Re: 9/17/98 - Secret FBI report suggests a murder convict was framed by a crooked detective.
The Cop & the "Killer"
Secret FBI report suggests a murder convict was framed by a crooked detective.
By Paul Bass
Scott Lewis says he didn't kill anybody.
A lot of people sitting in jail for the rest of their lives say that.
Scott Lewis has something, though, that a lot of those other convicted murderers don't have.
He has a stunning, secret FBI report that strongly suggests a cop framed him for the murder. The report suggests that a New Haven drug cop was actually a partner with a top-level regional drug boss -- and was framing people like Scott Lewis, unsympathetic street-level drug dealers themselves, to punish them for personal debts and feuds.
Few people have seen Lewis' FBI report. Some who have seen it can set him free, or at least start the process. They've chosen not to.
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A jury found Scott Lewis guilty of committing a celebrated double murder. One of the victims was a former city alderman.
While every murder has its own poignant human drama, these particular killings ultimately didn't differ much from many other drug-related shootings in the out-of-control New Haven cocaine economy of the late '80s and early '90s.
These shootings did have an unusual aftermath for two men caught up in their investigation -- and in the cocaine economy's murky world of snitches and loyalties, law and order. Both men grew up in New Haven. Both came from police families. One became a celebrated cop. One became a printer. Both ended up breaking laws. Both were accused of committing violence. Both proclaim their innocence. Both claim they were framed.
One is free today. One may never be free again.
Nobody ever called Lewis a hero. Except, perhaps, kids who see young urban drug dealers driving around town in BMWs.
People did call Vincent Raucci a hero. He hounded drug dealers. He cracked murders. New Haven's Citywide Block Watch Association named Raucci -- a streetwise cop known for his "sixth sense" -- Officer of the Year in 1986. His chief at the time gave him special commendations.
The story of the cop and the "killer," of Vincent Raucci and Scott Lewis, isn't a story about heroes. Culled from hundreds of pages of court transcripts, previously unreleased FBI reports, police reports, court records and interviews with the drama's key characters, the story is about the so-called war on drugs. About who wins and who loses.
Beginning on Oct. 11, 1990, Scott Lewis and Vincent Raucci lost.
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The Murder
The double murder took place some time after 4 a.m. that day in New Haven's impoverished, concrete- and asphalt-covered Hill neighborhood. One of the victims, Ricardo Turner, was a former city alderman. The other victim, roommate Lamont Fields, was his lover.
Since losing his seat in the mid-'80s, Turner had dived into the booming drug economy. According to friends, lovers and business associates later interviewed by the FBI, Turner regularly rode trains to New York City to pick up cocaine. Back in New Haven, he'd sell it on the street along with a group of fellow dealers. He also may have moved PCP.
Turner knew shortly before his death that he might have an upcoming appointment with a bullet. He told that to Ann Boyd, a neighborhood friend. Her son dealt drugs for Turner until he began serving a 50-year prison sentence for murder in the late '80s. Ann Boyd later told the FBI that Turner believed someone was stalking him. He kept notes about it in a diary. He told Boyd: "If anything should happen to [him], she should look at his diary," according to an FBI report. Turner also had an address book with phone numbers of drug-dealing accomplices.
Someone did catch up with Turner. That someone, with an accomplice, entered the apartment Turner shared with Fields at 634 Howard Ave. That someone killed Turner with a bullet to the head, then shot a second bullet through his heart. Two shots in the back killed Fields.
After authorities carried the two bodies, wrapped in sheets, out of the building, blood stains remained on the hallway steps. Police said the blood belonged to the shooter.
The first clue came a month later. Police Sgt. Francisco Ortiz heard from one of his regular street informants. The informant said he knew who killed Turner and Fields: a drug dealer known on the street as Bullet.
Ortiz trusted this informant. His information in the past had helped solve homicides, robberies, burglaries and narcotics cases, according to a police report at the time. So the cops investigated the tip. The informant said Bullet had told him he killed Turner in some kind of dispute. Indeed, it would later turn out that Bullet was one of Turner's drug dealing associates. His name appeared in the address book. Numerous witnesses would later tell the FBI that the two sold drugs together.
For now, though, the police could confirm just that Bullet's family was involved in the drug trade. They interviewed Bullet. He said he didn't commit the murder.
In December, Detective Vincent Raucci started steering the investigation to a different target: Scott Lewis.
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The Cop
Raucci was among the cops who combed Howard Avenue for details in the pre-dawn hours of Oct. 11. Raucci liked working homicides. Police work ran in the family: His father, Vincent Sr., was a respected chief of detectives on Hamden's force. He raised Vincent Jr. in working-class Fair Haven when the neighborhood "was a great place," says Vincent Jr., who is 43. "We didn't have the murders and the guns then." Vincent Jr.'s uncle, too, was a cop. His great uncles. His grandfather.
"He was always a kid who excelled in anything he did," Vincent Sr. recalls in a phone conversation from his Florida retirement home. His son was an especially good Little League pitcher. He threw a mean fastball. But he "burned out" on the game by high school.
Vincent Sr. recalls telling his son, every day over breakfast and dinner, about his murder and robbery investigations. He adds that he also talked to his son about the need for police to "treat people fairly."
Vincent Jr. joined North Haven's force right out of high school. He moved over to the New Haven force in 1981.
He found he had a knack and a zeal for the work. He had an intuitive radar for trouble and trouble-makers and how to deal with them. He was the kind of cop former New Haven Police Chief William Farrell wanted in his department.
"He was a very aggressive young police officer," Farrell recalls today, "very ready to go out there and do business on the street."
Raucci earned a coveted detective's badge and found himself back in Fair Haven. In the '80s his old neighborhood, decimated by real estate speculation and the flight of legal factory jobs, became a thriving center of the region's cocaine trade. The Latin Kings, among other gangs, worked there. A particularly thriving distribution network beginning in Colombia had Fair Haven as its street-level retail end point. Farrell and block-watch groups both took notice of Raucci's seeming ability to crack cases.
"I like a guy who uses his head more than his muscle or brawn," Raucci claimed to me in an interview 10 years ago, at the height of his career. "A guy who just runs in without using his head, I have no respect for."
In December 1990, he appeared on the verge of solving the Turner murder. The way Raucci would later report it in written police statements, he picked up a teenage drug-dealing gang member. Let's call the guy "Rock." (We've changed the names or used only the street names of secondary characters in this story for two reasons: because some charges against them are unproved, and because revealing their identities could pose the danger of retaliation. The state corrections department denied a request to interview Rock -- to protect his safety, officials said.) Rock had shot someone on Spring Street. In the course of talking with Raucci, Rock offered to trade some information: He allegedly said he knew who killed Ric Turner, according to subsequent court testimony.
Rock allegedly said he'd been the lookout on Howard Avenue. His job: wait outside, keep the car warm. Raucci claimed Rock gave him a statement describing a night on which Scott Lewis and Stephan Morant were driving around town with Rock, fuming about money and drugs Ric Turner owed them. After drinking and smoking reefer, the trio went to Howard Avenue in Lewis' BMW, according to the statement. Lewis and Morant ran inside, shots rang out, the two ran back to the BMW carrying a full gym bag and a full bank-deposit bag and told Rock to drive away, according to the statement. Then Lewis said he'd done what he "had" to do, according to the statement.
Unlike, say, the drug dealer named Bullet, the names of neither Lewis nor Morant appeared in Turner's address book. Lewis would later claim he didn't know Turner.
But Raucci produced more statements to corroborate parts of what Rock allegedly told him. One was from a teenage girl. Raucci wrote a report, which she signed, saying she'd run into Rock, an old friend, as he was waiting in the car outside Turner's apartment building at 4 a.m. that day.
And Raucci produced a statement from a drug dealer known as Mac Tonight. Mac Tonight allegedly told Raucci that he overheard Lewis talking about Turner the day before the murder. He allegedly overheard Lewis saying, "If he doesn't have the money, he's through."
On April 15, 1991, Raucci arrested Lewis. According to Lewis, Raucci offered this explanation: "You should have never stopped selling drugs in Fair Haven."
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The "Killer"
Scott Lewis had an alibi for the night of Oct. 10 and the early morning hours of Oct. 11: He'd been working an all-night job at Minuteman Press in Fair Haven. They had to turn out a rush job for the phone company.
Lewis liked working the presses. He learned the trade at Eli Whitney Technical School. Growing up in New Haven, he'd originally wanted to be a cop. "My uncle was a cop. A lot of people in my family were cops," he says. He chose printing instead. He found the work creative, fun. It just didn't pay that great.
In his last year of high school, he traveled to Colorado to visit the father he'd never known. Things didn't work out. The father (who had a criminal record) sent him to live with other relatives in Denver. He was crushed.
He needed money to return home. One night he held up a pizza-delivery girl. The court gave him a six-month sentence at a community halfway house. He snuck back to New Haven; he conned his mother into sending him the money for the plane trip. But authorities caught him in New Haven, sent him back to complete his sentence.
When he eventually returned to New Haven he continued working at print shops, earning $10 an hour. He also started dealing coke. That paid a lot better. Especially as he worked his way up in the organization of Frank Parise, beginning in 1989. Parise, who lived in Branford at the time, ran one of the region's most thriving cocaine operations, the one with the Colombian pipeline. His operation hired young blacks and Latinos to work urban streets. (See accompanying article.) The police would eventually bust Parise and his operation in 1995. He's now serving a 20-year sentence. He's appealing his conviction and, according to FBI reports, receiving partial immunity from the state, presumably in return for cooperating with investigators.
Efforts to reach Parise's lawyer, New York-based Bruce Cutler (who also represents accused Big Apple mobster John Gotti and used to represent Gotti's dad, the don), were unsuccessful.
According to a statement Lewis would later give the FBI, Parise used to front him the cocaine to sell. Parise eventually trusted him enough to advance a half-kilogram at a time, then 1 kilogram a week.
Speaking in quiet but persistent and articulate tones during a jailhouse interview, wearing a tan prison uniform, Lewis, who's 33, says he earned as much as $3,000 or $4,000 a week working for Parise -- sometimes that much in a single day.
Yet he kept the $10-an-hour job running two- and four-color presses. Why? "I loved the printing job. And it made me legit."
In addition, like many young dealers, he says, he harbored dreams of earning enough quick money to leave the criminal life and start a legitimate business of his own. But few end up following that plan. The money's too fast, too easy. Lewis did buy a barber shop where a friend cut hair. But Lewis also kept dealing. "I was trying to go too fast. I wanted to live beyond my means. I was arrogant," he says. Did he ever think about the people whose lives he was helping to wreck by selling them cocaine? "I didn't feel. The only thing I could think about was hustling. The other part -- hurting other people -- I didn't think about until my cousin got strung out."
When that happened, he decided to quit, Lewis claims. He had another reason to cut off ties to Parise -- he owed him money he couldn't pay back. Lewis had briefly set up a base of operation on Clay Street. The cops raided it on Jan. 5, 1991.
Lewis says the police failed to find most of the kilo he had just prepared for sale. But because of the bust, he couldn't move the cocaine, and it went bad. (Once dealers mix cocaine with other ingredients the drug has a limited shelf life, says Lewis.)
That debt, Lewis told the FBI, was why he ended up framed for murder. That debt, he said, explained why not just Parise, but Vincent Raucci, too, were out to get him. Raucci and Parise, he said, were partners.
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The Witness On the Stand
Lewis said some of that at his trial in the spring of 1995. The jury didn't believe him. Reading the transcripts, you can see how a drug dealer making such wild-sounding claims might not seem credible.
However, reading those same transcripts, you have to wonder why the state's only real witness, Rock, did sound plausible to the jury. Lewis' attorney, John Williams, repeatedly brought out how often Rock had already lied in his young life. He lied to get a fake ID. He lied, by his own admission in court, when he told prison authorities that he saw the devil in his cell, that he was hearing voices, that he was possessed by someone inside him named "Red Bean." He told those lies, he testified, because he wanted to be kept in solitary confinement -- away from fellow prisoners who were angry at him for ratting on friends. He gave details on the stand about how a fellow prisoner coached him to make up these stories. He even changed his street/prison nickname to protect himself.
Defense attorney Williams also brought out that Rock was heavily medicated in jail. That authorities labeled him mentally ill and prescribed him Thorazine and Haldol. That he had repeatedly used different aliases with the police, even while giving this statement about Scott Lewis and the Turner-Fields murders. Trial testimony leaves it unclear whether Rock needed the medication -- whether he was psychotic and delusional, or whether he was simply a skilled liar. Either scenario, the defense maintained, rendered Rock a weak witness on whose testimony to pin an entire murder case.
But the prosecutor in the case, assistant state's attorney David Gold, persuaded the jury that Rock was believable, partly because he had a legitimate reason to hide his identity: fear for his life. He lived on the street since age 13. Rock testified about how his stepfather, his girlfriend, his best friends all "came against me" for snitching. "I felt like I had nobody." He testified about cutting himself in prison with a razor on his chest, both arms, his palm. He tried to hang himself. "I acted like I was crazy." He threw urine at a corrections officer. He was desperate, he said, to get away from enemies who wanted to punish him for testifying.
Gold also persuaded the jury that Rock wasn't making up a statement against Lewis just to stay out of jail. After all, he was in jail. Yes, Rock might have made up other statements in his life, Gold told the jurors. He might have a felony narcotics conviction, two misdemeanor drug convictions, a disorderly conduct conviction. He might have shot people. But they could trust his story this time.
Gold told the jury not to believe that Scott Lewis never knew Ric Turner, not to worry that Lewis' name never appeared in Turner's address book. "If you're an ex-alderman in the city of New Haven, you're holding yourself out to be a hard working Joe, are you going to put the name of your drug dealer in the book?" He didn't mention that the book contained other drug dealers' names.
The state never did produce any other significant evidence tying Lewis to the murder. No fingerprints. No blood testing: The state now said the blood on the steps belonged to the victims, not the murderer, so there was no need to test it.
Scott Lewis and his attorney, on the other hand, never produced Bullet, the dealer whom the original police informant had blamed for the murder. They tried to find him. He had apparently skipped town. They produced Lewis' boss from Minuteman Press to confirm Lewis had been working the all-night job at the time of the murder. That boss -- a cokehead, according to FBI reports -- didn't prove believable.
Gold's toughest sell of all was to explain why he was left with only Rock as a serious witness. The prosecutor's other important witness, Mac Tonight, changed his story on the stand. He said he never overheard Lewis saying that Turner was "through." He said Detective Raucci pressured him to make that statement, repeatedly turning the tape recorder off and telling him what to say.
To win the case, Gold had only to cast doubt on that one firsthand account of Vincent Raucci pressuring people to make false statements.
Once the FBI got on the case, though, there'd be several. Plus a bunch of other witnesses who raised serious questions about how Raucci built this case and why. The most incriminating witness of all: Rock.
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The Witness, In Prison
From his prison cell, Scott Lewis got the FBI involved. He told an agent his story. On Feb. 22, 1996, two agents sat down with Rock, who was also in prison. This is what happened, according to the agents' report:
First Rock repeated the story he'd told in court. Then he suggested he hadn't been "completely truthful in his testimony." He said he'd told Detective Raucci and prosecutor Gold that he couldn't name Frank Parise at the trial. "[Rock] told interviewing agents that he had done a great deal of drug dealing for PARESE [sic] and was very aware of PARESE's ruthless tactics and feared for his life from any PARESE retaliation.
"Interviewing agents then told [him] that PARESE had recently been taken down by the FBI and was currently under indictment for drug trafficking. It was pointed out that the FBI wasn't afraid of FRANK PARESE. [Rock] began to cry. [He] was then asked if he was afraid of Detective VINNY RAUCCI. When he answered tearfully in the affirmative, [he] was told [that Raucci had been arrested and suspended from the police force] and that the FBI wasn't afraid of RAUCCI either. [Rock] began crying more forcefully then, losing his composure. [Rock] stated he has been living for five years with a terrible secret which he could no longer contain."
Then he testified that he knew who really committed the murders -- and that it wasn't Scott Lewis or Stephan Morant. He said his story was basically true at the trial, except he substituted their names for the real killers' names.
Then Rock said Parise was behind the murders. He said he'd worked for Parise for years, as well as for other gangs.
Rock told agents that Parise and his associates targeted Turner, then killed Fields to eliminate potential witnesses. He said he made up the story about the teenage girl meeting him on the street "to provide additional witnesses." Turner allegedly owed Parise money.
Rock said Parise and "the Italians from Rhode Island" who ran the drug operation didn't always kill debtors. Sometimes they had police set them up and send them to jail.
Lewis was one of those people, Rock said. And, he said, Vincent Raucci was the cop who set him up.
Rock told the agents that Raucci and Parise were friends and partners. He said he would pick up drugs from Parise's Branford home or visit him at other locations and find Raucci there, "talking and drinking with PARESE while PARESE was counting 'drug money.'" He said Raucci was sometimes involved in transactions when he picked up drugs.
Raucci planned the "setup" of Lewis and Morant, Rock testified: He told Rock "that in order to make the story more credible, [Rock] was to shoot an 'enemy,' a drug dealer competitor, after which shooting, [Rock] would be arrested by RAUCCI. Following his arrest, [Rock] would cooperate with RAUCCI and cut a deal to give up LEWIS and MORANT for the double homicide."
You could excuse the agents for not taking Rock's story seriously. After all, he'd testified that he had invented stories in the past.
But the FBI did some digging. A lot of digging, actually. Agents traveled to Phoenix, Florida and elsewhere to track down witnesses. They found details checking out -- and new charges emerging about Raucci, according to the file.
They also opened a broader investigation into Raucci. The New Haven Advocate has reviewed only the file on the Lewis case. The state had to turn that part over to Scott Lewis under laws requiring that accused criminals be given any "exculpatory evidence" in the case against them. Lewis gave the Advocate a copy of the report he received.
That report shows that agents spoke to the teenage girl Rock claimed to have seen outside Turner's apartment during the murder. She told the FBI that Raucci forced her to make up her statement. Contacted last week by the New Haven Advocate, the young woman -- now 22 and a state employee -- says she signed the false statement because she was only a teenager at the time and felt intimidated by Raucci. She would never be walking on Howard Avenue at 4 in the morning, she says. "My mother whipped my ass for doing what [Raucci] told me to do."
The FBI report shows that agents took handwriting samples from people whose names appeared on letters sent to Rock in jail. Rock told the FBI that Raucci had him forge those letters, which contained incriminating information about the Lewis case, to build supportive evidence. The FBI handwriting analysis showed that some of those letters probably were forged.
The FBI report shows five other alibi witnesses supporting parts or all of Scott Lewis' story. Several, including fellow employees of Minuteman Press, expressed surprise that New Haven police had never formally interviewed them. They said Raucci stopped by the printing plant and heard their stories about Lewis having been at the press at the time of the double murder. One witness recalled Raucci telling the press' owner that, "If he knew what was good for him," he would forget Raucci had ever been there. This co-worker told agents "he thought it was odd that even though [he] had been with Lewis most of the day and evening on the date of the double homicide, he was never interviewed by police."
The report has one Fair Havener telling agents that Raucci approached him "as a favor" -- and as "insurance against being busted in the future on other charges" -- to give a completely false statement implicating Scott Lewis. This Fair Havener says Raucci tape recorded the statement in his car, not at headquarters, coaching him on his lines while the machine was off.
The report has others familiar with Ricardo Turner's life telling why they believed the original suspect, "Bullet," committed the murder -- since Turner had allegedly "burned" Bullet for $48,000. These people are reported saying they don't think Turner even knew Lewis.
Frank Parise told agents in a jailhouse interview that Lewis owed him $18,000 from a drug debt. He said little else. On other occasions he has professed his innocence against charges of drug dealing and violence.
Raucci's fellow police officers did tell the FBI that they saw Raucci take legitimate statements from witnesses. They claimed he never coached anyone. He'd turn tape recorders on and off only for "normal interruptions such as a knock on the door, the telephone ringing, or for the interviewers to formulate questions."
The FBI report ends with a brief additional statement from Rock, which he gave as he was about to leave prison. (He has since returned.) Rock recanted his recantation. He now said his original statement -- the one given to Raucci and at trial, the one implicating Lewis -- was the real one.
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The Cop
When the FBI finally interviewed Raucci, on Aug. 30, 1996, he categorically denied all the accusations. He did the same in a telephone conversation with the Advocate. He says he never even knew Parise, just ran into him once while executing a search warrant.
But by the time the FBI interviewed Raucci, his career had already spun out of control. He knew the FBI had been looking into him. And he knew the FBI's agents weren't the only ones.
Scott Lewis hadn't called only the FBI after the jury found him guilty. He also called New Haven's then-police chief, Nick Pastore. Pastore visited him in jail. Lewis thought Pastore blew him off. However, the New Haven force began its own investigation into Raucci. State, federal and local cops were all tagging him.
Raucci's sixth sense picked up on it.
"You could tell just the way people were acting toward you. It was kind of a sickening feeling," Raucci recalls. "I was sitting at my desk one night. The guys from narcotics from the state task force came in. They were pushing the dogs toward my desk. I was working murders; then they were investigating me."
Raucci recalls sensing undercover cops following him on the road. Those cops knew Raucci was on to them, according to someone connected to the investigation. "He was a hard guy to follow. He would speed up, slow down. Speed up, slow down." This person remembers Raucci entering the Route 34 Connector near police headquarters with an unmarked car on his trail: Raucci would speed up to 80 mph, dash onto I-91 north, swing onto an exit ramp, slow down to 20.
The police department felt it had enough on Raucci to move for his dismissal. The police commission suspended him without pay as Internal Affairs presented the evidence in two cases against Raucci. City officials refuse to release information about that internal investigation, even though it's closed now. (The Advocate plans to appeal the decision.)
One of the Internal Affairs cases involved an incident in Fair Haven, according to a law-enforcement source close to the investigation. Raucci was in his apartment, off-duty, when a friend known as "Frankie the Stud" ran in complaining that someone had just robbed him. Raucci raced onto Blatchley Avenue and beat the alleged robber over the head with a rifle, according to the source.
The other case against Raucci: that he had been falsely collecting federal money for overtime security work at a Newhallville public housing project for the elderly. Instead, he was meeting a girlfriend at the Howard Johnson's in Hamden.
Raucci claimed the motel charge was "never proven." He says all the other accusations against him were false.
But he chose to resign -- and collect a pension -- rather than fight the charges. He says he sought help from then-Chief Pastore, in vain. "He said, 'You're out the door.' He thought I was a rogue cop.
"I had a good career, but the odds were stacked against me," Raucci maintains. Why? "I'm truly afraid to say it. It deals with high-ranking officers. Someone was whispering in my ear that [a high-ranking cop] was involved in some murders early on. Being the cop that I am, I started poking around the records room. That's when my troubles started."
He acknowledges a second source of his troubles: substance abuse. He adamantly denies the prominent story told about him: "They [investigators] had me sniffing cocaine. That came from an informant. I never did it." He did develop a drinking problem, he claims, after the death of the young son of a close friend on the force.
Whatever the source, his troubles continued after he resigned on April 11, 1996. The state prosecuted him on felony charges for defrauding the government in the public housing overtime case. Raucci was found guilty. Over the prosecution's objections, the judge gave him accelerated rehabilitation, a special form of probation that spared him prison time.
He returned to court, though, after police arrested him for beating up his ex-wife. A statement from the ex-wife in their divorce court file reports that Raucci put her in a choke hold, "screaming that he was going to kill me." He allegedly grabbed the phone as she dialed 911 and hung it up. She escaped and called police.
"I am terrified of this man," the ex-wife stated. "He has in the past abused me and I know he will come after me again."
Raucci responded in the file that his wife attacked him. He now says, "We were both going through turmoil."
In addition to the assault charges, the court entered a restraining order against Raucci to stay away from the family. A judge also cited him for failing to make court-ordered alimony payments. "My ex-husband has vanished," his ex-wife reported to the court. An arrest warrant has been issued for Raucci on the assault charges, and bond increased from $25,000 to $200,000. This past March the court started attaching $168 a week from his police pension.
Raucci won't confirm what state he's living in now, even whether he's in Connecticut. "I've been clean now for months and months. It's beautiful. This is the first time I've had a good night's sleep in years. I'm living in a place that's clean air, clean water."
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The "Killer"
The jail Scott Lewis calls home may have clean water. But he doesn't consider his situation "beautiful."
Like his incarcerated co-defendant, Stephan Morant, Lewis is asking anyone who'll listen for help. He wants his case reopened. The state Supreme Court already rejected that plea. But that decision came before he received the FBI report, with its voluminous exculpatory evidence.
Lewis has also studied intensely, making a transformation so many prisoners do: into legal expert and religious devotee. He has become a Jehovah's Witness. "I needed to have something to keep me strong." He hesitated to authorize the Advocate to publish the picture appearing with this article because it shows him wearing a cross. That was before he became a Witness; the group's creed bans the use of religious symbols.
"I can deal with being in jail for selling drugs," Lewis says. "But I'm in jail for something I didn't do. The person who did this is still out there. I didn't kill nobody."
He's still amazed, he says, that the state could send him to jail for the rest his life based completely on the testimony of a convicted felon and confessed habitual liar. "If you can't believe nothing he's saying, how can you believe him about me?"
In a Kafka-esque twist, Lewis remains in jail partly because the U.S. Attorney's office agrees with him. It agreed that it couldn't trust Rock's word. The problem: That means it didn't believe Rock's jailhouse recantation.
That put the U.S. Attorney's office at odds with the FBI, according to Lenny Boyle. Boyle headed the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's office in Connecticut until last January. He was in charge of the Lewis/Raucci case as his office dealt with FBI investigators. He found himself in a friendly but determined conflict with the FBI agents who investigated Raucci and presented evidence to Boyle.
The FBI wanted a grand jury to |
