True Crime Stories

You have seen several cases from the Oklahoma City area from me lately. Sometimes that happens due to how I make my list of cases and whether they grab my interest when I am going through the list. This all started with the case of Curtis McCarty, a man who was sentenced to death three times but later released from prison. Often when I read about one case others are mentioned and that was such the situation with McCarty. Much of the information on his case centered around the local prosecutor at the time, a man named Robert “Cowboy Bob” Macy and a lab technician named Joyce “Black Magic” Gilchrist. In the process several other cases, such as this one, relating to Robert Lee Miller Jr. was mentioned, as questionable cases. Robert Lee Miller Jr. was convicted and sentenced to death in the murders of eighty-three year old Anne Fowler and ninety-two year old Zelma Cutler. Both of the elderly women had been raped and murdered in their homes. Anne Fowler had been foun...

When a case goes to trial it is only on the rare occasion that every detail is known by the prosecution. Sure, we see confessions from people and there is always the evidence that is used to point to the defendant. Confessions are a tricky thing. When they are not coerced or proven to be completely false confessions, they are still almost always riddled with inconsistencies and falsehoods. This should come as no surprise considering the fact that those who give the confessions are generally involved in the crime. Perpetrators normally do not want to come off as a “monster” and for that and other reasons will often lessen their role and culpability to a crime. Most often a prosecutor is forced to come up with a “theory” when it comes to the motive behind the crime, but in cases in which there is not a confession they are also forced to come up with a theory on how things took place. It is not unheard of to hear of a “strange” theory or one that seems implausible, but...

You have often heard me say that it is not always the aspect of the true crime that fantasizes me, but the law itself and how things are conducted. Sometimes guilty people go free because either the evidence is not there to obtain a conviction or because the prosecutors did not do all that it took to get the conviction. Then are the times in which the prosecutor or the state witnesses did whatever it took, legal or illegal, to get their man. While in those cases, at least those that are caught, justice is not served for the family or families of the victims, it should prevent injustice being brought to innocent people. For people in Oklahoma City it seems it took decades. If you do a search on Curtis McCarty you will find him on websites for The Innocence Project and those claiming he was exonerated. You will also see on those sites multiple references to the fact that he was convicted of a “crime he did not commit.” Police and prosecutors have argued against t...

The entire time I was researching this case I thought about another case, that of Cameron “Todd” Willingham of Texas. Willingham was executed by the state of Texas in 2004 in the murders of his children that authorities say occurred when he set their home on fire. Even before his execution there were arguments that the “science” used to convict him was later found to be flawed and new advances had cast doubt on his guilt. However, the courts would not grant a reprieve and it has been argued that further studies were stopped so as to not legally prove that an innocent man was executed. Bill Amor thankfully was not sentenced to death in the murder of his mother in law and was given the right to prove his innocence. We cannot be ignorant enough to believe that innocent people have not been executed. There have been too many people who were at one time on death row and later exonerated through DNA for us to conclude that prior to the science being available every cond...

The only thing that this case has in common with the last two blogs that I have done is that the accused was a woman, oh and they were convicted for a crime. The difference here is that Susie Mowbray was retried after serving nearly nine years in prison and acquitted. There are some that think she should have never been charged and others who believe she got away with murder. In the end, whether you believe she was guilty or innocent even the second jury admitted it came down to the investigation conducted by law enforcement and the behavior of the prosecution. Several years later Cameron County Texas, where this case took place, would be rocked with a scandal involving corruption that most say was so deep and outrageous only a fiction writer could talk about it. It was not clear just how long the corruption went back but more than a dozen people were involved including a judge, a State Representative and several current and former members of the DA office. Some of th...