Thomas Siller

The Crime

On June 4, 1997, police responding to an anonymous 911 call made at 3:49 a.m. found 74-year-old Lucy “Alice” Zolkowski bound to a chair in her home on Hosmer Avenue in Cleveland. She had been severely beaten after being tied to the chair with strips of cloth ripped from her nightgown. She was alive but unconscious. The home had been ransacked.

The Investigation

Police interviewed neighbors and learned that two building contractors, 41-year-old Thomas Siller, and 40-year-old Walter Zimmer, frequently worked at Ms. Zolkowski’s home. 

On June 5, 1997, police interviewed Mr. Siller, who said that he had performed work for Ms. Zolkowski since the fall of 1996 and that on June 3, the day before she was attacked, he had driven her to the bank and then dropped her back at home around 4 p.m.

Mr. Siller said that in the early morning hours of June 4, he started getting paged by Rosie Crowder, a friend, so he went to Ms. Zolkowski’s home. When he arrived, Mr. Zimmer was there. According to Mr. Siller, Mr. Zimmer said that he had discovered Ms. Zolkowski tied to the chair and beaten. Mr. Zimmer said that he then went to Ms. Crowder’s home and she paged Mr. Siller.

Mr. Siller said Mr. Zimmer told him that he had not called the police because there was a warrant out for his arrest on a charge of driving on a suspended license. Mr. Siller told detectives that he drove Mr. Zimmer home and stopped at a pay phone to make the 911 call that alerted police. Mr. Siller also said that after taking Ms. Zolkowski to the bank, he had borrowed $200 from her. He also said he had borrowed about $12,000 from her since he began working for her.

Mr. Zimmer and Ms. Crowder also voluntarily came to speak with detectives that day. Mr. Zimmer said that he was walking to Ms. Crowder’s home sometime after midnight. When he passed Ms. Zolkowski’s home, he noticed that her lights were on. He said he knocked, but got no answer. He then went to the back door which was open. He said he looked inside and saw cabinets open and items strewn about. He walked into the kitchen and discovered Ms. Zolkowski severely beaten and tied to a chair in the living room. He immediately left and went to Ms. Crowder’s home. Mr. Zimmer said he had borrowed about $5,000 from Ms. Zolkowski over the prior eight months. In fact, tally sheets in the home showed Mr. Siller owed Ms. Zolkowski $12,155 and Mr. Zimmer owed her $7,640.

On June 13, Mr. Siller gave another statement to detectives, saying he had been in a bar with Mr. Zimmer on the night of June 3 and that he actually had borrowed $240, not $200, from Ms. Zolkowski that afternoon.

Evidence technicians found Mr. Zimmer’s and Mr. Siller’s fingerprints in the home as well as the fingerprints of 28-year-old Jason Smith, who had prior convictions for aggravated assault, drug trafficking, possession of criminal tools, receiving stolen property, and vehicle theft. Unlike Mr. Zimmer and Mr. Siller, who had worked in the home on numerous prior occasions, Mr. Smith had no known relationship with Ms. Zolkowski. Mr. Smith’s prints were found on a dresser drawer.

On June 14, police went looking for Mr. Smith at the home of his girlfriend, Jenean Harper. She said Mr. Smith wasn’t there, but police searched the home anyway, and found him in a closet. Mr. Smith was charged with attacking Ms. Zolkowski. Ms. Harper was charged with obstruction of justice for attempting to hide Mr. Smith. Police also confiscated a pair of Mr. Smith’s pants bearing what appeared to be bloodstains.

Two days later, during an interview with detectives, Mr. Smith denied involvement in the crime. He claimed he had seen Mr. Siller and Mr. Zimmer doing work on Ms. Zolkowski’s sidewalk at some previous time. Police obtained a sample of Mr. Smith’s blood for testing.

At about the same time, Mr. Smith began talking to other men in the jail where he was being held. One of them, Ed Farrell, went to detectives and said Mr. Smith had bragged about breaking into a home and beating up an elderly woman, but that he would not be convicted because friends in Kentucky were going to supply an alibi. Mr. Farrell told police that Mr. Smith said he wasn’t worried about anyone snitching on him because he had been alone.

On June 17, detectives interviewed Mr. Smith again and he claimed he was in Kentucky at the time of the crime. He said he had been working in a restaurant and had cut his leg, which was how blood got onto his pants.

Mr. Smith’s pants were sent to the Cleveland police crime laboratory. Joseph Serowik, a serologist, reported that there were stains inside the right knee area and there were small stains on the front legs — “spatter patterns.” Mr. Serowik said the stains were not blood. 

In 1998, when Mr. Smith learned that Ms. Harper was going to plead guilty to the obstruction of justice charge and testify against him, he agreed to plead guilty to the attack on Ms. Zolkowski and admitted he was at Ms. Zolkowski’s home on the night of the crime. 

On March 4, 1998, Mr. Smith, in a deal that an appellate court later called “breathtakingly favorable,” pled guilty to aggravated burglary and received a three-year prison sentence. Charges of attempted aggravated murder, aggravated robbery, felonious assault, and kidnapping were then dismissed. In return, Mr. Smith told police that Mr. Siller and Mr. Zimmer had attacked Ms. Zolkowski and that he was outside the home at the time. He explained his fingerprints by saying that he later went into the house to search for valuables.

That same month, Mr. Siller and Mr. Zimmer were arrested and charged with attempted aggravated murder, felonious assault, aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping. 

The Trials

In June 1998, Mr. Siller and Mr. Zimmer went on trial together in the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas. Both men maintained they were not at the scene of the crime.

Mr. Smith testified that he waited in a car while Mr. Siller and Mr. Zimmer went inside. He said he later came inside and saw Mr. Zimmer standing over Ms. Zolkowski, yelling at her. Mr. Smith said he didn’t enter the room where she was. He said that as he left the house, he noticed the back door trim had been “messed up.”

Mr. Serowik testified that there were no blood spots or spatters of Ms. Zolkowski’s blood on the pants confiscated from Mr. Smith. Mr. Serowik conceded that he may not have tested some spots of “questionable color” because they did not appear to be blood.

The prosecution argued that the lack of blood on Mr. Smith’s pants was proof that he was not near Ms. Zolkowski when she was beaten and that whoever “did this vicious beating probably got some blood spattered on the clothes.”

On July 2, 1998, Mr. Siller and Mr. Zimmer were convicted of all charges. Mr. Siller was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Mr. Zimmer was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

On April 26, 1999, Ms. Zolkowski died. She had never regained consciousness. 

Mr. Siller and Mr. Zimmer were then indicted for murder. The prosecution said it would seek the death penalty for both men. Mr. Siller and Mr. Zimmer were tried separately, with Mr. Siller going on trial first on July 18, 2001. 

Mr. Smith again testified, but this time he added to his account — saying he saw Mr. Zimmer strike Ms. Zolkowski in the face. It was also revealed that Mr. Smith had cut deals with prosecutors to testify against other defendants in three unrelated cases in which he was charged with criminal conduct. 

A person in jail testified that Mr. Siller had confessed to him, although the person’s account did not match the physical evidence or Mr. Smith’s version of the crime. Another person in jail testified that he heard Mr. Siller deny involvement in the crime. Two other people in jail testified that Mr. Smith had bragged he had beaten a murder charge by falsely implicating two innocent men.

Mr. Serowik again testified and, under cross-examination, he said he had tested every stain on Mr. Smith’s pants. When Mr. Siller’s lawyer noted that Mr. Serowik testified at the first trial that he had not tested all the stains, the judge halted the trial and the pants were sent back to the lab for further testing. 

Six days later, Mr. Serowik returned to court and said a stain on the back of his left leg tested positive for Ms. Zolkowski’s blood. He said he had gotten that result in the original testing prior to the first trial. He explained the lack of documentation for such testing as an “oversight.”

Mr. Serowik said he had found no other bloodstains on the pants. The prosecution then argued that this single spot on the back of Mr. Smith’s pants could have gotten there by brushing against Mr. Siller. The prosecution argued that if Mr. Smith had beaten Ms. Zolkowski there would “be more blood and it would be on the front of his pants.”

In August 2001, a jury convicted Mr. Siller of aggravated murder. After the jury rejected the death penalty, Mr. Siller was sentenced to 30 years to life to be served concurrently with his prior 20-year sentence.

In November 2001, Mr. Zimmer pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter rather than risk being convicted and sentenced to death. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison to be served consecutively to the 40 years he had received for his prior convictions.

The Exoneration

Just a month earlier, in October 2001, through the efforts of the Innocence Project, Anthony Michael Green had been exonerated of a rape in Cleveland after DNA testing excluded him and was matched to the actual rapist, who then confessed to the crime. 

Mr. Green subsequently filed a federal civil rights lawsuit seeking compensation for his wrongful conviction. The lawsuit focused in part on Mr. Serowik, who had been the analyst in Mr. Green’s case as well. An examination of his reports and testimony conducted as part of the lawsuit revealed that Mr. Serowik’s work and conclusions in Mr. Green’s case had been fabricated. In fact, Mr. Green had been excluded by Mr. Serowik’s testing, although Mr. Serowik had testified to the contrary. 

In 2004, as part of a $1.6 million settlement of Mr. Green’s lawsuit, the City of Cleveland agreed to audit Mr. Serowik’s work in more than 100 other cases. Experts conducted a wholesale review of Mr. Serowik’s cases and concluded that Mr. Serowik’s work was pockmarked by fraud and errors. 

Mr. Siller, represented by the Innocence Project, sought DNA testing in 2005. The tests came back in 2006 and showed that contrary to Mr. Serowik’s trial testimony that there was no blood on the front of Mr. Smith’s pants, there were, in fact, 20 blood spatters on the front of Mr. Smith’s pants. Nine were tested and seven contained Ms. Zolkowski’s blood. The other two were Mr. Smith’s blood.

Mr. Siller then sought a new trial in both of his cases. The motion in his murder case — the second case — was denied when a judge ruled the new evidence would not have convinced the jury to acquit Mr. Siller. The motion in the first case remained pending while Mr. Siller appealed. 

In 2009, the Ohio Court of Appeals reversed Mr. Siller’s murder conviction. The court concluded that if the jury had known about the new DNA evidence, it might have acquitted Mr. Siller. While Mr. Siller was awaiting a new trial, more DNA tests were conducted on the pieces of Ms. Zolkowski’s nightgown that had been used to bind her to the chair. Male DNA was found that excluded both Mr. Siller and Mr. Zimmer. Mr. Smith, however, could not be excluded as the source of that DNA.

At that point, the prosecution offered a deal to Mr. Siller and Mr. Zimmer, who were represented by the Ohio Innocence Project: plead guilty to charges of theft of more than $300,000 for the money they had borrowed from Ms. Zolkowski, and all pending charges would be dismissed. These new charges were not related to the attack on Ms. Zolkowski and had no factual basis in the amounts each actually had borrowed from her.

On March 24, 2011, Mr. Siller entered a plea to the new theft charges and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Because he had already served 13 years, he was immediately released. Mr. Zimmer entered a similar guilty plea to theft on April 1, 2011. He received the same sentence and was also immediately released.

In 2012, Mr. Smith was charged with perjury for his testimony against Mr. Siller and Mr. Zimmer. He pled guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison.

Mr. Siller and Mr. Zimmer filed a federal wrongful conviction lawsuit against the city of Cleveland and Mr. Serowik in 2013. In 2014, the city of Cleveland agreed to pay each man $650,000. Both also filed a lawsuit seeking a declaration of innocence to obtain state compensation, but that lawsuit was unsuccessful.