The confession tapes

Now, tell me the truth. Isn't it true...

or is it true that you went in that garage and saw what was going on?

Isn't that the truth?

No, I swear to God. No.

I didn't go in there.

I want you to... tell me if you recognize...

each person in these photographs and what that person did in this crime.

What part they played? Start right here.

Is there anything else you want to add to this

that you have not told us?

I didn't have anything to do with it and I don't want it all to fall down on me

if they saying I did it.

I just want this thing to get over with so I can live my life like a free man.

This crime rocked the 8th and H Street neighborhood.

I've had many people tell me that on a certain level, it still does.

The gruesome discovery was made in a rain-soaked alley

in the 800 block of H Street Northeast, an alley where junkies go to use drugs.

Inside a vacant dilapidated brick garage, the partly nude body of a young woman.

This is not usually what goes on around this area. It was crazy.

Everybody was curious and furious.

The victim has been identified

as 48-year-old Catherine Fuller, of K Street Northeast.

She had been sexually assaulted and beaten to death.

The detectives looked at this crime scene

and the horrible circumstances of her death.

And I think they had this immediate idea a group must've done this.

It's the first time ever in history that

that many people were charged for one murder

of one person, without it being a conspiracy.

You had to realize how the system worked in D.C. back in the '80s and '90s.

Back then, we had so many people getting killed in D.C.

We were number one murder capital of the United States.

The homicide unit, it was 30 detectives and we had one too many cases.

This was a very brutal crime.

I mean, I handle lots and lots of cases,

and this, one of the three gross crimes that I've ever seen.

Once they opened that body, you could see the damage they caused.

The pole that they put...

in her body all the way up.

This was too much.

It's kind of difficult to believe that...

a human being will inflict so much pain...

and... so much brutality towards another human being.

This afternoon, homicide detectives returned to the alley,

looking for evidence and talking with people

who may have seen something.

At approximately 4:30 p.m. on the day of the murder...

...Mrs. Fuller left to go shopping.

That's the best we know from the testimony of her husband and her son.

Mrs. Fuller was 48 years old. She was small.

She was 99 pounds.

She wasn't much taller than five feet tall.

She was a woman who took care of six kids and a husband who was on disability.

The forensic evidence is that she was beaten up

on the 9th Street side of the alley.

The alley runs parallel to 8th Street.

Some of her possessions were found in that 9th Street portion of the alley.

And the perpetrator who decided to assault her

dragged her body from that 9th Street side of the alley into the garage.

And based on the autopsy,

some lengthy object had to be used to commit the sodomy.

Departments are judged on their crime rates,

especially on their homicide crime rates.

If you have a high homicide rate, you need to do something.

You need to bring it down. And you need to show a high closure rate.

The pressure's on you and you want to close it.

You want to close it quick.

About six o'clock, a lady walking through the alley discovered the...

partially clothed body of an adult female.

On the night of the murder, somebody left an anonymous tip for the cops

at I want to say, 2:30 in the morning,

saying that there was this group called the 8th and H Crew

that hung out in that alley.

And three young men in that group had bragged

about dragging women into the alley to rape.

So they started hearing these rumors about this gang stuff.

It kind of fit what we thought was going on in the world at the time.

And they switched from gathering evidence to suddenly,

"Oh, my God. This must be it."

So we're now suspect-based.

We're out to prove that these are the guys who did it.

You ever heard of a gang by the name of the 8th and H Crew?

- No, I haven't. - Never heard of 'em?

No, not a gang.

- You live around here? - Yes.

- Never heard of them? - No.

Never heard of, never seen 'em either.

8th and H was a park where buses

and everyone transferred to go wherever they go.

And guys would go down 8th and H to see where guys,

"Hey, what you doin', man? I'll meet you up at 8th and H"

because it was convenient to meet up there.

And so dudes started referring to different guys

as the 8th Street Crew.

We was basically like a family.

We all went to school together. Different schools.

We all met up on the basketball courts.

We young, running around, having fun, going to the go-go.

You had the go-go bands.

It's pretty much our own sound. It's D.C. sound.

And we, like, represented where we lived at.

And we may occasionally bump a couple people

or something like that and...

And we started fighting.

Farthest someone would get is hit in the head with a bat.

Or you know, black eye.

Some stitches. But we wasn't doing no killing.

And whenever the go-go bands were playing, they'd ask, you know,

like who's in the house or, you know, is 8th and H Crew in the house?

It just meant you lived in that neighborhood.

And as soon as I went out into the community,

I became suspicious of the police story

because people in the community said they weren't aware of a gang.

And police insisted there was a gang.

And a gang creates an image in the community, you know, panic.

It makes people angrier.

It's a gang. It's, you know, it becomes vicious.

Open up the door.

Yesterday morning, D.C. Police fanned out

to arrest six members of the crew on charges of murder.

They just started snatching everybody out of the neighborhood.

D.C was going through a purge.

They startled my family.

Came in about 6:30, seven o'clock.

Flying-- Helicopters flying over.

Lights, police lights all outside. Came in.

Took me out. Put me in the back of the police car.

They would jump out and grab all of us. Put us in the car and try to take us down.

Just to question us.

I was like, "Oh, this some...

This some bullshit."

I mean, it was like, they were just kicking down doors.

Sunday, December the 9th, 1984, they kicked my door in.

I had never been arrested.

I had finished high school when I was 17 years old.

I was gonna go in the military. I was going to college.

Police drove us to 8th and H where they put is in the paddy wagon

to make it look like these the guys that hang out there on 8th and H.

Police say these men are members of a gang

which was known as the 8th and H Crew.

There are still other members of the gang and police say there may be other arrests.

Their approach was kind of like a shotgun approach.

You kind of round in all the usual suspects,

start putting them in the box, squeezing them and see what comes out.

You get a 15-year-old and they're telling him he going to jail,

or this gonna happen to him, or this gonna happen to him, that's scary.

That's very scary.

You lie to say anything.

When they came to the house that Sunday morning,

got him out of the bed,

they said they was gonna talk to him.

They didn't tell me he was under arrest for murder or anything.

They did not request for his parents or attorney.

Clifton didn't have nobody to speak for him.

Do you have any objections to this videotaping taking place?

No.

Have any promises been made to you in return for your statement?

Excuse me. Could you go by that one again?

Sure.

Have any promises been made to you...

Have I promised you anything for talking to me today?

No, you haven't.

Cliff came up very high on the suggestibility scale.

His I.Q. was measured at 69.5.

Clifton not retarded.

Special needs. Slow learner.

That was Clifton problem. He was a slow learner.

Cliff didn't understand... what he was being asked to sign.

- Do you remember signing the rights card? - Yes.

- Did you read the card? - Yes.

Back then, we were not videotaping interrogations from start to finish.

We were only doing what we call, the "recap video."

We're here today to talk to you about the death of...

the lady in the alley at 8th and H Street.

Why don't you start, tell us everything that you know about that.

I came home from school.

I came across H Street...

up Ninth Street...

to the alley... the end of the alley.

I seen Monk dragging the lady into the alley.

He slammed the lady.

Chrissy hit her.

Burt... hit her.

He dragged her.

Snot Rag hit her and dragged her.

Derek stomped, Fella hit her.

Bobo hit her.

Levy was standing over top of her.

When you see these recap videos, a lot of times people will say,

well, look, just the story flows, how cold they are.

That it's being factual.

They've rehearsed this again and again and again.

So all of the manipulation, the lies about the evidence,

the promises of leniency, that's all off camera.

Snot Rag said, "Stop, Derek."

So that's when Snot Rag and Burt pulled her to the cut of the alley.

Levy...

stuck a pole in her.

Where was she when he stuck the pole in her?

Right at the cut of the alley.