Innocent, But Behind Bars
Another man confessed to murder. Why is this retarded man in prison?
Police were intrigued. Since firefighters delayed entering the house for 40 minutes, only the killer would have known at that point that the elderly woman was inside tied up. Wilson claimed, by Wall's account, that his "older brother" had been inside and seen Martz tied up. Wall described the brother as tall and thin, with brown hair. That alone should have made police question Wall's credibility: Wilson was an only child. And Gerry Johnson--the high school assistant principal--had already told police that Wall was a troublemaker and "a very skilled liar." Investigators, however, never asked Johnson about Wilson. If they had, she says she would have told them that Wilson "didn't have the mental capability to do the planning of it."
U.S. News found Wall's brother, who says Wall later admitted he had lied because he hoped to receive an award from a state arson fund. Johnny Ray Wall says the subject came up a few years after the murder when he and his wife took Gary one harvest season to California, where they earned a migrant worker's wage picking fruit. "Did the kid really do it?" Johnny Wall asked his younger brother. He recalls Gary Wall's answer: "No, he didn't really do it, but I'm getting $5,000." According to Johnny Wall, his brother "was more or less bragging about it, and he was happy because he was going to get $5,000." Gary never got the money. Johnny Wall says neither police nor Wilson's attorneys ever questioned him. Johnny Wall, who never went to police with his story, says he has not spoken to Gary since last fall, in part over a falling-out after Gary pawned his older brother's rented VCR and television.
Wilson's alibi. Not only was the prosecution's star witness offering shaky testimony but Wilson had a strong alibi. When fire sirens wailed at 8:05 p.m. on that Sunday night, Wilson and his mother were in a grocery store buying cheese and soda. One neighbor, Lucille Childress, told U.S. News that she spoke to them there, as the sirens went off, but never told police because she was afraid to come forward. Before that, Wilson had spent the evening at home. A 13-year-old neighbor, Matt Reed, had come over around 5:30 p.m. to tape heavy-metal records. The two boys watched the start of a Disney movie that began at 6, and Reed said he went home for dinner a half-hour later. Susan Wilson then helped her son tack posters to the new paneling in his bedroom and by 7:30, she estimates, they left for the grocery store.
Sometime in that period, the prosecution argued, Wilson (who asked permission every time he went to the park just across the street) sneaked out of the house, walked the eight tenths of a mile to Martz's house, ransacked it, tied up Martz, set the house on fire and walked home carrying the stolen loot--in time to go shopping with his mother. Journalist Bill Maurer, who wrote for a now defunct weekly paper, knocked on doors along the 40-minute round-trip route between the Wilson and Martz homes--which passed businesses onthe town square and churches conducting services that evening--and found no one who recalled seeing Wilson.
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