Framing the Guilty, Framing the Innocent

There is an all-too-common practice in our justice system known as Framing the Guilty. A police officer (or crime lab supervisor or medical examiner or district attorney) is convinced of a suspect's guilt but fears the bastard will walk free. The police officer (or other administrator of justice) will therefore bury exculpatory evidence, manufacture or plant inculpatory evidence, coerce a false confession, or provide favorable treatment to a third party in exchange for false testimony.

Since the dirtbag being framed is guilty, no harm is done.

A greater harm would be to allow the sleaze ball to walk free so that he could rob or rape or kill again.

It's okay because everyone does it.

No need to lose any sleep over it.

Right?

Sometimes, however, the police arrest the wrong person. They are loath to admit it, but sometimes they do arrest the wrong person. Sometimes, district attorneys convict innocent defendants. They never admit it, but sometimes district attorneys do convict innocent defendants. In those cases of actual innocence, Framing the Guilty becomes Framing the Innocent.

The classic movie frame up is more fiction than reality. A bad guy wants to deflect suspicion away from himself. A vengeful partner wants to extract revenge. A mob boss wants to eliminate competition. Those evil private citizens therefore manufacture a case against an unwitting foe. The police and district attorney fall for it. An innocent man is convicted through no wrong-doing whatsoever on the part of the State.

I repeat, the classic frame up is more fiction than reality. In the real world, nearly all the framing is done by the State. In those frames, the administrators of our justice system are the bad guys, the vengeful partners, the mob bosses. They serve at our pleasure. We must therefore bear our share of the blame.

I now take another break from my blogging sabbatical to write this series about the State of Texas framing its citizens for capital murder. I do so because Larry Swearingen, The Most Innocent Man on Death Row, has a critical hearing on 15 May. Larry Swearingen is one of those innocent people who has been framed for a crime he did not commit. The State and People of Texas still hope to execute him as soon as they can.

I will intersperse this disturbing series with posts about the framing of Larry Swearingen. I will also discuss other instances of Framing the Innocent.

One of those cases will be that of Preston Hughes III, the most thoroughly framed person ever executed in this country. It was my failed effort to save Hughes that led to my sudden and unannounced sabbatical from blogging. Before too long, I will publish my book revealing all of what I learned both before and after the execution. Here, in this series, I will give but a brief overview.

Another case in the series will be that of Cesar Fierro. Even the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed that Fierro confessed to stop the police from physically torturing his parents. The TCCA agreed also that the police perjured themselves at his trial. The TCCA, however, ruled that the framing of Cesar Fierro was a harmless error, and they refused to grant a new trial. Cesar Fierro will not be executed, however, since he has gone undeniably insane while incarcerated on death row.

Another case in this series will be that of Robert Otis Coulson. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found that the police had, in that case, planted an envelope on a desk. The court found also that the district attorney improperly used the envelope as evidence against Coulson. "We agree," the judges wrote in their opinion, "that the evidence regarding the location of the envelope was false. We also agree that this knowledge may be imputed from the police to the prosecution." The 5th Circuit then ruled that the framing of Coulson was a harmless error, and they refused to grant a new trial. Robert Otis Coulson was executed by the State and People of Texas on 25 June 2002.

Yet another case in this series will be that of Derrick Leon Jackson. Jackson was convicted of capital murder based on the work of the notorious HPD crime lab in general and the work of the notorious James Bolding in particular. The independent investigators hired to review the HPD crime lab saved their most scathing words for James Bolding. "We have identified three cases in which Mr. Bolding was involved in the wholly inappropriate and unethical alteration of bench notes reflecting the serology results obtained by either himself or another Crime Lab serologist. Each of these cases reflects a disturbing lack of integrity on the part of Mr. Bolding. … James R. Bolding appears to have committed scientific fraud and perjury." The investigators identified the Jackson case as one that needed to be reinvestigated. Derrick Leon Jackson was nonetheless executed by the State and People of Texas on July 20, 2010.

I write this series to inform the public, and the judges who serve the public, that the State and People of Texas have framed innocent defendants all too frequently, and that Larry Swearingen is one of those innocent defendants who has been framed.

For a status of the series and for ease of navigation, see the Table of Contents.

Photographic Update

While I've been away from blogging, I spent some time on the northern California coast. Here's a photograph that I find to be a pleasant reminder. Click to enlarge.

I intend to return both to the coast and to blogging about wrongful convictions. I have something to complete, however, before I do either.

Cameron Todd Willingham: Told ya!

I'm back for a single post, then I'll disappear for another couple months. Later I will explain my sudden departure from blogging.

Cameron Todd Willingham was executed by the State of Texas on 17 February 2004.  Willingham had been convicted of killing his three young daughters by setting fire to his house. The innocence world is now atwitter about a recent development in the case. Evidence has been uncovered that suggests the prosecution purchased snitch testimony. Color me shocked!

I wrote extensively about Johnny Webb in my book The Skeptical Juror and the Trial of Cameron Todd Willingham. I'll provide multiple excerpts of what I wrote about him, before formally declaring "Told ya."

The first witness in the trial of Cameron Todd Willingham was a drug-addled snitch named Johnny Webb. I summarize Webb's testimony below:

Willingham came home to find his wife terribly distressed. His wife told him that she had accidentally killed one of their three daughters. Willingham told her he would save her from prosecution by destroying the evidence of her guilt. He would set the house on fire and make it look like the oldest of the girls, Amber, had set the fire. To do this, he somehow rendered Amber unconscious, moved her from the children's room to his room, placed her in his bed, then used a flaming roll of paper to inflict burns on her arm and face. He squirted lighter fluid on the floors and walls, and then ignited it.

In my book The Skeptical Juror and the Trial of Cameron Todd Willingham, I presented Webb's testimony. I then had the fictional jury deliberate it. I modeled my fictional jury after the fictional jury in Twelve Angry Men. I discussed that modeling in a special note at the end of my book, which I cleverly called "A Note on Twelve Angry Men".  From that note:

Anyone who has watched and remembers Twelve Angry Men will have no doubt that my fictional jury deliberations were inspired by that movie. 

I modeled eleven of my jurors on its actors. In my book, for example, Sports Fan Ward plays a similar role to that played by Jack Warden. Timid John sits in the same seat as did John Fiedler, and John Fiedler did indeed play therapy patient Mr. Peterson in The Bob Newhart Show. … Boisterous Lee is clearly similar to Lee J. Cobb. [Foreperson] Marti is a variant of Martin Balsam, different both in gender and competence. 

I dared not assume the skeptical juror role portrayed by Henry Fonda, for he was more subtle and persuasive than I can hope to be. Instead I assigned that role to Harriet. I placed myself in the next chair, and I frequently reminded myself I needed to be more like her. ... 

I borrowed from Twelve Angry Men not because it made my job easier, for it certainly did not, but because I wanted to pay homage to the movie. It has special meaning for me. One prosecutor, angry that I had thwarted his conviction and wanting a retrial, compared me to Henry Fonda in the movie. He did not intend it as a compliment to me; he merely wanted to convince the judge that the State would prevail if the defendant were retried. I nonetheless accepted it as a compliment, though the parallel never occurred to me as I struggled to save a stranger, someone who turned out to be a fine and decent man. 

The movie, of course, portrays jury deliberation to be more dramatic than it really is. I've yet to see a juror threaten another with a knife, or witness one break into tears while ripping apart a photo of his own son. 

On the other hand, Twelve Angry Men expresses many of the concerns I have about jury behavior. Jurors tend to be insufficiently skeptical of the prosecution, too willing to convict without a thorough deliberation of the evidence. Jurors are too eager to relieve the State of its burden of proof, too willing to deprive the defendant of his presumption of innocence. Too many jurors base their votes on convenience or intimidation rather than conviction. These are not lessons I learned from the movie. They are lessons I learned behind closed jury room doors.

In my book, I interlace the actual testimony with the fictional jury deliberation of that testimony. Johnny Webb is the first witness, and Boisterous Lee is his biggest defender. I described Lee as follows.

Lee is large, forceful, opinionated, and boisterous. He's personable enough, but when confronted with ideas other than his own, he tends to respond with volume rather than with reason, persistence rather than persuasion. I fear I see myself in him, though I'm at least conscious of my failing. I make a mental note to practice restraint and subtlety.

I, on the other hand, was Johnny Webb's biggest detractor. In the real world, I had no doubt that Johnny Webb perjured himself in return for favors from the prosecution, even though the prosecution maintains otherwise, at least so far. In the book, I therefore made myself Johnny Webb's biggest detractor. I, my character, was so bothered by him that I several times failed to practice restraint and subtlety as I had promised to do. Lee and I naturally butted heads on several occasions over Webb's testimony. I excerpt below our first exchange on the subject:

Boisterous Lee: "He's no snitch. A snitch is a prisoner who lies on the stand about another prisoner in exchange for time off, or privileges. We got no evidence Webb is lying, and we have the word of the prosecutor that he's not going to get any time off, or anything else for that matter.

I decide to speak up.

"I'll give you two-to-one Johnny Webb is out in five years, no longer. He'll serve the minimum, maybe a bit more, but he won't be in fifteen years, not even half that." 

Ward: "I'll take a piece of that action."

"Sorry. Offer's only good for Lee. What do you say? We get together five years from today. If your man Johnny Webb is still locked up, I write you check for two thousand dollars. If he's been sprung, you write me a check for a measly thousand."

Lee: "Get outta here."

"I'm serious. Two-to-one."

Ward: "I'm serious. I'll take a piece of that action."

"This is between Lee and me. What do you say?"

Lee: "You'll never show."

"We'll set up an escrow account. Winner takes the proceeds and all the interest to boot." 

Lee: "Give it a rest, will ya? Are you telling us the prosecutor was lying to us? Is that what you're saying?"

"They don't have to lie. They all know how the game's played. A wink here, a nod there, some hypothetical off-the-record discussions, and somehow everyone's getting what they want, everyone that is except the poor schmuck who's going to get needles in his arms."

Bitter Ted: "So now you're saying he's not guilty too?"

"Not saying that at all. I am saying that a snitch's testimony isn't worth a used roll of prison toilet paper. I'm saying that as far as I'm concerned Webb's testimony hurt the prosecution far more than it hurt the defense. The prosecution needs to prove to us beyond a reasonable doubt that Willingham did this crime, that a crime even occurred, and yet their very first witness is a jailhouse snitch. And we're supposed to believe him beyond a reasonable doubt?"

Ted: "You believe what you want, I'll believe what I want."

"Lee won't even bet a thousand dollars on him. Will you bet your life on the truthfulness of Johnny Webb?"

Ted: "That's a damn silly question."

"But you'll stake Willingham's life on his testimony, won't you?"

I later upped the odds to four to one, then five to one. Lee and I thereafter went back at it:

Lee: "And they did prove motive, didn't they? The prison guy, what's his name Webb, he said that this guy told him he killed them because he was protecting the mother." 

Everyone in the room stares at him. 

Lee: "Whadda ya all looking at? What?" 

He's squirming badly now. 

Lee: "He didn't mean he was protecting her because she set the fire. That's not what he said." 

Beads of sweat are forming on his reddening forehead. 

Lee: "He said she had hurt the kids, that's why he killed them. He did it to protect her." 

Time for me to violate my self-imposed subtlety oath. 

"That's the best reason of all to arrest her, assuming they believe Webb. They're using him to get what they want, and he's using them to get what he wants. We all know that, at least most of us do. So I'm going to double my bet, and I'll give you even better odds. If Johnny Webb gets out within five years, you write me a check for one thousand. If he's still in, I write you a check for four. 

Sports Fan Ward: "I want a piece of that." 

"This is between me and Lee. Isn't it Lee?" 

Lee: "I don't know what you're talking about, this between you and me stuff." 

"If the prosecutors believed Johnny Webb, Stacy would be sitting there next to Todd. And if they really believed the evidence about the music or the food or all the other crap they threw at us, if they believed any of that was worth a plugged nickel, Stacy would be sitting beside Todd. The prosecution doesn't believe its own evidence, but they want us to." ... 

Lee can't let go of Johnny Webb. He speaks to no one in particular. 

Lee: "You know that thing I said about him trying to protect her, I didn't mean that she might have set the fire.

Marti: "Yes Lee. I think we all understood you."

He points an accusing finger in my direction.

Lee: "He was just trying to bait me."

Edie: "He did a pretty good job."

Lee doesn't understand that he just can't win on this one any longer. The jury has grown to distrust Webb. Lee won't be able to rehabilitate him. He should let the matter drop.

But, of course, he won't.

Lee: "Webb was right about the little girls, wasn't he? He said this Willingham guy carried one of them into another room and that's just how they found 'em. The baby twin girls were in the front bedroom and the older girl was in his bedroom. Just like he said. You've got an answer for everything. Whadda you say about that?"

I remind myself: subtlety and restraint.

"I don't believe he's a credible witness."

Lee: "How would he get that information?"

"I believe that's obvious." 

I restrained myself from adding "at least to everyone except you."

Lee: "Whadda ya mean obvious?"

What the hell!

"You really don't get it, do you? They fed him the information. They spoon fed it to him, bit by bit. They didn't just meet with him once and hear his story. They met with him over and  over, at least four times that Webb would admit to.

"Webb only has to hear the story from Willingham once, and tell the story to the guard just once, but he has to tell it to the prosecutors four times? Of course not. He tells them a story, they go back and compare notes, and they come back a few days later. 'Did he say how he set the fire? Did he say anything about spreading lighter fluid all over?' And then Webb, who knows as well as any other snitch how the game is played, says something smart, like 'Uh, yeah, what you said. He used lighter fluid.' 

"They go away and come back a couple of weeks later. 'What about the little girl? Did he say he moved her from the bedroom or did he just leave her there with the other two?' To which Webb answers, "Uh, he left her with the others.' 

"That's a disappointment to the prosecutors of course, but they've run into this before. It's easy to fix. They just ask 'Are you sure?' 

"Webb knows those are the code words for 'try again', so he tries again. 'I mean, he said he moved one of them to another room. That's what he said.' 

"And those little meetings keep happening over and over until Webb is telling the story that the prosecutors want to hear. Then they give him a wink and a nod and say 'All we want is for you to tell the truth. We can't promise you anything, understand.' And Johnny Webb, professional snitch, winks at them and says 'I understand.' 

"Now they could have recorded every single one of their interviews with Johnny Webb, and they could have played every one of them for us during the trial. But they chose not to, and I'll tell you what. If you can lay your hands on any one of those recordings, I'll be pleased and honored to write out a check for five thousand dollars, right here on the spot. You don't even have to put any money up." 

Ward: "Now I'd really like some of that action." 

"Give it a rest, Ward. None of you are going to find any of those tapes because they never made them. The last thing they want is for anyone to see what goes on in those little secret meetings. They just want you to believe their snitch when he gets on the stand and talks about how awful he thought it was and how terrible he felt and how he just had to do the right thing. 

"The problem is they talked to him so many times he can't keep his story straight. So when he gets up there on the stand and they ask him if Willingham said anything about moving the little girl, he says "No. I don't believe he said that.' 

"It's just like my little make-believe story of what happened in those secret meetings. He gives them the wrong answer, except this time he's on the witness stand, right in front of us. While that's a little embarrassing for the prosecutors, they never flinch. They just hand him a piece of paper and ask if he now remembers it differently. Supposedly the paper is a statement that he signed, but it may just as well read '15 years is a long time.' 

"Suddenly, and if by magic, Johnny Webb changes his testimony right there on the spot and tells us that Cameron Todd Willingham said he moved one the girls from the children's bedroom to somewhere else. So I'm sitting there in the jury box, and I sure as hell know Johnny Webb is lying his ass off. The interesting question to me now is: how did he learn that the girls were in different locations? 

"Then I give myself a metaphorical slap on the forehead and realize the information has been fed to him, and I have a pretty good guess on who did the feeding. Then I decide, right then and there, that if the prosecution is going to begin their case with this lying, son-of-a-bitch snitch, I'm going to be damn suspicious of everything they try to feed me. 

The room seems to be in shock. I realize I had exhibited neither subtlety or restraint, so I try to cover it. 

"I guess what I'm saying is that I'm pleased that we're all discussing this case together." 

Yeah, That'll do.

And I lit into Johnny Webb a third time by end of the book:

Time for another intervention. It has to do with Johnny Webb, so I'll have to try extra hard to restrain myself. 

"It's a lot worse than that. A lot worse." 

Marti: "Go ahead." 

"Certainly. I want to talk again about the inside knowledge that Johnny Webb seems to have. If he didn't get it from Willingham, I'm guessing he got it from the prosecutors during one or more of their many get-togethers." 

Boisterous Lee: "You don't know that! You can't know that. Nobody can know that. Now you're not only claiming he lied, your claiming they set him up to lie." 

He just can't help himself. 

"That's exactly what I'm saying. Are you just now figuring that out? Sure they asked him to lie. They fed him the information. I already talked about how he screwed up on the stand and couldn't remember his lines about Willingham moving Amber from one room to the other. He said he didn't recall Willingham saying that, they showed him the mystery paper, and he changed his tune. 

"But that's not the only thing he forgot about. He forgot he was supposed to cover their ass in the off chance that one of the jurors wasn't completely brain dead and figured out Amber started the fire. So Assistant Prosecutor John Jackson asks him if Willingham said anything about trying to shift the blame to someone else. And what did Johnny Webb say?" 

There's a pregnant pause. 

"He said, and I believe this is an exact quote, he said 'I'm not sure.' 

"Well that answer didn't cut any mustard with John Jackson, so Jackson asks him specifically whether Willingham told him anything he did with the children. 

"Martin is objecting left and right that Jackson is leading the witness, because that is exactly what Jackson is doing. He's leading the witness by a fifteen-year-long nose. Judge Douglas overrules the objection, either because he couldn't recognize a leading question if it bit him on the ass, or because he just assumes Willingham is some kind of dirt bag who deserves whatever he gets. 

"And while all that objecting and overruling is taking place, Mr. Webb realizes he just screwed the pooch. So he changes his story again, and he tells Jackson just what he wanted to hear, just as they rehearsed it. Johnny Webb says, with a straight face mind you, that Willingham told him he burned one of the kids to make it look like they were playing with fire, that he wadded up some paper, set it on fire, and burned his own child on the arm and on the forehead with that burning piece of paper. 

"But it gets worse, even worse, because it's not just some low-life snitch behaving badly, it's the people who are supposed to protect us that are bending and twisting the truth so that they can see one of us strapped to a gurney and shot full of chemicals. 

"They are so afraid one of us will figure out that Amber started that fire, and thereby blow their precious case to kingdom come, that not only do they feed the story to a low-life snitch, they involve a well-trained, well-paid professional in the charade. Jackson asks him if he could determine whether the burns on Amber's body had been caused by super-heated air or an open flame. The doctor said he couldn't tell. 

"So that's it. Case closed. We're supposed to figure Webb's story might actually be true. Marti said it exactly right. They want us to convict on the lack of evidence. 

"But if Jackson really wanted to get to the bottom of it, if he wanted us to understand what really might not have happened, he could have asked somewhat more penetrating questions. For example: 'Doctor, did you find any wounds consistent with a flaming, wadded-up piece of paper applied directly to the victim's forehead?' 

"And I'm guess the good doctor would have said 'No.' 

"Then he could have asked, 'Doctor, could those generalized burns on the victim's face, neck, arms, legs, and one foot be caused by a flaming, wadded up piece of paper held close to her skin?' 

"And I'm guessing the doctor would have said 'No.' 

"But Jackson didn't ask those questions or anything like those questions because he didn't want us to believe that Amber might have started this fire. And just in case one of us turns out to be clever enough to figure out that she may have, we're supposed to remember that Willingham told upstanding citizen Johnny Webb that he framed one of his little girls for the crime. 

"So you tell me: who's the one more likely being framed here? Amber or her father?"

I included an extensive notes section at the end of the book. Regarding Johnny Webb I wrote:

In the movie, there was no snitch. During the trial of Cameron Todd Willingham, the snitch was the lead witness for the prosecution. The jurors in that trial explained they paid little attention to Johnny Webb. That is unfortunate. Johnny Webb's testimony provided evidence that Willingham's prosecutors were willing to fabricate evidence against him to win their case. 

Less than five years after the jury voted to put Cameron Todd Willingham to death, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles released Johnny Webb early. He had served only five years of his fifteen year sentence. His criminal history suggested he would likely return to a life of crime. At one time or another, he had been convicted of robbery, burglary, forgery, auto-theft, and distribution of drugs. He claimed his criminal behavior stemmed from drugs and alcohol. There was no real reason to believe he would be better able to control his addictions if released early than he had been prior to his most recent arrest. 

Prosecutor John Jackson, however, spoke in favor of Johnny Webb's early release. Though Jackson considered Webb to be "an unreliable kind of guy," Jackson nevertheless troubled himself to argue in favor of Webb's early release. "I asked them to cut him loose early." 

According to Jackson, his endorsement has nothing to do with the assistance Johnny Webb had provided him during the Willingham trial. Of course not. Jackson explained that he was merely concerned about Webb's safety and well being. He claimed that Johnny Webb had been targeted by the Aryan Brotherhood. 

A few months after his early release, Johnny Webb was caught with cocaine and returned to prison. 

In March of 2000, eight years to the month after his conviction of robbing a woman for her purse, Johnny Webb sent John Jackson a Motion to Recant Testimony. It read in part: "Mr. Willingham is innocent of all charges." 

John Jackson apparently failed to inform Cameron Todd Willingham's defense team of this surprising turn of events. Instead, John Jackson may have explained the consequences of perjury to Johnny Webb. If the recantation were true, Jackson may have pointed out, Webb's testimony during the trial of Cameron Todd Willingham would have been false. 

Soon thereafter and without explanation, Johnny Webb recanted his recantation. 

During an interview after his release, Johnny Webb effectively recanted the recantation of his recantation. Speaking of Willingham, he said: "It's very possible I misunderstood what he said. … My memory is in bits and pieces. I was on a lot of medication at the time." 

He then added: "The statue of limitations has run out on perjury, hasn't it?"

Now finally for the "Told Ya!" From the 27 Feb 2014 of The New York Times, emphasis and emendation mine:

What has changed is that investigators for the Innocence Project have discovered a curt handwritten note in Mr. Webb’s file in the district attorney’s office in Corsicana. The current district attorney, R. Lowell Thompson, made the files available to the Innocence Project lawyers, and in late November one of the lawyers, Bryce Benjet, received a box of photocopies. 

As he worked through the stack of papers, he saw a note scrawled on the inside of the district attorney’s file folder stating that Mr. Webb’s charges were to be listed as robbery in the second degree, not the heavier first-degree robbery charge he had originally been convicted on, “based on coop in Willingham.” 

Mr. Benjet recalled a “rush of excitement,” he said, and thought, “This is what we’ve been looking for.” 

The Innocence Project submitted the note, which is not dated or signed, in a new filing to the board asking that it be included as part of its September request for a pardon. 

Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, called the note a “smoking pistol” in the case. 

“We’re reaching out to the principals to see if there is an innocent explanation for this,” he said. “I don’t see one.” 

Judge Jackson [the man who prosecuted Willingham and claimed he never made a deal] did not respond to several requests for comment.

Color me shocked that such a thing might happen in our criminal justice system.

Shore: The Possible Unacknowledged Victims

 << Previous Post in this Series: Residence -- Miscellaneous

In this series, I am considering the possible unacknowledged victims of Anthony Allen Shore. I am limiting the discussion to attacks prior to 16 January 1999 when Shore raped Amy Lynch and nearly strangled her to death. Since Shore tended to attack young women that he first encountered near his residence, I have presented several posts regarding his residences. In this post I will give brief summaries of possible unacknowledged victims of Anthony Allen Shore. I will not discuss herein his four acknowledged murders and his one acknowledged rape. I will simply list the names of those five victims and the dates of their attacks, providing a link for detailed information.

 Laura Tremblay -- 1986 09 26  (yyyy mm dd)
 Carmen Estrada -- 1992 05 16
 Selma Janske -- 1993 10 19  (pseudonym)
 Diana Robellar -- 1994 08 07
 Dana Sanchez -- 1995 07 06

As I will describe in the next post, the timing of these killings indicate that list above is incomplete. When I include the cases summarized below, the time increments between attacks follow the Random Walk pattern associated with attacks of a serial killer. In other words, the timing of the attacks inform us that Shore has not acknowledged all his victims. The circumstances, locations, and dates of the following attacks suggest that Shore may have been the attacker in each case.

Shandra Charles: 16-year-old, black, female murdered on 26 September 1986; stabbed in the throat; murdered two years to the date after the murder of Laura Tremblay, while Shore was living at the Tallulah Lane residence; murdered in a dark, vacant field located 1.6 miles from where Shore was living. Preston Hughes III was wrongfully convicted of and executed for this murder. I wrote 100,000 words on that case in this blog. I prepared an application for writ of habeas corpus for him, as well as a motion for DNA testing, as well as a civil suit complaint against the city of Houston. I sat by helplessly as he was wrongfully executed by the people and State of Texas. I learned of Anthony Allen Shore while trying to figure out who in fact murdered Shandra Charles. A summary and directory of my blog posts for that case are here. The habeas is here. The motion for DNA testing is here. The civil suit is here.

Marcell Taylor: 3-year-old, black, male, murdered on 26 September 1986; stabbed in the throat; murdered during the same attack that ended the life of Shandra Charles. Other information and links are same as above.

Monalisa Espinosa: 16-year-old, Hispanic female; disappeared from 10120 Irvington Boulevard in North Houston on 5 February 1989. That would place the point of her disappearance 22 miles from Shore's Tallulah Lane residence. Monalisa's body was discovered on 9 December 1991 in a wooded area behind an auto shop located at 5350 Addicks Satsuma Road in Houston. That is 10 miles from the Tallulah Lane residence. The body was decomposed: a cause of death could not be determined. Monalisa used drugs and was sexually active. She engaged in prostitution to support her habit. Shore was known to hire prostitutes, having been arrested for paying an undercover cop for sex. I wonder if Shore took Monalisa to one of his miscellaneous residences, had sex with her there, kept her hostage there, strangled her there, and disposed of her body. She was found 8 miles from the apartment complex at 10438 Hammerly Blvd, where Shore had rented an apartment. I learned of Monalisa's case from Victor Jackson, who married Monalisa's mother (Alice) sometime after Monalisa's disappearance. Victor nonetheless refers to Monalisa as his step-daughter. Victor continues to search for the person who killed his step-daughter. I continue to search for the person who killed Shandra Charles and Marcell Taylor. We independently determined Anthony Allen Shore to be the likely culprit. We now work together to learn more about Shore and his possible unacknowledged victims.

Jane Doe Westheimer: a young, white or Hispanic female; unidentified body found at 5433 Westheimer Road in Houston on 29 December 1989; around 5' 3" tall; around 160 pounds; black hair, 20" long; brown eyes; small half-moon scar below right knee; wearing black corduroy pants, a white pullover shirt, black shoes, white panties, white bra, and black lace-up shoes. The body was found 9 miles from the Tallulah Lane residence, where Shore was probably living at the time. It is 9 miles also from the 10000 Hammerly Blvd. apartment complex where Shore rented an apartment. Several months before this victim was found, Shore rented yet another apartment within the complex at 10000 Hammerly Blvd. It is not certain he was renting two apartments at the complex at the same time, but it seems as if he might have been.

Stephanie Beuhler: 18-year-old, white, female. last seen on 8 September 1990. Her car was found one half mile from her home near the corner of Westheimer and Beltway 8. It had a flat tire. Police suspect that she attempt to walk back to her house but never arrived. Her car was located 4 miles from Shore's Tallulah Lane residence, where he was probably living at the time of Stephanie's disappearance. Her car was also less than 7 miles from the apartment complexes on Hammerly Blvd. Sometime between the discovery of Jane Doe Westheimer and the disappearance of Stephanie Beuhler, Shore rented yet another apartment within the complex at 10000 Hammerly Blvd. Shore rented one house and three different apartments during that period, either sequentially or concurrently.

Trellis Sykes: 16-year-old, black, female; strangled manually on the morning of 13 May 1994 while taking a shortcut across an empty field (Shandra Charles was also black, and was also murdered in a empty field.) Trellis was 6 foot tall and athletic. She played for the Worthing High School basketball, volleyball, and track teams. In addition to being strangled, she was beaten about the head and face. The field was located near 3900 Redbud. That is 18 miles from Shore's 18th Street residence, where he was living at the time. It is less than 7 miles from the apartment complex at 6363 West Airport Blvd., where Shore had lived sometime previously.

Erica Ann Garcia: 14-year-old, Hispanic, female; strangled with her own underwear; found inside the boarded-up and vacant Alief General Hospital. She had been sexually assaulted. The abandoned hospital was located at 11101 Bellaire, just a mile from the Dimension nightclub where she had visited the night before with friends. She told her friends that someone was going to pick her up. The hospital was 18 miles from Shore's 18th Street residence, where he was living at the time. It is only 5 miles from Shore's previous residence on Tallulah Lane. Erica's attack is similar to Shore's acknowledged killing of Diana Robellar. Diana was sexually assaulted, strangled, then dumped behind a large, abandoned building.

Melissa Trotter: 19-year-old, white, female; strangled with one leg of a pair of pantyhose; discovered in the Sam Houston National Forest on 2 January 1999. According to the medical examiner, she had been dead for 25 days. According to 7 distinguished forensic medical experts, she had been dead less than one week. Since she had disappeared on 8 December 1998, it appears as if she had been held hostage for some time before she was strangled, just as several other of the unacknowledged victims may have been held hostage. Larry Swearingen was convicted of Melissa's murder, and Texas has tried to execute him several times for the crime, being thwarted each time by successful appeals based on new forensic evidence. This is another case about which I have written a substantial amount. For my explanation of why Larry Swearingen is The Most Innocent Man on Death Row, see my multi-part series beginning here. To understand why I believe Melissa may have been another victim of Anthony Allen Shore, look here.

Amy Lynch: Amy Shore was Shore's second wife, 14 years his junior. The two began living together while Amy was still in high school. On or sometime before the date of Melissa Trotter's murder, Shore came home with blood on his shirt. Two weeks after Melissa's murder, Shore choked Amy nearly to death, and had sex with her when he thought she was dead. She filed for divorce the next day that the court was open for business. For more details, see the post just mentioned, here.

In the next post, I will begin using a temporal analysis to provide evidence that these victims were all victims of Anthony Allen Shore.

Shore: Residence -- Miscellaneous

<< Previous Post in this Series: Residence -- 18th Street

In this series, I am considering the possible unacknowledged victims of Anthony Allen Shore. I am limiting the discussion to attacks prior to 16 January 1999 when Shore raped Amy Lynch and strangled her nearly to death. Since Shore tended to attack young women that he first encountered near his residence, I have presented one post for each of the four residences that I believe were Shore's primary residences. Those four residences are.

An apartment on Renwick Drive west of downtown Houston.

An apartment in the Atrium Apartments complex near the Gulf Freeway and Hobby Airport.

A house, probably owned by a friend, on Tallulah Lane well west of downtown Houston.

A house, rented, on 18th Street, slightly northwest of downtown Houston.

Public records for the time period of interest show that Anthony Allen Shore and/or his first wife (Gina Worley Shore) resided at multiple other addresses. The beginning and end dates of the stays at these residents overlap one another as well as the dates for the primary residences. It's seemingly impossible to envision how Shore might have simply moved sequentially from one residence to the next. It seems instead that Anthony and/or Gina Shore were maintaining multiple residences. I have formed several hypotheses for the significance of the multiple residences, but my hypotheses are not well-formed or substantiated. I'll therefore leave it to you to devise your own.

In this post, I'll simply provide the addresses of the miscellaneous residences (without the specific apartment number), then provide a map showing all of Shore's addresses in comparison to his victims, both his acknowledged victims and the others I suspect of him.

I list the miscellaneous addresses in the order of earliest-to-latest occupation date.

10438 Hammerly Blvd, Houston 77043
10438 Hammerly Blvd, Houston 77043 (same apartment complex, different apartment)

10000 Hammerly Blvd, Houston 77080

6363 West Airport Blvd, Houston 77035

The four "primary" residences and the four "miscellaneous" residences combine for a total of eight different residences for Anthony Allen Shore after his return to Houston (sometime before April of 1981) until the time he raped and strangled (nearly to death) his live-in girlfriend Amy Lynch (in January 1999).

I now present the map showing the eight possible residences (yellow house icons) of Anthony Allen Shore and the fourteen attacks (red balloon icons) for which he may have been responsible. Click to enlarge.

There are only seven residence icons because two residences were in the same apartment complex. There are only thirteen attack icons because two people were murdered in the same attack at the same location.

Anthony Allen Shore has acknowledged five of the attacks. In the next post in this series, hopefully next before the end of next weekend, I'll summarize the cases of the nine other individuals who may have been attacked by Anthony Allen Shore.