Larry Mayes

The Crime

On Oct. 5, 1980, two Black men, one armed with a pistol, entered a gas station in Hammond, Indiana. One of the men put a blue denim bag on the counter and demanded that the clerk, a 20-year-old white woman, put the cash register money inside. Then the men, one of whom was noticeably taller and heavier than the other, forced the woman into their car, drove around, and raped the woman.

Afterwards, the victim sought help and was taken to a hospital where a rape kit was collected.

The Investigation

Five weeks later, on Nov. 14, 1980, two men attempted to rob a hotel in Hammond where Larry Pucalik, an off-duty Hammond police officer, was working as a security guard. When Mr. Pucalik intervened, he was fatally shot. The robbers fled, but left behind a blue denim bag matching the one used in the October gas station robbery.

Detectives discovered that victims of an earlier robbery at a KFC chain restaurant also reported two male perpetrators, one with a blue denim bag. 

Detectives also learned that earlier in the year, two women reported to police that they were raped after being picked up while hitchhiking toward Chicago on Interstate 80-94 outside of Hammond. The women said that two cars had stopped, but that the driver of the second car told them to get in his car because the first was not working well.

After the women got in the second car, both vehicles drove to a home where the poorly-functioning car was dropped off. Then, the women were driven around in the other car before the two men raped them.

Because of the similarities between the gas station attack and the hitchhikers’ attack, detectives re-interviewed the hitchhikers and located the home where the malfunctioning car was dropped off. The woman listed as the owner of the car told police she didn’t drive it, but her brother did. Police then interviewed the brother and realized he did not fit the description of either of the rapists given by the women. The brother, however, said that his nephew, 17-year-old James Hill, sometimes drove the car. James was a student at Roosevelt High School in the neighboring city of Gary. Police went to the school, obtained a photograph of James, and put it in a photographic lineup.

Multiple victims — including the gas station clerk, those of the KFC robbery, and the hitchhikers — identified James as one of the men who robbed and raped them. Mr. Hill was charged with armed robbery, kidnapping, and rape in the gas station crime.

In the meantime, an informant told police that the gas station robbery was committed by 30-year-old Larry Mayes and another man. Police put a photograph of Mr. Mayes into a photographic lineup and the gas station clerk identified him as the smaller of the two men who attacked her. On Jan. 31, 1981, Mr. Mayes was then charged with rape, robbery, and kidnapping for the gas station crime.

The Trial

James Hill and Mr. Mayes were tried separately in Lake County Circuit Court. 

At James’ trial, in February 1982, the victim identified him as the taller attacker. A classmate of James’, Arthur Ezell, testified that he had seen James carrying a blue denim bag. Apparently, James had told him that he made the bag himself, suggesting that it was one-of-a-kind. On Feb. 11, 1982, James Hill was convicted. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison. 

Mr. Mayes went to trial in July 1982. The victim identified him as the smaller of the two attackers. The victim admitted that she had been unable to identify Mr. Mayes in two live lineups, but she eventually had picked his photo out of a photographic lineup. She had previously described her assailant as having a gold tooth, which matched Mr. Mayes’ gold tooth. 

A forensic analyst testified that serology testing was unable to include or exclude Mr. Mayes because he and the victim had the same blood type.

Mr. Mayes was convicted on July 8, 1982, and was sentenced to 80 years in prison. 

The Exoneration

The Innocence Project accepted Mr. Mayes’s case in 1996. Interns assigned to his case spent years searching for the rape kit used at trial, only to be told that it had been lost. A persistent summer intern convinced a diligent court clerk to search the courthouse evidence room once again. The rape kit was discovered in 2000 and the Innocence Project moved to have it preserved. 

The Innocence Project was joined by students at the Indiana University School of Law, working out of what is now the Indiana Innocence Project. In July 2001, after a newly-enacted statute permitted post-conviction DNA testing, a motion for DNA testing of the evidence in Mr. Mayes’ case was filed. The motion was granted and in October 2001, the evidence was sent to Cellmark Diagnostics in Germantown, Maryland.

At that time, the new prosecutors on the case contacted the victim. She revealed that the police had hypnotized her prior to her identification of Mr. Mayes and Mr. Hill from the photographic lineup. This information had never been disclosed to the defense. 

On Dec. 19, 2001, Cellmark reported that Mr. Mayes had been excluded as the source of the semen found in the rape kit swabs. 

On Dec. 21, 2001, Mr. Mayes’s conviction was vacated and the charges were dismissed.

Subsequently, Mr. Mayes won a $9 million wrongful conviction lawsuit against Indiana and Lake County law enforcement officials. The suit was later settled while on appeal for $4.5 million.

James Hill, who had been released from prison on parole in May 1998, was exonerated on Oct. 6, 2009, based on evidence that the prosecution had withheld a statement by an informant that others committed the crime, as well as a statement from Arthur Ezell about the blue denim bag. In Arthur’s statement, he stated that James told him he got the bag from a friend, not that James had made the bag himself.