Did Tennessee execute the wrong man for a horrific 1980s murder? Alcoholic who confessed but then recanted before his 2006 death may have been INNOCENT as cops suspect an ex-pastor arrested last year for another brutal killing in Missouri could be connected
By Ralph R. Ortega
Daily Mail
October 18, 2019
A new suspect in the the brutal murder of a young female marine more than 30 years ago has been identified by authorities after another man was already executed for the slaying.
Sedley Alley was put to death by the state of Tennessee 15 years ago for the 1985 murder of Suzanne Marie Collins, a 19-year-old Marine who left her barracks for a jog and never returned.
Collins was later found raped, beaten and stabbed with a sharpened tree branch and strangled in a park in Millington, according to police.
Alley, a 29-year-old repairman at the time, who was alcoholic and addicted to drugs, confessed to the murder after cops fed him breakfast and bought him a pack of cigarettes, reports the Washington Post.
A jury delivered a guilty verdict in less than three hours, and despite changing his story and possible DNA evidence that could have exonerated him, Alley was forced to die by lethal injection at the age of 51 in 2006.
Then came the arrest of Thomas Bruce in Missouri in November 2018.
Cops said the 54-year-old, former Missouri pastor posed as a customer at a Catholic Supply store in the suburbs of St. Louis, returned armed with a gun, forced two women into sex acts, and killed a third.
He was arrested and faces 17-felony charges for the grisly attack and is currently awaiting trial.
At the time of Bruce's arrest, police were stunned that he had no prior criminal record. Given the horrific nature of his alleged sexual assaults and murder, took a closer look at the man.
That's when they suspected he may be linked to other crimes and came across a 77-year-old woman, who recognized his face in media reports, and said that before the Catholic supply store incident he had forced his way into her home, raped her and stole her cell phone.
He has plead not guilty to both charges.
Authorities in their investigation of Bruce also made what they believed could be major break in the Collins case. They said they had learned Bruce was enrolled in the same avionics school Collins had attended in Memphis, not far from where her body was found after she was murdered.
Cops contacted Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, a nonprofit group that helps to exonerate people who are wrongly convicted, through the use of DNA evidence, and which had unsuccessfully tried to help Alley.
'They were saying to us, there's a possibility that he is the serial killer that you had argued might be discovered by a DNA test all those years ago,' Scheck said.
Lawyers for the Innocence Project had long-argued that a potential piece of key evidence -- a pair of men's red underwear discovered at the scene where Collins was slain -- should have been submitted for testing to know for sure Alley was the killer.
Tennessee prosecutors, however, have argued that there were other factors proving Alley was the killer, and that DNA alone would not have been enough to prove his innocence.
His execution came after Alley took back his confession, and experts had come to the conclusion that he had been coerced.
There also had been no physical evidence linking him to the murder, and his recollection of the attack on Collins didn't match up to autopsy results and findings from the crime scene, reports the Post.
Innocence Project lawyers warned against putting Alley to death penalty without the DNA testing, and that if executed, the real murderer would still be on the loose.
After the execution, attorneys for the project petitioned the courts to have the DNA tested on behalf of Alley's daughter. She said she hoped to get closure during a court hearing on Monday.
A judge is expected to rule on her request in November.
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