Season 2, Episode 2: The Route

If you haven't listened to the first episode of In The Dark, stop, go back, and listen to it first, and this will make a lot more sense. One other note, this episode contains a word that's offensive. Last time, on In The Dark. Do you remember how you heard that Curtis had been arrested for the murders? Curtis, gee of honor, flowers murdered those four people, there's no doubt in my mind. Curtis flowers were sentenced to death on four counts of capital murder. That conviction actually marked the sixth time flowers have been tried in the case. It's too long, way too long, and Curtis flowers are still in prison, and it's still dragging it on. I know Curtis didn't do it. I will go to my grave, leaving Curtis didn't do it. If you try, man, and you go six times to the same crime, there was something that's wrong about the entire system. On the west side of Winona, in the middle of a neighborhood with lots of houses close together, there's what looks like an abandoned parking lot. It's nearly a block long, it's overgrown, the grass isn't mowed, it's kind of place you might drive by and never give a second thought. But if you slowed down and looked more closely, you'd notice a row of bricks poking out of the grass along the edge of a lot, and a set of concrete steps that lead nowhere. If you got out of your car and walked onto the lot and headed all the way to the back, you'd find an old desk overturned in the grass. You'd see that someone had taken a silver marker and written the words "Mary Christmas." This abandoned lot used to be a school. Back in the 1960s, it was an all black school, and it was in a black neighborhood. But in 1970, the federal government ordered the city of Winona to integrate its schools, and white and black students started to go to school here together. But then, four years later, on the night before Valentine's Day, after all the students and teachers had left, a fire broke out. The flames lit up the sky and people could smell the smoke for miles. Within hours, the entire block-long brick building had burned to the ground. Nearly everyone I talked to about the fire, black and white told me they think it was arson and that it was related to integration. Right next to the field where the school used to be, there's a small white house with a porch on the side. This is the house where Curtis Flowers' parents live. Hello? Lola and Archie Flowers have been married for 54 years. Everything in their house is just so. The dining room table is set perfectly with cloth napkins. In the living room, there's a curved tan velvet couch with fringe on the bottom and a matching ottoman. Lola and Archie are both retired and although they have five other children and many grandchildren, they have devoted most of their time in the past 21 years to their son Curtis. Curtis' parents talk on the phone with them almost every day. They regularly make the 80-minute drive each way to parchment prison. There were two weeks we go. We see them the first and third to use them each month. We don't miss a bit. Can you bring them anything? When you get them getting sushed and everything, every time you go, you might wear them and leave you clothes off and go on over the edge. Well, they really search it. Yeah, scan you and everything. From the beginning, Lola and Archie Flowers have believed their son is innocent and they spent a lot of money on Curtis' case. How much do you think you spent? Shoot, we were like, I counted that up. It was like a hundred and some thousand dollars. Oh my gosh. I'm telling you. How did you afford it? I used to work three jobs a day. He was working double twice and then, after that, we went in barry son from the bank and everything to pay for the next law you just do. We had some money there, but we don't have enough. Over the past 21 years and six trials, Curtis Flowers has had every archetype of lawyer. The father-son legal team, the high-profile black nationalist attorney, the dedicated public defenders. When I met his parents, Lola and Archie last summer, Curtis' case had been taken on for free by a new team of lawyers from the Innocence Project and a high-powered East Coast law firm. Lola was feeling optimistic for the first time in a while. She was thinking ahead to the next family reunion. So we're having the next one, a Labor Day weekend, so I hope Curtis out, buddy. Maybe it was Supreme Court to say something. That's what we're waiting on now to see what they got to say. Do you let yourself think about that moment? Like, do you think about what that would be like if he. No, yeah, I think about that all the time, you know. What a good time we're going to have in here. A lot of the families say, "When they let him out, we all will be there." So yeah, we're going to have a good time. Curtis' father, Archie, didn't say much the first time I met him. He sat next to his wife, and when she talked, he would just sigh or shake his head. I asked the Flowers if they had any photos of Curtis. They told me they only had one, because in 1999, just before Curtis' second trial, their house burned down. Lola and Archie were out of town in Memphis when it happened. Their daughter was sleeping over at their house with some of their grandkids. My daughter was home. And she said, "It sounded like something blowed up or something." She said, "It was a loud noise." And when she went to look, everything was burning. It just burned, it were wet. As for the cause of the fire, according to the report from the fire department, which I got a copy of, there was no final determination as to what caused it. But Lola told me that after the fire, someone told her that they'd heard something from a white person in town. But somebody said they heard it, say if they let the nigga go, another house going burned. What do you think of that? What do you think? I think of it. Does somebody properly say it or not? (Music) Many years ago, around the time of the first trial, Curtis's friends and family tried to organize people in town to help Curtis. I went with our producer Samara to talk to some of the people who were involved in it, Pastor Jimmy Forrest and his wife Rosie. Hi, are you Reverend Forrest? Pastor Forrest had had a stroke the previous year, so Rosie did most of the talking. But what we was trying to do was family-wide just try to see if we need to raise money, get lawyers, find him a lawyer, or do we need to, we were just going to talk about and find out what it is that we can do to help Curtis. Just follow it. Yeah, just be there for him. Rosie said her husband Jimmy took the lead back then on organizing a community meeting. Rosie told me that it felt like there was some momentum there, like they could really get something going. But then one day, before the meeting had happened, a woman came into the salon where Rosie worked, a black woman whom Rosie refused to name. And this woman told Rosie that she'd been asked to deliver a message to her husband Jimmy from the white side of town. The message was brief. He needs to relax. He needs to relax. Cool off. Who is the message from? We don't know exactly, but we didn't want a house burn or anything to happen to our family. And so did you still have the meeting? Do we do it? No, we didn't. Everybody just disappeared. We had planned to get together and talk about it. Nobody. So we just didn't do anything else. We backed out. Because it sounded like it's a threat, right? It was. It was. It was a threat. If you ain't been here, Matter of fact, if I had, if I knew enough about the law system or lawyers or whatever, I would have investigated that incident. I would have tried to follow that up, but I didn't know enough. We don't have the bad part about it. Can't prove none of this stuff. How do you heard of things like that happening in Winona before? I have. So that's what put the fear. This is season two of In the Dark, an investigative podcast from APM Reports. I'm Madeline Baron. This season is about the case of Curtis Flowers, a black man from a small town in Mississippi who spent the past 21 years fighting for his life and a white prosecutor who spent that same time trying just as hard to execute him. I was in Mississippi to find out what was going on in the case of Curtis Flowers, to find out why the prosecutor, Doug Evans, had tried the case six times. I decided to start out my reporting by looking at the evidence that Doug Evans presented to the jurors in those six trials. The way I saw it, the case against Curtis Flowers really came down to three main things. The route he said Curtis walked the morning of the murders. The gun he said Curtis used to murder the four people at the store and the confessions he said, the Curtis made to assault mates. The route, the gun, the confessions. I decided to start with the route. I went with our producer Natalie to check it out for ourselves. Okay, so we are standing in front of Curtis Flowers' house where he was living in 1996 and what we're about to do is walk the route that the state says Curtis walked that day and it's like seven o'clock in the morning. Yeah, so it's about the time that he would have started out according to the state. Okay, so let's start walking. To our right basically. According to Doug Evans, Curtis had walked everywhere that morning. He got up early on the morning of July 16th, left his house on the west side of town and started walking east. In the neighborhood where Curtis lived, the houses are small and close together. It's hilly, the yards are short and some houses are practically up on the street. People are out in their yards hanging out, waving to people as they drive by. According to Doug Evans, Curtis walked out of his neighborhood and he went east. He crossed over one of the town's biggest streets, highway 51, and kept going. Curtis turned down a street that led to a small sewing factory. We are coming up to Angelica Drive. He walked up to the parking lot right outside the factory and stole a gun from the glove compartment of a car. Then he walked all the way home, back to the west side of town, his neighbor crossing 51. Now we're back on Curtis's side of town. Curtis was at his house for a few minutes, then he left again. This time to go to Tarty Furniture. Tarty Furniture was all the way on the other side of town, on the side of town where Curtis just was. So he headed back east to go to the store. He walked past block after block of houses and as he got closer to Tarty Furniture, he started to pass by businesses, an auto body shop, a dry cleaner. He arrived at Tarty Furniture, walked inside and killed all four people there. Then he walked out the front door and headed west to go back home. On the way he stopped at a convenience store on Highway 51 to buy chips and a six pack of beer. This is such a long walk. It really is. By the time Natalie and I were done, we'd walked for an hour and 36 minutes. The route the prosecutor Doug Evans said Curtis Flowers took was long. It was nearly four miles and it's brazen. Would have taken Curtis all over the town of Winona that morning. When Curtis Flowers talked to investigators on the day of the murders and later when he testified in court, Curtis said he never walked that route. In fact, he said he was never on the east side of town at all that morning. He'd spent the whole morning in his own neighborhood on the west side. But the problem for Curtis Flowers was that the prosecutor Doug Evans had found witnesses who placed Curtis at almost every point on that route. These route witnesses were one of the strongest parts of the state's case. Each of them raised their right hand and sore and oath and testified to seeing Curtis that day as he walked by. Although none of the witnesses testified that they saw Curtis carrying a gun or saw any blood on him, their testimony was powerful. Most of these route witnesses knew Curtis. A lot of them have known Curtis their entire lives. Most of them were black and they grown up in the same neighborhood as Curtis. When Doug Evans put them on the stand and asked them to describe who they saw that morning, these witnesses could not have been more clear. They would point to Curtis and be like, "It was Curtis. There he is. I've known him for years." It was hard for Curtis's lawyers to break the spell of the route. They tried cross-examining each of the witnesses, but it didn't seem to do much. If anything, as the trials went on, the witnesses seemed to get even more certain and even more angry at the defense attorneys for doubting them. It was easy to see how a jury would be convinced by these route witnesses. To the jurors, these witnesses came across as credible, as people doing the right thing. Doug Evans told them that what the witnesses said, all their individual stories, it all fit together. It made sense as one story, one route, a clear convincing story about a man walking to commit murder. But there was something I found odd about this route and about these witnesses. I managed to track down the original statements that the route witnesses gave to law enforcement. There were at least 12 witnesses who'd given statements about seeing Curtis flowers walking on the day of the murders. Most of them had testified at trial. The statements are pretty basic. Did you see Curtis flowers? Do you remember what he was wearing? That kind of thing. But it's when the statements were given that stood out to me. The first statement from a route witness, naming Curtis, didn't come until a month after the murders. Some statements weren't given until four, five, or even nine months later. This seemed strange to me. Because what the witnesses were describing seemed totally unremarkable. They were describing a man they knew who lived in their neighborhood, walking past them. A man who wasn't doing anything strange. He was just walking. That was it. I couldn't see any reason why on the morning of the murders, anyone would have connected that to an execution style quadruple murder in a different part of town. And if you didn't make that connection in your mind that day, how in the world would you be able to make it weeks or months later? And even if you did remember it, why would you wait so long to tell the cops? That's what I wanted to find out when I set out with our producer Natalie to find these witnesses last summer. I wasn't sure what to expect. A lot of people in Winona told me that these witnesses, they don't talk about their testimony. They don't talk at all about the case. I couldn't find a record of any of the witnesses ever giving an actual interview to a reporter. And when we found one of our first witnesses and asked him about his testimony, we didn't exactly get off to a promising start. That is confidential. This guy's name is James Edward Kennedy, but everyone just calls him BoJack. It's confidential. We're not supposed to talk about that. We're not supposed to talk about it because other people have gotten the wrong impression by talking to people like you all. So for me myself, I don't talk about it. You don't. You're not going to talk about that period because it's confidential and it causes confusion on both sides. BoJack had talked to the district attorney's investigator John Johnson in September of 1996, two months after the murders. He said that he'd seen Curtis Flowers walking by his house, smoking a cigarette on the morning of July 16, 1996, near the factory where Curtis had supposedly stolen the gun. BoJack had testified in five of Curtis Flowers trials. And over all of those trials, BoJack never wavered. He was absolutely certain he had seen Curtis that day. I ended up talking to BoJack for nearly four hours over two days. And eventually, he did tell me a story of what he'd seen on the day of the murders. It was more or less the same one he told in court five times about seeing Curtis that day. BoJack told me he was out on his porch at the time when he saw him, walking back. And did you say anything to him? I mean, what are you doing now? He's an owner. He mumbled something and he never stopped. But it quickly became clear that BoJack is a kind of guy who says a lot of things, a kind of guy who just likes to tell stories. For example, BoJack told me that ISIS was in Winona. And at one time, the river in Winona suddenly switched directions and started flowing backwards. And also, he told me that he worried that my microphone might be transmitting messages to the Russians. BoJack wasn't saying any of these things with any real seriousness. It didn't seem at all as though he really thought my microphone was in communication with Vladimir Putin. He was just messing with me. BoJack was happy to tell me about all kinds of things. But the only thing he wouldn't talk about was how he'd ended up giving a statement to Law Enforcement two months after the murders. I didn't live with this thing. I guess I wanted to tell you, but I'm not living with this thing. I didn't think it would be like a big question actually. That's it. I'm not gonna say anything about what I mean. I'm looking at in the back of my mind. It's telling me not to talk no more. Okay. As the summer went on, Natalie and I kept talking to witnesses. And slowly, we started to piece together just how these route witnesses came to be giving statements to investigators. And it turned out it wasn't like they just picked up the phone and called the cops to report what they'd seen. In the Curtis Flowers case, it worked the other way. Hi. How are you doing? I'm Mary. Oh. Oh. Yeah. I talked to a route witness named Mary Jeanette Fleming, who told me that how she got involved in this 21-year-long death penalty case, isn't entirely clear to her. She said that one day, about seven months after the murders, she was working her shift at McDonald's when in-walked the police chief of Winona. He came up to McDonald and told me to come to the police station and I asked him what we're going on. You not thought something had happened to one of my teeth and he never did tell me so it anyway. You were worried something was up with your kids? He just said he wanted to talk to me at the station that day, you know. Mary Jeanette asked her boss if she could leave work right then in the middle of her shift and he said, OK. And then she drove herself down to the Winona police station. She said she still didn't know what it was about. And then she ended up in a room with an investigator. So when I got there, he broke it up about the flower case. And so did they ask you, like, did you see Curtis the day of the murders? Yes, ma'am. That's what he asked me. Mary Jeanette said she told the investigator that she remembered seeing Curtis walking pastor on the sidewalk on the morning of the murders seven months earlier. So I just, you know, told my head, seen him that morning, I didn't know Paul said it anyway. Mary Jeanette Fleming has had to testify at every trial that Curtis Flowers has had for 21 years. She said that all of this has turned her family against her. She said her family believes Curtis is innocent, and that they think she went to the police with a made up story so that she could get the $30,000 reward that had been offered in the case. My own folk was against me telling me I wanted to get moving and stuff like that. I didn't want no damn pay. Why do you think they didn't want you to tell that story? Like how they were freeing too, huh? Then they were telling me he was a church member all the way on main tomb. You know, he didn't want to do it, you know, he couldn't kill the men and people at one time. I didn't say he did do it. I said I'd seen him that morning headed in that direction. I told him I don't know where he went to. So you got your own family accused of being a liar? I didn't know you. We found another witness, Danny Joe Lot, lying on a bench out in front of a dollar general store. His arm slung over his eyes to block out the afternoon sun. Are you Danny Joe Lot? Great. Danny Joe had given a detailed statement to the DA's investigator John Johnson. It was about ten months after the murders when he gave it. When I found Danny Joe, he'd clearly been drinking and by his own account, Danny Joe's memory was terrible. He told me that back in 1996, he would get drunk almost every day. He told me he was actually drinking a beer the morning some officers pulled up. In May 1997, ten months after the murders, and told him to go with them, down to the police station. They got me. Who got you? I don't know them, white men, fine on the police. I don't know. And they told you to get in the car? Yeah. Was it, were you scared? Like they just come by, you don't know who they are? Yeah, I was scared. I didn't know who they were. I just got in. Danny Joe lot had been picked up a lot by the police over the years, but this time was different. This time he said, they didn't put handcuffs on him, and they let him ride in the front seat. He said, "We ain't putting no handcuffs on you." I said, "Okay." He said, "Get in the front seat. I got in the front." He said, "You ain't dead now, we got got to ask you questions." Danny Joe told me that once he got to the police station, he was put into a room with the same investigator who talked to many of the other witnesses, John Johnson, the investigator for the District Attorney's Office. That's when he gave a statement about seeing Curtis. I kept talking to witnesses, and as I did, I became more and more suspicious. Not of the witnesses, but of the investigation. People seemed kind of freaked out. They spoke to me through their screen doors or out of car windows. I knocked on one woman's door, and she wouldn't come out at all. All she would say was that if Curtis had another trial, she would refuse to testify. I went to see a really minor witness. She didn't even testify at trial, because all she said was that she saw Curtis in his own neighborhood on the day of the murders. But when I went to see this woman, she told me she actually did not see Curtis that day, and then she closed the door on me. One day, I ended up talking to a man whose wife was a witness, though she never testified at trial. When I stopped by, his wife was taking a nap, and at first, he was very friendly and invited me inside. But when I asked about his wife's statement about seeing Curtis, he said I should go. That his wife would not want him talking about that. When I asked him why, he said that his wife had felt pressured to talk by law enforcement, but they'd asked about things she knew nothing about. He wouldn't explain what he meant. On the way out, he made this really cryptic remark. He said they wanted everything. They wanted her to make some commitments she couldn't make. And then he told me, I've said more than I probably should have, and the interview was over. And then one day, I met a witness, named Ed McCristen. That's after the break. Comprehensive. Witty. Speculative. Critical. Insightful. Profound. Wide-ranging. Hopefully it doesn't take itself too too seriously. I'm David Remnick, and each week on The New Yorker Radio Hour, my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world. I hope you'll join us for The New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts. The thoughtful. Exquisite. Just, you know, real. Wired has always put a microscope on the people, power, and forces shaping our world. Uncanny Valley brings that same fearless reporting straight to your feet. Is Doge finally over? Will AI actually democratize American health care? Each week, wired journalists from across the newsroom are going to unpack where politics, technology, and Silicon Valley collide. 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British Vogue's head of editorial content, as they explore fashion through the lens of culture with guests like Doge a Cat and Margot Robbie. Listen and watch The Run Through with Vogue wherever you get your podcasts and Vogue's YouTube channel. Edmmer Christian lives in a neat one-story brick house. As I walked up, an air conditioner was blasting in the window. Can we sit down for a sec? You mind? It's just so hot. Edmmer Christian was wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt that became more and more soaked with sweat as we sat in lawn chairs on a little strip of concrete in front of his house. He held a little blue washcloth in his right hand. In every minute or so, he would raise it to his head to wipe off the sweat that streamed down it. Then he would neatly fold the blue washcloth and press it down on his jeans to dry it off. I asked Edmmer Christian all my usual questions. He told me how he saw Curtis Flowers walking by his house in the day of the murders. He told me he did not get in touch with law enforcement to tell them about this, that law enforcement got in touch with him, that he gave a statement to John Johnson at the police station. Edmmer Christian had talked to John Johnson about a month after the murders. In court Edmmer Christian always testified that he was certain of what he saw. Curtis Flowers walking by his house on the morning of July 16, 1996. He just paid just like that. I never gave him a thought. I mean, you don't know nothing about him, so I just looked at him seeing who he was and he was. That was it. How certain are you? that it was that morning that you saw Curtis. I wasn't even really stupid. That you've had more about it than I do. I wasn't even really sure. They had more about it than I did. What did that mean? And then Edmund Christian told me how it came to be that he gave such a detailed statement about seeing Curtis Flowers on July 16, 1996. He said that statement he gave, it didn't start with him. It started with John Johnson. Edmund Christian told me Curtis Flowers did walk by his house at some point that summer, but he never remembered which day it was. He said that wasn't a problem. Because when he walked into that room at the police station, John Johnson already knew what day he'd seen Curtis. That he'd seen Curtis Flowers on July 16, 1996. They had a downpact for me. So all I had to do would go there and they didn't question the lies. Edmund Christian said it's still not clear to him exactly how John Johnson knew this. He said Johnson told him that someone had turned him in, that someone had said that Edmund Christian had seen Curtis on July 16. Johnson wouldn't say who this person was. The whole thing was kind of unsettling. Somebody had told him I think, so I couldn't say I didn't think. So Edmund Christian said yes. I did see Curtis Flowers on July 16, 1996. He gave the statement and testified to it in six trials. And so if you hadn't been like called in there and they hadn't said like July 16, 1996, would you have even remembered the day? No. Edmund Christian told me that every time another one of Curtis's trials came up and he found out he had to testify again. He didn't want to go, but he didn't think he had a choice. He told me he's not sure exactly what would happen to him if he straight up refused to testify. But that whatever it would be, it wouldn't be good. Like you might have to pay a fine or could even be thrown in jail. All A.D.A. return and deal subpoena me every time. So you didn't have a choice? Every time I get a subpoena. Did you ever say like I'm not doing this? You don't know how bad I wanted to. No, I never did say it, but I sure wanted to. Don't you know girls? We had talked to almost all the witnesses on the route that the prosecutor, Doug Evans, said Curtis had walked on the morning of the murders. I had just two witnesses left. And the story that these two witnesses told was critically important to the state's case against Curtis. Their names were Roy Harris and Clemmie Fleming. They didn't talk to law enforcement until about nine months after the murders. Clemmie and Roy gave separate statements to John Johnson. But what they told him was more or less the same story. Clemmie and Roy said they were in a car together on the morning of the murders. Roy was driving. Clemmie was in the passenger seat. Clemmie had asked Roy to give her a ride to Tarty Furniture, to pay her furniture bill. Roy and Clemmie pulled up outside the store. It was right around the time of the murders. But Clemmie decided not to get out of the car. Because even though she had driven all the way down here, she later explained she wasn't feeling well because she was five months pregnant. They left, and as they drove around the corner, and got about a block or two away from Tarty Furniture, they spotted a man up ahead, running across the field, running west, like he was running away from the direction of downtown. Clemmie recognized him right away. It was her neighbor, Curtis Flowers. She pointed him out to Roy, but Roy didn't know him. They didn't talk to Curtis. They couldn't remember what clothes he was wearing or what kind of shoes. They didn't describe seeing any blood on him or seeing a gun. But what they did see was bad enough. Curtis Flowers, running west around the time of the murders, just a block or two from Tarty Furniture. Clemmie and Roy both testified in the first trial. But almost as soon as that first trial ended, the story of Clemmie and Roy began to fall apart. Last summer, I went with our producer, Samara, to find Roy Harris. He lives in a little town about a half hour from Winona. Roy didn't have a listed phone number, and we couldn't find anyone who had an address for him. So we just started stopping into gas stations and truck stops, asking if anyone knew him. - Do you happen to know where Roy Harris lives? - I have no idea. - Okay, I don't know where Roy Harris lives. - Oh, who now? - Roy Harris. - Roy Harris. - Yeah. - I can't play. - Okay. - No, okay. - Finally, we stopped into a cafe, and asked the ladies working the lunch buffet if they knew where to find it. - I got it. - Good, here we go. - A man named Roy Harris. Well, he can't figure out where he lives. - I know you. - Oh, is that him there? - The cashier pointed to an older man, sitting at a table with a woman. They were eating lunch. It was Roy Harris and his girlfriend, Joanne Young. - I don't want to interrupt your life. - I don't sit there with you. - Nice to meet you. - Hi. - To my name is Joanne. - Hi, I'm Adelaide. - Joanne told us that talking with Roy wasn't going to be easy, because Roy was almost entirely deaf. He lost most of his hearing when he was a teenager and attractor ran over his head. He didn't know sign language. He didn't use a hearing aid. We made plans to meet up with them a few days later at Joanne's house. - Come on in. Y'all going to hit him throw a fan in it? - No. - Joanne was wearing a long-flowing skirt and red lipstick. Roy was wearing a baseball cap, a T-shirt, and jeans. We sat down at Joanne's kitchen table and right away, Joanne took charge of the interview. - He can hear the words, but he don't, he can't make it out what it is. - So you can hear that someone is talking? - Right. - But what it is? - What it is, he don't. - My hand reads your lips, my lips, he can read me good. - Yeah, yeah, that's why it's good to have you here. - I mean, really? Roy, she's gonna ask you some questions. I know, I know. - Thanks. Roy Harris told me that the morning of the murders, he did see a man running across the street a block or two from tardy furniture. But he also told me that when he saw that man, it was much earlier in the morning and that he was alone in the car. Clemmie wasn't with him. Roy said he didn't take Clemmie for a ride until later that morning, after he'd seen the man. And that when he was in the car with Clemmie, they didn't see anyone running. - But she ain't seen nobody running. The other time I see somebody running, that's when I was by myself. She wouldn't with me when I for a while, when I seen you for the run. And when I took her, we ain't seen nobody running. Nine months or so after the murders, law enforcement told Roy Harris they wanted to talk to him. Roy didn't know how they'd found him. Figures it somehow, someone must have told someone about the man he'd seen running. Roy said he went down to the police station and just like so many of the other witnesses, he ended up in a room with John Johnson, the investigator for the district attorney's office. - So, what did he say when you met? - What did you, what did he say when you met? When he took you to the police station, what did he say to you? - He showed me credit flyer picture, like a school, a school picture. - And how many photos did they show you? - How many pictures did they show you? - Just one. - Just one. - Mr. Polaro, picture. Yeah, me with that, the fella I seen running, I told him now. I told him never wearing the fella. Ray Harris said that John Johnson pushed him on this point. Wasn't it Curtis Flowers, he saw? And wasn't Roy in the car with Clemmie when they saw the man? - And so, he kept on, kept on, kept on. He tried to make me, you know, say that, you know, she went me, but I told him she wasn't. - So, he, he kept questioning you? - Keep on, kept on, kept on, kept on. And I wouldn't, I didn't want to agree with it. But eventually, Roy said, you broke down, told John Johnson, fine. I saw Curtis Flowers with Clemmie on the morning of the murders. Roy said he did it because he wanted to get out of there. He just wanted it to be over. - I thought I was afraid of Johnson. Why would you afraid of Johnson? - Why would you have somebody do something to me? Something like that, you know, because you're trying to get me all messed up in a way. - Oh, okay. - What did you think he might do? - What would you think he might do? - I don't know anything. You know, telling what? - But you was afraid of them. - Yeah, because he knew what I couldn't hear good and he trying to get me in trouble. You know, like, you know, by saying the wrong thing, you know, and stuff like that, he'd get me locked up, you know. - But it sounds like you felt threatened. - I tried to talk to John Johnson about this, but he did not respond to my requests for an interview. Roy testified in the first trial that he and Clemmy saw Curtis that day. But after that first trial, Roy Harris went to Curtis's lawyers and told them that the testimony he'd given was not true. After Roy Harris recanted his testimony, The prosecutor Doug Evans had a-- problem. The story of Roy and Clemmie had been one of the strongest pieces of evidence about Curtis' route at the first trial. Now, that story was falling apart. If Clemmie also changed her story, that would be even worse. If that happened, Doug Evans would no longer have a story of Curtis running away from downtown. All he would have would be some stories of Curtis walking around. And so, after Roy changed his story, Doug Evans' investigator John Johnson moved to lockdown Clemmie's story. And the thing is recording. I managed to track down the video that John Johnson took of Clemmie Fleming after Roy had recanted. Clemmie looks young in the video. She's just 22 then. She's barely talking above a whisper. She's wearing white spandexy shorts and a long sleeve straight polo shirt. Her hair is straight and down to her ears. She's wearing silver earrings. She's in a room with John Johnson and another investigator. Both of the investigators are off camera. Clemmie's sitting in a blue office chair and she keeps swiveling left and right. John Johnson and the other investigator take Clemmie through a whole story. Throughout the interview, John Johnson and the other investigator keep guiding Clemmie back to the statements she gave at trial. They keep reminding her of what she'd said in the past. Then John Johnson tells Clemmie why they wanted to make this recording. Basically, what we want to know this morning, Clemmie, the day that you came in and made this statement. Did I lead you to say anything? Was your statement free and voluntary? Did I offer you money or any reward or any gratitude at all if you would make the statement? No. Also, you know, I didn't guide you as to the facts of what you saw that morning. It goes on like this. Were you truthful with your statement that day, Clemmie? I don't be lying. You've been truthful in your testimony under of you raised your hand and sworn to tell the truth. Is that correct? In fact, you told the truth to the end. I think that's all that we need. Clemmie, we just want to record the fact that, you know, you told the truth and we hadn't guided you as to what to say that your statement was free and voluntary and that you have not backed away from being truthful. Thank you very much. I've talked to a lot of people who know Clemmie, her friends, her family, and they all said that despite what Clemmie has told law enforcement and despite Clemmie's testimony in all six trials, they do not believe that she actually saw Curtis that day. I talked to Clemmie's sister, Mary Ella, who told me that Clemmie couldn't have seen Curtis flowers on the day of the murders because she said Clemmie was with her the whole day. She said she remembers it because that morning, she and Clemmie had planned to go down to Tardy Furniture together so that Clemmie could pay her furniture bill. But while they were getting ready to leave, someone came by Mary Ella's house and told them that there had been a shooting at Tardy Furniture. Mary Ella said she and Clemmie went to the crime scene together to check it out. And we got down there and I taped off and I told Clemmie I said I'm glad we didn't go down there cause we probably would have been, you know, caught up in there and she said show would have. Mary Ella didn't find out that Clemmie had given a statement to law enforcement until the first trial. Mary Ella wasn't at the trial, who's being held in two below, about a hundred miles away. But someone passed a long word to Mary Ella, that her sister, Clemmie, was up there on the stand, testifying under oath that she saw Curtis on the morning of the murders. Mary Ella's first reaction was to race to the courthouse, to tell the jurors exactly what she told me. The Clemmie's story couldn't possibly be true. But by the time she got there, the trial was almost over and the defense decided not to try to call her as a last minute witness. Mary Ella did end up testifying for Curtis's defense in the second trial. And it was like, they were using me and Clemmie against water. It was like Clemmie word against mine and Clemmie more. I went to talk to one of Clemmie's best friends from back then, her cousin, a woman named Latarsha Blissett. Latarsha and Clemmie still live just a block apart. Latarsha lives in a trailer with her husband, it's in the backyard behind her mother's house. Latarsha said she remains convinced that Clemmie made up the story and that she did it because she felt pressured by law enforcement and because she thought she might be able to get some money. And Latarsha said the reason she thinks this is because of what happened to her. Back in 1996, Latarsha was 19 years old and she said she was at high school one day when the cops showed up and told her she needed to come with them. I was kid, but it was the police, so I'm finna go. I know I ain't doing anything wrong because I don't know what to do. Latarsha said she was taken to a police station and put in a room with two investigators. She said one of them was John Johnson. She doesn't remember who the other person was. She said they asked her about Curtis Flowers, whether she'd ever dated him, whether she knew what kind of shoes he wore, whether she knew anything that would connect Curtis to the murder's Attardi furniture. She told them no, no, and no. But she said they also asked her this other kind of question. Asked me was I trying to buy a mobile home. Asked me if I knew what $30,000 could buy. If you know you're trying to get a mobile home, do you know what this amount of money could buy. But every time they would ask me something they always would ask me do I know what this certain amount of money could do. So they didn't just say, "Hey, we'll give you blah, blah, blah, you go by that trailer." Or they didn't do that, but they ended everything with this money to let me know that it's on the table. So did you pick up on that? Latarsha said that although the investigators implied that she could get money, they never actually said that if she connected Curtis to the crime, she would get a reward reward. Latarsha said she didn't tell them anything because she didn't know anything. But when she found out that her cousin, Clemmie, had talked to law enforcement and that Clemmie had told them that she'd seen Curtis that day, Latarsha did not believe Clemmie's story, not at all. It was time to go talk to Clemmie. Natalie and I went to see her late one afternoon. Clemmie is now 42. She still lives in her childhood home in Winona. It's a small one-story house about a block from where Curtis grew up. Clemmie opened the door. It was hot out. She was wearing red shorts and a t-shirt. She was holding a plastic bag of lettuce in one hand. She looked at me with suspicion. She didn't invite me inside. Our entire conversation took place with her in the doorway, sometimes sort of closing the door a little bit, then opening it a little bit. Like she was going to end this conversation at any moment. Clemmie told me more or less the same story that she testified to in court about seeing Curtis running away from the downtown on the morning of the murders, although some of the details had changed. Clemmie told me she never wanted to get involved in the investigation in the first place. She told me that she would have never come forward by herself, and that the only reason she talked to investigators is because someone overheard her talking about it at work and turned her in. Why didn't you want to tell anybody about it, do you think? I don't want to get this seed and I have to go to court and people criticize you and I'll leave. How important do you think what it is that you have to say is? I don't know. I think the only one who's the fat. He ate a lot of people just the fat. Do you have a sense of like who's the most important witness? No. Yeah. Who you thought? I don't know. I mean, I think you're placing him the closest to the store. You know. So. I don't know. Yeah. When I tried to ask Clemmie more questions about her testimony and what she saw, she got annoyed. So then like what happened after that? I don't know. You. - I don't know, you ain't reading the Bible. - Well, like, I know you're seeing my statements and stuff, 'cause I don't testify when I had three and when, I mean, all the world with this stuff, I just wish to do that. I hate it happy, and I ain't gonna let nobody criticize me. Back then, I let you just do anything. Everything to me, I ain't gonna do it no more. I ain't gonna let nobody walk up and slap me. So that just, like, I ain't gonna let nobody just criticize me. So, I just wish that I shouldn't have to hate my name in, I don't like it, and I just wanna live a normal life, I don't care nothing about. I hate it happy. - I told Clemmie what I'd heard from her friends and family, how they thought her story about seeing Curtis wasn't true, and how a lot of them figured that she'd been pressured by law enforcement into saying it. Clemmie said, "All those people had it wrong." She told me that her story is the truth, but she also told me that even if her story wasn't true, coming forward now and saying that, probably wouldn't help Curtis's case anyway. - They ain't gonna help nothing, if I did, you said, it wasn't gonna help nothing cause it got other people to test the fire, saying they see him. So, what, what would my test the fire hit? I think a great deal. So, what they want me to do till last year and see him. I see him, and like I can erase it, and make it go away, it happened, it happened. That's the truth, so now you know the truth. Do you think, well, you'll do if there's a seventh trial? - Yeah, I ain't gonna be in an own curtain about this though. I just wish she'd go away, and I ain't not bad. I ain't gonna go to Nanley. You're not gonna do it. I don't want to, I ain't gonna bad to go and force me. I just ain't gonna do it. - Clemmie wouldn't tell me exactly why she would refuse to testify if she was called for another trial, and she wouldn't answer any more questions. I was at the end of the route. By the time I was done, I talked to every person who's still alive, who testified about seeing Curtis Flowers on the morning of the murders. And after having done all that, I thought back on how Doug Evans had presented these witnesses to the jurors, how he described them as reliable, credible, as people with excellent memories, people with no reason to lie. I thought about how Doug Evans had emphasized how many witnesses there were, and how their stories of seeing Curtis all fit together. It was supposed to be damning evidence, and at trial, it certainly was. It helped lead jurors to convict Curtis and sentence him to death. When I look at it now, I agree with the prosecutor, Doug Evans, that all these witnesses do add up to solid evidence, but not evidence that Curtis Flowers walked around town that morning. Instead, when I look at all these witnesses, all these people I'd spent so much time with, I see evidence of a different kind. Evidence that law enforcement was willing to rely on testimony from people who couldn't plausibly remember what they saw in any kind of detail. Evidence that law enforcement was willing to pressure people. And evidence that so many of these people were just plain scared. So, yes, these witnesses were evidence, but not the kind of evidence the jury had ever heard. Coming up next time on In the Dark. - You don't want to walk in the grass in the year? - Oh, no. - No. - What's there? - Oh, kind of snakes in the grass. - Snakes. There's a lot more information about these route witnesses, how some of their accounts contradict each other, how their testimonies changed over the six trials. It's way more than we could ever get into even five episodes of this podcast. But it's worth checking out. We have it all on our website in thedarkpodcast.org. In the dark is reported and produced by me, Madeline Barron, Senior Producer, Samara Fremark, Producer Natalie Jablonski, Associate Producer Raymond Tungakar, and Reporters Parker Jesko and Will Kraft. In the dark is edited by Catherine Winter. Web editors are Dave Mann and Andy Cruz. The editor in Chief of APM Reports is Chris Worthington. Original music by Gary Meister and Johnny Vince Evans. 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