Sept. 11, 2023

193: Police Corruption & The Murder of Kim Groves

193: Police Corruption & The Murder of Kim Groves

Thursday, October 13th of 1994 was a big day for New Orleans. On one side of town, their new police superintendent, Richard Pennington, was being sworn into office. On the other side of town, a beloved mother of three was being murdered. This mother...

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Thursday, October 13th of 1994 was a big day for New Orleans. On one side of town, their new police superintendent, Richard Pennington, was being sworn into office. On the other side of town, a beloved mother of three was being murdered. This mother was 32-year-old Kim Marie Groves. As a result of Kim’s unfortunate death at the hands of dirty police officers, the New Orleans Police Department’s rampant corruption would be exposed, and Superintendent Pennington’s reign as the head of the NOPD would be forever changed.

Hosted and produced by Erica Kelley
Researched and written by Andrea Marshbank
Additional Writing by Erica Kelley
Original Graphic Art by Coley Horner
Original Music by Rob Harrison of Gamma Radio
Edited & Mixed by Brandon Schexnayder of Southern Gothic & Erica Kelley

Sources: https://www.southernfriedtruecrime.com/kim-groves

Sponsors for this episode:
  • This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp online therapy. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/southern and get on your way to being your best self.
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  • Go to Proactiv.com now and use the exclusive promo code southernfried to get 20% off your first order! Proactiv, Taking the guesswork out of clearing skin since 1995.


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WEBVTT

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Southern for a true crime covers cases
that are not suitable for young listeners,

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00:00:05.879 --> 00:00:10.919
and there may also be some explicit
language used. Listener discretion is advised.

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00:00:14.880 --> 00:00:19.199
When we call nine one one,
we expect first responders to get there as

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00:00:19.199 --> 00:00:23.679
soon as possible. The torment of
waiting can make it seem like it takes

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00:00:23.719 --> 00:00:27.480
forever for help to arrive, even
if it's only a matter of minutes.

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00:00:28.600 --> 00:00:32.079
But what if it's not Your panic
can fear? What if it takes a

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00:00:32.159 --> 00:00:37.240
large metropolitan police force almost an hour
to get to you. In a medical

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00:00:37.280 --> 00:00:42.000
emergency, every second counts, and
even if it's clear that there is no

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00:00:42.079 --> 00:00:46.359
hope for the injured person, the
despair of waiting that long next to their

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00:00:46.399 --> 00:00:53.000
body is agony. Thursday, October
thirteenth, nineteen ninety four was a big

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00:00:53.079 --> 00:00:58.280
day for New Orleans. On one
side of town, their new police Superintendent,

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Richard Pennington, was being worn into
office. On the other side of

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town, a beloved mother of three
was being murdered. This mother was thirty

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two year old Kim Marie Groves.
As a result of Kim's death at the

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hands of dirty police officers, the
New Orleans Police Department's rampant corruption would be

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exposed, and Superintendent Pennington's reign as
the head of THENPD would be forever changed.

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Welcome to Episode one ninety three,
Police Corruption and the Murder of Kim

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Groves. On that Thursday, October
thirteenth of nineteen ninety four, forty eight

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year old Richard Pennington was sworn in
as the City of New orleans newest police

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chief. It was an exciting ceremony, one of pomp and circumstance. The

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air probably smelled fresh like new beginnings, and why shouldn't it. He was

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a great candidate for police superintendent was
certainly qualified for the role. At age

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eighteen, Richard had enlisted in the
US Air Force and served in the Vietnam

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War. After that, he became
a law enforcement officer with the Metropolitan Police

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Department in Washington, DC. He
stayed there for twenty six years and was

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even promoted to assistant chief. Now
Richard was in the big leagues. This

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was his first stint at the top
of the food chain, the superintendent of

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the New Orleans Police Department, and
he was ready, or at least he

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thought he was. Minutes after he
became superintendent, an FBI agent pulled him

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aside. This agent explained to the
newly appointed police chief that the corruption within

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the New Orleans Police Department was bad, very bad, far worse than anybody

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could have ever imagined. As time
went on, the FBI agents explained to

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Richard the nuances of thenpd's corruption.
There were rogue officers, a drug ring,

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and an elaborate FBI sting operation meant
to take down dozens of dirty cops.

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Years later, Richard told The Times
Pickie in newspaper, I thought,

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my lord, what am I getting
myself into? And it just so happens

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in an act of pure coincidence.
On October thirteenth, nineteen ninety four,

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the same day that Richard Pennington was
shaking hands and being congratulated for his new

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position as the superintendent of the NPD, a woman was being murdered. Her

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name was Kim Groves, and her
death would become the unexpected catalyst that revealed

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what the FBI had suspected all along, years and years of corruption within the

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New Orleans Police Department. I'm going
to pause now for a short commercial break.

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Kim Marie Groves was born on January
tenth, nineteen sixty two, in

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New Orleans to parents, Nathaniel and
Gwendolyn. We don't know much about Kim's

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childhood, but through Kim's family,
we do know that she became an important

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woman who impacted the lives of many. In an interview with Rare Reports,

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Kim's nephew, Pops and her youngest
daughter, Jasmine, described Kim as above

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all else, a mother. She
was a literal mother to her three children,

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Jasmine, her son, and her
eldest daughter. That Kim wasn't just

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a biological mother. She was a
spiritual one, a protector by nature,

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a warrior, a queen. In
Kim's neighborhood, the fifth District of New

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Orleans, she was recognized as a
mother to all, as in, if

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you were a kid in the thirteen
hundred block of Alabo Street, you knew

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Kim wass family. You knew she
cared about you, loved you, wanted

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what was best for you, and
she would fight tooth and nail to make

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sure you were safe, happy,
and healthy. Kim watched over everyone.

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She wasn't going to let anyone slip
through the cracks, and she regularly went

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above and beyond to ensure the well
being of others. She was known for

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celebrating the successes of the neighborhood kids
get an A on a test. Kim

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was ready to senior praises, get
hired for a part time job. She

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was going to be the first to
congratulate you. But she was also known

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for reminding those same neighborhood kids to
be better people when they made poor choices.

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And that's because Kim was a believer
of justice. If you did something

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wrong, you needed to take responsibility
for your actions. You had to.

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We all did, otherwise, what
would the world come to. So in

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the fall of nineteen ninety four,
when Kim heard that a high school acquaintance

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turned police officer and as partner,
had pistol whipped a neighborhood kid, she

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was not going to let it slide, especially because the kid in question,

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a teenager named to Nathan, hadn't
done anything wrong. According to Kim,

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the officers had mistaken and Nathan for
a person involved in the shooting of an

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officer. About a day after this
pistol whipping incident happened, on or near

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October eleventh, Kim went to the
New Orleans Police Department Office of Internal Affairs.

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There, she failed a complaint against
that officer who she knew from high

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school, and his partner in the
complaint. Kim reported both officers for alleged

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police brutality. On the evening of
Thursday, October thirteenth, Kim was at

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home planning a party. Her youngest
daughter, Jasmine's thirteenth birthday, was the

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next day, on Friday, October
fourteenth. Everyone was excited. Thirteen years

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old is such a big deal.
Little Jasmine wasn't so little anymore. She

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would be a teenager, just one
step closer to adulthood. That Thursday night,

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Jasmine had her cousin Ever for a
sleepover. They were playing card games

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when Kim burst into the room,
serenading Jasmine with her own silly rendition of

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the Happy Birthday song. And it
was such a happy moment, one that,

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according to Jasmine, she would never
forget. Not long after this mini

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birthday celebration, Kim stepped out of
the house. It was about eleven pm.

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We're not sure where she was going, and honestly, it doesn't matter,

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because minutes later, the phone started
ringing in the Grove's household. After

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a few rings, Jasmine picked up
the phone. The person on the other

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end of the line a woman was
screaming frantically. She told Jasmine, Kim

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has just been shot, and I
think she's dead. Jasmine ran out of

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the house, down the block and
around the corner, and that's when she

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saw her mother, thirty two year
old Kim Marie Groves, lying on the

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cement. She was dead and the
cause was clear, a single gunshot wound

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delivered straight to Kim's head in what
reporters would later call execution style. As

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twelve year old Jasmine took the sea
in, she was immediately in shock,

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but soon she realized somebody needed to
call nine one one, and that somebody

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was her. But according to Jasmine, after she explained the tragic situation to

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a nine one one operator, it
still took emergency responders forty five minutes to

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arrive. And even though Jasmine recalled
that her mother was clearly dead far beyond

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the help of any medical professional,
that long of a response time was still

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upsetting. It was yet another clue
that the New Orleans Police Department was not

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concerned about Kim, or Jasmine or
anyone else in the New Orleans fifth District.

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As Jasmine and her family waited for
the police, they sat alongside Kim's

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lifeless body. Jasmine told rare reports
that her grandfather picked up Kim's spilled brain

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matter and washed it in a nearby
a levee. Jasmine explained that this was

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a ritual, a cleansing that would
allow Kim to be fully released from this

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world and sent peacefully onward to the
next. After the police came and went,

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they left remnants of Kim's murder on
the sidewalk for over twenty four hours.

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Jasmine remembered seeing her mother's bloodstains on
the sidewalk after school the next day,

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and later Jasmine would say it felt
like a dream. Almost a month

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passed after Kim's murder, and it
appeared that there was little to no progress

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on her investigation. An eyewitness had
said the killer looked similar to Kim's boyfriend,

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but when it turned out the perpetrator
wasn't Kim's boyfriend, that was it.

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The investigation slowed to a full,
heart wrenching stop. I'm going to

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00:09:43.519 --> 00:09:48.960
pause now to hear a word from
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all intents and purposes, it seemed
like the New Orleans authorities could care less

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about Kim, and since Kim's murder
didn't make the news, there wasn't any

161
00:13:28.159 --> 00:13:33.480
public pressure to force the NPD to
care either. But suddenly, on November

162
00:13:33.559 --> 00:13:39.000
two of nineteen ninety four, the
FBI came out of the woodwork. They

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00:13:39.080 --> 00:13:43.200
received eight search warrants, one of
which was for the home of twenty four

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00:13:43.279 --> 00:13:46.840
year old Damon Causey, a known
drug trafficker with a reputation for violence.

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00:13:48.159 --> 00:13:52.279
During the raid, the FBI found
a gun in Damon's home. They knew

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00:13:52.279 --> 00:13:56.919
they would, after all, the
FBI had rated Damon's home specifically to look

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00:13:56.919 --> 00:14:03.879
for this specific gun, And then
ballistics testing proved what the FBI had already

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00:14:03.919 --> 00:14:09.639
suspected that Damon's nine millimeter handgun was
the murder weapon used in Kim Groves's death.

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00:14:11.480 --> 00:14:13.639
It matched a bullet casing found at
the scene of the crime and everything.

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00:14:16.279 --> 00:14:18.320
But how had the FBI known to
look for the murder weapon used to

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00:14:18.399 --> 00:14:24.200
kill Kim in Damon's home? In
fact, why were the FBI involved in

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00:14:24.279 --> 00:14:30.000
Kim's case at all? Kim a
beloved woman had been betrayed by her local

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00:14:30.039 --> 00:14:33.200
police and her local media, both
of whom hadn't taken hardly any notice of

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00:14:33.240 --> 00:14:39.240
her absence. So why had the
FBI, the United States top investigative force,

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00:14:39.519 --> 00:14:43.679
take notice. Well, it's a
hell of a story. To explain

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00:14:43.720 --> 00:14:48.399
it, I'll have to go back
to the beginning. In nineteen eighty eight,

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00:14:48.720 --> 00:14:52.039
a twenty four year old man named
Lynn Davis joined the New Orleans Police

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00:14:52.080 --> 00:14:54.879
Department, and right from the beginning, Lynn was not the perfect cop.

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00:14:56.320 --> 00:14:58.799
In fact, he was far from
perfect. Over the course of seven years

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00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:05.600
the NPD, Lynn would gain a
reputation for poor performance. In nineteen ninety,

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00:15:05.000 --> 00:15:09.279
he was suspended for fifteen days after
crashing his police vehicle, and on

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00:15:09.320 --> 00:15:13.519
another occasion, he was found guilty
of a battery arrest and was suspended for

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00:15:13.519 --> 00:15:20.679
fifty one days. And Lynn didn't
handle his ever growing list of disciplinary fractions

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00:15:20.720 --> 00:15:26.559
well. He started drinking more,
he became increasingly violent while on duty,

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00:15:26.799 --> 00:15:31.000
and the number of internal affairs complaints
filed against Lynn's behavior went up and up.

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00:15:33.159 --> 00:15:35.120
Later, one of his own lawyers
would indicate that Lynn never had any

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00:15:35.159 --> 00:15:39.320
business being on a police force.
So why was Lynn still on the New

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00:15:39.440 --> 00:15:45.240
Orleans Police Force. Why didn't they
just fire him? You know the old

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00:15:45.279 --> 00:15:48.120
saying, how one bad apple spoils
the bunch. Well, if ever there

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had been a bad apple, it
was probably Lynn Davis. If THENPD could

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just throw Lynn out, they would
save the rest of them from being equally

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rotten. But the department couldn't fire
Lynn. They couldn't fire anybody. And

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that's because the NONPD was drowning in
violence. In the mid nineties, New

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Orleans experienced more criminal activity than ever
before, and the year Kim Groves was

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murdered nineteen ninety four, there had
been a record breaking amount of homicide victims

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four hundred and twenty four to be
exact. A former commander of the innopd's

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homicide division, Jimmy Keene, told
The Times Pickyune, we were really knee

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deep in murders. We just chased
our tales, going from one murder to

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the next. New Orleans was overwhelmed
by crime and underwhelmed by qualified applicants for

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police officer positions. And since the
NPD was forced to accept anybody and everybody

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into their ranks, they became horribly
corrupt. New Orleans police officers knew their

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jobs were secure and with an annual
salary of less than eighteen thousand a year,

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which is thirty seven thousand in today's
money, these officers were looking for

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side gigs, and some of them
didn't much care whether or not these side

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gigs were legal. Now, thirty
seven thousand may sound like an okay salary

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depending on where you live, but
New Orleans has always been known for its

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staggeringly high cost of living. Today, New Orleans is forty four percent more

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expensive to live than the average US
city. Because of all these contributing factors,

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the NPD became notorious for accepting cash
in exchange for favors, committing crimes,

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and hurting civilians, all without facing
any consequences. At first, the

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people of New Orleans were outraged by
this illegal police activity. They filed complaint

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after complaint against the NOPD. The
Justice Department reported that in the nineties,

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New Orleans sometimes led the country and
police brutality complaints, But after a while,

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when nothing seemed to be changing,
the people of New Orleans stopped speaking

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out against the police. Is often, why would you if nothing was going

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to change and now you would have
a target on your back. It simply

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wasn't worth it. The Mayor of
New Orleans, Mark Moriel, who was

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elected the same year Kim was killed, said the New Orleans Police Department was

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the worst police department in the nation, Riddled with corruption, leading the nation

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in civil rights complaints, and populated
by criminals and uniforms. It was a

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tremendous stain on the police department's history. Needless to say, the department didn't

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have any credibility within its community,
especially not in its more affordable neighborhoods like

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the Fifth District, where most of
the crime was happening. In nineteen ninety

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four, the Fifth District was where
one third of all New Orleans homicides happened.

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For the record, there are eight
districts recognized by the NOPD, so

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one of them being home to one
third of all murders. That's a big

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deal, a statistical anomaly. This
is the location where you want your best

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and brightest officers, the cream of
the crop. But of course the NPD

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wasn't equipped to assign the best and
brightest anywhere. So in night teen eighty

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nine, the Fifth District is where
the young officer Lynn Davis made a name

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for himself. Locals called Lynn the
Desire Terrorist, and that's because he frequently

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patrolled a public housing complex called Desire, and as his nickname suggests, Lynn

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wasn't above using terror to get his
way. Before Lynn ever became a police

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officer, he and Kim Groves actually
knew each other. They had attended the

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same New Orleans High school sometime in
the eighties. Lynne was a few years

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behind Kim, but Kim had interacted
with him on several occasions enough times to

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know that she was not a fan. From the way Kim's daughter, Jasmine

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tells it, not many were a
fan of Lynn Davis even as a teenager.

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According to Jasmine, Kim thought he
was weak, maybe even mean,

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and Lynn wasn't above picking on other
kids. According to Jasmine, Kim once

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saw Lynne try to convince some other, probably younger boys, to put their

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heads under the tires of parked vehicles, and Kim, always a protector,

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always a mother, immediately put a
stop to that bullshit. She told Lynne

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exactly what he should be doing instead
of harassing other kids. Jasmine speculated in

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her interview with Rare Reports that perhaps
Lynne liked be in a cop because of

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00:20:15.160 --> 00:20:18.640
his friendless childhood experiences. For so
long, he was probably the butt of

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a lot of jokes, maybe even
bullied before he became a bully himself.

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Now, as a police officer,
Lynn had power. If someone acted in

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00:20:27.799 --> 00:20:34.039
a way he didn't like, he
could arrest them or worse. I'm going

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to pause now for a short commercial
break. Over time, Lynn Davis became

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00:20:44.799 --> 00:20:48.720
one of the more corrupt inn OPD
officers. His big thing was protecting drug

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dealers and traffickers in exchange for money. Through this operation, Lynn made friends

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with many seedy people in the dark
underbelly of New Orleans, including a narcotics

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dealer and hitman and named Paul Hardy. His friends called him cool. When

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Lyne's colleague, officer Leon Duncan,
realized he was getting closer to this guy,

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00:21:08.480 --> 00:21:12.079
he was concerned. And it wasn't
even like Leon was a squeaky clean

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officer. He just knew that Paul
was a really, really bad guy.

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In fact, according to Leon,
Paul was the suspect in quite a few

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00:21:21.079 --> 00:21:25.640
murder cases he had worked on.
So when Leon saw Lynn take a call

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from Paul during a backyard cookout,
he asked Lynne what was going on.

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Here's what Leon testified in court.
Lynn Davis got on the phone and he

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00:21:36.000 --> 00:21:38.680
told the individual on the phone,
yeah, yeah, I'm home, just

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come on over. When I asked
him who that was, thinking it was

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a policeman that he was inviting over
since he was having a cookout, and

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Lynne said, oh, that's Paul. I said, Paul, Paul Hardy

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and he said yeah. And I
said, what the fuck are you doing

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hanging out with a cold blooded killer
like Paul Hardy? And he said,

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man, Paul Hardy, eate never
killed nobody that didn't deserve to die.

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I said, who the fuck are
you or Paul Hardy to decide who lives

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or dies? And he made the
statement, well, Dunk, you just

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don't understand the game. I said, fuck the game. We're talking about

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people's lives. And he said,
see, that's your problem now. In

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addition to all this, Lynn also
helped a group of law enforcement officers sell

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cocaine on the streets of New Orleans. Together, these police officers covered each

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00:22:27.079 --> 00:22:33.079
other's tracks through violence, intimidation,
and falsified evidence. All this is to

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00:22:33.119 --> 00:22:38.039
say, if NPD police officers in
the nineties were bad, Lynn Davis might

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have been the worst, But the
universe had something waiting for Lynn, an

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00:22:42.640 --> 00:22:48.480
act of karma that was going to
help balance the scales of justice. Because

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one day Lynn tried to pressure a
cocaine dealer into paying him for his protection

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services, and that cocaine dealer just
so happened to be an FBI informant.

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00:23:00.039 --> 00:23:03.640
And when the FBI learned of Lynn's
drug racket, they knew that he was

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only the tip of the iceberg.
So the FBI orchestrated a complex sting operation

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00:23:08.279 --> 00:23:12.680
to take down every corrupt officer in
the New Orleans Police Department. It was

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called Operations Shattered Shield, and it
began in December of nineteen ninety three.

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The FBI knew that Lynn Davis and
his partner Sammy Williams were eager to make

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00:23:22.960 --> 00:23:30.160
money through illegal drugs, so undercover
FBI agents posed as a large scale cocaine

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00:23:30.160 --> 00:23:36.599
operation and they hired Lynn and Sammy
to assist their business. Lynn and Sammy

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00:23:36.680 --> 00:23:40.960
helped safeguard drug shipments and stood watch
at a warehouse filled to the brim with

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cocaine. After only a few months, Lynn and Sammy recruited seven other police

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officers to join them. The undercover
FBI agents running the whole thing were stunned

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at how smoothly this entire process was
going. They had enough evidence to charge

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Lynn pretty early on, but as
long as Lynn kept bringing in more and

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more corrupt cops, the FBI was
happy to let the operation continue. And

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these police officers were bowld too.
Sometimes they would engage in a legal activity

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while on duty and in uniform,
and no time at all. The FBI

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had plenty of recorded evidence they could
use to put these officers away, But

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00:24:19.319 --> 00:24:26.200
of course, operations Shattered Shield had
some bumps. According to the then New

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00:24:26.279 --> 00:24:30.720
Orleans FBI commander Neil Gallagher, one
undercover FBI agent was almost outed in the

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early stages. Somehow a rumor got
around that one guy was an undercover FBI

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agent. A showdown occurred and this
FBI agent had to strip naked to show

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everyone he wasn't wearing a wire,
And luckily, that agent just happened to

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not being a wire at that specific
time, And even more luckily, the

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entire ordeal was captured on videotape.
But as far as extremely dangerous FBI missions

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00:24:56.920 --> 00:25:02.279
go, this one was fairly smooth, and the FBI had a lot writing

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00:25:02.319 --> 00:25:06.039
on it. A year into the
sting, the FBI had employed the efforts

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00:25:06.079 --> 00:25:10.079
of over sixty agents. They used
more than one hundred and thirty kilos of

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real cocaine, and they paid about
ninety seven thousand in cash to Lynn and

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his guise. The FBI needed their
investments here to pay out, and they

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suspected that besides the nine NPD officers
they already caught red handed, they could

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probably get two more with just a
little time. In case you're counting,

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that's about thirty corrupt New Orleans Police
officers. At this time, the entire

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00:25:33.119 --> 00:25:37.559
NPD had about two hundred officers,
so that means fifteen percent of the New

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Orleans Police Department could have gone down
for corruption. But unfortunately they didn't,

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00:25:42.960 --> 00:25:47.559
and that's because the FBI ran out
of the one thing they needed. Time.

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Now, let's return to October of
nineteen ninety four. Kim Groves bravely

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00:25:52.519 --> 00:25:57.519
made a complaint against both Lynn and
his partner Sammy for police brutality. And

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this complaint should have been confidential,
but at around one am on October twelfth,

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00:26:04.079 --> 00:26:07.400
Lynn found out about it. One
of his fellow officers called him and

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00:26:07.440 --> 00:26:12.240
explained the situation in detail. Kim
Groves, an acquaintance Lynn already didn't like,

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had had some bad things to say
about Lynn's policing, and Lynn was

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00:26:18.000 --> 00:26:22.240
outraged. He insisted Kim was lying
that his partner Sammy, had pistol whipped

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00:26:22.240 --> 00:26:26.759
the kid, not him. For
the record, even if that's true,

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00:26:26.799 --> 00:26:30.319
who cares. You can't just watch
your police partner beat up a kid and

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00:26:30.400 --> 00:26:36.119
not do anything. Right After learning
of Kim's complaint against him, Lynne paged

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00:26:36.160 --> 00:26:40.119
his good buddy, twenty seven year
old Paul Hardy, and Paul called back.

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The two men discussed and vague terminology
their plan to kill Kim Groves.

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Paul was to shoot her, then
Lynn and his partner Sammy would falsify evidence

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at the crime scene to cover Paul's
tracks. Lynn and Sammy drove Paul to

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Kim's neighborhood and their police car.
The three men tried to track her down,

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but couldn't find her. At about
seven thirty pm, Paul got out

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00:27:02.200 --> 00:27:04.759
of the car to walk around the
neighborhood, but Kim was nowhere to be

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00:27:04.839 --> 00:27:10.160
found. Lynne was frustrated. He
wanted to take care of Kim now.

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Lynn and Sammy drove Paul home.
They were to call Paul. Once they

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00:27:14.480 --> 00:27:18.880
found Kim, Lynn and Sammy went
back to the Fifth District where Kim lived

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and continued searching. Lynn became angrier
and angrier as the evening went on,

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00:27:22.640 --> 00:27:27.200
and Kim remained alive. At about
ten p m. Lynn and Sammy found

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00:27:27.200 --> 00:27:30.920
her. She was near her home
on the thirteen hundred block of Alaba Street.

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Lynne paged Paul and Paul called back. Then. Lynne described Kim's appearance

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00:27:36.920 --> 00:27:41.039
to Paul, and Paul said that
he was on his way. At this

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00:27:41.079 --> 00:27:44.480
time, Sammy shift had ended,
so he went home, leaving Lynde to

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00:27:44.519 --> 00:27:48.359
stew in his own negativity. Forty
five minutes later, Lynne was upset because

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Paul hadn't shown up, so Lynne
called Paul again and described Kim again in

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00:27:53.880 --> 00:27:59.440
excruciating detail, down to her light
brown eyes. And after this call,

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Paul finally arrived, but he wasn't
alone. Two men were with him.

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00:28:04.640 --> 00:28:08.519
One was twenty four year old Damon
Cauzey. Damon was in charge of getting

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00:28:08.599 --> 00:28:12.240
rid of the murder weapon, and
the second man was Steve Jackson. He

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00:28:12.279 --> 00:28:18.680
was the getaway driver. At eleven
PM on October thirteenth, Paul found Kim

348
00:28:18.720 --> 00:28:22.160
around the corner from her home and
killed her with a single shot to the

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head. He fled the scene with
Damon and Steve. Then he called Lynne.

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00:28:26.160 --> 00:28:32.200
Paul laughed as he confirmed that Kim
was dead, and Lynn audibly celebrated,

351
00:28:33.720 --> 00:28:37.480
cheering at the death of the highly
beloved and irreplaceable Kim. Marie Groves

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00:28:38.640 --> 00:28:42.279
and the FBI, well, they
heard all of this, every single word

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00:28:42.319 --> 00:28:48.000
exchanged between Lynn and Paul leading up
to and after Kim's murder. So I

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00:28:48.079 --> 00:28:51.200
know your first question, and it's
a good one. How did they know

355
00:28:51.279 --> 00:28:56.160
all of this? Well, Lynn's
cell phone was wire tapped by the FBI.

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00:28:56.839 --> 00:28:59.680
In fact, Lynne had actually gotten
the cell phone from the FBI.

357
00:29:00.480 --> 00:29:03.119
He told his new cocaine business associates, you know, the ones that were

358
00:29:03.200 --> 00:29:07.599
undercover FBI agents, that he needed
a cell phone to help conduct their business,

359
00:29:08.079 --> 00:29:12.799
and the undercover FBI agents posing as
cocaine traffickers were happy to give lenn

360
00:29:12.799 --> 00:29:18.240
a new cell phone with a few
modifications so they could record his every move.

361
00:29:18.359 --> 00:29:22.480
Now you probably have a second question. I know that Kim's family definitely

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00:29:22.519 --> 00:29:26.400
did, and that was if the
FBI was listening to all of Lyne's phone

363
00:29:26.440 --> 00:29:32.319
calls and heard him and Paul colluding
to assassinate Kim, why didn't they stop

364
00:29:32.359 --> 00:29:36.680
it? According to the FBI,
their agents didn't know what to make of

365
00:29:36.759 --> 00:29:41.200
Lyne's strange phone conversations with Paul near
the time of Kim's murder. They attributed

366
00:29:41.240 --> 00:29:47.400
the misunderstanding to lennon Paul's vague coded
language about Kim. Keep in mind,

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00:29:47.960 --> 00:29:51.279
lenn and Paul weren't speaking this way
because they thought Lynne's phone was bugged,

368
00:29:51.559 --> 00:29:56.480
because they had no idea about that. They were using coded language, probably

369
00:29:56.599 --> 00:30:00.359
because they didn't want eavesdroppers to get
any ideas, or at least that's how

370
00:30:00.400 --> 00:30:04.440
the FBI spun this part of the
story. In court, the contents of

371
00:30:04.440 --> 00:30:08.279
these phone call recordings would be revealed, and as it turns out, Lynn

372
00:30:08.319 --> 00:30:12.960
and Paul weren't speaking and hardly any
code at all. Lynn can be heard

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telling an unknown person, I can
get p to come and do that horn

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00:30:17.599 --> 00:30:21.880
now, and then we can handle
the thirty. In this context, thirty

375
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is police code for homicide, as
in, my partner Sammy and I will

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00:30:25.480 --> 00:30:30.279
clean up the homicide crime scene.
And Lynn also told Paul come do that

377
00:30:30.319 --> 00:30:33.400
horn now and later after it's done, goes straight uptown and call me.

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00:30:34.839 --> 00:30:38.559
Many people have criticized the FBI for
not stopping the murder of Kim Groves,

379
00:30:40.160 --> 00:30:44.160
and they may be right. It
wouldn't be the first time the FBI has

380
00:30:44.200 --> 00:30:48.519
been accused of letting someone they deem
unnecessary die in order to further their larger

381
00:30:48.559 --> 00:30:53.759
mission. But the FBI publicly maintained
that they did not know Kim was going

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00:30:53.799 --> 00:30:59.680
to be shot. Gallagher, the
leader of operations Shattered Shield, was reported

383
00:30:59.680 --> 00:31:03.799
by The Times Pickyune to have said, Unfortunately, we were not provided with

384
00:31:03.920 --> 00:31:07.400
enough information to allow us to prevent
it. The pertinent conversations were spread out

385
00:31:07.440 --> 00:31:12.279
over a ten hour period and were
intermingled with many other discussions concerning their protection

386
00:31:12.319 --> 00:31:17.839
activity at the warehouse. The conversations
simply did not alert us to what would

387
00:31:17.839 --> 00:31:22.119
occur. They were cryptic and they
did not take on significance until compared with

388
00:31:22.160 --> 00:31:27.319
other events. But once it became
clear to the FBI that Lynn had masterminded

389
00:31:27.359 --> 00:31:32.680
the murder of Kim Groves, they
still didn't act. It wasn't until Lynn

390
00:31:32.720 --> 00:31:37.519
started planning violence against even more people
still using his bugged cell phone, that

391
00:31:37.599 --> 00:31:41.640
the FBI decided to pull the plug
on operations shattered shield so as I said

392
00:31:41.680 --> 00:31:47.039
before. In November, one month
after Kim's murder, the FBI rated Damon

393
00:31:47.079 --> 00:31:51.640
Causey's home. There they found the
murder weapon used to kill Kim, and

394
00:31:51.720 --> 00:31:55.240
a month after that, on December
fifth, Lynn, Davis, Paul Hardy,

395
00:31:55.279 --> 00:32:00.240
and Damon Causey were arrested. All
three were charged with one conspira he

396
00:32:00.359 --> 00:32:04.880
to injure a press, threaten,
and intimidate Kim Groves and another individual in

397
00:32:04.960 --> 00:32:08.039
the right to be free from use
of unreasonable force. We're not sure who

398
00:32:08.079 --> 00:32:15.279
that other individual is, and two
violating Kim Grove's civil rights, and three

399
00:32:15.400 --> 00:32:20.279
killing Kim Groves with the intent to
prevent her from communicating information to a federal

400
00:32:20.319 --> 00:32:24.640
law enforcement officer relating to the commission
of a federal offense. They faced life

401
00:32:24.640 --> 00:32:29.680
in prison with a possibility of a
death sentence. Two days later, on

402
00:32:29.720 --> 00:32:35.559
December seventh, Lynn and eight additional
officers in the NPD were arrested. They

403
00:32:35.599 --> 00:32:40.119
faced charges of conspiracy to distribute cocaine
and use of firearms while drug trafficking among

404
00:32:40.200 --> 00:32:45.319
those eight, whereas a sergeant and
Lynn's own partner, Sammy Williams. All

405
00:32:45.400 --> 00:32:50.160
nine officers faced life in prison,
but it was public knowledge that even more

406
00:32:50.200 --> 00:32:53.960
New Orleans officers probably would have been
arrested had the FBI been able to continue

407
00:32:54.000 --> 00:32:59.519
their investigation. In fact, twelve
officers had been placed on desk duty while

408
00:32:59.559 --> 00:33:04.720
awaiting the results of the FBI operation. Three of those officers walked free.

409
00:33:05.279 --> 00:33:09.000
Attorney Frank Disavo, a representative of
the Police Association of New Orleans, set

410
00:33:09.039 --> 00:33:14.039
on Wednesday, December seventh, I
just left three happy officers who didn't get

411
00:33:14.039 --> 00:33:17.119
indicted. Maybe there wasn't enough evidence, or maybe they didn't do anything.

412
00:33:19.480 --> 00:33:22.880
While Kim Groves's murder hadn't made hardly
any newspapers only a few months before,

413
00:33:23.480 --> 00:33:28.400
now it was the talk of the
town. Actually, this entire debacle was

414
00:33:28.440 --> 00:33:32.960
a huge scandal for New Orleans.
Headline's focused on innopd's widespread corruption, on

415
00:33:34.039 --> 00:33:37.480
how officer Lyne Davis hired a trigger
man to kill an unsuspecting mother, on

416
00:33:37.559 --> 00:33:43.759
the FBI's somewhat successful steeing operation,
and of course, on the remaining unknown

417
00:33:43.799 --> 00:33:47.160
police officers who were a single hair's
breadth away from being arrested by the FBI.

418
00:33:49.119 --> 00:33:52.720
If community feelings towards the NPD were
bad before, now they were abysmal.

419
00:33:53.359 --> 00:33:57.359
New Orleans residence had no way of
knowing if the police offer who was

420
00:33:57.400 --> 00:34:00.400
supposed to be helping them was only
one lucky take away from being indicted for

421
00:34:00.440 --> 00:34:12.519
corruption. I'm going to pause now
for a final commercial break. The operations

422
00:34:12.519 --> 00:34:16.239
shattered shill scandal was so big it
shaped the New Orleans political landscape. The

423
00:34:16.320 --> 00:34:21.360
city mayor at the time, Mark
Morial said Lynn Davis was quote one of

424
00:34:21.400 --> 00:34:24.480
the worst examples of what the department
had come to. Morial asserted that he

425
00:34:24.480 --> 00:34:29.920
would not tolerate cavalier cops by saying, we're on a crusade. We're going

426
00:34:29.960 --> 00:34:31.920
to be in a holy war.
We're going to clean this department up.

427
00:34:34.119 --> 00:34:37.800
And on the same exact day that
Kim Groves was murdered, the New Orleans

428
00:34:37.800 --> 00:34:43.239
Police Department was swearing in their new
leader, Superintendent Richard Pennington, and Pennington

429
00:34:43.280 --> 00:34:46.719
famously learned of Kim's death, Lynn's
corruption, and the secret FBI steeing operation

430
00:34:47.119 --> 00:34:52.440
only a few days into his new
job. Pennington had come to the NPD

431
00:34:52.719 --> 00:34:57.440
knowing corruption was an issue that was
part of the reason he got the job,

432
00:34:57.880 --> 00:35:00.639
but he probably never imagined just how
far the weeds of corruption had grown

433
00:35:00.679 --> 00:35:07.199
in the NPD. There's even some
suggestion that the previous superintendent was in on

434
00:35:07.280 --> 00:35:10.639
it. After all, the FBI
hadn't told him about operations Shattered Shield.

435
00:35:13.079 --> 00:35:17.559
As prosecutors Constantine George's and Mike McMahon
prepared for the trial against Lynn, Davis,

436
00:35:17.559 --> 00:35:22.039
Paul Hardy, and Damon Causey,
they decided to seek the death penalty

437
00:35:22.360 --> 00:35:27.840
for Lynn and Paul, not Damon, and on April eighth of nineteen ninety

438
00:35:27.840 --> 00:35:31.159
six, two years after Kim's murder, the trial began. Lynn, Paul,

439
00:35:31.239 --> 00:35:36.280
and Damon were co defendants. Steve
Jackson, the getaway driver, testified

440
00:35:36.320 --> 00:35:39.199
for the prosecution, so if he
faced any charges, which he might not

441
00:35:39.360 --> 00:35:45.639
have, it wasn't during this specific
trial. Throughout the course of the trial,

442
00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:50.320
the state painted Lynn as the mastermind
behind Kim's murder. He wanted Kim

443
00:35:50.360 --> 00:35:54.119
dead because she had fought a complaint
against him with the NPD's Internal Affairs office,

444
00:35:57.440 --> 00:36:01.239
and this argument didn't take much convincing
as Lynne was the mastermind. The

445
00:36:01.360 --> 00:36:07.880
many many hours of recorded phone calls
proved it. Honestly, the phone calls

446
00:36:07.960 --> 00:36:10.840
kind of made this case open and
shut. There really was no question as

447
00:36:10.880 --> 00:36:15.679
to who had done what or why. But the States still covered all their

448
00:36:15.679 --> 00:36:20.800
bases. Lynn's partner, Sammy Williams, testified for the prosecution. Sammy played

449
00:36:20.800 --> 00:36:24.400
guilty to those conspiracy and drug trafficking
charges and was cooperating to get a lighter

450
00:36:24.440 --> 00:36:30.400
sentence. So In his testimony,
Sammy corroborated the phone calls recorded by the

451
00:36:30.440 --> 00:36:35.960
FBI, and Sammy also explained that
Lynn gave Paul three hundred dollars as a

452
00:36:36.000 --> 00:36:42.119
token of appreciation for the murder of
Kim Groves. During closing arguments, prosecutor

453
00:36:42.159 --> 00:36:45.280
McMahon said life in prison is too
good for Lynn Davis. He deserves to

454
00:36:45.320 --> 00:36:50.440
die for what he did, and
Prosecutor Georges agreed, calling attention to the

455
00:36:50.480 --> 00:36:54.119
fact that Lynn had never expressed any
remorse for his crimes. Georges asked the

456
00:36:54.159 --> 00:36:58.880
jury, what more does someone have
to do to deserve the highest penalty the

457
00:36:58.920 --> 00:37:06.800
law provides. The only defense presented
was that Kim's boyfriend was the killer because

458
00:37:06.840 --> 00:37:10.360
of the two eyewitnesses who said the
assailant who shot Kim looked similar to Kim's

459
00:37:10.400 --> 00:37:16.599
boyfriend. Lynn did not testify.
On Wednesday, April twenty fourth, nineteen

460
00:37:16.679 --> 00:37:21.519
ninety six, after two days of
deliberations, the jury found thirty one year

461
00:37:21.519 --> 00:37:23.960
old Lynn Davis and twenty eight year
old Paul Hardy were guilty of all three

462
00:37:24.039 --> 00:37:30.360
charges. Twenty five year old Damon
Causey was found guilty of two. The

463
00:37:30.480 --> 00:37:35.559
jury couldn't decide if Damon was guilty
of actually killing Kim, which was the

464
00:37:35.599 --> 00:37:39.480
third charge, so that ended in
a mistrial. Upon hearing his guilty verdict,

465
00:37:39.800 --> 00:37:45.880
Lynne visibly sagged in his chair.
He was sentenced to death. Next

466
00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:49.800
was Paul. He also received the
death penalty, but after years of legal

467
00:37:49.840 --> 00:37:53.840
footwork, he was determined to be
intellectually disabled, meaning he wasn't eligible for

468
00:37:53.880 --> 00:37:59.360
the death penalty. But many people, including some of Kim's family and experts

469
00:37:59.360 --> 00:38:05.199
on IQ test, believed that Paul
was not intellectually disabled, rather he had

470
00:38:05.199 --> 00:38:08.639
faked poor test scores to get out
of the death penalty. Regardless, Paul

471
00:38:08.719 --> 00:38:13.320
won that legal fight, and although
he's not facing the lethal injection, he

472
00:38:13.400 --> 00:38:16.480
will spend the rest of his life
in prison. Damon was sentenced to life

473
00:38:16.480 --> 00:38:22.719
in prison. At this sentencing,
his family became extraordinarily upset. Apparently,

474
00:38:22.840 --> 00:38:27.159
Damon had rejected a deal from the
federal government just hours before his guilty verdict

475
00:38:27.159 --> 00:38:30.039
was announced. In that deal,
Damon would have played guilty to accessory to

476
00:38:30.119 --> 00:38:34.760
murder and he only would have served
a maximum of nine years in prison.

477
00:38:35.960 --> 00:38:38.440
But according to Damon's lawyer, Damon
had rejected the deal out of loyal to

478
00:38:38.519 --> 00:38:43.639
his friend Paul. By accepting a
deal, Damon worried he would make Paul

479
00:38:43.679 --> 00:38:46.920
look guilty. And I mean Paul
was guilty. But those are just the

480
00:38:46.960 --> 00:38:52.119
details. I suppose. All three
convicted criminals, Len, Paul, and

481
00:38:52.239 --> 00:38:55.559
Damon have appealed multiple times. One
time, Lenn even represented himself in the

482
00:38:55.599 --> 00:39:00.159
appeal. It went as poorly as
you can imagine. When Lynn became upset

483
00:39:00.239 --> 00:39:04.239
at the way the court proceedings were
going, he just stopped showing up to

484
00:39:04.280 --> 00:39:08.320
court at all. Ultimately, they're
all still in prison. Paul and Damon

485
00:39:08.360 --> 00:39:14.320
are incarcerated in a federal facility in
Paula, Louisiana, and fifty eight year

486
00:39:14.320 --> 00:39:19.360
old Lynn Davis sen the terahte Us
Penitentiary in Indiana. He avoided the death

487
00:39:19.400 --> 00:39:24.239
penalty through his repeated appeals years ago. Kim's family actually wrote a letter to

488
00:39:24.239 --> 00:39:29.840
the George W. Bush administration asking
that Lynn's sentence be reduced from the death

489
00:39:29.880 --> 00:39:34.199
penalty to life in prison. According
to the letter, Kim's family was sick

490
00:39:34.239 --> 00:39:37.400
of coming back to court and reliving
their trauma for every one of Lynde's appeals.

491
00:39:37.800 --> 00:39:43.119
It was exhausting. But nothing ever
came from that letter. Technically,

492
00:39:43.199 --> 00:39:45.320
Lynn is still on death row,
but he has some court proceedings in the

493
00:39:45.320 --> 00:39:51.519
works right now. Lynn's corruption during
his seven years as a New Orleans police

494
00:39:51.559 --> 00:39:58.360
officer negatively impacted the lives of many
many people, perhaps thousands people were wrongly

495
00:39:58.400 --> 00:40:02.320
incarcerated and even murder as a result
of Lyne's decisions. The City of New

496
00:40:02.440 --> 00:40:07.400
Orleans had to go back through each
case that Lynn was even remotely involved in

497
00:40:07.519 --> 00:40:10.360
and try to determine if he screwed
the whole thing up, or at least

498
00:40:10.400 --> 00:40:15.440
the City of New Orleans should be
doing that. They've received heavy criticism for

499
00:40:15.480 --> 00:40:20.599
how long that process has taken them. For example, it wasn't until twenty

500
00:40:20.800 --> 00:40:25.400
twenty two that New Orleans released three
wrongfully incarcerated men from prison. The men,

501
00:40:25.679 --> 00:40:30.360
Bernald Juluke, Kunta Gable and Leroy
Nelson, were arrested and charged after

502
00:40:30.480 --> 00:40:36.480
Lynn accused them of murdering nineteen year
old Rondelle Santiac. This happened in August

503
00:40:36.480 --> 00:40:39.559
of nineteen ninety four, two months
before Lynn ordered the death of Kim Groves.

504
00:40:40.960 --> 00:40:45.079
As it turns out, Rondelle's case
might have been a first rone of

505
00:40:45.159 --> 00:40:50.440
Lynn's assassination process, maybe even the
same one that Kim endured. It's likely

506
00:40:50.480 --> 00:40:54.480
that Lynn ordered the head against Rondelle
himself. He was concerned that Rondelle's family

507
00:40:54.559 --> 00:40:59.960
was coming after his drug business,
and so Lynn orchestrator Rondel's death and France

508
00:41:00.480 --> 00:41:02.960
eighteen year old Burnell, seventeen year
old Kunta, and seventeen year old Leroy

509
00:41:04.079 --> 00:41:09.039
for it. These three men spent
twenty eight years in Louisiana's harshest state penitentiary,

510
00:41:09.480 --> 00:41:15.719
known as Angola Prison. They walked
in teenagers and left grown men.

511
00:41:15.880 --> 00:41:19.559
Their lives were irreparably damaged for a
crime that none of them had committed.

512
00:41:20.360 --> 00:41:23.039
Upon his release, Kunta Gabel told
the court that he had never even seen

513
00:41:23.079 --> 00:41:28.239
the man he was supposed to have
killed. If you're a true crima fictionado,

514
00:41:28.360 --> 00:41:30.880
you know that Lynn could not have
successfully operated the way he did all

515
00:41:30.920 --> 00:41:36.280
alone for so many years. The
legal system is built with safeguards. If

516
00:41:36.320 --> 00:41:38.840
the cops are dirty, good lawyers
can figure it out and if the lawyers

517
00:41:38.840 --> 00:41:42.599
are dirty, then maybe a judge
will catch it, and if not,

518
00:41:42.760 --> 00:41:46.800
the judge will Hopefully the district attorney's
moral compass can help guide everyone toward morality.

519
00:41:47.840 --> 00:41:52.559
Recently, The Times, picking a
newspaper, approached Julian Parker, the

520
00:41:52.639 --> 00:41:59.480
prosecuting lawyer for Rondelle's case. Reporters
asked Julian about the business of wrongfully convicting

521
00:41:59.519 --> 00:42:04.800
three teens on almost zero evidence,
but Julian said he couldn't remember a single

522
00:42:04.840 --> 00:42:07.480
detail about the case. That was
a thousand cases ago, he reasoned.

523
00:42:08.679 --> 00:42:14.360
Following this questionable case in nineteen ninety
four, Julian became a chief judge for

524
00:42:14.360 --> 00:42:19.800
the district Court. He retired in
twenty fourteen, and the district attorney from

525
00:42:19.880 --> 00:42:23.280
nineteen seventy three to two thousand three, Harry Connick Senior, never seemed to

526
00:42:23.280 --> 00:42:28.840
catch on to Lyne Davis or anyone
else's corruption within the New Orleans Police department.

527
00:42:29.800 --> 00:42:35.280
It's crazy how that happens. I
guess, just pure chance happenstance,

528
00:42:35.320 --> 00:42:40.280
if you will. Perhaps it was
best said by Peter Sharf, a criminologist

529
00:42:40.360 --> 00:42:45.559
at Louisiana State University, quote,
the Lynn Davis case needs to be understood

530
00:42:45.599 --> 00:42:52.360
among systemic corruption. This was an
era, not an individual. Today,

531
00:42:52.400 --> 00:42:55.239
the City of New Orleans appears to
be working on solving their police corruption problem.

532
00:42:57.440 --> 00:43:02.159
Former Superintendent Richard Pittington was widely lauded
for his work in eradicating corruption from

533
00:43:02.159 --> 00:43:07.719
the NPD before he stepped down in
two thousand and two, and more recently,

534
00:43:07.800 --> 00:43:12.000
from twenty thirteen to twenty eighteen,
New Orleans spent more than fifty million

535
00:43:12.000 --> 00:43:17.719
dollars on reforms intended to eradicate police
corruption. Sure, these reforms were ordered

536
00:43:17.719 --> 00:43:22.239
by a federal institution, but we'll
take what we can get. When the

537
00:43:22.280 --> 00:43:27.000
reforms were signed at City Hall in
two thousand ten, Kim Groves's daughter,

538
00:43:27.119 --> 00:43:31.039
Jasmine attended the event. Since the
tragic death of her mother, Jasmine and

539
00:43:31.119 --> 00:43:37.599
other members of Kim's family have been
active advocates for justice. In April twenty

540
00:43:37.840 --> 00:43:43.039
fifteen, over twenty years after Kim
was murdered, the City of New Orleans

541
00:43:43.079 --> 00:43:46.719
finally agreed to pay Kim's three children
one point five million in a lawsuit settlement,

542
00:43:49.199 --> 00:43:53.599
and today Jasmine is the president of
an organization entitled Family's Overcoming Injustice.

543
00:43:54.119 --> 00:43:57.599
It's a group for loved ones who've
had a loss at the hands of the

544
00:43:57.679 --> 00:44:02.559
NOPD. You can find and support
them on Facebook. Each year, Jasmine

545
00:44:02.559 --> 00:44:07.000
holds an event on her own birthday, October fourteenth, to memorialize her mother

546
00:44:07.199 --> 00:44:12.960
and other victims of civil rights abuses. In twenty fourteen, Jasmine wrote a

547
00:44:13.000 --> 00:44:16.599
poem for this gathering. It was
entitled Dear Mamma. Here's an excerpt.

548
00:44:17.840 --> 00:44:22.639
I remember as a child being so
happy and safe seeing the police because the

549
00:44:22.679 --> 00:44:27.599
car said to protect and serve.
It was nine to one one. I

550
00:44:27.679 --> 00:44:30.400
called to help and save you,
Yet they know it was their own kind

551
00:44:30.840 --> 00:44:38.639
killed you. Southern Fried True Crime
is hosted and produced by me Erica Kelly.

552
00:44:38.960 --> 00:44:43.920
Today's episode was researched and written by
Andrea Marshbank, with additional writing by

553
00:44:43.920 --> 00:44:47.119
myself, and of course, all
editorial opinions are my own. Southern Frid's

554
00:44:47.159 --> 00:44:51.760
original music is by Rob Harrison of
Gamma Radio and the original graphic artist by

555
00:44:51.800 --> 00:44:55.159
Coley Horner. Today's episode was edited
and mixed by Brandon shack Snyder of Southern

556
00:44:55.159 --> 00:44:59.719
Gothic and Erica Kelly. If you
have any case suggestions, please go to

557
00:44:59.760 --> 00:45:04.840
my website and click on the listener
suggestion tab or email SFTC Research at gmail

558
00:45:04.920 --> 00:45:08.719
dot com. Please remember that I
do not accept suggestions on social media private

559
00:45:08.719 --> 00:45:14.199
messages. The research tab on Southern
Friedtrucrime dot com is the best way for

560
00:45:14.239 --> 00:45:17.400
me to get those little known cases. Y'all always send me, but please

561
00:45:17.440 --> 00:45:22.000
come join our Facebook group, Southern
Friedtrucrime Fans Discussion Group, where we swap

562
00:45:22.039 --> 00:45:27.320
recipes, worship Dolly Parton and share
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563
00:45:27.360 --> 00:45:30.679
media time and our lovely group.
We do, of course discussed truecrime,

564
00:45:30.760 --> 00:45:32.719
not just Southern Fried, but all
cons but it is still very much a

565
00:45:32.719 --> 00:45:37.480
Southern lifestyle group. Our group is
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566
00:45:37.480 --> 00:45:38.840
and by God, we mean it
when we say no shutous is allowed.

567
00:45:39.159 --> 00:45:42.920
It's not just a motto, it's
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568
00:45:43.000 --> 00:45:45.119
enjoy today's show, don't forget to
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569
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570
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Spotify, Amazon, Audible and YouTube. Until next time, thanks so much

571
00:45:54.760 --> 00:46:00.400
for listening, y'all. Take care. Four