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“No. I didn’t really see anything but the room. And the other guys.”
“And the other guys were all Black?”
“Yes.”
I kicked myself for not asking Selma the same question. For all I knew she was shown six photos with only one Black guy. And then Wellesley circled back and did another “lineup” to make it appear as though it had been done fairly.
“She writes to me, you know. Selma,” he said. “She wants me to know she’s forgiven me.”
“Yes, she told me that.” And then I wondered, “Are you going to be able to forgive her?”
“I was with my mother when the girl was raped. The police called my mother a liar, the lawyers called her a liar, six months after the trial she died of a broken heart. I’m not forgiving anyone.”
****
Larry Wilkes was brought in next, after another twenty-minute wait. It was well after lunchtime and I was beginning to get very hungry. The smell of the place made it impossible to think of eating, though. Mostly, I wanted to escape.
Whatever two decades in prison had done to Larry, it didn’t show. He was nearly forty, sandy-haired and looked like your typical TV dad. He was a marked contrast to my visit with Danny Osborne, who’d been beaten down and somewhat haunted. But then, Larry had been convicted of killing another man, rather than a teenage girl. Maybe that earned him some respect. Maybe he got left alone.
When he sat down, I said, “I’m Dom Reilly, I work with The Freedom Agenda. I read your letter.”
“You’re taking my case?” he asked, with obvious excitement.
“No. I’m here to ask questions to see if we’ll take your case.”
“Oh. Okay.” Not as excited.
“In order to reopen a case like yours there needs to be new evidence. Or evidence of misconduct, either by the prosecution or defense. We work with DNA testing a lot because that’s clearly new evidence. However, in your case I don’t see anything we can test.”
“So why are you here?” he asked, now a little grumpy.
“Like I said, I read your letter. I’d like to hear your story directly from you.”
He took a long breath and began. “Pete Michaels and I were in a relationship during our last year of high school. I hadn’t known I could be in love with a man. I knew what I was, but I’d been told gays were perverts, that we couldn’t find happiness. And then I found out that wasn’t true… with Pete… he was so… confident, happy, almost carefree. I’d never met anyone like that, never imagined someone could be gayandhappy.”
I was close to ten years older than he was, so what he was saying was familiar. I’m sure I was nodding along sympathetically.
“Anyway, I went away to college in Santa Barbara. It had been in the works for a while. My parents really wanted it, and they were paying for it. Pete had started doing construction work. He had an uncle who worked on the docks in Long Beach who was trying to get him into the long shoreman’s union. That’s a great union, he would have been set for life.” He swallowed hard. “I couldn’t take college. Couldn’t take being that far away from him.”
“You were only there a few weeks.”
“That seems like a long time when you’re eighteen. I tried to talk to Pete on the phone, but I kept missing him. I don’t think his family was giving him my messages. Finally, I got on a bus and went home. My parents weren’t happy to see me, but I didn’t care. All that mattered was Pete. I kept calling, but he didn’t call me back, so I took my mother’s car and drove over—”
“Why?”
“Because he wouldn’t talk to me on the phone.”
“Yes, but why that day? Why did you go over that particular day?”
“We had a signal. Two rings and then hang up. A lot of the time we’d have a plan and I’d know where we were meeting. Sometimes we’d go parking, once we went to a cheap motel. Usually his family would be gone and we’d be in his room.”
“So you got the signal that day?
“Yes. I guess that’s why I went over.”
“Because you thought no one would be home except Pete.”
“Yes. That’s what I thought.”
