May 15, 2023 • 31 mins
So their theory is that a wandering necrophiliac comes across the body and defiles it?
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin tell the story of how five Chicago teens were wrongly convicted of the rape and murder of their classmate - and how prosecutors tried to explain away the DNA that proved them innocent. This case happened during the early 1990s, when the media was saturated with misleading stories about youth of color committing violent crimes in groups. This "superpredator" narrative drove the wrongful prosecution of the so-called Central Park Five “wolfpack” -- but it didn’t stop there.
We are releasing this updated episode to share the news that, in 2021, Illinois passed a law banning police from lying to children during interrogations. If this law had been in place back in 1991, the Dixmoor 5 would never have been wrongfully convicted.
To learn more and get involved, visit: https://www.centeronwrongfulconvictions.org/
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions 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 (00:04):
Hey guys, it's Laura today. I have some pretty great
news to share with you. Back in season one of
False Confessions, Steve and I brought you the story of
the Dix Moore Five, a group of teenage boys who
were interrogated for hours without lawyers or parents present. One
by one, they were each implicated in the crime and
ended up spending about twenty years in prison. Their confessions
(00:28):
were in the Forum of Science Statements. There was no
recording of their interrogations, but one of the reasons they
confessed was because the police lied to them. This is
common in police interrogations and it's something we've seen over
and over on the show. Police will falsely promise leniency
in order to get a confession, or they'll lie that
they have evidence they don't really have. This is a
(00:50):
horrible practice and it's one that's clearly not working to
get real criminals off the streets. Using lies and deceptive
interrogation tactics is a huge risk factor for false confessions,
and as we know, false confessions are one of the
leading causes of wrongful convictions. They occur in about thirty
percent of cases that have been overturned by DNA evidence.
(01:11):
It's just plain wrong and it needs to end. But
here's the good news. In an incredible step towards justice,
Illinois became the first state in United States history to
adopt a law in twenty twenty one that bans police
from lying to children during interrogations. I cannot tell you
how huge this is. If this law had been in
(01:32):
place back in nineteen ninety one, the Dixmore five would
never have gone to prison and had twenty years of
their lives stolen a way. This is a reform that
was sorely needed, especially here in Illinois, the false confession
capital of the country. In our state alone, there have
been over one hundred wrongful convictions based on false confessions.
I am so proud to be part of this work
(01:54):
and that the cases I helped defend are themselves helping
to pass new laws, creating a few with fewer wrongful convictions.
But we can't stop here. This kind of law should
exist in every state, and it should apply to everyone,
not just kids. We now have the data and the
experience to know that when police lie to a suspect
(02:15):
during an investigation, that does more harm than good. There
are much better ways to solve crimes we need all
interrogations to be videotaped, and we need better protections for
everybody who winds up inside that room. It's only with
reforms like these that we can live up to one
of the founding principles of our justice system. Innocent until
(02:35):
proven guilty, Welcome to wrongful conviction, false confessions. I'm Laura
and I writer.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
And I'm Steve Drusen.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Today we're going to tell you about a case out
of Chicago, the story of a violent and tragic crime
that took the life of a young girl. But there's
a larger reason why we want to talk about this
case because of what it also took from not one,
but five innocent teenage boys and from their families and communities.
This case happened during what we now call the super
(03:10):
Predator era the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. The news
media was saturated with stories of urban crime, drugs and gangs,
and in particular, sensationalized stories about black and brown youth
committing violent crimes in groups. This narrative is often associated
with New York City. It drove the wrongful prosecution of
(03:31):
the so called Central Park five wolf Pack, but it
didn't stop there. Today, we're going to tell you about
a group of teenage boys whose false confessions transformed them
into Chicago's own wolf pack. They're known as the Dixmore Five.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Now Chicago may be called the second city comes to
false confessions. We don't take a back seat to anybody,
not New York or any other jurisdiction for that matter.
We're home to more false confessions than any other city
in the United States. We're home to more juvenile false confessions.
And we're also the home of more cases in which
(04:17):
there are multiple false confessions. And over the years, the
Center on Wrongful Convictions has obtained exonerations in many of
these cases, all of which were from African American teenagers
in the Chicago area.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Marquette Park four, Uptown seven, Englewood four, Dixmore five. These
numbers start to add up, and the thing is each
one of these cases involves innocent African American teenagers in
groups confessing to crimes they didn't commit.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Of course, the most famous case like this was New
York's Central Park five case. In April of nineteen eighty nine,
five teenage boys were charged with the sexual assault and
the tempted murder of a female jogger in New York's
Central Park. The boys falsely confessed to beating this woman
(05:08):
within an inch of her life and leaving her in
the woods to die. The Central Park five confessions were
driven by race Wolfpax. Wilding was a whole new language
to describe groups of African American and Latino teenagers, and
it created a level of fear in New York City
(05:30):
and around the country that I had never seen before.
So when we began to look at the Dixmore case,
the case of the Central Park five was ringing in
my years.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
It was November of nineteen ninety one and fourteen year
old Kateresa Matthews was in the eighth grade. She lived
with her mom and Dix Moore, a suburb on the
South side of Chicago, surrounded by a tight knit extended
family and community. Every day after school, Kateresa followed the
same routine. She'd walk to her great grandmother's house, where
she'd do her homework, tuck on the phone, and do
(06:05):
whatever fourteen year old girls do. After school, she was
waiting until her mom came home from work to go
back to her own house. Kateresa followed this routine religiously
until November nineteenth, nineteen ninety one, when she doesn't show
up at her great grandmother's house after school. Her family panics.
They call the police and a search begins, but for
(06:27):
three weeks there's no sign of Kateresa until December eighth,
nineteen ninety one. That's when Kateresa's body is found lying
in a wooded field next to the Interstate Highway that
runs through Dixmore. She's on her back, partially undressed, with
her pants draped across her lower body. On her chest
is a spent casing from a twenty five caliber bullet.
(06:50):
She's been shot once in the mouth. Even though Kateres
had been missing for three weeks, the medical examiner concludes
that she's been killed recently, right around the time her
body's found. There are several reasons for this. For one thing,
rigor mortis is present when she's found that usually disappears
about twenty four to forty eight hours after death. Her
(07:11):
body is also still bleeding when she's discovered, which you
wouldn't expect if she'd been killed much earlier. And also
when a body's been lying outside for a long time,
there are usually signs like animal or insect bites. There's
nothing like that here. And the medical examiner finds something
else too, semen on Kateresa's body. She's been raped.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
This was an awful crime.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
It's the worst. I mean, it's every parent's nightmare to
have this happen to their child.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
You know, when you think of a crime like this,
you don't think of it as something that teenagers would do. Typically,
teenage crimes are impulsive crimes. There's not a lot of
planning or premeditation. They happen in the spur of the moment.
But this crime clearly required some forethought.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
For eleven long months, the investigation into Kateresa's death goes
nowhere until fall nineteen ninety two, when a teenage boy
tells police that he saw Kateresa getting into a car
with some friends around the time of her disappearance. Police
decided to question those friends, starting with Robert Vel on
October twenty ninth, nineteen ninety two. Now, Robert's fourteen years old,
(08:18):
but he has pretty severe intellectual limitations that make him
think more like a five year old. He's questioned for
hours without a parent or a lawyer present, off camera,
and in the end he signs a confession prepared by
his interrogator, and the story in this confession is brutal.
(08:41):
Robert says he and four other African American teenage boys
kidnapped a girl they knew from school. They gang raped
her as she pleaded with them to stop, and then
they shot her once in the mouth. It was a
story of an animalistic group of black teenagers attacking their
classmate for sport.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
The level of depravity in this story was so out
of bounds that it made me question whether it was true,
But it also had an eerily familiar ring to it,
and for me, the significance was as I was seeing
the same explanations in different cases, which made me begin
to feel that like maybe there was a script that
(09:24):
was getting passed around among Chicago police officers.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Only hours after Robert Veil confesses, police bring in one
of his supposed co perpetrators, fifteen year old Robert Taylor.
He's a kid from a loving and protective family, but
his parents didn't know he was at the police station
being interrogated. Hours later, his signature appears on a confession too,
and that confession tells a similarly vicious story. The same
(09:50):
five African American teenagers lured Katresa into a car, then
raped her and shot her in a field.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
The super Predator era was a period of of pronounced
moral panic in the United States that focused on young people, race,
and crime.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
That's our colleague and friend, Perry Moriarty. She's a professor
of law at the University of Minnesota and an expert
on juvenile justice and the era of the super Predator.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
The front end marker is more than likely the Central
Park five case that was April of nineteen eighty nine,
and that began an era when, in the name of
public safety, in the name of being tough on crime,
law enforcement authorities dropped any pretense of treating children as
children and prosecuted them as adults. If they were black
(10:42):
and brown children, they were adultified, either by law or
by connotation, and certainly by the media. A jogger murdered
in New York Central Park, a little girl gunned down
in her family's car.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
And Los Angeles, a.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Judge has sentenced two boys for killing another child who
refused to steal candy for them. There's a tidal wave
of juvenile violent crime right over the horizon, and some
who study it say the worst is.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Yet to come, terms like wilding, beast chill, predatory. In
New York City newspapers alone, the term wilding appeared one
hundred and fifty six times in articles over the eight
years following the Central Park five arrests. To put it
in perspective, just a few months after the Central Park
(11:27):
five case, a large group of Italian and Irish predominantly
teenagers in benson Hurst, Brooklyn, chased down and killed a
young Black teenager named Yuseph Hawkins. And the headlines did
not say wilding. They did not say beasts chill, They
did not even say gang. They said a group of
(11:48):
white teenagers.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Now the police have two confessions that implicate the same
five teenagers, but they're not done yet. Next up is
Cheyenne Sharp, seventeen years old, the third supposed co perpetrator.
He's questioned for nearly twenty four hours before he also
confesses and implicates the other four. And it's the same
brutal story, a group of African American teenage boys terrorizing
(12:23):
their classmate for fun.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Now you have to understand how these confessions are taken.
These confessions are scripted, usually by a prosecutor from the
State attorney's office. Sometimes they're written by police officers, and
these scripts contain a narrative, including character development. Kids are
described as thugs. There's usually references to gang membership. Women
(12:52):
are called bitches and hoes. The scriptwriter in these cases
is doing two things. He's painting the suspect in a
way that nobody can ever think of them as teenagers.
And he's also painting them in a way that nobody
and that means nobody in the public and nobody on
(13:12):
the jury can have an ounce of sympathy for them.
And in doing so, he's making a script that is
about as rock solid as a route to conviction as
one can imagine.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
So far, the police have confessions from three of the
Dixmore five, and within days they bring in the two
remaining teenagers for questioning two brothers, seventeen year old James
Harden and fifteen year old Jonathan Barr. The boys are
interrogated for hours, but their father had always told them
never sign anything prepared by the police. Somehow a miracle
(13:50):
they remember these words and they don't confess, but they're
still named in the other three teenagers' statements, so all
five are on the hook.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
In part because because they were arresting and prosecuting kids
in mass in groups, law enforcement became very adept in
that period at pitting kids against each other during the
interrogation process and using kids against each other to extract
false confessions.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
When you look at these cases of multiple false confessions,
you see a similar pattern. First of all, the police
usually start with the most vulnerable, most naive, most gullible
of the suspects, and they focused in this case on
Robert Field. He was the weak link. Then they get
a confession from Robert Veel, and what do they do
(14:39):
with that confession They use it as a battering ram
to plow over all of the other defendants. This is
how it works. The first suspect comes in and the
police officers tell them that they know that he was
involved in this crime and nothing that suspect can say
is going to change their mind. But they don't think
(15:00):
he was the one who actually raped anybody or killed anybody.
He was just a follower. The suspect is pressured into
adopting a story in which he is a passive participant
to the crime, and which he fingers his co defendants
as the more active participants. Then once that suspect confesses,
(15:23):
they bring that confession to the next in line and
they go over the same thing again. We don't think
you committed the crime. He's telling us that you committed
the crime. We know you were there, but maybe you
just held down her arm while they were raping and
killing her. Each suspect is vying for the least culpable role,
(15:47):
and at the end of the day, this is a
very effective way to get confessions from multiple suspects.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
In this case, the dominoes are falling and each one
of them eventually agrees to a story in which James
Harden is the one who actually places the gun inside
Kateresa's mouth and pulls the trigger. It's no coincidence that
James is one of the last ones questioned here.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
That's right. And at the end of the day, please
got confessions from Robert Field, Robert Taylor, and Cheyenne's Sharp,
but they couldn't get James Harden and Jonathan Barr to confess.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Based on the confessions, all five teenagers are charged with
the assault and murder of Kateresa Matthews, and the Dixmore
Five are transformed into Chicago's own wolf pack. Pretty soon, though,
it becomes apparent that this case has major problems for starters.
The teenager's versions of what happened are wildly inconsistent. They
(16:46):
can't agree on how they met up with Katsa, what
the group did before they ended up in that field
by the interstate, or who assaulted Kateresa, and in what order.
In fact, one of the only things they do agree
on was that Kateresa had been murdered the day she
did disappeared, November nineteenth. But remember this was contradicted by
the medical examiner, who determined that she'd been killed three
(17:07):
weeks later, around the time her body was found. And
then here comes the biggest problem. After all five teenagers
were charged but before trial, DNA testing from the seaman
left on Katrese's body excludes all five suspects. Instead, this
DNA belongs to a single unidentified male.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
This is might drop evidence, the kind of evidence that
should have resulted in these cases being dismissed before.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Trial exactly these confessions had been proven false. But instead
of dropping its case, the state offers deals to two
members of the Dixmore Five, Cheyenne Sharp and Robert Veale.
If the boys agree to testify against their co defendants,
they'll receive much shorter sentences. Syenna and Robert decide to
take the deal, while the state moves forward with trials
(17:57):
for the other three, and those trials of are based
on the stories told in the confessions. Despite the DNA.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
You talk here about tunnel vision. This is what happens.
The police officers lock into a story. They become invested
in this notion of a gang rape, and they can't
get out of.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
That box exactly. And you see this when they have
to deal with the DNA and the prosecutor addresses it
during closing arguments.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
And what does the prosecutor say? He explains the presence
of DNA as the work of a necrophiliac.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Now, Steve, if this isn't exactly a household term, what
is a necrophiliac?
Speaker 2 (18:34):
It's someone who has sex with dead bodies.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
I knew you know that. This is officially the most
batchitt theory I think I've ever.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Heard, By the way, I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
So, let's get this straight. The theory here at the
Dixmore viv trial was that five teenage boys sexually assault
this victim. They don't leave a trace of themselves behind.
Then here comes this wandering necrophiliac who comes across the
body and decides to defile it. I mean, we've heard
a lot of excuse us for DNA in our time,
but this one may take the prize.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
It's unbelievable that they would even present this to a jury.
It's that insane. But you have to understand in the
context of a climate of fear, the irrational becomes rational. Now,
in the opening statement in this case, the prosecutor said
that these men, pointing at the five teenagers, these men
(19:27):
came from a world where so called friends were turned
into a pack of jackals hunting down their prey, and
then they were done with it, killing it for sport jackals.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Can you believe that this really is Chicago's own wolf pack?
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Again, it's a lot easier to fathom locking up a young, beastial,
feral thing than it is a child, which is in
fact what we were doing.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
And when you talk about children as if they were animals,
it becomes so much easier to throw away their lives.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
To just not worry about doing that last bit of
DNA testing, figure out whose DNA it was actually left on.
Katries and Matthew's body.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
It becomes easier to try them as adults. It becomes
easier to sentence them to life sentences or even the
death penalty. It becomes easier to just lock them up
and throw away the key.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
The dehumanizing story embedded in these boys confessions. While it works,
each of the Dixmore five is convicted, and the three
who don't cut deals, Robert Taylor, Jonathan Barr, and James
Harden are sentenced to life in prison. Cheyenne Sharp and
Robert Veale serve their time and are eventually released with
murder convictions on their records, But the other three languish
(20:58):
behind bars forgotten people.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
But they were not forgotten by their parents or their
loved ones. You know, I'll never forget learning that Jonathan
Barr and James Hardin's dad would literally drive around with
boxes full of files regarding their cases in his trunk,
trying to get lawyers interested in taking his son's cases,
(21:23):
and Robert Taylor's family did similar things. They would write
letters and letters and letters to lawyers begging them for help. Finally,
in twenty ten, we learned about the case of the
Dixmore Five. Our colleague Josh tepfer knew a public defender
named Jennifer Blagg who had represented Robert Taylor on appeal.
(21:45):
She referred the case to Josh and we agreed to
take Robert's case.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
By this time, Robert was in his early thirties.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
That's right, he had served over fifteen years of his sentence.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Robert Taylor grew up with his parents, sister, and in Harvey, Illinois,
right next to Dixmore. From day one, Robert's dad, a
Navy vet, was his strongest defender. Robert Senior refused to
be broken by the fact that his son had gone
to prison because of the words he'd signed his name to.
When the Center on Wrongful Convictions agreed to take Robert's case,
(22:17):
his dad became a major presence in our lives. I
can still remember the smell of his leather jacket when
he hugged us and welcomed us to his family's struggle.
Around the same time, organizations like the Innocence Project and
Exoneration Project got involved in representing other members of the
Dix Moore five. Our collective first priority was identifying whose
DNA had been left at the crime scene.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
We had a new tool called CODIS the combined DNA
index system, and over the time frame since the advent
of DNA testing in the late nineteen eighties, that database
had grown, and so the chances of finding the identity
of the person who raped and killed Katsa. Matthews had
grown exactly.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
I mean, let's remember for a moment that we're talking
here about DNA that was taken from the semen left
on a rape victim. You cannot ask for better evidence
than that, and it's just sitting there forgotten. How can
you not want to know whose DNA that was? Isn't
that the most important question in this case had been
sitting there unanswered for fifteen years?
Speaker 2 (23:21):
But where was it sitting? That was the first challenge.
And after a year of searching, we found the DNA
in some warehouse or in some trailer, and we then
had to get permission from the court to test the DNA.
We then sent the DNA off for testing to a lab,
and we waited and a lab extracted a profile, and
(23:44):
when that profile was extracted, it was run through the
code ISS database. A miracle of miracles, in March of
twenty eleven, we got a hit and the hit was
to a man, not a boy, a man named Randolph.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Now Willy Randolph, was a troubled guy. He was much
older than Kateresa or the Dixmore five. When Kateresa disappeared,
he was thirty three years old, more than twice her age.
Willi had been in and out of prison his entire
adult life for all sorts of different offenses. In fact,
he'd been paroled only a few months before Kateresa was
killed to a house within a mile of where she lived,
(24:26):
and Willie Randolph had previously been accused of rape in
that very same field by the interstate where Kateresa's body
was found. This is a person with a history of
these kinds of attacks, and his DNA and no one
else's was present at the crime scene. Finally, it all
made sense.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
When we learned the identity of Willie Randolph, when we
investigated his background, when we learned the history of abusing
and sexually assaulting women, including young women, teenagers, we thought
this case was over. We thought we are going to
get these boys out tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Exactly, there's no relationship at all between Willy Randolph and
any of the Dixmore five. He's not mentioned in any
of their confessions.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
And why would there be a relationship. This is a
man with a long history of violence in his record,
and none of these boys had a history of violence.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Right, He's twice their age. When they were growing up
in the neighborhood, he was in prison.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Willy Randolph is the guy who did this to Katersa Matthews.
The DNA proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Now we had to convince the prosecutors to do the
right thing.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
But as incredible as it sounds, the state wouldn't let
go of their necrophilia theory, and the case dragged on
for months.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
You know, old habits die hard. The state actually suggested
again that maybe Willy Randolph was their mystery necrophiliac.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
This is an unbelievable thing. Still they're clinging to this
theory that five teenage boys assaulted Katersa Matthews, left no
trace of their DNA behind, and here comes Willie Randolph,
the older man, the man of the history of assaults
and violent crime and rape in that very field, and
just happens to defile her body. It beggars belief.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
It still took six to seven months to investigate whether
there was any link between Willie Randolph and any of
the Dicks more five, there wasn't one.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Meanwhile, we were coming back to court every few weeks
to get an update on the state's investigation and to
ask the judge is today the day of exoneration? And
for six long months we were disappointed. I remember coming
home after those court dates and crying with frustration that
I was able to go home, but Robert Taylor, our clients,
had to go back to a prison cell.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah. I remember pulling out my hair and I had
hair back then.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
That's where it all went.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
That's where it all went because we had the best
possible evidence of their innocence, and not only were they
refusing to our clients, Willie Randolph was on the street.
He was out of prison on parole, and he could
be doing this to somebody else. It was driving me crazy.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Every time before we walked into that courtroom, I remember
watching Robert hold his whole body just taught. His muscles
would be tense, and you could see those twenty years
of trauma that he had endured and the toll it
had taken on him. He couldn't relax into the possibility
that it was going to be his day that day,
and it wasn't his day.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
For months until it finally was.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
On November third, twenty eleven, Robert Ville Cheyenne Sharp, James Harden,
Jonathan Barr, and Robert Taylor were exonerated. Their convictions were
thrown out nearly twenty years to the day after Kateresa
matthews disappearance, The Dix Moore five had wrongly served a
total of more than fifty years in prison. Eventually, Willie
(27:58):
Randolph was charged with the attack on Kateresa Matthews based
on DNA evidence. He's still a waiting trial today. We're
proud to have helped free the Dixmore five, but as
our colleague Josh Tepfer put it, this is not justice.
Justice would have happened a long time ago.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Hello, hey, Robert, Stephen Laura A long time.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
I'll see too long.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Too long.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Good to hear your voice. What's going on with you
these days, Robert, I'm hanging in now. How's your son doing?
Speaker 2 (28:30):
He's all right. I got picked boy. You got to
take him up to the school. Yeah, I'll pick him
up every day.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Hold your point seven going away?
Speaker 1 (28:40):
What's your favorite thing to do with your son?
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Robert I'd like to see him smad. I.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
So you can't give those twenty years back to Robert
or to any of the Dicks, Moore five, or any
of the guys we're going to talk about on this podcast.
You can't give that time back. But what you can
do is make the years decades that they lost means something.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
One of the greatest tragedies in my opinion, and I've
been teaching about the Central Park five case for years
and to this day. When I introduced the case in
my criminal law classes, the one thing that people don't
know about the case is that the kids were innocent.
So few people knew that even after Matthias Rayes confessed,
(29:21):
even after these kids were let out of prison, even
after they were compensated. It is the footnote in this
story that gets lost in our collective consciousness. Maybe not anymore. Finally,
there is attention being brought to who they actually were
and what they suffered.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
And that's a big part of how Steve and I
approach these cases. Right It's about of course getting them
out of prisent fighting for them, opening up those doors,
but it's also about telling the stories. It's about making
it meaningful. It's about saying their name. It's about not
forgetting what happened to them and changing it so it
doesn't happen again. Like the Central Park five, the story
(30:00):
of the Dixmore five is about convictions that were driven
by prejudice rather than proof. But the injustices of the
super predator era or not just a New York City
thing or a Chicago thing, And although we may want
to think so, they're not even really a nineteen nineties thing.
In times of great fear or moral panic, prejudices can
distort the search for the truth. Mistaken assumptions, faulty investigations,
(30:25):
and flawed evidence are all still real, and they still
cause wrongful convictions across the country. Every day. We tell
these stories so that we can learn from them, so
that one day there won't be any more Dixmore fives.
To all the Dixmore five, but especially to our client
and friend, Robert Taylor, You've endured years of injustice while
(30:47):
remaining a pillar of strength and resilience. To you and
your families, we wish you all the best. Thanks for
letting us tell your story. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is
the production of Lava for Good podcasts in association with
(31:07):
Signal Company Number One. Special thanks to our executive producer
Jason Flamm and the team at Signal Company Number one.
Executive producer Kevin wardis Senior producer and Pope, and additional
production and editing by Connor Hall. Our music was composed
by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram or
Twitter at Laura Nyrider and.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
You can follow me on Twitter at s Drizzen.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com
and be sure to follow the show on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on
Twitter at wrong Conviction
Hey guys, it's Laura today. I have some pretty great
news to share with you. Back in season one of
False Confessions, Steve and I brought you the story of
the Dix Moore Five, a group of teenage boys who
were interrogated for hours without lawyers or parents present. One
by one, they were each implicated in the crime and
ended up spending about twenty years in prison. Their confessions
(00:28):
were in the Forum of Science Statements. There was no
recording of their interrogations, but one of the reasons they
confessed was because the police lied to them. This is
common in police interrogations and it's something we've seen over
and over on the show. Police will falsely promise leniency
in order to get a confession, or they'll lie that
they have evidence they don't really have. This is a
(00:50):
horrible practice and it's one that's clearly not working to
get real criminals off the streets. Using lies and deceptive
interrogation tactics is a huge risk factor for false confessions,
and as we know, false confessions are one of the
leading causes of wrongful convictions. They occur in about thirty
percent of cases that have been overturned by DNA evidence.
(01:11):
It's just plain wrong and it needs to end. But
here's the good news. In an incredible step towards justice,
Illinois became the first state in United States history to
adopt a law in twenty twenty one that bans police
from lying to children during interrogations. I cannot tell you
how huge this is. If this law had been in
(01:32):
place back in nineteen ninety one, the Dixmore five would
never have gone to prison and had twenty years of
their lives stolen a way. This is a reform that
was sorely needed, especially here in Illinois, the false confession
capital of the country. In our state alone, there have
been over one hundred wrongful convictions based on false confessions.
I am so proud to be part of this work
(01:54):
and that the cases I helped defend are themselves helping
to pass new laws, creating a few with fewer wrongful convictions.
But we can't stop here. This kind of law should
exist in every state, and it should apply to everyone,
not just kids. We now have the data and the
experience to know that when police lie to a suspect
(02:15):
during an investigation, that does more harm than good. There
are much better ways to solve crimes we need all
interrogations to be videotaped, and we need better protections for
everybody who winds up inside that room. It's only with
reforms like these that we can live up to one
of the founding principles of our justice system. Innocent until
(02:35):
proven guilty, Welcome to wrongful conviction, false confessions. I'm Laura
and I writer.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
And I'm Steve Drusen.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Today we're going to tell you about a case out
of Chicago, the story of a violent and tragic crime
that took the life of a young girl. But there's
a larger reason why we want to talk about this
case because of what it also took from not one,
but five innocent teenage boys and from their families and communities.
This case happened during what we now call the super
(03:10):
Predator era the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. The news
media was saturated with stories of urban crime, drugs and gangs,
and in particular, sensationalized stories about black and brown youth
committing violent crimes in groups. This narrative is often associated
with New York City. It drove the wrongful prosecution of
(03:31):
the so called Central Park five wolf Pack, but it
didn't stop there. Today, we're going to tell you about
a group of teenage boys whose false confessions transformed them
into Chicago's own wolf pack. They're known as the Dixmore Five.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Now Chicago may be called the second city comes to
false confessions. We don't take a back seat to anybody,
not New York or any other jurisdiction for that matter.
We're home to more false confessions than any other city
in the United States. We're home to more juvenile false confessions.
And we're also the home of more cases in which
(04:17):
there are multiple false confessions. And over the years, the
Center on Wrongful Convictions has obtained exonerations in many of
these cases, all of which were from African American teenagers
in the Chicago area.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Marquette Park four, Uptown seven, Englewood four, Dixmore five. These
numbers start to add up, and the thing is each
one of these cases involves innocent African American teenagers in
groups confessing to crimes they didn't commit.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Of course, the most famous case like this was New
York's Central Park five case. In April of nineteen eighty nine,
five teenage boys were charged with the sexual assault and
the tempted murder of a female jogger in New York's
Central Park. The boys falsely confessed to beating this woman
(05:08):
within an inch of her life and leaving her in
the woods to die. The Central Park five confessions were
driven by race Wolfpax. Wilding was a whole new language
to describe groups of African American and Latino teenagers, and
it created a level of fear in New York City
(05:30):
and around the country that I had never seen before.
So when we began to look at the Dixmore case,
the case of the Central Park five was ringing in
my years.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
It was November of nineteen ninety one and fourteen year
old Kateresa Matthews was in the eighth grade. She lived
with her mom and Dix Moore, a suburb on the
South side of Chicago, surrounded by a tight knit extended
family and community. Every day after school, Kateresa followed the
same routine. She'd walk to her great grandmother's house, where
she'd do her homework, tuck on the phone, and do
(06:05):
whatever fourteen year old girls do. After school, she was
waiting until her mom came home from work to go
back to her own house. Kateresa followed this routine religiously
until November nineteenth, nineteen ninety one, when she doesn't show
up at her great grandmother's house after school. Her family panics.
They call the police and a search begins, but for
(06:27):
three weeks there's no sign of Kateresa until December eighth,
nineteen ninety one. That's when Kateresa's body is found lying
in a wooded field next to the Interstate Highway that
runs through Dixmore. She's on her back, partially undressed, with
her pants draped across her lower body. On her chest
is a spent casing from a twenty five caliber bullet.
(06:50):
She's been shot once in the mouth. Even though Kateres
had been missing for three weeks, the medical examiner concludes
that she's been killed recently, right around the time her
body's found. There are several reasons for this. For one thing,
rigor mortis is present when she's found that usually disappears
about twenty four to forty eight hours after death. Her
(07:11):
body is also still bleeding when she's discovered, which you
wouldn't expect if she'd been killed much earlier. And also
when a body's been lying outside for a long time,
there are usually signs like animal or insect bites. There's
nothing like that here. And the medical examiner finds something
else too, semen on Kateresa's body. She's been raped.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
This was an awful crime.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
It's the worst. I mean, it's every parent's nightmare to
have this happen to their child.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
You know, when you think of a crime like this,
you don't think of it as something that teenagers would do. Typically,
teenage crimes are impulsive crimes. There's not a lot of
planning or premeditation. They happen in the spur of the moment.
But this crime clearly required some forethought.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
For eleven long months, the investigation into Kateresa's death goes
nowhere until fall nineteen ninety two, when a teenage boy
tells police that he saw Kateresa getting into a car
with some friends around the time of her disappearance. Police
decided to question those friends, starting with Robert Vel on
October twenty ninth, nineteen ninety two. Now, Robert's fourteen years old,
(08:18):
but he has pretty severe intellectual limitations that make him
think more like a five year old. He's questioned for
hours without a parent or a lawyer present, off camera,
and in the end he signs a confession prepared by
his interrogator, and the story in this confession is brutal.
(08:41):
Robert says he and four other African American teenage boys
kidnapped a girl they knew from school. They gang raped
her as she pleaded with them to stop, and then
they shot her once in the mouth. It was a
story of an animalistic group of black teenagers attacking their
classmate for sport.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
The level of depravity in this story was so out
of bounds that it made me question whether it was true,
But it also had an eerily familiar ring to it,
and for me, the significance was as I was seeing
the same explanations in different cases, which made me begin
to feel that like maybe there was a script that
(09:24):
was getting passed around among Chicago police officers.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Only hours after Robert Veil confesses, police bring in one
of his supposed co perpetrators, fifteen year old Robert Taylor.
He's a kid from a loving and protective family, but
his parents didn't know he was at the police station
being interrogated. Hours later, his signature appears on a confession too,
and that confession tells a similarly vicious story. The same
(09:50):
five African American teenagers lured Katresa into a car, then
raped her and shot her in a field.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
The super Predator era was a period of of pronounced
moral panic in the United States that focused on young people, race,
and crime.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
That's our colleague and friend, Perry Moriarty. She's a professor
of law at the University of Minnesota and an expert
on juvenile justice and the era of the super Predator.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
The front end marker is more than likely the Central
Park five case that was April of nineteen eighty nine,
and that began an era when, in the name of
public safety, in the name of being tough on crime,
law enforcement authorities dropped any pretense of treating children as
children and prosecuted them as adults. If they were black
(10:42):
and brown children, they were adultified, either by law or
by connotation, and certainly by the media. A jogger murdered
in New York Central Park, a little girl gunned down
in her family's car.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
And Los Angeles, a.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Judge has sentenced two boys for killing another child who
refused to steal candy for them. There's a tidal wave
of juvenile violent crime right over the horizon, and some
who study it say the worst is.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Yet to come, terms like wilding, beast chill, predatory. In
New York City newspapers alone, the term wilding appeared one
hundred and fifty six times in articles over the eight
years following the Central Park five arrests. To put it
in perspective, just a few months after the Central Park
(11:27):
five case, a large group of Italian and Irish predominantly
teenagers in benson Hurst, Brooklyn, chased down and killed a
young Black teenager named Yuseph Hawkins. And the headlines did
not say wilding. They did not say beasts chill, They
did not even say gang. They said a group of
(11:48):
white teenagers.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Now the police have two confessions that implicate the same
five teenagers, but they're not done yet. Next up is
Cheyenne Sharp, seventeen years old, the third supposed co perpetrator.
He's questioned for nearly twenty four hours before he also
confesses and implicates the other four. And it's the same
brutal story, a group of African American teenage boys terrorizing
(12:23):
their classmate for fun.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Now you have to understand how these confessions are taken.
These confessions are scripted, usually by a prosecutor from the
State attorney's office. Sometimes they're written by police officers, and
these scripts contain a narrative, including character development. Kids are
described as thugs. There's usually references to gang membership. Women
(12:52):
are called bitches and hoes. The scriptwriter in these cases
is doing two things. He's painting the suspect in a
way that nobody can ever think of them as teenagers.
And he's also painting them in a way that nobody
and that means nobody in the public and nobody on
(13:12):
the jury can have an ounce of sympathy for them.
And in doing so, he's making a script that is
about as rock solid as a route to conviction as
one can imagine.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
So far, the police have confessions from three of the
Dixmore five, and within days they bring in the two
remaining teenagers for questioning two brothers, seventeen year old James
Harden and fifteen year old Jonathan Barr. The boys are
interrogated for hours, but their father had always told them
never sign anything prepared by the police. Somehow a miracle
(13:50):
they remember these words and they don't confess, but they're
still named in the other three teenagers' statements, so all
five are on the hook.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
In part because because they were arresting and prosecuting kids
in mass in groups, law enforcement became very adept in
that period at pitting kids against each other during the
interrogation process and using kids against each other to extract
false confessions.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
When you look at these cases of multiple false confessions,
you see a similar pattern. First of all, the police
usually start with the most vulnerable, most naive, most gullible
of the suspects, and they focused in this case on
Robert Field. He was the weak link. Then they get
a confession from Robert Veel, and what do they do
(14:39):
with that confession They use it as a battering ram
to plow over all of the other defendants. This is
how it works. The first suspect comes in and the
police officers tell them that they know that he was
involved in this crime and nothing that suspect can say
is going to change their mind. But they don't think
(15:00):
he was the one who actually raped anybody or killed anybody.
He was just a follower. The suspect is pressured into
adopting a story in which he is a passive participant
to the crime, and which he fingers his co defendants
as the more active participants. Then once that suspect confesses,
(15:23):
they bring that confession to the next in line and
they go over the same thing again. We don't think
you committed the crime. He's telling us that you committed
the crime. We know you were there, but maybe you
just held down her arm while they were raping and
killing her. Each suspect is vying for the least culpable role,
(15:47):
and at the end of the day, this is a
very effective way to get confessions from multiple suspects.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
In this case, the dominoes are falling and each one
of them eventually agrees to a story in which James
Harden is the one who actually places the gun inside
Kateresa's mouth and pulls the trigger. It's no coincidence that
James is one of the last ones questioned here.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
That's right. And at the end of the day, please
got confessions from Robert Field, Robert Taylor, and Cheyenne's Sharp,
but they couldn't get James Harden and Jonathan Barr to confess.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Based on the confessions, all five teenagers are charged with
the assault and murder of Kateresa Matthews, and the Dixmore
Five are transformed into Chicago's own wolf pack. Pretty soon, though,
it becomes apparent that this case has major problems for starters.
The teenager's versions of what happened are wildly inconsistent. They
(16:46):
can't agree on how they met up with Katsa, what
the group did before they ended up in that field
by the interstate, or who assaulted Kateresa, and in what order.
In fact, one of the only things they do agree
on was that Kateresa had been murdered the day she
did disappeared, November nineteenth. But remember this was contradicted by
the medical examiner, who determined that she'd been killed three
(17:07):
weeks later, around the time her body was found. And
then here comes the biggest problem. After all five teenagers
were charged but before trial, DNA testing from the seaman
left on Katrese's body excludes all five suspects. Instead, this
DNA belongs to a single unidentified male.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
This is might drop evidence, the kind of evidence that
should have resulted in these cases being dismissed before.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Trial exactly these confessions had been proven false. But instead
of dropping its case, the state offers deals to two
members of the Dixmore Five, Cheyenne Sharp and Robert Veale.
If the boys agree to testify against their co defendants,
they'll receive much shorter sentences. Syenna and Robert decide to
take the deal, while the state moves forward with trials
(17:57):
for the other three, and those trials of are based
on the stories told in the confessions. Despite the DNA.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
You talk here about tunnel vision. This is what happens.
The police officers lock into a story. They become invested
in this notion of a gang rape, and they can't
get out of.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
That box exactly. And you see this when they have
to deal with the DNA and the prosecutor addresses it
during closing arguments.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
And what does the prosecutor say? He explains the presence
of DNA as the work of a necrophiliac.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Now, Steve, if this isn't exactly a household term, what
is a necrophiliac?
Speaker 2 (18:34):
It's someone who has sex with dead bodies.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
I knew you know that. This is officially the most
batchitt theory I think I've ever.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Heard, By the way, I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
So, let's get this straight. The theory here at the
Dixmore viv trial was that five teenage boys sexually assault
this victim. They don't leave a trace of themselves behind.
Then here comes this wandering necrophiliac who comes across the
body and decides to defile it. I mean, we've heard
a lot of excuse us for DNA in our time,
but this one may take the prize.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
It's unbelievable that they would even present this to a jury.
It's that insane. But you have to understand in the
context of a climate of fear, the irrational becomes rational. Now,
in the opening statement in this case, the prosecutor said
that these men, pointing at the five teenagers, these men
(19:27):
came from a world where so called friends were turned
into a pack of jackals hunting down their prey, and
then they were done with it, killing it for sport jackals.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Can you believe that this really is Chicago's own wolf pack?
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Again, it's a lot easier to fathom locking up a young, beastial,
feral thing than it is a child, which is in
fact what we were doing.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
And when you talk about children as if they were animals,
it becomes so much easier to throw away their lives.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
To just not worry about doing that last bit of
DNA testing, figure out whose DNA it was actually left on.
Katries and Matthew's body.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
It becomes easier to try them as adults. It becomes
easier to sentence them to life sentences or even the
death penalty. It becomes easier to just lock them up
and throw away the key.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
The dehumanizing story embedded in these boys confessions. While it works,
each of the Dixmore five is convicted, and the three
who don't cut deals, Robert Taylor, Jonathan Barr, and James
Harden are sentenced to life in prison. Cheyenne Sharp and
Robert Veale serve their time and are eventually released with
murder convictions on their records, But the other three languish
(20:58):
behind bars forgotten people.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
But they were not forgotten by their parents or their
loved ones. You know, I'll never forget learning that Jonathan
Barr and James Hardin's dad would literally drive around with
boxes full of files regarding their cases in his trunk,
trying to get lawyers interested in taking his son's cases,
(21:23):
and Robert Taylor's family did similar things. They would write
letters and letters and letters to lawyers begging them for help. Finally,
in twenty ten, we learned about the case of the
Dixmore Five. Our colleague Josh tepfer knew a public defender
named Jennifer Blagg who had represented Robert Taylor on appeal.
(21:45):
She referred the case to Josh and we agreed to
take Robert's case.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
By this time, Robert was in his early thirties.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
That's right, he had served over fifteen years of his sentence.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Robert Taylor grew up with his parents, sister, and in Harvey, Illinois,
right next to Dixmore. From day one, Robert's dad, a
Navy vet, was his strongest defender. Robert Senior refused to
be broken by the fact that his son had gone
to prison because of the words he'd signed his name to.
When the Center on Wrongful Convictions agreed to take Robert's case,
(22:17):
his dad became a major presence in our lives. I
can still remember the smell of his leather jacket when
he hugged us and welcomed us to his family's struggle.
Around the same time, organizations like the Innocence Project and
Exoneration Project got involved in representing other members of the
Dix Moore five. Our collective first priority was identifying whose
DNA had been left at the crime scene.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
We had a new tool called CODIS the combined DNA
index system, and over the time frame since the advent
of DNA testing in the late nineteen eighties, that database
had grown, and so the chances of finding the identity
of the person who raped and killed Katsa. Matthews had
grown exactly.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
I mean, let's remember for a moment that we're talking
here about DNA that was taken from the semen left
on a rape victim. You cannot ask for better evidence
than that, and it's just sitting there forgotten. How can
you not want to know whose DNA that was? Isn't
that the most important question in this case had been
sitting there unanswered for fifteen years?
Speaker 2 (23:21):
But where was it sitting? That was the first challenge.
And after a year of searching, we found the DNA
in some warehouse or in some trailer, and we then
had to get permission from the court to test the DNA.
We then sent the DNA off for testing to a lab,
and we waited and a lab extracted a profile, and
(23:44):
when that profile was extracted, it was run through the
code ISS database. A miracle of miracles, in March of
twenty eleven, we got a hit and the hit was
to a man, not a boy, a man named Randolph.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Now Willy Randolph, was a troubled guy. He was much
older than Kateresa or the Dixmore five. When Kateresa disappeared,
he was thirty three years old, more than twice her age.
Willi had been in and out of prison his entire
adult life for all sorts of different offenses. In fact,
he'd been paroled only a few months before Kateresa was
killed to a house within a mile of where she lived,
(24:26):
and Willie Randolph had previously been accused of rape in
that very same field by the interstate where Kateresa's body
was found. This is a person with a history of
these kinds of attacks, and his DNA and no one
else's was present at the crime scene. Finally, it all
made sense.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
When we learned the identity of Willie Randolph, when we
investigated his background, when we learned the history of abusing
and sexually assaulting women, including young women, teenagers, we thought
this case was over. We thought we are going to
get these boys out tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Exactly, there's no relationship at all between Willy Randolph and
any of the Dixmore five. He's not mentioned in any
of their confessions.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
And why would there be a relationship. This is a
man with a long history of violence in his record,
and none of these boys had a history of violence.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Right, He's twice their age. When they were growing up
in the neighborhood, he was in prison.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Willy Randolph is the guy who did this to Katersa Matthews.
The DNA proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Now we had to convince the prosecutors to do the
right thing.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
But as incredible as it sounds, the state wouldn't let
go of their necrophilia theory, and the case dragged on
for months.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
You know, old habits die hard. The state actually suggested
again that maybe Willy Randolph was their mystery necrophiliac.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
This is an unbelievable thing. Still they're clinging to this
theory that five teenage boys assaulted Katersa Matthews, left no
trace of their DNA behind, and here comes Willie Randolph,
the older man, the man of the history of assaults
and violent crime and rape in that very field, and
just happens to defile her body. It beggars belief.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
It still took six to seven months to investigate whether
there was any link between Willie Randolph and any of
the Dicks more five, there wasn't one.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Meanwhile, we were coming back to court every few weeks
to get an update on the state's investigation and to
ask the judge is today the day of exoneration? And
for six long months we were disappointed. I remember coming
home after those court dates and crying with frustration that
I was able to go home, but Robert Taylor, our clients,
had to go back to a prison cell.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah. I remember pulling out my hair and I had
hair back then.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
That's where it all went.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
That's where it all went because we had the best
possible evidence of their innocence, and not only were they
refusing to our clients, Willie Randolph was on the street.
He was out of prison on parole, and he could
be doing this to somebody else. It was driving me crazy.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Every time before we walked into that courtroom, I remember
watching Robert hold his whole body just taught. His muscles
would be tense, and you could see those twenty years
of trauma that he had endured and the toll it
had taken on him. He couldn't relax into the possibility
that it was going to be his day that day,
and it wasn't his day.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
For months until it finally was.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
On November third, twenty eleven, Robert Ville Cheyenne Sharp, James Harden,
Jonathan Barr, and Robert Taylor were exonerated. Their convictions were
thrown out nearly twenty years to the day after Kateresa
matthews disappearance, The Dix Moore five had wrongly served a
total of more than fifty years in prison. Eventually, Willie
(27:58):
Randolph was charged with the attack on Kateresa Matthews based
on DNA evidence. He's still a waiting trial today. We're
proud to have helped free the Dixmore five, but as
our colleague Josh Tepfer put it, this is not justice.
Justice would have happened a long time ago.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Hello, hey, Robert, Stephen Laura A long time.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
I'll see too long.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Too long.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Good to hear your voice. What's going on with you
these days, Robert, I'm hanging in now. How's your son doing?
Speaker 2 (28:30):
He's all right. I got picked boy. You got to
take him up to the school. Yeah, I'll pick him
up every day.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Hold your point seven going away?
Speaker 1 (28:40):
What's your favorite thing to do with your son?
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Robert I'd like to see him smad. I.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
So you can't give those twenty years back to Robert
or to any of the Dicks, Moore five, or any
of the guys we're going to talk about on this podcast.
You can't give that time back. But what you can
do is make the years decades that they lost means something.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
One of the greatest tragedies in my opinion, and I've
been teaching about the Central Park five case for years
and to this day. When I introduced the case in
my criminal law classes, the one thing that people don't
know about the case is that the kids were innocent.
So few people knew that even after Matthias Rayes confessed,
(29:21):
even after these kids were let out of prison, even
after they were compensated. It is the footnote in this
story that gets lost in our collective consciousness. Maybe not anymore. Finally,
there is attention being brought to who they actually were
and what they suffered.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
And that's a big part of how Steve and I
approach these cases. Right It's about of course getting them
out of prisent fighting for them, opening up those doors,
but it's also about telling the stories. It's about making
it meaningful. It's about saying their name. It's about not
forgetting what happened to them and changing it so it
doesn't happen again. Like the Central Park five, the story
(30:00):
of the Dixmore five is about convictions that were driven
by prejudice rather than proof. But the injustices of the
super predator era or not just a New York City
thing or a Chicago thing, And although we may want
to think so, they're not even really a nineteen nineties thing.
In times of great fear or moral panic, prejudices can
distort the search for the truth. Mistaken assumptions, faulty investigations,
(30:25):
and flawed evidence are all still real, and they still
cause wrongful convictions across the country. Every day. We tell
these stories so that we can learn from them, so
that one day there won't be any more Dixmore fives.
To all the Dixmore five, but especially to our client
and friend, Robert Taylor, You've endured years of injustice while
(30:47):
remaining a pillar of strength and resilience. To you and
your families, we wish you all the best. Thanks for
letting us tell your story. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is
the production of Lava for Good podcasts in association with
(31:07):
Signal Company Number One. Special thanks to our executive producer
Jason Flamm and the team at Signal Company Number one.
Executive producer Kevin wardis Senior producer and Pope, and additional
production and editing by Connor Hall. Our music was composed
by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram or
Twitter at Laura Nyrider and.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
You can follow me on Twitter at s Drizzen.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com
and be sure to follow the show on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on
Twitter at wrong Conviction
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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