The Binding Referendum Project

To: Richmonders, one and all
Re: The Binding Referendum Project

As 2013 is ending City Hall seems to be telling the citizens of Richmond they have two choices in how they may react to the new baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom deal. We can like it, or we can lump it.

With a slick propaganda campaign pushing this newest version of the baseball in the Bottom plan, the task of stopping City Hall’s bandwagon won’t be easy. Yes, some powerful locals are on the bandwagon. But there are some everyday folks in Richmond who think there may be a way to stop it, using the best tool available in a democracy -- votes. 

The first meeting was a step. Held Tuesday evening (Dec. 17) in the old fire station that now houses Gallery 5, it breathed life into the Binding Referendum Project.

Eight people sat down and talked about standing on common ground. They didn’t necessarily agree on the best path to that ground. Some talked more than others but everyone had their say. Views were politely discussed, questions were asked. There were more questions than answers.

The goal of the group -- that common ground thing -- is to stop the building of a baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom, and to put an end to such a bad idea. The goal is not to dictate where, or even if, a new baseball stadium will be built.

In the process of the conversation the would-be collaborators seemed to be becoming a little more comfortable with one another. It wasn't a get-together of old friends. It was discussion about a political strategy, devoid of ideology. As the eight left the hour-long confab, as faint as it may have been, there was a spirit of collegiality in the air.

In 2014 this new group expects to add considerably to its numbers. Next month the group plans to propose a feasible solution to the problem those two choices pose. A third choice is being crafted.

As you enjoy the holidays season, there's new hope that the right thing will be done. Hey, who's against democracy?

From: Terry Rea (ftrea9@gmail.com)

Signs of Protest: Photographs from the Civil Rights Era

This press release just came in from Suzanne Hall at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts:

VMFA acquires new works by African American photographers

Bob Adelman, Demonstrator During the March on Washington, D.C., 1963, printed 2013, gelatin silver print. 
Aldine S. Hartman Endowment Fund.

Signs and protests were inseparable in the 1960s, with words painted or printed large scale to produce maximum impact when photographed or filmed by the media. Like a visual bullhorn, they both amplified and unified the voices fighting injustice. Ninety percent of the works featured in Signs of Protest: Photographs from the Civil Rights Era were acquired by VMFA in the past three years and emphasize the museum’s commitment to diversifying its photography collection.

On view from January 11 to August 3, 2014, the exhibitions includes photographs that feature protest signs, as well as images of the larger culture of resistance surrounding them, with an emphasis on Civil Rights leaders.

Featured icons of the movement include Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Stokely Carmichael. Benedict Fernandez’s powerful portfolio, Countdown to Eternity, documents the last year of King’s life. Other images express the need for opposition, such as Gordon Parks’ striking photograph of an aunt and niece standing under the neon sign, “Colored Entrance,” outside a movie theater in Alabama. Likewise, Richard Anderson captured a sit-in at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Richmond, Virginia, with a “Restaurant Closed” sign prominently advertising the store’s refusal to serve its African American customers.

Featured artists include Benedict Fernandez, Gordon Parks, Louis Draper, Beuford Smith, Leroy Henderson, Bob Adelman, among others. Also included is a photograph by South African photographer Ian Berry of the late South African leader, Nelson Mandela.

Signs of Protest is a part of Race, Place and Identity, a community collaboration of eight institutions presenting work inspired in part by Signs of Protest.

*

Title: Signs of Protest: Photographs from the Civil Rights Era
 
Date: January 11 – August 3, 2014
 
Curator: Dr. Sarah Eckhardt, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art
 
Number of works: Approximately 24
 
Admission: Free
 
About the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts:

VMFA’s permanent collection encompasses more than 33,000 works of art spanning 5,000 years of world history. Its collections of Art Nouveau and Art Deco, English silver, Fabergé, and the art of South Asia are among the finest in the nation. With acclaimed holdings in American, British Sporting, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist, and Modern and Contemporary art – and additional strengths in African, Ancient, East Asian, and European – VMFA ranks as one of the top comprehensive art museums in the United States. 

Programs include educational activities and studio classes for all ages, plus lively after-hours events. VMFA’s Statewide Partnership program includes traveling exhibitions, artist and teacher workshops, and lectures across the Commonwealth. 

VMFA is open 365 days a year and general admission is always free.  For additional information, telephone 804-340-1400 or visit www.vmfa.museum.

*   *   *

Re: Mandela

It seems that Nelson Mandela became what his country needed in the 1950s. And, in the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s and especially in the ‘90s. While he called for change, he changed. He became wiser.

Celebrating one of his personal heroes, President Barack Obama praised Nelson Mandela as the last great liberator of the 20th century, urging the world to carry on his legacy by fighting inequality, poverty and discrimination. At a memorial service in Johannesburg, Obama compared the former South African President to Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln.

Click here to read the entire piece from AP at the PBS website.

Furthermore, there's no need to cast him as a saint now, although what he did for peace and freedom once he was released from prison was saintly, indeed.

Today, those pissants who want to pursue their low-road political games within the Republican Party, to mimic what American rightwingers were saying about Mandela 30 or 40 years ago, are revealing more about themselves than they are about the man Obama just eulogized.

Although some people in America have no ability to grasp what "reconciliation" means, most of the world couldn't care less about the Tea Party's political jockeying.

-- Photo by Herman Verwey/Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images via AP

Billy Ray Hatley Tribute Concert

The Billy Ray Hatley Tribute Concert was show business at it best: the music was joyful and uplifting. The vibe in the room was inspirational.

From my STYLE Weekly review of the Billy Ray Hatley Tribute Concert at the National on Sunday night: 

Although the stage was filled by 24 performers (with a stage crew of eight), the entertainment offered was no jam session and the show ran smoothly. No covers of rock ’n’ roll classics were played. Every song was written by Billy Ray Hatley, who can no longer perform them. In all, one corny old show biz word well describes how the concert went over -- "boffo!"

To read the entire piece click here.

Giving Peace a Chance

The first pass at telling this tale appeared in SLANT in 1987. 

The version below was updated in 2012.

On the occasion of the anniversary of his death, on Dec. 8, 1980, I can’t help but wonder what the founder of the Beatles — John Lennon, a master of word-play and sarcasm — would have to say about today's music, art and politics.

It would be anybody's guess. After all, in his nearly 20 years as a public figure Lennon’s knack for changing before our eyes was dazzling. There's no reason to think such a restless soul wouldn't have kept on changing.

In November, 2008, on the occasion of what was the 40th anniversary of the release of the Beatles’ White Album, the Vatican newspaper praised the groundbreaking British band for its body of work and forgave Lennon for his flippant 1966 quip about sudden success, “[We’re] more popular than Jesus.”

Even the bloody Vatican has changed but peace is still waiting, off-stage, for its chance.

In February of 1964 the Beatles made their initial appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show. At the time most people probably didn’t connect the events, but those two appearances were less than three months after the assassination of President Kennedy. Surely, the somber mood of the nation, still trying to regain its balance, had something to do with why those fresh sounding Beatles songs cut through the airwaves with such verve.

Clearly, there has been no explosion in the American pop music scene since them, with anything near the equivalent impact of Liverpool’s Fab Four.

Then, in 1980, the murder of moody John Lennon had an impact on the public few would have predicted. It was as if a world leader had been gunned down on the street in Manhattan.

Lennon’s obvious contributions as a songwriter and musician were huge. However, it was the working class hero’s sincerity, his sense of humor and delight in taking risks that helped set him apart from his teen idol counterparts, many of whom toyed with politics and social causes as if they were merely hairdos or dance crazes.

With the Vietnam War still underway in the early ‘70s, President Richard Nixon looked at Lennon and saw the raw power to galvanize a generation’s anti-establishment sentiments. Fearful of that potential, the Nixon administration did everything it could to hound Lennon out of the country. The details of that nasty little campaign are just as bewildering as some of the better known abuses that flowed from the Dirty Tricks Department in the White House during those scandal-ridden days.

With so many years of perspective on Lennon’s death, I have to say that even if that particular nut-case (a man I choose not to name because I refuse to add in any way to his celebrity) hadn’t pulled the trigger, it could easily have been another one; surely there were other bullets out there with John Lennon’s name on them.

Like the comets of each generation are bound to do, sometimes Lennon burned too bright for his own good. And, speaking of assassinations, at this time I’m also reminded of an item that ran in the Nashville Banner on Feb. 24, 1987. The article began with this:

Two Nashville musicians remained free on $500 bond today after they went on a magazine-shredding tear …to protest People magazine’s current cover story.

The two musicians were Gregg Wetzel, and Mike McAdam. As members of the Good Humor Band they were fixtures in Richmond’s Rock ‘n’ Roll scene in the early ‘80s. By the time the story mentioned above was published, the pair had established themselves as respected sidemen in Nashville — Wetzel on piano and McAdam on guitar.

In a nutshell, Gregg and Mike became incensed at seeing the magazine with a cover story about John Lennon’s murderer. They felt spotlighting the killer in that way might encourage another deranged wannabe to take gun in hand to go after whoever. So they fortified themselves with an adequate dose of what-it-takes — legend has it they were drinking out of an Elvis decanter — and set out on a mission to destroy the cover of every copy of the offensive publication they could find on the strip.

As the reader may know, this sort of endeavor is frequently best undertaken in the wee hours. In the course of their fifth stop, at a Nashville convenience store, the avenging angels were stopped by the cops and charged with “malicious mischief.”

Shortly afterwards, in a interview about the incident, McAdam said at the time, “If another guy like [name withheld again] sees that, he might think he can get on the cover of People magazine by killing a politician or artist.”

Bravo!

Primary among the reasons John Lennon was selected for the kill by his stalking murderer was he had a rare ability to move people. In that sense, Lennon was slain for the same reason as political figures such as Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. Two thousand years ago Jesus H. Christ was taken out of the game for much the same reason: He challenged people to change; to take a chance on a life based on something better than might making right.

Although Nixon miscalculated Lennon’s intentions, the soon-to-be-disgraced president was probably right about the former Beatle’s potential to focus the anti-establishment sentiments in the air. What Nixon didn’t grasp was that Lennon — in spite of his mischievous streak — was really more interested in promoting peace than fomenting revolution.

“The cops looked at me and McAdam,” said Wetzel recently, to flesh out the 25-year-old tale, “decided we weren’t exactly flight risks and entrusted our transport to the pokey with an attractive female officer, all by her lonesome. On the way to the hoosegow, Mickey hit on the cop. True story.”

After listening to a John Lennon compilation CD, even today, some of his best post-Beatles cuts seem fresh, they still have the feeling of being experimental.

Well into what are strange days, indeed, 32 years after Lennon's departure from the realm of the living, this grizzled scribbler can smile, wondering what more he would have imagined.

Peace.

-- 30 --

The Billy Ray Hatley Tribute Show

To enlarge the poster art click on it.

For the Billy Ray Hatley tribute show at The National, among the performers onstage Sun., Dec. 8, (7 p.m. until 10:30 p.m.) will be: Rico Antonelli, Charles Arthur, Steve Bassett, Bill Blue, Craig Evans, Chris Fuller, Susan Greenbaum, Janet Martin, Mike McAdam, Gayle McGehee, Mic Muller, Bruce Olsen, Li’l Ronnie Owens, Velpo Robertson, Robbin Thompson, Brad Tucker, Jim Wark and Chuck Wrenn.

You can't go to the real High on the Hog, anymore. It's history. Same with the Changing of the Seasons party the Usry brothers used to stage every fall. But at the National on Sunday night you can get a nice dose of the spirit and the music that animated those fondly remembered annual get-togethers.

For some background on why this show has been eight months in the planning and rehearsing click here to read Brent Baldwin's "For the Sake of the Song."    

Rain or shine, the movie cameras (six of them) in the theater will document what unfolds. And, yes, although it's billed as a concert, there will be an area for dancing.

For more information about this one-of-a-kind gathering of a generation of Richmond-connected musicians and their friends click here to visit the Facebook page for the event.

For more info and to buy tickets go here.

Looting RVA?

A quick mockup (done by yours truly) of a coaster that answers a "Loving RVA" coaster being seen in bars that has suddenly become part of a local political story. It seems coaster propaganda is the latest twist in the campaign to build a baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom, or not.

Please feel free to borrow the mockup, if you like, in order to express yourself. For more on this  click here to visit the Referendum? Bring It On! Facebook page.

Eating Dandelions, Tasting Freedom

Note: All the food-consciousness and emphasis on thankfulness of the weekend now getting smaller in the rear-view mirror reminded me of a particular connection between those topics that I wrote about 11 years ago. With her appeals exhausted, Beverly Monore began serving her 22-year prison term in 1996. In 2002 a federal judge ordered her immediate release. Then she had to wait for months to see if she would be retried.

Over the year of 2002 I wrote pieces about her plight for three different local periodicals. To read the one I wrote for STYLE Weekly click here. The longest of those articles was the feature published by FiftyPlus. It is below:

Eating Dandelions, Tasting Freedom
by F. T. Rea

On March 5, 1992 Beverly Anne Monroe began to lose her hold on the strands of the life she had known. That morning her boyfriend/companion of more than a decade, Roger Zygmunt de la Burde, 60, was found dead in the library of his house, situated in Powhatan County, on 220 acres along the James River. De la Burde had been shot once in the head; his own handgun was at his side on a couch. County officials acted on the assumption they were dealing with a suicide. Yet, later that same year, Beverly Monroe found herself listening to testimony in support of the charge that she had committed a cold-blooded murder.

The prosecutor, Jack Lewis, told the jury that Monroe had admitted to David Riley, a state police special investigator, she was in the room when the gun went off. Monroe vigorously challenged that assertion, proclaiming her innocence. The defendant left the courtroom facing twenty-two years of incarceration.

After losing appeals in state courts, on April 5, 2002, Monroe was released from prison by order of U.S. District Judge Richard L. Williams. In vacating her conviction, Judge Williams wrote, "This case is a monument to prosecutorial indiscretions and mishandling."

Upon hearing the news she would leave Pocahontas Correctional Unit that day Monroe returned to the stark building in which she had lived, to fetch her belongings.

"In both dorms they [the prisoners] were all pressed against the bars, cheering, screaming to congratulate me," says Monroe. "It wasn’t about me, it was about hope."

*

The original trial wiped out Beverly Monroe’s savings; eventually all she had was liquidated.

"[Then] We sold the house in order to pay for the habeas process," says Katie Monroe, Beverly Monroe’s daughter who is an attorney.

Now 37, in 1996 Katie Monroe set her own career aside, at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, to work exclusively toward her mother’s release. As she labored with appeals she also established a non-profit group to raise funds and network. And, she put up a web site (www.freebeverly.com) to help disseminate and collect information.

"All in all, this has cost over $500,000, says Katie Monroe."

Beverly Monroe, 64, now lives in Katie Monroe’s cheerful yellow house on a quiet street in Richmond’s Bellevue neighborhood. That setting provides an opportunity for Monroe to pursue her lifelong interest in outdoor activities as she tends the backyard garden there. In prison the presence of wildflowers had lifted her spirits. Weeds capable of growing anywhere, even along the perimeter of razor-wired topped fences, were an inspiration.

Beverly Monroe asserts, as well, that dandelions have nutritional value.

As she received short rations of fruit and vegetables, and she wasn’t keen on the balogna that was readily available, dandelions mattered. "But you don’t eat them for the taste," Monroe says, nodding her head slightly for emphasis.  

Beverly Monroe’s chief pleasure, these days, is sharing time with her daughter’s son, Asher, who is four. She’s been teaching him to hit a tennis ball, also how to spell and write.

"There are days I take care of Asher and we play cowboys with stick horses," says the proud grandmother, her blue eyes sparkling.

*

A book on the fascinating Monroe case, "The Count and the Confession," by John Taylor, hit bookstores earlier this year. Both NBC Dateline and a TNT cable television documentary have examined the mysteries of the case. Each of these studies has revealed that Special Agent Riley played an especially aggressive role in converting a situation originally viewed as a suicide into a murder investigation.

Judge Willliams called Riley’s tactics, "deceitful, manipulative, and inappropriate," while finding that the Commonwealth Attorney improperly withheld "exculpatory evidence" - information it had in hand that could favor the defense. His sense of outrage that the prosecutor consistently broke with proper form is plain in the 67 pages of his decision.

Attorney General Jerry Kilgore promptly appealed the Williams decision to the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a panel of three judges. Briefs have been filed from both sides. On December 3 oral arguments from Monroe’s pro bono legal team - led by Steve Northrup - and the AG’s representatives will begin.

"It feels to me like sheer vindictiveness to keep her in prison," says Northrup. "I don’t understand it."

As for why the commonwealth has moved to set aside Judge Williams’ ruling, Randy Davis, Kilgore’s Deputy Director of Communications says, "It is our duty to protect the citizens of Virginia and continue to pursue violent crime cases. Ten years ago, a jury of her peers from Powhatan County unanimously agreed that Beverly Monroe was guilty of the first degree murder of her lover, Roger de la Burde, and the use of a firearm in the commission of that murder. That conviction was upheld by the Court of Appeals of Virginia and the Supreme Court of Virginia. Since her conviction, 19 judges or justices have reviewed her case. 18 of them, all but one, have concluded she received a fair trial. We have an obligation to the citizens of this Commonwealth to seek judicial review of the ruling of that one judge who has concluded that her trial was not fair."

Katie Monroe says, "The only court to have considered the totality of the prosecutor’s misconduct was the U.S. District Court, which vacated Beverly’s conviction. The majority of the evidence of misconduct was discovered later, after the police and prosecutors were ordered by that court to turn over their files. Neither the Virginia Court of Appeals nor the Virginia Supreme Court considered the impact of what wasn’t seen by the jury. The Attorney General’s reliance on an alleged technicality, to try to reinstate a conviction that was won through prosecutor misconduct, is a disservice to Virginians."

Asked what the appeal is costing taxpayers, Davis responds, "It will cost the same as any other appeal in which we're involved."

*

The daughter of Dallas and Anne Duncan, Beverly Duncan was born in 1938 in Marion, North Carolina. She and her three brothers grew up on a farm in Leeds, South Carolina. In addition to farm chores her father worked for the U.S. Postal Service and her mother was a telegraph operator.

In her teens Beverly Duncan played on the high school basketball team and was named as the prettiest girl in her class. In 1959 she graduated from Limestone College in Gaffney, South Carolina. Then she earned a master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Florida. During her two years in Gainesville she met and married Stuart Monroe, who was working toward his doctorate in chemistry.

After living in Wilmington, Delaware for 3 years the Monroes moved to Ashland, Virginia in 1965; Stuart taught chemistry at Randolph-Macon College, Beverly Monroe stayed at home with her three children while they were young.

In 1970 Dallas Duncan walked into the woods near his home. With a borrowed gun he ended his life. This haunting specter of her father’s suicide returned to play a role in Monroe’s dealing with de la Burde’s violent death.

In 1979 she returned to the workplace; Beverly Monroe accepted a job as a patent researcher at Philip Morris. In 1981 the Monroe’s marriage fell apart, ending in divorce. Beginning again, she built a house in Chesterfield County.

*

At Philip Morris Monroe got to know Roger de la Burde. Eventually they became romantically involved. At the time de la Burde was married. And, as Monroe would eventually learn, he tended to lead a hopelessly complicated life.

Roger de la Burde, a count by his telling, grew up in Poland and came to America in the mid-fifties. Although his scientific work at for Philip Morris was impressive - work from which nine patents flowed - he eventually had a bitter dispute with the company that kept lawyers on both sides of it busy.

"I do know there were times he felt afraid, or even paranoid," says Monroe. "He bought the gun around the time he filed the suit against Philip Morris in about 1987-88, out of some perceived fear. Roger was terribly depressed about the way that was going. He wished he'd never started it."

To gain leverage on the tobacco giant de la Burde is said to have seized some company documents he believed were related to hidden health issues about cigarettes. Shortly after his death that material was carted away by Philip Morris agents, never to surface again.

In published reports after his death de la Burde was remembered by some for his energy and charm. Others saw him as a swindler in business, a fraud in general, and a womanizer. Researchers from all angles seem to agree that his claim to noble ancestry was bogus, as were aspects of his vaunted African art collection.

Katie Monore and her sister, Shannon Monroe, still speak of their fondness for him. Yet, there was a dark and somewhat hidden side to Roger de la Burde. For one thing, he had been taking Librium to help him cope with his anxieties and mood swings and Monroe was completely unaware of that.

Significantly, this information, furnished to the police shortly after his death by his ex-wife, a doctor, was withheld from the defense. This, while the prosecutor built a case on the theory that de la Burde, in spite of his flaws, was an upbeat guy who wouldn’t do himself in.

Beverly Monroe declines opportunities to comment on Burde’s mounting troubles concerning business dealings in real estate or art. She also remains convinced, as do others who were close to him, that he took his life in a fit of depression.

*

As there was little in the way of physical evidence presented, the hinge on which Beverly Monroe’s fate swung in her trial was what she said to David Riley in their conversations - what she said, and why she said it.

To believe Riley’s account and interpretation one must see him as a canny bloodhound that smelled a crime where others had missed it. In a series of meetings set up by Riley, in the weeks after de la Burde’s death, he urged Monroe to accept that a trauma-induced amnesia could have been blocking her memory of that evening; suggesting to her that she was probably present when Burde pulled the trigger. Meanwhile, he didn’t reveal to her that she was being considered as the only real suspect in a murder investigation.

Monroe says she was convinced that Riley, as a professional who knew about such things, was trying to help her. Consequently, she didn’t think to consult an attorney as she discussed trying to recover her supposedly lost memory with Riley. By entertaining the stealth sleuth’s theory of why her grief was so paralyzing in the weeks after de al Burde’s death, Beverly Monroe, herself, unwittingly opened the prison door.

Later, when the commonwealth’s forensic experts testified that de la Burde hadn’t pulled the trigger, the door slammed shut.

Monroe’s motive, the prosecutor told the jury, was jealousy over de al Burde’s other girlfriend, Krystyna Drewnowska, a 40-year-old professor at the Medical College of Virginia, who was pregnant with his child.

Doubting Riley, one might see him as a man who became determined to produce a result that jibed with his first impression as he looked over Polaroids of de la Burde’s body and the position of the gun.

However, what Riley saw as a clue may well have been a bum steer. No one treated the library as a crime scene on March 5, 1992. As the county’s officials examined what they thought to be a suicide, physical evidence was lost. Two Marlboro cigarette butts in an ashtray were thrown away.

Yet, since de la Burde smoked Players and Monroe didn’t smoke, one is left to wonder who may have visited him after Monroe says she left to go home, following their last dinner together.

And, too, the county’s personnel wasn’t overly concerned when the estate’s caretaker, Joe Hairfield - the man who found Burde dead - told deputies that morning he had inadvertently moved the gun as he examined Burde’s body.

As well, Monroe’s forensic experts, who have studied the evidence collected in 1992 since the conviction, insist the commonwealth’s homicide theory is inconsistent with the residues found on Burde’s body, including  the presence of primer residue - an invisible chemical that flies out of the back of a gun - found on Burde’s right hand.

*

"I’m going to rebuild my life, we’ve been robbed of it," says Beverly Monroe. "I know it won’t be easy."

Once this ordeal has run its course she wants to continue working in conjunction with others on "wrongful convictions." Without knowing how she will earn a living, she hopes to connect with an established group, or perhaps start her own.

"This has been a ten-year education, I don’t want to waste it," say Monroe.

As she reaches to gather the strands of a new life, Monroe sees her future focus as a matter of righting wrongs. Her sense of solidarity with those who’ve been sprung from prison by post-trial revelations is strong.   

"If it happened to me, it can happen to anybody," says Asher’s stick-horse sidekick.

*   *   *

[Actual Testimony Sidebar]

September 17, 1999: Regarding his tactics during meetings with Monore, Riley’s testimony during a discovery session ordered by Judge Williams was:

"You repeat the theme or modify it slightly, you bob and you weave and commiserate ... And I was very close to her, and ... I wouldn't lose eye contact with her ... I said, we need to work this thing out. And then it didn’t seem like she was willing to accept remembering that she was present or openly remember that maybe she had -- would think of some variation of that such as blocking it from the memory or shock type situation and sometimes it does happen. People are involved in very traumatic situations, the shock is so bad that they really don’t remember the actual event. It’s more like a dream.... I gave her an example of my own father who actually did commit suicide. And I lied to her ... about the fact that I was so shocked that I had blocked it from my memory ... but I was acting with her and doing a darn good job, okay.

"Anyway, she accepted the shock theme. And the thing that really got her to accept it was it was so clear to her that I believed it. It was so clear to me that she believed that I believed people could be shocked to the point where they could block things from their memory. And when I gave her the example of my ... my father’s suicide, that was what seemed to put the cork in it. And so she sort of -- it was sort of like she was in a trance."

December 4, 2001: Beverly Monroe’s testimony about the same at an evidentiary hearing was:

"[Riley] said I know - I know what’s happened.  I’ve seen it so many times.  He said you have to let me help you with this thing .…  But it was going so fast and he was sort of right over me like this and right in my face and it was so loud and nonstop .…  He knew I had to have been there.  He said this is what he knew had to have happened … and this is what was causing me to have such terrible grief and this was causing me not to be able to remember and that I would never get over it.  And that’s truly how I felt; that I would never get over it. 

"Riley sounded so knowledgeable and so concerned and so believable … and I had just disintegrated inside from letting this happen to both my father and to Roger.  … [Riley] kept trying to put images in my mind by verbalizing what "must have happened" … like my "being asleep on the couch."  …  He just kept pressing, saying I had to remember .…  He was the person in authority and must be right, and I was sure there was something wrong with me because I couldn’t remember."

Note: Due to space concerns, or perhaps other considerations, The Actual Testimony Sidebar was not run as part of the feature in 2002. So the readers of FiftyPlus didn’t get to see it.

Beverly Monroe was exonerated in 2003 and remains free. That’s something for which I’m sure she remains grateful. Since that turbulent time she and her daughter, Katie, have both become a tireless advocates for the wrongfully convicted. To this day, I’ll bet Beverly can still remember the bitter taste of those dandelions.