:41):
run them through the Pennsylvania Statewide APISTS, the Automated Fingerprint
Identification system. He also compared them to prints from surrounding
states New Jersey, Delaware, and d C. Each state has
to be queried individually. The night of the murder, Beam
got a hit on one person right way, but he determined,
(12:01):
after visually reviewing the prints that they did not match,
and so he immediately eliminated this person as a suspect,
and that person was never questioned, investigated, or arrested. The
lead was completely ignored. Now it's time to take a
step aside and talk about fingerprints because they're not a
(12:23):
perfect science. It's an approximation. It's humans making judgments based
on similarities to their naked eye. So keep that in mind.
This is not science, this is really more art. Fingerprints
have to be compared manually by experts. Detective Beam was
actually considered the best fingerprint guy in Chester County after
(12:44):
just a few FBI training courses in Latin print testing.
He didn't have an academic or doctorate degree in forensics,
and Beam was the sole person left to determine who
these prints belonged to. And again, if prints were partial fingerprints, okay,
so they weren't even full pringer prints, they're not good
(13:05):
material to make a strong match. Even if you do
have a full print. Fingerprinting has been more or less
debunked as junk science in the world of justice. Similar
to teeth, impressions and fiber comparisons, and fingerprints have been
accepted as evidence in courts for over one years and
people assume that it's reliable. This is Mary Moriarty, chief
(13:29):
public defender in Hennepin County, Minnesota. She's talking to Wrongful
Conviction junk Science host Josh Dubin. You are first looking
at a fragment of the print, and it is totally
within the subjectivity, the subjective discretion of a fingerprint analysis
or examiner to decide whether there is enough information on
(13:51):
that print to even go ahead and compare it. So
just think about that. It is completely subjective. The Pennsylvania
State Police search for the person who matched the partial
prince for over a year. They then concluded the person
whose prince they matched was not in their system, and
(14:12):
they registered the prince to the Unsolved Latent print database.
Now here's the thing. Brian's Prince had been in their
system at the time of the murder. He was actually
arrested in the past on an unrelated minor charge. Yet
when they searched for matching prince, Brian's did not come
(14:34):
up as a candidate or match. But despite that, Brian
was arrested for the murder. It came completely out of
nowhere because it was four years after the crime had
taken place. Detective Beam was determined to close the case.
It seems Detective Beam still had the Gus Boullius murder
on his mind. At some point, four years after the crime,
(14:58):
at a conference in Miami with the FBI, the detective
brings these prints and then asked the FBI to look
at them in a database, and it comes up potentially
being similar to twenty four people. One of those people
is Brian Parnell. Brian's prince eventually popped up four years
(15:20):
later as a potential match among dozens of others when
the FBI random through their National Integrated Automated Identification System
i APHIST database. But we're talking about a very weak,
partial fingerprint that one person who was hell bent on
solving this crime, who had a tremendous amount of pressure
on him to find somebody, decided this is the guy,
(15:43):
and Detective Beam just fixates on Brian Parnell from that
point forward, doesn't even look at the other twenty three
despite testing the hair and DNA found at the scene
of the crime, neither of which showed up as a
match for Brian. He was arrested, and I think when
he found Brian it seemed venient, even though obviously Brian
had no motive, didn't know the victim, didn't really go
(16:05):
in that area, but he was close enough. I think
the fact that Brian's African American likely played a role.
The fact that Brian had a previous criminal record, all
the very minor one. I want to emphasize, no violent crimes,
nothing whatsoever, just some a couple minor offenses, and most
of them have been dismissed. But I think that was
(16:26):
convenient for the detective to say, you know what, let's
just close the case. Let's get this guy. I'm going
to declare the match. He's gonna get convicted and be
done with it. The prosecutor at trial was First Assistant
District Attorney Patrick Carmody. At trial, the fact that the
(16:47):
DNA and hair samples did not match Brian was a
hurdle for him. So they suddenly developed with this as
very common as you know in wrongful conviction cases. Oh well,
then there must have been a second perpetrator, although there
was no effort to ever find the second perpetrator. The
prosecution had no murder weapon, no witnesses, no motive, and
(17:08):
no connection between Brian and Gus Boullius. Brian was also
forty minutes away. The partial fingerprint was the only evidence
used against Brian. In fact, during police interviews with Gus's friends, family,
and colleagues, they gave the names of multiple people who
actually could have committed the crime. The victim's wife thought
(17:29):
that the person knew him and came through the front door.
There were a lot of people with motive, with opportunity,
people who had talked about killing the victim, people who
had grudges against the victim, people who thought the victim
has stolen money from them. In fact, according to police
reports and interviews, on the day before his murder, Gus
told his business partner that he had become aware that
a couple of his employees were discussing breaking into his
(17:52):
home to rob him. At the time of the murder,
there was nearly fifty thousand dollars in cash hidden in
the rafters of Gus' home office in his basement, and
his colleagues knew about that money and the lead detective
kind of beam for some reason, was fixated on two
partial fingerprints on the screen of a window coming into
(18:16):
the house and decided that only the person who matched
those fingerprints would have committed the crime, and therefore he
rejected all these people who were obvious suspects and didn't
investigate them because he decided their fingerprints didn't match. And
Prosecutor Carmody ran with this. He was determined to get
(18:37):
a conviction after all this time, which allegedly included bribing
Brian's alibi witnesses. Here's Brian's ex girlfriend, Lakeisha, one of
the people he was with that night, talking to someone
from Brian's team. The d A or whoever he wasn't
asked me all the questions, and the police officers were
bullying me. Basically, um, they told me that they would
(18:58):
offer me start eight thousand dollars to say that Brian
did it, house and witness protection, and then I declined,
and then they basically told me if I didn't cooperate
and do what they wanted to do, they would take
away my children. Now you might be wondering what about
Brian's defense and alibi. Brian's parents were lucky enough to
(19:20):
be able to hire private attorneys. His defense team were
lawyers Ronald Joseph Tarik, Kareem al Shabaz, and Gerald Aston,
and they came highly recommended to Brian by another incarcerated person.
But quickly Brian realized they were not going to help
him to the extent that he needed. And I said,
I want you to talk to my family, my entire family,
(19:42):
And they didn't do none of that. He said, I
called nobody answered. Defense said, that's not true, because they
call you. And they tried to say, oh, I didn't
get the call from your family. That's not true. They
told Brian they were dropping his alibi defense and that
meant both alibis, because Brian also had a physical inability
(20:04):
to commit this murder the way the police and prosecution
said it went down. Police insisted the killer came through
the window, but Brian he was on crutches at the
time of the murder, at least a week before the incident,
and after the incident. Here's Mark again, and there's no
way he would have been able to climb through a
window when he was on crutches and couldn't walk. I mean,
(20:28):
it just defies credulity. But his defense did not bring
up his injury or call his alibi witnesses. They did
not question the validity of the fingerprints or call their
own experts, and alternate suspects were also not presented. So
I had to ask Brian, how did that feel? It hurts,
(20:48):
And to be real with you, I said to myself,
they're railroading. This is a railroad job, and it's a
sloppy railroad job. Is blatant. I'm sorry, it's emotional. I'm
sorry if my voice is breaking up, but it hurts.
In First District Attorney Carmendies closing statement, he said, quote,
(21:09):
I want to thank Mr Parnell for not wearing gloves
that day. He gave us the evidence. The defense can't
explain away the fingerprints, bottom line, and that's going to
convict them, and it did. The fingerprints are what led
to Brian being convicted of very weak partial fingerprint. So
imagine a jury of well intentioned people who are believing
(21:32):
law enforcement, believing the evidence coming forward in trial hearing
it's a match that is completely fictitious. It's just outrageous,
and the trial was an absolute farce. We're talking a
murder trial with a person getting a life sentence, and
it took place in under two days, and that includes
the full trial and the jury deliberations. After only two
(21:57):
hours of deliberation, Brian was convicted of second degree murder
and burglary on July fifteen, two. He was sentenced to
life in prison without parole. M h. First of all,
it was devastation to the entire family. Here's Brian's sister
(22:20):
Tamera again. It is if his family has been incarcerated
along with him. In other words, we didn't do the crime,
but we're doing the time with him. It's like a
gaping hole. You know, the person still exists, but you
can't have regular contact or interaction with them that you
normally would have on a day to day basis. It's
(22:42):
horrible because you have to try to function as a
family unit as if they're there, but they're not there.
And especially when you know they've not done something, or
they've been incarcerated for something they did not do, that
even hurts even more. And she says Brian's incarceration deeply
(23:02):
affected his children, who were so young at the time
they had a hard time grasping in the beginning that
he was away in jail with bars and guards, in
a in a place an institution where we don't have
any control over him coming out because they didn't understand.
(23:24):
They wanted him to come with them when we would
go visit at the prison. They wanted him to play
with him. They're like, parents can't play with their children
in the in the prison system, or they have a
designated area for the playroom for children, but the incarcerated
people can't go in that room. And it's hard for
(23:45):
a five year old or an eight year old to
understand that. It was also hard for their mother to
understand that. My mom in the beginning, she engulfed herself
with this case, Like her dining room table used to
stay full of his files and Affi David's the whole everything.
(24:06):
She had crime scene pictures, everything, and she really studied
the case a lot more than any family member. Yeah,
it's it's like, how do you how do you help
parent wrap their mind or adjust to the fact that
there's child has been incarcerated and wrongfully let alone, but
(24:28):
for twenty one years you can't. But it also personally
hurt Brian's mom because she was law enforcement and she
taught her kids to cooperate and respect the law. So
that's where it becomes a double betrayal for my mom
because she's like my children. I raised him. I raised them,
(24:49):
and I raised him to be truthful and honest and
to cooperate with law enforcement. How how do you take
in incarcerated or make someone guilty of some think and
fix things to make it like it was they did
the crime. So, yeah, that hurts. It's a dagger. I
actually looked at law enforcement officers through the eye of
(25:13):
my mother, and when I say, I used to have
that belief that certain costs would do above and beyond.
Don't get me wrong, but there were a lot of
good ones out there because of my mother, and that
right there is where I tried to keep it. I
tried to keep the still in that realm, because, believe
it or not, there are a lot of police officers
(25:36):
that really means and do good. You have a lot
of them. While in prison, Brian has enjoyed studying law
and assisting others who are incarcerated with legal work. He's
even helped some corrections officers with the law when they
were helping their family members. Brian says when he gets
(25:56):
out he wants to advocate for the wrongfully accused and
helped change the laws that results in mass incarceration. He
plans to call his organization home Front. Me and my
son came up with My oldest son came up with
the concept of calling it the home Front to help
family members in my situation. Geared tours parents, siblings, and
(26:19):
children most to teach them how to advocate for their
family members. That's incarcerating, But at fifty years old, above all,
Brian works every day to prove his innocence so he
can get out and be with his growing family. I
have a whole bunch of beautiful nieces and nephews, and
(26:40):
I even have now two granddaughters and I have one
on the way. Wow, how old your granddaughters? The oldest
is five and the young and the youngest is too.
After being incarcerated for so long, Brian says, what he's
gone through is a nightmare. I wouldn't wish this one nobody, nobody,
(27:03):
it's it's a nightmare to be accused of killing them. Man.
I walked through these walls of this institution day in
and day out with the conscience clear because I know
I never killed nobody a day in my Life. Brian
(27:24):
has filed multiple appeals and they've all been denied. As
of two thousand five, one of Brian's attorneys, Ronald Joseph,
was placed on administrative suspension and has not practiced law
in Pennsylvania since. Brian is also represented by the Pennsylvania
Innocence Project, which is seeking additional testing of evidence. This
(27:45):
could result in a DNA profile that could then be
uploaded to the national database, and that could be the
very thing that finds who actually kills Gus Bullius. For
more information on the case, go to Justice for Brian
Parnell dot com and follow at Justice for Brian Parnell
(28:07):
on Twitter. Next week on Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling,
Davonia Inman and Life after Exoneration, it's a lot more
to it than just being free, because the prison part
(28:27):
it was hard, but it's not harder than being thrown
back into a big old ocean and you don't know
what's in it or we'st there no more. Thank you
for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support
your local innocence organizations and go to the links in
(28:50):
our bio to see how you can help. I'd like
to thank our executive producers Jason Flam and Kevin Wortis,
as well as senior producer Annie Chelsea, researcher Lila row Robinson,
story editor Sonya Paul, with additional production by Jeff Klaiburne
and Connor Hall. Special thanks go to Mark Howard and
then making an egonary program. The music in this production
(29:12):
is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be
sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on
Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at Wrongful Conviction,
as well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms,
you can also follow me on both Instagram and Twitter
at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a
(29:35):
production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal
Company Number one
I have a question for you, Jason fire Away. You know,
sometimes when I talk to people after decades in prison,
twenty thirty going on forty something years, how many people
have you experienced that do have such a strong support system,
like they still have their parents, brothers, sisters, connected with
(00:20):
their children that they might have had before present. Well,
I don't know the percentage, but I can tell you this,
For the people that do, it's a literal lifeline. Just
knowing that there's people out there that love you, that
care about you, that are concerned for your well being. Um,
it can be literally the thing that saves people, and
it can be the thing that helps to free them.
(00:44):
It's like a gaping hole. It is if his family
has been conserrated along with him. In other words, we're
doing a time with him. From love of for good
is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today Brian Parnell. On August,
(01:14):
Konstantinos Boullius, also known as Gus, finished closing up his
two pizza shops in the suburbs of Philadelphia. He went
home to his wife, Daphne, and two children. Sometime later
that night, Daphne woke up to a loud bang. She
found Gus lying on the floor, shot in the back.
Daphne and her children tried to help and called nine one.
(01:35):
Gus was taken to the hospital, but by the time
he arrived it was too late. Gus Bullius was gone.
Responding officers took note of evidence at the scene, collecting
hair samples and several partial fingerprints, but after searching the house,
detectives decided, even with nothing actually taken from the home,
(01:59):
that it was robbery gone wrong. Detective Kenneth Beam ran
the prince through databases in Pennsylvania and surrounding states, but
no match turned up. Eventually, the case went cold. Four
years later, Detective Beam took the prince to the FBI
(02:19):
to run them through their national fingerprint system, and suddenly
he had a suspect, twenty nine year old Brian Parnell.
Despite having multiple alibi witnesses, Brian was arrested for murder
on September two. That was a shock. I was really
in shock, like, oh my god, you know, this is like,
(02:42):
oh man, I still feel the emotions. I mean, talking
about it right now, it's making me tear up because
I don't know if you ever been accused of something
that you know you didn't do no affiliation with and
I've been living this nightmare for going into my twenty
or a year. Brian Parnell was born in Philadelphia on
(03:11):
Valentine's Day, nineteen seventy two, to Karin and DeAndre Parnell.
Brian Parnell is a very fun, loving kind of guy.
He's a family very family orientated above all. That's how
Brian describes himself. He grew up in a large, loving family.
His father was a maleman and his mother was a
federal law enforcement officer. His parents divorced when he was little,
(03:34):
but they worked hard to maintain family harmony. And I
was blessed with very very beautiful parents, not just you know,
my biological parents, but also my stepparents. Even though my
dad and my mom went through whatever they went through,
they never reflected that on us. They made sure we
were in, you know, a part of each other's lives.
(03:55):
Because my two younger sisters they have a different mother
than I do. They made sure we all knew we
are you know each other and interact with each other.
So when I say that we were rooted in love,
I'm very rooted in love. Bryan's sister Tamera remembers this
time fondly. Bryant was always doing something. He had like dogs,
(04:19):
growing up, reptiles, frogs, m fish. He was He was
your normal child. But in being your normal child, he
was very caring and concerned. He was compassionate. He had
like a imagination that was just out of this world.
My mother brought him this red outfit and he would
put that outfit on and he would do the Michael
(04:41):
Jackson's Billy Jean and then he would do the moonwalk
or he he had that that dance and that song
down tech. You would you think he was Michael Jackson.
I mean, he just was um Or is a loving, funny, precocious,
curious kid and an adult that to this wonderful man.
(05:06):
Brian's first child, Brian Jr. Was born. When Brian was
twenty years old. I used to take him out to
the park when once River Drive and we would go
to this old big shop and body steal bread and
I would take him out there and we will see geese.
And that was like one of the most beautiful things,
just to see his mind expand at an early age.
(05:29):
You know, being around him, it changed me as a man.
Brian's daughter, Brianna, also brought some surprising changes to his life.
He would do his daughter's hair and I never knew
a man to do a little girl's hair, and he
would fix her hair and it was neat. Tam Or says,
(05:49):
Brian was a great dad, channeling the love and support
his family gave to him onto his children. My brother
was in their life every day until this happened. Right
the time Brian Jr. Brianna, and his son Cameron were born,
(06:11):
Brian was ready to have a career to support his family.
He had a dream of opening an automotive shop because
he always loved cars. He even had his own hot rod,
so he enrolled at Lincoln Technical Institute to pursue a
career in automotive mechanics. Things for the young dad and
future mechanic were going great, that is until September two.
(06:34):
Brian was at school that morning. That morning was one
of the most hands down craziest mornings of my life.
Were setting up in the in the lab. We was
inside the shop and we was getting ourselves together for
that day and Principle comes to the door. He's like,
part now, I want to see you my office real quick.
And when I went in his office, there was two
(06:54):
guys in there, and once I came in, they shut
the door, and it's like four or five cops started
walking up on the door outside the door, and they
started telling me, hey, Mr Partner, we gotta gotta matter
with you, involving a homicide. And I said what, because
I'm I've never been in that type of life, you know,
(07:16):
chilling anybody carrying guns or anything like that. I don't
get down like that. But when they turned around and
said to me, yeah, we have your DNA and we
got your fingerprints at a prime. See you joked this
guy from What's just I said, wait a minute, you
got the wrong guy. Brian denied any knowledge of the
(07:38):
crime or any connection to Gus. Brian explained how he
had only been to the town Gus lived in twice
in his life. He was cooperative with police. You know,
whatever you wanna do. I want to give my hair
and my samples up for DNA testing. I offered all
of that from the gate that approved minuses. I'm gonna
give it to you. Despite his efforts to prove his innocence,
(08:01):
Brian was arrested and charged with the murder of Gus
Bullius and to understand why we have to go back
four years to the night of the murder. Almost exactly
four years earlier, Gus Bullius arrived home after closing his
pizza shop at around two forty am. Gus, his wife,
(08:22):
woke up to the sound of voices in the hallway,
allowed bang, the thought of someone falling, footsteps running out
the house, and the screen door slamming shut. She ran
out of her room, where she found Gus lying on
the floor. She and their two children tried to help him,
but it was futile. Gus died on the way to
the hospital. Detectives Gregory Stone and Kenneth Beam were assigned
(08:47):
to the case. After inspecting the crime scene, they quickly
concluded that this was not a random attack but quote
a robbery gone wrong, although no money or property was
taken from home. At the same time, twenty miles away
from the Bullius home, about forty five minutes away by car,
(09:08):
Brian was in West Philadelphia at his girlfriend Lakisha's house
with Lakisha, her sister Jovita, and Brian's cousin Maurice. According
to Maurice, they were all spending the night. If nobody
else on this planet knows. I know that he was
with me that entire night until the next morning. Brian
(09:29):
had an alibi witness. Brian was with his girlfriend at
the time, the mother of his child. This is Mark Howard.
I'm a professor of Government in Law at Georgetown. I'm
also the director of the Prisons and Justice Initiative, and
I co teach a class informally called Making an Axonoree
with my childhood friend Marty Tankliffe, who was himself an
(09:51):
Axonoree of course, and we have our students reinvestigate possible
wrongful conviction cases and if they feel strongly about it,
to advocate for the persons in a sense and exoneration.
The Making an Exonery program created a partnership with Discovery,
who carefully reviewed Brian's case and concluded that Brian Parnell
did not kill Gus Boullius. Brian did not know the victim.
(10:14):
Brian did not know that part of town. He'd only
been there a couple of times in his entire life.
It was not an area that he frequented. He had
zero connection to the victim. He'd never been to the
pizza shops Brian had zero connection to any of that,
so then why did the police home in on Brian.
At the crime scene, Detective Stone and Beam collected DNA,
(10:35):
a sliced window screen in the dining room, hair samples,
and several partial fingerprints from the window sill, ledge, and screen,
and those fingerprints are what would later lead the police
to Brian Parnell. This episode is underwritten by a i G,
(10:59):
a leading globe insurance company. A i G is committed
to corporate social responsibility and to making a positive difference
in the lives of its employees and in the communities
where we work and live. In light of the compelling
need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of
a i g s commitment to criminal and social justice reform,
(11:20):
the ai G pro Bono Program provides free legal services
and other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. After police
cleared the murder scene, Detective Beam took the partial fingerprints
they had recovered to the Pennsylvania State Police Lab to
(11:41):
run them through the Pennsylvania Statewide APISTS, the Automated Fingerprint
Identification system. He also compared them to prints from surrounding
states New Jersey, Delaware, and d C. Each state has
to be queried individually. The night of the murder, Beam
got a hit on one person right way, but he determined,
(12:01):
after visually reviewing the prints that they did not match,
and so he immediately eliminated this person as a suspect,
and that person was never questioned, investigated, or arrested. The
lead was completely ignored. Now it's time to take a
step aside and talk about fingerprints because they're not a
(12:23):
perfect science. It's an approximation. It's humans making judgments based
on similarities to their naked eye. So keep that in mind.
This is not science, this is really more art. Fingerprints
have to be compared manually by experts. Detective Beam was
actually considered the best fingerprint guy in Chester County after
(12:44):
just a few FBI training courses in Latin print testing.
He didn't have an academic or doctorate degree in forensics,
and Beam was the sole person left to determine who
these prints belonged to. And again, if prints were partial fingerprints, okay,
so they weren't even full pringer prints, they're not good
(13:05):
material to make a strong match. Even if you do
have a full print. Fingerprinting has been more or less
debunked as junk science in the world of justice. Similar
to teeth, impressions and fiber comparisons, and fingerprints have been
accepted as evidence in courts for over one years and
people assume that it's reliable. This is Mary Moriarty, chief
(13:29):
public defender in Hennepin County, Minnesota. She's talking to Wrongful
Conviction junk Science host Josh Dubin. You are first looking
at a fragment of the print, and it is totally
within the subjectivity, the subjective discretion of a fingerprint analysis
or examiner to decide whether there is enough information on
(13:51):
that print to even go ahead and compare it. So
just think about that. It is completely subjective. The Pennsylvania
State Police search for the person who matched the partial
prince for over a year. They then concluded the person
whose prince they matched was not in their system, and
(14:12):
they registered the prince to the Unsolved Latent print database.
Now here's the thing. Brian's Prince had been in their
system at the time of the murder. He was actually
arrested in the past on an unrelated minor charge. Yet
when they searched for matching prince, Brian's did not come
(14:34):
up as a candidate or match. But despite that, Brian
was arrested for the murder. It came completely out of
nowhere because it was four years after the crime had
taken place. Detective Beam was determined to close the case.
It seems Detective Beam still had the Gus Boullius murder
on his mind. At some point, four years after the crime,
(14:58):
at a conference in Miami with the FBI, the detective
brings these prints and then asked the FBI to look
at them in a database, and it comes up potentially
being similar to twenty four people. One of those people
is Brian Parnell. Brian's prince eventually popped up four years
(15:20):
later as a potential match among dozens of others when
the FBI random through their National Integrated Automated Identification System
i APHIST database. But we're talking about a very weak,
partial fingerprint that one person who was hell bent on
solving this crime, who had a tremendous amount of pressure
on him to find somebody, decided this is the guy,
(15:43):
and Detective Beam just fixates on Brian Parnell from that
point forward, doesn't even look at the other twenty three
despite testing the hair and DNA found at the scene
of the crime, neither of which showed up as a
match for Brian. He was arrested, and I think when
he found Brian it seemed venient, even though obviously Brian
had no motive, didn't know the victim, didn't really go
(16:05):
in that area, but he was close enough. I think
the fact that Brian's African American likely played a role.
The fact that Brian had a previous criminal record, all
the very minor one. I want to emphasize, no violent crimes,
nothing whatsoever, just some a couple minor offenses, and most
of them have been dismissed. But I think that was
(16:26):
convenient for the detective to say, you know what, let's
just close the case. Let's get this guy. I'm going
to declare the match. He's gonna get convicted and be
done with it. The prosecutor at trial was First Assistant
District Attorney Patrick Carmody. At trial, the fact that the
(16:47):
DNA and hair samples did not match Brian was a
hurdle for him. So they suddenly developed with this as
very common as you know in wrongful conviction cases. Oh well,
then there must have been a second perpetrator, although there
was no effort to ever find the second perpetrator. The
prosecution had no murder weapon, no witnesses, no motive, and
(17:08):
no connection between Brian and Gus Boullius. Brian was also
forty minutes away. The partial fingerprint was the only evidence
used against Brian. In fact, during police interviews with Gus's friends, family,
and colleagues, they gave the names of multiple people who
actually could have committed the crime. The victim's wife thought
(17:29):
that the person knew him and came through the front door.
There were a lot of people with motive, with opportunity,
people who had talked about killing the victim, people who
had grudges against the victim, people who thought the victim
has stolen money from them. In fact, according to police
reports and interviews, on the day before his murder, Gus
told his business partner that he had become aware that
a couple of his employees were discussing breaking into his
(17:52):
home to rob him. At the time of the murder,
there was nearly fifty thousand dollars in cash hidden in
the rafters of Gus' home office in his basement, and
his colleagues knew about that money and the lead detective
kind of beam for some reason, was fixated on two
partial fingerprints on the screen of a window coming into
(18:16):
the house and decided that only the person who matched
those fingerprints would have committed the crime, and therefore he
rejected all these people who were obvious suspects and didn't
investigate them because he decided their fingerprints didn't match. And
Prosecutor Carmody ran with this. He was determined to get
(18:37):
a conviction after all this time, which allegedly included bribing
Brian's alibi witnesses. Here's Brian's ex girlfriend, Lakeisha, one of
the people he was with that night, talking to someone
from Brian's team. The d A or whoever he wasn't
asked me all the questions, and the police officers were
bullying me. Basically, um, they told me that they would
(18:58):
offer me start eight thousand dollars to say that Brian
did it, house and witness protection, and then I declined,
and then they basically told me if I didn't cooperate
and do what they wanted to do, they would take
away my children. Now you might be wondering what about
Brian's defense and alibi. Brian's parents were lucky enough to
(19:20):
be able to hire private attorneys. His defense team were
lawyers Ronald Joseph Tarik, Kareem al Shabaz, and Gerald Aston,
and they came highly recommended to Brian by another incarcerated person.
But quickly Brian realized they were not going to help
him to the extent that he needed. And I said,
I want you to talk to my family, my entire family,
(19:42):
And they didn't do none of that. He said, I
called nobody answered. Defense said, that's not true, because they
call you. And they tried to say, oh, I didn't
get the call from your family. That's not true. They
told Brian they were dropping his alibi defense and that
meant both alibis, because Brian also had a physical inability
(20:04):
to commit this murder the way the police and prosecution
said it went down. Police insisted the killer came through
the window, but Brian he was on crutches at the
time of the murder, at least a week before the incident,
and after the incident. Here's Mark again, and there's no
way he would have been able to climb through a
window when he was on crutches and couldn't walk. I mean,
(20:28):
it just defies credulity. But his defense did not bring
up his injury or call his alibi witnesses. They did
not question the validity of the fingerprints or call their
own experts, and alternate suspects were also not presented. So
I had to ask Brian, how did that feel? It hurts,
(20:48):
And to be real with you, I said to myself,
they're railroading. This is a railroad job, and it's a
sloppy railroad job. Is blatant. I'm sorry, it's emotional. I'm
sorry if my voice is breaking up, but it hurts.
In First District Attorney Carmendies closing statement, he said, quote,
(21:09):
I want to thank Mr Parnell for not wearing gloves
that day. He gave us the evidence. The defense can't
explain away the fingerprints, bottom line, and that's going to
convict them, and it did. The fingerprints are what led
to Brian being convicted of very weak partial fingerprint. So
imagine a jury of well intentioned people who are believing
(21:32):
law enforcement, believing the evidence coming forward in trial hearing
it's a match that is completely fictitious. It's just outrageous,
and the trial was an absolute farce. We're talking a
murder trial with a person getting a life sentence, and
it took place in under two days, and that includes
the full trial and the jury deliberations. After only two
(21:57):
hours of deliberation, Brian was convicted of second degree murder
and burglary on July fifteen, two. He was sentenced to
life in prison without parole. M h. First of all,
it was devastation to the entire family. Here's Brian's sister
(22:20):
Tamera again. It is if his family has been incarcerated
along with him. In other words, we didn't do the crime,
but we're doing the time with him. It's like a
gaping hole. You know, the person still exists, but you
can't have regular contact or interaction with them that you
normally would have on a day to day basis. It's
(22:42):
horrible because you have to try to function as a
family unit as if they're there, but they're not there.
And especially when you know they've not done something, or
they've been incarcerated for something they did not do, that
even hurts even more. And she says Brian's incarceration deeply
(23:02):
affected his children, who were so young at the time
they had a hard time grasping in the beginning that
he was away in jail with bars and guards, in
a in a place an institution where we don't have
any control over him coming out because they didn't understand.
(23:24):
They wanted him to come with them when we would
go visit at the prison. They wanted him to play
with him. They're like, parents can't play with their children
in the in the prison system, or they have a
designated area for the playroom for children, but the incarcerated
people can't go in that room. And it's hard for
(23:45):
a five year old or an eight year old to
understand that. It was also hard for their mother to
understand that. My mom in the beginning, she engulfed herself
with this case, Like her dining room table used to
stay full of his files and Affi David's the whole everything.
(24:06):
She had crime scene pictures, everything, and she really studied
the case a lot more than any family member. Yeah,
it's it's like, how do you how do you help
parent wrap their mind or adjust to the fact that
there's child has been incarcerated and wrongfully let alone, but
(24:28):
for twenty one years you can't. But it also personally
hurt Brian's mom because she was law enforcement and she
taught her kids to cooperate and respect the law. So
that's where it becomes a double betrayal for my mom
because she's like my children. I raised him. I raised them,
(24:49):
and I raised him to be truthful and honest and
to cooperate with law enforcement. How how do you take
in incarcerated or make someone guilty of some think and
fix things to make it like it was they did
the crime. So, yeah, that hurts. It's a dagger. I
actually looked at law enforcement officers through the eye of
(25:13):
my mother, and when I say, I used to have
that belief that certain costs would do above and beyond.
Don't get me wrong, but there were a lot of
good ones out there because of my mother, and that
right there is where I tried to keep it. I
tried to keep the still in that realm, because, believe
it or not, there are a lot of police officers
(25:36):
that really means and do good. You have a lot
of them. While in prison, Brian has enjoyed studying law
and assisting others who are incarcerated with legal work. He's
even helped some corrections officers with the law when they
were helping their family members. Brian says when he gets
(25:56):
out he wants to advocate for the wrongfully accused and
helped change the laws that results in mass incarceration. He
plans to call his organization home Front. Me and my
son came up with My oldest son came up with
the concept of calling it the home Front to help
family members in my situation. Geared tours parents, siblings, and
(26:19):
children most to teach them how to advocate for their
family members. That's incarcerating, But at fifty years old, above all,
Brian works every day to prove his innocence so he
can get out and be with his growing family. I
have a whole bunch of beautiful nieces and nephews, and
(26:40):
I even have now two granddaughters and I have one
on the way. Wow, how old your granddaughters? The oldest
is five and the young and the youngest is too.
After being incarcerated for so long, Brian says, what he's
gone through is a nightmare. I wouldn't wish this one nobody, nobody,
(27:03):
it's it's a nightmare to be accused of killing them. Man.
I walked through these walls of this institution day in
and day out with the conscience clear because I know
I never killed nobody a day in my Life. Brian
(27:24):
has filed multiple appeals and they've all been denied. As
of two thousand five, one of Brian's attorneys, Ronald Joseph,
was placed on administrative suspension and has not practiced law
in Pennsylvania since. Brian is also represented by the Pennsylvania
Innocence Project, which is seeking additional testing of evidence. This
(27:45):
could result in a DNA profile that could then be
uploaded to the national database, and that could be the
very thing that finds who actually kills Gus Bullius. For
more information on the case, go to Justice for Brian
Parnell dot com and follow at Justice for Brian Parnell
(28:07):
on Twitter. Next week on Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling,
Davonia Inman and Life after Exoneration, it's a lot more
to it than just being free, because the prison part
(28:27):
it was hard, but it's not harder than being thrown
back into a big old ocean and you don't know
what's in it or we'st there no more. Thank you
for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support
your local innocence organizations and go to the links in
(28:50):
our bio to see how you can help. I'd like
to thank our executive producers Jason Flam and Kevin Wortis,
as well as senior producer Annie Chelsea, researcher Lila row Robinson,
story editor Sonya Paul, with additional production by Jeff Klaiburne
and Connor Hall. Special thanks go to Mark Howard and
then making an egonary program. The music in this production
(29:12):
is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be
sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on
Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at Wrongful Conviction,
as well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms,
you can also follow me on both Instagram and Twitter
at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a
(29:35):
production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal
Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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