03x10 - Crime Seen

[bunniefuu]

NARRATOR: In , a young couple

got lost searching for a campsite

in Virginia's Blue Ridge Parkway.

They decided to spend the night sleeping in their car.

They were awakened by a white male

in his mid 's at : AM.

[knocking]

MAN: Step out of the vehicle.

NARRATOR: What the couple saw that night,

their eyewitness description of the assailant,

was all that police had to go on.

[theme music]

NARRATOR: When the -year-old woman

and her -year-old fiance were rousted from sleep,

they assumed the man was a policeman.

MAN: Move to the rear of the vehicle, please.

NARRATOR: Blinded by his flashlight

and concerned that they had broken the law,

they handed over their car keys as ordered.

Suddenly, the man produced the g*n

and told the fiance to run into the woods.

He threatened to k*ll him if he didn't obey.

MAN: Move!

NARRATOR: The young woman, now terrified for her life,

was forced at gunpoint into the man's vehicle.

MAN: Open the door.

Open it. Get in the back.

Keep your head down.

Don't look at me.

[car door shuts]

[car starts]

NARRATOR: He drove her to a secluded campsite

about a half hour away.

MAN: That's far enough.

On your knees.

NARRATOR: And over the next two hours,

repeatedly r*ped and sodomized her.

WOMAN: Why are you doing this to me?

NARRATOR: Although the assailant had threatened to k*ll her,

he left her on a deserted stretch of road

and told her how to get back to her car.

She was traumatized, but alive.

-Is there anything that you remember

about this guy, his appearance, his demeanor?

NARRATOR: The victim said that the r*pist wore camouflage

pants, had a large cross around his neck,

and during the as*ault, chain-smoked, drank whiskey,

and babbled incessantly about a Lieutenant

Kolecki and their experiences together in Vietnam.

MAN: Kolecki, in that w*r, hell.

For all of us.

NARRATOR: The victim and her fiance

helped a police sketch artist prepare

this composite drawing of the assailant.

Police all across Virginia searched

for a man who fit the description.

But the search turned up nothing,

and police feared that the Blue Ridge

r*pist would never be identified.

Four months passed, and in nearby Roanoke, Virginia,

there was another sexual as*ault.

The victim said her attacker looked a lot like one

of her neighbors, Edward Honaker.

Honaker had an alibi for the r*pe in Roanoke,

and was quickly eliminated as a suspect.

But investigators noticed a striking resemblance

between Edward Honaker and the composite drawing

of the Blue Ridge r*pist.

Honaker owned an automobile similar to the one

driven by the Blue Ridge r*pist.

It had no back seat, and had rust damage on the body,

consistent with the description given by the victim.

-The car he was driving, one of those big Broncos,

was identified by the victim as, as a car driven by the r*pist.

He had a mustache, so did the r*pist.

He was about the same size, height, weight, as the r*pist.

Um, the case seemed to point directly at him.

NARRATOR: Police prepared a photographic lineup

of six individuals to show the victim and her fiance.

They both identified Edward Honaker as the r*pist.

WOMAN: He had camouflage.

NARRATOR: The r*pe victim and her fiance

both identified Edward Honaker as the r*pist

from the photographic lineup.

Honaker was a -year-old welder with a dishonorable discharge

from the military, and a past history of burglary.

He had recently been hospitalized for depression,

because his wife had left him, taking their three children.

When Honaker was questioned about the r*pe in the Blue

Ridge Parkway four months earlier,

he didn't immediately offer an alibi.

Later, he said he was asleep in his mother's home in Montvale,

miles away.

Honaker owned an automobile similar to the assailant's.

And from his home, police recovered clothes and jewelry

similar to those worn by the Blue Ridge

r*pist on the night of the attack.

-She described the assailant as having worn fatigues.

Fatigues were recovered at his home.

She described him as having a cross about his neck,

a cross of a-- she also said that he had told her

when this as*ault was over that he

was going back to the Roanoke area.

And Honaker was living in and about the Roanoke area.

NARRATOR: The final step was to compare the hair found

on the victim's shorts with Edward Honaker's hair.

-The expert there stated that they were very likely a match.

And that was very strong evidence against him, as well.

-The last thing I told my mother was, don't worry about it.

I'll probably be home tomorrow evening, or the next day.

I thought I would go to a lineup or something,

and the lady, the victim, would say, no, this isn't the guy.

NARRATOR: But something else happened when Edward Honaker

faced his accuser for the first time in court.

-He was identified in a crowded courtroom,

the preliminary hearing, by the fiance and the victim.

They both identified him in court, picked him out.

Not seat-- not standing in an orange suit up front,

but mixed in among the rest of spectators in the courtroom.

MAN: Get out of here.

NARRATOR: Honaker's defense lawyer noted that Honaker was

right-handed, and the assailant held the g*n in his left hand.

The assailant ranted about his experiences in Vietnam,

but Honaker was never in Vietnam.

The defense also presented evidence

that Honaker had a vasectomy, which meant he could not have

produced the sperm found on the vaginal swab.

But the prosecution said the victim and her fiance

had consensual sex a few days before the r*pe.

The sperm could have belonged to the fiance.

For the jury, it was an easy decision.

The most damaging piece of evidence

came when the victim took the stand.

Henry Connor was the jury foreman.

-She looked right at the defendant,

looked him in the eye, so to speak.

And said, that is the man who r*ped me.

And we had no reason to doubt her,

because she was very, very sure.

-I had a lot of animosity toward her and her boyfriend.

I just, I couldn't understand why they had done this to me,

why they had chosen me for this.

And I just, I, I don't know.

I just, I had a lot of hatred for, for both of them.

NARRATOR: Edward Honaker was found guilty of r*pe, sodomy,

and aggravated sexual battery, and was sentenced

to three life terms plus years.

The judge stated that Honaker's hair found on the victim

had sealed his fate.

While Honaker was in prison, he continued

to proclaim his innocence.

Months went by, then years.

Over time, Honaker's attention turned

from proving his innocence to simple survival.

-You can't show fear in prison.

If you do, you'll be preyed upon.

There are some of the world's best predators

locked up in a prison cell.

And they will take advantage of you.

They can, they will spot it, I think someone said once,

quicker than a lion can spot a limp.

NARRATOR: Over the next five years,

Honaker sent letters to journalists, lawyers,

and criminal advocates all across the country,

pleading his case to anyone who would listen.

No one responded.

Honaker never gave up hope, but was out of ideas.

Until one day, on television, he watched the trial

of Timothy Spencer, the so-called South Side Strangler.

-I had watched that trial.

And I told a friend of mine at the prison, Floyd.

I said, Floyd, this is my, this is my salvation.

This is the answer that God has given me

through all of my prayers, is this DNA.

But Honaker wasn't sure if the vaginal swab from his r*pe case

had been preserved.

And if it had, could it still be tested after all those years?

Five years after Edward Honaker was convicted of a r*pe he said

he didn't commit, one of his letters

made its way to Kate Germond of Centurion Ministries,

an organization that works on behalf

of the wrongfully convicted.

Centurion Ministries receives thousands of letters

from convicted criminals every year.

But there were a number of things about Honaker's case

that caught Germond's attention.

-Eyewitness testimony, in our country,

is considered, by most people, to be

the most profound proof of truth.

That's the man that did this to me.

We all assume, I think through the years

we've come to believe that our mind is like a videotape.

That it just accurately records whatever

we see, whatever we hear, whatever

we come in contact with.

The reality is, what our memory is actually recording is, yes,

what's going on in the moment.

But it's also mixed into that is memories,

dreams, um, some little distraction.

It's just a huge variety pack.

So our memories are actually not accurate at all.

NARRATOR: When the victim chose Honaker's picture

from the photo lineup, Honaker was the only one standing

in front of a white background.

The other suspects were all photographed

in front of the standard height scale.

Research has shown that if one item in the array

of photographs is uniquely different,

such as the background, it is more likely to be chosen.

Furthermore, police lineups should include faces that

have an equal chance of being selected, faces similar to one

another.

Honaker's photo was the only one of six

that remotely resembled the description

given by the victim.

-The mugshot spread that was shown to both the victim

and her boyfriend, in my opinion,

is one of the most tainted mugshot spreads I've ever seen.

NARRATOR: Centurion Ministries asked the state of Virginia

to release the forensic evidence used to convict Honaker.

And they asked hair expert, Dr. Peter DeForest,

to analyze the hair found on the victim's shorts, which

the state of Virginia said matched Edward Honaker's hair.

-I compared the unknown hair taken from the victim

with a known sample of Mr. Honaker.

And assuming that the known sample was representative

of Mr. Honaker's range of variation,

I would have eliminated Mr. Honaker as a donor of that hair

from the victim.

NARRATOR: And forensic scientists agree.

There is no such thing as a hair match.

-You cannot match hair.

There is no such thing as a hair match.

The most that you can ever say about hair

testimony, hair evidence, is that it

is similar or dissimilar.

It is consistent or not consistent.

That's it.

NARRATOR: And their investigation

uncovered something else.

-We also learned that the victim had been to a hypnotist

to have her memory hypnotically refreshed.

The hypnotist, um, notes in a letter to the prosecutor

that the victim was brought to him because she could not

recall the face of her assailant.

NARRATOR: Hypnotically-enhanced recollections

are inadmissible as evidence in most states,

including Virginia.

The victim's identification of Honaker

should not have been presented to the jury.

But when the victim pointed Ed Honaker in the courtroom,

it practically ensured his conviction.

-The victim was very, very convincing, and very,

very credible.

And I think she, uh, beyond all shadow of a doubt,

made the difference in the jury's, uh, I know,

in my own case.

And there was, I don't think, uh,

there was ever any real doubt, uh, in the minds of the jurors

about, uh, about the guilt of Mr. Honaker at that time.

NARRATOR: Barry Scheck was convinced that DNA testing

would prove Honaker's claims of innocence.

But prosecutors and Honaker's new defense team

were in for another surprise, when

the victim changed her story, once again.

By the time Centurion Ministries completed their investigation

of Edward Honaker's case, he had spent almost nine years

in prison for a crime he said he didn't commit.

Centurion Ministries gained access to the vaginal swab

taken from the victim on the night she was r*ped,

and sent it to Dr. Edward Blake at Forensic Science

Associates near Oakland, California.

They also sent along a sample of Edward Honaker's blood.

Centurion Ministries paid for the DNA testing,

which was approximately $,.

Dr. Blake needed to identify all of the genetic markers

on the swab, and then determine whether Edward Honaker could

have provided any of the markers present.

Dr. Blake performed a DNA test called

polymerase chain reaction, or PCR.

It's a test used when the sample is

small or has been degraded over time.

-PCR is ideally suited to what you might

consider historical investigations.

That is investigations that are maybe more than five years old.

Dr. Blake assumed that the cotton swab contained cells

from three individuals, the victim,

her fiance, and the r*pist.

After Dr. Blake analyzed the DNA from the swab,

he did not believe that Edward Honaker was the r*pist.

-The conclusions that could be reached from the analysis

of the vaginal swab alone was that the sperm, uh,

could not originate from Ed, Edward Honaker.

NARRATOR: But Governor George Allen wasn't so sure.

He asked the Virginia State Crime

Lab to conduct their own analysis.

And they found something in the tests they hadn't expected.

-We were not as absolute in the conclusion

that Forensic Science Associates originally came to.

We felt that there were some other scenarios that

might possibly explain the results.

NARRATOR: The Virginia Crime Lab noticed some genetic material

they could not identify or fully explain.

It was a , genetic marker found

in the sperm fraction of the PCR test.

The mixture of all of the DNA profiles,

and the similarities presented by the combinations

of the genetic materials meant that Honaker could not

be eliminated as the contributor of the , genetic marker.

Faced with competing scientific opinions,

Governor Allen asked police to go

back over the investigation one more time.

-As Governor, you want to make sure

that you have all the evidence, and have it investigated,

talk to the witness, look at the evidence,

run whatever tests can be done on the evidence,

so that I have the full story.

NARRATOR: When investigators re-interviewed the victim

and told her that DNA testing of her vaginal swab

revealed some inconsistencies, she

made a surprising confession.

After the r*pe, she married her fiance.

But they had since divorced.

She admitted that at the time of the r*pe,

she was sexually involved with another man in addition

to her fiance.

-It raised the question about whether or not

the sperm taken from the victim's vag*na

had any relevance to the sexual as*ault on her.

That's how Ed Honaker gets brought back into the suit.

NARRATOR: When DNA testing is done in r*pe cases,

all of the consensual sexual partners have to be identified.

-What we have to account for and understand

is that in taking samples like this,

one has to account for, um, prior consensual,

sexual intercourse.

And therefore, one has to account

for the DNA types of those individuals.

NARRATOR: Sheriffs located the second boyfriend,

took his DNA sample, and scientists performed

a more sophisticated DNA test called a poly marker

test, which types five genes at once,

instead of just one or two.

The poly marker DNA tests showed conclusively

that Edward Honaker was not the contributor

of the , genetic marker.

Edward Honaker was innocent.

In October of , Governor Allen called Honaker in prison

and told him he was a free man.

-He said, I feel that that jury made a mistake.

He said, as of this moment, you are a free man.

What he said after that, I have no idea.

NARRATOR: After years in prison,

Edward Honaker walked out of the Nottoway Correctional Facility

into the arms of his family and friends.

He had missed the last years of his children's lives.

-It was a grow miscarriage of justice.

The evidence of his innocence was just overwhelming.

You'd have to be complete fool to miss it.

-There are many, many limitations

on the testimony of eyewitnesses,

particularly in situations where-- where,

uh, there's a great deal of not only physical trauma,

but emotional trauma.

That's not a place for people to make

careful, critical observations.

-I always knew, deep in my heart,

that I would one day get out of prison, a free man.

Not only, not only get out of prison,

but proven that I did not commit that damn crime.

I always knew that.

[theme music]