Buzz
Serving a lengthy sentence in a federal prison is a nightmare for most. But what’s even harder to fathom is spending years behind bars for a crime you didn’t commit—simply because you confessed to it. The rise of DNA testing has shown us that confessions aren’t as reliable as we once thought.
10. Anthony Caravella
In December 1983, Anthony Caravella found himself in serious trouble after being arrested. Although his initial charge was for skipping a juvenile court appearance for a bicycle theft in Florida, he was soon questioned about the brutal rape and murder of Ada Jankowski that had occurred two months earlier.
Caravella, a 15-year-old with an IQ of 67, made four different confessions, each contradicting the last and the actual details of the crime. For instance, he initially admitted to killing Jankowski by striking her with a bottle, yet she had been stabbed 29 times. He mistakenly referred to her as a “girl,” despite the fact she was 58, and claimed she was taller than him, though she was nearly 30 cm (12 in) shorter. Caravella’s defense team now claims he was coerced by police, who gradually fed him information until his confession seemed to match the crime. Without any physical evidence, the teenager was sentenced to life in prison in 1984.
In 2001, prosecutors agreed to test the physical evidence from the crime using DNA analysis, but the results were inconclusive. Then, in 2009, the evidence was sent to California DNA expert Edward Blake. Dr. Blake was able to isolate a sperm sample from the rape kit, something the local lab had failed to do. This led to Caravella being excluded as the source.
Caravella was granted provisional release from prison in 2009 after serving 26 years. Subsequent tests led to his official exoneration in 2010. In 2013, a jury determined that two former police officers had framed Caravella and ordered them to pay $7 million in damages. The verdict was upheld by a federal appeals court in 2015.
9. Jeff Deskovic
It didn’t take long for Jeff Deskovic to become a suspect in the rape and murder of a classmate in 1989. The 16-year-old first attracted the police’s attention because he was late to school the day after the murder. Authorities also found it odd that he had visited the victim’s wake three times, seeming “overly distraught.” During questioning, Deskovic told the police that he had conducted his own investigation and even offered them a list of potential suspects.
In January 1990, the police requested that Deskovic undergo a polygraph test. He agreed, under the impression that it would clear his name, allowing him to assist the police as a sort of junior investigator. The test was conducted at a private polygraph business owned by a local sheriff’s deputy. Deskovic was confined to a small room for the entire day, given frequent cups of coffee but no food. During this time, detectives interrogated him between polygraph sessions.
After six hours, detectives told Deskovic that he had failed the polygraph test and urged him to confess. This caused Deskovic to break down, sobbing uncontrollably and curling up beneath the table. He eventually made a full confession, often speaking in the third person. DNA testing later revealed that the semen found on the victim’s body was not his. Despite this, he was still prosecuted, with his confession being the main piece of evidence. He was convicted of rape and murder in 1991.
The prosecution argued that the semen might have come from a consensual partner, meaning it didn’t matter that it wasn’t Deskovic’s. However, nearly 15 years later, the semen was retested and entered into a DNA database of convicted felons. It matched Steven Cunningham, a man already serving time for a similar murder. When presented with this evidence, Cunningham admitted to both crimes. Deskovic was released shortly afterward.
As compensation for his wrongful imprisonment, Deskovic received over $13 million from New York state, Westchester County, and Peekskill. A federal jury also awarded him an additional $41 million in a civil rights lawsuit against Putnam County.
8. Henry Lee McCollum And Leon Brown
In 1983, an 11-year-old girl was found raped and murdered in the small town of Red Springs, North Carolina. With no leads to follow, a local youth suggested that the culprits might be Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, half brothers who were mentally disabled. The brothers had recently moved to Red Springs from New Jersey with their mother.
After five hours of intense questioning, McCollum, believing he would be allowed to go home, signed a confession. The police then told 15-year-old Brown that his brother had confessed and implicated him, pressuring him to confess as well to avoid the death penalty. He did.
Both McCollum and Brown quickly retracted their confessions, but they were still convicted and sentenced to death. Brown’s sentence was later reduced to life in prison, but McCollum remained on death row. In 1994, the US Supreme Court declined to review their case.
Decades later, North Carolina’s Center For Death Penalty Litigation secured new DNA testing on much of the physical evidence. DNA found on a cigarette butt at the crime scene was identified as belonging to Roscoe Artis, a man who lived nearby with a history of sexual assault convictions. Artis had confessed to another rape and murder in the area shortly after the Red Springs incident, for which he was eventually sentenced to life in prison.
It remains unclear why the authorities continued to pursue the prosecution of the brothers after discovering that a man living just a block away had committed a nearly identical crime within weeks of the murder. McCollum and Brown were released in 2014 and officially pardoned in 2015, each receiving the maximum compensation allowed by the state: $750,000.
7. Barry Laughman
As a child, Barry Laughman injured his pinky finger. While the injury seemed minor at the time, it would later become a pivotal detail in a much more serious story.
In 1987, when Laughman was 24 years old, a woman in his neighborhood was found murdered. The authorities quickly focused on Laughman after noticing he was unable to bend his pinky finger. The victim had small bruises on her arm, indicating she may have been gripped by only three fingers, which appeared to match Laughman’s injured finger.
With an IQ of 70, Laughman had the mental capacity of a 10-year-old child. He was coerced into confessing after police officer John Holtz informed him that a fingerprint found at the crime scene had a whorl pattern, like Laughman’s. While Holtz’s statement was true, he failed to disclose that whorl fingerprints are common, found in 25–35% of the population. Ultimately, Laughman’s fingerprints were not found at the scene.
Armed with Laughman’s confession, the prosecution secured a conviction. Shortly after, DNA testing became a routine part of the legal process. Defense attorney Mark Beauchat sent key evidence samples to anthropologist Mark Stoneking for analysis. However, Beauchat claimed that Stoneking called him to say he could not perform a conclusive test and subsequently failed to return the evidence. Stoneking, on the other hand, stated that he was never able to test the evidence because Beauchat only sent crime scene samples and ignored his request for Laughman’s DNA to compare it to.
It appears communication faltered between Stoneking and Beauchat. Beauchat thought the evidence had been lost or destroyed, while Stoneking had actually taken it with him to Germany. The evidence resurfaced in 2003, after investigative reporter Pete Shellem tracked down Stoneking. In his defense, Stoneking told Shellem that he had “no idea what the case was about.” The DNA test, though delayed by almost a decade, ultimately cleared Laughman.
6. Byron Halsey
In 1985, Byron Halsey asked his neighbor Clifton Hall to give him a ride across town to meet friends. A few hours later, Halsey returned to his rooming house, where he lived with his partner Margaret Urquhart and her two young children. To his shock, the children were gone. He immediately called Urquhart and began searching for them. The next morning, their bodies were discovered in the basement of the rooming house, having been raped and brutally murdered.
After enduring 30 hours of intense police interrogation, Halsey confessed to the murders. However, Halsey, who had significant learning disabilities, initially got every detail of the crime wrong. The police, however, pressed him, challenging his inconsistencies, and allowed him to revise his story until he had guessed the correct details. The final confession, which the police typed up and Halsey signed, did not reflect the numerous revisions he had made throughout the process.
In 1988, Halsey was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences. Barry Scheck, the director of the Innocence Project, later commented to the New York Times that it was “a minor miracle that he wasn’t sentenced to death. Some of the jurors just didn’t believe in the death penalty.” This turned out to be a fortunate turn of events, as post-conviction DNA testing in 2006 revealed no evidence tying Halsey to the crime. The testing did, however, point to Clifton Hall, who had dropped Halsey off across town before returning to the house where the children were left alone. Hall was serving a prison sentence for three sexual assaults when his DNA was matched to the murders of Urquhart’s children.
Halsey was freed in 2007, but he was required to wear an electronic ankle bracelet while the case was re-investigated. Two months later, all charges were officially dropped. Hall passed away in prison in 2009, while Halsey was awarded $12.5 million in compensation in 2015.
5. James Edwards
In 1996, James Edwards found himself in police custody for armed robbery—but his situation was about to become even worse.
After more than 27 hours of intense questioning, Edwards admitted to the armed robbery charge. He also confessed to the 1994 murder of 71-year-old Frederick Reckling, the 1974 murder of Sylvia Greenbaum, and a bank robbery that later surveillance footage showed he hadn’t committed, among other crimes.
Edwards later retracted his confessions, claiming that Chicago police officers had taken him to a section of the station under construction and tortured him into admitting his involvement in Greenbaum's murder. He said the officers then threatened to kill him and stage it as a suicide unless he also confessed to Reckling’s murder.
There were clear inconsistencies in his confessions—for example, he stated he had gone to a bar after Reckling’s murder, but that bar had been closed for six years. Additionally, non-DNA tests on blood found at the crime scene revealed it didn’t belong to either Edwards or Reckling. However, Edwards was viewed as an unsympathetic figure, as he had been convicted of a third murder in 1974 and had only been paroled in 1991. He was quickly convicted of Reckling’s and Greenbaum’s murders and returned to life imprisonment.
Acting as his own lawyer, Edwards pushed for DNA testing on the unidentified blood found at the scene of Reckling’s murder. In 2010, the DNA was matched to Hezekiah Whitfield, a known armed robber active in the area during the time of Reckling’s murder. This development led to Edwards being exonerated for the Reckling murder. He remains incarcerated for Greenbaum’s death, despite his insistence that his confession to that crime was false as well.
4. John Kogut
In 1988, a prisoner named John Restivo came across a story about a man whose conviction was overturned thanks to a new technique called DNA profiling. As Restivo later shared with the New Yorker: “I thought, if they’re using this to convict someone, they’ll have to use it to set me free.” It took five years for Restivo to get permission for DNA testing, but the prosecution contested its reliability in court. In 2002, a missing swab was discovered among evidence, and DNA testing was used to exonerate Restivo along with his co-defendants John Kogut and Dennis Halstead. The three men were released in 2003.
Almost 20 years earlier, in 1984, Nassau County, New York, was rocked by the brutal murder of teenager Theresa Fusco, who had been raped and strangled. Lead detective Joseph Volpe suspected Dennis Halstead and John Restivo. Restivo later described how Volpe kept him in custody for 20 hours without food or sleep, shouting at him, denying him legal counsel, and allowing another officer to punch him. Despite this mistreatment, Restivo maintained his innocence, insisting that he had never met Fusco.
At some point, Restivo mentioned one of his employees, John Kogut, who was then brought in for questioning and subjected to a polygraph test. Kogut passed the test, but the detectives told him he had failed and pressured him into confessing. After 18 hours of interrogation, Kogut reportedly gave at least six different confessions. The police only recorded the last one. However, the confession lacked any new information that the police didn’t already know, and Kogut was unable to provide details about the murder weapon or other crucial evidence.
The three men were convicted based on Kogut’s confession and hairs supposedly belonging to Fusco, which the police claimed were found in Restivo’s van. However, later forensic analysis revealed that the hairs matched samples taken during Fusco’s autopsy, which had been carelessly stored in an unsealed envelope at the police station. A judge later ruled that the autopsy hairs were likely mixed with the van evidence, though it remains unclear whether this was an accident or intentional.
Detective Volpe passed away in 2011. Halstead, Restivo, and Kogut have since been awarded millions in civil rights lawsuits. The murder of Theresa Fusco remains unsolved.
3. The Three Trials Of Juan Rivera
In 1992, Illinois law enforcement was stumped by the brutal rape and murder of 11-year-old Holly Staker. More than two months later, a prison informant pointed the finger at a new inmate, Juan Rivera, who had recently been incarcerated on burglary charges. Rivera, a 19-year-old with a history of mental health issues, had no evidence connecting him to the crime. In fact, he was under house arrest at the time of the murder, with an ankle monitor confirming his whereabouts and showing no signs of tampering.
Lacking any other leads, the detectives inexplicably decided to focus on Rivera and subjected him to intense questioning for four consecutive days. He also took two polygraph tests, both of which proved inconclusive. Despite this, investigators told Rivera he had failed. At 3:00 AM on the fourth day, Rivera eventually agreed to confess. Soon after, he was seen banging his head against a wall. His first signed confession did not align with the details of the crime, so the police kept interrogating him until he offered a more accurate version.
During Rivera’s trial, the prosecution intended to present a pair of Rivera’s shoes, which investigators claimed had Staker’s blood on them. However, the prosecution quickly withdrew this evidence after the defense revealed that the shoes in question had not been available for purchase until after the murder. The way the police identified Staker’s blood on shoes that couldn’t have been at the crime scene remains a source of controversy. Nevertheless, Rivera was convicted based on his confession.
The initial verdict was quickly overturned by an appeals court due to mistakes made in the original trial. The retrial began in 1998. This time, prosecutors supported Rivera’s confession with the testimony of an eyewitness—Taylor Englebrecht, one of the two children Staker was looking after when she was murdered. Englebrecht, who was only two years old at the time of the crime, was believed by the prosecutors to be able to accurately identify Rivera as the murderer six years later. The jury sided with this assertion, and Rivera was again sentenced to life imprisonment.
In 2005, DNA testing showed that the semen recovered from Staker’s rape kit didn’t belong to Rivera. As a result, Judge Christopher Starck—the same judge who had twice sentenced Rivera to life—vacated his conviction. Despite this compelling DNA evidence, prosecutors persisted in their belief that Rivera was guilty and moved forward with a third trial. Prosecutor Michael Mermel tried to explain the DNA results by suggesting that the 11-year-old victim had been sexually active before the murder. Miraculously, this argument prevailed, and Rivera was convicted again, receiving a life sentence for the third time from Judge Starck.
In 2012, Rivera’s conviction was definitively overturned by an appeals court. In 2015, authorities agreed to pay him $20 million in what became the largest wrongful conviction settlement in U.S. history.
2. Eddie Joe Lloyd
In 1984, Eddie Joe Lloyd was a patient at the Detroit Psychiatric Institute, grappling with severe mental illness. Among his various delusions, Lloyd frequently sent letters to police departments, claiming that he could assist in solving high-profile murder cases. His letters were generally disregarded, but detectives investigating the murder of 16-year-old Michelle Jackson grew suspicious when they received a letter from Lloyd that seemed to mention details of the crime that had not been made public.
Lloyd was interviewed by police officers, and during the conversation, he made a full confession, sharing information that only the authorities and the murderer could have known. However, Lloyd later retracted his confession, alleging that the police had enlisted him to help with the investigation and suggested that a false confession could help them identify the true perpetrator. Lloyd also claimed that the lead detective had provided him with the incriminating details, saying, 'He asked, ‘What kind of jeans was she wearing?’ I replied, ‘I don’t know.’ He then said, ‘What kind do you think?’ I responded, ‘Jordache.’ He corrected me, saying, ‘No, Gloria Vanderbilt.’'
In 1985, Lloyd was convicted of the crime. A decade later, he saw Innocence Project director Barry Scheck on the television show Donahue and decided to contact the organization for help. After years of tracking down vital evidence, the Innocence Project secured permission for DNA testing, which definitively cleared Lloyd of any involvement in the crime. He was exonerated and released in 2002, having spent over 17 years wrongfully convicted.
Lloyd passed away just two years after his conviction was overturned. During the time before his death, he became a speaker for the Innocence Project, traveling across the country to raise awareness. He became well-known for his frequent declaration: 'DNA is God’s signature. God’s signature is never a forgery, and his checks never bounce.'
1. Christopher Abernathy
Nearly 14 months after the tragic rape and stabbing death of 15-year-old Kristina Hickey, a teenager named Allan Dennis approached Illinois police, claiming that his friend Christopher Abernathy had confessed to the crime. Abernathy, an 18-year-old high school dropout with learning disabilities, had briefly dated Kristina. Following over 40 hours of police questioning, Abernathy signed a detailed confession, though he mentioned that the stabbing had been unintentional. Shortly after, he withdrew his confession, stating that police had pressured him into signing it, promising he could return home to his mother.
Despite the absence of physical evidence, Dennis's testimony along with Abernathy’s confession were sufficient for a jury to convict Abernathy of first-degree murder. Since he was just 17 at the time of the crime, he avoided the death penalty and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In 2009, a group of journalism students from Northwestern University highlighted Abernathy’s case to lawyer Laura Kaeseberg from the Illinois Innocence Project. Kaeseberg concluded that Abernathy's confession had been coerced. Further investigation revealed multiple flaws in the original trial. For example, a witness testified that Abernathy had visible scratches on his face at Hickey’s funeral, suggesting a fight, although paramedics confirmed his explanation of having accidentally run into a tree.
Most damningly, Allan Dennis later admitted that he had fabricated his testimony to gain a lighter sentence for some burglary charges he was facing. In 2014, the Illinois Innocence Project gained permission to conduct DNA testing on eight pieces of evidence from the case, including a vaginal swab and the victim’s clothing. The results revealed a partial DNA profile, but it did not match Abernathy’s.
In 2015, Abernathy was freed after serving 28 years for a crime he didn't commit, thanks to new DNA evidence. Throughout his incarceration, his mother visited him almost 1,000 times. Upon his release, Abernathy shared with the Chicago Tribune that he was overwhelmed by fear, saying, “I’m scared. It’s just scary to be out, ’cause that’s all I know.”
