willie james hemphill willie james hemphill

Hemphill was held in jail for 11 days, according to county records, though it's not clear why he was held. Asked if he'd committed the murders at Tardy Furniture, he simply said, "Hell, no.". Includes Address(1) Phone(2) Email(1) See Results. Saums believes whoever carried out the crime had inside information. Nine days later, on July 25, 1996, the bodies of two innocent people were discovered in a pawn shop in Birmingham, Alabama. And that omission, a law professor and former prosecutor told the team, could mean a seventh new trial for Flowers, condemined to death for the murders of four people at Tardy Furniture Store. Shooting a handgun with accuracy is more difficult than people think, said private investigator Charlie Saums of Ridgeland. In the midst of the probe, the Mississippi Crime Lab sent a copy of the bloody shoeprint found at Tardy to the lead Boston investigator. It would indeed have been a solid alibi except it didn't check out. For Flowers, the new information including Flemings changed story adds weight to his case for a full acquittal. The day in photos. "If he's guilty, he's guilty.". They also discovered an unfired .380 bullet, which might suggest the gun jammed. Presley was the tougher of the two, and he didn't say much. 0 Reputation Score Range. Willie Hemphill in Virginia. Just after the murders, police arrested and jailed him as a suspect, but then let him go. Willie James Hemphill has lived in Evansville, IN 47714; Greenwood, MS 38930. Law enforcement witnesses had testified under oath in Flowers sixth trial that Presley was never a suspect. Katie Ali had been researching parallels between the Tardy Furniture murders and a string of similar crimes that had happened that same summer in neighboring Alabama. Before he left on July 3, he said she gave him $30. Hemphill said investigators tape recorded the interrogation and took notes, none of which was in the file given to Flowers defense attorneys. 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. "We did go to the mall, but it wasn't the day of the killing. A series of Willie James Hemphill mugshots ranging from 2000 through 2016. Eight days later, Tardy and three others working for the store were killed execution-style. "You're confusing me. Willie James Hemphill is confronted by reporters at an Indianapolis courthouse in June 2019. The murders rocked the small town. The killer or killers could have used the key to enter the side door, perhaps hiding before the store opened. What an Alabama crime spree might reveal about the Curtis Flowers investigation. FUNERAL HOMES. Convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh has been sentenced to life in prison for killing his wife and son. It wasn't until Flowers' sixth trial that jurors heard anything about the Alabama suspects. A burglary took place at Tardy Furniture just eight days before the killings. You can send your sympathy in the guestbook provided and share it with the family. Now the spotlight is on three other deaths that are linked to the case. For starters, a key prosecution witness who testified she saw Flowers sprinting from the front of the store at the time of the murders, has been discredited, he said. Visitation: 6-8 pm Friday, March 2, 2012 at Laurel Land Funeral Home. That day in October 2015, Ali was looking at a photo lineup that law enforcement had used to implicate Flowers in the Tardy case. Are you a sl*t? We collect and match historical records that Ancestry users have contributed to their family trees to create each person's profile. "I think we pretty much ruled him out from the get-go," Matthews testified. So where was Hemphill during the day? 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. More: Curtis Flowers' prosecution witness says testimony was all 'make believe', More: Recanted testimony, subjective science helps put Curtis Flowers on death row, Supreme Court rules jury selection in Ga. trial unconstitutional. Find out more about our policy and your choices, including how to opt-out. And, unlike Curtis, Doyle had more than a passing acquaintance with organized crime (a mobster once left him for dead in a field outside of New Orleans). On 03/12/2020 Willie Hemphill filed a Prisoner - Other Prisoner lawsuit against Warden. They found out later that Flowers uncle, Doyle Simpson, said his .380 automatic had been stolen from the glove box of his car parked at the Angelica Garment Factory where he worked. Each victim had been murdered execution styleone or two bullets to the back of the head. Select this result to view William Thomas Hemphill's phone number, address, and more. The presence of live ammunition on the floor suggested that one of the killers was using a 380 pistol that jammed repeatedly. The Dallas Morning News Homepage. At a hearing, the attorney generals office told the judge that prosecutors knew of no such gun. We know that Willie James Hemphill had been residing in Gaffney, Cherokee County, South Carolina 29341. APM Reports, the investigative and documentary reporting team based in St. Paul, Minnesota, spent a year digging into the Flowers case for its In the Dark podcast. Early voting has begun. He told APM Reports that he was arrested and questioned in the . At the time of his first known arrest, in 1990, he was an 18-year-old high school dropout bouncing back and forth between his mother's house in Memphis, Tennessee, and Winona, where his grandmother lived. "Best I remember is somebody brought it to the attention of the investigators that they wanted us to talk to him, and he came in and we talked to him," Matthews said on the stand in the sixth trial. Where were you?, Hemphill: I was in your p***y. Burial will follow in Hemphill Star Cemetery, Boyce. And then Hemphill stormed off, ending the interview. It wasnt until 2016 that defense lawyers took a closer look at Armstrongs statement that he found a .380 handgun. His website is. Miller also asked the investigator to interrogate Presley and Gamble about the Tardy Furniture murders. It wasn't that day." Search by Name. James Mather at IMDb; This page was last . Follow him onFacebookandTwitter. Just weeks ago, however, reporters discovered that Hemphill had an upcoming court date in Indianapolis and met him there. Why was he questioned? In addition, one jailhouse snitch has recanted, he said. He's also targeted women in general and often women carrying purses. View Actual Score Check Background . They have also lived in Franklin, NC and North Fort Myers, FL. "I don't understand how she said that.". The podcast, which uncovered evidence used by Flowers to get his conviction overturned, spoke with witness Clemmie Fleming. Three of the four were each killed with a single head shot. . How did your name get involved in this?, Hemphill: I wasnt in the city. Mr. Willie James Hemphill, of 1119-101 Kevin Lane, died Thursday, November 9, 2017. Lived In Sidon MS, Indianapolis IN, Prince George VA, Clarksville TN. He will be held in a county jail while its decided if he should face trial for a stunning seventh time. Two weeks later, a picture of Marcus Presley, the shooter in the Birmingham murders, was included in a photo array shown to Porky Collins, a witness in the Winona, Mississippi case. Hired by Starz to examine the case, Saums said the crime"suggests somebody who has done it before. Baran said she reached out to the two state investigators who questioned Hemphill, Matthews and Wayne Miller. Records show he was questioned Hemphill said he was interrogated for hours and held for 11 days before being released. But we found a document showing that another man, Willie James Hemphill, had also been questioned just days after the murders. Case Details Parties Documents Dockets . Willie James McDaniel Funeral services for Willie James McDaniel will be held at 12:00 p.m., Wednesday, January 26, 2022, at Hemphill Star Church in Boyce, La. But he never cut ties with Winona, where his grandmother remained and where he committed a slew of small-time thefts in the years before and after the Tardy Furniture murders, according to public records. After examining the autopsy reportsand crime scene photographs, Baden said the evidence suggests one person maintained control while another person carried out the execution-style killings. The accused has had his conviction overturned for the sixth time, the woman who put him at the scene of the murders has backflipped on her story and another man has been forced to deny it was him all along. (Although that figure is, at best, an educated guess.). In the Dark has previously reported that Hemphill was an initial suspect in the days after the July 1996 murders in Winona, Mississippi. When Flowers went back on trial, Armstrong heard no mention of the gun by either prosecutors or defense attorneys. It's not like you're going to say, 'Yeah I robbed this 7-11, but I didn't rob that 7-11.'". In 1880 James, now 16, has an additional. … 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. Doyle, he said, used to work for Tardy Furniture.. How do we create a person's profile? His full criminal history is too lengthy to reproduce here. INDIANAPOLIS At first, Willie James Hemphill was calm. Following a masterful turn as Flowers defense lawyer, the podcast also wanted to play the part of the prosecution. 0 Add Rating Anonymously. Evidence of false testimony by prosecution witnesses could potentially get Flowers' conviction overturned, Bennett Gershman, a former prosecutor who now teaches law at Pace University, told the APM reporting team. As I argue in the course of the program, Simpson seemed to be bending over backwards to let the world know that a gun had been stolen from his car in the parking lot of the garment factory where he worked. Yet theyre willing to hand him over to the prosecution, to possibly watch him die. It might mean letting someone get away with an abominable crime. "He would have just told me everything and anything at that point," Goldberg said. (1870), A.M. (1872), and LL.D. 2. But how could a single person (especially a man like Curtis Flowers) dispatch four victims with a bullet to the back of the head? WrongManleans tentatively fingers Doyle Simpson as the prime suspect. Hemphill, Willie Mae Willie Mae Hemphill, Born March 8, 1926. And Gamble wore Fila sneakers the same brand of shoe that left a bloody footprint at the Tardy Furniture scene. Resides in Greenwood, MS. The two men had family in both Boston and Norfolk. Hemphill says he was in Memphis on the day of the murder and his alibi might check out. Sure, onceIn the Dark is over the heat will diminish slightly. Authorities put together alineup later that day of black-and-white photos, and she identified Flowers from the lineup as the man she briefly saw that morning when she came outside to move her car. He told us the truth … The statement that he gave in court I made sure was the truth before we used it.. Presley and Gamble made three runs to Boston during the summer of 1996: once after their June crime spree, once after the pawn shop murders and once immediately after the furniture store murders in Winona. Back in 1996, there had even been speculation in the media that the crimes could be connected, and investigators had told the local paper they were looking into it. Maybe. On November 16, 2015, Marcus Presley signed an affidavit claiming that Lasamuel Gamble and Steven McKenzie (the driver of the getaway car) had been in Mississippi the day of the Winona murders and had returned with several hundred dollars in their pockets after claiming to have hit a lick (committed a crime). Hemphill also wasnt held briefly. That discovery will very likely win Curtis a new trial, but it doesnt necessarily finger the new guy as the killer. In total, he killed four people and wounded three others in the space of just three months. Fourteen lawyers. But Curtis Flowers is somehow still not cleared of the gruesome quadruple murder on July 16, 1996. He said he began working at Tardy Furniture on June 29, 1996. The suspects include the gunman in an Alabama crime spree that summer that bore several similarities to the Winona killings and a violent career criminal who at the time of the murders was living with a girlfriend across from the furniture store. American Public Media reports that Hemphills ex-girlfriend Monkra Moore said she and Hemphill lived together in 1996 and claimed that he was home in Winona at around 7am on the morning of the murders. Whoever did this crime (the Tardy murders) was a good shot.. Obituaries Section. View More. Eight days before these murders, a side door key was stolen. . Jurors at Flowers trials had only heard of one suspect who could have worn Fila Grant Hills Flowers although investigators never found the shoes they said he wore. It is with deep sorrow that we announce the death of Willie James Hemphill (Rock Hill, South Carolina), who passed away on November 9, 2017, leaving to mourn family and friends. Willie James Hemphill's alibi doesn't check out TIMELINE: Hemphill's long criminal record. The Tardy Furniture murders were committed at a store on Front Street in Winona, Mississippi, at about 10 a.m., and around the time that one of the store's employees, Carmen Rigby, was returning with a bank bag. The judge denied Flowers' request to attend his mother funeral here on July 21. Prior to his death, Doyle came across as a passive man working hard to stay out of trouble. Email Address: w XMLS @yahoo.com +1 email. At the time, investigators in Mississippi told the media they were looking into whether the crimes could be connected to the murders at Tardy Furniture. Steven McKenzie, the driver of the getaway car in the pawn shop murders, was arrested on August 1 in his hometown of Boston, Massachusetts. Flowers, the individuals I reference as the Birmingham boys. But, just like Curtis Flowers, Doyle Simpson fails the motive test. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008); The Social Network (2010) Evans has spoken to the Greenwood Commonwealth, most recently about APM Reports analysis of his record of striking potential black jurors vs. white juries 4 1/2 times more often. Matthews never responded. When Armstrong first saw the gun in 2001, he thought back five years to the quadruple murder at Tardy Furniture, remembering that authorities had never found a murder weapon. When the podcasts reporter Parker Yesko confronted Hemphill about whether he committed the murders, he denied it, and the show included audio of the hideous, misogynistic things he said in response. "I was coming out of Piggly Wiggly and there was a woman, I will never forget her name. He's shown a fearlessness about committing brazen attacks and thefts in daylight with high risks and low payoff, in places close to where he's lived and where people are more likely to recognize him. Lab officials, however, say the gun never arrived and was never tested. Other facts may help explain why Hemphill initially was a suspect: The shoes he told In the Dark that he was wearing when he was questioned by investigators on July 21, 1996 Fila Grant Hill high-tops are the same type of sneaker that had left bloody footprints at the scene of the murders five days earlier. It was still in the morning time.". Hemphill seemed surprised when reminded that he'd told In the Dark in June 2018 that he was with an old friend named Twanda Woods. Presley shot and killed store employees execution-style on his way out the door. NEWS & ADVICE. Nationwide News Pty Ltd 2023. I was nowhere around., Reporter: The one thing that makes sense to me is that maybe if you had been on Front Street (where the murders took place) and you had seen something , Hemphill: Im done talking to you, youre trying to put me on Front Street., Reporter: Did you commit the murders that day?, Hemphill: Did you? But he believed Gamble's denial. Marcus Presley and Lasamuel Gamble werent raised at all. Hemphill certainly sounds like a career criminal who is fully capable of committing violence; but he doesnt come off as a psychopathic killerand whoever did the deed at the Tardy furniture store was either a hired killer (or killers) or enjoyed killing people for kicks. The district's Republicans should nominate James Hemphill as their candidate for Congress in the May 3 primary. "We have never had any evidence that showed anything other than this defendant's guilt," Evans said. "[I]t's almost like a hair trigger that would cause a reversal if you've got false testimony that is significant.". View Willie Smith results in Kingwood, TX including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. But we found a document showing that another man, Willie James Hemphill, had also been questioned just days after the murders. Ive been confused of the day from the beginning. In addition, he won an Emmy for the television show The West Wing.. I was scared I was going to go to jail.. The investigative file contained no indication of what Hemphill said or why he was eliminated as a suspect. "Yeah we was leaving. He died on December 28, 1908, at his home in the section of Abbeville called Fort Pickens, and is buried in Melrose Cemetary, Abbeville. LAYTON - Willie Morris Hemphill, 69, passed away August 11, 2018 at St. Mark's Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. Record for Willie James Hemphill 27 May 1919 - 14 July 2000 in Quantico National Cemetery, Triangle, Prince William, Virginia, United States from BillionGraves GPS Headstones. Who was he? Presley and Gamble had developed a simplemodus operandi. I know he didnt do it, Archie Flowers said. Flowers, who had been fired from the store 13 days before the murders, reportedly owed a small amount of money to one of the owners. Hemphill's ex-girlfriend Monkra Moore told In the Dark that she and Hemphill lived together on the east side of Winona in 1996 and that he was at home around 7 a.m. on the morning of the murders when she was leaving for work. Initially, Hemphill refused to provide further details of his whereabouts on July 16, 1996. If you recall our last conversation, I wasnt in the city., Reporter: You said you were in Memphis with Twanda Woods. It was all make believe. 20181228 Willie James Hemphill Criminal Civil Records Item Preview remove-circle Share or Embed This Item. He told APM Reports that he was arrested and questioned in the early days of the investigation. A photo array that contains Marcus Presley (No. 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. Their reporters know better than anyone that Hemphill wouldnt get a fair trial. It takes no imagination at all to imagine Marcus Presley committing a crime like thatwe have the video from the pawn shop. Last month, the Supreme Court overturned Flowers latest conviction, citing In The Darks reporting. As far as him telling me he killed some people, hell, naw, he aint ever told me that. In the sixth, he was again convicted and sentenced to death, and his latest appeal was ongoing when the podcast started. 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. Jessie Mae Hemphill; Jimmie Gordon; Jimmy "Duck" Holmes; Jimmy Burns; Jimmy Dawkins; Jimmy Holmes; Jimmy Johnson; . Even before finding the gun, Armstrong had doubts about whether Flowers played a role in the quadruple murder. "Yes, sir," Snow replied. But at Curtis Flowers' trials, the prosecution downplayed any investigation of other suspects. He attended Erskine College, where he earned a A.B. Finding the truly guilty person (or people) strengthens the case that Flowers is innocent. After the second stick up, the two men argued about whether they should have killed the witness. Wrong Manpresented us with a small group of criminal justice professionals who started out believing that Curtis was probably 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. He said he called Tardy the next day, asking if he still had a job, and she said he didnt. In the past, Willie has also been known as Willie James Hemphill, Willie A Hemphill, Willie James Hemphill, Willie J Hemphill and Willi Hemphill. Whoever killed four innocent people in the Tardy Furniture store on that fateful day in 1996 was familiar with armed violence and kind of liked it. I dont think they learned anything.. The second season of the In the Dark podcast is about the case of Curtis Flowers, who was tried six times for the same crime. And in the first Flowers trial, in 1997, he testified that "there were numerous suspects" in the early days of the investigation. Past Addresses: Shelby NC, Shelby NC +7 more. There is little doubt that Hemphill has done terrible things. APM lead investigative reporter Madeleine Baran found one page among the documents Evans did give the defense attorneys, a form someone named Willie James Hemphill, then 24, of Memphis had signed at the Winona Police Department five days after the murders waiving his rights to an attorney. And that's what I know," said David Goldberg, now retired from his job as a detective in the Norfolk Police Department. Visitation will be observed from 10:00 a.m. until the time of service. "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. Between June 19th, 1996 and June 30thof that year, Presley was involved in five robberies at gunpoint. Willie Ray Hemphill, Jr., 49, of Bryan, passed away Thursday, August 13, 2009 at his residence. In a remarkable turn of events almost 23 years after four people, including a 16-year-old boy, were gunned down and left inside the Tardy Furniture store in Winona, Mississippi, three things have happened.