Murder in the Orange Grove: The Troubled Case Against Crosley Green - Revelations: 4

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

The first time 48 Hours Correspondent Erin Moriarty met Crosley Green, it was 1999 and he had been sitting on death row for nearly a decade. Moriarty had interviewed convicted killers before but soon discovered that no one was like Crosley Green. The more she looked into his case, the evidence didn't seem to add up. On a quest to find out the truth, Moriarty spoke to some of the prosecution witnesses who testified against Crosley. All these years later, they had very different stories to tell. 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. You got that big key in his arms? Now you're ready. On September 9th, 1999, I walked into the Union Correctional Institution in Rayford, Florida. Florida's death row.

Going into a maximum security prison isn't new to me. I've been in dozens. I've even done other interviews on death row, face-to-face with convicted killers. But this case weighed heavier on me. Who is Crosley Green? Hi, Crosley. I'm Erin Moriarty with CBS News, 48 Hours. We've been looking at your case. Now it's really important to meet you and have viewers meet you. Nervous at all today? No, no, I'm not nervous. I'm a little shy, but I'm not nervous.

It had been nine years since Crosley was convicted for the murder of Chip Flynn. And for the last eight years, he had been sitting on death row, confined to a six-foot-wide, nine-foot-long cell. And that's where he spent 23 and a half hours every day. I want to ask you the question I think that everybody needs you to answer. Did you kill Chip Flynn? No, I did not kill him. I'm 48 Hours correspondent Erin Moriarty. This is Murder in the Orange Grove, the troubled case against Crosley Green, Episode 4, Revelations. I've been examining and reporting on Crosley's case for 25 years, since 1999, which is where we start this episode, when I first met Crosley Green.

Why should I believe that you didn't kill Chip Flynn? I'm going to tell you just like I tell people, my friends that was visiting me, my attorneys. Hey, I didn't kill that man, all right? But it's already embedded in your mind. I'm a criminal. Why should I believe you? Initially, I wondered, could this be a case of mistaken identity?

The murder did occur on a moonless night in an unlit orange grove. Kim Hallock said over and over again she didn't get a good look at the assailant. This was one of the first questionable conviction cases I had ever covered, and I felt the need to find the truth, the real truth, because the consequences were life or death. The room where we met Crosley was tiny, just enough space for me, my cameraman, and Crosley. What's it like being here on death row? It's hell. It's hell in a lot of ways.

It's hell. It's hell to me because I'm here for a crime I didn't commit. All right? Then I got to sit in my cell 24 hours a day. Do you ever think about what you face if you don't get out of here? Do I ever think about it? No. I don't think about it. That is so far away from my mind.

I didn't expect to find a man with so much hope, but Crosley appeared to be convinced that his murder conviction would one day be overturned if someone would just take a closer look. Well, listen, do me a favor. Just don't take my word, painful memory in the small Florida communities of Titusville and Mims, but it was mostly unknown to outsiders like me. I needed to go down there for myself to better understand the facts of the case. For the next few weeks, I met with different members of the community, from attorneys and forensic experts to people who knew both Crosley Green and Chip Flynn, people in their closest circles. We spent days there at a time and kept going back.

I started with reviewing the police records and reading trial transcripts. There seemed to be several prosecution witnesses who placed Crosley at the first crime scene, Holder Park, like Willie Hampton, a retired police officer at the time, who testified that he saw Crosley wearing a jacket at the baseball game earlier in the day. It was consistent with the description of the bolo. That's the police term for be on the lookout. But here's what Crosley said he was wearing that night. What were you wearing? I think it was a tank top, which you would call a corn shirt. Red.

Jeans? A pair of jeans and a pair of sneakers. And what about a jacket? No siree. Listen, if I had on a jacket at that time, when that bolo came out, why so many people that was around me and I'm sitting with them

couldn't come up and say, listen, I remember a guy there with a gray army jacket on. He was sitting right beside me. And there seemed to be inconsistencies about the assailant's hair. If you remember, Kim Halleck first told police that the assailant had an afro. Here she's talking to a sheriff's deputy on April 4th, 1989, just hours after the murder. Okay. What about the hair?

Could you tell the hairstyle of the blackmail? Just afro and there. Nothing fancy, nothing weird. Was it thick, long, short? Just thick. Kind of long, not long. A little bit of an aspect. But later, at a pretrial deposition, the description of the assailant's hair had changed.

Kim told defense attorney Rob Parker that the suspect had tight ringlets styled with a substance like a gel. When I asked Crosley about how he wore his hair, he insisted that it had been very short, almost like a buzz cut. As I kept pushing him for specific details, you can hear him getting more and more frustrated until... Can I look at the camera? Because I want to say this to the camera, man. Yeah.

The way I look now is the way I looked then. I mean, so your hair was that... The way I look now is the way I looked then. That's short. And she describes someone with curls over the years.

The way I look now, to you, this is exactly what I look like. Okay, it may not be quite clear about what just happened, but Crosley had become so frustrated with my questions over and over again about his hair that he suddenly just looked away from me and then looked straight into the camera lens and said, the way I look now is the way I looked then. Okay, got it, Crosley.

That is still one of my favorite moments from that first interview. And more than another decade later, Crosley still wears his hair pretty much the same. He has short, cropped hair, almost completely shaven. I think we all have ideas of what a killer looks like. Crosley didn't fit mine. You can tell when someone is guarded, not Crosley. This was a guy who was open and eager to talk to me. I got the sense that he was thrilled to finally get the chance to tell his side of the story. I was told not to say nothing.

Not to take the stand? No. Not only not to take the stand, but after it was over, I was told by my attorney, don't say nothing. I do the talking for you. What did you want to say? What I wanted to say nothing I do to talk him for you. What did you want to say? What I wanted to say, I wanted to turn around and tell the parents of that kid that I'm sorry about their son, but I didn't kill their son. What struck me the most about talking to Crosley is not just that he denied killing Chip, I mean, I expected that, but how much he wanted to set the record straight with Chip's parents. What pained him the most was that they thought he murdered their son.

They've been fed with something that's not true. They've been fed with something that's not true. They have been fed with something that's not true. Okay? And I feel bad for them. I really do. I feel bad for them. When I lost my mother and father, I didn't know what I felt. And for her to lose her son, I knew what she felt. What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of Chip? Rarely did you see him without a smile on his face. Just rarely. That smile he always wore. Before I met Crosley, I met Charles and Peggy Flynn, Chip's parents. It's the hardest part of reporting on crime, talking to parents who have lost a beloved child. And Chip Flynn was a beloved child.

After his murder, the 10 years that had passed had done nothing to reduce their pain. They spoke to me in their Titusville home. What's the most important thing you want people to know about Chip? He didn't deserve to die. We sat at their dining room table with pictures of Chip over the years spread across the table. Family photos, school portraits. In all of them, Chip is smiling with laughter in his eyes. I'm a mom myself. I don't know how anyone goes on after losing a child.

You want to wake up every day and say, hey, this has all been a bad dream. It's going to go away. They don't. Chip was named after his father, Charles. Charles remembered Kim Hallock's fateful call in those early morning hours of April 4th, 1989. She just told us that they had been kidnapped and that this guy had taken them down to Orange Grove and that Chip jumped out of the truck shooting to try to save her, and she jumped in the truck and took off. Do you believe Crossley Green is the man who robbed and killed your son? Yes. Yes. Absolutely.

I definitely do. There's nothing no worse than I'd rather do than see somebody go to the sheriff for something they didn't do. No, I would never want that to happen, but I agree. I feel like there's enough proof that the case has totally been proven that he did do it. And that's the way I feel. You're telling people you're innocent, and you're still sitting here on death row. I'm a poor black man.

I don't have no money to hire no lawyer, no investigators. I have to do with what they give me. I have to do with that. While Crosley couldn't afford an attorney, he did have a rotating cast of at least five court-appointed defense attorneys. At that point, they had tried and failed to get his conviction overturned or even get him off death row. Still, Crosley remained upbeat, convinced that he would someday walk free. I have one great big hope to try to help myself by writing to different peoples and ask them for help to take a look at it. You know, I'm not just going to sit here and give up and not try to help myself. Turns out that Crosley's willingness to talk to different people would prove to be a major turning point in his case, in large part thanks to this woman, Nan Webb. I just almost feel driven sometimes to help people that can't help themselves,

because I think that's what we're supposed to do. That's what God tells us we're supposed to do. In 1999, when I met Nan Webb, she was a 57-year-old teacher and anti-death row activist. She and her husband Bill sat with me one afternoon in the kitchen of their Melbourne, Florida home. A flyer titled Release Crosley Green Now was displayed prominently on their fridge alongside a photo of their poodle and a serenity prayer magnet. Here's Bill. I just believe the man is innocent, and I want to help him as much as I possibly can and support him and his family. What if Crosley Green is guilty? He's not. But what if he is? But he's not. How can you know that? Because I've read the information, and we know Crosley.

They wanted to hire a private attorney for him, but they didn't have the money. So Nam went to a wrongful conviction conference in Chicago in hopes of meeting someone who would take the case pro bono. And for the first time in nearly a decade, Crosley's luck took a turn. After talking to Nan, a private detective decided to recruit a team of five other investigators from across the country to re-examine the evidence against Crosley for free. I asked Crosley what he thought about these investigators who were willing to drop everything to look into his case. You can probably imagine his answer.

You feeling more hopeful? Can I scream? When I feel good, I like to cry.? Can I scream? And when I feel good, I like to cry. So can I cry out? You feel good. That's what I feel like. And that's really how I, along with a group of 48 Hours producers, got involved in this story. In early 1999, when we heard that a band of private detectives were reinvestigating Crosley's case on their own dime, we knew there was probably a story there.

My dream is to be able to afford a home in the city I love. The last thing that's free these days is walking and breathing. I want a premier who gives a damn. You deserve a good life. Every day all across this province, I'm inspired by people. And you deserve a government that inspires you too. You deserve a leader, period. It's Marit.

It's Marit. It's Marit. Find out why it's Marit.ca. Authorized by the CFO for the Ontario NDP. Around the beginning of August, we rolled into town with a CBS News camera crew. We stuck out like a sore thumb, and we had to be careful. It felt like everyone knew each other, and we were strangers from New York digging into a 10-year-old case that had clearly left its mark on rural Florida.

My first impression of Brevard County was that it's like many counties in Florida, rural, buggy, especially with mosquitoes. It was humid with wide open soggy spaces of overgrowth. If you're traveling north on highway US-1, on the right side is the area known as East Mims, and that is where the vast majority of black citizens live. On the west side is West Mims. And that is where the vast majority of whites live. When I started working on this podcast, I wanted to know more about the racial history of Titusville and Mims. And that's how we found Bill Gary. He's been involved in the local NAACP chapter for decades and told me about his experience moving to Brevard County now 50 years ago.

There was segregation here. My first wife and I bought a house out in North Titusville where there were no other black families. And we endured several months of people throwing citrus fruit on our house, driving through our yards. They spray painted the N-word on both sides of the house. Florida, to many people, conjures up an image of beaches, of farm trees, orange groves, but also Florida has a very dark history when it comes to the treatment of Black citizens in this state. At one time, Florida was the leading state in terms of lynchings.

Bill is also board president of a cultural institution dedicated to Harry and Harriet Moore. The Moores were two activists who spearheaded the Florida civil rights movement right here in Mims. In 1951, they were murdered when their house was bombed. It's important because it's a part not only of the African-American history of the state, but also of the nation. We have the annual Harry T. Moore Memorial Service. And when we arrived, there were some Ku Klux Klan flyers all over the parking lot. And there have been flyers scattered in neighborhoods and stuff over different years. While Bill Gary didn't know Crosley personally, after Crosley's conviction in 1990, his brother O'Connor asked Bill to review the trial transcripts.

They both hoped that Bill would see for himself the lack of evidence against Crosley and could help rally the community to fight for his release. This was a big story back in 89. The people that I've talked to in the community, I never heard any comments or talks about Crosley attacking anybody or being violent at school or anything of that nature, which is why I think many people were surprised when he was prosecuted for this. As I continued to learn more about Crosley's case, this was a common sentiment I heard from many people. Even though Crosley had had run-ins with the law and a conviction for selling drugs, no one could imagine he was capable of murder. And why did they want that conviction so badly? Because a young white man dies? Yes. And based on the testimony of a young white woman. And the state attorney that we had at that time was not interested in justice. What they were interested in is a conviction. That state attorney was Norm Wolfinger, prosecutor Chris White's boss.

Wolfinger died in 2016, but he was still in office in 1999 when I started to investigate this case. From where you're standing now, do you believe that Crosley Green is the one who killed Chip Flynn? You know, what I believe isn't important now, the jury has found him guilty, the judge has sentenced him. To Wolfinger and many in the local community, it was an open-and-shut case. Crosley Green had murdered Chip Flynn.

But nine years after the trial, Crosley still couldn't believe that he had been convicted. I really didn't expect them to find me guilty. What can they find me guilty of? Whatever it is. But now there was a new team of private detectives in town who were starting to pick apart that evidence. That group of five men and one woman from around the country who flew in to re-examine Crosley's case for free. They had been in Brevard County since July, and when we caught up with them later that summer, they were sunburned, tired, and making progress. All right, let's rock and roll.

Coming through the bug-infested Florida orange grove. Boring. Got it. They were poring over old case documents, topography maps, and aerial photographs of the crime scenes. And they were searching for prosecution witnesses who would be willing to talk to them. They caught a break, a big one, when they found Alan Jerome Murray. He was one of the several witnesses who testified against Crosley at his murder trial. He was the witness at trial who had been part of a group of men hanging around the corner in Mimms known as 21 Jump Street. Alan had testified that Crosley was

also there and told them he had just killed a man and that he was going to, quote, disappear. I spoke to Alan myself about this experience. It's a little hard to hear and understand Alan on this recording, so listen carefully. Tell me about it. What did you say 10 years ago? I sent an innocent man to prison. Allen, who was on parole at the time of the murder, told me that he felt pressured by detectives to come up with a story about Crosley Green, any story that would connect him to the crime. And what did they want you to say? The black man said he killed somebody. And they told me, they said, if I don't say what they want me to say, I'll go right back to the slammer. What did you tell the police? They told me, they said he killed him, I go right back to slamming. What did you tell the police?

They told me they said he killed him, so I just said he killed him. Again, in case you couldn't quite hear him, Allen said, they told me to say he killed him, so I just said he killed him. And did Crosley Green ever tell you that? He never told me that. Nearly 10 years after Allen testified against Crosley Green ever tell you that? He never told me that. Nearly 10 years after Allen testified against Crosley, he admitted that he had lied on the stand. And apparently, he wasn't the only one.

Remember Tim Curtis, that auto shop repair owner who told police the sketch of the alleged assailant looked like Crosley? Well, 10 years later, he had a confession to make. Did that sketch look like Crosley Green? No, it didn't. Not at all? The sketch was of a fatter type face person. Crosley Green had a real narrow, little bone structure of the face. Did you tell the police though,

that it looked like Crossley Green? I think I may have said that in the report. Why say anything at all? People, I was angry. I wanted the person who'd done it. I wanted justice done. At all costs. Even if the wrong person was convicted?

But at the time, I thought we had the right person, or I felt I was the right person. Tim had also told police that O'Connor told him that Crosley had shot Chip, even though Tim knew it wasn't true. I think I may have said something like that. I think that was almost like you got a little fire going, so you add a little bit more cold to it. So you added, embellished. I think... Made up. No, I wouldn't go as far as say really made up.

I think it's almost like how rumors get started, you know? I seen the guy jump the creek. By the time it gets back to you, he swam the creek. Heck, he walked on water before he got to the other side. Do you believe you made a mistake? Now I do. And if Crosley Green is innocent, if Crosley Green didn't do this,

I'd like to say the opera ain't over till the fat lady sings. And I think the fat lady's fixing to sing on this one. The investigative team was on a roll. They tracked down another prosecution witness, Lonnie Hillary, the fiance of Crosley's sister, Sheila. He told these private investigators in a videotaped statement that he felt pressured by prosecutor Chris White to testify against Crosley to corroborate Sheila's account of that night. At Crosley's trial, Lonnie corroborated Sheila's story

and testified that he saw Crosley in the hours after the murder and said that Crosley told him, quote, I f***ed up. But now, 10 years later, Lonnie told private investigators this wasn't true. It couldn't be because Lonnie was with Sheila for the entire night of the murder and the following morning, and neither had spoken to Crosley about anything. But one of the most important witnesses, the woman whose testimony was devastating to Crosley at trial, well, she was elusive and kept avoiding the investigator's calls. That was Sheila Green. I asked Rob Parker, Crosley's defense attorney for the 1990 trial, just how damning was Sheila's testimony.

I basically told Crosley, I said, you know, she strapped you in. Did you believe Sheila Green at that time? Do you believe that Crosley Green actually told her? No. He did? No, I don't believe that. Why do you think Sheila Green testified against her own brother that way? She didn't want to go to federal prison.

The more I learned about this case, the more I realized just how powerful her testimony was against her brother. Did she also lie on the stand just like Lonnie Hillary and Alan Jerome Murray. It became clear that in order to overturn Crosley's case, the PIs would need to track down Sheila and ask, did Crosley really confess? The pressure was on to find her, and we appealed to her older sister, Shirley White. I can only show Sheila love and give her love. The rest is up to Sheila. But do you want her to come forward now? I want her to come forward. I told her today to come forward.

She will. I know she will because she's my sister. She will. I have that much confidence in her. Somehow, Shirley did her magic. And later that week, there she was. Leaning against a vehicle, Sheila spoke with the investigators. I wasn't allowed to hear that initial conversation. And I thought, if she didn't want to talk to them, she'll never talk to me, a reporter with a camera. But she did.

What have these last 10 years been like for you? It's been like hell. That's something I had to live with for 10 years. Every time I look at news and hear about an individual death row, I think about my brother. And I knew that he's there not only for my statement, but for other people's statement, but I knew mine was a lie. And I always told myself one day that I was going to help him.

I didn't know how to go about helping him because I was so afraid of what the outcome of my situation is because I'm on probation and I don't know the judicial system, you know, and I was afraid of being sent back to prison. It was painful to hear Sheila's story. She's a mother, and she said prosecutors promised to reduce her upcoming sentence on a drug conviction if she gave information about Crosley's whereabouts on the night of Flynn's murder.

What did they say would happen if you didn't testify against your brother? I would never see my kids again. They said that specifically? Yes. My kids is one of my weakness. You know, you use my kids, it's like you're stabbing me in my heart with a knife, and I've never been as separated from my kids. And I felt that I wanted to see them again, so I cooperated with the DEA and the state attorney's office.

Are you telling me, Sheila, then, that your entire testimony against your brother was a lie? It was a whole lie. What did that feel like on the stand? I felt horrible. It was wrong. But I felt I had to do it. Do you think Crosley had anything to do with the murder? No.

Have you talked to Crosley at all in all these ten years? No, I haven't. Do you want to? Yes. What would you want to? Yes. What would you tell him? He will understand. You think he will? Yes.

He will. He knew I did. It's okay. He wouldn't be mad with me. And Sheila was right. When I asked him about this terrible betrayal, Crosley didn't seem to be mad or even holding a grudge against his sister. I'm not no rookie with just a sister, okay? I was 31.

She was what, 23, 24, okay? And she never went through a system before. They shook her up pretty good. Things changed when they started to really mess with her and started talking about taking her kids and stuff away from her. Come on, Krause. No, I don't hate my sister, man.

Because it ain't Sheila's fault. No, it ain't Sheila's fault. She testified against you. Listen, when I saw my sister in trial, that wasn't my sister. Okay? And it hurt me to my heart to see her like that. That wasn't my sister.

Sheila did not receive the lighter sentence she was promised. She ultimately gained nothing from testifying against Crosley. Surprisingly, Crosley didn't have anger towards the people who testified against him because he knew the system. He knew prosecutors and investigators can and sometimes would divide families just to convict someone. I'm a lawyer, and still, this was shocking to me. You've had, what, 10 years at least to think about what happened that night. What do you think happened? What I think, I think it's terrible that a young man got killed, okay? But who killed him?

How he got killed? And all that? I don't know. But do you think that there is another man out there? A black man. Do I think there's another man out there? A killer. I don't know this young lady.

Okay? I'm not going to call her a liar. Maybe it wasn't no one. Maybe it was someone. I wasn't there. I can't tell you that. I cannot tell you that. I had my doubts.

And I still have my doubts. This is Alma Jean Bloss, one of the jurors on that 12-person, all-white jury that convicted Crosley of murder. On a hot Florida summer day in 1999, I sat at her kitchen island, a scan of the local paper floored it today between us. It was the first article that the paper had written on the murder of Chip Flynn 10 years ago. Alma was composed, but she was troubled. All of these years later, she was still haunted by her decision to vote for a guilty verdict and seemed to want to get it off her chest. From the very beginning, you had doubts? Yes, from the very beginning, yes.

The evidence was lacking. Pieces from the puzzle were gone. There was no proof of this and that. What worried you the most? Well, no fingerprints. In the truck? That was my biggest thing. No fingerprints when he drove a truck, and no gloves mentioned. Did he put his socks on his hands?

Remember, the only identifiable prints found on Chip's truck belonged to Kim Halleck. No prints anywhere on that truck were traced back to Crosley. Alma had other concerns, too. They never found Crosley's gun, so did he have one? And how did they know what color clothes in an orange grove? It was pitch dark. The fact that there was only one eyewitness, a young white woman identifying a black man,

did that concern you? Well, to me, actually, I'll tell you, it was like a made-up story. You thought that at the time? In my personal opinion, down deep in, I thought it was a made-up thing. And then she said she saw the shots. It was like she saw the shots after dark. How could you see them? You might hear them. And that bothered me. It's bothered me for all these years. And yet, even with all these questions, and yes, doubts during the trial,

Alma voted to convict Crosley, along with 11 other jurors. Did you feel pressure in the jury room to convict him? Yes, I did. Because he had a previous past, he had just got out of prison. The jury, they just kept saying, he did it, he did it, he did it. And I held out till the end. What made you finally give in? I just, they're all against me.

And I was the only one and it was down to the grits. So that's what you do. Alma could have hung that jury and maybe save Crosley from death row. After talking to Alma and thinking more about the evidence, I began to consider really for the first time a completely different theory of the crime. And it's something that Crosley himself had alluded to in his interview. What if this wasn't a case of mistaken identity of a third-party assailant?

What if there was no third person at all? Just Kim and Chip in that orange grove? I asked State Attorney Norm Wolfinger. Why wasn't, in this particular case, Kim Hallock ever considered a suspect? Well, I'm not getting into the investigation. I can't say she was or wasn't. That was something that happened in the investigation. I went through the entire investigation. I went through the entire file. I read through all the court transcripts. At no time

did the police question her story they never tested her hair to see if a gun had been held up against her head they never tested her clothing they never tested her hands why wouldn't that be done wouldn't that be standard procedure well again I'm not going to get into the investigation back in 1999 there was nothing in the police records or court documents to indicate that law enforcement or prosecutors ever questioned Kim's story. I wanted to hear directly from her about what happened that night, but she denied 48 Hours multiple requests for an interview. We don't really know what Kim thinks. She's never agreed to talk with us.

But Kim did provide us with a statement that read in part, quote, For the last 10 years, I've had to live with the memories and nightmares of that horrific evening. The fact is, there are only two surviving witnesses from that evening, myself and Crosley. And I'm sure deep down inside, Crosley knows that he's right where he deserves to be. I took another look at the physical evidence presented at trial. The prosecution had shown the jury a diagram of Holder Park, the first crime scene, that showed shoe prints that stopped where Chip's truck was reportedly parked. But reviewing the crime scene videotape again with the private detectives, we noticed a

discrepancy. Here is Agent DeMars talking on the video taken hours after the murder. We heard some of this recording in past episodes, and I think it's important to play it again. Crime scene begins with what we believe to be suspect shoe prints that initiate at this point. Agent DeMars assumed that the alleged attacker arrived at the park in a vehicle because the shoe prints appeared to start on the side of the road. Heading in a west direction up into the area between the trees, which is where the victim's vehicle was parked, along with the two victims prior to the abduction.

This so far matches the police diagram presented at trial. But in the videotaped crime scene walkthrough, DeMars continues. The shoe prints after proceeding west will then continue on around just to the outside of this fence, with the last shoe print being seen just north of the second cement pole. The shoe prints that DeMars is following, the one she believes belongs to the alleged assailant, left the park along the fence. So how could he have gotten into the truck with Chip and Kim? The investigative team and I examined another important piece of evidence, Chip's truck. It was a hulking 82 Chevrolet, step-side, 4x4 pickup.

It was massive. The tires were so big that the only way to get into the truck was by grabbing along the window frames and hauling yourself in. I asked Tim Curtis, who had once owned the truck and then later sold it to Chip, if it was as hard to drive as it looked. If you look at Kim's statement, she never mentions any problem with the driving. I mean, is that possible from what you know about this truck? No way. I drove that truck. I know exactly how that truck drove, 100% without a shadow of a doubt at all.

You could not get in that truck and take off without it stalling. That is a fact. Even if you knew a lot about driving stick? Heck, I own the truck. And at times when I'd pull away from a stoplight, I would even stall it. And I've driven it for who knows how long and got a lot of experience driving trucks like that. If even a career auto mechanic has had issues with stalling Chip's truck, I wondered how someone like Crosley could have driven it for the first time that night, steering and shifting. And don't forget, with the added challenge of pointing a gun at Kim and Jip all at the same time.

Crosley's trial attorney, Rob Parker, never asked Crosley back in 1989 if he knew how to drive a stick shift. And the new team of PIs told me they hadn't asked him either. But I was raised driving cars with standard transmissions, and it came up in my conversation with Crosley. We were talking about the morning after Chip's murder when Crosley said he was helping his cousin Carlene with her car. And did you try to move the car? Oh yeah yeah. I tried to drive a car, but, you know, she don't like me to drive it because I can't drive a car. What do you mean you can't drive a car? I can't drive a car.

Why not? Why can't you drive a car? It's a stick shift, and I have trouble driving a car, okay? What do you mean you have trouble driving it? Okay, I have a problem shifting a car, a shifter, and it jerks when I try to drive it. To be sure, we checked later with Carlene, and she corroborated that Crosley tried to move the car, but as she put it, he kept, quote, jerking it.

Crosley, help me out here. If you have trouble driving stick shift and standard transmission, I mean, you knew that truck that Chip Flynn owned was standard transmission. I mean, you knew that truck that Chip Flynn owned was standard transmission. Why didn't you tell your lawyer that? I didn't know that. What do you mean? How am I supposed to know that man got a standard shift or automatic? How am I supposed to know? You tell me how I'm supposed to know what kind of truck that man got? Such a simple detail that somehow fell through the cracks at trial.

The fact that the truck had a standard transmission with a clutch was part of the evidence at trial. And yet, no one thought to ask Crosley if he could even drive it. I asked defense attorney Rob Parker to clarify for me more details of the case. Did the prosecutors ever find any fingerprints of Crossley Green? No. Did they find any bloody clothing? No. Did they find this assailant's weapon?

No. Did they find any weapon that Crossley Green owned that could be connected to that shooting? No, ma'am. Did they find any weapon that Crosley Green owned that could be connected to that shooting? No, ma'am. Did they find any evidence at all, physical evidence, that Crosley Green was there? Quite to the contrary, they found evidence, fingerprint evidence, latent fingerprints, that are not Crosley Green's and are to this day unidentified. By the end of our time in Brevard County, I felt like I was leaving with more questions than answers.

Why was there a man sitting on death row for nearly a decade when there was no direct physical evidence tying him to the crime? My crew and I headed home to New York to work on our broadcasts and thought we might be dealing with a wrongful conviction. 48 hours, we take you there. On November 1st, 1999, 48 Hours aired its first broadcast on Crosley Green. Dan Rather introduced our story. A condemned man is waiting to die. He insists that he's innocent, and perhaps he is.

Back in the 90s, CBS and broadcast news in general had a lot of power. News networks were the only game in town, and there were very few wrongful convictions reported on the air. Still reversing a death sentence can be an impossible mission. Our report gave national attention to this small-town murder, but it also shook up Brevard County. Investigative team turned up four people who had testified against Crosley, who then later recanted their stories, even at the risk of being charged with perjury. This was a monumental revelation for the community there, and one for me, too. What happens if they don't get you a new trial? What happens? What happened from this day forward, I can say,

if I make it or don't make it, there's always gonna be a question about this case. There's always gonna be something about this case that people's gonna wonder about. On the next episode of Murder in the Orange Grove, the troubled case against Crosley Green... You have tons of circumstantial evidence against Kim. I don't see how it could have gone the way it did.

You actually believe Chip came up with this story along with her? Absolutely. He'd have to. He'd have to. And if it was some stranger who abducted him and shot him, I think the first words out of his mouth would be, he went that way. It was a black man. He went that way. You know? But he would never say. It's always just, get me out of here, get me out of here, get me out of here.

That's all he would ever say. Murder in the Orange Grove was reported by me, Erin Moriarty, alongside producers Alan Pang, Annie Cronenberg, and Alison 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 Tigart 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. listen to the next episode one week early and ad-free by joining 48 Hours Plus on Apple Podcasts or Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.