Chapter 1: What happened during the Hardy murder investigation?
Last time on Ear Witness.
I believe I got a phone call from someone in the room saying they heard gunshots. Boom! Small caliber gun, it wasn't a big caliber. Boom! About the second time I said it, Ben went, that was a gun.
When you got a deafening sheriff killed over here, it's high profile. And people are expecting things out here.
Tavares Johnson, I remember he was pushing a Draco's 4 in the wheelchair. They came together. I had saw Tavares pushing a Draco's in the club. Me and one of my girlfriends, her name was Latonya, me and her and two guys were supposed to hook up that night. One is 21. They call him Dre. He's in a wheelchair.
Not only do you want somebody in custody... The captain is telling the lieutenant, we need to get this done. The sheriff is telling the captain, we need to get this done.
I didn't get a second hand. I was there. You were there. I was there when it went down. So what she's saying, she was there and I was there. That's a lie. That's a lie. That's a shame.
When police come looking for Ardragus Ford, his mom calls Richard Jaffe, who had helped them in the past.
Ardragus was in a wheelchair, as you know, and his mother brought him over to the lion's den, to the sheriff's department.
Jaffe's a trial lawyer, and he looks like one, but not in a slick way. He's slender in a rumpled suit with gray hair and glasses. The day Ardragus went to the sheriff's office for questioning, Jaffe is just beginning a trial in a different case. But before he goes to court that day, he gets a phone call from the sheriff's office.
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Chapter 2: How did tunnel vision affect the detectives' approach?
Certainly wasn't happy with me at all. And I said, what's going on? And he said, they were screaming at me, and they made me tell the story over and over and over again and even tell it backwards. And I said, well... This is an immunity agreement, maybe we should talk about it. And he reads it, and he said, so they want me to lie. He said, look, Mr. Jaffe, I wasn't there.
And I've got a dozen or more alibi witnesses that will testify to that. I know nothing about it, zero. I said, okay, well, they think that you're not a shooter, but you were there, and they think Tafaris is the shooter. And he looked at me and he said, listen, I'm not going to lie for anybody. Tafaris and I are close, but we're not that close. He's not family.
I would be happy to give Tafaris up in a heartbeat, except it would be a lie and I'm not going to lie. That never happens, even on a theft case, even on a possession of marijuana case, even on a hubcap case. Everybody flips, sadly enough, to save themselves. He said, no way, not going to lie. I said, all right, well, they're going to take you to jail.
They're going to wheel you to jail, and they're going to charge you with capital murder, which is a death penalty offense. And he goes, I wasn't there. Tell them to take me to jail. And they did.
The next day, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office announces formal charges in the murder of Deputy Bill Hardy.
Charged with capital murder of a law enforcement officer are 22-year-old Torforrest Johnson, 21-year-old Ardragus Ford, 23-year-old Oman Berry, and 21-year-old Quintez Wilson. They are held without bond.
All four people charged with capital murder are young black men. Based on the changing stories of Yolanda Chambers, detectives believe at least six people were in the parking lot behind the hotel when Hardy was shot. Yolanda and LaTanya, Taforest and Ardragus, and the two other people Yolanda identified in photos, Omar Berry and Quintez Wilson.
The headline in the Birmingham News reads, Police Confident They Got Right Men in Deputy Slaying. Sounds like an open and shut investigation. But pull back the curtain, or in this case, open up the investigative file, and the inner workings tell a different story.
Fierce
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Chapter 3: What choices were presented to Ardragus Ford by the police?
The time is 3.50 p.m. This is going to conclude this interview. In a lot of the interviews that you did in this case, you and Sergeant Salter presented a choice. You can be a witness or you can be a defendant. Tell me about that. presenting that to somebody that you're interviewing. That seems like a lot of pressure to put on someone.
Well, at certain times you have to put pressure on somebody. That's just a strategy. That's just an investigative tool.
That's nothing.
So I look at you and I say, look, you can either be a witness or you can be a defendant. It's up to you. And that's the truth. What if the person is neither a witness nor a defendant in the case, though?
Well... Sometimes you say that trying to determine if they're a witness or a defendant. You know, particularly if you don't know. And if they continue to maintain, I know nothing, at some point I'm going to say, OK, I got you.
But for LaTanya, there was never an OK, I got you from investigators. Even though she explains she doesn't know anything about the crime, detectives follow through with their threat and make her a defendant. One month after Tony Richardson questions LaTanya, the state charges her with hindering prosecution. In Alabama, that's a felony.
At 16 years old, police take LaTanya Henderson to adult jail, where she stays for five months.
You know, LaTanya Henderson, I mean, even if she had been there... Even if Yolanda's story was true, what's she a defendant on? You know, what has she done?
This is Derek Drennan, a lawyer who worked with Richard Jaffe in representing Ardragus Ford.
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Chapter 4: Why did LaTanya Henderson become a defendant?
The rumor around the drug scene was that a deputy was taken care of.
Is this the story of a man who just got lost in the desert? Or of a cover-up inside the nation's largest sheriff's department?
A homicide captain saying, "'Detective, do not find out if this guy's guilty or innocent.'" Who does that?
Do you have any advice for us while looking into this disappearance? I wouldn't do it alone.
Detectives are moving ahead with the theory of the crime that Yolanda Chambers gives them in her interrogations, even though the theory isn't supported by what hotel witnesses saw and heard the night of the murder. So what were detectives missing? What evidence was available?
And was there anything else they should have looked at but didn't because they decided to stick with Yolanda as their key witness? Let's back up to the moment Hardy was shot. We know officers began their investigation by talking to hotel guests, actual confirmed witnesses who were staying at the Crown-Sterling Suites.
Several people heard the shots and looked out their window right after it happened, like Marshall Kelly Cummings, the Keebler cookie guy.
Fallon is an interview with Mr. Marshall Kelly Cummings. Mr. Cummings is employed by Keebler.
This interview was recorded about two and a half hours after Hardy was shot. Cummings says he saw someone get into a car and drive away from the hotel right after he heard the shots fired.
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Chapter 5: What discrepancies arose from witness testimonies?
But detectives decide that Colvin isn't a witness. He's a defendant. As I dig deeper, I learn that Detective Tony Richardson and Leon Colvin are cousins. And in the first week of the investigation, Richardson decides that Colvin is hiding something
We have talked with several people.
People we have talked to have indicated that you do know more.
Colvin gives detectives multiple statements about what he heard and saw, and Tony Richardson interrogates him for hours about his movements inside the hotel the night of the murder, insisting that Colvin was involved.
If you tell us one thing, and it's not accurate,
We know that you know different. And you can be charged with the crime, okay? Just so you know.
Tony Richardson shows Yolanda Chambers four photos of possible suspects. Yolanda picks out the photo of Leon Colvin and says he was involved in the alleged drug deal behind the hotel when Hardy was killed.
The people that picked you out of that lineup said you were standing right there when the man was shot. I wouldn't doubt it.
Leon Colvin is charged with hindering prosecution and taken to jail.
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Chapter 6: How did detectives handle the alibi witnesses?
And I found eight different tips urging detectives to look into Hardy's personal life. These tips suggest that someone Hardy knew might be connected to his murder. I asked Detective Tony Richardson about this. Is there anything that you recall y'all investigating as far as that goes?
I don't recall that. or recall us investigating anything, I'll say right now that I wouldn't have. I mean, I'm investigating a police officer that's dead. He's been shot and killed. It don't matter what, you know, he did, if somebody walked up to him and shot him like that.
My producer Mara presses him.
Like, the first thing to me if I hear that somebody is killed is, I would look at their life for a motive instead of assuming that it was random. Is that not where you would start?
You know, I can explain it like this.
When Hardy was shot, he was in uniform working a part-time security job, still a sheriff's deputy now, doing his job.
And he was shot and killed. Okay. If he had been at home in his pajamas, shot and killed, in bed, we would have looked at him because that's what you do. Because Deputy Hardy was a police officer and was killed in uniform, not in his own bed wearing pajamas, Detective Richardson says he wouldn't have looked into people that knew Hardy.
Instead, Richardson repeats the theory that Hardy walked up on a drug deal that he wasn't supposed to see, and that's why he was killed.
An insider that I talked to, a retired bailiff who worked in Jefferson County when Deputy Hardy was murdered, told me that this theory about a police officer interrupting a drug deal, it's like a default explanation when detectives don't have any idea what happened. The sheriff first mentioned this scenario hours after the murder, and the media ran with it.
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Chapter 7: What were the implications of Yolanda Chambers' changing story?
But no one never contacted me, so I felt like as far as needed me, that someone would reach out. I had no knowledge of what to do.
Ardragus and Taforest told police about multiple people they were with at T's. The bartender, who remade a weak drink. The guy who sold Taforest a hot dog outside the club. And the girls they chatted with in the parking lot. Taforest also gave Tony Richardson the names and phone numbers of friends he remembered seeing inside the club.
One female name is Queecy. Queecy.
Including Queecy and Mama Cat.
One female name is Mama Cat. Her number is 785.
785. Tafaris couldn't give us any names other than nicknames or maybe a first name. There was no way that we could find a witness.
But we sat and we waited, hoping that, you know... Who don't know that DeForest is in jail for this crime? Maybe they'll come forward.
Not a single one. Nobody came forward to say, hey, you got the wrong guy. He was at the club.
Not a single person came forward to say DeForest was at T's place the night of the murder? After Tony Richardson tells me this, I look through the investigative file to double-check.
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Chapter 8: What unresolved questions remain about Deputy Hardy's murder?
Two weeks after she says Omar Berry and Quintez Wilson have nothing to do with the crime, Yolanda Chambers pivots and says under oath that she's made up the entire story about the murder. She recants all of her testimony, now saying Taforist and Ardregas also had nothing to do with the murder.
Evidence-wise...
We didn't have virtually, well, we had virtually no evidence. We had the word of a 15-year-old who told lies, a lot of lies.
I've lied, I've lied, I've lied.
We had this table empty, wasn't nothing on it. And we were still trying to try that case. And we were like, man, what are we going to do? How are we going to win this case?
But investigators have someone else, someone they hadn't initially believed, someone who will become the state's new star witness against Taforrest Johnson.
That's next time.
Ear Witness is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company No. 1. Executive producers are Jason Flom, Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wardus, and me, Beth Shelburne. The investigative reporting for this series was done by me and Mara McNamara. Producers are Mara McNamara, Hannah Beal, and Jackie Pauley. Kara Kornhaber is our senior producer.
Britt Spangler is our sound designer. Additional story editing from Marie Sutton. Fact check help from Catherine Newhand. And special thanks to Taforest Johnson's legal defense team. You can follow the show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter at Lava for Good. To see behind the scenes content from our investigation, visit lavaforgood.com slash earwitness.
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