Norfolk Four
The Norfolk Four are four former United States Navy sailors: Joseph J. Dick Jr., Derek Tice, Danial Williams, and Eric C. Wilson, who were wrongfully convicted of the 1997 rape and murder of Michelle Moore-Bosko while they were stationed at Naval Station Norfolk. They each declared that they had made false confessions, and their convictions are considered highly controversial. A fifth man, Omar Ballard, confessed and pleaded guilty to the crime in 2000, insisting that he had acted alone. He had been in prison since 1998 because of violent attacks on two other women in 1997. He was the only one of the suspects whose DNA matched that collected at the crime scene, and whose confession was consistent with other forensic evidence.
Nearly ten years later, after the four recanted their confessions and entered years of appeals, they gained support for a clemency campaign and received conditional pardons in 2009 from then-Virginia Governor Tim Kaine. New exculpatory evidence was found after that and the Norfolk Four were exonerated in 2017, receiving absolute pardons by Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe. In December 2018, they received a combined settlement of $4.9 million from the City of Norfolk and $3.5 million from the Commonwealth of Virginia for their wrongful convictions.
These four were among a total of eight men whom the Norfolk Police indicted and initially prosecuted as suspects in what the prosecution said was a multiple offender crime. Three men, named by others from the four, were released and their charges dismissed, because of lack of evidence against them. Omar Ballard, a man who had an independent association with the Boskos, was the last arrested for this crime in March 1999 after it was found his DNA matched that at the crime scene, and was the only match made. He confessed in March and April 1999 and insisted that he committed the rape and murder of Moore-Bosko by himself, but the prosecution continued to press the theory of a group crime. In 2000, Ballard pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 100 years in prison, 59 of which were suspended by the court. Forensic evidence is consistent with his account that there were no other participants.
Each of the Norfolk Four had confessed to the police about these crimes, but later recanted their confessions, saying they had been threatened and coerced by Norfolk detectives, and their confessions were false. Williams and Dick pleaded guilty to rape and murder before trial, under threat of receiving the death penalty. Dick testified for the state in trials in 1999 and 2000 against the other two defendants. Each of their DNA was excluded from matching that collected in evidence from the scene. As there was virtually no physical evidence against them, Wilson and Tice were convicted by juries based on their confessions. With the plea deals and trial, Tice, Williams, and Dick, were convicted of both rape and capital murder, and sentenced to one or more life sentences without the possibility of parole. Wilson was acquitted of murder but convicted of rape; he was sentenced and served 8½ years in prison.
Events and investigation
On July 8, 1997, Bill Bosko, a 19-year-old sailor in the US Navy, returned home after a week at sea, and found the body of his wife Michelle Moore-Bosko, 18, who had been murdered at their apartment at the Bayshore Apartment Gardens in Norfolk, Virginia. High school sweethearts, they had married in April 1997 in Norfolk. He went to his neighbor Danial Williams's apartment for help, and they called the Norfolk Police Department.Moore-Bosko was found to have been raped, stabbed, and strangled to death. At the time, police noted that there were no signs of a break-in or a large struggle inside the apartment. The crime was estimated to have taken place during the night before, sometime after 11:30 pm on July 7, 1997. Neighbor Tamika Taylor said she had been out with Moore-Bosko most of that day from noon until that time.
The coroner's report said that Moore-Bosko had died due to being stabbed and strangled. As introduced in evidence in the trials, the state's medical examiner described the stab wounds to Moore-Bosko as of a uniform depth and clustered closely together. He said that the pattern was consistent with a scenario in which one assailant had stabbed her multiple times, but there was an outside possibility of more.
As the Norfolk police investigation progressed, detectives questioned residents of Moore-Bosko's development. Tamika Taylor told one of them that their neighbor, Danial Williams, was "obsessed" with the murdered woman. Williams, also a sailor in the US Navy, lived in an apartment across the hall from the Boskos, with his wife Nicole. They had recently married after she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. They shared their apartment with Joe Dick, another sailor who was a shipmate from Williams's USS Saipan.
Confessions
Detective Ford arrested Williams and led the interrogations. According to Williams, he had been interrogated for eight hours before Ford began at 5 AM. He obtained a confession from Williams within another hour. Williams said he felt threatened and treated like a criminal until he was overwhelmed and worn down.His later defense lawyers said it appeared Ford and other investigators were satisfied with Williams's confession and after they indicted him in August 1997, not much happened in the investigation for several months. The attorneys found no record or evidence that the police ever searched Williams's apartment despite his status as a prime suspect, or tried to recover any evidence, such as blood from the crime scene, his own blood, or DNA from the victim on his clothing or items in his apartment. They never took an affidavit from his wife. The Norfolk Commonwealth's Attorney's office, which conducts prosecutions, later refused Freedom of Information Act requests for records related to the Norfolk Four case.
His attorneys asked the court for funds to investigate further crimes in the area, which would have revealed the additional rape by Ballard, but the funds were never spent. Several days after his wife's death in early November, he filed a motion to suppress his confession, but the court rejected it.
It was not until December 11, 1997, that police learned that Williams' DNA did not match the DNA evidence taken from the scene. They did not tell his attorney until April 30, 1998. In January 1998 they offered him a plea bargain in exchange for a life sentence, which he refused. Needing to expand their field, they arrested Williams' roommate and shipmate Joe Dick as a suspect.
Dick maintained his innocence for hours, saying that he was on duty on his ship USS Saipan at the time of the murder. According to a 2007 New York Times feature article, neither his supervising Chief Petty Officer, Senior Chief Michael Ziegler, nor his supervisor, Commander Scott Rettie, were interviewed by Norfolk police or Dick's defense counsel Michael Fasanaro, Jr. As far as the Navy men knew, no records were sought from the ship, although ship logs and attendance records show clearly who is on duty at every hour. Those records were destroyed before the New York Times published a feature on this case in August 2007.
Dick's original defense attorney, Fasanaro, and the lead prosecuting assistant commonwealth's attorney, Damian J. Hansen, continued to assert that Dick was not on the ship that night. But Ziegler told the New York Times in 2007 that he had "no doubt" that Dick was on duty that night. Already aware of and concerned about what he perceived as Dick's limited mental capacity, Ziegler stressed the high security maintained on the ship. He did not believe that Dick was capable of sneaking off and on the ship to commit the crime and return. But, since Dick pleaded guilty before trial, the state never had to prove their assertion or break his alibi.
Eleven weeks later, in March 1998, Dick's DNA was also excluded as a match to the forensic DNA evidence found on Moore-Bosko. Because Williams had refused the plea bargain offered by the prosecution, his attorneys ordered a competency evaluation in February 1998. He told the psychiatrist that he was not guilty and had made a false confession.
Investigation expands, new arrests are made and confessions are gained
The police and prosecution decided to widen their search again for suspects. A jailhouse informant, at the jail where Dick was being held pending trial, suggested that he name a co-conspirator. He named Eric Wilson, another sailor. Wilson's DNA was also excluded from matching the evidence at the scene.The police came back to Dick for more suspects. He said that a fourth man, whom he called "George" but who he identified from Navy photographs as Derek Tice, was also involved. Three of these four men were on active duty with the Navy and one was recently retired. None of them had a prior criminal record. Ford went to Florida, where Tice was then living, to arrest him.
After being arrested and interrogated for eleven hours, Tice finally also confessed to the crime. In the process, he implicated two additional Navy men as having been involved in the crime. He claimed that the group of several men had broken into the apartment and each attacked Moore-Bosko. But this contradicted the police review of the crime scene and evidence. The apartment did not appear to have been broken into or disrupted, and there was no evidence of wide-scale violence from several people. The small apartment was neat and clean. Within weeks, Tice's DNA was also excluded from matching the DNA evidence collected at the scene.
These men: John Pauley,, retired; and Geoffrey A. Farris, were arrested for rape and capital murder but did not confess. Farris asked for counsel and stopped his interrogation. Pauley was verified as being hundreds of miles away, where he lived and worked, at the time of the murder, as shown by his work records and by bank records of his having withdrawn money from a cash machine at that distant location. At a late August 1998 hearing about Pauley and Farris, Dick testified that these two were involved in the attack on Moore-Bosko, but said he had not seen Farris stab her. Their attorneys challenged the theory of multiple offenders, but the judge decided there was probable cause and indicted them.
After being interrogated again in October 1998, Tice named John E. Danser,, as a seventh suspect. He did not confess; he had retired from the Navy and lived and worked in Warminster, Pennsylvania, 300 miles from Norfolk. Despite his having two paper records supporting that he was there at the time of the murder, he was indicted for rape and capital murder.
In November Tice recanted his accusation against Danser and his own confession when talking to detective Ford, but the Commonwealth attorney's office did not give this information to Danser's attorney. A month later, Tice repeated his accusation against Danser at the latter's preliminary hearing.
In February 1999, a refined DNA test excluded all seven men from the forensic DNA associated with the crime. None of the last three men indicted was tried, and the state charges against them were eventually dismissed. But detective Glenn Ford and prosecutor Damian J. Hansen continued to act at the trials of Wilson and Tice in 1999 and 2000 as if the other men were still part of a large, multiple offender attack.