Rodney Lincoln FREED After Spending 36 Years in Prison
By Bill Clutter
“I’d rather be living life than doing life,” said Rodney Lee Lincoln, a distant relative of Abraham Lincoln. On the hot August day that I visited him at his daughter’s home in St. Louis, with my son Keagan Clutter, Lincoln was celebrating his 74th birthday. He spent 36 birthdays behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit. My son Keagan, who followed in my footsteps as a criminal defense investigator, conducted a crucial interview that helped demonstrate Mr. Lincoln’s innocence.
Our organization, Investigating Innocence, began working on Lincoln’s case in the Fall of 2014, after I was contacted by his daughter, Kay Lincoln. She read an affidavit that I filed with the Illinois Prisoner Review Board that described how serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells killed his other victims. Sells was executed in Texas earlier that year, in April of 2014. In the 10 years that I served as director of investigations for what is now the Illinois Innocence Project, two people we helped free, Julie Rea and Herb Whitlock, served time in prison for crimes that were committed by Sells.
My investigation of Sells in the Rea case involved a mother who was charged and convicted of killing her 10-year-old son on Oct. 13, 1997, in Lawrenceville, Illinois. She claimed an intruder broke into her home at 4 a.m., using a knife from her kitchen to kill her only child. My interviews of witnesses, that I videotaped, convinced Texas ranger, John Allen, who investigated Sells in his many other crimes, to sign an affidavit in support of Rea’s petition for a new trial. The case of Herb Whitlock involved the Paris, Illinois murders of a newlywed couple who were found stabbed to death in July 1986. A knife from the kitchen was used by the killer in that case, and a neighbor heard screams of a dying woman at 4 a.m.
Kay Lincoln was struck by the similarity of the murder in her father’s case with the other crimes Sells was known to commit. In the Del Rio case, a brutal murder of a child, Kaylene Harris, at 4 a.m., an intruder broke into the trailer where she was sleeping, took a knife from the kitchen, and left two girls for dead. One survived, which led to Sells’ arrest and death sentence in Texas.
There was one other detail that stood out in my affidavit. Sells had sexually assaulted one of his victims who had given birth, who was eight-months pregnant, with a baseball bat that was found protruding from her birth canal when police discovered the grisly crime scene in Ina, Illinois, in Nov. 1987. Sells’ confession to that crime was corroborated by Texas Rangers based on details he provided that were not publicly known. The murder victim in Lincoln’s case was stabbed to death with a knife from her own kitchen by an intruder. Neighbors living above the ground floor apartment heard a commotion below at 4 a.m. But the detail that stood out the most for Kay Lincoln was that the sexual assault the perpetrator inflicted on the victim involved using a broom handle. When police arrived, the corn bristles of the broom protruded from the victim’s anus. The similarity with the Ina murder victim was shockingly obvious.
After getting the call from Kay, I enlisted the help of my son, Keagan, who works for the Madison County Public Defender’s office in Edwardsville, Illinois. I asked Keagan to interview Tim Sells, the brother of Tommy. Keagan’s interview confirmed that Sells, then 17 years old, had moved from Arkansas with his family to St. Louis right before JoAnne Tate, 35, was murdered in her St. Louis home in April of 1982. My son’s investigation placed the notorious serial killer in St. Louis at the time of the murder. By the time I was contacted, the Midwest Innocence Project, based in Kansas City, had conducted mitochondrial DNA testing of a pubic hair that was said to be microscopically similar to Rodney Lincoln when he was tried three decades earlier. In 2010, the DNA test excluded Lincoln as the source of the pubic hair.
This new forensic testing refuted the testimony of a Missouri State Police crime lab analyst who claimed Lincoln’s hair was microscopically similar to a public hair that was found at the crime scene. Many innocent people have been convicted based on the inexact and faulty “science” of microscopic hair comparison testimony, resulting in the FBI to recently review past cases where such testimony led to convictions. More than 70 percent of the DNA exonerations involve mistaken eye-witness testimony. Nevertheless, a judge denied Lincoln’s petition to vacate his conviction, citing the testimony of surviving victim, Melissa DeBoer, whose throat was slit, a seven-year-old child who witnessed the horrific murder of her mother. Her fouryear-old sister, who later died of cancer, also survived after being left for dead.
A jury relied on Melissa’s eye-witness testimony that was arguably corroborated by “science” (the pubic hair), in convicting Lincoln in 1983. A first trial ended with a hung jury, unable to reach a guilty verdict. Residual doubt among the jurists in feeling less than certain in Lincoln’s guilt is the one thing that saved Lincoln from a death sentence. Instead, he was sentenced to life behind bars. When I contacted the Midwest Innocence Project and offered to help, they didn’t seem interested in pursuing Tommy Lynn Sells as a suspect. They had their own alternate suspect they were investigating. In the summer of 2015, a dramatic turn of events occurred after I was contacted by film producer Ron Zimmerman, who came across our website Investigating Innocence. Zimmerman was working for a new TV syndicated series called Crime Watch Daily.
True crime writer Diane Fanning told Zimmerman about my investigation on the Lincoln case. Fanning’s first book was Through the Window: The Terrify True Story of CrossCountry Killer Tommy Lynn Sells. Ron immersed himself in the details of the case and began filming the story that would eventually lead to Rodney Lincoln’s release from prison. The first story on Crime Watch Daily aired in Nov. 2015. A defiant Melissa DeBoer was interviewed. She insisted Lincoln was guilty. In contrast, my interview detailed the evidence that pointed to Tommy Lynn Sells as the person who killed her mother. A testament to the power of the media, the program triggered the truth to come out. Melissa had a visceral reaction of seeing the face of the killer, Tommy Lynn Sells. On Nov. 28, 2015, Melissa, who had despised Kay Lincoln for advocating on Twitter and Facebook that her father was innocent, used social media to reach out to Kay Lincoln and the family of Rodney Lincoln.
Melissa DeBoer meets Rodney Lincoln during a prison interview with Crime Watch Daily in 2015. Her testimony as a child mistakenly identified him as the killer of her mother. She realized her mistake after seeing Tommy Lynn Sells in the first program that aired.
Posting on Facebook, Melissa announced, “Rodney Lincoln did not kill my mom. He did not attempt to kill my sister and I; It was Tommy Lynn Sells. I have kept an innocent person in prison for 34 years. I did not know I was wrong, but I was and realizing it is so painful. When I saw a picture of Tommy Lynn Sells, I had a horrible, horrible feeling.” I traveled to Pittsburg where DeBoer now lives and interviewed her for an affidavit that I provided to the Midwest Innocence Project. Zimmerman flew DeBoer to St. Louis, where she met Kay Lincoln and the two became friends. She met with the St. Louis Circuit Attorney, Jennifer Joyce, in early Dec. of 2015 and pleaded for Lincoln’s release. The next day, with cameras filming the dramatic meeting, DeBoer went to the prison in Jefferson City and had an emotional meeting with Rodney Lincoln, asking him to forgive her. Lincoln assured her he didn’t blame her. “You were just a child,” he said.
The prosecutor, Jennifer Joyce, however, would not budge, and refused to free Lincoln. The Midwest Innocence Project filed a motion to vacate the conviction based on DeBoer’s recantation. The prosecutor filed a response, claiming Sells was in jail at the time of murder.
To support the claim, the prosecutor attached with the pleading a copy of a book that said Sells had been arrested in Arkansas and sentenced to a juvenile facility weeks before the murder in early April of 1982. early April of 1982. “Bill Clutter suggested that we at Crime Watch Daily hire a private investigator in Little Rock to find out definitely if Tommy Lynn Sells was in fact in jail in Arkansas,” said Zimmerman. “So, we engaged Michael West of Arkansas Investigations.” West found court documents that showed Sells had been arrested in Little Rock for breaking his girlfriend’s window while drunk, then arrested again a few days later in Paragould, Arkansas, for stealing a GMC Jimmy from behind a fraternity house,” said Zimmerman. Sells wrecked the stolen truck and ran away from the scene, barefooted, he was caught by police. On April 6, 1982, still without shoes, he was brought before a judge. His was appointed a public defender and released on bail.
“On April 14, 1982, Sells was given a suspended sentence under the condition that he pay $100 restitution and serve two months in a county home for wayward youth. This is where the story gets even more interesting,” said Zimmerman. “No written record says Tommy was there at the juvenile center.” West interviewed six staffers at the youth home. None of them could recall Tommy Lynn Sells ever being there. Based on the interviews West conducted, the usual procedure was for the convicted youth-offender to self-report. Court officials told West, back then the procedure was, a youth upon being sentenced by a judge is free to walk out of the courtroom.
Zimmerman stated, “Tommy told the court he was on his way home and reported that his brother and his family all lived in St. Louis.” Less than two weeks later, on April 27, 1982, JoAnne Tate was murdered, and her two girls, ages 7 and 4, had their throats slit, but somehow survived. West’s investigation and affidavit was presented in a petition filed by the Midwest Innocence Project, in response to the prosecutor’s assertion that Sells was in custody. His investigation corroborated the interview that my son Keagan conducted of Sells’ brother. West owns UCMJ Investigations, a company that focuses on providing investigative defense services to military members and veterans. This was not his first case investigating an inmate who claimed to be innocent.
The Innocence Project, based in New York, earlier had hired him to locate evidence under a court order. “We found the evidence in that case that they said didn’t exist,” said West. “I look at these cases as challenges more than anything,” he said. An evidentiary hearing was held in 2016, but the judge denied the petition, siding with the State. Prosecutor Joyce’s refusal to have an open mind went against the grain of recent trends, whereby conviction integrity units have been established within the offices of prosecutors throughout the country to objectively evaluate wrongful convictions and to take affirmative steps to right injustices that have occurred in the past. It came as no surprise that local courts, even when confronted with convincing evidence of a person’s innocence, so often fail to seek justice in cases like Lincoln’s. Two more years would pass before Lincoln would come home to his family. Ironically, it was the election of a new prosecutor in St. Louis in November 2016, Kim Gardner, the first African American elected as St. Louis Circuit Attorney, that paved the way for Lincoln’s release.
It was a political sex-scandal that made it possible. After the media reported that Missouri Governor Greitens threatened to blackmail a woman with whom he had an extra-marital affair, the new prosecutor, Kim Gardner, charged Governor Greitens with a felony that ended his political career. He violated the law when he blindfolded the woman, tied her up naked, and took her photo with a cell phone, and threatened to release the photo if she ever told anyone of the affair.
On his last day in office, agreeing to resign in exchange for a plea deal that spared him from going to prison, Greitens commuted the life sentence of Rodney Lincoln, setting him free. Regardless of how it happened, Lincoln was happy to be home on the day my son, Keagan, and I visited him. I was in the area visiting my son and gave Rodney a call. Coincidently, it happened to be his birthday. While we were visiting, Rodney’s two daughters, Kay and Janie, were busy preparing for a family cookout. An old friend Rodney had known as a child stopped by the house to wish him Happy Birthday. Then came a call from Melissa DeBoer. His face was lit up with joy, talking with the woman who helped convince a Governor to set him free. “I love you, too,” said Rodney. It was a day that my son and I will remember for the rest of our lives. “It was great to finally meet Rodney Lincoln and to know that my work helped free an innocent man,” said Keagan.
It is easy for us, who have never experienced being confined to a prison cell, to take for granted the small pleasures of life like a party celebrating one’s birth. Blowing out candles on a birthday cake surrounded by family and friends, was something he hadn’t experienced for such a long time. When you ask him how long he spent in prison, without hesitation, he will tell you, “Thirty-six years, ten days,” when I recently spoke to him on the phone. At age 74, Rodney Lincoln is making up for lost time, enjoying the outdoors, fishing with his son Rod Lincoln, his namesake, and connecting with old friends. In September 2018, Rodney went skydiving for the first time in his life, and is planning his next adventure, making the most of the remaining days he has left on Earth.
In 2001, private investigator Bill Clutter started what is now the Illinois Innocence Project, the first undergraduate program in the nation. After moving to Louisville, in Feb. 2013, Clutter started a new national organization of private investigators called Investigating Innocence. The Rodney Lincoln case is the Project’s third exoneration.
