July 14, 2022 • 50 mins
On May 31, 1985, Julie Bonds McCrory was found beaten to death in her home in Andalusia, Alabama. Julie’s husband, Charles McCrory, quickly became the main suspect. Forensic Dentist, Dr. Richard Souviron, testified that an alleged bite mark on Julie’s body was made by Charles. Regardless of Charles’ alibi and another similar crime committed by a more compelling suspect, the prosecution built their case around Charles and sentenced him to life in prison. Years later, Dr Souviron recanted his testimony.
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https://innocenceproject.org/charles-mccrory-innocent-incarcerated-35-years-in-alabama/#:~:text=In%201985%2C%20Innocence%20Project%20and,Julie%20Bonds%20in%20Andalusia%2C%20Alabama.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
In nineteen eighty five, Charles and Julie mcquarie were having
marital trouble and seeing a counselor while amicably sharing both
the care of their three year old boy, Chad, and
occasionally the same bed. On May five, Charles left Julie's
house around ten fifteen pm and made a phone call
in the pre cell phone era. This corroborated that he
had arrived at his apartment the following morning. Charles's parents
(00:25):
were expecting Julie to drop off Chad and began to
worry when she did not show. After several unanswered calls
from Charles and his parents, Charles's father was the first
to discover Julie's body just inside her front door. It
was determined that she had died of blunt force head
trauma sometime in the early hours of the morning. A
red bandanna was found in the body, and a clump
(00:46):
of hair as were found in her hand that did
not belong to her or Charles. Besides conflicting and dubious
reports of a car that looked like Charles's at Julie's
house that morning, no evidence connected him to the crime.
Despite a similar instant it within a month committed by
a man known to wear red bandanas. The police maintained
their focus on Charles. Since the district attorney was reluctant
(01:08):
to charge Charles, Julie's family hired a private prosecutor team
who sought the help of notorious junk science dentist Dick Superan.
Superan testified that some of Julie's wounds were not only
bite marks, but that they were made by Charles at
the time of death, effectively sealing his fate. Suparan has
since recanted that testimony, including the assertion that the wounds
(01:30):
were even bite marks at all. Yet, somehow Charles is
still serving a life sentence in an Alabama prison. This
is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to ronal conviction. You know,
(01:53):
when listeners of our show asked me, what are some
of the most disturbing cases I've ever heard of? I
will list off Vincent Simmons, Richard Gloss of pedro Rena. So,
I mean, there's so many others I could mention, But
before we even start today, I think Charles McQuary has
to be added to that horrifying list. Joining us. Besides
(02:15):
the man himself, we have his attorneys, first from the
Southern Center for Human Rights, Mark Loud and Brown, Mark,
welcome to Wrongful Conviction. Thank you very much for having
and a voice you'll all recognize, I'm sure. Chris Fabric Kent.
Chris is the strategic Litigation director at the Innocence Project,
the author of the fantastic book You've heard me talk
(02:36):
about it before, Junk science and the American criminal justice system.
And he's also a frequent guest on the show and
was featured on our Junk Science podcast hosted by Josh
Dubin where he talked about bite mark analysis, which was
the pivotal thing in this case. And so Chris, welcome
back to Wrongful Conviction. It's great to be back. Jason,
thanks for having us and now calling in from an
(02:59):
Alabama prison where he's been locked up for I hate
that I even have to say this for over thirty
seven years. Charles mccruary, thank you for joining us. Well,
thank you app Well, we're happy to have you here.
Despite the reason why you're here, or more to the
point where you are as you call us today, and
(03:19):
that reason is bite mark analysis, which is a proven
junk science. It fails that not only reliably concluding who
made a bite mark, but also a reliably identifying wounds
as bite marks at all, especially because these wounds are
found on skin and the medium itself is elastic and
usually changing over time as it heals or decomposes or grows.
(03:44):
And then some Charlotte comes into court claiming that they
can match a suspects teeth to usually a photograph of
an injury, and they say they can do this to
the exclusion of every other set of teeth on the planet.
It's just in bananas. But it's only recently that lawyers
like Chris and Mark been battling these junk science experts
(04:05):
in post conviction because at the time of conviction, everybody
bought into these lies. And Chris, I've been quoting your
book left and right, And of course the book I'm
talking about is junk science and the American criminal justice system.
But what are some of the other common threads between
these wilful convictions that are based on junk science and
(04:26):
bite mark analysis in particular. But I've seen in all
of these cases, I feel like I've been involved in
all the bite mark cases over the last ten years,
is that I have never seen an effective cross examination
of a bite mark expert at trial, and all the
transcripts that I've read, I've never even seen the question,
you know, even the most basic one. You know, you
(04:46):
think about when an injury is inflicted, usually during the
crime itself, nobody was there, Nobody knows the position that
the perpetrator or the victim was in at that time.
But we know one thing is that it's on a
mortuary slab where the photographs were taken of this injury.
And we know that the injury has changed, often quite
(05:07):
dramatically as a result of decomposition of the body, and
they continue decomposition, So you may match quote unquote a
bite mark quote unquote one day and not the next.
You might be one hour and not the next hour, right,
because skin is changing all the time, particularly with the
deceased victim. So you never see that type of cross examination,
(05:28):
and you never see like, how is it that you
know that this is a bite mark? What is it
about being a dentist that makes you an expert in
diagnosing an injury as a bite mark? Right with the
proximity to teeth? Nonsense? Right, So you never see those
and I think that just as a general matter on
junk science, convictions. Broadly speaking, is that it's almost impossible
to cross examine your way out of a wrongful conviction
(05:50):
with junk science. Once the judge lets it in, you
got two strikes against you anyway, you know, And I'm
not sure Johnny cochrane could have saved Charles McQuary once
Dick Subran gets on the stand and you know, spouts
these invented credentials, right the American Board of Forensic go
to intology. It's That's what I wrote about this in
the book. It's just an invented organization. Never tested any
(06:10):
of their members on their abilities to actually match bike
marks or even diagnose them. They just gave each other
board certifications to bring into court and wild jurors in
places like in Louise, Alabama, and they led to a
lot of wrongful convictions, including at least three others by
Dick sub Ran. And we'll go further into how this
(06:30):
junk science applies to Charles's case in just a bit,
but first I'd like to go back to before all
of this happened. Tell us Charles about your life growing up.
Were you born in Alabama? I was born actually in
the Panhandle of Florida, and UH lived in Mobile a
couple of years when I was in first or second grade,
But anyway, we moved to in Blujia at the beginning
of my third grade year and grew up there and
(06:52):
graduated in Blujia High School. Went to UH Junior College
there at Earley and Wallace for a year or so,
and then I transferred to McArthur Tech College and Op,
which is just fifteen miles or so away, and finished
a associate degree in computer science. A few months later.
They started working for the junior college that I had
been a student at previously, and was set up and
(07:14):
then later ran the computer center there. They didn't really
have one when I started there. You know, this was
back in seventy nine, so we're in a very early
period as far as computers were concerned. And worked there
for five years and then had gone over to the
Power Company album Electric co Op it was called in
this now Power South. So pretty much if our living,
that's all I'd really ever done full time was computer work.
(07:38):
So okay, you were working in the field that has
become central to all that we do, so plenty of
potential in your life. And I understand you were also
a volunteer e MT. The rescue Squad as it was
called in Andalusia, Alabama. Yeah, the rescue Squad was all
volunteer organizations, about thirty men that provided damns and rescue
for that area. You know, reward didn't work to say
(08:00):
the least. Yes, saving wise kind of the freaking opposite
of being a murderer, right, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And
of course during this rise in your career, both professional
and in the volunteer space, you had married your high
school sweetheart, Julie Bonds, had a great job fulfilling community
service and had your son Chat in two, through which
(08:25):
you and Julie shared a bond that could not be
broken even if your marriage was going through a rough patch,
and it was, you know, the little back is just
a lot of poor decisions on probably both of our part,
but certainly on mine, and we kind of grew apart,
I guess, you know. I said we had We had
a good relationship, very very amicable to say the least.
(08:46):
We were together pretty much every day. Even during the
time that we later separated and I had an apartment
across town. We were still very involved, of course with
our sons. As well as mutual friends and things like that.
And we were together constantly even though we were we
were separated and trying to work out you know, merrity
issues and so forth. Yeah, and it seems that things
(09:06):
may have worked out in your marriage had all of
this tragic series of events not come to pass. The
night before Julie died, you two had actually spent the
evening together, correct that night, I've been over there. We
had actually been to see a marriage counsel, right, had
had an affair before that for the for several months
prior to that, and then had ended it, although I
(09:26):
was you know, still talking to the little lady for
a while there, and and anyway, June and I were
trying to work through those things, and so we had
actually had an interview with the marriage counselor that night,
if and then we were actually met back over the
house later and stayed at the house for I guess
a couple of hours or so, left around tim fIF
ten thirty, somewhere in that range. And this affair that
(09:47):
you mentioned, the woman you're referring to is Gloria Wiggins, who,
at least from trial testimony, said that you had called
her on the phone from your apartment. I remember this
is the era before cell phone, so this is decriborative
evidence that you were actually at the apartment. You know,
I had that phone call. I'm at the apartment when
I made the call, and then you know, I just
go to sleep, and then the next morning, I get
(10:09):
up at whatever time, six thirty six, had to be
at work at seven thirty. Okay. So this is the
morning of May thirty first, and you were having what
you thought it was going to be a normal day,
and as per usual, your parents were waiting for Julie
to drop off chat at their house on her way
to work right usually around eightish, and so there was
(10:30):
times when she'd bring me breakfast her you know whatever.
And so that morning I had called her about that
and picking up something on her way, and then get
an answer and turned around call right back. I figured
I'd just died the wrong number something. Still didn't get answer,
and even then it didn't particularly along. You know, you
just think, Okay, she left for work a little earlier something.
I really thought a little of it, and then um,
(10:52):
later on it was I believe after a I called
my mom's house and she hadn't got there yet. And
my mom, of course I want something like that, and
she just starts worrying. So, you know, I called the
house a couple more times and getting no answer, and
so eventually I called her a workplace. They had not
seen her either, and about that time, you know, my
mom was like, so he dad is going to check
on said okay, okay, I'll go there, and just doing
(11:14):
you're kind of like we're leaving, you know, fears so speaking.
So I leave work, go towards the house, and many
of the rescue squad members we had two way radios
in our personal vehicles, and so as I'm going to
the house, I hear him on the radio call about
an enamous going to beside Charles mccroary's house or near
Charles mccroary's house. And even then, you know, my thought
(11:36):
was maybe a neighbor in trouble or somebody outside, or
I call and tell them, you know, look, I'm on
my way over there anyway. And when I get there,
my dad's outside and he's just you know, he's upset,
and he said, something's wrong with Julie, you know where
he issue. So he just kind of like going towards
the house and I said, where's Chaid, And he said,
I've I've already got Chad. He's at the neighbors. He
(11:57):
had he had already been in the house and found
or the front door was a jar when he got there.
So your father was the first to see this horrible
crime scene before whisking away your three year old boy,
who was thankfully unharmed. It's the only silver lining in
this whole thing. And as you mentioned, he had taken
him to the neighbors. Julie, on the other hand, was
(12:17):
not so fortunate. She had been beaten to death. Rigor
mortis typically sets in about three to six hours after death,
and by the time investigators arrived on scene around nine am,
rigor mortis had not yet set in, so the murder
must have occurred sometime between three and six am. Well,
you hadn't seen her since about ten fifteen pm, despite
(12:38):
conflicting and dubious reports of a car that looked like
yours having been allegedly seen at the house during those hours.
And we're going to get to that in a bit,
but first I want to talk about the crime scene itself. Now,
this was a terribly violent struggle. A stocking had been
tied to her right wrist. Haro was founded her left
(13:00):
hand hair that must have logically belonged to the person
with whom she was fighting for her very life. There
was also a red bandanna found near the body. Now
the fire poker from the fireplace appeared to be missing
and was never found again. From the autopsy, it appears
that she was struck four times in the back of
the head, with one wound to the side of the head,
(13:21):
blunt trauma to the left part of the skull, eleven
puncture wounds to the left breast, fractures on both mandibles,
bruises on her face and ribs, and two bruises that
may or may not have been bite marks on her
right shoulder. So this is your wife, the mother of
your son, and now you've come upon this unbelievably bloody
and brutal crime scene. When you when you walk in
(13:43):
and see that, you just mean, you don't know, you
just don't know what to do. I mean, you don't
know what to think. Is so shocking that there's really
no standard response for it, you know, after it had
saying that Julie was dead, and then the riscue score
got there right after that and of course, you know,
I knew all the guys on the squad. They were
all friends of mine, and they were, you know, wanted
(14:06):
to see. At that point, the police had not arrived
or anything. And and so after we do that, I
come out and I go across the street to Chad,
and I remember, I remember holding him and just really
the thought to come to mind is, my God, what
has happening? Remember him kind of pushing back a little bit.
I guess I was squeezing him too tight or something.
(14:27):
But and then in the coming days, you know, he
would ask far and which try to answer him as
best you can. This is an incredibly brutal crime, and
(14:53):
the perpetrator undoubtedly would have been very bloody. And there
was only alleged to have been about four hours past
between the last time that Mr McQuary he saw the
victim in this case and when he was first questioned
by police at that time. They turned over all of
his clothes, They started the inter of his car, they
searched his house. They found no trace of blood on anything.
(15:16):
Then they examined the hairs that were clutched in the
victim's hand. Those hairs were not from the victim and
they were not from Charles mcquarie. In other words, they
were from a third person. We still don't know whose
hairs those were. There was also a red bandanna found
near the victim's body. There was a construction worker that
(15:39):
worked next floor to the victim's house who was known
to wear a red bandanna. There was an open window
on that side of the house, the same side as
the construction site, that had a fresh bootprint outside that window.
The police took an impression of that bootprint, but then
never compared it to anything or anybody, and never dusted
(15:59):
the window sill that was open for fingerprints. But we
know that a man who worked at that construction site
named Ainsworth was known to wear a red bandanna. And
we know that a few weeks after this murder, Key
committed a home invasion rape and served twenty years in
prison for that crime, was never investigated as a suspect
in this case. Then we also know that Mr McCary
(16:22):
had been entirely cooperative with the prosecution from beginning to end,
had voluntarily supplied samples of his hair, his DNA, his body,
all of which was exculpatory, nothing to point to Mr
McQuary's guilt. The only physical evidence was concocted, and we'll
(16:45):
talk about the bite marks in a second. The only
other evidence was that neighbor across the street who claimed
that around four o'clock in the mornings, nineteen year old
kid decides to get up and check on the garden,
but he wasn't sure of the date, and he isn't
sure of the truck, but he thought that on the
date in question, that he had seen a truck similar
(17:08):
to Mr mcquarie's. And despite this extremely dubious teenage middle
of the night gardening scenario, we also found out later
that he and later his grandfather not only exaggerated their
vantage point, but also several other neighbors with much more
credible recollections reported only Julie's car in the driveway on
the date and time and question. That's the only evidence
(17:31):
that they had apart from the spike mark and the
bite mark. Even their trial expert, Dick Suberan years later
admitted that he wasn't even sure if it even was
a bite mark at all. But even back in other
than the refuted recollection of this teenage middle of the
night gardener and his grandfather all other evidence pointed away
(17:53):
from Charles, but tunnel vision had already set in, and
some say that it came back to something Charles had
said at the crime scene and what later the prosecutor
tried to use against him at trial. It was when
at the scene, looking at the body with the other
rescue squad guys and police and seeing the gash on
the back of her head, Charles said something to the
(18:13):
effect that do you think it was the licks to
her head? Is that what killed her? So they just
totally ignored the clump of hair in her hand, the
red bandanna, any alternative suspects, the lack of blood on
anything that Charles owned, and started turning their focus on
him anyway, on Charles, do you remember when that happened?
(18:35):
I do know there was a time when the fielding
is almost like the atmosphere changed. You could just fill
it in the air. And in fact, I believe later
Saturay I told my mom that looked, you know that
they're they're turning this on me, They're looking at me.
And then it was on Saturday night. The mayor of
Andalusia was a man named Chalmers Bryant. He was a
long time family friend of ours. He was a diggon
(18:56):
in our church and I had known Challenge a long time.
He was also one of the charld members of the
Rescue Score, so I knew him through that. He called
me and said, look, I want to talk to you.
So we talked on Saturday night for a good while
and Chelmers told me then he said, you know they
think you did this, he told me, said, I don't
believe that, he said, But I'm the mayor. I can't
get involved in this, you know, I've got to let
(19:17):
the police do their work. Wow. So, okay, if you're
at home listening to this insane story right now and thinking, well, okay,
but you're somehow safe, You're somehow insulated from the possibility
of being the victim of a wrongful conviction. Are you
friends with the mayor? Because even a friendship like that
(19:40):
couldn't save Charles, which shows us, in very stark terms
that none of us are safe. So, just after Julie's
funeral on that Monday, they brought you in for a
more accusatory interview that ended up in your arrest. Did
they try to extract a confession as we saw off
and see? Oh? Yes? Act as we were walking over
(20:01):
to the county jails when one of them said, you know,
we can help you on this. You've got a long
record of community service, you come from a good family.
You know, all these kinds of positive things about in
my life that they seem to soon forget. But they say,
you know, we can do a deal here where you know,
we'll talk to the d A and see if we can't.
You know, I think we can do ten years that
time manslaughter without a weapon. I believe it was called
(20:22):
for like ten years is the max. And said, you
know you'd be home and two or three years for
Chet even gets in school. Good. You know you'd already
be home. So I'm not pleading guilty to something I
didn't do. And and that kind of ended that discussion.
And oddly enough, the Coving and County d A. Great
Elandier had no plans on indicting you none. The case
against you was just too weak. A false confession would
(20:44):
have definitely changed his tune. But you didn't crumble. This
is why Julie's family, on this bizarre Alabama law, was
able to bring in private prosecutors to do with Great
Elanier rightfully did not want to do he declined to
do it, Mark, do I have that right? That's right
from talking to folks in the community that he was,
(21:06):
at best lukewarm about the prospect of indicting Mr mccruary
and trying the case, as you would think he would be, because,
as you've pointed out, there was no evidence against Mr mccruary,
and the evidence that there was was exculpatory, right, And
so I believe it was Julie's uncle approached this father
son duo of Frank and Harvey Tippler, who were very
(21:30):
well known trial attorneys, and so he went out and
paid them to prosecute the case. And I think that's
the point at which this alleged bite mark sort of
as Chris said, it's concocted. There were a number of
puncture wounds on the victim's body. It was the Tipplers
(21:50):
who took this injury and decided that these were potentially
teeth marks, and it took this evidence to Dr Dick Subaran,
who rose to fame as one of the forensic odentologists.
Is to like to call themselves when they're in court,
it's just a fancy way of saying forensic dentist and
(22:11):
Subaran decides that these R and D teeth marks, but
he's very you know, noncommittal about associating these teeth marks
with Mr McCrory. Then the case gets closer and closer
to trial. And you see this in wrongful conviction after
wrongful conviction, particularly as it relates to junk science. And
this is why junk science is so convenient, because it
(22:32):
really can say whatever you needed to say, and it
wasn't saying enough before trial. But by the time it
got to trial, Dick Subran was saying that it was
Mr mccrary's teeth to exclusion for everybody else on the
planet's teeth that made this particular bite mark. So according
to this letter from Suberan to the Tipplers that was
hidden from the defensive trial, Suberan shared his own doubts
(22:53):
about making that match in court, but then he later
did it anyway a trial. Now how he squared that
circle for himself, we don't know. But the Tipplers now
had their, you know, the piece of evidence that they
needed to win, not to get justice, but to win
for trial. And this is just five months later in October.
And remember Charles was doing well in life, so he
(23:13):
was able to hire a real solid team Bubba, Marcel
and Larigos said, who were experienced defense laws. They just
couldn't overcome what was eventually the recanted false testimony of
Dick Subran. So it's a short trial, a couple of days.
What is frustrating is that the opening and closing statements
are not transcribed, so we only have the testimony of
(23:36):
the witnesses. And like you mentioned, it really comes down
to the bite mark right after suv run. But in
addition to that, the Tipplers presented the marriage counselor as
well as the woman with whom Charles had had an affair,
Gloria Wiggins, to solidify their narrative that marital trouble was
a potential catalyst or motive. But oddly enough, this woman,
Gloria Wiggins, actually corroborated that Charles was back in his
(23:59):
apartment around him thirty pm, not at Julie's. They also
brought up this comment from Charles at the crime scene
about the quote licks to the back of her head.
Now again he was making an observation and she had
a massive gash to the back of her head. So far,
this is not a compelling case at all. Then they
(24:20):
brought out the nineteen year old with the crazy midnight
gardening story, Willie Meeks, who had been staying with his grandfather,
Hubert Walker, Julie's neighbor, who also testified. There's this teenager
kitty corner from Julie's home who claims that he was
out at four thirty five o'clock in the morning checking
(24:41):
on his grandfather's garden. It may have been the morning
of May one, he's not really sure. And he sees
this car that looks similar to the one that Mr
mccruary drives parked at Julie's house, right, so whatever that
is worth um. Interestingly, his grandfather there, who lives in
that home, also testifies and claims that he is also
(25:06):
up in the morning and also says that he sees
a similar car, but he says that the car has
parked somewhere else, in a different location. So, like you
have these two stories that I think the prosecution probably
hoped would corroborate each other, which actually didn't corroborate each other,
probably because they were inaccurate. You know. Meek said that
he saw the truck there and and my attorney had
(25:28):
him draw a sketch, and that's part of the trial records.
There's actually a hand drawn sketch of where the truck
was parked. And I think it's the point a lot
of people just didn't catch in the jury at the time.
The house has a double driveway in it, and Julie's
car would always would always parked it, you know, closer
to the front door. My Bronco was hit beside it,
but there was plenty of room in the driveway for
both vehicles. So when I got there, my dad's car
(25:52):
was already there, park beside Julie's car in the dry
so I just pulled up behind him over on the
grass to the left side of the driveway. And then
Danny leaves to go tell mother what had happened. And
so when he leaves, that leaves an opening in the driveway.
And so that's exactly how Meeks drew it on his diagram,
(26:12):
and to me is obviously what Meeks saying, that's what
he'd remember seeing that morning after the police got there
and after all this had happened, And there's an aerial
photo of the scene taken by the police that shows that.
So it seems like maybe this kid was interviewed in
the aftermath about seeing Charles's car a few days after
the fact, and his recollection was a bit fuzzy. Perhaps
(26:33):
his memory was enhanced by that aerial photo. Will never know. Perhaps,
as we've seen in other cases, you just had a
kid who for whatever reason, wanted to insert himself into
an investigation to help the police. However, what we found
out just before the evidentially hearing that Chris and Mark
recently tag team was that an investigator working for Chris
(26:56):
checked out the properties and get this, the vantage point
that Willie Meeks and his grandfather had. They checked it out,
and what they found is that that vantage point was
totally misrepresented to the jury. The jury had been told
that they were right across the street, but if you
were standing where they said they were standing and looking
(27:17):
at Julie's house, you would not have been able to
see the driveway in the way that they claimed. This
kid who testified he was checking the garden as the
father of a teenager. It struck me when I read
the transcript, was like, who does that? Who gets up?
But like, you know, I think that you know, normally
when you would have a testimony like that at a
(27:38):
trial that you would have some sort of explanation. Yeah,
it was part of my job, like to go out
and you know, make sure that the garden was still
there at four thirty in the morning, when it's still
basically dark out. The defense called two other neighbors, one
of whom had an actual explanation that was credible for
why they were out on the morning of May thirty one.
That is, they were getting in their car to go
(27:59):
to work. These were, you know, and it was an
adult who had had a job. These two witnesses said
there was no car there, meeting that description. So this midnight,
pre dawned gardening teenager and his grandfather, who remember, whose
accounts did not corroborate each other, were refuted by two
other neighbors with credible recollections of that morning who said
(28:19):
that both said that Charles's car was not there. And in
in addition to this weak evidence, the Tipplers presented no confessions, eyewitnesses,
forensic evidence because there wasn't any. The hairs found in
Julie's hand were not a match for Julie or Charles.
Charles's clothes, his car, fingernails, his apartment, no blood evidence
at all was found and that get this prior to trial.
(28:41):
At one point they even claimed that they had found
blood on his tennis shoes, but when it came back
from the lab it turned out to be Coca cola. Now,
the defense presented Charles, who, of course reiterated the same
statement that he had been making since day one, recounting
his every step and maintaining his innocence. The defense tried
to ing up the evidence of an intruder coming through
the open rear window, the bootprint, and the red bandanna,
(29:04):
as well as the construction worker Ainsworth who worked behind
Julie's house and committed a rape and home invasion just
a month after Julie's murder, but none of it gained
enough traction to overcome the testimony of Dick Subaron. Dr
Richard subern fresh off his testimony convicting Ted Bundy. Dr
Suberon is a charismatic guy, one of the sort of
(29:26):
godfathers of forensic ode antology. Right. He's got resume full
of credentials, at least he did in at the time
of this trial. Fancy doctor flies up to Andalus al
Obama from Miami and wow's the jury with this quote
unquote science. And you know, I think the private prosecutors,
(29:46):
the Tipplers, knew how important he was because they saved
him till the end of their case against Mr McQuary,
And right at the end of his testimony, they do
this series of questions, Is this a bite mark? Yes?
Did Mr mccruary make the light mark? Yes? Did he
do it during the murder? Essentially yes? And if you're
a juror, that's hard to overcome. Um. You know, yeah,
(30:09):
there's tons of all their exaltatory information out there, obviously,
but you just had this fancy doctor who flew up
from Miami saying this guy bait her while he was
killing her. You know. It's usually at this point that
I asked if you were still holding out hope that
the jury got it right, but it doesn't sound like
anyone did. Can you take us back to that moment,
that awful moment when the jury came back in, well,
(30:33):
when when they walked in, I mean, I could have
told you the verdict before they read. I just jurors
that were smiling and looking at us and so forth.
But when they came back in that they were not
looking our way. And I knew then, you know that
it was over when Jorge Bowen, you know, wound guilt.
I told him then that I didn't kill her. I
(30:54):
knew he wasn't gonna make any real difference, but there's
something I felt I had to say. I had to
tell him personally as it listen, you know, I wanted
to say in front of everybody, I did not do this.
And we were surprised that the judge allowed me to
remain out on bond until citizen and that was just
don't heard of. And I've often thought that maybe that
was a little bit of how he felt about the case,
because you just don't get convicted of murder and stay
(31:16):
out on bonding. And I went out for ten more days.
Prison is is a is a horrible place. You don't
want to be there, and you don't want your family there,
to say the least, there's a real adjustment. Is not
(31:39):
the word for it is culture shock. I mean, it's
just not something I ever dreamed in the worst nightmare,
whatever happened. And so to get sentenced to life sentences,
you know, it takes a while to adjust to that.
There's no way I ever want to even imagine, much
un less live through it. So I mean, seeing what
(32:01):
Dick S. Hoover did, did you have any hope that
this could ever be undone? Uh, well, we we've of
course did a direct appeal to criminal core appears like
he normally would, and that was shot down, although there
were some comments in their opinion that you know, they
agreed that Suberan's testimony had substantially changed from the time
(32:21):
he wrote the letter until he actually came in the
courtroom and that should have been revealed to us under
discovery lass. But the judge said that Marsil my attorney,
did not object at the proper time to preserve it
for appellate review. And it's like, I couldn't believe that
your attorney doesn't object even though they think there's an
issue here. And then of course we didn't. We didn't
(32:43):
know until after I was at Kilby for a while
at a hearing on a motion for a new trial.
The d a greatly near at the time great and
made the comment about Harvey went down there one day,
and that's when we first learned that Harvey Tippler, the
young the son of the Tipplers, had act that gone
down to Carl Gave with Florida, met with Suberan from
(33:03):
the time of the letter until the time of the trial.
So now it's like, Okay, now we're seeing some understanding.
Why did this testimony changed like it did? Wow, So
now things begin to appear a bit clearer. You know,
another thing happened after this case. The Tippler is younger
member of their duo went to federal prison serving life
(33:24):
sentence for solicitation and murder as an aside. Right, So
these are the guys that prosecuted an innocent man. So
it appears Harvey Tippler may have been willing to fudge
evidence to ruin an innocent man's life, which makes his
solicitation of murder conviction not that surprising, let's face it.
So what did the Alabama Supreme Court do with this information?
(33:47):
Supreme courts, they really just didn't do anything with it,
and then it just set for a while in I'm
not sure the date here, in the early two thousand's
or someone the two thousands that the cases involved in
Michael and the dental mess over there in Mississippi were
two different men were sentis to death row. Yeah, Levon
Brooks and Kennedy Brewer. It was like two thousand seven
(34:10):
two eight Michael West that was basically exposed as being
a fixer for hire. If you didn't have the evidence
you needed to convict, he basically just show up and
match any teeth to almost any injury, right exactly. That
case became public and we got wind of it and
Newsweek magazine, I believe it was. And so after that
(34:32):
we filed a Rule thirty two trying to attack the
dental evidence, but at that point we didn't have near
the resources. Any serious ammunition didn't come up until I
got a letter from Mark earlier. The Innocence Project of
New York had asked if we would be willing to
provide records they were doing, i think a task force
or studying dental cases around the country. So we provided
all the records. You know, when we in strategic litigation
(34:55):
at the Innocence Project decided to focus on rankmark comparison.
That evidence we identified as well as we possibly could
every bite mark conviction in the history of time, and
we focused on death penalty cases initially, and then we started,
you know, litigating all of these cases because we know
that any conviction that rests on junct science is inherently
(35:18):
unreliable and because Mark and I have litigated many post
convicsion cases previously, including another wrongful conviction of Sheila Denton
in Georgia that was also bite Mark case. We reached
out to Mark, you know, because Mark and the Southern
Center for Human Rights Liddy Gates and Georgia and in Alabama,
and referred Mr McClory's case to him. I read the
(35:39):
transcript and I thought, yep, we're gonna take this. You know,
Mr McClory's lead trial councils deceased now, but the junior
trial attorney at the time is not. And you know,
he was practicing in 's still practicing. So that's a
career of something like thirty seven thirty nine, forty years.
When I walked into his office after I learned of
this case a couple of years ago, he had Mr
(36:00):
McCrory's file sitting behind his desk and he said, that's
where I keep my file because this is that case,
this is the case that haunts me. One of the
first things we did was we've talked with Chris and
he said, wow, let's just see if Dr Suberan what
he thinks today. And so we asked him, you know,
I'm not very popular with the dentists, as you can imagine,
(36:21):
particularly after publishing my book, But I do have respect
for forensic analysts of any discipline that are willing to
review their prior case work and to recant when they
know they've been wrong, when they know that their opinion
may have led to the conviction of an innocent person.
And I think that with notable exceptions that we've talked
(36:44):
about um on your show before, Jason, but most forensic
analysts are trying to do the right thing. They're not
trying to frame innocent people for crimes that they didn't commit.
And you know, when you have the influence of you know,
prosecutors saying that you know, this guy is a guilty
murderer and we need your opinion to help put them away,
(37:04):
you know, many friends ag analysts believe that they're doing
the right thing by giving the opinion to the prosecution
that they want. Dick s Uberan went back, he reviewed
his testimony, he reviewed the evidence at issue, and he
entirely recanted his opinion. Once that happened, Mark and I
decided to co counsel this case together, and we filed
a petition for a new trial untainted by false, misleading
(37:27):
evidence that was presented, nonetheless is so called scientific evidence
to Mr mccorary's jury. So that's what we want. We
filed this motion for a new trial in the case,
and we were granted an evidentiary hearing, and in the
lead up to this evidentry hearing, the day before, we
got an offer from the prosecution for time served, which
(37:50):
means that all Mr McCory has to do is accept
responsibility for this murder, and he goes home that day.
That day, goes back to his son, to his sisters,
to his life after thirty seven years in prison. He
did not hesitate for one second in rejecting it. I
think I'd plead guilty almost anything to get out of
(38:12):
prison after being in for that long. And to me,
that was as much evidence as anything else that Mr
mcquarie is an instant man. And the fact that it
was offered in the first place, and the fact that
they let him go home after he was sentenced, but
before he went to prison, all of it adds up
to an even more seering indicting of the whole system.
Someone asked me recently, did you entertain it? And I
(38:34):
didn't know I didn't entertain him. I'm not about to
plead guilty to a murderer that I did not do
for many reasons. I mean, obviously I want to get
out of prison, but we want to know what happened
and who did it and so forth, and it seems
to be that we're the only ones chasing those answers.
The police have long since given up on trying to
help that. It seemed like in many ways they've tried
(38:54):
to cover their tracks on their uh in epiness. Back
when all this occurred, I mean the early and he's
investigator Blade Garrett destroys and burns several things that could
have been used for DNA. That's when DNA was just
becoming known and just becoming popular, and yeah, he burns
these things. Now, we would love to do DNA testing
(39:15):
of the fingernail scrapings that were taken from Julie right
despite no scratches im Mr McQuary, the hair that was
found clutched in her head, the red bandanna like the
one that Ainsworth War. We would love to test all
of that for DNA, but one of the police officers
burnt it all and so it's unavailable for testing. Who
(39:35):
burns evidence. This is insane, like, at least lie lie
to us, right, lie it was tell us that you
lost it, but you burned it. It just speaks to
the fact that all the people in positions of power
really must know that he's innocent. It's just astonishing. So
we proceed to the hearing, and in addition to the
(39:56):
recantation that was done in an Affidavid and you know, notably,
the prosecution did not call pick Subran to try to
rehabilitate him or to try to salve at his conviction. Instead,
we put on the evidence, and we put on to
forensic dentists Adam Freeman and Cynthia Brazowski, both of whom
are to extent that anybody can be well qualified in
(40:18):
this field. They're both very well qualified, and we've studied it,
and they both opined that this was not a bite mark.
They looked at the other injuries that had not been
called teeth marks and pointed out that these things that
were called teeth marks and these other things that weren't
appeared to be the same instrument that created all these
injuries which were not teeth right. And then additionally and importantly,
(40:40):
we had an investigator go out to the scene a
couple of days before the hearing and take a look
at the vantage point that the kid across the street
and his grandfather claimed to have seen Mr McQuary's truck
or something that looked like his truck, maybe on the
day of the murder, maybe not. And the description of
(41:02):
the vantage point that they gave to Mr mccary's jury,
it was described as being directly across the street. But
if you were standing where they said they were standing,
and you were looking towards the victim's house, you would
not have been able to see the driveway in the
way that they claimed. And when we put our investigator
(41:22):
on the stand, we showed evidence from the nineteenes that
showed that the houses were in the same position, that
there were no new structures, and that they were the
same when we did the hearing last year. So even
this one shred of weak evidence was further undermined at
this hearing. To sort of close out the rest of
(41:43):
the hearing, you know, we we felt like we did it.
That's the only evidence. It's not there anymore, right, And
so what does the prosecution do. The prosecution has an
investigator from their office read the direct testimony of some
of the witnesses who testify it in so this guy
is just literally reading the transcript. He's not reading the
(42:05):
cross examinations, he's not reading any of the defense witnesses.
He's just reading certain prosecution witnesses from which seems to
me a concession that they have no response to anything
that we've we've said, and then enclosing argument, get up
and create an entirely new theory of guilt. Right. Liliana
Sigoura and Jordan Smith did an article for The Intercept
(42:27):
on this case, and they called the closing argument a
fever dream. It was just this story that the new
prosecutor made up, completely inconsistent with the theory that the
prosecution had at the time. And so we're sitting there like,
what is going on? What? What is this? This makes
no sense? This is a totally new theory. And so
(42:48):
a few days after the hearing, an investor, Guiter and
I went down to the prison where Harvey Tippler was
serving his prison since he was agreeable he knew the
case well. He has since passed away. He spoke with
us for quite a while about his memory of the
case because I mentioned at the outset. We didn't have
the opening statement and the closing argument, and so we
(43:08):
didn't know what the prosecution argued in closing. So we
went to the source and we said Mr Tippler, what
did you say in closing? And he said, oh, is
the bite mark? That was all we had, you know,
And so we submitted a notice to the court saying
we would like to let the court know that Mr Tippler,
the lawyer who tried the case, disagrees with the new tact,
(43:28):
essentially that the prosecution has taken and the court didn't
allow us to add that to the record, so they
had no response to the new evidence and instead made
up this story. And the real kicker was when they
said that the jury was free to decide for itself
(43:50):
that it was Mr McQuary's bite mark. So, notwithstanding three
dentists who said it's not a bite mark, let alone
mr mcquarie's, the execution said, well, but the jury could
have decided that it was, and therefore his conviction should stand. So,
to put it differently, lagers are more capable of engaging
in junk science than the junk scientists themselves, right, and
(44:14):
so that the idea is is that you don't even
need an expert witness. We can just put this junk
science in front of the jury and that would be
good enough for government work. You know what, did you
bring in somebody like Sue or on with these big
fantasy pictures and all that, and they're gonna believe what
he says. And the idea that somehow they can take
that out and the jury would have reached the same
(44:34):
verdict is ridiculous. It's unfucking real. And then on the
first of March, you guys filed the motion to reconsider
the order. In it, you've described all of the other
White Mark cases that resulted in overturned convictions, and this
motion began. I think this is so powerful just with
the names of thirty five people who combined probably served
(44:58):
over a thousand years in prison. If I to guess,
and we know some of these names because they've been
on the show, and I mean we can read them
one at a time, I feel like we should go in,
like each take turns reading the names. Keith Harward, Robert Stinson,
Gerard Richardson, Willie Jackson, Roy Brown, Ray Crone, Calvin Washington,
(45:18):
Joe Williams, James O'Donnell, Levon Brooks, Kennedy Brewer, Benny Starks,
Michael Christini, Jeffrey Mouldwan, Anthony Kiko, Harold Hill, Dan Young Jr.
Greg will Hoote, Crystal Wimer, Stephen Cheney, William Richards, Alfred Swinton,
Sherwood Brown, John Cunso, Gary Sazari, Sheila d Robert du Bois,
(45:41):
Eddie Lee, Howard, Gilbert Pool, and of course the man
we're talking about today, Charles mccruary. And each of these
people was wrongfully convicted due to bite mark evidence, and
there are countless other names that could be added to
this list that we haven't been able to help yet.
So with that, Charles is in your thirty seven of
this slow moving train wreck. You know, I want to
(46:04):
find out from you guys, is there any steps that
people can take? Is their petition? Is there someone? What
can people do? We are appealing the case. We've partnered
with some Alabama lawyers who are are helping us do
the best we can to try to convince the appellate
court that the trial court will cut it wrong. And
so that's the next step. And I think just the
more people who know about the case, the better we
(46:26):
share the podcast the articles to those listeners in Alabama too,
right into your lawmakers and question you know why Charles
McQuary and instant man is still in prison, and this
is correctible. Charles McQuary can still live the rest of
his life and be reunited with his family. So I
hope that listeners will help spread the word, help put
(46:50):
pressure on the decision makers to do the right thing.
We really want people in Alabama to know that this
is happening in their backyard and this is not a
right or a isssue. This is a human rights issue.
There should be no politics in freeing the innocent, so
please do get involved. We'll put links in the bio
to action steps you can take. Again, Chris Fabric can't
(47:12):
go get the book junk Science. Some of these stories
are just too crazy to be believed. But you'll understand
the issue so much better. And it's a great reading
reason like a novel. And now we turn to the
part of our show that I know everyone looks forward
to like I do, which is called closing arguments. And Chris,
you know how it works. Um, Charles was going to
(47:34):
tell you how it works right now, and Mark Um,
so basically I thank you closing arguments. I'm going to
turn my microphone off and leave it on for each
of you guys to share any thoughts that you have,
anything we may have left out, or anything else you
want to say. So we'll go Chris, then over you Mark,
and then of course Mr McQuary, Charles, please close it out.
(47:58):
I like people to retain their skepticism and that it's
really important that we all serve on juries, that we
have skeptical jurors and that don't believe anything that somebody
tells you just because they're board certified or they're wearing
a white lab coat. I want to just read a
quote that I think is is important for people to
(48:19):
keep in mind. You know, Chris and I have mentioned
a few times that we represented a woman by the
name of of Sheila Denton in Georgia. It was a
bite mark case and in two thousand and twenty Miss
Denton was granted a new trial. This is down in Waycross, Georgia,
conservative part of of Georgia, and the judge chief judge wrote, quote,
proven unreliable scientific evidence should never serve as the basis
(48:44):
of a conviction and should be dealt with by the
courts if and when it is found. And like Dr Suvaran,
who we applaud for admitting his mistake, like this judge
who wrote this, who applaud for being courageous enough to
overturn a murder conviction because it was based on proven,
(49:06):
unreliable scientific evidence. I just hope that there are more
judges and prosecutors out there who have the courage that
this judge did to see that and to enforce that. Well. Again,
I appreciate uh your interest in the case, and I
just say that I think I wrote this recently. There
should not be a finality in a case where an
innocent person is in prison, and I think what some
(49:27):
courts want to do is close the door. This is
not the only case we know of thirty something exoneries
just from dental evidence alone, and how many others are
out there so juries. While they try to make I think,
good decisions, they do not make perfect decisions, and there
should be a real process that for people seriously look
at this when people claim innocence, and I appreciate groups
(49:49):
like yourself and others that are working on that. Thank
you for listening to raw full conviction. I'd like to
thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Claverne, and Kevin Wardis,
with research by Lila Robinson. The music in this production
was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
(50:12):
Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at
wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
all three platforms, you can also follow me on both
TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason flom Raleful Conviction is
the production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with
(50:32):
Signal Company Number one
In nineteen eighty five, Charles and Julie mcquarie were having
marital trouble and seeing a counselor while amicably sharing both
the care of their three year old boy, Chad, and
occasionally the same bed. On May five, Charles left Julie's
house around ten fifteen pm and made a phone call
in the pre cell phone era. This corroborated that he
had arrived at his apartment the following morning. Charles's parents
(00:25):
were expecting Julie to drop off Chad and began to
worry when she did not show. After several unanswered calls
from Charles and his parents, Charles's father was the first
to discover Julie's body just inside her front door. It
was determined that she had died of blunt force head
trauma sometime in the early hours of the morning. A
red bandanna was found in the body, and a clump
(00:46):
of hair as were found in her hand that did
not belong to her or Charles. Besides conflicting and dubious
reports of a car that looked like Charles's at Julie's
house that morning, no evidence connected him to the crime.
Despite a similar instant it within a month committed by
a man known to wear red bandanas. The police maintained
their focus on Charles. Since the district attorney was reluctant
(01:08):
to charge Charles, Julie's family hired a private prosecutor team
who sought the help of notorious junk science dentist Dick Superan.
Superan testified that some of Julie's wounds were not only
bite marks, but that they were made by Charles at
the time of death, effectively sealing his fate. Suparan has
since recanted that testimony, including the assertion that the wounds
(01:30):
were even bite marks at all. Yet, somehow Charles is
still serving a life sentence in an Alabama prison. This
is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to ronal conviction. You know,
(01:53):
when listeners of our show asked me, what are some
of the most disturbing cases I've ever heard of? I
will list off Vincent Simmons, Richard Gloss of pedro Rena. So,
I mean, there's so many others I could mention, But
before we even start today, I think Charles McQuary has
to be added to that horrifying list. Joining us. Besides
(02:15):
the man himself, we have his attorneys, first from the
Southern Center for Human Rights, Mark Loud and Brown, Mark,
welcome to Wrongful Conviction. Thank you very much for having
and a voice you'll all recognize, I'm sure. Chris Fabric Kent.
Chris is the strategic Litigation director at the Innocence Project,
the author of the fantastic book You've heard me talk
(02:36):
about it before, Junk science and the American criminal justice system.
And he's also a frequent guest on the show and
was featured on our Junk Science podcast hosted by Josh
Dubin where he talked about bite mark analysis, which was
the pivotal thing in this case. And so Chris, welcome
back to Wrongful Conviction. It's great to be back. Jason,
thanks for having us and now calling in from an
(02:59):
Alabama prison where he's been locked up for I hate
that I even have to say this for over thirty
seven years. Charles mccruary, thank you for joining us. Well,
thank you app Well, we're happy to have you here.
Despite the reason why you're here, or more to the
point where you are as you call us today, and
(03:19):
that reason is bite mark analysis, which is a proven
junk science. It fails that not only reliably concluding who
made a bite mark, but also a reliably identifying wounds
as bite marks at all, especially because these wounds are
found on skin and the medium itself is elastic and
usually changing over time as it heals or decomposes or grows.
(03:44):
And then some Charlotte comes into court claiming that they
can match a suspects teeth to usually a photograph of
an injury, and they say they can do this to
the exclusion of every other set of teeth on the planet.
It's just in bananas. But it's only recently that lawyers
like Chris and Mark been battling these junk science experts
(04:05):
in post conviction because at the time of conviction, everybody
bought into these lies. And Chris, I've been quoting your
book left and right, And of course the book I'm
talking about is junk science and the American criminal justice system.
But what are some of the other common threads between
these wilful convictions that are based on junk science and
(04:26):
bite mark analysis in particular. But I've seen in all
of these cases, I feel like I've been involved in
all the bite mark cases over the last ten years,
is that I have never seen an effective cross examination
of a bite mark expert at trial, and all the
transcripts that I've read, I've never even seen the question,
you know, even the most basic one. You know, you
(04:46):
think about when an injury is inflicted, usually during the
crime itself, nobody was there, Nobody knows the position that
the perpetrator or the victim was in at that time.
But we know one thing is that it's on a
mortuary slab where the photographs were taken of this injury.
And we know that the injury has changed, often quite
(05:07):
dramatically as a result of decomposition of the body, and
they continue decomposition, So you may match quote unquote a
bite mark quote unquote one day and not the next.
You might be one hour and not the next hour, right,
because skin is changing all the time, particularly with the
deceased victim. So you never see that type of cross examination,
(05:28):
and you never see like, how is it that you
know that this is a bite mark? What is it
about being a dentist that makes you an expert in
diagnosing an injury as a bite mark? Right with the
proximity to teeth? Nonsense? Right, So you never see those
and I think that just as a general matter on
junk science, convictions. Broadly speaking, is that it's almost impossible
to cross examine your way out of a wrongful conviction
(05:50):
with junk science. Once the judge lets it in, you
got two strikes against you anyway, you know, And I'm
not sure Johnny cochrane could have saved Charles McQuary once
Dick Subran gets on the stand and you know, spouts
these invented credentials, right the American Board of Forensic go
to intology. It's That's what I wrote about this in
the book. It's just an invented organization. Never tested any
(06:10):
of their members on their abilities to actually match bike
marks or even diagnose them. They just gave each other
board certifications to bring into court and wild jurors in
places like in Louise, Alabama, and they led to a
lot of wrongful convictions, including at least three others by
Dick sub Ran. And we'll go further into how this
(06:30):
junk science applies to Charles's case in just a bit,
but first I'd like to go back to before all
of this happened. Tell us Charles about your life growing up.
Were you born in Alabama? I was born actually in
the Panhandle of Florida, and UH lived in Mobile a
couple of years when I was in first or second grade,
But anyway, we moved to in Blujia at the beginning
of my third grade year and grew up there and
(06:52):
graduated in Blujia High School. Went to UH Junior College
there at Earley and Wallace for a year or so,
and then I transferred to McArthur Tech College and Op,
which is just fifteen miles or so away, and finished
a associate degree in computer science. A few months later.
They started working for the junior college that I had
been a student at previously, and was set up and
(07:14):
then later ran the computer center there. They didn't really
have one when I started there. You know, this was
back in seventy nine, so we're in a very early
period as far as computers were concerned. And worked there
for five years and then had gone over to the
Power Company album Electric co Op it was called in
this now Power South. So pretty much if our living,
that's all I'd really ever done full time was computer work.
(07:38):
So okay, you were working in the field that has
become central to all that we do, so plenty of
potential in your life. And I understand you were also
a volunteer e MT. The rescue Squad as it was
called in Andalusia, Alabama. Yeah, the rescue Squad was all
volunteer organizations, about thirty men that provided damns and rescue
for that area. You know, reward didn't work to say
(08:00):
the least. Yes, saving wise kind of the freaking opposite
of being a murderer, right, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And
of course during this rise in your career, both professional
and in the volunteer space, you had married your high
school sweetheart, Julie Bonds, had a great job fulfilling community
service and had your son Chat in two, through which
(08:25):
you and Julie shared a bond that could not be
broken even if your marriage was going through a rough patch,
and it was, you know, the little back is just
a lot of poor decisions on probably both of our part,
but certainly on mine, and we kind of grew apart,
I guess, you know. I said we had We had
a good relationship, very very amicable to say the least.
(08:46):
We were together pretty much every day. Even during the
time that we later separated and I had an apartment
across town. We were still very involved, of course with
our sons. As well as mutual friends and things like that.
And we were together constantly even though we were we
were separated and trying to work out you know, merrity
issues and so forth. Yeah, and it seems that things
(09:06):
may have worked out in your marriage had all of
this tragic series of events not come to pass. The
night before Julie died, you two had actually spent the
evening together, correct that night, I've been over there. We
had actually been to see a marriage counsel, right, had
had an affair before that for the for several months
prior to that, and then had ended it, although I
(09:26):
was you know, still talking to the little lady for
a while there, and and anyway, June and I were
trying to work through those things, and so we had
actually had an interview with the marriage counselor that night,
if and then we were actually met back over the
house later and stayed at the house for I guess
a couple of hours or so, left around tim fIF
ten thirty, somewhere in that range. And this affair that
(09:47):
you mentioned, the woman you're referring to is Gloria Wiggins, who,
at least from trial testimony, said that you had called
her on the phone from your apartment. I remember this
is the era before cell phone, so this is decriborative
evidence that you were actually at the apartment. You know,
I had that phone call. I'm at the apartment when
I made the call, and then you know, I just
go to sleep, and then the next morning, I get
(10:09):
up at whatever time, six thirty six, had to be
at work at seven thirty. Okay. So this is the
morning of May thirty first, and you were having what
you thought it was going to be a normal day,
and as per usual, your parents were waiting for Julie
to drop off chat at their house on her way
to work right usually around eightish, and so there was
(10:30):
times when she'd bring me breakfast her you know whatever.
And so that morning I had called her about that
and picking up something on her way, and then get
an answer and turned around call right back. I figured
I'd just died the wrong number something. Still didn't get answer,
and even then it didn't particularly along. You know, you
just think, Okay, she left for work a little earlier something.
I really thought a little of it, and then um,
(10:52):
later on it was I believe after a I called
my mom's house and she hadn't got there yet. And
my mom, of course I want something like that, and
she just starts worrying. So, you know, I called the
house a couple more times and getting no answer, and
so eventually I called her a workplace. They had not
seen her either, and about that time, you know, my
mom was like, so he dad is going to check
on said okay, okay, I'll go there, and just doing
(11:14):
you're kind of like we're leaving, you know, fears so speaking.
So I leave work, go towards the house, and many
of the rescue squad members we had two way radios
in our personal vehicles, and so as I'm going to
the house, I hear him on the radio call about
an enamous going to beside Charles mccroary's house or near
Charles mccroary's house. And even then, you know, my thought
(11:36):
was maybe a neighbor in trouble or somebody outside, or
I call and tell them, you know, look, I'm on
my way over there anyway. And when I get there,
my dad's outside and he's just you know, he's upset,
and he said, something's wrong with Julie, you know where
he issue. So he just kind of like going towards
the house and I said, where's Chaid, And he said,
I've I've already got Chad. He's at the neighbors. He
(11:57):
had he had already been in the house and found
or the front door was a jar when he got there.
So your father was the first to see this horrible
crime scene before whisking away your three year old boy,
who was thankfully unharmed. It's the only silver lining in
this whole thing. And as you mentioned, he had taken
him to the neighbors. Julie, on the other hand, was
(12:17):
not so fortunate. She had been beaten to death. Rigor
mortis typically sets in about three to six hours after death,
and by the time investigators arrived on scene around nine am,
rigor mortis had not yet set in, so the murder
must have occurred sometime between three and six am. Well,
you hadn't seen her since about ten fifteen pm, despite
(12:38):
conflicting and dubious reports of a car that looked like
yours having been allegedly seen at the house during those hours.
And we're going to get to that in a bit,
but first I want to talk about the crime scene itself. Now,
this was a terribly violent struggle. A stocking had been
tied to her right wrist. Haro was founded her left
(13:00):
hand hair that must have logically belonged to the person
with whom she was fighting for her very life. There
was also a red bandanna found near the body. Now
the fire poker from the fireplace appeared to be missing
and was never found again. From the autopsy, it appears
that she was struck four times in the back of
the head, with one wound to the side of the head,
(13:21):
blunt trauma to the left part of the skull, eleven
puncture wounds to the left breast, fractures on both mandibles,
bruises on her face and ribs, and two bruises that
may or may not have been bite marks on her
right shoulder. So this is your wife, the mother of
your son, and now you've come upon this unbelievably bloody
and brutal crime scene. When you when you walk in
(13:43):
and see that, you just mean, you don't know, you
just don't know what to do. I mean, you don't
know what to think. Is so shocking that there's really
no standard response for it, you know, after it had
saying that Julie was dead, and then the riscue score
got there right after that and of course, you know,
I knew all the guys on the squad. They were
all friends of mine, and they were, you know, wanted
(14:06):
to see. At that point, the police had not arrived
or anything. And and so after we do that, I
come out and I go across the street to Chad,
and I remember, I remember holding him and just really
the thought to come to mind is, my God, what
has happening? Remember him kind of pushing back a little bit.
I guess I was squeezing him too tight or something.
(14:27):
But and then in the coming days, you know, he
would ask far and which try to answer him as
best you can. This is an incredibly brutal crime, and
(14:53):
the perpetrator undoubtedly would have been very bloody. And there
was only alleged to have been about four hours past
between the last time that Mr McQuary he saw the
victim in this case and when he was first questioned
by police at that time. They turned over all of
his clothes, They started the inter of his car, they
searched his house. They found no trace of blood on anything.
(15:16):
Then they examined the hairs that were clutched in the
victim's hand. Those hairs were not from the victim and
they were not from Charles mcquarie. In other words, they
were from a third person. We still don't know whose
hairs those were. There was also a red bandanna found
near the victim's body. There was a construction worker that
(15:39):
worked next floor to the victim's house who was known
to wear a red bandanna. There was an open window
on that side of the house, the same side as
the construction site, that had a fresh bootprint outside that window.
The police took an impression of that bootprint, but then
never compared it to anything or anybody, and never dusted
(15:59):
the window sill that was open for fingerprints. But we
know that a man who worked at that construction site
named Ainsworth was known to wear a red bandanna. And
we know that a few weeks after this murder, Key
committed a home invasion rape and served twenty years in
prison for that crime, was never investigated as a suspect
in this case. Then we also know that Mr McCary
(16:22):
had been entirely cooperative with the prosecution from beginning to end,
had voluntarily supplied samples of his hair, his DNA, his body,
all of which was exculpatory, nothing to point to Mr
McQuary's guilt. The only physical evidence was concocted, and we'll
(16:45):
talk about the bite marks in a second. The only
other evidence was that neighbor across the street who claimed
that around four o'clock in the mornings, nineteen year old
kid decides to get up and check on the garden,
but he wasn't sure of the date, and he isn't
sure of the truck, but he thought that on the
date in question, that he had seen a truck similar
(17:08):
to Mr mcquarie's. And despite this extremely dubious teenage middle
of the night gardening scenario, we also found out later
that he and later his grandfather not only exaggerated their
vantage point, but also several other neighbors with much more
credible recollections reported only Julie's car in the driveway on
the date and time and question. That's the only evidence
(17:31):
that they had apart from the spike mark and the
bite mark. Even their trial expert, Dick Suberan years later
admitted that he wasn't even sure if it even was
a bite mark at all. But even back in other
than the refuted recollection of this teenage middle of the
night gardener and his grandfather all other evidence pointed away
(17:53):
from Charles, but tunnel vision had already set in, and
some say that it came back to something Charles had
said at the crime scene and what later the prosecutor
tried to use against him at trial. It was when
at the scene, looking at the body with the other
rescue squad guys and police and seeing the gash on
the back of her head, Charles said something to the
(18:13):
effect that do you think it was the licks to
her head? Is that what killed her? So they just
totally ignored the clump of hair in her hand, the
red bandanna, any alternative suspects, the lack of blood on
anything that Charles owned, and started turning their focus on
him anyway, on Charles, do you remember when that happened?
(18:35):
I do know there was a time when the fielding
is almost like the atmosphere changed. You could just fill
it in the air. And in fact, I believe later
Saturay I told my mom that looked, you know that
they're they're turning this on me, They're looking at me.
And then it was on Saturday night. The mayor of
Andalusia was a man named Chalmers Bryant. He was a
long time family friend of ours. He was a diggon
(18:56):
in our church and I had known Challenge a long time.
He was also one of the charld members of the
Rescue Score, so I knew him through that. He called
me and said, look, I want to talk to you.
So we talked on Saturday night for a good while
and Chelmers told me then he said, you know they
think you did this, he told me, said, I don't
believe that, he said, But I'm the mayor. I can't
get involved in this, you know, I've got to let
(19:17):
the police do their work. Wow. So, okay, if you're
at home listening to this insane story right now and thinking, well, okay,
but you're somehow safe, You're somehow insulated from the possibility
of being the victim of a wrongful conviction. Are you
friends with the mayor? Because even a friendship like that
(19:40):
couldn't save Charles, which shows us, in very stark terms
that none of us are safe. So, just after Julie's
funeral on that Monday, they brought you in for a
more accusatory interview that ended up in your arrest. Did
they try to extract a confession as we saw off
and see? Oh? Yes? Act as we were walking over
(20:01):
to the county jails when one of them said, you know,
we can help you on this. You've got a long
record of community service, you come from a good family.
You know, all these kinds of positive things about in
my life that they seem to soon forget. But they say,
you know, we can do a deal here where you know,
we'll talk to the d A and see if we can't.
You know, I think we can do ten years that
time manslaughter without a weapon. I believe it was called
(20:22):
for like ten years is the max. And said, you
know you'd be home and two or three years for
Chet even gets in school. Good. You know you'd already
be home. So I'm not pleading guilty to something I
didn't do. And and that kind of ended that discussion.
And oddly enough, the Coving and County d A. Great
Elandier had no plans on indicting you none. The case
against you was just too weak. A false confession would
(20:44):
have definitely changed his tune. But you didn't crumble. This
is why Julie's family, on this bizarre Alabama law, was
able to bring in private prosecutors to do with Great
Elanier rightfully did not want to do he declined to
do it, Mark, do I have that right? That's right
from talking to folks in the community that he was,
(21:06):
at best lukewarm about the prospect of indicting Mr mccruary
and trying the case, as you would think he would be, because,
as you've pointed out, there was no evidence against Mr mccruary,
and the evidence that there was was exculpatory, right, And
so I believe it was Julie's uncle approached this father
son duo of Frank and Harvey Tippler, who were very
(21:30):
well known trial attorneys, and so he went out and
paid them to prosecute the case. And I think that's
the point at which this alleged bite mark sort of
as Chris said, it's concocted. There were a number of
puncture wounds on the victim's body. It was the Tipplers
(21:50):
who took this injury and decided that these were potentially
teeth marks, and it took this evidence to Dr Dick Subaran,
who rose to fame as one of the forensic odentologists.
Is to like to call themselves when they're in court,
it's just a fancy way of saying forensic dentist and
(22:11):
Subaran decides that these R and D teeth marks, but
he's very you know, noncommittal about associating these teeth marks
with Mr McCrory. Then the case gets closer and closer
to trial. And you see this in wrongful conviction after
wrongful conviction, particularly as it relates to junk science. And
this is why junk science is so convenient, because it
(22:32):
really can say whatever you needed to say, and it
wasn't saying enough before trial. But by the time it
got to trial, Dick Subran was saying that it was
Mr mccrary's teeth to exclusion for everybody else on the
planet's teeth that made this particular bite mark. So according
to this letter from Suberan to the Tipplers that was
hidden from the defensive trial, Suberan shared his own doubts
(22:53):
about making that match in court, but then he later
did it anyway a trial. Now how he squared that
circle for himself, we don't know. But the Tipplers now
had their, you know, the piece of evidence that they
needed to win, not to get justice, but to win
for trial. And this is just five months later in October.
And remember Charles was doing well in life, so he
(23:13):
was able to hire a real solid team Bubba, Marcel
and Larigos said, who were experienced defense laws. They just
couldn't overcome what was eventually the recanted false testimony of
Dick Subran. So it's a short trial, a couple of days.
What is frustrating is that the opening and closing statements
are not transcribed, so we only have the testimony of
(23:36):
the witnesses. And like you mentioned, it really comes down
to the bite mark right after suv run. But in
addition to that, the Tipplers presented the marriage counselor as
well as the woman with whom Charles had had an affair,
Gloria Wiggins, to solidify their narrative that marital trouble was
a potential catalyst or motive. But oddly enough, this woman,
Gloria Wiggins, actually corroborated that Charles was back in his
(23:59):
apartment around him thirty pm, not at Julie's. They also
brought up this comment from Charles at the crime scene
about the quote licks to the back of her head.
Now again he was making an observation and she had
a massive gash to the back of her head. So far,
this is not a compelling case at all. Then they
(24:20):
brought out the nineteen year old with the crazy midnight
gardening story, Willie Meeks, who had been staying with his grandfather,
Hubert Walker, Julie's neighbor, who also testified. There's this teenager
kitty corner from Julie's home who claims that he was
out at four thirty five o'clock in the morning checking
(24:41):
on his grandfather's garden. It may have been the morning
of May one, he's not really sure. And he sees
this car that looks similar to the one that Mr
mccruary drives parked at Julie's house, right, so whatever that
is worth um. Interestingly, his grandfather there, who lives in
that home, also testifies and claims that he is also
(25:06):
up in the morning and also says that he sees
a similar car, but he says that the car has
parked somewhere else, in a different location. So, like you
have these two stories that I think the prosecution probably
hoped would corroborate each other, which actually didn't corroborate each other,
probably because they were inaccurate. You know. Meek said that
he saw the truck there and and my attorney had
(25:28):
him draw a sketch, and that's part of the trial records.
There's actually a hand drawn sketch of where the truck
was parked. And I think it's the point a lot
of people just didn't catch in the jury at the time.
The house has a double driveway in it, and Julie's
car would always would always parked it, you know, closer
to the front door. My Bronco was hit beside it,
but there was plenty of room in the driveway for
both vehicles. So when I got there, my dad's car
(25:52):
was already there, park beside Julie's car in the dry
so I just pulled up behind him over on the
grass to the left side of the driveway. And then
Danny leaves to go tell mother what had happened. And
so when he leaves, that leaves an opening in the driveway.
And so that's exactly how Meeks drew it on his diagram,
(26:12):
and to me is obviously what Meeks saying, that's what
he'd remember seeing that morning after the police got there
and after all this had happened, And there's an aerial
photo of the scene taken by the police that shows that.
So it seems like maybe this kid was interviewed in
the aftermath about seeing Charles's car a few days after
the fact, and his recollection was a bit fuzzy. Perhaps
(26:33):
his memory was enhanced by that aerial photo. Will never know. Perhaps,
as we've seen in other cases, you just had a
kid who for whatever reason, wanted to insert himself into
an investigation to help the police. However, what we found
out just before the evidentially hearing that Chris and Mark
recently tag team was that an investigator working for Chris
(26:56):
checked out the properties and get this, the vantage point
that Willie Meeks and his grandfather had. They checked it out,
and what they found is that that vantage point was
totally misrepresented to the jury. The jury had been told
that they were right across the street, but if you
were standing where they said they were standing and looking
(27:17):
at Julie's house, you would not have been able to
see the driveway in the way that they claimed. This
kid who testified he was checking the garden as the
father of a teenager. It struck me when I read
the transcript, was like, who does that? Who gets up?
But like, you know, I think that you know, normally
when you would have a testimony like that at a
(27:38):
trial that you would have some sort of explanation. Yeah,
it was part of my job, like to go out
and you know, make sure that the garden was still
there at four thirty in the morning, when it's still
basically dark out. The defense called two other neighbors, one
of whom had an actual explanation that was credible for
why they were out on the morning of May thirty one.
That is, they were getting in their car to go
(27:59):
to work. These were, you know, and it was an
adult who had had a job. These two witnesses said
there was no car there, meeting that description. So this midnight,
pre dawned gardening teenager and his grandfather, who remember, whose
accounts did not corroborate each other, were refuted by two
other neighbors with credible recollections of that morning who said
(28:19):
that both said that Charles's car was not there. And in
in addition to this weak evidence, the Tipplers presented no confessions, eyewitnesses,
forensic evidence because there wasn't any. The hairs found in
Julie's hand were not a match for Julie or Charles.
Charles's clothes, his car, fingernails, his apartment, no blood evidence
at all was found and that get this prior to trial.
(28:41):
At one point they even claimed that they had found
blood on his tennis shoes, but when it came back
from the lab it turned out to be Coca cola. Now,
the defense presented Charles, who, of course reiterated the same
statement that he had been making since day one, recounting
his every step and maintaining his innocence. The defense tried
to ing up the evidence of an intruder coming through
the open rear window, the bootprint, and the red bandanna,
(29:04):
as well as the construction worker Ainsworth who worked behind
Julie's house and committed a rape and home invasion just
a month after Julie's murder, but none of it gained
enough traction to overcome the testimony of Dick Subaron. Dr
Richard subern fresh off his testimony convicting Ted Bundy. Dr
Suberon is a charismatic guy, one of the sort of
(29:26):
godfathers of forensic ode antology. Right. He's got resume full
of credentials, at least he did in at the time
of this trial. Fancy doctor flies up to Andalus al
Obama from Miami and wow's the jury with this quote
unquote science. And you know, I think the private prosecutors,
(29:46):
the Tipplers, knew how important he was because they saved
him till the end of their case against Mr McQuary,
And right at the end of his testimony, they do
this series of questions, Is this a bite mark? Yes?
Did Mr mccruary make the light mark? Yes? Did he
do it during the murder? Essentially yes? And if you're
a juror, that's hard to overcome. Um. You know, yeah,
(30:09):
there's tons of all their exaltatory information out there, obviously,
but you just had this fancy doctor who flew up
from Miami saying this guy bait her while he was
killing her. You know. It's usually at this point that
I asked if you were still holding out hope that
the jury got it right, but it doesn't sound like
anyone did. Can you take us back to that moment,
that awful moment when the jury came back in, well,
(30:33):
when when they walked in, I mean, I could have
told you the verdict before they read. I just jurors
that were smiling and looking at us and so forth.
But when they came back in that they were not
looking our way. And I knew then, you know that
it was over when Jorge Bowen, you know, wound guilt.
I told him then that I didn't kill her. I
(30:54):
knew he wasn't gonna make any real difference, but there's
something I felt I had to say. I had to
tell him personally as it listen, you know, I wanted
to say in front of everybody, I did not do this.
And we were surprised that the judge allowed me to
remain out on bond until citizen and that was just
don't heard of. And I've often thought that maybe that
was a little bit of how he felt about the case,
because you just don't get convicted of murder and stay
(31:16):
out on bonding. And I went out for ten more days.
Prison is is a is a horrible place. You don't
want to be there, and you don't want your family there,
to say the least, there's a real adjustment. Is not
(31:39):
the word for it is culture shock. I mean, it's
just not something I ever dreamed in the worst nightmare,
whatever happened. And so to get sentenced to life sentences,
you know, it takes a while to adjust to that.
There's no way I ever want to even imagine, much
un less live through it. So I mean, seeing what
(32:01):
Dick S. Hoover did, did you have any hope that
this could ever be undone? Uh, well, we we've of
course did a direct appeal to criminal core appears like
he normally would, and that was shot down, although there
were some comments in their opinion that you know, they
agreed that Suberan's testimony had substantially changed from the time
(32:21):
he wrote the letter until he actually came in the
courtroom and that should have been revealed to us under
discovery lass. But the judge said that Marsil my attorney,
did not object at the proper time to preserve it
for appellate review. And it's like, I couldn't believe that
your attorney doesn't object even though they think there's an
issue here. And then of course we didn't. We didn't
(32:43):
know until after I was at Kilby for a while
at a hearing on a motion for a new trial.
The d a greatly near at the time great and
made the comment about Harvey went down there one day,
and that's when we first learned that Harvey Tippler, the
young the son of the Tipplers, had act that gone
down to Carl Gave with Florida, met with Suberan from
(33:03):
the time of the letter until the time of the trial.
So now it's like, Okay, now we're seeing some understanding.
Why did this testimony changed like it did? Wow, So
now things begin to appear a bit clearer. You know,
another thing happened after this case. The Tippler is younger
member of their duo went to federal prison serving life
(33:24):
sentence for solicitation and murder as an aside. Right, So
these are the guys that prosecuted an innocent man. So
it appears Harvey Tippler may have been willing to fudge
evidence to ruin an innocent man's life, which makes his
solicitation of murder conviction not that surprising, let's face it.
So what did the Alabama Supreme Court do with this information?
(33:47):
Supreme courts, they really just didn't do anything with it,
and then it just set for a while in I'm
not sure the date here, in the early two thousand's
or someone the two thousands that the cases involved in
Michael and the dental mess over there in Mississippi were
two different men were sentis to death row. Yeah, Levon
Brooks and Kennedy Brewer. It was like two thousand seven
(34:10):
two eight Michael West that was basically exposed as being
a fixer for hire. If you didn't have the evidence
you needed to convict, he basically just show up and
match any teeth to almost any injury, right exactly. That
case became public and we got wind of it and
Newsweek magazine, I believe it was. And so after that
(34:32):
we filed a Rule thirty two trying to attack the
dental evidence, but at that point we didn't have near
the resources. Any serious ammunition didn't come up until I
got a letter from Mark earlier. The Innocence Project of
New York had asked if we would be willing to
provide records they were doing, i think a task force
or studying dental cases around the country. So we provided
all the records. You know, when we in strategic litigation
(34:55):
at the Innocence Project decided to focus on rankmark comparison.
That evidence we identified as well as we possibly could
every bite mark conviction in the history of time, and
we focused on death penalty cases initially, and then we started,
you know, litigating all of these cases because we know
that any conviction that rests on junct science is inherently
(35:18):
unreliable and because Mark and I have litigated many post
convicsion cases previously, including another wrongful conviction of Sheila Denton
in Georgia that was also bite Mark case. We reached
out to Mark, you know, because Mark and the Southern
Center for Human Rights Liddy Gates and Georgia and in Alabama,
and referred Mr McClory's case to him. I read the
(35:39):
transcript and I thought, yep, we're gonna take this. You know,
Mr McClory's lead trial councils deceased now, but the junior
trial attorney at the time is not. And you know,
he was practicing in 's still practicing. So that's a
career of something like thirty seven thirty nine, forty years.
When I walked into his office after I learned of
this case a couple of years ago, he had Mr
(36:00):
McCrory's file sitting behind his desk and he said, that's
where I keep my file because this is that case,
this is the case that haunts me. One of the
first things we did was we've talked with Chris and
he said, wow, let's just see if Dr Suberan what
he thinks today. And so we asked him, you know,
I'm not very popular with the dentists, as you can imagine,
(36:21):
particularly after publishing my book, But I do have respect
for forensic analysts of any discipline that are willing to
review their prior case work and to recant when they
know they've been wrong, when they know that their opinion
may have led to the conviction of an innocent person.
And I think that with notable exceptions that we've talked
(36:44):
about um on your show before, Jason, but most forensic
analysts are trying to do the right thing. They're not
trying to frame innocent people for crimes that they didn't commit.
And you know, when you have the influence of you know,
prosecutors saying that you know, this guy is a guilty
murderer and we need your opinion to help put them away,
(37:04):
you know, many friends ag analysts believe that they're doing
the right thing by giving the opinion to the prosecution
that they want. Dick s Uberan went back, he reviewed
his testimony, he reviewed the evidence at issue, and he
entirely recanted his opinion. Once that happened, Mark and I
decided to co counsel this case together, and we filed
a petition for a new trial untainted by false, misleading
(37:27):
evidence that was presented, nonetheless is so called scientific evidence
to Mr mccorary's jury. So that's what we want. We
filed this motion for a new trial in the case,
and we were granted an evidentiary hearing, and in the
lead up to this evidentry hearing, the day before, we
got an offer from the prosecution for time served, which
(37:50):
means that all Mr McCory has to do is accept
responsibility for this murder, and he goes home that day.
That day, goes back to his son, to his sisters,
to his life after thirty seven years in prison. He
did not hesitate for one second in rejecting it. I
think I'd plead guilty almost anything to get out of
(38:12):
prison after being in for that long. And to me,
that was as much evidence as anything else that Mr
mcquarie is an instant man. And the fact that it
was offered in the first place, and the fact that
they let him go home after he was sentenced, but
before he went to prison, all of it adds up
to an even more seering indicting of the whole system.
Someone asked me recently, did you entertain it? And I
(38:34):
didn't know I didn't entertain him. I'm not about to
plead guilty to a murderer that I did not do
for many reasons. I mean, obviously I want to get
out of prison, but we want to know what happened
and who did it and so forth, and it seems
to be that we're the only ones chasing those answers.
The police have long since given up on trying to
help that. It seemed like in many ways they've tried
(38:54):
to cover their tracks on their uh in epiness. Back
when all this occurred, I mean the early and he's
investigator Blade Garrett destroys and burns several things that could
have been used for DNA. That's when DNA was just
becoming known and just becoming popular, and yeah, he burns
these things. Now, we would love to do DNA testing
(39:15):
of the fingernail scrapings that were taken from Julie right
despite no scratches im Mr McQuary, the hair that was
found clutched in her head, the red bandanna like the
one that Ainsworth War. We would love to test all
of that for DNA, but one of the police officers
burnt it all and so it's unavailable for testing. Who
(39:35):
burns evidence. This is insane, like, at least lie lie
to us, right, lie it was tell us that you
lost it, but you burned it. It just speaks to
the fact that all the people in positions of power
really must know that he's innocent. It's just astonishing. So
we proceed to the hearing, and in addition to the
(39:56):
recantation that was done in an Affidavid and you know, notably,
the prosecution did not call pick Subran to try to
rehabilitate him or to try to salve at his conviction. Instead,
we put on the evidence, and we put on to
forensic dentists Adam Freeman and Cynthia Brazowski, both of whom
are to extent that anybody can be well qualified in
(40:18):
this field. They're both very well qualified, and we've studied it,
and they both opined that this was not a bite mark.
They looked at the other injuries that had not been
called teeth marks and pointed out that these things that
were called teeth marks and these other things that weren't
appeared to be the same instrument that created all these
injuries which were not teeth right. And then additionally and importantly,
(40:40):
we had an investigator go out to the scene a
couple of days before the hearing and take a look
at the vantage point that the kid across the street
and his grandfather claimed to have seen Mr McQuary's truck
or something that looked like his truck, maybe on the
day of the murder, maybe not. And the description of
(41:02):
the vantage point that they gave to Mr mccary's jury,
it was described as being directly across the street. But
if you were standing where they said they were standing,
and you were looking towards the victim's house, you would
not have been able to see the driveway in the
way that they claimed. And when we put our investigator
(41:22):
on the stand, we showed evidence from the nineteenes that
showed that the houses were in the same position, that
there were no new structures, and that they were the
same when we did the hearing last year. So even
this one shred of weak evidence was further undermined at
this hearing. To sort of close out the rest of
(41:43):
the hearing, you know, we we felt like we did it.
That's the only evidence. It's not there anymore, right, And
so what does the prosecution do. The prosecution has an
investigator from their office read the direct testimony of some
of the witnesses who testify it in so this guy
is just literally reading the transcript. He's not reading the
(42:05):
cross examinations, he's not reading any of the defense witnesses.
He's just reading certain prosecution witnesses from which seems to
me a concession that they have no response to anything
that we've we've said, and then enclosing argument, get up
and create an entirely new theory of guilt. Right. Liliana
Sigoura and Jordan Smith did an article for The Intercept
(42:27):
on this case, and they called the closing argument a
fever dream. It was just this story that the new
prosecutor made up, completely inconsistent with the theory that the
prosecution had at the time. And so we're sitting there like,
what is going on? What? What is this? This makes
no sense? This is a totally new theory. And so
(42:48):
a few days after the hearing, an investor, Guiter and
I went down to the prison where Harvey Tippler was
serving his prison since he was agreeable he knew the
case well. He has since passed away. He spoke with
us for quite a while about his memory of the
case because I mentioned at the outset. We didn't have
the opening statement and the closing argument, and so we
(43:08):
didn't know what the prosecution argued in closing. So we
went to the source and we said Mr Tippler, what
did you say in closing? And he said, oh, is
the bite mark? That was all we had, you know,
And so we submitted a notice to the court saying
we would like to let the court know that Mr Tippler,
the lawyer who tried the case, disagrees with the new tact,
(43:28):
essentially that the prosecution has taken and the court didn't
allow us to add that to the record, so they
had no response to the new evidence and instead made
up this story. And the real kicker was when they
said that the jury was free to decide for itself
(43:50):
that it was Mr McQuary's bite mark. So, notwithstanding three
dentists who said it's not a bite mark, let alone
mr mcquarie's, the execution said, well, but the jury could
have decided that it was, and therefore his conviction should stand. So,
to put it differently, lagers are more capable of engaging
in junk science than the junk scientists themselves, right, and
(44:14):
so that the idea is is that you don't even
need an expert witness. We can just put this junk
science in front of the jury and that would be
good enough for government work. You know what, did you
bring in somebody like Sue or on with these big
fantasy pictures and all that, and they're gonna believe what
he says. And the idea that somehow they can take
that out and the jury would have reached the same
(44:34):
verdict is ridiculous. It's unfucking real. And then on the
first of March, you guys filed the motion to reconsider
the order. In it, you've described all of the other
White Mark cases that resulted in overturned convictions, and this
motion began. I think this is so powerful just with
the names of thirty five people who combined probably served
(44:58):
over a thousand years in prison. If I to guess,
and we know some of these names because they've been
on the show, and I mean we can read them
one at a time, I feel like we should go in,
like each take turns reading the names. Keith Harward, Robert Stinson,
Gerard Richardson, Willie Jackson, Roy Brown, Ray Crone, Calvin Washington,
(45:18):
Joe Williams, James O'Donnell, Levon Brooks, Kennedy Brewer, Benny Starks,
Michael Christini, Jeffrey Mouldwan, Anthony Kiko, Harold Hill, Dan Young Jr.
Greg will Hoote, Crystal Wimer, Stephen Cheney, William Richards, Alfred Swinton,
Sherwood Brown, John Cunso, Gary Sazari, Sheila d Robert du Bois,
(45:41):
Eddie Lee, Howard, Gilbert Pool, and of course the man
we're talking about today, Charles mccruary. And each of these
people was wrongfully convicted due to bite mark evidence, and
there are countless other names that could be added to
this list that we haven't been able to help yet.
So with that, Charles is in your thirty seven of
this slow moving train wreck. You know, I want to
(46:04):
find out from you guys, is there any steps that
people can take? Is their petition? Is there someone? What
can people do? We are appealing the case. We've partnered
with some Alabama lawyers who are are helping us do
the best we can to try to convince the appellate
court that the trial court will cut it wrong. And
so that's the next step. And I think just the
more people who know about the case, the better we
(46:26):
share the podcast the articles to those listeners in Alabama too,
right into your lawmakers and question you know why Charles
McQuary and instant man is still in prison, and this
is correctible. Charles McQuary can still live the rest of
his life and be reunited with his family. So I
hope that listeners will help spread the word, help put
(46:50):
pressure on the decision makers to do the right thing.
We really want people in Alabama to know that this
is happening in their backyard and this is not a
right or a isssue. This is a human rights issue.
There should be no politics in freeing the innocent, so
please do get involved. We'll put links in the bio
to action steps you can take. Again, Chris Fabric can't
(47:12):
go get the book junk Science. Some of these stories
are just too crazy to be believed. But you'll understand
the issue so much better. And it's a great reading
reason like a novel. And now we turn to the
part of our show that I know everyone looks forward
to like I do, which is called closing arguments. And Chris,
you know how it works. Um, Charles was going to
(47:34):
tell you how it works right now, and Mark Um,
so basically I thank you closing arguments. I'm going to
turn my microphone off and leave it on for each
of you guys to share any thoughts that you have,
anything we may have left out, or anything else you
want to say. So we'll go Chris, then over you Mark,
and then of course Mr McQuary, Charles, please close it out.
(47:58):
I like people to retain their skepticism and that it's
really important that we all serve on juries, that we
have skeptical jurors and that don't believe anything that somebody
tells you just because they're board certified or they're wearing
a white lab coat. I want to just read a
quote that I think is is important for people to
(48:19):
keep in mind. You know, Chris and I have mentioned
a few times that we represented a woman by the
name of of Sheila Denton in Georgia. It was a
bite mark case and in two thousand and twenty Miss
Denton was granted a new trial. This is down in Waycross, Georgia,
conservative part of of Georgia, and the judge chief judge wrote, quote,
proven unreliable scientific evidence should never serve as the basis
(48:44):
of a conviction and should be dealt with by the
courts if and when it is found. And like Dr Suvaran,
who we applaud for admitting his mistake, like this judge
who wrote this, who applaud for being courageous enough to
overturn a murder conviction because it was based on proven,
(49:06):
unreliable scientific evidence. I just hope that there are more
judges and prosecutors out there who have the courage that
this judge did to see that and to enforce that. Well. Again,
I appreciate uh your interest in the case, and I
just say that I think I wrote this recently. There
should not be a finality in a case where an
innocent person is in prison, and I think what some
(49:27):
courts want to do is close the door. This is
not the only case we know of thirty something exoneries
just from dental evidence alone, and how many others are
out there so juries. While they try to make I think,
good decisions, they do not make perfect decisions, and there
should be a real process that for people seriously look
at this when people claim innocence, and I appreciate groups
(49:49):
like yourself and others that are working on that. Thank
you for listening to raw full conviction. I'd like to
thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Claverne, and Kevin Wardis,
with research by Lila Robinson. The music in this production
was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
(50:12):
Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at
wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
all three platforms, you can also follow me on both
TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason flom Raleful Conviction is
the production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with
(50:32):
Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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