Everyone. This next episode contains some pretty harsh language and some of its racially sensitive. So if that bothers you fair warning thanks. They said they were riding around in the race right that was going on in Jacksonville drinking beer. Now, may I say what they said yeah let's go get a nigger. It was March 23rd, one thousand nine hundred and sixty four, a woman named Johnny may Chapelle walked with call store to buy some groceries for her family. She was thirty five and had ten kids the things she bought at the store was ice cream. She threw the ice cream and her wallet and the rest of the groceries in a paper bag and started to walk home and she was walking home. She realized the ice cream had swept through the bag in the bottom. It's split open and then She got home. She realized she was missing her wallet. She thought it.

It had fallen out, so she went back to the road to retrace her steps as she walked. She met two friends. They helped her look, they were all african american At the same time, for young white men were driving around the area listening to the race riots on the radio, the the on the dashboard. Their names were Jw Rich Wayne, chessmen Elmer Kato in James Alex Davis. These four most drove past and Jw Rich leaned out the window with a twenty two caliber pistol and fired, hitting MRS Chappelle and killing her. It's so close to the road I mean it must have her had such close range, and it was just a twenty two cal bullet, but she bled internally and because getting rescue out here at the time was you for a black person. The ambulance was an old panel truck took for to get here and there was no medical services on board, so she essentially bled to death before they could get her to the hospital

it was four months before Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights ACT of nineteen, sixty four outlawing segregation, our producer or in spore, grew up in Jacksonville hearing about this episode and today She brings us a story of a hate crime and the men who walked away. I'm Phoebe Judge, and this is crew. Now. We all want to think of Florida as not part of the deep south, but it is absolutely especially Jax very much part of the deep south. This is my dad Bob. Or he's a lawyer, and so is my mom and my brother, and even my brother, soon to be wife. So when I say my family. We always talk about their cases. My dad likes to talk about this. In particular he's worked on it probe I know for a number of years Last time I went home. He drove me to the spa

where Johnnie Mae Chapelle was killed and over there is the food market. Where she had gone to shop for some groceries, including ice cream for her kids. The night she was killed, the police showed up and took down a report. They talked to the friends who are king with her and wrote down the color of the shooters car dark blue, but it's better. Way in the friends couldn't see much in the dark. Chappells Murda was briefly mentioned in the newspaper the next morning and a story about the race riots The headline was large area. Terrorized by negroes. There were no other news stories and from what one can tell there was no investigation. My name is Kenny C. Annie Lee Cody, Junior League thirty was a detective. The time in Jacksonville. He was. Going to sign to the case, but he tried to keep up with all of the homicides that occured and he taken note of the Chappelle case. He worked that neighborhood a lot one night. Five months after the murder, something bizarre happened

as usual. When we were on that side of town at night. We would stop by the freeset and have dinner that was a diner Cody and his Arnold Coleman were eating six young guy came in some I sort of knew as a firefighter his name. Was Wayne chessmen for you, he came by the table. He said large. He said I just wanted to let you know that I've straight in my life up and I'll of course responded and uh. So that's good good Wayne, I'm glad to see you get ahead headset and he and I'll. Ask me so that's kind of strange when I said I'd mourn strange. That's weird! about a week later they were back at the freeze at and Wayne chessmen showed up again this time in a dark, Blue Plymouth, he came in again and came up to us and he said if never help you with anything. Let me know, I told sergeant

I'm going to Donelan said they were involved in the murder of that MRS Chappelle, on the black woman that was killed on us. One is loaded out in my mind about it and that's probably the vehicle that was driven, Cody truck setup to detectives intuition, which seems a little Hollywood to me. But it was enough to convince his partner into intestines house and asked him to come down to the police station Cody had a plan. He got Bible from the stations, little lending library and under the commandment thou shalt not kill with a red pen. Apple, the Bible, the Bible out, monitor and in front of his face. I said look, that commandment underlined in red, and you have any comments and his jet blurted it right out, he said Sarge, I didn't, I didn't, kill her, I didn't shoot, or I was just in the car just like that and I said, kill. Dushon. What was it? You said that old, black woman- I don't know one. I said, that's what I thought

Would you be willing to give us a a statement? Any said? Yes, Sir three of the four men came in and confessed. The fourth guy had left town with the army and their confessions were transcribed by a court reporter. They told the detectives were to find the gun and coding Coleman went to pick it up, but there the problem when they got to the police station. There was no file for Chappelle. There was no evidence of this never being killed in Duval County. Not one record was there Cody said his boss would often files in his office so in Coleman, waited for the chief to leave and started snooping through his papers? They rambled through drawers and filing cabinets, but they weren't finding anything about Chappelle in as we got up to leave. He saw the core Verbal white piece of paper sticking out from under the chair, met the heart that that you rode your chair on in the chiefs of it. He said

but that is I sullen low, so we lift up than men worried to death the chief was gone, come define is doing that anyway, that just so and to be the addendum written by the uniformed officers at night of that and it had a case file. A fixed number fix to it, so somebody had put it under the floor, mat yeah, along with about fifty or sixty other documents that we didn't have time to look but by, that time we had the case number so we went back to the is the vision, a double check and there was. Case violent with that number on it. So we knew then what happened. Cody alleges that police chief, Jc Patrick, was intentionally hiding files and why would you do that he is a racist. Obviously, this is Cody's opinion. It could have just been shoddy police work but it is hard to imagine a white woman's murder file winding up floor mat in one thousand nine hundred and sixty four Cody, and

woman decided to go over the Chiefs head straight to the sheriff and we told him what we'd learned. Shooting what we had, and he was a ball of course, though, but he Don't so don't don't do a thing until you hear from me. This is terrible. The next and when we came in, we heard from Chief Patrick Can I say what he said profane yeah and he can slam the door and he he said. Let me tell you to mother something you can't rock this boat boys, the anchors too big. Soon after both detectives are fired, they were told it violated, departmental rules. By the lack of evidence. The state attorney's office decided to go ahead and try the case. They started with Jw Rich, the guy who fired the gun

the all white. All male jury deliberated for one hour, coming back with a verdict, manslaughter rich was sentenced to ten years in prison. And got out after only three, and even though they confessed the three the guys in the car that night were never brought to trial after their mother's death, Johnny Matia, pals, kids, all ten of them were removed from their father's custody. The girls were sent to live with relatives and the boys were sent to a juvenile shelter until foster homes could be arranged once we got in the juvenile shall they split from each other. So we had no one, no one. This is Shelton Chappelle. He was

infant when his mother died and he grew up entirely in the custody of the city of Jacksonville in the juvenile shelter the boys home group homes foster homes, ten foster homes. According to Shell, then one of the hardest things was that his family didn't know much about his mother's murder. His father heard rumors that the there was an african american man who died soon after but a Shelton got older. He started asking questions and doing his own research and that twenty finally learn the name Jw Rich then, in one thousand nine hundred and ninety six, he called all of his brothers and sisters together for a memorial service for their mother. There was an- and once met in the newspaper. Meanwhile, things weren't going too well for detective Cody at that point in time I was so disgusted with everything in this world. I I didn't, have it telephone. Didn't watch television. I had a little houseboat boat. I lived down down at the beach. There is little restaurant in the Marina early one morning he was walking through and he happens to the new

Paper on one of the tables, I saw the name chip Ellen that of course peaked. My interest, so I started reading it the final out Shelton, the youngest son was in Jacksonville, going to have a memorial service on is date of his mother's death and Ali learned that he'd been trying and trying and trying to get cinema information out of the sheriff's office about his mother's death. There was none and I knew he wouldn't come and tell him anything so I thought about it, and I said you know I people will never know what happened, how their mother was violated. They'll, never know it. Unless I tell him so and truly Cody style, he decided to get involved. He showed up at the memorial service. He said young man, you don't know half of the story and say what are you talking about? You say: well, I'm the officer

who caught the killers who killed your mom. I ask him to sit outside with me in the lobby there of the church for awhile, and I said son I'm taking yeah. I know you're trying to find out some information about your mother's death, but you won't find it out. They became good friends and still talk on the phone all the time. They want the same thing for the other three guys in the car to go to trial and in some ways that feels like a no brainer, but my dad says it's complicated well there's no statute of limitations for murder. There are a lot of other things in play. Like the speedy trial rule, which says that because the charges were dropped in the 60s, the state can't just re file them decades. Late It doesn't make a whole lot of sense that we know there's men out there who fifty years ago, were involved in a brutal murder. They confessed to their part. Patient in that murder, and yet the state of Florida for a number of reasons can

and will not bring them back to a courtroom and That's the most frustrating thing for me is to try to sit and talk with Shelton AN and his brothers and sisters and explain how that can be Try Almost twenty years, Shelton Cody have tried to reopen this murder investigation. Cody wants a grand jury to hear the whole story and had a bunch of lawyers help. They even went on Oprah and all this time the four guys from the car we're just living out their lives in Jacksonville, a reporter for the city's all weekly Susan Cooper Eastman went to find the shooter Jw Rich and ask him straight up his side of the pray conveniently he'd, never moved in two thousand and six. He lived in the same house. He lived in in nineteen sixty four,

inconveniently. He wasn't home, but a lady on the street told are J at the bar, where he always is I could see JW rich sitting right there on the barstool. He was very thin and he was very drawn You could kind of see, I think, the little bit of that rap browser and him he was sixty three It's and spent eight hours a day in that bar the bartenders kept a special mug for him and a jacket, in case it was cold when he walked home at night. He said as the way the bullet flew it couldn't have hit her. And that even he might have remember, but hearing it hit like a sign or stop sign or something like that, like but he was sure the bullet he just shot into the air. Wasn't the bullet that killed her? The people in the bar didn't exactly say again? We believe it, but they say

that the media had gotten the story all wrong and that they were torturing him and he could never have justice because he could never clear his name after talking with him. Did you believe he was tortured by it? He was tortured you know. Maybe he would have been a drunk anywhere been drinking anyway, but I chose to see, M as she, in his eyes blurring his mind. You know convincing people around him having people around him who were telling him? No. Oh, no you're, not a murderer you're a good guy, you know and that that was he was in a little bubble there at the bar, Jw Rich, died a few years after Susan talked with them, and just this month there, of the foreman passed away, Elmer Kado. That leaves two. Ah at this point there's only one way: anyone could see jail time and that's if they were up on federal charges, but in order to do that,

there's got to be something that makes it federal, like cross state lines are jumping the gun on a military base and they've looked they've subpoenaed these guys again and again hoping they'll something that could trigger federal charges I remember one of them. It was very poignant. He that at the end of the interview he looked at the prosecutor- and he said, is this: it does this mean this is an finally over and the prosecutor to his credit, No, this is never going to be over. You know, I know a lot of people. I would say fifty years you should be all right, listen I'll, never be over it. If it was my four brothers and I had killed black or white, I don't think it would be over I want justice. The fact is: finding any resolution is just going to get harder, if not impossible. So much of the case rests on the original confessions of the men in the car, the ones collected by

booty when he pulled out the Bible that night and those confessions have disappeared. Half of the accused her dead, Cody's partner, Donald Coleman's day The only other person who witnessed those now missing confessions is Cody himself and that doesn't bode well. I'm the only fact witness alive in thing else anybody says about this is hearsay. So what will happen if nothing. If you pass away before anything happens it's over and less, I tell it, it has no factual bay. How old are you, sir, in January I'll, be eighty five and you feel optimistic. Do you think something's going to happen? No, no! At.

Criminal is produced by Lauren Eric Mental and me Julianne Alexander, does our episode art you can find more episodes on Itunes and, if you like, we're doing you can subscribe and leave us a review. We're on Facebook and twitter at criminal show I'm Phoebe Judge, and this is criminal hi. It's Phoebe! For the past four years, we've been part of radio topia, a collective of podcast, independently owned and run we're joined in this network by some of our favorite podcast at their shows like kitchen sisters present and ninety nine percent invisible, but read your topia isn't just about the shows that make up the network. It's about the community of listeners who make it all possible in this year for annual fundraiser. We want to do something you were asking you to help design a new radio topia coin, the coin for

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