The True Murderer

Have you ever been told you talked in your sleep? Should what you said be reliable? The brothers in this true crime went to prison for life largely based on what one allegedly said in his sleep.

The jail-cellmate of the one brother who was serving time for sexual assault said he had uttered a confession to killing a woman who had worked near to the sleeping man and whose case had remained unsolved for eleven years.

The sleeping man and his brother had gone to the woman’s place of work and gotten into an argument with her over the price of something. The investigators had questioned them in the beginning, so this new information seemed believable.

When the cellmate told the guards about the sleeping confession, they passed it on up the chain of command. Then they interrogated the incarcerated brother for six hours about the woman’s murder. The interrogators didn’t allow him any breaks. He cracked and confessed to the murder and said his brother was there too.

They charged both brothers and tried them for the sexual assault and murder of the 44-year-old mother of two. Based on one brother’s confession and no physical evidence, they found both brothers guilty, and the judge sentenced them to life in prison. At the time of the crime, they collected physical evidence. The source of the DNA was unknown—neither brother was a match.

After their appeals failed, the Great North Innocence Project accepted their case and began searching for a genetic genealogy match to the DNA. Not finding a match, the Innocence Project contacted Ramapo College’s Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG) Center for help.

After thirty-six years, in only three days, the staff and students in the college’s program linked the DNA source to one of three brothers who lived in the area at the time of the murder. One of those brothers was free and recently released from a long prison term for sexual crimes.

By the time IGG identified the three possible matches, the brother who’d been in prison for sexual assault crimes had passed away. The court granted the Innocence Project a court order to obtain a DNA sample from his disinterred remains. He was a match to the DNA found on the body of the murdered woman.

With the new evidence, the judge granted a motion to release the two brothers from prison. They’d served almost 25 years for a crime to which one brother had falsely confessed.

When the judge ordered the brothers to be released, he also said about the case,

“Today, [the victim] will rest in peace, because her true murderer is now known.”

The state where this crime and false imprisonment occurred paid the two brothers, one in his late 60s and the other in his 70s, $130,000 for attorney fees and a total payout of $25,000 to each brother—basically $1,000 for each year they had wrongly served. The state has an outdated cap on wrongful incarceration compensation. State legislators are considering a larger payout to the brothers.

Source: The Great North Innocence Project, People, Ramapo College of New Jersey, Wisconsin Public Radio

All data and information provided is for information and research purposes only and not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, or individual. Criminal cases may have been appealed or verdicts overturned since I researched the case. All information is provided on an as-is basis.