Framed

The Norfolk Four#4

In the Norfolk jail, Tice was placed in the same unit as Omar Ballard, a man he’d never met.

In the coming months, the ever-changing theories of guilt would include yet another new one: Tice and Ballard, along with six others, had formed an impromptu gang, primarily of strangers, that got itself organized only long enough to pull off the rape and murder.

Rick Pauley was a former sailor who lived with his parents in Norfolk.

He was arrested soon after Tice’s confession and taken to an interrogation room.

There, Detectives Bobby Backman and Don Brenner repeatedly accused him of the crimes, refused to believe his denials, lied about evidence linking him to the scene, threatened him with death if he didn’t cooperate, promised him leniency if he did, announced that he’d flunked his polygraph exam, and ignored his right of silence after he demanded an attorney.

After five hours, Pauley was on the verge of cracking and telling the police anything, just to end the interrogation.

He later told his mother that they’d almost convinced him he was guilty.

But Pauley refused to confess, and the police eventually gave up.

He was lucky, because Glenn Ford was on vacation.

His lawyer speculated that if Ford had been on duty, then Pauley would have confessed.

Though he did not, and there was no evidence placing him at the scene, Pauley was charged with capital murder and rape, and thrown in the Norfolk jail where he would spend the next ten months.

The police then rounded up Geoffrey Farris, another former sailor who lived in the area.

Farris was not under arrest when he entered the interrogation room, but that would soon change.

Glenn Ford, back from vacation, went through the preliminaries, which of course meant breezing through the Miranda rights.

After two hours of accusations, and the obligatory failed polygraph exam, Farris demanded an attorney and stopped talking.

Ford told him he was under arrest for the rape and murder, and Farris went to jail where he would stay for the next ten months.

In late August 1998, the state crime lab delivered more bad news to the police and prosecutors.

The DNA recovered from the crime scene did not match that of Derek Tice, Rick Pauley, and Geoffrey Farris.

Six men in jail, all cleared by DNA.

The Norfolk police suddenly had a new theory: There had been seven men in the gang! And the seventh killer was still at large.

Since Derek Tice had been the source of the last two random names—Rick Pauley and Geoffrey Farris—it seemed logical that he might have another up his sleeve.

Good police work dictated that Tice be squeezed again.

And it worked.

On October 27, during another marathon workout at the hands of Glenn Ford, Tice coughed up the name of John Danser (#7), and the Keystone Kops took off once again in search of their elusive sperm supplier.

John Danser was a former sailor who knew Williams (#1) and Tice (#4), but none of the others.

He had served in the military police and was not easily intimidated.

He was arrested at his home north of Philadelphia and extradited back to Norfolk.

He was interrogated by Ford, who went through his usual routine.

Danser agreed to a polygraph, and when he was told he flunked it he asked for a lawyer.

But the interrogation continued.

At one point, Ford showed Danser a photo of Michelle at the crime scene and asked if that was the way he remembered her after he’d raped and stabbed her.

Danser stuck to his denials.

He had an airtight alibi—he’d been at home in Pennsylvania at the time of the murder—and he refused to yield an inch.

Ford claimed to have proof that Danser had been in Norfolk at the time of the crime, but, as always, he did not indicate the nature of this evidence.

Ford finally gave up and Danser was thrown in jail and charged with rape and murder.

Two months later, he was eliminated as a source of the DNA found at the crime scene.

February 1999.

The Norfolk authorities had the seven sailors in jail, and not one shred of physical evidence with which to convict them.

This, however, did not deter the prosecutors.

They had four bogus confessions and they were determined to use them.

One month earlier, Dan Williams (#1) had finally succumbed to the pressure and agreed to plead guilty in return for two life sentences with no parole.

He had repeatedly turned down similar offers, but finally gave in on the eve of his death penalty trial.

His alibi witness, Nicole, was dead.

His lawyers had conducted no investigation, and they were convinced he would get the needle because no jury would believe his false confession claim.

His deal would spare his life, and he felt he had no choice.

Joe Dick (#2) had also agreed to a similar plea bargain.

Eric Wilson (#3) refused and continued to recant his confession.

He insisted on going to trial.

Derek Tice (#4) was also having second thoughts, but eventually refused to plead guilty.

Before the police could hatch a new theory and start looking for Number 8, Omar Ballard finally entered the picture, and things changed, somewhat.

From prison, he wrote a letter to a friend and confessed to killing Michelle.

The letter was given to the police, who gave it to the prosecutors, who tried to keep it quiet.

They eventually gave it to the defense attorneys, but only after a court ordered them to do so.

A quick DNA test nailed Ballard.

The police finally had a match! Glenn Ford hustled off to prison to interview his latest suspect.

It would be a short interrogation by Ford’s standards.

No threats, no bogus polygraph test, none of the usual tactics.

Ballard admitted everything within minutes.

He committed the crime, did it alone, and felt remorse.

He described the crime scene and the apartment in detail, and was the first and only confessor to accurately describe the murder weapon, the serrated steak knife.

Ford suggested that others were involved, but Ballard said no.

Ford pressed this repeatedly, and Ballard grew angry at Ford’s tactics.

He insisted that he acted alone, but Ford didn’t believe him.

At the end of the taped statement, Ford asked Ballard if he wanted to add anything.

He said: “No, just them four people that opened their mouths is stupid.”

In an affidavit signed later, Ballard said: “Ford asked me a series of leading questions in an attempt to get the version of the crime he wanted.

For example, Ford would tell me some detail about the killing of Michelle then ask me a question, encouraging me to use the detail he had just provided in my answer.

I repeatedly told Ford that I committed the crime alone, but Ford wanted me to say that the other defendants had been involved.”

Ballard later told a television producer, “Detective Ford is scum.

He puts words in people’s mouths and won’t stop until you agree.

And that’s what those four white guys are guilty of, ‘agreeing.’?”

Rather than step back and admit the obvious, rather than reexamining their case and exploring the possibility that perhaps they’d been wrong, the police and prosecutors marched on.

They had far too much invested in their fraudulent investigation.

They had a new theory.

There were now eight men involved in the crime, with Omar as the leader.

Never mind that none of the first four confessions mentioned a gang of eight or the presence of a black man, and never mind that the fifth confession, Omar’s, expressly denied the involvement of others.

The Eight Man Gang theory went something like this: Seven white sailors were having a party at Dan’s apartment, even though his wife, Nicole, had just returned from the hospital after cancer surgery.

They decided to go next door and rape Michelle, since Billy was at sea.

She wouldn’t open the door.

They hung around outside in the parking lot when Omar Ballard appeared.

They did not know him, but they nevertheless told him of their plan to gang-rape Michelle.

Omar said he could get the door open because he knew Michelle.

They followed Omar inside once he convinced Michelle to open the door.

They took turns raping her, though it’s unclear in what order.

Ballard was the only one who ejaculated.

They took turns stabbing her, though it’s unclear who went first or last.

The attack may have happened in the den, or maybe in the bedroom.

Such a wild scene in the tiny apartment surely caused a mess, but the gang was thoughtful enough to tidy up behind itself and, of course, wipe away every single fingerprint.

To believe this ridiculous scenario, one also has to believe a long list of other insane notions, such as: Joe Dick (#2) managed to dodge security on the USS Saipan, sprint to the apartment, join up with the others, some of whom he’d never met, commit the crime, then sprint back to the ship, dodging security again; that John Danser (#7) made the seven-hour drive from his home in Pennsylvania in five hours, joined the gang, only two of whom he’d ever met, committed the crime, then raced back home; that Geoffrey Farris (#5), who had records to prove he was on the phone with his girlfriend in Australia when the murder took place, actually put down the phone, ran from his home in Norfolk, joined the gang, then raced back to finish the conversation with his girlfriend; and, that the various attackers who stabbed Michelle managed to inflict near-identical wounds of the same depth.

Perhaps the most fantastic part of this tale is that a savvy street thug like Omar Ballard would commit such a heinous crime with a bunch of white boys he’d never met.

Not surprisingly, the Eight Man Gang theory collapsed under the weight of its own lunacy.

Derek Tice (#4) recanted and wouldn’t testify against the three men he’d named, so the prosecutors were forced to drop the charges against Geoffrey Farris (#5), Rick Pauley (#6), and John Danser (#7).

They walked out after spending months in a tough jail.

There were no apologies, no compensation, no explanations, nothing.

And they were the lucky ones.

Dan Williams (#1) tried to withdraw his guilty plea in light of Ballard’s admissions, but the judge refused.

Joe Dick (#2) had convinced himself he was guilty and even wrote a letter of apology to Michelle’s family.

Eric Wilson (#3) went to trial and was found guilty of rape.

His confession was read to the jury and sunk him.

He served seven and a half years in prison and was released in 2005.

Derek Tice (#4) was convicted in two separate trials and given life without parole.

In the Wilson and Tice trials, Joe Dick testified for the prosecution, but was not believable.

The juries, however, were riveted by the taped confessions.

Williams, Dick, and Tice were sentenced to life without parole.

Remarkably, in a jurisdiction where the death penalty is frequently used, Omar Ballard was offered a deal that would keep him off death row.

A hardened criminal with a violent record, the self-confessed murderer of Michelle Bosko.

In any other setting, the authorities would have been itching for a sensational trial.

Why was Ballard given a break? The only plausible explanation is that the police and prosecutors were afraid of a full-blown capital murder trial in which Ballard’s lawyers would be allowed to ask the jurors the obvious question: How can you convict this man when four others have confessed to the crime? Such a trial was far too risky for the police and prosecutors.

They quickly cut a deal with Ballard and sent him off to prison for life.

The final outcome of the Bosko case was determined not by the truth, but by lies.

So many lies were told by so many people, at so many levels, in so many ways, and for so many reasons, that the truth became irrelevant.

But the hard facts gleaned from the crime scene never changed, though they were willfully ignored by the police and prosecutors.

There was one assailant, one DNA match.

Omar Ballard, by his own admission, acted alone.

—

In 2004, Peter Neufeld, the cofounder of the Innocence Project in New York, was asked to take a look at the wrongful convictions of the Norfolk Four.

Neufeld knew of the case; it was legendary in the growing circles of innocence work.

He knew of no other case in the country where DNA had excluded so many defendants who were still prosecuted.

In the vast majority of cases where DNA excludes a defendant, prosecutors do what should be done.

They admit they have the wrong suspect.

“DNA trumps the confession,”

Neufeld said.

“The way the prosecutors and police conducted themselves in the Bosko case is so off-the-wall, so unconscionable, and unfathomable, that there really is no precedent for it.”

But the case was too big for the Innocence Project.

Neufeld turned to a noted capital defense lawyer named George Kendall and asked for help.

Kendall was at first skeptical because of all the confessions, but after some research became intrigued by the case.

He signed on and convinced three mega law firms to join forces.

His firm, Holland a television show in which the cops kick in a door, or a prosecutor harangues a witness; the suspicious look from a neighbor he’s known for years.

He thinks of the years lost in prison and the naval career he once dreamed of.

He relishes the conviction and prison sentence of Glenn Ford, but the mere thought of his name evokes the same emotion: hatred.

Derek Tice lives in a small town in North Carolina with his wife and family.

He served eleven years, two months, and one day for no reason.

He has a good job and is at peace with the world, but has accepted the fact that what happened in Norfolk can never be forgotten.

He says, “Twenty years from now I know I’ll still have flashbacks.”

—

And Omar Ballard has been in prison for twenty-five years with no chance of parole; not that he dreams of getting out.

In various interviews over the years, he has repeatedly taken full, sole responsibility for the rape and murder of Michelle Bosko.

He acted alone and has declared numerous times that the Norfolk Four are innocent.