Admits Alternative Suspect Anthony Drake Was a Paid Informant
By David Protess
March 5, 2010
In a videotaped interview with Medill student-reporters, retired Harvey, IL detective Coleman McCarthy called the State's star witnesses against Anthony McKinney "young and dumb" and "morons," also claiming they lied when later swearing they had not witnessed the shotgun slaying of security guard Donald Lundahl in 1978.
Prosecutors had relied heavily on the witnesses’ testimony in charging and convicting McKinney of the crime. The derogatory comments about the witnesses by the lead detective in the case may become important in McKinney’s quest for a new trial because their credibility – and the detective’s – is crucial for assessing McKinney’s hotly contested confession. With no physical evidence against McKinney, the witnesses’ original statements and McCarthy’s testimony provided the only evidence corroborating that confession.
The May 28, 2005 videotaped interview (part 1 and part 2) at McCarthy’s south suburban home was among several recordings sent to Cook County prosecutors this week. The recordings had already been published on the Medill Innocence Project’s Web site, shown to McKinney’s lawyers or given directly to the State. But prosecutors complained they had not seen them, so lawyers for the Project provided additional copies to the State’s Attorney’s Office. The Project steadfastly refuses to comply with subpoenas for unpublished tapes, notes, grades, e-mail or other information that is privileged under the Illinois shield law and federal privacy law.
During the hour-long videotaped interview with McCarthy, student-reporters showed him statements by recanting witnesses Wayne Phillips and Dennis Pettis. McCarthy had a camera fixed on him and was wired for sound as he reacted to watching the witnesses allege they were forced to fabricate stories against McKinney.
Concerning Phillips, McCarthy said, "He could not remember....two plus two unless I told him the answer." Phillips has claimed the detective clearly told him the answer: to testify that McKinney shouted "Your money or your life" before shooting Lundahl. McCarthy denied the allegation, saying on the tape that "you can't lead this person on. He's too stupid."
McCarthy insisted he was not present when Pettis implicated McKinney. But when the student-reporters confronted the former detective with evidence that he had beaten Pettis, McCarthy countered: "I don't know what to tell you girls...I think [Pettis and Phillips] are morons." Pettis testified before the grand jury that indicted McKinney, but said he went into hiding rather than testify falsely at the trial.
So whom should we believe? Did the witnesses see McKinney commit the crime, thereby corroborating his confession, or did they make up a story against him at the behest of McCarthy?
An innocence petition filed last month by lawyers at the Center on Wrongful Convictions contained evidence that McCarthy pummeled Phillips and Pettis until they agreed to testify against McKinney, charges the detective denied to the student-reporters. The Center's petition also identified several lawsuits and a federal indictment against McCarthy for police brutality.
And documents obtained by the Medill Team indicate the witnesses’ original testimony could not have been true. The documents – official time logs of a heavyweight fight the witnesses swore they watched on the night of the crime -- revealed that neither man could have arrived at the murder scene until after Lundahl had been killed.
Prosecutors are fighting to bar these documents and the allegations of brutality from the forthcoming hearing that will determine whether McKinney wins a new trial. They claim this evidence could have been known at the time of McKinney’s trial and is no longer “newly discovered,” a requirement under Illinois law for innocence petitions.
Former Harvey detective Coleman McCarthy interviewed
by Medill student-journalists on May 28, 2005.
In the videotaped interview, McCarthy also revealed that Anthony Drake, the prime alternative suspect in the student-reporters' investigation of the murder, was a paid informant for the Harvey Police Department at the time of the crime. According to McCarthy, Drake provided valuable information to another detective about burglaries and an armed robbery until officers realized he was scamming them in other cases.
"The detective that used him as an informant [told us that Drake] was playing him...We had to go to our inspector to get money out of the fund to pay the informants...the detective was called in and said we’re paying this idiot, you know, 50-100 dollars, 200 dollars, and the information's not panning out."
But "a couple of times....[Drake] came through good," McCarthy said.
In court filings pertaining to the Medill subpoenas, prosecutors claimed Drake told them that Medill student-reporters had indirectly given him about $50 through a cab driver after Drake agreed to a videotaped interview in 2004. On the videotape, however, Drake said that he was not promised or paid anything in exchange for admitting he was present for the murder of Donald Lundahl.
Prosecutors did not indicate whether they paid Drake for his statement, but have acknowledged they gave cash to Michael Lane, another alternative suspect in the case whom Drake named as an accomplice in Lundahl’s slaying.
Lane was a "vicious person," McCarthy told the student-reporters, committing armed robberies and burglaries. (The Lundahl crime involved an armed robbery.) According to recent court filings in Wisconsin, Lane is awaiting trial for two felonies, possession with intent to deliver cocaine and maintaining a house for drug trafficking. Lane also had accused the Medill Team of paying him for an interview, a charge they have denied.
Drake has a long criminal record of his own, including a conviction for murdering an elderly man by beating him with a rifle and a pole. Several witnesses also have claimed Drake confessed to them that he committed the Lundahl murder. Among those witnesses was Dennis White, whose videotaped interview with Medill student-reporters was also made available to prosecutors this week.
Former Detective McCarthy admitted having his own run-ins with Drake. "He doesn't particularly care for me," McCarthy said. "We've had a few scuffles on the street....one particular incident where we were in a fight," he recalled.
"He got a few good licks in and then, I got mine in, and that was the end of the fight."