Dark Downeast - The Murder of Gwendolyn Taylor (Massachusetts)

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

On the night Gwendolyn Taylor was attacked just outside her apartment building in Dorchester, Massachusetts, witnesses watched helplessly as an unknown man grabbed the 18-year old, demanded money, and told everyone within earshot not to call the police. When her body was discovered hours later, those same witnesses found themselves at the heart of the investigation. Their recollections of the man they saw that night pointed authorities to a suspect, and blood evidence left no room for doubt: Thomas Rosa Jr. was their guy. But no matter how self-confident, it’s possible investigators got it wrong, and Thomas Rosa Jr. is fighting to prove it. View source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/gwendolyntaylor Dark Downeast is an audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case

On the night Gwendolyn Taylor was attacked just outside her apartment building in Dorchester, Massachusetts, witnesses watched helplessly as an unknown man grabbed the 18-year-old, demanded money, and told everyone within earshot not to call the police. When her body was discovered hours later, those same witnesses found themselves at the heart of the investigation. Their recollections of the man they had seen that night pointed authorities to a suspect, and blood evidence left no room for doubt. Thomas Rosa Jr. was their guy. But no matter how self-confident, it's possible investigators got it wrong, and Thomas Rosa Jr. is fighting to prove it. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Gwendolyn Taylor on Dark Down East. It was the middle of the night on December 7th, 1985,

and Gwendolyn Taylor was walking up the street with her boyfriend, Charles Ferguson, towards her apartment on Talbot Avenue in the Dorchester section of Boston, Massachusetts. Gwendolyn was a nurse's aide at a nursing home in Cambridge, and she was still wearing her work uniform when she stopped into a party to meet up with Charles after her shift that night. By midnight, though, she was ready to make her way home and crawl into bed. It was late and dark, and so even though Gwendolyn lived close by, Charles wanted to walk her home. They were only about 150 feet away from Gwendolyn's building when they said goodbye, and she continued the rest of the

way on her own. When Charles made it back to his house, he decided to call Gwendolyn just to double check she made it back safe. Gwendolyn's roommate, Sherita Offley, picked up, and when Charles asked if he could speak to Gwendolyn, Sherita told him she wasn't home yet. Five minutes later, Charles called back a second time, and then a third and a fourth, but Gwendolyn still wasn't there. Charles told Sharita that Gwendolyn without a doubt should have been home already. So with Charles still on the line, Sharita walked to the balcony of their third floor apartment and peered down onto the sidewalk. To her surprise, there was Gwendolyn, sitting on the steps at the front door of their building. But there was a man standing in front of her. Charita hollered down to Gwendolyn,

telling her that Charles was on the phone, but Gwendolyn yelled that she'd call him later. Not having it, Charles demanded to talk to his girlfriend right that second, but Gwendolyn insisted that she'd have to call Charles back, so Sherita hung up and went back inside. Moments later, Sherita heard the doorbell ring, so she looked out over the porch railing again and saw Gwendolyn and the man standing at the door. She asked Sherita to come downstairs, and though Sherita was probably confused or maybe even a little bit annoyed, why was her roommate ringing the doorbell to her own apartment at one o'clock in the morning? Sherita walked downstairs to the

front entrance, and that's when she saw that the man had his arm around Gwendolyn, and his hand was locked onto her wrist. He was holding a weapon to Gwendolyn's head. Through panicked breath, Gwendolyn told Sherita that she needed $100 and to hurry. As Sherita ran to find their other roommates, she heard the man warn her not to call the police. The other roommates were Sherita's sister, Donita, who went by Tammy, and Tammy's boyfriend, Kevin. She frantically told them what was happening outside and asked if they had any money because Gwendolyn was in trouble. The roommates ran to the window and saw that Gwendolyn was being forced across the street towards Joseph Lee School and down a dark alley. She was screaming for her roommates

to throw her the cash to help her get away from the man, but court documents state that Sherita shouted back that they didn't have enough money. The roommates watched helplessly from their window as Gwendolyn and the man disappeared out of sight. At least one source says that at that moment, Kevin ran to his car to see if he could catch up to Gwendolyn and the man, while Sherita called police to report an abduction in progress. Kevin circled the block and the alley, but Gwendolyn was nowhere to be found. Police arrived minutes later, and the terrified roommates reported what they'd just witnessed. Case documents say that two police officers drove down the alley, scanning left and right with spotlights, and then they parked and sat in silence, apparently waiting and listening for any sounds that might tell them where to look.

But the search and listening efforts that night didn't lead them to Gwendolyn. Hours later, as the sun rose in Dorchester, employees at Mike's Auto Repair on Norfolk Street noticed something unusual on their lot. In one of the cars, they could see an arm hanging out of a rear window, like maybe someone was sleeping in there. But as they went to take a closer look, it was obvious this person wasn't sleeping. Something was very wrong.

Flying in the back seat, they saw the nude body of a young woman, with the sleeve of a sweater wrapped tightly around her neck. For the second time in less than 12 hours, police responded to the same section of Boston's Dorchester neighborhood. Their missing person investigation had just become a homicide investigation. The woman was soon identified as 18-year-old Gwendolyn Taylor. Investigators processed the scene, collecting evidence from inside and outside the car, as interviews with potential witnesses began. From the source material I've been able to obtain, there's very little about what was collected and processed from the scene

itself. However, details about the witness interviews are plentiful. Employees at the auto shop said that the car had been there for about a month and hadn't moved. Police didn't have any reason to suspect that the people who found Gwendolyn's remains had anything to do with her ending up there, and they took their investigation elsewhere. The recollections of the witnesses who reported Gwendolyn's abduction the night before were going to be crucial to the developing case. Police interviewed Gwendolyn's roommates, and Sherita was able to give police a rough description of the man she saw standing in the doorway with Gwendolyn. She said he was Hispanic and about

5 feet 9 inches tall with a slight build. He was wearing black pants and a tan coat. Sherita and other witnesses also told police that the man they saw had a distinctive mouth with either a missing tooth or a hanging lip. Court documents state that Sherita went down to the police station later that day to speak with Detective Edward Doyle of the Boston Police Department. She asked if she could look through photos to see if she could identify Gwendolyn's abductor. Based on her initial description, Detective Doyle handed Sherita a stack of mugshots in two separate books, all of Hispanic men.

Sherita leafed through the first book for just a few minutes before she landed on a photo that caught her attention. She studied it quietly and then told Detective Doyle that it looked like the man, but it wasn't the man. His eyes were different, she said. Sherita switched to the second book, going page by page with her gaze intense on the photos in front of her. Again, she stopped. But this time she said to the detective,

quote, this is him. I'm definite. If it's not him, it's an identical twin. End quote. Sherita and the other roommates apparently weren't the only people to see Gwendolyn's attacker that night, though. A downstairs neighbor, Sharon Arre, told police that she was walking home with a friend when she saw Gwendolyn with a man at the front door of their building. Sharon even recognized him, because she was sure he lived upstairs from her cousin

a few streets over. When a detective gave Sharon the photo array that Sherita had viewed, Sharon picked out the photo of the same exact man. Sharon, too, was sure that he was the guy she saw on the night of December 7th, 1985.

The man in the photo matched the description that Sherita and the roommates had given police on the night Gwendolyn was abducted, though he may have weighed less, and notably, he wasn't missing a tooth and he didn't have a hanging lip. But with two identifications from the photo array, detectives waited no time tracking the man down. His name was Thomas Rosa Jr. 24-year-old Thomas Rosa Jr. lived on Colonial Avenue in Dorchester in December of 1985, just a few streets away from Gwendolyn's apartment building. Boston Police Sergeant Charles Horsley tracked him down there and asked him to come down to the station for questioning.

He'd had run-ins with the law before, that's how his photo ended up in the mugshot array, but none of his past offenses were violent. So, after hearing his Miranda rights that day, Thomas voluntarily gave a statement to Sergeant Horsley. According to case documents, Thomas explained that he was at home the entire weekend of Gwendolyn's murder, from around 11 p.m. on the night of Friday, December 6th,

and 10 a.m. on Monday, December 9th. He also told the officer that he was still wearing the same exact clothes he'd worn all weekend, including a pair of gray pinstriped pants and a gray full-length overcoat. Regardless of what Thomas had to say about his whereabouts during the early morning hours of Saturday, December 7th, police had two eyewitnesses who independently picked his photo out of an array. They were confident Thomas Rosa was their suspect, at least for the kidnapping part of the crime. They needed more evidence to bring a murder charge against him. Police placed Thomas Rosa under arrest for kidnapping, and he was held at the Charles Street Jail on $500 bail

while investigators beefed up their case for murder. And they found what they were looking for right in Thomas Rosa's own home. Thomas Rosa's wife, Olga Gomez, was home on the afternoon of December 9th when Sergeant Horsley arrived at the front door. Horsley would later report that during the first conversation with Olga, she told him that Thomas was in and out on Friday and Saturday, the night before and morning of the murder. According to

Horsley, Olga estimated that Thomas left around 11.30 p.m. and returned, quote, before daybreak, end quote. Sergeant Horsley also executed a search warrant at Thomas and Olga's apartment. Despite what Thomas claimed to be wearing that weekend, Gwendolyn's roommate Tammy told investigators that she saw that the man was wearing blue jeans, and both she and Charita said that the man was wearing a brown coat. So Horsley seized a pair of jeans from Thomas' apartment, as well as a brown coat that matched the description of the one the man was supposedly wearing when he abducted Gwendolyn. Both the jeans and the coat found at Thomas' apartment,

along with biological evidence, were submitted for testing, and Thomas voluntarily provided blood and saliva samples to test against. Interestingly, Gwendolyn's sweater, the one that was found around her neck and presumed to be the murder weapon, it doesn't seem to be part of the evidence that was sent for testing. It's not mentioned in any source material I've found until much later on in this case, which I'll get to, but at least during those first few days of the investigation, it seems like investigators got what they needed from other pieces of evidence. A few stains on Thomas's brown coat underwent chemical analysis, and there was a match. The tests identified skin cells that were consistent with Gwendolyn's blood type. What's more, tests showed that bodily fluids found in and on Gwendolyn's body matched Thomas' blood type.

In the mid-1980s, blood type evidence was a helpful but somewhat limited tool in criminal investigations. It mainly involved determining a person's ABO blood group, which could be used to rule out or consider suspects in cases involving blood evidence. However, it couldn't provide precise individual identification. DNA analysis was beginning to emerge as a more powerful and accurate forensic method, eventually replacing blood typing as the go-to method for identifying individuals in criminal cases, but it hadn't yet reached the level of accuracy or precision that it has today. So, outside of matching blood type evidence, there's no other reported connection between Gwendolyn and Thomas Rosa. They didn't know each

other, as far as investigators could tell. They chalked it up to a rare but terrifying act of random violence. With all the witness statements and physical evidence they needed to get a signed arrest warrant for Thomas Rosa, police felt confident that they were taking a violent predator off the streets. Thomas Rosa Jr. faced a jury in late September of 1986 on charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping, and aggravated rape. There were a number of witnesses the prosecution planned to call

in support of their case against Thomas Rosa. Not least of all was his wife, Olga Gomez. During that first conversation with Sergeant Charles Horsley, Olga said that Thomas had been in and out of their apartment on December 6th and 7th, and that he was gone for hours overnight and into Saturday morning, around the same window that Gwendolyn was attacked. Olga's testimony regarding those original statements

would be key to corroborating the Commonwealth's version of events, but problems arose when she was called to the stand. According to court documents, police repeatedly summoned Olga to court, but she never showed. A judge issued an arrest warrant for Olga, and Sergeant Horsley and another detective began a stakeout of the home where she was believed to be staying. Two days later, the detectives saw Olga leaving the house in a cab and pulled it over. Inside the car was Olga, her cousin, and her two sons, a three-year-old and a one-month-old. Both of Olga's children were receiving treatment at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The toddler recently had an operation for brain cancer, and the infant had a feeding tube that needed constant monitoring. And they were due at appointments that morning when the cab was pulled over. The gravity of her situation was

obvious, but the detectives had a warrant for her arrest. Horsley told her she needed to go with them to the courthouse, and she may even be held there overnight. There's a lot to this piece of the puzzle, and I don't want to get bogged down in the complex details, but the context around Olga's testimony is really important and it comes into play later, so I'll summarize it. When the detectives told Olga she really had no choice but to go with them, she made arrangements with the hospital to have her three-year-old son admitted overnight without her there, and her cousin would take the one-month-old baby back home. When Olga finally got to the courthouse,

prosecutors asked if she wanted to testify in Thomas Rose's case. She said that she did, but she was reminded that she didn't have to. It was her right to invoke spousal privilege as Thomas was her husband. Again, the assistant district attorney asked if she was sure she wanted to testify. Olga hesitated at that moment, but ultimately agreed. On the stand, Olga was once again told that she had the privilege of not testifying against her husband, but this time, she decided she didn't want to. The prosecution, in fear that they wouldn't get the testimony of a key witness, told the judge they had evidence Olga and Thomas weren't actually husband and wife, and so she couldn't invoke spousal privilege.

Eventually, though, a marriage license showed that they were, in fact, legally married. Step back from the legal technicalities for a moment and think about how Olga must have been feeling as she sat there in the courthouse, at risk of being held overnight, knowing that her young son was in the hospital alone and her newborn was at home under someone else's care. Thomas was clearly thinking about all of this too. He didn't want his wife held overnight when her children needed their mother. So Thomas insisted that Olga testify. He just wanted Olga to get out of the courthouse as fast as possible, even after his attorneys advised him of the risks if she did decide to speak. After speaking with Thomas, Olga ultimately decided to testify. The waiving of her spousal

privilege seemed anything but voluntary, though, and she didn't turn out to be as helpful as the prosecution must have hoped. Olga struggled to remember details of those days almost a year prior. Also, English is not Olga's first language, and so she reviewed Horsley's report of their first conversation with the help of an interpreter. But even then, Olga's recollections of that weekend were actually quite different than what was stated in the report. She didn't remember telling the detective that Thomas was gone for the night. Rather, she said he stepped out for a few minutes around 11 p.m., but came right back.

Court documents detailing Olga's testimony about the timeline of that evening state that her recollection was, quote, so confused as to be virtually incomprehensible, end quote. The prosecutor also asked Olga about her husband's outfit that night. In her initial interview with Horsley, she said Thomas was wearing blue jeans and maybe a brown or tan jacket, and she showed him the coat in question. On the stand, though, Olga wavered on this statement and said that he may or may not have been wearing it that night. She said she, quote, took that coat out of the closet, but Thomas didn't wear it because it was too big for him, end quote. Olga wasn't exactly the star player for the prosecution, but she didn't have to be.

They had the eyewitnesses, the identification from the photo lineup, and perhaps most convincingly, the biological evidence that linked someone with Gwendolyn's blood type to Thomas Rosa's jacket, and someone with Thomas' blood type to fluids found in and on Gwendolyn's body. I want to note that Thomas Rosa's trial transcripts for these and for future proceedings, which would normally help me understand key points from the defense, they're impounded so I can't access them. But I can discern from newspaper articles and other legal documents that Thomas Rose's attorney, Gordon A. Oppenheim, did introduce the theory that investigators had the wrong man on trial for this brutal crime. He argued it was a dark night and the witnesses must have been confused about who they saw. As far as I can tell, the defense called just one witness to speak to Thomas Rose's character, and he did not testify

in his own defense. After five days of testimony, the case was turned over to the jury, and they struggled with the case before them. Deliberations began on a Tuesday, but by Thursday they were still ongoing. Jurors told the judge that they couldn't come to a unanimous decision. They were stuck on the identification of Gwendolyn's assailant. That Thursday marked the end of the trial without a verdict. The judge declared a mistrial due to a hung jury. District Attorney Ronald Moynihan expressed his surprise at the result of the trial, telling the Boston Globe, I felt confident with the evidence in the case, and I'm very surprised and disappointed the jury couldn't come to a guilty verdict." A mistrial is not an acquittal. Thomas Rosa would be tried a second time later the same year, and again, the Commonwealth presented their case against

the man accused of killing Gwendolyn Taylor. But while the details were largely the same, it led to a much different outcome. Olga Gomez did not testify against her husband at his second trial. This time, she invoked her spousal privilege from the start. However, the prosecution was permitted to use the transcript of her original testimony in the new trial in a limited capacity. It could only be used for impeachment, not as substantive evidence. Meaning, the prosecution could introduce Olga's past testimony to raise doubt about her credibility as a witness, but not to raise doubt about Thomas Rosa's alibi. Without Olga there, Horsley read parts of the transcript

and gave his account of that first conversation he had with her. And when the prosecutor summed up the Commonwealth's case in his closing statements, he attacked Thomas's alibi based on the pieces of Olga's testimony that supported their theory. The prosecutor said that Thomas had time opportunity to commit the crimes because his wife said he

wasn't home during the same approximate window of the attack. But this was not how Olga's statements were permitted to be used, and the defense objected during the closing statements. Without getting into the legal weeds too much here, basically what the judge did to cure this was to explain to the jury what they could and couldn't take from Olga's previous testimony. So just forget what you heard and make sure it's not part of your final decision, essentially.

When the case was handed over to the jury for a second time, they returned just two hours later. They had no issue reaching a unanimous decision this time around. They found Thomas Rosa Jr. guilty of murder, kidnapping, and aggravated rape. Thomas Rosa appealed this conviction, but appeals can be a brutally sluggish process. It wasn't until December of 1991 that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts reviewed his case. And it turns out, the very issue raised during the second trial regarding the use of Olga's past testimony would be the same issue that got Thomas Rosa's conviction thrown out. The 1992 decision by the Supreme Judicial Court states that other than

Olga's testimony about Thomas's outfit on the night of the attack, quote, there is nothing in Gomez's prior recorded testimony that properly aids the prosecution. A fair reading of Gomez's testimony reveals that most of it is either too confused to be understood or contrary to the prosecutor's theory of the case, end quote. The court found that the prosecution used Olga's past testimony improperly, and with that, the judgments against Thomas Rosa were reversed, and the verdicts set aside, pending yet another trial. Thomas was released on bail until November of 1993, when he'd be tried for a third time. The story the Commonwealth told had been perfected by February of 1993 when that third trial began. Their case was a well-oiled, doubt-busting machine built on

eyewitness identification and biological evidence. The prosecutor placed tremendous weight on the recollections of the witnesses who saw the man with Gwendolyn that night. During their third time testifying against Thomas Rosa, Sherita Offley and Sharon Arrett told the jury the man they saw was most definitely the same man sitting at the defendant's table, and they'd picked his mugshot out from several others within days of the attack on Gwendolyn. Further, the Commonwealth said that because of the extreme stress and trauma that Sherita and Sharon were under that night, their memory, quote, significantly improved, end quote, and it bolstered the accuracy of their identification of Thomas Rosa as the

attacker. Directly from the prosecution's closing argument, quote, when something this traumatic happens to you in your life, the loss of a friend or the loss of a loved one or the loss of a president, for example, when President Kennedy was killed, things like that, they create in your mind an indelible imprint, and you'll never forget certain things about it at the time. You'll probably remember exactly where you were when you received the news about the president, and what you were doing for a living, and maybe who even told you. Sherita, for the rest of her life, will never forget his face, because it was as devastating and as traumatic an event that could ever happen to her. It was devastating and she'll never forget it seven and a half years later because she's going

to live with it for the rest of her life and indelibly imprinted in her mind is his face and that photograph she picked out, end quote. To back up those eyewitness accounts, the Commonwealth introduced the bodily fluid evidence. The chemist who conducted testing for Gwendolyn's case testified that the blood typing on the vaginal swabs showed the presence of type B blood. Thomas Rosa had type B blood. Testing on the jacket Thomas was supposedly wearing that night, according to eyewitnesses, was found to have stains containing type O blood. Gwendolyn Taylor had type O blood. The defense, meanwhile, hinged their argument on the fact that although Sherita and Sharon had picked Thomas Rose's photo out of an array, he didn't match the first descriptions given by those witnesses to police. His weight was off by a significant 40

pounds. He didn't have a hanging lip. He didn't have a missing tooth. Once again, Thomas Rosa awaited the jury's ruling and his fate. For the second time, the jury found Thomas guilty of first-degree murder and kidnapping, but he was acquitted of aggravated rape. For the murder and kidnapping charges, Thomas received a life sentence. But that's not where his story or Gwendolyn Taylor's story ends. 17 years after his second murder conviction, new testing on existing evidence shattered the case to pieces. Thomas Rosa Jr. maintained his innocence as he returned to prison, and he planned to exhaust all possible appeals.

According to court records, Thomas Rosa's defense team requested advanced DNA testing on the biological evidence in the case in 2001. A company called Orchid Cellmark performed YSTR DNA testing on the vaginal swabs and on the brown jacket at the center of the evidence against Thomas Rosa. This testing found that the stains on the brown jacket supposedly worn by Thomas Rosa that night were not from Gwendolyn Taylor. She was excluded as a contributor. However, Thomas Rosa could not be excluded as a contributor of the DNA from the vaginal swabs. Thomas filed a motion for a new trial based primarily on the results of the testing on the jacket. In 2003, that motion was denied without a hearing. The judge found that although the evidence was newly discovered, it wouldn't have affected the jury's verdict. But Thomas wasn't done yet. Fourteen years later, in 2017, the Boston College Innocence Program and the New England Innocence Project took up Thomas Rosa's case.

These organizations fight to correct and prevent wrongful convictions for innocent people throughout New England who are imprisoned for a crime they did not commit. With the help of their pro bono services, Thomas Rosa submitted the same swabs to a new company, Bodie Selmark, for advanced testing and analysis. It's no secret that DNA analysis has improved in recent years, and techniques have allowed for even deeper insights for criminal investigations since the biological evidence was first collected in Gwendolyn's case. Bodie Selmark performed the same YSTR tests on the samples, but in contrast to the other lab more than a decade and a half earlier, the new results determined that Thomas Rosa was excluded as a potential contributor. It was potentially groundbreaking exculpatory evidence, especially since the Commonwealth's case was anchored in blood type matches

that now, new and more precise DNA testing seemed to negate. In June of 2020, Thomas Rosa filed a motion for a new trial based on the DNA findings. The motion raised other critical issues too. Remember the prosecution's argument about the eyewitness testimony and the closing statement by the district attorney who said that traumatic and stressful situations strengthened the memories of witnesses and sharpened their ability to identify Thomas Rosette as the attacker?

Did your eyes bug out of your head when I first told you about that piece? Because mine did. Since when do stressful situations improve memory? Well, Thomas and his legal team were quick to point out that's not at all how memory works, and eyewitness identification isn't all that reliable, especially under traumatic circumstances. More recent precedents and research into eyewitness identification shows that high stress situations make a witness less reliable when it comes to identifying a perpetrator, because stress impacts our ability to recognize faces and encode details into our memories. The new information completely contradicted the Commonwealth's argument. Had this been part of

the trial, the jury may have reached a different conclusion. Thomas Ross's defense team argued in their June 2020 motion that a confluence of factors demanded post-conviction relief and that he should receive a new trial. And in October 2020, the court ruled on that motion. From Justice Frank Azeano's decision, quote, the DNA evidence, if correct, in conjunction with the defendant's other claims, could well establish that confluence of factors

that would indicate that a new trial is warranted, end quote. It could take months or even years for the court to weigh all of the factors raised in the motion and possibly grant that new trial, but the court found that his motion for post-conviction relief had merit. And so, since he presented no danger to the public, and he was at particular risk of contracting COVID-19 in prison, it was decided that Thomas Rosa Jr. could be released. After 34 years in prison, Thomas Rosa Jr. walked out of the Massachusetts Correctional Institute in Norfolk, Massachusetts to meet his adult son, Manny, who was born the same year Thomas was first convicted of Gwendolyn's murder. His legal team captured a cell phone video following his release. Tommy, tell us about when you found out

you were going to be coming home today. This morning at 8.30? Yeah. She said I have some happy news, and I got very happy. Sometimes you always thought this day would never happen. It was great. He said, oh, really?

Yeah. Are you kidding me? You're kidding me, right? I said, no. Did you believe it? My eyes got watered open. All the guys were, it's happening? I said, it's happening.

It's happening. It wasn't until 2023 that Thomas Rosa finally received an answer on his motion for post-conviction relief. He'd been out of prison for almost three years by then and was focused on making up for lost time with his family. Photos I've seen of this time show him surrounded by his son and his grandchildren, as well as his new wife, Virginia. Thomas also got involved with the exoneree network community, supporting others who experienced wrongful conviction and the trauma of long-term incarceration. But he also dealt with debilitating health struggles and even suffered a stroke in 2022. He was left unable to work and couldn't contribute to his household. The years in prison had taken a toll on his body, but Thomas kept fighting. Meanwhile, his legal team continued to fight too.

In a Boston Globe story by Nick Stoico, Thomas' attorney, Charlotte Whitmore of the New England Innocence Project, said that they were looking for additional evidence to support their client's claims of innocence, including Gwendolyn Taylor's sweater that was apparently misplaced between Thomas' second trial in 1986 and his third trial in 1993. The sweater found around Gwendolyn's neck was believed to be the murder weapon and was missing despite a court order to retain evidence in the case. If it still exists somewhere, it could contain the DNA of whoever took Gwendolyn's life. Attorneys on both sides were still trying to track down the sweater as of October 2020. But with or without the murder weapon, the Suffolk County Superior Court returned with a decision for Thomas Rose's motion on September 6, 2023.

In a stunning turn of events, the singular justice granted Thomas Rose's motion for post-conviction relief and vacated all of his convictions. From the decision, quote, under a confluence of evidence analysis, the new DNA evidence and modern eyewitness science warrant a new trial. Rosa's conviction, the result of three trials and based on evidence that was far from overwhelming, was based on two eyewitness identifications supported by blood typing, all of which has been called into question. The new DNA evidence, excluding Rosa, debunks the prosecution's closing statement connecting the victim to the brown jacket, and thus to Rosa, and casts doubt regarding the reliability of the eyewitness testimony given by Sherita Offley, who testified that Rosa's brown

jacket was worn by the assailant. Moreover, the advances in eyewitness science suggest that the identifications of the eyewitnesses are not as strong as the Commonwealth argued they were. Because such evidence would be a real factor within jury deliberations, there was a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice sufficient to grant a new trial, end quote. It was a very big check in the win column for Thomas Rosa Jr., but it still wasn't the end. Days after the decision was made public, Thomas Rosa, his family, his supporters, and his attorneys gathered outside the Suffolk County Superior Court for a press conference. According to reporting by Ivy Scott for the Boston Globe, Thomas and his defense team announced that they are asking District Attorney Kevin Hayden

to drop all charges against Thomas. Now, it's up to the District Attorney to either order a new trial, a fourth trial, or dismiss all the charges completely. The DA's office told the Boston Globe that they were reviewing the ruling and a decision was still pending. I reached out to Thomas Rosa through his legal team, hoping to hear his story in his own words. However, at the time of this episode's recording, he is still waiting to hear if he will face a new trial, and so he wasn't able to speak with me for this episode. Thomas continues to wait in limbo. Though he is technically out of prison, Thomas has said, quote, I am free, but not free, end quote. In the eyes of the New

England Innocence Project and Boston College Innocence Program, and all who know, love, and support Thomas Rosa, the DA's office clearing him of all charges could right a wrong made more than three decades ago. But what then for Gwendolyn Taylor? When a wrongfully convicted individual is exonerated, it often leads to a re-examination of the case. Investigators could uncover new evidence that points to another person as the likely perpetrator of the crime. The prosecutor may pursue charges against the new suspect and bring them to trial. That's the hope, at least. But these cases are complex and require re-evaluating evidence, witness testimony, and the original investigation, all of which we've already seen is flawed. But then again, maybe the evidence,

now with the benefit of advanced DNA testing and analysis, could make a new case against a new suspect rock solid. It wouldn't be the first time DNA exonerated one suspect and identified another. Kirk Bloodsworth was convicted of rape and murder in 1985, but in 1993, he became the first man to be exonerated through DNA. Another man was identified as the true perpetrator through the same DNA evidence. Daryl Hunt was wrongfully convicted of rape and murder in North Carolina in 1984. He spent 19 years in prison before DNA evidence cleared him in 2004. The DNA evidence pointed to another man as the real perpetrator.

In New England, Dennis Mayer was wrongfully convicted of rape in Massachusetts in 1983. He spent 19 years in prison before DNA evidence led to his exoneration in 2003. The same DNA evidence then identified the man actually responsible for the crime. Not all wrongful convictions result in the identification and trial of a new suspect, but it does and can happen. If Thomas Rosa is not, in fact, Gwendolyn Taylor's killer, who is? Is the DNA evidence enough to point to a new suspect and seek charges, despite the almost 40 years that have passed? I can't stop thinking about that sweater. Gwendolyn's sweater, the murder weapon. If it exists in a box somewhere, filed away in some forgotten storage room, what answer does that sweater hold? Gwendolyn was only 18 years old when she crossed paths with pure evil on her walk home that winter night.

She'd moved to Massachusetts from Mississippi to be near her father just two years earlier. She had a great job and was living in her own place with roommates when she was attacked seemingly at random and dragged off into the night. Gwendolyn's surviving family members have been subjected to unimaginable suffering over the past three decades. Years on a rollercoaster of legal decisions, multiple trials, and the constant revisitation of the heart-wrenching details of her final moments have undoubtedly shaken the very core of their existence. The pain of not knowing the truth for all these years adds an indescribable layer of torment to the wounds they carry. The profound tragedy of wrongful convictions is that they create multiple layers of victims within a homicide case.

Thomas Rosa Jr. very well may be another victim of the events of that December 9th in 1985, but we cannot forget Gwendolyn. We cannot forget that if this was a miscarriage of justice for Thomas Rosa, then it was also a miscarriage of justice for Gwendolyn and all who loved and lost her. We cannot forget Gwendolyn. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at darkdowneast. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones

and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East. Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and Audiocheck. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?