Photo Courtesy of Anna Schwarz
A Go Fund Me crowdsourcing account has been set up by the defendants’ legal team. As of Wednesday afternoon it has raised nearly $50,000. All donations will be split equally between Bell, Johnson, and Bolt.
By Michael V. Cusenza
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz on Friday asked the court to dismiss charges against George Bell, Gary Johnson, and Rohan Bolt, who were convicted of the Dec. 21, 1996, murders of Ira “Mike” Epstein and NYPD Police Officer Charles Davis during a robbery attempt of Epstein’s check-cashing business.
“The evidence at trial against these defendants rested heavily on the confession and testimony of an accomplice named John Mark Bigweh and the confessions made by two of the defendants in this case, George Bell and Gary Johnson,” according to the People’s Dismissal Motion, presented to the court by Executive Assistant District Attorney Pishoy Yacoub, who spearheaded the Conviction Integrity Unit’s three-month investigation into the 25-year-old case.
Yacoub said his probe “reaped the following results:
Although the confessions asserted that the vehicle used during the course of this crime was a red/burgundy van, four independent eyewitnesses at the crime scene identified a blue van as the vehicle that was used to perpetrate this crime. One of those eyewitnesses went so far as to identify the perpetrators entering and fleeing in a blue Ford Aerostar van immediately after the murders. A sketch of this van was drawn by an NYPD sketch artist back in 1996. This information was documented in a DD5. This information was never disclosed to the defendants.
A blue Ford Aerostar van was recovered less than an hour after the crime approximately 20 minutes away. This van was processed for latent fingerprints in connection with this case and compared to the defendants’ fingerprints. Their fingerprints did not match. This information was not disclosed to defendants Johnson and Bolt.
As it relates to the reliability of the evidence implicating defendants, Det. Bubelnik was the detective who obtained the confession from the accomplice John Mark Bigweh, which ultimately implicated the defendants Bell, Bolt and Johnson. During the course of her investigation, Det. Bubelnik also obtained a confession from an individual named Jason Ligon who confessed to be the getaway driver during this crime. After the defendant’s trials, however, an investigation ensued into the veracity of Ligon’s confession. It was ultimately determined that his confession was false and he was released from custody and his case was dismissed. This information was not available to the defendants at trial.
Det. Bubelnik also had a pending lawsuit against her at the time of trial which stemmed from a previous case in which she was accused of coercing a false confession from the defendant in that case. That lawsuit was ultimately settled. That information was not available to the defendants at trial.”
“A fair and accurate trial depends on all parties knowing all of the evidence so that the jury can make an informed decision about the guilt or innocence of a defendant,” DA Katz said. “There can be no true justice, in Queens County or anywhere else, unless we hold ourselves to the highest standards facilitating the process by which justice is sought. My commitment to the effort continues.”
