4: What Really Happened At The Honey Baked Ham

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It's got to be horrible. You know, I felt guilty the whole time, and I couldn't take it no more. Almost 12 years after Larry helped put T.J. in prison, an investigator knocked on his door. That's why I was so relieved that they came to interview me so I could finally get this out of me and get off my chest, man. I told him right off the bat that this guy is innocent, and I would love to do anything I could to help to get him out. You know, this is the only time I ever lied, and it cost me big time. Larry told the investigator that his testimony all those years ago was a complete lie. T.J. didn't do it. In November of 1994, T.J. was sentenced to 50 years in prison for murder. He was 15 years old. T.J. never confessed to killing Eric Moro, and there was no physical evidence. At trial, prosecutors leaned heavily on T.J.'s extensive arrest record, and his membership in a gang called The Simon City Royals. They also had testimony from four eyewitnesses who said T.J. did it. Most important among them was Larry Tufel. While in prison, T.J. wrote letter after letter, hoping someone would help him appeal his conviction. One of those letters landed in the mailbox of Northwestern Universities Center Unwrongful Convictions. They agreed to take a look at T.J.'s case, and send investigators to re-interview the witnesses. That's when everything started to unravel. From WBEZ Chicago, I'm Frank Maine, and this is Motive. What really happened at the Honeybake Tam? This past summer, I went on a little tour with Larry Tufel. He showed me around the old neighborhood where he and T.J. grew up, getting into trouble with their gang. I wanted Larry to give me some context on what it was like around here, back when Eric Moro was killed. That used to see SCR up there, real big Simon City Royals. Was it still up there? Not up there, they painted over it. Larry says he hasn't been here in a long time. Yeah, everything's changed around here. Holy shit. This used to be a liquor store. This is the word of the Honeybake Tam, is it? What is it now? It's kind of those like deaths, it looks like it. Avondale is a nice middle-class neighborhood now. It's quiet. It was recently named one of the quote, "hotest up and coming neighborhoods in the country." It's tough to imagine this place with a bunch of gang members standing on corners, dealing drugs, and throwing bricks at cars. We pull up to Larry's old house. It's just a block away from where Eric Moro was murdered. I was the borrower's kid in the neighborhood. I mean, if you would have seen how this building looked the way it was when I lived there. It was so decrepit, man. I mean, there was mice and cock-a-roaches and everything like that. Hell yeah, it was embarrassed. We caught like 20 mice the first day we moved in there with Mike Stress. I haven't been in this neighborhood like in 25 years. But this is totally different than I remembered it. It was really gang-infested. It would be a scene here 25 years ago. So you see us hanging out on the porch drinking, smoking pie, doing whatever hanging out, all kinds of motherfuckers right there in front of the house. That was the party house. Did your parents have been out there, too? Oh yeah. My stepfather, my mommies, is still out there and drinking all night. Friends of Larry's parents would even go into his room and wake Larry up to snore cocaine. He was about 14 years old. Like, I'd be going to school in the morning, and I always see motherfuckers laying on the couch, past out from being drunk all night. When I used to go to school, it was fucked up, man. It's only when my parents were fucking bad back then. Larry is the first person to tell you that he's made a lot of mistakes. But I really don't know how it would be possible for a kid growing up in that house to not get into drugs or join the neighborhood gang. I still don't blame my parents for what happened. They knew I was going to do whatever the fuck I wanted anyway. They couldn't control me anyway. Just down the block, Larry notices a man pushing an ice cream cart. You don't see that in my neighborhood, I wish I'd missed it. Those ice creams are the best, the paletas. I like the coconut. We actually beat up an ice cream guy and stole all his ice cream one time. We were bad, man. The neighborhoods changed, but the memories of what happened here still haunt Larry. He had to go back to the car after this, because I don't know who's out here. We drive just a couple blocks away from Larry's house. This is the corner, Albany, and school. 30 fucking guys were standing on the corner when I first seen the rails and they were breaking cars with bricks. Right here, 30 motherfuckers I swear. Mostly white guys. Okay, we're coming up on the park now. Let's keep going. We go to where Larry saw his first gun battle. One of the rails had a gun stashed here. And three curled deduces came down this street with bats and poles and knives ready to jump all of us to the park. The insane duces were a rival gang. So they got out and started coming in the park. That's when Shorty ran behind the bushes and grabbed the gun and started chasing them and they were running for their lives. And he hit a couple guys because I was right out on the other side watching and I was chasing them with a crowbar. I was freaking out. I didn't expect that to happen. Like I said, I just tried to be cool and be popular. Once I seen that shit, I was like, oh, this is good enough to control. I'm going to show you where the morals live in the basketball court where we play basketball. Eric hit me in the face with the basketball. He was a bully back then. And I hated them for it. At first, Larry didn't like Eric. In February of 1993, Eric Moral was 19 years old. Larry was around 14. We ended up hanging out and getting high together and fucking I got to know him and I started being his friend. Eric wasn't in a gang, but he and Larry had gotten trouble. TJ'd hang out with them too. Eric was tall and big and had muscles and he was fast. He could hop over fences and the police used to chase us and get away all the time. Then the moral family moved. Eric wanted to stay in the neighborhood and he more or less became homeless, couch surfing at friends houses. Eric would come by Larry's house. Larry'd given things to eat and lend him stuff like a Chicago Bulls jacket. Eric was wearing that jacket the night he was murdered. The reason why he got killed, he got shot, was because over a 40 lousy bag of cocaine, powder cocaine. I actually did some of the drugs with him in a gangway where we were getting high that night that day happened. That's the reason why he got killed over some fucking drugs. Now the shooting happened in front of a honey-baked ham store when two pairs of boys ran into each other. This is the honey-baked ham right here. I never actually went in there and got a honey-baked ham. I don't know why I didn't. You got to pick up honey that way because ham is salty. You got to put some kind of glaze on the ham or it's going to be salty. On the night of the murder, Eric and Larry were walking east on Belmont Avenue. Behind them were the shooter and a 12-year-old boy named Victor Roma. We tried to approach Victor, sent him letters, spoke to his family, but we were told he wouldn't talk to us. In this video deposition, Victor is now an adult. He seems like he's got his act together. He's wearing a grey suit and a tie. Let's talk about the day of the shooting. Victor's testimony is that just before the murder, he was wandering around Avondale with another boy, but a mile west of the honey-baked ham. And then what happens? Remember shooting off the gun in the alley over there? Shoot enough look gun. The gun I had at that time? Or why did you have a gun at the time? Wanted to be a tough guy I guess? No, no reason in particular. Victor gives the gun to the other boy. Why did you just hold it? I don't know. At that time, perhaps I was not that great a friend, figure if somebody I'll caught with it would be him and not me. They begin walking east on Belmont towards the honey-baked ham. What do you remember happening next? Nothing significant until I saw 32-fold in Eric Marl. And you're coming from behind them? Yes. And then all of a sudden they just came out of nowhere out of the corner, both of them, to young teenagers. aged kids. Larry and Eric were walking to a friend's house after they did some cocaine in a nearby alley. Eric got the drugs from a dealer in the neighborhood named Leo. Victor Romo says he had overheard that dealer saying that Eric owed him some money for the drugs. So that gave me the pretext to, you know, approach them. So what do you say? I don't remember, but something along them lines of, don't you owe Leo some money? This is where they said right here, they said, "Hey, Eric, don't you owe Leo some money ," and that's when Eric turned around and said, "It's none of your business," and kept down walking. I believe some of my thinking in all that was to show how tough I was. It wasn't my intention for anyone ever to get shot or killed. So then we kept down walking, and then out comes the gun, like right here. Victor wasn't surprised when his friend pulled out the gun. I guess in some sick way, I kind of expected him to, and wanted him to, didn't necessarily want him to shoot, but I did want to appear as tough as we possibly can without necessarily getting too big a trouble. We had every kind of backstab off, so I thought, "Oh, you know, that's the new guys." And Eric says, "Put that fucking gun away." So he put it back in his pocket and kept that walking. Right when they got about right here, this is probably where the honey baked the ambasad. They pushed him up against the wall, both of them like this. Eric then punched the boy holding the gun. Punched him where? In the face. Like at the same time, the gunshot went off. And that happened kind of remember him saying, "Oh shit." And they both ran. Who said, "Oh shit." I believe it was Eric Moral. And you know, they started running eastbound, we started running westbound. I know we ended up on the train tracks. I ran through the gang, because I thought they were going to come after me next. And that's when I was running towards my house, and I seen them running that way towards the tracks. That's when I turned around and took a little check on Eric. So he was like right here stumbling on the curve, like this holding a chest thing. I got shot. I got shot. And that's when I, he fell and I grabbed them. A police car pulled up. Larry was put in the back seat. An ambulance took Eric to the hospital, while Larry was being driven to the police station. I heard it over the police radio that he died on the way to the hospital. It just broke down in tears. You know, I feel bad, man. He got the worst of everything. And he never had was in gangs. It's like the other people that don't deserve it are the ones that get killed all the time. You know what I mean? I know that had to be painful, because it only took one bullet and that went straight to his heart. You know how much they had to hurt before he died. It's a horrible way to die, man, getting murdered, that's the worst way to die. In the back seat of the police car, Larry was sitting next to an older man who he knew. Another supposed that I witnessed. The first thing that came out of his mouth to me was, was a TJ. And I said no, it wasn't TJ, it wasn't even around. And he kept that insisting that he seemed TJ doing it. And that's when the other witnesses said they've seen what happened, that's what fucked everything up. Back in 1993, Larry told the police that TJ did it, version 1. But today he's got a completely different story. TJ isn't even there. That's what you just heard, version 2. You heard our interview with Larry, what did you think? Well, with all due respect to Larry, I believe Larry version number 1 is true. And I don't find version number 2 credible. Andy Hale was the attorney hired to defend the city and the police against TJ's wrongful conviction lawsuit. We let Andy listen to some of our tape of Larry. Andy doesn't believe much of anything that Larry says today. He can find holes everywhere. You know, he talked on the interview about there being snow on the ground. That's not true. There was no snow on the ground, there was no blizzard. So, this gets messy. Larry circa 1993. I had no supervision for my parents. Did you ask for your parents? My parents didn't care. They didn't. They wouldn't have went anyways. Larry is driven away from the murder scene in a squad car. He arrives at the police station for interrogation. It was just this wide little room like a no windows, nothing just a closed area. They were yelling at me, screaming saying I was going to go to jail. He doesn't even talk about the interrogation other than for like 10 seconds with no details at all, which I find very telling. Larry says he was trying to be helpful in identifying the shooter, but he didn't know the guy's name. He gave a description and left. Then, the police detective got statements from three supposed eyewitnesses who said TJ was the shooter. Nobody was there, it's not me. One eyewitness said he saw the shooting from a third floor window. Larry says there's no way he could see it from that high angle in the dark. I swear to God, I'm the only one that's seen him with hip. The other two eyewitnesses were a mother and daughter who said they saw the shooting on the street. Larry says they were in a bar. They didn't come out and say after it happened, you know, there's no way they could have seen what happened. It wasn't possible. But the police were now armed with those statements, contradicting Larry, and they went to his house. Three o'clock in the morning, they came banging back on my door and said that I was lying and they had other witnesses that seen what happened. They said they know TJ did it. And finally I was so exhausted and shocked, I just gave up and said, yeah, he did it. I gave up. Andy Hale says this wasn't your classic course of interrogation. Larry offered up TJ's name pretty easily. Hale says the detectives spoke to Larry at his house for only 15 minutes. So it's not two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight hours of interrogating him and yelling at him. You got to say it's TJ. It wasn't TJ. It wasn't TJ. You got to say it's TJ and then they broke me down after hours and hours. Did you want to go to bed or were you just tired? I was just exhausted and shocked and tired and I couldn't, I tried to tell them over and over but they didn't listen. So I just gave up. I know it was wrong. I should have stuck to the truth. I should have just told them to put me in jail, you know, but I didn't want to go to jail. I was scared out of my mind, you know. To this day, Larry insisted he was a little kid who got broken down by the police through hours of interrogation that night. And for years, he continued saying what the police wanted him to say, even under oath at TJ's murder trial. Larry is what put TJ in prison. Larry was the guy. He's a friend with TJ. So, you know, it's not a case of mistaken identity. That's why Larry's testimony was still compelling to that criminal jury. They were friends and they knew each other. So I wouldn't anybody believe Larry. Larry even stuck with that story after TJ's trial and Larry says that identifying TJ as the shooter came with real consequences from the Simon City Royals. I had to go back to that fucking neighborhood and live there. The police didn't do shit. They didn't put me in witness protection program or nothing. They wanted my testimony. That's all they wanted. They threw me right back out there after that. While we're standing outside his old house, Larry says the royals would pay him visits. All the royals had to come out, wait for me to come outside and intimidate my ass all day. I don't ask men and you're a kid wanting to kill you. If telling a lie is making your life a living hell, why not just tell the truth? The royals are after him and want to hurt him because he has squealed on one of their own. Good God. I mean, wouldn't you just say, hey, state attorney's office, please, TJ didn't do it, right? You got a whole gang after you? Come on. I mean, that to me right there, right there makes no sense. I just found that to be incredibly incredible. And then there was TJ himself. He never got in touch with Larry to try to get him to tell the truth. He all doesn't think that makes any sense. Once you found out that Larry was telling the police you shut Eric Moral, did you make any attempt to find out why he was doing that? I don't believe so. If I got accused of murder, okay, because you, Frank main, told the police, I shot somebody. And I'm now convicted. I'm sitting in prison for years. I would contact you and say, Frank, what the hell is going on? Why did you say I shot somebody? Go tell the police. That is wrong. I'd be writing you a calling you every day. I'm just going to let it go. Larry, circa 2006. Larry was homeless for a little while. He worked as a janitor for Chicago Public Schools and he was diagnosed with Paranoid schizophrenia. Can you walk us through the moment when Northwestern came knocking on your door? I mean, what was that like? I was living at this crappy place called Somerset. It was for people they had mental illness and stuff, they had to use the place housing and stuff. And my mother died. I had nowhere to go at the time and I ended up living there. It was a bad place. I lived there for about five years. And that's where they came to interview me at. The private investigator was working for Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions, which had agreed to take on TJ's case in 2006. When somebody shows up at a mental health facility where Larry Tufel is housed and diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and now says to him, we think TJ is innocent and he says, yeah, you're right. TJ wasn't the shooter. He's innocent. They explained who they were and they said they were private. investigator for TJ and I said oh oh good I said I was actually relieved you know because this is my time to fix what I did and I corroborate with them I told them from the very day that they came that he was innocent he was in jail for dead. They were nice people you know. We contacted people who worked on TJ's case for Northwestern but they wouldn't talk to us. Andy Hill thinks Larry was vulnerable and possibly suggestible. So I don't think his ret can't when he's in a mental health facility was credible. Hale's argument is that Larry in 2006 was in no mental state to recant his testimony. 14-year-old Larry was being truthful with the police and if he was lying back then there were plenty of opportunities to tell the truth and make his life easier but he never took those. Larry's argument is that in 1993 he was a scared 14-year-old kid who didn't want to go to jail. He became a man riddled with guilt suffering from mental problems. What does Andy Hale know about his life anyways? He wasn't in my shoes he didn't see what happened. Fuck them lawyers they're pretty much scumbags their self lawyers if you ask me they don't know how it is growing up I know what the fuck I see. I'm just giving you my personal opinion it's absolutely right I've not stood in Larry's shoes or anybody else's shoes. I just think that that the more credible case is that his initial testimony was truthful. So and I know better next time something like this happens again I didn't see shit I don't know shit I don't want to know shit because all I did was caused me more trouble. Larry's recantation kicked off the whole process of getting TJ out of prison. It all took nearly two years. Frank? Yes. Okay. Okay I am. Northwestern took Larry's new testimony among other evidence to the Cook County State Attorney's Office. It landed on the desk of the head of the Post Conviction Unit. Celeste Stack. I came out of the meeting with them objectives I knew it had to be investigated thoroughly but I knew there were problems there. Nobody wants to put the wrong person in jail. We were in constant communication about this was a kind of a big deal. Prosecutor Darren O'Brien was working with Stack on TJ's case. He was known as a law and order guy responsible for deciding whether to charge violent criminals. In this case I don't think there was much else besides Larry that causes case to get charged. O'Brien looked at the two police interviews of Larry the first one where he didn't identify TJ and the interview at 3am when he said the shooter was TJ. And he failed to identify TJ in his original statement. For me that's fatal. That said bells and whistles off in my head right there. Stack and O'Brien boiled down the case to the two witnesses who were definitely there at the murder. Larry Tufel was now saying it wasn't TJ and Victor Romo. Romo was prosecuted as an accomplice to TJ even though he always said the shooter was a different guy and TJ wasn't even there. I was able to read reports on Victor Romo from Juvenile Court. And he was very very angry. He just couldn't understand why you know no one would listen no matter how many times they testified. The police assumed the Romo was covering up for TJ. He didn't even know TJ so and that we couldn't prove that he knew TJ. Romo served three years in the juvenile system. Harry is talking about TJ getting convicted. You never again came the faith you I guess you're supposed to have an adjusted system knowing that stuff like that happens and it takes so long for the wheel's justice to correct itself. Again Darin O'Brien. If you look back at the whole process you cannot guess what happened. So it's always easy to say well maybe he did it. I think he could have done it. If that's what your thought process is you cannot charge that case and so I think he didn't do it and I at a minimum I would say there wasn't enough evidence to charge him but I'm convinced personally that he didn't do it. The Northwestern lawyers made one failed attempt to get a judge to release TJ. Then nearly a year later in 2009 Larry's story that he made it all up when he was 14 was believed. TJ was freed. People could look at me and say I'm a piece of shit for lying or whatever but you know what would the fuck you do if you were in my shoes you know what the fuck would you guys do if you had to bury my shoes yeah. Andy Hale still contends that Larry Tufel, Sautatti Semenes, shoot Eric Moro dead. I think the state's attorneys office got duped. Did the state's attorneys office get duped? Was Larry finally telling the truth? It's tough to know for sure. At minimum it seems like there just wasn't enough there to fairly prosecute TJ. No confession, no physical evidence just a handful of shaky witnesses. Doesn't madden you sometimes to know that the whole key to this whole case is Larry. It's in his brain. Yeah in all my cases I always say I joke around I say God I just wish like all of a sudden miraculously like this security camera you know that nobody knew existed like so this took place in front of a honey baked ham you know. Hey there was a security camera there we just got the footage oh my god let's let's pop in the tape and we can see what happened and we can watch what happened and we can resolve once and for all exactly what happened. If anyone listening work security at the honey baked ham on Belmont Avenue in the mid 90s please get in touch. Next time on Motive I survived because of the love and support that I received from my mother. I just couldn't believe it. When you finally lay down I kept going in they're touching you know it's feeding stuff. Mine was wrong with you because I just want to make sure this is not a dream. Motive is a production of WBZ Chicago based on original reporting from the Chicago Sun Times. I'm Frank Maine the producer is Colin McNulty the executive producer is Kevin Dawson our engineer is Shelley Stephens special thanks to the listeners whose financial support of WBZ made this podcast possible.