Criminal - Photo, Hair, Fingerprint

Episode Date: December 1, 2017

In 1988, a man in Hickory, North Carolina named Willie Grimes was sentenced to life in prison for raping and kidnapping a 69-year-old woman named Carrie Lee Elliot. He was convicted with evidence experts would later call “junk science.” It took him 24 years to convince someone to look at the evidence again. Special thanks to Chris Mumma of the North Carolina Actual Innocence Center. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's BotoxCosmetic.com. That's BotoxCosmetic.com. This episode contains descriptions of sexual violence and may not be suitable for everyone. Please use discretion. Carrie Elliott was 69 years old. She was living by herself. Her husband had died the year before. Someone knocked on the door. She had the door chained, actually opened it just a little bit, and then they kicked the door and pushed her onto the couch and raped her, and then dragged her to the bedroom and raped her again.

At 9.22 p.m., a police officer patrolling the neighborhood noticed her broken door, and by 9.51 p.m., Carrie Elliott was at the hospital. This was in the small North Carolina town of Hickory. She described her attacker to the police, an African-American man around 35 years old, six feet tall, 200 pounds or more, with facial hair and wearing a green shirt that he removed during the attack. The police put together a sheet containing six photographs of potential suspects. Carrie Elliott was white. All six men on the sheet were African American.

She identified the man in position two. In 1987, October the 24th, on a Saturday, that Saturday morning, I got up, was taking a shave, and I was living with Brenda Smith at the time. This is Willie Grimes. Brenda Smith was his girlfriend. They left the house and spent the day running errands. Willie didn't drive, so in the early evening, Brenda dropped him off at their friend Rachel Wilson's house. It was a place where people often went to have dinner and play cards. Brenda didn't stay. She had to work the third shift at a nursing home that night.

So I stayed there and talked, played a little card and drunk. I guess we sat there up until 11th or 20 minutes to 3 o'clock that night, drinking and just talking and playing cards and doing. The next morning, after Brenda Smith finished her overnight shift, she picked Willie up from Rachel Wilson's house. They spent the rest of the weekend quietly, and on Monday morning, Willie went to work. Carrie Elliott had a conversation with one of her neighbors, Linda McDowell, about the attack. Linda McDowell thought she might know a man who

matched that description. They talked about what he looked like, but Linda didn't tell Carrie a name. She said she would only tell it to the police. After that conversation, Carrie Elliott called the police with some more details about her attacker. She said he had a mole near his mouth. Shortly after, Linda McDowell also called the police. She said she had some information, but first wanted to know if there was any reward money available. The officer confirmed that there was a $1,000 reward, and 20 minutes later, Linda McDowell showed up at the police station.

She told officers that she'd seen a man wearing a green shirt in the neighborhood on the night of the rape, a man with a mole on his face, and that his name was Willie Grimes. The police revised their sheet of six photographs of potential suspects. They replaced the photograph of the man in position two, the man Kerry had originally identified with a photograph of Willie Grimes. And when I got home that Tuesday, Brenda Smith told me that the police had been there looking for me. Said they had a bunch of wants for me. And I said, for what? I know I ain't did nothing. She said, I don't know what they were for.

So I asked her, would she carry me to the police station to find out what they were for? Did you have any reservations going to the police station? Or in your mind, were you thinking, I've got to go clear this up? Well, that's what I was going up there to find out what it was and let them know that I hadn't did anything because I knew I hadn't did anything. So that's one of the reasons I wasn't afraid to go up there. This was on Tuesday, more than two days since the attack. And on that day,

Willie Grimes happened to be wearing a green shirt. He waited for the police officer who had been looking for him, Officer Steve Hunt, to arrive. When he got there, he came in. I asked him, what was he looking for me for? And he said, you was in big trouble. You done did a lot of bad things like that." And I said, what? I know I ain't did nothing, I know I ain't did nothing.

I take a lot of test to test or do whatever you want me to do because I know I ain't did nothing. And he said, I'm telling you one more time, you in big trouble, be quiet. Because everything you said can be news against you and this and that. So I ain't said nothing else, and he told them to fingerprint me and book me. That's what they did. He was charged with two counts of rape and kidnapping. At the initial hearing, Carrie Elliott was in the courtroom.

And she had to be there to identify me or this and that. What do you remember? Do you remember when she identified you wanting to, I feel like I would want to scream out, no, that's not me, you've got the wrong guy. No, not at the time because the way she identified me, I thought in a way we was going to go pretty smooth because they asked her, did she

see the man that attacked her in the courthouse? And she said, I don't really know that look like him over there. So then, you know, I still felt like, you know, everything was going to go pretty smooth because if she knew it was me or this and that, she wouldn't have said that looked like him. She would have said that is him sitting right there.

Willie Grimes was kept in custody until his trial. A month passed in jail, and then another and another. He was certain that in the meantime, the police would find the man who did rape Carrie Elliott, and he would go home. He was sure of it. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. In July of 1988, his trial began at the Catawba County District Court. Eight people testified

that they'd been with Willie during the night. Four people testified to Willie's non-violent character. But the prosecution had one piece of evidence that seemed foolproof, a hair that had been found at the scene of the crime. Willie Grimes was actually the one who asked for the hair to be examined. He thought it would prove he'd never been in Carrie Elliott's apartment. An agent from North Carolina's State Bureau of Investigation examined the hair microscopically and testified that it could be a match for a piece of Willie Grimes' hair.

When further questioned, he said that it was a match for Willie Grimes or that if it wasn't Willie Grimes, it had to be someone of the same race, whose hair had the same microscopic characteristics. Microscopic hair examination has since been replaced by DNA testing, which is a lot more accurate. Some experts have since called hair comparison junk science. The jury deliberated for less than two hours.

Eleven of the 12 jurors were white. When the verdict was read, I still was sort of looking for them to say not guilty, but when they did read it and they said guilty, it just hit me. It just felt like I got real hot, like I wanted to faint or something. And that's when he said that I'm not going to sentence him today. I'm going to wait until Monday. We'll come back on Monday to get him to sentencing. On Monday, he was sentenced to life in prison

for two charges of first-degree rape and one charge of kidnapping. Well, at first when I got my time, I got so I couldn't sleep or anything, thinking and worrying about the situation that I was in and knowing that I wasn't going to get no help. After the verdict was read, Willie's lawyer immediately asked the judge for access to evidence gathered at the scene that wasn't used in the trial. Fingerprints were found in Carrie Elliott's apartment. Investigators had taken them off

fruit from a bowl in her kitchen, and they'd been tested against Willie Grimes' fingerprints. They were not a match. But somehow, this wasn't a red flag. Investigators speculated that if the prints weren't Willie Grimes, then they must belong to the victim. But they never even checked. Willie's lawyer wanted to run the fingerprints through an FBI database. He also wanted someone to test them against Carrie Elliott's. The prosecutor said he was, quote, kicking a dead horse. The judge said he would think it over. But then, nothing happened.

Willie's defense attorney didn't follow up. The judge retired, and Willie just sat in prison. Well, the hardest time of day is at night when you get ready to go to bed when they call bedtime and everybody have to get in bed. And then you'd have doing all that night, no one to talk to, no one would talk to her, no one would listen to her, this and that, because you wouldn't like to talk enough after you go to bed. Willie worked in the prison kitchen, then moved to the bakery, and finally to the laundry. He was transferred from one prison to the next, constantly,

bouncing from one side of the state to the other, often moving with no warning and no information about where he was headed. What's Thanksgiving and Christmas like in prison? Well, it was real hard because you didn't never see your people so well ever. But it wasn't as hard if you were working in the kitchen because you would have to cook for those days, and sometimes it would make you feel pretty good to try to make something real good for those days

to help the other inmates realize that they had something to look for or enjoy themselves or something like that. But still, it was real hard on yourself. Willie was in prison when his mother died and many of his siblings. He spent years dealing with debilitating insomnia and depression, and then he got prostate cancer. He never stopped writing letters to anyone he could think of,

asking them to look at his case. And I went to reaching out to a lot of different lawyers, a lot of different shows that was on TV and this and that, and writing clemences and things, never could get no kind of help. So eventually, I felt like I wasn't going to never get out of there, never get no help. You know, he was given the opportunity to go home. He would just admit to sexually assaulting this woman, and he would not do it. He would not go through the program in prison that would have allowed him to be paroled.

And he actually said, I'd rather stay in prison. Attorney Chris Mumma first heard about Willie Grimes in 2003. She's the executive director of a nonprofit called the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence. And you could just tell from Willie's writing that there was something there. But then looking at the case, looking at the transcript, and seeing all the red flags that we see in wrongful convictions, microscopic hair comparison, a very, very shaky witness or victim identification, very strong alibi evidence. So a lot of red flags in the case. And so we set to work trying to find evidence to prove his innocence because a lot of times it takes that physical

evidence, particularly in a rape case. So trying to find the rape kit or the sheets or clothing or fingerprints. So we asked for anything that they had that we might be able to use to prove his innocence. Those requests went to law enforcement, they went to the district attorney's office, and always came back with the same response, that there was nothing left, that everything had been destroyed. Without the rape kit and the fingerprints,

it was going to be hard to prove that Willie's case deserved a review. By now, Willie had been in prison for more than 15 years. But then, a newly formed organization called the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission agreed to take a look. And, you know, I hate to say it, but somebody finally got up out of their chair and actually did what they would call a thorough search. And that's how they found the fingerprints.

So the commission didn't even have to go in and do a search. The fingerprints were found just by somebody in the office looking. And what did the fingerprints show? The fingerprints were run through the automated indexing system that can be used now, keeps track of everyone's fingerprints, and those fingerprints matched Albert Turner. And Albert Turner actually had been an original suspect in the case and lived or was staying in that neighborhood, had quite the reputation. And, you know, he didn't confess to the rape, but his story changed and developed in trying to come up with the reason

why his fingerprints would have been on, the fingerprints were actually collected from fruit in the victim's home, so why his fingerprints would have been on that fruit. Why was Willie Grimes ever even a suspect? fruit in the victim's home, so why his fingerprints would have been on that fruit. Why was Willie Grimes ever even a suspect? Willie Grimes became a suspect because of that informant. His name would never have been brought up otherwise.

When Chris Mumma refers to the informant, she means Linda McDowell, the woman who was paid $1,000 for supplying the name Willie Grimes to police. And it's interesting, Albert Turner's picture was actually in the first lineup that Carrie Elliott was shown, because he was a suspect. But Carrie Elliott had described this person as having an afro, and the picture they used in the lineup of Albert Turner had his hair was plaited, so it was in cornrows and very flat. So she just she didn't pick him. If you if you put the pictures of Albert Turner and Willie Grimes side by side, it is quite striking for someone who's not who where it's a cross race

identification. What have you learned about the problems with cross-race identification? for people we're comfortable with. So whether it's black identifying white or white identifying Asian or Asian identifying black, when you don't spend as much time with someone from another race, the features blend a little more and it becomes more difficult for identification. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family.

Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge,

to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. By 2012, it was clear that microscopic hair comparison was unreliable, that fingerprints from the scene had not matched Willie, but did match Albert Turner, and that the whole photo ID process had been problematic from the start. The Innocence Inquiry Commission sent the case to a panel of judges for review. It had been 24 years since Willie first went into the Hickory Police Station and offered to take a lie detector test.

It didn't even take the panel of judges 30 minutes to make their decision. Well, I was the last one to hear about it because I was out working. I was working on work release. That evening when I got in, they were telling me, you're a free man, you're a free man. They don't find you innocent. They don't find you innocent.

I didn't know nothing about what they were talking about and this and that, but when I seen it on TV, tears went to running out my eyes and this and that. I wanted to be by myself, because I didn't want nobody to see me crying or doing this or doing that. But it wasn't crying for being sad. It was just being crying for being so happy and this and that. Because all that time I was telling them that I was innocent. The DA didn't even offer any closing arguments.

He just apologized. Willie Grimes was 67 years old. The DA didn't even offer any closing arguments. He just apologized. Willie Grimes was 67 years old. You know, you don't seem mad. Why? Well, because we grinned and keeping stuff balled up inside of you. Don't do nothing but make you a person that you're not. And it makes you get better and do things that you wouldn't normally do.

And holding grudge and holding hate isn't doing nothing, making you being a worse person than you is. We see that actually a lot. I mean, in Willie's case, he's just a forgiving, gentle soul. But the longer someone is in prison, actually, the less bitter they are when they get out because they have to let go of the anger in order to survive. And so, you know, there were plenty of years that Willie was in prison, that he was angry and bitter and depressed. But by the time he, unfortunately, it takes that long. And by the time you get out, you just want to be free and not have all that anger bear down on you. We met him at his house in Lawndale, North Carolina,

about 10 miles from where he grew up. But he doesn't really know many people there anymore. Oh, when I came up here, I went searching for houses. And I went to riding around, and I came up here, I went searching for houses and I went to riding around and I saw this house. I was living in Gastonia at the time. And what I liked about the house because it had a tin roof and it reminded me of when I was growing up.

We would grow up in old house with tin tops on it. And it was out by itself. It wasn't too close to houses. And I don't like to be too close to any houses. He answered the door wearing an orange dress shirt. He's tall, with graying hair. He's 71 now. We sat at his kitchen table.

He speaks so softly and gently that I kept trying to pull my chair closer, which didn't seem to bother him. Or if it did, he was too polite to say anything. I've been laying back and everything, not the way I want and this and that before I go taking trips. About four months ago I went and got passport and this and that just in case if I get ready to take one and that.

Where would you go? Where would you love to go? Well, the first place I'm going to is Puerto Rico. I had a good friend that was littered in there in prison. He still lives there, but I just wanted to go and see. You lost a lot of your family when you were in prison, didn't you? Yeah, I lost mostly everyone except one of my sisters. I just had one sister living there. I lost one, two, three, four brothers and a sister while I was in prison. Are you in close contact with your sister now? Yeah, I see her mostly every day.

I was older earlier this morning, young day. But we try to, we talk to one another every day on the phone, and I go down there every other day, regardless. How many days, how long exactly were you in prison? Oh, I was in prison 24 years, 9 months, and 23 days. The view out the back window of his house is of a big field leading down to dense woods. At this time of year, the hay has been cut and is rolled into big bales, which mark the countryside. Right before we left, he walked us outside so we could see the view of the mountains from the front lawn.

Oh, you can see them. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You can get out there in the yard. Them trees sort of blocking it now because of all the leaves. But most times leaves ain't there. You can just

stand and look at all. Well, it's a beautiful place. Well, I'd probably take care of it. Carrie Elliott died in 1989. Albert Turner died in 2016, before he could be prosecuted for her rape. Over the course of his life, he'd been charged with assault 23 times. Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohr, Nadia Wilson, and me. Audio mix by Rob Byers. Matilde Erfolino is our intern.

Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. And there's a great book about Willie Grimes and this whole thing called Ghost of the Innocent Man by Benjamin Racklin. You can find out more on our website, thisiscriminal.com. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collection of the best podcasts around. And special thanks to AdCirc for providing their ad-serving platform to Radiotopia. I'm Phoebe Judge.

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