S03 Episode 2: Lex Talionis (Pt. 2 of 2)

built on. You're listening to Unexplained with Me Richard McClean smith Lex talionis Part two. With the announcement of Johnny's arrest on Monday, November ninth, a great tension in the community has been released, and although Bishop Matheson advises some caution since it remains to be seen if Johnny is the perpetrator, there is palpable relief at the Saint Franci's convent back at the city jail. Later that evening, local attorney Bill Pollius offers his services as a court appointed

attorney to Johnny. The family has little money and little choice but to take him on, but even at this point his attitude causes great concern for Johnny's mother, Charlotte. From the moment he introduces himself, she can tell his mind is already made up. It was a lost cause. That night, Johnny sits alone in his cell while his mother returns home, haunted by what he had told her.

According to Johnny, after his arrest, he had been taken into an interview room where two detectives had immediately started telling him what he was supposed to have done. When they offered a version of events, he had just nodded along and told them to put it down. But they weren't his words, He kept telling his mother he never

did any of it. The following day, at tired and fragile, Charlotte arrives at the county courthouse, jostled by press and onlookers as she makes her way to meet her son to escort him to his bail hearing at one thirty pm. Accompanied by Bill Pollius, she takes the scared and handcuffed seventeen year old Johnny by the arm and leads him

into the charged atmosphere of a packed courtroom. Trying not to look at the many spectators who have crammed in to watch the hearing, She just has time to give her son a peck on the cheek before two police deputies take him away, removing his handcuffs and sitting him down by the judge's bench. All rise to their feet when a solemn Elbe Bartlet, Justice of the Peace, enters

the room. Johnny, Charlotte, and Pollius remained standing as Bartlet lays out the charges, But before he can speak, Charlotte feels her legs go and is helped to a seat

at the council table behind her son. Johnny Frank Garrett, hereinafter styled the defendant, heretofore on or about the thirty first day of October, did then and there knowingly and intentionally, while in the course of committing and attempting to commit the offense of burglary, cause the death of to day a bends by choking and strangling the complainant manner and means unknown. Johnnie stares at the table, shaking his head as his mother struggles to hold back the tears covering

her ears. At the mention of choking and strangling, Detective Joger places a hand on her shoulder. Barrett finishes by asking Johnny to sign a document stating he understands the charges, Charlotte interrupts, letting the judge know that her son cannot read.

Pollius then proceeds to read the document to Johnny. Despite an attempt by Pollius to secure an examination trial to ascertain if there is even enough evidence to indicte Johnny, District Attorney Danny Hill argues forcibly against it, and the opportunity is denied. Johnny is refused bail and instructed to

return to jail to await his trial date. With the hearing brought to her clothes, he is handcuffed once again and led toward the door, kissing his mother good bye, before being walked past a horde of jeering spectators and the media. That night, Johnny is put in a cell with b and offender J. Kelly Pinkerton, who was awaiting trial charged with rape and murder, having already received the death penalty for a murder he committed back in nineteen

seventy nine. Throughout the county, as the press raced to break the news of the teenager's indictment, one reporter has been especially thrown by the charge six days previously, five days before Garrett had supposedly even become a suspect. Globe News reporter Charlie Bates had been contacted by two apparent psychics. What they told him at the time had been too peculiar to print In an article published the day after the hearing, However, Bates was finally able to explain the

extraordinary turn of events. After hearing about the horrific murder of sister todaya self confirmed psychic, INA's Patterson, who had assist police previously on a nineteen seventy nine rape case, together with her associate Allne, decided to hold a clairvoyant session to see what they might find out. That night, as Allene watched on, Inez apparently entered a trance like state in an effort to channel the murdered nun, but had to end the session abruptly when she became too

enwrapped in the victim's emotions. Not before, however, she had gleamed some vital information. During the trance, Ines claimed to have received the vision of a house, as well as the name Clyde. The house was described as being on Northeast eighteenth Avenue, having a white frame structure and dirty hardwood floors. The following day, the two psychics took a walk along northeast eighteenth, tracing their steps from the convent until they apparently found themselves standing in front of the

exact house. Inez had supposedly seen in her vision. It was number four thousand, Johnny Garrett's home, and at the back of the house they spotted a dog kennel, over which scrawled in thick paint was the name mister Clyde.

Patterson had also offered a description of the suspect to journalist Charlie Bates, saying that he was a young man about five ft eleven with a muscular, small frame, having what was described as a long abe Lincoln nose and large ears, a description that could be said to closely match Johnny's. On receiving this information, Bates had attempted to put authorities in touch with the psychics, but they had

apparently made no attempt to contact them. Over the next year, the District Attorney's office worked to build their case against Johnny, who continues to profess his innocence as the trial approaches in August of nineteen eighty two. The case of the teenager Johnny Frank Garrett is all that the city of Amarillo can talk about united in their speculation of who this monstrous eighteen year old might be and how his

mother could have raised him to be that way. During the trial, the case against Johnny rests mostly on the two finger prints found in Sister to dea Benz's room, one on the nun's headboard and one on the knife found under her bed. Although both knives found close to the scene were determined not to have been used to stab the victim, pathologist Ralph Erdmann, who carried out to daa Benz's autopsy, claims that injuries to the front of the nun's neck were caused by an object consistent with

the knife found under the bed. One FBI agent testifies that the stake knife found outside the building was the same brand as a knife recovered from Johnny's mother's kitchen. Another that some pubic hair found on the floor of Sister to Day's room, although not a confirmed match, came from an individual with similar characteristics to Johnny. None of Sister to Day's blood was linked back to Johnny in

any way. No fibers from Sister to day as clothes were found on any of Johnny's clothes, nor were any fibers found on her that had come from him. Unknown footprints found at the scene were not matched with any shoes belonging to Johnny. Black hairs, as well as the white T shirt that was found were also not linked to Johnny in any way, and crucially, no attempt was made to test the sperm or prostrate secretions to determine

the blood type of the perpetrator. The samples had been destroyed soon after Johnny's arrest, and yet Johnny's finger prints were found in sister to Day's room. Although he virulently denied the rape and murder charges, Johnny testified in court that he had been to the convent before. After all, he had been there two days prior to the murder,

apparently looking for things to steal. Johnny claimed that he had snuck into the convent some time around lunch and taken the butter knife from the kitchen to pry open locked drawers, which is how he suggested it ended up in the nun's bedroom. The finger print on her bed, he said, had got there when he leant against it

to steal a crucifix that had been hanging on the wall. However, a nun subsequently testified that Johnny couldn't possibly have been near the canteen at lunch without being seen, and that there were no locked drawers in the convent. It was a damning indictment for Johnny's defense. And then a final piece of information is presented by the prosecution, a statement made by eighteen year old Lonnie Dale Whatley, who had been a fellow inmate of Johnny's at the Potter County Jail.

Whatley's statement claimed that Johnny had confessed the murder to him shortly after his arrest in November. Johnny strongly denied the claim. It took the jury of eight men and four women five hours to deliberate over their decision, and on September third, nineteen eighty two, Johnny Frank Garrett was convicted of the rape and murder of sister TODAYA Bends and sentenced to death by lethal injection. Are you always taking care of your family? Do you often take care

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dot com slash Unexplained podcast. While most of the cities celebrated Garrett's conviction, those who actually knew the boy struggled to reconcile his betrayal in the press. With the troubled but soft natured young man they thought him to be born on Christmas Eve in nineteen sixty three, Garrett had significant learning difficulties and struggled at school. By sixth grade,

he had yet learned how to read em write. As a young boy, Johnny had been raped by two separate stepfathers, beaten burned by cigarettes all over his body, and once held down onto a kitchen stove. One step father even prostituted Johnny to his friends and would also film him being forced to commit sexual acts. Neighbors sued Jasper would often find a desperate Johnny crying uncontrollably on her doorstep, but he would never say why, only asking if he

could stay the night at hers. Other nights, Johnny would be found sleeping under his high school football stand, too afraid to go home. At fourteen, Johnny began drinking and experimenting with drugs, soon earning a reputation for minor misdemeanors. In many ways, he presented as an ideal suspect for sister to Day's murder, and yet, in spite of everything that had happened to him, Johnny was not known to be particularly violent and had been a loving brother to

both his sisters. After his conviction, Johnny was moved to Ellis Unit, just north of Huntsville in Texas, which served as death row for the state. After hearing about his case, local lawyer Jeff Blackburn, who had later found the Texas Innocence project, which attempted to overturn what he considered to be unconvincing convictions, took up Johnny's case over the next

ten years. Blackburn will try and fail on two separate occasions to appeal Johnny's conviction, arguing variously that Johnny had not been mentally competent to stand trial, that there had not been enough evidence to convict him, and that doctor Erdman's negligence in discarding the samples of seamen had denied Johnny the right to at least clear his name for the rape of Sister to Daa. On both occasions, the Texas Board of Pardon and Paroles voted unanimously, with the

exception of one abstension, to uphold garrett death sentence. After the first appeal, District Attorney Danny Hill had been elated to hear the news of its failure, stating it was wonderful and that he hoped the execution would now be speeded through. With an hour to go before Johnny's nineteen ninety two scheduled execution in January, a request from Pope John Paul the Second and a statement signed by Bishop le Roy Matheson and other Texas bishops earns garrett a

thirty day stay of execution. Although Bishop Matheson was not questioning his conviction, it was his and the opinion of his colleagues that human life was sacred, that the church ought to be the voice of social conscience. Their obligation as religious leaders, he said, was to be faithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ, which calls us to reconciliation and forgiveness of those who wronged us. But their test

would come too late. On February tenth, nineteen ninety two, a by now twenty eight year old Johnny garrett Is served his final meal, a large bowl of ice cream. Shortly before midnight, Johnny's mother, Charlotte, and his two sisters, stepbrother, and new stepfather file into the death House, a small

brick building inside the Ellis Unit. The room, painted mint green and brightly lit, is divided in two by a row of bars, on one side of which stood Johnny's family, and on the other a gurney with a number of white leather straps laid across the top. Behind the gurney, to the right a small window of mirrored glass, behind which the executioner waited. A moment later, the door was unbolted open. Charlotte let out a cry at the first sight of Johnny being led into the room by two

guards and the prison warden. He was clean shaven, his hair neatly combed, and wearing a pristine blue jumpsuit. Johnny's mother uttered the first of many I love yous, holding onto the bars with one hand and to her daughters with the other as she tried her best to stay strong for her son. Together, the family watched as Johnny is led shuffling forward towards the gurney, pausing to have his hands and legs unshackled before being helped onto the bed.

Within seconds, the straps had been secured across his body, his arms outstretched as if pinned to the cross. Two lines of clear tubing ailing from out of the wall were needled into each of Johnny's arms. The family had barely noticed the handful of journalists that had filed into the room behind them, eager to watch the execution for themselves. In response to his family's words of reassurance, Johnny turned his head to the right, speaking with a mixture of

fear and defiance. I'd like to thank my friends who tried to pull me through this. My guru for helping me go through this. I'd like to thank my family for loving me, and the rest of the world can kiss my ass. Johnny fixed the warden with his eyes before swiftly turning his head back to face the ceiling. The warden nodded towards the glass panel, and seconds later, a concoction of sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride

snaked its way through the plastic tubing. Charlotte turned her eyes to the floor, leading the family in a tearful rendition of amazing grace as the liquid creeps into Johnny's veins. It wasn't clear quite when the moment had come, but when Charlotte raised her eyes again, Johnny's body was completely still, his mouth slightly agape and eyes staring into nothing. After a quick check of Johnny's pulse, the prison doctor turned to the warden and announced the time as twelve eighteen am.

When a side door was pulled open, Johnny's family said their last goodbyes and left the building outside. Stepping into the cold air, the family were met with the sound of clapping and ecstatic cheers. As a crowd of students from sam Houston State University gathered to celebrate the execution, earing and breaking into a lated song as the embattled family silently made their way back to the prison administration building. And that is how things might have ended until something

very peculiar came to light. In all his time incarcerated, Johnny never wavered in his insistence that he was innocent of sister to Day's murder, or lost sight of the anger at the unfairness of his predicament. And he put it all down in a letter over five pages of impassioned invective. Garrett cursed a hypocritical society who turned a blind eye to him when he needed them, but was all too ready to crucify him when they needed a monster on which to pin their fears. He was not

about to go quietly in your nightmares. I will live in your times of fear, big or small. Will I be. Every frustration in your lives will be me. Every death of your families will be me. I will be the fear you experience upon your last breath. I curse your souls to the deepest depths of your own hell. I curse your parents souls and your rotten grandparents souls. I curse every adult, every person that's born after my death

that is remotely related to your infested blood. And because I know that curses will be fulfilled, I meet death in a better spirit and stronger soul. And in the months that followed Garrett's death, some say his curse came to fruition, with a number of people will involved in the case dying prematurely, chief among them being district Attorney Danny Hill, who had worked so hard to secure Garrett's conviction.

Hill committed suicide in April nineteen ninety five. The psychic Inez Patterson, who had apparently received visions of Johnny's identity five days before he was arrested by the police, turned out to be the girlfriend of Michael Eugene Patterson, a well known local drug dealer who some suspect of working as an informant for the police. Patterson was found dead in his car not long after Garrett's execution, his cause of death unknown. Whether you believe in Garrett's curse or not,

one thing has begun to look increasingly likely. But Garrett's first appeal hearing, doctor Ralph Erdman, testified that he had not been instructed to deliberately throw away the one piece of evidence that might have exonerated the defendant, the fluid

samples he had taken from vaginal swabs. In September nineteen ninety two, barely six months after Garrett's execution, Erdman pleaded guilty to seven felony offenses involving falsified autopsies that are thought to be just the tip of the iceberg of fraudulent activities perpetrated by the former coroner. Erdman was sentenced to ten years probation for these charges, though some suspect he may have falsified and faked numerous toxicology reports and autopsies.

One lawyer who had been appealing at murder case at the time stated that I believe, as I believe that the sun will come up to morrow, that there was a conspiracy between the prosecut utian and Erdman to say whatever was necessary to get a conviction. Then, in two thousand and four, a homicide investigator analyzing a number of unsolved crimes came across the murder case of Narnie box Bryson after resubmitting a bedsheet for DNA testing taken from

the scene of the crime. Incredibly, they found a match. The man was Lencio Perez Ruader, a former Cuban refugee who had been picked up by police for peeping at a woman through a window only two weeks after Bryson's murder. In two thousand and five, Ruada was convicted for the rape and murder of Bryson and sentenced to forty five

years in prison. At the time of Benz's and Bryson's murders, before Garrett had come into the picture, Amarillo police and Ye Danny Hill was certain that both crimes had been related, with similar black hairs and an abandoned white T shirt

found at both crime scenes. Initial suspicions had fallen on another Cuban refugee named Fernando Flores, in whose apartment police found hairs similar to those found in both Bryson and Sister to day of Benz's bedrooms, as well as what they thought were fibers from Sister to Daya's blue night dress. After analyzing the hairs, however, Flores was determined not to have been a match. What wasn't discovered until many years later is that Flores and Ruada had been flatmates at

the time. In August two thousand and four, while Ruada was awaiting his trial, attorney Jesse Quackenbush, who was hired by Johnny Garrett's sisters to reopen the case against their brother, secured an interview with the defendant. Ruada at first claimed that Flores had been the man who attacked the nun in the early hours of October thirty first, nineteen eighty one, before eventually admitting that he had been there too. All elements of Unexplained are produced by me Richard McClain smith.

Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes, but feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or on Twitter at Unexplained Part Now it's time to take care of yourself. To make time for you, teledoc gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you

get back to feeling your best. Speak to a licensed therapist by phone or video anytime between seven am to nine pm local time, seven days a week. Teledoc Therapy is available through most insurance or employers download the app or visit teledoc dot com forward slash Unexplained podcast Today to get started. That's t e l a d oc dot com Slash Unexplained Podcast