It was the summer of nineteen ninety six in Portsmouth, Virginia, and Terence Hobbs had just started dating Devana Byers, a young woman who shared a five year old daughter with one of the biggest drug dealers in town. When the FBI pressed Devanna about aiding her ex with money laundering, she agreed to testify against him in his federal drug charges, planning to skip town afterward. Devanna and Terry's budding romance
fizzled as a result. On July twentieth, nineteen ninety six, shortly after her testimony, the bodies of Devana Buyers and another lover, Leon Porter, were discovered, having both been shot once in the head. Investigators immediately honed it on Terry Hobbs, Divana's most recent X, but with no physical evidence to corroborate the theory, the case went cold. As the summer wound down, a bank robbery occurred in nearby Virginia Beach.
While facing unrelated charges, an old junior high acquaintance of Terry's, Eric Cook, alleged that he had called Terry from jail and that Terry had confessed to both the bank robbery and the July double homicide. At the bank robbery trial, the bank teller and another employee corroborated Eric Cook, which must have meant that Terry's fingerprints had just been missed by the crime scene technicians. At the double homicide trial, five witnesses facing their own criminal charges painted Terry as
a jealous ex boyfriend. But they couldn't possibly all be lying, especially about a convicted arm bank robber. But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. Today we have a first on this program, a double wrongful conviction. Now Terrence Hobbs was convicted of a bank robbery and then a completely separate double homicide, both of which he had nothing to do with. Terry joined us from not Away Correctional Facility in Virginia. Terrence, Welcome to wrongful conviction.
Thank you for having me.
Yeah, you're very welcome and joining us as a man who knew Terry on the inside. He himself was rightfully convicted for a string of robberies in the nineties in which no one got hurt and the proceeds amounted to around five hundred and eleven dollars. But I think it's fair to say that you were over sentenced having received a grand total of get this one thousand, three hundred
and ten years. Governor mccauliffe granted him a conditional pardon back in twenty eighteen, and Lenny has been fighting to clear Terry ever since. Lenny Singleton, welcome to the show.
Thank you, glad to be here.
Very glad to have you, and also here with us as someone who's been fighting for Terry the longest. His mother, Catherine Hobbs, thank you from the bottom of my heart for joining us and very courageously sharing today.
You're welcome, happy to be here now.
These crimes took place in two cities that are close to one another. There was a bank robbery in Virginia Beach In about a month before that, there was a double homicide in which the departed were a woman named Devana Byers, who was the mother of a drug kingpin's daughter and her new lover, Leon Porter, a man who was in possession of a very large amount of cocaine. So you know, maybe he was a competing dealer. We don't know, but it doesn't seem far fetched. So the
homicide portion of this is certainly touching that world. In Portsmouth, Virginia, now, Lenny, when you were in the military before your conviction, you were stationed in Virginia. Right.
Remember, Portsmouth, Virginia was like one of the heroin capitals of the world, this country anyway, and they were known for corruption. Every time I opened the paper back in the nineties, there was always some issue about corruption in Portsmouth.
Right, and Terry, you grew up there, so could you or maybe Ms. Hobbs if you want to jump in here too, could you tell us about your life growing up.
On August nineteen seventy in the city of Portsmouth, Virginia to a upper middle class black family. Pretty much had a typical childhood, I guess you could say it.
So.
I was diagnosed with dyslexia and very greed and.
He was very self conscious about that. They said he had above average intelligence, but he had the reading problem. And at the time they didn't know how to help students with that reading problem. So they put in a special education in which you get a certificate.
You do not get us the thumba.
We come from a military family, and he wanted to go so much with that certificate, he was not able to go.
And your military upbringing brought you in touch with guns, and you owned several legal firearms, all of which were being stored out of your possession at the time of the crime. But even the fact that you owned firearms at all was eventually used against you, even though none of your guns could be connected to the crimes were about to discuss here, But let's get back to Terry's childhood.
I started working at an early age. I got a job at food line at age sixteen and worked all through high school at food line. After the food line, my cousin got me a job with him working at the shipyard. Unfortunately, I got laid off, and at one point in time I did get involved in selling drugs on a very small level, but I never got arristed for it, and then after I was able to get my career back on track, I walked away from it.
And you'll get no judgment from me about being involved in drugs. But that, along with the love of motorcycles, did bring you into contact with a crowd of people who later went on to help frame you in exchange for leniency in their own very serious cases. But in the lead up to these two incidents, you were gainfully employed at the Coast Guard based shipyard. Now, I want to go back to your time at food Line during
high school. You worked there for a short while with one of the victims in this case, right, Devana Byers. Is that where the two of you first met.
I met Devana Bias in junior high school and we pretty much hung with different crowd. She was always extremely beautiful, extremely popular, being laid on. She worked at food Lye with me for maybe three months, and I probably didn't see her again until I was about twenty five years old.
And at that time you two became romantically involved, but that unfortunately got cut short, most likely by the circumstances in her life surrounding the father of her five year old daughter, Kia, a man named Nathaniel Skeete Richardson who was a major player in the Portsmouth drug game and was under federal indictment at the time.
But before he got his federal drug indictment, he had a long list of charges, a lot of them violent. Even one of the charges was the shooting death of his girlfriend an unborn child, and he went on to getting out on a knee and the dollar lond.
So this is a young guy who's already a suspect in the killing of the mother of his unborn child. And he's got a lot of money. He probably paid one hundred thousand cash on that million dollars to get himself out. Maybe he put up the whole million, I
don't know, but one way another he was loaded. He was making more money in a month than most of the police officers were making in the year at that time back in Portsmouth, so clearly, had he chosen to he had more than enough money to corrupt a local officer into giving him a pass or even offering him protection from the law.
Possibly, I wouldn't be surprised. Back in those days, not with Portsmouth. It wasn't uncommon for police to be on payrolls, especially he's drug kingpins back in those days.
From what I understand, at twenty two or twenty three years olds, Keith Richardson had so much money that he had developed a money laundering scheme involving there which is a trade of expensive cars, and one of those trades involved Divana and eventually the FEDS approached her, threatening her with money laundering chargers if she didn't cooperate in their prosecution of Skeete Richardson, who was under federal indictment for a laundry list of drug charges, conspiracy, et cetera.
I told her I felt like considering the people that they were asking her to talk about and testify against, I didn't think it was in her best interest. And I told her, you know, the moneyliner in charges that considered white collar crimes, you may do two or three years and you can start your life over. She wasn't interested in hearing it. She wasn't trying to do a single day.
It was that decision to testify against him that was more than likely what led to her death. So she was subpoena to appear in court, and she did.
And then what happened About a week or two before she was killed, she went to either Mississippi or Alabama, or to spend some time with family down there. And after she came back, she asked me if I would be willing to move with her to Mississippi or Alabama after she finished cooperating with the FBI. And I'm be honest with you, I considered it when I didn't want to have to leave my home under those circumstances. I don't had nothing to do with it.
So at this point even though you two were still occasionally sleeping together, you had created some distance between you and Devanna, hardly the actions of a jealous boyfriend, as the state would later paint you when you were prosecuted for what happened in the aftermath of her testimony in
this federal drug trial. So let's get to that. This was the night of July nineteenth into the twentieth of nineteen ninety six, just two weeks after she had testified against her baby's father, who was, of course the drug kingpin. Now apparently she had been with her parents earlier that evening, went home with her five year old daughter, Kia, and a man named Leon Face Porter. That was his nickname. Face. Kia had gone to bed. Then around midnight, an ear
witness her gunshots. Around four am. Kia called her grandfather after discuss her mother and mister Porter were dead. Police found that the outside door and apartment door had been busted open. Divana was found by the foot of the bed, shot in the back of the head. Mister Porter was found lying on the bed and he had been shot in the face, as if he had been sitting on the edge of the bed when he was shot.
I woke up to my page of going off back to back to back to back to back. The ruma was that Divonna and I had gotten murdered. Once they found out that I hadn't gotten killed, because the nature of our relationship where we were still sleeping with each other from time to time, I became a suspect.
They tried to say it was a crime of passion a jealous boyfriend, but those two people were shot execution style only once.
And they'd know that she'd just testified against the biggest drug dealer in Portsmouth.
Virginia, right even though Divana's baby's father, Nathaniel Skeete Richardson, was the logical suspect. They pursued Terry anyway. But you had seen a movie with your sister the night before, then went to your parents' house to pick up some mail before spending the night at your sister's, And when you woke up to your page er just blowing up, you called some friends, found out what had happened, and you and your sister went to Divanda's parents' house.
Can I agreed to talk to the police, and at some point in time, Detective Huntington and Detective beach Look showed up at Divanna's house.
So they asked you to accompany them to the detectives Euroa and you were, I would say, as cooperative as you possibly could be. At first, you know.
Asked me a few questions, asked me about my whereabouts that they and then they got around to ask me if I owned any firearms, which I told him I did and gave him a list of the firearms. They asked me if I had any problem with them running ballistics tests on them. I had the guns they delivered to the police department, I can send into the gunshot residue tests, right.
They tested his guns, they tested his fingerprints. Nothing matched.
They asked me if I had any problem taking a lot of detective tests, which I did and at the.
Time, yeah, agreed to the light detective test. And you also told him where he could find your other firearm at the Portsmouth Big Tackle and Pawn shop.
Detective Huntington went there to try to retrieve my block from the shop, and I think the lady's name was Kathleen half Cock, and he told her personally that he was there to get my gun because it was used in a murder. Luckily, she had the presence of mind to ask when did the murders take place? After he told her when the murders took place, she told him that it was no way possible that weapon could have been used and that crime because they had been hi the shop prior to the crime taking place.
So it seems that Detective Huntington had already pretty much decided that you were the focus of his investigation, despite the fact that you had been cooperative. There was nothing that was a match for you. They're alibizing, there was nothing that pointed in your direction anyway. You started getting wind of this.
Right Detective Huntington at one point in time, he actually told my sister that he had been informed by several individuals that I was running around in the street bragging that I had committed the murders. And I called the Detective Huntington back and asked him what was he talking about,
because I hadn't been talking to anybody. I told him straight up, I said, look, it seems like you are more concerned with listening to romas that you're hearing in the street versus taking what you have at the crime, seeing the actual evidence and using that is your starting point to start your investigation. And do your job. So then after we had their conversation, he asked me, would I still be willing to come in and take the
Lotti tech the test the next day. I told him I was not interested in taking the Lotti tech the test. Instead of him doing his job, it seemed like he was more interested in trying to hang these crimes on me.
So now things are heated between you and this detective, but he's got nothing on you. Nothing connects you to this murder besides your previous relationship with the deceased. And there's definitely a much more motivated and likely suspect in
the mix, But for now the case went cold. The summer was coming to a close, and at this time, two guys that you knew in junior high, Darryl and Eric Cook, had gotten involved in bankrupt They were awaiting charges on two separate incidents at bank robbery in Chesapeake and then another one in Portsmouth, and the second one involved to shootout with the police and Eric Cook. He was looking to trade information for leniency.
Seems to me that mister Eric Cook made his living doing that.
So while that part of the story is simmering in the background, the entire Hobbs family was headed to Franklin, Virginia for a family reunion on Friday, August thirtieth, when Terry received a traffic ticket on his ride out there, and that ticket was issued around six forty five pm near Franklin, which is only about an hour's drive outside of the Portsmouth, Virginia Beach area.
Well, you have to remember this is on a holiday weekend. We get beast traffic and people coming in from out of state. There would be about a two and a half to three hours draft fighting at traffic.
So this traffic ticket out in Franklin at six forty five pm makes it extremely unlikely that you could even be physically available to commit a bank robbery in Virginia Beach a little after four pm that same afternoon. Now, this isn't the same bank robbery that Eric and Daryl Cook were arrested for. This is a totally separate incident. This was August thirtieth, nineteen ninety six, after four pm
in Virginia Beach. A black man in his mid twenties with a baseball hat, sunglasses, a thick go tee, and a dark blue backpack entered the first Virginia Bank on the corner of Virginia Beach Boulevard and Kings Grant Round. He revealed a gun in his waistband, but he never drew it. The bank teller mis Barrard complied with his demands and handed over about eight hundred dollars in small bills,
and the robber fled the scene. Now, this is a bank, so they've got all kinds of surveillance footage, of course, and screenshots of this robber.
And I've seen the pictures. There's no way you can look at those photos and say Terry Hobbs did it.
At that time, I couldn't even grow a full beat it. I had a peach flods mustache and that was pretty much it. With a guy who ractually robbed the bank had a full mustache and go tee that was so fake that you couldn't see that a drop of skin through his mustache or go tee.
On top of that, the guy wasn't wearing any gloves. To the transcripts, his hands were over the glass the case. There in the bank, they ran the fingerprints. Guess what, Terry's fingerprints didn't match anything there.
Very soon after the robbery, when shown a photo array with Terrence's picture. The bank teller Ms Berrard and a bank employee named Genie Chaplin both said that they couldn't make a positive ID due to the assailant having worn a hat, sunglasses, and a thick cotee, but somehow that later changed, so no ID, no fingerprint match where there
definitely were fingerprints left to the scene. But now here comes Eric Cook, a guy Terry hasn't spoken to since junior high school who's facing his own bank robbery charges as well as the attempted murder of a police officer from Virginia Beach City Jail. And he was clearly looking to trade information for leniency. But I thought that he had robbed a bank in Portsmouth.
He was on a courtesy hole, in particular crestody in Virginia Beach because when he was an imforceable city jail of the city which he attempted to committed bank robbery, and when he was in the jail block, any person that was in the sale with him or in the par with him, he would get on the phone and call crime solversts and say that these people were confessing
the committing crimes. So it eventually got around and the whole car had turned on him and beat him within the ench of his life, and he had to be hospitalized. And after he was released from medical treatment, he was put in Virginia Beach City Jail in protective custody, and that's where he called Crime Solvi was once again from me. Even at the expense of almost losing his life for baron false witness against people, he still hadn't learned his lesson.
So he goes from Portsmouth Jail under Detective Huntington's jurisdiction to Virginia Beach who are a friend of Huntington's. A detective named Chris Moleen was working the August thirtieth bank robbery and Eric Cook called Crime Solvers with information that just so happened to benefit both detectives.
He claims he called me. He said that I had told him that I had robbed the bank whiching a Beach, and that I had also murdered Devana Bias and Leon Porte.
But this alleged call between you and Eric Cook would have been made from a jail phone. Not only would it have been recorded and made for some really compelling evidence a trial, but it also would have shown up on your phone records if in fact it ever took place.
So I got my phone records during that time and it showed no calls from no institution on there.
Man didn't even have my phone number, couldn't even tell you what my phone number was.
So this phone call just simply never took place. And you know, calls to crime stoppers are anonymous. But yet instead of the authorities paying a visit to Terry to see what he had to say about these allegations, somehow Detective Huntington's buddy in Virginia Beach, Detective Chris Malin knew exactly who to go visit in the Virginia Beach City jail.
So one can only surmise that this was a plan that was between Mouleen Huntington and their highly incentivized witness, Eric Cook to make a quasi anonymous call to crime solvers. But there's something else that's interesting about the interviews with Eric Cook.
Every single interview that I have, there were copies of statements made to the police would detect the robber tuning General David Beachlaw and which is I think is extremely odd. Why are you sitting an interviewing this man about a Virginia Beach bank robbery. You have absolutely no risk powers in the city of Virginia Beach.
All right, this shit stinks already. But as I mentioned, the bank teller, Missus Berrard, and the bank employee Jennie Chaplin did not make an id from the photo lineup right.
The bank teller herself, she says, this guy right here kind of looks like the robber, but because of the robber wane of disguise, which was the hat and sunglasses, I'm not one hundred percent sure that this is the robber. That is not a positive identification. But yet if you look at my risk warrant, it say is the reason I was being charge with that crime was due to the sworn statements of Christopher C. Moleen, not the actual victim, Tracy Barad or Genie Chaplin.
So Detective Malene fabricated evidence and both he and Eric Cook purjured themselves in order to obtain your arrest warrant.
The morning of September twenty third, nineteen ninety six, they took me over to the Detectives Bureau. They kept me in that room I don't know how many hours, and detective hunting and came in there and tried to give me the impression that I was being charge with the murders and that he was going to make sure that
I got the death penalty. I didn't take it too kindly, and I told him if he got off his ass and did his fucking job and went by the evidence of the crime scene, he could find out who committed the murders and stopped harassing me. So he looks at me and walked out the rum, and within five minutes Detective Moleen came in and asked me to set aside my conversation that I had just had with Detective Hunting, and so then he starts talking to me about a bank robbert in Virginia Beach, and he said I had
already been identified as a suspect. I volunteered fingerprints to run them if they had finger prints recovered from the crime scene. Not only had they collective fingerprints from the bank robbery, they had already run my fingerprints against the fingerprints from the bank robbery before I was arrested, and they came out negative.
They always knew you hadn't committed this crime. And sometimes we just see a nihilistic approach from a detective where they just don't care at all who they got as long as they close the case, you know, if they say a body for a body. But here it seems as if all of this tension between you and Huntington was just adding fuel to his fire. So were you able to bond out?
And they took me to the Virginia Beach City jail. I think I was allowed to probably close in ninety days before I was able to get a bond right, And I.
Had to get an attorney to get his bond. Ken Melvin, he's a judge now, but the attornety got the bond for me, and it was a fifty thousand dollars bond, so he was.
Out on bond for a little while. But you couldn't afford Ken Melvin for the full trial, and eventually you had a quarter pointed a two. But even for someone who was presumably overworked and underpaid, as almost all of the public devendors in the country are, this still should have been an easy win. You had this false statement from Eric Cook about an alleged phone call that you could prove never took place, and then Ms Berrard and
mss Chaplin, who never identified you. But as we so often see, sometimes witnesses become more confident in their ideas as the trial approaches.
Yes, nat goes from them not being showed them the person did percent showed them the person.
Nine months later. How can she positively say it was Terry and she couldn't do it hours after the robbery. It just it just smells bad to me that she was coached.
But Okay, your attorney could have impeached these ideas as unreliable, considering the fact that the witnesses had not been able to make an id in the immediate aftermath of the robbery, just hours after it took place, as well as the fact that the bank robber face and had or covered by a hat, sunglasses, and the thick goatee that Terry couldn't possibly have grown. Plus, we know that you were out of town en route to your family reunion in Franklin, Virginia.
You had, I mean, for christ sakes, you had a traffic ticket to prove it, as well as the officer who issued the ticket. Now I understand that he was called as a witness to corroborate your whereabouts.
Right when I walked in the courtroom, that day, Blow and behold Detective Huntington and Golan having a discussion with this police officer that issued me the traffic ticket before he ever takes the stand. He takes the stand and states that he can't remember if I'm the person that he actually gives you the ticket too. So my next request was is that he give us the original copy
of the ticket. Well, the original copy of the ticket supposedly was destroyed, and he supposedly had a gallon of paint in the trunk of his car and had an accident and the paint spilled on his paperwork, and therefore the ticket was no longer available. But I find that hard to believe.
Sounds totally made up to me. But still there's more that could have been done to combat the state. Besides what should have been an easy job impeaching the credibility of the IDs, you had this patently bogus statement from Eric Cook about an alleged phone call confession that you could conclusively prove never took place. So what happened with that?
Apparently, after my attorney showed the Como frattorney to copy of my phone records, the phone records reflected heiit and never even called me. They allowed Earriit to change his testimony, and they also sealed his statement that he made to the Virginia Beach police because of the discovery when my mom had a fool from the archives. They did not allow us to see any statement he ever made to the police.
So all you knew was that he alleged that you confessed on a phone call. This wasn't some opportunity to cross examine and create doubt when you submitted the phone records to evidence as proof of the lies, that would and should have shut down their lying star witness completely. So the state just sidestepped your defense with mora lies. But you had no idea that they were going to do this. How could you have predicted that your defense was prepared to disprove the lie about the phone call,
but was not prepared to combat this new lie. The evidence was not shared with the defense. It's just perfect example of a Brady violation right out in the open, plain sight. So what did he change his story.
To He changed his story and see it that he walked up on a conversation that me and his brother was plotting to rob his bank in Virginia Beach, and we said and planned it out and detailed myself and his brother and the commonwealths attorney basically vouch for his credibility, and how he was coming full at great risk to hisself because of me being an extremely dangerous individual, and that he was putting hisself at great risk to protect the citizens of Virginia Beach from people like myself.
So not a bank or arber trading false testimony for leniency, but actually a concerned citizen was nothing to gain.
Jess a concerned citizen. They were aughted by the judge not to bring up his criminal history, none of his prior crimes because in Chesapeake his citizen had been postponed and imports of his citizen had been postponed, and under the guide lines of the law until he's officially sentenced by a judge, he is not a convicted felain. He was actually one before he started his line of question, and not to ask him any questions about where he's housed at or anything that would lead him into the
devultion to the jewelry. That he was arrested and convicted of any type of crime for his testimony. He was given three years and thirty days for the attempted bank robber, re imporcement, the juse of farms and the commission of a felony, and the attempted capital murder of a police officer.
Jesus, I mean even the attempted murder of a police officer usually carries you know, a little bit.
More than that, of course, but his statue on a murder is either life or death. He did three years and thirty days and then only was sentenced for the Chesapeake bank robbery after he was released from prison. By the time they suspended all this time, he only is sixtys and eight months. So between the two robbery, the three use of farms and the commissioner of felony and the attempt capital murder of police office, he got less than ten years.
So your lawyer wasn't even allowed to bring up the fact that this guy is receiving a huge break on his own charges in exchange for testifying against you. This is really dirty. So Eric Cook's statement appeared to be corroborated by the now all of a sudden one hundred percent sure of witnesses, and that was enough to overcome the fingerprint evidence of the contrary, which by that I mean the fact that you certainly were not there.
The fingerprints that were recovered. We couldn't even really go into that too much because of the cong walth attorney. She didn't want the fingerprints entered in the evidence.
What about your attorney?
He didn't make the motion.
So the jury came to a sadly predictable conclusion.
Nobody in the jury would look at me, which I knew that was a bad time. They came with the guilty verity. I looked over to mo Leen and Huntington. Huntingen winked at me and Jomio and you've made on Tojo's gonna get you.
We'll be right back after this. This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company. AIG is committed to corporate social responsibility and is making a positive difference in the lives of its employees and in the communities where we work and live. In light of the compelling need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of AIG's commitment to criminal and social justice reform, the AIG pro Bono Program provides free legal services and other support
to underrepresented communities and individuals. So now you're convicted, but you still had to go to sentencing. When your lawyer still had one move left, he located Eric Bok's brother, Darryl, who took the stand.
Darryl Cook came forward and took the stand, and my attorney asked them some questions and basically just said his brother was lying because he didn't want to do the time. In the end, my lawyer made a motion that the judge set aside the verdict and order a new trial or overturned the conviction altogether. But the judge wasn't having he upheld the conviction.
The fact that his brother got on the stand and then they found phone rerecords were bogus that there was never a call. I don't know how that did not get overturned.
He appealed my centizen, which my guidelines was five years and one month, immediate range point was six years and two months. Nine years was the max, and they gave me forty eight years and a thirty thousand dollar five.
So, in light of Eric Cook's own brother coming into testify against him, the state star witness, which should have really shaken their confidence in this conviction, instead of the max of nine years, they doubled down on this tragedy by over sentencing you. So your lawyer must have had an appeal ready to go. I know in Virginia you've got to get it filed within thirty days of the conviction, though right.
He had a state appointed attorney that really did nothing for him. Even times I would go to his office to try and meet with him. I think I was avoided twice. The third time I laid in wait in the parking lot, they said he wasn't there, So I stayed in the parking lot until he got there so I could have a talk with him.
How did that conversation go?
I went up to his office with him because I wanted to know what was going on. Where are we now with the appeal? Well, and that's when he let me know he didn't get it filed in time.
Author Ehnrich, who has been disbarred more than three times for one of the very things that he did to me. You know how you have a constitutional rights to an appeal, has never had an appeal for my case in Virginia Beach because he made the motion that he would be filing appeal and never filed it. And I was time barred. So my constitutional right to appeal was lost. It was revealed later that he had a cocaine habit and he
was barely been his duties. So I know when I when I claimed ineffect of assistance a council, that's exactly what I had, whether the common was attorney. When they get to filed their briefs, they claim I was only claiming interffective assistance or council is because I was unsatisfied with the outcome of my trial.
So you were time barred on the direct appeal and denied on a clear case of ineffective assistance a council, and therefore you were stuck to serve out a forty eight year sentence, effectively a life sentence. Now, at this time, Virginia made another horrendous move, which is that they did away with parole entirely. But if your jury had not been advised that you would never be eligible, as was in fact the case here, you would have been what is known as a fishback candidate. So that becomes an
issue later on and we'll explain that. So you've potentially
got parole to look forward to. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to you, Detective Huntington was out there for several years building up a case against you for the double homicide, and he was talking to people you knew through your hobby of riding motorcycles, as well as some guys that you knew from your short time that you spent dealing drugs, and Detective Huntington was working on coercing and incentivizing them to cooperate, and eventually he was successful at finding five people who
were willing to do it by nineteen ninety nine.
Every single one of them have cases against them, and most of them are big time drug dealers or in the drug trade and they have something to gain by lying on Terrence Hobbs. Detective Huntington, Yeah, he was on a mission to convict the wrong man of these double.
Murders, Terry, Since the only thing you knew about Eric Cook's initial statement at this point was that he had implicated you and the robbery, and the rest of the details were sealed, including the fact that he'd implicated you in the double murder as well. Were you even aware of Detective Huntington's investigation? When did you find out?
I was actually sitting in prison at Southampton Coressional Facility. I'm sitting in the sale looking at television, and they had movies on the weekend and they rented for us to see. And one of my friends come past the sale and he say, tee. He said, ma'am. He said, I just saw you on the news. They just indicted you for two council capital murder. I said, man, go ahead with that bullshit. Stop playing, He said, Man, I wouldn't play about nothing like that. He said, turn from
a movie channel. He said. He turned the NBCCBSORABC. Every time they show a commercial, they're showing your face on the news, and you're being charged in a cold case.
I couldn't believe it. And then we thought back to what had happened that night. He and his sister had gone to the movie.
Right. He was with his sister at the movies and came by your house for some mail, then went back to his sisters. She accounted for his arrival around midnight, the same time that an ear witness heard gunshots from Havanna Buyer's apartment. She and Leon Porter were each shot once, execution style.
She had already been threatened that if she testified against the drug kingpin, which was her daughter's father, then for it would happened to her he had already shot and killed someone else that was karing his baby before he was locked up.
But rather than tracking down those leaves, Detective Huntington just went ahead and pursued Terry, whose fingerprints again were not found in a scene where they almost certainly should have been considering his relationship with Divanna and Terry was more than helpful. He came to Devana's house with his sister, who was ready to vouch for his whereabouts, and all of his guns were tested for holistics evidence. He willingly
gave his fingerprints submitted to a GSR testing. No matches were found, and at least initially he was willing to take a lot of detective tests, but none of that was good enough for this Detective Huntington. It almost makes you think that he it was doing everything he could to avoid investigating the guy who he should have been investigating,
which was sket Richardson. So, with this lack of evidence and clear standout suspect, Detective hunting had to get creative and he conjured up five witnesses, but the stories weren't quite adding up. But even with this weak ass bullshit case, publicly they were claiming that they had five corroborating witnesses.
If you look at the newspaper article that was dated for what were the first nineteen ninety nine in the Virginian Pilot newspaper. They were requesting the death penalty, and they even came to me with a twenty year plead to try to get me the plead guilty for two council capital murder, and I refused to take a guilty plead of twenty years for two murders that I had not committed. They came back and brought a teen year plea to me and I refused to take that as well.
They had my attorney asked me, would be any amount of time that I would be willing to accept so that they wouldn't have to take me to trial, and I would not take it. I actually still have a copy of the twenty year plead. They did ten year plea verbally twenty year plea for two council of capital murder to run k and Karen with the forty eight years in Virginia Beach. Now the state of Virginia, there's only two penalties for capitol murden, his life or death.
So how do you offer a man a twenty year plea in the in turnaround, I offer him a teen year plea for a capitol murder unless you know he didn't do it.
Yes, they know he's not the guy. No prosecutor would come with a ten year plea deal on a double murder if they knew he committed to crime. No way, no, Hew, that's just bullshit. They want to close the case.
Nevertheless, they took him to trial knowing that the evidence was all just incentivized testilize that started with Eric Cook. He was so unreliable that they did not even include him in this proceeding at all. Now, the five quote unquote new witnesses here were Sean Saunders, Curtis Freeman, William Godwin, Derek Blackwell, and Tyron Wallace. And we're about to destroy all of their credibility right now.
Well Sewn Saunders, who happens to be a three time felon and who admitted to Terry's mom after the trial that he had lied to avoid going back to prison. He worked with Terry on the construction job at the Coastguard Base. He testified that he and Terry were good friends throughout high school, but Saunders had actually dropped out
of school in eighth grade. According to Terry didn't see him again until he worked with him on the coastguard job, and Saunders claimed that while they were working together that Terry told him that he and Devanna were breaking up and that if he ever found Devona with another man, he would kick in the door of an apartment if he had to with.
Killer Seawn Sanders claimed that he told my supervisor. My supervisor actually came to court and testis out on my behalf. He said we were never alone together, that he worked in one place and I worked in another.
A year before the trial. Interestingly, Saunders had been subpoenat, but he didn't tell you authorities about Terry's alleged emissions. Then you know, it was only the day before Terry's trial after Saunders again was arrested for selling drugs, the Saunders come up with the story that Terry threatened to kick in Divana's door and kill her if he saw her with another man.
Saunders testify that Terry had said he would park his motorcycle around back and kick in the back door and use a silencer on a gun. But there's a problem with this that earwitness would have definitely heard a motorcycle.
And importantly, there is no back door, So he would have made that mistake to say I'm going to kick in the back door knowing there is no back door.
Right, Terry knew that apartment well and never would have mentioned a non existent back door. Now, Curtis Freeman, he was facing home invasion and robbery charges. What did he say to save his own skin?
Freeman's testifying that he was familiar with Terry's motorcycle, which he described as being a neon greenish color and purple and allegedly unique because of his bright colors, despite Terry riding with many others who also had these colorful sport motorcycles. He also testified that he noticed Terry's motorcycle parked around the block from Devona's apartment on the night of the murders, and that he said Terry had a notoriously loud motorcycle because of the modifications.
So now the bike is parked around the block, and again, where was the ear witness on this extremely loud motorcycle. They heard the gunshots, but no notoriously loud motorcycles speeding away. They somehow missed that.
One Freeman was given probation for a home invasion and robbery because of his cooperation.
And Lenny can back me up here. But these are not the types of sentences that Virginia is known for doling out for home invasions or anything for that matter. I mean, Lenny got over a thousand years for stealing just a little bit over five hundred dollars.
Oh my goodness.
So now we're at William Godwin or Bill Godwin. Right, he was in federal custody drug possession conspiracy charges with the seventeen and a half year sentence. Initially he had said that he didn't know anything about the murders, but knew that Terry was innocent. What did he say to get released after just two and a half years?
Like, he claimed that he was with me and he saw me threaten Greg Elliott with a far arm because Greg was at her house visit in her and Greg Elliott came the courte and subpoena as a Commonwealt attorney witness, and once he took his sting and basically said that everything that Beal testified to was a lie.
So there goes lie number one. Then Godwin testified that he had been told by a man named Daryl Evans about a conversation that Evans had overheard in which Terry had confessed to the murders.
Daryl Evan has come to court and testify it and refused Bial's testimony.
So there goes Godwin, making the Commonwealth look stupid again. He also alleged that Terry had basically confessed to him about the murders. But I think Godwin had already told too many lies that had been refuted in court for anyone to take him seriously about anything. So on to Derek Blackwell, he was in federal custody on charges of being a drug kingpen and running a criminal enterprise, facing thirty years to life. Initially, he had told police that knew nothing about the crimes, but then.
He lies and says about two to three weeks after the killings, he and Terry were at a gas station in Portsmouth and Terry unsolicited now admits to shooting Devana and Porter. He first offered a story about Terry's alleged confession about two months after he had been arrested in November of nineteen ninety seven for federal drug conspiracy charges. Blackwell only served three and a half years as a
result of his cooperation. Interesting with Blackwell's testimony. You know, he said Terry was with him at his house all day until seven pm on July nineteenth, nineteen ninety six. That's directly contradicted by Terry's work time card at the Coastguard base that day.
Just another fucking liar that to his description of Terry's bike as primarily black. I thought it was Neon, green and purple. So enough of this guy. Last, but not least, Tyrone Wallace, who was in federal custody facing drug conspiracy charges.
Evidence is clear that the door was kicked in. Wallace testified that Terry admitted he killed Divanna in Porter after he parked his bike. Now it's a couple of blocks away, not behind, a couple of blocks away all the night of the murders, and entered the apartment with a duplicate key.
Yet we know the door had been kicked in. He also said that Terry had said that he shot Porter while he was lying in bed, and that he shot Divana from under the chin.
But the medical examiner established at Porter was shot in the face while sitting at the end of the bed and Devona had been shot in the back of the head. So contradiction after contradiction after contradiction. You know, he faced twenty two years and served less than four.
Come on, man, it's just exponential injustice on top of an already insane double wrongful conviction. But I mean, couldn't the jury see how these guys their stories just weren't matching up, That their stories didn't match the back to the crime, and in some cases their lives were called out by both defense and prosecution witnesses that this was not some jealous boyfriend case, but rather a homicide that was in retribution for Divana's testimony against her acts.
Yeah, the common of the turning kept down playing it is that would not be enough motive compared to the evidence that they had. And the only evidence that they had against me was the false testimony of these witnesses. And I guess the only thing and I could think that would have caused me to get a guilty verdict is that the jury would feel like, well, all of these guys can't be lyned, even though they were. They
had tried to killed me without killing my body. They killed me by killing my reputation, which in turn caused me to be found guilty of these crimes, and they thought that this is gonna be the end for me, that they were gonna lock me up for basically thirteen hundred years, and that was gonna be the end of my story.
And that's a number that Lendy is all too familiar with. These insane numbers really started after they abolished parole in Virginia. Right when was that?
Well, guys had opportunities at parole well before ninety five January ninety five. So even in a case like this, if you had a life sentence, you start going up for parole in twelve years, two life sentences, you still get an opportunity to go up you just it would take around twenty years. Guys still had a shot if you weren't given life without the possibility of par The life sentences didn't nail you until after they abolished parole. And so now if you get life, it means exactly that life.
Wow, and you have how long to follow your appeal In Virginia.
You got thirty day to get that appeal in immediately.
So Terry, I'm going to imagine that you didn't just want to take this insane sentence lying down, but with two wrongful convictions and this seriously short amount of time for a meaningful appeal to be filed, no potential DNA testing, no possibility of parole. What happened? Did your lawyer screw it up and get time barred again?
We actually went through there and Jordan time field process and that one single jealous would overturn the convictions.
I mean, post conviction litigation is largely based on whether or not you receive due process and if any constitutional rights were violated. I'm sure in effective assistance could be argued here, but accompanying actual innocence claims can be helpful with any other claims. And the only evidence against you at the second trial were these inconsistent and patently and obviously false statements from these incentivized witnesses. Was all of that pointed out to them?
Yes, all of this stuff was pointed out, But to say the fact that the matter is a lot of these people don't want to point to saying that another prosecutor or police officer certain say that they were. And that's just the sad fact of the matter. Without the support of my family, I believe I would have lost myself in here because I'm gonna tell you something. I'm surrounded in this small amount of acreage of this penitentiary.
I'm around from everything that you could possibly think of, murderers, rapists, child molester's necro vctiality. I'm around the worst of the worst. Had I not had the love and support of my family sticking by me and just they received that unconditional love, it kept me from losing myself in here. To be completely honest with you, I don't know what kind of person I would be now had I been left to living in this environment of violence and blood and sweat
and tears. People on the team people commit suicide, hanging themselves because they could not do this time. I do this time every single day, alcohol free, disease free, drug free of any of those things. So the things that most people do in here to deal with the reality, I deal with sober. That's the only way I can have a clear head to do what I need to do to try to mount the best defense that I
can for myself. And when people like yourself are interested in hearing my story, I can tell the team, and of.
Course people like Lennie who heard your story. If not for him, we wouldn't be having this recording session right now. And if I hadn't read about his story, of course in the New York Times, I'm not sure any of us would be talking right now. Lenny. How did you and Terry end up meeting?
I was transferred to not Away Correctional Center in nineteen ninety eight, and I think I were. Yeah, we met around early two thousands. And Terry, because of what he's been through, he is totally aloof walking around with his grid on his face every day, and most people really didn't like Terry inside because of that, and so he
just kind of gravitated towards me. I was a leader in the church and doing a lot of teaching and mentoring, and a little bit at a time he started sharing with me his story and I would tell him, I says, well, Terry, what are you doing about this? Well, at that time that's I was working on a conditional pardon. I said, man, your case is so bad that I could not possibly see anybody reading all of this and not doing something about it. And so eventually I would be granted my pardon.
On January twelfth, twenty eighteen, my wife had already gotten hired by attorney John A. Cockshull. He added me to the team the very next day after my release. Once Attorney Cockshull created what he called the Pardon Petition Team, Terry Hobbs was our first client, so we've been working with him since the end of twenty eighteen.
So what happened with the conditional pardon petition.
We filed his original pardon petition in twenty twenty, just based on the bogus bank robbery. They turned it down because they believed that he was a fishback candidate. Fishback is for guys who were sentenced between ninety five and two thousand, and the jury wasn't instructed that parole had been abolished, So these guys are getting these long sentences and the jurors don't know that there's no parole in Virginia, so they were under the assumption that Terry was a
fishback candidate. In hindsight, now I think we probably should have done the double murders first, because it was those double murders that removed Terry from being a fish back
eligible for parole. If we could have gotten the double murders removed with the pardon, that would have just left the bank robbery which would have allowed him to go up for parole, turned down his original pardon petition, and we had to wind up calling Missus Trudy Harris, who's the chief investigator over the parole board, informing her about all of this, and they would eventually reinstate his petition. I mean, honestly, because he's an innocent man of both
of those things. We went ahead and added an addendum to that original pardon petition showing both the bank robbery and the double murders as being bogus. And that was November twenty twenty one. So in essence, his petition, from what I understand, hasn't reached the stage of a full investigation yet and we're waiting on that.
And Lenny, normally we speak with our guest attorney. I'm very happy to speak with you. But there's another sad note to this story about why we're not speaking with him. And I'm talking, of course about the late great John Cattishaw Well.
Unfortunately, Attorney John Cockshall. He passed away June nineteenth, twenty twenty two. It was totally unexpected. We were just visiting him in April of twenty twenty two. We all went to an awards event where he was awarded Attorney of the Year. Vandy and I were awarded Authors of the Year, and we just saw him. His wife had just passed away, probably three to four months before he did, and we could kind of tell that, you know, he that took the wind out of his sales.
Now, I'm sure he would have loved to get Terry over the line before he passed, But you and your wife, Andy are going to get him there, as you have done for so many others already. And I understand John trusted you both implicitly actually making you too fearless warriors. A branch of his firm.
We were the western branch of the John A Coxual law firm. Yes, and so yeah, we obtained eleven pardons since twenty eighteen, including my own.
You're an inspirational guy, and I know you can do it. So I know it was Terry mccalloff that pardoned you, and Governor Northen was also very active in this arena. Now we have Governor Glenn youenkin.
The thing about the pardon process when you're running a state as big as Virginia, co'm and wealth as big as Virginia, they just don't have time to investigate, so he appoints people to do that. Jrudy Harris being the chief investigator for the Parole Board over pardons, and then you have five parole board members, so he delegates that task onto them, and they make a recommendation to the governor.
Nine out of ten times, unless it's something high profile and the governor just doesn't want it to taint his political career, he goes with the recommendation of that parole board and those investigators.
Well, I hope miss Harris is listening. We implore her, don't listen to us. Follow the evidence. Look at the flimsy false testimony in this case that was refuted by other witnesses, and the physical evidence plus the more likely suspects. I think you'll find that this should be an easy decision. Now we're going to have action steps linked in the bio, and I also asked that our audience scroll down and get involved. I always say pressure breaks pipes, people, and
we need you now. And with that, we're gonna go to my favorite part of the show. Of course, this is the part we called closing arguments, where I turned my microphone off and let you guys have the final say so I'm gonna kick back in my chair with my headphones on. Lenny Singleton once you go first, then Ms Catherine Hobbs, and of course Terry, I'm gonna save you for last. Thank you all for being here, and now I'm just gonna sit back and listen.
This could happen to anyone. He wasn't a choir boy, but he wasn't a bank robber, and he wasn't a killer. This just goes to show that our criminal justice system still has a very long ways to go, especially as it relates to African American men. Sadly, we make up about sixty percent of the prison system in Virginia and something needs to change. We need to get involved. We need to talk to our elected officials, get them involved
with fixing the things that we know are wrong. Using convicted feelings as your only evidence in any case, just can't take someone's word for it, especially if they're getting a deal. You got to have more evidence than.
That he got involved with the wrong people and they just used him to gain their own freedom. I think Karl was not eve on a lot of things and they could see that, so they just used him he's a mom. I never would have did anything like this to anybody, so I didn't think nobody would do this to me, and neither did I. He needs to come home,
he's grown up. He needs to spend time with his daughter, he needs to spend time with this whole family and I I'm so grateful and appreciative for what you all are doing.
Thank you very much, Jason to take this time out to interview me, to shine a light on the injustice that was done to me. I wouldn't wish this on any person. Detective speech fool when he came to see me to serve the indictments on me in Southampton. They even implied that I may could help him with other
cases and make my charges less or disappear altogether. I told him, after what I've gone through and what my family has gone through, I would never put anyone or their family through what my family Hasn't do it just to regain my freedom. I'm not that individual. I have to be able to look myself in the miror and
like what I see on a daily basis. Even if it was to spend the rest of my life in prison, I had to live my life and be able to hold my head up with pride and know that I did not low on somebody else to ruin somebody else's life just to ease my suffering, because that's what they wanted me to do.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wartis, 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