The police have the suspect dead to rights.
They say they’ve interrogated him for hours, gotten a confession, and ruled out any alibis.
They’re ready to take the case to the judge. If that’s not enough proof for the
judge to approve criminal charges, there’s the evidence. This is rock-solid
proof that they’ve got the right guy, and there’s no jury that would acquit once they’ve
seen the evidence. There’s only one problem. The evidence wasn’t real. It
was planted by the officers. Does this really happen? Do the police plant
evidence to get false convictions or to protect themselves from charges? It happens more often
than you think, and here are eight of the most shocking cases where the police
planted evidence - including one that brought in the federal
government to investigate. The first case takes place in rural New Zealand
in 1970, when crimes that made the front page were rare. So it shocked the farming community
of Lower Waikato when young farm couple Harvey and Jeanette Crew were found brutally murdered
on their ranch. Jeanette’s father had legal and financial trouble before, and their farm had been
plagued by burglaries and arson. They were set to receive her mother’s share in the farm shortly,
which would make life with their toddler daughter much easier. Then they went missing, and their
eighteen-month-old was found alone in her crib. Doctors said the baby had been alone for at
least two days and was severely dehydrated. But it would be almost two months before the
couple’s bodies were found, shot to death. Police immediately zeroed in on a suspect. Arthur Alan Thomas lived on a neighboring farm
and it was discovered that his car axle had been used to weigh down Harvey’s body. When the
police searched the Crewe house again and found a cartridge from Thomas’ rifle in the garden, his
fate was sealed. He was charged with two counts of murder despite his wife and cousin giving
him an alibi. The star witness? Lenard Demler, Jeanette’s father who had been forced to
sell them his half of the farm. Thomas was convicted twice despite little evidence, with
the first conviction being thrown out on appeal. Supporters and investigators quickly began
campaigning for a pardon and after nine years, evidence came out that the batch of cartridges
the bullet came from couldn’t have been from his gun. Thomas was pardoned, and two Detectives
were investigated for planting the evidence. While they were both implicated in
misconduct, neither was ever charged. But corrupt police don’t just plant evidence to
solve crimes - they do it to get away with them. It was the footage that outraged a nation in 2015.
Many controversial police shootings had taken place over the previous year, but few as shocking
as the one that happened in North Charleston, South Carolina. Walter Scott was a forklift
operator who had a warrant out for his arrest for missing a child support hearing. Michael
Slager was a police officer with several accusations of excessive force against him. When
Slager stopped Scott for a broken brake light, he found out about the warrant and
moved to arrest him. Scott ran, and the two briefly scuffled. When a taser
didn’t knock Scott out and he turned to run, Slager pulled out his gun and shot Scott
eight times, hitting him fatally in the back. Slager justified his actions by saying that
Scott had taken his taser and was a threat. There was just one problem with that. It was the era of cell phones, and the
footage of the shooting of Walter Scott was captured by a bystander. Feldin Santana
was terrified of being targeted by police, but he shared it with Scott’s family, who
released it. It showed clearly that Scott had never laid hands on Slager’s taser and
was shot in the back without provocation. Mass protests came to North Charleston, and
Slager was fired and charged with murder. While the first case deadlocked when one juror
wouldn’t vote to convict, he was charged and pled guilty to federal civil rights charges
and is currently doing twenty years in prison. It wasn’t the only time police tried to cover
up a killing, and the next one went much higher. The year was 1975 in Montgomery, Alabama,
and it seemed like an open-and-shut case. Police were searching the neighborhood
for a suspect in a grocery store robbery, and they zeroed in on Bernard Whitehurst
Jr. When they confronted him, Whitehurst reportedly pulled a gun and aimed it
at the officers. They returned fire, killing him with a single bullet to the chest.
The shooting was quickly deemed justified when a gun was found at the scene, there was
no autopsy, and Whitehurst was quickly buried. It seemed like an open-and-shut
case like so many other police shootings. It wasn’t, and six months later
the entire case started to unravel. The Montgomery Advisor was one of the only
newspapers to cover the case extensively and allege that the gun was planted, and many
locals were starting to question the events. The police alleged that the paper was making up
stories, and their publisher even agreed to take a polygraph test. Three Montgomery officers
were eventually charged with perjury over the planted gun, and offered a chance to take
a polygraph test to prove their innocence. They all resigned from the force instead. While no
one was ever charged in the shooting and no one is exactly sure what happened in the moments that led
to Bernard Whitehurst Jr.’s death, the conspiracy led to the resignation of eight officers and
several Montgomery officials including the Mayor. There’s a third type of planted evidence.
Instead of trying to solve or cover up crimes, this officer tried to create them. For those who were stopped by
Deputy Zachary Wester in Florida, a traffic stop quickly turned to horror.
He would pull them over, question them, and then make up a reason to search the car.
He would quickly find drugs, usually meth, and make a quick arrest. The people would go into
the system and many saw jail time or lost jobs or custody of their children. Over several years,
Wester seemed to have an uncanny ability to stop cars whose drivers were carrying small amounts
of drugs. This was a great asset for a policeman, and anyone who watched him work was
sure he was headed for a promotion soon. It was all a lie. Zachary Wester was planting the drugs on
unsuspecting people, and footage shows them react with shock and horror when it’s pulled out
seemingly from thin air. While only eleven victims were initially found, prosecutors dropped over a
hundred cases involving Wester and were reviewing over two hundred. Eight people were released from
prison and Wester was charged with racketeering, false imprisonment, official misconduct, and a
host of other charges. Prosecutors were showing no mercy, and Wester wasn’t offered a plea deal.
He’s currently awaiting trial and could face over thirty years in prison if convicted - and he’s
probably lucky his victims were already released. The next case set a record the
Government wasn’t happy about. It was one of the most shocking crimes in the
history of Waukegan, Illinois. In August 1992, a woman called police and reported
that her home had been broken into and her children’s 11-year-old babysitter,
Holly Slaker, was missing. When police arrived, they found the girl’s body in the house,
stabbed to death. Evidence of rape was found, samples were taken, and a massive manhunt began.
A prison informant fingered a fellow inmate, Puerto Rico-born Juan Rivera. Rivera cooperated
with the investigation and gave samples of his blood and DNA. While no physical evidence
was found on site linking him to the crime, Rivera was held in custody where his
mental condition began to deteriorate. His long nightmare was only beginning. Rivera was interrogated until he confessed, even
though many Detectives stated his comments were inconsistent with the crime scene. He was quickly
charged with first-degree murder and convicted, despite evidence from his electronic
ankle monitor showing that he hadn’t left the home on the night of the murder.
While his first conviction was overturned, his fate was sealed at his second trial by the
testimony of the child being babysat- who was only two at the time. It wasn’t until 2004 when
DNA testing cast doubt on his guilt that he saw the chance at freedom - but prosecutors
were determined to try him again. They had a bizarre theory that he could have still been
guilty due to cross-contamination and even claimed that Slaker had been sexually
active, contaminating the crime scene. Shockingly, Rivera was convicted
again and all hope seemed lost. It was 2011 when the courts issued a
scathing condemnation of the initial trial, pointing out all the flaws. Not only
did they overturn Rivera’s conviction, but they barred the prosecution from
trying him again. The prosecution had even tried to enter shoes as evidence that weren’t
available for sale at the time of the murder. The many legal flaws and lies in the proceedings
led to Rivera winning the biggest settlement for wrongful conviction in United States
history at the time - twenty million dollars. The next case’s criminal cop
didn’t commit his crimes alone. Sgt. Wayne Jenkins was a prominent officer
in the Baltimore Police Department, the head of the Gun Trace Task Force. So when
one of his suspects wound up dead, run over by Jenkins’ car while being arrested, most officers
gave him the benefit of the doubt. He claimed that the suspect had pointed a gun at the car,
which turned out to be a BB gun, and that gave him the authority to take out the suspect by any
means necessary. But all of this started falling apart when Jenkins was arrested and convicted for
a host of crimes committed using his position of power including robberies and dealing drugs.
All his past cases started being investigated. And the truth about the incident
with his car was blown wide open. Not only did the suspect not have a gun
on him, but Jenkins didn’t act alone. He called up two other officers,
Keith Gladstone and Carmine Vignola, and asked them to bring a gun from their
own car to the scene. The two officers worked together to stage the crime scene. When
federal investigators looked into the case as part of a massive scandal involving Jenkins’ task
force, the two officers were exposed and wound up receiving prison sentences. As for Jenkins, he
was headed for a twenty-five year stay in prison, where many of the people he had convicted
were likely not so happy to see him. The truth usually comes to light
- but sometimes it’s too late. It was 1940 in County Tipperary, Ireland, and the central-Irish town was about to be
rocked by a shocking murder. Mary McCarthy, also known as Moll, was an unmarried woman with
seven children by six fathers who made a living off sex work. Her controversial profession
led to her home being targeted for arson, but everyone was still shocked when she turned up
dead, found with two gunshot wounds to her head delivered by the nephew of her landlord. Harry
Gleeson was suspected of being the father of her youngest child, and suspicion soon fell on him. He
claimed innocence, but he was quickly charged and convicted. Justice was swift in those days, and
Gleeson was hung only six months after the murder. That was far from the end of the story. Sean McBride, Gleeson’s lawyer, didn’t give
up the fight after his client was executed. Decades later, a friend of Gleeson’s put together
a book detailing all the flaws in the case. Among them, the murder happened on a date when
Gleeson had an alibi, the landlord wasn’t called as a witness, and the local Garda engineered
a false confrontation between Gleeson and two of McCarthy’s children. They had even failed to
enter the local shotgun register into evidence, which could have helped Gleeson’s case.
The suppression of the register and the alibi was enough, and the President of Ireland
issued a posthumous pardon to Gleeson in 2013. The next case nearly took down an
entire major police department. New York State Trooper David L. Harding was an
ambitious man, and he was looking to move up to the CIA. When he was asked in an interview if
he was willing to break the law for his country, he didn’t wait - he answered yes and proudly
announced that he had fabricated evidence to convict people he knew were guilty
as an officer. The CIA wasn’t pleased. They notified the Justice Department
and an investigation began - and what they found was shocking. In Central New
York, a massive conspiracy of fraudulent convictions and falsified evidence
had been taking place for years. It had even ruined people’s lives. Two false murder convictions were quickly
uncovered. One man, John Spencer, had been booked into a police precinct. The police then lifted
his fingerprints off surfaces in the precinct and attached them to evidence cards, using
that to convict him of murder. Another suspect, Shirley Kinge, was convicted of burglary and
arson in a horrible quadruple-murder case that her son was implicated in. While she did
possess a stolen credit card from the home, the evidence against her was mainly falsified
fingerprints. Not only did what came to be known as the New York Police Troop C Scandal lead to
five officers being charged and three convicted, but every conviction involving
the unit had to be reinvestigated. For more on shocking police behavior, check
out “Weird Times Police Arrested Kids”, or watch “This Happens to Drugs Confiscated
By Police” for an in-depth look at the system.
