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- [00:00]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [00:25]
Jason Flom
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- [00:31]
Amy Brown
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- [01:01]
Gilbert King
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- [01:35]
Jason Flom
On July 15, 1949, Norma and Willie Padgett went out for a night on the town. According to the couple, during their ride home, car trouble forced them to stop on the side of the road. The following morning, Norma Padgett turned up in a nearby town alone. Once Willie was located, the couple told the local sheriff that while they were stranded, four men had overpowered Willie and raped Norma. Although a physician's findings as well as a witness account did not support this narrative, three local young men were apprehended Walter Irvin, Sam Sheppard, and Charles Greenlee. An associate of Greenlee's named Ernest Thomas was killed while being pursued through a swamp by police and an angry mob. When Sam Sheppard and Charles Greenlee both gave confessions, the growing mob called for the sheriff to produce the Three young men to be lynched. But the sheriff quelled the crowd with a promise that a jury trial would set them to their deaths. But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction, where we're covering the case of the Groveland 4. Ernest Thomas, Charles Greenlee, Samuel Shepard, and Walter Irvin. A Pulitzer Prize winning book, Devil in the Grove, helped secure their posthumous exoneration. So we've asked, and we're really privileged to have the author of that book to join us. In their stead, our audience will recognize him as the host of Bone Valley, the podcast series about another wrongful conviction out of Lake County, Florida. So it's my honor to welcome my great friend and colleague, Gilbert King.
- [03:21]
Thanks, Jason. I'm really looking forward to this. Thanks for having me on.
- [03:24]
We're really happy to have you. Now, Gilbert. This case took place in Groveland, Florida, and it's an agricultural town relying mainly on orange groves. And there was a pretty clear racial divide between the white orange grove owners and the mostly black farmhands. The local sheriff, Willis McCall, took it upon himself and was really tasked with keeping those black farm hands keeping their labor as cheap as possible. And one of the ways he was doing this was by running union organizers out of town. And don't forget, this was clan country during the late stages of Jim Crow, the years following World War II.
- [03:58]
You know, something really interesting is happening in the country at this time. You have more than a million black servicemen who are coming back from overseas, having fought in World War II. And many of them have experienced greater freedoms and respect abroad in places like Germany, France and England. And now they come back to the Jim Crow south and they're sort of expected to slip quietly back into that, you know, second class citizenship. And two of the men who would later become known as Groveland Four served the military. Then they came back to Groveland and they continued to wear their military uniforms, which was a very common thing. Sort of a reminder to the people in the south that, you know, I was willing to fight and die for this country, put my life on the line. I deserve a little more respect as an American citizen. But that was not what was waiting for them when they returned to the Jim Crow south.
- [04:45]
No. And these two young men you mentioned were 22 year olds, Samuel Shepard and Walter Irvin, who grew up in Groveland. And Sam Sheppard's father, Henry Shepard was a bit of a thorn in the side of your average white supremacist because he really kind of stuck out as a very successful farmer in what was once the black part of the county.
- [05:04]
Yeah, that's absolutely right. You know, and one of the things that, you know, Henry Shepard did when he first came to this land, it was swampland. So he drained it personally himself and he took the best land. But by draining the land, it became a desirable part of land in South Lake County. So now you had sort of this forced desegregation where white people were starting to move into this land and they resented the fact that the black man had the best land in the area. And so you started to see, like them letting their cows and their cattle go and graze on Henry Shepard's land. Henry tried to complain and Sheriff Willis McCall told him, no black man has a right to file a complaint against a white resident of Lake County.
- [05:43]
And that wasn't the only racist law that the sheriff made up. He specifically forbade black servicemen from doing what Sam and Walter had been doing, donning their uniforms and demanding their well earned and well deserved respect. So Sam and Walt were really already into crosshairs of the Klan here. But what about these other two men of the Groveland four? And I said men, but one of them, let's face it, was just a kid from Tennessee, right?
- [06:08]
Right. Charles Greenlee and Ernest Thomas. Charles Greenlee was a 16 year old kid who met Ernest Thomas in Gainesville. They were working at a fast food place together and Ernest said, come back to Lake county, you can work in the orange groves, you can make some money. They didn't even know Walter Irvin and Sam Shepard. It just all got caught up in the middle of July of 1949.
- [06:29]
Yes, July 15th to be exact, when 16 year old Charles Greenlee had been arrested for sleeping at a train station. Earlier on in the evening, 26 year old Ernest Thomas was at home with his family in the black part of town, Stuckey still. And then Sam and Walter had gone out drinking in nearby Orlando before returning to Groveland. Now what's the real story with the alleged victims?
- [06:50]
What had happened was a young couple by the name of Norma Padgett and her husband. Willie had only been married for about six months. And there was rumors going around town that, you know, Willie was an abusive husband to Norma and the families kind of wanted them to separate. Didn't think they were a mature, good couple to be together. And so they separated for a few months just into their marriage. And on July 15, 1949, they decided to sort of give it another chance and go out dancing. And so Willie picks up a bottle of whiskey, they go out to an American Legion hall in Lake County, Florida, start dancing. And shortly after midnight, Willie and Norma take off in Willie's car and they're going to go out for a snack.
- [07:32]
Now, we're not exactly sure what happened next, but they allegedly had some car trouble, pulled over. And what we do know for sure is that Norma was spotted the following morning alone in front of a cafe. Now, it's believed that Willie had gotten aggressive with Norma at some point and Violet, and that they needed to make up a story to cover for that fact. However, for now, let's stick with what is known, starting with Norma at about.
- [07:58]
6 in the morning, she's seen in a little town called Oka Humpka, standing outside this cafe called Bertoff's Cafe. And so Lawrence Bertoff is like this 18 year old kid, works for his father's cafe. He looks out the window and he sees this woman on the side of the road, opens up the cafe, pours some coffee. They talk for like 15 minutes. He says, you know, she doesn't seem very upset. She just says, I'm looking for my husband. We got separated the night before. She doesn't say anything about being sexually assaulted or anything like that. She basically just says, I need a ride to go back and look for my husband. Lawrence puts Norma in the car and they start driving down the road where the car broke down. And that's where they see Willie Padgett coming the other way in a car with a deputy. Lawrence Bertoft sees Norma get out, she goes over to her husband and that's it. And they drive off, off. And the next thing we know, Norma Padgett has made the accusations that four black men beat up her husband, took her off, raped her, and then dropped her off on the side of the road. So when she made those accusations, Sheriff Willis McCall basically claimed the story from Norma because she said initially I couldn't identify them, it was too dark. Willis McCall said, well, I know exactly who they are. And he just rounded up people that he believed were troublemakers in town. The first two he picked up were Walter Irvin and Sam Shepard, the ones that wore their military uniforms after their service. But you know, because Norma Padgett said that it was four men, they had to find two others. So Sheriff Willis McCall was kind of scrambling at that point. He finds Charles Greenlee, who just got into town. He was sleeping at a train station 20 something miles away. He got arrested for vagrancy. So they arrest him and say he was part of it. And then they find this other guy, Ernest Thomas who was supposedly with Charles Greenlee that night.
- [09:45]
And this is 1949, five years before the lynching of Emmett Till, when any kind of alleged impropriety from a black man or men to a white woman was met with extreme violence. And Norma's father, Coy Tyson, was a Klan member. At this point, clan in the region began to mobilize and descend upon Groveland. While the local clan had marched down to the shepherd family's farm and burned it to the ground. Sam Sheppard was already in custody, along with Walter Irvin and Charles Greenlee. But Ernest Thomas had not been rounded up yet.
- [10:14]
Ernest Thomas, he sees what's happening with all the clan coming into town, and he flees up north to a swamp. Sheriff Willis McCall puts together a posse of more than a thousand men, and they go up to North Florida and just hunt him down like a dog. Ernest Thomas was executed in the swamps up there. One of the coroner's reports said that his body was riddled with something like 400 slugs. And so that's pretty much how the Groveland Four became the Groveland Three.
- [10:42]
Then McCall and his deputies went back to the courthouse where Sam, Walter and Charles were in custody. While a bloodthirsty mob slowly began to amass on the courthouse steps.
- [10:52]
The deputies take the three young men down to the basement of the Lake County Courthouse. It's a basement that has a dirt floor with pipes hanging above. And so what they do is they handcuff the defendants to the pipes so that their hands are over their heads, and they break these Coke bottles on the ground and sprinkle it below their feet. And they pull down their pants and just start beating them with, like, rubber hoses and God knows what else, punching them. So as they're beating each man, they're having to move their feet around and they're stepping on this broken Gl. Beat these guys so bad that Charles Greenlee and Sam Shepard confess just to stop the beating. Walter Irvin just passes out unconscious, but he never confesses. He says. And then the sheriff goes out on the courthouse steps and basically holds up these white pieces of paper that are blank and says, yeah, all three of them confessed. We got the guys. We're going to be bringing them to trial. And, you know, within days of this, the Orlando Sentinel is putting out these editorial cartoons with electric chairs calling for the deaths.
- [11:54]
And the gathering racist mob. Definitely wanted death, to be sure, but not by electric chair. That didn't seem to be good enough for them.
- [12:02]
They wanted vengeance. This was going to be a lynching. And McCall recognized that he snuck the Groveland boys out of the jail because he knew there was going to be trouble. And he moved them up to Rayford State Prison. So when the Klan shows up outside the courthouse, he eventually strikes a deal. And he says, okay, Norma's father, Coyote and Willie Padgett can go up into the jail and look around and see if they see the defendants. And obviously these guys weren't there at this point. And so that's how he was able to sort of tamp down the mob. And the New York Times wrote a big story about him the next day. It said, you know, fast talking sheriff prevents a lynching in Lake County.
- [12:39]
Yeah, he prevented a lynching maybe. But the misdirected violence that followed is reminiscent of the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, when an angry white mob, spurred on by a false allegation of sexual impropriety by a black man against a white woman, burned down a thriving Tulsa, Oklahoma community known as Black Wall street and killed anyone and everyone they could find. And this Groveland mob was not all that different.
- [13:04]
Right. And that's, you know, just a very common thing in the Jim Crow South. It happened in Florida with Rosewood. It's happened in Ocoee, where these accusations just sparked this white violence, sometimes driving every black person out of these towns. In this particular case, the Ku Klux KL started burning down the homes in the black part of town called Stuckey. Still, what's really interesting is you have all these really wealthy white citrus barons, basically, and they don't want to see a mass exodus of labor. So they're actually sending their trucks in there and trying to move blacks in Lake county to safety because they don't want what's happened in other places like Ocoee and Rosewood, where all of a sudden you lose the black labor force that hits them economically. So they're actually protecting them. And National Guard had to come into Lake county to sort of stop the violence, to stop the destruction of the black community. You know, it's then the Klan starts turning on the wealthy people, saying, if you talk to the FBI about this, we're going to burn down every building your own. You're not safe either. And there's a very famous photograph of Sheriff Willis McCall where he's out surveying the ruins, the ashy ruins of these houses that were burned down the following night. And what you later learned through FBI reports and informants was that the sheriff himself, Willis McCall, was the one supervising the Klan about which houses to burn down. He was on the scene. The Night before.
- [14:25]
Was he a Klan member?
- [14:26]
He wasn't just a Klan member. I mean, informants in the Klan meetings would say Sheriff Willis McCall was the one giving orders, giving him legal advice, telling him not to talk to police. Sheriff Willis McCall was really trying to have it both ways.
- [14:39]
Right. So on a national stage, McCall appeared to be a champion of even keel justice. But locally, he had actually led the Klan in their bloodthirsty rampage through Stuckey. Still. And remember, this case and others like it represented a slow shift away from lynching into a more sugar coated form of white supremacy and white terrorism.
- [15:04]
What's really remarkable about this case is the transition from lynchings to the death penalty. The way the death penalty was used, and back then it was a capital offense to be charged with a rape of a white. I think in the state of Virginia there were 49 cases where a man was executed for rape. All 49 of those men were black men accused of raping a white woman.
- [15:28]
And you can see throughout the history of the death penalty in this country how unevenly it has been applied. Now, if there's any silver lining to this story, it's that the overwhelming destruction and mayhem garnered the attention of the naacp, who sent none other than NAACP attorney Franklin Williams and future supreme court justice Thurgood Marshall. And they were there to represent the Groveland 3.
- [15:54]
Franklin Williams showed up at the jail to interview these men and got their statements. And he said he was absolutely disgusted by what he saw. Three weeks after these beatings, these men were still wearing the same clothes. There was blood all over the clothes, welts in their head, teeth were knocked out, they were viciously beaten, and now they're going on trial for their lives.
- [16:14]
The prosecutor, Jesse hunter and Sheriff McCall already had the tortured confessions and Norma Padgett ready to identify them in court. In addition, they had tried to shore up any other potential witnesses, starting with the kid from the cafe, Lawrence Bertoff.
- [16:29]
You know, he told a story that they were threatening to, you know, destroy his father's cafe if he didn't go along with this. And his mother said, lawrence, just tell the truth, don't, don't lie. Just tell the truth. We'll deal with all that. And he tries to tell the story of what he observed, but it doesn't fit the state's narrative. So what does the state do? They hide Lawrence Bertoft from the defense, basically get him to leave town. They take all of the defendants families and lock them up in jail so that they can't share stories and talk about alibis. I mean, these are the kind of things that law enforcement could get away with in the South. We learned this because I filed a FOIA on this case to get all the FBI records. And if you look at the FBI interviews with Norma Padgett, they do not match the story Norma Padgett was telling at trial. But of course, the defense didn't even have access to these FBI interviews either, so they never knew the whole story.
- [17:23]
And then there's the doctor, right? Dr. Jeffrey Binovelt.
- [17:28]
Absolutely. Hours after this alleged attack, he does the medical exam of Norma Padgett. And I got my hands on his report. He concluded that there was no evidence of any kind of sexual assault to the degree of which Norma Padgett reported. What does the state do? Basically, they hide Dr. Beneveld from the defense. Those are the kind of things that Franklin Williams and Thurgood Marshall were contending with.
- [17:51]
And this went to trial only about two months after the alleged rape in front of Judge Truman Futch. Now, I'm going to take a wild guess and say that this was an all white jury.
- [18:01]
All white men. Yes.
- [18:03]
Yeah. And get this. The prosecutor, Jesse Hunter, he actually did not present Sam and Charles's tortured false confessions, which you don't have to be Colombo, to figure out that he knew they were false and that he actually thought that the torture had been so extreme that the jury might see through them, even this all white, all male jury. But instead they produced some plaster casts of Walter Irvin's shoe prints, allegedly from the scene, which screams malfeasance and it reeks of junk science. They also presented a pair of Walter's jeans, pointing to a stain and alleging that it was, quote, a human stain, unquote. Who. Whose human stain, though? What kind of fluid? They didn't even bother to say that. They probably didn't know. Think about the time and place this was. But I understand that Groveland 3 took the stand in their own defense, right? Starting with Sam and Walter.
- [18:53]
Sam Shepard and Walter Irvin completely denied it. Charles Greenlee said, look, I was on another side of town. I was locked up in a jail for loitering. I don't know who those. Walter Irvin and Sam Shepard. I've never seen them before in my life.
- [19:04]
And with Bertoff hidden and any potential alibi witnesses locked up and with no access to the FBI's interviews with Norma Padgett and barely two months to prepare in the lead up to the trial, had the defense been able to uncover anything meaningful or even helpful by this.
- [19:20]
Point, the Defense state heard rumors that this doctor had been out there and had done this exam. And they tried to get their hands on the doctor or FBI cooperation, but they were told that this was still an investigation in progress and that they didn't have rights to the doctor or his testimony or even his report. This is how it was stacked against the Groveland three.
- [19:40]
And really what did any of this matter, considering Norma Padgett was going to take the stand?
- [19:46]
Thurgood Marshall was told, like, the quickest way to send your clients to the electric chair was if a black man stood up in court and questioned the word of a white woman. In fact, Thurgood Marshall had to hire a white lawyer by the name of Alex Akerman to come in. And so what they basically said is, we're not saying that this didn't happen to you, Ms. Padgett. We're just saying that you've identified these suspects incorrectly. And that was as far as they were were willing to go. And so when Norma Padgett takes the stand, she points out to the three black men sitting at the defense table and refers to him as the N word for each of them and basically says, those are the men that raped me by the time they came to the verdict. Walter Irvin and Sam Sheppard are sentenced to death by electric chair. Charles Greenlee, because of his age, 16, was given life on a chain gang. Thurgood Marshall later said, that's how you know the jury believed that your client was innocent. In the south, they only get life in prison.
- [20:53]
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- [21:13]
Thurgood Marshall and his lawyers at the naacp, they understood the appellate process. What they also know is that the state of Florida has committed some egregious violations of the Constitution. The way Florida selected a grand jury, they were pointing out black people in the community, inviting them in, and then using peremptory strikes to get them off. The Supreme Court had already ruled that this was an illegitimate way to select a jury. Marshall, he also knew that there was so much pretrial publicity, assuming that they were guilty and calling for executions that there should have been a change of venue. So that's what they argued before the Supreme Court in 1951.
- [21:51]
This appeal was only for Sam and Walter, but not for 16 year old Charles Greenlee.
- [21:56]
And Marshall explained to Greenlee, like, look, we could get you in this appeal and you could get a retrial and you might get convicted and sentenced to death next time because you're no longer a 16 year old kid, now you're 18 and the jury might not have any sympathy for you. So he persuades Greenlee to not join the appeal.
- [22:13]
So the Supreme Court recognized the constitutional violations and overturned Sam and Walters convictions and ordered them a new trial, which broke Sheriff Willis McCall's promise of a legal lynching in the electric chair.
- [22:25]
So Sheriff Willis McCall says on the night of the retrial, I'll drive up to Rayford State Prison myself, pick up Sam Shepard and Walter Irvin and bring them back to the courthouse. Him and his death. While they're driving back down, McCall gets back into Lake county. And then curiously, he turns off onto a dirt road and he starts shaking the wheel of his car and says, boys, I think I got a flat. He pulls over, orders Shepard and Irvin out of the car, opens the door and opens fire. Shot Sam Sheppard three times. The third shot straight between the eyes, killing him instantly. Walter Irvin is handcuffed to Sam Shepard. McCall drags them both out of the car and shoots Walter Irvin twice. Once in the chest and once in the side. The next thing we know, there's Sam Shepard lying dead in a ditch, handcuffed to his best friend, Walter Irvin.
- [23:21]
And the only reason we know any of this was that Walter Irvin was still alive.
- [23:26]
The only thing he could do because he was handcuffed was he pretended to be dead. And he said that's when he heard the sheriff get on his radio, call back to his deputy and say, jimmy, Jimmy, I got him good. Get back here. The deputy circles back in his car. Walter Irvin is still conscious. And he hears the second police car coming. And he hears these footsteps of James Yates. And he's laying there trying not to breathe. And that's when he feels a flashlight shine over his face. And he hears the deputy say, this n ain't dead yet. And at that point, Irvin opens his eyes and he's staring down the barrel of a.38 caliber Smith and Wesson. The next thing he knows, another shot is fired. It goes clean through his neck.
- [24:15]
So now McCall and Yates radioed it in and their team shows up, including the prosecutor, Jesse Hunter, and a photographer.
- [24:23]
The photographer shows up. He says, Willis McCall is just pacing, saying, they tried to escape. I had no choice. They came after me. I had to. I had to shoot him. I hate that this has happened, but, you know. And he's Got a little blood trickling down his face. His clothes are disheveled. Fifteen minutes later, an ambulance shows up, takes Sheriff McCall to the hospital. Interestingly enough, there's a very famous photograph that was taken of the body of Sam Shepard and also Walter Irvin. When that flash fired and that picture was taken, Jesse Hunter said one of those boys just moved. And sure enough, Walter Irvin was still alive, still breathing. And so they bring Walter Irvin to the hospital as well.
- [25:07]
When Walter finally regained consciousness, Thurgood Marshall, a team of FBI agents, and a court stenographer were present to hear what had really happened. So pick back up with just after Walter was shot by Yates, that's when.
- [25:20]
He hears the sheriff and the deputy say, we gotta make this look like an escape. Rip my clothes. And they start fabricating evidence. They grab hair out of Sheriff McCall's head and place it in Sam Shepard's hand as if there was some kind of struggle. What's really interesting at this point is the FBI, they've already taken a statement from Sheriff Willis McCall, who says that he was being attacked and he emptied his revolver into them, shooting them six times. Well, the FBI is thinking to themselves, well, we've recovered five of those bullets. The sixth bullet that went clean through Walter Irvin's neck is never going to be recovered if the sheriff is telling the truth, because he says that they were standing and approaching when the last gunshot was fired. But if Walter Irvin is telling the truth, we have an idea where that final six bullet might be. And so they rush back to the crime scene from the night before, and they find it still cordoned off. And they find the blood stain where Walter Irvin was laying. And 10 inches below the surface of that soil, they find a.38 caliber slug.
- [26:28]
So the FBI had irrefutable forensic evidence that Walter was telling the truth and the sheriff was lying.
- [26:35]
At this point, you know, the FBI put together this damning report with forensic evidence, proof of perjury, urging the U.S. attorney in Tampa to fully prosecute the sheriff and the deputy for murder and attempted murder. And this U.S. attorney, who's a known segregationist appointed by Woodrow Wilson, quickly quashes the investigation and it goes back to.
- [26:59]
A local level, which meant going back in front of the trial Judge Truman Futch, who had empaneled what's known as a coroner's jury, a body convened to assist a coroner in determining the cause of death. But with what we've seen so far, we could pretty much predict how this is going to go.
- [27:15]
The coroner's jury was appointed by Sheriff Willis McCall. He picked his own friends and business associates to judge whether he used reasonable force on Walter Irvin. Sam Shepard, the judge Truman Futch says, well, you know, because the coroner's jury said that it was, you know, self defense, there's no need to empanel a grand jury. One of the FBI agents even wrote in a report, you know, he was wondering why this was going nowhere. And he was told that it was quashed for four Tranquility of the South. In other words, if people really knew what had happened in this incident, they might riot in the streets instead. Thurgood Marshall and his lawyers never knew about the reports, never knew what the FBI had really written in this case. And so that was hidden from them as well. And so sure enough, they go right to a second trial.
- [28:05]
And even without the FBI's proof of Walters version of events, his story of survival cast enough doubt on Willis McCall.
- [28:13]
This has become embarrassing for the state of Florida with this out of control sheriff. And the governor at this point sort of wants this to go away. And so, so they sent down an emissary to Thurgood Marshall and saying, look, get Walter Ervin to plead guilty. We'll take the death penalty off the table and then we can come back to this once it quiets down and try and get Walter Ervin out of prison. Ervin says, yeah, I don't want to go to the electric chair. What do I got to do? And Marshall says, you got to stand up in court and admit that you raped Norma Padgett. He says, I'm not telling a lie. I'm not going to do that. I'm not admitting to something I didn't do. And Marshall's like, like imploring him like, the state of Florida is going to kill you. They are going to convict you again. Trust me on this. And Ervin's like, nope, I'm not lying. I'm not going to do it. And so he goes forward with a second trial. As Marshall predicted, he's convicted and sentenced to death.
- [29:02]
Governor Leroy Collins knew that this was unjust and in 1955 commuted Walter sentence to life with the possibility of parole.
- [29:10]
Walter Irvin ends up serving 20 years before he's finally paroled and released. Here's another part that's really disturbing. Jason. He receives news after his release that his uncle has passed away in Lake county and he has to write to the county for permission to come back to Lake county because he's living down in Miami. He comes back to Lake county to attend his uncle's funeral. He's found dead in his car the same day he arrives back in Lake County.
- [29:40]
The official story was that he died of natural causes on February 16, 1969.
- [29:46]
People are absolutely convinced that Sheriff Willis McCall has finally gotten to him again.
- [30:01]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [30:25]
Jason Flom
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- [30:32]
Amy Brown
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- [31:01]
Gilbert King
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- [31:37]
Jason Flom
Charles Greenlee After 10 years he was basically released and so he went on and had a very successful life, moved back to Tennessee, opened up his own business, raised a family and you know, never talked about this with his. He just found it so shameful. He didn't want to poison his own children with these kind of stories of racism, so he kept them all to himself. He was the last of the Groveland Four to die. He died in 2012.
- [32:03]
Wow. That's really just a short time ago. I Mean, this is not some ancient history, folks. And he died the same year the Devil in the Grove was published. And unfortunately, Charles didn't live long enough to see that. Your investigation for the book helped lead to all of their exonerations. With the benefit of a barely more modern era, you were able to see way more than what was shared with the defense, which confirmed what Sam and Walt knew all along.
- [32:31]
At one point, it was learned that Walter Irvin and Sam Shepard were driving home from a club in Orlando, and they came across Willie and Norma on the side of the road. And because of the broken down car, Sheppard and Irvin stopped and they tried to help them by pushing the car out. And Norma, because they couldn't get the car to work, Norma got out of the car and handed Sam Shepard some whiskey for trying to help them get out. And Willie kind of flipped out at that and said something like, I don't drink behind no n word and got mad. And they got into a fight with Sam Shepard, and Sam Shepard seems to have gotten the better of Willie Padgett, left him on the side of the road. They take off in their car, and that's when Willie said, oh, I got attacked by four black men. And he tried to invent this story. And they made it much worse by, you know, basically Norma Padgett claiming that she'd also been raped when they took away her from the scene. So these accusations are obviously explosive. Willie Padgett didn't want his pride hurt, so he had to invent this story. We got to say, I was beat up by four black men. And I think that's what the defense believed was the real story that started all this.
- [33:40]
And again, what a crazy full circle thing. Here's these guys doing a good deed, which they had to know there was some element of risk in that anyway. Right. You know, to be two black men stopping on the side of the road with a white couple at nighttime in the Deep South. But they did it anyway, right? They did the right thing. And of course, it backfires as badly as anything possibly could. So it. It's really extra sickening because of that element to me, and I'm sure to many people in our audience.
- [34:08]
Yeah. And, you know, one of the things when I started really investigating this story that really jumped out at me was that, you know, I always just assumed that the Klan had, you know, racial motives and everything, but they were also sort of this moral enforcer in these communities in the Deep South. Say you're a mother of a child and you're you have an alcohol problem. You're drinking a lot, and you're neglecting your child. You might get a visit from the Klan and a beating. And that was the way they sort of enforced this moral code. If you were beating your wife, that might earn you a visit from the Klan. And the Klan was very much involved in this part of Florida. And Willie Padgett had a reputation, and I've seen his rap sheet for being rough with women. And so it seems very likely those were the rumors in town that he was hurting Norma, and that's why they separated. So, you know, we don't know what happened that night where he pulls the car over on the side of the road. But the next thing we know that, you know, Norma's making these accusations that she was abducted and sexually assaulted by these four black men. And Sheriff Willis McCall had to put this story together, and that's why he's out there searching for people that he thinks are good suspects for this.
- [35:12]
You know, it's really crazy, Gilbert, and it's giving me the chills to think about. But knowing what we know about Padgett's, you know, proclivity for violence against women, it's within the realm of possibility that by stopping their car, they may have actually saved Norma's life. And then it turns around full circle, and she ends up creating this false narrative and false accusations that ended theirs effectively. Right. And, of course, your book does such an incredible job of exposing this. And that book, that work of yours, it led to the absolute pardons for these four men in January 2019.
- [35:51]
Yeah, you know, that was really remarkable because I'd go around and do these lectures down in Florida just talking about the story, and more and more people were reading about it. And I remember, like, being at certain book signs where people would come up to me and sort of whisper in my ear, like, don't worry. We're looking into this. We're going to help you. And I'm like, always, who are these people? And one time a guy said, you know, watch the news tonight. And Senator Marco Rubio stood on the floors of Senate and basically said, you know, now is the time to acknowledge the wrongdoing with the Groveland Four. These men need to be pardoned. And there became this movement. And I was kind of watching this very curiously. And, you know, sure enough, you have had Ron DeSantis, who was running for governor at this time. He actually said publicly that when I take office, if I win, this is going to be one of the first things that I address and, you know, a lot of people were very surprised by this, that it was taken on this sort of bipartisan level of support. And sure enough, I think just like two days into Governor DeSantis first term, he called a meeting with his cabinet. And it was, you know, I went there, it was up in Tallahassee. It was extraordinary. Family members of the Groveland four testified. You know, I also testified and, you know, basically my point was this isn't a he said, she said. We're going on documentation. There's proof of perjury, prosecutorial misconduct. That's the reason we're here today to address what happened in that courtroom to these men who were wrongly accused of this. They voted right there unanimously on the floor to pardon the Groveland four and to have the investigation reopen, opened.
- [37:24]
So despite Ron DeSantis's record otherwise, there's no doubt that this was the right thing to do, even in the face of Norma Padgett, who was still alive and voiced her opposition. So what happened with the case after it was reopened?
- [37:38]
The Attorney General of Florida put the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in charge of the investigation. And two agents came up to me in New York. I gave them all my files. And so the FDLE did like a two year investigation. And the bar is there needs to be new evidence in order to, to get to a posthumous exoneration. And that report concluded that there's no new evidence. And I remember State Attorney Bill Gladson called me up and he said, you know, is there any new evidence out there? Have you found out anything? Because I just cannot go back to these families and tell them that there's nothing that can be done. And so one of the things that had always haunted me about this case was that the physical evidence from both trials, for 70 years, it was missing. About two weeks later, I got a text with a photograph from State Attorney Bill Gladson. And it was a box that he had found in a different courthouse. And he said it was the Groveland evidence. And inside that box were the jeans, the dungarees that Walter Irvin was wearing on the night of this alleged attack. And the prosecutor, Jesse Hunter, had held up these pants in both trials and pointed to a stain and said to the jury, this stain was evaluated. It's a human stain, and it belongs to Walter Irvin. He's guilty. Well, Gladson took those pants, and you could still see the stain on it. And he had them DNA tested, and the results came back that that was not a human stain. So Jesse Hunter, the prosecutor, had lied about the evidence against Walter Irvin. And State Attorney Gladstone said, that rises to new evidence. I can use this, that, you know.
- [39:18]
To bring it full circle. In August 2021, investigators spoke with a grandson of Jesse Hunter, Broward Hunter. The grandson said that he had found correspondence in his grandfather's law office that convinced him that Jesse Hunter, the prosecutor at the time, and the judge presiding over the retrial both knew that no rape had occurred. Investigators were also skeptical about evidence provided by James Yates, a sheriff's deputy who was the states primary witness in the 1949 trial and the 1951 retrial.
- [39:50]
Basically, what they did was they confiscated Walter Irvin's shoes the night he was arrested, and they basically took the shoes and made these fake plaster impressions. It was completely manufactured. I later found out that this same deputy, James Yates, actually got caught a couple years later doing this when one of the deputies turned him in and said, he's not taking these footprints from the crime scene. He's going in the backyard and doing it on the soil there. And the FBI did an investigation and found out that that's exactly what happened. And so Yates later got indicted himself for manufacturing evidence, which he was doing throughout his career.
- [40:25]
So what did Gladson finally do with all of this evidence?
- [40:29]
Gladson wrote this incredible motion calling for the immediate dismissal of charges against all four of the Groveland four, saying that the prosecution embarrassed themselves, perjured themselves, and committed a grave injustice against these four wrongfully accused men.
- [40:46]
So in November 2021, Circuit Court Judge Heidi Davis in Lake County, Florida, granted the state's motion to posthumously dismiss the indictments of Ernest Thomas and Samuel Shepard and vacated the convictions of Charles Greenlee and Walter Irvin.
- [41:02]
And so Florida, you know, however you want to look at it, they actually did follow up with this and did correct this gross injustice so that the names of the Groven 4 are now officially clear. Weird.
- [41:15]
Amen to that. It's too late, but it's not too late. So I don't even know if that makes sense, but it's just how I feel and can't help thinking about all the other cases we'll never know about, as we might never have known about this one if not for that incredible twist of fate that that young man survived being shot three times on the side of a dirt road, handcuffed to his best friend. So, Gilbert, look, this story. I'm so glad we did this. I'm so, so again, just honored to work with you and to know you and call you my friend and, you know, Every episode we end the same way, which is what the segment called Closing Arguments. It's where I get to turn my microphone off, kick back in my chair with my headphones on, and just listen for you to share any final thoughts.
- [42:06]
Yeah. Well, thanks, Jason. I really appreciate it. And, you know, I sit here, you know, I listen to your show all the time. And one of the things that's sort of depressing about this story is that, you know, there is no person who survived all this who is able to come back on and say, at least justice was done. All four of the Groven four are, you know, deceased. Now, there's family members who basically do say that, you know, this obviously is not going to bring back their family members, but these were people who continued to live in Lake county for decades under the false narrative that. That their relatives were convicted rapists and that the sheriff was defending himself because these bad people tried to kill the fine sheriff of Lake County. And that's why narratives are so important. If Walter Irvin had died on the side of that road, like he said, nobody ever hears of this story. The official narrative of Sheriff Willis McCall would have carried the day. And I think that there are so many cases like this, especially in the Deep south, where you have these young men who are just absolutely railroaded by the system. They don't have lawyers who put up much of a fight. They actually serve as, like, lampposts on the side and sort of are tools in leading towards the convictions. And this is what the system looked like back then. Well, you know, the system really isn't that much different today. Things have gotten better in the courts, and certainly technology has helped us. Like I said, you know, Walter Irvin's story dispels the official narrative because you can see it with your own eyes. There's a bullet that ended up exactly where Walter Irvin said it was that proved that this was murder and attempted murder. And these stories are just common back in the day. And, you know, you can look to cases like Trayvon Martin, which happened in the same part of Central Florida, 2012, right when this book came out. And I can't tell you how many people came up to me and said, you know, nothing's changed. The official narrative is not the correct narrative. You know, and the only thing I really add in closing is that thanks to people like Thurgood Marshall and Franklin Williams and the NAACP lawyers, the justice system is different. I mean, it's hard to imagine a time back in 1940 where you could actually coerce and beat a defendant and if he confessed, it was a legitimate confession in court. These are the things that these laws lawyers were fighting against. So the system is better, but it's still obviously these kinds of wrongful convictions are happening all the time and that's why it's so important for a show like Wrongful Conviction. These stories are going a long way towards not just educating jurors, future jurors, but also improving the integrity of the courts that we do get them wrong sometime and that we need to listen to these stories when there's compelling evidence of innocence. Innocence.
- [44:58]
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early by subscribing to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team, Connor Hall, Annie Chelsea, Lila Robinson and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wardes and Jeff Claire Clyburn. The music in this production was supplied by three time Oscar nominated composer J. Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms at Lava For Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at its jasonflom Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one.
- [45:46]
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