A week before Christmas in 1992, Buffalo police rounded up three suspects. They handcuffed a machine operator at Rich Products on Niagara Street, a chemist working his second job at a downtown hotel, and later a federal employee living near City Hall. The three were named in an appalling crime. Two 8-year-old girls, twin daughters of the machine operator, said their father raped them on three occasions during the previous year – when they were 6 and 7 – and the other defendants joined in the assaults. The girls said they had been tied to mattresses or chairs, then violated as their mouths were sealed with duct tape. Afterward, life would go on as normal. Prosecutors could offer no scientific proof and only dubious physical evidence of rape and molestation. But they had the girls’ statements. As the suspects fought the charges and rejected plea deals, prosecutors placed the sympathetic victims in front of the jury. The verdict: guilty on all counts. The years passed, and the three convicted sex offenders refused to back down. From prison cells they filed appeal after appeal. All were long shots. But the three insisted they were innocent. As it turns out, they were.
Saturday, February 07, 2015
Three people spent years in prison over a horrible crime against children – that never happened
Three people spent years in prison over a horrible crime against children – that never happened
A week before Christmas in 1992, Buffalo police rounded up three suspects. They handcuffed a machine operator at Rich Products on Niagara Street, a chemist working his second job at a downtown hotel, and later a federal employee living near City Hall. The three were named in an appalling crime. Two 8-year-old girls, twin daughters of the machine operator, said their father raped them on three occasions during the previous year – when they were 6 and 7 – and the other defendants joined in the assaults. The girls said they had been tied to mattresses or chairs, then violated as their mouths were sealed with duct tape. Afterward, life would go on as normal. Prosecutors could offer no scientific proof and only dubious physical evidence of rape and molestation. But they had the girls’ statements. As the suspects fought the charges and rejected plea deals, prosecutors placed the sympathetic victims in front of the jury. The verdict: guilty on all counts. The years passed, and the three convicted sex offenders refused to back down. From prison cells they filed appeal after appeal. All were long shots. But the three insisted they were innocent. As it turns out, they were.
A week before Christmas in 1992, Buffalo police rounded up three suspects. They handcuffed a machine operator at Rich Products on Niagara Street, a chemist working his second job at a downtown hotel, and later a federal employee living near City Hall. The three were named in an appalling crime. Two 8-year-old girls, twin daughters of the machine operator, said their father raped them on three occasions during the previous year – when they were 6 and 7 – and the other defendants joined in the assaults. The girls said they had been tied to mattresses or chairs, then violated as their mouths were sealed with duct tape. Afterward, life would go on as normal. Prosecutors could offer no scientific proof and only dubious physical evidence of rape and molestation. But they had the girls’ statements. As the suspects fought the charges and rejected plea deals, prosecutors placed the sympathetic victims in front of the jury. The verdict: guilty on all counts. The years passed, and the three convicted sex offenders refused to back down. From prison cells they filed appeal after appeal. All were long shots. But the three insisted they were innocent. As it turns out, they were.
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