A Suspect

Carol:

Oh, my God.

Okay. I'm going to roll down the window so I can get a better look.

I’m driving down Copley Rd looking for the old Copley Theater. At least that’s what it was back in the 40’s. Didn’t last long.

A decade later, the old theater was gone. In its place, Akron’s only combination TV/radio station.

So this is WAKR, where I used to work back in the day.

WAKR radio has long since moved to a new, more modern building.

The old studios have been ravaged by time. The building is vacant. Deteriorating.

A local production company is making a spooky film that takes place on this street.. I can understand where they got the idea. This part of Copley Rd feels…creepy.

News Announcer:

WAKR TV-23 Akron/Canton.

Carol:

Definitely creepy.

I remember when that woman was attacked.

That woman was a fellow employee at WAKR. She was attacked by a man as she walked to her car around the time Phyllis was carjacked.

It was scary.

As I continued to cover the Cottle case, I was assigned a plum beat: The police beat. I went down to Akron PD every morning. I skimmed through reports. I established sources who might confidentially tell me what was going on in Akron – especially with the Cottle case.

The cops downtown told me – and everybody else – to “be careful.”

Security measures were put into place all over the city. That included TV23/WAKR.

Carol:

That's why they put up this fence because they wanted to better protect the employees as they walked outside to their cars.

Some women took self-defense courses to protect themselves. I learned to carry my keys between my fingers like brass knuckles, in case anyone tried to carjack me.

A good thing, in retrospect. The prime suspect in Phyllis’ attack lived a walk away from WAKR.

Yeah, that's where Samuel Herring used to catch the bus to go to his parole board.

It's just creepy to know he was always so close to me physically, right? It just goes to show that just by chance, Phyllis was the one.

Phyllis had been abducted less than a mile and a half from WAKR.

I’m Carol Costello. This is Blind Rage Episode 7: A Suspect.

Carol:

Detectives had a suspect: Samuel J. Herring.

They knew Herring had signed in to see his parole officer on March 20th. That put him in the area of the 1286 Bar – not far from where Phyllis’ car had been set on fire – where 3 people: the manager, bartender and a regular, the fabulously named, Chili Mo, witnessed an agitated man – who fit Herring’s description.

A cab driver later dropped that agitated man off near Herring’s parole office. Herring’s behavior in the parole office was suspicious. He signed in at 4:00 when he’d actually arrived at 4:10.

He left his gym bag in the lobby instead of taking it with him to meet with his parole officer, where the bag could be legally searched.

All of that intrigued Detective Chris Contos. He got on the phone and called his lieutenant, Lieutenant Stemple.

Contos:

I'm not familiar with Sammy. And I didn't even ask the parole officer yet, what record he has, but he had to have a serious record to be on parole. And I call, that's when I call Lieutenant Stemple and told him, I said, “Are you familiar with Sammy Herring?” And he says, “Oh yes. He's been around.”

Carol:

Oh yeah. Sammy Herring had been around.

He committed his first crime when he was a child – 11 years old. He would commit 7 more crimes before he turned 18.

Crimes like - destruction of property, throwing stones, assault and battery, cutting to wound and felonious assault.

All of those crimes had an element of aggression, an element of violence.

I can find no record that a child named Samuel Herring received psychiatric care.

I do know Herring came from a broken family. He was poor, black, and obviously in need of help.

Here’s criminologist Casey Jordan.

Casey Jordan:

To me, that indicates, when you have a police record starting at age eleven, that this isn't just nature versus nurture because we have different percentages of nature and nurture in all of us, free will versus the fact that we are, to a certain extent, a product of our environment. He would've been a product of his environment, but I have no doubt that he suffered from some sort of organic issues, mental illness.

But I suspect that if circumstances had been different and resources available and services available, he would've very likely been diagnosed from a very young age. Who knows? ADHD, could have had a schizotypal personality. But he's a smooth operator, so by the time he is in his twenties, he appears to have elements of an antisocial personality disorder. He can talk smoothly, but show absolutely no remorse while he is committing horrific violence.

Carol:

According to the American Psychological Association, people of color – especially back then – were “more likely to be ushered into the criminal justice system.”

And that’s what happened. Herring served time in a juvenile detention center over and over and over.

And he continued his life of crime into adulthood.

I’m looking through Herring’s adult criminal record now.

It started right back up when Herring turned 18.

Grand theft.

Less than a year later, criminal damaging.

Then assault.

Let's see, what else is in here?

He shot a man in the stomach in 1975. He got two to 15 years.

But he got out early. He was paroled in ’78.

And he promptly committed another violent crime.

By this time Herring was considered what was then known as “super-predator.”

Casey Jordan:

They say it takes three years of hard time incarceration before a convict becomes an inmate, and what that means is that they become institutionalized. They accept that, even if they get out of prison, they will never have a normal life. They will always lead a life of crime because no one will ever give them a job. No one will ever want to date them. No one will ever want anything to do with them.

The phrase we use in criminology is they become “crusted over,” they become unfeeling, unremorseful, like kind of all in with a poker game, except that that's an everyday thing to just live very high risk.

Carol:

In 1978, the judge threw the book at Herring. He was sentenced to 5-25 years.

And…you guessed it.

Herring would not serve 25 years. Or even 5 years.

By January of 1984 – after serving 4 and a half years – Herring was a free man.

Carol:

But he was clearly a violent person.

Bob Bulford:

Yes.

Carol:

Why was he free?

Bob Bulford:

Why was he free?

Carol:

Why was he free?

Bob Bulford:

Because the parole board let him out.

Carol:

Bob Bulford was the Director of the Career Criminal Program in ’84.

That program accelerated under the “law and order” Reagan administration. Under the program, repeat offenders were meant to stay behind bars longer. At the same time the prison population boomed – prisons became overcrowded and that meant some dangerous people had to be released early.

As director of the program, the parole board was still required to get Bulford’s input before they freed anyone.

Bob Bulford:

I pulled his file and I looked at it and, of course, the file in the prosecutor's office at that time, it had his prior record in it, and I said, "Fred, obviously we've got to oppose this," and he said, "Yeah." So I wrote a letter. Basically, I believe what I said in the letter was: he has a lengthy record, his last offense involved a burglary where he had a knife, and he's not above confronting people, and if you let him out he's going to hurt somebody.

Carol:

Bulford’s letter also insisted Herring receive psychiatric care. It never happened.

Bob Bulford:

I remember when they were doing the investigation and his name came up and they saw that... They said, "Sam Herring," and I thought, wait a minute, that's really familiar, and then I said, "I just wrote a letter about this guy." When they saw that he was at the parole office at 4 o'clock, we're thinking well, he's a pretty good suspect, isn't he?

Carol:

A pretty good suspect except for one thing: Herring never served time for rape or sexual assault. The most violent crimes he was convicted of involved men.

Here’s Casey Jordan.

Casey Jordan:

Now, the interesting thing is that he had no record for this kind of crime in the past, but we can't just accept that he's never done this before. It could be he's done it many times, and the crimes were never reported to the police or if he was, for instance, attacking sex workers in the past or drug addicts in the past, these sorts of vulnerable victims, number one, usually don't report it to the police because they just kind of consider it an occupational hazard of the lifestyle they lead. So that may have actually bolstered his courage to continue escalating and doing it.

Carol:

Akron Police paid Herring a visit at his sister’s house. He wasn’t there. Detectives left a card and asked him to come talk with them.

A few days later - Herring obliged. He sat down with detectives. Answered their questions.

From the police reports:

Voice of the Court:

Mr. Herring said, “I’ve been out of the Ohio State Penitentiary for 2 months. I don’t smoke or drink. I’m an amateur boxer.”

Carol:

As for where Herring was between noon and 4:30 on March 20th?

Voice of the Court:

Mr. Herring told officers, “I cooked and watched the beginning of a movie, Death Wish, or maybe Magic or 10 to Midnight, I don’t remember which one.

I left the house between 2 and 2:30, walked down Copley Road and caught the bus near WAKR to the parole office.”

Carol:

He added:

Voice of the Court:

I had nothing to do with the lady that got raped. I’m just trying to be a boxer and get to the olympics.

Carol:

Police asked to keep Herring’s jacket. He handed it over. Police placed it in a brown paper bag marked, “evidence.”

They also noted he had an inch-long scar on his left hand below his thumb.

Herring told police he would be glad to take a polygraph exam…

Voice of the Court:

…but I want my lawyer present.

Carol:

It would have been so simple to prove Herring was a good suspect had Phyllis’ sight returned. She could have identified him – or not – in a police lineup, but that was out.

What about…his voice?

Detective Contos thought about it.

He could record various suspects’ voices and ask Phyllis to listen to them – sort of like an audio police line-up.

Voice of the Court:

Ms. Cottle was asked if she could identify this person’s voice.

To which she replied, “I’ve thought about it a great deal. I’m not positive I could identify his voice. There was really nothing outstanding about it. I do know that it was a rather smooth type of voice. There was no dialect or accent or anything like that.”

Carol:

Because of that, Contos nixed the idea. Too unreliable. He stuck with the plan. He would continue to investigate this case like a homicide.

So Police released two sketches of the suspect: one drawn with help from someone at The 1286 Bar, the other sketched with the help of the bank teller.

I have both of those composites in front of me. They look nothing alike. Nothing. The shape of their faces, their noses and eyes are all different.

On the 24th detectives upped the game.

They brought in the 1286’s manager, the bartender, and Chili Mo.

The bartender looked at a photo array that consisted of 7 pictures. Included in that aray was a picture of Samuel herring.

The bartender studied the photos intently. He asked the detective to “put a hat on them,” like the man in the bar.

The detective used his fingers to cover part of the suspects’ foreheads. It was the best he could do.

The bartender paused, and then picked-out Herring’s picture along with another man’s photo.

The 1286’s manager looked at the photos, pointed to Herring’s picture, but could not say with one hundred percent certainty that Herring was the man she had seen in the bar.

Then, it was Chili Mo’s turn.

Detectives had high hopes that Chili Mo would come through for them. Not only had he given detectives the best description of the suspect, but he told them if he saw the guy again in person, he could definitely ID him.

Chili Mo studied the photos. And then studied them some more.

He turned to the detectives and said: “Sorry, I don’t recognize any of these guys.”

That troubled prosecutors.

Here’s Fred Zuch:

Fred Zuch:

It was a big part of our case, putting him in that area. We knew we could put him in that parole office, but we didn't know we could put him up the street. And I am sure that there were some real defects in the pre-trial identification process. I don't mean improper defects, just that the guy didn't pick him, or was leaning towards another photograph.

Carol:

That complicated their case. And it’s why many prosecutors today do not depend on photo arrays to ID suspects.

Here’s Emily Pelphry.

Carol:

Why was there a move away from photo arrays? What were the problems?

Emily:

I think that you have people that, and you see it in this case, right? I mean, you have people that, did they see him? Did they not see 'em? And you have all of these different answers. So from either side, I don't know that I would want to really rest my entire case on an identification when for every person that's identified him as a suspect, you have another person that's identified somebody else. So how is that going to help anyone really? It's kind of a wash.

Carol:

Prosecutors depend more on physical evidence like fingerprints, or blood, or other bodily substances, all things in short supply in Phyllis’ case.

Akron detectives tried hard to find those things.

They located two withdrawal slips that Phyllis’ attacker had sent through the bank’s vacuum tube.

And struck out. No fingerprints.

The lab tests on Phyllis’ clothes came back inconclusive.

There was still no knife. No fibers.

They didn’t even have a witness who saw Phyllis being carjacked on West Exchange Street.

Detectives needed one more big break.

They needed to find that house – two streets away from a bright blue house with a black eagle – and they needed to find it now.

Next week: Blue House, Black Eagle.

Emily:

You can't cross examine that house. It’s, in my opinion, the strongest part of this case.

[END CREDITS]