Five people, Devon Ayers, Michael Cosme, Eric Glisson, Carlos Perez and Cathy Watkins, were all convicted of the murder of a cab driver in the Bronx in 1995. An article in New York magazine even focused on the investigation with the headline, “How to Solve a Murder.” However, now an investigation by the United States Attorney’s Office claims the murder was not actually solved.
At the time of the trial, prosecutors claimed that the five defendants were part of an elaborate conspiracy to steal $50,000 worth of cocaine from one of the cab’s passengers. Jurors accepted this theory and all five were convicted and sentenced to long prison terms.
Recently, federal prosecutors received a letter from Eric Glisson who professed his innocence in the 1995 slaying and presented a new theory of the crime. He alleged that the murder had been committed by two members of a Bronx gang called Sex Money and Murder (S.M.M). The letter, addressed to a prosecutor who was no longer in the office, landed on the desk of John O’Malley, an investigator in the office’s violent crimes unit. O’Malley immediately recognized the description of the crime in the letter as eerily familiar to a confession he had heard in 2003. Two former S.M.M. members had agreed to work with prosecutors against their former gang and told O’Malley they were involved in a robbery and murder of a cab driver in 1995. Each man separately gave accurate descriptions of the crime.
O’Malley presented an affidavit to the defendants’ attorneys in support of their potential motions for new trial based on this new evidence.
Read more here.
