Framed

Autopsy Games#2

Suspects were plentiful.

Deputy Eichelberger’s method of investigation was to arrest all of them, throw them in jail, and wait for the truth to come out.

The first was Courtney’s great-uncle by marriage, a man named Mickens, who was known to drink too much and when drinking often touched women inappropriately.

To Eichelberger, that was enough proof that Mickens was somehow involved in the rape and murder of a child.

When the suspect appeared on the evening news, handcuffed and bewildered, a reporter breathlessly covered the heinous details of the crime, which now included not only a murder, but a violent rape, a head wound, and a cut on the mouth.

Eichelberger then arrested Courtney’s uncles: Tony, Ernest, and William Smith, all on suspicion of murder but without a shred of evidence against them.

Uncle Tony had been fast asleep on the sofa when the killer entered the house and left with Courtney.

The three men had just lost a niece, one they loved, protected, and shared a home with.

Now they were accused of killing her and were sitting in jail.

Eichelberger was just getting started.

He arrested William McCarthy and David Harrison, two men with nothing to do with the crime, but since they were friends of Ruby’s, the grandmother, and in the neighborhood that night, they were suspicious enough to be charged and jailed.

He arrested John Hodge, Sonya Smith’s boyfriend; Robert Goodwin, a neighbor; and Lee Harris, a friend of Uncle Tony’s.

With his tenth arrest, Eichelberger finally got lucky, though he didn’t realize it.

He stumbled upon the murderer and arrested him.

He was Justin Johnson, a thirty-five-year-old local with a reputation of strange behavior, keeping to himself, and getting arrested.

More than once, he was accused of breaking into homes late at night and either attacking or threatening women.

The cops picked up his trail because several neighbors reported seeing his blue and white 1978 Buick Electra parked near the pond around midnight.

His alibi was lame.

At the jail, Eichelberger asked him if he had been arrested before and he replied, “Yes, for a similar deal, attempted rape. Not long ago.”

An experienced detective, or perhaps even a low-level beat cop, would have concentrated on Johnson, but Eichelberger was distracted by yet another promising suspect: Levon Brooks.

Johnson was eventually released.

Eighteen years would pass before another detective questioned him about the murder of Courtney Smith.

—

Levon Brooks became the prime suspect because he occasionally wore an earring.

He lived in Macon, a nearby town, and didn’t hang around Brooksville.

He knew the Smith family well because he and Sonya had dated a few times years earlier and they were still friendly.

Levon was friendly with almost everyone.

He loved the nightlife, the clubs, the ladies, and he was especially fond of fancy clothes and the latest fashions.

The gold earring was something new and added to his reputation as a man ahead of his time.

He enjoyed his job at the Santa Barbara, a nightclub not far from his home. He earned good money there, worked decent hours, and met a lot of women. Levon was thirty-two years old, a bachelor, nice-looking, and always played the field. He managed to stay friendly with all his ex-girlfriends.

On the Saturday night Courtney Smith was abducted and murdered, Levon was working at the Santa Barbara, eight miles away from her home in Brooksville.

Numerous alibi witnesses would swear on the witness stand that he was there mixing drinks, cooking in the kitchen, watching the dance floor, and, as always, flirting with the ladies.

However, such clear proof would be no match for the bogus scientific testimony cooked up by Drs.

Hayne and West and presented to the jury.

The earring theory began its long and tortured journey with the assumption made by the investigators that the only possible witness to Courtney’s abduction was her five-year-old sister, Ashley.

As the days passed with no clues, a jail full of “suspects,”

and pressure mounting to solve the crime, the investigators decided to concentrate on Ashley and prod her into remembering something.

Interrogating children, especially those traumatized by violent crime, is a fragile, complicated business that should be handled by qualified forensic professionals with a background in psychiatry.

Five days after Courtney’s murder, and the day after her funeral, Ashley sat for her first interview.

The officer had no background in psychiatry, psychology, or therapy.

He was a local cop who had once hosted a kids’ show on television; thus he claimed to have a certain talent in dealing with children.

The interview was a disaster and should have made the police realize that Ashley should be left alone.

She said things the police knew to be outright fabrications.

She said her uncle Tony pulled a knife on the intruders, but later changed it to a gun.

Her ramblings were often fantastical and absurd, as when she said the abductor had fled with Courtney in an airplane.

In the next interview she tried to identify the abductor or abductors: he was a black man named Shavon; then Travon, who went to college with her mother; Travon then had an accomplice; then he had two, one white, one black; then he was a lone white man named Clay; he had a stocking over his head; then it was a Halloween mask.

In another interview, she added more details: the attackers left with Courtney but returned home with potato chips and drinks; one of them taunted her, saying, “Ha, ha, we got your sister”; one also had a bag full of money.

The truth was that Ashley had slept through the entire abduction and didn’t realize her sister was missing until she woke up the following morning.

From that moment until her first interview five days later she never claimed to have seen the abductor.

Only when the police began suggesting details did her vulnerable imagination take over.

Wearing a quarter in one’s ear was a fad that came and went in some black communities.

When the interviewer asked Ashley about a quarter in the abductor’s ear, she took it and ran.

Yes, the man did indeed have a quarter in his ear.

The shrewd detectives surmised that perhaps the quarter was really an earring.

Levon Brooks was one of very few local black men wearing earrings in 1990.

Finally, the cops had a real suspect.

They showed Ashley a series of photos of black men and manipulated the lineup to cast more suspicion on Brooks.

She identified him and added that he had blindfolded Courtney with a stocking—two details that were first suggested by the police and not Ashley.

Tenuous as it was, the earring was the only possible evidence linking Brooks to the crime.

He had not been in the area at the time of the crime; indeed, he had never been to the current home of Sonya Smith.

He had never met Courtney or Ashley.

He had no history of sex crimes and had never been accused or suspected of abusing children.

—

Even as the investigation began to focus on Levon Brooks, the investigators were busy elsewhere.

On September 23, Dr. West arrived in town with his tool kit and a sack of plaster.

He began with the ten men in jail, none of whom had lawyers, and convinced them to provide dental molds of their teeth.

No lawyer worth his salt would allow such a procedure without a warrant or a hearing, but due process and legal protections were of little significance.

The “suspects”

felt as though they had no choice but to cooperate.

Oddly enough, Dr. West also shoved a tray filled with plaster into the mouth of Sonya Smith, the victim’s mother, and made a dental mold from it.

No one had even remotely suggested that Sonya was involved in the murder, nor did anyone have a clue as to why she would be suspected of biting her daughter’s wrists.

A total of ten “suspects”

consented to the dental molds, including the killer, Justin Johnson.

The next day, Dr. West informed the authorities that he had completed his examination and all ten had been excluded as the source of the bite marks.