Johnny Tall Bear

The Crime

On Oct. 3, 1991, the body of a man experiencing homelessness was found beaten and stabbed to death near an abandoned and boarded-up home known as the “Green House” in Oklahoma City. The man, who was known as “Pops,” was of Mexican descent and about 60 years old. He was found next to the shopping cart where he kept his possessions and cans that he collected for income. He had been living on the building’s front porch for several weeks.

Although his identity was never confirmed, he had an identification card with the name Timothy Rios. 

The Investigation

Police recovered a knife, numerous shards of blood-covered broken glass, a baseball cap, and several bloodstained bags that might have been used by the attacker to wipe off blood. An autopsy showed Mr. Rios died of blunt trauma to the head. 

Mr. Rios was found on his back lying on items of debris and clutching three crushed, bloody aluminum cans. His skull and left wrist were fractured. He had numerous cuts on his face. The pockets of his jeans had been turned inside out and blood was found on the inside portion.

The shopping cart was on its side, along with miscellaneous items. Atop the shopping cart was a foam mattress pad and under the wheel was a green towel. Police believed a circle of blood on the mattress pad indicated it had been used to cover Mr. Rios’ face.

The police posted flyers offering a reward for information. On Oct. 3, a transient named Raymond Burke told Officer Eric Mullenix that the day before, he had spoken to a man named Nolan Prairiechief at 10:30 a.m. Mr. Burke said that Mr. Prairiechief had been upset and crying because he had seen 34-year-old Johnny Edward Tall Bear stab an old man to death the previous night. That was deemed unreliable because the previous night was Oct. 1 and Mr. Rios had been seen alive between 5:30-6:00 p.m. on Oct. 2. Mr. Prairiechief would later admit that although he knew Mr. Tall Bear, he had not seen him for over a year, and that he had overheard four middle-aged Black men claiming to be “Crips” discussing beating and robbing an old man by an abandoned house.

In addition, on Oct. 3, the police interviewed several individuals at “The Rest,” a halfway home that served the local transient population. Charlie Diehl, an employee at the intake desk, noted that Mr. Tall Bear could become violent and had aggravated the “old man” on occasion outside the residence. Mr. Diehl said that Mr. Tall Bear would sometimes use an ax handle as a crutch and that on one occasion, they had taken away (and later returned) a red-handled pocket knife with a three-inch blade from Mr. Tall Bear.

Mervyn Harrison told police that Mr. Tall Bear had been “picking on” Mr. Rios recently and on one occasion, Mr. Tall Bear and two other men had pushed over Mr. Rios’ shopping cart while drinking at the Green House. Mr. Harrison, who had visibly wounded knuckles, said that he began arguing with one of the other men. He said he got into a physical altercation with one of them, a Native American man who was tattooed, appeared young, and was wearing a baseball hat turned around backwards.  

When the officers returned to The Rest the next day, Oct. 4, a resident named Larry Hill told them that weeks before, Mr. Rios, who had visible stitches in his face, had pointed out a 20-year-old Native American man as the person who had cut and attacked him. Mr. Hill noted that the young man “usually wears a baseball hat turned around backwards.” 

Despite this specific information, the police focused their search solely on Mr. Tall Bear. They found him at a nearby rescue mission seated in a wheelchair. Mr. Tall Bear said that he could not “walk or put pressure on his leg” due to major surgery on his gangrenous left ankle. The police took Mr. Tall Bear to the police station for questioning.  

Mr. Tall Bear denied involvement in the crime. He said that on the night of the murder, he was with his cousin, Mary Tucker, and her husband socializing at their home. He said he was in the home from 10:30 p.m. until the next afternoon. 

The police returned to The Rest on Oct. 6 to continue their interviews. Floyd Lewis, a meal server at the Salvation Army, said that on Oct. 2, he and a friend, while walking near the Green House, saw Mr. Tall Bear and another man fighting with a third man who was on the ground.

Mr. Lewis said that Mr. Tall Bear was kneeling on the ground, beating a man with his fists. Mr. Lewis said that when he yelled at the men, Mr. Tall Bear used a stick to stand up.

During a second interview on Oct. 8, Mr. Tall Bear told police that although he once owned a brown pocket knife, he lost it a year earlier. Mr. Tall Bear insisted he could not have committed the crime because of his recent surgery. He said he knew Mr. Rios, though not by name, from having around the neighborhood and that he knew Mr. Rios was living at the Green House. 

Mr. Tall Bear was charged with first-degree murder. The second man that Mr. Lewis said he saw at the scene was never identified.

The Trial

On March 9, 1992, Mr. Tall Bear went to trial in Oklahoma County Criminal District Court.

Mr. Lewis was the prosecution’s primary witness, although he had testified at a preliminary hearing that he didn’t think Mr. Tall Bear committed the crime. Mr. Lewis’ description conflicted with the physical evidence. He said the attack occurred on the northeast side of the house, while the body was found on the southeast side. All of the blood evidence was found next to the body or on the portion of the porch where Mr. Rios had been living.

Although Mr. Lewis testified that Mr. Tall Bear was beating a man with his fists, police officers who spoke to Mr. Tall Bear six hours after Mr. Rios’ body was discovered saw no scrapes or wounds on Mr. Tall Bear’s hands.

Joyce Gilchrist, a forensic chemist for the Oklahoma City police department whose false testimony in numerous other cases would lead to her firing in 2001, told the jury that she found four blood types on Mr. Rios’ pants pockets, but not Mr. Tall Bear’s blood type. The multiple blood types, the prosecution argued, diminished the significance of the absence of Mr. Tall Bear’s blood type.

Three witnesses testified that Mr. Tall Bear was elsewhere at the time of the crime, and most significantly, that he was confined to a wheelchair.

Mr. Tall Bear’s physical therapist, Jeannie McNichol, testified that she saw him three days before the murder, and he was unable to stand up, even with a cane. Ms. McNichol testified that Mr. Tall Bear had surgery on Aug. 1, 1991, to repair his gangrene-infected leg, and afterward, he was unable to put pressure on his left foot.  

On March 11, 1992, the jury convicted Mr. Tall Bear of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison.

The Exoneration

In 1997, Mr. Tall Bear wrote to the Innocence Project. In 2005, the Innocence Project accepted his case and sought DNA testing, but the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s office refused to agree.

Eight years later, in 2013, the state of Oklahoma enacted a post-conviction DNA testing law. In November 2014, a petition seeking testing was filed on behalf of Mr. Tall Bear.

In November 2017, the bloody bags that the police believed were used by the attackers to stop bleeding from wounds suffered during the attack were tested as well as on the inside of the turned-out pockets on Mr. Rios’ pants. The tests identified two male DNA profiles and excluded Mr. Tall Bear. The DNA profiles were uploaded to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), a national DNA database, but no possible matches were identified.

The testing further revealed that Ms. Gilchrist falsely identified blood found on certain evidence to Mr. Rios, despite it not being his, while also misidentifying other blood samples that were, in fact, his. The testing showed there were only two different blood types on the evidence, not four as Ms. Gilchrist testified.

On June 11, 2018, Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater joined with the Innocence Project attorney Karen Thompson and attorney Douglas Parr in a motion to vacate Mr. Tall Bear’s conviction. The motion was granted and Mr. Tall Bear, who was 61, was released after serving more than 26 years in prison.

Tragically, less than a year later, on March 8, 2019, Mr. Tall Bear was killed in a traffic collision in Seminole County, Oklahoma.