The accused

Nathan Wilson spent 11 months in jail on a murder charge before the DA dropped the case due to lack of evidence

Nathan Wilson walked out of the High Point jail at about 9 p.m. on Feb. 25, just as a winter weather system was about to dump about six inches of snow on the Carolina Piedmont, after exactly 11 months of detention on a murder charge since his first appearance in court on March 25, 2014. The decision came as a surprise to Dolly Manion, Wilson’s lawyer, who received a phone call at noon advising her to be in court at 2 p.m.

“This case has left a permanent scar on our system of justice,” Manion said. She added that the district attorney’s handling of the case amounts to a “travesty.”

©

 

©

 

McCullough was in jail awaiting trial on March 24 when she asked to speak with a detective.

“When Sarah McCullough contacted a police detective and wanted to make a statement implicating Nathan, they told her that her name did not appear on the sign-in sheet at the club that evening,” Manion said in an email. “Sarah McCullough weighs about 250 pounds and looks like a man. [She] has long dreads and is at least 6 feet tall. If she had been at the club that night no one would have missed her; they all knew her.”

After McCullough provided a statement implicating Nathan Wilson in the murder, the High Point police put in a call to their counterparts in Durham, asking them to reduce McCullough’s bond, Manion said. With her bond dropped, Manion said McCullough fled the state. McCullough is now serving a state prison sentence in North Carolina for various fraud-related charges.

Manion said she brought a witness to the July 30 bond hearing who was prepared to testify that McCullough was lying about having witnessed Gerald Williamson’s murder, but that Judge Burke said it wouldn’t make any difference in determining the bond amount. The judge set Wilson’s bond at $750,000.

“I told the court that this witness was with Sarah McCullough at the time Gerald was shot,” Manion recounted. “They were in a sweepstakes internet café in Kernersville.”

Manion argued in a September 2014 motion: “The state’s sole evidence is that of two witnesses who claim to be eyewitnesses to the shooting. Neither individual was present at the scene of the shooting and the state has made no attempt to corroborate their claims of being present.”

Last November, Manion complained to Triad City Beat: “Right now, they don’t have probable cause to hold my client.” She added at the time: “It’s very upsetting to me that the police don’t want to corroborate their witnesses’ statements. I’m the sort of attorney that I get out on the street and talk to people. The police haven’t even tried to talk to these people.”

Manion elaborated in a recent email: “Sarah’s own mother told me that Sarah was not at the club that night. Sarah told the police that she went to the club by herself and that she walked there from her niece’s apartment. The police never interviewed her niece, but we did and she said that Sarah lied; she was not at her apartment.”

Michael Rich, an associate professor at Elon University School of Law in Greensboro, said — assuming what Manion said is true: “It doesn’t sound like good police work, and it doesn’t seem surprising that the case was dismissed.”

Stockdale told Triad City Beat that Kindle and McCullough never told him that they were not at the club on the night of the shooting, but he added that McCullough “had credibility issues with me based on her previous criminal history.”

At this point, Stockdale said he doesn’t know whether Kindle or McCullough actually witnessed Williamson’s murder, but up to the time the DNA returned without a positive match to Nathan Wilson, he gave credence to their statements.

“They knew information that would either mean they were present or they had spoken to people who were present,” Stockdale said. “They knew facts about the case that the average Joe wouldn’t know.”

Manion countered that the two witnesses’ familiarity with the case didn’t make them credible.

“The reason that Abdullah knew where on Gerald’s body there were gunshot wounds is because half of the people at the club went to the hospital right after the shooting and within an hour it was all over town as to how many times Gerald was shot and where he was shot,” she said.

Rich, who has written extensively about the use of criminal informants by police, said there’s nothing unlawful about police exercising their discretion to not arrest an informant in exchange for information helpful in solving another case, as long as the deal is disclosed to the defendant.

“In terms of an ethical problem, that depends a lot on whether the prosecutor and the police officer believed the informant was telling the truth,” Rich said. “There’s a saying — and I’m probably going to mangle it —that to catch the devil you don’t work with angels. The idea is generally, from their standpoint, what else do you expect them to do?”

Looking up to ‘Bigfoot’

Nathan Wilson holds the unique distinction in High Point of having been charged with murder and then set free with a voluntary dismissal, not once but twice. He spent four months in jail in 1998, Manion said, before the police realized they had charged the wrong man. And Wilson spent six months in state prison in 2003 for possession of marijuana, according to North Carolina corrections records. A 2008 charge of assault on a female was dropped as part of a plea deal in which Wilson pleaded guilty to possession of a stolen firearm, carrying a concealed weapon and resisting a police officer, according to court records. He served more than two years in prison, from October 2009 to December 2011, for those offenses.

At 42, Wilson is 14 years older than Gerald Williamson, and closer in age to Williamson’s mother, Dona, who now lives in Lexington. She remembered greeting Wilson by his nickname, “Foot.”

Gerald and two of his brothers would run out the door when Wilson walked up the street and yell, “Bigfoot! Bigfoot!” Dona Williamson said she corrected her sons, but Nathan Wilson would typically laugh at their mangling of his nickname.

Nathan Wilson and his cousins, the Pratts, grew to be close with her sons as the Williamsons moved through a series of public housing communities, including Carson Stout and Juanita Hills.

“We grew up everywhere, everybody, his family and my kids, they supposed to be just like this,” she said, pressing her index and middle fingers together. “Close. They hang together, chill together, get high and stuff like that.”

A Facebook page set up to pay tribute to Gerald Williamson is replete with fond reminiscences by friends about fighting and making up, and partying. Dona Williamson said her son loved kids, and enjoyed buying candy for kids in the neighborhood.

“He might get into a fight with you and squash the whole thing the next day,” she said. “He don’t get mad long because my son do got a heart. He hates to see people get hurt.”

When he was 18, Williamson went to prison for two years for larceny and indecent liberties with a child. Dona Williamson said her son had sex with a girl who told him she was 16 and turned out to be 12 or 13. Then, she said, one time when the girl invaded his privacy and he rebuffed her, she went and told someone that he had raped her.

More recently, Gerald Williamson served time for a Schedule I drug offense — a level that typically applies to heroin, LSD and ecstasy.

Slender but muscular with a winning smile, Gerald Williamson could inspire jealousy.

“He’s the type when he makes his money he tries to fix up his cars,” Dona Williamson said. “Okay, he got a Cadillac — a white Cadillac and he got two other black cars. Come to find out when he was with his girlfriend, someone shot at his window two times.

“I believe a bunch of them might be jealous of him because that fact that he do look good,” she continued. “And they think that he got a whole bunch of girls and they can’t get none.”

A falling-out, then reconciliation

Gerald Williamson and Nathan Wilson had a history of conflict leading up to the Feb. 28, 2014 shooting.

“If my client had been shot, I think everyone would have suspected Gerald Williamson,” Manion said.  “They had a beef, and everyone knew about it.”

They fought about three months before the shooting. Later, Dona Williamson would look into the source of dissension, and determine that it was sexual jealousy. Hearing rumors that a sexual liaison between Wilson and her son’s girlfriend had been the cause of the dispute, Dona Williamson said she inquired to see if it was true. She said it was.

“She said before they were going to get married they wanted to bring out who they messed with so they can get it out into the open,” Dona Williamson said. “She said Gerald told her what going on, what about him, and she told him that she messed with Foot.”

Porscha Leak, Nathan Wilson’s girlfriend and the mother of his children, also maintained a friendship with Gerald Williamson. Dona Williamson said her son went over to Leak’s house so that she could work on his dreadlocks, and sometimes they would just hang out. But Leak told Dona Williamson that the friendship never crossed into romantic territory, although Nathan might have harbored suspicions.

Gerald Williamson confronted Nathan Wilson about the infidelity, and they fought.

“Everybody knew that Foot was going around saying he was gonna kill my son, but y’all didn’t warn my son that he was gonna do that,” Dona Williamson said. “My son thought he was cool, so being the bigger man went and shook his hand and apologized to him. He apologized to him. He shook my son’s hand. And then I found out they was still talking on the phone like everything was cool.”

Last night at Kenzie’s

What used to be Kenzie’s Event Center hardly commands notice among the discount stores, churches and low-income apartment complexes that line Brentwood Street. It’s a drab, split-level cinderblock building. Charity Thomas, an entrepreneur and women’s clothing retailer, held the lease on the building on Feb. 27, 2014, which would prove to be the last night the venue was open. The event was a birthday celebration for one of Nathan Wilson’s cousins.

©

 

Dona Williamson said she believes someone called her son and invited him to Kenzie’s for the birthday party. But she said when the police looked at his cell phone they were unable to find a number on the phone to indicate who extended the invitation.

“The party didn’t start until 11:30,” Manion said. “These people were drinking and drugging heavily. This doesn’t come from my client; I’ve beat the bushes to get people to talk to me.”

Manion described the interior of the club as consisting of three sections.

“There’s the vestibule area where they take money and pat them down for weapons,” she said. “At the north end, there’s a bar with a few tables in there. It’s on a different level from the dance floor. The shooting occurred in the bar where there were fewer people.”

Based on what she’s been told, Dona Williamson said Charity Thomas was working behind the bar when her son was shot.

“She was givin’ out drinks,” Williamson said. “My son was standing at, sitting at the bar when he killed him, so she seen it all.”

The 911 call came from a woman who identified herself as the owner of the club — later identified as Thomas — according to police records.

“Charity Thomas advised that the victim, later identified as Gerald Dwayne Williamson Sr., was lying on the floor and the suspected shooter was known as ‘Goodfoot,’ whose current whereabouts were unknown,” Detective Chris Wolanin would later write in an affidavit in support of a warrant to obtain a DNA sample from Nathan Wilson. The police determined that “Goodfoot” was an alias for Wilson, and later observed a tattoo on his right forearm bearing the nickname.

Streets don’t talk

While Nathan Wilson’s involvement in the shooting was taken as a given on the streets, the High Point police found few if any witnesses willing to make a statement that would implicate him in the crime.

One young woman who claimed to be at Kenzie’s on the night of the shooting came to pay her respects at the home of Dona Williamson’s mother. Based on how close the woman claimed to be, Dona Williamson said she felt certain that she was in a position to identify the person who killed her son.

“You tell everybody else the truth, but when it comes down to telling me or the police, you going to switch your story,” Dona Williamson said, recounting her frustration.

Even one of her family members refused to speak to the police. Her son’s uncle told Dona Williamson that his wife was at the club at the time of the shooting.

“She told Carlos she seen him empty that gun into Gerald,” Dona Williamson recounted. “So Carlos gave the police her number. And she trying to talk about, ‘Well, I ain’t no snitch.’ I’m like, ‘That’s your family. And you just gonna sit there and say something like that?’”

Why out of potentially 100 witnesses at the club on the night of the shooting, no one was willing to come forward and give a statement to the police, except for two people who apparently lied to gain leniency with the police is hard for Matt Stockdale to understand.

“I wish I knew,” the assistant district attorney said.

Moving in on the suspect

At the time of Gerald Williamson’s murder, Nathan Wilson was out on bond while facing felony charges for assaulting a female and common-law robbery, both based on allegations made by Porscha Leak, his girlfriend and the mother of his children. The charges are still pending. Manion has filed a motion to exclude Leak’s testimony, arguing that she has since said she doesn’t recall what happened and that she could perjure herself if she takes the stand and testifies to the contrary.

Manion said her client was out of town on March 10, when he was called into court for a “status check.” Nathan Wilson’s mother went in his stead. She told Manion that two homicide detectives were sitting in the courtroom. The next day, Wilson turned himself in, and a judge ordered him to wear an electronic ankle bracelet as a condition of his continued release. Three days later, Manion said her client freaked out when he saw eight or nine sheriff’s deputies outside a friend’s house. He removed the ankle bracelet and fled, she said, but later turned himself in to the police. Manion said the sheriff’s deputies were ostensibly there to serve a warrant on Wilson for nonpayment of child support, but she looked in the case file and discovered there was nothing to indicate he was behind.

Around the same time, Dona Williamson said her niece and a friend encountered Nathan Wilson at the courthouse in High Point. While her niece’s friend was waiting outside, she said she overheard a man who was called “Foot” say, “Yeah, I killed him, and ain’t nobody gonna do nothing about it.”

Although she steadfastly believes Wilson murdered her son, Dona Williamson said on one level it doesn’t make sense: Nathan Wilson had been shot by a group of men before, and didn’t retaliate.

“What I don’t understand is somebody shot him before all this happened,” Dona Williamson said. “He done got shot up by these dudes, and he didn’t go back and try to kill them. I don’t understand that. And then you want to turn around and fight somebody because they fought you straight up.”

Wilson was in jail for violating the conditions of his pre-trial release on the common-law robbery and assault charges when the High Point police charged him with murder on March 24. By then, they had interviewed Abdullah Kindle and Sarah McCullough.

Investigating on the back end

Dolly Manion said from the day she was appointed to represent Nathan Wilson at his first appearance in court on March 25, 2014, the case was marred by unnecessary delays, which only aggravated the injustice of her client being deprived of his liberty without evidence to support a murder charge.

State law requires a probable-cause hearing to be held within 15 days of a first appearance, but Wilson’s hearing was not held until May 2 — 38 days after his first appearance.

When Manion appeared in district court on May 2, she said she found that the assistant district attorney had unilaterally continued the hearing for another eight weeks. Manion objected, and a compromise was worked out to continue the hearing until May 16. In the meantime, a grand jury handed down an indictment against Wilson, negating the need for a probable-cause hearing.

The first 37 pages of discovery that Manion received in mid-May contained law-enforcement reports and summaries of the interviews with Kindle and McCullough. Manion said Detective HC Meyer had written on the final line of the packet: “This supplement is not complete!”

In a May 20 motion, Manion requested DVD interviews with the two witnesses, digital images of the crime scene and the deceased, and the guest register book from Kenzie’s Event Center.

©

 

“[Where] an indigent defendant has limited resources compared to those of law enforcement, time is of the essence,” Manion wrote. “It is particularly so in this case because upon information and belief, potential witnesses at Kenzie’s Event Center on Feb. 28, 2014 numbered between 80 and over 100. It is imperative that the defense have access as soon as possible to police files, indicating the identities of potential witnesses and any statements they have made. The district attorney has an affirmative duty to ensure that the police comply with the laws governing discovery. Withholding readily available, discoverable evidence unduly impinges upon defendant’s right to effective assistance of counsel, his right to a speedy trial and the right to meaningful confrontation of witnesses against him.

“The paucity of discovery provided to defendant and the history of delay by the state strongly suggest a design to stall forward movement of the case to give law enforcement more time to search for evidence and build a case,” Manion concluded.

Assistant District Attorney Matt Stockdale did not respond directly to Manion’s assertion in a recent interview, but said she received a copy of all the documents she requested.

“Oftentimes a person is charged and an investigation continues,” he said. “I think it would be improper for the police to say, ‘Okay, someone is charged; we’re not going to continue to investigate.’”

A second murder

Working behind the bar at Kenzie’s Event Center and then calling 911 in February 2014, Charity Thomas had already experienced one murder. Now, tragedy was to visit her on a much more personal level. Thomas’ boyfriend, Maurice “Boss Hogg” Hagler, was shot to death at a house on Wise Avenue on Dec. 12.

Dona Williamson said she believes that Hagler had put up the money for Kenzie’s Event Center, although Thomas was listed as the registered agent for the company that owned the club.

Hagler had been incarcerated for eight months in 2006 for possession with intent to sell Schedule II drugs, a category that typically includes cocaine, methamphetamines, opium and methadone. In 2012, he was convicted of possession with intent to sell marijuana, and received a suspended sentence of probation.

Hagler’s murder transpired only six days before the High Point police announced a massive roundup of area heroin dealers. Like the murder of Gerald Williamson, Hagler’s murder remains unsolved.

Dona Williamson said Hagler’s murder cast a chill over potential witnesses in Nathan Wilson’s case before the charges were dropped, intimating that Hagler was killed by people close to Nathan Wilson.

“Yeah, they killed him because he was going to testify against ‘Foot,’” she said, adding that although Hagler wasn’t at the club on the night of the shooting, his death might have been intended as an effort to intimidate Charity Thomas. Thomas could not be reached for comment for this story.

Unsolved, again

The Guilford County District Attorney’s office obtains convictions “in the vast majority” of homicide cases,” Chief Assistant District Attorney Howard Neumann told Triad City Beat last year, adding that it was “a fairly rare occurrence” for the DA’s office to have to dismiss charges for lack of evidence.

“Oftentimes, more investigation is done, which adds to the evidence against that person,” he said. “In other cases, the harder you look, the more inadequacies you see in the evidence and the case against the defendant.”

Michael Rich, the Elon Law School professor, said the dismissed charge against Nathan Wilson resonates with a national discussion about how long people who are awaiting trial should be held in jail.

“A murder case is a little odd because you want prosecutors to take the time to make sure they have the evidence,” he said. “It’s a hard argument to say that people accused of murder should be out on the street.”

The case holds an ambiguous significance for the local court system, he added.

“This strikes me as a funny case,” Rich said. “In some sense we ought to be happy that if there’s not enough evidence to move forward that the district attorney dropped the charge. It’s this issue of time spent in jail that’s troubling — and the idea that a person spent any time in jail at all without evidence. There’s a really negative consequence there.”

Dolly Manion put it more bluntly: “A man lost 11 months of his life. Not to mention the collateral damage inflicted on his small children and his mother and girlfriend.”

Meanwhile, whether Nathan Wilson is the actual culprit or not, the recent turn of events means that at this point there’s no justice for the family of Gerald Williamson.

“Foot did it — I don’t see nobody else mad at him,” Dona Williamson said. “Foot knows he did it. They keep sending messages on Facebook with fake pages: ‘Dona, that wasn’t Foot. You know Foot would fight Gerald; he wouldn’t kill him.’ They tell me all kinds of crazy stuff. I was like, ‘Man, I don’t want to hear it.’ And then they delete their page. People was like, ‘It wasn’t Foot, Dona.’

“Okay, if you knew it wasn’t Foot, then who it is then? Just let me know.”

Nia Hill and Zack Astran contributed reporting to this story through Triad City Beat’s investigative journalism program.