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In the Dark

Factual: Crime & Justice: True Crime

How can one man be tried six times for the same crime?

Curtis Flowers has been tried six times for the same crime. For more than 22 years, he’s maintained his innocence, winning appeal after appeal. But every time Flowers’ conviction has been reversed, the prosecutor tried the case again. Reporters from American Public Media spent two years investigating the Flowers case to find out what the evidence really shows, and why the same prosecutor has tried the case again and again.

In the Dark: The gun

Factual: Crime & Justice

10/08/2019 GMT

The gun

BBC World Service - In the Dark, The gun

The gun used was never found, but it became a key piece of evidence

The gun used in the killings at Tardy Furniture was never found. But it nonetheless became a key piece of evidence against Curtis Flowers.

Investigators never found the gun used to kill four people at Tardy Furniture. Yet the missing gun, and the bullets matched to it, became a key piece of evidence against Curtis Flowers. In this episode, we examine the story behind the gun prosecutors believe was the murder weapon.

Back in 1996, on the morning of the murders at Tardy Furniture in the small town of Winona, Mississippi, a man named Doyle Simpson told people that someone had just stolen his gun: a .380-caliber pistol. It wasn’t long before investigators got in touch with Doyle. His stolen gun was the same type of gun that had been used in the murders.  

Investigators didn’t have the weapon, but they claimed to have matched the bullets from the crime scene to other bullets fired from Doyle’s gun.  A firearms examiner who testified at Curtis Flowers’ trial said the bullets were a 100 percent match. But the science they used to make this claim isn’t science at all.  


Hosted and narrated by Madeleine Baran.

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