On June twenty first, nineteen ninety four, Evan King went to the East Cleveland apartment of a new friend, Crystal Hudson, her daughter, welcomed to men to await Crystal's return. Soon they were joined by Cristel's mother and a friend. Before leaving, the elder Hudson told them about a premonition that she had about Evan killing her daughter. Little did they all know, Cristel's body was already decomposing in the bedroom closet. While waiting for Crystal, Evan fell asleep, only to be awoken
by her daughter's screams. Upon discovering the body, the autopsy showed signs of a struggle, rape and strangulation, and a rape kit collected a great deal of decomposing sperm. The police held Evan on a previous minor infraction while questioning him about Crystal's murder. His body and clothing were free from any of her blood and any sign that he may have been in a struggle. DNA testing also cleared
him as the source of the sperm. However, in the summer heat, the decomposition gave the prosecution an opportunity to create uncertainty about whether the sperm had been deposited at the time of death. The prosecution presented false testimony to circumvent the DNA evidence, claiming that the sperm could have been deposited hours or even days before her death, paying no mind to the sheer number of sperm which indicated
a more recent deposit. Nearly two decades later, DNA testing on Crystal's fingernail scrapings confirmed that her killer was also her rapist. But somehow even that wasn't enough for authorities to immediately release Evan King. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. Today we're going to be interviewing a man named Evan King who served almost a quarter century in prison for a crime that I don't want to say a third grader could have solved it, because
that's not the case. But a third grader would have known that this was not the man that committed this crime. All the evidence was in plain sight, and his conviction was based on a freaking premonition at somebody. I'm sorry, I have to laugh to keep from crying. So with us today is the man himself. But before I introduce him, I'm going to introduce someone who's voice you'll probably recognize Jennifer bergeron of the Ohio Innocence Project. Jennifer, welcome back to Wrongful Conviction.
Thank you Jason for having me back.
I feel like we could do just multiple seasons and just interview you because there's so many terrible cases in Ohio, but this case is really something and the man himself a survivor not only of almost a quarter century and some of the worst prisons in the country, but also a cancer survivor. Just a guy that's tough to kill and easy to love, a guy named Evan King. Evan, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me.
Before we get into the insanity that Cuyahoga County dished out, and we hear that name again and again on this show. Let's talk about Evan King as a young man before your life was before you were kidnapped by the state. Let's call it what it was, right, So what was your life like growing up? Where did you grow up?
I grew up on the East side of Cleveland, starting and the projects on fifty fifth.
Did you have a happy childhood? Your brothers and sisters?
Yes, nine of us, five boys and four girls.
Wow, so you had a big family had a whole baseball team. And by the time all this swept you off your feet, what was your life like?
Well at the time, it is I had was a vallet at the Omni Hotel, and I had ventured into drugs. You know, I was messing with drugs and selling a little drugs, you know, just quick money, doing the wrong thing.
You know, Listen, I believe is that all drugs should be legal, and no one should ever go to jail for what they put in their own bodies, unless they're putting somebody else in harms away. Were you ever involved in any violent crime? Nope, I mean so there was no reason to suspect that all of a sudden one day,
you just snapped and committed this. What was really a brutal murder which happened in June of nineteen ninety four, involved a victim named Crystal Hudson, and Cristel was someone who was known to you, right.
Yes, she was known to me. I had been friends with her for about two.
Weeks, which brings us to the evening, the faithful evening of June twenty first, nineteen ninety four. She was already gone at this point, but no one knew that yet, except for the actual rapist and murderer. But that very night you went to visit Crystal at her high rise apartment building, and her daughter met you at the apartment door. She invited you in to wait for her mom, so, as far as you knew, she was expected home at
some point. Soon you were joined by Cristel's mother and her best friend Jean, and none of you, none of you, none of you had any idea that chris So's body had already begun decomposing in the bedroom closet down the hall. I mean, this is nuts. Can you walk us through how this evening unfolded.
I got to the apartment and her youngest daughter was there, and I asked her, was a mama here? She said no, I said, well, I wait on her. You know, so the youngest daughter when the backing played, I watched TV on the couch.
Okay, so the body is in the apartment. It must have been an awful stench.
I didn't notice on smell.
Okay, so you're in the apartment. And then what happens.
Chrystal's mother lived a couple of floors up, and so they were best friend. They came down later on that evening, best friend had a couple of forty ounces and we sitting at the kitchen table. That's where the mother mentioned she had a premonition that I killed her daughter. That's exactly what she said. I had a primenive. I was like what. And after a while, the mother decides to go upstairs and she takes the youngest daughter and left
me and Jean in the apartment. Now, why would she say she had a premonition yet, and still you would leave me and Jean in the apartment, you know, I mean, if you think I killed your daughter, why wouldn't you put us out when you left? And even when they was there, you know, the mother says something about was I cooking or something, because she was talking about she smelled something and I say, well, I don't smell nothing, and just left it at that, and the mother went
upstairs with the youngest daughter. Me and Jean sat there drinking the forty ouncers. So when Jean left, I sat on back on the couch and I nodded off on the couch and next thing I know, it's the next morning. Both of the young daughters come in and that's when I will up and they said they wanted to get some closed school. They go to the closet and the oldest daughter stars screaming, and I jumped off the couch and run back down. Say what is She pointed to
the close and said, my mother's in the closet. I look, I ain't even touched nothing. And I took both girls out in the hallway, knocked on the neighbor's door. See it, called the police.
And for our audience, this is a brutal crime. So just be aware what you're going to hear is going to be, you know, upsetting. And this is where I want to bring Jennifer, and Jennifer, can you tell us about the crime itself?
So the crime was quite brutal. Poor Crystal was found strangled to death in her own closet, basically naked. And this was Cleveland in June, and it was hot and it wasn't air conditioned, and she'd been deceased for they decided over twenty four hours before she was even discovered. And she had been in this high apartment in Cleveland this whole time. You know, there's lots of degradation that happens. There was evidence from the very beginning that she had
also been raped at the time of her death. Evan happened to be in the apartment unfortunately when she was found, and so I think that's why he sort of became suspect number one, because he was.
There and I waited in the hallway with the two daughters. Why the police came.
If you were the actual killer, would you stand there and wait for the police to arrive. I mean, you're neither dumb nor crazy, and you'd have to be both to do that.
And not only that. When the detectives did come, they brought me in, set me at the table and said, would I mind asking some questions? I said, no, I don't mind.
The police, so far as I could tell, never did any actual investigation. They just decided it was him, in part because Crystal's mother told them she had a premonition that Evan was going to harm her daughter. Now, somehow that premonition even came into court, which still boggles my mind as to how that was introduced evidence, But it was.
I wish this was the only time I had ever heard of something like a premonition being committed into court, but it's not. Maybe instead of courts, we should all just go to psychics, you know what I mean, see if they can figure these things out for us. I mean it was a combination of laziness. Right, here's a guy who was in the apartment, okay, must be him, and then oh there's a premonition bingo, right.
And then they ran a check on me. I had a couple of tickets on me of Bench Warren. And after they did their little investigation up there, they took me home downtown.
So okay, so you get arrested on these bench warrants and then did they hold you from that time right up until the trial? When did you find out you were being charged with the murder?
I think it was seventy two hours later.
Yeah, clearly they did a lot of investigation if they arrested in for murder and that short amount of time.
Once I went to jail, I never got out, and the detectives interviewed me a couple of times over them seventy two hours. And I'll never forget. The detective asked me, but I take a lot of tech tests. I said, sure, I take a lot of the text tests. He never brought it up again. One other thing that really tripped me out was when the guy came and took photographs up my body. I'm standing in that neked He had me get undressed, right, my man, Luke, he was like,
turn around, he had his camera in his hand. He was put your hands up and you know, looking around. He said, you the first guy I never took a picture of. If he didn't take one picture, I didn't have a scratch on me, no bruises, not I'm a life scinned guy. Believe me, I bruised easy. He didn't take one picture.
And I'm glad you brought that up, because it's important to recognize that miss Hudson didn't leave this world willingly, right. She fought there was fingernel scrapings, right, we find out later if they knew that, and of course that you know.
She had scratched her attacker.
But somehow or other, you didn't have any scratches enough to gut even take one freaking picture. So, okay, this is how ridiculous this really is. And it's made even more so by virtue of the fact that the biological evidence, and there was a lot of it, right, and none of it matched Evan. So how did they square that circle?
Yeah, not only was there no evidence that Evan actually committed the crime unless you count the fact that he was in the apartment and the premonition. But there was actually evidence at the time of trial that he didn't
commit the crime. They had completed a rape kit on crystal and did some DNA testing on it even back then, and there was male DNA present, but it wasn't Ethan, So you know, they kind of had to come up with a way to explain that away because there was also, as I said before, there was physical evidence that she had been raped, meaning physical evidence of trauma to her, you know, intimate areas that suggested and confirmed that she was raped at the time, but they just kind of
ignored the physical trauma areas. They basically got around this evidence by some testimony from some folks from the coroner's office from Cuyahoga County that we now know well they would have known it at the time, but no one paid that close of attention to it. But we know for sure now was just completely bogus. The big question
was when this semen was deposited. Was it deposited at the time of death or was it deposited up to a week earlier, And of course the state came in and said, well, that could have been there for up to a week, and so she wasn't raped and murdered. The problem was that the folks from the Corner's office, especially one, you know, they were focusing on the wrong information that was scientifically invalid at the time to even
look at. They were looking at different fluid levels, but they should have been looking at sort of the number of sperm and the amount of semen that there was, and that's not what they were doing. So they weren't even following the appropriate practices at that time, and so that allowed them to go forward with the theory that she wasn't actually raped and murdered, that she was just murdered, even though the evidence clearly showed that she was raped and murdered.
So the notorious Cuyahoga County Carner's office was either unconsciously or consciously presenting false testimony, as they've done before, they created some wiggle room for the jury to still believe in you as the assailant. If that sperm had been deposited earlier than the time of death, perhaps she had had consensual sex or even been raped, you know, hours
or even days before she was killed. Making it plausible for the jury to believe that the DNA evidence from the sperm didn't determine who actually killed her, which would have left you as still some sort of potential suspect. Then you can see how the jury got fooled.
Yeah, I mean, you know, Unfortunately for Evan, his defense counsel didn't effectively cross examine them on this and didn't bring in any expert to sort of debunk it. It wasn't that, you know, it should have been a battle of the experts where one was saying one thing and the other was saying the opposite. They were just flat out wrong, and nobody called them on it.
Evan, who was your attorney? Well, were they court appointed?
Yeah, I'll never forget that name, roc O Russo.
Wow, what a name.
He didn't present no defense from me, because even my family when they came to court, they was like, your lawyer ain't objecting to nothing. He wouldn't object and he was falling asleep cup time. You know, if you fear that lawyer is selling you out, you gotta let it be known instead of the lawyer telling you, Because uh, roc Russa just kept telling me I got it. Just sit there I got this and I believed him. I sat there and that was the mistake on my behalf. But you don't know at the time.
Yeah, even if it seemed like you could see it, then you just didn't know it, unfortunately until it was too late. But back then, in that moment, did you still hold out any hope that the jury was going to see through this false testimony and believe their own eyes and ears when it came to the actual evidence in.
This case, Yeah, of course. You know. I was thinking, well, I didn't do it, so they ain't getting refine me guilty. I mean, that's where my mind was. But you know, when you stand up and they come back with a verdict of guilty, you know you gotta take it and keep your head held up and walk out. That guy said what I wanted to say to the judge. I definitely told him I'll be back in this courtroom. I'll never forget what I told. Judge Corgan.
What'd you say after.
He said, mister King, I'm sending you to fifteen years of life And he said, do you have anything to say? I say, you're sentence and an innocent man to prison. While the guilty man walked the streets of Cleveland. Free pointed to him and I said, one day I'll be back in this courtroom for you to set me free. I have to, I said that. I turned and I walked out. My head held him. Any prison is bad because basically you're on guard twenty four hours a day.
I mean, you don't know when somebody flip out, They flip off for the minus things. Somebody might not be able to get on the phone and bush in your head or cut your head. I mean, it's it's it's crazy on guard twenty four hours a day, basically, you know. But either you can stay in prison and keep back in a food in prison and be de the rest of your life, or you got to learn some things
or get some help. I couldn't adapt good to the books as far as Gates lawing, so I had to start writing letters, seeing who can give me some help. I was lucky enough to get in touch with MS Burst, Run Out Ohio, Innocent Project, God Bliss.
So you ended up finally in the hands of people who cared a lot and were talented lawyers, and they weren't going to let go. But one after another of these courts denied you and it was not that long ago that justice was finally delayed but not denied. So Jennifer take us through these denials.
So Evan was represented by different attorneys for a while, and back in two thousand and four I think actually he filed a first motion for DNA testing and it took a long time, but in two eight he asked for DNA testing on the fingernail scrapings because, as you mentioned, we know that Crystal Hudson fought back at the time of her death, and so his theory was, well, if we test these fingernail scrapings and you find male DNA and it's the same as the DNA from the semen,
then that's going to confirm what Evan's been saying since day one, which is that he was not the murderer, and that the person who loved the Semen was actually Racher and was the murderer. So Evan had filed for DNA testing and the trial judge had ordered it, saying, I think I can quote him here, DNA belonging to an unknown party found under the fingernails of the victim, and then went on to say would prove the identity of the real killer if it matches the DNA from
the scene. Okay, So basically, the trial judge was agreed that if the fingernail scrapings came back and matched the rape kit, that that would prove Evans claim. Well, it did exactly that.
When I first read what the judge said about if the fingernails scripting math, that's said, I'm out of here. And then when it come back for him to deny me, that just took me away. I'm like, isn't writing you say if this come domess that it eliminates me as the killer, and then it come back to do just that, then't you say, denied, even.
Though he'd explicitly said before that that's what he was looking for. But he denied it based on the expert testimony from the trial. That same expert testimony that we've been talking about that we know was just complete bogus nonsense. And so the trial judge said, well, the jury already knew that the DNA on the rape kit came from someone else, and you know, the expert said that could have come up to a week beforehand, so it really doesn't mean anything. So then he appealed. This was in
twenty twelve and the appeal was split three ways. One judge, who as now an Ohio Supreme Court Justice, said he'd already showed he was actually innocent and should be released, and then there was two other opinions basically saying, well, we see the DNA results, but there was no expert
testimony contradicting the trial expert testimony. So at this point is when the Ohio Innocence Project got involved, and with the help of actually one of our former lawyers, Carrie Wood, who worked at the Public Defender's Office, she got an expert involved and then she got in touch with me. Long story short, we refiled several things in STA court
and we also filed in federal court. The Coroner's office in the Prosecutor's office refused to give us all of the information we were asking for, like the additional data on the DNA testing, and they just flat out refused
to give it to us. So our expert was working with what he had available, and he produced an appidavit that's said several things, one that the Corner's office experts who testified at the trial essentially presented false testimony, and also the additional information about the fact that they found male DNA under her fingernails indicated it had to have been a struggle because most people don't walk around with
DNA under their fingernails belonging to someone else. And the fact that they were able to get a full profile off the rape kit all those years later also indicated that semen must have been put there at the time of death, because it wouldn't be that strong that much later. So we had three different motions pending in the trial court level, but eventually, like a year and a half later, the trial judge finally just denied all of those, so we had to peel it again.
I mean, it's just insane that you were denied by the trial court at this point, considering that you were remedying what they claimed was the reasoning behind the earlier denial, involving the DNA match from the scrapings and the rape kit. Now you had done it. You had refuted the trial experts, but the trial court went ahead and moved the gold hosts again, calling your refuting of the state's false expert
testimony a quote battle of the experts. Of course, you appeal this denial, and in January of twenty seventeen, the appellate court agreed with you, reversing the trial court's denial, granting you access to the DNA test results, which they had previously been blocking. They granted an upload to codis to see if you could get a match to another known perp, and so far there's no dice with that.
But significantly, you've got an evidentiary hearing out of this, so you all start prepping for what you thought was going to be.
An epic battle.
Your expert now had access to those DNA results, so he could go beyond what he'd already done in the APPI David, and in twenty seventeen, something truly unexpected happened.
Just completely out of the blue. One day in April, I was in a meeting and that got done, and I had like multiple voicemails and emails and things from one of the people from the prosecutor's office. I called her back and she told me that they had reviewed the case and talked to the corner's office again and had concluded essentially that we were right and that our expert was right, and that they were agreeing that they
would release Evan. And I think I fell out of my chair about when that phone, when I had that conversation because it was so unexpected given how they had been fighting everything up until that point. But of course the first thing I needed to do was to get a hold of Evan to tell him the news.
Right so that.
Means that means I think it's not going to get filed till Monday. But I think that means you should hopefully be able to be going home soon.
That's it.
Hit me.
The moment to process this, I wanted. I wanted you to know it right away.
I knew.
I knew that the day have come one day because.
I knew.
I cried too, because the child.
My mother told me to no one.
But you know, you.
Know my thankful show. I know she's looking down at me.
You know, I'm sure she is.
And like all we told you, I.
Had complete faith in you.
You know, thank you.
M After she he told me I had, I just laid the phone down and my mind just tears came out. That's why I'm turning up now, tears just.
Because that the only thing that I really think about it is mom.
My Mama and my aunt. Because my Mama always told me the Lord gonna let you out one day. He just wants you to get your life together. And I held on to that.
H yeah, when she told me that, there was a lot of tears that day, but uh, it's the day age that I'll never forget.
Yeah, we had the call on Friday, and then it was getting ready to be Easter weekend. So yeah, as your listeners probably know by now, when someone is released from prison after they've been wrongfully convicted, it's obviously amazing, but it's not like they're sin home with anything to help them readjust to life. So you know, we had to go into sort of high gear in our office trying to make sure Evan had somewhere to go, and
he did with his cousin, who was fantastic. But I was on the phone most of the weekend trying to make sure all of that was said, and then wait for them to transfer back to the county jail, and then I was able to visit him there the night
before we went back to court, which was amazing. And then finally we went back to court, but then it took hours and hours for them to process him back out, and then in the meantime, even after we knew he was coming home, it still wasn't a relaxing experience, because even just simple things like he needed access to medication that he took daily, and they weren't letting him come home with any And I spent the day trying to track down the doctor who ran the jail to make
sure they would at least release him with a prescription so that we could make sure he didn't miss any of the doses of the medication that he needed.
They wouldn't even give me the medication I had.
That they gave you and let you take it out. It's crazy.
It's crazy, which makes absolutely zero sense on any level. Right, It's just some bureaucratic insanity on top of all the other insanity. But luckily you had this great team behind you and good family, and so you walk out into the fresh air. What was that moment like? And where did you go? Did you did you go straight to a restaurant or a bar, or did you hug a tree?
Or what did you do when once we got outside? You know, just the air is different on this side of the fence. It's like you can breathe again, you know. To Media's God's gift.
I hear you, I mean we hear it in different ways from every different person who's been through what you've been through, different variations of it. It's it's beautiful. I even sad, but it's beautiful. So we're just happy you're home and you're free, and we wish you, you know, every blessing that life has to offer going forward. You certainly deserve it, and I want to before we go
to the closing of the show. First of all, I want to encourage people to support the Ohio Innocence Project, and we will put a link in the bio for people who want to donate or get involved in any way they can. You were the twenty fifth person exonerated by the Ohio Innocence Project. It's a remarkable number, but still it's a tiny number in terms of the overall innocent people that remain behind bars. But we're happy you're here.
And now we're going to turn to the closing of our show, which we call Closing Arguments.
It works like this.
I thank you both again, Jennifer. You know you inspire me and so many other people by your remarkable advocacy, and it's always great to have you on the show. And obviously I'm working closely with the Highly Innisance Project on other cases John Jones and others, and I know we're going to win those two. It just takes longer than we want it to, like it always does, but closing arguments works like this. I'm going to finally stop talking.
I'm going to turn my microphone off. Thank you again, Evan King, Jennifer Bergron for being here with us closing arguments. I'm going to just turn my microphone off and let you say anything else that's left unsaid that you want to share with our audience. Evan, we're going to save you. I mean, you're the man of the hour, so you're going to be the last one to speak, if that's okay, and we'll let Jennifer share her thoughts and then hand the mic off to you and then take us out into the sunset.
Albright, Well, first of all, I wanted to say thank you for having me back on. I'm kind of sad that I'm here because it means that there's more clients whose cases we can discuss. But I'm so grateful for the light that you're bringing to cases all over the country.
There are stories that deserve to be told. Also, if I may, would like to put in a plug for two of my current clients, Carl Willis and Wayne Brady, are their's website setup freewayneancarl dot com or that you can go read more information and find all kinds of information. And then of course I wanted to say thank you to Evin for being here with me and you've always
inspired me to keep going. And anytime I'm down and need a pick me up, I like to watch the video of you woo who who ing after you're coming out of the court when you were released, because it's just a feeling of pure joy that gives me a smile every time.
Thank you, thank you. Uh. First of all, the Ohio Innocent Project was the Gods and to me, they're family to me. For those of you out there listening, look up to Ohio Innocent Project. Some of you have people in love, ones that you know are innocent, need to be free. You don't know where to start, Just give them a call and as always, stay in your try to stay trouble free. But the Lord has your back. Just keep your faith and continue to do the right thing.
But one thing I would like to say came out good out of this. I haven't messed with the drug cocaine in almost thirty years now. I've been clean for almost thirty years now. People who always talk about you can't stop drugs overnight, Oh yes you can when the right thing happened to you. You can stop anything, but that all happens in God's blessings. So with that, thank you for having me here on your podcast, as I bid you farewell, Thank.
You, Thank you for listening to Rafel Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin War with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms. You can also follow me on
both TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason Flam. Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one