Read Online Mary's Mosaic by Peter Janney - Free Book Online

vehicle at the Foundry Underpass to make the call, but no such a call—if one ever took place—was ever mentioned in the trial transcript or any police report.
    Dovey Roundtree seized on the discrepancy in patrolman’s Roderick Sylvis’s testimony in her cross-examination:
     
   Roundtree:  
  Mr. Witness, do you know what time the defendant, Ray Crump was arrested?  
   Sylvis:  
  I know it was approximately 1:15 when it came over the air.  
   Roundtree:  
  Now, then, thirty minutes after that time you saw a man stick his head out?  
   Sylvis:  
  Pardon?  
   Roundtree:  
  Thirty minutes after Ray Crump, Jr. has already been arrested, you saw an unidentified Negro male stick his head out of the woods?    60
    Hantman immediately objected, stating that what Roundtree had alleged had not been Sylvis’s testimony, in spite of the fact that it had been. This may have been one of the few moments during the trial where Dovey Roundtree missed a significant opportunity. Why didn’t she ask Judge Corcoran to have the stenographer read back Sylvis’s testimony, confirming that Sylvis had just testified that it had been “1:45 or 1:50 [ P.M .]” when he saw the mystery “Negro male”? Sylvis, for his part, must have realized that he had been “off message,” because in the next instant he corrected his testimony and said that he first saw the head of the man poking out of the woods at “approximately 12:45 [ P.M .].” 61
    That would have been physically impossible. Having already testified that he had arrived at Fletcher’s Boathouse at “12:30 P.M . or 12:29 P.M .,” 62 then waited “about four or five minutes,” before deciding on a plan with his partner, only to then spend “at least five minutes, probably more” interrogating the young white couple before beginning to vigilantly walk “a mile east on the tow path,” Sylvis would have had to have been a world-class runner to spot the mystery “Negro male” man at 12:45 P.M . It was, in fact, accurate that about an hour later, “about 1:45 [ P.M .] or 1:50 [ P.M .],”—Sylvis’s initial response to Hantman—that he spotted the head of the mystery “Negro male,” who could not have possibly been Ray Crump.
    When Roundtree confronted Sylvis with the discrepancy, he had to have realized that by first telling the court that it was 1:45 P.M . when he saw the “Negro male,” he had risked sabotaging the prosecution’s case against Crump. Sylvis now wanted the court to believe that it had occurred at 12:45. But his initial answer to Hantman’s inquiry of “about 1:45 or 1:50 [ P.M .]” was the correct answer, and he confirmed that with me in 2008. 63 Crump, it will be shown, was already in the custody of Detective John Warner east of the murder scene as early as 1:00, which could only mean there was a second “Negro male” on the towpath that day and that he had eluded capture—as well as the attention of the court proceedings.
    Indeed, a cornerstone of the prosecution’s case was that the man Sylvis had spotted was, in fact, the fleeing Ray Crump. Prosecutor Hantman hammered that point home repeatedly throughout the trial. Should that assertion be successfully challenged, the case against Crump would crumble. That was about to happen, although it would again elude the scrutiny of the defense and remain hidden in the trial transcript until now.
    Detective John Warner, scheduled to testify after Sylvis, had not been in the courtroom during Sylvis’s testimony. It was customary to keep witnessesfrom hearing other testimony in order to reduce the possibility of collusion and fabrication. Warner was therefore unaware of the various conflicting time stamps that had jeopardized the prosecution’s case. Warner testified that he had arrived at the Key Bridge entrance of the canal towpath at 12:29 P.M . with his partner, Henry Schultheis. They waited there until 12:40, he said, at which point Warner decided he