Armstrong said a law enforcement officer told him the gun had been sent to the state Crime Lab, determining this .380 handgun wasnt the murder weapon. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008); The Social Network (2010) His full criminal history is too lengthy to reproduce here. UNLOCK PROFILE. She lived in Winston, Mississippi, United States in 1930 and Beat 2, Winston, Mississippi, United States in 1940. Whoever did this crime (the Tardy murders) was a good shot.. Curtis Flowers, as any prison guard who has ever worked with him can tell you, has no demons. Presley and Gamble made three runs to Boston during the summer of 1996: once after their June crime spree, once after the pawn shop murders and once immediately after the furniture store murders in Winona. It wasnt until 2016 that defense lawyers took a closer look at Armstrongs statement that he found a .380 handgun. He allegedly stabbed a woman with a screwdriver, among other violent crimes. Both men bounced from one traumatic living arrangement to another with no respite. The answer was yes many, many times. "I don't understand how she said that.". Steven McKenzie, the driver of the getaway car in the pawn shop murders, was arrested on August 1 in his hometown of Boston, Massachusetts. Following their Alabama crime spree, Presley and Gamble fled north to Boston, where Gamble had relatives. Afraid that he would be shot on sight if he didnt surrender, Hemphill turned himself in at the local police station (wearing Grant Hill Filas, the shoes investigators had linked to a bloody footprint at the crime scene) and was immediately handcuffed and booked into the local lock-up. Jessie Mae Hemphill [1]1923-2006 Blues musician, singer, songwriter, guitarist, percussionist Blues musician and vocalist Jessie Mae Hemphill [2] was a paradox. He's also targeted women in general and often women carrying purses. Phone Number: (704) 751-NZMM +2 phones. Willie James Hemphill; Willie James Hemphill, Age 44. aka Willie Jr Hemphill. Last month, the Supreme Court overturned Flowers latest conviction, citing In The Darks reporting. For Ali and the other lawyers working on Flowers' appeal at the time, this was a significant revelation. But there was a three-week gap in the Alabama crime spree right at the time of the Tardy murders. I know he didnt do it, Archie Flowers said. Yet despite a number of theft and drug charges, probation violations, at least four domestic violence convictions and a girlfriend who alleges he stabbed her 13 times Hemphill has managed to avoid a long stint in prison. In 1880 James, now 16, has an additional. There are 60+ professionals named "Willie Hemphill", who use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas, and opportunities. When the podcasts reporter Parker Yesko confronted Hemphill about whether he committed the murders, he denied it, and the show included audio of the hideous, misogynistic things he said in response. State investigator Matthews told the jury he didnt check Hemphills alibi, ruling him out by conversation alone. But how could a single person (especially a man like Curtis Flowers) dispatch four victims with a bullet to the back of the head? <a . Reporters from In the Dark tried to contact Hemphill online to present him with these findings. Visitation: 6-8 pm Friday, March 2, 2012 at Laurel Land Funeral Home. Prosecutors said repeatedly at trial that the only suspect seriously investigated was Flowers. Information APM Reports obtained from the Montgomery County Sheriffs Department through a public records request shows Hemphill was held for 11 days in jail. Born in 2 Jun 1941 and died in 27 May 2008 Gaffney, South Carolina Willie James Hemphill Selected filmography. You can send your sympathy in the guestbook provided and share it with the family. Presley wasnt the only suspect defense attorneys didnt know investigators had seriously considered. When In The Dark spoke to Woods, she denied the two were together. It was a .380-caliber automatic handgun, coated in dirt and rust. After the second stick up, the two men argued about whether they should have killed the witness. One of them, LaSamuel Gamble, had more money in his possession when he returned to Alabama, Presley said. 2) and Curtis Flowers (No. They wanted to ask him about his alibi for the day of the Tardy Furniture murders, an alibi that hadn't checked out. F.T. Hemphill had previously told police and the podcast that he was not in Winona on the morning of the murders. Willie James Hemphill, age 37, Justice, IL Search Report. No one was going to all that trouble over the approximately $400 investigators say was in the till that morning. The day in photos. By the time Presley and Gamble were arrested, Doug Evans wasnt interested in alternative scenarios; he knew Curtis was the killer. By the end of the two episodes devoted to the Flowers case, they had all abandoned Curtis as a suspect. Wiilie Hemphill passed away in Bryan, Texas. Can Marcus Presleys affidavit be trusted? That brings us to a theory that has been explored extensively by some of the folks currently representing Mr. He was born on December 6, 1948 in Weir, Mississippi the son of Eddie Allen and Garner Lee Edwards Hemphill. Gamble told me that they saw a few licks while they were in Mississippi. Jessie Mae Hemphill; Jimmie Gordon; Jimmy "Duck" Holmes; Jimmy Burns; Jimmy Dawkins; Jimmy Holmes; Jimmy Johnson; . Matthews never responded. <p>Prosecutors have always said that Curtis Flowers was the only serious suspect in the Tardy Furniture investigation. WrongManleans tentatively fingers Doyle Simpson as the prime suspect. Willie James Hemphill has done many terrible things. Hemphills name came up briefly in Flowers 2010 trial. Willie James Hemphill was detained for 11 days following the Hardy Furniture murders and wore the same brand of shoes as the bloody footprints found at the scene. Willie Ray Hemphill, Jr., 49, of Bryan, passed away Thursday, August 13, 2009 at his residence. According to testimony in Flowers' first trial, authorities found $255 hidden in the headboard of Flowers' girlfriend. That might not be so if the whole world wasnt watching, but it is. In Flowers' third trial, Snow testified that the height of the man she saw was between 5-foot-3 and 5-foot-5. Mississippi Smoldering: Tom Mangold reports on the Curtis Flowers case in 2009, Dwelling in a land of disbelief: My University Years . Saums believes whoever carried out the crime had inside information. And so, in the corridors of the courthouse last week, a female journalist with In The Dark confronted Hemphill about his airtight alibi. Obituaries Section. A series of Willie James Hemphill mugshots ranging from 2000 through 2016. Hemphill, Willie Mae Willie Mae Hemphill, Born March 8, 1926. Right now, Willie Hemphill lives in Rock Hill, SC. . 0.68 2.43 /5. But Flowers deserves to have a fair trial and prosecution, he said. Free this man. In the sixth, he was again convicted and sentenced to death, and his latest appeal was ongoing when the podcast started. Whoever killed four innocent people in the Tardy Furniture store on that fateful day in 1996 was familiar with armed violence and kind of liked it. They did, however, find bullets, bullet fragments and shell casings at the crime scene. He allegedly committed robberies to fund a drug habit. Sympathy Ideas. That day in October 2015, Ali was looking at a photo lineup that law enforcement had used to implicate Flowers in the Tardy case. Reporters also poked holes in Hemphill . When we finally found Hemphill, living in Indianapolis, he had some very surprising things to say about the case. Detective Goldberg got Presley and Gamble to confess their roles in a pair of murders at a Birmingham pawn shop less than two weeks after the Tardy Furniture murders. In 1996, central Alabama saw a string of armed robberies, where the criminals told store clerks to lie down and held them at gunpoint, sometimes killing them. Police arrived at the factory and interviewed employee Katherine Snow. His father had, for just a few months, been the first sheriff in the county, but returned to farming his land. View Willie Smith results in Kingwood, TX including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. But it isnt necessary to prove a case against any of these people; the real scandal is that the existence of alternative suspects was systematically withheld from defense counsel. In October 2015, almost 20 years after the murders at Tardy Furniture, one of Curtis Flowers' lawyers was paging through his case file, when she saw a familiar face. "We did go to the mall, but it wasn't the day of the killing. Told that Woods had a clear memory of being in Winona on the morning of July 16 and learning, outside the Piggly Wiggly, that the murders had just happened, Hemphill interrupted and altered his story. The obituary was featured in The Bryan-College Station Eagle on August 16, 2009. Hemphill said he was wearing his Filas when in walked into the Sheriffs Department. During the sixth Flowers trial, Matthews, who worked with Miller at the Mississippi Highway Patrol, said the only suspect in the case aside from Flowers was Doyle Simpson, whose gun the prosecution argued Flowers stole and used as the murder weapon. He died on December 28, 1908, at his home in the section of Abbeville called Fort Pickens, and is buried in Melrose Cemetary, Abbeville. Lab officials, however, say the gun never arrived and was never tested. Willie James Hemphill, Willie J Hemphill, Williae Hemphill. It hurts my feelings.. Two weeks later, a picture of Marcus Presley, the shooter in the Birmingham murders, was included in a photo array shown to Porky Collins, a witness in the Winona, Mississippi case. Why was he questioned? Actually,In the Dark hasnt weighed in on the guilt-innocence issue (thats not what they do), but their careful dissection of DA Doug Evans case against Flowers has left the case in a shambles. The podcast has never cared about the fundamental horrors of the justice system; it just wants to ensure that those horrors only happen to the correct people. The truths going to come out.. My mom, my stepdad were afraid that, hey, if they're manhunting me like that, they may shoot me down in the street, Hemphill told them. He told them that a day or two after the murders he was driving back to Winona from Memphis when his stepfather called him and told him carloads of law enforcement officers had descending on his parents house looking for him. 1 hr 4 min . On April 30, 2018, American Public Medias true crime podcast In The Dark began airing its second season, an investigation of the case of Curtis Flowers, a black man in Mississippi accused of a quadruple homicide at a furniture store in 1996. I knew his sisters, I knew his brother, he said. EPISODE 16. "We have never had any evidence that showed anything other than this defendant's guilt," Evans said. Willie James Hemphill Phone Numbers (662) ***-4391 Illuminating Journalism from American Public Media. Nor was there any record of the evidence gathered from Hemphill. Hemphill certainly sounds like a career criminal who is fully capable of committing violence; but he doesnt come off as a psychopathic killerand whoever did the deed at the Tardy furniture store was either a hired killer (or killers) or enjoyed killing people for kicks. Current Address: EHZR Hannah Dr, Rock Hill, SC. Willie James Hemphill was confronted in an Indianapolis courthouse last week, 23 years after police deemed him an initial suspect but later pursued leads against Flowers. Before he left on July 3, he said she gave him $30. View Willie Hemphill results including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. But we found a document showing that another man, Willie James Hemphill, had also been questioned just days after the murders. Between June 19th, 1996 and June 30thof that year, Presley was involved in five robberies at gunpoint. Share to Facebook. Judge Joseph Loper asked Evans if the state had any exculpatory evidence.. They contained no mention of the Alabama suspects. It was all make believe. He said he called Tardy the next day, asking if he still had a job, and she said he didnt. It was Geraldine. Submit an Obituary. At the time, investigators in Mississippi told the media they were looking into whether the crimes could be connected to the murders at Tardy Furniture. Search by Name. Are you a wh*re?, Reporter: Did you commit the murders on Front Street? That said, I dont see a compelling motive, and none of these people is any more capable of pulling off an outrage on this scale than poor Curtis Flowers. An APM Reports investigation of Hallmon's criminal history shows that at least seven felony charges against him fell away between 2001 and 2016. The July 16, 1996, killings of Tardy Furniture owner Bertha Tardy, 59, and three employees, Carmen Rigby, 45, Robert Golden, 42, and Derrick Stewart, 16, have haunted this town ever since. Usually if somebody starts shooting, he said, others will run.. But that doesnt mean that he killed those four people at Tardy Furniture. Willie married Janeen Winegar on August 10, 2003 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The answer was yes many, many times. Find records of Willie Hemphill . Flowers through six trials present Presley and Gamble as an alternative theory of the crime? According to the July 8, 1996, police report, store owner Bertha Tardy reported to police that a burglar or burglars smashed through a skylight, tried to break into the safe and stole the side door key. Presley was the tougher of the two, and he didn't say much. "Yes, sir," Snow replied. The two of them walked the same school halls from first grade through high school, he said. The podcasts reporters spent months methodically proving that prosecutors systematically denied black people a seat in the jury box, and how a man who is likely innocent has been repeatedly sentenced to death. Soon that would change. Katie Ali had been researching parallels between the Tardy Furniture murders and a string of similar crimes that had happened that same summer in neighboring Alabama. If it hadnt been for a single slip of paper in the prosecutors file with Willie James Hemphills name on it, theIn the Dark squad wouldnt have known about the man. 2. In The Dark proved that Curtis Flowers was railroaded by an unjust system. How do we create a person's profile? The district attorneys office isnt commenting. Presley and Gamble were extradited to Alabama, and again Gamble was questioned, almost in passing, about Mississippi. He never responded. Injustice flourishes in the darkness, and the sun is now blazing in the heavens (at least for Curtis Flowers). In a sworn statement, one of those criminals, Marcus Pressley, told Flowers' lawyers thattwo of his accomplices in the Alabama crimes were in Mississippi at the time of the Tardy murders. Presley shot and killed store employees execution-style on his way out the door. Eight persons linked to this address. Podcasts should stick to exonerating the innocent. Menu. Willie James Hemphill, Willie J Hemphill, Willie J Hemphill, Willie James Hemphill. Relatives were alarmed to see a swarm of police cars descending on their homes in search of Willie James. Evans didnt want jurors comparing his tortured theory with a simple and sensible alternative. Send Flowers. He died on July 14, 2000 at age 81. Just weeks ago, however, reporters discovered that Hemphill had an upcoming court date in Indianapolis and met him there. The justices wrote that it was as strong a prima facie case of racial discrimination as we have ever seen in the context of a Batson challenge. Hemphill's Timeline Willie James Hemphill has an extensive criminal record starting in 1990, just when Hemphill was eighteen-years old. The ordeal of Curtis Flowers screams for correction. I was scared I was going to go to jail.. Not long after Armstrong found the gun in October 2001, two police officers happened to pull him over for speeding. Willie James Hemphill, 38. Hemphill said investigator took his shoes for a few minutes as well as his fingerprints. He allegedly committed robberies to fund a drug habit. He lived near Tardy Furniture at the time of the murders, and near where a gun that might have been the murder weapon was found. Contact Jerry Mitchell at 601-961-7064 or jmitchell@gannett.com. Gamble never discharged his weapon. They wanted to ask him about his alibi for the day of the Tardy Furniture murders, an alibi that hadn't checked out. Flowers, who had been fired from the store 13 days before the murders, reportedly owed a small amount of money to one of the owners. He will be held in a county jail while its decided if he should face trial for a stunning seventh time. ADVERTISEMENT BY ANCESTRY.COM. In the past, Willie has also been known as Willie James Hemphill, Willie A Hemphill, Willie James Hemphill, Willie J Hemphill and Willi Hemphill. 704-***-**** View Phone. Not the right Willie? 1.58 3.33 /5. A Hearing. But he believed Gamble's denial. WIILIE HEMPHILL OBITUARY. Why was he questioned? Memphis is two hours north of Winona, just across the border with Tennessee. View Tommy Hemphill results including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. The weapon in at least some of the Alabama cases was a .380 handgun that tended to jam. But attempting to deliver another black man into that same system goes against its good work. He said: "If it wasn't for the fact that I had an airtight alibi, I could be the one on death row right now. It remains unclear why Mississippi investigators ruled them out as suspects. If Gamble and McKenzie were in Mississippi the day of the Winona murders its very possible that Presley was with them. Service: 11 am Saturday, March 3, 201. The bodies of Derrick Stewart, 16, Robert Golden, 42, Carmen Rigby, 45, and Bertha Tardy, 59, were found spread throughout the store and in the back office. Law enforcement had interviewed a different suspect with a violent criminal history, Willie James Hemphill a fact which was not disclosed to the defense. Illuminating Journalism from American Public Media. Jurors at Flowers trials had only heard of one suspect who could have worn Fila Grant Hills Flowers although investigators never found the shoes they said he wore. He explained his suspicion that the gun might have something to do with the Tardy murders. After learning that Willie James Hemphill was an initial suspect in the murders at Tardy Furniture, reporters for In the Dark wanted to find out if he'd ever broken the law before.