Episode 128: The Exoneration of Sean Ellis
Sean with his mother Mary “Jackie,” left, and his sister Sharday, right.
On September 26th, 1993, Steven Bannister, an employee at the Walgreens in the Roslindale section of Boston, Massachusetts, ran into the store at 3:49am, yelling for the manager to call 911. He was returning from break and saw 52-year-old John Mulligan, a Boston Police detective who was working on a paid security detail for the store, in his car with blood all over his face. He had been asleep in his car when he was shot five times in his face and head. His gun had also been stolen.
A task force consisting of 65 police officers were assigned to solve the crime. Three narcotics detectives, Kenneth Acerra, Walter Robinson and John Brazil, who had worked alongside John Mulligan, were assigned to the task force, which was rather unusual as this was a homicide investigation and did not involve narcotics.
A delivery driver had seen a brown Volkswagen with tinted windows with two black males in the front and a woman in the back seat on the same road as the Walgreens at around the same time as the murder. This is when police realized that this car must have contained the people responsible for the murder, and they put out information on the car and asked for the public’s help to track it down. This led police to 18-year-old Terry Patterson.
On September 29th, 17-year-old Celine Kirk and 23-year-old Tracy Brown were found murdered in Tracy’s apartment in Boston. Found in the apartment was a photo ID of 19-year-old Sean Ellis, who had recently moved into Tracy’s apartment. He was also Celine and Tracy’s cousin. David Murray, Sean, Tracy and Celine’s uncle, told police that Sean told him that he suspected that Celine’s ex-boyfriend, 18-year-old Craig Hood, was responsible for the two murders.
Sean Ellis was first questioned by police on September 30th, and Sean told police that on the night before the murder of John Mulligan, he had ridden his bike to hang out with some friends in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He called Tracy Brown at just after 2:00am to let him know he would be heading home soon, and Tracy asked Sean if he could pick up some diapers on his way back. 18-year-old Terry Patterson, the owner of the brown Volkswagen, was also at this gathering of friends and offered to give Sean a ride to the nearby Walgreens. They then arrived at the Walgreens, used a payphone, Sean purchased the diapers and they drove home.
On October 3rd, Terry Patterson and his attorney, Nancy Hurley, met with police. Terry told them the same account of events as Sean, saying the two used the pay phone near the Walgreens to call their friend, and then Sean went inside to buy the diapers. He also told police that he owned the maroon-colored Volkswagen Rabbit with tinted windows. At the end of the interview a detective asked Terry “Were you the triggerman?” To which Terry replied “No.”
On October 5th, 19-year-old Rosa Sanchez and her husband Ivan went to the police homicide unit where Rosa looked at two photo arrays. Rosa had been at the store on the night of the murder and was one of the last customers in the store before Mulligan was shot. She also knew Kenneth Acerra personally, as he was dating her aunt. Rosa told police that she saw a black male crouching down next to Mulligan’s vehicle before he was shot, but when asked to identify the male in the photos she did not choose Sean. She then left the building, but Kenneth and Walter, who were conducting the photo lineup, asked her to talk with them in Kenneth’s car. After several minutes, Rosa went back inside and selected Sean from the photo lineup.
Terry Patterson and Sean Ellis were both arrested for first-degree murder, armed robbery, and two counts of illegal possession of a firearm on October 6th. Police believed that the two boys worked together to steal John Mulligan’s gun, shoot him and run. They did not say who they thought shot John at the time of the arrests. Also on October 6th, Craig Hood, Celine’s ex-boyfriend and the man who Sean said killed Celine and Tracy, was arrested for their murders. On October 7th, police located John Mulligan’s gun as well as a .25-caliber pearl-handled pistol buried under leaves in a vacant lot near Sean’s home. Further investigation and ballistics revealed that the pearl-handled pistol was the murder weapon used to shoot John.
Later that same month, Terry Patterson’s attorney received a copy of the affidavit that had been submitted supporting a search warrant. The affidavit said that in Terry’s police interview, when asked if he was the triggerman, he nodded his head yes. His attorney realized that this was untrue and immediately contacted both the prosecutor and Sean’s lawyer to say that the affidavit had been falsely altered to implicate Sean. As a result of this, the two boys had separate trials.
On January 4th, 1995, Sean’s trial began. Prosecution claimed that Sean and Terry approached John’s car, realized that he was asleep and came up with the plan to rob him of his gun and shoot him. They then drove to a dead-end street, walked back to the Walgreens and carried out their plan. On January 21st, the jury convicted Sean of two counts of illegal possession of a firearm. They ended up declaring a mistrial on the first-degree murder and armed robbery charges because the jury wasn’t able to reach a verdict.
Terry Patterson’s trial began right after Sean’s. The main piece of evidence against him was the fingerprints that had been lifted from John’s car. They said that there were four prints from the same hand made at the same time, and that these were Terry’s as he shut the drivers side door after robbing John of his guns. However, the fingerprint examiner said that this method for identifying cumulative points of comparison from different fingers is not standard practice. On February 1st, 1995, a jury convicted Terry Patterson of first-degree murder, armed robbery, and illegal possession of a firearm. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Sean went to trial a second time on March 21st, 1995, but they declared a mistrial a second time on April 1st, 1995 after the jury was again unable to reach a verdict.
Sean went to trial a third time on September 6th, 1995. At this trial Rosa Sanchez again identified Sean as the man she saw crouching next to John’s car. Also at this third trial, the fingerprint evidence used to convict Terry was brought up. Alongside these prints it was revealed that another fingerprint was identified, and this belonged to Letia Walker, Sean’s girlfriend. The print was found on the .25-caliber pistol. Letia testified under a grant of immunity from prosecution and said that four days after John’s murder on September 30th, 1993, she and Sean went to Tracy Brown’s apartment and Sean grabbed a bag with two guns: the .25-caliber and a nine millimeter Glock semiautomatic. Sean then brought the guns to Letia’s house, where their friend, Curt Headon, hid them under leaves. Curt was unable to testify his account as he had been shot and killed in front of his own home prior to the trial starting. Letia had a young son who, at the start of her involvement in the case, was brought up by police. Police implied that if she didn’t testify against her boyfriend, they would notify social services and have her son removed from her custody.
Sean was convicted of first-degree murder and armed robbery on September 14th, 1995. He was sentenced to life in prison.
In February of 1996, the Boston Police anti-corruption unit had begun investigating several of their own detectives, including Detective Kenneth Acerra and Detective Walter Robinson, for robbing drug dealers. The unit had received complaints of corruption against multiple Boston Police officers. One of the officers who had a significant amount of complaints made against him for corruption was John Mulligan. In October of 1997, a federal grand jury indicted Walter and Kenneth on numerous charges, including but not limited to the falsification of search warrants and the theft of thousands of dollars from drug dealers dating all the way back to 1990. They both pled guilty and were sentenced to just three years in prison. Detective John Brazil was granted immunity in return for his testimony against Kenneth and Walter.
A year later, Sean’s attorneys filed a motion for a new trial based on the disclosure of the corrupt behavior from Kenneth, Walter and John, who were all heavily involved in Sean’s case. This motion was denied without a hearing. It escalated to the Supreme Court where they upheld the dismissal in December of 2000, saying that there was no proof that the detectives had falsified any evidence in the case. This same month, the Supreme Judicial Court reversed Terry’s convictions, saying that he was deprived of crucial evidence when his defense attorney failed to be called as a witness to rebut the detective’s statements of what happened during his interview where he made up Terry nodding his head yes when asked if Sean was the trigger man.
At this time, attorney Rosemary Scapicchio had taken over Sean’s case and started submitting requests under the Freedom of Information Act to city, state and federal agencies seeking information about Officers John Mulligan, Kenneth Acerra, Walter Robinson and John Brazil. In 2010, Rosemary sought help from the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) and its Wrongful Conviction Review fund. The case was accepted, and the CPCS began providing funds for the investigation and public records requests. In March of 2013, Rosemary filed a second motion for a new trial, saying that both the prosecution and police failed to disclose evidence of other possible suspects. The motion also said that the state failed to disclose evidence, including FBI reports and federal grand jury testimony, showing that John Mulligan was deeply involved in the corrupt activities of the three other officers: Kenneth Acerra, Walter Robinson and John Brazil. A federal grand jury indictment stated that just 17 days before John Mulligan was murdered, he joined Kenneth Acerra and Walter Robinson to steal $26,000 from a Boston drug dealer.
In May of 2015, the motion was finally granted for another trial for Sean Ellis. Judge Carol Ball wrote in her decision that Kenneth, Walter and John were involved in “nearly every aspect of the homicide investigation” and had a personal interest in getting this case closed as soon as possible to avoid further investigation into John Mulligan and his criminal activities to avoid exposing their own criminal activities.
Sean Ellis was released on bond on June 3rd, 2015, and in September of 2016 the Supreme Judicial Court unanimously upheld Judge Ball’s ruling. Sean was to go to trial for a fourth time.
On December 17th, 2018, interim Suffolk County District Attorney John Pappas said that the prosecution would move to dismiss the murder and robbery charges against Sean, stating “the passage of more than two and a half decades has seriously compromised our ability to prove it again.” On December 18th, the motion was granted and the murder and robbery charges against Sean were dismissed. The weapons convictions against him remained. In May of 2021, based on a motion by Suffolk County District Attorney Rachel Rollins, the convictions for the weapon charges were vacated. She then dismissed the charges.
After 21 years, 7 months, and 29 days in prison, 41-year-old Sean Ellis was exonerated. He was wrongfully charged with the murder at the age of 19.
Sean settled a lawsuit against the city of Boston for $16 million dollars in 2021, and he is now an incredible advocate against wrongful incarceration. He went from serving on the Board of Trustees of the New England Innocence Project to working for them full-time as the founder and director of the project’s Exoneree Network, that provides resources to others wrongfully convicted.
Image sources:
boston.com - “5 things to know about the Boston murder case at the center of a new Netflix documentary series”