Back From A Dance With Death

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Former Death Row Inmate Free From Prison, But Still Confined

By Marie DoRego and Rob Cathers

inn_inst [at] pointpark [dot] edu

BROCKWAY, Pa. — Released after 18 years on death row, Ernie Simmons, 53, wanted to get a triple-decker burger and settle down at the “Just for Jesus” shelter in a remote Central Pennsylvania town with hopes of trying to reassemble some remnants of his troubled life.

Instead, he was met by frightened and outraged protesters at the shelter who heard news accounts that Simmons is a serial killer. He was met by police who continue to dig for evidence to connect him to as many as five murders dating back to the 1970′s, and he was handed a lengthy set of rules from a parole board closely monitoring his every move through a GPS bracelet locked to his ankle for the next 10 years.

Sitting before a dimly lit alter at the shelter beneath crosses and biblical depictions of Jesus Christ, Simmons, branded by some as “Jason of Johnstown” due to the never-ending scrutiny he has faced for heinous crimes, proclaimed he has not killed anyone during an exclusive interview with the Innocence Institute of Point Park University (view part of the interview here).

“Even though I’m free, I’m still in jail,” said Simmons when asked about his life outside of prison in the first interview. He said his restrictive parole conditions are an effort to put him back behind bars, but said he’s “never going back.”

Innocent Killer?

By the time Simmons was sent to death row for the 1992 murder of Anna Knaze, an 80-year-old Johnstown, Pa. woman found dead in her home with almost every bone in her body broken, his life had been an abject horror story. He was born to a drug addicted woman who did not care for him and a father he never met. As a youngster in Philadelphia, Simmons scrounged through garbage dumpsters to find food until he was put into the child welfare system and placed with a foster family in Harrisburg. By that time, it was too late, his foster parents would later testify. He was known to exhibit delusional, erratic behavior, and he was involved in nickel and dime crimes until police began suspecting he was a murderer.

Police first suspected Simmons in the death of 40-year-old James Griffin of Harrisburg in September, 1976. Simmons was 17-years-old when Griffin was stabbed and shot. Simmons said he “never met him.” While Harrisburg police say Simmons remains a suspect in the case, they confirmed a person other than Simmons was charged in the case and charges were subsequently dropped when the suspect died.

Over the next eight years, Simmons was in and out of jail for a string of non-violent crimes, including petty theft, burglary, and receiving stolen property.

In 1984, he admitted to the brutal assault of two elderly men in the state’s capital and car theft. He was sent to prison for 7 to 15 years.

Before he was sent to prison, Marie Boyd and Elwood Conway were severely beaten to death only days apart in Harrisburg. By that time, the record of violence against the elderly Simmons had amassed made him a suspect, but Simmons said he did not know the victims and “[police] took my DNA… Didn’t match.”  Harrisburg police have reportedly been re-examining palm print evidence in the murder.

Jason of Johnstown?

In 1991, Simmons was paroled to Johnstown, where he hoped to start a barber shop for African Americans. Six months later, Simmons said he heard “noises of distress” from a neighbor’s apartment and entered to find 82-year-old Joseph Buhek with a dagger pierced through his throat. He recalled police questioning him in the kitchen of Buhek’s apartment.

“I told [police] the same thing I am telling you. They let me go,”  said Simmons. “I haven’t heard from them since.”

Two months later, Knaze’s body was found in her Johnstown home, a short distance from the scene of Buhek’s murder. Knaze’s body was found severely beaten and strangled with almost every bone in her body broken. Her spine was severed. Since Simmons was on parole for assaults against the elderly, Harrisburg police suspected him in at least three murders, and that he found an elderly man with a dagger in his neck put a bull’s eye on Simmons’ back.

Simmons has always said his schedule on the day of Knaze’s murder made it impossible to commit the horrible crime. He said he was seen repeatedly while doing errands between 10:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. when it occurred.

“There was a time factor with this. If this lady was beaten so severely it would have taken time to do that,” said Simmons.

With his day beginning around 9:45 a.m., Simmons said he dropped his then girlfriend off at 10 a.m. for a class and proceeded to drive his neighbors across town to an auto shop. In the process, Simmons admitted driving past Knaze’s home with his neighbors in the car around 10:30 a.m., but denied having any knowledge of this at the time.

Around 11 a.m., Simmons said he was in a bank checking on the status of an auto loan application. Though Simmons alleges that he spoke with a teller at the bank, she was never called to testify as an alibi witness. Simmons then said he picked up his girlfriend, and by noon, dropped a key off at the salon where he worked. At that point, forensic evidence suggested the elderly woman was already dead..

“I was at the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Simmons in an effort to explain the coincidence that he was in the same area of Knaze’s murder at the time of the crime.

While the case languished for three months, Johnstown police had focused on Simmons as the only credible suspect. Finally, a Johnstown cop found a report from one of Knaze’s neighbors, Margaret Cobaugh, who said she was raped around the time of the murder before trying to withdraw her police report. After months of questioning, Cobaugh agreed to testify that she not only identified Simmons as her attacker but stated under oath that her attacker warned her she would –get the same thing Anna Knaze got– if she ever reported the incident to police. While there was no forensic evidence at the grisly crime scene tying Simmons to the case, that statement and those of a jailhouse snitch sealed his fate for a trip to death row.

On Death Row

Simmons was convicted in 1993 of murder and robbery and sentenced to death by lethal injection, where he twice faced execution, once coming within three days of execution before an appeal was granted.

That was the worst part, Simmons says. He said he watched from his cell window as prison officials loaded his personal belongings into a van and later delivered his execution outfit.

“The white t-shirt, the blue and white shoes. When you are waiting to die, the clock goes by faster. You watch the seconds tick,” said Simmons. “If I told you I wasn’t scared, I’d be a [liar].”

Key Witness Discredited

After his initial appeals were denied, lawyers from the Public Defender’s Association of Philadelphia found a wide assortment of prosecutorial misconduct that permeated almost every aspect of the case. They found hidden police tapes between Simmons and his girlfriend where he professed his innocence 19 times and repeatedly denied guilt. The jurors knew nothing about secret deals doled out to witnesses, or about Cobaugh’s background or her questionable testimony.

In 2004, reporters from the Innocence Institute discovered Cobaugh had repeatedly lied on the witness stand. During an interview in her home, Cobaugh conceded there were numerous inconsistencies in her testimony and admitted she could not positively identify Simmons, but only did so after months of badgering and threats by a police detective.

The 61-year-old woman acknowledged Simmons’ jury didn’t know she was an ex-convict that served 11 years in prison for burglary and larceny. They didn’t know she told police almost nothing about the Knaze murder until a now disgraced Johnstown police officer named Richard Rok learned she had been caught as a felon with a firearm. It was only then that she said she had seen Simmons in the area on the day of the murder and told police he sexually assaulted her in exchange for a break for her own legal woes.

In a dramatic courtroom scene, Cobaugh told jurors that during the assault, which she said occurred before Knaze’s murder, Simmons told her not to “open your mother f-king mouth or you’ll get the same thing that Anne Knaze got.”

The witness collapsed on the courtroom floor after her testimony, never having to explain why her assailant would mention Knaze’s murder before it happened.

In 2004, after she was confronted with the inconsistencies in her testimony as well as evidence proving she’d never been raped, Cobaugh told the Innocence Institute she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen Simmons.

“It could have been [Simmons] it could not have been,” Cobaugh told Innocence Institute reporters in a face-to-face interview. She later denied saying that.

While Simmons twice had dates with death, in 2005, U.S. District Judge Sean McLaughlin of the Western District of Pennsylvania ruled Cobaugh’s testimony untruthful, and among other things, that hidden tapes and deals with witnesses for testimony violated Simmons’ rights, and he deserved a new trial. Cambria County prosecutors lost appeals all the way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

During and after the appeals process, police in Johnstown and Harrisburg continued to press investigations in an assortment of other cases. At a pretrial hearing in November 2009, police armed with a subpoena, took blood from Simmons, hoping they could tie him through DNA testing to the Knaze case and possibly some of the others. When those tests failed to connect Simmons to the Knaze case or any of the others and since Cobaugh had not only been discredited but died, Cambria County District Attorney Patrick Kiniry — on his last day in office before he became a judge — offered Simmons a deal for freedom. On New Year’s Eve 2009, Simmons agreed to plead guilty to third degree murder that, with time served, led to his freedom on May 16, 2010.

Limited Freedom

“Everyone here tells me I ought to be happy, then why is it I don’t feel good?,” he asked in a telephone interview from the State Correctional Institution at Laurel Highlands just after accepting the plea deal that led to his freedom.

In the time between his plea and his release, a television station and newspaper reports in Cambria County dredged up possible connections Simmons had to other murders dating back to 1976, even though there is no evidence to prove it.

Simmons has long admitted that he is guilty of beating and robbing two elderly men in Harrisburg in 1984 when he was “young, stupid and out in the streets like the regular common thief” with no particular motive for the crime. But when it comes to murders of Knaze, or elderly residents in Johnstown and Harrisburg, he scoffed when confronted with media reports questioning the reliability of the justice system for releasing him from prison.

“Shame on them,” Simmons said sternly in response to allegations that he is a serial killer.

When asked if he has ever killed anyone, Simmons said, “Hell no. The police must think I’m a genius, if I [killed all those people] and I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed,” said the high school dropout.

Simmons now says he regrets signing the plea agreement, and says if he knew the extent of his parole conditions, he would have made another choice.

“If I had known they would be following me for the next ten years, we’d be picking twelve right now,” he said of a second jury trial.

Simmons says his parole conditions are far too restrictive, especially the constant tracking of his movements via the electronic monitoring system attached to his ankle. In addition to the relentless surveillance, Simmons must also abide by a strict curfew, attend life skills classes, and inform the parole board of any intentions to travel.

“I can’t even have an f—ing girlfriend without them telling me it’s okay,” Simmons said.

Life Facing Death

Though Simmons finds his parole conditions excessive, he says they are nothing when compared to his life on death row. Simmons described himself as being “luckier than most” because he was a worker. He occupied most of his time and escaped the confinement of his cell by working as a janitor and cutting the hair of death row inmates.

“All the other guys on death row are in their cells 21, 22 hours a day,” said Simmons. “It was miserable, that’s how I would sum that [time] up — it was unjust.”

Simmons described the relief of hearing he was being offered a plea deal that would give him the freedom he fought for throughout his time in prison.

“It was like dangling a carrot in front of a horses face,” he said. “If you don’t think I’m not going to take a bite. I’m not going to let them take me back.”

Raucous Reception

Simmons knew he was unwelcome back into the community from the moment he began preparing to leave the State Correctional Institution at Laurel Highlands. Prison officials told him that his release, originally scheduled for the morning, was delayed late into the night to avoid media and protesters.

He said the feeling of being out of prison is unexplainable.

“Everybody asks me if it hits me,” said Simmons. “I don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like when it hits you … I have yet to have a frown on my face.”

The residents of Brockway have openly protested Simmons arrival in town with concerns for their safety. Applications for gun permits increased in Jefferson County during the first week of Simmons release, according to news reports. Simmons said he is not a threat to residents and is not going to hide from those angry over his presence in the community.

“They [residents] can ask me anything,” said Simmons. “They can holler stuff at me, but I’m not going anywhere.”

Founder of the “Just for Jesus” shelter, Jack Wisor, said protests outside of the shelter were “chaotic” for the first week of Simmons’ arrival but have since diminished.

Wisor described protesters carrying various signs with livid messages over Simmons’ presence in their community, one reading, “Jack’s little house of horrors, molesters and murders,” alluding to the Megan’s Law offenders also housed at the shelter with Simmons.

State Representative Sam Smith (Republican, Punxsutawney) expressed concerns to the Pa. Board of Probation and Parole in a letter over the qualifications of the shelter Simmons is staying at to provide a home plan.

“There are too many questions and not enough information available to satisfy the concerns brought to me by the residents,” Smith wrote.

Simmons insisted he has no immediate plans to leave.

“I can wake up every day and still have a smile on my face. It wasn’t like that before. I have my freedom and people that care and love me here,” he says.

Perilous Health

After the legal battle for his freedom, Simmons, now 53, has serious health issues to contend with. He needs dialysis three times a week and is starting the process of obtaining a kidney transplant.

Simmons said he attributes the problem to high blood pressure, but is unsure of the exact cause.

“[I] never had this problem before. All of a sudden I got it,” said Simmons.

Simmons is currently recovering from a minor heart attack he suffered in June, and says his experiences, including this most recent medical scare, have made him more determined to value both his freedom and his life.

“I spent 18 years to try and save my life. The last thing I want to do is something stupid out here and lose it.”

 

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Marie Do Rego is a Graduate Assistant and Reporter at the Innocence Institute of Point Park University who can be reached at 412-765-3164 or mdorego [at] pointpark [dot] edu. Rob Cathers is a recent graduate from the School of Communication at Point Park University.