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Thread: Paul Christopher Hildwin - Florida

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    Paul Christopher Hildwin - Florida




    Summary of Offense:

    Paul Hildwin raped and murdered a woman by strangling her in Hernando County. On the night of September 8, 1985, Hildwin and two women went to a drive-in movie, where they spent all their money. Returning home early the next morning, their car ran out of fuel. They collected some soda bottles that were lying on the roadside, redeemed them for cash and bought some gasoline. However, they were still not able to start the car. After spending the night in the car, Hildwin at nine a.m. began walking toward a convenience store near a coin laundry. He had no money left, but when he returned approximately an hour and a half later he had money and a radio. Later that day he forged a check written to him on the account of Vronzettie Cox, the victim. The check led police to Hildwin. A search of his home turned up a radio and a ring, both of which belonged to the victim. The victim had been missing for four days when her body was found in the trunk of her car, which was hidden in dense woods in Hernando County. The man she lived with said she left home to wash clothes at a coin laundry near a convenience store.

    Hildwin was resentenced to death in Hernando County on December 4, 1996.

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    July 31, 2009

    Judge denies death row inmate Paul Hildwin's claim of ineffective counsel

    A Hernando County judge's ruling denying a death row inmate's latest appeal moves the notorious 24-year-old case closer to conclusion. But just barely.

    Circuit Judge Richard Tombrink denied Paul Hildwin's claims of ineffective counsel on July 9.

    Hildwin, now 49 and suffering from cancer, was convicted of murder in 1986. He argued that his attorneys at his 1996 sentencing hearing, Richard Howard and William "Bud" Hallman — now both Circuit Court judges — failed to fully investigate and present mitigating circumstances that might have spared him from the death penalty.

    He filed the appeal in January 2001, but it went unheard until Tombrink held a hearing in January 2009. Prosecutors considered the ineffective counsel issue one of the final remaining obstacles to a death warrant.

    In his seven-page ruling, Tombrink found that the alleged mistakes did not show that "counsel provided a deficient performance and second, that the deficient performance prejudiced the defendant," the 2 necessary tests Hildwin needed to prove.

    The judge similarly dismissed another issue about Hildwin's attorneys failing to object to a statement in the prosecutor's closing argument.

    The decision did not deter Hildwin's appellate attorney, capital public defender Mark Gruber, who appealed Tombrink's decision to the Florida Supreme Court last week.

    The state's top court has previously rejected at least eight Hildwin appeals.

    But Gruber, in an interview Wednesday, said an additional appeal in federal court is also pending. "I take issue with the idea that this case is almost done," he said.

    Hildwin's case dates to September 1985, when 2 men discovered Vronzettie Cox's partly nude body stuffed inside her car's trunk.

    Prosecutors told jurors that, four days earlier, Cox had stopped on U.S. 19 to offer Hildwin a ride after the stranger's car ran out of gas. Cox, 42, and Hildwin, then 25, drove toward his home off Knuckey Road in northwest Hernando County.

    He raped her and strangled her with a gray T-shirt in a pine forest, prosecutors said.

    Authorities starting looking at Hildwin as a suspect after he forged a $75 check from Cox's account the day of her death. Investigators also found Cox's portable radio and pearl ring in Hildwin's bedroom.

    From the start, Hildwin maintained his innocence. He pointed the finger at Cox's boyfriend, but authorities dismissed the theory.

    The Florida Supreme Court upheld Hildwin's 1986 conviction but ordered a new sentencing hearing, saying his defense attorney was ineffective.

    In the 2nd sentencing hearing in 1996, the jury spent 5 hours before deciding 8-4 in favor of the death penalty. Tombrink later agreed, telling Hildwin, "Death is the appropriate, lawful sentence. ... May God have mercy on your soul."

    (Source: The St. Petersburg Times)

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    June 10, 2010

    TALLAHASSEE, FL — The Innocence Project has filed a petition asking the Florida Supreme Court to order a DNA database search that could prove beyond any doubt whether a Hernando County man on death row was wrongfully convicted.

    The order is necessary, attorneys said, because the state has gone to "enormous lengths" to block the search despite assuring the Court 5 years ago that it would actively pursue all available means to obtain the truth.

    "This 1-time database search is in everyone's interest, because it could not only provide conclusive proof that Paul Hildwin is innocent, but at the same time, identify who actually committed the crime," said Innocence Project Senior Staff Attorney Nina Morrison. “That’s why most prosecutors in Florida and around the country routinely work with us to conduct searches like these without delay. But in Mr. Hildwin’s case, the Attorney General’s office has spent more than 5 years opposing our request for a search, even though they have never denied that a database hit to another offender could both prove the innocence of a man on death row and permit the state to prosecute the real killer."

    In 2003, DNA test results proved that Paul C. Hildwin was not the man whose semen and saliva were found on key items of evidence in the vehicle of the woman he was convicted of murdering in 1986. The Innocence Project, affiliated with Cardozo Law School, is now seeking to have that same DNA sample searched in the federal DNA databank, known as CODIS, and in Florida's state database system. In a matter of days, such a search could determine whether the DNA in Hildwin's case comes from another offender — potentially someone with a history of similar murders — whose profile is contained among the millions now stored in the system.

    In legal papers filed June 8th, the Innocence Project asked the Florida Supreme Court to invoke its "all-writs" jurisdiction under the state constitution to order the CODIS search. This little-used procedural step is an appropriate use of the court's authority not only because of the state’s continued stonewalling, but also because of the court’s role as "the ultimate arbiter of fairness and equity in the administration of capital cases," according to the Innocence Project petition. The petition further notes that recourse to the Florida Supreme Court under an all-writs petition is necessary because the state has taken the hard-line position that no court, state or federal, has the power to order the search under traditional legal routes if, as here, the state chooses not to conduct a search on its own.

    Morrison is co-counsel in the case of Hildwin, who was convicted of murdering Vronzettie Cox, a 42-year-old woman whose body was found in the trunk of her car in Hernando County 25 years ago. Her death was due to strangulation. Because the victim's corpse was nude, and unidentified semen stains were found on a pair of her underwear in the back of her vehicle, investigators also concluded that she had likely been sexually assaulted.

    Hildwin became a suspect in the murder after stolen property from the vehicle was found in his possession. When questioned, he told investigators that he had hitched a ride with the victim and her boyfriend several days earlier, and admitted stealing property from the vehicle, including the victim's checkbook. But he denied assaulting or murdering her, and insisted that he left the victim with her boyfriend by the roadside after the 2 got into an argument and pulled over the car. (The victim's boyfriend, William Haverty, has since been convicted of multiple violent sexual offenses against children and is presently serving prison sentences for those crimes.)

    At the time of Hildwin's trial, the only forensic evidence connecting him to the crime was a serology test showing that stains from semen and saliva on a pair of panties and a washcloth found in the back seat of Cox's car may have belonged to a "non-secretor"—that is, the 11 percent of the population whose blood type doesn't show up in other bodily fluids. According to prosecutors, these results meant that Hildwin, a non-secretor, had likely sexually assaulted Cox before murdering her, making the crime even more serious (Cox's boyfriend Haverty was a secretor, and prosecutors argued this eliminated him as a suspect). Because Cox’s body was badly decomposed, however, it was impossible to tell for sure whether she had been raped. Nonetheless, the prosecutor made every effort to use this evidence to convince the jury to convict Hildwin — including, according to one news report, waving Cox’s tattered bra at the jury in his closing argument.

    In early 2003, DNA tests on those same samples proved that Hildwin was not the source of the semen or saliva after all. Based on this important new exculpatory evidence, Hildwin's lawyers requested a new trial. The Florida Supreme Court denied the request in 2006 by a narrow 4-3 margin, saying that although the new evidence was "worthy of consideration" it would not "probably" produce an acquittal at retrial. 3 members of the Court strongly disagreed, writing that "justice demands a new trial for Paul Hildwin" because the new evidence would have provided strong support for his innocence claim and likely caused a jury to have a reasonable doubt about his guilt.

    The Court issued this close ruling only after the State explicitly assured the Justices at a 2005 hearing that it would allow a CODIS search once an eligible DNA profile was available from a state-approved laboratory. Such a profile has been available since 2008, the Innocence Project said in legal papers, yet the state continues to oppose the databank search, notwithstanding its earlier promise to the Court.

    Hildwin's attorneys believe that a DNA "hit" from the CODIS databank could produce precisely the additional evidence the Court requires to order a retrial — and could, in fact, avoid the need for a new trial altogether by providing clear proof of his innocence. Florida's database system, according to government reports, produces "an approximate 50 % match rate – that is, about half the time, a known sample is linked to a forensic (unknown) sample."

    The Innocence Project also noted in its filing that many of the 254 individuals exonerated through DNA evidence to date involved defendants who had appeared unquestionably guilty in light of the evidence offered against them at trial (including multiple eyewitness identifications, detailed confessions to the crimes, and various non-DNA forensics). In addition, the dozens of DNA exonerations facilitated by CODIS searches over the last decade include many cases in which – as with Hildwin – the defendant had previously failed to secure a retrial based on exclusionary DNA results alone.

    Hildwin, now 50 years old and suffering from cancer, is represented in his death row appeal by attorney Martin J. McClain of the law firm McClain & McDermott in Wilton Manors. McClain today filed an appeal before the Florida Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of Hildwin's death sentence on various grounds.

    (Source: The North Country Gazette)

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    The Florida Supreme Court, in today's orders/opinons, has remanded Hildwin to trial court for questions raised about DNA testing and evidence loaded in the crime database.

    Opinion is here:

    http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/d.../sc10-1082.pdf

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    On December 1, 2010, Hildwin filed a successive 3.851 motion with the State Court. This motion was denied on January 30, 2011.

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    A 3.851 motion appeal was filed with the Florida Supreme Court on March 3, 2011. This appeal is pending.

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    Paul Christopher Hildwin, left, hangs his head down as jurors give a guilty verdict against him for the first-degree murder of Vronzettie Cox. Seated besdie Hildwin is his defense attorney Dan Lewan. The jury took only two hours to reach their verdict.


    DNA unearths doubt in death-row case

    The case has gnawed at him, frustrated him and infuriated him for the past 20 years.

    Martin J. McClain has handled most of the appellate work on behalf of Paul Christopher Hildwin, a cancer-stricken death-row inmate.

    Twelve jurors in September 1986 convicted the Brooksville man of first-degree murder in a Hernando County courtroom.

    They listened to him testify in his own defense. They thought he came off desperate and dishonest.

    Jurors watched as a veteran prosecutor verbally plowed into him. They sorted through 60 exhibits in the deliberation room. They heard witness testimony – much of it gut-wrenching.

    They didn't hear or see everything.

    "The state, simply stated, wanted a conviction at any cost regardless of whether or not Paul Hildwin actually committed the murder with which he was charged," McClain stated in a motion six years after the verdict.

    In the years since, McClain has continued to advocate for Hildwin's release from death row. In the process, he's also been a sharply outspoken critic of the State Attorney's Office and the 5th Judicial Circuit.

    He has said the state carried out a "gross manipulation of the evidence" before and during the trial.

    Based on the myriad circumstances, he said a conviction and death sentence for Hildwin was unavoidable.

    "A conviction obtained on such half truths and perjured testimony cannot be allowed to stand," he wrote in a motion for appeal. "Relief is appropriate."

    He said he felt so much was wrong with the case, from the prosecutor's perceived guile to the way the Hildwin's attorney was appointed.

    To the best of his ability, McClain said, defense attorney Daniel Lewan tried to insert reasonable doubt into the minds of jurors by pinning the murder on the victim's boyfriend, William Haverty.

    Haverty and the victim, Vronzettie Cox, had a volatile relationship. Cox, 42, was nearly twice the age of Haverty. Based on interviews and evidence presented at the trial, the couple had an open relationship, which often led to angry outbursts from Haverty, according to the defense.

    Haverty said on the stand during the trial he never lost his temper with Cox.

    He claimed the two never fought.

    "She did her thing and I did mine," he said.

    Lewan didn't have much luck shifting suspicion from Hildwin to Haverty during the trial.

    A bar owner testified he once kicked out Haverty because he got into a fight.

    Lewan called another witness who said Haverty had bought her a beer at the same bar. He wanted to get the woman to say whether she thought Haverty was trying to lure her away for a one-night stand, but his leading questions drew loud objections from prosecutors. The judge sustained all of them.

    The trial lasted two weeks, but jurors made up their minds on a guilty verdict in less than two hours. They were unanimous on the recommendation for death.

    All of McClain's work on the case led to a second sentencing hearing in 1996. Jurors decided 8-4 to keep Hildwin on death row.

    Cox's naked corpse was discovered the morning of Sept. 13, 1985. Her body was stuffed into the trunk of her Chevrolet sedan, which was stuck in a wooded area near Finch Road in Royal Highlands. Forensics specialists concluded she had been left there for four days.

    Her bag of dirty laundry was in the backseat. On top of the bag was a pair of panties intertwined with a rolled up pair of shorts. There also was a washcloth with traces of saliva.

    Hildwin cashed one of Cox's checks at a bank and soon thereafter was arrested for check forgery.

    Before long, authorities surmised Hildwin hitchhiked the morning of Sept. 9, 1985 and was picked up by Cox, who was headed to a laundry facility near High Point. He raped and beat the victim, drove her to a wooded area near his dad's house and murdered her.

    Hildwin's car had run out of gas the night before on the way back from a drive-in movie theater. Both he and the two women accompanying him were broke.

    The three of them spent the night in the car along U.S. 19. Hildwin decided to walk the following morning to the nearby JP Mart to get money and gas. He left before 10 a.m. and returned roughly 90 minutes later. He had cash and a radio and looked as though he had cleaned himself up, according to the two women who would later testify at the trial.

    Detectives said the radio had belonged to Cox.

    The state believed Hildwin met Cox, committed the murder, stole the car, parked it in the woods, washed up, cashed the forged check and hitched a ride back to his car within that time frame.

    "You look at what the state had," McClain said. "It was really just a house of cards."

    DNA left at the scene was not Hildwin's

    "We tried to judge each case on the admissible evidence," said Tom Hogan, who was the lead prosecutor in the Hildwin trial.

    He now runs a private practice in Brooksville.

    "I remember the case … He had her checkbook and he wrote a check to himself. The teller identified him," Hogan said. "He's the right guy."

    One of the key components for the prosecution was the forensic evidence left in the backseat of the car.

    In 1985, before the advancement of DNA technology, the FBI tested the seminal fluid left behind in Cox's rolled-up underwear and the saliva left on the washcloth.

    Lab technicians determined the seminal fluid came from a nonsecretor – someone whose blood type can't be traced through bodily fluids. Nonsecretors make up only 11 percent of the world's population, according to forensic experts who testified at the time.

    Hildwin was a nonsecretor. Haverty was not.

    Seventeen years later, a private company compared the DNA to Hildwin. The results came back negative.

    The DNA has never been tested against Haverty.

    Hogan thinks even if the seminal fluid was Haverty's it proves nothing other than the two probably had sexual relations at some point before her death.

    In an evidentiary hearing in February 1992, Lewan testified he didn't know bodily fluid evidence was going to be presented at Hildwin's trial.

    "I had been, in fact, informed of directly the opposite, that there was no bodily fluid evidence to be presented," he said.

    "This was a large body of legal materials and scientific materials regarding this type of evidence," he continued during his testimony. "And no, I don't feel that I ever was fully prepared for it."

    In the same 1992 hearing, Hogan said Lewan knew about the semen evidence before trial, but purposely acted as though he hadn't.

    "We had put together a very good case," Hogan testified. "We had put together, you know, a pretty lock-tight case combining circumstantial evidence and inconsistent statements of the defendant, along with a lot of good physical evidence."

    Lewan said he directly asked Hogan prior to the trial why blood and saliva samples were taken of his client.

    "It was a mistake," Lewan recalled Hogan telling him. "I thought there was something, but there wasn't."

    Lewan said he was blindsided during Hogan's opening arguments at trial when the prosecutor mentioned his plans to present the evidence to jurors.

    "This was the first knowledge I had of any evidence linking my client to these seminal and saliva deposits," said Lewan.

    Three appeals have been filed in the Hildwin case, all of which are being handled by McClain. One of those appeals includes a petition to have the Florida Department of Law Enforcement upload the unknown DNA into the database.

    "The DNA results are a huge circumstance that does huge damage to the state's case," said McClain.

    Haverty has been in prison since his 1998 conviction on sexual battery charges. The victim was younger than 12 years old, according to court records.

    Green and unprepared for trial, naïve about Haverty

    Lewan's intuition was telling him he didn't have all the evidence before trial.

    He said so during the 1992 evidentiary hearing, during which revelations surfaced that not all of the vital information in the murder case was provided to the defense.

    Lewan was a few years removed from law school and was an emergency fill-in for the public defender's office.

    In spite of the long odds of having a murder trial fall onto his lap, his number got called.

    Lewan had no co-counsel. He was about to go up against the savvier and vastly more-experienced Tom Hogan, who was teamed with another prosecutor.

    More than five years after jurors returned with guilty and death verdicts for his client, Lewan discovered how much evidence he never saw before and during the trial.

    There were sheriff's reports he didn't know about, not to mention a vulgar and threatening hand-written letter from Haverty to the victim.

    Haverty jotted down "(expletive deleted) off and die" on the back of an envelope and left it in plain view for Cox. It also stated, "If you don't like it, you can leave."

    Ralph Decker was one of the detectives who worked the case.

    Decker was no longer employed with the Hernando County Sheriff's Office when he brought it with him to the courtroom for the 1992 hearing.

    McClain said he was floored when he saw the note. He said Decker told him he brought some materials from the case home with him after he resigned and had kept it in his garage for years.

    Lewan also was dumbfounded.

    "Part of the theory of the defense was that the relationship between the victim and Mr. Haverty had been deteriorating and this would have been evidence of that deterioration," Lewan said during his testimony at the hearing.

    Haverty had an alibi the morning Cox went missing, according to the sheriff's office.

    That same person who initially told detectives he saw Haverty at home the morning of the murder told a different story later. The witness admitted he might have had his dates mixed up, McClain said.

    He might have seen Haverty at the house seven days prior to the killing, according to court records. That was the only time he remembered seeing him.

    There also was the issue of the missing person report.

    Perry Louis Flinn, who was a shift supervisor in the sheriff's office's communication's center, took the report from Cox's sister and Haverty.

    "The boyfriend (William Haverty) gave this office several different (date of births) for Mrs. Cox," wrote Flinn. "William did not appear upset, but tried to act important by demanding we check our tow log, the hospital, FHP."

    Haverty also gave specific instructions about contacting the Brooksville Police Department. The city limits were less than 20 miles from where Cox's body would subsequently be found.

    "(He) said don't bother with the city (police) because she would not be in their area," wrote Flinn.

    McClain emphasized the significance of the report in a motion he filed in 1992.

    "Once again, it appears that it shows that Mr. Haverty had information that he should not have had if he was not somehow involved in the killing," he wrote.

    Flinn said Haverty's suspicious statements were made worse by his strange demeanor.

    "When this officer advised that (Mrs. Cox) had not been to any hospital in our area and that her car had not been towed, William stated, 'Well, that's all they can do. Let's go,'" according to Flinn's report.

    Lewan said he never knew about Flinn's meeting with Haverty.

    Flinn testified during the trial, but only sat on the stand for a couple minutes. Lewan didn't cross examine him.

    Flinn testified during the 1992 hearing he contacted his supervisor based on his presumptions about Haverty.

    Additionally, Thomas Blackman, who supervised the detectives in the criminal investigations division, said when he questioned Haverty after the killing he appeared "somewhat nervous."

    "His story almost (seemed) rehearsed," said Blackman, according to court documents.

    Prior to the 1985 trial, Lewan had taken part in an aggravated battery trial, defended a couple of DUI suspects and handled a few more below-the-radar cases. He was a few years removed from law school.

    He took over after then-public defender Jack Springstead passed on the case because of his immense workload. Others passed on it because they had former clients who later wound up on the state's witness list.

    Lewan, who now is a public defender in Citrus County, did not return a message last week.

    "I don't think that would happen now," said McClain of an inexperienced attorney taking over a capital murder case with so little time to prepare.

    He also said Lewan was "probably overwhelmed" going up against Hogan.

    "Hogan's history and pattern as a prosecutor is that he's going to win," said McClain, who acknowledged there has been acrimony between them. "He had an ends-justify-the-means approach to his job."

    McClain described Lewan as "unprepared, cold and inexperienced" when he worked the trial.

    He said it was another example of why he thinks there have been several "serious, systematic problems" with the way death penalty cases are handled in Florida.

    This is part one of a two-part series on the death penalty case against Paul Hildwin. Part two will be posted Wednesday

    http://www2.hernandotoday.com/conten...eath-row-case/

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    Uncertain verdict

    Attorneys for more than two decades have argued jurors were left in the dark about the inconsistencies in the Vronzettie Cox murder investigation.

    Most of the proof is found in various reports written by detectives with the Hernando County Sheriff's Office. More undisclosed evidence was brought to light in the dozens of volumes of court documents and testimony given during the post-trial hearings.

    Prosecutors said Cox, 42, was killed and stuffed into the trunk of her Chevrolet sedan the morning of Sept. 9, 1985. One year later, they convinced jurors Paul Hildwin was the culprit.

    After a series of appeals and a second sentencing hearing in 1996, Hildwin remains on death row.

    Prosecutors used forensic test results, eyewitnesses and a jailhouse informant to support their case.

    "Piece by piece and block by block, these bricks of circumstantial evidence are going to surround this defendant and this circumstantial evidence is going to be held together by the mortar of your common sense," said then-Assistant State Attorney Tom Hogan during his opening arguments in the 1986 trial.

    Attorneys representing Hildwin during the appellate process said they have found several holes in Hogan's case — and they've accused him of purposely hiding them.

    For starters, the sheriff's office was unsure of the correct timeline in Cox's murder even after Hildwin was indicted and subsequently convicted and sentenced, according to narrative statements written by detectives who worked the case.

    They interviewed a relative of the victim who spoke to Cox at a Brooksville-area bar one night — 12 hours after she was reportedly killed.

    Another witness claimed she saw Cox with her boyfriend the following day. She was a server at the bar the two allegedly visited.

    A motion was filed by Hildwin's defense in 1990. It included stinging indictment of the performance of Hogan and his co-counsel, Assistant State Attorney Richard Cole. Attorneys took aim at their ethical approach to the case.

    "(Jurors) saw and heard only what (Hogan and Cole) felt was appropriate to put before them," wrote attorneys with Capital Collateral Representative, a state-funded office that represents death-row defendants.

    "Despite the State's obligation … to produce the HCSO records, however, none of the actual reports were given to the defense," CCR attorneys argued. "The failure to provide these reports was obviously deliberate because they contained information damaging to the state's case."

    What the defense attorney did on his own perhaps proved more damaging to Hildwin's fate. A murder trial that dragged on for two weeks resulted in a jury deliberation lasting less than two hours.

    It was in large part because Hildwin took the stand in his own defense.

    Pine needles, a checkbook and a ring

    Jurors afterward told The Tampa Tribune it was a difficult trial to sit through, but reaching a guilty verdict was easy, especially after Hildwin testified.

    "The state had a real good case," one juror said.

    Hildwin, who was convicted of rape twice, had told detectives he witnessed someone assaulting Cox. He said her attacker had a noticeable tattoo of a cross on his back.

    While Hildwin was cross examined, Hogan ordered him to stand up, pull up his shirt and turn his back to the jury.

    Hildwin was sporting a cross tattoo.

    "It was obvious he was confessing," one juror was said in the Tribune article. "We all knew he was describing himself."

    Hildwin, who had no money, said his car had run out of gas the night before along U.S. 19. He decided the following morning to walk to a nearby store to get some cash. While hitchhiking, he was picked up by Cox and her boyfriend, William Haverty, according to his interviews with detectives.

    Hildwin said he had met Haverty before. He claimed the couple argued incessantly that morning before Haverty snapped and attacked Cox.

    While Haverty was smacking and choking his girlfriend, Hildwin decided he had seen enough, he said.

    He grabbed Cox's purse and her checkbook fell out. Inside one of the side pockets was a pearl ring.

    He said he took off on foot with both items while Haverty continued to attack Cox.

    Authorities arrested Hildwin on check forgery after he cashed one of Cox's checks. Deputies searched his home and found the ring.

    In October 1985, more than four weeks after Cox's body was found, deputies responded to a pine forest near Oregon Road, a short distance north of Centralia Road, according to sheriff's office records.

    A pair of women's sandals was recovered along with a silver door molding. Authorities later linked the shoes to Cox and the molding to her vehicle.

    Cox's body and Chevrolet were barely less than a mile from the pine forest.

    Additionally, pine needles were found inside the car and on Cox's body, according to the sheriff's office.

    Hildwin told several stories to detectives — and gave another version while on the stand during his trial.

    Hogan tore into him, accusing him of telling "repeated lies" to investigators.

    More suspicions about Haverty

    Haverty, who was 23 at the time of the murder, showed a variety of emotions after a detective notified him of Cox's fate, according to the sheriff's office.

    Sgt. Thomas Blackman, who at the time was a supervisor of the criminal investigative division at the sheriff's office, interviewed Haverty.

    "It should be noted, during this interview, when Mr. Haverty was advised that (Cox's) body had been found in the trunk of a vehicle and she had been murdered, he became somewhat theatrical in his motions temporarily and then appeared to show no remorse or concern whatsoever," Blackman wrote in his report.

    "When relating this story in his sequence of time, Mr. Haverty was very quick in his responses," stated Blackman. "(It was) almost as though his story had been rehearsed."

    Blackman also noted when Haverty was told people were looking for him at local bars to talk to him about Cox's disappearance, he "spontaneously started to make the remark, 'I knew you would be,' and then caught himself."

    Relatives of Cox had their suspicions of Haverty, according to sheriff's records and court documents.

    Acquaintances of Haverty also learned through their conversations with him that his relationship with Cox had hit a few snags.

    Tracy George told prosecutors he observed Haverty acting "huffy … jumpy and unsettled" one morning — possibly the day after authorities believed Cox was killed, according to interview transcripts.

    George said Haverty left that morning for a few hours. After he returned to his trailer, George noticed a woman's stocking hanging out of Haverty's pants pocket and gravel on his T-shirt, the transcripts showed.

    Deputies also recovered a handwritten note inside the couple's trailer written by Haverty. It read, "(expletive deleted) and die."

    When Cox's sister, Beatrice Moore, filed a missing person report, she was accompanied by Haverty.

    Sgt. Perry Louis Flinn, who took the report, noticed a strange demeanor on the part of Cox's boyfriend. He also noted Moore's apparent distaste for Haverty, according to court records.

    Haverty said not to contact the Brooksville Police Department "because she would not be in their area," Flinn stated in his report.

    Hildwin's attorneys point to that statement as evidence he had inside information, which contradicts his contentions he had nothing to do with the slaying.

    Moore and Haverty arrived at the sheriff's office to file a report only after they were implored to do so by Cox's husband, who lived in Ohio.

    "Sgt. Flinn was obviously intrigued by the fact that it was Mrs. Cox's estranged husband, rather than her boyfriend, who wanted to report Mrs. Cox as missing," CCR attorneys wrote in a 1990 motion.

    All of the aforementioned evidence was withheld from Hildwin's defense attorney prior to the 1986 trial, according to court records.

    Haverty, meanwhile, remains in prison following his 1998 conviction on sexual battery charges. The victim was younger than 12 years old, according to court documents.

    Faulty forensics and a shaky timeline

    Hernando Today recently reported the discovery of a failed match between Hildwin's DNA and the forensic evidence recovered at the scene.

    Prior to the advancement of DNA technology, prosecutors relied heavily on the evidence to prove its case. The seminal fluid found on a pair of underwear in the backseat of Cox's car contained no traces of a blood type.

    That only occurs with 11 percent of the population — and Hildwin was part of that minority, prosecutors said. Haverty, they contended, was not.

    The DNA still hasn't been matched to anyone else since the 2003 discovery and Hildwin's attorneys have argued it's entirely because of the state's inaction.

    They have filed a petition asking the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to upload the DNA into its databank. The Florida Attorney General and the State Attorney's Office are fighting it.

    Jennifer Krell Davis, the press secretary for Attorney General Pam Bondi, said her office had no comment on the case because it's still going through the appellate process.

    The latest oral arguments were made March 7 before the Florida Supreme Court. Briefs on the DNA petition are likely to be written and filed by both the state and the defense during the next few weeks.

    One issue CCR attorneys have referenced multiple times in their appellate motions has been whether the sheriff's office nailed down an accurate timeline. They believe that's where detectives failed. They also think former prosecutor Tom Hogan ignored those warning signs before taking the case to trial.

    Some of the reports on file with the sheriff's office include narratives from witnesses who said they had seen Cox more than 12 hours after she was reported killed.

    One bar manager told detectives he saw Cox and Haverty together in the middle of the afternoon on Sept. 10, 1985. Prosecutors said Cox was killed the previous morning.

    A bartender at the same bar confirmed the sighting. She told detectives she served drinks to both of them.

    Lt. Roland Hazzard, of the sheriff's office, had a lengthy interview with Terry Moore, who was Cox's nephew.

    Moore, who was 21 at the time, said he was at Peeping Tom's Bar with the victim and her boyfriend the night of Sept. 9.

    Haverty was drinking and not paying attention to his girlfriend's conversation with Moore, according to Hazzard's report.

    Moore told Hazzard they spoke for three or four hours, during which Cox made it known to him she was unhappy with her relationship with Haverty.

    Cox asked Moore whether he could "fix an enemies (sic) car so that it didn't run," according to the report.

    Cox explained she wanted Haverty's vehicle "destroyed" and would pay $50 to do it, Moore said.

    Eventually, the couple left the bar together visibly drunk, according to the report.

    That was the last time Moore ever saw Cox.

    Hildwin's trial attorney, Daniel Lewan, "was not provided with even the names of the witnesses in (those) reports," according to court documents.

    A questionable jail informant

    Hildwin was arrested Sept. 21, 1985, for forging one of Cox's checks.

    Four days earlier, Hogan prosecuted Robert Allen Worgess on a grand theft charge. The judge, R.L Huffstetler, sentenced him to probation.

    On Nov. 7 of that same year, Worgess was told he would be arraigned on a second count of grand theft.

    Roughly five weeks later, Worgess gave a statement to the sheriff's office claiming Hildwin had confessed to him about the Cox murder.

    On July 23, 1986, a month prior to Hildwin's trial, Worgess went before Huffstetler again. He was granted a continuance for his second grand theft charge.

    While testifying on the stand during Hildwin's trial, he told jurors the murder defendant was reading a book one day and in a fit of emotion, hurled it out of his cell.

    Worgess said he approached Hildwin, who then told him, "They're going to fry my (expletive deleted)."

    "And at that point I asked him did he kill her," Worgess testified. "He said, 'Yes, I did.'"

    Worgess also said Hildwin told him "I stabbed her first."

    The autopsy report revealed Cox was strangled. There was no evidence her attacker used a knife or any other sharp object to kill her.

    "The prosecutor, Tom Hogan, nevertheless, failed to correct Worgess' perjured testimony and then used it in his closing argument to the jury," CCR attorneys wrote in their motion.

    On Sept. 10, 1986 — five days after jurors returned with a death penalty recommendation for Hildwin — Hogan asked Huffstetler to release Worgess from jail.

    "Worgess was then released immediately and his reinstated probation was transferred to the State of Michigan," Hildwin's attorneys stated.

    Worgess received no additional jail time for his second grand theft charge, in spite of committing it while on probation, according to court records.

    Huffstetler retired from the bench and died in 2009.

    Hogan, who now owns a private practice with offices in Brooksville and Spring Hill, did not return a message seeking comment Tuesday.

    "None of (those) facts ever reached the jury," Hildwin's attorneys stated in their motion 21 years ago. "Whether Worgess, at the time of his testimony, expected favorable treatment is indisputable.

    "It would stretch the imagination to its limits to believe that Worgess simply never discussed with Mr. Hogan the ramifications of his assistance," they wrote. "The state's conduct in this instance was appalling."

    http://www2.hernandotoday.com/conten...rtain-verdict/

  9. #9
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    PAUL CHRISTOPHER HILDWIN vs. THE STATE OF FLORIDA

    Today the Florida Supreme Court AFFIRMED the trial court‘s DENIAL of Hildwin‘s motion for postconviction relief.

  10. #10
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    PAUL CHRISTOPHER HILDWIN vs. STATE OF FLORIDA

    Today, the Florida Supreme Court granted Hildwin's writ petition seeking an order from the Court directing the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) to upload the DNA profile from semen and saliva found on items at the crime scene into the National DNA Index System (NDIS) so that it may be compared in CODIS (the Combined DNA Index System) with forensic profiles obtained from other crime scenes and the profiles of known offenders.

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