Kevin Bailey

The Crime

At 2:15 p.m. on June 1, 1989, the body of 69-year-old Lula Mae Woods, the wife of a retired Chicago police officer, was found on the floor of her open garage on the south side of Chicago, Illinois. She had been stabbed to death and her purse was missing.

Ms. Woods had been seen 30 minutes earlier when she deposited a check at a nearby bank and withdrew $100. Near her body, police found two sets of keys, a bloody towel, and the strap of her purse, which had apparently been cut off. Under her body was a Domino’s Pizza hat.

A 6-inch serrated steak knife, believed to be the murder weapon, was found on the sidewalk nearby, but had little evidentiary value as it was raining.

The Investigation

Police recovered two strands of hair on the bloody towel and a single hair on the hat. They believed the hat had been left by the perpetrator. Ms. Woods’s purse was found three hours later in a garbage can a block away. They recovered her bankbook, deposit slips, a check register, and other items. No money was found. Seven fingerprints were recovered from the items.

A few days later, police arrested Larry Johnson on unrelated charges. Mr. Johnson told detectives that he had overheard an argument between 19-year-old Corey Batchelor and his brother, Tony. Mr. Johnson said he heard Tony tell Corey, “Man, you shouldn’t have gone in that lady’s purse.” Mr. Johnson also told police that Emil Batchelor, father of Corey and Tony, “knew” that Corey was involved in the murder.

As a result, on June 6, 1989, detectives picked up Mr. Batchelor and put him in an interrogation room where he spent the next 27 hours.

For the first 24 hours, Mr. Batchelor later said, he did not receive his Miranda warning, although detectives questioned him repeatedly. He denied any involvement in the crime. At one point, he mentioned that he had been at a park with a friend, 19-year-old Kevin Bailey, and they found $50 in cash on the ground. Based on that statement, detectives arrested Mr. Bailey on June 7.

By the end of that day, Mr. Bailey and Mr. Batchelor both had given confessions to a court reporter. Although the confessions were inconsistent in many significant details, both said that Mr. Bailey had stabbed Ms. Woods to death and that they took her purse.

Both men were charged with first-degree murder, armed robbery, and burglary.

Mr. Bailey and Mr. Batchelor insisted that the confessions were false and the product of repeated beatings by the detectives. Mr. Batchelor said he was kicked, punched, and choked. The detectives, he stated, “started telling me I was lying and things like this, and one of them just began to kick me…one of them choking-hit my head against the wall.”

Mr. Batchelor said that detectives told him that he would be protected from the beatings if he just confessed and implicated Mr. Bailey. 

By that time, detectives were also interrogating Mr. Bailey. He later testified that he was being similarly beaten because he insisted he was not involved in the crime. Both men said the detectives fed them the details of the crime. 

Comparative hair analysis excluded them as the source of the three hairs. Police said that none of the fingerprints belonged to either Mr. Bailey or Mr. Batchelor. The only evidence linking them to the crime was their confessions.

The Trial

In October 1990, Mr. Bailey went to trial in Cook County Circuit Court. Mr. Bailey did not testify, and detectives told the jury that Mr. Bailey spontaneously confessed halfway through a polygraph examination, saying that Mr. Batchelor killed Ms. Woods. The detectives said that when Mr. Bailey was asked how he did it, he raised his left hand above his shoulder. Because the detectives knew Mr. Batchelor was right-handed, they concluded that Mr. Bailey had stabbed her. The detectives denied physically abusing Mr. Bailey.

On Oct. 18, 1990, the jury convicted Mr. Bailey of first-degree murder, armed robbery, and burglary. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison.

Mr. Batchelor went to trial in Cook County Circuit Court in April 1991, and chose to have his case decided by a judge without a jury. Mr. Batchelor testified in detail about the physical abuse inflicted on him and said one detective had threatened to kill him. The judge convicted Mr. Batchelor of first-degree murder, armed robbery, and burglary, and sentenced him to 30 years in prison.

In August 2004, Mr. Batchelor was released from prison on parole. By then, both men had filed numerous appeals and post-conviction motions for new trials, but all were unsuccessful.

The Exoneration

In 2006, the Innocence Project took up Mr. Bailey’s case and sought DNA testing of the evidence. The testing excluded Mr. Bailey, Mr. Batchelor, and Ms. Woods as the source of the hair found on the Domino’s pizza hat, and confirmed that the hair came from a man.

Similarly, the testing excluded Mr. Bailey, Mr. Batchelor, and Ms. Woods as the source of the two hairs found on the bloody towel.

DNA tests performed on swabs that had been taken from the purse revealed a mixture of DNA from two males. Mr. Bailey and Mr. Batchelor were excluded as the source of the DNA.

Lawyers for the Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago Law School, the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth at Northwestern University School of Law, and the People’s Law Office joined the Innocence Project to file a petition for a new trial on behalf of Mr. Bailey and Mr. Batchelor based on the DNA test results.

By that time, allegations of torture involving scores of defendants, including Mr. Bailey and Mr. Batchelor, had been made against Chicago Police Lt. Jon Burge and detectives under his command. The petition for a new trial detailed the evidence of the widespread and systemic use of torture by detectives, including those who interrogated Mr. Bailey and Mr. Batchelor. 

In 2017, following a hearing held to address the DNA test results, Cook County Circuit Court Judge Alfredo Maldonado ruled that the new evidence was insufficient to overturn the convictions. However, after a further review of the case by the prosecution, on Jan. 30, 2018, Judge Maldonado granted the prosecution’s motion to vacate the convictions. 

The charges were dismissed and Mr. Bailey was released more than 27 years after his conviction.

In January 2022, Mr. Bailey and Mr. Batchelor settled a wrongful conviction lawsuit with the city of Chicago for $14 million.