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Brought to you by the Capital One Venture Card. Earn unlimited double miles on every purchase, every day. And you can use those miles on any travel purchase. Plus, earn unlimited 5X miles on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel. Your next trip is closer than you think with the Venture Card from Capital One. Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com for details. Previously on Serial. When you're not in jail, do you live with those fine people? That was false. That's completely false.
They lied on oath, under oath. Oh my God. I know. His testimony was that he patted the outside of the pocket first, then he did a pat down. He felt a bulge. He reached into the pocket. Objection. I'll tell you how we fix that. We don't go. He's this walking perpetuation of don't trust the police.
From This American Life and WBEZ Chicago, it's Serial. One courthouse told week by week. I'm Sarah Koenig. Before we get started, I want to give you a warning. I know a lot of the material in this series is hard to hear and hard to think about. And this story may be especially so, in part because it involves children.
Rhonda Gray is a police officer in Cleveland. She started as an EMT in the 80s, then joined the police force, first as a patrol officer, worked her way up to detective, then homicide detective. She's experienced, is what I'm saying. She's seen a lot. In early October of 2015, she spoke to a reporter from Cleveland.com. Yesterday, I sat at Rainbow Baby and Children's Hospital with the mother of a five-month-old infant.
She was too distraught for me to interview her. So instead, I found myself comforting her. I listened to her screams as they went through the ER. The five-month-old infant was named Avielle Wakefield. She'd been riding in a car with her family, tucked into her car seat, when someone started shooting from the street. Avielle was killed, shot through her chest.
And I watched the mother, the grandmother, wash blood off her as she tried to save the child. And I just want to say to the citizens of Cleveland to speak up. It's time to speak up. There are people who know what happened. There are people who saw what happened. There are people who heard what happened. And it's time for them to speak up. Aviel's shooting came at the end of a hideous month for Cleveland. Four children were shot.
Not teenagers. Little, little kids. Three of them died. They weren't targeted. These were mistakes. Collateral damage from street violence. The whole city was bereft. Public officials, people who deal with tragedy for a living, were unraveled by what was going on. In the days after Aviel's death, cops, the mayor, the county prosecutor begged the public to speak up.
Help us. Talk to us. Speak up. Speak up. Speak up. They implored. They also chastised. The police chief, Calvin Williams, was plainly aggravated. All you people who complain about violence in the police, when are you going to stop yammering and do something? He didn't say it quite like that, but almost. We need people out there in the community that are concerned.
with Black lives, with Brown lives, with White lives, with Purple lives, to step out and do something and not just have chants and slogans and marches. We've marched enough. We need people to do something. Help us, which really means trust us. About two months after this press conference, the city held another press conference. This time they were grateful. People had spoken up. Now they had someone in custody.
This past Friday, Devon Holmes was indicted on 13 felony counts for the homicide of Aviel Wakefield. A young guy named Devon Holmes. He'd just turned 19. The indictment against him was robust. Two counts of aggravated murder plus one regular murder. That was for the baby. Three more attempted murders and three more felonious assaults for the other passengers in the car that day, who miraculously were unhurt.
and another attempted murder and felonious assault for a bystander. It was as if one big law enforcement fist were pounding on the public podium. This should not be happening in our city, and we've got to do something about it. At Davon's first court appearance, the prosecutor noted that, quote, Mr. Holmes has a history of violence as a juvenile. He asks for a million-dollar bond. The judge sets it at $1.5 million. A couple days later, another judge would raise it to $2 million.
A year after that second press conference, almost to the day, I happened to be at a holiday party at a restaurant downtown. The local defense bar was throwing it. I was tagging along with an attorney I'd been interviewing. And he saw a friend and he said, hey, how's it going? And the friend, also a defense attorney, was beaming. He said, great. We just got my guy out. Oh, really? What's the case? A murder case. A baby. We were both taken aback. Wait, what?
He quickly said, it's a horrible case, but my guy didn't do it. They got the wrong guy. Davon Holmes had been quietly released from the Cuyahoga County Jail. The charges against him dismissed, without prejudice, which means the county could try to re-indict him in future. But for now, he was free. Avielle's death, her unassailable innocence, as one of the 911 operators said that day, a baby baby killed in her car seat,
It was a kind of incident that makes a city stop arguing for a bit over what the criminal justice system is doing right and what it's doing wrong, so that everyone seemed to line up, fired up, to find justice for Avielle. That's why I'd looked into this case, into all these awful shootings from the fall of 2015, because I figured if any homicides were going to get the full menu of police and prosecution resources, it would be these. Everyone wants to solve the case of the five-month-old baby.
So what happened? After all that effort? Wrong guy. What happened? Why did the police think it was Davon in the first place? And what happened over the course of that year to make the state let him go? I heard about all the trials, all the kids being killed at the end of time. It was a big issue. It was all over the news. This is Davon Holmes.
Did you know that there was gossip that you had done it? No. That's what freaked me out. I never thought my name was in that situation. When I knocked on his door, he'd only been out of jail for a couple of months. He was living at home with his mother. I had a speech in my head about why he should talk to me, but there was no need. He agreed right away, as if he'd been waiting for someone to come along and ask what the heck happened.
I was not able to ask the police what the heck happened. The detectives weren't allowed to talk to me. In fact, no Cleveland officials, no police officials, no one from the mayor's office would agree to an on-the-record interview for this series. I've frankly never encountered a city government with a jaw locked up tighter than Cleveland's. They wanted nothing to do with us. Which is too bad, because Cleveland has some interesting leaders with ideas and lots to say about their city. Just not to me.
So while I did meet the homicide detectives in charge of Aviel Wakefield's case, I could not ask them, "How much did you know about Davon Holmes before you arrested him?" Instead, I went to Davon. He started at the beginning, right after Thanksgiving 2015. I was at my mom's house, going to make me a plate from leftover Thanksgiving. I was making the plate and my mom said, "What the police doing here like that?"
So me being me, I just look. I ain't got nothing to be scared of. I ain't, you know what I'm saying? I ain't did nothing wrong. So I come in the dining room. My mom say, come here. So I walk up there. They just arrest me. Straight cuff me up. I say, what am I being arrested for? Like they don't talk to you? They didn't talk to me. They say, what am I being arrested for? He say, we'll tell you when you get downtown.
It wasn't just a couple of cops at the door. It was the U.S. Marshals' Northern Ohio Violent Fugitive Task Force in full battle rattle. There was a warrant out for Davon's arrest, but he didn't know that. They take him downtown to the Justice Center, to an interview room. And I seen the detective, and he was just, you're a baby killer. You killed the baby. I know you did it. Everybody's seeing you did it. We know you did it.
Me, I don't know what you're talking about. I wasn't there. I heard about the child dying. I feel bad, but I'm not the one that did it. Y'all got the wrong guy. Yeah, you a baby killer. You did wrong. That's the phrase they use, baby killer? Calling me a baby killer. Calling me all type of baby killers and cowards and just belittling me all around the board. It was to the point that I just couldn't take it no more. I was cuffed up. I didn't know what was going on. I think they was trying to scare me to...
Like, telling myself. To confess. Confess. I can't confess to something I didn't do. People do it all the time. You know? But I was really innocent. So I said, okay, I'm ready to go home. So the lady detective said, no, you're going to jail for the rest of your life. The lady detective was Rhonda Gray, the same one who listened to Avielle Wakefield's mother screaming down the halls of the ER. Davon understood the pressure, political and personal, to solve crimes like these.
Over weeks, then months, that's what scared him. The dual knowledge that he didn't kill Avielle Wakefield, and that he could well be convicted for killing Avielle Wakefield. Because there ain't no two, three year thing, no probation, no treatment. This is the rest of my life. The death penalty. This is a child we talking. So I didn't know what to do.
Davon had been locked up before, but the circumstances this time made everything more foul. The creeping mold, the roaches, having to wash his clothes and sheets in the sink, or more often the toilet, the relentless bologna sandwiches, nothing healthy to eat from commissary. No, no, no, no fruit, no fruit, no fruit, no fruit, no fruit, no fruit, no fruit.
As I got to know Davon, I'd hear him do this when a thing sticks in his mind. Repeat it in batches, as if he's skipping a mental stone. For instance, one of his appointed attorneys, Michael Shaughnessy. Yeah, Shaughnessy a good dude, though. He a real good dude. He a real good dude. He a good dude. And he a judge now. Yeah, he a good dude. Davon said Shaughnessy believed him, that he didn't commit this crime. He's a good dude. What did they say to you? Like, what did they say the state had against you?
Oh, uh, uh, ID witness. Somebody saying they seen me running with a gun in my hand. Somebody saying they can identify me. No fingerprints, no guns, no ballistics tests, no nothing. All they said was the word. That's all they had. Shaughnessy and another appointed attorney, the one I met at the party, would visit Davon periodically. Tell him they were working on it. The evidence was thin. Keep your head up. But Davon said he was struggling. He was pent up in every way a person can be.
He said it was almost a relief when he got in a fight with some guy and got sent to the hole. About five months in, a date was set for Davon's trial, June 27th. June 27th came and went. They set another trial date for late October. A week before that trial date, it too was canceled. A month after that, Davon's lawyers came to see him in jail. They said, congratulations, you're going home.
It'd been a year since he was arrested. Davon said, don't play with me like that. He said, yeah, you going home? I said, when? He said, today. I said, then call my mama and tell her to come get me, because I just didn't believe him. I said, then call my mama and tell her to come get me. He called. I couldn't do nothing but cry. It was just like all my worrying was relief. But it's still hurting me because I just did a year, wasted a year of my life for telling these people the same thing.
I did not do it. Davon's not mad that the cops brought him in for Aviel Wakefield's death. He feels like they had information, they acted on that information, fair enough. But what came after, post-arrest, that he's mad about. I feel like they should have did a little bit more investigation because Cleveland, they don't investigate. They good when they come and get somebody. But they ain't good cops as far as investigations. When I asked Davon why they finally let him go, he said this.
Because the family, the family said they know I ain't had nothing to do with it. Wait, which family? The child family. Wait, that's what your lawyers told you? That the child's family said you didn't have anything to do with it? Yeah, they said they came to court and said they heard I ain't had nothing to do with it. How would the family know? That's what I don't understand, but at the same time, I'm happy that they realized and seen that I really didn't do it. I don't think that's what happened. That's what my lawyer told me. He said that's why you're getting out? Yeah. Yeah.
He said, "We had court and the family came and said you didn't have nothing to do with it." And the judge dismissed the case right there. That's crazy. If they had court, why weren't you there? That's what I don't understand. This story made no sense to me. But once I thought about it, it made sense why it would make no sense. Many of the defendants I talked to in Cleveland, especially the ones who were waiting in jail, I often knew more about what was going on with their cases than they did. Just from taking a quick look at the public records,
Because their contact with the outside world, with the workings of the court, is stymied by multiple layers of interference, like a frustrating game of telephone. Maybe you're assigned attorneys checking in briefly, but that's about it. So there you are in the county jail, only an elevator ride away from the courtroom and the prosecutor's office, but all you have is a cloudy porthole to help you decipher what's going on upstairs. I don't know what evidence Davon's attorneys did or didn't show him. I don't know what they told Davon about why he was being released.
Davon's attorneys would not talk to me for this story. I think they said no out of concern for Davon. The case of Avielle Wakefield is still open. From the list of evidence the state handed over to the defense, I can roughly piece together the swatches of information that led to Davon's arrest. In the days right after the shooting, anonymous tips began to come in. Certain names began to percolate and repeat. Davon's name appears four days after the shooting.
Crime Stoppers tip re Davon Holmes. Another one the next day. A couple days after that, TC telephone call from anonymous mail re Tink. Tink is Davon. It's been his nickname forever. Other names were still coming in, too. Then on October 10th, a little more than a week after the shooting, police show a photo lineup to an eyewitness. I'm going to call this eyewitness the landscaper because he worked as a landscaper.
The landscaper was there when the shooting happened, on East 145th Street off Kinsman Road, right in the middle of the 4th Police District, the busiest one in the city, possibly in the entire state of Ohio. The landscaper had been working at a house across the street for some months. I only know the specifics because Davon's lawyers filed a motion to suppress the evidence the landscaper gave police. In their motion, they say that at first the landscaper had told police he hadn't seen the shooter.
but that a little more than a week later, he came forward to say that in fact he had. The police show him some photo arrays. He doesn't positively identify anyone, but he says two people looked sort of like the shooter, neither of whom was Davon. The defense says Davon's photo was in that initial array. The state says it wasn't.
In any case, about five weeks later, the cops show the landscaper another photo lineup. First, he rules out Davon, then changes his mind, then says someone else's photo looks like the shooter. Finally, a week after that, so 57 days after the shooting, they show the landscaper that same photo array. And he says he's going to go with his gut and that he's 90% sure it's this guy right here, Davon Holmes. ♪
In their suppression motion, Davon's lawyers reference studies about how memory is malleable and subject to contamination. But especially in times of high stress, we miss details. They argue that Davon doesn't really match the landscaper's initial description of the shooter. Davon is younger, shorter, significantly heavier.
By showing the landscaper his photo in these lineups, maybe the police were in fact creating a memory. Maybe the landscaper was recognizing Davon because he'd seen him before, in these very photo arrays. They don't mention the studies, I start looking into this, that talk about how when eyewitnesses pick out someone as the perpetrator in a police lineup, they identify innocent people more than 30% of the time. 30%.
or the ones that say you're never supposed to show an eyewitness the same photo more than once. So, yeah, nearly two months after the fact, the landscaper is suddenly 90% sure of his ID. Davon was aware of the landscaper's statement, but he was more focused on, and troubled by, another ID witness the state had, a guy I'm going to call John. Davon said John claimed to have seen Davon after the shooting running with a gun in his hand.
John had given this evidence when he himself was locked up and facing serious charges. Aggravated robbery, felonious assault, kidnapping. Davon thinks it's John's statement that got him arrested. On paper, it does look as if the case clicked into place as soon as John talked.
Court records show that detectives talked to John on November 18th, and that same day they showed the landscaper another photo lineup with Davon's picture in it. Nine days later is when the violent fugitive task force bangs on Davon's door, interrupts his Thanksgiving leftovers. But the disturbing part for Davon is that he knows John well. And why did he ID you? It was something that happened with my brother a long time ago.
I'm going to invite you on a little tangent now, just because when I first heard what happened, I couldn't quite believe it. John's older brother and Davon's older brother were best friends. One day in 2007, when Davon's brother was 16, John's brother was 15, they tried to rob a guy coming back from the corner store where he'd just bought Newport cigarettes and a bag of popcorn. The teenagers had a gun, but the guy also had a gun, and he shot and killed John's brother, the 15-year-old.
Because they were together and were trying to commit a crime, and this is the part that blew my mind until I looked up the definition of felony murder, but Davon's brother was charged with the murder of his best friend, even though he didn't fire the weapon. Davon's 16-year-old brother was bound over to the Justice Center, meaning he was transferred from juvenile court, where the maximum sentence he could get was around five years, and prosecuted as an adult.
He was sentenced to 18 years to life. He can try for parole in March of 2025. He's unlikely to get it. In the aftermath of all this, Davon said his family and John's family were fine. No animosity. In fact, his uncle is with John's mom. He thought of John as a brother. But the way John's statement was worded, Davon's interpretation was that John wanted to hurt Davon's family. That maybe he blamed Davon's brother for his own brother's death and wanted revenge.
I like Davon, but I want to make clear that this isn't one of those cases where the honor student gets profiled by the cops because he was wearing a hoodie and lives near Kinsmen. Davon was treated like the usual suspect because he is the usual suspect. He was part of the largest, most troublesome gang in Cleveland, the Heartless Felons. I imagine the cops in Cleveland's 4th District were familiar with the burly kid called Tink long before Aviel Wakefield was killed. When his brother was locked up for his best friend's death, Davon was 10 years old.
Davon told me he himself was first locked up when he was 10 years old for strong-arm robbery. Much as I am tempted to connect these two events, Davon isn't. I was angry about it, like, yeah, I lost my big brother, but that wasn't the reason I was in the streets, because I was in the streets when he was home. My brother used to make me go home, like, get out, go home. And I used to fake, like, act like I was going home, but I'd just go down another street.
What were you doing? Just being in the neighborhood, throwing rocks at cars, just being bad. And were you just skipping school all the time or were you going to school? No, I used to go to school, running hard, fight, steal from teachers, breaking their cars. This wasn't what I meant by going to school anyway. Throwing rocks, stealing food out the cafeteria in school, running around, security chasing me. They called on my mama.
This is the school right across the street from Davon's house. It's closed now, boarded up. Davon has abiding respect for his mother. She loves him. She tried to guide him, never gave up on him. But when he was at that age, he says, he listened to no one. Not his mother, definitely not his teachers. He doesn't actually know how far he got in school. Maybe 7th grade, maybe 9th.
Davon said he loved being in the streets. Infatuated was the word he used. He loved all of it. The fast money and the cars and the girls, but mostly the rush. The adrenaline of running away from people, of being chased. He hated school, but this came easily to him, he said. He was a leader among his friends, an organizer. As he got older, he sold drugs, bought a gun with the money, got caught for stuff, sent to residential programs, group homes. He'd escape. He'd escape.
When Davon was 14, he got seriously hurt, shot in the elbow. He's got a vicious scar from it. He was sent to a juvenile prison for the first time that same year. By that time, Davon was already a heartless felon. A gang, members prefer to call it a family, that was born about 15 years ago inside Ohio's juvenile prisons and then spread to the world outside.
Davon's loyalty, his willingness to engage in combat, earned him a pretty high rank in prison. He got into fights with guards, which brought new assault charges, which in turn brought more prison time. His original six-month sentence stretched to three years. Finally, when he was almost 18, he came home. When he got picked up for the murder of Aviel Wakefield, he was just starting to tire of the streets, he said, starting to slow down.
I had a hard time comprehending Davon's resume, specifically Davon the early years, when he was a little boy, 9, 10 years old. Weren't you scared, though, doing it by yourself? I don't understand how a little kid can be like, I know, why don't I go attack this person and take their money or whatever? Weren't you terrified? Why not? I don't know. It just wasn't. Did you feel like it was wrong? Do you feel like it's wrong now?
What you mean? I don't have remorse for nothing I did. Why not? Because I did it. For what? I can't be sorry for something I did. I can only change from it. But I ain't going to be sorry for what I did. I don't regret nothing that I did. Like that. Even if I see somebody today that I harmed, that I did something years ago. You know what I'm saying?
I'm a B. As soon as I see him, honestly, as soon as I see him, I'm going to get in defense mode. You get it? I don't know. I'm probably weird to you. He is weird to me. We talked a lot about remorse, which he doesn't feel, and regret, which he also says he doesn't feel, but which I think he does, and responsibility, which he feels keenly. He told me he's not going to deny he did something if he did it. He says he didn't shoot that baby. He says he doesn't know who did.
But even if he did know, he wouldn't tell. If we're sitting right here on this couch, he said, and he sees out the window someone shoots someone else, he's either going to leave before the cops show up, or if he does get questioned, he's going to help the cops as unhelpfully as he can. I don't know what happened. I didn't see it. But what if you did see it? I don't know. Who did it? Did you see? Okay, did you see it? Yeah, I seen it. What happened? He got killed.
He got shot. Who did it? I don't know. Did you see him? Yeah. What'd he look like? I don't know. Which way he go? He just ran. I'm helping, but I'm not gonna say he had on a black coat, he ran down that way, he got in that car. I'm not doing all that. Because why? This is what I'm trying to understand. Why not? I wasn't raised like that. I don't care if you was my worst enemy. I'm not telling on you. I don't care what you did.
It don't matter if you was the oldest, nicest, meanest lady. I am the oldest, nicest, meanest lady. I'm just saying, even if it was a lady. It's because it's your principle. You're just saying it's not about the consequences for me. It's just a principle. That's against my religion. I'm going to say that. That's against my religion to tell on somebody. That ain't going to make me. I'm not going to feel right. I'm going to feel less of a man. What if it was like a relative who was the victim of it?
You know what I mean? Does your principle bend at all with the nature of the crime? No, I'm not telling if, no. No? No. We're just going to have to handle it a different way. Meaning street justice, which Davon can get behind. But Cleveland police justice or justice center justice? No way.
This is precisely what vexes police investigations in cases like Aviel's. It's probably as old as crime itself, certainly as old as organized crime. No snitching. It's not just about gangster codes of loyalty, though. Over the decades, it's been helped along by the criminal justice system itself, especially during the war on drugs. You could argue no snitching was a rational response to the widespread use of low-level informants who'd be threatened with mandatory prison sentences if they didn't talk.
Problem was, these low-level informants sometimes didn't know that much. So people are getting arrested based on flimsy or even false information. And then, of course, people don't cooperate because of straight-up fear. Well-supported fear. Until we watched the no-snitching principle play out during trials in Cleveland, I'd never fully understood how deeply it muddies cases.
We watched a capital murder case in which witnesses were visibly scared. Even some of the jurors were scared. And they weren't paranoid. The defendant was a heartless felon. Already one witness had been shot and killed in his driveway just before he was supposed to come to court. We watched another case in which a police informant had been murdered. We saw people squirm on the stand, prevaricate.
Probably the most tortured testimony we saw was from a man who goes by R.J. He'd been in a gang, and he was an important witness during the trial for the murder of one of the other children killed that fall of 2015, Major Howard, who was three years old. It was a drive-by. When the shooting happened, R.J. was there on his front porch. And at first he became a bit of a media hero because he had tried to help Major.
In a news video, he's sitting on his porch, shirtless, being interviewed. He looks sad and dazed. He's got staples up his arm, holding together a wound from wrist to elbow, the result of an unrelated shooting the week before. The words, never snitch, are tattooed in fancy script just below his collarbones. At trial, the prosecutor, Anna Feralia, made it clear to the jury that R.J. had told detectives he'd seen the defendant, Donnell Lindsey, known as Nell,
shooting from the window of a white car. Now, today, almost a year and a half since he made that statement, R.J. was on the stand saying it wasn't true. Okay, didn't see the shooter, didn't even see the car. Soon as he heard shots, he had ducked down onto his porch floor, he said. So all he saw was his porch ceiling and the little chairs he's got out there. Didn't see Donnell Lindsey at all the day Major Howard was killed.
Ana Faralia tries to tease out of him why the discrepancy between these two statements. Because they state, I ain't gonna lie, I don't know what to do. RJ begins to spiral. It's hard to follow, which I have to think was at least partly by design. He says he's got all this pressure on him and no one can help him. He's even asked COs in prison. He's serving time now on a different case. What should he do? Should he testify?
He feels it was right to help the baby, he says. The best thing he ever did. But a lot of people on the street are talking about him, threatening him. He's getting in fights in prison now because people have heard he's a snitch. Eventually, he says to Anna Faraglia, "'I didn't see Donna Lindsay myself. "'I just told detectives what I'd heard from other people "'because my face had already been in the news "'and since I was already public, "'people in the neighborhood started coming to me with information. "'People who were scared themselves, "'who'd scattered before police arrived that day.'
So I was really passing their information to the detectives, not my own information. And that was also a good deed. I could have run like other people did. I could have shut my door. I knew the police were looking for me for another shooting. But I tried to help that baby. I talked to detectives. What else do you want from me? It went on like this for hours. Finally...
It's a movie move. States Exhibit 351 is an autopsy photograph of adorable little Major Howard's dead body. She hands the photo to RJ. Is that who you tried to help? Is that who you tried to help? Is that a yes or a no? You tried to help this little boy? Okay. And don't you think you owe it to him to tell this jury who shot this little boy and not be afraid anymore, sir? Okay.
RJ slumps, starts to cry. The day Major was shot, RJ ran to him, took off his own shirt and wrapped it around him, jumped in a car and held on to Major while they rushed to the hospital. Major was still conscious, looking up at him, touching his chest, dying, three years old. RJ was still tormented by it. Did Nell shoot this little boy? No.
Did you see him shooting from a white car that night? That's all I'm asking you. I didn't see him. I didn't see him shoot no gun. I just, I heard what other people saying. They didn't step up. I didn't hear the help. Shit, I'm trying to, I help Major the best way I can. Helping Major is telling the truth. Right, I'm telling you my truth and what other people's truth, but they ain't there to tell their own truth. I told you my truth, though. Anna says to him, let's get real. You won't deliver because you're afraid of retribution.
She told me gang members had come in the courtroom, sat in the back, trying to get in RJ's head. She says to RJ, now you're afraid because you broke the code. He says, that ship sailed the moment I picked up that little boy. I broke the code by talking to the news reporter who approached me on the street. I broke the code by speaking to the cops. I'm breaking the code right now by sitting in this courtroom. Doesn't even really matter what words I say. Just being here is enough. Like I said, I'd already said I broke the code coming right here talking to you.
I talked to a few jurors about the case afterwards. Two out of the three said they didn't believe RJ saw Nell in the car. But there was other evidence aside from RJ, and Donnell Lindsey was convicted. He got 37 years to life. For what it's worth, his lawyers don't think he did it, and that's actually unusual for them. Emmanuel watched the whole trial, and he came away not at all convinced Donnell Lindsey was guilty. I still don't know what to think.
So what exactly did they have on Davon Holmes? No video, no physical evidence, no fingerprints, no DNA, no gun. I found out Davon apparently had made a statement placing himself in the vicinity of the crime, saying he'd been at the Family Dollar at the top of the street and had seen people running. To me, Davon denied making any such statement.
Police had gotten his cell records, which showed that he was indeed nearby at the time of the shooting, but considering he lives only a few blocks from where the shooting happened, the cell records seemed underwhelming. So the eyewitnesses were paramount. And again, at least on paper, they looked wobbly. There was John, the guy Davon knew, but he had offered information from jail. Witnesses like that are inherently weak. The defense can always argue the person's lying to get a deal.
I wasn't able to reach John, but I did talk to someone close to him, whom I believe is reliable, who said they had talked to John about his statement. This person told me that what John told the police, quote, it's not true. This person said John had lied to save himself to try to avoid going to prison. They didn't think John did it because of his brother's death. That yes, he does still suffer over his brother, but they didn't think that was the reason John lied about Davon.
So the landscaper's ID was probably the strongest thing they had. I wasn't sure what to make of his sudden clarity, 57 days post-shooting. Was he somehow manipulated by the police, or maybe he'd been scared of choosing the wrong person or the right person? Maybe he just made a mistake. I went looking for him one day at various addresses around the city. Emmanuel and I left notes and our business cards tucked in mailboxes and front doors. It worked. I got a call that same night from the landscaper.
He did not trust me. His neighbors had seen Emmanuel and me walking around with our hands in our pockets. We looked like cops. I told him it was cold outside, that's why. I asked him if we could meet so he could see for himself I was harmless. But the more I asked, the more suspicious he got I was trying to set him up to arrest him. We spoke a couple of times on the phone. He was upset his name was part of Davon's case. He was told his name would stay out of it. He said, "They threatened me that if I didn't come to court, they'd put me in jail.
He thinks they dropped Davon's case because they didn't want to pay out the reward money, which was $25,000. The landscaper was full of conspiratorial fervor, which I got the feeling he'd come by honestly. Sometime later, a woman called me. She said she was family to the landscaper. She said, "You should be careful what you do, because you can come in and ask all these questions, but then you get to leave, and we don't. We live here, and these people will kill you. We have cops in our family. I know how things happen."
I told her I know. She's right. I am trying to tread delicately. We talked for a long time. We were friendly by the end. She said she'd tell the landscaper to talk to me, but he never did. Before I'd hung up with him that last time, the landscaper had asked me, have you talked to the baby's family? He'd been in contact with Charles Wakefield, Aviel's father, he said. You should talk to the family. That's coming up after the break.
Hey, serial listeners, go deeper into one detainee's story in Letters from Guantanamo on Audible. Mansour Addaifi was 18 when he was kidnapped by Afghan militia and sold to the CIA. As one of the first prisoners at Guantanamo, he endured unbearable
I'm Julian Barnes. I'm an intelligence reporter at The New York Times. I try to find out what the U.S. government is keeping secret.
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I'd been waiting to contact Mr. Wakefield until, I don't know, I had more information, I guess. But really, I was avoiding it. I figured it would be painful for him and professionally of little use to me. We know. I know the whole story. So, like I say, it's just a waiting game. I was being a dummy. Charles Wakefield is a lovely, welcoming person who says he knows exactly what happened. First shot hit in the back of the front passenger tire.
Charles wasn't there himself. He wasn't a witness. He doesn't have any proof for his version of what happened. It's all information he's gathered from other people. So I'm going to be beeping out a name here.
The version of the story he feels confident is true is that some guys were shooting dice in a building on East 145th Street off Kinsman. Sometime earlier, one of them had been robbed maybe at another dice game or there'd been some gambling issue. Charles wasn't sure about that part. I later learned there had been a shooting. Anyway, these guys were ready to retaliate. They were on the lookout for a particular car, a car that looked a lot like Charles's car.
Charles said the guy they were after had a white 2000 Oldsmobile Aurora. Charles had a white 2001 Oldsmobile Aurora. The only difference was he has had tenant windows and ours had a sunroof. The guys playing the dice game see an Oldsmobile coming. Charles says one of them recognized it. Somebody that was there with them knew my car and they told, they said, that ain't the car.
But one guy started firing anyway. Charles' fiancée, Aisha, was driving. His elderly mother was in the passenger seat. Behind her was Aviel, and behind Aisha was her other daughter, who was eight years old. They were driving to the Save-A-Lot just a few blocks away to get ingredients for Charles' birthday cake. It was his birthday the next day. I'd have seen the person with that car, but I don't know who he is. I actually met him up at the car wash when I first met him.
I'm not sure why this hadn't occurred to me before, but it was hitting me now, talking to Charles. He lives right here. The shooting happened down the street from where we're sitting. The people he thinks are involved with his daughter's death, they also live right here, within blocks of each other, some of them.
Of course he knew things, had heard things. I asked Charles about Davon, Tink. When he got arrested, did you think, oh, okay, they got him? Yeah, I knew right away it was Tink. And now this is where I'm going to start beeping, because Charles doesn't think it was Tink. He tells me a story about another person whom he names. Soon as the shots was fired, my car was hit. One of the dudes come running to me. First words come out of his mouth is, **** said he gonna holler at you.
And in my head I'm thinking, like, why would he say name? He like, man, said he gonna holler at you. What did you take that to mean, says he's gonna holler at you? Like he's got to, he has to speak to you about something. Mm-hmm, like pretty much he was either gonna, I believe they didn't think my daughter was gonna die. So he was gonna, you know, try to patch up. Make amends in some way. Right, but she ended up dying, so it, he couldn't do it no more. And then it was probably a few days later,
You know, the streets started talking and all figures pointed back to shit. How many people talked to you about it? About four or five people. Them name came out of all of their mouth. And you're pretty sure it wasn't just an echo chamber where it was like they'd all heard the same single rumor? It was like different information? It was different information.
Charles knows this guy he's talking about. They weren't close friends, but they definitely knew each other and had been cool with each other. And he says ever since the shooting, this guy acts strangely when he sees him. Twitchy. Twitchy is a useful tell in the movie version of this story, but it is not evidence of anything, really. But to Charles, it feels like this guy's body language is what gives him away. And it's not even me. Like, he will see one of my buddies that I'm kind of close with, and my buddy will tell him, this is how I knew it was s***.
He said, man, I just seen **** and it was like he took off. Like he jumped in somebody's car that he wasn't even in and took off. And I'm like, bro, he did it. He like, I know, bro. Charles says he finally confronted the guy himself in the street. I'm like, bro, why you keep running from me? You know, I ain't running from you. I said, well, why I got to stand in the middle of the street to flag you down to come back right now?
Oh, is that what happened? Yeah. Where? Right here in front of his house. You saw him in a car? Yeah. And you stood out in front? I was talking to the people across the street. I was walking back from the store. He was facing this way. And when I turned the corner, he backed up in my driveway and went that way. So I'm in the middle of the street like this with my arms up, waiting for him to look through the rearview mirror. Finally, he looks through the rearview mirror. He stops the car. He comes back, but he got somebody in the car with him.
And the look on his face was like, I think he just wanted me to do something to him so he can press charges and get me locked up. And I'm looking at him like, I'm like, "Bro, just tell me what happened." I'm like, "My daughter did. I know you want to live. You tired of running from me every time you see me." You know what I'm saying? He, "Man, I don't know what to tell you. I was at the wrong place at the wrong time or something. The car, it was the wrong car or something." Whatever he told me, but I'm telling him like, "That ain't it."
And like I told him, it ain't just me that's mad at you, bro. You got a nation of people. You killed an innocent baby. I can't stop people from doing what they feel in their heart. I'm not the only person that know your face now. Was this like you're telling this to me in a very moderate tone? Was that the tone of the conversation or were you screaming in the street? Just like I'm telling you. Talking to him, yeah. Charles wasn't scared of ****.
Wasn't worried about someone coming after him for telling police what he'd heard. He's the grieving father of a dead baby daughter. The rules didn't apply to him. Or if they did, he didn't care. He thought **** should sidestep the game too and turn himself in. So if it was this other guy, I asked Charles, why did he think people started calling in anonymous tips about Davon?
One reason, he said, was because Davon changed his appearance soon after the shooting. It cut his dreads. Because he cut his dreads off claiming that he had a warrant for something he did on the west side. So it made everybody think, you know, he had something to do with it. He was there. He had a gun, but he didn't shoot. Wait, so you're saying Tink was there? Yeah, he was there. He was there and he had a gun, he just didn't shoot? Yep, he was there. Have you ever spoken to him? Mm-hmm.
You've spoken to Tank? We spoke today. Oh, you did? Oh, where did you see him? At the store. Davon had told me he didn't know the Wakefield family. And do you guys speak? What do you say? I mean, it's not a, you know, he just say, he pretty much sizing me up to see if I still think if he has something to do with it or if I'm going to, you know, do something to him or, you know, like that. But, you know, if I want to do something, I'd have been did it. Right.
I respect that man enough. He stayed in jail for about a year for something he didn't do. But you're saying he knows what happened. Yeah, he knows, but, I mean, he didn't do it. It's the difference between knowing and doing. That's two different things. Why do you think it took so long for them to let Tink out? That was to, they was trying to get him to snitch on. That was just to dry out.
Trying to dry him out. Yeah, that's all that was. They know Tink didn't do that or never let him out. Charles thinks the state indicted Davon on three different kinds of murder charges and held him in a filthy jail cell for a full year in hopes that he'd turn on s***. Davon told me he doesn't know s***. Charles feels pretty sure he does. To be clear, Charles did not know who Davon was before all this happened. But he told me several times he's got no problem with him now.
Okay. So I'd been talking to Davon for four months by this point, and he had not said any of this to me. He'd been categorical. He knew nothing about that shooting, wasn't there, didn't know any of these people. After I'd talked to Charles, I went back to Davon and ran all this by him. And he said, aside from, yes, recognizing Charles Wakefield on the street, none of it was true.
He said he'd heard all these same rumors I had, but that's what they were. Rumors. Stories. Which, by virtue of repetition, do not become true. I don't know if Davon's telling me the truth about what he knows or doesn't know. But now that I know what I know, I wouldn't be surprised if he's not. I might be the oldest, nicest, meanest lady, but at the end of the day, I'm still an outsider. And while I can understand why Charles feels that his information is solid and true, at the end of the day, it's all secondhand.
You're naming to me, like, individual people who you think were there and know the same story you're telling me. And yet not one of them, it seems like, has gone to the police or talked to the police about it. Does that surprise you? No, not really. I mean, like I said, it boils down to nobody want to be labeled a snitch. Like, everybody will tell me who did it, but, you know, because I can't go tell the officer. Well, such and such just told me. They have to tell the, you know, so...
I don't know, does that make you mad at all your neighbors? Yeah, it pisses me all the way off. Like, every time I go outside, I just look at everybody different. Like, you know what happened, but you won't say nothing, you know? So that's just how I look at everybody. Really? You know, and it's the same ones that, hey, Chuck, hey. I'm like, yeah, hey. And they're like, what? Because you know, you've been new this whole time. Charles is a big man, big and soft around the edges.
His mother told me he was always a crier, but now the tears seemed to leak from him, unbidden. His mom told me the loss of his baby was a soft hurt, which I took to mean still tender. I didn't know him before Aviel died, but my sense now is that he is ravaged by the loss of her. Halfway through our conversation, I realized I was talking to him from the same place he sleeps, an oversized armchair and matching ottoman in the living room. At the foot of the makeshift bed was a coffee table, covered with photographs and mementos of Aviel.
Charles had been a stay-at-home father. Aisha worked, and so he took care of Abiel all day. He felt very close to her. Since the shooting, he's had a hard time not thinking about her and her death and the unsolved case every minute. It just kind of makes you want to take matters to your own hands. Really? Yep.
Is that a possibility that you would do something about it yourself? No, I'm not, no. I can't put nobody in this pain that I feel. Can't nobody else deal with it. Just me knowing that somebody's going to be sitting, feeling like this. I can't. I don't care if it's a grown man. This ain't the pain you want. I got a conscience. Like, I can't live like that. It ain't worth it.
I done had the opportunity plenty of times. I know where he at, know where he stay, know where he be. I know everything I need. Like, that's what hurt me. Like, maybe I should go get him. Like, but then what? I'm going to be on the run. That's where I get my satisfaction from knowing that his life will never be the same. Like, ongoing right now as we speak, he probably laughing, but in his mind, it's not right.
Charles feels as though he can't directly ask anyone to come forward and speak to the police. He understands. Snitches get killed. He wants to live in a world where snitching is unnecessary. I heard this from several people I interviewed in Cleveland. If the cops just did their jobs better, civilians wouldn't be put in this impossible position. The system shouldn't...
need the public to do its job. That's the sad part. All they do is get out here and ask somebody else to do their job. No, you get out here and look for the person you think did it instead of wanting somebody else to tell on somebody. But I mean, isn't that them doing their jobs, though, is try to get help? I mean, they're not magic. They weren't here. The only way they get information is people telling them information. No, they get information by getting out here in these streets and finding the information themselves, just like I did.
Right, but that still would require someone to tell. You know what I mean? Like if they go to the same people who talk to you, they're asking them to tell. Right, but no, I'm saying that person would be telling them instead of telling me. Right. You see what I'm saying? Like it's easy. Like I said, the whole neighborhood didn't tell me what happened. Exactly, because he's not a cop.
I gotta say, most of the detectives I talked to told me that back in the day, 20 years ago, even 10 years ago, they did have better relationships with the people they policed. There wasn't as much animosity toward them, for one thing.
They used to have a substantial community policing unit. The former commander of it told me, 22 police mini-stations, staffed with two officers each, plus DARE officers at schools, officers at public pools. Police didn't materialize only in the aftermath of disaster. They were visibly around. They could develop relationships, which in turn could lead to information. You make a quiet phone call, and people on the other end of the line would trust you to keep their names out of it.
I don't know whether these guys were waxing nostalgic, but everyone I talked to agreed that it has been degrading in recent years, this relationship with the public. The team in charge of police reform in Cleveland recently surveyed officers. They issued a report a few months ago that included officers estimating that 60% of people they come into contact with want nothing to do with them. The police mini-stations were axed more than a decade ago. Budget cuts led to the department losing hundreds of officers.
Charles said he did relay everything he'd been hearing to the cops, specifically to Detective Art Echols. He and Detective Rhonda Gray were running the investigation. Charles says he was calling and calling, leaving messages. "I got information. I got another person." He says he never got a call back. "You just went cold." The guy Charles believes shot Avielle. The police are aware of him. Charles didn't tell me anything he hadn't already told police.
And anyway, he said Detective Echols already had heard that same guy's name almost as soon as Charles did. This man himself knows the police are aware of him. I met him. That is, I recognized him one day at the Justice Center while he was sitting on a bench waiting to make a 10 a.m. jail visit. And I asked if I could talk to him about the Wakefield case. I gave him my card. He was unequivocal. No. I got nothing to say. I just want to leave all that in the past. It's over. ♪
The last time Charles met with the detectives was late November of 2016. They'd called him and Aisha to tell them they had important news. They all gathered in the prosecutor's office, where the detectives and prosecutors explained they'd be letting Davon Holmes out of jail. Charles said he told them, well, yeah, because Tink didn't do it. They said they'd still be pursuing the case, still looking at other suspects.
including the guy Charles believes did it. They discussed that guy. They discussed Davon. And when the detective told me, he like, well, you know, I believe they're going to be at each other and, you know, this and that. Like, you don't even... Basically saying they're going to kill each other. That's what he said to you? Basically, yeah. This is Echols. Yes. Yes. Yes, he meant it. That was the day they let Tink out. He like, well, you know, we...
Sort of like, "Don't worry about it, Mr. Wakefield. They'll deal with each other." Don't you worry about it. After a while, they're going to cross paths and it's going to be between them two now. That's what it was. Pretty much shocked that me and the guys I be with haven't did nothing yet. Kind of proud of you. I'm glad you ain't did nothing yet, but don't worry, it's going to happen. You know what I mean? That's kind of how it was.
I wasn't able to run this by Detective Echols. Again, the Cleveland Police Department didn't want to comment on it. A prosecutor at the meeting said he didn't remember Detective Echols saying that. But I can kind of imagine it. When they had this meeting, the Cleveland Police Department had only 12 homicide detectives. Murders in Cleveland were reaching their highest numbers in a decade. So yeah, I can see a cop saying to Charles, between us, I think your best bet is to let them kill each other.
A quiet, bitter nod to the supremacy of street justice. So, what did get Davon out of jail? Well, it was detective work. But not by detectives. That's next time on Serial.
Thank you.
Music clearance by Anthony Roman. Seth Lind is our director of operations. The serial staff includes Emily Condon, Julie Whitaker, Cassie Howley, Frances Swanson, and Matt Tierney. Our music is by Adam Dorn and Hal Wilner, with additional music from Matt McGinley, Nick Thorburn, Fritz Meyers, and Wes Schwartz. Our theme song is by Nick Thorburn and remixed by Adam Dorn.
Special thanks to Ronnie Dunn, Dan Flannery, Jeff Helgeson, Jeff Cardenas, Obid Shelton, Michelle Harris, Marvin Cross, Detective Philip Shetter at the Euclid Police Department, Judge Ronald Adrian, Judge Cassandra Collier-Williams, Judge Emanuela Groves, Gary Wells, and Sergeant Jennifer Chach at the Cleveland Police Department.
The art on our website was made by Jess X. Snow. She created the mural for this episode, and Moth Studio did the animation. Please check it out on our website, SerialPodcast.org. That's SerialPodcast.org, where you can also sign up for our email newsletter and be notified when new episodes are released. We're also, of course, on Facebook and Twitter. Serial is a production of This American Life and WBEZ Chicago.