‘I never witnessed any murder’: Witness blames NC detective for false statement
Nearly 26 years after Angela Oliver’s statement helped convict Darryl Howard of a double murder, she recanted and blamed the lead detective in the case for the deception that imprisoned the Durham man for nearly two decades.
“I never witnessed any murder in my life,” said Oliver, whose deposition was displayed on monitors before a jury in Howard’s civil rights lawsuit in a federal courtroom in Winston-Salem last week.
A year after Doris Washington and her daughter Nishonda, 13, were found dead, Oliver indicated she was with Howard the night he killed them. Howard, now 59, has always said he didn’t kill them
Oliver’s statement was key link in Durham police detective Darrell Dowdy’s investigation, which led to the conviction of Howard for the murders and arson and an 80-year sentence. Firefighters found the mother and daughter dead and naked on a bed in a burning apartment on Nov. 27, 1991.
In the federal civil trial that started last week, Howard contends the detective violated his right to a fair trial by inventing and withholding evidence that led to Howard spending more than 23 years incarcerated.
At stake could be a judgment for tens of millions of dollars as other recent cases have led to, including two brothers awarded $75 million. The settlement included $1 million for every year they spent in prison.
Howard contends the Washingtons were raped and murdered by members of the New York Boys, a violent gang sending a brutal message after Doris Washington took their drugs.
Semen from two men was found in the the mother and daughter. Tests excluded Howard. The autopsy also revealed a tear in Doris Washington’s vagina that was likely made by a hard object.
Dowdy contends multiple witnesses linked Howard to the killings. He said he never investigated the killings as a sexual assault since the medical examiner didn’t mention it in reports and he believes the semen found on the teen was from consensual sex.
In the first week of testimony, Howard’s legal team has been dissecting Dowdy’s investigation into the murders that occurred in Few Gardens, a public housing complex that has since been leveled. Many of the witnesses, including Howard, were selling and using drugs in the complex that had been divided up among gangs and independent drug dealers, according to court testimony.
Some witnesses, including Oliver, spoke to Dowdy after they were arrested on unrelated charges. The case also offered a $10,000 reward, though Dowdy testified none of the witnesses asked about money.
“Not a single one,” he said.
Oliver’s arrest
About a year after the the 1991 murders, Oliver was arrested on a prostitution charge, accused to trying to solicit an officer. Dowdy was contacted around midnight and told Oliver wanted to share information about the killings, he testified.
“She felt it was time to get all of this off her chest,” he said.
Oliver’s taped statement, which was taken over a 46-minute period but lasts only about 10 minutes, is a key piece of Howard’s evidence in his claim that Dowdy, who retired from the Durham Police Department in in 2007, fabricated evidence and one of three questions the jury is being asked to decide.
The other two include whether Dowdy made up evidence about the teen having consensual sex before the killings, and whether he withheld information about another witness’s ties to the New York Boys and work as a confidential informant.
Howard claims Dowdy fed Oliver information during the interview. While a transcript of the tape is available, it went missing after the trial along with Dowdy’s notes on his investigation.
“I didn’t put words in her mouth,” Dowdy testified. “She provided that information.”
Howard’s murder and arson convictions were vacated in 2016 by a Durham judge after new DNA and other evidence were discovered. The judge cited police and prosecutorial misconduct. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper pardoned Howard in April.
1995 testimony
Before the 1995 trial, Dowdy picked up Oliver in Goldsboro and drove her to the courthouse.
At the trial, Oliver refused to respond to questions and was treated as a hostile witness, resulting in a recording of the statement she made to Dowdy being played to the jury.
In the statement, Oliver described Howard threatening to kill Doris Washington hours before she was found dead if she didn’t come up with his drugs or money.
Later that night, Oliver, Howard and his brother went back to Washington’s apartment, she said.
“She still didn’t have his stuff,” Oliver told Dowdy, “so he started jumping on her and after a while, he grabbed her.”
Howard beat Washington, hit her in the face and the chest and took her upstairs as Washington screamed.
“My daughter here. My daughter here,” Oliver said she heard Washington cry as Howard took her upstairs.
Oliver went outside, and waited until Howard ran out of the apartment.
“He said he had to burn them up,” Oliver told Dowdy. “He didn’t want to leave no evidence.”
During Oliver’s 1995 testimony, she appeared to both affirm and deny her statement made to Dowdy.
New evidence
New tests on the sexual assault evidence in 2010 revealed previously undetected semen found in Doris Washington that matched the DNA profile to Jermeck Jones, who was 15 at the time of the murders and affiliated with the New York Boys, according to court documents and testimony.
The New York Boys were were known for using young men for violent crimes because they are less likely to face harsh sentences, according to court testimony. Early in his investigation, Dowdy received but ignored a tip that indicated a gang from New York or New Jersey raped and killed the Washingtons for a drug debt, court documents state.
Dowdy’s supervisor flagged the tip and pointed out that information about a sexual assault hadn’t been shared with the public, according to court documents.
When police questioned Jones about the killings, Jones said he dated and had consensual sex with Nishonda but didn’t know Doris Washington.
While police left the room, a recording captured Jones making a phone call saying he didn’t want to “rat on anybody” and other statements indicating he had lied and knew more about the crime.
Jones, who hasn’t been charged in the case, was deposed for Howard’s civil case. He said “plead the Fifth,” Amendment to questions about the murders. The jury was told it may infer that his answers might have been incriminating.
‘I can’t read’
For years, attorneys looked for Oliver, and finally found her last spring, according to court documents. She was interviewed in a video deposition in Washington, D.C., in August, which jurors saw portions of last week.
In the deposition, Oliver asked Howard’s attorney Nick Brustin to read sections of her 1992 statement to her since she can only read at a third-grade level.
“I can’t read,” she said.
It may be an important point since Dowdy testified that Oliver, who was known as Angela Southerland in the 1990s, made her statement and later read and signed all the pages to confirm they were accurate.
While the jury listened to Oliver, Howard put his head in his hands, as some of his team of lawyers comforted him.
‘Let her know’
In the August deposition, Oliver said at the time of the killings she was a prostitute and an addict who shared information about crimes with Dowdy multiple times before she gave a statement in the Washingtons’ case. She is also schizophrenic and bipolar, she said. She said she doesn’t remember testifying or making the statements.
Oliver, who said she doesn’t remember much about the case, said she didn’t witness the Washingtons’ murders and likely lied because she didn’t want to be locked up.
Dowdy must have “let her know” about the details of the murder that were in the statement, Oliver said.
When asked what kind of benefits Dowdy provided for her help with crimes, Oliver said it had to be money since he didn’t have drugs.
Dowdy testified that he didn’t know Oliver before the 1992 interview and that many of her statements in the deposition, including that she couldn’t read, were lies.
Dowdy testified that after he started the 1992 interview, he stopped the tape to check Oliver’s information and background but that he never stopped it once she started outlining what happened.
“I may have gotten the time wrong, but I know I didn’t stop the tape,” he said.
Roneka Jackson
After Dowdy interviewed Oliver in 1992, he circled back to another witness who had shared information previously.
Roneka Jackson, who was 17, had volunteered information about the murders after she was arrested on unrelated charges three days after the killings.
In her first statement, Jackson said she saw Howard threaten Doris Washington and her daughter the evening before the murder.
Howard was upset because his girlfriend was in Doris Washington’s apartment, and he thought she was encouraging her to exchange sexual favors for drugs there, Jackson told Dowdy, according to court documents.
Jackson also said she saw Howard and his brother carrying a TV and a VCR from Doris Washington’s apartment later the night of the murders and saw smoke coming from the apartment 15 minutes later.
About a year after the killings and a month after Dowdy interviewed Oliver, the detective interviewed Jackson again. During that interview, she identified Oliver and Howard in a picture line up.
Howard, who contends Dowdy fabricated Jackson’s second statement, was charged with the murder and arrested the next day.
Dowdy said he planned to recommend that Jackson receive the $10,000 in reward money.
Jackson never got the money. Months after the trial, Jackson was murdered by members of the New York Boys gang, according to statements in court.
After the killings, it was revealed that Jackson had been working as a confidential informant since at least 1994 and had been dating members of the New York Boys, including having a child with one.
Dowdy denies that he knew Jackson was a confidential informant or was affiliated with the gang
“I didn’t disclose it because I didn’t know it,” he said.
This story was originally published November 15, 2021 at 5:30 AM with the headline "‘I never witnessed any murder’: Witness blames NC detective for false statement."
