Category Archives: Kevin

Kevin Pease was 19 in 1997 when he was falsely accused of playing a part in the murder of John Hartman. He has maintained his innocence along with the other three four all these many years.

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

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A better question might be who’s afraid of the big bad wolf pack?

The corruption in this case runs very deep. So deep that there is no point in denying that there is a large range of potential risks in writing about some of it publicly. Every stone that is turned over in researching this case reveals more and more indications of corruption, some on the part of common criminals, some on the part of those that we should be most able to trust – police officers, attorneys, and judges. And the idea of making any of them too angry is, well, scary.

But the truth in this case is that fear was used like a tool to repress many people. A lack of courage on the part of many was required for justice to be so far miscarried. In this climate, the courage of some is all the more astounding. The earliest truth-tellers in this situation are people to be admired. It seems simple enough to just tell the truth, but as Orwell said, “In times of universal deceit telling the truth becomes of revolutionary act.” It was scary to stand up then, and many didn’t.

There is a quote so often repeated that it is hard to find its original source – “All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.” It is a powerful idea, and one that applies here. Many, many, many people did not come forward as alibis, or as informants to the actual perpetrators while this case was active because they were afraid. It is understandable, it was a terrifying time, but to move forward we must let go of that fear. Many good people did nothing when this case occurred. That is the past, and we must learn from it, but we must also let it remain the past and walk bravely into a new future.

So, here is a new quote to for a new era:

“Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.”  – Gandhi

We possess a power greater than those that oppose us because we act from love. On that note, here are some of the highlights of corruption in this case. Sadly, this is the tip of the iceberg:

When the labwork came back and there was NO physical evidence against the Fairbanks Four, the investigators did not pursue other leads. They went “shopping” for jailhouse snitches. One was a woman who claims that she overheard an incriminating statement while she was in jail at FCC the same time as the four. Even though male and female inmates are separated even in general population. Even though the four were being held in isolation, where they made comments of any nature to absolutely no one. The star witness was a man who received leniency in his own crimes (and whose criminal record would make you sick) who agreed to testify that he had seen the four together. From 550 feet away. In the dark. Drunk. High on drugs. Standing with a group of people, some who were sober, who saw nothing. (To be fair, perhaps he got into radioactive goo or something as a child and has super powers).

In the absence of any physical evidence to take to trial, Detective Aaron Ring and Prosecutor Jeffery O’Bryant got together in their hotel room and made some. Don’t bother reading that sentence twice, you did indeed read it right the first time. With young men’s entire FUTURES at stake men sworn to uphold justice, to serve and protect us all, made exhibits for court during a hasty craft hour held in their hotel room. They took a lab-made ink print of George’s boot that was printed on clear overhead type paper. They selected a few slides that did not show all of the tread. They then layed it over a photo of John Hartman’s face. The photo had no scale. It was scientific garbage, but the lab logo would lead the average person to see it as legitimate. With no scale, a picture can be adjusted until its size roughly corresponds with any shoe. The exhibit was not made by a forensic lab, but by a police officer and prosecutor in their hotel room.

In an affidavit filed by John Cayton, the forensic expert the defense employed at the trial, filed post-trial, Mr. Cayton calls the exhibit “extremely misleading,” “troubling,” a “misrepresentation,” and states that, after repeatedly asking the defense attorney for a chance to review the evidence (remember, the defense attorney should have WANTED his expert informed), he was eventually told to get it directly from Aaron Ring, who sent poor quality copies and copies without any scale.

George’s first attorney, Bob Downes, made some other remarkable choices during trial. In addition to not supplying the expert the information he would have needed to testify properly, he did not call any of George’s alibis as witnesses. He also DID NOT OBJECT to the homemade bogus boot exhibit.

Bob Downes had worked with the prosecutor, Jeffery O’Bryant in the past, and knew him personally. After the trial was lost Bob Downes became a judge. He used Jeffery O’Bryant as a reference, and got the job. You can read his application/resume HERE.

No other suspects were investigated. Even though John Hartman’s brother had received a phone call warning him that his brother might be in danger the same night that he was killed. Even though Chris Stone, the person last seen alive with the victim, had astounding inaccuracies in his statement. Even though the victim was found wearing his pants. Even though he had suffered a similar beating a few weeks earlier and had refused to name his assailants. Even though there was never ever any evidence that any of the accused knew the victim or would have had any reason to harm him. Even though Chris Stone left a disturbing message for a friend that night, even though that friend asked police to get a copy, even though she went to the police station that day to make a statement that she thought Chris Stone was not being honest. EVEN THOUGH THERE WAS NO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE.

All interrogations in Alaska are required by law to be taped. George insists, and Crystal Sisto also insists, that his interrogation began long before a tape recorder came on. Read transcripts of the interrogation HERE and decide if that seems to be the case. You can also read the post about his interrogation HERE.

Eugene Vent was a minor and had the right to have a parent present. They told him that, but read about his interrogation HERE and ask yourself if they really believed he had understood all of his rights.

There is no recorded Blood Alcohol Level for George Frese on record anywhere. Interesting, considering that he had drank beer and liquor all night, hard liquor all morning and into the afternoon. Unusual, since it seems that an intoxicated underage patient would typically have a blood alcohol test. It makes you wonder…..is there a blood alcohol content at which a person must receive medical treatment and cannot be interrogated? Is there a blood alcohol content at which a person is considered legally incompetent and their statements could be voided? If there was one taken, how did it disappear?

The key players in this case received serious promotions following the “successful” outcome. These boys made the list of his notable accomplishments when Jeffery O’Bryant’s promotion to Fairbanks District Attorney was announced. Check that out HERE

Add to that the MANY PAGES of details that we will need time to write down. Add to that controversies that we are still afraid to write down. Add to that corruption we have not unearthed. And add this final quote to your mind for times when you want to blend into the flock because you are afraid:

“Make yourself sheep and the wolves will eat you.” Benjamin Franklin

There are many people in our community who know who committed this crime and have remained quiet out of fear. To you we say, muster your courage. Put your faith in the idea that to act from love gives you great power. Remember that fear does not make you safe, it makes you sheep. And the wolves are out there.


The Truth About Experience – Kevin’s Interrogation

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Kevin Pease was not a stranger to the Fairbanks Police Department. His juvenile record was not exactly shocking, but showed a pattern of trouble-making. In short, this was not his first rodeo.

Kevin’s previous experience with the police, and his clear disdain for them, comes through loud and clear. Kevin had something that none of the other four had – he had some understanding of his rights. He asks if he can leave, and because they have no legal right to continue holding him for questioning, he gets to leave.

Kevin is not respectful or polite in his interrogation. However, if the other three had known a little more about their rights, and felt less obligated to bow to authority, the investigation likely would have ended there.

Kevin’s interview is a quick read. It is worth noting that Kevin lies to the police about his whereabouts. He tells them he was with his girlfriend, when in fact he had spent the night partying at various locations. It is also worth noting that the blood on his shirt, which he says is his own from a nose bleed, was in fact shown to be his blood in lab tests.

CLICK HERE TO READ KEVIN’S INTERROGATION

Can DNA Evidence Set the Record Straight?

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Many prominent exonerations have come after Innocence Projects re-tested DNA evidence collected from a crime. Unfortunately, that is not an option in this case. The summary of physical evidence connecting George Frese, Eugene Vent, Kevin Pease, and Marvin Roberts to the murder for which they were arrested and convicted is contained below:

That’s right – nothing. No physical evidence. Zero, Nada, Nothing. There are many points of this case on which people disagree and can present a compelling argument. The point of physical evidence is not one of them.

Perhaps, if we assume the best of the investigators, they may have believed during the earliest points of the investigation that they had the right men. Kevin Pease, for example, had blood visible on his shirt when he was questioned. He claimed that the blood was his from a nosebleed. Labs would confirm that was the case.

Police collected the shoes and clothes that George, Marvin, Eugene, and Kevin were wearing the night of October 12, 1997 and sent them to a forensic lab, most likely hoping or assuming that some physical evidence would link them to the victim. Nothing did. No blood, no DNA, nothing.

Police dismantled Marvin’s car looking for evidence that would at least place the four young men together in the vehicle. Nothing.

Despite the accusation that these four men had spent the evening together on an unprovoked spree of violence, culminating in the kicking/stomping murder of John Hartman, no physical evidence of any kind has ever linked them to the victim, the crime scene, or each other.

According to the national Innocence Project, eye-witness misidentification, snitch testimony, and false confessions are often the key ingredients to wrongful conviction. All of these elements would be used to build a case against the four. Missing from this case is physical evidence of any kind, the most reliable form of evidence, and in a crime of this nature, the most obvious type of evidence to look for in the search for the responsible parties.

It seems logical to assume that there was indeed physical evidence on the people who committed this crime. Unfortunately, such evidence was never collected. No other suspects were ever pursued in this case. The physical evidence of this crime probably existed in those crucial hours following the murder, on the shoes, vehicle, and clothing of the actual perpetrators. And it was probably washed away a decade and a half ago.

These four will have to proceed toward exoneration without physical evidence, a notoriously difficult and complex fight.

 DON’T FORGET TO LIKE FREE THE FAIRBANKS FOUR ON FACEBOOK!

Introducing the Fairbanks Four

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On the same evening that John Hartman lived his last night on Earth, four other young men also spent a normal day with their friends and families, with no idea as evening fell that October 10, 1997  would be the last normal day. No premonition that the night and early morning hours of October 11, 1997 would contain the moments that changed their lives forever; the line that now divides their lives into two parts –  before and after.

None could have possibly predicted that each movement they made would be scrutinized for a decade and more. Not one of the looked into the faces of those around them knowing that these friends, family members, acquaintances, and strangers were about to become alibis. That some of them would be threatened, that some of them would be courageous, that some would be afraid, that some would become activists, that some would sink into their sorrow. No. It was an ordinary night.

 The four boys knew each other. They were not close friends, but had all played on the same basketball team for Howard Luke, a predominantly Native high school. They did not spend the evening together, but each saw the others at least for a moment at some point that evening. The  times their paths crossed that evening they would not have known that soon they were to be each others only friends – the only familiar faces in a foreign place, and an all encompassing nightmare.

 The Four Were:

                                                          

                                                           

Marvin Roberts. Marvin was 19, had been valedictorian of his class that spring, a basketball enthusiast, a doting older brother to his toddler brother, and best friends with his sister. A gentle person. He was not a drinker, and unlike most of his classmates and friends, had a car.

Eugene Vent. Eugene was 17 that fall and a basketball enthusiast. He was funny guy, always smiling, and kind. He was young, and like many young men he drank too much and too often. He had, just days prior, revived a ticket for drinking underage. Like so many other teenage boys Eugene was finding his way from boyhood to manhood, a road not without challenges, but on the whole was a good guy.

                                           

                                                                                          

 

George Frese. George was 20 at the time, and the oldest of the four. He was a doting father to his three year old daughter Tiliisia, and most who knew him at this time will talk first of his dedication to his daughter. George and his partner faced challenges common for teenage parents, but met most of them with grace. George did not drink often, but when he did he drank to great excess

 

 

Kevin Pease. Kevin was 19, smart, an athlete, and a kid who was doing his best to transcend hardships at home. His father had been murdered just a short time before this pivotal night. One friend, asked to describe Kevin, said “Fun. Brave. But if I had one word I would say fun. It was hard not to smile when Kevin smiled.” Kevin had had a series of small run-ins with the police. He was the baby of his family.

How they spent that fateful night:

Marvin spent the bulk of the night at a wedding reception, where many tens of people saw him throughout the evening. He was the only one of the four that did not get drunk that night. Earlier in the evening he cruised around aimlessly with a few friends, looking for girls. He gave a few people rides. No less that 10 people insist that they saw him dancing and mingling between the hours of 1 am and 2am.

That night, Kevin and Eugene went to a house party in the hills above Fairbanks. Their friend had the house to himself with his parents out if town, and the predictable party and mayhem followed. A house party full of people of course saw them at the party, drinking and mingling. Both Kevin and Eugene drank heavily; Eugene drank to the point that he blacked out much of the night. A sober driver eventually drove a car packed with teenagers like sardines back toward town. He remembers looking at the clock frequently he says, because he was nervous about getting pulled over with a car full of drunk teenagers out past legal curfew. He says that the arrived in town at about 2am. This is notable because it is a full half hour after John Hartman was attacked.

Once in town, they stopped by the wedding reception, and ultimately went their separate ways, with Eugene heading to a part in a room at the Alaska Motor Inn and Kevin heading home.

George spent the first part of the night at home drinking with some friends and his girlfriend Crystal. Three sober babysitters watched George and Crystal’s daughter while they visited with their company. Another sober friend, the late Patrick Henry, older brother of Edgar Henry, said he was with George and his little brother all night. He says that they left George’s apartment as a group at about 1:30am, and walked as a group first to a friend’ s house, and then to the large wedding reception downtown. He said his brother and George were so drunk he had to “babysit” them, and consequently remembers their actions that night well. He says they arrived a the reception at 2am, and were together until after 3am.

How did they become suspects?

Eugene was arrested first, walking home from the part at Alaska Motor Inn. He ran when the police car pulled up on him, which they considered the first indication of his guilt. In reality, he ran because he was a young drunk kid, and the police were behind him. Clearly, his whole life would be different if he had run faster.

Kevin was brought in next.  When he got home to is mother’s house, they had a huge fight, and he smashed up the house – punched Sheetrock, broke a few things. His mother called the police, a decision that she went to her death-bed regretting. He was a teenage troublemaker, already known to the police. When they realized he knew Eugene, a theory began to develop.

George was the third one taken. He woke up the next day still drunk and with a hurt foot. He was limping around in it complaining, and went to the E.R. to have it looked at. An ER nurse who had treated both the white boy dying upstairs and the Native boy with a hurt foot downstairs decided that the two patients were linked and alerted police. At some point the police did enough research to determine that George had played on the same high school basketball team as Eugene and Kevin. They came to the hospital for him.

Marvin was last. They showed up at his home, where he was sitting with an uncle, and took him in for questioning. During his interrogation he said he was innocent dozens of times, apologizing when an officer accused him of being disrespectful for saying it, and calling both officers “sir” through the entire interview, but never wavered for a moment in his insistence that they had the wrong person. Marvin was in that same yearbook photo, and probably the only one who had managed to get a car since graduation, and for the scenario that the police were building there had to be a driver.

A child was murdered at 1:30am, at which time four Indian boys were dancing at a wedding, walking to a friend’s house, and driving in a car packed like a sardine can. Yet, by the next morning the police are taking a victory lap for the local press, theorizing that these Indians probably killed the kid because he was white, or else that it is simply in their savage nature.

If you have read this far, you are likely left with nothing but questions, most of which boil down to why and how. If what we wrote above is true, and it is, why did they arrest these four men? Why were these alibis discounted? How were they convicted?

The answers can be long, or they can be short. The short answers are that they were arrested by chance, and guilty of being Native before the first question came. That they were drunk, terrified, with no idea what their actual legal rights were since they were not raised in the Law and Order culture, but the culture of Interior Alaska, where in the late 90’s most Native kids understood that once the cops picked you up whatever came next was up to the cops, and that resistance made things worse.

Their alibis were dismissed as not reliable, because their alibis were Indians. The D.A.’s closing argument was that, much like in the “I am Spartacus” scene, that Natives will lie for Natives, take care of their own kind, and can’t be trusted. Similar to the decrees long issued in this country that the savage is different.

They were convicted in puppet show trials by juries not made of their peers, with no physical evidence, and plenty of corruption. And the trials didn’t matter. Despite the fact that no one here had ever seen any prisoner from Fairbanks Correctional costumed that way before, they marched them out chained together and dressed in orange for their arraignment. The public defender of course voiced his shock and called it grandstanding, but it was too late. The picture was snapped of the four chained together in orange, and it would run beside the smiling school picture of a victim that could be anyone’s child in every early article and news story run in Alaska and was the stock image for years to come. And the story, see, made sense. It didn’t have to make factual sense to make sense in the hearts of many. The official statement may as well have been, “Four Indians savagely killed a child, because he was white. No one’s children were safe, but now they are. We are protecting you from a fear you felt but could never substantiate. There will be no further questions.” They didn’t come up with any motivation beyond hoping that the public would assume these four were just senselessly violent people.

The LONG answers? Will be here, in this blog, and are partially addressed in the links below. You do not have to take our word for it, because we wouldn’t expect you to, and because we don’t need you to. All we ask is that you remain, hear this story, and take from it what you will.

If you want to do further reading, please take  a moment to look at the work of journalist Brian O’Donoghue and the UAF Journalism Department Students via their website, or the “Decade of Doubt” series that ran in the local paper.

A Thanksgiving Perspective from Alaska

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Alaska. The tourists come here in buzzing clouds, thick and as transient as mosquitos. They are very old. They are in the twilight of their lives. The women have poofs of white hair and wear elastic banded blue jeans. Their husbands carry cameras and wear khaki explorer hats.They arrive on enormous cruise ships and travel the thin highways on guided bus tours and train tracks, led by bright-eyed college students spending their summer working as tour guides. The greatest generation, spending their carefully sequestered Alaska portion of their retirement account, shuffling on the gravel at every highway overlook, scanning the horizons with their binoculars in search of a bear, a moose, their history.  They all buy the same deep blue sweatshirt that says “Alaska: The Last Frontier,” in gold-embroidered letters. It is, after all, why they came  –  to see the Last Frontier. It calls to them because they come from places where the frontier has been conquered and settled and is gone now. Alaska is the last, the very last, American frontier.

There is a lot of magic in a name; part truth and part spell. The Last Frontier was bestowed carefully, a  tribute both to the land’s untamed expanses and America’s deep rooted nostalgia for the era of cowboys sleeping under the stars and teepees peppering the wide open plains. America misses the Last Frontier. The idea that our ancestors walked bravely into the unknown, carved trails through an unforgiving wilderness, and ultimately weaved from the fabric of drastically different cultures, hard work, and luck the world’s strongest country is a great story. Our story. It is written so deeply into our collective consciousness that we walk with it, always, so intrinsic that we forget it is there. All of those old men and women were children once, together in that November classroom to learn the story. We were all there. When winter began to bite through fall we carefully stapled together the wide brown band of construction paper and pasted bright feathers to our Indian head-dress. We glued the bright yellow paper buckle to our pilgrim hats while the teacher laid out the multi-colored corn and parents arrived for the feast. And there, divided only by our different paper hats, we acted out the story: pilgrims and Indians eating together. Pilgrims and Indians celebrating abundance, welcoming the winter, waiting for the thaw, for the spring when America would begin in earnest. Thankful. So very deeply thankful for not just a meal, but for what was to come.

The story of our bright beginning, the purest freedoms, the wide open plains, that story is deep in our bones now. But we know that it wasn’t that easy. We feel the ghosts of other, less often told stories, lurking in the periphery of that happy story. We close our eyes and see teepees burning. We know that the pilgrims won, and we know how. Sand Creek. Custer’s Last Stand. Trails and trails of blood and tears carved through what was the frontier, paved and perfected so that the wild could become America. We sense it – that when those early November’s frost chased away the last of the leaves and winter was moments away, thousands of children were placed in hard-dug graves, wheels of wagons crashed over tiny bones and ground them to dust, and the division was real. Some of us walk with those stories, too, as deeply written and as impossible  to shed as the first Thanksgiving. But those stories are heavier. Harder to carry.

For most of America, the stories get further away each season, until they are so far in the distance they are forgotten. The terrible ones remain untold until the words are hard to form and people are able to forget. But this is the Last Frontier, and here, the wagons must keep moving if America is to take root properly. Here it is sometimes America of golden arches and great bridges, but much of the time it is still cowboys and Indians.

In Alaska we are plagued with a terrible double vision, one we cannot make peace with. See, this is the America that learned from its past. This is the country that has progressed, where a million men marched, where a woman would not budge from her bus seat, where we can erradicate the past in order to form a more perfect union. And Alaska is part of that America. Yet, we are out of time in some ways. We are not as far along in our story, we are somehow still in the part where teepees must be burned and trails must be carved, even though we know the ending, even though McDonald’s is here before all the bison are dead. We are American enough that we believe ourselves to not be racist, to believe ourselves to be undivided. But when Martin Luther King had a dream, soldiers still came in the night to take Indian children out of their beds and send them away. Not a story from our ancestors, a story from our parents. It’s all wrong. Someone forgot to divide the Indians into reservations and erect copper likenesses of their murdered chiefs in the town squares. Someone forgot to build town squares. We are not divided enough to pretend convincingly that we are undivided. So, we have to play a kind of first Thanksgiving. America lays out the feast and shows us the colorful corn that could never grow in this soil. See here? America says. The proof that this is your story, too. Our story together. And we put on our technicolor feathers and flopping construction paper buckles and rehearse our happy meal. Pilgrims and Indians, cowboys and Indians, make believe until you believe.

Then, sometimes, something happens that breaks it all back open and the other stories come roaring alive. A boy, say, scalped on the streets, his blood staining snow, the last of his hot breath wisping into the late fall sky, life leaving him.

Men in cars with red and blue flashing lights, wearing badges and those black paper hats that were placed onto their heads so long ago that they have forgotten they are there. Still, right away they scan the horizon, begin looking for four Indian boys playing at warrior games, feathers like a shadow. The investigation is over now, before it has begun, because these men remember this story. They know how it ends already.

This story is very old. This is the story of America. This is the story of the Last Frontier, the very last. This is a story that you know already. This story was whispered to you once in the rustling of construction paper and dried corn. This is a sad story. Listen, listen.

Free the Fairbanks Four