In spring of 1986, the ghastly murder of an elderly widow would lead to the shocking conviction of an innocent man, a breakdown of the justice system that would take nearly a decade to be corrected.
Seventy-nine-year-old Pauline Martz lived alone in the small town of Aurora, Missouri. On April 13th, firefighters were called to her home to extinguish a blaze, and they discovered the dead body of the woman inside. But they very quickly determined that the fire had been no accident: Pauline had been bound and gagged, beaten, possibly sexually assaulted, and then left to the ravages of the flames. Her cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning.
The murder stunned the entire community, but more unbelievable events were yet to come. A few days after the crime, police picked up a twenty-year-old, mentally-challenged man named Johnny Lee Wilson, who had been a friend of Pauline’s. According to investigators, a witness named Gary Wall had stated that Johnny had confessed the deed to him. After interrogating Johnny for approximately four hours, officers claimed that the suspect gave in and confessed that he was guilty. A search of the home Johnny shared with his mother turned up further incriminating evidence, such as clothing and jewelry that had supposedly been stolen from Pauline’s residence, and a mostly empty can of gasoline.
Few people in town seemed to believe that the gentle Johnny could have possibly killed anyone, and what’s more, there were perfectly mundane explanations for the women’s clothing and jewelry found in the Wilson home, which belonged to Johnny’s mother and grandmother, respectively. Johnny’s mother even told police that Johnny had been with her at the grocery store when the fire that killed Pauline Martz was set. In addition, Gary Wall, the witness who had allegedly heard Johnny confess to the murder, walked back his statement as well, claiming that the police had forced him to say it. All evidence of the boy’s innocence, however, was ruthlessly set aside.
Johnny, who had an approximate IQ of seventy-six, was initially deemed not mentally fit to stand trial by two psychiatrists, but a third, court-appointed psychiatrist contradicted their findings, and it was his testimony that was heeded. Before the the ensuing trial, Johnny Lee Wilson recanted his confession, telling his attorneys that the police had coached him into it by threatening him and asking leading questions, and telling him that he would be allowed to go home if he just said what they wanted him to say. In spite of this, his attorneys still advised him to plead guilty, which he did, reluctantly, and clearly not really understanding the gravity of the situation. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Years later, a man named Chris Brownfield, who was serving time in a Kansas penitentiary for beating, robbing, and killing an elderly woma—a crime which occurred only an hour away from and sixteen days after the murder of Pauline Martz—confessed to police that he and an accomplice had indeed been responsible for Pauline’s death, and that Johnny Lee Wilson was completely innocent. Authorities dismissed Brownfield’s statement as not credible, however, even though he told them details about the crime—such as the fact that he had left a stun gun behind at the scene—that had not been released to the public.
Brownfield’s confession, though, spurred Johnny Wilson to file a motion for a trial by jury in 1989. This motion was denied in 1991, as the judge ruled that Johnny had understood the charges against him and had plead guilty on the basis of that understanding.
In 1995, however, after a year-long investigation headed by governor of Missouri Mel Carnahan, Johnny Lee Wilson was granted a pardon and released. Tapes of the police interrogation that surfaced later on revealed that the examining officers had indeed used intimidation and profoundly leading questions to coerce the mentally-challenged Johnny into confessing to a crime he did not commit.
Though at this stage, it seems most likely that Chris Brownfield and his unknown accomplice were guilty of the murder of Pauline Martz, neither has been charged in the homicide, and the case is officially unresolved.
Crime Immemorial 