00:00:02 Speaker 1: In January nineteen ninety five, two murders occurred in the Bronx. One was a Federal Express executive named Denise Raymond, the other a livery cab driver named Bath d'ap. Eventually, an alleged witness and her teenage translator claimed to have information that one had seen a group of assault from her window and that they both overheard a group of young men talking about robbing a cab and a girl. The police also believed Denise Raymond's ex boyfriend was involved, as well as someone who had allegedly called the car service to set up the cab driver. In total, seven people were charged with one or both of the murders, including Eric Listen, who ascends to twenty five to life. This is wrongful Conviction. You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcast one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to Wrong for Conviction. This is the story I've been waiting a long time to tell. It's almost too much. It's got a gang called Sex Money Murder, a Bronx drug gang. It's got an ear witness who somehow or other was lucky enough to be a witnessed to two different murders that happened about thirty six hours apart, separate crimes, who herself was kind of a let's just say, a complicated character. It's got six wrongfully convicted people, one of whom's here with us today, and that's just the beginning. So without further ado, I'm so excited to have with us today the man who lived through this. Eric listen, thanks for being there, Thank you, Jason, and with Eric here today is a guy I can only describe as a hero of the indist movement who's reporting and investigative journalism has resulted in freeing quite a number of wrong for convicted men that I'm so happy, Dan Slepian, that you're here on the show to help tell the story that you actually played a key role in. So we'll get to that later.

00:02:25 Speaker 2: Brother. You're like a kindred spirit, and for you to say that about me is kind of silly, to be honest with you, because you're like the north star of everybody in this movement and a mentor figure. Because I'm younger.

00:02:36 Speaker 1: Than so okay, so Eric, before this insane Ordeal befell you. What was your life like growing up?

00:02:49 Speaker 3: Well, my family were very close. I didn't have my father too much in my life. He lived in Colorado with his new wife and my brother and my sister, so I was raised by my mother, my grandmother, my grandfather, and all of my uncles, which was six in total. My mother was the only daughter, however, actually passed away and I was left to the care of my grandmother, who couldn't handle me. Because I was twelve years old, I thought I knew everything, so I mainly hung out in the park with my friends. But we were into gangs causing mischief. We were in causing any problems in the community. I grew up in Classing Point Gardens, which is next to Soundview Projects, and so mixing up with a few of the guys from Soundview, Classing Point as well as Saquan, we all just became like one close knit community and there was a lot of support from everyone because if you're seeing anyone in the street doing anything wrong before you reach home, someone knew about it from your family. But mainly I stood to myself. I was like a really introvert after my mother's death, and I supported myself with cutting grass in the neighborhood. I did your front yard for five, your backyard for five, and your hedges for three.

00:04:07 Speaker 1: Soon Eric was eighteen years old with a daughter on the way.

00:04:11 Speaker 3: I was going to every doctor's appointment, every sonogram, being there when she was born, just waiting to be a father, waiting for this new experience, and just suddenly one day, one morning, and just all crashed.

00:04:26 Speaker 1: Down on me, and the murder itself. The first crime was Denise Raymond, and she was a thirty eight year old woman. We're talking a cold night on January seventeenth of nineteen ninety five. She was a FedEx executive, which probably added a little pressure to the police investigation, and we know how that goes. When they feel pressured, they cut some corners too often. And she was found the following morning, January eighteenth, bound, gagged and blindfolded in her Bronx apartment. That she had been shot twice in the head. So this was even in the high crime you know time that this was really a horrible crime. And then four thirty am on January nineteenth, so this is less than twenty four hours after miss Raymond had been found forty three year old bath Theopp. He was a driver for the new Harlem car service and he was found fatally shot on a Bronx street and what police said appeared to be a robbery. So now the pressure ramps up even more because this seems like almost like a spree, right. But they were only linked by geography, right, because other than that, there's nothing to connect them at all.

00:05:30 Speaker 2: Other than the detectives were a team. His cases were not connected at all. Bath Dyop's body was found. It was a rookie detective from the forty third Precinct by the name of Mike Donnelly, who has assigned that case. It was only his second murder investigation. His mentor was on the verge of retirement on his last Thomiside case, a guy named Thomas Iello, a detective and a few hours before the bath Dopp murder, as you said, is when they found Denise Raymond's body, and Thomas Iyello, Mike Donnelly's mentor, was the lead detective on the Denise Raymond murder case. They weren't connected at all other than the fact that those two detectives knew each other and were a team.

00:06:09 Speaker 1: And this team was having trouble producing any promising leads. They'd been looking at Denise Raymond's ex boyfriend, Charles McKinnon, but they'd hit a wall until two weeks later, when Detective Donnelly picked up a teenager named Hanley Gomez on an unrelated charge.

00:06:23 Speaker 3: When they got a young kid named Hanley Gomez in the precinct on another charge, they questioned him about the taxi driver and the FedEx Exectly, he told them that he knew someone that might have information about it because she lived directly across the street from where the taxi murder took place.

00:06:42 Speaker 2: Goma said, there's a woman, Miriam Taveres, who's a homeless prostitute that stays on my couch. So Donnelly goes over to the house and Goma's sister, Kathy Gmez, a sixteen year old girl, was asked by the detective to be a translator because Miriam Tavera is the main witness, only spoke Spanish and Donnelly only spoke English. Miriam Taveries said she saw heard what five people, six people did and said in a place where she couldn't possibly see in what she said she saw and picks out five young men from the neighborhood, most of whom don't really even know each other, saying that they did it Detective Donnelly by the time he left the apartment that sixteen year old sister Kathy Gomez also all of a sudden became a witness, saying she overheard what these guys were saying.

00:07:30 Speaker 1: The Gomez statement said that on January seventeenth, a group of young men was overheard talking about quote, robbing a taxi and a girl end quote. The group that she was talking about was seventeen year old Israel Basquez, eighteen year old Devin Ayers, nineteen year old Michael Cosme, and twenty five year old Carlos Perez. In addition, Miriam Tavares also allegedly overheard them discussing the Denise Raymond murder, and then she claimed that on January nineteenth, she heard gunshots, looked out the window and saw the group fleeing back the ops car along with eighteen year old Derek Clisten.

00:08:10 Speaker 2: Meanwhile, we have the crime scene tape, we know where the cab driver came to rest after the shooting. That went to the crime scene. She could not have possibly seen what she said she saw. But there were five men arrested at first for the cab driver murder and the Denise Raymer murder. But the cops weren't done because Detective Donnelly had this theory from the night of the crime that whoever called the cab that night must be involved. So he went to the cab dispatcher and she said, I think it's a woman named r Vett who calls all the time, and so Donnelly says, if a vet calls, tell her I want to talk to her. So a couple weeks later, this woman calls her a cab and the dispatcher is like, sounds like a vet, And the dispatcher says to Yvette, the cops want to talk to you. So Yvette calls the detective and they asked her to come to the precinct. And this woman was not named Vette. This woman was named cab Matthy Watkins, who had never been arrested before and had a daughter. And she comes to the precinct and they sit her in her room and they put the dispatcher down the hallway and Donnelly is standing over her and say call the dispatcher and order that cab because he wanted to know if that voice was the same, and the dispatcher's down the hall in the precinct and she says, yeah, that's the voice. And then Miriam Taveris, who had never before said a woman was involved, says, okay, yeah, she was there snapping her fingers mean to the guys the five night, hurry up and finish the murder. And so because of that, and only because of that, she was arrested with all of these other guys for both murders. Six people eric had never even met her, No one met her before, no one knew anything about her. She literally did not even call the.

00:09:45 Speaker 4: Cab service that night, they later found, but the detective never even checked that, mind you.

00:09:50 Speaker 2: A seventh person was arrested, Denise Raymond's ex boyfriend, who had nothing to do with anything.

00:09:56 Speaker 1: The police obtained a statement from Denise Raymond's coworker, Kim Alley Xander, in which she allegedly wrote an elevator with Denise Raymond and her ex Charles McKinnon on January seventeenth. The pair allegedly argued before he followed her out of the building, and this theory was that McKinnon contacted this group of young men to whom he had zero ties, by the way, and set her up. They took him to trial in nineteen ninety eight, despite surveillance footage that showed McKinnon was not present at all for this elevator argument. Fortunately he was acquitted.

00:10:32 Speaker 2: Charles McKinnon was acquitted and he died a few years later from heart issues. That I spoke to his wife, think that being wrongfully accused killed him and may.

00:10:41 Speaker 1: He rest in peace. And meanwhile, back in nineteen ninety five, Eric had just welcomed his daughter into the world, completely unaware of the murders, let alone that he was a suspect.

00:10:53 Speaker 3: You know, I was focused on bringing my daughter home from the hospital and being a father that I didn't speak to anybody in the neighborhood for that period of time. I was just going to the hospital, being there we bought the baby home. That I didn't even know nothing about that crime. But lo and behold, I found out very quickly with being arrested for that crime.

00:11:17 Speaker 1: Wow, here you are, eighteen years old, being wrongfully accused of a murderer or two with this other group of people. Some of them do each other, some of them didn't it's such a just cluster fuck.

00:11:29 Speaker 3: I didn't really believe it was happening because at first they told me I was being arrested for robbery or burglary or something of that nature, and I know I didn't do that. But then later on during interrogation, they began to accuse me of murder.

00:11:43 Speaker 2: It is heartbreaking to hear his interrogation with an assistant prosecutor. He's brought in and he's sitting bent at the waist, trembling, crying, saying in his sweet voice, I don't know what you're talking about. I have no idea. I didn't do anything. I just want to go home and see my daughter. And they are just at him, at him, and he's like, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you're talking about. And he was telling the truth.

00:12:11 Speaker 3: And that's when I saw my life falling apart right before me. I saw me never going home to my daughter, who we just brought home from the hospital. I had five other co defendants who also were innocent and didn't actually know each other. However, before we went to trial, one of the cases, which was Denise Raymond, was dismissed against me. And my other code defended Kathy Watkins.

00:12:36 Speaker 1: The Gomez statement only implicated Israel Vaskaz, Devin Ayers, Michael Cosmi, and Carlos Perez in the Nise Raymond murder, while Tavares alone implicated Eric Listen in the bath Dap murder, followed by Kathy Watkins at a subsequent statement. So Eric and Kathy were split away from the group and the group was tried first in May nineteen ninety seven.

00:12:59 Speaker 2: By the time the trial came around, Kathy Gomes tried to kill herself because she didn't want to testify because we now know that Detective Donnelly wrote a statement made her say what she said. She didn't even read English. She signed the statement without reading it, and she was a main witness at Denise Raymond's trial, and she tried to kill herself.

00:13:19 Speaker 1: But that was all unknown to their jury, along with Miriam Tavares's obstruct advantage point and any existing physical evidence.

00:13:29 Speaker 3: The prosecutor took the bullets and other evidence related to the case home and said that his car was broken into and it was stolen, and we weren't able to use any of that to prove my innocence.

00:13:41 Speaker 1: And neither were the other four who received fifty years each. Before Eric and Kathy Watkins went to trial in September nineteen ninety seven.

00:13:50 Speaker 2: Miriam Tavares was the main witness, and it was her testimony, and only her testimony, that's it that convicted Eric and Kathy Watkins.

00:13:59 Speaker 1: That's it.

00:14:00 Speaker 2: When I went and I looked into Eric's case, I literally got into the apartment where she said she saw this from. She no longer lived there, but the people who live there allowed me to come in, and I went to the bathroom window and I took video from where she said she saw it from.

00:14:13 Speaker 4: Literally impossible first of all, to see what she said she saw. But more astonishing than that, Mike Donnelly, the detective, never even did that. He never did it.

00:14:24 Speaker 2: He never went to see if she could see what she said she saw.

00:14:27 Speaker 1: But Eric's attorney did, and he argued to have the jury see the crime scene as well as Miriam Tavares's obstruct advantage point for themselves, but.

00:14:37 Speaker 3: The judge denied it, state in that it was unnecessary after the successful argument of the prosecutor that we put up pictures and videos depicted in the crime scene, so why would the jury need to go to here, and basically they tuned into Miriam Savers.

00:14:52 Speaker 4: So it was Eric and Kathy Watkins that were tried together for the cab driver murder alone, even though they had never met. They had never said a word to each other, that Kathy Watkins never called the cab, that Eric had no idea what anybody was talking about, and they were convicted and sentenced to twenty five to life.

00:15:08 Speaker 3: After seeing my co defendants get convicted first and receive fifty years each, I pretty much knew that I wasn't going to come out of this and from that day on I lived a nightmare with every week an hour.

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00:16:21 Speaker 3: A lot of people say, how did you do it? I die on my feet, not on my knees. A lot of people say, oh, I couldn't do that.

00:16:30 Speaker 2: Yes you can.

00:16:31 Speaker 3: If you are confronted with a situation like that, anyone is gonna fight. It's just that how much fight you got in you and how much will and tenacity dig deep, dig inside yourself, find that strength. Never give up with anything that you are confronted with your life, because every problem has an expiration date. And when I'm in those low points in my life that gets me by, I don't have they sayers inside of me telling me I can't do it right. And I practiced that with my daughters on their room doors. I wrote in big letters girls can do anything, so that if they ever confronted with any adversity in life, that they able to dig deep inside themselves when there's no one else around, when you cry out for help and no one listens, you can count on yourself because the answer is in yourself and that's what gives you the positivity to attract positivity.

00:17:33 Speaker 1: And part of the power of positivity and action brought Eric in touch with a number of other innocent men, including several former guests on this very show, Johnny Kincapier and JJ Velasquez, who's another connection to Dan. Even though Eric didn't know Dan at the time, Dan and JJ had been in contact since two thousand and two. But back at Sing Sing, the three of them were participating in the RTA program, short for Rehabilitation through the Arts, as well as taking college courses together.

00:18:01 Speaker 3: We were all studying far our degrees and behavior science. Johnny was going for his masters. I think at the time I knew Johnny through the RTA program at first, and just being around these people and feelingate their energy, you can tell that they're not there for something they did that's obvious. They don't have murder written on their face, they don't have that written in the moral fabric. And then when you see people going to the law library a lot, and that's really their mainstay when they have free time, those are the people you need to really pay attention to because they're fighting. They're not going to the yard where it's leisurely easy. They're in the law library. So for those seventeen years and nine months, you know, I convinced myself that one day I would get out of them. And I worked tiresly on my case without any professional help. Because I was poor. I didn't have the funds to obtain a high profile attorney that can give me the best legal advice and work that he could, and so I wrote to numerous attorneys, different outreach programs.

00:19:05 Speaker 2: We would just write letters to lawyers and projects. In the Innocence Project. My name is Eric, Listen, I'm innocent, and it would all go into the void. Meanwhile, he's learning the language that was used to lock him up. He's going to the law library fining freedom of information requests to do whatever he can from inside his cement box.

00:19:22 Speaker 1: Let's give some props to sister Joanna Chan, who I think knew you from the theater program in Sing Sing right, and then went and advocated for you to get legal representation.

00:19:32 Speaker 3: As you know, Peter was a corporate attorney. He didn't know anything about criminal law. And his assistant shaw Man, who's become like a sister to me. All of the three way calls that Charmain would do for me, and the research of looking on Facebook and different social media platforms for different individuals that has some idea might be involved.

00:19:53 Speaker 1: And Peter Cross was there to guide Eric through what happened next.

00:19:56 Speaker 2: In early twenty twelve, he finally got a a freedom of information request and it was the cell phone of Bathtiop, the cab driver who was killed, had a cell phone nineteen ninety five. Not a lot of people at cell phones, and there was all of these phone calls made right after his death. And Eric, from his prison cell figures out that the phone numbers are.

00:20:19 Speaker 4: Traced back to a really really bad gang in the South Bronx called Sex Money Murder. And what he does is he writes yet another letter to the US Attorney's office that took down Sex Money Murder. He found out the prosecutor who took down that bad gang, her name was Helen Campwell, she didn't even work in the office anymore. And the secretary who got the mail remembered that there was an investigator at the US Attorney's Office by the name of John O'Malley who said, if there's any letters that come in about murders, put them on my desk because he knew everything about murders in New York City.

00:20:53 Speaker 2: He was a gang investigator. And he puts the letter on the desk and John O'Malley starts to read this letter and he says, oh shit, a cab driver soundview section of the Bronx nineteen ninety five.

00:21:06 Speaker 1: I knew who did that.

00:21:07 Speaker 4: It was two guys from the gang he took down called sex money murder. In fact, he arrested them and they played guilty to this crime in federal court nine years earlier.

00:21:29 Speaker 3: I was told to go down to the Administration building. So I questioned on why I was going down there if the officers wouldn't give me any information. When I did finally reach that room, John O'Malley, this guy looked like a gumshoe detective, and I seen that he had a big picture of me, and I thought at that time that I was being charge with some other crime now. But then when he raised the letter and he asked it I write that letter, you know, a little bit of relief came over me. He told me, I know the two guys who did this crime. Ask me did I have co defendans? And I told him yes, and he asked me how many and when I explained to him FI that the co defendants, he was dumbfounded.

00:22:08 Speaker 4: He thought Eric was.

00:22:09 Speaker 2: The only one in there.

00:22:10 Speaker 1: In twenty twelve, O'Malley was still operating under the impression he had been left with when he inquired with the NAYPD about this murder. In two thousand and three, after two members of Sex Money Murder, Gilbert Vega and Joey Rodriguez, confessed to the shooting.

00:22:25 Speaker 2: When John O'Malley went to the precinct to say, I got these guys confessing to this crime, the NYPD told them, we don't have any record of that crime. They didn't say, oh, we have six people serving time in prison already for fifteen years, and he's told that the murder didn't exist.

00:22:39 Speaker 4: We don't have a record of that. So these guys, Gilbert Vega and Joey Rodriguez, plead guilty in federal court to shooting a gun and the commission of a robbery. The guys say, we shot the cab driver. We think he died, and the judge actually says, I hope nobody got killed. The prosecutor is saying, I'm sorry, you're honored. The NYPD is saying, we don't have the death here, we don't have a murder, so the guys plead guilty. No one knew that six people were in prison for the same crime until Eric Glisten wrote that letter nine years later. So now with the seven people that were charged originally, plus the two who really did it, there were nine people. Two of them are really did it, seven didn't.

00:23:22 Speaker 3: It didn't hit me until I contacted Chawmain when we went out to the yard and she told me that someone did call Peter and that Peter was excited and crying. From that point I knew something was afoot in that maybe I might have hope.

00:23:36 Speaker 1: And one would think that when O'Malley brings this information and the prosecutor of the US Attorney's Office to the Bronx DA's office in June twenty twelve, that the prison gates should have just flown right open, right.

00:23:51 Speaker 2: But what happened The DA's office fought. Eric was sent to Rikers, humanitarian nightmare when he's totally innocent calling me from Vikers. There's no court date on the docket, so I got WNBC. We did a local report in August of twenty twelve. He was going to get out anyway, but he didn't get out until October. And after he got out.

00:24:12 Speaker 4: To make it even worse, they didn't just say we're sorry, mister Glisson and the five others. What they said was, Okay, we're going to do a conditional release while we investigate. You get out on an ankle monitor.

00:24:24 Speaker 1: And I'm thinking to myself, investigate what Miriam Tavares had died in two thousand and two, and by this time her translator, Kathy Gomez, had already recanted.

00:24:33 Speaker 2: Kathy Gomez did recant, and not only did she recan't she said that the detective wrote the statement from her. She couldn't read it because she didn't read English. She signed it under duress, and she didn't want to testify, and it says in the court record she tried to kill herself instead of testifying because the detective was making her testify.

00:24:52 Speaker 1: And so again, June of twenty twelve, that's the date that he should have come home, but they strung it out a little bit longer than there was Jako munder. But tell us about your co defendants and getting them out, because they didn't come out at the same time you did.

00:25:07 Speaker 3: Right about five or six months later, they were released. I really don't want to take the credit for it, because whatever was coming our way with positive vibes was coming our way. It came, and everybody was able to reach back home to their family. And that's what gives me the best joy in this situation, because it started out terrible. It was terrible for everyone. I wasn't the only one that went through it, and today there's still innocent people who have been released and still going through it. My life out here has been devoted to fighting against injustice at every chance I can, and I think we'll do a less less fighting in the future if more accountability is attached to police and the district attorneys who commit these crimes and atrocities against whole entire communities.

00:25:58 Speaker 1: You're absolutely right, Eric, prosecutors have absolute immunity, and it's hard to think of any other professions that have that same type of immunity against misconduct, even if it's flagrant, even if it's deliberate. Let me just say, for the way you handled yourself and the way you reached back. I mean, that's why I always say, Eric, people like Dan and myself were just in awe of people like you who go through hell for no reason of your own doing and come out carrying buckets of water for people you left behind. And you're the perfect example of that. And that's the type of person I think we all aspire to be. So, Dan, Eric, this is my favorite segment of the show, which is called Closing Arguments, and it's basically me turning off my microphone, thanking both of you, and then I'm going to leave your microphones on to share any other thoughts and so as tradition has it, Dan, you go first and then hand the microphone off to Eric and he'll take us off into the sunset.

00:26:54 Speaker 2: For me, you know, just like you Jason, probably, this is not something that I found. This is something that found me. This is something that chose me, this issue, and I have no choice. This is what I do when I have witnessed through proximity a system that is so pathological and irrational, and I have a platform the way you do to be able to do something, I feel like I have no choice but to do it. This journey for me began more than two decades ago when I started with this case called the Palladium Case. The Palladium nightclub murder, and it eventually led me to Eric. And when I had written my book, I looked up the word palladium and it means silver, white metal, but it also means safeguard, and it made me think, like that was very interesting. What is our true, genuine safeguard against injustice? And the answer is educating people, because we're all going to be jurors, and the system doesn't work the way that everybody thinks it works. And when it comes to judging our fellow citizens of anything much less a capital crime, we should be asking far more questions than are asked. We should be taking it way more seriously than we do, certainly if we're a jur and certainly if somebody's life on our hands. So to me, this as a chapter in our history that one day we will look back on this era as a very dark chapter. You know, not in our lifetimes perhaps, but one day people will look back on this chapter in our history the way we look at slavery. This is the next incarnation of the civil rights movement. It is that apparent of an injustice, It is that brazen that people's lives are stolen from them, People are kidnapped by the state without any sort of due process all too often. And so what we need to do is keep talking about it, keep talking to each other about it and others and educating ourselves. And Jason, you keep doing what you're doing. I'll keep doing what I'm doing. Eric will keep doing what he's doing, and eventually, you know, we grow. We're all soldiers in this war together. So the safeguard is.

00:28:51 Speaker 3: US prisons in America is really a profit entity. Every phone call you make, you have to pay. Every infraction you do, you have to pay. They deducted from your and made account. How to health does these prosecutors office budget mimic the economy of small countries for them to convict people cause more to feed than people. We have over two million people in prison. And right now, as I went back to Sing Sing, I saw that they don't have any more vocational programs, which is very instrumental and the biggest tool to help people reactlimate and come back out and be successful with becoming gainfully employed. When I was there, I got plumbing, electrician, carpentry, building maintenance, small engine repair, small appliance repair, computer repair, and college. But now those programs has been removed from the prisons, but the prosecutor's budgets got bigger, and that's the biggest incentives to keep the prisons going, to keep the courts going, and to keep those doors to the prison open the budgets.

00:30:05 Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Kleiber. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.

00:30:41 Speaker 2: We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate.

00:30:45 Speaker 4: The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good