Off Duty: The Interrogations | Ep 2

0:00In early January 2012, four men were brought into the police station on Chicago's northwest side, somewhere friends, some nearly strangers. Then 72 hours, three of those men confessed to having murdered officer Clifton Lewis. But in time, they all recanted, insisting they never had anything to do with the murder. Two of those confessions would be tossed. One man was never even charged. So if they didn't kill officer Lewis, why did they say they did?

1:05From the Guardian, I am Melissa Segura, and this is Off-Duty, episode two, The Interrogations. The murder of Clifton Lewis was one of the highest profile crimes the city had seen in years. A cop had been killed, and CPD had been tasked with finding the killers. This was the priority. A $10,000 reward was offered. The shooting was making headlines. Calls to a tip line pointed to again called the four corner hustlers. They had supposedly been involved in a shooting at the mini-mart three weeks before the murder. Days were passing, three, four, five. The pressure to make an arrest was enormous. Finally, that pressure came down on a man named Edgar though Cologne.

2:08On the evening of January 3rd, five days after the murder, he was riding with friends in a beat-up Honda Civic. A CPD officer pulled them over and found a gun in the car. Edgar though wasn't that worried at the time. I've dealt with the police in the past, and the police will be like, okay, well, if you give me a gun or you give me whatever, I'll let you go. He figured this would be the same thing. The Chicago police want to get as many illegal guns off the street as they can. So they take this one from the car, and he'd steer them to another gun, and he'd be on his way. Edgar though had been in a gang for most of his adult life, but it wasn't the four corner hustlers. It was a Spanish cobras. He'd done time for serious crimes, but he says that wasn't his life so much anymore. He was 34 years old, taking care of a mother with early onset dementia, and a one-year-old daughter whose life he didn't want to miss out on, like he had with his older kids. He was wrong about the gun though.

3:10The officer who pulled him over wasn't interested in it. Instead, she took him in, and the moment Edgar though stepped into the police station, he knew something was up. The place was packed with Spanish cobras. They put me in a little room, and I'm sitting there. It's a real small room, it's just a slab, like a little bench, welded to the wall. I could barely stretch out all the way on the floor, so that's how small it was. Two detectives came into the room. When I started telling them that I didn't have nothing to do with the gun or whatever, they're like, well, the gun's the last thing you better worry about. And that's when he started talking about the police officer's murder. They didn't want to talk about the gun, he says. They wanted to talk about the murder of Clifton Lewis. A tip had come in that morning that the killers were Spanish cobras. When they started, like, we know you guys, you know, the cobras killed this police officer or whatever, and just stuck there and going through my mind, like, wait a minute. Now you're questioning me about a police officer's murder, I had nothing to do it.

4:16There's something I've never been able to figure out. If most tips pointed to the four corner hustlers, why do cops seem to fixate on that tip pointing to the cobras instead? Because there are plenty of reasons to doubt the cobras involvement. The minimar, where Lewis was shot, is in a neighborhood controlled by the hustlers. It got though said he would never go there. No cobra would. It's unheard of because first of all, like, the Spanish cobras and the four corner hustlers are oppositions. So just being in the neighborhood there, I mean, it's dangerous. So to go actually and commit a robbery in their neighborhood, you would have to worry about running into them and then going to commit the robbery too. So it's, I don't think it's, I wouldn't do it. One gang crimes officer who caught wind of this theory at the time said it was, quote, bullshit. But if anyone else raised questions, they weren't documented, at least not in the paperwork I've seen. And from here on out, the investigation had the cobras in its sights.

5:29It's around 9 p.m. on January 3rd. Generally, police can't hold someone longer than 48 hours without charging them. If they don't have what they need to bring charges after two full days, then they have to let them go or ask permission from a judge to keep holding them. So the cops are on the clock with it, Gartho. And at first, he says he's not giving them anything. He says they already had a whole theory of the case. Basically start feeding me a story, like telling me, you know, like, we know you guys did this and this and this and that. He says they started filling in more details, naming accomplices. Flipp and Tyrone Clay went into the store and I was driving the car and Melvin the young was with us. Flipp, that's Alex via's nickname. Police have surveillance videos from the night of the murder, including one from just outside the mini-mart. It shows a car driving near the store around the time of the crime. What looks to be a silver or beige, judge and trumpet, or maybe a Chrysler 300. When they searched a database looking for people they've stopped who drive either model,

6:32Alex's name popped up as the owner of a silver dodge and trumpet. CPD knew Alex was also a Spanish cobra. According to court documents, it looks like detective scratched him from the list of suspects almost immediately. Again, likely because it didn't make sense that a cobra would go into rival territory to knock off a convenience store. But when that tip about the Cobra's came in, Alex was back on the list of suspects. I knew that from being around the neighborhood that Flipp had a lot of bad runnings with police officers. It didn't surprise a guard though that they were asking about Alex. What didn't make sense was, why were they asking him about Alex? Yeah, they're both Spanish Cobra's, but they were from different parts of the gang. He says they didn't really have anything to do with each other. Never relationship, never a friendship, never did anything together, never bought anything from them sold anything to them, nothing of that sort.

7:33Police say a guard though volunteered information about the case. But a guard though says they had their own agenda. He says they just kept feeding him details about the murder, repeating the story over and over. Four of you drove up to the store, two went in and shot Officer Lewis. They robbed the store and got back in the car and you drove away. It's just like no, no, no, I haven't done that, I don't know nothing about that. By 9 p.m. on January 4th, a guard though had been in the interrogation room roughly 24 hours. That's when detectives started threatening his family, a guard though says in court filings. They're coming in there talking about they're going to take my daughter. No, they were like, well, we're going to take your mom's housing. If you don't cooperate, you don't help us. His mother lived in subsidized housing in a guard though stayed there to take care of her.

8:34But he has a felony record and a felony record is often reason people are denied or removed from public housing. A guard though says cops were telling him, listen, if we say you're staying in that building, then your mom gets kicked out of the program. You want her to lose her home? It was, you know, you're sitting in that room, you don't know if you're ever going to see your family again because they're blaming you for something. They know what points to hit to break you down. It was a real hard time, mentally. Well, two detectives interrogated at guard though, two others pulled his cell phone records, calls, location data, web searches, contacts. Alex Via's number wasn't on at Garlo's phone. Like at Garlo was trying to say, they didn't know each other very well. Would you commit a robbery with someone you didn't even know well enough to have their phone number? He says one of those detectives scrolled through at Garlo's contacts and finds a name he recognizes. Another Spanish cobra named Choco. He texts him, pretending to be at Garlo and says, hey, give me Flips number.

9:39A minute later, at Garlo's phone, dings and a phone number appears on the screen. It wasn't Alex's number. It was a jingle from an ad that was in heavy rotation. Choco's way of saying, a few, I'm not giving you Flips number. That didn't matter. It Garlo says the officers just kept coming back to the same story. We know you did this. We know Alex did this. They're just pushing and pushing. We know you were there. We know we're not going to lock you up. You can just help us, whatever. He says they were like, give up Alex. He's the one who pulled the trigger. Help us and help yourself. Two and a half miles away from the police station, Alex via knew something was up. He'd been hearing about other cobras getting picked up for petty things.

10:43That wasn't so unusual. But the number was. More than 100 of them had been arrested in just a few days. When some of the guys got released, they reached out to Alex and told him, police are asking about you. So Alex wanted to lay low. Pianna's girlfriend asked to crash with an old friend of his, a guy named Tyrone Clay. Before dawn, on January 5, Tyrone's girlfriend wakes him and says there are a bunch of police outside. The police outside. I said the police outside. The police outside for what happened. Next thing you know, they got to be no more though. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Open up. We know you're in there. Tyrone tells his girlfriend, whatever you do, don't let them in. That's all I know. You better not open that door. Let them kick it in. Because if they really had something to do with a big kick down, she opens it anyway. Hey, Russian, the house about I say good 30 like 30 police officers rushing the house come straight for me. Grab me.

11:48Alex says he was in the living room with Monica Rivera, his girlfriend at the time. I was laying there on the sofa with Monica. It just grabbed me dragging face on the floor. She started a punch on me. It was horrible. I had like 70 officers on me, yelling at me. Got punched in the ear, kept saying, where's the gun? Where's the gun? And I didn't know what the hell they were talking about. He started hitting me in my groin area, my private area, sitting there. I'm like, and he's just shouting, where's the gun? I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. Tyrone claims police beat him too. They hit me with a gun in my face. They kept hitting me in my face. We're going to kill you. We're going to kill you. Say you did it. We're going to kill you. Say you did it. We're going to kill you. We're going to kill you. I was like, man, I don't even know what y'all are talking about. Alex says they then cuff him tightly. I was just suffering from a gunshot wound as well.

12:48The cuff was so tight when it took me to the station that it wasn't coming off by itself. That's how tight the handcuffs were. The police take Alex and Tyrone to the police station. The same one where Edgar though is being held. Alex says police start asking him about the Lewis murder. I know nothing about this. I'm not from that area. I've never been there. Just like my neighborhood, we don't be over there. Alex described the scene to me nearly 13 years after it happened. He was calling from Lawrence Correctional Center, 250 miles south of Chicago. The prison he'd been sent to for the murder of officer Clifton Lewis. When everything is moving all at once, your workforce, your tech stack, your business, you don't need more tools.

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14:54It got the Cologne, Tyrone Clay and Alex Via. There was a fourth man who was a crucial part of the case, Melvin DeYoung. When police showed up at his door that morning, he was in his underwear. They storm and throw me in handcuffs. I'm in my boxers and they start searching. I wasn't presenting it with a search warrant or anything. Like the others, Melvin said he didn't know what was going on. He says the officers were shouting at him about some cop killing. Actually, I had no idea about the case. None of it. This was the first time I heard about the officer losing his life. Melvin says he'd never kill a cop. It's just not something he'd do. Plus, his dad had been an officer on the force for 16 years. First of all, I'm not going to kill him off his period. My father was a cop.

15:55As the officers searched, they turned up a gun and some weed. That was enough to bring him in. By 7am, Melvin's in an interrogation room at the same station as Alex at Garthau and Tyrone. Melvin was a cobra too, and he was tight with Alex, like a second big brother to him. He says he tells detectives over and over that he doesn't know anything about a cop being shot. He doesn't know why he's there. He also tells them that he's a Type 1 diabetic. He needs insulin shots five times a day. If he misses those shots, he could die. I would love to play a recording of these interrogations for you, and they were recorded. It's state law for the interrogation rooms to have cameras. But the city of Chicago successfully petitioned a federal court to block the release of many of the materials related to these cases,

17:00including the interrogation tapes. I did get some transcripts and was able to dig up a tiny fraction of recordings. Four of the 40 hours that Alex and Melvin were in the interrogation rooms. The footage I watch doesn't show much. You see each of the men in a room, pacing, sitting, talking to themselves. You hear noises from the hallway, but it's still unsettling to watch. The claustrophobia and the anxiety are palpable. And also, I knew what was coming. By mid-afternoon on January 5th, Edgar the Cologne, the first of the four men to be taken in, was still in a cell. He says he hadn't eaten, hadn't really slept, no fresh air or daylight for nearly 40 hours, he says.

18:07The police were running out of time, approaching that 48 hour deadline when they'd have to charge him or let him go. There was a lot of things going through my mind, you know, like never seen my kids ago. But he knows he just has to hang on for a few more hours. Except there's a loophole. The police can appeal to a judge to extend the clock. It requires an emergency hearing. They have to make the case for the extension to a judge. And there is a document signed by a judge indicating that she held a hearing and approved an extra 24 hours for a Garthal Cologne's interrogation. Judges are not required to hear from a suspect before deciding if they should be held longer. What they did was they took me to the county jail from the police station. Instead of taking me in front of a judge, they ran me through the processing for the gun charge. As soon as we finished with the processing, I went right back to the police station.

19:08As Edgar was brought back to the station, Alex Vio was about nine hours into his own interrogation. You know, you're telling somebody or anything, you're trying to plead with somebody and they're not listening to you. I remember several detectives just completely disregarding what I was saying. Trying to feed me stories as they were talking to me. I felt like it was a lot of psychological gangs being played in that interrogation room. Alex's friend Tyrone, who was brought in at the same time, kept insisting that he had an alibi. He told officers that he was on his playstation, playing NBA 2K at the time officer Lewis was murdered. So you know, the game is a mini computer. It saves everything, got a hard drive, everything. So the time and the date that I was logged up on that game, that's the time and the date I was in the house. You see what I'm saying? And that game had that on there.

20:09I said, man, if you look on that game, it's going to tell you everything. Tyrone says he asked for a lawyer and that his request was repeatedly ignored. In the transcripts, an officer does read him his rights. But then tells Tyrone that he has to say yes, that he understands his rights and is not being coerced. Lawyers would later argue that Tyrone had been arrested before and would have known his rights. It's an argument a court would later reject. Tyrone was diagnosed with learning differences as a child and scored 66 on an IQ test. It's unclear as you read the transcripts, whether he fully understands what he's agreeing to. Police also halted in the wives and girlfriends of the men being questioned and interrogated them. They bring in Alex's girlfriend, Monica Rivera, and download the data from her cell phone, including her tax. Later, in court, Monica testified that police threatened and abused her.

21:13She accused officers of slapping her and that an officer dug his fingernails into her face. Another woman said under oath that an officer raised a fist at her and threatened to take her four kids. In court documents, police denied any misconduct in this case. But of all the people holding for questioning, no one was very worse than Melvin D. Young, the guy with type 1 diabetes. More than 10 hours had passed without him taking the insulin he uses to control his blood sugar, and he was feeling it. My vision was blurry. My tongue felt like a piece of cardboard. I felt my cheekbones sinking in. I'm like, man, where are you trying to kill me in here? At this point, Melvin's really sick. Police call an ambulance and bring him to the hospital. He gets an insulin injection and is brought back to the station.

22:14Melvin says an officer rides with him in the ambulance and badgers him the whole way there and back. Alex Vio was in bad shape, too, from the beating he says he took when police arrested him at Tyrone's house. There's a moment in the transcript when Alex tells the detective that he's throwing up blood. He says, I feel like my ribs are broken, like pushed into the side. The detective replies, I don't see any vomit. And Alex says, that's blood right there. Eventually, police call a second ambulance. This one to take Alex to the hospital. His medical records are sealed, but Alex says when they got there, the police told the medical staff that he was fine, just having a panic attack. They took him back to the interrogation room. It's now nearly 10 p.m. on January 5th. In a room just down the hall from Alex, a garthal cologne is on hour 56 of his interrogation.

23:14Still no food, he says, hardly any sleep. And a garthal feels a kind of despair take over him. I felt weak. I felt beaten. I felt taken advantage of. You know, it was just like, how do I explain it? It's just that feeling like, okay, they got me where they want me. And there's nothing I can do about it. There's nobody to help me. There's nobody to come save me. You know, I don't want to die in here. I don't want to, you know, I'm going to have to do something and try to get out of here. It Garthal says he began to weep. He says he was ready to say whatever he had to to get out of that room. You know, some people say why was somebody confesses something that they didn't do? And me, I would say, is that they never been under pressure the way that I was.

24:16They broke me down to the point where it's like, okay, I'll tell you what you want to know just so I can get out this room. Just so I can, I mean, if you're going to lock me up, lock me up, or at least take me somewhere, why can't you see some day like get some fresh air or get on the phone or anywhere but this room. He says he asked for a lawyer, but he says police ignored his request. It's not like on TV, you know, like what not with us, where you see a TV program and he tells the cop, will give me a lawyer. Okay, fine, but I'll leave you alone. It doesn't work like that with us, you know, especially in Chicago. They just act like they didn't hear you. They just keep going. Like, yeah, whatever, you don't need a lawyer right now. That's a practice that they've been doing for years, you know, not just with my case, even before me. At Gartho finally relents. He is ready to make a confession. He says a prosecutor comes in to take a formal statement. But at Gartho is getting the details wrong. The first time he was kind of irritated because he knew,

25:16right away, like, no, they're saying that enough. I knew more than I did at that point. Obviously, you know, he's seen the video, so he knows what happened there. He knows everything. And when I say certain things, I can see the look on his face like, you're not ready yet. A detective is in the room with him. Coaching him at Gartho says, telling him the route he, Alex, Tyrone, and Melvin supposedly took when they drove home from the mini-mart. He'll be like, OK, so you guys went this way. And I'm like, yeah, we went this way. And he's like, no, no, wait a minute. He just kept leading me a different way whenever he was see that I'm off what he wanted me to say. It went on like that for a long time at Gartho says, him struggling to get the details straight, trying to repeat the story he feels they want to hear.

26:18At one point, a Gartho says that Melvin and Tyrone were the ones who went into the mini-mart to rob the store. But that couldn't be right. Both Melvin and Tyrone are black. And one of the assailants on the video is light-skinned, lighter than either of them. The detectives were getting more and more frustrated at Gartho says. The prosecutor kept coming in to take a statement at Gartho tells me and then leaving when a Gartho couldn't get it right. And a Gartho was like, what do you want from me? You know I'm lying to you because I told you from the beginning that I hadn't done do with this. But now you're telling me that this is not adding up with what I'm saying. Well, I'm thinking to myself, I'm not telling them this, but I'm like, well, of course, it's not adding up because I was never there. At one point, a Gartho says he tells the detective he needs help. He thinks maybe he's having a heart attack. I was having a lot of chest pains and shorted breath and I'm telling him, I don't know what's going on with my chest and I need to go to a hospital.

27:18I need to get out of here. And nothing, oh, you'll be okay. You'll be okay. He says police tell him he's not going anywhere until they get a usable statement from him. Finally, after 60 hours, he gives them a statement that seems to satisfy them. His statement goes like this. A Gartho was outwalking his dog when Alex drove by and told him about plans to rob the mini-mart. A Gartho spontaneously agreed to go. They dropped off his dog, then he, a Gartho, got behind the wheel of Alex's car, the silver dodge and trepid. They drove to the mini-mart and he and Melvin waited outside while Tyrone, whose black and Alex, a light-skinned Latino, went into the store. They shot Officer Lewis, grabbed the money out of the register, and they all drove away.

28:18One confession down. Meanwhile, detectives have given a polygraph test to Tyrone Clay. The guy who says he was playing a video game and now they come back into the room and tell Tyrone he failed it. And he's in trouble. I said, how I failed the polygraph and I'm telling the truth. He's like, well, you failed. You were there. So they're going to charge you. I said, man, charge me for what? A murder I didn't do. Tyrone has been in custody for nearly two full days. He's confused and scared. And he figures he'll tell them what they want to hear and fight the case later, like Edgar though. Tyrone says he has to repeat the story several times to get the names and details right before they finally record his confession. Two confessions down. Now, only Alex and Melvin remain.

29:20But Melvin's condition has worsened since his trip to the hospital. His blood sugar spiking as he sits in the interrogation room. So they take him to the hospital for a second time. Nurses gave him an IV and more insulin. Then it's back to the station for more questioning. Hours go by. Blood sugar spikes again. And it's not an exaggeration to say that Melvin is worried that he might die. It's like your kidneys are always boiling over. You have to urine it. The hydration is like bone start to hurt. He sees his options in this moment as lie about Alex, a guy he loved like a little brother, or risk his life. Melvin starts giving in. Starts repeating back to the detectives, pieces of the story he says they're giving him. But his blood sugar is all off. He says he can't concentrate enough to give them the details

30:21he thinks they want. Melvin goes back to the hospital for a third and final time. When he gets back, he gives a statement. Three down. Then, after detectives finally leave the room, that's when Melvin looks at the camera and says those words that Jennifer and Eric will. Years later, watch over and over. It was a lie. By sun up on January 7th, the CPD has matching confessions from three of their four main suspects. It got the cologne, Tyrone Clay, and Melvin de Young. Tyrone will spend nearly 12 years in jail waiting for trial. It got the will be found guilty and sent to prison for 84 years. And Melvin, despite his confession, will never be charged as an accomplice to the murder.

31:22That happens sometimes, especially when police and prosecutors are looking for cooperation from a suspect. Instead, he'll go to prison on a weapons charge. Illegal possession of a gun police found when they searched his place. He'll do seven years, until loose his toe in prison as a result of his diabetes. Unlike the other three, Alex will refuse to confess. He will be released after 48 hours. But the police aren't done with Alex. Not by a long shot. The Guardian made repeated attempts to speak with the Chicago Police Department. The department did not have anyone available to answer our questions, a spokesperson wrote in an email. Police did not respond to Alex, Edgar though, Tyrone, and Monica's specific allegations of abuse in court. But they have denied that the police were not available to answer our questions, a spokesperson wrote in an email.

32:22In court, but they have denied any misconduct or wrongdoing in the case. In court documents, officers deny any misconduct. The Cook County State's Attorney's Office declined to comment, citing pending litigation. In court documents, the State's Attorney's Office denied allegations of wrongdoing. The Office of the Chief Judge, on behalf of the judge extended Edgar those time in police custody, also declined to comment, citing pending litigation. This is The Guardian. This is The Guardian.