Roy Brown

The Crime

In the early morning of May 23, 1991, firefighters were called to a farmhouse near Aurelius, New York. Around 3 a.m., more than an hour after firefighters arrived, the body of 49-year-old Sabina Kulakowski, a social worker, was discovered about 300 yards from the house. 

The Investigation 

The evidence suggested that Ms. Kulakowski had engaged in a struggle for her life that left her with multiple injuries and defensive wounds. Her assailant had viciously assaulted her, covering her body with bite marks. Investigators believed that because the house had not been robbed and the victim had not been raped, the motive was personal.

Ms. Kulakowski’s nightshirt was found near her body. Chemical tests revealed several stains of blood and saliva. The blood from the nightshirt was tested, and the bite marks on her body were swabbed. The results of both were inconclusive. The coroner’s report stated that the farmhouse had been set ablaze, and Ms. Kulakowski had been dragged 300 yards away in the nightshirt, where she died of stab wounds and strangulation. 

A day later, investigators began collecting statements. Four statements concerned a volunteer firefighter named Barry Bench, who had been acting strangely the evening before Ms. Kulakowski’s body was discovered. His brother, Ronald Bench, had been Ms. Kulakowski’s partner of 17 years. The couple had lived together in the farmhouse, which the Bench family owned, until they had separated two months prior to Ms. Kulakowski’s death. 

Police then questioned Barry Bench’s girlfriend, Tamara Heisner, as well as the fire dispatcher, the dispatcher’s wife, and a neighbor about Barry’s actions on the night of the murder.

Ms. Heisner explained that she and Barry had gotten into a fight around 5 p.m. on the night of the murder. Barry had then left the house and gone to a bar before returning home, highly intoxicated, around 1:30 or 1:45 a.m. This was about the same time that Ms. Kulakowski’s neighbors began calling 911 about a fire at the farmhouse. Barry was believed to have left the bar around 12:30 a.m., which left a gap of 60 to 75 minutes during which his whereabouts were unaccounted for. 

The bar was one mile away from his house. Ms. Heisner told police that when Barry had come home, he had immediately gone inside to “wash up” and then turned off his fire monitor before going to bed. After the couple received multiple telephone calls notifying them of the fire, the two of them headed to the scene. Witnesses would later say Barry was seen walking near where Mr. Kulakowski’s body was eventually discovered, claiming he was “trying to find evidence or find Sabina.”

Despite this suspicious behavior and the witness statements implicating Barry, the police stopped investigating him for reasons never explained.

Instead, the investigators turned their focus to 29-year-old Roy Brown.

Mr. Brown, a magazine subscription salesman from nearby Syracuse, had only a tenuous connection to Ms. Kulakowski. Mr. Brown had recently been released from an eight-month jail term for making threatening phone calls to the director of the Cayuga County Department of Social Services, which had placed his daughter into residential care earlier that year. 

Ms. Kulakowski was an employee at that same agency, so investigators theorized that Mr. Brown had murdered her to seek revenge, even though Ms. Kulakowski was not the caseworker on Mr. Brown’s daughter’s case.

On May 26, 1991, three days after the crime, Mr. Brown was arrested and charged with murder.

The Trial

In January 1992, Mr. Brown went to trial in Cayuga County Supreme Court. The prosecution’s case relied heavily on bite mark analysis. 

Dr. Edward Mofson, an expert in bite mark analysis, testified that seven bite marks on Ms. Kulakowski’s body were “entirely consistent” with Mr. Brown’s dentition — even though one of the bite marks showed six upper teeth in a continuous line, while Mr. Brown only had four upper teeth. Dr. Mofson explained away the inconsistency by claiming that Mr. Brown could have twisted Ms. Kulakowski’s skin while biting her, thus filling the gaps left by his missing teeth. 

Dr. Homer Campbell, a forensic odontologist, testified for the defense. He contended that the bite mark featuring six continuous teeth excluded Mr. Brown, and that the other six bite marks were not adequate for proper analysis. The defense did not present any evidence pointing to an alternative suspect. 

On Jan. 23, 1992, after less than six hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Mr. Brown of second-degree murder. After his guilty verdict, Mr. Brown told the court and spectators, “I never knew Ms. Kulakowski, and I had nothing to do with that woman’s death … I had nothing to do with this crime. I am truly innocent.” He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

The Exoneration

In 1995, Mr. Brown requested that the bite mark swabs be submitted for DNA testing, but was told that there was insufficient material due to earlier testing. The same was said to be true for the saliva from the nightshirt.

In 2003, Mr. Brown wrote a letter to the Cayuga County court clerk requesting a copy of his trial records under New York’s Freedom of Information Law. He also asked for a copy of a “hidden” affidavit, based on information from an anonymous source suggesting the existence of a jailhouse informant testimony. Upon receiving a written list of all statements in the case from the clerk, Mr. Brown found no record of this alleged statement.

There were, however, the four statements regarding Barry Bench’s suspicious behavior during the initial investigation. These documents, implicating Barry Bench, had never been disclosed to the defense.

From prison, Mr. Brown began drafting motions with the help of his stepfather, William Murphy.

In 2003, Mr. Brown, acting without a lawyer, filed a motion for a new trial. In the motion, Mr. Brown asserted that the incriminating statements pointing to Barry Bench had been withheld from his attorneys, and these statements highlighted the implausibility of Barry’s claim that he had gone directly home from the bar. 

In response, the prosecution contended that all of the affidavits had been given to Mr. Brown’s trial counsel, although there was no evidence of their production. On Sep. 16, 2003, the motion was denied.

On Dec. 24, 2003, Mr. Brown mailed Barry Bench a letter from prison. The letter informed Barry about the new affidavits Mr. Brown had discovered and that they provided evidence of Barry’s guilt. Mr. Brown urged Barry to confess and warned him that DNA testing would prove Mr. Brown’s innocence and incriminate Mr. Bench. 

In the letter, Mr. Brown wrote, “Judges can be fooled and juries make mistakes, [but] when it comes to DNA testing, there’s no mistakes.” Five days after the letter was mailed, Barry Bench took his own life. 

In January 2005, attorneys at the Innocence Project began representing Mr. Brown and requested expedited DNA testing from the New York State Police Forensic Investigation Center. They discovered seven more saliva samples on the nightshirt that could be tested. By November of that same year, DNA testing revealed that all of the saliva had come from a single contributor and excluded Mr. Brown. 

Although the DNA excluded Mr. Brown, there was no direct way to compare the DNA profile from the evidence to the deceased Barry Bench. Instead, law enforcement obtained a voluntary saliva sample from Barry’s biological daughter. Half of her DNA was consistent with the saliva on the nightshirt, as was expected from the child of the source. Barry Bench’s body was later exhumed, and a sample of DNA was taken and compared, which provided further confirmation that he was the source. 

On Dec. 14, 2006, the Innocence Project filed a motion to vacate Mr. Brown’s conviction and sentence. The motion was granted, and on Jan. 23, 2007, Mr. Brown was released from prison. 

On March 5, 2007, the District Attorney for Cayuga County dismissed the charges. 

The New York Court of Claims subsequently awarded Mr. Brown $2.6 million in compensation. 

Mr. Brown died in 2019. He was 58 years old.