Pushkin previously on Deep Cover. Greg, you gotta I can't just call a prosecutor over here and waste his time. You've got to tell us what is it we're asking the prosecutor to come for. And that's when he says, I'm not the shooter and I want immunity, and so he.
Starts telling us how it went down. That basically that he and Tommy decided one night to go and find a black man to kill that black man so that they could get their spider web tattoos. As skinheads.
It was definitely a different type of case. You know, a skinhead coming to fill a to kill somebody, a cowardly act.
The family and I thought that this would be good if we found at least what happened to him. Can't do nothing about it, can't bring him back, but at least we would find out the truth.
Aroan Wood was murdered in the spring of nineteen eighty nine. The case had been called for almost twenty years until two thousand and eight. That's when tom Guybison was put on trial. He stood accused of four charges, ethnic intimidation, carrying a firearm without a license, conspiracy to commit murder, and murder in the first degree. So far, I'd heard a great deal about the prosecution's case against him, and I wanted to hear the defense's case directly from the man who made it himself.
He's scared to death, Jake. They're taking away his life.
This is Mike Ferrell. He was Tom Guybison's lawyer, and he was quick to tell me just how precarious his client situation was at the time.
He's facing life without parole and the only comfort he has, and he's got this crooked Irish kid who's trying to help him.
Crooked Irish kid being you correct, Why do you call yourself a crooked Irish kid?
Well, I have a crooked face, Jake.
He means that quite literally, by the way, when he was just a baby, Mike had an operation and as a result, the left side of his face is paralyzed. It's not a parent immediately unless he smiles, and then you notice because it's really only a half smile. When I arrived at Mike's house in Philadelphia, he was prepared to retry this case. And I'm being serious here. He had his opening remarks printed and laid out on dining
room table. He'd retrieved all the files from this case, boxes of it, and after a brief introduction, you know, explaining his crooked face as he called it, he launched right into his opening arguments.
I believe Tom Geybison is innocent.
Tom Guybison is innocent, he told me, is as if the trial were going on right now in his dining room.
They had no physical evidence, they had no gun, They had nothing but the ear witnesses of scorned girlfriends and Craig Peterson, who had been made an offer he couldn't refuse to escape prosecution in return for full immunity.
Mike got worked up, read in the face, raised voice, leaning in close to me. At one point he actually apologized for getting so animated, said he couldn't help it. I learned that over the course of his career, Mike had carved out a niche for himself defending what Mike calls quote, unpopular persons, people who might alienate a jury. He represented a bunch of skinheads, but also guys like Mumiya abou Jamal, a black activist who is convicted of
murdering a white Philadelphia cop. Mike was on his legal team too.
At cocktail parties, criminal defense attorneys are always asked, you know, how do you represent people who are accused of doing horrible things. My answer was, because I'm a sinner.
When you say you're a sinner, though, what exactly do you mean by that? Do you mean that in a way that we're all sinners or you speaking specifically, or.
Yes, we're all centers. I'm a sinner, and ultimately, no one is the worst thing that they've done in their life.
One more thing that I should mention about Mike. Years after he defended Tom, he was convicted of money laundering and attempted witness tampering in another case involving marijuana dealers. It's safe to say Mike's entire career, start to finish defies convention. One of Mike's challenges in this case was to keep the jury from jumping to conclusions about his client, Tom Guybison. The whole skinhead thing was potentially a liability. It threatened to bias the jury against Tom from the start.
To counter this, Mike described Tom in a very specific way. You might recall Tom once told a local newspaper that he was at one time a certain type of skinhead, a blue collar skinhead. Mike claimed that this was a very important distinction.
Tom Geybison was a blue collar skinhead, and a blue collar skinhead did not advocate racism. He advocated, frankly, not on like our current magla, which is America First. Blue collar skinheads do not advocate racism.
I had read that he had a Hitler tattoo though on his body.
He did, and at some point in his younger life that was part of his ideology, but it was not his ideology when I represented him.
I haven't been able to speak with Tom directly about this. He never responded to my requests for an interview. But based on the court records, Tom got the Hitler tattoo after the alleged murder. I know this because before the trial even started, his lawyer, Mike argued that the jury did not need to know about that tattoo, and the judge agreed. It was a win for the defense. Even so, it would be easy for a jury to make some snap judgments about who Tom Guybison was and what he believed.
It was Mike's job to prempt these judgments. Mike hoped that he could focus the jury's attention instead on what he saw as the problems with the prosecution's case.
This was a case that was absolutely backwards. Would nearly you have a murder and law enforcement searches for the murder. In this case, they started with a murderer and searched for a murder.
In other words, the FEDS had taken the rumor of a killing, linked it to a cold case, and blamed his client. That was the argument. Anyhow, Mike didn't have to offer any answers. He didn't have to identify the quote real killer. All he had to do was create reasonable doubt, poked just enough holes in the prosecution's argument that jurors might start scratching their heads. And the thing about Mike is he's really good at poking holes. This became apparent to me the minute I set foot in
his dining room. But of course it wasn't me. He needed to convince it was a jury of twelve Philadelphians back in two thousand and eight. His adversary was the legendary prosecutor Roger King. His audience was a courtroom packed with spectators. They included lawyers who had come to witness this showdown, a Ron Wood's family who was praying for justice, and Of course, the press was there too, because this
trial would make headlines. How could it not. A cold case almost two decades old have been resuscitated in rather epic fashion, and if the prosecution was to be believed, hate itself was on trial from Jay Calburn and This is Deep Cover Season four, The Nameless Man, Episode five, the trial. The prosecutor in this case was Roger King, a legendary figure, a distant cousin of Martin Luther King Junior. He spoke with the cadence and the charisma of a
big church pastor. Roger often made the papers he tried high profile cases. Back in the spring of two thousand and eight, the city's Criminal Justice Center was buzzing with the news that Roger King was trying his very last case. This drew a bunch of spectators. Then one of them was another prosecutor named Carlos Vega. Carlos says he just had to be there.
It's almost like saying goodbye. You know, it's a level of respect you're giving him, but also you're watching one of the greats do his last performance.
Carlos, like so many prosecutors in Philadelphia, had been mentored by King.
As a baby DA. When you first came through the office, he was a legend. He had tried these really complicated murders, you know that were in the front page, and you know, they go, that's Roger King.
Eventually, Carlos ended up getting involved in this case as a prosecutor, but initially he was just a spectator sitting in the gallery watching Roger King's last performance. As he put it, Roger died back in twenty sixteen. The headline to his obituary read, Roger King seventy two, Large than life, and I should tell you his legacy was complicated. In a number of other murder cases that he tried. His convictions were later overturned. There are allegations that he hid evidence,
manipulated witnesses, or otherwise broke the rules. Carlos told me Roger was not the kind of guy who would have been intimidated by anyone. That he was tough, and that he was always ready for anything.
A lot of homicide prosecutors are are armed. So you know Roger always carried two guns. Why two? Because Roger is Roger.
And then there was Roger's opponent, Mike Ferrell. Carlos remembers how Mike carried himself in the courtroom.
He was very, very intense. He's not a bully because it's very gentle, but he looks like he run up and punched you, like he really You see the veins pop in his neck and everything like that.
So that was the scene in the courtroom. Larger than life. Roger King who liked to carry his two guns, and the self proclaimed crooked face irishman vains ready to pop out of his neck, two impassion lawyers getting ready prelude to an epic standoff. The trial would hinge on two fundamental questions. Number one, did it really happen? In other words, do you believe that in nineteen eighty nine, Tom Guybison
went to Philadelphia and murdered a complete stranger. The answer to this question would depend on the credibility of three star witnesses. There were the two ex girlfriends, both of whom claimed that Tom had confessed to them, and there was the old friend Craig Peterson, who claimed to be the accomplice. These witnesses would have to convince the jury that Tom had committed murder back in nineteen eighty nine. Then there was question number two. Was this the correct victim.
In other words, was there enough evidence to convict Tom Guybison specifically for the murder of Iran Wood? And the answer to this question would focus on the detective work performed by Scott Duffy, Terry Mortimer and the Philadelphia PD. The burden of proof was on the prosecution, and this was a point that Mike made both in his opening arguments and in the little re enactment that he did for me.
Now, in a criminal case, it's very interesting in the sense that the prosecution side of the story they have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. As to the defense side of the story, we just have to create reasonable doubt. But we did way more than that.
Ultimately, Mike would present his own theory on how and why iron Wood was killed, but his job was simply to poke holes in the prosecution's case. Starting with the credibility of its three star witnesses, Let's start by talking about the testimony of the two ex girlfriends. If you recall, one of them was from high school. Her name was Jen.
Tom was her prom date, and when she took the witness stand, she testified that Tom had shown off his spider web tattoo on a number of occasions, including the prom and that Tom had been very clear this tattoo was a badge of honor for killing a black man. Jen also claimed that Tom kept a newspaper article covering the man's death and boasted that this was his doing
his murder. Jen testified quote, he told me that he was driving aimlessly and a man just walked out between two parked cars and he shot him in the head. Jen said her relationship with Tom ended because he was abusive. The other ex girlfriend was Patricia. She was Tom's girlfriend when he was older in his twenties. Patricia also testified to the fact that Tom liked to show off his
tattoo and brag about the murder that he'd committed. She also talked about the newspaper article that Tom supposedly kept. She also alleged Tom had abused her in a brutal manner. I'm not going to get into all the details here,
but the allegations were graphic, specific and disturbing. Carlos Vega, who you heard from earlier and who eventually got involved in this case as a prosecutor, said that Jen and Patricia showed real courage, not only for taking the stand, but for risking the potential consequences.
Think of it. If they were intimate with him. They know who he is, They know what he is. People don't understand. It's not TV that it's cut and everybody's high. There is a life after a case, and people have to live the rest of their lives dealing with the murderer, his family, his friends, his associates. They're going to have to look behind their back for the rest of their lives.
Mike, the defense lawyer, argued that both of these women had been cast aside by Tom, that they were quote scorned girlfriends. In particular, Mike attacked Patricia's credibility, noted that she'd struggled with substance abuse for years, and pointed out that Tom had cheated on her repeatedly.
You know, he was not a faithful boyfriend, but he was not a murderer.
Mike maintained that both ex girlfriends were lying on the stand to get back at Tom. In cross examination, Mike did his best to poke holes in the ex girlfriend's stories by pointing out inconsistencies. Over the preceding years, Jen and Patricia had told their stories multiple times to investigators
and court officials, and there were some discrepancies. Patricia and Jen both testified at trial about seeing Tom's spider web tattoo, but years earlier, Patricia had originally told investigators the tattoo that Tom got for the murder was a tear drop within a spider web.
Well, the theory of the girlfriends, the theory that began this whole snowball rolling down the side of a snow covered hill, was not to earn the web tattoo, but to earn a red tear drop within the web tattoo.
For the record, Tom did have a web tattoo, but there was no tear drop in it. Mike found things like this, small inconsistencies and hammered away at them. In my mind, the most confounding issue that Mike raised involved the newspaper article about the murder, the one that Tom allegedly kept. This article was important because in theory, if Iran would was the victim, then this article would have Iran's name in it right because it would be about Iran.
But no one, not the FEDS, or the police or the prosecutors, was able to find such an article, not at Tom's house or the library, or anywhere. It's a loose end that remains unexplained, and according to Mike Farrell, this was another hole in the prosecution's case. More on the prosecution after the break. By far the most important witness was Craig Peterson, the supposed accomplice. He was really the lynchpin to the prosecution's case. When Craig finally walked
into the courtroom, it was a dramatic moment. Craig and Tom had been friends since the fourth grade. They knew each other's families, they had grown up alongside one another in Delaware, and if Craig was to be believed, they'd finished out their adolescence by committing murder together. Now, almost two decades later, the former friends were in their late thirties. One was the defendant, possibly facing life in prison, the other the star witness who had a get out of
jail free card. When he took the stand, Craig described the night of the murder in detail, just as he had done with Scott and Terry, the two federal agents two years prior. It was the same story that he had helped to kill a man all because of the color of his skin, and that he had watched as Tom Guybison shot him in the head, and then, as Craig told the jury, he quote slowly drove off like nothing happened and just kept going.
Craig Peterson was a liar, He was a corrupt source. Frankly, he was given an offer that no one could refuse.
This is the argument that the defense made a trial that Craig lied to the federal agents Scott and Terry to save his own skin.
If in fact their theory was that he was the driver of Tom Guybison to Philadelphia from Warmington to kill a black man. He's a co conspirator first degree murder, life without parole.
So you can is that they explicitly threatened him or said you're going to go away from murder if you don't cooperate with us.
It's not my theory, Jake, it's the truth. It's exactly what happened. You know, mister Peterson, you know, didn't Tom Guybison. Didn't you drive Tom Guybison to Philadelphia to cooble backman?
No?
Second time? Didn't you drive Tom Guybison to Philadelphia to cool back man?
No?
Third time? Well, look, you know you're facing life without parole. First degree murder co conspirator, but we'll we'll let you go scott free with total immunity if you essentially tell us what we want to hear.
It is true that initially Craig denied taking part in this murder when Scott and Terry made that trip to Vermont, But it's also true that once he confessed, his story, with all its many details, remained consistent. In the courtroom, under cross examination, Craig held his own At one point, Mike asked him, pointedly, you decided to tell them what they want to hear, that you'd get immunity and not have the worry about prosecution. Correct, Craig replied, I didn't
tell them what they wanted to hear. I told them what happened. It's impossible to underscore just how important Craig was as a witness. In order to convict Tom Guybison, the jury would not only have to believe that Craig was credible, they would also have to believe that Craig's memory was reliable because all the details they connected this murder to iron Wood came from Craig's confession. Scott, Terry, and Luby, the detective from the flipd All testified for
the prosecution. They walked the jury through the years of work they'd done to bring this cold case out of the basement literally and into the courtroom. Talked about how several key facts from Greig's confession, the general location, the type of weapon, the nature of the wound, and the time frame spring of eighty nine led them to a single match iron Wood. But in the end, it would all come down to a gut feeling about Craig. The prosecution presented him as someone with a checkered past who'd
finally redeemed himself and told the truth. The defense was calling him a liar and an opportunist. It would be up to the jury to decide. After the prosecution rested, Mike Ferrell had an opportunity to present his own witnesses to build out an alternate theory of how Iran Wood died to suggest that Tom wasn't the one who killed him. His counter narrative is a bit spotty, not all of it connects, but I'm going to walk you through it.
Would it was supposedly the victim, Tom Guyvenson, didn't kill him, Drugs and guns killed him.
Mike called a bunch of witnesses to build out his theory that Iran was murdered over a drug debt. One of these witnesses was an old girlfriend of Iran's. She testified that Iran sold drugs and that she'd once received a threatening phone call from a guy who was looking for Iran. In response, Roger King pointed out that this call occurred more than a year before the murder, so he argued, connecting these two events was a real stretch.
Mike brought into other witnesses too, including a bartender who'd seen Iran on the night of the murder in an agitated state.
We proved that Aaron Wood was in a bar, nervous, afraid, indicating that he may never come back. The bartender called Iran saying, quote, you probably won't be seeing me no more man after today.
It went on like this. Mike brought in someone who had been interviewed by the police back in nineteen eighty nine at the scene of the crime.
And we have an eye witness of heard the gunshot and saw three black males in hoods running from the scene of the gunshot.
On cross examination, Roger asked this witness if he thought the three men in the hoods running away were involved in the crime, No, said the witness. This man also admitted, in a moment of absurdity, that he had no idea why he was being called to testify because he knew nothing about this murder. Okay, at this point, if you're scratching your head trying to keep all this straight, I hear you information overload. That, however, seemed to be part
of the defense's strategy here. Mike wasn't offering complete answers or a counter narrative that made total sense, and he didn't have to. He was just trying to see doubts in the jurors minds. I should mention Tom Guybison never took the witness stand. He waved his right to testify, so the jury never heard from him. The trial would last for twelve days, and as the lawyers sparred and the witnesses testified, one man in the gallery watched on silently.
He was there every day from start till finish, taking it all in. That man was Tyrone Wood, Aron's youngest brother.
I felt like I had to go to trial every day, and I feel like I had to find truthful not only for the family, for my mom because she said should I go, and I said no.
No, because he didn't want her hearing all the details, reliving the whole nightmare, so he went instead, though it was no easy to ask for him either. In the lead up to the trial, kind of amazingly, no one had shared any details with him, the whole story about Tom and Craig and the prom and the tattoos. That was all news to him. Tyrone intently listened to all the witnesses, especially Craig, and he found him credible. It was a tortuous situation. On the one hand, Craig's testimony
is what made this whole trial possible. He was the key to the family shot at justice or at least a closure. On the other hand, Craig was also the man who supposedly helped kill Roan, the man who drove away quote like nothing happened. I asked Tyrone how he felt about Craig testifying.
I was actually thinking that I was glad he did at least for my family and for my mother, so at least they can close their eyes knowing that they knew who did it. And that's the way I look at it. Also, I just thank God for that I know who did it.
Occasionally during the trial, Tyrone found himself looking right at Tom Guybison, looking and thinking.
I said, I'm not gonna let him win. I just wanted you to be convicted of my brother's death. You did it, you know, you did it so and I felt like he was a coward, you know, because you didn't face no man. You went up and just shot a man just because the sport. I don't hate, but I was kind of hating for a little bit. And then at the same token, I thought to myself, I came that this guy overtake me again. So I'm thinking that we're gonna get justice and then everything will be okay.
His family's hopes, just like Tom's fate, were now in the hands of twelve Philadelphians. It was their call. They had to sort through the witness's testimonies, the narrative, the counter narrative, the lofty rhetoric of Roger King, the doubts sewed by Mike Ferrell, all in search of the elusive prospect that buried somewhere in this tangled, tragic mess was a verdict. It was truly just next time I'm deep cover.
My name is Bob.
I'm a Philadelphian and.
I was selected to serve on the Jewelry that heard the case of Thomas Guybison.
Pressure was growing within the group to come to a conclusion. There was a feeling of we don't have more to go on.
Deep Cover is produced by Amy Gaines McQuaid and Jacob Smith. It's edited by Karen Schakerji mastering by Jake Gorski. Our show art was designed by Sean Carney. Original scoring in our theme was composed by Luis Gara, fact checking by Arthur Gomberts. Our story consultant was James Foreman Jr. Special thanks to Jerry Williams, Sarah Nix, Greta Cone, and Jake Flanagan. I'm Jake halpern
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