David Vasquez

The Crime

Sometime after 10 p.m. on Jan. 23, 1984, an intruder broke into the Arlington, Virginia home of Carolyn Jean Hamm, a 32-year-old Washington lawyer. She was raped and murdered.

Ms. Hamm’s body was discovered when she did not show up for work on Tuesday and Wednesday. Her secretary called Darla Henry, Ms. Hamm’s closest friend, who went to Ms. Hamm’s home. Ms. Henry found the front door ajar. She sought help from a young man down the street. They entered together and found Ms. Hamm’s body on the basement floor. Her hands had been bound behind her with a venetian blind cord. She had been hanged.

The Investigation

On Jan. 29, 1984, police received a telephone call from the sister of the man who found the body. The sister claimed to have seen 37-year-old David Vasquez, whom she had known for several years, in the neighborhood on Jan. 23. She claimed she had once seen him ogling Ms. Hamm when she was sunbathing in her yard. 

A day later, police received a call from Michael Ansari, who said he saw Mr. Vasquez in the neighborhood on Jan. 25 after Ms. Hamm’s body was found. Mr. Ansari said Mr. Vasquez’s behavior had been “strange” because “the whole neighborhood was interested in what happened — except Dave.”

Mr. Vasquez, who had an IQ of less than 70, had formerly lived in Arlington and worked as a high school janitor. Several years earlier, he had moved to Manassas, Virginia, about 25 miles and a 50-minute drive away. He lived with his mother and worked at a McDonald’s restaurant cleaning tables and floors. Arlington County Detectives Robert Carrig and Charles Shelton went there on Feb. 4, and Mr. Vasquez agreed to go to the Prince William County police station.

Over several hours, the detectives interrogated Mr. Vasquez. The interrogation was recorded on tape. Initially, Mr. Vasquez said that he had not been in Arlington on the night of the crime. Asked his whereabouts, he replied, “Stayed home, like usual.” 

The detectives falsely told Mr. Vasquez that his fingerprints were found in Ms. Hamm’s home. Mr. Vasquez vaguely admitted he might have visited her place but was confused about how he got to Arlington due to transportation issues. When asked how he tied Ms. Hamm’s hands, he gave inconsistent answers, first mentioning ropes, then a belt, and later a coat hanger, before finally agreeing it was a venetian blind cord. He initially said he stabbed Ms. Hamm but changed his statement to match the detective’s claim that she was hanged.

On Feb. 6, 1984, after realizing that they had failed to read Mr. Vasquez his Miranda warning, the detectives interrogated Mr. Vasquez again, this time at the Arlington police station after advising him orally of his Miranda rights. Mr. Vasquez now insisted that he had not been in Arlington at any time in recent months. Nearly an hour into the session, Detective Shelton later reported, Mr. Vasquez dropped his head and said, “I have horrible dreams.”

Asked to describe his dreams, Mr. Vasquez said that, in his dream, he had an encounter with a girl, during which she made unsettling requests that left him deeply disturbed.

With that, Mr. Vasquez was arrested on charges of murder, rape, and burglary. 

The next day, Feb. 7, the detectives questioned Mr. Vasquez again. This time, Mr. Vasquez signed a Miranda waiver and gave another tape-recorded account that was largely the same.

Meanwhile, a forensic analyst reported that hair recovered from Ms. Hamm’s robe and two blankets showed “the same visual and microscopic characteristics” as a sample of Mr. Vasquez’s hair.

The Trial

In September 1984, Mr. Vasquez’s lawyers, Richard McCue and Matthew Bangs, filed a motion to suppress all three of Mr. Vasquez’s statements. They contended that the statements had not been voluntary. 

Arlington County Superior Court Judge William Winston barred the use of the first two statements, but ruled the third statement was admissible because Mr. Vasquez had waived his Miranda rights in writing. 

The prosecution’s case relied on two main points: a rambling, incoherent dream statement, and testimony from eyewitnesses who placed Mr. Vasquez in Arlington around the time of the crime, although there were concerns about their credibility. The man who had discovered Ms. Hamm’s body, for instance, had initially been considered a suspect, and his sister had come forward only after he had been questioned twice. Although Mr. Ansari claimed Mr. Vasquez was in the neighborhood after Ms. Hamm’s body was found, no one else reported seeing Mr. Vasquez.

There were other problems. Mr. Vasquez was not the source of semen recovered from Ms. Hamm – he had the wrong blood type – and Mr. Vasquez’s shoe had been eliminated as the source of shoe impressions found outside the window Ms. Hamm’s attacker used to gain entry. 

Commonwealth Attorney Henry Hudson moved forward, saying Mr. Vasquez must have had a co-conspirator. Mr. Vasquez faced the death penalty.

On Feb. 3, 1985, the day before his trial was to begin, Mr. Vasquez entered an Alford plea to second-degree murder and burglary. The plea allowed him to maintain his innocence while acknowledging that the prosecution had evidence sufficient to convict him. In return, the prosecution dismissed the rape and capital murder charges. Mr. Vasquez was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

On Dec. 1, 1987, a rape and murder strikingly similar to Ms. Hamm’s murder occurred in Ms. Hamm’s neighborhood. Susan Ann Tucker, a 44-year-old U.S. Department of Agriculture employee, was raped and murdered. Although Ms. Tucker was not hanged, she had been strangled with a noose made of thin white nylon cord, similar to the cord used to bind Ms. Hamm’s hands.

Detective Joe Horgas interviewed Mr. Vasquez in prison, in the company of defense attorney Mr. McCue. The detective was straightforward – Mr. Vasquez could go free within a couple of years if he would identify his co-conspirator. After Mr. Vasquez reasserted his innocence, Detective Horgas began considering the possibility that Mr. Vasquez was innocent and that a serial killer was at work.

The detective discovered that in the months preceding Ms. Tucker’s murder, three similar crimes had occurred in Virginia. Each victim had been raped, bound, and strangled with a ligature tied like those used in the murders of Ms. Hamm and Ms. Tucker. 

Detective Horgas also learned that between late June 1983 and late January 1984, 10 women in Arlington and Alexandria had been raped. They had described their attacker as a masked Black man of slight build who carried nylon cord and was armed with a knife.

Since none of the crimes occurred between late January 1984 and September 1987, Detective Horgas suspected that the attacker might have been in prison during that time. Ultimately, he focused on Timothy Spencer, who had been arrested on Jan. 29, 1984, for an Alexandria burglary. Mr. Spencer had been released to a halfway house on September 4, 1987. Records showed that he had been signed out of the halfway house at the times of all of the 1987 murders. DNA testing established that the semen recovered in all of those murders was his.

On July 16, 1988, Mr. Spencer was convicted of the murder of Ms. Tucker. He was later convicted of the murders of Ms. Davis, Ms. Hellams, and Ms. Cho. He was sentenced to death in each case. 

The Exoneration

The circumstantial evidence strongly suggested that Mr. Spencer also was responsible for Ms. Hamm’s murder. However, there was not enough evidence to test. A pardon was Mr. Vasquez’s only option.

On Jan. 4, 1989, Virginia Governor Gerald L. Baliles granted that pardon. Mr. Vasquez was freed the same day. The exoneration is considered the first in U.S. history to be caused by DNA testing.

In 1990, the Virginia General Assembly approved legislation awarding Mr. Vasquez $117,000.