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Home John Spirko The Case Exculpatory Evidence Turned Over After My Trial Exculpatory Evidence Turned Over After My Trial
Thursday, 20 July 2006
After years of fighting, my attorneys finally gained access to the U.S. Postal investigation documents related to Betty Jane Mottinger's disappearance and death. It was a "limited review" and done "under seal," which meant that we could not discuss anything in the records – and I was not allowed to see them. In those records we found the State and postal inspectors hid evidence from my defense and they knew Gibson was not involved in the crime. On the morning of August 9, 1982, Gibson was in Asheville, North Carolina working on a farm over 500 miles from Elgin, Ohio.
My prosecutors also knew that Gibson was not clean-shaven on August 9th, but that he had a full beard. The state concealed 58 photographs from my defense and the jury that Gibson's wife had turned over to investigators before my trial. Among them were photos taken of Gibson in North Carolina on August 8th, with a full beard. His presence in North Carolina on August 9th was confirmed by eyewitnesses, including his boss.
The withheld exculpatory evidence proves that my prosecutors presented a case to the jury they knew was false. The lynchpin of their case was that Gibson was the man seen outside the Elgin Post Office on the morning of August 9, 1982 – when they knew all the while he was over 500 miles away in a different state!
There was also a confession by another man who admitted to the crime. That was never turned over to us. Also withheld from me were witness interviews of other people who were in front of the post office at 8:20 to 8:25 am. One witness in fact had a brown and white Monte Carlo that was parked in front of the post office at 8:25 am that morning. She, and several other people, were at the post office that morning waiting to pick up their mail. They even leaned against the woman’s car waiting for the post office to open.
Another witness was driving his daughter to the doctor's office that morning and saw Mark Lewis park his truck. The witness claimed that Lewis got out of the truck and waved at him that morning, The witness also said that as he drove by the post office he saw Betty Jane Mottinger put her key in the door, and there were no cars in front of the post office.
Investigators made a sketch of the crime scene. However I did not see that sketch until after I had been on death row for 12 years. After comparing that sketch with the testimony of Seibert and Lewis, there is no way - in fact it is impossible - for either of those two alleged eyewitnesses to have seen anything. Their testimony was false. Based on the information provided my attorneys after my trial, there is reason to believe the prosecutors knew it was false at the time it was given in the courtroom.
The state has argued that I knew details of the crime that were not public knowledge, and that only a person involved in the crime could know those details. They argue that none of these details, the victim‘s purse, her clothing, the way in which the body had been wrapped, was ever made public. That is a bold-faced lie. The fact of the matter is that every so-called detail I told investigators was published in newspapers in the days after the crime. We included several newspaper clippings of those articles as exhibits to our briefs. We proved these details had been made public, yet the courts still choose to ignore the facts. I continue to be denied relief by every court and they have denied the truth for twenty years.
Spirko Concocted Murder Confession in 1969! “Thirteen years earlier, while in custody in Flint, Mich., after another barroom brawl, a 23-year-old Spirko embarrassed a veteran homicide detective by concocting a detailed, convincing and altogether phony confession to a series of coed murders then filling the local newspapers. Spirko simply wanted to get out of his jail cell for a few hours of coffee and conversation, he later admitted. Further investigation showed that he had nothing to do with what came to be known as “The Michigan Murders.”” Cold-Blooded Liar, by Bob Paynter, The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, January 23, 2005