Evidence clearly establishing Washington's innocence never materialized in the Culpeper case, but neither was there much evidence against him aside from his confession. And his current lawyers maintain his attorneys at the time of the trial incompetently failed to pick apart the glaring inconsistencies and inaccuracies in their client's story and the sloppy police work that led to that story being told.
Washington's initial responses to police questioning were incorrect on the question of the victim's race, height and weight, whether anyone else was in the apartment when the crime was committed, whether he took his clothes off, and how he entered the victim's apartment. Washington said he kicked the door in, but there was no sign of that. He said he stabbed the victim two or three times. The autopsy found 38 stab wounds. Washington said he cut himself, but his blood was never found at the scene. Court and police records show that with repeated questioning Washington improved his responses to better fit the facts of the case.
Washington's lawyers say there is no reason to assume any of the officers questioning their client knew he was retarded and easily led along. But led along he clearly was, they maintain, assenting to police descriptions of the crime and altering his answers when they did not seem to satisfy the police. One of the experts who has ranked Washington's IQ at 69, Dr. Ruth Luckasson, wrote in a report for Washington's clemency petition, "All the circumstances surrounding the 'confession' indicate that its contents came (intentionally or not) from the police and were simply parroted back by Earl."
Key pieces of evidence in this case are semen samples from a blanket and from the victim's vagina. Tests of the blanket stain were found to exclude Washington prior to his trial, but the evidence was not presented in court. DNA tests done in 1994 agree with the early conclusion regarding the blanket.
DNA tests of the vaginal sample performed in 1993 also exclude Washington according to a defense expert. The Attorney General's Office maintains that those tests allow for the possibility that Washington raped Williams, as long as there were two rapists or the victim had consensual sex early that morning with someone other than her husband.
But Williams told her husband and the police before she died that there was only one attacker, a black man. There was no mention of a second rapist in the prosecution's case or in Washington's confession.
*****
Around noon on June 4, 1982, Rebecca Lynn Williams, 19, was found naked, bleeding, and dying at the entrance to her apartment. Before Williams died, she reportedly said one black man had attacked her. There were no other witnesses who could identify this attacker. Williams was pronounced dead at Culpeper Hospital at 2:05 p.m. She had children ages 6, 3, and 8 months. The two younger ones were found in the apartment when the crime was discovered.
According to documents provided to Washington's lawyers, a lot of fingerprints that were never identified were found at the crime scene, but none of them were Washington's. Hairs found in the pocket of a shirt allegedly belonging to the murderer have not been tested and compared with Washington's. A shoe impression in the floor mat was thought to possibly be the murderer's, but it was not Washington's.
A composite sketch based on the recollections of witnesses who had seen a black man leaving the building did not match Washington.
An eyewitness said he saw a black man with extra-large muscles in his chest, arms, and upper back leave the scene at the time of the crime wearing a white sleeveless T-shirt. This does not match Washington's physique or the clothing he said he was wearing. He claimed to have kept on a jacket and worn it home, even after he said he'd taken off a shirt because he'd gotten blood on it.
At least 11 suspects were considered during the year following the crime. This is known because their names appear on lab reports at the time from the Virginia Bureau of Forensic Science. One of those suspects, James Morris Pendleton, reportedly lived next door to Williams.
Coincidentally, he also turned up in stories surrounding Earl Washington's arrest for another crime. Pendleton was the brother-in-law of Washington's sister, Alfreda Pendleton. The DNA report on the blanket in 1994 mentioned only two suspects and said both were excluded. These were Pendleton and Washington.
Nearly a year after Williams' murder, on May 21, 1983, Washington, a farm worker, was picked up by Fauquier County deputies in an unrelated matter. He was accused of breaking into the home of an elderly woman there named Helen Weeks and robbing and raping her on the same day as his arrest.
Fauquier deputies D.A. Zeets and Terry Schrum, the officers interrogating Washington, did not know that Weeks would later deny the rape charge. Without any known reason to suspect that Washington had raped Weeks, they asked him if he had, and he said yes.
According to their notes, Washington told the deputies he'd found his brother, Robert Washington, with his girlfriend, and gone across the road to Weeks' house to get a gun he knew she kept there. He said Weeks surprised him while he was in her house searching for the gun, and he hit her with a chair, tried to rape her, took money from her purse, and went back and shot his brother.
Washington's initial responses to police questioning were incorrect on the question of the victim's race, height and weight, whether anyone else was in the apartment when the crime was committed, whether he took his clothes off, and how he entered the victim's apartment. Washington said he kicked the door in, but there was no sign of that. He said he stabbed the victim two or three times. The autopsy found 38 stab wounds. Washington said he cut himself, but his blood was never found at the scene. Court and police records show that with repeated questioning Washington improved his responses to better fit the facts of the case.
Washington's lawyers say there is no reason to assume any of the officers questioning their client knew he was retarded and easily led along. But led along he clearly was, they maintain, assenting to police descriptions of the crime and altering his answers when they did not seem to satisfy the police. One of the experts who has ranked Washington's IQ at 69, Dr. Ruth Luckasson, wrote in a report for Washington's clemency petition, "All the circumstances surrounding the 'confession' indicate that its contents came (intentionally or not) from the police and were simply parroted back by Earl."
Key pieces of evidence in this case are semen samples from a blanket and from the victim's vagina. Tests of the blanket stain were found to exclude Washington prior to his trial, but the evidence was not presented in court. DNA tests done in 1994 agree with the early conclusion regarding the blanket.
But Williams told her husband and the police before she died that there was only one attacker, a black man. There was no mention of a second rapist in the prosecution's case or in Washington's confession.
*****
Around noon on June 4, 1982, Rebecca Lynn Williams, 19, was found naked, bleeding, and dying at the entrance to her apartment. Before Williams died, she reportedly said one black man had attacked her. There were no other witnesses who could identify this attacker. Williams was pronounced dead at Culpeper Hospital at 2:05 p.m. She had children ages 6, 3, and 8 months. The two younger ones were found in the apartment when the crime was discovered.
According to documents provided to Washington's lawyers, a lot of fingerprints that were never identified were found at the crime scene, but none of them were Washington's. Hairs found in the pocket of a shirt allegedly belonging to the murderer have not been tested and compared with Washington's. A shoe impression in the floor mat was thought to possibly be the murderer's, but it was not Washington's.
A composite sketch based on the recollections of witnesses who had seen a black man leaving the building did not match Washington.
An eyewitness said he saw a black man with extra-large muscles in his chest, arms, and upper back leave the scene at the time of the crime wearing a white sleeveless T-shirt. This does not match Washington's physique or the clothing he said he was wearing. He claimed to have kept on a jacket and worn it home, even after he said he'd taken off a shirt because he'd gotten blood on it.
At least 11 suspects were considered during the year following the crime. This is known because their names appear on lab reports at the time from the Virginia Bureau of Forensic Science. One of those suspects, James Morris Pendleton, reportedly lived next door to Williams.
Coincidentally, he also turned up in stories surrounding Earl Washington's arrest for another crime. Pendleton was the brother-in-law of Washington's sister, Alfreda Pendleton. The DNA report on the blanket in 1994 mentioned only two suspects and said both were excluded. These were Pendleton and Washington.
Nearly a year after Williams' murder, on May 21, 1983, Washington, a farm worker, was picked up by Fauquier County deputies in an unrelated matter. He was accused of breaking into the home of an elderly woman there named Helen Weeks and robbing and raping her on the same day as his arrest.
Fauquier deputies D.A. Zeets and Terry Schrum, the officers interrogating Washington, did not know that Weeks would later deny the rape charge. Without any known reason to suspect that Washington had raped Weeks, they asked him if he had, and he said yes.
According to their notes, Washington told the deputies he'd found his brother, Robert Washington, with his girlfriend, and gone across the road to Weeks' house to get a gun he knew she kept there. He said Weeks surprised him while he was in her house searching for the gun, and he hit her with a chair, tried to rape her, took money from her purse, and went back and shot his brother.
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