Cold Case Files - Blood on the Badge

Episode Date: October 19, 2021

When a police officer is murdered in Atlanta, the suspect list is vague at best. The case seems destined to stay on the cold case shelf forever... until a brave little girl speaks up about her attacker and investigators close in on the man responsible for both crimes.  Check out our great sponsors! Bonafide: Go to HelloBonafide.com and use code COLDCASE to save 20%!   SuperBeets Heart Chews: Get a free 30 day supply with your first purchase at SuperBeets.com/coldcase  LifeLock: Join now and save up to 25% off your first year at LifeLock.com/coldcase  June's Journey: Download June’s Journey free today on the Apple App Store or Google Play! Total Wireless: Do amazing with your wireless plan at TotalWireless.com 

Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production, available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One. An A&E original podcast. This episode contains descriptions of violence and sexual assault. Use your best judgment. Officer James Richard Green, often referred to as Jim or J.R., worked the night shift in Atlanta, Georgia. His lunch break fell at around 1 a.m., so he stopped at the all-night restaurant Grandma's Biscuits and got some to go. He might have wanted to eat in his car in case he needed to respond to a call. Or maybe just to have some quiet time to think about his upcoming wedding. Either way, he parked his car in front of a closed gas station and began to enjoy his meal.

It didn't last very long, though, because just a few minutes later, Officer Jim Green was shot three times. His body was discovered slumped over the steering wheel, with a napkin still in his hand. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. Once Officer Jim Green's murder went public, the police started receiving a lot of tips. But many of them were identified as bogus. Fortunately, there was at least one credible tipster, Charlotte Moore,

who had been waiting for her ride home from her work at a donut shop. They went right across in front of us, and we had to stop to keep from hitting them. He had very distinctive eyes, you know, like real wild-eyed and scary, kind of. It was 1971, pre-cell phones, so Charlotte rushed home to report what she had witnessed. When the police arrived, they discovered Jim's gun and badge had been taken. Criminalist Kelly Fite was called to analyze the crime scene. J.R. Green had a gunshot hole of entry in the left side of his neck that had a tattoo pattern of about six inches in diameter, which indicated that the barrel of the gun was probably six to

ten inches from his neck when it was fired. A second bullet struck the left side of Green's head and a third entered his right shoulder. The bullets recovered from the left side of Green's body were.38 caliber with eight distinct grooves cut by the barrel of the gun when the bullet was fired. Another.30 caliber slug was pulled from Green's right shoulder. This one was marked with six grooves, indicating that the bullets were fired at Green from two different guns. Oh, it was definitely an execution. One person firing from the driver's side with the eight-groove.38 Special revolver. Another person firing from the passenger side window with the six-groove.38 special. Kelly fights theory. Jim Green was targeted,

ambushed, and then executed. There was no evidence suggesting Green ever fired his weapon or even got a chance to draw it from his holster. Sergeant Lewis Graham was the lead on the investigation. Why would you kill a police officer and take his weapon and tear his badge from his chest? I mean, that really stuck with me throughout the whole investigation. The nature of the crime led Sergeant Graham to believe he was dealing with someone

who had a score to settle with Jim. Maybe someone he had arrested. Graham asked around about any enemies Jim might have had. One of the people Graham talked with was Larry King, Jim Green's brother-in-law and best friend. I told him from the time we was kids, I never knew anybody, Jim, you know, as far as Jim getting in fights or scrapes or anything else. You know, he just wasn't that type. He wasn't aggressive. He just wasn't. And I told him then, when they did find out who killed Jim, that it was going to be that they shot the uniform and not Jim.

Sergeant Graham agreed. Jim wasn't a violent person and didn't have any enemies that would want to seek that kind of revenge. So then my other thought pattern was, OK, something or somebody has moved in on us. And that is the road that I took. I began to look at other crimes and I came up on this bank robbery. The bank robbery happened a month before Jim was shot.

Sergeant Graham discovered that five possible suspects in the case had been nabbed on weapons charges in nearby DeKalb County. The five, John Leo Thomas, Samuel Cooper, Joanne Chesmar, Twyman Myers, and Freddie Hilton, were members of the Black Liberation Army, the BLA. The BLA was a splinter group, once a part of the East Coast Faction of the Black Panthers. But to hear one former BLA member describe it... The East Coast Faction wanted to be more radical, you know, wanted to be more physical, more violent. The West Coast Faction wanted to be more political. So we split off into what they call the Black Liberation Army.

And I guess it just went crazy from there. The group had known ties to several bank robberies, and there was a rumor that killing a police officer was the price of admission to the BLA. As it turned out, four of the five suspects in the Atlanta bank robbery were wanted in connection with a separate officer shooting in New York. Graham decided he needed to talk to them about Jim's murder. Before he could do that, however, a problem developed. They escaped from the camp county jail. All of them. They just escaped.

And I guess they scattered throughout the country. But I continued my investigation and determined they had a safe house. Two days later, Graham and a SWAT team stormed a known BLA safe house in southeast Atlanta where they found weapons, explosives, and plans for more bank robberies. What they didn't find was any trace of their suspects.

In September of 1972, almost a year after the murder of Officer Jim Green, Louis Graham got his first break in the case. One of the men interested in the case, Samuel Cooper, had been arrested in Florida. Cooper was one of the men who had broken out of jail before he could be interviewed about Officer Green's murder. So Sergeant Graham flew to Florida for a sit-down with the 20-year-old. I really suspected he wouldn't talk to us, but what I found out was he talked very freely. And I found out that he was just a young kid. He was scared and he was really ready to give it all up.

Cooper admitted to taking part in the Atlanta bank robbery. Then detectives pressed him on the murder of Officer Green. Within 30 minutes, Cooper told the detectives that his fellow BLA members, Twyman Myers and Freddie Hilton, were involved. He said that Myers and Hilton killed Officer Green and presented the officer's badge and gun to the group's leader, 39-year-old John Leo Thomas. By the end of the interview, Sergeant Graham believed he had an airtight case. I was really pumped up. We had the identities of the people who killed the police officer. We had a person who was willing to testify. And I was really ready to go.

Graham flew back to Atlanta and took his case to the district attorney, who promptly declined to prosecute. I was shocked. I couldn't believe it. I was hurt. But then I was a police officer, so I moved shocked. I couldn't believe it. I was hurt. But then I was a police officer, so I moved on. In November 1973, Twyman Myers was killed in a shootout with the New York State Police. Freddie Hilton disappeared, and the James Green case went cold. It would stay that way for more than 30 years, until a 12-year-old girl bravely spoke up about Freddie Hilton and the abuse he subjected her to.

In January 2001, 30 years after Officer Green's murder, a woman and her daughter entered the 69th Precinct in Brooklyn, New York. The woman said they needed help. Her live-in boyfriend, Kamau Siddiqui, had been molesting her daughter. Detective Chris Karalkowski took the case. Kamau Siddiqui was dating the mother at that time. He was actually living with them for seven years. And over the course of six years, he was sexually abusing this girl. And the girl broke down, and she told her mother what had been going on for all these years.

The detective ran a background check while filing for a warrant. But Kamau Siddiqui didn't seem to have any offenses in his past. In fact, he didn't have much of a past at all. We couldn't find anything. He was working for the phone company for 18 years. He didn't even have any traffic tickets. He was an upstanding citizen. But when the police arrested Siddiqui on a molestation charge,

they discovered a loaded handgun. So they added criminal possession of a weapon to his charges as well. At the station, Detective Karolkowski began to interview Siddiqui, and he quickly discovered why his background check didn't reveal anything. He told me that his real name was Freddie Hilton. And I asked him why he was using Kamau Siddiqui. He told me that when he got out of prison, he wanted to start over and leave Freddie Hilton in the past.

So he changed his name. A check on the name Freddie Hilton revealed a new piece of information. Hilton was still wanted for questioning for his possible involvement in the 1971 shooting of Atlanta police officer Jim Green. Karolkowski followed up with a phone call to Atlanta cold case detective Jim Rose. He had advised me that he arrested Freddie Hilton on some charges and that there was some reference that he was possibly implicated or a suspect in the murder of Officer Green. Detective Rose dug further into the files on the BLA,

hoping to find information that would lead to Jim Green's murder. My goals were to meet and find ex-Black Liberation Army members and interview them to see if they could recall and back up some of the story that I had about Freddie Hilton and Twyman Myers coming back into the safe house and bragging about the murder of Officer Jimmy Green. Investigator M.C. Cox was assigned to assist Rose in the investigation. The two detectives traveled the East Coast by helicopter,

reaching out to former members of the BLA, hoping to find someone who might talk. We had to question them about their knowledge of what happened, whether they wanted to participate or tell us to go to hell or whatever. We had to ask because we had to follow up. Every lead that we had, we had to contact every individual that we had on the list that had something to do with that case. Avon White was 53 years old, an assistant pastor at his church. He worked with young people on making the right choices in life, but he hadn't always been a pastor. In 1969, at age 18, he joined

the Black Panther Party. Two years later, the party split and Avon White sided with the more violent Black Liberation Army. John Thomas, a former Green Beret, brought him to Atlanta and was teaching him to kill cops. He was like our leader. He was training us to do stuff like how to rob banks and how to survive in the woods and stuff like that. You know, how to shoot guns.

None of us had any kind of training like that. In 1973, White was sentenced to a seven-year prison term for bank robbery, a time in his life that he had put behind him until the police knocked on his door. I got up and looked. I seen these couple of guys. I thought it was the man that was supposed to give me estimates for my gutters on that day.

I got back in bed. They kept knocking. What was they knocking for? I got up and answered the door. Detective Rose said he was with Atlanta PD and he was here to question me about a murder in Atlanta. Detective Rose explained that they were not there to charge or arrest Pastor White. They just needed information about the men who had killed Officer Green back in 1971. We spoke for maybe five or ten minutes and I asked him if he could come with me so

that I could audio tape and video tape an interview with him. White agreed to record an interview. Detective James Rose with the City of Atlanta Police Department Homicide Unit, and this is Detective Joe Lawrence, and we're here to investigate the murder of a police officer, which occurred back in 1971. White's statement corroborated the information Sam Cooper provided decades earlier. Freddie Hilton and Twyman Myers killed Officer Green, and one detail White remembered solidified the investigator's certainty.

After he shot him, I think he took his gun and his badge from him. I remember, I kind of remember that they had brought it back to the house where we was at, that was their proof that they had killed him. I just told them what I knew. And leave it in the hands of the Lord. You know, because the Bible teaches me that no weapon formed against me shall prosper. And I believe that. After two hours of questioning White, he had no new information to share, but agreed to cooperate with police.

Jim Rose moved to the next name on his list of former BLA members, Bobby Brown, who was located in Philadelphia. Like Avon White, Brown wanted to put his past behind him. On February 17, 2001, he sat down with police and identified Twyman Myers and Freddie Hilton as the killers. Can you remember their exact words? They said they took care of business. And that meant to you? That meant to me that they shot and killed the police officer. The final person on the list of former BLA members was Ron Anderson, who was living in New York City.

New York detectives conducted the interview where Anderson shared a very familiar story. Fred Hilton came up to me, came to the bed where I was at, and he came to me and he says that we have shot a police officer. And I want you to get rid of this gun. Anderson then explained he didn't get rid of the gun, but rather gave it right back to Hilton. With the consistent and detailed statements of Avon White, Bobby Brown, and Ron Anderson as evidence, a warrant was issued for Freddie Hilton's arrest. On June 18, 2002, Hilton was extradited from New York to Georgia to face a murder charge. The testimony of Hilton's former associates in the BLA was key to a conviction.

They testified knowing any of them could have been in Hilton's shoes. I guess it was what they called the luck of the draw, because that could have been me. You know, he was like, Ava, I want you to go kill that cop. You know, I can't tell them no. They would be able to kill me. I look back on it now, and I thank God that

he never gave me such an order. One by one, each of the three witnesses took the stand. Here's a clip of Ron Anderson's testimony. What did you do with those items? After a while, I came back to the house and we gave it back to Fred Hilton. Prosecutor Al Dixon believed the witnesses were telling the truth. Avon White, Bobby Brown, and Ronald Anderson had no reason to lie. It was 30 years ago. I think they were genuinely sorry about the fact

that an officer had been killed. And the last thing they really wanted to do was to have to come down here and testify. And of course, they could have said they didn't remember anything but they did the jury also found the witnesses credible and Hilton was convicted of murder and sentenced to life plus 18 years here's detective Rose again it was very emotional I think it was just as served but long overdue and there was a lot of relief. In my case, I guess it was like taking a thousand pound weight off my back.

Jim Green's best friend, Larry King, felt like the verdict was too little, too late. Freddie Hilton lived his life for 30 years out there doing whatever he did and making his life, and where Jim never had that opportunity. But I wish that there would have been more on the table other than just life imprisonment. To me, that would have been final justice if they could have taken his life just like he took Jim's life. Because of the investigative team's success in solving Jim Green's cold case, Chief Pennington of

the Atlanta Police Department decided to create a team dedicated to unsolved cases. I think we have to send a strong message to people that commit these heinous crimes of murder that we're going to track you down and we're going to continue to work on those cases if it takes forever.

Freddie Hilton is continuing to serve out a sentence in a Georgia state prison. He's 68 years old. Cold Case Files, the podcast, is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by McKamey Lynn and Steve Delamater. Our executive producers are Jesse Katz and Ted Butler. Our music was created by Blake Maples. This podcast is distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis.

You can find me, at Brooke Giddings on Twitter, and at Brooke the Podcaster on Instagram. I'm also active in the Facebook group, Podcast for Justice. Check out more Cold Case Files at AETV.com or learn more about cases like this one by visiting the A&E Real Crime blog at AETV.com slash real crime.