The police have the suspect dead to rights. They say they’ve interrogated him for hours,
gotten a confession, and ruled out any alibis. They’re ready to take the case to the judge.
If that’s not enough proof for the judge to approve criminal charges,
there’s the evidence. This is rock-solid proof that they’ve got the right guy,
and there’s no jury that would acquit once they’ve seen the evidence. There’s only one problem.
The evidence wasn’t real. It was planted by the officers.
Does this really happen? Do the police plant evidence to get false convictions or to protect
themselves from charges? It happens more often than you think, and here are eight of the most
shocking cases where the police planted evidence - including one
that brought in the federal government to investigate.
The first case takes place in rural New Zealand in 1970, when crimes that made the front page
were rare. So it shocked the farming community of Lower Waikato when young farm couple Harvey
and Jeanette Crew were found brutally murdered on their ranch. Jeanette’s father had legal and
financial trouble before, and their farm had been plagued by burglaries and arson. They were set to
receive her mother’s share in the farm shortly, which would make life with their toddler daughter
much easier. Then they went missing, and their eighteen-month-old was found alone in her crib.
Doctors said the baby had been alone for at least two days and was severely dehydrated.
But it would be almost two months before the couple’s bodies were found, shot to death.
Police immediately zeroed in on a suspect.
Arthur Alan Thomas lived on a neighboring farm and it was discovered that his car axle had
been used to weigh down Harvey’s body. When the police searched the Crewe house again and found
a cartridge from Thomas’ rifle in the garden, his fate was sealed. He was charged with two counts
of murder despite his wife and cousin giving him an alibi. The star witness? Lenard Demler,
Jeanette’s father who had been forced to sell them his half of the farm. Thomas was
convicted twice despite little evidence, with the first conviction being thrown out on appeal.
Supporters and investigators quickly began campaigning for a pardon and after nine years,
evidence came out that the batch of cartridges the bullet came from couldn’t have been from his
gun. Thomas was pardoned, and two Detectives were investigated for planting the evidence.
While they were both implicated in misconduct, neither was ever charged.
But corrupt police don’t just plant evidence to solve crimes - they do it to get away with them.
It was the footage that outraged a nation in 2015. Many controversial police shootings had taken
place over the previous year, but few as shocking as the one that happened in North Charleston,
South Carolina. Walter Scott was a forklift operator who had a warrant out for his arrest
for missing a child support hearing. Michael Slager was a police officer with several
accusations of excessive force against him. When Slager stopped Scott for a broken brake light,
he found out about the warrant and moved to arrest him. Scott ran,
and the two briefly scuffled. When a taser didn’t knock Scott out and he turned to run,
Slager pulled out his gun and shot Scott eight times, hitting him fatally in the back.
Slager justified his actions by saying that Scott had taken his taser and was a threat.
There was just one problem with that.
It was the era of cell phones, and the footage of the shooting of Walter Scott
was captured by a bystander. Feldin Santana was terrified of being targeted by police,
but he shared it with Scott’s family, who released it. It showed clearly that Scott
had never laid hands on Slager’s taser and was shot in the back without provocation.
Mass protests came to North Charleston, and Slager was fired and charged with murder.
While the first case deadlocked when one juror wouldn’t vote to convict, he was charged and
pled guilty to federal civil rights charges and is currently doing twenty years in prison.
It wasn’t the only time police tried to cover up a killing, and the next one went much higher.
The year was 1975 in Montgomery, Alabama, and it seemed like an open-and-shut case.
Police were searching the neighborhood for a suspect in a grocery store robbery,
and they zeroed in on Bernard Whitehurst Jr. When they confronted him, Whitehurst
reportedly pulled a gun and aimed it at the officers. They returned fire,
killing him with a single bullet to the chest. The shooting was quickly deemed justified when
a gun was found at the scene, there was no autopsy, and Whitehurst was quickly
buried. It seemed like an open-and-shut case like so many other police shootings.
It wasn’t, and six months later the entire case started to unravel.
The Montgomery Advisor was one of the only newspapers to cover the case extensively
and allege that the gun was planted, and many locals were starting to question the events.
The police alleged that the paper was making up stories, and their publisher even agreed to take
a polygraph test. Three Montgomery officers were eventually charged with perjury over the
planted gun, and offered a chance to take a polygraph test to prove their innocence.
They all resigned from the force instead. While no one was ever charged in the shooting and no one is
exactly sure what happened in the moments that led to Bernard Whitehurst Jr.’s death, the conspiracy
led to the resignation of eight officers and several Montgomery officials including the Mayor.
There’s a third type of planted evidence. Instead of trying to solve or cover up crimes,
this officer tried to create them.
For those who were stopped by Deputy Zachary Wester in Florida,
a traffic stop quickly turned to horror. He would pull them over, question them,
and then make up a reason to search the car. He would quickly find drugs, usually meth,
and make a quick arrest. The people would go into the system and many saw jail time or lost jobs or
custody of their children. Over several years, Wester seemed to have an uncanny ability to stop
cars whose drivers were carrying small amounts of drugs. This was a great asset for a policeman,
and anyone who watched him work was sure he was headed for a promotion soon.
It was all a lie.
Zachary Wester was planting the drugs on unsuspecting people, and footage shows them
react with shock and horror when it’s pulled out seemingly from thin air. While only eleven victims
were initially found, prosecutors dropped over a hundred cases involving Wester and were reviewing
over two hundred. Eight people were released from prison and Wester was charged with racketeering,
false imprisonment, official misconduct, and a host of other charges. Prosecutors were showing
no mercy, and Wester wasn’t offered a plea deal. He’s currently awaiting trial and could face over
thirty years in prison if convicted - and he’s probably lucky his victims were already released.
The next case set a record the Government wasn’t happy about.
It was one of the most shocking crimes in the history of Waukegan, Illinois. In August 1992,
a woman called police and reported that her home had been broken into
and her children’s 11-year-old babysitter, Holly Slaker, was missing. When police arrived,
they found the girl’s body in the house, stabbed to death. Evidence of rape was found,
samples were taken, and a massive manhunt began. A prison informant fingered a fellow inmate,
Puerto Rico-born Juan Rivera. Rivera cooperated with the investigation and gave samples of his
blood and DNA. While no physical evidence was found on site linking him to the crime,
Rivera was held in custody where his mental condition began to deteriorate.
His long nightmare was only beginning.
Rivera was interrogated until he confessed, even though many Detectives stated his comments were
inconsistent with the crime scene. He was quickly charged with first-degree murder and convicted,
despite evidence from his electronic ankle monitor showing that he hadn’t
left the home on the night of the murder. While his first conviction was overturned,
his fate was sealed at his second trial by the testimony of the child being babysat- who was only
two at the time. It wasn’t until 2004 when DNA testing cast doubt on his guilt that he
saw the chance at freedom - but prosecutors were determined to try him again. They had a
bizarre theory that he could have still been guilty due to cross-contamination and even
claimed that Slaker had been sexually active, contaminating the crime scene.
Shockingly, Rivera was convicted again and all hope seemed lost.
It was 2011 when the courts issued a scathing condemnation of the initial trial,
pointing out all the flaws. Not only did they overturn Rivera’s conviction,
but they barred the prosecution from trying him again. The prosecution had even
tried to enter shoes as evidence that weren’t available for sale at the time of the murder.
The many legal flaws and lies in the proceedings led to Rivera winning the biggest settlement
for wrongful conviction in United States history at the time - twenty million dollars.
The next case’s criminal cop didn’t commit his crimes alone.
Sgt. Wayne Jenkins was a prominent officer in the Baltimore Police Department,
the head of the Gun Trace Task Force. So when one of his suspects wound up dead, run over by
Jenkins’ car while being arrested, most officers gave him the benefit of the doubt. He claimed
that the suspect had pointed a gun at the car, which turned out to be a BB gun, and that gave
him the authority to take out the suspect by any means necessary. But all of this started falling
apart when Jenkins was arrested and convicted for a host of crimes committed using his position of
power including robberies and dealing drugs. All his past cases started being investigated.
And the truth about the incident with his car was blown wide open.
Not only did the suspect not have a gun on him, but Jenkins didn’t act alone.
He called up two other officers, Keith Gladstone and Carmine Vignola,
and asked them to bring a gun from their own car to the scene. The two officers
worked together to stage the crime scene. When federal investigators looked into the case as
part of a massive scandal involving Jenkins’ task force, the two officers were exposed and wound
up receiving prison sentences. As for Jenkins, he was headed for a twenty-five year stay in prison,
where many of the people he had convicted were likely not so happy to see him.
The truth usually comes to light - but sometimes it’s too late.
It was 1940 in County Tipperary, Ireland,
and the central-Irish town was about to be rocked by a shocking murder. Mary McCarthy,
also known as Moll, was an unmarried woman with seven children by six fathers who made a living
off sex work. Her controversial profession led to her home being targeted for arson,
but everyone was still shocked when she turned up dead, found with two gunshot wounds to her head
delivered by the nephew of her landlord. Harry Gleeson was suspected of being the father of her
youngest child, and suspicion soon fell on him. He claimed innocence, but he was quickly charged and
convicted. Justice was swift in those days, and Gleeson was hung only six months after the murder.
That was far from the end of the story.
Sean McBride, Gleeson’s lawyer, didn’t give up the fight after his client was executed.
Decades later, a friend of Gleeson’s put together a book detailing all the flaws in the case.
Among them, the murder happened on a date when Gleeson had an alibi, the landlord wasn’t called
as a witness, and the local Garda engineered a false confrontation between Gleeson and two
of McCarthy’s children. They had even failed to enter the local shotgun register into evidence,
which could have helped Gleeson’s case. The suppression of the register and the
alibi was enough, and the President of Ireland issued a posthumous pardon to Gleeson in 2013.
The next case nearly took down an entire major police department.
New York State Trooper David L. Harding was an ambitious man, and he was looking to move up
to the CIA. When he was asked in an interview if he was willing to break the law for his country,
he didn’t wait - he answered yes and proudly announced that he had fabricated evidence
to convict people he knew were guilty as an officer. The CIA wasn’t pleased.
They notified the Justice Department and an investigation began - and what
they found was shocking. In Central New York, a massive conspiracy of fraudulent
convictions and falsified evidence had been taking place for years.
It had even ruined people’s lives.
Two false murder convictions were quickly uncovered. One man, John Spencer, had been booked
into a police precinct. The police then lifted his fingerprints off surfaces in the precinct
and attached them to evidence cards, using that to convict him of murder. Another suspect,
Shirley Kinge, was convicted of burglary and arson in a horrible quadruple-murder case
that her son was implicated in. While she did possess a stolen credit card from the home,
the evidence against her was mainly falsified fingerprints. Not only did what came to be known
as the New York Police Troop C Scandal lead to five officers being charged and three convicted,
but every conviction involving the unit had to be reinvestigated.
For more on shocking police behavior, check out “Weird Times Police Arrested Kids”,
or watch “This Happens to Drugs Confiscated By Police” for an in-depth look at the system.