Cop Killing Suspect Pleads Not Guilty (Last updated 3:59 PM ET April
19)
(NEWARK) -- The latest suspect pleads innocent to the murder
of a North Jersey policewoman. Twenty-five-year-old Condell Woodson
is being held in lieu of one Million dollars bail and could face the death
penalty if he is convicted of the murder of Orange Police Officer Joyce
Carnegie. Woodson... the fourth person arrested in the case... was picked
up early Saturday a few hours after Terrance Everett was released. Woodson
is the son of acareer Army man. He had been a a good student and star athlete
at Orange High School before he began to go astray. He has a criminal record
that includes robbery and drug charges.
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN April 18, 1999 NYT
NEW YORK
-- A man wrongly held for nearly a
week as the prime suspect in the killing of an
Orange, N.J., policewoman
told Saturday of being
assaulted as his family
was terrorized by masked
police officers in a predawn
arrest raid at his home,
and said he intended to
file a civil rights lawsuit
against the authorities.
Terrance Everett, a 24-year-old
computer repair
service clerk, said that
ski-masked, heavily armed
officers hunting for the
killer of Officer Joyce Anne
Carnegie broke into his
home at 5:30 a.m. on April 10,
handcuffed his wife and
mother, and, as his 5-year-old
son watched, threw him to
the floor and handcuffed
him.
"They started kicking and
punching and spitting at me,"
Everett said at a news conference
at the Newark office
of his lawyers on the morning
after his release and
exoneration by the Essex
County prosecutor, Patricia A.
Hurt. His wife, Ebony, 22,
who is six months pregnant,
and other members of his
family attended the news
conference.
"They threw me into the kitchen
and an officer hit me
with the butt of his gun,"
he said. "It was crazy. When
they brought me outside,
there were police standing
there, saying 'We got him,'
and they started applauding."
Later, in custody at the
Prosecutor's office, he said, he
took two lie-detector tests,
which he passed, although
he said he was told he had
failed both, and gave
interrogators detailed accounts
of being with his wife
and eating hamburgers at
a restaurant at the time
Carnegie was slain.
Everett, who still bore a
blackened left eye and bruised
cheek that had been evident
at his arraignment, did not
criticize the prosecutor's
handling of the case, and said
he had not been mistreated
during his week at the Essex
County Jail. But he called
on the prosecutor's office to
investigate the conduct
of the Orange, East Orange and
State Police Departments
during his arrest, and said he
would file a civil rights
suit against the law
enforcement authorities.
"This was a harrowing experience
for Everett and his
family," said Ronald Hunt,
a lawyer for Everett. "He
made it clear to us that
he was not the person involved.
We followed up on all the
information he gave us, and
it became clear he was not
the person. We're overjoyed
for him and his family,
but there are obviously some
repercussions from this
that he has suffered."
Hunt added: "It's important
to recognize that he was
dragged out of his house
at 5:30 in the morning and
charged with the crime of
killing a police officer, a
police officer who was beloved
in the community. He
was assaulted in police
custody. He was incarcerated
and, minimally, faced a
murder sentence that could
have been 30 years to life,
and possibly a death
sentence."
A spokesman for Ms. Hurt,
Ray Weiss, said Saturday
that the prosecutor's office
had no comment on Everett's
statements or on any other
aspect of what he
characterized as a continuing
investigation. Officials
with the Orange and East
Orange Police Departments
could not be reached for
comment.
Ms. Hurt had emphasized at
a news conference Friday
night that Everett, whose
release she was announcing,
had been taken into custody
on the strength of
identifications by four
witnesses -- one said to have
seen the shooting, and three
people who had been
robbed on nearby streets
in the hours before the
shooting, purportedly by
the killer.
Ms. Hurt declined to say
what led investigators to
Everett initially. But other
officials have said the
witnesses picked Everett
because he bore a superficial
resemblance to a police
sketch of a suspect in the
killing, a bald man with
a goatee. In addition, the
witnesses were said to have
picked him from a police
photo array.
Everett, who is bald and
wears a goatee, has a police
record. He served more than
three years in prison on a
robbery conviction, and
has been on parole since April
8, 1997. Aside from his
arrest in the Carnegie case, he
has had no brushes with
the law since then, his lawyers
said.
Everett's release ended a
week of twists, turns, riddles
and confusion in a case
that has evolved from the death
of an officer into a perplexing
tangle of events -- three
arrests, a jumble of charges
and countercharges, the
death of one suspect in
custody, misgivings among law
enforcement officials and
accounts of turmoil in the
Prosecutor's office.
Besides Everett, two other
men were arrested last
Sunday. One, Earl Faison,
27, an aspiring rap artist,
collapsed and died about
an hour after being taken into
custody. The police suggested
that the cause was a
severe asthma attack, but
his father contended that he
was beaten to death by the
police.
Another man seized in the
investigation, James Coker,
29, of Newark, has been
charged only with possession
of drugs, and some law enforcement
officials have
insisted that his name should
not have been cited in the
Carnegie case and say he
is not a suspect in her killing.
Complicating the picture
of turmoil in the inquiry, Ms.
Hurt's top aide, Patrick
Toscano, resigned at midweek.
He was the third top official
of the prosecutor's office
to resign in the last two
months. Toscano denied that his
departure had anything to
do with the Carnegie case,
but other officials said
mounting professional
difference between Ms. Hurt
and her staff accounted for
the staff defections.
The investigation took yet
another turn Saturday. A
report in The Star-Ledger
of Newark said investigators
had gone to Georgia in search
of a man purportedly
linked to a gun that was
believed to be used to kill
Carnegie. She was shot in
the abdomen and head on a
desolate street in Orange
on the night of April 8 when
she approached a suspect
in two armed robberies.
The investigators from the
prosecutor's office and the
Federal Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms
were said to be searching
for Cordell Woodson, a man
with a criminal record in
New Jersey and the South,
who was living in Orange
at the time of the officer's
murder but has since vanished.
The published report quoted
unidentified law
enforcement officials as
saying that Woodson was not
necessarily a suspect, but
that his name surfaced in the
inquiry after federal agents
traced a 9-millimeter pistol,
believed to be the murder
weapon, to him in Georgia
using its serial number.
The report said a partial
fingerprint found on the
gun had not been identified.
Everett's status as the prime
suspect had been
questioned from the start
by some law enforcement
officials, who said privately
that they were not
persuaded that he was the
killer or that there was
enough evidence to charge
him. There were other
reports quoting investigators
as saying they had urged
Ms. Hurt not to charge him
until his alibi and other
factors had been evaluated.
April 20, 1999
Essex County Prosecutor Defends
the Investigation of Policewoman's
Death
By RONALD SMOTHERS
NEWARK
-- As the latest suspect in the shooting
death of an Orange, N.J., police officer was
arraigned here Monday, the
Essex County Prosecutor
spoke extensively about
the investigation for the first
time, defending the "diligence"
of her office's work on
the case, which has seen
four people taken into custody.
One of the four died while
in custody and under still
unexplained circumstances,
and another was charged
but eventually exonerated.
The Prosecutor, Patricia
Hurt, acknowledged that the
April 8 death of the officer,
Joyce Carnegie, had
aroused "high emotions,"
but she praised the police
department's work despite
allegations that those
emotions led to an excessive
use of force in the
investigation.
Ms. Hurt insisted that her
office had "strong evidence"
from witnesses' descriptions
that led to their first,
mistaken arrest of Terrance
Everett for the slaying.
The witnesses, she said,
had identified photographs of
Everett as the man who had
committed three robberies
on the night that the officer
was killed. As a result, Ms.
Hurt said, authorities had
no choice but to arrest him on
April 10 and formally charge
him with murder on April
12. He was released four
days later.
The fourth person taken into
custody after the shooting,
Condell Woodson, 25, was
arrested on Saturday in
Newark.
Monday he waived an appearance
before Judge Betty
Lester at his arraignment
in Essex County Superior
Court on murder, robbery
and weapons charges. His
lawyer, from the Essex County
Public Defender's
office, entered a plea of
not guilty.
Judge Lester ordered that
he remain held on bail of $1
million.
In the end, Ms. Hurt said
at a news conference in her
office here, it was her
office's investigation of the
account from Everett's lawyers
and relatives of his
whereabouts at the time
of the shooting that led to his
exoneration. Ms. Hurt stopped
short of apologizing to
Everett.
"It is regrettable what happened
to Everett," she said.
"But four or five days to
exonerate Everett is not a very
long time as far as this
office is concerned."
Everett has said he was hit
in the face when a task force
made up of state troopers,
Federal agents, Orange
police, East Orange police,
Essex County Sheriff's
deputies and investigators
from the prosecutor's office
burst into his home to arrest
him.
Today Ms. Hurt said that
she had taken steps to insure
that the state would investigate
Everett's charges of
mistreatment and that she
had asked that the state's
Division of Criminal Justice
supersede her office and
conduct the investigation.
Another man caught up in
the police net died while in
police custody. Ms. Hurt
said that her office was still
investigating the arrest
of that man, Earl Faison, 27,
who, according to reports
in The Star-Ledger of
Newark, died of a seizure
on the night of April 11
while in police custody.
Faison's relatives have said
the police beat him.
Faison had been stopped while
riding in a taxicab near
the scene of the crime.
He matched a description of the
killer of Officer Carnegie,
Ms. Hurt said today. Faison
has been cleared of any
involvement in the shooting of
the officer, she said, as
has James Coker, a 29-year-old
Newark man, who was also
picked up because he fit
witnesses' descriptions
of the possible suspect.
Ms. Hurt was unable to explain
why investigators had
picked up Faison and Coker
if her office had such
strong evidence of Everett's
guilt. She said the arrests
were part of a "two-pronged
investigation," in which
her office was checking
Everett's account of his
whereabouts and trying to
build a case against a murder
suspect at the same time.
"We had probable cause to
arrest him," she said,
referring to Everett.
Among those circumstances
was verification of
statements by Everett and
his wife that during the
approximate time of the
officer's shooting they were
eating hamburgers at a restaurant
less than a mile from
the scene of the shooting
and at an automatic banking
machine. Computer records
of the transactions helped
confirm their account. In
addition, Everett passed two
lie-detector tests shortly
after he was taken into
custody.
She said that work in checking
his account had been
delayed because "investigators
had been up three or
four days going nonstop
on the case and I had to give
them a rest."
She denied widespread reports
that her investigative
staff was deeply divided
through last week on who
should be charged in the
case.
Ms. Hurt also denied that officers used excessive force.
The Essex County Sheriff,
Armando Fontoura, who
joined Ms. Hurt in the news
conference, also defended
the investigators and insisted
that they had not been
"overzealous," as many Orange
residents have charged.
"Cops were not overzealous
and we could have sat
back on our laurels and
gone out to play golf after we
had Everett," he said. "But
we didn't." Ms. Hurt added,
"Sometimes justice calls
for an arrest and sometimes
justice calls for release."
Perhaps to emphasize that
she believed they finally had
the right man, Ms. Hurt,
who had sounded confident of
Everett's guilt after his
arrest, described the evidence
against Woodson in some
detail.
A gun that was found near
the crime scene and linked to
the slaying of Officer Carnegie
was vital to the case
against Woodson. Willie
Brownlee, assistant special
agent in charge of the New
York office of the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms,
who also joined Ms.
Hurt in discussing the case
today, said that within 24
hours of the shooting the
agency had traced the gun to a
transaction in Butler, Ga.
The town, in west central
Georgia, is about 45 miles
northwest of Cordele, Ga.,
where Woodson had lived
before coming to East
Orange about a month ago
to visit relatives.
She also said that the witnesses
to the robberies who
had identified Everett as
the man with a bald head and
goatee had subsequently
identified Woodson.
"The evidence in this case is strong," she said.
"But we are continuing our
investigation."
Story on April 25 with great detail:
April 25, 1999
Early Suspicion of Big Mistake
in
Murder Case
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER with ALAN FEUER
RANGE,
N.J. -- By late in the morning of April
10, several hours after heavily armed, masked
state troopers broke down
the door of a house near here
and arrested Terrance Everett
in the murder of an
Orange police officer, seasoned
investigators in the
office of the Essex County
Prosecutor were certain that
Everett was innocent.
According to a high-ranking
law
enforcement official, they
told the office's
second-in-command, First
Assistant
Prosecutor Patrick Toscano,
that Everett
had just given a convincing
account of his
whereabouts on the night
of the murder --
from the two bacon cheeseburgers
with no
tomatoes that he had eaten
at a fast-food
restaurant to the bank machine
where he
had withdrawn cash -- and
had even
passed two polygraph tests.
Convinced, Toscano urged
his boss,
Prosecutor Patricia A. Hurt,
to let Everett
go free.
But Ms. Hurt overruled Toscano
and
others who made the same
recommendation, at one point
even
pounding a table with her
fists, according to a county
official who was told of
the incident. After all, four
eyewitnesses had independently
identified Everett from
an array of police mug shots.
And that night, she
announced Everett's arrest
in time for the news to make
the Sunday papers.
Everett was not released for six more days.
Now, more than two weeks
after the April 8 death of
Officer Joyce Anne Carnegie,
Ms. Hurt maintains that
the real killer is behind
bars and that she and her
subordinates handled the
case well. "Over all, I think
that this office did a good
job," she said at a news
conference last Monday.
Yet details of their joint
investigation, gleaned from
interviews with police officers,
prosecutors, witnesses
and others -- most of whom
were under strict orders not
to discuss the case and
insisted that their names not be
published -- suggest that
the inquiry was the antithesis
of a textbook case.
The most glaring lapse, according
to those interviewed,
seems to be the failure
to interview a key alibi witness
for Everett. Although Everett
told investigators that he
was eating at a nearby Wendy's
when Officer Carnegie
was killed, detectives did
not interview the restaurant
manager until after his
account appeared in a
newspaper -- six days later.
In addition, the man now
accused of killing Officer
Carnegie, Condell B. Woodson,
was not arrested until
April 17, two days after
detectives flew to Georgia.
The detectives found the
person from whom Woodson
is believed to have bought
the 9-millimeter pistol,
which prosecutors contend
is the murder weapon.
But as early as the night
of April 9, even before Everett
was arrested, Federal agents
told Orange and Essex
County investigators that
they had traced the gun to
Georgia. Neither Ms. Hurt
nor the Orange Police
Director, Richard Conte,
has explained why it took
nearly a week to make the
trip south.
In the meantime, two other
men were swept off the
streets in the investigation
into Officer Carnegie's
murder. One, Earl Faison,
died in police custody an
hour after being pulled
out of a taxicab. His family
claims he was beaten by
officers.
The investigation has put
the Essex Prosecutor's office
and the Orange police on
the defensive. The New
Jersey Attorney General
and the United States Attorney
in Newark have opened separate
inquiries into the
death of Faison and the
treatment of Everett. Everett
says the police beat him
during his arrest, and two days
later he appeared at his
arraignment with a black eye, a
bruised cheek and a bewildered
expression. On
Thursday, Federal agents
removed documents from the
Orange police station under
a subpoena. Everett's and
Faison's families are considering
civil rights lawsuits.
Ms. Hurt's image within law
enforcement circles was
damaged even further when
it became known that
Toscano, her second-in-command,
had resigned in
protest within hours after
pushing her to release
Everett. Toscano has repeatedly
declined to comment.
Perhaps the most harmful
result of the problems with
the murder investigation
could materialize later, when
the case against Woodson
winds up in court.
Law-enforcement officials
here and in surrounding
jurisdictions are speculating
privately that a skilled
defense lawyer could make
much of the three earlier
arrests.
If Woodson indeed confessed
to the killing, as has been
reported, "it saves them,"
said one veteran investigator,
referring to the Essex Prosecutor's
office. "But even
then, he could argue that
he was scared he'd die, like
Faison."
Ms. Hurt, a Republican who
was appointed by Gov.
Christine Todd Whitman in
1997, has refused repeated
requests for an interview
since Monday, when she
defended her handling of
the investigation at a news
conference after Woodson's
arraignment. At the time,
she denied there had been
deep divisions among her
staff.
On Friday, her spokesman,
Ray Weiss, reiterated that
Ms. Hurt "believes it would
be inappropriate for her to
make any comments while
this is still an ongoing
homicide investigation."
He called back later to add
that Ms. Hurt "cannot comment
about the Everett case,
because the Attorney General's
office is in charge."
Conte, the Orange Police
Director, conceded in an
interview this week that
"mistakes were made," and
vowed that, "When the dust
settles, we will learn from
this." But he declined to
say what the mistakes had been
and refused to answer many
questions about the case.
The Investigation: Slaying
Sets Off Chaotic
Manhunt
he
call came over the police radio around 8:15
P.M.: two armed robberies on the south side of
town. Be on the lookout
for a bald black man with a
stocky build wearing a leather
jacket.
Half a mile north of the
robbery scene, three Orange
police officers, each assigned
to patrol a different
sector of this 2.2-square-mile
working-class town,
were taking a break, chatting
by their cars in a parking
lot near the train station.
Hearing the radio call, they
headed for the scene, at
the corner of Carteret and
Clarendon. Two officers
drove off in one direction. But
Officer Joyce Carnegie's
car was pointing the other
way.
Officer Carnegie made the
first right turn onto Day
Street, heading south. Almost
immediately, she spotted
someone and called in to
double-check the description
of the robbery suspect.
She never asked for backup,
and no one heard from her
again.
Less than 15 minutes later,
Carlos Gonzalez, a former
Orange police officer driving
home from work in
Brooklyn, saw Officer Carnegie's
patrol car stopped on
the sidewalk, partly blocking
northbound traffic on Day
Street, its lights flashing,
the driver's door open.
Gonzalez, now an agent of
the Federal Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms,
pulled over and found
Officer Carnegie lying face
up near the door.
She was mortally wounded,
shot in the abdomen and
the back of the head. Her
weapon had never left its
holster.
Gonzalez flagged down a passing
ambulance, which
took Officer Carnegie to
the trauma center at University
Hospital in Newark. But
doctors could not save her.
At 8:40 P.M., the Orange
police dispatcher reported an
officer down at Day Street
and Freeway Drive West.
Conte, the Police Director
and a 27-year veteran of the
department, was called at
home and told that, for the
first time in more than
30 years, a member of the
department had been gunned
down. As friends and
relatives of Officer Carnegie
headed for the hospital,
the search began for her
killer.
Police officers immediately
began searching the area
around the crime scene.
Someone reported seeing a
black man running down the
railroad tracks, and an
officer gave chase but could
not catch up to the man,
Orange police officers said.
Into the night and throughout
the next day, scores of
police officers on foot
and in squad cars pressed a
chaotic manhunt. The normal
weekday calm was
shattered every few minutes
by the sounds of blaring
sirens and screeching tires.
At one point near the scene
of the shooting, an unmarked
cruiser burst airborne
from a parking lot, spun
wildly on the rain-slicked
asphalt and sped away.
Still, investigators from
the Orange force and from the
Essex Prosecutor's office,
which handles most
homicide cases in the county
outside Newark, had
plenty to go on.
They had the accounts of
three witnesses to the
robberies, which investigators
believe were committed
by the killer. And they
soon found a witness to the
shooting itself. That person
told officers that the
gunman had run along Freeway
Drive, the service road
to Interstate 280, toward
a public housing complex on
the other side of the interstate,
according to a homicide
investigator.
Within hours, the investigator
said, the police had
canvassed the grounds of
the housing project and found
a 9-millimeter handgun in
a patch of grass. The gun was
given to agents of the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms for examination.
Joseph Green, a spokesman
for the bureau, said that by
the next evening, agents
had traced the weapon to the
Barrow Gun Shop in Butler,
Ga. A licensed gun dealer
there had sold it in 1993
to a Butler resident, Green
said. The bureau immediately
gave that information to
the Essex County prosecutors,
Green said.
An employee of the store
said that she received a few
calls from officers identifying
themselves as agents of
the bureau over the next
several days. But no one
visited the shop until New
Jersey investigators and
Federal agents arrived on
April 15, a week after the
shooting, she said. They
removed records about the
1993 gun sale and left,
she said.
Green said that bureau agents
spent the days in between
trying to locate the buyer,
whose name has never been
released. The buyer was
interviewed by two Federal
agents and New Jersey investigators
on April 15, he
said. The buyer, investigators
say, led them to Condell
Woodson, an Orange native
who once lived in Georgia.
He was arrested in Newark
two days later.
The First Arrest: Ex-Suspect Says Police Beat Him
n
Friday morning, April 9, the day after Joyce
Carnegie was killed, Terrance Everett, a
warehouse clerk for a computer
repair company, was
eating breakfast with his
wife, son and mother in the
kitchen of their home in
East Orange. The television
was on, and the morning
news carried the report of the
Thursday night murder in
Orange.
When it was over, Everett
said in an interview this
week, he shook his head.
"Whenever they find him," he
said to his family, "they're
going to whup him."
Before dawn the next day,
Everett was asleep in the
third-floor bedroom he shared
with his wife, Ebony,
who is 6 1/2 months pregnant.
Sometime after 5 A.M., Mrs.
Everett was startled
awake by a loud bang. "I
thought the boiler was
exploding," she said.
But when Mrs. Everett opened
the door to the hallway,
she met eyes with a masked
man holding an automatic
rifle. A haze of smoke was
filtering through the house.
Other armed men downstairs,
later identified as
members of the entry team
of the New Jersey State
Police, were yelling, "Where
is Terrance Everett?" she
said.
Mrs. Everett, wearing only
a nightshirt, was led down
to the second floor of the
house and pushed to the floor,
she said. Her hands were
strapped together behind her
back.
Everett, who had taken the
time to put on a T-shirt,
followed his wife into the
hallway and was ordered to
freeze. He said he was thrown
to the floor, cuffed, then
pulled down to the second
floor and thrown to the floor
again, face down.
One officer stood on Everett's
back; others kicked, spit
on and cursed him, he said.
Another blew his nose on
him.
Pinned down, face to the
floor, he peered past the
officers who crowded the
room and saw his son,
Terrance Jr., 5, staring
back. "He was sitting there on
his bed, with his mouth
hanging open," Everett said.
"He just had this blank
look on his face."
Everett said he asked what
he was being arrested for,
but no one answered him.
"They took me downstairs
and flung me into the kitchen,"
he said. "I fell into the
table. One cop picked me
up, then another threw the
table out of the way and
threw me into the stove. I
bumped into a cabinet, and
he tore the door off the
cabinet."
To walk Everett outside to
a waiting van, officers
needed the key to unlock
the wrought-iron fence that
surrounds the front yard.
Everett said he asked if he
could turn around to show
the officer the right key.
Then, he said, another officer
slammed him in the face
with the butt of his gun,
saying, "Nobody told you to
turn around."
Wearing only the T-shirt
and a pair of blue pin-striped
boxer shorts -- the first
gift his wife had ever given him
-- Everett was taken outside
into the cold light of
morning. "There was a sea
of officers," he said,
"clapping and applauding."
Only after the police van
arrived at the Essex County
Prosecutor's office in Newark
a few minutes later,
Everett said, did he learn
that he had been arrested as a
suspect in the killing of
the Orange police officer.
For the next several hours,
he said, different
interrogators came and went,
leaving him alone for long
stretches in an interview
room. Over and over, he
described where he had been
on the night of April 8.
He was read his rights,
he said. "But every time I asked
for a lawyer, they'd say,
'If you're innocent, you don't
need one,' get up, and walk
out of the room."
Investigators asked Everett
to take a polygraph test. "I
knew I was telling the truth,
but I figured the fact that I
was nervous could make me
fail," he said. Still, he
agreed, and by 10 A.M.,
he had taken the polygraph
twice, answering the same
questions.
He was not told how he had
done until about 3 P.M., he
said. "They were having
lunch," he said of the
investigators. "They told
me I'd failed the polygraph."
In fact, he had passed both
times.
In truth, Everett had an
easy enough time recalling the
details of his Thursday
night. He got off work at 6 and
picked up his wife an hour
later at home. The two, who
were married last October
and share a bedroom in the
home of Everett's mother
in East Orange, drove off to
look at an apartment in
nearby Irvington, but they did
not like the area.
Back at the house, Everett
ran in for a quick shower and
change of clothes. Then
the couple went to the Wendy's
on Main Street for dinner.
Everett ordered two junior
bacon cheeseburgers with
no tomatoes. His wife, eating
for two, ordered two
junior bacon cheeseburgers
with mayonnaise and
onions only. They had fries
and a Frosty, too. Then
Everett went back to the
counter for a fruit punch.
While they ate, Everett
noticed an East Orange police
officer enter the restaurant
and order a meal.
Around 9 P.M., the couple
left for Eagle Rock
Reservation, a park in West
Orange. They walked
around for a while, talking
and playing, Everett
touching his wife's belly
to feel the kicking of the baby
girl they are expecting
in July.
From there, he said, they
stopped at a cash machine,
then headed home, stopping
on the way at a gas station
in East Orange that is a
hangout for that city's police
officers. Mrs. Everett's
father is a member of the force.
Inside the interrogation
room, investigators resumed
questioning Everett about
3 P.M., he said. By then, the
Essex County Prosecutor's
office had been riven by an
explosive debate about his
guilt or innocence.
His arrest had been a good
one, investigators said. He
was a bald black man who
fit the general description of
the robber and gunman. Witnesses
identified his
photograph the day after
the shooting. And he was a
paroled felon who had served
three years in prison for
a robbery conviction.
But several investigators
felt that his alibi was too
thorough, too calmly delivered,
too easily verifiable,
law enforcement officials
said. And he had passed the
polygraphs. Experienced
investigators grudgingly
concluded that they had
the wrong man.
Toscano and others argued
to free him, officials said.
But Ms. Hurt angrily refused.
At 2 P.M., Toscano
resigned, a decision not
made public for four days. That
night, Ms. Hurt announced
that Everett had been
charged with murder, criminal
possession of a weapon
and robbery.
A Puzzle: With Man in Jail, Search Continues
s. Hurt said later that the investigation of Officer
Carnegie's murder had by that time become
"two-pronged" -- with officers
examining Everett's
alibi while continuing to
follow other leads and
evidence.
But the next day, a Sunday,
that two-pronged approach
produced the odd scene of
officers scouring the streets
of Orange, carrying the
composite sketch of a killer
who their superiors were
saying was already in jail on
murder charges.
In fact, that night, the
police arrested two more
suspects. James Coker, an
unemployed man with a
record of at least two convictions
on drug charges, was
at his aunt's apartment
in Newark when police officers
broke through her front
door around 6 P.M. The police
say that officers saw him
try to swallow a bit of crack
cocaine as they burst in.
Investigators said they tracked
down Coker, who also
fits the general description
of Officer Carnegie's killer,
after he bragged to others
that he had killed a police
officer and got away with
it.
In an interview in the Essex
County Jail on Thursday,
Coker, 30, said he had no
part in the shooting. He said
he volunteered to take a
polygraph test, but none was
given to him. He remains
in custody on charges of drug
possession, attempting to
destroy evidence and other
outstanding charges, his
lawyer, Albert Kapin, said.
Later that night, sometime
after 10, a police officer
ordered Earl Faison to get
out of a green taxicab near
his girlfriend's apartment
on the south side of Interstate
280, two blocks from the
scene of Officer Carnegie's
murder. He was on his way
to his aunt's house in
Newark, his relatives said.
But because officials have
provided so little
information about the case,
it is still unclear why the
cab was stopped. But at
her news conference on
Monday, Ms. Hurt said that
Faison, an aspiring rap
performer who happened to
be bald, was picked up
because he, too, fit the
killer's description.
When approached by the police,
he ran, the authorities
said. He was caught after
a three-block chase, carrying
a gun, and was arrested
after a struggle. According to
an account in The Star-Ledger
of Newark, he was
subdued with pepper spray.
An hour later, he was dead.
According to the County Prosecutor's
office, Faison
collapsed and died as he
walked into the Orange police
station. One law enforcement
official said that Faison,
who was carrying an inhaler
at the time, had suffered an
asthma attack, which can
be fatal if left untreated.
While a preliminary autopsy
report ruled out blunt
force, the cause of his
death is still undetermined.
But Faison's father, Earl
Williams, believes the police
killed his son and has hired
a private pathologist for an
independent autopsy. He
said he was shown a picture
of the corpse at the county
morgue on April 12. There
were many cuts and bruises
on his son's face, which
was so swollen it looked
as if "he was dragged by a
truck," Williams said. "From
the moment I saw the
pictures, I knew he had
been beaten to death."
The Alibi: Delays in Checking a Convincing Account
ichard
Fajimolu, the assistant manager on duty at
Wendy's the night of the murder, clearly
remembers and Mrs. Everett
from the night of Officer
Carnegie's shooting.
They came in around 8:30
and sat at a table against the
windows for at least a half
hour, under a display
showing a crescent moon,
he said. In an interview this
week he recalled the special
orders they placed, as
well as other details.
"I didn't know she was pregnant,"
he said of Mrs.
Everett. "But she was heavyset,
wearing a long, long
dress."
As the couple ate, an East
Orange officer, a regular
customer, came in for a
sandwich and told Fajimolu
that an Orange officer had
just been gunned down six
blocks away. "He told me
to call if I saw anyone
matching the description,"
Fajimolu said. "I told him I'd
hit the panic button."
It never dawned on either
man that the bald man eating
cheeseburgers with his wife
might be a suspect,
Fajimolu said.
Two nights later, April 10,
a detective came by asking
to see the restaurant's
security tape. Fajimolu played it
back for him. But images
from the night of April 8 had
already been erased because
the tape records over
itself every 24 hours, he
said. The detective left without
asking Fajimolu any other
questions, he said.
He said that detectives returned
on April 12 and 13
with subpoenas, and another
manager provided receipts
showing orders for the same
meals Everett said he had
ordered, at the same time
he said he had.
But investigators did not
question Fajimolu. On April
15, he told his story to
reporters for The Star-Ledger.
The newspaper quoted him
the next day as saying that
Everett "was here that night."
That morning, Fajimolu was
picked up at home and
brought to the Essex County
Prosecutor's office. He
repeated his story.
That night, as word surfaced
that Woodson was the
newest suspect in Officer
Carnegie's shooting, Ms. Hurt
hastily called a news conference
at her office to
announce that Everett had
been exonerated. Around the
corner, a gate swung open
and Everett walked out of
the county jail.
Inside her office, Ms. Hurt
abruptly ended her news
conference by bundling her
papers and rising. A
reporter shouted a last
question. Would she apologize
to Everett and his family?
Saying nothing, the Prosecutor
walked out.