The Wrong Guys: Murder, False Confessions, and the Norfolk Four

I had a keen interest in reading this book. I was in the Navy stationed with two of the four accused in this book--Danial Williams and Joseph Dick Jr. When I was stationed aboard the USS Saipan, we had heard a story about this on the news, but--at the time--didn't think anything of it--if they did it, they did it. Not too long ago, I heard about this again, but in a different light. I had checked out the website [....] and found that these guys were, in fact, innocent of their crimes. It's a shame that even though they were just recently pardoned by Governor Kaine of Virginia, that pardon is a conditional one in that they will still have the charges on their records and will still have to answer to a parole board. This book presents the facts in order--as confusing as this case can be--which is a difficult task. It shows facts and references to facts, interviews, and confessions. It is a really good book about this particular case. I hope and pray that the governor finally will grant a full and complete pardon--at least a conditional one will get them a much needed escape from a prison cell and with their families.

The Wrong Guys by Tom Wells and Richard Leo details the infamous case of the Norfolk Four. In 1997, a Navy private named Billy Bosko returned to the apartment he shared with his wife Michelle to discover her murdered body in their bedroom. He raced across the hallway of the building to a neighbor to ask him to call 911. That phone call sucked the neighbor, Danial Williams, into a nightmare that he and his family are still fighting today. The police quickly focused on Williams as a suspect, despite the fact that his wife remembered waking up in the middle of the night with him next to her as she heard raised male and female voices in the Bosko apartment. The police discounted that alibi and all other evidence proving Williams' innocence (his wife died four months later without ever being questioned) including DNA evidence that cleared him. Williams spent hours without food or sleep being interrogated by a police officer who had pre-determined Williams' guilt. Williams decided that he was never going to get out of the interrogation unless he confessed to a crime he didn't commit. When the DNA evidence cleared him, the police instead decided that he must have had a confederate and started questioning Joe Dick Jr, Williams' former roommate. Dick, who has a low IQ and is easily led, was easily convinced by the police that he had committed the crime with Williams (again, Dick had an alibi the police never checked on) and he confessed as well. When DNA evidence cleared him too, he started naming men he knew only casually as his accomplices until a total of seven men were charged with the crime. Even when the real killer confessed to the crime and was convicted (it was his DNA), the police were still convinced that the eight men killed poor Michelle together. Three of the Norfolk Four are still imprisoned, and their case is currently under review by Virginia's governor for a pardon. Wells and Leo lay out their case for the men's innocence like the best of attorneys starting with the crime itself and then bringing in experts to back up their case. The story is a frightening indictment of a prosecutorial system that refuses to admit when its committed wrong. It's well written, and while I can't say I enjoyed it, I definitely couldn't put it down.

Innocent people do not confess. Especially to rape and murder. That is the belief of most people, including jurors, judges, attorneys, and even the very police detectives who induce false confessions. The Norfolk 4 case is the perfect vehicle to challenge our misguided faith. And Tom Wells and Richard Leo are the ideal storytellers: Wells, author of The War Within: America's Battle over Vietnam, followed the case for seven years; Leo is a leading expert on the social psychology of police interrogation. The book is meticulously researched, through primary source documents and dozens of interviews. Reading like a Stephen King novel, this book provides a step-by-step deconstruction of the bizarre case of the Norfolk 4, explaining the individual, situational, and systemic factors that converge in a typical false confession case. For those who want more after reading this case study, Leo's scholarly Police Interrogation and American Justice (Harvard University Press, 2008) provides a brilliant historical analysis of the topic.

The Wrong Guys: Murder, False Confessions, and the Norfolk Four Tom Wells and Richard Leo did a great job of research in order to present a horror story of injustice perpetrated on innocent men by, in my opinion, an unscrupulous police detective with a history of coercive confessions. A story of one man saying that he acted alone with DNA evidence to support this statement and the same DNA evidence that says these men known as The Norfolk Four did not commit this crime. The authorities chose to use the DNA evidense to say yes this one man did commit the crime but the same DNA evidense which has cleared numerous people across this country is considered insignificate for The Norfolk Four. This book is a classic "What not to do" for police everywhere. This book should also serve as a wake up call for all decent people everywhere to beware and question the actions of police. Beware, you could be the next victim of police rush to judgement just so they can put someone away and close the case, totally disregarding a simple matter of truth. How do I know? I have lived this for many years, I am the father of one of The Norfolk Four.

This book is AWESOME. Why are the wrong guys still in prison???? Det. Glenn Ford should have to go to prison for a long long time for what he did to these innocent guys. They have the one and only one tied to the crime by DNA and evidence of the crime scene in prison also. Why want Governor Kaine pardon them??? They really did do Joe Dick dirty and played on his mind very bad. How can people that were sworn to uphold the law get away with the things Det. Ford did (or so he said he did not do)?? Why is it that all the guys he tried to coerce a false confession out of said the same thing about him, that they told Det. Ford what he wanted to hear so he would stop. The DNA and inconsistancy in the statements should have thrown up a red flag, but no they could not turn back now. What is this world coming to that DNA is releasing people everyday that have spent years and years in prison for a crime they did not commit, but the DNA from the start on these guys never matched. WONDERFUL WONDERFUL BOOK. VERY WELL WRITTEN