April 25, 1976.
At around 9.30 pm an intruder arrives at a house on South Union Street in Concord, North
Carolina.
After scaling a white banister, he climbs through a window.
He then walks downstairs to find a woman alone in the kitchen.
Pulling out a knife, he shouts, “Don’t look at my face!”
It’s too late.
She already has.
Her recollection of that face and some shady police work will result in one of the biggest
travesties in the history of US justice.
Let’s go back to the night of the crime.
After the perpetrator entered the house, he made his way down to the kitchen.
There he met with a very startled woman, a 54-year old widow named Sarah Bost.
He immediately pounced on her, taking out his knife and holding it against her throat.
He told Bost to give him all the cash she had in the house, demanding that she empty
the contents of her purse- but there was no money in the purse.
The man proceeded to drag Bost to her bedroom, where he assaulted her.
She put up an almighty fight, so much so that her fingernails were wrecked.
He kept screaming, “Don’t look at me!”
The attack ended when the phone in the house rang.
The intruder took off, and the victim ran straight to a neighbor’s house to call 911.
She was later taken to Cabarrus Memorial Hospital where she was treated for her injuries and
had swabs taken from various parts of her body.
The Concord Police Department soon showed up at the hospital and talked to the badly
shaken victim.
She told them her attacker was black, about five feet five to five feet nine, slim, softly
spoken, and probably somewhere between 20 and 30 years old.
She said he didn’t have any kind of accent she could make out.
He spoke very clearly and didn’t have the “brogue” accent some people have in North
Carolina.
Police wrote, “Subject was wearing a dark waist-length leather jacket, blue jeans with
a dark toboggan pulled over his head.
Could possibly have been wearing gloves.”
A toboggan if you didn’t know, is a hat, what you might know as a beanie.
As for the blue jeans, don’t forget that bit.
She did not say the man had facial hair.
Don’t forget that, either.
She was shown 13 photos of possible suspects but did not choose any of them.
Meanwhile, investigators had found a footprint on the banister that the perpetrator had scaled.
They also found spent matches close to where that attacker had gotten through the window,
as well as strands of hair in the house, possibly from the attacker.
Then the cops came up with a name.
He was a 20-year old named Ronnie Long.
One of the reasons he was a person of interest is because a similar crime had been committed
the year before in Washington DC.
An ID was found at the crime scene, and it belonged to Long.
Nonetheless, he wasn’t charged with the crime.
His attorney said Long had lost the ID when on a trip to the capital.
A few days after Bost was assaulted, police grabbed Long and told him he was trespassing
in a public park.
The park wasn’t far from where Bost lived, and it was also not far from where Long’s
parents lived.
He was subsequently brought to the police, where he had his fingerprints and photograph
taken.
It was unfortunate that he wore a leather jacket that day, and worse, a pair of gloves.
This piqued the curiosity of cops, who were quick to join the dots.
The police report noted, “He was able to do things as normal as someone without gloves.
He was able to take out of his billfold his driver’s license.”
Long was told he had a court date on May 10.
The trespassing charge was a joke and would be dropped in court, but that’s not why
cops wanted him in court that day.
They had him there so Bost could sit in the second row and look at about 50 men, 12 of
whom were black.
Long was sat somewhere in the middle, having no idea that his life was about to change
forever.
Bost, who of course was frightened her attacker might be in court that day, wore a red wig
and sunglasses as a disguise.
Long was still wearing his leather jacket.
He also still had his beard.
Despite the facial hair, after about 90 minutes, Bost told police that she could identify her
attacker.
She said he was Long.
Soon after, the police took Bost back to the station and asked her to look at a bunch of
suspects in a photo array.
Again, she picked out Long.
Notably, he was the only black man in the array wearing a leather jacket.
Long was now at home, happy that the ridiculous trespassing charge had been dropped.
He then heard a knock at the door.
Seeing the blurred images of cops through the frosted glass in the door, he thought,
“What this time?!”
He was told the police still had something to sort out at the station and could he go
back with them for an hour or so.
Off he went in the car, peering out the window as his house receded behind him.
He would never go into that house again.
He would not sleep in his own bed for 44 years.
He would not pass another tree-lined street until he was in his autumn years.
Back at his house, police found books of matches.
They also said they came across a green toboggan hat and some gloves.
This came as a surprise to Long, who said he’d never seen that hat before in his life.
To his utter astonishment, he was charged with the crime.
When people heard about it, they stood in the streets protesting.
The police had nothing on this man.
Still, some things were just set in motion that would not help Long at all.
The jury was chosen from 49 people, and every person picked was white.
This was in a county where 20 percent of the population was black.
During the trial, Bost again said she was sure her attacker was Long.
Still, she maintained that he had been light-skinned, whereas Long was dark-skinned.
Something strange also happened.
Even though she’d said her attacker had no facial hair in the past, she now said he
had a mustache.
We don’t know what changed her mind.
We’ll never know.
She died in 2015.
For some reason, the swabs that had been taken from Bost were not used in evidence during
the trial.
As you’ll soon see, a ton of evidence was suppressed.
Then there were the matches that were found at Long’s house, well, actually in the family
car.
Long’s attorneys didn’t want these being brought into evidence, but they were in the
end.
Detective David Taylor was asked if the matches taken from the car were the same as those
found at the crime scene.
He replied, “No sir, they did not match.”
Notably, the jury wasn’t present at this time.
The matches were a big point.
If the spent ones matched ones found in Long’s car, this was some pretty solid evidence for
the prosecution.
Even though the detective said they didn’t match, when he was asked by the prosecution
when the jury was present, he said the matches at the house were “of a similar nature”
to the ones found in the car.
You wouldn’t be naïve for wondering if many kinds of matches in this world are of
a “similar nature.”
Just how similar would be more to the point.
More about that later.
Then a shoe print expert came forward and said he believed the print on the banister
“could have been” something made by a pair of shoes found at Long’s house.
He also said he couldn’t say for sure.
Long didn’t take the stand, but he did have an alibi and a good one at that.
On the night of the crime, he’d been at a meeting about a class reunion.
That ended around 8 pm.
He then drove home.
At home, he talked on the phone to his young son and the mother of the child.
Long then drove to a party some 25 miles away.
When he got to the party, witnesses said he looked absolutely normal.
There were no signs of him being injured by a woman who had damaged her nails on an attacker’s
skin.
At the party, he was wearing khakis, not jeans.
There was simply no evidence against him except a positive ID from a woman who had been badly
shaken and could have been swayed by the matter of a leather jacket.
Even worse, a lot of evidence had been left out, which could have supported Long.
Unfortunately, in a justice system where winning means everything for police and prosecutors,
suppressing exculpatory evidence is actually not that uncommon…especially in a racist
environment.
The prosecutor said in his final statement, “We have shown that Ms. Bost’s testimony
is not only accurate, but totally consistent with every piece of physical evidence existent.
Everything she says happened that is capable of being corroborated by physical evidence
... is so corroborated.”
The defense rightly finished by saying there wasn’t any solid physical evidence.
The prosecution had nothing.
Still, the all-white jury didn’t waste much time arriving at their verdict: Guilty of
all charges.
Later, it came to light that four of the hand-picked jury were professionally linked to Bost’s
deceased husband.
His conviction meant a mandatory death penalty in North Carolina at the time, although the
US Supreme Court later ruled that the state’s list of crimes for such a sentence was perhaps
wide of being draconian.
Long was given two life sentences.
He could quite easily have become an innocent man who went to the execution chamber.
Believe it or not, prosecutors had before the trial offered Long a plea deal, one which
was glaringly enticing.
They said admit your guilt, and you’ll be looking at no more than seven years, out in
possibly three.
Long told them to shove the plea deal where the sun doesn’t shine.
He later explained why, saying, “My dad looked at me and told me, 'I didn’t raise
ya’ll to admit to something you didn’t do'.
So, I didn’t take the plea.
I went to trial.”
He appealed the sentence a few times as the years passed.
His lawyers argued that his car had been illegally searched.
They said the jury selection was utterly improper.
They also said he hadn’t been sufficiently represented by his lackluster attorneys.
Denied.
The 1970s passed and morphed into the 80s.
Long sat in his prison cell as a former Hollywood actor became the 40th President of the United
States.
He scooped up grim prison chow for years on end as fashion changed, music evolved, and
his relatives had many Christmases without him.
Then in 2005, the North Carolina Center for Actual Innocence got on the case.
It went before a judge and asked that all evidence from the Cabarrus County District
Attorney’s Office, and the Concord Police Department, be made available.
The judge passed the motion.
Ok, so where were those swabs taken back in the day?
No one knew, they were mysteriously missing.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the new lawyers discovered that the prosecution had held back
forensic evidence collected at the crime.
This evidence pointed to a very, very strong possibility that Long had not committed the
attack.
The district attorney had first said that nothing in the evidence files could have been
of any use to the new lawyers, and they should just leave the case alone.
That patently wasn’t true.
It was a bare-faced lie in an attempt to save face.
Much of the evidence was of use.
Hair found at the crime was not the same color as Long’s hair.
This evidence wasn’t heard in court.
Neither was evidence that showed Long’s clothing police had taken showed no signs
of fiber contamination that could have come from Bost’s carpet.
The suppressed evidence also showed that the matches found at the house and in the car
might have been “similar in nature”, but they were also a different color!
The state argued that the evidence not used was not exculpatory but inconclusive, and
that’s why it never saw the light of day in court.
A 12-year old educated in criminal justice by Judge Judy shows could have seen how wrong
that was.
Long stayed in prison, though, and for a lot more time.
Then his attorneys found another bombshell.
The police had held back a total of 43 fingerprints that had been collected at the crime scene.
That doesn’t mean the culprit’s fingerprints were everywhere, but such evidence should
have been presented to the jury.
None of them matched Long’s.
Why was this evidence not disclosed by the prosecution?
It was thought that while the attacker wore gloves, he might have taken them off when
he lit those matches.
Try grabbing a match with gloves on.
It’s not easy.
Prosecutors over the years said it was up to the defense to use all the evidence available,
although when evidence was withheld how could they have done that?
Judge Stephanie Thacker said she was “shocked” about how the case had been conducted.
She said, “A man has been incarcerated for 44 years because, quite simply, the judicial
system has failed him.”
Long was finally pardoned and released in 2020 after 44 long years.
He became one of the people in the US who has spent the most time behind bars as an
innocent man.
On his release, he told the media one of the first things he was going to do was visit
the gravesite of his parents.
He said, “I know my mother and father died with a broken heart.
I’m gonna tell them now, when I visit the gravesite, ‘Your son is clear.’”
As for compensation, well, as you might know, you can spend a lifetime in prison as a wrongly
convicted person in some states and get zilch.
But in North Carolina, such victims of the justice system receive $50,000 a year for
every year locked up.
That works out at $2.2 million for Long, but the state caps the amount at $750,000, meaning
he got $17,000 a year.
What that really means is 29 years of his prison time was not compensated.
Long said this did not correspond to the life he had lost.
He said, “You took my 20s, my 30s, my 40s and my 50s and you still talking about this
is worth that?”
You might wonder, like we all wonder, why police and prosecutors fight to keep people
behind bars when they know evidence has been held back that could lead to a person’s
release.
A judge named James Wynn, in relation to the Long case, asked just that.
He also asked, “When did justice leave the process such that we let our rules blind us
to the realities that we all can see?”
We all know the answer, and it’s why the wonky scales of justice in the United States
are in dire need of recalibration.
Now you need to watch “Innocent on Death Row, Here's What You Actually Get When You're
Released.”
Or, see what could have happened to Long in “50 Insane Death Row Facts Nobody Tells
You.”