On May 11, 1978, 28-year-old Lawrence Lionberg (who was working a night shift at a Homewood, Illinois, gas station) and his 23-year-old fiancé Carol Schmal were kidnapped.
The police did not inform the defense that a witness, Marvin Simpson, heard shots and identified four men running from the murder scene - Arthur Robinson, Juan Rodriguez, Ira and Dennis Johnson (these four were later found to be the real killers).
[6] On appeal, the Supreme Court of Illinois reversed the convictions of Williams and Rainge in 1982 because the defendants' lawyer was incompetent and was the subject of a legal disciplinary hearing.
Prosecutors offered Paula Gray a deal to get out of jail if she testified she had seen Jimerson, Williams and Rainge shoot the victims and rape Schmal and she accepted.
[6] Three female students (including Laura Sullivan who is now an award-winning investigative correspondent for NPR) working under Professor David Protess of the Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism investigated this case and found the Marvin Simpson witness statement testifying to seeing Robinson, Rodriguez, Ira and Dennis Johnson fleeing from the murder scene.
[11] The Ford Heights Four received $36 million in 1999 in civil rights damages from Cook County - the largest settlement in US history at the time.
[13] George Ryan, the Governor of Illinois, declared a moratorium on the state's death penalty in 2000 citing the Ford Heights Four as one example of men who would have been executed if it had not been for the unpaid work of the Northwestern University journalism professors and students.