Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
Dark Down East is proudly sponsored by Amica Insurance. The unexpected can happen at any moment, and Amica knows how important it is to be prepared. Whether it's auto, home, or life insurance, Amica has you covered. Their dedicated and knowledgeable representatives will work with you to make sure you have the right coverage in place to protect what matters most. You can feel confident that Amica is there for you. Visit amica.com to get started.
Want the same expert advice you get from the pros in the store while shopping online at DiscountTire.com? Meet Treadwell, your personal online tire guide that matches you with the perfect tire for your vehicle. Get your best match in one minute or less with Treadwell by Discount Tire. Let's get you taken care of.
You heard that right. Days.
That's modern made simple. Shop up to 40% off during All Modern's Modern Design event, August 9th through 13th at allmodern.com. During the late 80s and early 90s, multiple women from Hartford, Connecticut were found dead in remote areas of the city and surrounding towns.
After identifying a suspect in one of the cases and bringing it all the way to trial, police thought they might have a serial killer on their hands. But all the suspicion in the world was proven false when years later, advanced DNA analysis challenged what investigators thought they knew. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Carla Terry on Dark Down East.
It was January 12th, 1991, and 28-year-old Carla Terry was getting ready for a night out on the town. She was the mother of two children and often helped out with other kids in the neighborhood, so Carla was ready to blow off some steam and take a night for herself.
As she got dressed, Carla asked her sister Laverne for help adjusting her bra. Carla was borrowing it from a family member and it was a bit too loose, so Laverne found two safety pins and poked them through the black fabric, affixing the right side of the band to the left. Carla then put on a pair of jeans and a blue shirt, a pair of boots and a white hat. With a few layers of jackets to defend against the New England winter night, Carla was ready for the evening's festivities.
Carla typically stuck around Hartford's North End, a neighborhood that abuts Keeney Park just west of the Connecticut River. That evening was no different. Andrew Julian and Gina Burgone report for the Hartford Current that Carla first hung out at the St. Lucia American Society on Albany Avenue before heading to a bar on Barber Street. At some point during the night, Carla met up with a man and they went to the Keeney Park Cafe around 1 a.m., now January 13th.
Although they arrived together, they went their separate ways for part of the night, and Carla was seen speaking to a different man while she was there. Carla ended up leaving the cafe around 2 a.m. and getting a ride from the same man she walked in with earlier that night. Another one of Carla's sisters, Rhonda, heard a car pull up outside her apartment a little after 2 a.m., and she could see Carla getting out of the car.
Carla had been planning to stay at Rhonda's place that night, but she didn't head straight inside after she was dropped off. Instead, Carla called up to Rhonda through the window, saying she'd be right back, and then Carla walked across the street and out of sight.
Almost three hours later, around 4.45 a.m., a Hartford police officer patrolling near the University of Hartford pulled over along Mark Twain Drive Extension at the sight of something unusual in a snowbank. The heap had a vaguely human shape, but when the officer called out from his cruiser, there was no response. As he got out and stepped closer, he discovered a body covered by a brown garbage bag from the neck down.
The body was that of a woman, and she was partially dressed, but her clothing was in disarray. The officer could see that she had abrasions on her neck and bruises on her face with a swollen eye. He checked for a pulse but found none. Paramedics arrived a short time later and found that the woman was still warm to the touch. They attempted life-saving measures at the scene, but eventually transported her to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
The woman was later identified by fingerprints as Carla Terry. The deputy chief medical examiner found during the autopsy that Carla Terry died as the result of asphyxia by manual strangulation. In addition to the bruising and abrasions on her body noted by the officer who found her, Carla also had distinctive crescent-shaped bruises around her breasts that were consistent with bite marks.
A forensic odontologist, Dr. Lester Luntz, confirmed that they were indeed bite marks, possibly caused by her killer before she died. As reported by Teresa Sullivan Barger for the Hartford Current, Hartford police detectives learned from witnesses that Carla had been at Keeney Park Cafe that night, and staff there said that Carla was talking to a man while at the bar and he bought her a drink.
The guy happened to leave some business cards behind that night. He'd supposedly been handing them out to women. The cards gave investigators a name, Alfred Swinton. Two detectives from Hartford PD found 42-year-old Alfred Swinton at his home in Stafford Springs on January 19th. When Alfred greeted detectives James Rovella and Stephen Kumnick at the door, he allowed them inside and spoke without hesitation.
They informed Alfred that they were looking into the death of a woman and asked if he knew someone named Carla Terry. Alfred said he did know her, but according to interviews with detectives in an episode of A&E's Cold Case Files, Alfred told them he wasn't in town the weekend she was killed. The detectives knew that wasn't true, though. They'd already spoken to witnesses who placed him at the bar on that Saturday night and early Sunday morning.
About a month and a half later, detectives Rovella and Kumnik spoke with Alfred again, this time picking him up for a ride-along around the greater Hartford area. Josh Kovner and Dave Altamari report that the route included the spot where Carla Terry's body was discovered. Alfred said he recognized the location and referred to it as his backyard. It was about a quarter mile from his old home on Granby Street, and he knew the area well.
With suspicion building, on March 5th, 1991, police returned to Alfred's Stafford Springs apartment, this time with a search warrant. During the search, police found a black bra in the basement of the building, and they noticed it had holes in the fabric along the band that, at first glance, could have been created by safety pins.
Later, when Carla's sister Laverne saw the bra, she said it looked like the same one she helped Carla pin up before she left the house on the night she was last seen alive. In addition to the bra, court records state that investigators found brown garbage bags, the same kind of bag that was wrapped around Carla's body when she was discovered. They also located a newspaper in Alfred's apartment dated January 13th, the date Carla was murdered, but no other newspapers.
The search warrant did not stop at Alfred's residence. Given bite marks were found on Carla's body during the autopsy, investigators also requested molds of Alfred's teeth. A Hartford police lieutenant transported Alfred to have the dental molds taken, and Alfred was talkative during the drive. He went on and on about how women, quote, bore the seed of evil, end quote.
He also expressed his opinion that women had nothing to offer except sex, and they were always trying to ask for money or rides or other favors in exchange for sex. He stated that women like that get what they deserve.
At that point, the case against Alfred was still circumstantial. He was with Carla at some point on the night she was killed. He was familiar with the location where her body was dumped. The bra found in his basement was identified as the one Carla was wearing. And his statements about women gave investigators the impression he had a degree of motivation to commit a violent act against a woman. But it would be the dental molds that finally pushed the case over the edge.
A forensic odontologist found that Alfred's teeth were a visual match to the bite marks left on Carla's body. With that, a warrant was issued for his arrest, and Alfred was taken into custody on June 25, 1991, for the murder of Carla Terry. But it wasn't a done deal. A little over a month later, the state's case against him totally unraveled.
In August of 1991, the charges against Alfred Swinton were dropped for insufficient evidence. The judge said that though the bite marks and their apparent match to the suspect's dental molds was compelling evidence, the judge couldn't be sure when the bite marks were made. Further, Alfred allegedly causing those marks on her skin did not prove that he killed her.
The other evidence, the bra, the statements, didn't make up a case on which a jury could find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. And so, Alfred was released. But it didn't shut out the suspicion that surrounded him. Police planned to continue their investigation into Carla Terry's murder. The dropped charges still allowed new charges to be raised against the same suspect, should evidence support that move down the road.
For the next several years, Alfred remained a primary suspect, and he continued to make what investigators deemed incriminating statements to multiple witnesses. Court records state that not long after the charges against him were dropped, Alfred was drinking with a group of friends when someone brought up Carla Terry's name. Alfred started laughing, and a friend scolded him, saying it was cruel to laugh in the face of what happened to her, even if he was innocent.
A witness said that Alfred smirked and then made a comment that he wasn't innocent. Investigators had just fouled up the case. Then in June of 1992, when Alfred went to pick up his vehicle from Benton Auto Body, where it had been on a police hold since the search over a year prior, he told the manager of the body shop that he was accused of biting a woman on her breasts and killing her.
He went on to say he actually dated the victim, and she'd been in the vehicle he was there to pick up. Again, Alford shared that he thought the police dropped the ball on the investigation and did a bad job. So bad, Alford said, quote, they will never catch me now, end quote.
Perhaps the most pivotal of all the words Alfred spoke after the charges were dropped came in 1993, when an investigative reporter contacted Alfred in hopes of landing an interview with the man whose name came up in the discussion of not only Carla Terry's case, but several other unsolved homicides in the city, too.
Busy parents have enough on their plates without adding their children's homework to the list as well. IXL is an excellent resource for homework help, which is especially nice for parents who are rusty on school info themselves. And methods have changed over the years too.
iXL Learning is an online learning program for kids. It covers math, language arts, science, and social studies. It's designed to help them really understand and master topics in a fun way with positive feedback. And you get one site for all the kids in your home, pre-K to 12th grade. There's a reason why iXL is used in 95 of the top 100 school districts in the U.S. Backed by research, kids using iXL are scoring higher on tests.
From studies done in almost every state in the country, the kids who had IXL are consistently doing better. If your child is struggling, this is the smartest investment you can make. A month of IXL costs less than an hour of tutoring. So now you can get your child the help they need at an affordable price. I know there's going to come a day when my daughter's academics exceed my own knowledge, particularly in math.
IXL will stand in where my arithmetic fails. Make an impact on your child's learning. Get IXL now. And Dark Down East listeners can get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership when they sign up today at ixl.com slash downeast. Visit ixl.com slash downeast to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price.
Thank you.
There's Greenlight. Greenlight is a debit card and money app for families, where kids learn how to save, invest, and spend wisely, and parents can keep an eye on kids' new money habits. Then there's Greenlight's Infinity Plan, which includes the same access to financial literacy education that makes Greenlight a valuable resource for millions of parents and kids. Plus...
built-in safety to give you peace of mind. With a chores feature that lets you reward kids for honoring their responsibility around the house, you can help kids get into their fall routine more easily than ever. Someday when my daughter is a little older, Greenlight will help me introduce financial literacy education with the chores feature so she'll learn that a job well done means she can buy herself a cake pop.
We love a little treat. Sign up for Greenlight today and get your first month free when you go to greenlight.com slash down east. That's greenlight.com slash down east to try Greenlight for free. greenlight.com slash down east.
In January of 1992, police across several Connecticut cities and towns, along with state police investigators, formed a special Connecticut Homicide Task Force to examine possible connections between several unsolved homicide cases with similar circumstances and determine whether there was a possible serial killer operating in the state.
Five of the cases under review by the task force included Carla Terry's homicide, as well as the deaths of Patricia Ann Thompson, Tamika Mayo, Deidre Dancy, and Sandra Rivera. According to a piece by Gina Bregone, Andrew Julian, and Brant Houston for the Hartford Courant, the body of 22-year-old Patricia Ann Thompson was found near the woods of Keeney Park on November 28, 1988. She died by strangulation.
Fifteen-year-old Tamika Mayo's body was recovered at the bottom of an embankment in Rocky Hill, about 10 miles away from Hartford, on March 11, 1990. She'd been strangled with a necktie. Nineteen-year-old Deidre Dancy had also been strangled to death and her body found in a South Windsor marsh on June 10, 1990.
19-year-old Sandra Rivera's body was found in the Zion Hill Cemetery in Hartford on March 3, 1991, less than two months after Carla Terry was strangled to death in January of 1991. Sandra also died by strangulation. All the victims were Black or Hispanic. They hung out in Hartford's North End, and some may have been involved with sex work.
One other similarity between the five cases, Alfred Swinton had connected himself to all of the victims. That day in March 1991, when two detectives drove Alfred past the spot where Carla's body was discovered, they also took him to the areas where Patricia, Tamika, Deidre, and Sandra's bodies were found. Alfred had something to say about each location and admitted to knowing all four women.
He said he'd bought them drinks and even went so far as to admitting to sexual relationships with several of them. Now, investigators on the task force did not specifically say if they were considering Alfred Swinton as a suspect in any of the cases, but it seemed to be an assumption at the time.
Sergeant Jose Lopez of Hartford Police did say, though, that the task force had one suspect in at least three of the cases, but were following other leads that may arise. The task force eventually expanded their list of cases to review at least 18 homicides for possible connections.
In 1993, investigative journalist Karen Haller was working on a story about 10 of the unsolved homicide cases under review by the task force for Connecticut Magazine. Karen said in later court testimony that she felt Alfred Swinton was key to her story, given he'd been a suspect in Carla Terry's case at one point.
When Karen first reached out to Alfred, he was reluctant. But Karen, who is remembered by her former colleagues as a marvelous reporter and one of the best investigative reporters doing magazine work in the country at the time, kept at it, eventually sending him a letter to get him on board. Alfred finally agreed to sit down with her on May 15th, 1993. They spoke over dinner and drinks at the No Fish Today restaurant in Hartford, California.
Alfred seemed to come around to the idea of Karen doing a story by then, and he wanted her help to prove his innocence. Thomas D. Williams reports for the Hartford Courant that during the several hours-long meeting, Alfred made vague statements about knowing who was actually responsible for the women's deaths, and he reportedly rambled, at times incoherently, about sex work and drug use.
He suggested the true killer was probably under the influence of drugs and had something bad happen in their life that caused them to kill. He also theorized that Carla may have agreed to exchange sex for money but then failed to do so after receiving payment. Just a side note to clear things up here, Carla's family has always said that she was never involved with sex work and she didn't have any related criminal charges.
Alfred said to Karen at one point, quote, End quote.
Karen asked if Alfred thought the killer would strike again, to which Alfred responded, quote, summer's long and summer's hot. Karen asked why the killer doesn't just stop. Alfred responded, if I knew that, I would stop tomorrow so somebody could live, end quote. The interview with Alfred was published in the September 1993 edition of Connecticut Magazine with the title, Killer at Large.
Alfred Swinton was not arrested or charged in any of the other cases Karen discussed in her article. The Connecticut Homicide Task Force continued to investigate the multiple deaths for a common denominator, with even more cases being added to the list over the next several years, including the case of Miriam Tyson, who was killed in the attack.
According to Christine L. Cordoba's reporting for the day, in 1994, police arrested a mystic Connecticut man named Louis W. Strunk after he confessed to killing 32-year-old Miriam Tyson. She was found in a snowbank in Springfield, Massachusetts, her body wrapped in two blankets. She'd been strangled and stabbed. Louis claimed that she was a sex worker and they got into an argument over payment.
He pleaded guilty and received a life sentence in Massachusetts without possibility of parole. Given Strunk's connection to Connecticut and the circumstances of Miriam's case, police were looking into Strunk for the Hartford area unsolved cases. However, it doesn't appear he was charged with any other crimes, and the task force moved on.
Carla Terry's murder remained unsolved, and Alfred Swinton was still the primary suspect for her death for years. The Chief State's Attorney's Office reopened Carla Terry's case with a second, smaller task force in 1998.
The physical evidence they had in the case was largely the same as when it was first investigated back in 1991, but the difference this time were the advancements in forensic science and the field of forensic odontology. The hang-up for the judge when Alfred Swinton was charged the first time around lay in the fact that it was difficult to determine when the bite marks were left on Carla's breasts.
Although the forensic odontologist at the time said the teeth marks were a match to molds taken of Alfred's teeth, it was impossible to make any conclusions about when or why they were there. But that all changed with a second review years later.
Thomas D. Williams reports for the Hartford Courant that a new examination of Alfred's dental molds by Konstantin Gus Karazules determined that the bite marks were, in fact, made at the time of Carla's death, between 8 and 10 minutes before she died. How did they know? Well, Gus Karazules bit himself.
His process went like this. First, the photographs of the bite marks on Carla's body were enhanced with a program called LUCIS, which turned them from linear images into digital renderings. Then images of Alfred's teeth were superimposed on top of those bite marks using Adobe Photoshop.
The two apparently matched, confirming for investigators at the time that Alfred Swinton indeed left the bite marks on Carla's body, just as the original investigation had determined. From there, in order to determine when Alfred left those bite marks, the forensic odontologist bit himself several times and observed how those bite marks changed and developed over a 90-minute period.
The color and other characteristics of the bite marks on Carla apparently matched the self-inflicted bite marks on the forensic odontologist after 8-10 minutes. With that, investigators concluded that if Alfred left the bite marks within 8-10 minutes before she was killed, then Alfred must also be responsible for her death.
With the new bite mark analysis as updated physical evidence, and the numerous statements Alfred made in the years since the first charges were dropped, including that interview with Karen Haller for Connecticut Magazine, Alfred Swinton was arrested and charged with the murder of Carla Terry for the second time in November of 1998.
Alfred Swinton finally went to trial in 2001. The state's case centered heavily on the bite mark evidence and analysis, as well as witness testimony regarding Alfred's comments about the case, women, and Carla Terry in particular. The Connecticut Magazine writer Karen Holler even testified for the prosecution and shared her transcript of the unedited conversation, parts of which were played for the jury.
Several weeks into the trial in early March of 2001, the prosecution also introduced a brand new witness, a jailhouse informant.
According to court documents summarizing testimony by the informant, Michael Scalise, he told a corrections officer, Hartford and state police on January 31st, 2001, when the trial was already in progress, that Alfred told him he was going to have two witnesses killed for testifying against him, one of those witnesses being Carla's sister.
Michael reported the incident about a week after it happened, and then made a second report a few days later, saying he had even more details about Alfred to share. Detective Rovella and a state police trooper met with Michael on February 16th and listened as he walked them through all the incriminating statements Alfred allegedly made.
Michael said Alfred told him he killed Carla and wrapped her body in a plastic bag and then left her in a snowbank near a college. He also said Alfred admitted to biting Carla during sexual intercourse before strangling her, but that he redressed her to keep her warm. Michael said Alfred also stated he kept her underwear and bra as quote-unquote mementos.
Michael testified that Alfred seemed confident that the state wouldn't get a conviction because it had been 10 years and he planned to have some teeth pulled so any new molds they took of his teeth wouldn't match the wounds on Carla. Alfred also allegedly told him he thought he had a solid defense because the plastic bag she was found in was a common household item and just because he had the same ones didn't mean he was a killer.
The informant met with detectives again on February 22nd to provide a written statement covering everything he'd heard from Alfred while they were in prison together. Michael added that Alfred told him he had sexual intercourse with Carla in the past, and he was jealous that she was talking to another man that night at the cafe. Police asked Michael Scalise to wear a wire in an attempt to get Alfred on tape making the same confessions.
However, after two days of surreptitiously recording their conversations, Michael didn't capture anything resembling a clear-cut confession from Alfred. When the informant took the stand, the defense attorney made sure the jury was aware that Michael hoped to exchange his cooperation for leniency for his own sentence in an unrelated case in an attempt to discredit his testimony.
The defense picked apart other elements of the state's case, too. They also called their own forensic dentistry expert to challenge what the prosecution had presented as cutting-edge methods for determining who left the bite marks on Carla's body and when.
According to Tina A. Brown's reporting for the Hartford Courant, Chief of Forensic Dentistry for the Medical Examiner of Westchester County, New York, Neil R. Reisner, told the jury that he'd never heard of such a practice described by the prosecution's witness. He stated that Karazoulis biting himself wasn't a scientific method, and the photographs and enhanced digital models of the bite marks didn't show enough to confidently and conclusively identify Karazoulis
whose teeth made those marks. As for the interview Alfred gave for Connecticut magazine writer Karen Haller, the defense argued that she plied him with alcohol. The recordings of that interview indicated Alfred consumed at least four pours of scotch over the course of their conversation, which may have caused him to ramble.
With or without alcohol, though, his attorney argued that Al was a talker, and he often made up stories. Quote, That's Al. He talks and talks. Just put a quarter in the meter and he keeps going. There's a killer at large, but it's not Alfred Swinton. End quote. When the case was finally in the jury's hands for deliberation, it had been a nearly two-month-long trial.
When they returned with a verdict two days later, Alfred Swinton was found guilty of murder. He was later sentenced to 60 years in prison. Alfred was given the opportunity to address the court at his sentencing.
He defended his innocence, saying that the state got it all wrong and the case was built on falsehoods. Quote, I'm not guilty of killing anybody in this world and that is the truth and I'm tired of being stereotyped by you people. I have never killed anybody. I love everybody. The evidence the state presented was false, okay, alright,
You may think you have gotten justice here, but the state came up with all these stories, these lies, these untruths, end quote. Alfred Swinton filed an appeal about two years later, challenging the technology and methods used to compare the bite marks and dental molds.
According to reporting by Lynn Tuohy for the Hartford Courant, Alfred's attorney argued that the process of enhancing and comparing the bite marks to Alfred's dental molds was introduced as evidence without first having an expert witness specifically explain the techniques that produced the enhanced photographs. Without an expert explaining how it all worked and the scientific foundation of the method,
Alfred's defense team said they couldn't properly challenge the computer-generated images. The state Supreme Court ruled on Alfred's appeal in 2004 and upheld the use of computer-enhanced photos of the bite marks and dental molds, but found that the use of Adobe Photoshop to create an overlay of the two images was not acceptable.
Regardless, the court found that the forensic odontologist based his findings on more than just the digitally enhanced photos, and the prosecution had presented plenty of other evidence against Alfred for a jury to determine guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. So, the appeal failed, and Alfred remained in prison and continued to proclaim his innocence.
About a decade later, though, others joined in on those proclamations when new advancements in forensic DNA testing brought a stunning revelation to light.
The National Sales Event is on at your Toyota dealer, making now the perfect time to get a great deal on a dependable new car like a legendary Camry. Built for performance and available with all-wheel drive, you can count on your new Camry to get anywhere you need to go. Or check out an affordable and reliable Corolla with a trim for every lifestyle. From the hip sedan to the sporty hatchback, there's a Corolla built just for you. Check out more National Sales Event deals when you visit buyatoyota.com.
Toyota, let's go places. It's almost time for the closet changeover here in New England. Sundress is away, sweaters out on the shelves, but last year's wardrobe is lacking in some places for sure. Good thing Quince offers timeless and high-quality items you'll adore to ensure your wardrobe stays fresh without blowing your budget. Quince has cashmere sweaters from $50, $50, and $50.
pants for every occasion, washable silk tops, and so much more. The best part? All Quince items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. By partnering directly with Top Factories, Quince cuts out the cost of the middleman and passes the savings on to you. I got this classic fit and flare mini dress from Quince a few weeks ago, and it's so easy to throw on and dress up or down. When the air gets a
I'll throw on a cotton linen cardigan, also from Quince, and it's the perfect transitional outfit for a Maine late summer evening. Make switching seasons a breeze with Quince's high-quality closet essentials. Go to quince.com slash downeast for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash downeast to get free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com slash downeast
A decade after Alfred's conviction was upheld, the Connecticut Innocence Project took up Alfred Swinton's case and began analyzing the evidence against him. It had been over 20 years since the initial investigation, and forensic DNA testing had made some massive leaps forward in that span.
Now, there were swabs taken during the initial autopsy, including swabs of saliva from the bite marks and vaginal swabs, but they didn't give any helpful information to the case at the time. The saliva swabs in particular contained too little DNA for a conclusive identification, but decades later, advanced testing could do way more with less.
In 2015, the Connecticut Forensic Science Laboratory conducted new DNA testing on the bite mark's saliva, and the updated testing showed that the saliva sample did not contain Alfred Swinton's DNA. The state's argument had been that whoever bit Carla must have also killed her, and if the teeth marks matched molds of Alfred's teeth, well then, he must be the killer.
But by the same logic, excluding Alfred's DNA from the bite marks could also exclude him as the person who ended her life. The vaginal swabs also indicated that Alfred could not have been the contributor of that DNA. The case was eventually handed over to the Innocence Project, a separate entity from the Connecticut Innocence Project due to a reported conflict, but the analysis of the evidence and case continued.
A new type of DNA testing, touch DNA, was conducted on the bra found in Alfred's apartment building basement, the one Carla was believed to be wearing on the night she was killed. That touch DNA testing determined that Alfred's DNA was not on the bra, and neither was Carla's. It likely wasn't even hers.
So DNA didn't link Alfred to bite marks on Carla's body or the bra that the state prosecutor suggested Alfred kept as a trophy of her killing. But what about the forensic odontologist and all that groundbreaking, cutting-edge science that matched Alfred's teeth to wounds on Carla's body?
All those years later, Gus Karzulis ended up recanting his testimony in a signed affidavit saying that he no longer believed with reasonable medical certainty that the bite marks belonged to Alfred. Karzulis said that thousands of people could have left the marks on Carla.
A 2009 study by the National Academy of Sciences stated that there was no scientific basis for bite mark analysts to give testimony suggesting that bite marks are unique to individuals. In his own words, Gus Karzulis said, quote, my science is junk science today, end quote. There was no forensic evidence that connected Alfred to the crime, no confession, and no eyewitnesses.
All the major evidence that was left included alleged incriminating statements to a jailhouse informant and the rambling interview with the magazine writer. With that, Alfred's Innocence Project team filed a motion for a new trial in January of 2017.
About six months later, after reviewing the evidence and arguments detailed in the Innocence Project's motion, the Connecticut state prosecutor agreed that these new findings undermined the state's original case against Alfred Swinton. The state asked the judge to vacate Alfred's conviction and put the case back on the Superior Court docket.
On June 8th, 2017, a Hartford Superior Court judge ruled to vacate Alfred Swinton's conviction. Dave Altomare and David Owens report for the Hartford Courant that Alfred was released on a promise to appear in court and would remain under house arrest, only permitted to leave his sister's house where he'd be living for doctor's appointments, religious services, and meetings with his legal team.
Alfred walked out of that courtroom with his arms held up above his head, a cane in one hand. He was finally free from prison after 18 years. He celebrated with his family and lawyers as he exited, despite knowing that he could still face a new trial for Carla's murder, and that police were still eyeing him as a suspect in other unsolved homicides too.
Carla's family, including her sister Laverne, were in the courtroom as the judge announced Alfred would be released. They were devastated and frightened. Laverne still believed Alfred killed her sister, and now with him out of prison pending a new trial, she felt like she was at risk. For several months, Carla's family and Alfred Swinton waited to hear what would happen next.
Finally, in March of 2018, they had their answer. The state had pored over the original trial testimony, reviewed existing evidence, and the new results from updated DNA testing, and it was clear that a jury was unlikely to find Alfred guilty beyond a reasonable doubt now. A judge ultimately dismissed all charges against Alfred Swinton.
He was free, truly free, after serving nearly two decades in prison for a crime he did not commit. After his release, Alfred Swinton began rebuilding his life with family and friends and tending to his deteriorating health. Although his name was at one point tossed around in multiple homicide cases in the greater Hartford area, Alfred had never been charged in any case other than Carla Terry's murder, and he never would be.
During the review of evidence in Carla's case after Alfred's conviction was first set aside, the state also reviewed the evidence in the other cases once the focus of two homicide task forces. There was nothing new that conclusively linked Alfred to those murders either. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, Alfred filed a claim for compensation from the state of Connecticut. He received $3.6 million in 2020.
He passed away a few months later, in May of 2021. The exoneration of Alfred Swinton righted a wrong that put a man in prison for a crime he didn't commit, but it revealed a chilling reality that the true killer never faced any consequences.
The sense of justice Carla's family thought they had was shattered, unlikely to be repaired, because the individual responsible for their daughter, sister, and mother's murder could still be out there. Perhaps the real killer watched as Alfred took the fall for the crime.
Maybe they might be responsible for the other cases of women found strangled or stabbed and dumped around Hartford in the late 80s and early 90s, once thought to all be victims of a serial killer. As far as I can tell, at least four of the cases, Sandra Rivera, Patricia Thompson, Tamika Mayo, and Deidre Dancy, are still unsolved today.
In recognizing the miscarriage of justice that occurs with a wrongful conviction, we risk overshadowing the person whose life was taken far too soon. It's crucial to remember that behind every wrongful conviction is the victim whose potential was never fully realized and whose loved ones continued to grapple with the profound and lasting consequences of their loss.
Their stories, their aspirations, and the injustice of their deaths deserve to be honored and remembered, all while holding the important discussions of the junk science and other legal injustices at play when a person is wrongfully convicted. I don't want Carla to be lost in all of this. Carla, the jokester who could always make her siblings laugh.
She was outgoing and fun. She liked to crank up some music on her record player so she could sing along at the top of her lungs. She and her sister Shirley loved Melba more. She was a mother, a sister, and a daughter, and her loss left a glaring hole in the fabric of her family forever.
Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at darkdowneast. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East.
Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and Audiocheck. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? Want the same expert advice you get from the pros in the store while shopping online at DiscountTire.com? Meet Treadwell, your personal online tire guide that matches you with the perfect tire for your vehicle. Get your best match in one minute or less with Treadwell by Discount Tire. Let's get you taken care of.
Was it easy leaving the group chat when the bubbles turned green and every message was Cam likes this and Claire dislikes that? Oh yes, yes it was because I get enough overreacting at home. Like liking messaging again with WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone.