Willie James Hemphill's alibi doesn't check out TIMELINE: Hemphill's long criminal record. William is related to Alicia Kristen Hemphill . In the sixth, he was again convicted and sentenced to death, and his latest appeal was ongoing when the podcast started. Like LaSamuel Gamble, Hemphill wore Fila shoes and had a criminal record. Willie Hemphill is 80 years old and was born on 04/13/1942. That night, according to Moore, Hemphill was home with an ounce of marijuana, some of which they smoked together. Willie James Hemphill in Georgia Fulton County arrested for U/S VGCSA POSS* BLOG; CATEGORIES. "We have never had any evidence that showed anything other than this defendant's guilt," Evans said. Again, he denied ever being there. Following that arrest, Hemphill committed crimes nearly continuously for the next three decades. But we found a document showing that another man, Willie James Hemphill, had also been questioned just days after the murders. Visitation will be observed from 10:00 a.m. until the time of service. He quoted Bertha Tardy as saying he would have to be responsible for paying for the batteries. Not the right Willie? Me and Twanda was out of town," he said. 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 his legal obligation, but its easy to see why he didnt. Who was he? Editor's note: This endorsement editorial was updated on . In the past, Willie has also been known as Willie James Hemphill, Willie A Hemphill, Willie James Hemphill, Willie J Hemphill and Willi Hemphill. He said he called Tardy the next day, asking if he still had a job, and she said he didnt. They wanted to ask him about his alibi for the day of the Tardy Furniture murders, an alibi that hadn't checked out. Montgomery County Sheriff Bill Thornburg searched Moores home and found a size 10.5 Fila Grant Hill shoebox in a dresser at her house. Born in 2 Jun 1941 and died in 27 May 2008 Gaffney, South Carolina Willie James Hemphill Why was he questioned? They have also lived in Franklin, NC and North Fort Myers, FL. Presley was the tougher of the two, and he didn't say much. 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. We collect and match historical records that Ancestry users have contributed to their family trees to create each person's profile. View More. The police there picked up the investigation and also apparently probed the Tardy Furniture connection. Willie Hemphill's passing at the age of 97 has been publicly announced by Arnold Family Funeral Services Inc. - Hillside Chapel in Altadena, CA.Legacy invites you to offer condolences and share memori That said, I dont see a compelling motive, and none of these people is any more capable of pulling off an outrage on this scale than poor Curtis Flowers. Nor was there any record of the evidence gathered from Hemphill. On July 19, the Clarion Ledger did just that, finding wires, broken concrete blocks, parts of childrens toys and a plastic dog bone. Willie James Hemphill was detained for 11 days following the Hardy Furniture murders and wore the same brand of shoes as the bloody footprints found at the scene. While Presley drove the action, Gamble kept his gun trained on the scene in case anyone tried to flee. In that 1963 ruling, the court said: "The suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment.". In 1996, central Alabama saw a string of armed robberies, where the criminals told store clerks to lie down and held them at gunpoint, sometimes killing them. Actually,In the Dark hasnt weighed in on the guilt-innocence issue (thats not what they do), but their careful dissection of DA Doug Evans case against Flowers has left the case in a shambles. APM Reports recently interviewed a man named Willie James Hemphill, who said he was a suspect early in the investigation. Saums believes whoever carried out the crime had inside information. Goldberg couldn't tell whether he was telling the truth. But Curtis Flowers is somehow still not cleared of the gruesome quadruple murder on July 16, 1996. District Attorney Doug Evans insisted he'd given the defense access to all records of the investigation. In the midst of the probe, the Mississippi Crime Lab sent a copy of the bloody shoeprint found at Tardy to the lead Boston investigator. 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. Submit an Obituary. View the profiles of professionals named "Willie Hemphill" on LinkedIn. 0 Reputation Score Range. Even before finding the gun, Armstrong had doubts about whether Flowers played a role in the quadruple murder. Six trials and six successful appeals. Convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh has been sentenced to life in prison for killing his wife and son. Grief Support. <p>Prosecutors have always said that Curtis Flowers was the only serious suspect in the Tardy Furniture investigation. Three of the four were each killed with a single head shot. Find 23 people named Willie Hemphill along with free Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok profiles on PeekYou - true people search. Burial will be at Barber Memorial Cemetery The podcast, which uncovered evidence used by Flowers to get his conviction overturned, spoke with witness Clemmie Fleming. Matthews never responded. Willie James Hemphill, Willie J Hemphill, Willie J Hemphill, Willie James Hemphill. Presley shot and killed store employees execution-style on his way out the door. He told the podcast he had an airtight alibi. Willie James Hemphill Obituary. The ugly facts of Hemphills past werent ugly enough for the podcast In The Dark emphasized its clear disdain of him. used to implicate Flowers in the Tardy case. With the discrediting of Hallmon and other witnesses, Saums said, I think the district attorney would find it hard to prosecute Curtis Flowers again, much less convict him.. A witness whose statement put a man on death row for 22 years has performed a remarkable backflip, turning a case on its head. Username. They said they didnt have a case against me.. On July 14, his mother, Lola, died of surgery complications. He didnt mark it or put it in an evidence bag, he told the Clarion Ledger. NEWS & ADVICE. Baran said she reached out to the two state investigators who questioned Hemphill, Matthews and Wayne Miller. The whole time Ive been telling them, I dont remember the day, Fleming said. On July 2, the podcast, which has been downloaded more than 24 million times in its second season, laid out a lengthy argument that a different man, Willie James Hemphill, committed the 1996 murders. Wiilie Hemphill passed away in Bryan, Texas. Contact Jerry Mitchell at 601-961-7064 or jmitchell@gannett.com. Curtis Flowers is on Mississippis death row, convicted of the murders after six trials, but his lawyers, APM Reports In the Dark podcast, the Starz TV program The Wrong Man and others have raised questions about his guilt. December 6, 1948 August 11, 2018. He also tried to shoot his own 12-year-old son who was hiding in a closet, though the boy survived. He told them that a day or two after the murders he was driving back to Winona from Memphis when his stepfather called him and told him carloads of law enforcement officers had descending on his parents house looking for him. Quantico National Cemetery. Obituaries Section. That might not be so if the whole world wasnt watching, but it is. Could those responsible for Tardy Furniture murders have escaped a different way? Miller would not comment. Miller, the Mississippi investigator who made the lineup and asked for the two to be interrogated, declined to answer questions from APM Reports. He allegedly committed robberies to fund a drug habit. Photos. His misdeeds, while abhorrent, are also likely inseparable from his decades-long history of poverty and addiction. But In The Dark was apparently unsatisfied with exonerating the innocent: It needed the narrative closure of guilt, and found its key to that in Hemphill. 1.58 3.33 /5. A burglary took place at Tardy Furniture just eight days before the killings. The funeral service will be 1pm Sunday at China Grove A.M.E. Zion Church. But instead of stopping there, its reporters started snitching to the same system whose injustice they had just unmasked. After examining the autopsy reportsand crime scene photographs, Baden said the evidence suggests one person maintained control while another person carried out the execution-style killings. And so, in the corridors of the courthouse last week, a female journalist with In The Dark confronted Hemphill about his airtight alibi. "I don't understand how she said that.". LAYTON - Willie Morris Hemphill, 69, passed away August 11, 2018 at St. Mark's Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. 0.68 2.43 /5. Small is now claiming that I never gave (the gun) to him, Armstrong said. Yes and no. After finding the weapon, Armstrong wondered how the gun had wound up under the house his mother was renting on Knox Street, only 700 feet or so from the furniture store. Illuminating Journalism from American Public Media. Willie James Hemphill was born on May 27, 1919. The prosecutors had said repeatedly at trial that the only suspect seriously investigated was Flowers. Phone Number: (704) 751-NZMM +2 phones. That day in October 2015, Ali was looking at a photo lineup that law enforcement had used to implicate Flowers in the Tardy case. 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. And in searching for Hemphill, she came upon a cousin with the same name who recalled three carloads of deputies showing up at his mobile home in 1996 looking for the other Hemphill. 4). ADVERTISEMENT BY ANCESTRY.COM. He allegedly stabbed a woman with a screwdriver, among other violent crimes. Search by Name. He told APM Reports that he was arrested and questioned in the early days of the investigation. This narrative turn places In The Dark firmly, disappointingly, and alarmingly in the mainstream of the True Crime genre. "I was out of the whole jurisdiction in another state.". He will be held in a county jail while its decided if he should face trial for a stunning seventh time. Nothing in the investigative file for the case explains why officers let him go. The second season of the In the Dark podcast is about the case of Curtis Flowers, who was tried six times for the same crime. I dont think they learned anything.. View More. How do we create a person's profile? He freely admitted that he had been a suspect and even says that, although innocent, he would have made a more convincing suspect than Curtis. What an Alabama crime spree might reveal about the Curtis Flowers investigation. Why was he questioned? Reporter: Mr Hemphill. His alibi is weak, according to In The Dark. Psychologist John R. Goff tested Flowers, concluding his IQ was 75. Jessie Mae Hemphill; Jimmie Gordon; Jimmy "Duck" Holmes; Jimmy Burns; Jimmy Dawkins; Jimmy Holmes; Jimmy Johnson; . Eight days later, Tardy and three others working for the store were killed execution-style. 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. Presley and Gamble made three runs to Boston during the summer of 1996: once after their June crime spree, once after the pawn shop murders and once immediately after the furniture store murders in Winona. They didnt question him about other suspects or bring up Flowers name. In addition, he won an Emmy for the television show The West Wing.. During the sixth Flowers trial, Matthews, who worked with Miller at the Mississippi Highway Patrol, said the only suspect in the case aside from Flowers was Doyle Simpson, whose gun the prosecution argued Flowers stole and used as the murder weapon. They also discovered an unfired .380 bullet, which might suggest the gun jammed. Whoever did this crime (the Tardy murders) was a good shot.. Selected filmography. There is little doubt that Hemphill has done terrible things. State investigator Jack Matthews, one of those who had read Hemphill his rights, said hed only talked to Hemphill for a short time before realizing he didnt know anything. James appears the first time in the 1870 Federal Census as a six year-old, living with two brothers and a sister on his parents farm in Lampasas County, Texas. FUNERAL HOMES. Evans didnt want jurors comparing his tortured theory with a simple and sensible alternative. But after several hours of interviews conducted over two days, Hemphill finally disclosed his alibi: He said he was at a mall in Memphis at the time of the murders, with a Winona woman named Twanda Woods. According to the ledger, about$287 was missing from the cash drawer the morning of the murders. But that doesnt make Doyle a cold killer. Prosecutors said repeatedly at trial that the only suspect seriously investigated was Flowers. When he showed up the Montgomery County Sheriffs Department two days later, he said, they immediately cuffed him and that the investigators made it clear he was a suspect. In the Flowers case, Evans and investigators asserted that Flowers was the main suspect from the beginning, including up to his sixthand, so far, final trial. The ordeal of Curtis Flowers screams for correction. 0 Add Rating Anonymously. Thats just standard procedure. WIILIE HEMPHILL OBITUARY. At a hearing, the attorney generals office told the judge that prosecutors knew of no such gun. 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. More importantly, Woods said she was certain that she didn't make the trip with Hemphill that day. 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. Miller also asked the investigator to interrogate Presley and Gamble about the Tardy Furniture murders. If Gamble and McKenzie were in Mississippi the day of the Winona murders its very possible that Presley was with them. It was all make believe. Episode 10 of the In the DarkPodcast was largely dedicated to the strange case ofWillie James Hemphill, a local bad boy with a violent streak who was continually getting cross-ways with the law. Service: 11 am Saturday, March 3, 201. But there was a three-week gap in the Alabama crime spree right at the time of the Tardy murders. Record that.. It wasn't that day." But if Curtis Flowers doesnt get relief in the face of these well-publicized facts there will be hell to pay. OBITUARIES. INDIANAPOLIS At first, Willie James Hemphill was calm. Police received a call about the murders at 10:21 a.m. Selected filmography. Why was he questioned? Why was he questioned? I aint saying nothing bad. 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. The crime had a random and senseless quality to it. One of them wore Grant Hill Fila sneakers. Send Flowers. Records show he was questioned Hemphill said he was interrogated for hours and held for 11 days before being released. Wrong Manpresented us with a small group of criminal justice professionals who started out believing that Curtis was probably the killer. Initially, Hemphill refused to provide further details of his whereabouts on July 16, 1996. Willie James Hemphill; Willie James Hemphill, Age 44. aka Willie Jr Hemphill. Me and her was leaving," he said, forfeiting his Memphis alibi altogether and placing himself a short walk from Tardy Furniture. Usually if somebody starts shooting, he said, others will run.. His full criminal history is too lengthy to reproduce here. He said he knew nothing about the burglary. NEWSPAPERS. But this week she told journalist Madeleine Baran that she was wrong. Each victim of the July 16, 1996 murders was murdered execution styleone or two bullets to the back of the head. The second best result is William E Hemphill Sr . But the investigative file turned over to Flowers defense attorneys didnt mention the possible link. No one was going to all that trouble over the approximately $400 investigators say was in the till that morning. 1. After a multistate manhunt, Presley and Gamble were arrested in Norfolk, Virginia. Share to Tumblr. The FBI checked it out. That was a lie, Hallmon told APM Reports in an interview on a contraband cellphone from his prison cell. In October 2015, almost 20 years after the murders at Tardy Furniture, one of Curtis Flowers' lawyers was paging through his case file, when she saw a familiar face. He attended Erskine College, where he earned a A.B. They wanted to ask him about his alibi for the day of the Tardy Furniture murders, an alibi that hadn't checked out. Winona, Mississippi lies three hours west of Birmingham on Highway 82. 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. My mom, my stepdad were afraid that, hey, if they're manhunting me like that, they may shoot me down in the street, Hemphill told them. When we finally found Hemphill, living in Indianapolis, he had some very surprising things to say about the case . In fact, it appears Miller had specifically asked for the photo of Presley from an investigator in Virginia, where Presley and his accomplice, LaSamuel Gamble, were apprehended. 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. LOW HIGH. Flowers through six trials present Presley and Gamble as an alternative theory of the crime? Willie James Hemphill, age 37, Justice, IL Search Report.
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