The answer was yes many, many times. "False testimony is a corruption of the truth-finding process of a trial," Gershman said. Select this result to view William Thomas Hemphill's phone number, address, and more. He lived near Tardy Furniture at the time of the murders, and near where a gun that might have been the murder weapon was found. Hired by Starz to examine the case, Saums said the crime"suggests somebody who has done it before. SEND FLOWERS. But his demeanor when approached by In the Dark investigative reporters was consistent with innocence. Find Willie Hemphill's phone number, address, and email on Spokeo, the leading online directory for contact information. But there was a three-week gap in the Alabama crime spree right at the time of the Tardy murders. His mother lived there, and he had gone to school there on and off. But instead of stopping there, its reporters started snitching to the same system whose injustice they had just unmasked. Nothing in the investigative file for the case explains why officers let him go. Can Marcus Presleys affidavit be trusted? Six trials and six successful appeals. Nine days later, on July 25, 1996, the bodies of two innocent people were discovered in a pawn shop in Birmingham, Alabama. Willie James Hemphill was born on June 2, 1941. 5 Visits. Passed away February 25, 2012. Grief Support. Her rough exterior portrayed a tough, independent woman. Lived In Sidon MS, Indianapolis IN, Prince George VA, Clarksville TN. Three of the four were each killed with a single head shot. He said he told investigators he was shopping with a woman in Memphis. Investigators said the Simpson brothers were eliminated quickly because they were both at work at the time of the murders. While talking to them, he said he told them about his discovery. <p>Prosecutors have always said that Curtis Flowers was the only serious suspect in the Tardy Furniture investigation. Willie James Hemphill, Willie J Hemphill, Williae Hemphill. (1870), A.M. (1872), and LL.D. Ive been confused of the day from the beginning. Appendix III: List of Soldiers by Name Updated February 22, 2005 War of 1812 Discharge Certificates Appendix I: List of Units and Subunits Appendix II: List of Company/Detachment Commanders Appendix III: List of Soldiers by Name Appendix IV: List of Soldiers by Unit Appendix III: List of Soldiers by Name [table striped="true" responsive="true"]NameYearRegimentCompanyAbbey, Edward17951st . 0.68 2.43 /5. Willie James Hemphill has done many terrible things. That night, according to Moore, Hemphill was home with an ounce of marijuana, some of which they smoked together. The suspects include the gunman in an Alabama crime spree that summer that bore several similarities to the Winona killings and a violent career criminal who at the time of the murders was living with a girlfriend across from the furniture store. F.T. Hemphill's ex-girlfriend Monkra Moore told In the Dark that she and Hemphill lived together on the east side of Winona in 1996 and that he was at home around 7 a.m. on the morning of the murders when she was leaving for work. When Jeffrey Armstrong heard his dog barking, he went outside tosee the reason for the commotion. Curtis Flowers, as any prison guard who has ever worked with him can tell you, has no demons. Contact Jerry Mitchell at 601-961-7064 or jmitchell@gannett.com. Who was he? Current Address: EHZR Hannah Dr, Rock Hill, SC. Visitation: 6-8 pm Friday, March 2, 2012 at Laurel Land Funeral Home. He said he called Tardy the next day, asking if he still had a job, and she said he didnt. Also known as Willie L Hemphill, Hemphill Wilie. Hemphill: A lot of people dont like to talk to the press and the police., Reporter: She was actually pretty talkative., Hemphill: Maybe she dont recall the day in question., Reporter: She actually has a really clear memory of that day., Hemphill: I dont know what she told you. The Tardy Furniture murders were committed at a store on Front Street in Winona, Mississippi, at about 10 a.m., and around the time that one of the store's employees, Carmen Rigby, was returning with a bank bag. All times AEDT (GMT +11). In 1996, four people were killed execution-style inside Tardy Furniture, which faces one of the busiest streets in the small town of Winona. He attended Erskine College, where he earned a A.B. Hours after the killings, authorities interviewed Flowers, who said he had been babysitting the children of his girlfriend, Connie Moore, and also gone to his sister's home and a nearby store. Illuminating Journalism from American Public Media. He explained his suspicion that the gun might have something to do with the Tardy murders. Due to a planned power outage on Friday, 1/14, between 8am-1pm PST, some services may be impacted. Law enforcement had interviewed a different suspect with a violent criminal history, Willie James Hemphill a fact which was not disclosed to the defense. Authorities put together alineup later that day of black-and-white photos, and she identified Flowers from the lineup as the man she briefly saw that morning when she came outside to move her car. Illuminating Journalism from American Public Media. He was born on December 6, 1948 in Weir, Mississippi the son of Eddie Allen and Garner Lee Edwards Hemphill. Willie Ray Hemphill, Jr., 49, of Bryan, passed away Thursday, August 13, 2009 at his residence. Marcus Presley and Lasamuel Gamble werent raised at all. View Tommy Hemphill results including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. Hemphill certainly sounds like a career criminal who is fully capable of committing violence; but he doesnt come off as a psychopathic killerand whoever did the deed at the Tardy furniture store was either a hired killer (or killers) or enjoyed killing people for kicks. Nor was there any record of the evidence gathered from Hemphill. Two weeks later, a picture of Marcus Presley, the shooter in the Birmingham murders, was included in a photo array shown to Porky Collins, a witness in the Winona, Mississippi case. Small is now claiming that I never gave (the gun) to him, Armstrong said. I knew his sisters, I knew his brother, he said. But if Curtis Flowers doesnt get relief in the face of these well-publicized facts there will be hell to pay. Username. The ugly facts of Hemphills past werent ugly enough for the podcast In The Dark emphasized its clear disdain of him. The criminals used a .380-caliber handgun that sometimes jammed. Investigators John Johnson and Jack Matthews denied on the stand knowing anything about them. Presley murdered four people and wounded three others in a spree of robberies and murders that year. It takes no imagination at all to imagine Marcus Presley committing a crime like thatwe have the video from the pawn shop. Marcus Presley, the gunman in the Alabama crime spree, was staring up at Ali from among the six photos in the lineup. He told the Commonwealth, I think these (APM Reports) folks are just coming up with anything they can to discredit the case. Check resumes and CV, arrest records, places of employment, social media profiles, photos and videos, public records, skilled experts, publications and memorials . While he was working July 3, he loaded golf cart batteries into the back of a truck. Whoever killed four innocent people in the Tardy Furniture store on that fateful day in 1996 was familiar with armed violence and kind of liked it. And the case file doesn't contain the report Goldberg says he would have sent to Mississippi authorities, or any indication of what might have been done to substantiate it. When we finally found Hemphill, living in Indianapolis, he had some very surprising things to say about the case . He also tried to shoot his own 12-year-old son who was hiding in a closet, though the boy survived. Hemphill had previously told police and the podcast that he was not in Winona on the morning of the murders. Miller, the Mississippi investigator who made the lineup and asked for the two to be interrogated, declined to answer questions from APM Reports. The police there picked up the investigation and also apparently probed the Tardy Furniture connection. Hallmon has since admitted he lied. January 5, 1960 - August 13, 2009. The fourth and fifth trials ended with hung juries. When Willie Hemphill was born on 14 August 1891, in Mississippi, United States, her father, Thomas Wiley Hemphill, was 23 and her mother, Izora Sullivan, was 21. Username. Episode 10 of the In the Dark Podcast was largely dedicated to the strange case of Willie James Hemphill, a local bad boy with a violent streak who was continually getting cross-ways with the law. It was all make believe. Steven McKenzie, the driver of the getaway car in the pawn shop murders, was arrested on August 1 in his hometown of Boston, Massachusetts. Hemphills name came up briefly in Flowers 2010 trial. Goldberg doesn't remember the alibis Presley or Gamble gave, but he said following up on those wouldn't have been his job. He allegedly committed robberies to fund a drug habit. Maybe Doyle did the deed and reported his gun stolen to throw everyone off the scent. There are 60+ professionals named "Willie Hemphill", who use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas, and opportunities. When we finally found Hemphill, living in Indianapolis, he had some very surprising things to say about the case. Name. "You're confusing me. Send Flowers. Willie James Hemphill Phone Numbers (662) ***-4391 They found out later that Flowers uncle, Doyle Simpson, said his .380 automatic had been stolen from the glove box of his car parked at the Angelica Garment Factory where he worked. We went to boot camp together., The officers denial dont make me mad, he said. The justices wrote that it was as strong a prima facie case of racial discrimination as we have ever seen in the context of a Batson challenge. Following their Alabama crime spree, Presley and Gamble fled north to Boston, where Gamble had relatives. The podcasts decision to try to figure out who may have actually committed the murders at the Tardy Furniture store in Winona, Mississippi isnt surprising. with Reverend Shane Russell officiating, assisted by Max Bennett. LAYTON - Willie Morris Hemphill, 69, passed away August 11, 2018 at St. Mark's Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. It took the In the Dark team a full year to track Hemphill down in an Indianapolis courtroom (he's still getting into trouble). 2) and Curtis Flowers (No. An early suspect in the murders, Willie James Hemphill, who has a long criminal history, lived less than a mile from where Armstrong found this gun in 2011. In the Dark,episode 10, makes it clear that the prosecution committed what is called a Brady violation by failing to inform defense counsel that Hemphill had been a suspect early in the investigation. Look, Ive got something yall need to get, he said he told them. APM lead investigative reporter Madeleine Baran found one page among the documents Evans did give the defense attorneys, a form someone named Willie James Hemphill, then 24, of Memphis had signed at the Winona Police Department five days after the murders waiving his rights to an attorney. When we finally found Hemphill, living in Indianapolis, he had some very surprising things to say about the case. Willie Hemphill. According to court records, he was "swinging a machete and causing a. Record for Willie James Hemphill 27 May 1919 - 14 July 2000 in Quantico National Cemetery, Triangle, Prince William, Virginia, United States from BillionGraves GPS Headstones. Evidence that prosecution witnesses may have given false testimony could potentially get Flowers' conviction overturned, said Bennett Gershman, a former prosecutor who now teaches law at Pace University. 1. Doug Evans, the district attorney who prosecuted Flowers in all six trials, has declined to be interviewedby APM Reports and has not returned calls from the Clarion Ledger. One, Rigby,was killed with two shots to the head. There is little doubt that Hemphill has done terrible things. . Willie James Hemphill was born on May 27, 1919. A wealthy lawyer who killed his wife and son at close range has been sentenced in one of the most troubling cases the judge said he had seen. What follows are selected incidents from his past. A surveillance camera revealed that the killer was wielding a 380 pistol that jammed repeatedly. "I don't understand how she said that.". He told APM Reports that he was arrested and questioned in the . "Best I remember is somebody brought it to the attention of the investigators that they wanted us to talk to him, and he came in and we talked to him," Matthews said on the stand in the sixth trial. But we found a document showing that another man, Willie James Hemphill, had also been questioned just days after the murders. The accused has had his conviction overturned for the sixth time, the woman who put him at the scene of the murders has backflipped on her story and another man has been forced to deny it was him all along. Inside the store, authorities discovered bloody footprints left behind by a Grant Hill Fila basketball shoe. Willie James Hemphill in Georgia Fulton County arrested for U/S VGCSA POSS* BLOG; CATEGORIES. Hallmon told APM Reports that he became a prosecution witness in spring 2001 after being arrested on multiple drug charges. His misdeeds, while abhorrent, are also likely inseparable from his decades-long history of poverty and addiction. Store employees were threatened with death and forced to lie on the floor. Thats just standard procedure. Burial will follow in Hemphill Star Cemetery, Boyce. But, just like Curtis Flowers, Doyle Simpson fails the motive test. Find out more about our policy and your choices, including how to opt-out. Again, he denied ever being there. LOW HIGH. "They wanted to put all these robberies onto Marcus and LaSamuel.". We encourage you to research and . State investigator Matthews told the jury he didnt check Hemphills alibi, ruling him out by conversation alone. A photo array that contains Marcus Presley (No. For starters, a key prosecution witness who testified she saw Flowers sprinting from the front of the store at the time of the murders, has been discredited, he said. Even so, they had to wade through a stack of rat-eaten files stored in an abandoned factory to realize he had been booked into jail. Follow him onFacebookandTwitter. He didn't work on July 4, a holiday, and didn't show up for work on July 5, 6 or 8. Saums believes whoever carried out the crime had inside information. After the second stick up, the two men argued about whether they should have killed the witness. Eight days later, Tardy and three others working for the store were killed execution-style. Hallmon is now serving three life sentences in Parchmanwithout the possibility of parole. At the time of his first known arrest, in 1990, he was an 18-year-old high school dropout bouncing back and forth between his mother's house in Memphis, Tennessee, and Winona, where his grandmother lived. View Actual Score Check Background . The first of these events took place last month when the US Supreme Court tossed out Flowers conviction. Flowers, who had been fired from the store 13 days before the murders, reportedly owed a small amount of money to one of the owners. While that case was delayed for more than two years, Hallmon murdered three people, including his ex-girlfriend, Marquita Hill, and her mother. . He died on July 14, 2000 at age 81. Asked if she remembered where she was when the murders happened, she recalled the morning clearly. It was still in the morning time.". <a . It was his legal obligation, but its easy to see why he didnt. When we finally found Hemphill, living in Indianapolis, he had some very surprising things to say about the case. When Flowers went back on trial, Armstrong heard no mention of the gun by either prosecutors or defense attorneys. Where were you?, Hemphill: I was in your p***y. A Hearing. It wasn't until Flowers' sixth trial that jurors heard anything about the Alabama suspects. Because Mr. Evans didnt tell them about the Alabama connection. As the investigators interviewed for theWrong Man episodes on Flowers point out, the family members of the victims should have been considered suspects until evidence suggested otherwise. Police arrived at the factory and interviewed employee Katherine Snow. Hemphill said investigators told him he was a suspect because witnesses had placed him on Front Street near Tardy Furniture Store on the morning of the murders and because of the kind of shoe he wore: Fila Grant Hills, the shoe investigators determined had made the bloody shoe prints inside the store. Free this man. In the 1980s and '90s, Hemphill spent time in Memphis. He said he wondered what happened with the gun. Her sister says she was in the house with her and not where she said she was.. The whole time Ive been telling them, I dont remember the day, Fleming said. Evans didnt want jurors comparing his tortured theory with a simple and sensible alternative. So, if I am forced to pick an alternative perpetrator in this awful case I would lean toward the Birmingham Boys, Presley in particular. It was either a paid hit on a single individual that went bad when other employees entered the room, or the awful deed was done for the hell of it. "He would have just told me everything and anything at that point," Goldberg said. Why was he questioned? The murders rocked the small town. Shortly after the killings, police arrested Hemphill, then 24, who was wearing a pair of the Grant Hill Fila shoes. Evidence of false testimony by prosecution witnesses could potentially get Flowers' conviction overturned, Bennett Gershman, a former prosecutor who now teaches law at Pace University, told the APM reporting team. Not the right Willie? Support investigative journalism with a donation to In the Dark. Historical Person Search Search Search Results Results Willie James Hemphill (1952 - 2006) Try FREE for 14 days Try FREE for 14 days. Menu. "The best of my recollection, Mississippi was able to determine that our guys weren't the ones, or there was something that didn't make them right for the Mississippi case," said Mike DeHart, the Alabama sheriff's deputy who questioned Gamble. "I think we pretty much ruled him out from the get-go," Matthews testified. 0 Rate Willie. He allegedly stabbed a woman with a screwdriver, among other violent crimes. If, hypothetically, theIn the Dark team was charged with defending Curtis in a seventh trial even an all-white jury selected entirely of Winona residents couldnt find him guilty. Early voting has begun. Now the spotlight is on three other deaths that are linked to the case. You can send your sympathy in the guestbook provided and share it with the family. He's shown a fearlessness about committing brazen attacks and thefts in daylight with high risks and low payoff, in places close to where he's lived and where people are more likely to recognize him. Reporters from In the Dark tried to contact Hemphill online to present him with these findings. Willie James Hemphill, 38. Gamble never discharged his weapon. At a hearing, the attorney generals office told the judge that prosecutors knew of no such gun. Visitation will be observed from 10:00 a.m. until the time of service. In addition, he won an Emmy for the television show The West Wing.. Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window). Presley wasnt the only suspect defense attorneys didnt know investigators had seriously considered. By his own account, someone told investigators that they'd seen him on Front Street that morning, though Hemphill has said repeatedly that he wasn't there. The district attorneys office isnt commenting. More importantly, Woods said she was certain that she didn't make the trip with Hemphill that day. An APM Reports investigation of Hallmon's criminal history shows that at least seven felony charges against him fell away between 2001 and 2016.