Beverly Monroe had been raised to be a proper southern lady. She had a masters degree in organic chemistry and a good job in the patent department of Philip Morris. Nonetheless, a jury wrongly convicted her of murdering the man she loved.

He had a grand name, Roger Zygmunt Comte de la Burde, and led a grand life, at least until he ended it with a bullet in March 1992. He had emigrated from Poland - that was for sure - and claimed noble birth, but that wasn’t so sure.

With a Ph.D. in chemistry, de la Burde worked for years at Philip Morris, inventing ways to improve tobacco processing; one invention reportedly saved the company $300 million. However, de la Burde and Philip Morris eventually parted ways over a patent dispute.

He also collected and sold works of art, although some were fakes, just counterfeits weathered on his roof to look old and authentic. Federal investigators had already begun making a case against de la Burde at the time he shot himself.

Men viewed him with suspicion and some considered him ruthless. Many women, though, found de la Burde irresistible. Beverly Monroe, who met him through their work at the tobacco company, continued to love him even though she knew that he had affairs with other women.

Somehow, de la Burde also found time for wheeling and dealing in land. He lived on a large estate near Richmond, Virginia.

Despite all his wealth, de la Burde was miserable. Some witnesses described him as obsessive, paranoid, and depressed. It didn’t help that federal agents were closing in on his art scam.

On March 4, 1992, Monroe had dinner with de la Burde but left at about 9:30 p.m., arriving at her home a half hour later. She spoke with her son and then drove to a local grocery store.

The next morning, she returned to de la Burde’s estate. She and the caretaker found de la Burde on the couch, dead, a pistol in his right hand.

 As a girl, Monroe had been taught to trust the police, but a Virginia State Police detective abused that trust. David Riley subjected her to coercive interrogations, telling her that she really had been present when de la Burde shot himself but that her mind had blanked it out.

According to Monroe, Riley pressured her into signing a statement that she had been present at de la Burde’s death by threatening to arrest her if she didn’t. She quoted Riley telling her that he had never lost a murder case, that he could twist her words so that no one would believe her, and that he could make her out to be “the biggest black widow spider of all time.”

Riley had an effective tactic. Even if he couldn’t intimidate a witness into falsely admitting a crime, he could bully the person into admitting some “fact” which might seem minor but which would be damaging in court.

In another case Riley investigated, there had been no evidence that the man Riley targeted had been near the murder scene at the time of the crime. However, with a combination of suggestion and intimidation, Riley got his suspect to admit he had been driving near the woman’s home at the time she was killed and had stopped to urinate by the side of the road.

But it hadn’t happened! It was Riley’s invention, a suggestion he pressured the suspect into believing.

Years later, after the detective had retired, Riley admitted to a reporter that, while interrogating the man, he had told him: “You probably had to relieve yourself - I didn’t use those words because men don’t use those words - but I said, ‘You probably stopped to relieve yourself on the side of the road.’”

The man had been convicted and years of appeals failed. However, the mounting evidence of innocence was so powerful that the governor granted a pardon. This past April, the Virginia legislature enacted a special law paying him almost 1.7 million dollars in compensation for the 32 years he spent in prison. That law specifically stated that “Virginia State Police Special Agent David Riley has a documented history of misconduct.”

In Beverly Monroe’s case, Riley’s intimidating tactics had devastating effects. Monroe had a good alibi: A time-stamped grocery store receipt showing that she had been miles away at the estimated time of de la Burde’s death. She even had a witness who had seen her at the store. However, her signed statement contradicted that evidence and placed her at the scene when de la Burde died. The change in her story also raised doubts about her honesty.

Riley’s coercive interrogation wasn’t the only misconduct in Monroe’s case. At trial, the prosecution called a woman who testified that Monroe had tried to buy a gun from her. That was a lie, but the prosecution didn’t disclose to Monroe’s lawyer that the woman had an incentive to lie. She had been charged with a firearms offense but, in return for her testimony, the prosecution agreed to drop the charge.

The prosecution withheld other information from the defense, but that misconduct did not come to light until years later. Monroe spent the meantime in prison.

She went through her savings and then sold her house to pay legal expenses. But Monroe still might be in prison if it weren’t for a tireless advocate, her daughter Kathryn.

Katie Monroe graduated from law school at George Mason University and focused on her mother’s case. She got other lawyers to volunteer to help, obtained documents through the state freedom of information act and worked on appeals. After the direct appeals failed, Monroe sought a writ of habeas corpus in state court, which denied it.

Monroe then went to federal district court, which did grant the writ. However, the state appealed.

In a long, thorough opinion, the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit upheld the district court. After 11 years in prison, Monroe found freedom.

And her daughter Katie found her calling. She became executive director of the Rocky Mountain Innocence Project and is now executive director of Healing Justice, a new organization working to make the justice system better, so that wrongful convictions like her mother’s no longer occur.

 

 She was 27 when, in an instant, her future changed. Forever.

Abere Karibi-Ikiriko, whose parents are Nigerian, had been blessed with huge scientific talent and a winning personality. While earning a bachelor’s degree at a midwestern tech college, Abere also wrote for the student newspaper and became active in a group seeking to help Nigerian women. In 1999, Glamour Magazine named her one of the 10 outstanding undergraduate women in America.

After graduation, Abere worked at a pharmaceutical firm, saving money for a home. When she began medical school at Howard University, she found a house in nearby Capitol Heights, Maryland. It was affordable, but because of the high crime rate there, she also decided to buy a pistol.

In school, Abere earned a 4.0 grade point average. She also fell in love with another medical student, a Nigerian named Okechukwu Ohiri, nicknamed "Will."

For two years their relationship was both passionate and tumultuous. In July 2004 they broke up, then made up, then broke up again. She loved him, except when he forced her to have sex.

After the breakup Will couldn't let go. He kept sending her emails and letters. In one he wrote, "God knows that I'll give up anything just to experience all these passions with you again One Last Time."

Abere put a deadbolt lock on her door.

When the evening of January 15, 2005 began, Abere had many reasons to be happy. In her final year in medical school, she ranked at the top of her class. And she was about to go to Austria to attend a scientific conference.

At 7:00 p.m., Abere was downstairs in her home, in her nightgown, doing laundry to prepare for the trip. Then, Will arrived and urged that they resume the relationship. In anger, she refused.

Will went upstairs and got Abere’s gun. Returning, he ordered her to a couch and pulled up her nightgown.

When he put the pistol down she grabbed it. During the ensuing struggle for the gun, it discharged, fatally wounding him.

The Prince George's County police took her into custody and a detective, well practiced in intimidation, questioned her aggressively. Ignoring Abere's repeated requests for a lawyer, he persisted grilling her until she screamed and sobbed, asking "How could you live if you knew you killed somebody you loved?"

Because the detective had violated her Miranda rights, the judge did not allow the jury to see the videotape of that emotional interview. But the judge also would not allow the defense to introduce the emails and letters Will had written.

Those emails and letters would have contradicted the prosecution's argument that Abere shot Will because he had gone to prostitutes. They also would have revealed him to be a man obsessed.

After deliberating 4 hours, the jury found Abere guilty of second degree murder. The court sentenced her to 15 years in prison, with an additional 15 years suspended.

The Maryland Court of Appeals found that the judge should not have excluded Will's emails and letters, and ordered a new trial, but the judicial system can be agonizingly slow. While waiting in jail for the new trial, Abere tried to commit suicide.

In the second trial, the defense introduced Will’s letters and emails. While the jury deliberated, Abere had an emotional breakdown.

Paramedics took her to the hospital. She wasn't in the courtroom when the jury returned a verdict of not guilty.

The National Registry of Exonerations' website reports that Abere died 5 years later, in 2012.

Why did she die? Was it suicide? The Registry had no information and I searched the Internet without success. But I did find one thing, a poem Abere had written that is both poignant and prescient.

Abere’s poem, below, appeared in the Howard University student newspaper on January 23, 2004, almost exactly one year before the night that changed everything.

             Memory

   I will be a memory
   Unable to erase
   Yet you will have no trace
   Of the love you once had

   I will be the heart
   That you once broke
   From all the lies you spoke
   With no guilt in mind

   I will be the partner
   One you took for granted
   Seeing others you wanted
   Without any pride

   I will be the treasure
   That once was yours
   But took another course
   to deserving arms reside

   I will be a memory
   Its not so hard to see
   We were not meant to be
   Anything but a memory

          Abere Karibi-Ikiriko