A month later, with his friends still in jail, Woodruff was called to testify before a grand jury. Detectives spoke with him beforehand, and in their subsequent reports they claimed that he gave them new details about the crime. According to a detective\u2019s memo, Woodruff said that one of his friends had suggested they all go to Fillmore Avenue that night, because \u201cmaybe somebody in one of the bars has cashed a check,\u201d and that two of them went into the Golden Nugget, after which they told the others about \u201can old white dude at the bar with some money.\u201d The teen-agers allegedly \u201cwaited till the white man crossed Fillmore Avenue,\u201d and, when he did, Gibson \u201chit the man about the head and face with the piece of pipe he had up his sleeve.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Woodruff was brought before the grand jury, he repeated some of those details. Timothy J. Drury, the lead prosecutor, was taking notes that day, and even he appears to have had doubts about the veracity of Woodruff\u2019s testimony. Drury\u2019s notes reveal that he was still considering two other suspects\u2014Watson and another man. If they were culpable, that would mean, he wrote, using Woodruff\u2019s nickname, that \u201cTony is lying.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walker and the other three friends could not understand why Woodruff was telling lies that could send them to prison for decades. In March of 1976, Walker wrote from jail to a friend that he did not know what was happening with Woodruff. Remembering that time, Walker recently told me, \u201cWe couldn\u2019t believe it. How could he do something like this?\u201d The four would talk about what they \u201cwanted to do to Tony, at the time, for what he was doing to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woodruff has described himself at the time as \u201cquiet and confused.\u201d He never confided in his parents about giving false testimony, because, he said, \u201cI didn\u2019t know how to go about it. I didn\u2019t know how to communicate with them.\u201d He told me that, before he testified, Drury shaped his story. When he tried to imagine details of the crime, the prosecutor would respond with guidance such as \u201cIt couldn\u2019t happen like that. Well, maybe it happened like this.\u201d (Drury has repeatedly denied any misconduct in the case.) Woodruff recalled thinking, about his predicament, \u201c\u2018Man, I done dug myself into some bullshit that I don\u2019t know how to get out of.\u2019\u201d He added, \u201cI should\u2019ve just said, \u2018You know what? I ain\u2019t doing nothing. Y\u2019all do what y\u2019all got to do.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, in 1977, he took the witness stand at four separate trials to testify against his four friends. Each time, he was presented as the only eyewitness to the crime. Defense attorneys pointed out inconsistencies in his statements and argued that he was lying, with Boyd\u2019s lawyer saying that the judge should dismiss the indictment because Woodruff\u2019s testimony was \u201cuncorroborated\u201d and \u201cunbelievable.\u201d Woodruff gave an incorrect time, date, and place for the murder, the lawyer noted; \u201che couldn\u2019t identify the victim, he could not identify the house.\u201d Drury told the jurors, \u201cLook, if we had fed Woodruff stuff, you wouldn\u2019t have that blithering idiot up there talking like he did. He would be a lot smoother.\u201d<\/p>\n
Drury added, \u201cHe is a ghetto kid.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. He is a snook. You saw him\u2014he is an idiot, a nitwit.\u201d But, the prosecutor continued, \u201cI am asking you to believe him.\u201d Walker, Gibson, and Boyd were convicted of second-degree murder and sent into the state\u2019s adult-prison system. Martin, who went on trial last, was acquitted. Martin\u2019s lawyer later explained that a crime-scene photo that he had received had been crucial to the acquittal but that he did not know if the other defense attorneys had been given it. As he recalled, the photo showed a single set of footprints in the snow walking from the crime scene\u2014evidence, he argued, that there had been only one assailant.<\/p>\n
After high school, Woodruff joined the Army. He was assigned to the 503rd Military Police Battalion, stationed at Fort Bragg, where he worked as a cook. But he did not last long in the Army. \u201cMy mind was in chains. I couldn\u2019t really focus, so I requested to get out,\u201d he told me. Soon after, he moved back in with his parents in Buffalo, but being in his home town was stressful\u2014\u201cI was afraid of the streets,\u201d he said\u2014and he went into what he described as survival mode. \u201cI was Casper the Ghost. Now you see me, now you don\u2019t,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s just how I taught myself to move\u2014just trying to stay out of the way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A month later, with his friends still in jail, Woodruff was called to testify before a grand jury.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[113,3777,1227,9,11,10,49,51,50,42361],"class_list":{"0":"post-146226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-buffalo","9":"tag-criminal-justice","10":"tag-n-y","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-news","14":"tag-new-york-state","15":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","16":"tag-new-york-state-news","17":"tag-wrongful-convictions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}