#117 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Dixmoor 5

families and communities. This case happened during what we now call the super Predator era, the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. The news media was saturated with stories of urban crime, drugs and gangs, and in particular, sensationalized stories about black and brown youth committing violent crimes in groups. This narrative is often associated with New York City. It drove the wrongful prosecution of the so called Central Park five Wolfpack,

but it didn't stop there. Today we're going to tell you about a group of teenage boys whose false confessions transformed them into Chicago's own wolf pack. They're known as the Dicksmore five. You know, Chicago may be called the second City, but then when it comes to false confessions, we don't take a back seat to anybody, not New York or any other jurisdiction for that matter. We're home to more false confessions than any other city in the

United States, were home to more juvenile false confessions. And we're also the home of more cases in which there are multiple false confessions. And over the years, the Center on Wrongful Convictions has obtained exonerations in many of these cases, all of which were from African American teenagers in the Chicago area. Marquette Park, four Uptown seven, Englewood four Dicksmore five.

These numbers start to add up, and the thing is each one of these cases involved innocent African American teenagers in groups confessing to crimes they didn't commit. Of course, the most famous case like this was New York's Central Park five case. In April of nine, five teenage boys were charged with the sexual assault and the attempted murder

of a female jogger in New York's Central Park. The boys falsely confessed to beating this woman with an inch of her life and leaving her in the Woods to die. The Central Park five confessions were driven by race wolfpacks. Wilding was a whole new language to describe groups of African American and Latino teenagers, and it created a level of fear in New York City and around the country that I had never seen before. So when we began to look at the dicks More case, the case of

the Central Park five was ringing in my years. It was November of and fourteen year old Cattersa Matthews was in the eighth grade. She lived with her mom in Dicks Moore, a suburb on the south side of Chicago, surrounded by a tight knit extended family and community. Every day after school, Catteresa followed the same routine. She'd walk to her great grandmother's house, where she'd do her homework, talk on the phone, and do whatever fourteen year old

girls do. After school, she was waiting until her mom came home from work to go back to her own house. Cattersa followed this routine religiously until November. When she doesn't show up at her great grandmother's house after school. Her family panics, They call the police and a search begins, but for three weeks there's no sign of Catresa until December eight. That's when Catteresa's body is found lying in a wooded field next to the Inner eight highway that

runs through Dick's Moore. She's on her back, partially undressed, with her pants draped across her lower body. On her chest is a spent casing from a twenty five caliber bullet. She's been shot once in the mouth. Even though Catres had been missing for three weeks, the medical examiner concludes that she's been killed recently, right around the time her body's found. There are several reasons for this. For one thing, rigor mortis is present when she's found. That usually disappears

about hours after death. Her body is also still bleeding when she's discovered, which she wouldn't expect if she had been killed much earlier. And also, when a body has been lying outside for a long time, there are usually signs like animal or insect bites. There's nothing like that here. And the medical examiner finds something else too, semen on Catres's body. She's been raped. This was an awful It's the worst. I mean, it's every parents nightmare to have

this happened to their child. Know, when you think of a crime like this, you don't think of it as something that teenagers would do. Typically, teenage crimes are impulsive crimes. There's not a lot of planning or premeditation. They happen in the spur of the moment, but this crime clearly required some forethought. For eleven long months, the investigation into Catresa's death goes nowhere until fall, when a teenage boy tells police that he saw Catresa getting into a car

with some friends around the time of her disappearance. Police decide to question those friends, starting with Robert Veal on October. Now, Robert's fourteen years old, but he has pretty severe intellectual limitations that make him think more like a five year old. He's questioned for hours without a parent or a lawyer presence off camera, and in the end he signs a confession prepared by his interrogator, and the story in this

confession is brutal. Robert says he and four other African American teenage boys kidnapped a girl they knew from school. They gang raped her as she pleaded with them to stop, and then they shot her once in the mouth. It was a story of an animalistic group of black teenagers attacking their classmate for sport. The level of depravity in this story was so out of bounce that it made

me question whether it was true. But it also had an eerily familiar ring to it, and for me, the significance was as I was seeing the same explanations in different cases, which made me begin to feel it like maybe there was a script that was getting passed around among Chicago police officers. Only hours after Robert Veale confesses, police bring in one of his supposed co perpetrators, fifteen

year old Robert Taylor. He's a kid from a loving and protective vamily, but his parents didn't know he was at the police station being interrogated. Hours later, his signature appears on a confession too, and that confession tells a similarly vicious story. The same five African American teenagers lured Catrisa into a car, then raped her and shot her in a field. The super Predator Era was a period of pronounced moral panic in the United States that focused

on young people, race, and crime. That's our colleague and friend, Perry Moriarty. She's a professor of law at the University of Minnesota and an expert on juvenile justice. And the era of the super predator. The front end marker is more than likely the Central Park five case that was April of nine, and that began on era when in the name of public safety, in the name of being tough on crime, law enforcement authorities dropped any pretense of

treating children as children and prosecuted them as adults. If they were black and brown children, they were adultified, either by law or by connotation, and certainly by the media. A jogger murdered in New York Central Park. A little girl gunned down on her family's car in Los Angeles. A judge has sentenced two boys for killing another child

who refused to steal candy for them. There's a tidal wave of juvenile violent crime right over the horizon, and some who study it say the worst is yet to come. Terms like wilding, beast, chill, predatory. In New York City newspapers alone, the term wilding appeared a hundred fifty six times in articles over the eight years following the Central

Park five arrests. To put it in perspective, just a few months after the Central Park five case, a large group of Italian and Irish, predominantly teenagers and Vincent Hurst Brooklyn chased down and killed a young black teenager named you step Hawkins. And the headlines did not say wilding, they did not say beasts Hill, They did not even say gang. They said a group of white teenagers. Now the police have two confessions that implicate the same five teenagers,

but they're not done yet. Next up is Cheyenne Sharp, seventeen years old, the third supposed co perpetrator. He's questioned for nearly twenty four hours before he also confesses and implicates the other four. And it's the same brutal story, a group of African American teenage boys terrorizing their classmate for fun. Now you have to understand how these confessions are taken. These confessions are scripted, usually by a prosecutor

from the States Attorney's office. Sometimes they're written by police officers, and these scripts contain a narrative, including character development. Kids are described as thugs, there's usually references to gang membership. Women are called bitches and hose. And the scriptwriter in these cases is doing two things. He's painting the suspects in a way that nobody can ever think of them

as teenagers. And he's also painting them in a way that nobody, and that means nobody in the public and nobody on the jury can have an ounce of sympathy for them, And in doing so, he's making a script that is about as rock solid as a route to conviction as one can imagine. So far, the police have confessions from three of the Dicks Moore five, and within days they bring in the two remaining teenagers for questioning two brothers, seventeen year old James Harden and fifty year

old Jonathan Barr. The boys are interrogated for hours, but their father had always told them never assign anything prepared by the police. Somehow a miracle they remember these words and they don't confess, but they're still named in the other three teenagers statements. So all five are on the hook in part because they were arresting and prosecuting kids

in mass in groups. Law enforcement became very adept in that period at pitting kids against each other during the interrogation process and using kids against each other to extract false confessions. When you look at these cases of multiple false confessions, you see a similar pattern. First of all, the police usually start with the most vulnerable, most naive, most gullible of the suspects, and they focused in this

case on Robert Field. He was the weak link. Then they get a confession from Robert Veal, and what do they do with that confession They use it as a battering ram to plow over all of the other defendants. This is how it works. The first suspect comes in and the police officers tell them that they know that he was involved in this crime, and nothing that suspect can say is going to change their mind. But they don't think he was the one who actually raped anybody

or killed anybody. He was just a follower. The suspect is pressured into adopting a story in which he is a passive participant to the crime and which he fingers his co defendants as the more active participants. Then, once that suspect confesses, they bring that confession to the next in line and they go over the same thing again. We don't think you committed the crime. He's telling us that you committed the crime. We know you were there, but maybe you just held down her arm while they

were raping and killing her. Each suspect is vying for the least culpable role, and at the end of the day. This is a very effective way to get confessions from multiple suspects. In this case, the dominoes are falling, and each one of them eventually agrees to a story in which James Harden is the one who actually places the gun inside Catresa's mouth and pulls the trigger. It's no coincidence that James is one of the last ones questioned here,

That's right. And at the end of the day police got confessions from Robert Field, Robert Taylor, and Cheyenne Sharp, but they couldn't get James Harden and Jonathan Barr to confess. Based on the confessions, all five teenagers are charged with the assault and murder of Catresa, Matthews and the Dicks Moore five are transformed into Chicago's own wolfpack. Pretty soon, though, it becomes apparent that this case has major problems for starters.

The teenagers versions of what happened are wildly inconsistent. They can't agree on how they met up with Cattersa, what the group did before they ended up in that field by the interstate, or who assaulted Cattersa, and in what order. In fact, one of the only things they do agree on was that Catresa had been murdered the day she disappeared November. But remember this was contradicted by the medical examiner, who determined that she had been killed three weeks later,

around the time her body was found. And then here comes the biggest problem. After all five teenagers were charged but before trial, DNA testing from the seamen left on Cattersa's body excludes all five suspects. Instead, this DNA belongs to a single unidentified male. This is mc drop evidence, the kind of evidence that should have resulted in these cases being dismissed before trial. Exactly these confessions had been

proven false. But instead of dropping its case, the state offers deals to two members of the Dicks Moore five, Cheyenne Sharpe and Robert Veal. If the boys agree to testify against their codefendants, they'll receive much shorter sentences. Cheyenne and Robert decide to take the deal, while the state moves forward with trials for the other three. And those trials, of course, are based on the stories told in the confessions despite the DNA you talk here about tunnel vision.

This is what happens. The police officers lock into a story, they become invested in this notion of a gang rape, and they can't get out of that box exactly. And you see this when they have to deal with the DNA and the prosecutor addresses it during closing argument. And what does the prosecutor say. He explains the presence of DNA as the work of a necrophiliac. Now, see if this isn't exactly a household term. What is a necrophiliac?

It's someone who has sex with dead bodies. I knew you know that this is officially the most batchet theory I think I've ever heard. By the way, I couldn't agree more So, let's get this straight. The theory here at the Dicksmore five trial was that five teenage boys sexually assault this victim. They don't leave a trace of themselves behind. Then here comes this wandering necrophiliac who comes across the body and decides to defile it. I mean, we've heard a lot of excuses for DNA and our time,

but this one may take the prize. It's unbelievable that they would even present this to a jury. It's that insane. But you have to understand, in the context of a climate of fear, the irrational becomes rational now. In the opening statement in this case, the prosecutor said that these men, pointing at the five teenagers, these men came from a world where so called friends were turned into a pack of jackals hunting down their prey, and then they were

done with it, killing it for sport jackals. Can you believe that this really is Chicago's own wolfpack? Again, it's a lot easier to fathom locking up a young beast, youll feral thing, than it is a child, which is in fact what we were doing. And when you talk about children as if they were animals, it becomes so much easier to throw away their lives, to just not worry about doing that last bit of DNA testing figure out whose DNA it was actually left Uncle Risa Matthew's body.

It becomes easier to try them as adults. It becomes easier to sentence them to life sentences or even the death penalty. It becomes easier to just lock them up and throw away the key. The dehumanizing story embedded in these boys confessions, while it works, each that Dicks Moore five is convicted and the three who don't cut deals, Robert Taylor, Jonathan Barr and James Harden are sentenced to

life in prison. Cheyenne Sharpe and Robert Veale serve their time and are eventually released with murder convictions on their records. But the other three language behind bars forgotten people, but they were not forgotten by their parents or their loved ones. You know, I'll never forget learning that Jonathan Barr and James Harden's dad would literally drive around with boxes full of files regarding their cases in his trunk, trying to get lawyers interested in taking his son's cases. And Robert

Taylor's family did similar things. They would write letters and letters and letters to lawyers begging them for help. Finally, in two thousand and ten, we learned about the case of the Dicksmore five, our colleague Josh tepfur New, a public defender, and Jennifer Blagg, who had represented Robert Taylor on appeal. She referred the case to Josh and we agreed to take Robert's case. By this time, Robert was in his early thirties. That's right, he had served over

fifteen years of his sentence. Robert Taylor grew up with his parents, sister, and brother in Harvey Illinois, right next to Dicks Moore. From day one, Robert's dad, a Navy vet, was his strongest defender. Robert Sor refused to be broken by the fact that his son had gone to prison because of the words he'd signed his name to. When the Center on Wrongful Convictions agreed to take Robert's case,

his dad became a major presence in our lives. I can still remember the smell of his leather jacket when he hugged us and welcomed us to his family's struggle. Around the same time, organizations like the Innocence Project and Exoneration Project got involved in representing other members of the Dicks Moore five. Our collective first priority was identifying whose

DNA had been left at the crime scene. We had a new tool called CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System, and over the time frame since the advent of DNA testing in the late nineteen eighties, that database had grown, and so the chances of finding the identity of the person who raped and killed KATRISA Matthews had grown exactly. I mean, let's remember for a moment that we're talking here about DNA that was taken from the semen left on a rape victim. You cannot ask for better evidence

than that, And it's just sitting there forgotten. How can you not want to know whose DNA that was? Isn't that the most important question in this case had been sitting there unanswered for fifteen years. But where was it sitting? That was the first challenge. And after a year of searching, we found the DNA in some warehouse or in some trailer, and we then had to get permission from the court

to test the DNA. We then sent the DNA off for testing to a lab, and we waited and the lab extracted a profile, and when that profile was extracted, it was run through the code AS database. A miracle of miracles. In March of two thousand and eleven, we got a hit and the hit was to a man, not a boy, a man named Willie Randolph. Now Willie Randolph was a troubled guy. He was much older than Catresa or the dicksmore five. When Catresa disappeared, he was

thirty three years old, more than twice her age. Willie had been in and out of prison his entire adult life for all sorts of different offenses. In fact, he'd been paroled only a few months before Cattersa was killed to a house within a mile of where she lived, and Willie Randolph had previously been accused of rape in that very same field by the interstate where Catresa's body was found. This is a person with a history of these kinds of attacks, and his DNA and no one

else's was present at the crime scene. Finally, it all made sense when we learned the identity of Willie Randolph, when we investigated his background, when we learned the history of abusing and sexually assaulting women, including young women, teenagers, we thought this case was over. We thought we were going to get these boys out tomorrow. Exactly, there's no relationship at all between Willie Randolph and any of the Dicks more five. He's not mentioned in any of their confessions.

And why would there be a relationship. This is a man with a long history of violence in his record, and none of these boys had a history of violence. Right, He's twice their age. When they were growing up in the neighborhood. He was in prison. Willie Randolph as the guy who did this to Katrisa Matthews. The DNA proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Now we had

to convince the prosecutors to do the right thing. But as incredible as it sounds, the state wouldn't let go of their necrophilia theory, and the case dragged on for months. You know, old habits die hard. The state actually suggested again and maybe Willie Randolph was their mystery necrophiliac. This

is an unbelievable things. Still they're clinging to this theory that five teenage boys assaulted Gatrisa Matthews, left no trace of their DNA behind, and here comes Willie Randolph, the older man, the man of the history of assaults and violent crime and rape in that very field, and just happens to defile her body. It beggars belief. It still took six to seven months to investigate whether there was any link between Willie Randolph and any of the dicks

more five, there wasn't one. Meanwhile, we were coming back to court every few weeks to get an update on the state's investigation and to ask the judge is today the day of exoneration? And for six long months we were disappointed. I remember coming home after those court dates and crying with frustration that I was able to go home Robert Taylor, our clients had to go back to a prison cell. Yeah, I remember pulling out my hair and I had hair back. That's where it all went.

That's where it all went because we had the best possible evidence of their innocence, and not only were they refusing to clear our clients, Willie Randolph was on the street. He was out of prison on parole, and he could be doing this to somebody else. It was driving me crazy every time before we walked into that courtroom, I remember watching Roberts hold his whole body just just taught. His muscles would be tense, and you could see those twenty years of trauma that he had endured and the

toll it had taken on him. He couldn't relax into the possibility that it was going to be his day that day, and it wasn't his day for months until it finally was November three, two thousand eleven, Robert Veale, Cheyenne Sharp, James Harden, Jonathan Barr, and Robert Taylor were exonerated. Their convictions were thrown out. Nearly twenty years to the day after Catresa matthews disappearance. The Dicks Moore five had

wrongly served a total of more than fifty years in prison. Eventually, Willie Randolph was charged with the attack on Catresa Matthews based on DNA evidence. He's still awaiting trial today. We're proud to have helped free the Dicksmore five, but as our colleague Josh Tepford put it, this is not justice. Justice would have happened a long time ago. Hey, Robert, Stephen, Laura, good to hear your voice. What's going on with you these days, Roberts, I'm hanging in Now. How's your son doing?

He's all right, I got you got to pick him up the school. Yeah, every day. Say what's your favorite thing to do with your son? Robert. You can't give those twenty years back to Robert, or to any of the Dicks more five or any of the guys were going to talk about on this podcast. You can't give that time back. But what you can do is make

the years decades that they lost means something. One of the greatest tragedies in my opinion, and I've been teaching about the Central Park five case for years and to this day. When I introduced the case in my criminal law classes. The one thing that people don't know about the case is that the kids were innocent, so few people knew that, even after Matthias Reus confessed, even after these kids were let out of prison, even after they were compensated. It is the footnote in this story that

gets lost in our collective consciousness. Maybe not anymore. Finally, there's attention being brought to who they actually were in what they suffered, and that's a big part of how Steve and I approach these cases. Right. It's about, of course getting them out of prison, fighting for them, opening up those doors, but it's also about telling the stories. It's about making it meaningful. It's about saying their name. It's about not forgetting what happened to them and changing

it so it doesn't happen again. Like the Central Park five, the story of the Dicks Moore five is about convictions that were driven by prejudice rather than proof. But the injustices of the super Predator era were not just a New York City thing or a Chicago thing, and although we may want to think so, they're not even really a ninety nineties thing. In times of great fear or moral panic, prejudices can distort the search for the truth.

Mistaken assumptions, faulty investigations, and flawed evidence are all still real, and they still cause wrongful convictions across the country. Every day. We tell these stories so that we can learn from them, so that one day there won't be any more Dicks. Moore fives to all the Dick's more five, but especially to our client and friend, Robert Taylor. You've endured years of injustice while remaining a pillar of strength and resilience. To you and your families, we wish you all the best.

Thanks for letting us tell your story. Next week we'll tell you the story of a false confession out of Arkansas, or a twelve year old boy maintains his innocence in a murder case until police turn off the cameras. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One. Special thanks to our executive producer Jason Flom and the team at Signal Company Number one Executive producer Kevin Wardace, Senior Producer and Pope,

and additional production and editing by Connor Hall. Our music was composed by j Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura and I and you can follow me on Twitter at s driven. For more information on the show, visit Wrongful Conviction podcast dot com and be sure to follow the show on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction