Tag: Murder

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News

Three Arrested in Shooting Death of University of Memphis Football Player

Memphis Police announced Monday afternoon that three people have been arrested in connection with the September 30th murder of University of Memphis athlete Taylor Bradford.

DaeShawn Tate (21), Victor Trezevant (21), and Courtney Washington (22) were charged with murder in perpetration of an attempted robbery. Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin wouldn’t release many details due to the ongoing investigation, but he did say police believe the men were trying to rob Bradford at the time of his death.

“They believed he had something they wanted,” says Godwin. The police director said the robbery attempt was unsuccessful.

Earlier this week, Tunica County Sheriff Larry Liddell reported that Bradford may have won several thousand dollars at a Tunica casino the weekend of his murder. Memphis Police will not discuss details of the casino trip due to the ongoing investigation.

Though the three men in custody are not U of M students, Godwin says possible future arrests in the case may involve students.

Bianca Phillips

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

FROM MY SEAT: Just Thinking…

A few
not-so-random thoughts from the world of sports:

• I
admire coach Tommy West and the University of Memphis football program for the
strength they showed in playing last week’s game against Marshall, as
scheduled, in the aftermath of Taylor Bradford’s murder. The marching band’s
rendition of “Amazing Grace” at halftime may have been the most poignant
moment I’ve experienced at the Liberty Bowl.

I
strongly disagree with the decision to play less than 48 hours after a member
of the team was shot and killed, but if three hours in helmets and pads in
front of 25,000 friends helped ease the pain, even briefly, the effort was
worthwhile.

It’s
now the responsibility of the U of M administration, of course, to be
proactive in raising awareness about gun violence in Memphis. Our flagship
educational enterprise simply must focus attention on this city’s single most
damning weakness. However isolated or “targeted” the administration considers
Bradford’s murder, guns taking the lives of young Memphians is epidemic. The
university owes this larger battle (and far more than a football game) to the
memory of Taylor Bradford.

•
Having caught my first glimpse of the 2007-08 Memphis Grizzlies at last week’s
public “Lunch Time” scrimmage, I’ve got a name for you: Casey Jacobsen. Mike
Conley and Darko Milicic will be popular new faces at FedExForum and will play
large roles in determining how close this team is to playoff contention. But
the sharp shooting Jacobsen — a college star at Stanford who cut his pro teeth
in Europe — is going to be among the most popular Grizzlies in the season
ahead.

• Can
SEC football get any better? The 12th-ranked Georgia Bulldogs go to Tennessee,
ready to put a beat-down on the sagging Vols, having won their last three
games in Knoxville. Instead, UT discovers it can run the ball and whips the
Dawgs by 21 in a game that wasn’t that close.

Then a
few hours later, top-ranked LSU finds itself on the ropes against the
defending national champions, only to rally with one fourth-down conversion
after another, scoring the winning touchdown with less than two minutes to
play. Don’t bet against these Tigers the rest of the season. (And how many
Mid-South football fans were shedding tears over Florida being eliminated from
the national-title hunt the first week in October?)

•
Tradition will take a beating in the National League Championship Series later
this week. The senior circuit’s two historical whipping boys — the Cubs and
Phillies — both went down in three-game sweeps, and at the hands of two clubs
(the Diamondbacks and Rockies, respectively) that weren’t playing baseball as
recently as 1992.

Consider these “historical” factoids. The greatest player in Arizona history —
the currently hobbled Randy Johnson — has pitched in more games as a Mariner
than he has as a Diamondback. In 10 years of baseball, Arizona has changed its
uniform design more often than the St. Louis Cardinals have in 116 years. As
for the Rockies, they aim to reach their first World Series having still never
finished atop their division. Bless the wild card.

Even
with tradition out the window, the NLCS will be a healthy introduction for
many fans to some of the best young players never seen east of the Rocky
Mountains. Colorado’s Matt Holliday (.340 batting average, 36 homers, 137
RBIs) is — with Philadelphia’s Jimmy Rollins — one of two viable NL MVP
candidates. Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki (.291, 24, 99) is a likely
Rookie of the Year winner. And rightfielder Brad Hawpe (.291, 29, 116) could
stand — in full uniform — at Times Square and not be recognized.

As for
Arizona, reigning Cy Young winner Brandon Webb (18 wins, 3.01 ERA) would be
making commercials if he played in New York, and centerfielder Chris Young (32
homers at age 23) will be a perennial All-Star by 2010.

So
forget the uniforms, the swimming pool in one ballpark and a humidor in the
other. (Mark this down: If Colorado wins the pennant, we’ll see the first snow
delay in World Series history.) Sit back and enjoy some great baseball.

• How
does a King lose his kingdom? He starts by wearing the opponent’s baseball cap
to a playoff game in Cleveland. How tone-deaf must LeBron James be to show up
at Jacobs Field in a Yankees lid? Here’s a thought for the next time the
Bombers come to Ohio for a game, LeBron: Yankee boxers.

Categories
News

“Memphis” Magazine Probes Emily Fisher Murder

Emily Fisher’s murder in 1995 was among the most brutal and high-profile crimes in this city’s history. In its October issue, our sister publication, Memphis magazine, gives readers an inside look at this tragedy and the events leading up to it.

Marilyn Sadler’s story, “A Murder in Central Gardens, Part I,” takes readers through Fisher’s struggle as a parent dealing with a drug-addicted son — who bragged to the wrong people about his family’s wealth. It also covers the 1996 trial of two suspects who were ultimately acquitted.

“Part II,” coming in November, explores the rest of the saga, offering more insights into Fisher’s son Adrian and his best friend — and what role they played in covering up the crime. The October issue is on newsstands now, or go to Memphismagazine.com to subscribe.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

FROM MY SEAT: A Dream Now Dead

I
realized a dream come true last weekend, courtesy the game of football. And I
came crashing back to reality Monday, with football merely the conduit for pain
an entire community must now endure.

I never
got to meet Taylor Bradford, the University of Memphis football player shot and
killed Sunday night on the U of M campus. But Tiger football is a part of my
life — both casually and professionally — every fall, and has been since I
started writing this column more than five years ago. So it’s a loss in the
family, even if extended.

That
dream I mentioned? A friend and I drove to Dallas last Saturday, with our
pilgrimage to Texas Stadium — almost 30 years in the making — central to our
Sunday plans. As children of the Seventies, Johnny G and I have carried Cowboy
blue and silver in our veins since Roger Staubach first bridged the gap between
comic-book hero and flesh-and-blood role model. From the Tom Landry statue —
every bit as rigid as its late subject was over his 29 years as Cowboy coach —
to the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (their pregame kick line from one
25-yard-line to the other rivals any the Rockettes have ever performed), the
experience made for an afternoon of goose bumps for two Memphians. And that was
before the 28-point victory over St. Louis had been completed.

Over the
drive back from Dallas — 500 miles allow for some serious reflecting, even on
the subject of football — I had some thoughts on the difference between football
in Cowboy country and the variety we know, love, and suffer here in the
Mid-South with the hometown Tigers. A professional orange to a college apple,
you might argue, but within the same pigskin realm. The contrast is dramatic, to
say the least.

But then
the crash. Then reality. Then murder in Memphis.

We
sportswriters aren’t deserving of the soapbox other journalists often stand upon
when it comes to society’s ills. Our job is to report scores, describe heroes,
identify trends — on offense, defense, and in between — that shape the way we
spend our down time. That’s what sports provide: a distraction. Until the
distraction is bloodied by the same horrid reality we all — journalists and real
movers and shakers — must confront when the worst in us seizes the headlines.

Time and
a criminal investigation will provide the details in Bradford’s murder. But
here’s one variable that won’t be affected, regardless of the investigation’s
details: no 21-year-old college junior should be dead having found himself on
the wrong end of a gun. Which brings me to my unwanted soapbox this week.

When
will we finally get it? When will we — Memphians, Americans, human beings —
realize that guns are destroying our freedoms, and not protecting them? That
guns turn grievances — minor and otherwise — into capital crimes? That guns in
the hands of young people are tragedy on a stopwatch? That people don’t kill
people, not without weapons, and that guns are the weapon of choice for most
killers?

Taylor
Bradford certainly had dreams. Maybe he dreamed of playing in Texas Stadium one
day (in a Cowboy uniform or otherwise). He certainly dreamed of closing the gap
between football as Dallas fans know it and the football Memphis fans recognize.
A track-and-field star at Antioch High School in Nashville, Bradford had come to
focus on football, and took it seriously enough to transfer from Samford
University to Memphis, where he could play for a program that would fulfill an
athletic dream. Most tragically, Bradford was a dream realized — all by himself
— for Jimmie and Marva Bradford, parents who now must find a way not to hate the
word Memphis, forget whatever football is played here.

The
Tigers will apparently play Marshall University Tuesday night at the Liberty
Bowl, as originally scheduled. The game will be televised on ESPN2. Marshall’s
football program, of course, is most famous for having been rebuilt from the
horror of a plane crash that killed in the entire team in 1970. I don’t imagine
there will be much excitement in the voice of your television analysts at
kickoff.

The game
shouldn’t be played. If it means forfeiting to Marshall, that’s what Tiger coach
Tommy West should do. Football should draw us to society’s margins, where we can
cheer, laugh, even boo events that don’t really matter. Whether performed in the
glow of a stadium that has seen five Super Bowl champions or in an oversized
arena clinging to life as a viable community asset, football should be that fun
distraction a society craves.

A
football player murdered? A human being murdered? The game stops. No time for
distractions.

Categories
News

Two Memphis Killers Denied Parole

Two Memphis convicts were denied parole today at a hearing in Henning, Tennessee.

Alfred Turner was convicted of facilitation to commit felony murder in the Emily Fisher trial in January 2007. With parole denied, he will not be up for another hearing until 2013. Fisher’s daughter, Rebecca Fisher, said, “I cannot tell you how relieved I am.”

William Groseclose was also denied parole. He is serving a life sentence for hiring two men to kill his wife, Deborah Groseclose, in July 1977. She was raped, stabbed, choked, and left to die in the trunk of a car.

Groseclose was originally sentenced to death and had been on Death Row for nearly 20 years, but had his conviction and sentence overturned in 1995. He, like Fisher, will not be up for parole again for six years.

Categories
News

Convicted Fisher Killer Eligible for Parole Hearing

He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in February 2007, with the first chance of parole expected after four-and-half years. But Alfred Turner, the man convicted in the high-profile murder trial of Emily Fisher earlier this year, is already eligible for a parole hearing on September 13th.

Fisher, who was prominent in the Memphis social and arts community, was stabbed to death in 1995. Two suspects were found not guilty of the murder in 1996. A few years later, an informant led police to Turner, whose blood was found at Fisher’s house on Central. In January 2007. Turner was convicted of “facilitation to commit felony murder.” Jurors never doubted he left blood at the scene but weren’t convinced he committed the act. Turner had ties to Fisher’s drug-addicted son, Adrian Fisher, who admitted in the first trial that he bragged about his family’s wealth and the presence of a safe in the elegant Midtown house.

According to Dorinda Carter of Tennesssee’s Department of Corrections, Turner was a “Standard Range One” offender who was ordered to serve at least 30 percent of the 25 years. However, after subtracting 1,142 days of jail credit, 304 days of pretrial behavior credit, and 54 days of “sentence reduction credit” earned since his sentence, Turner’s release eligibility date is August 14, 2010. His offense is also eligible for a “safety valve date, an early parole consideration date in place due to prison overcrowding,” says Carter. “He also gets credit for behavior and programs he’s completed while incarcerated.”

Not surprisingly, the family of Fisher, who was stabbed more than 50 times, is shocked. Rebecca Fisher, daughter of the victim, says, “I knew parole was a possiblity but to go up for it now — when it hasn’t even been one-fourth of the allotted time — is crazy. I have to tell myself it’s not going to happen or it will make everything, the whole justice system, seem pointless.”

Fisher, a San Francisco-based writer, performer, and teacher, wrote and performed a one-woman show about the murder titled The Magnificence of the Disaster, which ran in Memphis in May and will run again in March 2008.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

Violent Femmes

Beware: The lesbians are coming to get your young daughters. The dirty purse-snatchers work in gangs and revel in holding small children down while putting things in places things shouldn’t be put. And — horror of horrors — the phenomenon of lesbian gang bangers is spreading like wildfire across the prairie. Well, at least according to Memphis’ Fox affiliate WPTY and popular conservative talk-show host and columnist Bill O’Reilly. The Eyewitness News Everywhere report spoke of lesbian terror cells called GTOs or “Gays Taking Over.” Beverly Cobb of the Shelby County Gang Unit told news crews that the dastardly dykes aren’t afraid to use the weapons they carry and “will sodomize [little girls with sex toys] and will force [them] to do all sexual acts.”

“They are forcing themselves on our young girls in all our schools,” Cobb was quoted as saying. “They will use [weapons] quicker than any male that I’ve ever come upon.”

Of course, there’s no data whatsoever proving that lesbian gangs are spreading across the country threatening little girls with switchblades or dildos. Just last week, even O’Reilly, a man not known for saying he’s sorry, admitted that the report was “overstated.” Kinda like his credibility.

… And then the Fireworks

From the AP: “Police in Memphis have charged a 32-year-old man with murder in a shooting that erupted over fireworks.” According to investigators, the bloodbath that left one person dead and five others wounded started when “a youngster threw a firecracker at another child on the Fourth of July.” This kind of news makes the older generation long for the good old days when tragedies like these were motivated by drugs and modest sums of money.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Looking for the Thread

With the impact of last week’s “voluntary manslaughter” verdict in the Mary Winkler murder case in Selmer still reverberating, John Ford’s trial on bribery and extortion charges headed toward its own conclusion this week in federal court in Memphis. And by now nobody — but nobody — was thinking slam-dunk about anything. Even if the Ford case were to go the government’s way (and that was still in doubt at our press time), most observers who had logged time at the former state senator’s trial — hearing all the testimony, weighing all the evidence — were well aware that the exact shape of the outcome still remained in doubt.

The reason? Juries these days weigh so many factors, including subjective ones, that dramatically contrasting conclusions can quite obviously be drawn from the same set of facts — especially when the prosecution and the defense make a point of presenting radically different interpretations of the same circumstances.

Consider what happened in Selmer: Rev. Matt Winkler had been slain a year ago by a shotgun blast, one that quite clearly came from a gun being held by his wife, Mary, who then fled with the couple’s three children toward the Alabama coast before being apprehended in that state. Authorities both in Alabama and Tennessee promptly claimed to have confessions from Winkler.

End of story? Hardly. By the time crack defense attorneys Steve Farese and Leslie Ballin had presented their version of the case last week, enough doubt had been raised that the slain Matt Winkler himself appeared to have supplanted his surviving wife as the true “defendant” in the case.

Much of this might have been foreseen. Even while most news accounts of the crime last year marveled over how such an inexplicable and shocking crime could have occurred in what had appeared to be a model church-centered family, the Flyer came across the first chink in that construct. That was when a neighbor family disclosed to senior editor Jackson Baker that Matt Winkler had angrily and without much apparent provocation threatened to kill their dog for wandering over onto the Winkler property.

A similar story was told during the trial by a defense witness — a dog-owner from McMinnville, the Winklers’ prior home. But that was as nothing compared to the testimony from the defendant herself about a lengthy history of alleged mistreatment from an overbearing and often irrational husband. Explicit claims by her of aberrant and oppressive sexual behavior on her late husband’s part were buttressed somewhat by evidence of stored pornography on the Winklers’ home computer, even if specific details (involving garish high-heeled shoes and a garish wig, among other artifacts) were in the “he said/she said” category. The late Rev. Winkler, of course, was well past saying.

There was much else that could be read one way or another, and it was up to a jury of 10 women and two men to unravel the contradictions. In the end, the unraveling produced a dominant thread that most observers had not expected. Jury nullification, as some critics of the verdict complained? We think not. It was a group operating as the dominant conscience of a community, and that, after all, is one way of defining what a jury of one’s peers is and does.