Five teen boys from Newark NJ (1978) - Suspects under arrest

Jury in Lee Evans murder trial done for the day
Published: Monday, November 21, 2011, 12:17 PM

The jury in the Lee Anthony Evans murder trial has recessed for the day, after the judge had previously said today would be a half-day.
The panel deliberated for five hours today without reaching a verdict and will return Tuesday morning. They deliberated for two hours Friday afternoon, following closing arguments.
Evans, 58, is charged with murder in the Aug. 20, 1978 killing of five teenage boys in Newark, in what had long been considered a missing persons case. He was arrested in March 2010, following a confession 16 months earlier from his cousin. The cousin, Philander Hampton, was also charged with murder but has since pleaded guilty and testified against Evans at trial.
Earlier today, the jury requested Hampton’s testimony, which he gave over the course of two days last week. The jury received the transcript before telling the judge they were finished for the day.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/11/jury_in_lee_evans_murder_trial_1.html

Acquittal of Lee Evans ends 33-year-old Newark case but leaves a haunting mystery unresolved
Published: Thursday, November 24, 2011, 7:00 AM


NEWARK — With Wednesday’s acquittal of the so-called "mastermind" behind the decades-old killing of five teenage boys in Newark, the case has been officially closed but the mystery surrounding what had been one of the state’s oldest cold cases may forever remain unsolved.
The jury found Evans not guilty on five counts of murder and five counts of felony murder in the Aug. 20, 1978, arson killing of the five boys.
Evans, 58, faced multiple life sentences if convicted but instead walked out of Superior Court in Newark a free man, barely managing a smile as he greeted his son and several supporters with hugs.
For Evans, who has loudly proclaimed his innocence since his March 2010 arrest, believing corrupt Essex County officials and a media-hungry Newark Mayor Cory Booker had conspired to bring him down, there was no celebrating the verdict.
"That was the jury that wasn’t the people," Evans said outside the courthouse. "That’s not the same thing as someone destroying you. It’s like someone put you in the oven and burned you up. You can’t undo that. When you smash something up, tear something up, you can’t put it back together."
The jury’s verdict followed 12 hours of deliberations over four days. Earlier in the morning, the panel passed a note to Superior Court Judge Patricia Costello saying it was deadlocked. About 30 minutes after Costello instructed jurors to keep trying to reach a verdict, they did.
Evans, who has been free on bail for more than a year, showed no reaction when the verdict was announced but on the elevator ride down from the courtroom, he buried his head in his hands and started crying.


In a morose press conference after the late morning acquittal, Acting Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn Murray said the investigation was over.
"With respect to this case criminally, this case is closed," Murray said, surrounded by the assistant prosecutors who handled the case and two of the boys’ family members.
Terry Lawson, whose brother, Michael McDowell, was one of the five boys, said the verdict did nothing to change her mind.
"Not guilty does not mean innocent," Lawson said. "Mr. Evans may escape the law, but never the lord." Lawson was 13 at the time of the boys’ disappearance, and testified that she watched as he hopped into the back of Evans’ car that August night before vanishing. "We know in our hearts what happened to the boys and we know in our hearts that Mr. Evans is a guilty man walking free."
Murray said she was "disappointed in the verdict," but acknowledged the significant challenges in prosecuting a decades-old case that had no bodies of the dead and no forensic evidence to link the defendant to the killing. The boys’ disappearance, she said, "has bothered the collective conscience of the Newark Police Department for 33 years. This case was never forgotten, never put on the back shelf."
The modest gathering of reporters after Wednesday’s not guilty verdict was in stark contrast to the media frenzy that surrounded the arrest of Evans and his cousin, Philander Hampton on murder charges last year. At that time, then-Acting Essex County Prosecutor Robert Laurino confidently declared: "the mystery has now been solved."

After Wednesday’s verdict was read, the jury was quickly escorted out of the courtroom by sheriff’s officers. One juror later said the decision of the six-man, six-woman panel was not clear cut.
"To me it was 50-50, and the best decision came out of it," said the juror, Aja McKnight, who declined to go into further detail, adding the verdict spoke for itself.
John Zucal, an alternate juror who did not deliberate but listened to all the testimony, said he was leaning toward a not guilty vote, saying he did not believe Hampton — Evans’ admitted accomplice and the state’s key witness.
Zucal, 48, said there were several inconsistencies in Hampton’s description of the killing and in the way he described the boys’ final moments. It was a point that Evans, a mason by trade who represented himself at trial with the help of a legal adviser, had struggled to highlight.
Hampton had confessed to the boys’ killing in November 2008, calling Evans the mastermind. A third cousin, Maurice Woody-Olds, was alleged to have been involved, but he has since died.

As the lone, alleged eyewitness to the killing, Hampton spent two days on the witness stand, detailing how Evans had lured the boys into a vacant Camden Street house that night, how he "packed them" into a tiny closet, nailed the door shut then set the house on fire with a five-gallon can of gasoline.
The house burned to the ground and the bodies of Michael McDowell, Randy Johnson and Alvin Turner, all 16, and Melvin Pittman and Ernest Taylor, both 17, were never found. Hampton called the killing payback for the boys having stolen a pound of marijuana from Evans a week earlier.
Despite the numerous witnesses who testified that Evans was the last person they saw the boys with before the disappearance, the case rested largely on Hampton’s account, and his credibility with the jury. Hampton, a career criminal and admitted drug dealer, pleaded guilty and received a reduced prison sentence in exchange for his testimony. Evans rejected a similar plea deal offered by the prosecutor’s office.
In his testimony at trial, Hampton said Evans packed the boys into a 2-foot by 4-foot closet, which he secured with a single, long nail.
Zocal, the alternate juror, said it was unlikely the boys could have fit into that closet. "Then you nail the door shut with one long nail?" he said. " I would think five teenage boys would be able to force the door open."
Evans was stoic as the jury foreman read "not guilty" 10 times, with the only other sound a collective gasp from the audience that packed the courtroom. An imposing 6-4 and 260 pounds, Evans had been an unpredictable and emotional advocate for his cause, thundering his opening statement, breaking down in tears on several occasions, and shaking his head in disgust when cross-examining a prosecution witness.

"I was prepared either way. But I know what the facts are and the prosecutors know what the fact are. And the fact is I’m innocent."
His legal adviser, Olubukola Adetula, who took on a more prominent role in the trial’s waning days, said Evans "has a lot of work to do to regain back his name and his reputation, which has been completely ruined ... I only hope that he will be able to find the strength to be able to move on."
But Newark Police Director Samuel DeMaio, who was the city’s chief of detectives when Hampton confessed in 2008, said he was stunned by the not guilty verdict, and disappointed that one of the department’s most haunting mysteries will remain unsolved.
"I’m really confident in the investigative work that all of our detectives did from start to finish," he said. "I really thought we were going to be able to bring closure to the families of those kids."
That closure will never come, said Floria McDowell, Alvin Turner’s mother. McDowell, who testified at trial and who this month filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Evans, called the verdict, "a terrible thing."
"I think he will get his just do sooner or later," she added. "It might not be now, but it will come back to haunt him. The man knows what he’s done."


http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/11/lee_anthony_evans_trial_case_o.html