Innocent, But Behind Bars
Another man confessed to murder. Why is this retarded man in prison?
Another confession. Wilson's story might have ended with his imprisonment, had it not been for an extraordinary event one year after his guilty plea. Another man confessed to the Martz murder. Chris Brownfield was in prison at the time. His crime: the beating, robbery and murder of an elderly woman in her home 16 days after the Martz killing and only 60 miles away.
Brownfield laid out the Martz crime in detail. He described how he and a partner picked Martz because a third friend, who had once repaired her driveway, told them she kept large amounts of cash in the house. He also named the Joplin hotel where the two men spent that night. It was not the first time Brownfield's name had come to the attention of Lawrence County investigators. Three days after Martz's killing, a Joplin police detective had called to say that the murder fit the modus operandi of an escaped felon named Chris Brownfield, who was "known to tie up old ladies while he robbed their homes."
Most important, Brownfield provided something long missing: a clear motive for murder. Brownfield claims his partner--named in legal documents as Bruce Moore--had lost a stun gun while ransacking the house. Afraid it carried his fingerprints, Brownfield says, Moore chose to burn the house to destroy the evidence. (Moore has denied involvement.)
One of the lingering mysteries of the Martz murder was a stun gun found by police. On the tape of Wilson's second-day confession, police can be heard setting off something that buzzes loudly behind Wilson's back. What is it, they ask. An electric razor, he guesses. Unable to explain this key piece of evidence, police let the matter drop.
Unbending authorities. Following Brownfield's 1988 admission, a new attorney for Wilson sought a trial. But police and prosecutors in Lawrence County stood by their belief in Wilson's guilt and opposed reopening the case. They were aided by a crucial report from the office of the state attorney general. In it, investigator Jack Ruffel argued that because Brownfield was a career criminal, his testimony was "virtually worthless" and declared his story "not credible" based on several discrepancies.
Still, it is the major points of Brownfield's confession that seem to bear him out. Ruffel wrote that the stun gun had "truly baffled law enforcement personnel." But he dismissed Brownfield's tale because he drew a picture of the gun with a straight handle; the one retrieved from the fire had a slight curve.
Equally telling is Brownfield's memory of checking into the Capri Motel. Ruffel questioned this, noting that Brownfield "was very positive" that he had registered under an alias, "Tom Carpenter," but a check of the guest register found no one by that name. Ruffel conceded that "I did find where a Bruce Moore registered for two people and stayed in room 117." Hotel records indicate that the two drove Brownfield's 1978 Oldsmobile with Oklahoma license plates. Two phone calls were made from the room. One was to Moore's home in Oklahoma City; the second to the house where the third friend named by Brownfield was living.
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