I was scared I was going to go to jail.. At first, Willie James Hemphill was calm. Not the right Willie? Episode 10 of the In the Dark Podcast was largely dedicated to the strange case of Willie James Hemphill, a local bad boy with a violent streak who was continually getting cross-ways with the law. . Three of the four were each killed with a single head shot. Obituaries Section. Belfast (2021; co-nominated with Denise Yarde, Simon Chase and Niv Adiri) References External links. Marcus Presley, then 16, points a gun at pawn shop owner John Burleson shortly before killing him on July 25, 1996, in a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. View More. We have lots of information about Willie: religious views are listed as Christian . He lived near Tardy Furniture at the time of the murders, and near where a gun that might have been the murder weapon was found. The district attorneys office isnt commenting. Share to Pinterest. Contact Jerry Mitchell at 601-961-7064 or jmitchell@gannett.com. 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 And then Hemphill stormed off, ending the interview. Search for Roberto Thorpe Living on Prison Blvd in Sparta, GA. Get started for free to find contact info for nearly any adult in the U.S. One of them, LaSamuel Gamble, had more money in his possession when he returned to Alabama, Presley said. Following that arrest, Hemphill committed crimes nearly continuously for the next three decades. And Hemphill had actually lived for a time in Winona. It wasn't that day." Submit an Obituary. His website is. The first of these events took place last month when the US Supreme Court tossed out Flowers conviction. In loving memory of Willie Mae Hemphill who passed away February 25, 2012. When we finally found Hemphill, living in Indianapolis, he had some very surprising things to say about the case . APM Reports recently interviewed a man named Willie James Hemphill, who said he was a suspect early in the investigation. We encourage you to research and . They didnt question him about other suspects or bring up Flowers name. Hemphill also wasnt held briefly. The ugly facts of Hemphills past werent ugly enough for the podcast In The Dark emphasized its clear disdain of him. 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. Visitation: 6-8 pm Friday, March 2, 2012 at Laurel Land Funeral Home. According to testimony in Flowers' first trial, authorities found $255 hidden in the headboard of Flowers' girlfriend. Judge Joseph Loper asked Evans if the state had any exculpatory evidence.. Due to a planned power outage on Friday, 1/14, between 8am-1pm PST, some services may be impacted. "If he's guilty, he's guilty.". Information APM Reports obtained from the Montgomery County Sheriffs Department through a public records request shows Hemphill was held for 11 days in jail. She said the shoes had belonged to her son, who no longer lived there. The best result we found for your search is William Thomas Hemphill age 80+ in Highlands, NC. 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. How do we create a person's profile? Suppressing the evidence theyve already gathered might mean denying justice to the victims. 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. 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. As far as him telling me he killed some people, hell, naw, he aint ever told me that. Share to Facebook. The FBI checked it out. "Yeah we was leaving. And so, in the corridors of the courthouse last week, a female journalist with In The Dark confronted Hemphill about his airtight alibi. (Page 3) … Ive had many trials where no black jurors were struck., But the Mississippi Supreme Court overturned Flowers conviction in his third trial, ruling Evans had intentionally struck African Americans from the jury. His mothers mutt, Patches, was barking in the crawl space, causing him to find a gunbeneath the house she was renting. Following a masterful turn as Flowers defense lawyer, the podcast also wanted to play the part of the prosecution. Hemphill, now almost 50, hasnt been arrested for violence in more than a decade, according to the rap sheet assembled on In The Darks website. When we finally found Hemphill, living in Indianapolis, he had some very surprising things to say about the case. In the 1980s and '90s, Hemphill spent time in Memphis. In The Dark also found out that prosecutions star witness, Odell Hallmon, secretly received special treatment prosecutors dropped charges in seven felony cases against him in exchange for his false testimony that Flowers made a jailhouse confession. Check resumes and CV, arrest records, places of employment, social media profiles, photos and videos, public records, skilled experts, publications and memorials . Burial will be at Barber Memorial Cemetery Eight persons linked to this address. The judge denied Flowers' request to attend his mother funeral here on July 21. The presence of Presley in the lineup raised some questions about the testimony of law enforcement witnesses who'd said under oath that Presley was never a suspect in the Tardy case. Hemphill said investigators tape recorded the interrogation and took notes, none of which was in the file given to Flowers defense attorneys. The Dallas Morning News Homepage. Despite raising earthshaking doubts about the justice system, the show ultimately conforms to the systems logic that crime, denuded of context, must be solved and punished. "We did go to the mall, but it wasn't the day of the killing. The Dallas Morning News Homepage. 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. Yet theyre willing to hand him over to the prosecution, to possibly watch him die. Hemphill said investigator took his shoes for a few minutes as well as his fingerprints. The Tardy murders took place during a 24-day gap when the group carried out no robberies in Alabama. He was born on December 6, 1948 in Weir, Mississippi the son of Eddie Allen and Garner Lee Edwards Hemphill. But Curtis Flowers is somehow still not cleared of the gruesome quadruple murder on July 16, 1996. Willie James Hemphill in Georgia Fulton County arrested for U/S VGCSA POSS* BLOG; CATEGORIES. Add a Memory. Statistics for all 30 William Hemphill results: 68 yrs. (1909). Armstrong said a law enforcement officer told him the gun had been sent to the state Crime Lab, determining this .380 handgun wasnt the murder weapon. 0 Reputation Score Range. Prosecutors said repeatedly at trial that the only suspect seriously investigated was Flowers. It was still in the morning time.". Username. Although authorities quicklysettled on Flowers as their main suspect, he wasnt arrested until seven months later. Reporters from In the Dark tried to contact Hemphill online to present him with these findings. His misdeeds, while abhorrent, are also likely inseparable from his decades-long history of poverty and addiction. Flowers was convicted and sentenced to death in the first three trials, but each time, the verdict was overturned on appeal for prosecutorial misconduct in the first and second trials, and for racially discriminatory jury selection in the third. For Flowers, the new information including Flemings changed story adds weight to his case for a full acquittal. He thought back to when Small took the gun. Hemphill was held in jail for 11 days, according to county records, though it's not clear why he was held. That discovery will very likely win Curtis a new trial, but it doesnt necessarily finger the new guy as the killer. According to Yesko and Mann (2019), Hemphill dropped out of high school and was living back and forth from his mother's house to his grandmother's. And Hemphill had actually lived for a time in Winona. The day in photos. For Ali and the other lawyers working on Flowers' appeal at the time, this was a significant revelation. 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. ", If Evans and his prosecution witnesses knowingly or unknowingly withheld evidence from the defense of other suspects in the Winona killings, they could be in violation of the Brady rule, named after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that says a criminal defendant must be given evidence that could point toward his innocence. January 5, 1960 - August 13, 2009. In the Dark has previously reported that Hemphill was an initial suspect in the days after the July 1996 murders in Winona, Mississippi. In Flowers' third trial, Snow testified that the height of the man she saw was between 5-foot-3 and 5-foot-5. Find Willie Hemphill's phone number, address, and email on Spokeo, the leading people search directory for contact information and public records. It might mean letting someone get away with an abominable crime. We developed information that Doyle was missing from work that morning for about 30 or 40 minutes, which was about the time of the murders, he said. I knew his sisters, I knew his brother, he said. Memphis is two hours north of Winona, just across the border with Tennessee. Why was he questioned? By his own account, someone told investigators that they'd seen him on Front Street that morning, though Hemphill has said repeatedly that he wasn't there. But how could a single person (especially a man like Curtis Flowers) dispatch four victims with a bullet to the back of the head? The obituary was featured in The Bryan-College Station Eagle on August 16, 2009. Green is a reporter in Toronto. Twenty-two years on death row. And he's shown a quick and violent temper, particularly with women who don't comply with his demands. Willie James Hemphill was born on May 27, 1919. 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.. By licks he meant places to rob.. How did your name get involved in this?, Hemphill: I wasnt in the city. On April 30, 2018, American Public Medias true crime podcast In The Dark began airing its second season, an investigation of the case of Curtis Flowers, a black man in Mississippi accused of a quadruple homicide at a furniture store in 1996. Case Number : 20-11001. Marcus Presley sometimes accompanied by LaSamuel Gamble had committed a string of robberies in 1996 in and around Birmingham, with the same modus operandi. It wasn't until Flowers' sixth trial that jurors heard anything about the Alabama suspects. The two men had family in both Boston and Norfolk. It hurts my feelings.. An early suspect in the murders, Willie James Hemphill, who has a long criminal history, lived less than a mile from where Armstrong found this gun in 2011. Her sister says she was in the house with her and not where she said she was.. The suspicion that the crimes could be connected was a matter of public record at the time. It was June 21 just an hour before the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn Curtis Flowers' conviction and reporters for In the Dark had intercepted Hemphill at a courthouse in Indianapolis. I know he didnt do it, Archie Flowers said. Her rough exterior portrayed a tough, independent woman. District Attorney Doug Evans insisted he'd given the defense access to all records of the investigation. Before he left on July 3, he said she gave him $30. In fact, he said, police never searched the crawl space beneath the house. A wealthy lawyer who killed his wife and son at close range has been sentenced in one of the most troubling cases the judge said he had seen. "The best of my recollection, Mississippi was able to determine that our guys weren't the ones, or there was something that didn't make them right for the Mississippi case," said Mike DeHart, the Alabama sheriff's deputy who questioned Gamble. Lived In Sidon MS, Indianapolis IN, Prince George VA, Clarksville TN. Hemphill: A lot of people dont like to talk to the press and the police., Reporter: She was actually pretty talkative., Hemphill: Maybe she dont recall the day in question., Reporter: She actually has a really clear memory of that day., Hemphill: I dont know what she told you. Thats just standard procedure. (1870), A.M. (1872), and LL.D. 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. FUNERAL HOMES. Matthews never responded. He allegedly stabbed a woman with a screwdriver, among other violent crimes. Investigators John Johnson and Jack Matthews denied on the stand knowing anything about them. It's not like you're going to say, 'Yeah I robbed this 7-11, but I didn't rob that 7-11.'". Select this result to view William Thomas Hemphill's phone number, address, and more. 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. Email Address: w XMLS @yahoo.com +1 email. That day in October 2015, Ali was looking at a photo lineup that law enforcement had used to implicate Flowers in the Tardy case. Search by Name. INDIANAPOLIS At first, Willie James Hemphill was calm. He also tried to shoot his own 12-year-old son who was hiding in a closet, though the boy survived.