Michelle Moore-Bosko

Case background and investigation

Michelle Moore-Bosko was 18 and married to a Navy sailor when she was raped, stabbed and strangled in the couple's apartment in Norfolk, Virginia, in July 1997. According to Wikipedia's summary of the case, the crime took place on the night of July 7 to 8. The investigation that followed led to charges against eight men, although physical evidence pointed to only one.

Norfolk police first questioned Danial Williams, a sailor who lived in the same building. PBS Frontline reported that Williams confessed after about eleven hours of interrogation that included threats of the death penalty. When his DNA did not match evidence from the scene, detectives questioned his roommate, Joseph Dick Jr., and then Eric Wilson and Derek Tice. Each confessed and each later said the statement was false and had been given under pressure. Charges against three other men were eventually dropped.

None of the sailors' DNA matched the evidence. The only match was to Omar Ballard, who was already imprisoned for other violent offenses and who stated that he had acted alone. Ballard pleaded guilty to the rape and murder in March 2000 and remains in prison. Prosecutors nonetheless pursued the sailors on the theory that a group had taken part. Williams and Dick pleaded guilty and received life sentences, Tice was convicted at trial and sentenced to life, and Wilson was convicted of rape only and served eight and a half years before his release in 2005.

The convictions drew sustained criticism. Navy Times reported that dozens of former FBI agents and former prosecutors, along with the author John Grisham, supported the men's claims of innocence. In 2009 Virginia Governor Tim Kaine granted conditional pardons to Williams, Dick and Tice, freeing them but leaving the convictions on their records. Tice's conviction was vacated by a federal district court in 2009, a ruling the Fourth Circuit upheld in 2011. Wilson's federal challenge was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds in 2012 because he was no longer in custody, according to the Fourth Circuit's opinion.

The lead interrogator, Detective Robert Glenn Ford, was later convicted in federal court of extortion and lying to the FBI in unrelated matters. In 2016 a federal judge vacated the convictions of Williams and Dick, and in March 2017 Governor Terry McAuliffe granted all four men absolute pardons.

In December 2018 it was announced that the City of Norfolk would pay $4.9 million and the Commonwealth of Virginia $3.5 million to the four men, a combined $8.4 million. Ballard is the only person whose conviction for the killing of Michelle Moore-Bosko stands.