By Bob Barney
On our message board I ran a story about police corruption that is very close to me personally. I figured I would elaborate more on the story of a famous forensic medical examiner (who has a fake medical degree) that has been lauded by the media as the greatest crime investigator of the century turned out to be a total lying fraud who belongs in jail! It turns out that Dr Lee, who has lied in more than 200 cases causing the false imprisionment of many innocent people was actually brought down from a wrongfully convicted man from my hometown, after serving 31 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. I didn’t know Ricky Birch at the time he was arrested, but he was a friend and related to my wife Tammy’s family. His brother was married to Tammy’s sister. Since his release, I got to know Ricky, and his prison found conversion to Christ. I talked with him for hours at a home we rented on Lake Candlewood several years ago just how corrupt the New Milford Police, state police and especially Dr Lee was. Justice came 31 years late, but Lee was found liable for fabricating evidence in a murder case that sent Ricky and his friend to prison for decades for a crime they did not commit, a federal judge ruled Friday.
The felony murder convictions of Ralph “Ricky” Birch and Shawn Henning in the Dec. 1, 1985, slaying of 65-year-old Everett Carr, of New Milford, were based in part on false testimony about blood stains on a towel that later were proven not to be blood, the court ruled.
Birch has served more than 30 years of a 55-year sentence for felony murder, Henning, who was 17 when the crime occurred, was granted probation just last year under new rules for teenage offenders.
In an earlier court hearing, it was discovered that DrLee, 84, (who rocketed to fame after his testimony in the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder trial, in which he questioned the handling of blood evidence. He also served as a consultant in other high-profile investigations, including the 1996 slaying of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey in Colorado; the 2004 murder trial of Scott Peterson, who was accused of killing his pregnant wife Laci; and the 2007 murder trial of record producer Phil Spector.) When Birch and Henning were put on trial in 1989, jurors heard about an extremely bloody crime scene. Carr had been stabbed 27 times, had his throat cut and suffered seven blows to the head.
His testimony bolstered the state’s claim that 17-year-old Shawn Henning and 18-year-old Ricky Birch had used the towel to clean themselves up after a “burglary gone bad.” It played a huge role in convicting the friends, who were sentenced to decades behind bars.
The problem is, it wasn’t true. There was in fact no blood on the towel, and it had never actually been lab-tested, the Connecticut Supreme Court recently concluded. The ruling could lead to the exoneration of both men, who are in their fifties. The case features bombshell new DNA evidence—possibly pointing to a female killer—and witnesses who have since recanted, including a jailhouse snitch and a friend of Henning’s who testified he’d confessed to being at the home.
No forensic evidence existed linking Birch and Henning to the crime. No blood was found on their clothes or in their car. The crime scene included hairs and more than 40 fingerprints, but none matched the two men.
Prosecutors presented evidence from Lee — not yet famous — that it was possible for the assailants to avoid getting much blood on them.
Lee also testified that a towel, which later was suggested could have been touched by the killers while cleaning up, was found in a bathroom near the crime the scene with stains that he tested and were consistent with blood.
Tests done after the trial, when the men were appealing their convictions, showed the substance was not blood.
In his ruling U.S. District Judge Victor Bolden ruled that Lee presented no evidence to back up his testimony.
“Other than stating that he performed the test, however, the record contains no evidence that any such test was performed,” the judge wrote. “In fact, as plaintiffs noted, Dr. Lee’s own experts concluded that there is no ‘written documentation or photographic’ evidence that Dr. Lee performed the TMB blood test. And there is evidence in this record that the tests actually conducted did not indicate the presence of blood.”
The judge also ruled that Lee failed to properly use an immunity defense that could have shielded him from damages and was no longer eligible to use that argument.
In the latest case, which has just been wrapped up, a federal judge in an 84-page decision Friday, U.S. Judge Victor A. Bolden in Bridgeport ruled that Lee, who during the trials was the director of the Connecticut State Forensic Laboratory, would be liable for fabricating evidence in the murder case of Everett Carr. Bolden granted a motion for summary judgment against Lee, and the Associated Press reported that the only outstanding issue for a jury in his case will be the amount of damages.
The judge also ruled that Lee failed to properly use an immunity defense that could have shielded him from damages and was no longer eligible to use that argument, according to the Associated Press.
The ruling also sent the case against the police and the town to trial, according to the Associated Press.
Reached by phone, Dennis Santore, the now-retired DA who put away Henning and Birch, recently admitted “It was a fishy case.”
He said, “It was tough putting it together because it was circumstantial. But we did the best we could with what we had… We didn’t do much testing back then.” Asked if he stands by the evidence, he said, “I would have to, if I put it on [trial].”
A few days after Henning and Birch were granted new trials, Lee held a press conference insisting he made no errors. “In my 57-year career, I have investigated over 8,000 cases and never, ever was accused of any wrongdoing or for testifying intentionally wrong,” said Lee told a throng of reporters. “This is the first case that I have to defend myself.”
But Lee’s history of problems with evidence—intentional or not—doesn’t begin and end with Henning and Birch. According to The Daily Beast The 81-year-old world-renowned forensic scientist—who has appeared on dozens of crime TV shows and documentaries—has allegedly hidden evidence or given incorrect testimony in at least three other cases, potentially sending the wrong men to prison and allowing guilty ones to walk free, according to court documents and other legal sources.
The cases include:
* The Murder of L.A. Actress Lana Clarkson. Lee hid or destroyed a white object—likely an acrylic fingernail—found at the scene of Clarkson’s death by gunshot, a judge ruled in 2007. Lee had been hired by the legal defense of iconic record producer Phil Spector, who was charged with, and eventually convicted of, Clarkson’s second-degree murder. Sara Caplan, then a defense attorney working with Lee, admitted to the judge that she saw Lee take the evidence, which he then failed to hand over to prosecution, according to the ruling.
* The Murder of Young Mother Janet Myers. In 1990, Lee testified that 33-year-old Kerry Myers’ pants were spotted with his dead wife’s blood type, backing up the prosecution’s claim that he and a friend beat her to death with a bat. Both men were convicted. But Lee’s testimony was later called into question by a detective who handled the case and insists Janet’s blood type was never found on Myers’ pants.
* The Disappearance and Murder of Teenager Joyce Stochmal. In 1988, after Connecticut teen Joyce Stochmal went missing and turned up dead, Lee testified that a brown crusty substance, found on a knife belonging to 29-year-old suspect David Weinberg, was blood. Lee said there was no way to know if the blood belonged to a human, but Weinberg was still convicted. Yet lab tests had in fact been done by the time of the trial—and they revealed it was definitively not human blood, according to a petition for a new trial filed on behalf of Weinberg in 2017. His lawyer, Darcy McGraw, claims Lee “knew or should have known” it wasn’t human blood.
Lee has a defense for each alleged screw-up. In the Stochmal case, he insists the “lawyers don’t understand the science”—and that a “chemical presumptive test” taken at the crime scene “tested positive” for blood. In the Carr case, he claims he never testified that the substance on the towel conclusively was blood, only that the same type of field test showed it was “was consistent with blood.” (Testimony from back then, however, shows he went a step further, saying the “smear was identified to be blood,” according to The Washington Post.) In the Janet Myers case, he contends the police officer is mistaken about the blood type found on Kerry Myers’ pants. And in the Clarkson case, he insists he offered the possible fingernail to the prosecution and “they didn’t want it.”
In the years since these cases, Lee has become a rock star in the world of true crime. He’s appeared on the hit Netflix documentary The Staircase and dozens of Investigation Discovery-style programs, and he also scored his own show, Trace Evidence: The Case Files of Dr. Henry Lee. He’s won prestigious awards, including the Medal of Justice and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Science and Engineer Association. And he founded the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science—where his methods are being taught to future generations of criminalists.
But critics, including a former colleague and legal opponents, say he may simply care more about scoring legal victories than the truth. “His attitude is extremely dangerous in the criminal-justice system,” said McGraw, who is also the executive director of the Connecticut Innocence Project. “His testimony has led to some very unfair and unjust results. These are horrible cases—and there are big reasons to believe some of the men involved are innocent.”
Former O.J. Simpson prosecutor Christopher Darden now says Lee “stretched” the truth when he testified on behalf of the former football Hall-of-Famer’s defense team in 1995. Back then, Lee told jurors “something [was] wrong” with a blood sample placed into evidence, boosting the defense’s claim that cops had tampered with it. “I didn’t think it was true then—and I don’t think it’s true today,” Darden said of Lee’s testimony. “It was bullshit, not science.”
Kerry Myers, whom Lee helped send to prison for decades, is still seething. “Henry Lee is caught up in his own ego and loves being a forensic expert to the stars. I don’t think he cares about people—they’re objects he can use to promote himself,” said Myers, 62, who was set free two years ago. “It’s frustrating that he’s still doing it, and nobody is questioning him.”
In May 2013, Lee gave an auditorium packed with graduating students a piece of advice. “You must have a winner’s attitude,” he said at Manchester Community College in Connecticut. “The loser always says, ‘There is no way.’ The winner always finds a way.”
Lee likes to stress the importance of winning in his speeches and writings. As the 11th of 13 children, raised without a father by an immigrant mother, success and ambition set him apart from the pack.
Born in Kiangsu province, China in November 1938, Lee fled with his family to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese civil war in the late 1940s. His father, traveling to the island separately, died when his ship sank in January 1949. Lee was 10 years old.
As a young man, Lee was hired by the Taipei Police Department, where he worked his way up to the rank of captain. In 1965, he moved to the U.S. with just $65, and graduated from John Jay College with a degree in forensic science seven years later. He went on to get his doctorate at New York University.
After graduation, he volunteered his then-newfangled crime-lab skills to Connecticut prosecutors, but nobody would take him up on it. Instead, a public defender, Charlie Gill, gave him his first job. “I went to see him and I could barely understand a word he said,” Gill said in an Los Angeles Times profile piece several years ago, referring to Lee’s thick accent.
He asked Lee to work a salacious case. In it, two men were accused of sexually assaulting a woman they had met at a bar in Litchfield, Connecticut, in the mid-1970s. It had been nicknamed the “panties in a tree case” in reference to where the victim’s undergarments were found. As the star witness at the trial, Lee gave dramatic testimony. He said seminal fluid belonging to at least four other men was discovered on the woman’s underwear. In the end, the men on trial were found not guilty.
Lee’s career took off soon after. In 1979, he landed a job as the director of the Connecticut state crime lab, and eventually offered expertise on blood type, spatter, microscopic hair particles, and fibers. Back then, forensic scientists responded to crime scenes alongside cops and EMTs. “We got called in the middle of the night, on holidays and weekends, and we had to respond,” Lee told me. “It was not an easy job.”
On the stand, jurors found him credible and even charming. He was quick with a joke, or a moment of levity and could explain complex theories in simple ways.
“I don’t think I ever met a juror who didn’t find him persuasive,” said one former Connecticut court clerk, who shepherded jurors around during many of Lee’s cases. “He employed science in a way that made sense and he came across as a bona fide scientist. He always seemed very well organized,” he said. “He really impressed me.”
It took a long time, but The Plain Truth about Dr Lee and the corrupt police and court system in America has some light shining on it! After what we are seeing what is being done to Donald Trump, smart Americans everywhere are wondering, ARE WE NEXT? And we all might be!