Pushkin.
When Scott told me about this case, I just knew that we needed to highlight it, that we needed to share it. Because even before I knew all the details, even before I went down the rabbit hole, because I'm a person always going down the rabbit hole, pulling up news articles and videos or whatever I can find about FBI cases, even just hearing just a little bit about it, I knew that this was a case that needed to be told, that people needed to remember.
That's Jerry Williams. She worked for the FBI for over two decades, first as an agent and then as a spokesperson. Now she's the host of a podcast called FBI Retired Case File Review. Jerry's interviewed hundreds of FBI agents about cases they've worked. She's actually the person who first tipped me off about this story that we told in season four of Deep Cover. When it was done, I called
Jerry up to discuss this case. I wanted to know what drew her to it in the first place, and also get her impressions of what we'd put together for the Nameless Man. Later in this episode, you'll hear from Beth Wilson Devlyn. She's a jury consultant. Her job is all about understanding the psychology of jurors, and she had some interesting takeaways about the split verdict that the jury reached in this case. But first, here's my conversation with Jerry.
I love telling these stories, and I would love all of them to become a podcast series, a documentary, a TV show.
Well, that's one of the things I love about you, Jerry. It seems like you really want the agents to get the recognition that they deserve for these cases. It seems like a driving force with you.
It absolutely is. I just need to tell the true stories.
Talk to me like, I want to get an understanding of you're an FBI agent and now you're a podcaster who's doing these I almost think of them as like oral histories because you're just letting the agents talk like how does this happen? How do you go from from carrying the badge to you know, carrying the mic.
Well, it actually started before I retired, because my last four or five years in the FBI, I stepped away from investigations and became a full time spokesperson. But after I finished that job, I just wanted to continue telling the FBI story.
You know, you got me from the very beginning. I mean, just to give listeners a little bit of a back story. I called Jerry, as I've done a few times, and asked, hey, do you have any ideas like what should be the basis for season four? And you said to me, Hey, there's this story involving an agent named Scott Duffy. If you could get the players to talk in the story, it could be something. And then I immediately went and started. I remember where I was. I was actually in New
York City. I was walking around. It was a spring day, and I put my earphones in and I hit play.
Where do you want to start?
If I could share, I'd like to start with creating a picture for the audience. Imagine yourself as a senior at your prompt. Imagine wherever that may be, a hotel or some sort of venue, and picture yourself seventeen eighteen years old, enjoying the end years of your four years
of high school. And the reason why I say that is because you'll see, as I talk about towards the end of this case, this is where a lot of our if you want to call it evidence or collaboration, bringing together witnesses who had never imagined after sitting at a prom table together, which was located at the DuPont Hotel, where eighteen years later, they would be confronted by an ATF agent and an FBI agent asking them what they remember and the conversations they might have had that night,
the night of the prompt.
This beginning really grabbed me because there's something about situating it in prom night that really helps help me understand just how young the alleged perpetrators of this crime were.
Absolutely, I just couldn't wrap my mind around high schools students being so bold as to brag about killing somebody only based on the color of its skin. It was frightening. It made me angry, It made me sad. This case just grabbed me from the very beginning. Definitely, in Scott telling this story, he just drew me in. And this is kind of corny to say, but I felt his heart. I felt his heart and how much he cared about this unknown black man that was shot in the streets
of Philadelphia, and he drew me in. So it was not difficult at all. When you asked me, do I have a story that you might want to expand into a series? I knew exactly what I was going to ask you about. I needed to hear the whole story.
When you originally get this interview with Scott and you think to yourself, Wow, I'd like to hear kind of I guess, more perspectives on this story, kind of different players involved. Who are the other people that you're thinking, Yeah, I'd like to know what their deal is.
Definitely the family when I'm talking to Scott, always, always right in the back of my mind is this nameless man and who he is and his family and what they're wondering and feeling. That was always present because you know, I'm thinking if that was my son or my brother or uncle, I would have always wanted to know what happened.
The thing that really got to me, And of course Aaron Wood's mother had passed away before you did this, but I really, you know, it really got to me that she did have the opportunity to learn about what happened to her son, and that had to be something that helped her to know the truth behind that, because not knowing what happened to him, why he died, how he died what obviously was a hole in her life because it was so painful, she didn't want to speak
about it, but she was able to find those answers through the trial. And that makes me feel good that, you know, an FBI agent, you know, and an ATF agent was able to do that for this woman that you know, they'd never met. That that really meant a lot to me too.
Yeah, And it's interesting when I went down and interviewed them and realized that that they were in this question of their own to find the perpetrator who they didn't know. That's when I had this aha moment to call this series the Nameless Man, because I had talked to Scott and Terry and they were searching for this nameless man who is the victim, and they need the victim to
make the case. And then there's this parallel story where the family had a nameless man of their own they were searching for, which is who killed their brother and their son.
Wow. I never thought of that. Yeah, that is pretty cool.
Yeah, yeah, and it it felt like it took a little bit of the pressure off Scott and Terry. This wasn't just their story, it was also the story of the Wood family and their quest.
The whole case just gives us hope, And I say, that when we talk about Craig Peterson, because his story about his background is also a kind of a story of self hate.
Wouldn't you say, yeah, so let's talk about Craig because this was this was a shock to me. In fact, I'll just there's a bit of tabe you want to play here from Carmen Weinberger, who was thesis and Da and she when they're putting the case together, is meeting Craig for the first time.
I looked at him and felt Peterson's a skinhead. He looks like he's mixed with black. I remember that he has an olive complexion that causes me to believe I'm biracial, So I pay attention to those things. I always thought he was mixed somewhere in there. I don't know if he was adopted. Maybe he didn't realize it, maybe he did, but I always thought, and to this day I can remember and see his faith. He looked like he could have been relative.
What was your reaction when you heard that.
Jerry Mine blowing. It's so sad to think that someone could be so confused about who they are and where they fit that they would choose to take a side where there is genuine hate and hostility to the other half of who they are. It's I did not know this when I interviewed Scott. That just never came up.
Yeah, I mean, you know, sometimes you know how this goes, there's there's a kind of burning question that you feel that you didn't get to the bottom of. That's my that's my burning question with this series about this because if that is in fact true, if Craig is biracial, then the question of how he got involve this white supremacist group and then in fact went on to commit murder based on its ideology, it raises a million questions. So I'm hopeful that maybe Craig will somehow decide that
he wants to talk. Just to be clear here, I never got Craig to go on the record and confirm for me whether or not he was biracial.
Well, all I have to say is that when I suggested that you look into this case, I needed the answers that I wasn't able to get from just interviewing Scott, and you delivered. I mean you delivered. And if you could just now get that interview with Craig so we can find out more about him, then you would have hit it out of the park. So that's your challenge.
I'm still hoping that Craig is going to have an opportunity to listen to this and to understand that we really do want to hear from him, not in a judgmental way, but in a way that again allows us to come full circle and to get understanding and hope that people who hate are able to recognize and resolve those feelings and move on to a better place. So Craig talk to Jake.
After the break, I discussed the jury and their verdict with Beth Wilson Devlin.
I listened to the whole thing. Actually, I thought it was very interesting.
Wow, that's great. Yeah.
I'm not a.
Podcast person either, so I thought it was very good.
Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. You you now fall into the same class as my family members who I guilt into listening to my work. That's Beth Wilson Devlin. She's a partner at Edge Litigation Consulting. She's a jury consultant and admittedly not a podcast listener. But I reached out to Beth to discuss the verdict in this case. And if you recall back in two thousand and eight, Thomas Guybison was found guilty on two counts conspiracy to
commit murder and a weapon charge. He was acquitted on the murder and ethnic intimidation charges. The press at the time called this verdict quote bizarre. But I wanted Beth's take on all of this, and we started off talking about the process of how a jury is even chosen. In the first place. There's a jury selection process in which you're going through potential jurors and weeding some ow can you can you just talk us through that a little bit about how that works.
That varies dramatically from venue to venue. Sometimes it's just the judge asking questions of the jurors. Sometimes you get an opportunity as a lawyer to be able to ask questions of the jurors. Sometimes you have information in the form of a questionnaire that jurors have that they either fill out at the time or they fill out in advance of the jury selection process. So there's lots of
different ways that you can get information. But what that information is and how much you have is really depend dependent upon the venue. So one thing I will just say, because I did I listened to the podcasts and uh, you know, you talk about it as being a jury selection process, which is what a lot of people think it is because that's what it's called jury selection. But it's actually a de selection process. So you're not actually picking the jurors that are going to be on the
panel that are going to decide the case. What you are doing is you are of a group of people. You have to decide who do I not want on this panel for one reason or another. You know, usually it's because you have a belief that this particular juror that you're going to strike off the panel is somebody who you know is not going to be open minded to your case.
So if you're Roger King, the prosecutor in this case, who what are the types of jurors that you're looking to kind of weed out to maximize your chances of winning?
Right? So I think about it like, okay, So for example, when I talk to my clients, I talk to that as basically you're looking at vampires. Right. So it's like you have a group of individuals and you have so many people that are going to be the ones that are just you know, your worst case scenario, and you want to try to identify who those individuals are, and you have so many wooden stakes that you can use, right, so what you want to be looking for in the
case of the prosecution. I think they actually have the advantage in this case because most of the jurors in the pool are likely going to be in favor of the prosecution based on the information in the case. So if it were and I were advising the prosecution, I'd be looking for individuals who, for example, are what I
would call critical thinkers. They're people who are, for example, they might be in professions where they're very very detail oriented, very evidence based, people like accountants, people like engineers, people like people who have science backgrounds, like, for example, the juror Bob, he was one. He's a perfect example of thing.
You're saying this, and I'm like, you're describing Bob, who is who is not entirely convinced by the prosecution.
Yeah, that's exactly the kind of situation. And I think he was absolutely well intentioned and taking his job very very seriously. But that's an example of someone who is going to look he's not going to be satisfied by eyewitness testimony, by circumstantial evidence, like most jurors actually are
in these sorts of situations. In these cases, most people are going to be satisfied by that, but someone like a Bob is going to be more interested in saying, I need to see the actual evidence in this case. I need to see the connection, the link between this piece of evidence and that piece of evidence.
By that same logic, is the prosecution in this case I do looking for someone who's going to be motivated by the kind of emotionality of the case.
Yeah, I mean I think so. Somebody like if the prosecution had the opportunity to say, who do I want on my jury, They're going to be looking for someone who is more emotionally, more sort of gut level. I have a gut reaction to the case, and I'm more likely to say I don't need you know, beyond a reasonable doubt, I have enough here to say if it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck, it must be a duck.
Okay. I want to ask you about something else, which is kind of a sensitive question, but one that feels relevant and important, which is race. If you're coming into this this situation as Roger King, and if I'm the prosecution, and I ask you, and I'm saying, Beth, can I assume can I make assumptions based on race?
Well, so a couple things. You can't strike based just on race. So there's something called a bats In challenge that if there is a pattern of one side or another doing something like that, then they can raise the bats In challenge because you can't strike just based on something like race. Gender is another example for bats In challenge. So you can't do that, but you can strike somebody who is of, you know, a particular race or ethnicity
if you have other reasons for doing that. The way I think about it in this case is, you know, yes, there's certainly a racially motivated component to it, So to say that that isn't relevant would be ridiculous really, But I think what we're talking about is a situation where you're looking for people who, Okay, is this somebody who has experienced racial discrimination? Is this somebody who's experience being targeted because of the color of their skin, And so
that's the sort of thing that you're looking for. So if I'm, for example, you know, advising for the defendant, I'd be concerned about people who have had experiences like that, who have had experiences where they've been targeted because of the color of their skin, because of their ethnicity, or racially targeted in some way. I'd be concerned about someone like that.
Yeah, you use the vampire analogy, which made me think, you know, what is it the vampire? You break out the garlick or the crucifix, and you know you've got a vampire. But some people may just wear their biases on their sleeve, but most of us are fairly adept at hiding, particularly viewpoints that we may rightly sense are going to be a liability. You're going to turn people off. So how do you ferret that out?
Yeah, I mean that's a situation where the questionnaire is really the better way to go, because that's a situation where people are going to be much more candid if they don't have to look someone else in the eye, where there's a much more of a sense of being judged in that room.
Okay, So we talked a little bit through Roger King and what he would want, and you kind of address this. But I want to ask you, if you're Mike Ferrell, the defense attorney, and you've got this client here, who is being accused of murder who at one point in his life was is a skinhead, and all the kind of baggage that brings with it. Who are the people that you want and don't want on the jury From the defense perspective.
If I'm the defense in this case, I have a hard job because, as I said before, I think that if you look at the grand scheme of how many people like all the perspective jurors, most of them are likely going to be prosecution oriented in this sort of a case. So I'm going to be concerned about somebody who is, you know, very much pro law and order type. Somebody who you know is interested in, you know what the police say. They have very favorable viewpoints of the police.
They trust the police, they trust you know, prosecutors, they
think that they do a good job. That's the sort of thing where I'd be concerned about someone like that, somebody that I would like if I'm the defendant, I'd be interested in again the sort of the bobs, right, the people that are going to really hold the prosecution to a standard, to that beyond a reasonable doubt standard, who probably are going to be concerned with the idea of circumstantial evidence or eyewitness testimony, particularly when you're talking
about eyewitness testimony that occurred you know, you know, years and years ago where memories fade as as you talked about in the podcast, that's exactly the kind of thing where some jurors are going to be really concerned about putting someone in prison for the rest of their life
on that sort of evidence. I probably would also be interested in, you know, men who maybe don't hold super favorable views of women, who you know, have been scorned by women in the past, who have been you know, who have been betrayed, you know, by someone close to them, someone like that, who's going to somehow be able to make a personal connection to the defendant, skinhead or not skinhead.
There could be lots of ways that someone can personally identify with a defendant who would be willing to fight for that defendant.
That's interesting. But how do you that's like a very personal thing. How do you how would you suss that out?
Yeah, so, I mean it kind of depends on the process again, right, So we go back to what kind of information are you likely to get. If you're not going to be able to ask the questions, then it doesn't really matter. You're not gonna be able to ssess that out. But if you have a situation where you could ask, you know, very point blank, if they've ever been betrayed by a close friend, or you know, a
situation where you know they've ever been wrongly accused. Those are questions that you might be able to ask in the Vais deir process, and that juror, you know, will you know, they have to respond truthfully. That doesn't mean that they will, but just sometimes even their hesitations or the way they say things can help you understand how they're reacting and what they're likely to be thinking.
These lawyers did have a chance to ask the jurors questions. I know that the defense lawyer asked, would you be able to suspend judgments about someone who said they were a skinhead? Is anyone policing those questions?
So if the judge is there, then they're going to be the ones policing that. There could also be a magistrate there, so it's not the judge, but it's a magistrate that's doing that, somebody who's basically, you know, the umpire of those sorts of questions.
Yeah, because I'm thinking like you would you ask a juror, sir, have you been divorced?
Sir?
Has was it an acrimonious divorce where you had to fight over custody? And trying to get at that issue is is this someone who's going to kind of be you know, angry at women.
Those are questions that could get at that, right you can start to make inferences from that, but that's farther removed from the actual question. So I might you know, if you're asking a more specific question that can help more pointedly get at the the idea that you're trying to get at, Like something like, you know, have you ever had girlfriends, you know, or people that you've dated just lie about you and and you know, make things up?
And have you ever had a situation where you know they've you know, said things about you and and hurt your reputation you know, you know, in your community. So that's a situation where someone like who's had an experience like that, then they say yes, and then they start to kind of reveal some of the you know, the the inner workings of themselves, if you will.
One of the limited exit interviews that has done at the time with a juror, the one thing that he said to the to the press was something of the effect of one of the ex girl friends was baddie and just fixating on, you know, emotionality and the personality of one of these ex girlfriends, which seemed like an odd thing to base a desire to quit on. But I'm hearing you.
It's if that's resonating with you on a personal level, and you're the jur and you're thinking, oh, she reminds me of of this person in my life who was a nightmare and did these things to me and my god, like I can't take her word for anything, then you could quickly see how that like, because it's not all logic.
Right, that's absolutely right. I mean, that's a situation where I so that one holdout dur I doubt he was a critical thinker, not like a Bob right you talked of the different camps in this situation. This guy was probably more likely someone who did personally identify with the defendant, maybe not necessarily from a you know, racism level, although that might have been there too. It sounded like this particular jur didn't want to talk and really kind of
go into detail to sort of reveal his thinking. As to why he was so strongly for the defendant, and that can be an indicator of someone who you know, isn't a critical thinker, but rather as someone who's personally identified with the case, with a particular defendant and just no matter what, is going to stand by, you know,
his position and doesn't want to be challenged. It doesn't want to get into the debate with other jurors, and that can be incredibly frustrating for the other jurors because they don't have anything to work with, you know.
Yeah, when you talk about it that way and we think about it this way, it's funny because the idea of a trial by jury is such an underpinning of our sense of American democracy and in so many ways it feels.
Like it's it's it's wonderful.
And yet you can have a situation where in theory, some witness reminds him of his crazy ex girlfriend, and on that basis, he's the holdout that forces a decision, and when seen in that light, it seems like an absolutely crazy system.
Yeah, I mean, but I will say this, I mean, that's true, and we are all a product of our own you know, experiences and the world views that are formed from those experiences in the adagies and beliefs that we have. Everybody has them, no one is exempt from that.
But I think the one thing about the jury system, I mean, I will say from my experience, I've been doing this for just a little over twenty five years now, and I would say that there's not one jury that I've ever encountered that wasn't well intentioned, that wasn't trying to do the right thing. I think what happens is sometimes you have these kind of little, you know, hiccups. And I don't mean to minimize the situation, because I
think the verdict in this case was was tragic. I think that you know, people just buy and large would agree that this guy, even if there wasn't enough to link him to this particular murder, and I think arguably there was, there certainly was enough to suggest that he had gone and done something pretty bad, and you know that that he killed somebody. The question is is did
they get the right one? So I think in that situation, I think that jurors, again they're well intentioned, they're trying to do the right thing, but there can be in those in some circumstances, particularly when you're talking about murder one where you're talking about taking away someone's liberty forever.
You know, some jurors are going to be they're they're just more likely you're going to see that that element that comes out where jurors are going to be more like to say, look, I don't care what you say. I'm not changing my mind on this unless you give me a really good reason to and if I haven't heard it, I'm going to stand my ground. You know, in those sort of situations where the state are really high,
you get jurors like that. It doesn't happen in every case, but again, you can have that, and that doesn't mean that it's a failure of the system at large. I think it's just that's one of the it's one of the flaws in our system. It's just the way the system is. It's an imperfect system.
More in just a minute. One of the things that struck me, that surprised me, and I'm wondering how you reacted to it, which was that here we are, you know, fifteen years out, and when I talked to both Bob and to Nick, who is the foreman, I was really amazed at how I guess fresh and lasting the memories
and the experience of this trial were for them. Wondering does that surprise you or do you think that that is typical of these experiences have such a lasting effect on the jurors who said to these trials.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a couple of things. Jurors were essentially felt, at least it seemed to me, felt very disappointed by the outcome. I mean, so that that sort of lasts with them. You know, it wasn't something that they wanted. They wanted to do it one way, and they didn't get that outcome, and so you know, I can see why it haunts them and why it sits with them to this day. I don't fault them.
I get the sense that people feel like the jurors screwed up, they made a mistake, or they did something stupid. That's the easy way out. It's easy to say that jurors, you know, didn't get it right, and they didn't understand what they were doing. And how can you make any sense of this? I mean, as I look at what they did, it makes it actually made perfect sense to me.
But if you listen to their rationale, it does make sense, there were a number of jurors in there who felt strongly that this did happen and that this man was murdered by this guy. But when pushed by or when questioned by some jers who were sort of hung up on this idea of not just a belief, but beyond a reasonable doubt belief and the fact that there really wasn't I mean, if you look at what the prosecution brought, you know, there wasn't really a connection between you know,
what actually happened and this particular man. I mean, no one, at least my understanding, no one could actually identify that this was the man that was murdered by the defendant. And I mean, and remember that this case happened at a time when DNA evidence and physical evidence was something that was becoming very very forefront. You saw it all
over the news. It was a big it was a big thing that was becoming a real thing for cases like this, and so you know, it's not too shocking to me that there were some jurors who said, you know, I'm not seeing that that physical evidence. That's where the jurors fall. So that's where the compromise happens, because that's the crack right.
Well, so, I mean, if I'm hearing you're right, you're saying basically like the dury worked. Yeah.
I mean again, I think that, you know, for conspiracy, it makes sense that they concluded what they concluded. I mean, the conspiracy charge doesn't require proof of an actual murder. It just requires proof that you know an individual and another individual or more than that, you know, decide this is what they were going to do and actually started to put that plan into motion. And I think that
everybody could comfortably go there. I think when you're talking about the actual murder itself though, without something making that connection. And again, I think if you're asking me, or asking anyone any of the jurors, do you think that this is what happened? I think the answer to that is clear.
Everybody would be unanimous on that. But if you're asking beyond a reasonable doubt, you have to prove that this is the guy that was murdered by that guy, I think that's a harder question without that physical evidence there to connect it.
How common is it to have a compromise like this. I mean the papers at the time called it a bizarre split verdict, But this idea of juries. Kind of making a compromise in order to avoid a mistrial. Is this a pretty common thing?
I mean, the mistrial, that's an uncommon thing. So I think that jurors certainly will want to do what they can do to get the right outcome. So if people believe that he did something bad and did something wrong, and they're convinced of that, you know, they're not going to want him to just get off scot free. Right. So this is a situation where the conspiracy, the evidence is solid on that, the weapons charge solid on that.
You know, now at least we know that he can go away based on these charges.
And the one hand, I hear you saying that you felt that the jury did their job and it kind of worked in this case. But earlier, at one point I heard you say that the verdict in this case was tragic, and I was just wondering what you meant by that.
I think that if you didn't have a burden of proof and you just simply wanted to sit people down in a room and say, did this guy do it? I think that everybody would agree that he did. That's the tragic part of it is that I know that the family was looking for justice. They believe with all their hearts that this is the guy that did it, and in all likelihood he was that guy. The problem is is that there's that burden of proof, and there
are some jurors who will hold to that standard. And so I don't think even if people believe strongly that that's the case, if they don't have beyond a reasonable doubt in this case, some of those jurors are going to say, that's good enough for me to say that I'm not going to convict someone and put them away
for the rest of their life. I mean, I feel like the jury in one sense was honorable in the sense that they were not willing to hang and put potentially not allow any consequence to be met to the defendant, because you know that could have been what they did. They could have hung on murder one. But you know that if that was not going to get them to a conviction on a particular on anything, then you know, in a sense, that's better than not getting anything at all.
I mean, to me, the bigger travesty would have been that this guy walks away scott free. That would have been a huge travesty.
Well, well, thank you so much for chatting with me, and I'll be calling you when I get called for my next jury.
Absolutely, I will be happy to talk.
This episode was produced by Amy Gains McQuaid. Our editor is Karen Chakerjee. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Our show art was designed by Sean Carney. Original scoring and our theme was composed by Luis Gara. This episode was mass sired by Sarah Bruguier. Special thanks to Sarah Nix and Greta Cone. I'm Jake Calpert.