#363 Guest Host Susan Simpson with Daryl "Lee" Clark

On the evening of October eighteenth, nineteen ninety six, seventeen year old Cain's story came over to see his friend Brian Bowling, who lived with his family in a trailer near Rome, Georgia. Cain had brought along his father's revolver, and the two boys sat in Brian's bed and passed it back and forth, pretending to play Russian Roulette while Brian talked to his girlfriend Caprice on the phone. Suddenly, Caprice heard screaming, and then a few moments later she

See you again, and see you too, Susan.

Now, Lee, before we get into everything that happened. Can you tell the audience a little bit about you?

I was born in Rowing, Georgia, Floyd County. Most of my childhood, my early childhood. I grew up in our Murchy but went to Glenwood Elementary School. I've only got one blood brother, my brother Jamie, and I've got step sister or stepbrother Candy and Mark.

And then the lead up to all of this, to what happened in K and A six, you were seventeen years old and living in a small community south of Rome, Georgia called Silver Creek.

At that point in my life, I was young.

It's all on ne you at all. I was really dumber on a box of rocks, is what my daddy used to tell me. He's probably right too. I mean, I was getting into a lot of trouble back in nineteen ninety six doing stuff I wasn't supposed to be doing, and breaking into people's homes and stuff like that. I wasn't old enough to do it. But we drank a little bit if we'd get alcohol. If not that, we'd be smoking marijuana or something. Just hanging out as kids doing.

Doing crazy stupid junk kids do. Teenagers do.

And one of your oldest friends was Kin. Tell me about him.

I came we were coming up, coming through high school and stuff. He would be involved in some of the stuff I was doing. But Kane, he was more of a kind of goodie two shoes. He hung out with the preppy crowd a lot that they all time questioned him a lot about why he was hanging out with me. And that's just because of the way I was back then. I was just a young, stupid teenage kid. I mean, I wasn't bad as I made out to be.

I mean, I just wanted people to think that, so a lot of people would stay away from me.

And one of the boys that you guys hung out with with a guy named Brian Bowling. How did you know Brian.

I originally met Brian through Kane. When Kane moved out to Silver Creek, he introduced me to Brian, and me and Brian we became friends. Me and Brian were' as closest Kine and Brian were. I mean, I lot Brian, I mean I love Brian. He was a good friend of mine, and just as I got a little bit older, me being down there at his house became less frequent.

So were of ninety six. There was an incident that happened when you were over at Cane's house. Tell me about that.

It was on October third, nineteen ninety six. Day haunts me still to this day. Is something a regret of mine that I lived with. It's today that I went to Cayne's house and all of us teenage boys over me, Caine, his buddy Joseph Wilkins, and a buddy of mine named Pete Jordan. We all decided we was going to steal Cayne's diaddy safe from him.

So the four of you stole the safe from Cane's dad, took down the woods, busted it up, got some cash out of it. How long did y'all get away with a crime?

I was arrested four days after we stole this safe. Caine and his buddy Joseph Wilkins, they were arrested today we stole it, and then my friend Pete Jordan was arrested three days later on October tenth.

Yeah, so it was not the crime of the century. Y'all did not get away with it first more than a few.

Of course. No, it was straight stupid. It is what it was.

Yeah, Now, So Brian lived just down the hill for I'm Kane, but he had nothing to do with this safe though.

Right, No, no, he didn't have anything to do with it.

But as we'll see, that incident, along with Brian's close friendship with Cain, became important the prosecution's case. But for now, let's go back to just after the safeist. The night this happened, both Kane and his friend Joseph Fulkins were both arrested, and since shortly after you and your friend Pete Jordan were also arrested, well, logically it made sense that either Kin or Joseph Fulkins had been the ones

On October eighteenth, so I went to make Caine that day because I know I'd been arrested in yours. I just wanted to find out for him if it had been his buddy Joseph did it told on us? Or if it was had been Kane did it did it? I knew it had to be one of them. I just was sure which one, and I made him he sat there each tell him me. He swording up down and may it wasn't him. He didn't do it. He don't know who did it. And he played that on and on. So it's made to believe his friend Joseph

Yeah, so but.

That night you talked to Caine, He's like, no, man, wasn't me. I didn't telling y'all. And your little brother was there too.

Right, Yes, he was there. You have my little brother, Jamie.

The three of you ended up just kind of hanging out.

For a while. Yeah. Yeah, we just rode around when shoot some pool and stuff like that.

What kindness off? That's all in the motion, though, was that night before Cain went out to meet with you and Jamie he decided to grab a revolver from his dad's bedside table. He was gonna go target chooting. It was not the smartest idea since he was already in trouble with his dad. But well, while you're hanging out, he pulls the gun out and he shows it to you and even fires it out of a car window while you're driving around, just playing around. Eventually you decided to take him home.

I wasn't going back to his house, cousin.

I wasn't gonna take no chance of his parents being home, his mom or anything, or his dad. I don't want either one tore saving me back in his house. So I dropped him all the same place. I picked him up at Silver Creetman in the market. You know, I think about something now that I told Kane back then that uh me telling him this. I could still hear it so clearly in my head that wakes me up sometimes the middle of the night still to this day.

Put that gun back.

He swears up and down to me he's gonna do it, And that's the complete opposite of what he just told me he was feeling to do.

Yeah, after you dropped him off with the mini, mart Kin did not go directly home. Instead, he stopped at Brian's trailer on the way. They are now Brian's parents, his sister, and her boyfriend. They were all in the living room watching TV with some neighbors, Waining and Charlie Childers. When King got there, came knocking the door, said hi to everyone. They told him that Brian's back in the

So what happened then, Well, the way Kane explains it to me, he's in there and him and Brian put a bullet in the gun and he says they started playing Russian rou lit and he said there was cheating. They was putting it in there, and they was taking the chamber of a revolver. Anybody who knows anything about a revolver knows if you're looking down at it from the back of it, you can see where the bullets

Truth he told right now.

I mean, I can't tell you one hundred percent positive what went done in there, but that's like I've told you before, Susan. Look, I've struggled with that stuff for many and many years. If he may have accidentally did it and didn't want to tell me, but there's too much stuff too support it, and that's why I choose to believe it.

And a lot of what was observed immediately after the shooting supports what can say. The folks in the living room who had heard the gunshot rushed into Brian's room and found him there on the floor with blood pulled around his head and critically, the gun was underneath Brian where he was lying on the floor, and Caprice was

Of the night, Me and my brother turned around with my apartment in Lyndale where my girlfriend Shelley at a time, and a bunch of my other buddies were showing up over there. I was having a party at my apartment that night and we got over went to party and dranking, smoking with you, doing stupid teenager stuff.

And at around eight thirty that night, two of your friends, Doug and Dawn were dropped out by their mom, and she testified later at trial that while she was there to drop her sons off, you were standing out by her car and you were talking, and she told you that something was happening down at Brian Bowling's place.

I asked her what she meant, and she told me that there's a bunch of cop cars down in their driveways. We were making all kinds of sumptions to what we thought it may have been, but we were fall off face.

The next morning, the doctors told Brian's family that there was no hope of recovery, and his parents agreed to donate his organs, and around noon the day after he was shot, he was declared dead.

Yeah, the next morning I got up and I found out that two different people that Brian had shot herself the night before. My mom had called me and told me, and also Doug and Don's grandmother had told us about it when she come by to pick Doug.

And down up.

Now, during the initial investigation, the police took photos of the scene and talked to some of the family and other witnesses at the hospital, and of course they talked to Kane, who was taken down to the police station and had his hand swap for gunshot residue. When the police spoke to Caprice, she corroborated Cane's story that Brian and Kan told her on the phone that they had a gun and they were playing Russian Roulette. The last thing she heard was Brian saying I'm playing with the gun,

Well, he said they kept coming at him, but during the interview they were making him saying like that it was no big deal. That he just say what they wanted him to say. They won't gonna be in any trouble. Just go ahead and bit to you did this?

Would you say? What was then? Act?

And that's gonna be it and we can now all go home. And Kane, being young like he was, battles tricked him. He just deceived him into it. I mean, Kane, he's easily misled. I mean he's always been that way. He's a full grown man now and I hate to say it, but he's still easily misled today.

So when Cain admitted to this, to having the gun in his hand when it accidentally goes off, he's arrested charges manslaughter and re leased a bond. And then a few months later that gunshot residue test comes back and it's negative. There was no jess horn Kan's hands. Now, these tests are often junk science because the false positives and false negatives they can generate. You can hear all about that on Wrong Fiction Junk Science. We'll have that

Well, shortly after Brian had shot herself and everything, I was hearing all these rumors, these lies going around that I was there, that I was hit outside, all this and that, and I wasn't sure where all that was coming from at the time, But later down the line, after I was all said and done, I started pacing together had been coming from a guy that I knew when I was younger and had a little bad blove

Now, you and Battle had a bit of history.

Right, Yeah, we had pretty deep history, man, Dallas Battles.

Did do you think your previous run ends with the law, including that recent safe theft, had anything to do with Battles zeroing in on you.

Well, I'll tell you straight up. Dallas Battles was a corrupt cop, crooked as they come. This man took an oath when he with that badge owned uphold the law. And even though I was a young, stupid teenage boy and stuff, Dallas Battles knew what he was doing. He was a full grown man. And what he did to me he broke every law did he know all of them? And wanted to make stuff seem like it was a certain way, and that's what he did. He spun it that way, made it look like it. That's no doubt

He just didn't want to put it out there as he was dead set on setting me up.

Now, around this time, another Flood County officer, David Stewart, joined the investigation, and he and Battle developed this theory that Brian had not been shot accidentally, there had been no Russian roulette, but rather this was all a gang

So I wanted to try to say he was in there and never do drugs. Yeah right, Yeah, that really went well with us. Back in every time you turn around, we spoke in pot.

The gang's other rules were always stand by your brother, never talked to the police, and if a brother does talk to police, you have to kill him. If you don't kill them, you get killed yourself.

That's what they say it.

So the police decided that Brian had narked quote unquote on the other gang members by turning them in for the safe theft, and therefore Lee and Kane had been obligated to kill him because of their gang of rules. Don't forget that. Another influence on this murder was Bone Thugs and Harmony and they're nineteen ninety six hit single, Yeah Lacrossroad cross Roads.

Yeah.

Now, Crossroads was a favorite song of Brian's. It was playing at the time he was shot, and the investigators tracked down the lyrics and decided that the song Crossroads is about shooting narcs, and that that was why the song was playing when Brian died.

And whoever listened to that song knows that's not what that song is about. You know this whole gang stuff. It's so comical to me, it's simply it's just a joke.

And if I don't have a.

Sense of humor about it, I'm gonna cry about it, because in fact this the blase or what destroyed my life for many years.

Their theory was hair brained. It defies logic and reason, but Atal and Stewart were committed to it and somehow needed to drum up evidence to support it. That's why they ended up exhooming Brian's body in a search for evidence, and in the coffin when they opened it up, they found two handwritten notes. One of them had the lyrics to Crossroads written out on it, and the other was a note from Joseph Wilkins, the fourth member of the

Love you.

But on the little flag though eagles carring the one that says freebird's on it. Here's like a little addition made in the corner of the flag. It has the word narks on it. And it's crossed out like with the no smoking sign and a trial. It's this note that's uses evidence that Brian was killed as a gang revenge murder, although it's worth noting that the handwriting of the word arks is very different from the neat cursive that the rest of the note is written in.

Yes it is, and you know, Susan, I would not put it past Dallas Bidles to have did that, because you've done did some other shady stuff, so you ain't gonna stop her, not I see it.

And then in May of nineteen eighty seven, the police got two more key pieces to their theory. The first was a woman named Angela Bruce, who was interviewed and told Battle and Stuart that in about February of that year, she'd had a party and that's when Cain and this other boy he'd brought along with him had bragged her about killing Brian. They told her the whole story about how they had a gang and the rules. So they had a killing member who narked on them, so they

No?

No, I'd never met Capri before. I never actually sent her till we got to trial.

Yeah.

Kin hadn't actually met her either. I mean he talked with her on the phone a few times when it's over at Brian's, but he hadn't seen her in person. But Angela's story making Caprice part of the gang and part of the murder conspiracy was still not enough by itself to hold this theory together. Lee, you had about ten witnesses who could have placed you at your home that night, and no one in the living room at Brian's trailer mentioned you being there, said anything about you

Now.

Charlie Childers is stuff and didn't speak standard American sign language, but he allegedly somehow told Dallas Battle that after everyone had run to Brian's room that night after hearing a gunshot, he'd stayed behind in the living room, and that's how he'd looked out a window and seeing a boy running across the Bowling's front yard. Battle would later testify a trial that Charlie had add this boy in a lineup

Well, never forget that day as long as I live. Made the twenty third of nineteen ninety seven Memorial Day weekend, I was on my way to go to the lake. My mom my stepdad, my brother, my girlfriend, Shelley, her boy to code, going down there to teach the code to hide the ski and everything.

Well, I got over.

To my mom's house and stuff, and she come out, she's crying and stuff. I didn't know what was going on. She told me they'd been by there would have warrant from my wrist. She said, what they've been by your daddy's place too, all my dad. First thing you asked when I got on there, He said, well, have you done got yourself a baald? Then I said, I ain't did nothing. I said, this has got to be a mistake. We did going down here to the jail and find out what's going on. And we rode down there to

Say hey, here I am, and then turn around running. That don't make no sense.

But they drove me in the back and any hold and selling there and here come walking in Dallas battles. I looked at him, and they sit down from me. He said, Well, he said, I got you. I said, you played all these games. I don't even know what you talk about. Well, he said, we know you and Kane, we know y'all conspired to kill you, buddy, Brian, I said, everybody in this county knows that Brian Boldi's shot itself.

Now, Lee, it was January of twenty eight when you and Kane went on trial together, and you each had your own attorney. Your father had hired Zabernathy, and Cain had a court appointed attorney named Larry J. Barkley. And the prosecutor and his opening statement started out by telling the jury that they were going to hear all about this vicious gang called the free Birds.

Oh yeah, he built it all up on all that stuff, told about a vic gang called the Free Birds and how they how many basically were just notorious gangster killers.

And it was a joke. It was a joke, and it wasn't a funny joke either.

I mean, yeah, you could laugh at it because it's laughable, but it wasn't nothing funny body.

And then probably one of the more damaging things that happened a trial is that they played the tape of Ken's confession. They've pled the entire tape where he starts off saying that he did not shoot Brian, and eventually, after being told by the police that he wouldn't be any trouble if he admitted to it, he admits to it. So the jury hears Caine his own words, say that gums in my hand when it went off. Now this

No, no, I don't believe that one minute.

I mean, look way, as human beings, just human nature, when something just put it in your head, you got it in there, And I don't for one minute believe that you'll sit there and let the jury hear that and you disrespect them to disregard that, throwed out their head.

You never should have did it to begin with, It never should have been admitted to begin with.

So the jury has just heard Caine confess to at least accidentally shooting Brian. But the theory a trial, the one they're trying to convince you of, is that you Lee are the shooter and this whole thing was a

Yeah, how do you come under use in that? How does that work?

Right?

They never found any sort of evidence to actually back up the story that she gives. But the state's case relies more heavily on Angela Bruce and this alleged confession that you and Kane supposedly made to her at a party according to Angela Bruce, you and Kin explained to her in explicit detail how this killing happened, and according to her, this is what you say. That night, You, Caine, and Caprice all conspired to kill Brian, and you did it by having Caprice call Brian on the phone to

I couldn't wrap my mind around while she was up for saying what she was saying. I mean, I'm sitting there thinking to myself, I mean, this woman has never laid eyes on me, and they in her life doesn't even know me.

But it's up her telling these lies on me.

And I wasn't really for sure what the deal was there and my attorney at the time, Rex Sabergathi.

He said, I'm to tell you what it is.

He said, they got something on her kids, and they're using that against her. Right here, that's where Rex's mind was at. So I want to thinking that stuff too. I mean, I understand, Okay, they're holding your kids over your head, and I get that part right there. Apparently

But the jury heard Angela's testimony, and they heard the prosecutor tell them that there was no reason to find her not credible. And this was all shored up by Charlie Childers, the deaf witness who'd been at the bowlings watching TV that night. Now, Charlie's story doesn't actually come in through Charlie. The prosecution put Dallas Battle in the stand and he testified what Charlie had told him in

And I'm not trying to speak bad about anybody. He was on the stand. He could not use regular sign language. The interpreter could clearly not communicate with him. The interpreter told the judge a couple different points that she was having difficult to communicate with him.

She tells the Court, your honor, he's not speaking American sign language. He's using home signs.

The judge should have shut that down right then, but he unless it play on, to play on.

I can say that Charlie's testimony at your trial is hands down the most chaotic witness testimony I've ever encountered in any criminal trial and any trial ever. The poor interpreter came in and very quickly realizes that she cannot effectively talk to Charlie. But it's also very clear that this story that Dallas Battle testified to about Charlie seeing anyone, the lonely clerk right across the front yard, that's not

Yeah, black boy. I couldn't get I couldn't get over that black boy, black hair.

Yeah, yeah, has a wife.

You know this is not going great. You can see frustration from everyone, Like the prosecutor is frustrated, the fence is frustrated, like everyone in this courtroom is about to lose it because they've been here for hours trying to talk to Charlie and is not working. He does say he only saw Caine's story at the house that night,

Yeah, so, Bason, we don't have enough, We don't have enough ividgen as you as a co conspirator, but we'll go ahead and mudy your name. What was some lies just so nobody believed the truth to tell him. That's basically what it boiled down to.

And then for his defense, Kine testifies on his own behalf, which unfortunately did nothing to help you. Actually it hurt you quite a lot, because Cain got up there and told the truth, and the truth was that the two of you had hung out together that night and that you'd parted ways at the mini mart. But it wasn't until Kane testified that anyone can actually place the two

Yeah, he was a disaster when he was on the stand. I mean, he could tell his emotions were getting the better of him, and I don't know, looking back on it now, I could see it for what it was at the time. I mean, he's dealing with a lot of stuff in his head. He's got a friend he he watched kill hisself, and he's got all that bouncing in his head, and he was trying to trying to

That Pointly, how did you think the trial was going for you?

I thought it was going great for me.

I mean I thought Rex Shabern Atthew was doing a really good job at the time. I mean I was sitting there thinking, yeah, man, he's showing the people I ain't had nothing to do with this junk here.

I'm finil to go home. That's what I'm thinking the whole time, and.

May not knowing that little stuff that Rex was missing, that he wasn't hitting on, was going to wind up hitting us really bad in the end.

So after closing arguments, the jury goes back to deliberate, and in Georgia, the charges that you and canterfacing murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Even in the case of juveniles like you and Kane, they carry an automatic life sentence. The jury went into deliberate on Saturday, and the judge widn't have the next day off, but on Monday. When they come back on January nineteenth, thineteen eighty eight, it didn't not take them long before they returned with a verdict.

When they read off that guilty verdict on them both charges and found me guilty.

I mean I felt something, a feeling to come over me. It's difficult to explain it, but my heart was sitting in my chest.

I was about to choke to death sitting there watching at eighteen years old and watching my life flashing before my eyes. I'm seeing everything that I ain't never gonna have. It's all just like it's passing in front of me so much I've been to miss out on and wanting to myself, im I even gonna make it through what they're.

Finishing me to After we're convicted. Were sent down to the prison, Jackson State Prison. Me and came.

We were on the same bus together. We pull up in there looking at that prison engaged out there, and just I looked at him. I said, well, ain't gonna make at me. I said, I don't know what to tell you, man, but in this aintle in well force. And we get to going going through Jackson died Nasi walking in there, and they take you around there and

So your shared fight for freedom could not have been more dire. And you appealed your case to the Supreme Court of Georgia in nineteen ninety nine. And even though the court agreed that the non existent gang ree book shouldn't have been entered into evidence, they weighed against Angela Bruce's testimony about the alleged confession and ultimately upheld the convictions.

Yes, and if it were not for Joey, Hello, but I met you, Susan, And what with Joey, I'd still be in prison right now doing our life sentence.

In twenty sixteen, I covered Joey's case for my podcast Undisclosed, And while I was working on Joey's case, Joey told me about someone else he knew in prison who had also been falsely convicted of a murder in Floyd County as a teenager. And then one day when he was on the phone with me, he mentioned your case again, and I was like, can I talk to him? And He's like, yeah, hold on, I got him right here, And that's how we talked for the very first time.

When I got talking to you and you got telling me what you were wanting to do and all that stuff, I was thinking myself, well, he.

Be hot, you get this done.

But I'll be honest, I fully expected when you went out started talking to people, did you go and get all the same lives that these people had been telling years ago?

When just Sinda and I started investigating your case in twenty twenty one, we went down to Floyd County several times looking for documents, talking witnesses, and unfortunately Dallas Battle died about a week before our very first trip, but we were able to talk to Angela Bruce, which was

They had to.

We also tracked down Charlie Childers, and equally importantly, we tracked down his high school teacher, who had known Charlie for decades, like forty years, and he was familiar with though Charlie and his unique style of sign language, and could just talk to Charlie in a way that the trial translator couldn't.

If I'm not mistaking Susan, he's able to communicate with him better than anybody one faced his planning.

And we first began talking to Charlie with the translator, which struck me was just how eager and relieved he was to finally be able to tell his story because he remembered this ordeal. He remember Brian dying and testifying a trial, and clearly it had seriously affected him. But what we found out through the translator is that a trial.

Ever. It was a trip made to find out all these years later that that's what Charlie was testifying about.

By then, the Georgia Edison's Project had also taken on your case, and you ended up being the first non DNA related case that they had an exoneration in based in the evidence that we found in proof. They were able to file an extraordinary motion for a new trial in Floyd County as well as a habeas petition in the county where you were in prison. But since the Georgia Edison's Project couldn't also represent your co defendant, that

Yes they did, I mean it was evident did much conduct with the cops in there.

I mean there was no voiding it.

I mean, Dallas battles and David Stewart broke so many laws doing this. I mean, it was so obvious that there was no sense of fighting.

Do you remember getting the news that you and came to be released.

I do remember getting the news.

I had called my dad and I was telling him that I thought I was going to a hearing on December to sixth. He said, well, you ain't gonna be going no hearing on December to sixth. You got to hear it coming up on December to eighth, and when December to eighth gets here, you're gonna be coming home. When he told me that, right there, Susan, I was still riding at the cloud.

Right now.

I never felt to feeling so great in my life. I'll stay in that cloud now for the rest of my life, because I know what it's like to sit behind prison walls and not have a life, to sit there and have it all snatched from you for something you didn't even do. To finally have my life back, to have my freedom back, and I'll tell you, I plan on living all of it up to the fullest every day, no matter what comes my way. Anything I'm on face a life cannot be nowhere. It's difficult face

So we first of all, thank you so much for being here today and sharing your story with us. I know you've been trying to rebuild your life since you were released, and if listeners want to help support you on that, they can go to Mightycause dot com and search for Lee Clark. Now, this is the part of the show called Closing Arguments. It is your chance to share any final thoughts that you might have with our listeners about anything at all.

The flora is yours, I would like.

I mean, if there's any young young listeners out there, are any god to be young listeners, there's anybody out there just listening in general, if you're doing some wild stuff out there that you shouldn't be doing anything like that. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff that can happen to your life. Just be smart about things, approach life from a positive angle. I mean, look, I sit behind prison walls for twenty five years for a crime I didn't commit, but I didn't bring the negativity of it

It may not be much sturd to grab or grab what you can.

And I'm so thankful to everybody, from Joey Watkins to you, to the Innocent Project to just send to Kevin everybody. I'm just so thankful everybody to just put all the horror work and time and different into all this stuff to get this truth to.

Come out like it did. I tell you it's something I'm not going to live down. I'll be living on this cloud nine for a long time.

Thank you for listening to wrongful conviction I'm your guest host Susan Simpson. Thanks to executive producers Jason Flahm and Kevin Wardis for inviting me to be here, and thanks also to our production team Connor Hall, Annie Chelsea, Llyla Robinson and Jeff Kliberg. The music in this production comes from 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,