Kenneth Kagonyera and Robert Wilcoxson served almost 10 years in North Carolina prisons for a murder they didn’t commit before a three-judge panel overturned their convictions on September 22, 2011, based on DNA evidence proving innocence.

The Crime

On the evening of Monday, September 18, 2000, Walter Bowman, his son Shaun, a family friend, Tony Gibson, and Shaun’s girlfriend Wanda Holloway, were watching football at the Bowman home in Fairview, North Carolina. After Walter had gone to bed, three armed black men entered through the unlocked door wearing gloves and bandanas over their faces. Gibson later indicated that there may also have been more men waiting outside.  

A commotion ensued. Walter opened the door from the bedroom but shut it upon seeing the men. The intruder, armed with a shotgun, fired through the bedroom door, striking Walter in the abdomen. The intruder realized that the victim had been shot (crying, “I shot him! I shot him!”), and all three men left the home immediately. Walter Bowman died en route to the hospital.

The Investigation and Guilty Pleas

A Crime Stoppers tip implicated Robert Rutherford, Bradford Summey and Lacy “J. J.” Pickens. The sheriff’s office did not investigate the three men because they wrongly believed that Pickens was already in police custody at the time of the crime. 

Additional tips led the police to investigate six other men: Aaron Brewton, Teddy Isbell, Kenneth Kagonyera, Damian Mills, Robert Wilcoxson and Larry Williams. All six men initially denied any involvement in the murder and were arrested on other charges. They were interrogated several times each, and at various times Isbell, Mills, Kagonyera and Williams gave statements implicating themselves and some combination of the other five. Wilcoxson and Brewton never confessed. Charges were dropped against Brewton.

Three bandanas and two pairs of gloves were located on the side of the road near the Bowman residence and were collected by deputies as evidence in the case. The bandanas and gloves found near the crime scene were submitted for pre-trial DNA testing. Results excluded all six co-defendants, however this information was never turned over to Kagonyera or Wilcoxson’s attorneys and were unknown to them at the time of the plea.Kagonyera repeatedly requested the results but never received them. 

Fearing a possible death penalty, Kagonyera plead guilty to second-degree murder in December 2001. Wilcoxson, who still had not confessed, also plead guilty to the same offense in August 2002. Williams, Mills and Isbell, also plead guilty.

Post-Conviction

In 2003, Robert Rutherford (one of the three suspects implicated in the original tip) spoke with a federal agent unfamiliar with the case, claiming that he, Summey and Pickens had committed the crime. The confession was provided to the district attorney’s office, but it was not turned over to Kagonyera, Wilcoxson or their attorneys. Four years later, a DNA sample from the bandana was run through the CODIS databank, and it implicated Summey. 

Still apparently unaware of the CODIS hit, Kagonyera filed a Motion for Appropriate Relief in 2008 asking that the DNA results from the bandanas be compared against Rutherford, Summey and Pickens. The district attorney agreed to do this testing, not informing Kagonyera or the court that CODIS had already implicated Summey. A judge subsequently ordered the same DNA testing. 

In August 2008, Kagonyera submitted a claim of innocence to the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission; Wilcoxson did the same in November 2010, after being interviewed in connection with Kagonyera’s investigation. The Commission uncovered the evidence of Rutherford’s confession and the DNA match, and also the evidence of a security video from a store near the Bowman home. A three-minute segment of the video had been taped over—the only time when the assailants’ faces might have been clearly visible. The video did, however, capture the car—a 1971 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, the same model and make as that which was owned by Pickens.

DNA testing on Rutherford, Summey and Pickens was finally performed by the Commission, and certain bandanas and gloves from the crime scene matched Summey and could not exclude Rutherford and Pickens. After a hearing in April 2011, the Innocence Commission unanimously ruled that the case merited judicial review, and the case was forwarded to a three-judge panel. At this time, Kagonyera and Wilcoxson were the only two of the original co-defendants still in prison.

On September 22, 2011, the panel ruled that Kagonyera and Wilcoxson were innocent, and the two were released from prison.Williams, Mills and Isbell have applied to the Commission and their cases are in formal inquiry.