On September 14, 2020, 55-year-old Robert DuBoise was cleared of a 1983 killing in Tampa, Florida, almost 37 years after he was arrested for a crime he did not perpetrate.
At 8 a m on August 19, 1983, the body of 19-year-old Barbara Grams was found outside a dental office on North Boulevard in the Tampa Heights neighbourhood of Tampa, Florida.
She was naked except for a tube top that had been yanked below her chest. She had been beaten about her face, and she was clad in blood from scrapes and tears on her neck. She also had bruises on her limbs that appeared to have been made by the force of her attacker’s fingers.
Ms Grams worked at the Hot Potato Restaurant in a shopping centre approximately two miles from where her body was found.
A co-worker told police that she and Ms Grams had closed up just after 9 p m the night before. Ms Grams lived not far from where her body was discovered, and she frequently walked home along busy Buffalo Avenue.
Two friends told investigators they saw Ms Grams walking along North Boulevard at 9:30 p m., just a few blocks from her house, but by then several blocks south of the dental office.
That led police to think that she might have decided to get a pack of cigarettes at one of the convenience stores clustered at the corner of Buffalo Avenue and North Boulevard.
At the crime scene, the police discovered several pieces of two-by-four wood with blood and hair attached.
Police thought these were the murder weapons.
Detective Philip Saladino, the lead investigator, also noticed a white circle on a finger on Ms Grams’ left hand that appeared to be a ring mark.
No ring was discovered, and witnesses would later give inconsistent statements about what kind of ring Ms Grams wore and whether Ms Grams was wearing a ring on the night she was killed. Police also gathered fingerprints from a nearby air conditioner and from Ms Grams’ wallet.
Dr Lee Miller, the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner, conducted the autopsy on August 20. He concluded that Ms Grams had died from blunt force trauma to the head, most probably about 11:30 p m on August 18.
He gathered materials for a rape kit, as well as hair, blood and fingernail scrapings. In addition, he collected vaginal samples of what he called a “white fluid.”
Dr Miller would later testify that he noticed what he believed to be a bite mark on Ms Grams’ left cheek as he was washing the blood from the young woman’s face. He stopped his washing and then swabbed the area with a saline solution to potentially collect saliva that might have been left by her attacker.
Dr Miller called Dr Richard Powell, a local dentist who had been listed as a forensic odontologist by Dr Miller’s office, although Dr Powell was not certified in this speciality.
This would be Dr Powell’s first consultation in a criminal case.
Dr Powell took a Polaroid photo of the mark and told Dr Miller that it might be from someone missing upper front teeth, specifically a left front incisor. Dr Powell said he could see tear marks in the skin. He opined that the six lower teeth of the person who left the bite mark had no gaps.
A few days later, Dr Miller removed a section of Ms Grams’ cheek and put it in formaldehyde, which caused the tissue to shrink by almost 10 per cent.
Tampa police reached out to Dr Richard Souviron, a dentist in Coral Gables, Florida, who was a top forensic odontologist. Dr Souviron advised Detective Saladino to use beeswax to make bite mark impressions from possible suspects.
These moulds would then be filled with a composite to make a hard cast that could be compared against the photo of Ms Grams’ cheek.
As part of this process, the original beeswax mould was destroyed.
Detective Saladino had access to beeswax because a police captain was a beekeeper. One report would later say that Detective Saladino and other officers might have made as many as 100 beeswax moulds from possible suspects.
Dr Souviron came to Tampa on September 8, 1983, and examined the tissue that Dr Miller had preserved. Like Dr Powell, Dr Souviron said police should look for a suspect with a missing tooth, a large gap between his teeth or a tooth turned to the side.
Very early in the investigation, Detective Saladino spoke with a woman who had worked at a convenience store near the dental office for a few weeks in February 1983. She didn’t recognise Ms Grams, but she told Detective Saladino about several people who “caused problems” at the store. She knew their names only as “Ray, Robert and Bo,” but she led the police toward a nearby house. It was vacant, but there was mail in the mailbox addressed to several people named “DuBoise.”
A records check of that name turned up brothers Victor and Robert DuBoise. Robert was then 18 years old. He had two convictions for minor non-violent offences and was on probation.
On September 25, Detective Saladino met with Robert DuBoise. Mr DuBoise said he had heard Detective Saladino was trying to take bite mark impressions from everyone. He said he had “nothing to hide” and could prove that “he wasn’t the guy who bit that girl.”
Mr DuBoise’s parents told Detective Saladino that they believed both Robert and Victor were home on August 18, but that if they had gone out, it was to go look for their sister, who was reported missing on August 16.
Mr DuBoise had no gaps in his upper or lower rows of teeth and agreed to give Detective Saladino a dental impression.
Dr Souviron received Mr DuBoise’s cast from a beeswax mould in mid-October, and he told Detective Saladino that Mr DuBoise made the bite mark found on Ms Grams.
On October 22, 1983, an officer found Mr DuBoise at the Peter Pan Motel and told him that Detective Saladino needed to speak with him. Mr DuBoise arrived at the police station, was then arrested, and charged with murder and attempted sexual battery.
On October 23, Dr Powell made a second mould of Mr DuBoise’s teeth, this time using a sturdier substance than beeswax. It was sent to Dr Souviron, who again said it was his opinion that Mr DuBoise had bitten Ms Grams and left the mark on her cheek.
At the time of Mr DuBoise’s arrest, a man named Claude Butler was also in the Hillsborough County Jail, charged with kidnapping and armed robbery, plus other charges for probation violation and assault on a law enforcement officer. If convicted, he faced a possibility of two life sentences. Both Mr Butler and Mr DuBoise had psychiatric problems, and they were both placed in the area of the jail for prisoners with a mental illness.
In November 1983, Mr Butler approached Detective John Counsman, to whom he had supplied information in the past.
Detective Counsman introduced Mr Butler to Detective Saladino, and in January 1984, Mr Butler told Detective Saladino that Mr DuBoise had confessed that he, his brother Victor DuBoise, and a friend named Raymond Garcia had raped and murdered Ms Grams after she resisted when they tried to rob her.
Victor and Mr Garcia were never charged. After giving a statement to an assistant prosecutor on April 19, 1984. Mr Butler pleaded guilty to his own charges on May 14. He was sentenced to five years in prison.
A second witness, Joanne Suarez, told police that Mr DuBoise had said to her in August 1983 that he had killed someone. Ms Suarez also said that she might have seen Mr DuBoise with a ring similar to one worn by Ms Grams.
On February 25, 1985, Mr DuBoise went to trial in Hillsborough County Circuit Court. Just 12 days earlier, another prosecution witness had emerged.
Jack Andrusckiewiecz told police that he was living at the Peter Pan Motel at the time Mr DuBoise was arrested. A few days before the arrest, Mr Andrusckiewiecz said that he had seen Mr DuBoise at a party and that Mr DuBoise had said that he was wanted for murder.
Dr Souviron testified that Mr DuBoise made the bite mark to a “reasonable degree of dental certainty.” During cross-examination, Dr Souviron acknowledged that, at a police chief’s conference in November 1984, he had declared, “If you tell me that is the guy that did it, I will go into court and say that that is the guy that did it.”
Dr Norman Sperber, who was chairman of the bitemark guideline committee for the American Board of Forensic Odontology, testified for the defence that Mr DuBoise should be excluded as the source of the bite mark because there were too many inconsistencies between his teeth and the bite mark allegedly found on Ms Grams’ cheek.
No other forensic evidence linked Mr DuBoise to the crime scene. He, his brother, and Mr Garcia were all excluded as the source of the fingerprints collected from the air conditioner and Ms Grams’ wallet.
Mr Butler swore that Mr DuBoise had admitted his involvement, saying that he, Mr Garcia and Victor were trying to rob Ms Grams, but she fought back and then yelled out Mr Garcia’s name. (A later investigation would show Ms Grams and Mr Garcia had no connection.)
Mr Butler said Mr DuBoise told him that they forced Ms Grams into a car, drove around, then raped her and killed her.
Mr DuBoise’s attorney tried to discredit Mr Butler, presenting evidence of a wide range of psychiatric medicines Mr Butler was taking while in jail.
Detective Saladino swore that he had never met Mr Butler before Detective Counsman made the introduction. That was not true. A year earlier, Detective Saladino had been part of a sting operation that arrested Mr Butler for burglary and related charges.
Mr Andrusckiewiecz testified about his conversation with Mr DuBoise. At the time of the trial, Mr Andrusckiewicz was also preparing to be a prosecution witness in another murder trial, a case where there was the possibility for him to be charged as an accessory.
He was working closely with the State Attorney’s Office on that case, and his emergence as a witness in Mr DuBoise’s trial came through prosecutors rather than a police investigation. This was not disclosed at trial, and he was never charged in connection with that separate murder.
Ms Suarez gave little testimony. She could not remember much of the events and said she suffered from a traumatic brain injury.
Mr DuBoise did not testify. His mother did and provided an alibi for the night of the murder.
During closing arguments, prosecutor Mark Alan Ober pointed to the strength of the forensic evidence and also vouched for Mr Butler’s credibility, telling jurors that Mr Butler had “received nothing” for his testimony.
On March 7, 1985, Mr DuBoise was convicted of capital murder and attempted sexual battery. The jury recommended a life sentence, but Judge Harry Lee Coe III overrode that recommendation and sentenced Mr DuBoise to death.
However, now, after 37 years in prison, Robert DuBoise is suing for his unlawful conviction, claiming that officers conspired with a forensic dentist to put him in jail using unreliable beeswax moulds.
Robert DuBoise, 56, was freed from prison in August 2020 after long-shelved, untested DNA evidence from a rape kit proved he was innocent of the killing of 19-year-old Barbara Grams in Tampa.
To be honest, the dentist and officers belong in prison because I can’t imagine what it must have been like for the poor guy – being charged with something that he didn’t do, and then to be given the death sentence.
The people who caused this man to lose his whole life should be held accountable for their actions. He was in jail for 37 years; no money in the world can buy him back that time, but now he should not have to stress about getting a job or a home to live in. Perhaps now, he can travel and have a life, even a family.
This man was well and truly fitted up, and whoever did this should be in prison because this is sad, and his family never actually got real justice, plus the monster or monsters that did this got away with the crime, and that is just devastating. I just hope that the actual killer is reading this, dreading the day when there is a knock on his door, and honestly, it can’t come soon enough.
I also suspect that after his experience in prison, his life will be permanently changed, and he will probably never view or experience life as a ‘normal’ human being, and what happened will torment him for the rest of his life, but sadly, this is what happens when investigators are more interested in closing a case than solving a case.
Imagine how scared this teenager must have been going to prison for a crime he did not commit – his life was over, and what’s even more tragic is that the public believed he did it and that he was some vile beast, and even though he has been exonerated, this will follow him for the rest of his life, because mud sticks. What they should be doing now is giving him a new name, a new passport, a new life somewhere of his choice so that he can get on with what is left of his life.
AND THIS IS WHY I DON’T AGREE WITH THE DEATH PENALTY, WHATEVER THE CRIME, because people get fitted up, and evidence vanishes – they say it’s an exact science, but it’s not!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 