Location

Defendant(s)

Date of Alleged Crime

Ryan Ferguson and Chuck Erickson were convicted of the brutal murder of Columbia Tribune sports editor Kent Heitholt.  A janitor, Jerry Trump, caught a glimpse of two young white men running away from Heitholt's car around the time of the murder.  The janitor said he could not provide a detailed description of them.  Two years after the crime, after reading anniversary newspaper coverage, Erickson began telling friends he dreamed he had killed Heitholt.

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George S. Revelle, the CFO of Ozark Bank, was convicted of murdering his wife, Lisa, at their home in Fremont Hills.  Revelle told authorities that intruders broke into their home and shot his wife in a bungled extortion attempt.  He was convicted because he had a $500,000 life insurance policy on his wife and an old letter in which she criticizes him for being materialistic.

Five months into the investigation, the apparent murderers sent a confession letter to police. They said they were fugitives living outside the U.S. They stated George's stepbrother had originally approached them about kidnapping George and forcing him to go to his bank so they could rob it. The letter writers revealed the location of a pond where the murder weapon was found. The prosecutor never investigated any of this evidence, except to test the stamp on the letter envelope for Revelle's DNA.

Revelle's conviction was overturned in Nov. 1997 because an appeal's court found that his wife's note should not have been allowed as trial evidence.  On retrial in Dec. 1998, Revelle was acquitted.  (Beyond the Yellow Ribbon) (Google)  [4/08]

Jerry L. Parker was convicted of sexually molesting three girls, K.B., age 10, H.R., age 11, and B.C., age 13.  He was sentenced to 195 1/2 years of imprisonment.  The girls said they were kidnapped at gunpoint from a gazebo in Gerald City Park and forced to walk to a woman's rest room about a block away where they were molested.  The girls' story contains numerous implausible or impossible details.  A deputy indicated that he did not believe the story.  Police undertook no further action on the girls' report until two weeks later when Parker became a suspect.  At trial, on cross examination, the Gerald Police Chief conceded his office received over 50 leads and the names of three suspects regarding the alleged assault but Parker was the only person ever questioned about it.

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Eric Darnell Clemmons was convicted of the murder of Henry Johnson, a fellow prisoner at the Missouri State Penitentiary.  Clemmons had been cellmates with Johnson, but was moved to a different cell on July 1, 1985 after he accused Johnson of making sexual advances towards him.  There was no reported trouble between the two following the move.  This move occurred more than a month prior to Johnson's murder.  Prison guard Thomas Steigerwald testified that as he was walking towards a group of inmates, he saw an inmate strike Johnson. Johnson then ran past Steigerwald, at which point, Steigerwald realized that Johnson had been stabbed.  Steigerwald then pursued the inmate who struck Johnson. This inmate turned out to be Clemmons.

According to Clemmons, Steigerwald did not witness the stabbing, but had merely seen Johnson running into him after he had been stabbed by inmate Fred Bagby.  Several other inmates testified that Bagby had stabbed Johnson.  Following Johnson's stabbing, Bagby himself was stabbed three months later and died prior to trial.  The State argued that the testimony of Clemmons' witnesses should be discounted because it was easy for them to try to help Clemmons by blaming someone who could not defend himself.  Handling his own appeal, Clemmons discovered an internal DOC memorandum that had been withheld from his defense in violation of Brady v. Maryland.  The memo related that minutes after Johnson's stabbing, an inmate named Dwight Clark had told a guard captain that two men had performed the stabbing.  Clark thought one inmate was Fred Bagby, but the other inmate he only knew by sight.  On retrial in 2000, Clemmons was acquitted.  (Google)  [4/08]

Armand Villasana was convicted of the kidnapping and rape of Judith Ann Lummis.  Lummis, who was white, had described her assailant as a Hispanic in his early 20's.  She identified Villasana from a photo lineup that contained five white men and himself, the only Hispanic.  However, Villasana was 45 years old.  Following conviction, DNA tests produced the profile of an unknown male, results which exonerated Villasana in 2000.

In 2005, the unknown DNA profile was matched to a prisoner in the Ozark Correctional Center.  When interviewed the prisoner said that he was having an affair with Lummis at the time of her alleged rape, and had sex with her the very night she reported the rape.  According to the prisoner, after Lummis's husband questioned why she was late getting home, she made-up her kidnapping and rape story on the spur of the moment so her husband wouldn't find out she was cheating on him.

Investigators were initially unsuccessful at locating Lummis to confirm the story as she was on probation and had skipped reporting.  However, a background check revealed that Lummis had made a nearly identical kidnapping report in Aurora, Missouri against another man that was proven to be false prior to his trial.  After Lummis was arrested for violating her probation, she confirmed in 2007 that her accusation against Villasana was a hoax.  Lummis cannot be prosecuted for perjury as the statute of limitations for it had run out.  (JD38 p5) (IP)  [5/08]

Larry Griffin was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Quintin Moss.  Moss was killed in a drive-by shooting while allegedly dealing drugs on a St. Louis street corner.  The conviction was based largely on the testimony of Robert Fitzgerald, who had been at the scene of the killing.  He testified at trial that he saw three black males in the car from which the shots were fired and that he could identify Griffin as one of them.  He testified that Griffin shot at the victim through the window of a car with his right hand.  Griffin's lawyer, a recent law school graduate, had never tried a murder case.  The lawyer did not challenge this testimony, even though Griffin was left-handed.

Griffin's fingerprints were not found on the car or weapons.  All evidence against him was circumstantial.  Evidence suggests that Fitzgerald was promised a reduced sentence in exchange for his testimony.  The jury was not provided with this information.  Fitzgerald later recanted his testimony.  He said the investigating officers showed him a photograph of Griffin and told him, "We know this man is involved."  Fitzgerald was then presented with five photos from which he identified Griffin.  Griffin's lawyer failed to investigate an alibi witness.  The prosecution was able to bring out that the alibi witness had erred about the day he and Griffin had been together, thus making it appear that the alibi had been fabricated.

The prosecution failed to reveal that there were two additional eyewitnesses who confirmed that Griffin was not involved in the murder. The first testified that he witnessed the shooting, and he did not recognize any of the three men who killed the victim. He knew Griffin and was certain that Griffin was not in the car with the shooters. The other witness, a 16-year-old member of a gang led by Griffin's brother at the time of the murder, also testified that Larry Griffin was not involved in the shooting and named the three men who were all members of the gang led by Griffin's slain brother. He was able to describe the exact sequence of events leading to Moss's murder and to testify to the killers' motive. He also was able to identify correctly the place where the car and guns had been abandoned and later found by the police.

Despite the compelling evidence of Griffin's innocence, appeals courts upheld his conviction and death sentence.  Griffin was executed by lethal injection on June 21, 1995.  (EqualJustice)  [1/07]

Antonio Beaver, a black man, was convicted of robbing a 26-year-old white woman in a St. Louis parking lot.  The victim initially described her assailant as a 5'10" clean-shaven black man with a David Letterman like gap between his teeth.  The assailant stole her purse and also her car, which was recovered the next day in East St. Louis.  The victim also noticed that the assailant was bleeding while he was inside her car.  A week later, a detective arrested Beaver because he thought Beaver resembled the composite sketch in the case.  However, Beaver was 6'2", had a full mustache, and had chipped teeth.  Nevertheless, the victim identified him in a four-person lineup.

At trial, Beaver's defense argued that Beaver could not have been the perpetrator since fingerprints collected from the driver's side of the car and from the rearview mirror did not match him.  However, Beaver was convicted and sentenced to 18 years in prison.  In 2001, Beaver filed a motion for DNA testing of the blood evidence.  It was not until Oct. 2006 that the state agreed to this testing.  After test results came back, Beaver was exonerated and he was released in March 2007.  (IP)  [7/07]