Shades of Guilt

CAROLINA FREE PRESS

Dateline--Wilmington, North Carolina

November 14, 1983

A 22 year old New Hanover County man was sentenced to life in prison Thursday for his conviction of First Degree Rape of a UNCW student earlier this year.

Roland Edward Curtis, who three months prior was found guilty of one count of rape, burglary and use of a weapon in the commission of a felony, was sentenced by Judge Alvin Sanders to life in prison for the brutal January attack in an off-campus apartment on an unnamed female student.

Curtis made a brief statement to the court prior to sentencing, reaffirming his innocence. Judge Sanders however was not swayed and ordered the severest sentence under law for the assault on the Wilmington graduate.

* * * * *

The first blazing slivers of Saturday morning sunlight burst through the curtains covering Ann Thomas's picturesque bedroom window as she, and her husband Randy, soundly slept. Saturday mornings were the only opportunities for the entire family to steal an extra hour or two of sleep without having to worry about getting ready for work, school or church.

The routine of waking at that early hour was difficult to shake however. It was impossible for Ann not to at least open her eyes a few times to look at the clock as she tried laying in bed for as long as she could. She would constantly remind herself that it was Saturday as she shifted her body weight over into a more comfortable position before dozzing off again for a few moments.

Every now and then however, especially during those lazy mornings when she didn't have the routine of getting the kids dressed and off to school or helping her husband get ready for work, Ann Thomas's mind would incessantly drift towards more painful memories. As she laid there trying to force herself to stay asleep, the cruel and horrible memory of what happened to her 17 years earlier, when she was a college senior at UNC-Wilmington, caused Ann to immediatly flinch her eyes open. The rollercoaster ride of that whole fiasco brought a tear to her eye as she rested her cheek softly on the pillow below.

Without anything else to steal her attention away, Ann was forced to relive every memory of that awful time, from that night in 1983 when her life changed forever, to taking the stand during the trial and being the perfect eyewitness, sending Roland Curtis away for life, to the surreal turn the case took 14 years later and the ensuing fallout from that. It was all too much for Ann to take as she gently sobbed in the early morning light, her back firmly facing her sleeping husband so he would hear her fitful cries.

* * * * *

It was an early Monday evening in the Summer of 1997 that Ann Thomas was cursing herself for not using the deluxe dishwasher she had insisted upon having installed when her and her husband Randy built their new house.

With the pile of dirty dishes to her left steadily declining and the pile of clean ones growing steadily to her right, Ann playfully sang along with a song on the radio while she watched her husband through the kitchen window steer the riding lawnmower in wide swaths across the Thomas's acre and a half back yard.

Ann's eyes were locked onto Randy's frame when he suddenly braked the mower in the middle of the yard and dismounted it with a strange expression on his face as he walked out of Ann's sight, towards the family's driveway on the far side of the house.

Quickly grabbing a dishtowel to dry the dirty bubbles off her hands, Ann made her way into the living room to see who was visiting. Ann's first inclination was that it had to be one of Randy's golfing buddies stopping by to say "Hi" or maybe one of the neighbors pulling in to let the Thomas's know about some neighborhood issue of importance.

The instant that Ann's eyes fixated on Detective Sam Rinaldi accompanying Randy up the front walk however, she nearly blacked out as years of fear and frustration came rushing back. Standing frozen in front of the large bay window, Ann watched with stunned apprehention as the two men approached the front door.

"Darling..this is..ahh....a Detective Rinaldi.. ...he says he needs to talk to you for a few minutes," Randy quizically told his wife as he ushered the officer inside the house.

"Hi...Ann," Rinaldi said solemly, knowing that short of having to tell her a loved one had died, this was going to be the toughest news he could ever break.

Randy Thomas glided over to his stoic wife as she stared the Detective down, giving her a big hug and warm, reassuring kiss as Rinaldi patiently waited for Ann's husband to leave the two of them alone.

"If you need me Honey...I'll just be in the other room...just holler for me..OK..I love you!" Randy whispered as he let his wife go and retreated into the den adjoining the main living room, leaving his wife alone with the man that 14 years earlier had played such an integral role in gathering the evidence that put the man that had so brutally violated her, in jail for life.

"It's been a long time Sam..what's the matter?" Ann asked, her face now white with forebodding fear as the worst case scenerio, Curtis's escape, burned in her mind.

"Uhhh...well..Ann..first sit down," Rinaldi said, pointing to the sofa and taking a seat.

Waiting for Ann Thomas to take a seat to his right, Sam Rinaldi searched for the words to explain the sharp turn the legal system had taken with her case.

"The media really hasn't been giving it much attention Ann..there's been a lot going on behind the scenes...ever since the OJ Simpson trial really...everyone is clammoring about this DNA......," Rinaldi's words trailed off as Ann played every bad scenerio in her head while the detective beat around the bush.

When Sam Rinaldi finally said the words he was dreading to say however, the cruel hard phrase hit Ann between the eyes like a wrecking ball.

"Roland Curtis is now a free man!"

* * * * *

It had been a lazy Friday afternoon in cell C-114 for Roland Curtis as he sat in his 8 foot by 8 foot corner of the world alternating his attention between a backdated Newsweek and a crossword puzzle he had been attempting to finish for a few days, waiting for the dinner bell to ring.

When the familiar catcalls rose up and echoed through the cell block, Roland knew from 14 years of hard experience that a guard was on his way around.

"Strange," Curtis thought to himself as he patiently waited for one of the boys in blue to stride past the front of his cell.

When the guard finally arrived at C-114 and came to a sudden stop, Roland Curtis's heart dropped into his stomach as his eyes met the guard's morose stare.

"Get up Curtis...they need to talk to you downstairs," was all the guard said.

* * * * *

That was the last time Roland Curtis would ever have to breath the air of a jail cell again.

A criminology professor from the University of North Carolina named Erwin Bankston had taken a liking to Roland during a few of his inner jail projects over the years. After several years of getting to know Roland, and the facts behind the case that sent Curtis to jail for life, Bankston eventually was talked into digging a little deeper into the facts of Roland's crime.

Earlier in 1995, when another rapist on the other side of the state had been convicted for several other crimes, a few rapes he had committed in the Eastern part of the states in the early 80's, came to light with the use of DNA technology.

Bankston, along with a grant from the Southern Poverty Law Center, came up with the needed funds to re-examine the evidence that had led to Roland Curtis's conviction.

Not wanting to unduely get Roland's hopes up, Bankston never told Curtis about the tests until the results came back. When nothing in Curtis's genetic make-up matched any of the blood, hair or semen from Ann's crime scene, Roland effectivly became a free man after losing 14 years of his life for a crime another man committed.

There was still the matter of Ann Thomas's direct and certain eyewitness testimony on the stand during the trial implicating Curtis, but when the mugshots of Roland Curtis and Conrad Conley, the man whose DNA did match the evidence found in Ann's apartment, were compared, there was a haunting resemblence between the two men. The fact that Conley's DNA blueprint was a 99.99999998 % match all but exonerated Roland Curtis.

* * * * *

The words that slipped out of Detective Rinaldi's mouth bit at Ann's eardrums like razor sharp pirana teeth. Too stunned to string more than two disjointed words together, all Ann could muster was,".... Escaped....when?"

"No Ann," Rinaldi replied in a hushed tone. "He didn't escape..they freed him Friday afternoon. I wasn't even aware of it until somebody from the jail called me late last week. I couldn't believe it. He evidentally had some legal people as well as a teacher from up in Chapel Hill doing a few things for him. They ran a DNA check on all the human trace evidence from your case and......it didn't match his. The man that it did match was arrested a few years back and is in jail up in Greensboro. He has been linked to a few of the other rapes in Wilmington back during the same Summer as yours. His name is...."

"NO...No...no...please don't tell me his name.....Curtis raped me..I KNOW IT!" Ann interrupted as she started to sob.

"The man that did it, Ann, looked a lot like...," Rinaldi started once again before the shaken woman interrupted.

"THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING," Ann screamed, causing her husband to come running in from the other room to console his wife. Wrapping his arms around Ann and looking with shock and disbelief at the detective sitting beside her, Randy sensed the weight each was feeling, of having 14 years of their own lives pulled out from underneath them.

* * * * *

A week after Curtis was released from prison, a press conference was staged at the local Baptist church and media from all up the Eastern Shore of North Carolina, as well as a few of the national outlets, showed up to cover the captivating story.

Roland Curtis ended up saying only a few words to the assembled throng, the whirlwind of the past 7 days still too much for him to fathom.

The brunt of the hyperbole during the press conference came from the men who had been Roland's staunch supporters during the whole ordeal. Even though Curtis was the star of the show, those men were quick to use the opportunity to advance their own politcal agenda to get more falsely accused prisoners' convictions overturned.

Roland never lost sight that his case was simply a vehicle for the civil rights lawyers and the men from the Southern Law Center to advance their philisophical cause. Knowing that many of the men he had shared residence with over the past decade and a half were in jail for a crime they didn't committ, Roland fully supported what the lawyers were doing. Still, he couldn't help feeling a little selfish as he sat there on the podium under the hot Carolina sun, that his case won the proverbial lottery to get tested and then thrown out.

* * * * *

The ensuing months would not be easy for either Roland Curtis or Ann Thomas.

Curtis had surprisingly little bitterness against the woman who had ID'd him years ago. Even though the old saying,"they all look alike' was blatantly racist, Roland couldn't deny the obvious resemblence he had with the actual rapist and considering the woman's ordeal, no matter who the perpetrator was, he had found the inner peace to accept her mistake.

Still, on the streets of Wilmington, Roland Curtis found the going tough. The only housing he could find was in the basement room of the church he had given the press conference at after his release. Because no business seemingly wanted to give Roland a chance at a job, he gladly served as the church's janitor and care taker until something else came along.

Roland immediatly felt the scrutiny that those in the community had for him, especially the white community. To many of them, he was still considered a rapist and always would be. Every day he went out and tried walking the streets with his head high, there would be two general reactions to his presense. Either people would go out of their way to avoid him or , in some instances, walk directly up to him and verbally or physically make their opinion felt.

Ann Thomas, on the other hand, was not a victim of any outward hate. Her trauma came in trying to corral any sense of inner peace after hearing the unexpected news of Roland Curtis's release.

The terrible thing that had happened to Ann that night back in 1983, no matter who did it, would still haunt her until the day she died. The fact that a man, other than Roland Curtis, was found to be responsible of the crime did not prevent Ann from thinking about that haunting night in the dark recesses of her mind on a daily basis.

What did change however, was the fact that besides the nightmares she already had about her assault, she had also started having nightmares over the realization that she had sent an innocent man to jail for 14 years because of her misguided testimony.

The simple arithmatic of what 14 years meant boggled Ann's mind as she considered all she had accomplished in the years after that awful night in her college apartment. She had graduated from college, gotten married to her soulmate, had three beautiful children, carved out a career as a writer and editor for a local monthly magazine and had even found time to volunteer at the local rape crises center, helping women through the same tragic ordeal she had survived.

To her credit, Ann had proudly helped several of those girls have the strength to take the witness stand against their rapists, and in a half a dozen of those cases, sent the men to prison for their crimes.

14 years...quite a life could be built up or torn down in 14 years. Every time Ann Thomas closed her eyes, she couldn't help but wretch knowing she played a role in taking 14 years away from a man for a crime he didn't committ.

* * * * *

All it took was one phone call to Detective Rinaldi for Ann Thomas to take the first step to getting her sanity back. After several nights of heated and tearful discussions with her husband Randy, Ann finally convinced him the only way that she could overcome the obstacle that had befallen her was to actually meet with Roland Curtis, in person, so she could apologize for all the harm she had caused. Like everything else she had done in her life, Ann wanted to meet this dilemma head on, even if she didn't have a clue what she would say to him.

Thankfully for everyone involved, the media never caught wind of the renzedvous between Ann and Roland that was organized jointly between Sam Rinaldi, and the pastor of the church Roland was living and working at, Morton Evans.

On a bright, hazy Friday afternoon inside the North Wlimington Baptist Church, Ann Thomas finally came face to face with the man that had tormented her thoughts for well over a decade.

* * * * *

The meeting itself was very awkward but cathartic for both. While Randy Thomas waited outside in the church parking lot with Detective Rinaldi and Pastor Evans, making small talk, long swaths of silence ebbed and flowed inside the church doors as Roland and Ann measured their responses to each other.

Ann broke down into tears several times as she tried to communicate her deepseeded guilt over what had happened. Seeing the pretty blonde break down and cry, Roland couldn't help but brushing a few of his own tears away as he watched Ann's naked emotion spill out.

When Roland told Ann the sober truth about how, in an ironic way, prison might have been the best thing for him, he saw Ann's worrisome gaze improve just slightly. Roland told Ann that considering the crowd he was running with at the time of his arrest, he would most likely been killed long ago if it wasn't for the fact that he got off the tough streets he was living on. Roland also told Ann, through the grace of God, he learned a trade while he was incarcurated and was better suited to make a good living for himself as soon as someone was willing to hire him and would have never finished his high school equivalency degree either if he never got the 'wakeup' call.

Ann simply sat there with a curious, blank stare at Roland as he showed no bitterness whatsoever towards her for her gross case of mistaken identity. The sheer thought of him actually telling her his prison time might have been a 'good thing' for him almost made her feel worse about what she had did.

After nearly 45 minutes alone inside, Ann and Roland emerged side by side from the church's doors and shared a tentative embrace at the top of the steps as everyone in the parking lot looked on. A few more pleasantries were shared before Ann and Randy got back into their car and everyone went their seperate ways, with a promise to keep in touch.

* * * * *

Randy Thomas had been his wife's rock of Gibrolter through the entire fiasco of Roland Curtis's release. In fact, he had been Ann's source of stability and sanity ever since they met a few months after Ann's rape in '83.

Ann knew she would have a difficult time ever trusting another man after the gruesome tragedy that had befallen her and didn't even tell Randy that she was the nameless victim in all those news stories that Summer when they were starting to see each other.

It wasn't until the trial came about that Ann felt she needed to warn her soon to be husband what had happened to her.

Randy had willingly jumped through every hoop Ann had put in front of him and after more than a dozen years together, their marriage was, on the surface, picture perfect.

But there were still the nightmares. Not on a nightly basis as they had when they first started seeing each other. But there were still too many nights to count, over the course of their marriage, that Randy Thomas had been stirred in the middle of the night by the sound of his wife thrashing and moaning beside him, her nightgown saturated by a slick glaze of her own sweat.

Once Ann finally sat Randy down early on in their relationship and explained to him what had happened to her, he was horrified by the story, yet it deepened the love he was feeling for her by seeing the internal toughness Ann showed through the whole ordeal. He knew right then and there, this was the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

Knowing the reason for the nightmares however didn't make it any easier for Randy when she would wake him up in the middle of the night, moaning in fear. Even after being married for over dozen years, Randy was still torn between reaching out to console his wife or taking a chance of making it worse by actually touching her when she was dealing with such a powerful mental overload in the prison of her mind.

Even though the bad dreams had diminished in frequency over the years, Randy was still awakened on the rare occasion by his wife's unsettled sleep. When Ann was confronted with the fact that the bogeyman that had tortured her for 14 years really wasn't the man that actually did the crime, it seemed to open up all those old wounds that she had spent so much time and energy trying to heal.

Randy correctly suggested to Ann that the reason for the return of the nightmares might have been intensified by the fact that she was internally tearing herself up over sending the wrong man to jail.

Ann was loathe to talk about the internal weight she was bearing, but in the silence of her bedroom late at night, Randy got a front row seat to see how the ordeal was effecting her when she was at her most vulnerable.

Randy had casually suggested they both go see a psychiatrist about the life altering change, even adding a mental health provision to their insurance plan to cover any expenses. Like everything else Ann Thomas had encountered in her 37 years, she was going to overcome it herself. It turned out to be a battle however, with more fronts that Ann had the facilities to fight.