2nd Quarter 2010 Cases

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Johann Gawenda was convicted of the murder of his 16-year-old stepdaughter, Katharina Sroka, also known as Katie. Katie's mother died in 1867, leaving her two-year-old daughter an estate consisting of three acres of fields and a cottage. Katie's father, Ignatz Sroka, managed the estate following the death of his wife. He subsequently married Marie Gallus. This marriage did not last long, as Ignatz was convicted of murder and died in prison in 1875. His widow Marie then married Johann Gawenda, who took over the administration of the estate for the still underage Katie and at the same time pledged to provide for her maintenance and upbringing. Gawenda neglected these obligations in a most unscrupulous manner, as he monopolized the land and treated its owner so badly that she had to work as a maid and also to depend on charity.
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Franz Bratuscha was convicted of the murder of his 12-year-old daughter, Johanna. On April 16, 1900, she disappeared from her home in Majsperk, Slovenia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Bratuscha reported her disappearance to the police. About 9 weeks later he read in a newspaper that the body of a dead girl was found in Spielfeld, Austria, a town 26 miles to the north. Bratuscha went to Spielfeld and when police showed him the dead girl's clothes, he identified them as belonging to his daughter. He told police he had bought the fabric out of which the clothes were made and offered to bring the leftover portion of the fabric. Police were satisfied that the dead girl was his daughter and they gave him the clothes.
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Zhao Zuohai was convicted of murdering his neighbor Zhao Zhenshang. In June 1997, the two Zhaos, both about 45, had a hatchet fight in their hometown of Zhaolou village in Zhecheng County, Shangqiu City Prefecture, Henan Province, China. Four months later Zhenshang's nephew reported to police that his uncle was missing. In May 1999, after a headless body was found in a village well, Zuohai was arrested for the murder of Zhenshang and detained without trial for three years.
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Jamie and Gladys Scott, sisters, were convicted of participating with three teenage boys in the armed robbery of Johnny Ray Hayes and Mitchell Duckworth. The convictions were based on the testimony of the victims and two of the male robbers even though both groups initially gave police statements that made no mention of the sisters' involvement. The sisters were sentenced to life imprisonment.
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Barry Gibbs was convicted of murdering Virginia Robertson, a prostitute whose strangled body was found dumped on the Belt Parkway near Mill Basin Bridge. A witness, Peter Mitchell happened to be jogging on the bike path of the Parkway and said he saw the man who dumped the body.

Ten days later Gibbs was working as a counterman at a deli at the junction of Flatbush and Nostrand Aves. Police detective Louis Eppolito came in and took a can of soda out of the fridge. Gibbs told him, “That will be 75 cents.” According to Gibbs, Eppolito got so PO'd that he had asked for money that he took him down to the precinct station and tried to beat him into confessing to Robertson's murder, a murder he had no idea about. The witness, Mitchell, then identified Gibbs from a lineup as the man who dumped the body. Mitchell had initially described the dumper as 5-foot, 6-inches tall with a moustache. Gibbs was was 5-foot, 11-inches tall and had no facial hair.

In 1999, noted attorney Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project took up Gibbs case, but the case evidence file had mysteriously disappeared. In 2005, agents of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency arrested Eppolito in Las Vegas and charged him with being a hit man for the Lucchese crime family. In his home the Feds found Gibb's case file and when they contacted Mitchell, he told them Eppolito had coerced him into identifying Gibbs and that he “believed, and continues to believe, that Barry Gibbs is not the person he saw disposing of the victim's body.” Gibbs was subsequently exonerated and released after more than 18 years in prison. Eppolito was convicted of numerous charges including eight counts of murder.  (NY Daily News) (Fox News)  [4/10]

Jonathan Wheeler-Whichard was convicted of the murder of Joseph Foster. Foster was shot in the lobby of a crime-ridden building at 153 Marcus Garvey Blvd. in Bedford-Stuyvesant. He had attacked Wheeler-Whichard earlier, and a witness said Wheeler-Whichard confessed to shooting Foster for revenge. Another testified that she heard the two fighting.

Wheeler-Whichard was granted a judicial hearing in 2009 after one witness, now serving life on an unrelated murder, recanted. The other was proven a liar when the real 911 caller was found. The hearing judge, Justice Joseph K. McKay, reviewed this evidence and also heard from alibi witnesses not called at trial, including a correction officer. McKay said there are several suspects in Foster's murder, including a brother of one of the witnesses who implicated Wheeler-Whichard. He vacated Wheeler-Whichard's conviction on grounds of “actual innocence,” a ruling that appeared to be a first in the State of New York. A Manhattan convict, Fernando Bermudez, also had his conviction overturned on the same grounds later the same year. The rulings prevent the state from retrying Wheeler-Whichard or Bermudez.  (NY Daily News)  [4/10]

Morgan A. “Tony” Miller was convicted of armed robbery and assault following the robbery of an Arby's restaurant at 1455 Secor Road in Toledo, during which an off-duty police officer named James Snead was shot. Miller had been in the restaurant minutes before the robbery with two friends and even spoke to an employee who knew him and was leaving work. Although the robber wore a stocking mask, Miller was charged with the crime after three witnesses identified him as the robber. One of the witnesses said he got a look at the robber before he put on his mask. Another claimed that she saw the robber's face when he briefly lifted up his mask.
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William McCaffrey was convicted of raping Biurny Peguero. The rape supposedly occurred at knifepoint while McCaffrey was taking Peguero to an after hours party in Upper Manhattan. Judge Richard Carruthers called the alleged assault “horrific” and “disgusting” when he sentenced McCaffrey to 20 years in prison. DNA tests in 2008 showed that bite marks on Peguero's arm and shoulder which McCaffrey reportedly inflicted contained no Y chromosomes, indicating they were not caused by a man. In 2009 Peguero, who had since married and adopted the last name Gonzalez, confessed to perjury. She said McCaffrey did not rape her and she was riven with remorse for sending an innocent man to prison. She said her injuries stemmed from a drunken brawl with a female friend. According to a psychiatrist who examined her, Peguero came to believe her lie because she had been too drunk to remember much of the night in question. McCaffrey was subsequently exonerated and Peguero was convicted of perjury.  (NY Times) (HPost)  [4/10]

Fernando Bermudez was convicted in 1992 of the murder of 16-year-old Raymond Blount. Prior to the murder Blount had punched another teen named Efrain Lopez, allegedly after Lopez looked at him the wrong way. This incident occurred in the Marc Ballroom, a Greenwich Village nightclub on Union Square West. Lopez then approached an acquaintance in the club and told him what had happened. Later, at 3 a.m., outside the club, Lopez and his friends encountered Blount and his friends. As the two groups were getting ready to fight, Lopez's acquaintance asked him point out the puncher. After Lopez pointed to Blount, the acquaintance ran up and fired a bullet into him, severing an artery. Blount died in a hospital later that morning.
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Dewey Bozella was convicted in 1983 and again in 1990 of the murder of 92-year-old Emma Crapser. The victim interrupted a burglary after returning to her 15 N. Hamilton Street apartment in Poughkeepsie. She was beaten, bound with an electrical cord, and suffocated. At Bozella's trials, the prosecution relied almost entirely on the testimony of two career criminals, Wayne Moseley and Lamar Smith, both of whom repeatedly changed their stories and both of whom got favorable treatment in their own cases in exchange for their testimony.

According to the witnesses' testimony, the two left a park with Bozella about 8 p.m. and arrived outside Crapser's apartment when it was dark. Then according to Smith, both Mosley and Bozella were on the victim's front porch for five to ten minutes before they went inside. Not more than five minutes later, a car pulled up and the victim got out. Such testimony placed Crapser's arrival and death around 9 p.m. However, other evidence indicated with relative certainty that Crapser was dropped off and killed very close to 11 p.m.

There was no physical evidence linking Bozella to the crime. In 1983 the FBI found that a fingerprint lifted from the inside of Crapser's bathroom window matched a man named Donald Wise. Wise was convicted of murdering another elderly woman in the same neighborhood as Crapser. This murder occurred just months after that of Crapser and the victim's sister who was present at the crime said the assailant tried to stuff something down her throat. Crapser was suffocated with several pieces of cloth stuffed down her throat.

In 2007, the law firm of WilmerHale agreed to handle Bozella's case on a pro bono basis. Among the people the lawyers interviewed was Arthur Regula, a retired Poughkeepsie police lieutenant, who surprised them by pulling out Bozella's case file. Regula said it was the only case file he kept after retirement, figuring that the conviction was so problematic lawyers might want it someday. The file contained statements from Crapser's neighbors that contradicted the two key witnesses against Bozella. Using Freedom of Information Act filings, the lawyers obtained a tape recording of someone who implicated Wise in the murder. None of this evidence had been turned over to Bozella's trial attorneys. In 2009, a judge overturned Bozella's conviction, the prosecution dropped charges, and Bozella was released after 26 years of imprisonment.  (NY Daily News) (NY Times) (Appeals)  [4/10]

Dan Lackey was convicted of raping Amber Mundy. Mundy said she was assaulted near some railroad tracks in Oneida. At this site Mundy's footprints were visible in the snow, but those of her assailant's were not. It was alleged that passing trains blew snow into the assailant's footprints, but not into those of his victim. Mundy said she was assaulted with a stick, and according to her testimony, there should have been much blood on the stick, but there was only a tiny amount of blood on it. She also said her assailant bit her, but when a DNA test was performed on the bite mark, the results were deemed inconclusive because they failed to show the presence of any male DNA.

Although Mundy was not able to positively identify Lackey as her assailant, police alleged that Lackey gave an unrecorded confession to the crime. Three months after Lackey's conviction, Mundy reported a similar rape in Oswego County. For this action she was convicted of making a false report and spent 8 months in jail. A state police investigator had informed the Oneida Police of the case just three months after Lackey's sentencing. Lackey first learned of Mundy's false report two years later when a defense investigator interviewed Mundy's boyfriend.

In response to this evidence, a judge overturned Lackey's conviction in July 2007. The judge said he was not convinced that the alleged confession obtained from Lackey was admissible, because with a 73 IQ, Lackey may not have had the mental capacity to waive his Miranda rights. Lackey was released without bail. The D.A., however, appealed the decision to overturn Lackey's conviction, but his appeal was unsuccessful.  (Oneida Dispatch) (Video)  [4/10]

Roy Brown was convicted of murdering 49-year-old social worker Sabina Kulakowski. Following a fire at her house, firefighters entered the it to see if anyone was inside. While firefighters were inside, another firefighter, Barry Bench, who happened to be Kulakowski's ex-brother-in-law, found her nude body on a dirt road outside the house. She had been stabbed and strangled to death.

Brown had been angry at Kulakowski because she had removed his 17-year-old daughter from his home. After making harassing phone calls and mailing several angry letters about the decision, Brown was arrested. He served 8 months in jail for his actions and was released less than a week before Kulakowski's murder.

In 2002, after Brown's court documents were destroyed in a fire at his stepfather's house, he learned that under the Freedom of Information Act he could request not only his trial transcripts but also all the information the District Attorney had compiled on his case. From the documents Brown requested and received, he learned that police had initially suspected Bench of the murder. The more Brown learned about Bench, the more he wondered why police had not arrested him for the murder. Brown filed a motion to overturn his conviction based on the new evidence, but it was denied.

Brown then wrote a letter to Bench, accusing him of the murder. He wrote that with advances in DNA technology, there was no place for Bench to hide anymore. At the time Brown was not 100% sure that Bench was the killer, but he waited for a response to his letter. Five days later, Brown learned from the evening news that Bench killed himself by lying in front of an oncoming train.

DNA tests were subsequently performed that showed DNA supplied by Bench's daughter had a 50% match to DNA from a T-shirt found near Kulakowski's body. After Bench's body was exhumed, DNA was taken from it and tests showed it matched the DNA found on the T-shirt. In 2007, Brown's conviction was vacated and he was released from prison.  (Crime Library) (Post-Tribune)  [4/10]

Margaret Kelly Michaels was convicted in 1988 of 115 counts of sexual abuse against 20 children and sentenced to 47 years in prison. After working seven months as a teacher at a Wee Care Day Nursery, her troubles began on April 30, 1985 when when a four-year-old boy who was a student of hers said, when a nurse put a thermometer in his rectum, “That's what my teacher does to me at nap time at school.” When asked what he meant, the boy replied, “Her takes my temperature.” That one comment led to a criminal investigation and Michaels being charged with 131 counts of sexual abuse against 20 children.

During Michaels' trial, the judge questioned the children in his chambers while the jury watched on closed circuit TV. He played ball with them and held them on his lap; sometimes he whispered in their ears and asked them to whisper answers back to him. The children alleged Michaels raped and assaulted them with knives, spoons, and Lego blocks. They also contended she licked peanut butter off of the their genitals, played a piano in the nude, and made them drink her urine. All of this abuse allegedly occurred over the many months Michaels worked at Wee Care and went unnoticed by other teachers, parents, or administrators.

Michaels' conviction was overturned on appeal in 1993. The appeal judges singled out one witness's testimony as being inappropriate, because she was used to tell the jury to believe the children, when it was the jury's job to decide which witnesses to believe. The judges were also critical about the initial interviews of the children, describing them as coercive, highly suggestive, and inept. Michaels was subsequently freed on bail, and after a year and a half prosecutors dropped charges against her.  (Famous Trials) (Crime Magazine) (State v. Michaels)  [4/10]