a report<\/a> released Monday. <\/p>\nRoss regularly got money orders for his rent and life insurance payments at that post office, which helped him and the authorities follow a paper trail after the robbery. The trail soon led to Windley, who had given his name, driver\u2019s license and address when purchasing the stove at an appliance store.<\/p>\n
From the start, Windley said he had nothing to do with the robbery. He said he\u2019d simply bought a $542.77 money order at a discount from a couple of acquaintances, who insisted that it was valid but that they couldn\u2019t use it for a bureaucratic reason. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe was duped,\u201d one of Windley\u2019s lawyers, David Shanies, told the court Monday.<\/p>\n
Ross identified Windley as one of the thieves from a photo array and then a live lineup, both of them six weeks or longer after the robbery. Windley testified at his trial, telling jurors how his acquaintances had approached him and sold him the money order. But the jury convicted him in 2007 of robbery. Because of prior felony convictions, he was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. His appeals failed.<\/p>\n
Early on, Windley told prosecutors what he knew about the men who sold him the money order: their nicknames and some information about their legal names. After his conviction, a friend and private investigators helped him flesh out the men\u2019s identities and persuade them to come forward about what had happened, according to the D.A.\u2019s report. <\/p>\n
In sworn statements and then in interviews with D.A.’s office representatives, the two men said that they had robbed Ross together and that Windley was not involved, according to the report. It called their admissions \u201ccompelling.\u201d<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t give their names, referring to them only as \u201cSuspect 1\u201d and \u201cSuspect 2.\u201d Both are serving prison time on other robbery convictions, according to the D.A.\u2019s office. Those convictions all involved male victims in their 60s and older who were followed home from banks and check-cashing offices in Brooklyn in 2005 and 2006. <\/p>\n
If the jury had known those men\u2019s identities and robbery records, the information would likely have raised reasonable doubt about the charge against Windley, prosecutors concluded.<\/p>\n
No new charges have been brought in the case. The legal time frame for bringing charges ran out years ago, and Ross has died.<\/p>\n
Windley, heading off Monday afternoon to celebrate with his family, said he wasn\u2019t bitter about what he\u2019d been through.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just going to move on from there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 A man who spent nearly two decades in prison for a roughly $550 robbery…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[303,67962,5533,6662,417,67961,67960,9,24,11,10,797,421],"class_list":["post-166972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-crime","tag-david-shanies","tag-eric-gonzalez","tag-general-domestic-news","tag-general-news","tag-gerald-ross","tag-kenneth-windley-brooklyn","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-theft","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166972","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=166972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}