Former prosecutor wants 'truth to come out'

The prosecutor in the Helen Wilson murder case said Thursday he knows DNA testing has raised troubling questions, but he still stands by the investigation that convicted six people.

Former Gage County Attorney Dick Smith was asked whether he thought the state acted hastily in recently releasing the three defendants who still were in prison for the 1985 rape and murder of Wilson.

“I don’t know what to think,” Smith said. “I can’t get my head around how all these things mesh together.

“I know that I felt confident after the jury came back with the verdict that they had come back with the right verdict.”

Last week, Attorney General Jon Bruning announced that DNA testing of blood, hair and semen recovered from the victim’s apartment matched Bruce Allen Smith, who died in 1992 in Oklahoma.

In addition, the DNA tests excluded the six people who were convicted of the crime in 1989, all of whom were sentenced to prison.

The attorney general also criticized some of the police interrogation techniques used in the case. And he said Smith used the threat of the death penalty to coerce confessions from some of the defendants.

Within the past month, those DNA test results have led to the release of Joseph White, Thomas Winslow and JoAnn Taylor from prison. All had served more than 18 years.

The tests also have exonerated James Dean, Debra Shelden and Kathy Gonzalez, all of whom pleaded guilty to lesser roles in the murder. Investigators have found no connection between Bruce Smith and the six convicted in the crime.

On Thursday, several assistant attorneys general avoided laying blame for the wrongful convictions.

“The work they did at the time is what enabled us to find (Bruce Smith) now,” said John Freudenberg, chief of the criminal bureau. “The addition of DNA allowed us to close the door on this case.”

Yet the attorneys still characterized some of the interrogation techniques as “unorthodox.”

In response to criticism, Smith said he wished he would have been given the chance to explain his recollections of the investigation before Bruning made his announcement last week.

Smith knew a law enforcement task force had been assembled to reopen the case, but he said he never was consulted or questioned.

“The only thing I want on all sides is that the truth come out. Period,” he said.

He did not challenge the DNA testing of dozens of pieces of evidence that failed to match any of the six people he helped to convict. But he called it unfair to insinuate the investigation was orchestrated to produce false confessions or fabricated testimony.

Smith, now a private practice attorney in Beatrice, shared memories of the case during a 75-minute phone interview, the first time he has walked a reporter through it, he said.

Shortly after the murder, Beatrice police developed Bruce Smith as a suspect. They established that he had been dropped off outside Wilson’s apartment and that he left town several days after the killing.

Investigators tracked him to Oklahoma City and obtained samples of his blood, saliva and pubic hair. But a blood test conducted by an Oklahoma City technician -- who since has been discredited for mishandling forensic tests -- excluded him as the killer.

DNA testing didn’t emerge until 1992 in some jurisdictions. Had it existed in 1989, authorities probably would have arrested Bruce Smith and the six might never have been investigated, the former prosecutor said.

At about the same time police were tracking down Bruce Smith, Burt Searcey, a former Beatrice police officer who had left the department to farm, started working the case as a private investigator.

About three weeks after the killing, Searcey found an informant who said Taylor bragged she and White had killed the 68-year-old woman. Searcey said he eventually turned the information over to police, but nothing came of it.

Two years later, in 1987, Searcey joined the administration of a new sheriff and started investigating the Wilson murder as a deputy. The probe eventually led him to question Thomas Winslow, who was in jail for an assault in Lincoln.

From there, the case developed more quickly, and authorities arrested White in Alabama and Taylor in North Carolina. The arrests of Shelden, Dean and Gonzalez followed.

As for allegations that investigators leaked details to defendants so they later could testify accurately, Smith said he never saw evidence of such activity.

He did recall that videos from the crime scene were shown to some of the defendants, but only after they had agreed to help the prosecution.

Nonetheless, it’s impossible to claim no mistakes were made in an investigation of the magnitude of the Wilson case, Smith said. But he strongly denied that any of the defendants were coerced into admitting crimes they didn’t commit.

During any interrogation at which the prosecutor himself was present, Smith said, the defendant’s attorney also was in the room.

All of the investigatory paperwork, as well as videotaped and audiotaped interrogations, were given to defense lawyers. An attorney representing Taylor asked a judge to suppress one of her taped statements, but the motion was denied.

As for the threat of the death penalty, Smith agreed it may have motivated some of the defendants to plead guilty or cooperate with the prosecution. But he said the Legislature, not he, passed the law that gave the state an electric chair.

Smith offered agreements to five of the defendants, which allowed them to plead to lesser charges. White, who went to trial, was convicted of first-degree murder.

Smith defended his decision to offer the plea bargains because some of the defendants truly played lesser roles. He would have considered charging them with less serious felonies to begin with, he said, but the statute of limitations forced him to charge them all with murder.

It’s all in the thousands of pages of documents, trial transcripts and reports, Smith said.

“I hope that people who are looking at this case are looking at it with totally open eyes,” he said. “If they are, it’s not my place to judge.”