Introducing - Earwitness: Chapter 1 | Behind the Crown

Hi there, I'm Steve Fishman from Orbit Media and I've got a goodie for you. Today we're dropping the first episode of ear Witness, which is a favorite podcast of mine from our friends at Lava for Good. They released it in twenty twenty three and it didn't get enough attention, so luckily they're re releasing it in their Bone Valley feed. Personally, I think this podcast will rile you. It riled me.

This is quite a wall here. Oh, these are some great photos.

That's Jimmy Carter enough me, uh huh, yes, me and Lorena Lynn.

How did this come about? She was given a.

Concert in burmah Allen carrying me backstage to leader.

Look at this suit that you have on. Maybe you've never heard of Bill Baxley, but here in Alabama he's a big deal.

Oh.

Wow.

Baxley is eighty two, slightly balding, with silver hair and eyebrows. In the pictures he's showing me on the wall of his office. I see him looking younger. His hair is dark, and he's standing with famous musicians and politicians.

As my dad, I sweared me in for my first term.

Wow.

Baxley was elected as Alabama's Attorney general when he was just twenty eight years old. He later served as lieutenant governor, and he's still practicing law today. During his career, Baxley prosecuted hundreds of cases and sent three people to Alabama's death row.

There are some crimes that are so wrong and so horrible that they only deserve one punishment.

He's a lifelong defender of the death penalty. A true believer, like when the US Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty in the nineteen seventies, Baxley worked hard to bring executions back to Alabama. He's that kind of true believer. So it's not surprising that Baxley was skeptical when his son, who's also an attorney, asked his dad to look over a case because he believed an innocent man was on death row.

Over the course of my long career, I've had dozens and dozens of answerces were these I'll call them do gooders, but they are. They're good people. They take up there's causes of people that have been sentenced to death, and they get interested in trying to help them, and they all think they're always innocent.

Baxley didn't even glance at the case file until weeks later. On an icy winter morning, it was too slippery to walk down the driveway and grab the newspaper, so he picked up the file that his son sent him and began reading about a black man named to Forrest Johnson, who was sentenced to death for killing a shareff's deputy.

I mean mid morning, I couldn't believe what I was reading. I wouldn't have believed that something like this could have happened.

What was so unbelievable about it?

Everything? Everything. I don't know how the guy got indicted, how they got I didn't see how the jury convicted him. I would have never believed that that could have happened in Alabama, no question in my mind. This guy was not guilty of this crime, and I couldn't comprehend how this could happen.

There's only one other case where Basley thought the defendants were innocent, and that case is almost one hundred years old. So what is it about this case to Forrest's case that convinced Basley that Alabama is trying to execute an innocent man?

If it's a unique absurdity that I've never sleen before, it's too late to give him back all those years he's been on death road, but it's not too late to correct it today and get him out for the future. It's wrong that it's gone this long. It is still not too late to correct.

My name is Beth Shelburne. Like Bill Baxley, I was born and raised in Alabama. I grew up about a mile away from where the crime at the center of this story took place. I'm a journalist and writer, and for the last three years, I've been investigating the case that rocked Bill Baxley's world. The story begins on a hot July night in nineteen ninety five. It unfolds in two places at once, the Crown Sterling Sweet's Hotel and a nightclub that's almost four miles away called Tea's Place.

M do you heed my man?

Laughter?

Haads?

My fe.

Souls save bly is in this bad of tears? I want to see revelation. I want to know who you are, am reation in this inspiration to the Who's holding stand, to the Who's holding Stand.

I'm Beth Shelburne. This is ear Witness, Chapter one, behind the Crown a Lot.

Yes, ma'am, this is very calling from Crown Sterling Sweet Hotel in Birmingham, Alabama. I'm calling because I've had several guests report what appears on the windows who have been two gunshots and people running in the parking lot.

It's twelve fifty five am on July nineteenth, nineteen ninety five.

It's twenty three critch flight.

That is correct. I have security on the premises, which is ship of the County Police. But I'm calling you because I want to make sure that the Birmingham Police arrive. Please all right, we'll get the one out, thank you very much.

All right.

The Crown Sterling Suites Hotel was a nine story building in Birmingham. Today, the hotel is an embassy suites. Inside the main entrance of the hotel, there's a pale tiled walkway that leads through the lobby. The front desk is to the left, but keep walking past it and you enter a huge atrium, an open space surrounded by windows with an indoor garden of leafy green plants and trees. The tiled walkway leads to a koi pond with a

I remember hearing popping noises from the distance.

Barry Rushikov was working at the front desk when he made made that nine to one one call.

When I heard it, I believe that's when I tried to call Officer Hardy on the radio with no response.

Officer William Hardy, who went by Bill, had been a deputy with the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office for twenty three years. He was also a security guard at the hotel, where he worked the night shift to make extra money. Hardy was five foot ten, had a thin mustache, and wore his hair in a Jerry curl. He was known to

You know, when I worked there, and when I was working nights, it was me, you know, Officer Hardy or whatever officer on duty, and or we would sometime have a house who is cleaning floors or something, but very minimal group, and I never felt unsafe.

Barry wasn't the only person to hear the popping noises. A few guests at the hotel also heard gunshots, including Marshall Kelly Cummings, a guest in a fourth floor room directly above the hotel's back exit.

David, I can remember like it was yesterday now as far as the details.

As I worked on this project, I started referring to Cummings as the Keebler cookie guy, because in nineteen ninety five he worked for Keebler as a truck driver.

When I was with Keebler driving Wonder step Lands and delivering cookies and crackers and stuff.

And Cummings was staying at the Crown Sterling for a company training. After the workday was over, he drank a few beers at the hotel bar with some coworkers, and then he and the other Keepler employee he was rooming with turned in between ten and eleven PM. But Cummings was not asleep for long.

But it just I woke up and it was I kept hearing somebody talk kind of talk.

So you heard some voices and it sounded like they were arguing or not.

Really bad, but they.

Were having a conversation.

Yeah, it was male voices.

Yeah. Well they quit arguing and then I didn't hear anything. So I laid back down. And it probably wasn't twenty seconds, thirty seconds, forty five.

I'm out.

I didn't count boom, small caliber gun. They won a big caliber and all of a sudden, a few secons of a boom about the second time I saw it, Ben, that was a.

Gun, he remembers, turning to the coworker he was sharing a room with and.

I said, you hear that? He says, yeah. So I stood up and opened the blind to get my eyes fixed because it was dark. Then they had the lights, and.

The lights directly beneath his window. Cummings sees a four door car it's dark copper or light brown with a vinyl top, parked facing the hotel's back double doors. He sees a tall person get into the driver's side of the car, close the door, and slowly pull away with the headlights off.

And so I called down to the front desk. I said, hey, there's men shots fired. I heard I did you hear that?

I believe I got a phone call from someone in the room saying they heard gunshots.

So Barry makes that initial nine to one one call, hangs up, and decides to investigate it.

Jumped over the counter to walk back, and I was walked back. I saw Offsta Hardy's radio.

Barry sees Deputy Hardy's radio on a table in the hotel's atrium, and right next to it his cigarette still burning in an ash tray. Meanwhile, back on the fourth floor, Marshall Kelly Cummings hangs up the phone with Barry and goes back to the window.

And I kept looking, and I kept looking. Finally my eyes got where I could see, and I looked down. I could see him laying on the ground.

I went, oh, no, this ain't good.

Cummings spots a body on the ground and realizes someone has been badly hurt. It's right around this time Barry makes the same terrible discovery.

There's a hallway that went to the door that went back out to the back parking lot. As I turned the corner to go down that hallway and I looked out the door in the distance, I saw Offsta Hardy on the ground. That's when I ran back to the front desk, made an emergency phone call to the police.

Yes, man, it's a very cross again and I have a pit what appears to be a.

Go to the county police officer shot.

In the back of our ability. He ends that moving people in.

The car drove away and he's lying on the on the pavement. I'm a little afraid to go. Yes, he is a Birmingham police out Jefferson County. He is a hired night time security for us. Right, do you know if you can.

Sign out anything like if you breathe?

I protesting how much flood I'm trying, man, my my promise. I don't know if the people are still out there.

Okay, we we should be that Charlotte, you say much.

I'm gonna go back. Okay, thank you.

Jess County Debut has been shot on the back entrance of the hotel clown show Sweet. It is one of us and we are they have got one down who has been shot and it looks too bad. Three three two? Do we have any information? Do we have anything?

No?

Nice afect anything.

After he makes the second nine to one one call, Barry walks down the hallway to the back parking lot, and then I went back out the office.

Already he was not a good condition. He did have a wound to his face. He was making a gurgling, gasping noise.

You know, he was not conscious.

I believe I took my jacket off, my uniform jacket off, to try to cover him, or put under his head, or try to comfort him. But fortunately officers arrived so quickly and I was removed from that area immediately.

More than a dozen officers from four different agencies arrive at the hotel. One of them is Detective Tony Richardson, who says he'd known Deputy Hardy since he first started working for the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office in nineteen seventy eight.

Being black and Bill being black, naturally I noticed him. I was told more than once to get a haircut. That you know, to be a deputy sheriff, you gotta have your haircut. So the reason I mentioned that is because from the first day that I ever saw him, his hair was out.

To hear big afro, big afro, and he would put on his hat. He wore that hat religiously everybody else's. The shaff's office hated those hats. They didn't want to wear, you know, but he always wore his hat.

Deputy Hardy often wore his traditional broad brimmed tan smoky the bear style sheriff's hat. It was later entered as evidence from the rhyme see with a bullet hole through the brim, and he.

Would have it on his head and all that hair would be on the side would be out here, And I'm like, who is this guy? How can he get away with that? And not only that, he is in the Sheriff's office. How can he get away with that? So I was in treat by him, fascinated by him, but I was scared of him.

I was scared to meet him because I thought, of my mind, this guy's got to be crazy, you know who to do that and get away with it. He's got to be crazy. I was scared of him.

But anyway, when I first met him, I met him and talked to him.

He started to.

Feel better about well. I started to feel better about him.

We were never just bullsom buddies real close, but we were close and we knew each other.

Tony Richardson and Bill Hardy had been colleagues at the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office for seventeen years. He remembers the last time he saw Hardy alive.

The last day I saw Bill, my brother and I My brother would put a sheriff's office also, and we were standing there smoking and Bill drove out the alley and he was pulling up twenty second and he stopped in the road and he started to talk to us, and he said, Hey, guys, how y'all doing loan me some money. It's just you know, stuff like that. And we laughed and talked for a minute. And that was

Did you go to the actual scene?

Yeah?

What did you encounter when you got there?

Well, by the time I got there, Beale's body was gone.

Paramedics had already lifted Bill Hardy into an ambulance and rushed him to the emergency room of Birmingham's largest hospital. He is gravely injured, with two gunshot wounds to his head and jaw. A medical examiner notes a bullet wound to Hardy's finger likely means he raised his hand in a defensive posture when he was shot. Police go to his house to tell his wife, Patricia Diane Hardy, and

I got to call that Hardy had been shot, and they told me some looked very serious. So I got in my car and went down to the hospital. I stood there while they were operating on me, and then I just heard one say that's it.

It's over.

We can't do it anymore.

It's over. We can't save him. He's gone.

What does that feel like when you are a career law enforcement officer and one well.

It's kind of devastating to you. You know, you get to know these guys, and I knew Hardy that's a very devastating thing that happened to you.

Deputy Bill Hardy is pronounced dead seven hours after he was shot. The cause of death is two gunshot wounds fired at close range. I wanted to know more about Deputy Hardy, so I wrote to several family members inviting them to talk. They never responded, and I can only imagine his murder must be one of the hardest things they've ever experienced. But I have learned a few things about Deputy Hardy. He was married to Patricia Diane Hardy. He had two children and four adult step children. Hardy

You know.

It was rough.

It was rough.

It's rough right now.

There's a rough right as many working homicide. I've worked at bunch, but none of them affected me like the killing of a deputy ship. You know, you have a bond with the guys you work with in the uniform. Whether you know him or not, you have a bond. So when I was a deputy shareer working another deputy SHA's murder, do you think that was emotional. Yes, it was very and had it been my decision the day we caught the people that did it, let's put them on death throat.

Lead Detective Tony Richardson and his team of investigators have no eyewitnesses to the shooting, and there's no known motive. A fellow officer has just been shot, and they have almost no evidence to go on. At the exact time that Deputy Bill Hardy was shot to Forest Johnson and his friend ar dragas Ford were four miles away from the crime scene at a downtown Birmingham nightclub called Te's Place, but they would soon become the focus of Tony Richardson's investigation.

That particular night, they said they was going to teas and see he would go to tease every Tuesday and he have his particular same parking space and everything because he will give them good tips.

Ardregas was willing to pay for a good parking space because he was in a wheelchair. When Ardregas was a teenager, a group of men began shooting outside an apartment building he was visiting. He was shot trying to shield his cousin and her baby from gunfire.

My son when he got shot when he was fifteen, I had just gotten off from work. I was tied in the phone, Rang Rang Rang. I didn't answer the phone, you know, and I finally answered it and they stated that he had gotten shot. I need to rush to the murdency room. Who That was like a dream, you know. You hear about things happening to other people, but when it hit home, you know, and then he got spinal

In his early twenties, ar Dregis outfitted his Monte Carlo with a makeshift system so he could throw his wheelchair in the back and drive the car using just his upper body.

He would cut a broom you know, the broomstick. He would put one to the brakes, one to the clerator, and he would tape it to the car.

He would tape it to it.

So he like retro fitted his Yeah, he did.

Did.

He didn't buy the regular equipment that he should have used.

Are dragas and to Forrest actually came up with this idea together. Here's to Forrest's cousin, Antonio.

Green Drake's was. I guess that was a pride thing. He didn't want the handicap accessible pedals and stuff in his car. But as far as come up with this great, this genius idea where they're gonna well some metal rods to the break and accelerator pedal so he could use his hands and dry, well, he get to thinking about this thing and metal rods, Well did from the brake pedal or the accelerator. That's not too good of an idea in case you get in the accident. He hate

Could he get around?

Well?

I mean did he grow real?

Well, it's been a while since to Forest and our dregas have hung out because to Forest had recently gotten out of prison. He was arrested for driving with a suspended license, and as officers padded him down at the city jail, he tossed something into a nearby trash can. Officers reached into the can and found a plastic bag of cocaine. To Forest ended up pleading guilty to drug possession.

I used to go to Teas Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

Barbetta Hunt was one of the regulars who was there that night. What's your nickname back then?

Mama Cat.

That's like in the world of nicknames, that's in them.

Mother, it's the purpose and my father, Fred Perkins, they gave me that name when I was born. But that's my name. My name is Mama Cat.

When she was in her early twenties, Mama Cat spent a lot of nights hanging out at Tea's Place.

When you walk into the door, that's my spot right there. It's on the right hand side. Every time I got that was my spot. I see, I don't move from this spot.

I don't walk to the bag.

I don't walk there. I say, right there. Me and my friend Velinicia Aqui Sanders, we were together.

We got there before eleven because the club was always free on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday before eleven for women.

This is Belanique Sanders nicknamed Queisi.

Anything after eleven it was five dollars and me and Barbetta was very cheap, so we tried to make sure we got there in free because the little money we had. Say, we wanted to something to eat, and I love to get a chicken plate from there, a chicken breast with some French fries.

Oh my god, did you know to Forest Johnson?

Yes, I did.

I knew him from hanging out in the neighborhood in Ansley and I, oh my god, I had a crush on him. He was the finest.

Yeah, what do you remember about what he looked like?

He was short, a nice body, Oh my god. Anyway, he was a ladies man. I will say that, sweet, always kind. He was just a nice gentleman. Like his mama had raised him really well.

Did you guys ever go out or did he know that you had a crush on him?

He knew I had a crush on him, but we never went out. No, we would just see each other. I smiled, be like, Oh that he is, I'm gonna get him.

Yeah, that's it.

To Forest mostly grew up in Birmingham's Pratt City neighborhood, or Pratt for short.

We grew up together, I mean closer than just cousins. We were like brothers because we were all pretty much raised right in the same little local community.

While to Forest was growing up, most of his extended family also lived in or near Pratt, including his cousin Antonio Green.

And since we were toddlers, i mean babies, we were kind of together, took out in this thing, and he was a couple of years younger than I am, so he always kind of held on to my shirt tail and you know, so I've been closely connected with him for our entire life.

Pretty much.

To Forest's mom, Donna was seventeen when she had him, and when to Forest was young, she was more like a sister to him than a mother. Donna leaned on her parents and siblings to help take care of to Forest, and as to Forest got older, on him to help take care of his little brother.

He started at a very young age, much too young to really be faced with the type of responsibility that he took on. He was at an age where he was still a kid. I'm talking about eleven twelve, you know, just in nineteen years and had to take on the responsibility of taking care of his little brother. You know, he had a little brother that he got ready for school, he earned his clothes, he did. You know, He's always been that caring little dude, you know, and he did that.

You know, his mom and.

Dad was there, but his dad was a very very heavy drinker.

To Forest's father, Ronald, was an alcoholic and would get violent when he drank, which was every day. This made home life extremely volatile for to Forrest, his younger brother, little ron and especially his mother, Donna. She eventually left Ronald when to Forest was a teenager and moved in with another man who had an apartment and the Tuxedo Projects in Birmingham's Insley community, also known as the Brickyard.

Oh it was called the Brickyard.

Velainique aka Queisi, the one who had a crush on to Forest, also grew up there.

It was rough, idre.

You know, my mom had three girls, had three and we lived in a five bedroom project with our grandparents. So it was just a bunch of girls in the house. But I mean, you know, I had just seen people get killed right in front of me. My cousin got shot in the stummy.

You know, a lot of.

It was rough.

You had family's daddy couldn't afford to eat, you know, kids come to school, you know, wearing the same clothes over and over.

It was rough.

It was rough growing up in the projects.

To four and his little brother moved there when to Forest was sixteen. When he was seventeen, to Forrest was shot and a drive by shooting and spent three months in the hospital. To Forest's mom told me the bullet is still lodged in his chest. During this period, seven of to Forest's friends would be shot and killed. No one was ever prosecuted for any of these crimes, and it was around this time that to Forest dropped out of school. Several family members tell me that at twenty two,

There was a love before eleven, and we were standing outside and they came up as far as it was pushing the Draca's.

One of the first people they run into is Kenyara Pickett, who was standing near the entrance.

I remember exactly where I was standing, right in front of the club when he walked up, because I thought I was shocked that night out. You know, back in the days. It was TFC wearing big clothes back then. And I had on some black, some black big jeans but shorts, and I had on some black and white rebox and then I think I had on the button down shirt. My sister she had just got out of

She came home to Forrest and Ardregas make their way past Kenara and go into Tea's. Mama Cat and Velanik are already inside, perched at their table right by the front door.

Or Tavarras Johnson. I remember he was pushing Adreka's flour in the wheelchair they came together.

I saw so far was pushing a Draca's in the club, because we always stand at the front by the door so we can be nosy and see everything.

You wanted to see who was coming in and who was leaving with who?

Yes, yes, ma'am.

About eleven o'clock, I saw Tafarest come in pushing Anddrega's in and I was excited to sing him because I hadn't seen him in a year because I had just got out the military.

Stanley Chandler is also at Tease that night to catch up with friends. He and to Forrest knew each other as kids and Pratt.

So we stood there and we start we talked, you know about old times, you know, and I mean we.

Joked, laying and laugh to Forrest and Ardregas settle in at a table chatting with people who stopped by watching the dance floor.

I was sitting on the bathroom because when you go around, it's like a little balcony part that you could sit at, And so I seen Draca's and to Forest when they came in the door because he was pushing them in a wheelchair.

This is Dedra Carter, who was celebrating getting released from the hospital with her sister Kenyara. Dedra was also at Tease that night.

And him and my cousin Mona and my sister all us was just there talking and you know, I think Toft liked it Mona, so you know, he was trying to hook up with him, but she wouldn't.

No, she wouldn't never hook up with him.

We used to laugh, talk, joking like even we at the club, music playing we're still cracking up, you know, you know, just talking and stuff.

To Forrest SIPs a Long Island iced tea and orders our Draga's a brandy and coke. At one point, to Forrest goes back to the bar because Dragas says his drink is too weak, and the bartender makes him a new one. They linger at the club into the early hours of Wednesday morning.

When I say, we would probably ship the club now we was there, I know it's probably like they used to close about maybe one two o'clock, so we would leave right right before that.

So I know it was like maybe one.

I ain't leaving a club roughly about I'm gonna say around about right at one. And like I said, he was staying across the club. You know, you could see him because I mean, it wasn't a big, big club, you know. And I just started to do signs.

Up and I left and I was still there.

Yeah, he was stay there.

When I left.

There are at least ten people who say they saw to Forrest and Rodregis at Tea's place between eleven pm and one thirty am. Deputy Bill Hardy was shot right in the middle of that time frame, around twelve fifty am, four miles away at the Crowns Darling Sweet's Hotel. People like Kenyara, Dedra Stanley, Queisi, Mama Cat all remember that night. Their corroborated statements weave together a shield. That shield should protect to Forest and Ardregis from the accusations about to head their way.

But it doesn't.

The state would arrest to Forrest and Ardregis, try them and seek the death penalty against both of them for Deputy Hardy's murder. For the last three years, I've been trying to figure out how this happened. I've read through thousands of pages of court transcripts and investigative documents. I've done a full audit of all the media coverage and interviewed more than eighty people, including several who were direct involved in this investigation and prosecution, and many who have

I'm at to share his office headquarters along with Yolanda Michelle Chambers. Yolanda is a black female. She's fifteen years of age.

That's next time. Ear Witness is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One. Executive producers are Jason Flam, Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wardis, and me Beth Shelburn. The investigative reporting for this series was done by Me and MARAA McNamara. Producers are MARAA McNamara, Hannah Bial and Jackie Pauley. Kara Kornhaber is our senior producer.