DNA tests could free men convicted of ‘85 murder

DNA test results released Friday prove that two men in prison for the 1985 Beatrice murder of Helen Wilson did not rape her, their attorneys said.

If a court rules in their favor, Joseph White and Thomas Winslow could be the first inmates exonerated under the Nebraska DNA Testing Act of 2000.

White, 45, and Winslow, 42, are serving prison sentences in connection with the murder of Wilson, but tests of bodily fluids preserved from the 23-year-old case have cleared them of the rape, their attorneys said.

The DNA samples came from a single, unidentified man and did not match White or Winslow, said Jerry Soucie, a Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy attorney who is representing Winslow.

“I feel there was a great injustice done,” Winslow’s mother, Mary Winslow of Wymore, said at a Friday news conference in Lincoln. “I feel not only done to my son … but there was also a great injustice done to the Wilson family because these two men did not rape and kill Mrs. Wilson.”

But Wilson’s son, Darrell Wilson of Beatrice, discounted Friday’s announcement.

“I don’t care about DNA,” he said. “They’re guilty as guilty.”

Soucie and Doug Stratton, a Norfolk attorney who represents White, are seeking to vacate convictions in Gage and Jefferson counties. If a judge grants the motions, White and Winslow could be exonerated. If a judge chooses not to erase the convictions, the motions also ask the courts to consider ordering a new sentence or trial for each man.

Whether the men are quickly released depends, in part, on the response from the prosecution.

Gage County Attorney Randy Ritnour said Friday that just because the DNA evidence cleared the men of rape doesn’t mean they should also be cleared of other charges. But he also said his office would cooperate with defense attorneys.

“We seek justice here, not a win at any costs. So if … it turns out the evidence should show that these people are not guilty of this crime, then certainly these people shouldn’t be in jail.”

Ritnour, elected Gage County attorney in 2006, said he spoke to former Gage County Attorney Richard Smith about the case Friday and plans to meet with investigators from the Gage County Sheriff’s Office and Beatrice Police Department who worked on the case. The age of the case will make it more difficult for his office to come up to speed on the specifics of what happened, he said, but his lack of familiarity with it isn’t all bad.

“We don’t have a dog in this hunt,” he said. “We want justice done, and we’re not afraid to look at it in an objective manner.”

In all, six people were convicted in the Wilson murder.

Jerry DeWitt, the Gage County sheriff at the time, said his office picked up the investigation after the Beatrice Police Department stalled. A Gage County deputy who had worked for the Beatrice Police Department stumbled across a few leads in the case and began to investigate it more seriously, DeWitt said.  

“And the more we delved into it, the more we learned about it, and there’s no doubt in my mind that all six  of them were guilty, and were all there,” he said.

The Beatrice Police Department had already questioned the six, but hadn’t made any arrests, DeWitt said.

“They told us we had the wrong people,” he said.

Later, after all six had been sentenced, then-Police Chief Don Luckeroth admitted his office had “screwed up” the initial investigation, according to a story in the Feb. 17, 1990, edition of The Lincoln Star.

Luckeroth made the statement after Wilson’s family questioned the department’s handling of evidence, including a blood-stained bra found outside of Wilson’s apartment and allegedly thrown away by police.

But attorney Stratton said Friday that the DNA samples Beatrice police collected from the crime scene were well-preserved and well-labeled. “These results are indisputable,” he said.

Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers, who introduced the Nebraska DNA Testing Act, said he is pleased the law has done what it was intended to do. DNA testing proves the legal system makes serious mistakes that cost people years of freedom, he said.

“It shows the system is dysfunctional,” Chambers said. “It is not one on which people can rely on justice being done.”

For nearly two decades, those associated with the case believed they had put away Wilson’s killers.

The 68-year-old Beatrice widow was found Feb. 6, 1985, in her apartment, her hands bound, her body severely beaten. An autopsy determined she had suffocated.

The murder happened less than two years after a series of three attacks on elderly women in Beatrice that put the town on edge.

Four years after Wilson’s murder, officers began making arrests in the case. Three of six people charged testified that, as a group, they had broken into Wilson’s apartment. They also said White and Winslow took turns raping Wilson while Ada Joann Taylor suffocated her with a pillow.

Taylor, who pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting second-degree murder, remains in custody at Community Corrections in Omaha. Her projected date of release is Aug. 9, 2009. James Dean, Kathy Gonzalez and Debra Shelden were released from prison in 1994.

The DNA tests, conducted on semen recovered from the crime scene, undermines their testimony, Soucie said. The DNA has not been compared with Dean, but it has been turned over to authorities for possible matching in a national criminal DNA database.

“The bottom line is as we sit here today, the individual who sexually assaulted Mrs. Wilson is not in prison,” Soucie said.

Stratton said investigators found several fingerprints in Wilson’s apartment that matched none of the suspects.

“For all practical purposes, there is no physical evidence” against White and Winslow, Stratton said.

But a Jefferson County District Court jury convicted White of first-degree felony murder in late 1989, and he was sentenced to life in prison. He always maintained he was not present during the break-in and did not rape Wilson, his attorney said Friday.

Winslow pleaded no contest to aiding and abetting second-degree murder in Gage County District Court and was sentenced to 10 to 50 years in prison. He has maintained he has no memory of being in Wilson’s apartment.

The effort to obtain the DNA tests started in May 2005, when White contacted Stratton. In the course of his work, Stratton interviewed Winslow and then referred Winslow’s case to Soucie.

In 2006, District Judge Vicky Johnson of Wilber ruled that because White was convicted of a murder that occurred during the commission of another felony, whether he actually raped Wilson wouldn’t change the outcome of the case.

As for Winslow, the judge said he couldn’t ask for DNA testing because he entered a plea to avoid a possible death sentence.

In November 2007, the Nebraska Supreme Court ordered the tests, ruling that the purpose of the DNA Testing Act was to consider evidence “which is favorable to the person in custody and material to the issue of the guilt of the person in custody.”

White, 45, of Cullman, Ala., is at the Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln and has been incarcerated for 18 years. Winslow, 42, is at the Omaha Correctional Center. He’s served 19 years, and his projected release date is April 27, 2020.

His mother said Friday she never believed her son was capable of such a brutal crime. Even though he has served nearly two decades in prison for it, she said she detected no anger when she talked to him about the DNA test results.

“Overwhelmed was the word he used,” she said. “I guess his words were, ‘I want to be able to clear my heart of any feelings of madness or hate toward anybody.’”

Helen Wilson’s son said he hopes the case doesn’t go back to trial. It took four years for him and his two siblings to see an arrest in their mother’s death, and another year before the six who were arrested were convicted and sentenced.

He never saw his mother’s body because it was so battered, he said, but he sat through the trial in which witnesses described her rape.

All these years later, he didn’t expect to be haunted again by her brutal death.

A new trial, he said, would be a waste of money. But he also realizes he doesn’t get to decide these things.

“There’s nothing I can do about it,” he said. “Whatever will be will be. I hope they don’t get out. But if they do, how will I stop it?”