The Case of Curtis Flowers
The case of Curtis Flowers: a crime that took place in 1996 and was pinned on a boy who may not be guilty. Curtis Flowers was the perfect scapegoat. Police searched for months for the killer of four innocent people in an unsuspecting furniture shop. Curtis fit the profile and offered the perfect answer to their question. But was he guilty of the crime. There’s strong evidence pointing in another man’s direction.
The crime took place on July 16, 1996, in the small and unwarned town of Winona, Mississippi. In a family owned furniture shop named Tardy Furniture, Sam Jones discovered the bodies of three dead and one holding onto life by a thread. The three dead were Robert Golden, Carmen Rigby, and Bertha Tardy. Sixteen year old baseball star Derrick “Bobo” Stewart was lying in his own blood, clinging to life.
The case itself was a mystery. There were faint prints of a shoe in the blood as well as several empty 380 casings along with one live round. The presence of the live round indicates that the pistol had jammed during the killings.There was no apparant motive to the crime. Citizens of Winona were terrified. There was a murderer on the loose who appeared to be killing at random. They wanted him apprehended as soon as possible. Perhaps this is why Curtis Flowers was presumed guilty.
Eight months after the incident, Flowers was arrested in Texas. He had shoes matching the prints found at the scene of the crime. The shoe print found at the scene was a Grant Hill Fila shoe. He had worked Tardys Furniture in the past and had no previous criminal record. Authorities found $235 found hidden in his headboard($400 was stolen from the store). And although he had no gun, his relative did. And it was reported stolen on the same day. He also tested positive for gunpowder residue on his right hand. However, that was eight months after the crime took place.
There have been six trials for this case. In the first three, Flowers was convicted and sentenced to death by an all white jury(whether that has anything to do with it is up to you). In the fourth trial, the jury was split. Seven white, five black. All seven white jurors voted guilty. All five black voted innocent.
The fifth trial ended the same as the fourth. The jury couldn’t decide and was split 11–1. In the sixth however, the jury concluded that he was guilty and sentenced him to death. In the sixth trial, a man named Odell Hallmon testified. He says that Flowers admitted to his guilt involving the murders at Tardy’s Furniture. However, after the trial, he had this to say; “As far as him telling me he killed some people, hell, naw, he ain’t ever told me that. That was a lie,” he told APM Reports on a contraband cell phone from his prison cell. “It was all make-believe. Everything was all make-believe on my part … All of it was just a fantasy, that’s all. A bunch of fantasies. A bunch of lies.”(Mitchell)
After all this, Hallmon ended up killing three people and injured a fourth. He is currently serving over 3 life sentences.
So Curtis Flowers remains on death row after six separate trials on the same case. But the question remains. Is Curtis Flowers actually guilty?
Many fingers point towards another man. Marcus Presley was sixteen at the time of the Winona furniture store murders. In that summer, Presley was involved in five robberies with the threat of a gun present. Marcus Presley had two accomplices, one named Lasamuel Gamble, the other named Steven McKenzie who was the getaway driver. In four of the five crimes, Gamble was present with Presley. The fifth Presley did alone. All together, two innocent employees were shot and injured. Both went on to survive. Gambles weapon never went off. Presley was the shooter in both cases.
Just nine days after the Winona murders, in the town of Birmingham, Alabama, a local pawn shop met the same fate as the furniture store. There, two people were killed. Each was shot in the back of the head. Surveillance cameras reveal that Presley was the killer and Gamble was in attendance. It also shows that the heinous crime was committed using a 380 pistol that jammed repeatedly. The same kind of gun used at the Winona murders. The shoe print found, the one belonging to a Grant Hill Fila shoe, matches the shoes of both Gamble and McKenzie.
While there is a large amount of obvious evidence pointing at Presley, no one can ignore the stacks of eye witnesses claiming they saw him at the scene of the crime. Clemmie Fleming was one of these witnesses. She was driving through Winona at the same time the crime took place. “He was running away from the store,”(Elkins)Fleming claims. There are six others claiming to have seen him around the furniture store that morning. However, they can’t all agree on what he was wearing that day. Nor can they all agree on what time they saw him. The reportedly stolen gun wasn’t stolen until after 10:30. A half hour after the murders took place.
During the trials, the DA in charge of the trial, never told the jury of Marcus Presley’s potential involvement. In fact, he claimed that he was never even a suspect. Was this because they had already found a scapegoat that fit the profile? They could have found someone as fast as they could without really caring if they were convicting an innocent man to a lifetime in jail. They had found their man, and didn’t care if it was him or not. The real murderer was and still is Marcus Presley.