Nebraska Six

Gage County, NE

Nebraska Six

Feb 5, 1985 (Beatrice)

Six people were convicted of charges related to the murder of sixty-eight-year-old Helen Wilson. The victim had been raped, beaten, and strangled. The six defendants were Thomas Winslow, Joseph White, Ada Joanna Taylor, Kathy Gonzalez, Deb Shelden, and James Dean. The initial investigation into Wilson's murder went cold but it was revived in 1987 when a former Beatrice police officer, Bert Searcey, came forward with confidential informants. The informants said Taylor, a former Beatrice resident, admitted involvement in the murder.

Searcey took over the investigation after being hired by the Gage County Sheriff's office. Searcy focused on Taylor, White, and a group of friends who drank and took drugs together. The theory behind the case was that White and Taylor wanted to rob Wilson and that her rape and murder just happened. The theory left questions: (1) How could six people could fit into Wilson's tiny apartment without anyone seeing or hearing them? (2) Who would bring five witnesses to a sexual assault? (3) If robbery was the motive, why was Wilson's purse filled with $1300 left untouched on a kitchen stool?

Except for White, all confessed to the crime after reportedly coercive interrogation techniques. The techniques included the use of a psychiatrist to tell the defendants that they had repressed memories of the crime. There was also evidence that the police spoon fed details of the crimes to the defendants. Several defendants were threatened with the death penalty, including Taylor who was told that she would be the first woman to be executed by the State of Nebraska if she did not confess and cooperate. Taylor, Shelden, and Dean pled guilty to the crime while Gonzalez entered a no-contest plea. Gonzalez, Shelden, and Dean were released from prison in 1994.

In 2008, DNA tests were performed which exonerated all of the Nebraska Six and led to the release of Winslow, White, and Taylor from prison. The tests indicated Bruce Allen Smith of Oklahoma had committed Wilson's rape and murder. Smith died of AIDS in 1992. The Nebraska Attorney General's Office is, as of this writing, helping the Nebraska Six to obtain pardons. The DNA exonerations, the first in Nebraska, were the largest mass DNA-based exonerations, surpassing the 2002 mass DNA exonerations of five individuals convicted of raping a jogger in New York City's Central Park. (Bluhm) (State v. White) [11/08]