Carlton Gary's Final Interview: 11Alive Phone Call from Death Row, March 14, 2018 (Part 1)

Name: Carlton Gary's Final Interview: 11Alive Phone Call from Death Row, March 14, 2018 (Part 1)
Uploaded: 2018-03-15T00:00:00Z
Duration: 39 min 56 s
Description: The day before his execution, Carlton Gary told 11Alive by phone that he never confessed and argued, point by point, that the confession, DNA, hair, bite-mark and fingerprint evidence against him was false.

The day before his execution, Carlton Gary told 11Alive by phone that he never confessed and argued, point by point, that the confession, DNA, hair, bite-mark and fingerprint evidence against him was false.

Subject: Carlton Gary
Recorded: March 14, 2018
Runtime: 39:56

Content warning: Concerns the rape and murder of elderly women in Columbus, Georgia, in 1977 and 1978, and includes discussion of the forensic evidence (DNA, hair, fingerprints and a bite mark on a victim's breast); no graphic description of the murders.

The Interview

On Wednesday, March 14, 2018, the day before his scheduled execution, Carlton Gary spoke by telephone from death row with Jessica Noll of 11Alive (WXIA-TV) in Atlanta. 11Alive reported that the call came in on a speakerphone at the public library in Griffin, Georgia. 11Alive posted the audio the next day as two phone calls. This is the first, 40 minutes long. Gary does almost all of the talking; near the end, Brendan Keefe, who introduces himself as 11Alive's chief investigator, joins the call with one question.

Historical Context

Between 1977 and 1978 a series of elderly women were attacked in their homes in Columbus, Georgia; most were raped and strangled, several with stockings, and the killer became known as the "Stocking Strangler". Gary was arrested in May 1984, after escaping from a South Carolina prison the year before. In August 1986 a Muscogee County jury convicted him of the murders, rapes and burglaries of Florence Scheible, Martha Thurmond and Kathleen Woodruff, and he was sentenced to death. Other Columbus killings were attributed to him but never tried. DNA testing from 2009 onward was disputed: it was reported to link him to one of the other Columbus murders, but not to match in the Thurmond case or in the rape of the surviving witness who identified him at trial. His execution was stayed in 2009; a new date was set for 2018, clemency was denied, and he was executed by lethal injection at Jackson on March 15, 2018.

Circumstances of the Interview

Gary spoke on a prison telephone in the last hours before his execution, while appeals and a clemency application were still pending. Keefe tells him on the call that the parole board's hearing that day had been closed to the public and the media, and that the district attorney would not let 11Alive see the case files. The part ends with Gary asking the reporters to wait while he steps away, and promising to call back in a few minutes; Part 2 continues the interview.

What the Interview Covers

Gary says he wanted to talk because the full story had not been reported, and that from the start the state had money and experts while he had none. Told by Noll that he never confessed, he answers, "I have not ... Absolutely not." He says he did not know what he had been arrested for, that he was withdrawing from cocaine when questioned, that a detective carried a tape recorder that was never used for the statement attributed to him, and that the statement was unsigned and later cut down. He argues that another man, Jerome Livas, had given police details of several of the attacks, and works through the forensic evidence: the DNA results, hair samples, barefoot prints, dental molds and bite-mark testimony, and fingerprints, which he says did not match him or were mishandled. He accuses prosecutors, police and judges of lying and of racism, and speaks of segregated clubs in Columbus. Asked why anyone should believe a man facing execution, he says people need not listen to him but to the laboratory reports.

What Makes the Recording Significant

This is Gary's own statement of his innocence case, recorded about a day before he was executed, and it covers the physical evidence in more detail than Part 2, which turns to the eyewitness identification. Keefe's question records 11Alive's complaint, made to Gary directly, that the parole hearing and the case files were closed to the press.

Archival Importance

With Part 2, this is the interview 11Alive reported as Gary's last, given hours before his execution. The recording preserves how he presented his case at the end: the arrest and the disputed confession, the forensic evidence and the conduct of the prosecution.

Important Caveats

Everything Gary says about his innocence, about the confession and the evidence, and about the prosecutors, police and judges is his claim. A jury convicted him of three murders, the convictions were upheld on appeal, and he was executed. The phone audio is poor, and parts of the machine transcript could not be resolved. This part and Part 2 are one telephone interview and should be read together.

Jessica Noll: Okay, you ready for this, Carlton?

Carlton Gary: Yes, I am.

Jessica Noll: Okay. So, first of all, I just wanted to ask you how you're feeling today.

Carlton Gary: I'm fine. I'm blessed.

Jessica Noll: And tell me why you wanted to talk to me today.

Carlton Gary: Well, you know, it's far too much stuff that's going on that's not been reported. And, you know, I'm [unclear: "a Henderson person"; possibly "an innocent person"]. The actual [unclear: "Henderson"; possibly "innocence"] should be, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, no, that's enough to get people off of death row. So my thing is that the message is not getting out. A lot of people are not going to courtrooms. They're reading stuff that's been edited, you know, in the papers and everything. They're getting part of the story. Whereas I think that if people get the real story, you know, then we [unclear: "would"; possibly "wouldn't"] have this problem.

Jessica Noll: And what's the real story?

Carlton Gary: Well, the real story is that from the very beginning, this thing has just been one-sided. From the very beginning, from the [unclear: "rent home"], you know, you would never find another case like this, where I had not one [unclear: "diet"; probably "dime"] for an expert. From the beginning, the state had everything they had at the taxpayers' expense. They had all of the money, all the experts they wanted, and they opposed every motion that we put in. Although the judge declared me indigent, that I needed the money, but they would not give me the experts from the beginning. Then they lied from the very beginning of the arrest, because I had no idea what I was arrested for.

Carlton Gary: That's why I'm smiling in the very first photo, where people see me coming down the hall with the red sleeveless top on. They're thinking I've lost my mind, because I'm accused of these cases, but I'm smiling. Well, I'm smiling because I don't know I'm accused of these cases. I'm thinking it's because of the South Carolina, when I absconded from South Carolina.

Jessica Noll: Right.

Carlton Gary: Because of that, it was a big case, a so-called [unclear: "state house vending case"]. So I had no idea, and that's why they're lying. And that's why they're lying, because I always told lawyers from the beginning, I said they had a tape recorder in the car. He was on the back of the seat, and they was talking to me about it. The reason they lied about it, because the only thing that's on that tape is me talking about going back to South Carolina. They didn't mention anything about these lies, about "I want to talk about the case, I don't need a lawyer." They did mention South Carolina, but that's all. That's why they don't play the tape.

Carlton Gary: So all of these years, they lied about the tape, until a recent hearing after Jack Martin was able to pull this out, and [unclear: name; "the role" / "grovyle"] finally admitted, "Oh, yes, that's right, I did have a tape in my pocket, but it was not on." Well, if you look at it, they had already said from the beginning, "We're not going to question this man. We're just going to pick him up from Albany, Georgia, and we're going to bring him back to the jailhouse, to the Detective Division or whatever, and then we'll talk to him." Well, if you were not going to question me, why would you have a tape recorder in your pocket, and why would you not use that tape recorder? What was the point in that?

Jessica Noll: Right.

Carlton Gary: So I had been on cocaine, and they took pictures of the room. The police had watched me go to the store, and we went to the store and we purchased alcohol. I don't drink alcohol normally. So I had been on cocaine [unclear: "bins" / "bands"; possibly "binges"] for a while. They found some cocaine in a [unclear: "female container"] in a mini refrigerator over in [unclear: "Alabama" / "now remember"]. And I talked to the guy on the telephone, CID or somebody, and he said, [unclear: "man, from what other people telling you, you've just forgotten what these people here are telling me"]. So I said, "Well, look, that's my cocaine." So they know I've been on cocaine for like a week or so. So when I get arrested, I'm on this, and I had drank this beer. They took pictures of it in the room.

Carlton Gary: So, but they were talking to me. So when I get back up in here, you know, they're talking to me, and I'm withdrawing. You know, I'm really withdrawing, so they [unclear: "don't"] put me in the car. But I promise you, right here, we're on the back of the things back there. I didn't point out nothing. Those, those [unclear: "places" / "phrases"] were not integrated when I was growing up. My wife [unclear: "was from"], those years were not integrated at all. There's no way in the world I would be able to pick out each one of these houses where a single [unclear: "young" / "elderly"] white woman live, that's from an affluent family. There's no way I could do that, or nobody that's never been in those areas. So they lied about that.

Carlton Gary: And think about this: if I [unclear: "was going to refuse"] to be recorded, [unclear: "with what they signed"], the so-called confession, neither one of the police signed it, neither one of them [unclear: "mentioned" / "initialed"] it. They presented to the jury an unsigned, [unclear: "on an issue"; possibly "un-initialed"], something that somebody wrote down. They pared down from 12 pages to three pages. What happened to the other pages that was missing now? And in the pared-down version, they got pasted over. And if you get that version, as [unclear: "Dr. DeCloe"] did, [unclear: "ensure"] what I allegedly said, as opposed to what they claimed [unclear: "your own life" / "survivor"] was said, there's no [unclear: "fashion" / "path"] for what I allegedly said. They are saying that I said this was the house, but there's nothing there to say, "There was that box over that corner, and that box was not there when we came into this house." But in his [unclear: "hilarious"] statement, there's all kind of [unclear: "fashion"] there. So to kill that, [unclear: "he did the case of the police online"].

Jessica Noll: Because you never confessed to them.

Carlton Gary: I'm sorry?

Jessica Noll: You never confessed to them.

Carlton Gary: I have not.

Jessica Noll: Mm-hmm.

Carlton Gary: Absolutely not. You know, we talked about South Carolina. We talked about the robberies I had in Albany, Georgia. We talked about the robberies I had in Columbus. I didn't find out what I was charged with until I got on the telephone, and I called my companion at the time in Augusta, Georgia, (name withheld), who was from Columbus. I called her up and I said, "Listen, I suppose I'll be back in South Carolina in a couple of days." So she said, "No." She said, "What do you mean?" I said, "What do you mean? I said, get the lawyer, I'll be back in a couple of days." [unclear: "It's just astounding to carry one year" / "it just was staring at the care of one year"]. And she said, "No, [they] got you for murder." And I [unclear: "like to sell out"; possibly "like to fell out"].

Carlton Gary: So that's why I also asked the police, I mean, the lawyers, I said, "Get the Detective Division, get the phone records from them. See what time I placed this call." Because before that time, they had me chained to a desk by my leg, and they had the lady that was arrested with me, (name withheld), they had her in another room somewhere, and they was threatening me that if I don't say this, she'll never see her child anymore. They gonna send her to prison. People well aware of these police tactics. This is nothing new, especially when it's unrecorded. You know, so they [unclear: "didn't want to say they have access to"].

Carlton Gary: Okay, so yeah, we went out into the neighborhood, but they was pointing out. And then when you get this [unclear: "rally"], [unclear: "a lot of our Sellers, Rose and Boris" / "laughs, Celos, roll it"] did not know. Well, lo and behold, today, you know, [unclear: "as today" / "with fire and stuff"], we find out the stuff that's in the box. I got like 14 different documents where these guys [were] actively in the neighborhood, questioning people about these cases: that's [unclear: "Sellers" / "Celos"], and that's Rose, on the task force. Although [unclear: "Ryan Fields" / "land feels"] will get on the stand and tell these people that these people didn't know anything about these facts, that these facts had to come from me. But nobody's saying, "Well, let's look at these documents." Of the ones that's looking at the documents, they're just gliding over, they're casting [them] to the side.

Carlton Gary: You see, so after this thing, we go in the neighborhood, they bring me back, and they keep me [unclear: "sane" / "saying"]. I can't call anybody unless they go through them. So they lock me in this room, and I'm [unclear: "on like this place, in this cell down there"] in this room, in this jail, Muscogee County Jail. Then they come back later. So by this time, my mom and I got this lawyer come down, said, "Don't say anything," [unclear: "he called you on his land" / "he called Joyce Land"], and all that, and they took a sample from me. Okay, they came back a couple of days later and took another sample. My question is, what happened to the first sample?

Carlton Gary: They were saying that that was inadequate. Inadequate? Why? When the lawyers had come and said, [unclear: "they were shouting" / "comments feared"], "So you [unclear: "didn't have to"] go home." I said, "What are you talking about?" They said, "Because the stuff come back, and [unclear: "you also treated" / "clearly"], it doesn't match you." That was [unclear: "never like the second day"]. So that's why they took another sample. Nobody told them what happened to that sample.

Carlton Gary: Okay, so from this time, we get up in there, this fool was talking about, I told him something about, I could tuck my toes under in a shoe. I wear a size 14. Okay, but that night, I signed a consent to take the barefoot print. Even if I could put my foot in a [unclear: "slaw with"] shoes, what would you say about the barefoot print? How could I make that smaller?

Jessica Noll: Right.

Carlton Gary: That's not possible. Okay, [unclear: "the son of the house" / "them councilmen"], when my [unclear: "regional"; possibly "original"] lawyer was even asking them, "Is it usual that you take barefoot prints from suspects?" and the answer was no. "So why did y'all take these barefoot prints?" You know, the houses, I know this [unclear: "wooden house"; possibly "Woodruff house"] was one of them, and another house. So they had the barefoot, and they had the [unclear: "shard print"]. They still come out the same way. So he lied about that.

Carlton Gary: So here he is: allegedly I agreed to talk for hours. I agreed for you to take hair, blood, blood and saliva. I agreed to drive around in the neighborhood to point out all these houses to you. I agreed to do all of this, but when it comes down to recording the conversation, I [unclear: "just didn't know" / "said no"]. Now, where does that come from? And then, like I said, even [unclear: "in my opinion"], what about them? Why didn't they sign it? Who goes home and sits at the table hours later, and writes down some kind of [unclear: "feet tissue stain" / "teachers saying"] that they put down, and come back and say that? Even John Land, the [unclear: "ex-hinged"] judge, who was the judge originally on this case, [said] he's never seen that before. You and your investigative [unclear: "man" / "mode"], you'll never find another case like that. Who goes home and do that?

Carlton Gary: You take that thing there, it's dangerous. And so, a [unclear: "couple of the case" / "statement"] came out of Garden City, where they found out later that the police down there planted fingerprints, and he got [unclear: "sentenced"] in Garden City, Georgia, down in Savannah. They said because he was tired. Well, these police were tired. They said they had been looking for me for hours. They had nothing to sleep. They had all this political pressure on them to solve this case. I was not the first person that they falsely accused of that.

Carlton Gary: So again, back to the Livas question. They say, the GBI, not Carlton Gary, the GBI said they have matched Livas. The GBI said that [unclear: "none supremely status" / "seriously did non supreme status"] matched Livas. The GBI, the Columbus police, the DA, all of them say the statements that he allegedly gave, confessing to (name withheld), confessing to Dimenstein, confessing to Jackson, that those facts were facts. The police testified on the stand that "We didn't say that, that Jerome Livas did tell us that." So again, what I said initially: it's got to be either he did tell them that, or he did not tell them that. But one way or another, they are facts that the police acquiesced to. They said that's true. So who's lying about that?

Carlton Gary: And it could have been, if he said that later, and he could have went back upstairs or wherever he was like that, it could have dawned on him, "You know, I messed up." So again, he could have been talking crazy with you. [unclear: "I couldn't have done any worse."] Does that mean that the reason he was not telling the truth? It could have been.

Jessica Noll: Yeah.

Carlton Gary: Okay, so then, when we get back to all this other stuff, now we come down to the DNA and all this stuff. Now, how are you gonna [unclear: "murder somebody" / "learn about it"], and you people destroying the evidence? You took all this stuff out of these [unclear: "embolos" / "chemicals"; possibly "envelopes"] and everything. [unclear: "The cost of getting it" / "complicated"; possibly "Carlton Gary"] never refused to have anything tested. The State of Georgia did. They opposed us going to the Georgia Supreme Court. They opposed that thing, to have DNA taken. They opposed that. After the Georgia Supreme Court approved that and got back to the Superior Court in Muscogee County, they opposed that. They opposed us getting any experts from the beginning. They opposed us getting any money for any of that stuff from the beginning. They opposed any [DNA] testing from the beginning, and during this time on the extraordinary motion, they opposed that.

Carlton Gary: Then they said, "Well, we're going to [unclear: "be on this lab"]." It's not like, [unclear: "I think I'm picking one of them to take this stuff. During slavery, when they're there with them, they picked it."] I didn't ever pick up a particular thing to be tested. I said, "Test it all." So they wanted to take that, and the [unclear: "voting" / "motor"; possibly "Bode"] lab, agreed on in court. "We should let it know, Your Honor," is what the state said. So they went on and tested it. When it come back in the [unclear: "middle of the sample" / "no sample"], it clearly does not match me. Now they want to say it's a secondary case. [unclear: "Kids are not charged with it" / "care of kids on my charge"; possibly "a case I'm not charged with"]. But at the same time, you want to claim the Dimenstein case that I'm not charged with, you want to push that ahead. That cannot be contaminated. But when the other samples come back, they did not match me in the [unclear: "third one case" / "current cases"], you want to say that this case was contaminated. Well, if it was contaminated for me, it could be contaminated against me.

Carlton Gary: No, and what they're telling the public is not the whole story. When the lady in the courtroom stood up from the [unclear: "voting"] lab, it was clear that all of their alleles did not match up. Their alleles are the points. When you're matching DNA [unclear: "with your shoe" / "enables your shoes"], you guys have investigative reports and all about that. So [unclear: "the chief does the healthy eye. You know what I think?"] They push for 15 to 21. If one of your alleles does not match, that simply means that it's not the person. You could have 12 alleles line up; if one or two does not match, according to them, not Carlton Gary's theory, but according to them, that means that it's not a match. So that's what happened in the courtroom.

Carlton Gary: There's no confirmation match, and then the question came along: why is that? We don't know. When [they] went back, that [unclear: "you almost were empty" / "the rules were jumped, a little empty"]. Why was the envelope empty? You can't [unclear: "use all of the evidence"] and expect the other side to take that as gospel because they say it came out this way, because I assure you, had the defense done it, they would not ever [have] said this. You would have been [unclear: "trying" / "crying"], just like we're saying, like, "That's not fair."

Jessica Noll: Right.

Carlton Gary: You know, you're not supposed to use it when that's happened. [unclear: "There's an assumption that the side that's responsible for that"] is guilty. [unclear: "Why that"] they opposed everything. So that's not a confirmation on that. And then also, if that was a confirmation, what about the other seven, eight cases it was in? [unclear: "Done our code in Spain."] So the [unclear: "camera's game"]: why did they come back to the rest [unclear: "up"]? So now they try [unclear: "that passive learners use this excuse of day"]. We get to the [unclear: "by tomorrow"; possibly "bite mark"], the mold. [unclear: "Person or old question"]: why would a [unclear: name] that has nothing to do with the Columbus Police Department, why would she go to that [unclear: "dinners"; possibly "dentist"] to have them [unclear: "hold these loans"; possibly "do these molds"]? Not one mold, but three molds. We only knew about the one until later, when [unclear: "you got justified cool"].

Carlton Gary: So why would [unclear: name], not associated with the police department? Oh, that's right: [unclear: "hey, best friends now will the judge"; possibly "best friends with Followill, the judge"]. [unclear: "To the Judicial Qualifications Committee, to come in and let him either backed over the races"]. [inaudible] So [inaudible] down there, not even associated with the Columbus Police Department. Okay, all those [unclear: "roles"; probably "molds"] are still missing.

Carlton Gary: When we find this one more, they run up to [unclear: "11"] and get Dr. Thomas David, the GBI guy. Well-known forensic odontologist, the only one in the state, at least at that time. He identified the unfortunate victims in Hurricane Katrina. The unfortunate victims in [unclear: "90 level"; possibly "9/11"], they called him in to identify these people. He's been doing this for ages.

Carlton Gary: When they go to him, they try to get him to say, well, look, he said, "I can tell you what. I can look at the person's mouth, and I can tell you whether or not that's him, because the teeth are that bad." He said, "Hey, if y'all go get a court order, we can take a cast of his mouth, or [an im]pression, or whatever, and then that'll substantiate it even more." So he asked him, "Look, would you, is there some way that if it excludes him, would you say something different?" By the [unclear: "bridge"; possibly "grace"] of God, Dr. David said, "No, I'm not gonna testify with that." So guess what? They didn't [unclear: "show no more"]. They did not come back to him. Dr. David said he did not even realize what was going on until he saw it in the paper, that they was trying to [unclear: "murder me up before"].

Carlton Gary: So how could they do that? They didn't come back and talk to [unclear: "me"; possibly "him"]. Why not? You [unclear: "saw him out"; possibly "sought him out"] first. I didn't ask you to [unclear: "think"] Dr. David. He [unclear: "can work"] for the GBI. He doesn't work for me. You chose him, but when that man had scruples, he said, "I'm not gonna [unclear: "pay this good old boy a racist" / "lack of faith is good"], and I'm not gonna lie on this man. I'm not gonna lie for him, I'm not gonna lie against him." That's all I ever asked. I don't want nobody lying for me. I could've had plenty of people come up there and lie for me with alibis, and all kind of friends would've said I was here, I was there, but I did not do that.

Carlton Gary: So now the other two molds are missing. They took the one [unclear: "on the round" / "hold around"], when he takes the microscope, stereo microscope, which [enhances] and stuff, and he knew that that's what he do. He went to school for this stuff. And when he hit the court and he explained this to the judges, they questioned him. The judge [had] no experience, nothing to do with [unclear: "dumb" / "general"; possibly "dental"] stuff, medical or anything like that. He took over the [unclear: "area"; possibly "hearing"] and ran, just took over the entire [unclear: "area"]. The state didn't have to say anything. This is record stuff. He took over the [unclear: "area"] and questioned this man.

Carlton Gary: And then they go back to the dentist and say, "So are you a forensic dentist?" "No, I'm just a plain dentist." "Did you use the stereo microscope at the GBI crime lab?" "I did not." "So you just looked [with the] naked eye?" "Yeah, I just [unclear: "took it"]." Above the breast. The question was, a person with teeth, how do you bite the breast without leaving a bite mark above and below? How do you do that? That's not possible, I don't think. So he said, use the stereo microscope, and that's what he shows right here. But he had already told them that before he used that.

Carlton Gary: He said, his lower teeth right here, and one of those [was] rotated. To correct a rotated tooth, I asked the dentist here, Dr. Barron, "How would you do that?" [unclear: "You had to take that tooth out, because you put braces on that straight"], and he said no, that whole thing would have to be removed. So then they lied, the reason they didn't turn over: Bill Smith and his crew lied and said because I had [unclear: "expenses"; possibly "extensive"] [dental work] done [unclear: "where I'm done"]. My wife and people, we have these lab reports, or affidavits on these people. You will not see [unclear: "expenses"] nowhere in there. That man said he put on a cap, a crown. That's just a cement job, because the gold, the dental gold crown that was lost, he just made another one and it just slid on. He didn't have to do no drilling. He didn't have to do any of that. So there was nothing anywhere to say anything about it. That's the dental work that was done on my mouth. Nowhere. And that's what the report says.

Carlton Gary: Back to the hair. My sample, number 190, which I think I told you that I sent to you, number 190 and 191, head and pubic hair, from the GBI crime lab, stating straight up, "insufficient to [unclear: "lift"] similarities." And they explain what that means. They don't say match, non-match at that time. [unclear: "Insufficient means just a no. Sufficient means just a yes."] And the other one just simply means "we can't tell." They said no. On the [unclear: "half side" / "house"], [unclear: "we're 1-9-1-9-1" / "ever 191"]. But the [unclear: "liars in every one of his side" / "everyone is Cybermen"] will match each one of the cases. So according again to the GBI, according to the Columbus police or somebody's lab, [unclear: "it's not called together"; possibly "not Carlton Gary"]: I didn't do the testing. They did the testing.

Carlton Gary: And then we go to the prints. [unclear: "Ledgeman"; possibly "ladies and gentlemen"], how is it, [unclear: "Ledgeman"], that your famous people, David Rice, Hal Harris, half of your police department in this thing, they get these alleged prints. They [check] these prints against Carlton Gary's prints. They do not match. 14 months to two years later, GBI come down, and they match. And then they wanna lie and say, "We ain't [unclear: "greasing that"]." [unclear: "That bud's ain't gonna grease it in the court."] [unclear: "No bud"] said, "Well, we're not arguing the print that they've [unclear: "sold you"]. Might match him. But where did that print come from?" GBI said, "I don't know."

Carlton Gary: "Did you know that Hal Harris and David Rice tried to match this print, and it didn't match him?" "So no, we didn't know that." "So do you know how old this is?" "Don't know that." "Have you been to the crime scene?" "I have not." And from the crime scene, [unclear: "that's literally like this minute"], literally hundreds of prints that's still unidentified. Who could they belong to? They excluded the victims. They excluded [unclear: "his"] friends. They excluded [unclear: "his"] family. [unclear: "Given the workers"], everybody [they] didn't know was still unidentified. That's what George Keller said, the head guy that ran the ID division. Oh, I'm sorry, he was [unclear: "an extra agent"]. You know why? Because the head guy was Eddie Barnes, an African American.

Carlton Gary: They took off every African American that worked in this department. They were their [unclear: "head spurs"; possibly "experts"]. They kept this department up on the latest stuff. [unclear: "NID"], they kept them up on it. They took [unclear: "Andy Florence"] off of there, they took [unclear: "all the hardware"] off of there, they took the guy off of there, and they filed a lawsuit against that same Columbus Police Department [for] their racist stuff. They filed a lawsuit, eight police, and after that they started the African American Police Association in Columbus, Georgia. But they took a plane, they went to Washington, D.C., before the U.S. House of Congress, not Carlton Gary, the U.S. House of Congress, and they brought that circuit up there. They put in the [unclear: "depth of the statistics"] and showed clearly the Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit, it's the most racist circuit in Columbus, in Georgia, that whole circuit. It's not what I'm saying, it's statistics that prove that.

Carlton Gary: So, okay, we come back to that, and we say, well, how many points? So this is seven points, nine points, or whatever, but who knows? [unclear: "Each friend, all the person, had the habit of paying their guy"] 75 to 175 points. Don't listen to [unclear: "calls"; probably "Carlton"], and [unclear: "get her to get the proofs herself" / "call it proof, sir"]. And all of these people, [unclear: "David Ashball"], all of these people, they [unclear: "justify"; possibly "testify"] for the prosecution all of the time. They get all of the books, [unclear: "my news, and Theresa Day"]. I think I mentioned that to you and the other. They put out this paper from Georgia State University. They tell in that paper how police plant prints. [unclear: "Five"] New York State Police state troopers [unclear: "got serviced the proof of the plant prints"]. They got several guys up there that did it in over 40 cases, of plant prints up in there.

Carlton Gary: But the question still came up: "Well, how many people in this courtroom do you think could have the same number of points on the finger [unclear: "of a light"]?" The answer was, "It might be everybody in here." You and I might share 15 of the very same points. We might share 20 of the very same points. We're not going to share the whole print.

Jessica Noll: Right.

Carlton Gary: But then, lo and behold, we find out later, and it's not a science, number one, and they proved it the last years and already brought this out. They have no standard. One examiner might say one point, that's that person. Another would say, "Well, I need 101. That's that person." There's no standard. So you're going [unclear: "as a subjective, objective"], saying, what are we going by here? But also, as I told you with the DNA, and please check this out: just like with DNA, in fingerprint they have an exclusionary rule. Never heard of it in my life. An exclusionary rule is the same with the DNA. It's not how many match. It's the ones that does not match. If it does not match, that person [is] excluded.

Carlton Gary: While on [unclear: "the fence" / "address"], their favorite case was the Woodruff case. They said, every testimony that you see, he pushed the fact [that it was at] the point of entry. They even went beyond that and said it was found inside, on the window sill, at the point of entry. We have the crime [lab] report, and I have it right here on this cart right this minute. The crime [lab] report came from George [unclear: "King"], the same guy [I was] talking about a minute ago, and the director, [unclear: "S.D. Wright"], the director of that, [unclear: "vein"] examined the scene. And guess what this is: [unclear: "no one laid this development"; possibly "no latents developed"] at the point of entry. None whatsoever.

Carlton Gary: So these people purposely committed [unclear: "purpose"; possibly "perjury"]. [unclear: "Bill Swinton"; possibly "Bill Smith"] knew it was no prints. They had their report. [unclear: "Swinton"] knew he had the report. [unclear: name] knew [unclear: "the DNA"; possibly "the DA"]. She had the report. The attorney [unclear: "telling"] knew they had the report. But they allowed their [unclear: "spirits"; possibly "experts"] to continue to testify that my [unclear: "claim"; possibly "print"] was found at the point of entry. And then when the [unclear: "weak palm print"] come up, we put the [unclear: "DNA"] in the case, we put this guy out again on the stand and said, "Well, here's the report right here. Is this yours?" "Yes." "Does that report..." And defense is sitting [unclear: "on two"]. "Does that report [unclear: "and we shouldn't get parentheses"]?" "Absolutely. At all." Guess what? The answer was, "It's not even in the report."

Carlton Gary: The lie came back that way: "The reason we didn't make a [unclear: "shot"] of it or whatever is because it was too weak." [If it] was too weak then, how did it suddenly become strong? Because Bill Smith mentioned that that was the print. And they went [unclear: "from us"], and we tested the [unclear: "corner entrance" / "pronation"], we tested the wooden screen to the porch, we tested the [unclear: "peppercorn can" / "cup of corn can"] that somebody sprinkled to throw the dogs off. There are no prints. Absolutely none. But they've been allowed to [unclear: "perch in themselves"; possibly "perjure themselves"] all of these years and tell [these] lies, that my [prints were] found at the [unclear: "corner here"].

Carlton Gary: Just so when the [unclear: "property of that"], when they hear prints, you know, we watch TV, people automatically say, "That's a [unclear: "good deal"]." Nobody has ever said, "Well, you know, there were points on the print, not a whole print." In [the] crime scenes, they took six full cards of fingerprints from the Dimenstein case. They took eight full cards of fingerprints from the [unclear: "vanilla"] case. [unclear: "You take a while."] [Tell me] how many of those match Carlton Gary. Points or whole prints, from the Cofer case, from the Borom case, from all of these other houses: tell me how many of those prints match Carlton Gary. You know how many? Between zero and [unclear: "one"]. [unclear: "Not none."]

Carlton Gary: How do you explain that? How do you do that? You know, you say, okay, you say you got them. Y'all got full cards from the scene, on the [unclear: "board"], on the [unclear: "toes" / "close"], everything else, but not [unclear: "on the next card of yours" / "only Carnegie"; possibly "one of Carlton Gary's"]. But you'll come back two years later and say that, oh, seven points match him. We don't know, because you didn't give us no money to get an expert. We didn't have nobody to say, "Well, okay, even if seven did, everybody knew it could be seven. But if you did that, well, what about 75? And it could be 175." So what about that? No, no answer.

Carlton Gary: And let's not forget, everybody, almost to the person involved in this case, and it's not a race card, as I told you in the letter, this is a fact. Y'all [want] to have that record?

Jessica Noll: We do.

Carlton Gary: The Big Eddy Club, the Columbus Country Club, excluded Black people, always [unclear: "there"]. Every judge: Followill, Bill Smith, [unclear: "Slaughter"], you continue on down the line. Every one of those people belong to that club, one or the other, or both. Each one of them. The [unclear: "D.H.s"; possibly "DAs"] belong to the same racist clubs, the same people. And what adds even more so: the victims, [unclear: "the deception of two"; possibly "with the exception of two"]. Ms. Thurmond and Ms. Scheible did not belong to the clubs. Every one of the rest of them did. There were many other families, including the (name withheld) family, who survived the unfortunate attack on [unclear: "Earth"; possibly "her"]. Every one of them belonged to it. They know each other. They're friends. Every one of them belong to the same racist club.

Carlton Gary: Is it racist? Is it me saying it? Let's go back to Congress. Let's go back to Tyrone Brooks. When they settled one of the Justice Department['s] [unclear: "selling"] that lawsuit, the judge [unclear: "who did just a circuit"] was in that. They declared the [unclear: "jurors, she was killing them"]. They were racist. So when they declared that, [unclear: "they did a slip of the butt of the rug"]? Why did nobody attack that? Because [if it had] been the other way, they wouldn't have [unclear: "attacked"] it. As you see, they've done that: "Well, we're going to have to change this thing up here, because now the Black people got the power of votes." Well, [unclear: "approval out of Lincoln"], the representative, [was] still on the floor, and he used the n-word and said, "Well, we need to change it, because we don't want them to have this kind of vote."

Carlton Gary: The other judge I had, the very first judge I had, he got on the [unclear: "bank"; probably "bench"]. He said his hero was Hitler. The best time [unclear: "in the day"] was when he was in Nuremberg, and he [unclear: "spoke the hills"]. [unclear: "There's a lot of hell here that died."] He [unclear: "fives"; probably "flies"] the flags from the South. His [unclear: "boss is a little robiny Lee"; possibly "hero is Robert E. Lee"], his hero is Hitler. He praised William Calley, from [unclear: "the middle of Alaska"; probably "My Lai"], to kill all the people over in Vietnam. And guess where he is? He lives in Columbus. William Calley, he runs the [unclear: "DVD"] jewelry store down there. That's his hero, where the Vietnamese people were also minorities. They didn't care. [If they'd] have been white folks, [if] they'd have killed 100 and some white people, 200 people, they would have been [unclear: "old everywhere"]. But he was his hero also.

Carlton Gary: So somebody, I'm just looking for somebody to tell me: why am I here? Footprint doesn't match, hair does not match, semen does not match, [unclear: "right arm"; possibly "bite mark"] does not match, shoes are not match, nothing match. So why am I here?

Jessica Noll: Why are you here? Why are you there? Why did they choose you?

Carlton Gary: Because I was not the first person. By the time they had put Livas out there, and I come along, and they looked and saw this case in [unclear: "New York"], which is similar to the case [unclear: "as a kid"], they looked and saw, that's [unclear: "a little easy to go from there"]. I had a record, you know. It was easy to do that, because, number one, the community was bursting for somebody, as you surely must know. Before, Livas, this thing was saying that "We got the guy, we think we got the guy." You know, they didn't have the guy. So you thought the community was just going to continue to sit by that? So then they wanted to build the case. But they [unclear: "felt it"; possibly "built it"] on what? And I just read the Eleventh Circuit, the Eleventh Circuit sent down their ruling, and the Eleventh Circuit clearly said their case is weak. It's a weak case.

Carlton Gary: [unclear: "We case the case we"] [inaudible] That's what the Eleventh Circuit [is] gonna say, on page 20 of their ruling from [unclear: "November to 2009"]. They say it is [unclear: "not me"]. So where's all this evidence that they have?

Jessica Noll: Well, you know, I don't know. They won't show us anything.

Carlton Gary: I...

Jessica Noll: I said, I don't know. They won't show us anything. They're claiming that it's still, the case is still pending.

Carlton Gary: [inaudible] So [inaudible]

Carlton Gary: So if the, if the case was so weak, why didn't they [unclear: "bring to"] a new trial? [inaudible] [unclear: "To know the law, because he's a layperson, but we're causing here."] I'm expected to know the law. [unclear: "One piece of document would not turn over."] [inaudible] [unclear: "Only down to we use the"] [inaudible] They turn him loose, like that, but when this case come along, it's a whole other story.

Speaker Not Identified: Oh.

Brendan Keefe: I was gonna say, do you mind if I ask a question? Oh, sorry. I just jump in here.

Speaker Not Identified: [unclear: "This isn't one of the lines that we just said."] [inaudible]

Brendan Keefe: Carlton, it's Brendan Keefe, the chief investigator that works with Jessica. So today the parole board hearing was, the parole board hearing was closed. They didn't want the public or the media in there.

Carlton Gary: Okay.

Brendan Keefe: They didn't want the public or media in the parole board hearing. The DA won't let us look at the case files from a 40-year-old case, because it's still, quote-unquote, pending until you're dead, basically. Do you feel that all this is happening in the dark? Why is this happening in the dark? Why don't they want the people to see what's going on, if there's nothing wrong with the case?

Carlton Gary: Thank you. Thank you. Hey, [unclear: "answer that question"]. But not [unclear: "on"] that. Well, listen to this. [unclear: "Has a wife know"; possibly "Did my wife know"] that I had a hearing in [unclear: "Julie's joint case"]? I don't know anything about this. Nobody consults to me about filing anything. And this is what I want my wife to put out there, tomorrow or today, or you guys put it out there. Before I went to the [unclear: "evidence you hear me"; possibly "evidentiary hearing"] on the extraordinary motion, I was not contacted by the lawyer. Did nobody come down here to talk to me about that.

Carlton Gary: I was promised, when they discovered that box of stuff in [unclear: "Donald's"] attic, I was promised that we would do that, that nothing would be [unclear: "brought about"]. And I found all these documents that said [there] was a guy there at [unclear: "Grand Howard"] that lived five steps behind Mrs. Woodruff's back door. They found stuff from her house underneath this house. His name never showed up on a suspect list until we got these documents from the attic. I asked Jack, I said, "Look, we need to push this. If you let them get on that stand for three hours, then we got this stuff here now. We got the [unclear: "hell in there"] to show that [unclear: "a settler's"; possibly "Sellers"] lied about, he didn't know anything about the community, he used the documents. We got the stuff to show that [unclear: name] confessed to [unclear: "four stringers"; possibly "four stranglings"] in [unclear: "your case"]. Why didn't we talk to these people?"

Carlton Gary: So there's a whole bunch of this stuff. So it's them, it's not Carlton Gary, exactly. So understand this: I did not go, my wife is not there, she was gone. My daughter's never gone to [unclear: "the area"]. Nobody [unclear: "conscious"; possibly "contacted me"], since I had this date on me. Find out how many of them came back here to talk to me. So I filed a motion in Butts County about this, the state [unclear: "is"]. I filed a motion to John Land, to, I'm sorry, Clay Land, down there. I filed a motion to him. You know what I mean? I said, I'm sure that the defendant got a right to have some [unclear: "faith in"; possibly "say in"] how he's defended. And they got a case from the U.S. Supreme Court now, out of Louisiana, where, you know, Sotomayor and all the people said, "Hey, a person can talk to himself in the jail. They can talk to himself in the gas chamber, unfortunately, but that defendant got a right."

Carlton Gary: So who's going to, who contacted me? And I got no [unclear: "jackpot"], because I had a, I had a hearing in [unclear: "George's, George's"; possibly "the judge's"] chambers about this very same [unclear: "community"]. And I'm not the only client. There's another client out here, [unclear: "Jefferson and Stanley, Morris Jefferson"]. Who was talking to me? Tell me something. Don't just call me on the phone and say, "Well, we gonna put this off," and [unclear: "on this other bank"] to another date, or something like that. Tell me what's going on. Nobody's been there.

Jessica Noll: So why do you think that?

Carlton Gary: They're coming up, absolutely, they're coming up. One of them boys, or two of them boys, they're coming up [unclear: "beyond the racist lane"]. And anybody ask that question, that's exactly what we were saying. Why? Why not? If you're the one who got all this stuff, why didn't you test this stuff? Why did you oppose it at every level? Why didn't you give me the money? You got a fair case, why didn't you do that? Why you lying? And [unclear: "let people justify permanent"]. When you got the statement, Bill Smith also said these people were [unclear: "growing beef"]. Well, we had the copies of the lab reports from the GBI. It doesn't say that.

Jessica Noll: So I have to ask you, you know, I don't know of any death row inmate, or someone facing the death penalty, who isn't going to claim some sort of either innocence or that the death penalty is the wrong sentence for their crime. Why should people listen to you, and...

Carlton Gary: Because they're not listening to me. I have the documents. They're listening to Dr. Thomas David for the GBI. They're listening to the lab guy that worked for the police from California. They're listening to the lab guy from Alabama. They're listening to the [unclear: "border" / "older"; possibly "Bode"] lab from Virginia. They're listening to everybody [unclear: "blood caused to get" / "carried by the blood Carter gear"], including the GBI. It's not me saying it. That's why they should, because it's not me talking. Other people might talk, but we have the documents. We got their reports. So it's not listening to me saying [unclear: "I'm guilty of everything" / "I'm jealous of everything"], but it's the lab report. It's the facts. Exactly what he asked earlier: why would they do that? Why would they not come out there with these facts? Why would they oppose all this stuff?

Jessica Noll: Exactly.

Carlton Gary: That's my point. Why would they? Listen, can y'all, can y'all stay here for a minute? Because these people, everybody [unclear: "have a heart attack for me"] to go around this corner around here, and I can come back and call y'all [unclear: "to maybe"] five, ten minutes?

Jessica Noll: Yeah, that's fine.

Carlton Gary: Okay, let me go out there, because everybody get on my nerve, you know what I mean?

Jessica Noll: Okay.

Carlton Gary: I'll call y'all back in about five, ten minutes, so we shouldn't take that long.

Jessica Noll: All right, we'll talk to you soon.

Carlton Gary: Yeah, [unclear: "I'll hear"]. All right, I'll call you back in a few.

Jessica Noll: Okay. [39:54 to 39:56: no speech in either machine source; recording ends.] ---