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when a ship's captain turned up dead after a raging storm some said his death was a tragic
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accident an eyewitness told police it was murder but something on this videotape raised
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questions about who was telling the truth [Music] [Applause] [Music] venice louisiana like its namesake in
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italy is a place where life revolves around the water the small town marks the spot where the
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mississippi river empties into the gulf of mexico locals call it the end of the world
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everybody knows everybody's business pretty much good and bad and some people like it some people don't i
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tend to like it many people in venice make their money trawling for shrimp it's hard dangerous work
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the sea can either be friend or foe it's rough and the people there are rough it's not a genteel community
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there's friction there there's friction there between the pleasure fishermen and the
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work a day fisherman that does it for a living in july of 2000 a storm battered the louisiana coast
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while the fishing boats were still at sea all the boats somehow made it back safely all except
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one captain raymond liker otherwise known as tinky and his deckhand alvin latham were
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missing along with their shrimp boat named the bandit the coast guard was notified they
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searched the area in the gulf where tinky had made his last radio transmission but found nothing
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14 hours later a vietnamese fishing trawler picked up a man in the gulf clinging to a piece of wood
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it was alvin latham the deckhand he was exhausted but unharmed when interviewed by the coast guard
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alvin told a horrifying tale [Music] alvin said the storm came up so fast that he and tinky were unprepared
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the wind just picked up and wheels bouncing all over the place with five foot waves crashing over the
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bow and the fishing nets full of shrimp still in the water the boat started to lift
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it seemed like it was just sinking and then he reported may day mayday when they tried to pull the nets into
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the boat tinky's foot got stuck alvin said he tried desperately to get tinky's foot out of the net but he was
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unsuccessful he said he wasn't going to make it he has got to take care of his son
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tinky told alvin to try to save himself so i told him i was going to go try and get some help
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that's why i started swimming just moments after alvin jumped into the water
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the boat slipped below the surface like that the door was just going down alvin said he managed to grab hold of a
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piece of wood and swam for 14 hours until he was rescued i was doing everything i could to try to
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catch my keep my head above the water now it seemed like i was swimming forever he's told his story he tried to save his
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captain it was it was tender it was endearing it could have happened to anyone but alvin didn't want accolades
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i don't see myself as i feel that what i was doing i couldn't get no help to get him
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several days later the coast guard found tinky's body floating in the gulf of
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mexico and the body told a story that was very different from alvin's story the coast guard found tinky lyker's body
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in the gulf of mexico five days after the storm [Music] the only other person on the boat alvin
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latham said he tried to save tinky's life but was unable to free his foot from the fishing nets
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he was uh going around talking about it like he was a hero he had survived the storm and you know all that type of
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thing but when the local coroner performed a routine autopsy the findings contradicted alvin's story
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he had trauma to his head his left arm was partially amputated the coroner also found
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five stab wounds on the arms that would be considered defensive rooms as if the victim was fending off a knife attack
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someone that's trying to defend himself would raise their arms in front of their
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face and then and that way they would catch the stab wounds about the forearm and that's where they was on raymond
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like and the coroner found evidence of blunt force trauma to the head tinky lyker's death was ruled
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a homicide someone killed raymond like alvin latham was the only one on the boat that we
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know of his own self said he was the only one when the coast guard interviewed alvin
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just after his rescue he said nothing about tinky being stabbed or struck in the head
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so police asked alvin to come to headquarters and explain the discrepancies so we started route to the jail and he
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says well uh y'all found a body and i said yeah we did you know he says well i guess i'm in trouble
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investigators video taped the interrogation our laces original store when we first
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picked him up he said the captain was caught in the trial net the boat was sinking and he swam off of the boat and
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watched it go down he was underwater and i started swimming off for the first platform i could get to
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police informed alvin latham that the story he told didn't match the forensic
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evidence he had several stab marks on his body and just didn't know why why i didn't stop if raymond like her foot
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was caught in the net he would have went down with that boat okay did you burn it too did you murder it
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well i don't have to lock you up but i wonder what happened but i'm trying to tell you that's the best that
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i can well who murdered him if you did after five hours of questioning and three more on the following day
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alvin gradually began to change his story alvin started saying things like he felt
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uncomfortable with raymond lyker he didn't make him feel comfortable he he was coming up with things that happened
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to him on that boat as saying that raymond touched his leg made him feel uncomfortable that type of thing i'm
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thinking finally we're getting somewhere with him you know finally uh we're
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starting to get the truth and that's when he come around and started telling
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us what what he told us you know about the stabbing alvin now said that when the boat took
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on water he feared for his life and there was only one life jacket on board to get the life jacket alvin waited
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until tinky's back was turned grabbed a pipe and struck him how many times alvin said when he tried to grab the
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life jacket tinky came after him alvin used a knife to defend himself i guess i stabbed him in the arms
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and he fell overboard are you telling me the truth yeah and with his confession alvin latham was charged with murder
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and the right to remain anything you say ken and what would you do not many cases you begin with someone
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being a hero and then in a matter of two or three days he was a villain he was a killer
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[Music] as alvin latham sat in jail on a murder charge everyone in venice louisiana was talking
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about what happened or didn't happen the night tinky lyker died everyone debated it two people one life
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jacket what would you would i share you'd like to think you'd share it but would you
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since alvin was a man of limited means the court appointed attorney peter barbie to defend him
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barbie couldn't understand why alvin would have killed the captain over a life jacket yet wasn't wearing it
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when he was found floating in the water the next day i told alvin i said whatever you do tell
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me the truth i said if you did it that's all right we'll figure out how to handle
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it but i said whatever you do tell me the truth alvin now told his lawyer that he didn't kill tinky
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he reverted to his original story the one he told the coast guard the day after the storm that tinky's death was
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an accident i had to prove to a jury that he was vulnerable and very capable of confessing to something he didn't do man
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you would not believe how strong there is amongst people in the public that you wouldn't confess to something
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you did wouldn't do why would you confess to something you didn't do to find out
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barbie showed the entire eight hours of alvin's police interviews to dr jill
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hayes hammer a forensic psychologist from the lsu school of medicine come on al what happened you don't know
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everything you say you know do you know anything you couldn't swim 14 hours an
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hour i was very annoyed actually because it was obvious to me as a professional that
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alvin was incredibly slow and that he was being taken advantage of dr richard leo a professor of
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criminology and psychology at the university of california at irvine agrees this is an awful awful interrogation i
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think this is shoddy poor police work and i think these the the detectives who conducted this interrogation should be
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retrained and until they're retrained should not be permitted to do another interrogation
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during the first day of police interrogation alvin denied he killed tinky never come
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on what you gonna do say something explain it what you saw was an incredible amount of
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intimidation over a hundred times alvin said that he did not do it he was emphatic in saying that he did not do
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it instead why did you stab him on top of the show you did you hit him in the throat with something
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him in the head with something you didn't do nothing i don't believe that
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the police continued saying alvin until you tell us what we want to hear you will not be able to go home
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but during the second day of interrogation alvin started repeating what the investigators were telling him
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that's one of the most hostile interrogations i've seen there's only
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one life jacket you wanted you didn't give a [ __ ] if he lived or died he didn't say no damn prayer you'll liar
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about that interrogators are trained across the country not to be hostile they're going
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against the standard training that interrogators receive experts say another sign of a false confession is
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when the suspect's story doesn't match the physical evidence so the point about the ham don't sound
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right you sure you're here um [Music] he was in the water she was on the back of the boat
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what happened you went this for alan tell the rest of the story and use it i don't know
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i'm at one point alvin literally says i hit him with a two by four and he says there
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wasn't any damn two by four is a sinking boat he says uh a hammer there wasn't a
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hammer on that boat he says a pipe and he goes okay you have that that could have worked so you hit them in the head
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with a pipe i mean that literally is how they get the story out of them it's just
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it's just so obviously stupid what they fail to see is he doesn't have any memories of doing the things that
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they're accusing him of doing that he then caves in ultimately and passively
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accepts and that's why he's using that language dr hayes hammer discovered that alvin's
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iq was 74 and he had dropped out of school in the ninth grade you have many people with low iqs who
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have had rap sheets as long as my arm alvin did not so he was very naive to what was going on in the criminal
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justice system and he also did not have the intelligence to be able to cope with
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the questioning by the police officers false confessions do occur one of the most famous cases happened in
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england when a teenager richard buckland confessed to the rape and murder of a young girl but dna testing proved he
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didn't do it most people don't understand how someone can be made to falsely confess but as an
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empirical matter the fact is that they occur and they've been documented so many have been documented the question
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should not be do they occur but rather why do they occur and what can we do to minimize them
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most people who are questioned by police don't realize that they can leave the
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interrogation anytime meaning they don't have to put up with relentless questioning
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but trying to explain to a jury why someone would confess to a crime they didn't commit
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is always difficult confessions override lack of evidence improper searches and everything else so if you
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want to prosecute somebody what's the best thing in the world you have a confession they just got to where i just
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agreed with what they said just to get them off my back because i know they would stop the
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questions after i agreed with them life has been very hard alvin and i will be damned if i was going to
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sit back and watch the system steamroll him out of convenience the cover for crook
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corrupt stupid cops and that's the only way to describe it but there was still the matter of the
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coroner's report which had ruled tinky's death a homicide [Music] peter barbie was now convinced that
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alvin latham's taped confession had been coerced but why did the coroner rule tinky's
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death a homicide in looking at the autopsy findings barbie discovered that the coroner did
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not know the depth of the so-called knife wounds the coroner never measured them never
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dissected them never checked them for the angle from the photographs dr cyril wecht an
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independent forensic pathologist didn't believe these were stab wounds at all
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expect all or at least some of the bones to have had some significant depth of penetration we do not have that
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in this case hence i do not believe that these were stab wounds but if they weren't stab wounds
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what were they when you think of a propeller any portion of it is striking some part of the body then it is easy to
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understand how you can get these kinds of injuries dr wecht thinks this is also what caused
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tanki's fractured skull that his body was accidentally run over by a passing ship while floating in the
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gulf i believe that it is most plausible to infer that those areas of apparent trauma to mr leicher's
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body were sustained post-mortem when his body was floating for about five days in
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the gulf interestingly the tugboat captain who picked up tinky's body agreed
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he says i've been a boat captain a long time and this is not the first body i've
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seen and he says that man was run over by a boat and the tugboat captain told peter
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barbie something else something which hadn't been made public he said he had one boot on and one boot off
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well the lights went off on that one because that was alvin's basic story was
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that on the boat at the end of it tinky gone down with the ship because he had a foot stuck
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under a cable that's more sherlock holmes the man with one boot he correlated with
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the story that the foot was caught in the trolling net that is as good a reason as any and better than most to
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explain why one boat was on and one boot was not on with these new findings peter barbie believed the coroner's
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ruling was inaccurate you have an incompetent corner and that's being polite so these wounds
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tell me that the story that mr latham originally gave was the correct one and that there were
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no injuries inflicted on mr lyker's body by alvin latham when alvin latham went on trial for the
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murder of tinky liker prosecutors played alvin's confession for the jury but later
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the jury watched the entire eight-hour interrogation you did how you did it you hit the man and covered his mouth
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with duct tape what did you do i didn't hit him what happened i don't know
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anyone that watched the tape that saw what happened any intelligent person couldn't help be
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convinced that this was a a blatant case of police brutality the jury also heard from the defense
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pathologist who concluded tinky's death was an accident and alvin latham took the stand in his
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own defense and told the same story he told to the coast guard after the storm [Music]
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that tinky's foot got stuck in the fishing nets and that his death was an accident
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[Music] after six hours of deliberation the jury came back with their verdict not guilty
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[Music] with modern technology today with all the learning people got i knew i had a chance
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when you look at the evidence and you look at the forensics and what it shows us
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alvin was telling the truth unfortunately just nobody wanted to accept it or believe it
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so they just kept pushing them until they came up with something that they wanted to believe
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and they wanted to believe it because they fed it to them today alvin works at the local
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supermarket stacking shelves the man who conducted alvin's interrogation thinks the jury made a mistake
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everybody can't be the good guy or or no one confessed a serious crime in all my years of experience i've never
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known anyone to come say you know i committed this crime without it without interrogation
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and uh that's just tactics you use to get confessions but peter barbie thinks
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interrogation should be about getting the truth not getting a confession he wanted to pick on alvin i'd like to
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see him come pick on me and you can print that one that's how badly i feel about what he
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did to that man he's a bully and a punk [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you