A brief primer in wrongful conviction: the case of Curtis Flowers
Why are we so convinced that Curtis Flowers is innocent? Two reasons: the state’s theory of the crime doesn’t fit the actual evidence, and the state manufactured phoney evidence by manipulating, badgering and bribing witnesses
All are agreed that the gun that ended the lives of Bertha Tardy, Carmen Rigby, Bobo Stewart and Robert Golden was stolen from the car of Doyle Simpson while he worked at Winona’s Angelica garment factory. Simpson made two visits to his car on the morning of the crime and reported that his gun had been stolen from a locked glove compartment shortly before the crime was committed. Catherine Snow, one of Simpson’s co-workers, claims she saw Curtis Flowers leaning against Simpson’s car at 7:30 that morning.
Prosecutors argue that Curtis Flowers murdered Bertha Tardy because she had docked $82 from his pay to cover the cost of damaged lawn mower batteries. Flowers worked at the furniture store for three days just prior to the July 4th weekend in 1996. When Curtis didn’t return to work after the holiday and when he eventually contacted Ms. Tardy he was informed that he had been replaced. Prosecutor Doug Evans claims this provided Flowers with a sufficient motive for the most vicious murder in Winona history.
Finally, Curtis Flowers can’t provide an iron clad alibi for the morning of the murder. He maintains that, apart from a brief visit to his sister’s home, he spent most of the fateful morning alone at home.
This sounds like a weak circumstantial case until you start asking hard questions. Then it falls apart altogether.
Everyone agrees that Bertha Tardy was the killer’s primary target and that the other three victims were murdered in an attempt to eliminate witnesses. All four victims were killed execution style with a bullet to the back of the head fired at relatively short range. Three of the victims were found lying side-by-side.
If Ms. Tardy was killed first, how could a single gunman keep the witnesses from fleeing? The evidence suggests the work of two gunmen: a single shooter and an accomplice.
The murders were methodical and horribly efficient: three of the victims died from a single shot. The Tardy murders (as they are now called) were not the fruit of blind rage. For practical and psychological reasons, only an experienced professional with a callous disregard for human life could pull off a crime like this, and no one in Winona (certainly not Curtis Flowers) fits that profile.
No employer-employee disagreement in Winona history ever spiraled into murder; what made July 16th, 1996 any different? If Curtis Flowers entered the store engulfed in homicidal rage how could he work with such frightful efficiency?
There is general agreement that the murder weapon was stolen from Doyle Simpson’s glove compartment. But the state has never been able to explain how Curtis Flowers could have known there was a gun in his uncle’s locked glove compartment unless Doyle told him? Simpson usually kept the gun at his mother’s home.
Questioned the day of the murder, Catherine Snow reported seeing a stranger leaning against Doyle’s car two hours before the likely time of the Tardy murders. Once it was common knowledge in the community that Flowers was the prime suspect, Ms. Snow was suddenly able to put a face to the man by the car. This is particularly odd considering that Snow knew Curtis Flowers from having seen him singing with a gospel group at her church.
No one could have known there was a gun in Doyle Simpson’s glove compartment unless Doyle himself told them were to look. A local gun points to a local killer, and an experienced killer from outside Winona would have valued such a weapon. A streetwise hustler with addiction issues, Doyle Simpson had friends in low places.
Why then did a test reveal a single micron of gun powder residue on the defendant’s right thumb? Gun powder residue is ubiquitous in police cars and police stations and Flowers had been in both environments immediately prior to the test. Doyle Simpson was interviewed as soon as Flowers left the building but neither he nor any other suspect was tested for gunpowder residue. This suggests that investigators had marked Flowers as the killer three hours after the crime and were studiously ignoring evidence pointing in any other direction.
A single micron of residue is the tiniest fragment that exists in nature. If Flowers had washed his hands before the interview no residue could have survived—the stuff is that ephemeral. But if Flowers was the killer, his entire body would have been bathed in residue. A single micron of residue suggests the kind of incidental contact that is inevitable in a police car or a police station.
The police have a bloody footprint at the crime scene, but no bloody shoe. They recovered a shoebox full of Christmas ribbons from a girlfriend’s closet. Like the footprint, the box was for size 10.5 shoe, America’s most popular men’s shoe size. There would have been nothing remarkable about Curtis Flowers owning a pair of Grant Hill Fila running shoes, of course; they were the hottest selling shoe in the nation at the time. But his girlfriend, Connie Moore, insists she bought the shoes for an adolescent son and the son has confirmed her story.
Speculation on the subject of Grant Hill sneakers is of academic interest. The footprint discovered at the Tardy Furniture store wasn’t left by the killers. The state suggests that approximately $300 was taken from the cash register near where three of the bodies were discovered. If so, one of the victims was probably forced to hand over the money before being killed. The killers didn’t step in the blood because, while they were at the scene of the crime, there was little blood to step in.
Sam Jones, an elderly black gentleman who occasionally helped out at Tardy Furniture, was the first person to arrive at the crime scene. Sam is now dead, but at the first trial he testified that he saw no trail of bloody footprints when he first observed the crime scene—and he was in the building between five and eight minutes. Jones then hurried off to a hardware store where he called 911 and waited for a police car to arrive at the scene.
Porky Collins testified at two trials prior to his death. Collins had a Wal-Mart receipt showing that he left the store at 9:43, about the same time Sam Jones arrived at Tardy’s Furniture. Collins then drove three miles to a mechanics shop, made a brief stop at home, then drove by Tardy’s Furniture on his way to the cleaners. By this time, Sam Jones had left the furniture store and was still waiting for the police to arrive.
As Collins passed Tardy’s he saw two black men engaged in a passionate argument. One man had his hands on the hood of a brown car; the other was standing beside the car making dramatic hand gestures. Collins only got the brief glimpse of one man’s eyes as he passed.
Concerned by what he had seen, Porky Collins made the block and when he returned to the scene the two men were crossing the street on foot. Collins testified that he didn’t know where the men went next.
For the most part, Porky Collins makes a convincing witness. Any mistakes he made can be laid at the feet of law enforcement. Although he shared his story with the police on the day of the crime, Collins wasn’t shown a photo array for five weeks. He was showing an interest in one of first six pictures he was shown when an officer asked, “Do you know Doyle Simpson?” This comment cued Collins that he had the wrong man. Shown a second array of pictures, Collins’ finger wandered to a photo where the person’s head was much bigger than the heads in the other pictures. “Do you know Curtis Flowers?” an officer asked. This told Collins he had the right man. By August 24th it was common knowledge in Winona that Flowers was the state’s prime suspect.
Although Collins’ identification of Flowers can’t be taken seriously, the central thrust of his testimony should be taken seriously. Collins saw two men arguing in front of Tardy’s just after Sam Jones had left the building. If either man was involved in the crime it is unlikely that they would be ostentatiously drawing attention to themselves. It is more likely that they arrived at Tardy’s Furniture store just after Sam Jones disappeared into the hardware store. The lights inside Tardy’s were on, the door was unlocked, and Jones’ truck was parked on the street outside—the store appeared open for business. If the two men wandered inside they could easily have stepped in the steadily-growing pool of blood on the floor.
The fact that Sam Jones saw no blood track when he first entered the store and that he and Police Chief Johnny Hargrove immediately spied bloody footprints shortly after 10:21 makes this scenario probable.
This explains the dispute Collins witnessed. One man, believing they were the first to encounter a crime scene, wanted to file a report with the police. The second man protested that a black man with the slightest connection to the scene would immediately become a suspect. This argument prevailed and the two men left the scene.
This reconstruction is hypothetical, of course, but it is the only scenario that fits all the known facts. The state’s theory, by comparison, can’t account for any of the facts I have noted.
Prosecutor Doug Evans has a love-hate relationship with Porky Collins’ testimony. With considerable coaching from law enforcement, Collins placed Curtis Flowers at the scene of the crime even though the events he witnessed transpired at least half an hour (and as much as an hour) after the killings took place and involved a second person the state can’t account for.
As an ex-employee, Curtis Flowers knew that Tardy Furniture has a back entrance. If he were the murderer he certainly wouldn’t have made a spectacle of himself at the murder scene.
There has never been any room in the state’s theory of the crime for an accomplice. The state has an impressive stable of eyewitnesses, but they all report seeing Curtis Flowers walking alone.
Although Sam Jones, Porky Collins and Catherine Snow talked to the police the day of the murder, none of the other witnesses didn’t recall seeing Curtis Flowers on the morning of the murder until a $30,000 reward appeared on the black side of town.
Few of the states witnesses came forward voluntarily even then. I have interviewed several people who were picked up by police officers, taken to police stations in Winona or nearby Greenwood and enticed with the $30,000 reward. They were also threatened with dire legal consequences if they refused to cooperate with the investigation. This carrot and stick approach, applied over the six-month period between Flowers initial interview and his arrest in early 1997, produced a string of “weak-minded black folk” (as one local pastor described them) who can’t get their story straight.
Curtis Flowers walked to work at Tardy’s on three occasions two weeks before the crime and some or all of the witnesses may have seen him pass on his way to work. But could they remember, weeks and even months later, that they had seen Curtis on the morning of the Tardy murders?
This explains why the physical descriptions presented by the various witnesses fail to overlap at a single point. Memory is fragile of course, and we should expect some discrepancies in testimony. But when one witness has Curtis wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt, the next has him in dress clothes, and a third has him decked out in a jogging outfit the state has a problem. Either these folks are describing actual sightings that took place on different days or they are lying. The evidence suggests we are dealing with a bit of both.
Mary Fleming, the woman who says she saw Curtis walking in the direction of Tardy’s, gave her statement seven months after the crime. Her Curtis was wearing a gray jacket, white shirt and brown pants. Mary Fleming is the aunt of Clemmie Fleming, a young woman who claims she saw Curtis Flowers running away from Tardy furniture on the morning of the crime. Clemmie has admitted to friends and family members (one of whom has an audio tape) that her testimony is a complete fabrication. The elderly man who was driving Clemmie around town that morning grudgingly corroborated her story at the first trial. But he surprised the state at the second trial by telling the jury he had been bullied into false testimony at the first trial and wanted to set the record straight. In his amended testimony he saw a man (who looked nothing like Curtis Flowers) running before picking Clemmie up at her home and never drove by Tardy’s.
And then there is Patricia Hallmon Sullivan, the woman who says she saw Curtis Flowers leaving his home at 7:30 the morning of July 16th. Ms. Sullivan’s brother, Odell Hallmon, says he talked Patricia into concocting a Curtis Flowers story so they could split the $30,000 reward. Odell Hallmon put this admission in letter to Lola Flowers (the mother of the defendant) and defense attorney Andre de Gruy—two people who had nothing to give him in exchange. Then, realizing how unwise it is for prisoners doing hard labor at the notorious Parchman prison plantation to get on the wrong side of the prosecution, Hallmon changed his story. He only wrote the letters, he now says, because Curtis Flowers promised to supply him with free cigarettes. What kind of prosecutor would use the testimony of a witness who had publicly surrendered the last shred of credibility?
A prosecutor who is rapidly running out of options.
At the first trial, the state produced two jailhouse snitches who testified that they had heard Curtis Flowers confess to the Tardy murders. These witnesses didn’t appear at subsequent trials. Since Doug Evans uses dubious witnesses like Odell Hallmon, the disappearance of the jailhouse snitches remains a mystery.
Under enormous pressure to produce an indictment, Doug Evans and investigator John Johnson latched onto the first suspect who lacked an airtight alibi. Unable to build a solid case against this man, Evans and Johnson used threats, bribes and flagrant manipulation to shape testimony around Flowers. The Winona newspaper reveals that Evans and Johnson were the targets of harsh criticism when Curtis Flowers was finally arrested in early 1997.
A dispassionate review of the available evidence suggests the following conclusions:
• Bertha Tardy was the victim of a professional hit
• Two assailants were involved
• Neither man was from Winona
• Doyle Simpson made his gun available to the killers
• Simpson knows who took his gun but may not know the identity of the killers
• The bloody footprint wasn’t left by the killers
Therefore, the state of Mississippi should release Curtis Flowers to the free world and appoint an independent investigator to conduct a fresh and unbiased investigation.
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