In November 1997, 73-year-old Essie Mae Thomas was beaten and stabbed to death inside her North Philadelphia home. Her nephew found her after she stopped answering the phone. A year later, three men were convicted of her murder and sentenced to life.
This May, after nearly three decades behind bars, all three of these men walked. District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office concluded that the case against them didn’t hold up, and a judge agreed. But, as with the nearly sixty murder exonerations that have happened since Krasner took over in 2018, there has been no new investigations. No new trials.
If these three men didn’t kill Essie Mae Thomas — then who did?
The media certainly isn’t asking. District Attorney Krasner, the official responsible for prosecuting murder in Philadelphia, has said he’s not interested in looking.
So my organization Voices of Americans, in collaboration with Broad + Liberty, is finally asking the question: with nearly sixty murder exonerations in Philadelphia, where are the real killers?
With zero new trials, the tell is obvious: the killers have walked out of jail, thanks to Krasner’s policy of de-carceration, or letting murders out of jail outside of the legal means.
No one wants an innocent person in prison, least of all the families of victims. And a wrongful conviction is two injustices, not one. The first falls on the person wrongly locked up. The second falls on the victim, whose real killer has been free the entire time.
A fake exoneration that ends with a press conference and a cold-case file doesn’t solve either.
Every overturned murder conviction in Philadelphia should have launched a new investigation. In fact, with nearly sixty new unsolved murders, we should have a citywide manhunt in Philadelphia.
The stakes of getting this right are life-and-death. Shaurn Thomas, freed from a Philadelphia murder conviction in 2017 and paid $4.1 million by the city, since then committed another murder. He probably won’t be the last.
The legacy media has shown no interest in the obvious question. The Philadelphia Inquirer coverage of the three men’s release didn’t inquire about the real killer. Thomas’s nephew, who found her body nearly three decades ago, told 6ABC that “there is no justice for my aunt.” Exactly.
That’s why Voices of Americans, in partnership with Broad + Liberty, is telling Essie Mae Thomas’s story and asking the questions nobody else will. Her life mattered, and so does the truth about how it ended.
Kiele Cabrera is a Cuban-American political commentator and organizer. She is the Spokesperson and Secretary of Voices of Americans.