#487 Guest Host Conor Hall with Angel Bumpass

Hi, It's Connor Hall, the producer for Wrongful Conviction. As I mentioned previously, Jason and Kalia ah Lee are on their honeymoon, so they're letting me fill in for a few more episodes. And again I promise not to screw it up. So here we go. On January sixteenth, two thousand and nine, sixty eight year old Franklin Bonner was found suffocated by duct tape with signs of blunt force trauma. His Chattanooga, Tennessee home was ransacked, but no valuables appeared

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Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction, where we have a story that's just so ridiculous for so many reasons. Uh. You know, first and foremost, how young the accused was at the time of the crime. However, the details of the crime make it even less plausible. And to help explain it all, we welcome defense attorney Bill Massey, thank you, and of course the still relatively young woman who endured this insanity in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Angel Bumpus, thank you for joining us.

You're welcome, thanks.

For having me.

So can you tell us a little bit about, you know, growing up in Chattanooga.

When I was in Chattanooga, I lived with my grandparents, Chryl Bumpus and Bayliss Smith. And I mean, it's not nothing exciting to tell. At that point in their life when I was around, they were already well off into their forties and fifties. My grandma, she stayed home all day, could clean. My granddad went to work, came home. I was a good student. I won a lot of awards

And the crime in question occurred on January sixteenth, two thousand and nine. The victim was a sixty eight year old man named Franklin Bonner, who was known locally as the lottery Man, alluding to the numbers game that he operated. He was also alleged to sell some wheed on the side, none of which should have gotten him killed, but being known to have extra cash on hand may have played a role.

January sixteen, two thousand and nine, mister Bonner was in his home. His wife came home and had lunch with him, and then left back to work. When she came back home a little after five in the afternoon, she found him taped to the chair, duc taped and the chair turned over. His head was completely encircled in duct tape. She called the police. The police came, the man had suffocated.

There were eleven fingerprints, some of them only partial. There were also signs of blunt force trauma, but no implements were cataloged or found.

And the house had been ransacked, but strangely, very little was missing. There was jewelry in his pocket and in the home, as well as money and guns.

Perhaps something very specific was taken, but we're not sure what, if anything. There were also no eyewitnesses to potential intruders, so the police looked at the Bonner's landline for recent callers and found a number associated with the Bumpuses.

Carl Fields, I believe, was the lead investigator at the time, and he said that he saw that call number, they ran it and that it came back to Shirley Bumpus, which is the grandmother of Angel. So he went over there the next day to talk to the Bumpuses. And he says that she told him she had gone over to the Bonner home to buy some marijuana.

It was no secret that the Bonners and Bumpuses knew each other. According to Angel's grandfather, Bayliss, he had even done odd jobs for the Bonners on occasions, so it wasn't strange that their number appeared on the Bonners call log.

When we got the discovery the AT and T call log, it shows that my grandmother hadn't even called that day. So that's just something that they just were saying.

But that's what got them on to the Bumpus household.

The previous district attorney, Neil Pinkson, he did not like my grandmamma, like they had history. Like he was also on the case of my uncle who was murdered. And that's how I know, like how victims are getting treated and how they were treating the victim of this case. They don't treat my family how they were treating the victim. So it's like my grandmother, she used to just be very very vocal about stuff, and so her and Pinkson

They ruled them out.

I feel like I'm sensing there's a little facetiousness in there.

A man who was doing a federal sentence, Nicholas Cheating, when he heard about the incident in Chattanooga. He was trying to get a time cut by cooperating with police in solving this homicide case and says, hey, I think I know who's responsible for this, and that's how they got hooked up with Mallory Vaughn. So the detective were down I believe they were down there twice and talked

But it appears that investigators didn't find nicholas cheating statement about Malory Vaughn credible. So this case went cold for nine years, and in that time Angel grew up.

I moved to Kentucky during my junior year, graduated in high school. I was deciding if I was going to go to college or not. I actually was supposed to go to college in New York. I wanted to be a fashion designer and I was going to just go to New York and risk it or whatever. But I ended up getting pregnant, and I stayed and I ended up going to University of Louisville. I still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life now being a mother, and then eventually I became a single mother

Career for me.

And this is all still between like eighteen and twenty three, and so that was pretty much my life when she.

Was about eighteen or nineteen years old. In twenty fourteen, she got a traffic ticket.

I didn't really know about it, so I didn't pay it, and I had got a warrant from not showing up to court. Like I didn't know that I could go and redocate my case instead of turning myself in. I didn't know that, but I went down there. I just had to get built in. Ultimately, everything got dismissed in tank care, but my fingerprints were inside of the system from that.

So your prints are in the system. In twenty fourteen, does anyone know why they decided, you know, to run the princes again through APHIS in twenty eighteen.

If I remember from discovery that his granddaughter called and wanted to see if they had any new evidence.

APHIS, the automated Fingerprint Identification system marked angels prints as a potential match for two partial prints. I'd like to direct you to our coverage of fingerprint analysis on Junk Science. It'll be linked in the episode description, where we discuss how fingerprint analysis is subjective in nature, performed by flawed human beings on prints that are pulled from non uniform services.

Angel was pulled into this because of that fingerprint. That's truly the only piece of evidence that they had on her.

Additionally, her grandfather said that he had done odd jobs for the Bonners and He later testified that the duct tape likely belonged to him, which is a plausible explanation, but coming from a loved one, it's easily explained away. Nevertheless, the fingerprint match that the partial print was enough for.

An arrest warrant, and that was Juan of twenty eighteen. They knocked on a door, opened the door, and I mean and they were very hostile in their home and their on their hips and stuff. They were asking me who's inside of the house, and I'm like, it's just me and my kids are sleeping. This was a Kentucky officer. He was like, well, can I search your house? And I thought maybe they were looking for someone, and so

Angels age at the time of the crime thirteen and then her age at the time of arrest twenty three presented the state with a challenge. This was technically a juvenile case, but she couldn't be booked into juvenile facility at twenty three, so Angel had to wait in jail until her case was bound over into adult court before

Co defendant, asked for a speedy trial, and my attorneys would not get our trials separated, like they would not fight to get it separated for whatever reason.

And so now you've got a co defendant. That's how old.

I believe he's older than my mom.

He was forty eight.

Yeah, he's like double my age.

So he was twenty eight when you were thirteen.

Yeah.

Uh, And he says he didn't know Angel Boppas, and Angel says she doesn't know him.

Yeah, it'd be really fucking weird if he knew her.

Creepy, you know how they connected the two of.

Them Facebook Facebook out on my profile he was friends with a family member who was also older than me.

Yeah, but it's a friend. Ten years later and I'm back when this occurred.

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Their theory in this case was that Angel came home from school, she went over to where Melory Vaughn stayed, and that there were trails through the woods that led to mister Botterer's home, and that they went down those trails and committed this act. Now, there's no proof of that whatsoever, anywhere from anywhere else other than them saying it.

Yeah, this prosecutor is a very active.

Imagination, definitely, because I lived across the highway, so even if it was I would still have to cross the busy highway to get there.

So, in addition to dodging cars to cross a busy highway, there was a narrow window in which this could have even happened. Angel was at school until three pm, and Linda Bonner found her husband at five pm.

My attorney.

They hired a private investigator and he actually determined that I was at school. It shows that I wrote the boss, I don't have any absence on that day the timeframe I will have only had twenty minutes to commit the crime and get back home.

Trial began at the end of September twenty nineteen, and to support this implausible narrative involving a five foot tall, eighty pound thirteen year old beating and duct taping an adult man to a chair, they had to give her an accomplice who was strong enough to do Franklin Bonner and maneuver his body around. So Nicholas Cheating took the stand to implicate Mallory Vaughan.

Yeah, he just was saying the the co defendant, that he picked him up and he had money and he usually never has money, and he said that he told him that he did it, and something about a lottery man.

He should have be going to hit a lick on the lottery man, and then he showed up the next day with money, and of.

Course this twenty eight year old called up his trusted thirteen year old partner in crime, who he found on Facebook, to hit a lick on the lottery man. Cool story. I guess Nicholas Cheating recognized how ridiculous that sounded, so he denied ever hearing anything about Angel Bumpis, as in her co defendant. He denied knowing her at all, and perhaps in an attempt to make it seem more plausible, the state alluded to other potential accomplices.

The district attorneys, they just kept insinuating that the case was in closed and insinuating that more people were going to get arrested and more people were going to be punished for the crime. And I don't want to bash anybody, but the attorneys that I hired, they did not fight for me. There were no objections. They weren't even paying attention, Like one of the attorneys were just taxing the entire time. The other attorneys. She wasn't prepared. She was trying to

Right, because the judge denied to admit your eighth grade graduation picture into evidence.

And that's because those attorneys stay in properly put in the evidence in a timely manner.

I really think that the jury was just confused.

Or maybe they weren't. When the charges are aggravated robbery and felony murder with the specter of a larger group. They just needed to prove that she had some involvement in the actions that eventually led to mister Bonner's death. So they met that low ball with this partial fingerprint and without challenging if it even was her fingerprint. There was a plausible explanation offered by Angel's grandfather. Unfortunately, defendant's loved ones are typically easy to impeach or explain away.

I knew that the district attorney had made their case, and like, while we were waiting for deliberation, we went to this bar. The attorneys they all got drinks and they're like, oh, Angel, get a drink. And then like the female she asked me, She's like, do you want to get in the car and just go to Mexico. And like, I don't know if she was joking or not, but like in that moment, my heart dropped and I

So they read his verdict first and.

It's not guilty, so I have a little bit of hope. But then I get guilty. So I went to Silverdale and then I went to Tennessee Prison for Women. I got written up on my first day because I refused medical things. And it's just like I guess back then, I just wanted to hold on to whatever rights that I did have, and I knew that I didn't have to do anything medical because they couln't force medical stuff on you even if you're a prisoner.

And yeah, so they wrote me up.

I went to segregation for forty days upon arrival, very tough time. Couldn't use the phone, couldn't write letters, couldn't do anything. Then I got out and I would just call home a lot. Because it's also happened during COVID, so there was no visits or anything.

Like that, Now, how.

Old were your two little ones at the time.

They had just turned five and four.

Jeezus, that really sucks.

It was.

It was very traumatic experience going to prison. Like I literally don't know how people do that. I mean I did it, but like I can see how people like they go insane, they start using drugs and just all of that, because that's all you see in prison is drug use and just a lot of stuff. Guards doing stuff, they shit in and it's sad. But I had a lot of support, not only for my family, but from millions of people all over the world.

Well, Angel was being prosecuted. A and E crime docuseries Accused, Guilty or Innocent picked up on the story, and the coverage garnered a great deal of support for Angel. Meanwhile, the sentence she was given, considering all the strides that had been made over the previous two decades around life sentences for juveniles amounting to cruel and unusual punishment, it appeared that Angel's situation might have been unconstitutional.

Oh, you had sixty years because it was two felony, so you automatically get a life sentence.

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, But if they believe themselves. This is a crime that was committed when she was thirteen, and by twenty eighteen, the Supreme Court had already ruled mandatory life sentences for juveniles unconstitutional.

Well, there's been a case recently that laid out the law here for Tennessee. It said, I mean, I know the Eighth Amendment. You can't sen uce a juvenile to life and not take into account the maturity that they had at the time of the offense, or any of their upbringing or anything like that. You can't foreclose the future on a juvenile like that. And so they said, you know, at twenty five years, then you've got to be able to look and see if they've engaged in

We know that parole boards are typically filled with political appointees, so it's hard to know if we can count on that protocol Either way. She was re sentenced the first in a series of victories that happened, I believe, quicker than any case we've ever covered. You know, that's not to say that four years is somehow nothing. Just take a second to think about the length of one month or one year. I mean, would you accept being kidnapped away from your life, your children, your loved ones for

So Angela had hired me then to tried to get her a new trial. The judge allowed me to come into the case. We ordered transcripts, and prior council got me their files and we went to work.

Bill was able to point out multiple errors in Angel's trial, outlining ineffective assistance of council claims and constitutional violations. Judge Tom Greenholtz noted that Angel's eighth grade yearbook photos should not have been excluded from evidence, that her council failed to not only admit it in a timely fashion, but also failed to object to the ten years too late Facebook between angels relative and Mallory Vaughan, as well as to the specter of this larger group alleged to have

After the judge ruled in our favor, the next thing we did was asked for a bond. The judge was not going to approve the source of income until the entire amount of premium was paid on the bond, which was going to be the following week, and so we had really been anticipating Angel getting out. I know she was, and we were very disappointed. But about that time I felt a tug on my jacket and I turned around and it was the bonds lady and she said, Bill, there is a gentleman in the back there wants to

No, I cried, I was really wanting to get out and see my kids, and so I was just very grateful.

That's got to be incredibly emotionally confusing. I mean, you got this positive outcome with this generous gesture, but it's only positive in the undoing of this evil right anyway, You get home and you know, you probably squeeze those kids so tight their heads nearly popped off.

Yeah, it was.

That was a little difficult too, with their day. Even now, we are still going back and forth in court with like custody and visits, and it's a lot that has transpired in my wife. I still just have to deal with the mace regardless.

And even though Angel was out, this was not over yet. But at least with the newly elected district Attorney, Cody Womp, they were no longer fighting the same folks who had followed through with this absurd prosecution.

I talked with the prosecutors and they believed, I think that Angel was not, in their view, the primary perpetrator of this offense, and they thought because of the fingerprint that she may have been present, but they wanted to know who is responsible, and essentially tell them and we'll move you to go home. And so I go to Angel, who's always told me I don't know anything about this. I didn't do this. But I go to her. She swelled up and said, mister Massey, I do not know

As I mentioned earlier, fingerprint analysis has come under scrutiny on a few fronts, but most importantly, as in this case, fingerprint analysts are often dealing with partial prints from non uniform or uneven surfaces, and there's a disagreement in that community about how many points of correlation between fingerprints constitute a match. Is it twelve or twenty? I mean, raise your hand. If you thought that it had to be the whole thing, then you have to consider the surface.

That's when I arranged for her to take this enhanced polygraph that's available now to cycle physiological detection of deception examination. I believe it said between ninety two and ninety seven percent accurate, and the first one she took she did great on. I gave it to the prosecutors, but they wanted a law enforcement examination and I was told there weren't enough questions asked on this examination. I said, the polygraph strength is in the brevity of the questions. It's

You know, when I was reading initially about this case, my first impression was, at this point, it looks like they were, you know, looking for some way to save face for the office and you know as well as do the right thing.

Well, what did to give them that reason?

So the district attorney joined you and Judge A Man had done agreed. The charges were dismissed in August twenty twenty three.

Right, it was wonderful seeing the look on Angel's face when that dismissal was announced. I hadn't seen that deep of a smile in quite a while. You practice your whole life hoping for a moment that good stuff.

So, Angel, the kids, how old are they now?

Ten and nine? It's their birthday night?

Yep, ten and nine years. You've still got some formative years left. But where are you all living now?

I love back in Louisville, Kentucky.

So I'm trying to co parent with their dad, like I said earlier. That's just it's been very difficult and a lot of stuff that happened wouldn't have happened if I went to a prison. But I am back inside of nursing school. I got a year and a half and I'm going straight for the registered nurse and I have my PSN inside of it. So I just got a year and a half of that during that time.

That's great. Anything else that you're working on, you know, something you'd like to bring our attention to.

Yeah, I have wrote a book because when I was locked up, I used to journal like every day. I got notebooks and notebooks of stuff that happened every single day.

Like I remember people used to be like she's always writing. What is she writing? Like is she trying to tell on us?

Because I would literally document everything that I saw, everything that happened, like I had.

I got all stacks of it.

And I'm currently going back and forth for different publishers just to like fully detail get out my story. And I really hope that inspires people as people have wrote me and told me that I have inspired them, and I just want to get that bit of hope on paper to people to have forever and I can just finally close that chapter of my life and just to move on.

Would you send me an autographed copy?

Yeah, well, we've linked her socials in the episode description, so if anyone would like to reach out and you know, potentially assist in the publishing process, please do so. And with that we'll go to closing arguments, where I'm just gonna thank you both for joining us today, and then I'm going to lean back and lock it up as they share their closing thoughts.

BIP closing thoughts are while something like this that Angel got the experience, both the bad and the good. It's rare to see it, but it happens far more than we see. It happens far more than we see. Sometimes it's the wrong person, they weren't there, just like it wasn't Angel's case. And sometimes it's just simply overcharging. We applaud the work that the Edocence Project does and the Wrongful Conviction Group. It's a labor of love, isn't it. It's a labor of love.

Yeah, I just hope that one day the juvenile laws will be better, especially for my case, because I personally don't agree with anybody under eighteen spend it sixty years in prison.

I hope that one.

Day people can like relook into laws because I do feel like crimes are not black and white, like it's more stuff that goes into it. I've been around women who are there because of a boyfriend, you know, and just because they didn't want to say anything, then they got twenty thirty years sitting. Can't get out because I can't afford to get an appeal attorney or anything like that.

And I just hope one.

Day more district attorneys and police officers get a little more accountability so mistakes won't happen. Because anytime a mistake this happened, you know, it was just they were just doing their job, so nothing can be done about it.

Thank you for listening to Wrong for Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ed free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and