but with elmore facing the electric chair, he felt bad about what he had done. i said james, make it right. and i got excited. because i felt like, well, once this comes out, it would be free. gilliam said the testimony that i gave in these prior trials was false. that he made up this story to try to get better treatment for himself on his criminal sentence. gilliam would go on to state that the only thing elmore had ever said was that he didn t kill dorothy edwards. but diana s team also felt they needed to refute dorothy edwards time of death which the medical examiner had placed on saturday night during the only hours elmore had no alibi. diana hired forensic expert jonathan arden. in my opinion, the victim died in the early afternoon on sunday.
so it became obvious to me something wasn t quite right. the only photo of the bed shows it covered with police camera equipment, contaminating any evidence. the question became, where did the hairs in the baggie come from? there was no question they pulled those hairs from his body. they pulled a lot of them. and i don t think they were ever on the bed. i believe it was planted. diana was starting to see a pattern. there was all this ineffective assistance of counsel. there was no basis for probable cause to arrest mr. elmore anyway, and there was no list of negroid pubic hairs in the original police inventory. there was no item like that. as diana dug deeper into the case, a new suspect began to emerge. she thought the next door neighbor who discovered dorothy s body had acted suspiciously. really? he put his gloves on before he went to open the door? that grabbed me right away.
and the ruse was that i would exchange sex for money. we left bourbon street together, got in his car and one of the two guys came in. he got on the passenger side. i was scrunched in the middle. diana s friend pulled a gun and demanded money. the driver gave them $60. they jumped out of the car and ran. made it about three blocks. pulled over by the new orleans police department, up against the wall. the victim was a u.s. marshal. it s like dumb and dumber a little bit. what do you expect from an air ahead ahead ahead head 17-year-old. i pled guilty to armed robbery and off i went to the louisiana correctional institute for women. one day, the prosecutor in my case came to the prison to visit and he said, i just want you to
he tried to get up off the bed and get out of there, wasn t she. i was not there. and you caught her and started pounding her with your fist. no, sir. stomach and all. no, sir. did you kick her? no, sir. i wasn t there. that s all i have to ask you. in his closing argument to the jury, willie t. portrayed elmore as a sadistic killer who tortured his victim before beating her to death. but diana thought that the depiction of elmore was highly prejudicial and the evidence riddled with holes. she also thought elmore had done well under the circumstances. even under withering cross-examination by brilliant willie t., mr. elmore said what he always said, simply, i didn t do it. in order to solve the mystery of who did murder dorothy edwards, diana began looking for alternate suspects and she found one in the neighbor who discovered the body, james holloway. i read the testimony of james holloway and my head just about spun off my little spindly neck.
that timeframe makes sense with the rigor mortis, the lack of decomposition. but when the state medical examiner was asked, why did you recommend that the time of death be 65 hours prior to the time of discover, given all of the evidence of the rigor mortis, the lack of decomposition, she said under oath, because that s what they told me. the police told me that s when they thought it happened. but even with all the evidence in elmore s favor, diana and jensen knew the biggest hurdle would be explaining the blood on elmore s pants to the court. blood that was supposedly found on pants and shoes matched the blood type of mrs. edwards. and this was very difficult testimony to rebut. as jensen cross-examined the state s blood expert, diana went through the files on the defense table and made a key discovery. evidence lists showed elmore s pants had passed through eight different people before the trial. i jumped out of my chair. i start whispering to chris jensen, ask him what thi