Murder in the Orange Grove: The Troubled Case Against Crosley Green - Moonless Night: 1

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

On a moonless night, a terrifying tale unfolded involving an alleged kidnapping and a murder, all within a timeline that didn't quite add up. 19-year-old Kim Hallock found herself at the center of a traumatic event – one that would forever change the trajectory of her life, that of her ex-boyfriend Charles "Chip" Flynn, and a man named Crosley Green.Get early, ad-free access to episodes of Murder in the Orange Grove: The Troubled Case Against Crosley Green by subscribing to 48 Hours+ on Apple Podcasts or Wondery+ on the Wondery app starting September 11th. The series will be widely available everywhere else you get your podcasts starting September 18th. Subscribe to 48 Hours+: https://apple.co/4aEgENo Subscribe to Wondery+: https://wondery.com/plus/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

48 Hours Plus and Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to new episodes of Murder in the Orange Grove, The Troubled Case Against Crosley Green, one week early and ad-free right now. Join 48 Hours Plus on Apple Podcasts or Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military, and when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder?

Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. Can you ask him to come in? Hey, how you doing? Hey, Crosley. Hey, good to see you again. It's great seeing you. I told you I would be here soon. This wasn't quite

as soon as I hoped. It's soon enough. Here, I'm talking to Crosley Green. Crosley is a 67-year-old African-American man. He's fairly tall, just under six feet, with a lean build and delicate features. These days, Crosley is mostly bald, with a receding hairline that's speckled with more salt than pepper. Did you finally get a letter from me? No. See, I got one sent back. I sent another.

At the time of this interview, in June of 2024, we had been meeting like this for 25 years. We sound like old friends catching up. Except instead of meeting in coffee shops, we meet in Florida state prisons. Why do I keep coming back? Because in my entire career as a journalist, and I've been doing this now for 40 years, this is the case that troubles me most. It's a bizarre and maddening tale that involves murder, a timeline that doesn't quite add up, a sister testifying against a brother, death row, and even the U.S. Supreme Court. And at the heart of the story, Crosley Green, a man who has lived more than half his life behind bars for a crime he says he didn't commit. Even after all these years, Crosley only asked for one thing. Don't

listen to him. Look into his case yourself. You know, are you going to believe me, me telling you, or are you going to go out there and try to find the truth out for yourself? Because I can tell you things. Whether or not you believe it or not, it's up to you. But to me, for anything to be truthful that I tell you, you have to go out there and read it yourself, get knowledge of it yourself. I'm 48 Hours correspondent Aaron Moriarty. This is Murder in the Orange Grove,

the troubled case against Crosley Green, Episode 1, Moonless Night. Sheriff's case number 89-33497. To tell Crosley's story, we have to rewind the tapes all the way back to 1989. The date is April 4th, 1989. Time is approximately 8.20 a.m. Back to a sheriff's office in Titusville, Florida, the county seat of Brevard County along Central Florida's Space Coast. Kim, for the record, would you please state your full name and

spell your last name, please? Kim Sue Halleck, H-A-L-L-O-C-K. On the morning of April 4th, 1989, police were interviewing 19-year-old Kim Halleck about a trauma that began unfolding the night before, one that would forever change the lives of Kim, her ex-boyfriend, Charles Chip Flynn, and Crosley Green. You solemnly swear that the statement you're about to give is true and correct to the best of your knowledge, so I hope you got it. Yes. Okay.

At the time of this recording, Kim had already been with investigators at the sheriff's office for four hours, but this was the first time they were recording her sworn statement. Let's start by what was the first time that you saw the victim, who is Charles Flynn, you calling Chip? Yeah. Okay. Kim Halleck and Charles Flynn, he went by the name Chip, both lived in the city of Titusville. Kim was white with dark eyes and haircut above her shoulders. Those who knew her described her as a fairly smart, nice-looking girl.

22-year-old Chip was also white with shaggy, sandy brown hair and a smile always on his face. They dated a little over a year and a half, but had broken up about two months earlier. Chip had moved on. He had a new girlfriend and didn't talk about Kim anymore to his family or friends. But he hadn't fully cut ties with Kim either. When was the first time that you saw Chip yesterday, which would have been 4-3 of 89? About 10 o'clock at night, he came over to my house. Kim said that she and Chip watched a movie together, Pretty in Pink.

It was around 11 p.m. when he asked her if she wanted to go for a ride in his pickup truck. Chip had a manual transmission truck, a stick shift. There was only one row of seats, so Kim sat on the passenger side while Chip drove to Holder Park in the nearby town of Mims. They parked the truck on the dunes by the baseball field under some trees. After about 15 minutes, a patrol deputy drove by, but he didn't see the couple. Another few minutes passed, and Kim said she saw someone else walking towards them from the baseball fields. It's after that a black guy walked up in front of the truck. Kim told the police that she and Chip were instantly unsettled by this unknown man,

who she called, quote unquoteunquote, the black guy. You'll hear Kim say this over and over again when speaking with police. I was looking out, and I looked down, and I saw the black guy come up, and I told Chip there's a black guy on your side, and he rolled up the window real quick. Kim said she was unnerved by the encounter and told Chip she wanted to leave the park, but Chip said it was all right because the man had left. Kim said that about 20 minutes later, Chip got out of the truck to go to the bathroom, and that's when she heard him say, Wait a minute, hold on, wait a minute, man. And I just looked and I saw a black guy. According to Kim's timeline, the time would be between 11.30 and midnight.

Kim said that she remembered that Chip had a pistol in the glove box, so she pulled it out and hid it under a pair of jeans on the seat beside her. And that's when the man, she said, told Chip to get on the ground. Did you see that the black male was armed at that time? Yes, I did. Because he was in front of the door. Okay. She said he asked how much money they had and started calling them names. Even calling him Crack, Crackhead. Crackerhead. They're assailant said he would let them go.

But first, Kim said he threw one of Chip's sneakers at her and then told her to take the shoelace out. She said that while the assailant was tying up Chip's arms with that shoelace, his gun went off. Nobody was hurt, and Kim told police that she didn't think the gunshot was intentional, but on the moonless night, it would have been terrifying. Kim said that at this point, Chip was on his knees, no shoes on, his arms tied behind his back with a shoelace. The assailant pulled Chip's wallet out of his pants pocket. The assailant allowed her to get out of the truck, Kim said. And count it. And approximately how much money was in the wallet? $185. Okay. The assailant allowed her to get out of the truck, Kim said,

and then come around to where he and Chip were standing before instructing her to start the truck. What is he doing with the gun while he is instructing, giving you the instructions? He's got it on Chip. He's holding the gun on Chip? Yeah. Then, according to Kim, all three of them got back in the pickup truck on that one row of seats. Chip is now in the passenger side with his hands tied, Kim in the middle. And they're now kidnappers steering and shifting gears.

They begged him to let them go, with Chip once again offering himself up to save Kim. Take me, do what you want, just let her go. He said he was going to, but I knew he wasn't. This might have been the best chance Kim Hallett got to really look at the assailant, although it was still pitch black, and according to Kim, the truck's interior light might not have been working. The police officer questioning Kim was eager to try to pin down a physical description of the assailant, from his height... How tall was he? Between 5'8 and about 6'4.

And his weight? About 108 pounds. Kind of a big bill. To his clothing? Had a big heavy jacket on, a dark heavy jacket. Possibly green, a real dull green. Blue jeans and big heavy boots, like working boots. To his hairstyle. But Kim was unable to provide a detailed description.

Anything else unusual about the face? Not really. I really didn't get a real good look at him. I was really scared. In her terror, Kim said she did not get a good look at the assailant. Another police officer pressed her about the man's footwear again later in the interview. Describing his footwear, are you certain of what type of footwear he was wearing yesterday? Not real certain.

So the answer is no. Right. Could he have been wearing tennis shoes? That's possible, isn't it? Yeah, but it seemed like tennis shoes weren't heavy enough for the way he was. Okay. Your recollection describing his footwear is not based on something you visually saw and remember. It's a sound you heard.

Kim told police that the man made her and Chip duck down as they drove out of Holder Park. And when Chip lifted his head, Kim said, the assailant yelled at him to put it down or he was shifting, too? How was he doing that? If you couldn't quite hear, Kim said that their kidnapper was holding the gun, pointing it at her, while shifting gears and driving. At this point, Chip found his own gun, the one that Kim said she hid under a pair of jeans on the seat. Chip motioned to Kim to scoot up so he could get a clear shot at their assailant, but Kim said she couldn't move without the driver noticing. Ten minutes later, the assailant stopped the truck at a familiar landmark, the Orange Factory.

Nevin's Orange Factory. Yeah, that's it. Kim and Chip were in an orange grove in the city of Titusville, Florida. Their assailant, she said, shut the car off. It was completely dark. Then he yanked Kim out of the driver's seat by her arm. Kim said she pulled free and then ran around to the passenger side of the truck, opening Chip's door. And just as she put one foot inside, the assailant yanked her out again, and she fell to the ground by the back rear tire. The assailant yanked her out again, and she fell to the ground by the back rear tire.

The assailant got one arm around her and held his gun on her. I'm at him. It was on my face. Okay. Kim said that when she started to cry, the assailant shouted that he was going to, quote, blow her brain out if she didn't shut up. And that's when, according to Kim, Chip leaned out of the passenger seat, his pistol still clutched in his shoelace-bound hands. His hands were behind his back. He leaned out of the truck and somehow shot at the guy. And the guy stepped back, chipped him out of the truck. I jumped in the truck, and the guy stepped back, chipped him out of the truck. I jumped in the truck,

shut the passenger door, and then I reached over and locked it, and I heard about five or six gunshots. So if you're following, Kim said that Chip shot at the assailant and then jumped out of the passenger side of the pickup truck, all with his hands still tied behind his back. The police officer asked Kim exactly how Chip got out of the truck. Dough, like face first on the ground, onto his stomach, so I could get in and leave. And then asked Kim about those other gunshots. Okay, the other shots occurred after you got into the truck?

After I got in the truck. Do you recall how many shots Chip fired? He might have shot two, I'm not sure. The second one was from Chip, I'm not real sure. But then like four or five came from the black guy. Kim said Chip yelled at her to go and in her haste to leave the Orange Grove, Kim said she might have accidentally run over Chip's leg.

Kim drove for about four miles, going past a gas station and even a local hospital, stopping at a trailer park where Chip's best friend David Stroop lived. It was just about a minute away from her family home. David was asleep and didn't hear Kim best friends for close to five years, meeting at a party after Chip's family moved down from Illinois to Florida. They enjoyed doing the same kinds of things and spent many afternoons camping, four-wheeling, fishing. David liked that Chip was easygoing, without an enemy in the world. He called him country, a good old boy. David had been with Chip just hours earlier, watching a basketball game in David's trailer. Around 10.30 p.m., David had started nodding off on the couch.

Hey man, I'm gonna go to bed, he told Chip. Chip left, and David just assumed he was going home. It was a work night after all. When Kim banged on David's trailer, it was around 1 a.m. in the morning. David got out of bed to let her inside. She was hysterical and told him Chip had been shot. Up to an hour had passed since Kim had left the Orange Grove. Kim doesn't explain in her police interview why the drive took so long. David tried to get Kim to tell him exactly what happened,

but after a minute of not getting anywhere, he told her, hey, we got to call 911. The initial call was very ambiguous. Two men fighting in the road at an intersection in Mims. At 1.13 a.m., Brevard County Deputy Sheriff Mark Rixey got the dispatch call. He was out on road patrol. In fact, he was the police officer who drove through Holder Park a few hours earlier that night. When he arrived at the location given to him by dispatch, he didn't see a disturbance. Called the dispatch back and said, Brevard, there's nobody here. Can we get, you know, more information?

Dispatch relays a new location. Then they say, well, it's down Holder Road. So I drive down, up and down Holder Road, and there's nothing there. Something didn't seem right. Normally, when somebody witnesses an incident, it would not be such a drastic change of location. If I told you that an incident had occurred at the Hilton in Cocoa Beach, it wouldn't turn out later that it actually happened two or three miles down the road.

Rixey even began to suspect that the call was fake. This is a prank because nobody could get it that wrong. Sergeant Diane Clark was driving in a separate patrol car and monitoring all the dispatch calls coming into Deputy Rixey. By this time, dispatch was telling him shots had been fired out in the Orange Grove. Well, the Orange Groves go from the north side of Titusville all the way to the county line and beyond. So that didn't give us a lot of information. And the Orange Groves his little dirt roads, we would have been tracking all night long trying to find him.

Time was quickly passing, so Clark met up with Rixie and sent another deputy to pick up Kim Halleck. They all headed to the Orange Grove so Kim could show them the exact location of the disturbance. But Kim refused to get out of the police car. She says he's down this road, a dirt road, but she's afraid to go down there. Well, we'll go down there. Mark and I followed this dirt road or path. It was so dark they couldn't see their own hands in front of their faces, so the officers had to use flashlights. You know the kind of a night you get where the stars are,

you think you can reach up and touch them. They're so vibrant, but when there's no moon they're even more vibrant, but it's like pitch black out there. It was a very, in the middle of the woods, in the middle of the night, it was very dark. Both officers walk cautiously down the dark path, flashlights illuminating their way. And while I'm walking, I am noticing tire prints in the dirt. Perfectly detailed tire prints, so you can actually see the tread. And at the end of the path was a figure lying face down in the dirt. It was Chip Flynn. Almost like a fetal position.

His hands were tied behind his back with a shoestring, kind of crossed over behind him. He had a bullet wound. It was blood on the right side of his chest. He didn't have any shoes on. Clark called for an ambulance, while Rixey moved quickly to free Chip from the bindings on his hands. He seemed very cognizant, very alert, not suffering from the effects of a gunshot.

There was a gun on the ground, just one, a.22 caliber pistol, and Chip was moaning, alive and conscious. We started asking him, who did this to you? And all he said was, get me out of here. Well, could you at least tell us which way he went? Because as far as we were concerned, there was an armed assailant loose in the orchards where we were. And it was a safety issue, a big safety issue, not only catching the suspect, but a safety issue for us because we're exposed. Get me out of here is all he would say. Chip wouldn't answer any of their questions about his assailant. I've never even heard of that happening before. Normally, someone will say he went that way.

It's this kind of guy. But it quickly became clear that the more urgent priority was saving Chip's life. Obviously, he's injured. He needs an ambulance. It was a pool of blood under him. Kim had called both her parents and Chip's parents after calling 911. And now they were all waiting together about half a mile away from where Chip lay in the orange grove. The police wouldn't let them any closer, worried that an armed assailant could still be lurking nearby. Down the dirt path, Chip's condition took a turn for the worse. You know, all of a sudden, his breathing got shallow.

All of a sudden, you know, he deteriorated really quickly. Chip stopped breathing, but he still had a pulse, so Clark performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. And I'm waiting for the ambulance, and it seems like forever when the ambulance, you know, it just seems like when you're, it's life and death, you feel like, oh my God, are they ever going to get here? And I could hear them in the distance. The ambulance was close by, waiting by the main road with Kim, her parents, Chip's parents, and more police that had arrived for backup. But the police wouldn't let paramedics any closer, still concerned that a man with a gun could be waiting to attack. Back in the Grove, Clark was able to resuscitate Chip, but then...

He stopped breathing the second time. I did mouth-to-mouth again, brought him back. Chip had a sucking chest wound, and when Clark saw it, she knew Chip's condition was far more critical than it first appeared. You know, every minute that ticks away with that kind of a wound is closer to death. It needed a cellophane dressing, but she didn't have one. Only thing I had was a handkerchief, so I took that out, covered it, tried to keep the air out and try to stop the bleeding.

Chip stopped breathing a third time when the ambulance finally arrived. Rescue personnel sped him off to the hospital, but Chip didn't make it that far. Communications notified me around 2.20 or so that he had expired, that he had died. We did everything we could to try to save him. And, you know, it's like, that's my job. And it was very hard to not have been able to do more for him. Officer Rixey questioned why it took so long to nail down Chip's location in the first place. If we had been able to locate him the very first time, the time lapse between the time we found him and the time we got the call would have been about five to ten minutes instead of 45.

While Kim was transported to the sheriff's office for questioning, officers Clark and Rixie remained behind to protect the scene until the crime scene unit arrived before daybreak. As they left the scene, Rixey noticed something that had caught his eye the night before. On the way out of the Orange Grove, I followed the same path that the truck left the orchard in. And again, I noticed that the tire prints were perfectly detailed. If you leave a sandy area or a dirt area in a hurry, you're gonna have some tire spin. There's not gonna be perfectly detailed tire tracks. And these were perfectly detailed,

like there was no big rush to leave. By this point, you're probably wondering what any of this has to do with Crosley Green, or maybe you've already guessed. I was in Holy Park that night. We all go to Holder Park. I live there. I live right behind the baseball field there. Yes, that Holder Park, the one where Kim said, quote,

a black man robbed and then kidnapped her and Chip before taking them to the Orange Grove. Crosley Green is a self-described sports fanatic. He was a star athlete on the high school football team back in the day. And on the afternoon and early evening of April 3rd, 1989, 31-year-old Crosley Green was in Holder Park watching a Little League baseball game. And after the baseball game, he says he left the park hoping to catch a college basketball game on TV,

possibly the same game that Chip and David were watching in the trailer. It was the NCAA Tournament Championship game. It was during the playoff time. I wanted to get back and watch the games. Crosley says that he left Holder Park just as it was getting dark, sometime between 9 and 10 p.m., and walked to the house of his cousin, Carleen Brothers. Which is approximately, I would say, mileage-wise, three or four miles. Crosley walked those miles in his white Reebok tennis shoes.

I walked. I walked. But I didn't go down the roads. Okay, you can go through the orange grove, you know, or cut, instead of go all the way around the corner, you cut across the corners. Cutting through the orange grove.

Yes, that orange grove. He got to Carlene's house a little after 10 p.m. He watched TV with her. Arsenio Hall was on. I stayed there to watch Arsenio Hall at the time. The show was running at the time, at night. Arsenio Hall's show ran from 11 p.m. to midnight. After watching the show for a while, Crosley says he went out to the road in front of Carlene's house. He was selling

drugs, marijuana and cocaine at the time, even though he had just gotten out of prison on a drug charge. The time that Crosley was out on the road selling drugs differs depending on who you talk to. Carlene's ex-boyfriend, James Karn, says Crosley was back inside the house at 1240 a.m. James says he remembers because Crosley interrupted an argument that he was having with Carlene. There was a dispute about what she was doing and stuff like this, and there was another guy. So they got in a little argument, a little push around. James had let the air out of a tire on Carlene's car so she couldn't leave. Crosley helped de-escalate the argument. He wasn't the type of guy to normally get involved

in other people's business, but he says that when he saw something wrong, he'd intervene. He told Carlene and James, you ought to work things out. James said the three of them then sat down and talked before Crosley walked to the house of another friend in the neighborhood. Never went back to Holy Park. The only other place I went to from Carlene's house was over to Lori Raines' house. Lori Raines had once been Crosley's girlfriend. And while they weren't dating at the time, he had known her for over 10 years. And she was still a good friend.

I mean, to me, he's a very, very nice man. I mean, you know, when me and him first got together, my daughter was young. And he really treated her very nice. I mean, he treated me very nice. I never had any problems with him. You know, I really honestly did. He was a very gentleman to me. But here's where the stories about Crosley's whereabouts differ.

Lori said that Crosley arrived at her apartment in Mims on the night of April 3rd around 11 p.m. The last time he came to my house was like 11, 11.15. Both Lori and Crosley say that he stayed at Lori's house for the rest of the night. We basically didn't go to sleep until like 1, 1.30, something like that, when we fell asleep. Crosley Green says that he left Lori's house the next morning, around 7 a.m., and then walked back past his cousin Carlene's house. Carlene was outside dealing with that flat tire that James had given her the night before. Carlene called

out to Crosley by his nickname, Papa. Let's hear from her. He was walking over towards my way, so I said, Papa, I said, come change my tire. I say, there's more to flat my tire. Crosley then changed her tire for her. According to Carlene, Crosley was in his usual good spirits. A nice, friendly mood. That mood he always be in. Very nice and friendly. This was about 7 a.m. on April 4th. just a few miles away at a local county sheriff's office in Titusville. Kim Hallock was meeting with police, telling them about the black man that she said attacked her and Chip Flynn. Officer Mark Rixey was filing his case report, and Chip Flynn's parents were grieving the death of their youngest son

on the next episode of murder in the orange grove the troubled case against Crosley Green when did you find out you were a suspect when did I find out I was suspect maybe a day or two days after that was the main suspect. And what was your reaction? What was my reaction to that? Was that, here I go again. Murder in the Orange Grove was reported by me, Erin Moriarty, alongside producers Alan Pang, Annie Cronenberg, and Allison Bailey.

Kiara Norbitz is our coordinating producer, and Florence Burrow-Adams is our story editor. Additional production support from Dylan Gordon, Marlon Polycarp, Caroline Casey, and Christine Driscoll. Judy Tigard is the executive producer of 48 Hours. Gail Zimmerman, Asena Basak, Mark Goldbaum, Charlotte Fuller, Judy Ryback, and Stephen McCain produced the original 48 Hours episodes. Associate producers were Michael Loftus and Shaheen Toki. Patty Aronofsky was the senior producer. Special thanks to Megan Marcus, Jamie Benson, Nick Poser, and Gail Spruill.

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