Free Tyrone Noling

Lies put man on death row, three claim
Portage investigator used coaching, threats to get confessions, men say

Recently, the psychologist said he isn't sure, either.

It's true, Grzegorek said, that people sometimes recall a traumatic event slowly because remembering it all at once would be overwhelming. But the psychologist said he was never sure if Wolcott's memory problems were the result of trauma or if he was simply unable to remember the crime because he wasn't there.

"I could never figure that out, to be honest with you," Grzegorek said in an interview with The Plain Dealer.

The psychologist warned prosecutors in 1992 not to press Wolcott too hard or he might fill the gaps in his story with information gleaned from suggestions and hints made by investigators or Grzegorek himself.

"One of the worst things you can do is create a memory that in fact really isn't there," Grzegorek says today.

The sessions with Wolcott reached a point, he said, where he didn't think he could elicit any more information without contaminating Wolcott's recollections with memories that weren't his own.

"There is a point beyond which you shouldn't do much more," Grzegorek said.

The psychologist's reservations don't give Prosecutor Victor Vigluicci pause. "This case does not trouble me in the least," he said. "There was overwhelming evidence of Noling's guilt. I'm not interested in helping these people rewrite history."

Men say they were coached, threatened.

Wolcott now says he reacted as Grzegorek feared he might and pieced together his statement using cues from investigators.

In 1992, he repeatedly asked investigator Craig if he could take a trip to the Hartigs' house to jog his memory. Grzegorek went along.

The visit was anticlimactic -- no long-buried memories came flooding back.

But Wolcott had gotten what he'd needed. He now says he asked to visit the house so he could tell a more convincing story and keep his immunity deal.

With Wolcott's confession as leverage, Craig went after Dalesandro and St. Clair.

The three men now tell similar stories of their interrogations by Craig. They said he threatened them with the death penalty or life in prison, twisted their words and, when they eventually agreed to testify against Noling, provided them with details of the killings.

St. Clair said Craig showed him a videotape of the crime scene and photos of the victims, and drew a diagram of the house showing where the bodies were found. Wolcott was taken to the Hartigs' home and said he was also left alone with evidence files. Dalesandro said Craig told him facts about the crime and coached him on what to say.

Prosecutor Vigluicci would not allow Craig to be interviewed for this story, but defended his veteran investigator.

Craig did nothing underhanded, the prosecutor said. There are transcripts of the interrogations, which prove Craig had nothing to hide, Vigluicci said.

But there were off-the-record meetings between the suspects and the investigator as well. And it was during those sessions, the men say, that Craig supplied them with information about the case and helped them build their statements.

Undocumented chats happen, Vigluicci admitted; sometimes people feel more comfortable with the tape recorder off. But such tactics are ripe for abuse, say experts who study false confessions. It's the time when witnesses can be bullied, their recollections contaminated with facts they couldn't come up with themselves.

That's what Wolcott and the others say happened.

It's not what witnesses get right that determines whether their confessions are reliable, but what they get wrong, experts say. Wolcott couldn't describe the Hartigs' place until Craig drove him there. He couldn't provide directions, either.

Wolcott told them Noling had ripped the telephone cord out of the wall and trussed up the Hartigs with it. But the phone was intact and the Hartigs hadn't been tied.

All the confessions should be classified as "untrustworthy" and "unreliable," said social psychologist Richard Ofshe, an expert in false confessions hired by Noling's appellate lawyers to review the men's statements.

"Coercive interrogation tactics" were used to elicit all their declarations, he wrote in a report that has been filed with the court. Their recollections were deliberately contaminated during extensive sessions with Craig, Ofshe wrote.

Ofshe also concluded that any memories Wolcott had about the crime weren't his own, but were created from suggestions and coaching provided by his interrogators.

In September 1995, four months before Noling's murder trial, prosecutors sent Wolcott to the psychologist one last time. According to Grzegorek's report, while Wolcott's "memory . . . is more complete than it was in 1992," Wolcott admitted that "there are still a lot of things about [the day of the murders] that are a puzzle" and "it's still very hard to realize it's true." Later, Wolcott began to cry and told Grzegorek that he just wanted the ordeal to end.

Prosecutors put Wolcott on the stand in January. Jurors never heard from the psychologist.

Authorities fail to find the gun.

In 1996, with three confessions in hand, prosecutors offered to take the death penalty off the table if Noling admitted to pulling the trigger. He refused and told his lawyers he was innocent.

They didn't call a single witness in his defense or suggest another possible suspect, even though police had questioned one. Instead, his lawyers argued the government hadn't proved its case. Prosecutors had no murder weapon, no hairs or fibers - nothing, attorney George Keith told the jury.

The defense pounded on prosecution witnesses Dalesandro, St. Clair and Wolcott.

St. Clair was key. Prosecutors expected him to say that he'd watched Noling execute the Hartigs. They'd warned St. Clair that he would face "the maximum" sentence if he didn't tell what he knew. But he recanted on the stand, saying Noling was innocent - they all were. "Gary St. Clair is your reasonable doubt," attorney Keith argued.

Defense lawyers also pointed out that police never found the murder weapon. During the investigation, Wolcott, St. Clair and Dalesandro had told investigators that Noling carried only two guns - the sawed-off shotgun and a stolen .25 that was not the gun that killed the Hartigs.

But at trial, Dalesandro and Wolcott testified that Noling had a second .25 he'd used on the couple. After the shooting, they said, he stashed it in the glove compartment of Dalesandro's car. Noling called him days later from jail and told him to get rid of it, Dalesandro said.

Dalesandro claimed he sold it to a fence, but the fence, who'd turned over Noling's two guns earlier, was unable to lead police to the weapon.

"The government needs a second gun," Keith told jurors. "Joey Dalesandro . . . tailors his testimony, whatever they need. If they needed a pink elephant they could interview him about an hour and he could remember a pink elephant."

Dalesandro now says he lied about the second gun at investigator Craig's prodding.

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