Richard Phillips, framed for a crime he didn't commit, follows the man who framed him and
sent him to prison as he walks across the prison yard.
The man, Fred Mitchell, is completely unaware of being followed, and doesn't even realize
that Richard, the innocent man he sent to prison, is in that very same prison with him
now.
Robbed of almost seven and a half years of life away from his children, Richard can only
think of the justice that the system has so far denied him, despite appeal after appeal.
Fred is walking towards a blind spot along the prison walls, completely unaware that
here the guards can't see him, the cameras can't record what will happen next.
The man is completely oblivious to his approaching fate, and as he walks behind him, Richard
shifts the weight of the homemade knife back and forth in his hand.
Fashioned out of scrap metal from the prison workshop, Richard knows what he has to do-
plunge it quickly into the neck, just once is all it'll take, and the man who stole his
life from him will lie dead on the floor.
Sentenced to life in prison, Richard will never see the outside world again, but he
could still get some justice.
Fred is nearly at the blind spot, and Richard readies the shiv, focused on Fred's neck.
Growing up with an abusive stepfather, Richard learned early on to fend for himself.
He escaped the poverty he grew up in by taking to the streets, or fast-talking his way into
other family's homes so he could watch his friends open up presents on Christmas morning.
Escaping the problems of a hopeless home life on the streets of Detroit, it was there that
Richard would meet the man who would change his life forever, Fred Mitchell.
The two became close friends and accomplices in their juvenile delinquency.
With little prospects for their own lives, the two quickly became just another American
crime statistic, though they hadn't yet matured to full-blown criminals.
For Fred, that would soon change, and caught up in a street fight, he shot another teenager
and was soon pleading guilty to manslaughter.
Richard however had worked to improve his life.
During a short prison sentence, Richard took a typing class and learned how to type fast
and accurately.
He turned that into a new job at a Chrysler auto plant upon release, earning $4.10 an
hour- or over $33 an hour in today's wages.
Slowly and steadily, Richard got away from his criminal past, and all his former criminal
contacts.
Richard even married his girlfriend, having a daughter and a son and moving into an apartment
together.
Richard had beaten the odds and not just survived his violent past, but overcome it, and now
was living the American dream.
At twenty five years old though, life would take a turn for the worse.
Caught up in a work prank, Richard was blamed for a lit cigarette being dropped into a coworker's
back pocket and was fired from his lucrative position.
A spiraling Richard soon faced marriage troubles, and spent more and more time away from home,
returning to his past haunts.
At around the same time Fred Mitchell was released from jail, and he and Richard would
reconnect.
The two would cruise the town at night, doing heroin in motel rooms and causing mayhem.
For all his faults, Richard still loved his children and showed them all the love his
own father had never shown him.
They were never short on Christmas presents, and he made it a point to spend time with
them even as his life began spiraling out of control.
One fateful day, Richard took his daughter and son to the state fair where the three
had a grand time.
After tucking them into bed, Richard took off into the night once more, only to never
return.
That night, September 6th, 1971, Fred Mitchell and another male took part in a convenience
store robbery.
The duo took off with less than $10, but their erratically driving vehicle was called in
to police by an anonymous driver.
The vehicle registration came back to Richard Palombo, Fred Mitchell’s accomplice and
convenience store robber, but the police had no idea who his partner had been in the robbery,
and Palombo wasn't talking.
Phillips and Mitchell looked similar, and in a police lineup witnesses all agreed that
the second armed robber was Richard Phillips.
Despite shaky evidence, Richard was convicted for the robbery and sentenced to at least
seven years.
Palombo meanwhile refused to give up the real robber, even once behind bars with an innocent
man.
A year later and the frozen skeleton of a murder victim, Gregory Harris, was discovered
by a street repairman.
The body was identified as that of a young man who had gone missing a year earlier, and
who's mother had received a distressing anonymous call over the matter shortly after his disappearance.
The voice on the other end of the line said that she couldn't hold her silence any longer,
and that a man named Fred Mitchell and another nicknamed 'Dago'- Richard Palombo- had killed
her son.
They had dragged him out of his car and then shot him in the head, execution style.
It's not known if the police did anything with that information at the time.
Twelve days after the discovery of the body, Fred Mitchell was arrested on charges of armed
robbery and carrying a concealed weapon.
When his name popped up in relation to the young man's murder a year earlier, Mitchell
deflected by saying that he knew who had killed him, and fingered Richard Palombo and his
long-time best friend, Richard Phillips.
The case quickly went to court, despite there existing no physical evidence linking Richard
Phillips to the crime.
The only evidence the prosecution had was Fred Mitchell's own testimony, and it's still
unknown if the police had even inspected the murder victim's discovered automobile for
fingerprints, or analyzed the blood discovered therein.
It appeared that as far as 1970's Detroit's cops were concerned, a solved case was a solved
case, no matter if an innocent man had been convicted for it or not.
During the trial, Richard's lawyer barely offered any defense.
He allowed the prosecution to run roughshod all over the case, didn't allow Richard to
take the stand and defend himself, and only offered the following as a closing argument:
“You know, they talk about Gregory Harris being dead.
I don't know if Gregory Harris is dead.”
This was beside the fact that Harris was indeed dead, his skeleton identified from dental
records and discovered with bullet holes in his skull.
Four hours later, Richard Phillips was sentenced to life in prison.
Richard spent his time in prison writing poems, and continuing to draw pictures as he did
in his youth.
Meanwhile, Richard took up work in the prison's workshop, making license plates and earning
a meager $100 a month, all of which he saved so he could hire the best defense lawyer in
the state to plead his innocence.
Richard tried to spare his children the harsh realities of prison, and implored his wife
to not bring them to visit.
He told her to move on and find someone new, which she eventually did.
Broken hearted and alone, Richard found solace in his poetry.
Prison life hardened Richard, but he refused to surrender completely to the animal nature
so many embraced.
His resolve stiffened when one December, completely out of the blue an inmate he didn't even know
gifted him two packs of cigarettes for Christmas.
After that, Richard resolved himself to give presents to other inmates, and through a prison
program he picked out toys to send to his children.
In 1989, he won a prison contest for best prison song.
Despite the pressures of prison life, Richard- an innocent man- refused to become an animal.
On another Christmas though, Richard and some of his cellmates took part in a contest for
best snow and ice sculptures.
They built a nativity scene and other christmas scenes, along with a seal balancing a ball
on its snow.
A prisoner from another block vandalized the scene, kicking the head off the lamb in the
nativity scene.
Richard was blamed for assaulting an officer that tried to break up the ensuing fight,
despite a whopping 59 witnesses claiming his innocence, and was sent to solitary.
Still, Richard refused to break, and continued writing poetry and even took up painting.
Then came Fred Mitchell and the blind spot, the knife in Richard's hands.
As the two approached the would-be murder scene, Richard prepared himself for righteous
revenge- just one quick stab into the neck, and the man who had robbed him of his life
would be dead.
But as Richard prepared for the deadly thrust, he heard a voice in his head.
“Don't kill him.
You might still have a chance to get out of here.”
His knife hand stayed.
Richard turned around.
Fred Mitchell wasn't worth becoming a real murderer over.
Richard never gave up his fight for freedom, despite appeal after appeal being denied.
At parole hearings he knew that if he said the right things, he might earn freedom- but
Richard would not pretend to be guilty of a crime he was innocent for.
Then, finally, four decades after being imprisoned, hope shone once more.
Richard Palombo at last broke his silence.
He would finally tell the story of what really happened during that robbery in 1971.
Fred Mitchell had been spending time in jail under manslaughter charges when his mother
was robbed.
George Harris, the man found dead which Richard Phillips was blamed for, was one of the perpetrators.
After his release, Fred, feigning ignorance of Harris' involvement in his mother's robbery,
approached George Harris for help in a convenience store robbery.
Pulled into an alleyway across from the planned robbery site, Fred Mitchell suddenly produced
a gun given to him by Richard Palombo, shooting Harris in the head, and stunning Palombo.
Richard Phillips was completely innocent.
Fred Mitchell would end up drinking himself to death at age 49, and Richard Palombo would
die on April 19th of this year from Covid-19 while still in prison.
Richard Phillips was released from prison on a $5,000 bond granted him by a judge, a
first for a first-degree murder suspect.
But he wasn't a free man yet.
Richard had a second trial to endure, and in the meantime had to find a place to live
or he wouldn't be able to leave prison.
This was when Julie Baumer stepped in.
A new administrative assistant at the Michigan Innocence Clinic, Baumer herself had been
wrongly convicted of killing her drug-addled sister's baby.
When the child grew sick, she took him to the hospital where doctors discovered bleeding
in the brain.
Doctors suspected shaken baby syndrome, and Julie was arrested.
She fought her case with the help of six expert witnesses who all pointed at signs of stroke
in the child, and eventually she was released.
Now she would help another innocent soul out, the way she had found help, and offered Richard
a place to stay in her own home.
Richard's case would go to trial for a second time, against a formidable prosecutor's office
which would fight tooth and nail to preserve the original conviction.
At last, on March 28th, 2018, Richard could breathe a sigh of relief- he was officially
a free man, with the judge signing an order officially dismissing the case against him.
Richard Phillips, innocent man jailed for 46 years, was at last free.
We have another insane prison story for you to watch right now!
Go watch Why Prisoner Proven Innocent Can't Be Released or check out this video instead.