Guilty Until Proven Innocent: The 8-Year Struggle to Clear a Wrongful Conviction. Story of Clarence Elkins
On the night of June 7, 1998, a quiet and cozy home in Barberton, Ohio, became the scene of a terrible crime. 6-year-old Brooke Elkins woke up to scary noises coming from the kitchen. She followed the sounds and saw something that would stay with her forever: a man standing over her grandmother, holding some kind of tool. Terrified, Brooke ran back to her bedroom, but the intruder noticed her. He chased after her, hit her in the head with something heavy, and started choking her. After leaving her for dead, the man fled the scene.
Hours later, Brooke woke up and immediately went to look for her grandmother, but it was too late. Her grandmother’s bloody body was lying near the couch, lifeless. Brooke tried calling a friend and then a neighbor, but no one answered — it seemed like everyone was already asleep.
Beaten and bloodied, Brooke walked to her neighbor’s house. The neighbor, Tonya, was making breakfast and didn’t let her inside. Brooke waited on the porch for about half an hour before Tonya finally took girl to her parents’ house.
When the police started their investigation, Brooke and Tonya were questioned first. Brooke hesitantly said that the attacker looked like her uncle, Clarence Elkins, but she expressed doubts later on. Tonya also told the police that when Brooke came to her house, she said her uncle had killed her grandmother. This made Clarence the prime suspect in the murder and assault case.
Clarence was soon arrested. His wife, Melinda, insisted that her husband was home at night, but the police dismissed her claim, thinking she was just covering for him — even though the victim was Melinda’s own mother. In just one day, Melinda’s world fell apart: her mother had been brutally murdered, her niece was attacked, and her husband was arrested. But she never stopped believing that her husband was innocent. Clarence’s neighbors and friends also backed up his alibi.
On June 10, 1999, Clarence Elkins was convicted of murder, attempted murder, and rape. He was sentenced to two life terms. Melinda stood by his side in court, despite how angry this made her family. Even though the victim was her own mother, she knew Clarence was innocent.
The entire case was based on 6-year-old Brooke Elkins’s testimony. There was no other evidence — no fingerprints, no DNA. The hair found on the victim’s body didn’t match either her or Clarence. But none of that seemed to matter to the police. Despite the lack of solid evidence, the appeal court upheld the verdict.
When Brooke turned 7, she agreed to see a hypnotist to try and remember more details. She recalled that the attacker had brown eyes, but Clarence had blue eyes. This gave Clarence’s lawyers and Melinda some hope, but it didn’t change the investigation or the court’s decisions.
Years later, Brooke recanted her testimony and said her uncle wasn’t involved in the crime. But the prosecutors argued that her family had influenced her. Every request for a retrial was denied.
But Melinda refused to give up. She was sure her husband was innocent. Most of her time was spent investigating and doing detective work. She also asked Clarence’s relatives and her sister for help. Together, they raised over $100,000 to hire a private investigator and a new lawyer. Private detective Martin Yant, who had helped free wrongfully convicted people before and wrote a book called “Presumed Guilty: When Innocent People are Wrongly Convicted”, took on the case.
Yant believed the police had made a common mistake: they focused on one suspect and didn’t investigate other possible leads. Melinda and Yant turned to an independent lab. They found that the hair on the victim’s body didn’t belong to Clarence, and the DNA didn’t match his either.
Despite these findings, the court rejected yet another request for a retrial. The family felt stuck in a legal dead end, where no new testimony or real evidence could move the case forward.
Eventually, the Ohio Innocence Project got involved. Its leader, Mark Godsey, brought in 20 law students to help review the records of Clarence Elkins’s case. For two years, the students searched for ways to get him a new trial. The Ohio Innocence Project helped with DNA testing and legal procedures, but when a request for a new trial was denied, they knew they needed something bigger to free Clarence.
Melinda and Clarence’s life became a cycle of hope and disappointment. But Melinda’s determination was unshakable. While reviewing countless leads and evidence, she realized that neighbor Tonya had acted strangely: she didn’t let the badly beaten child into her home and made her wait on the porch for 30 minutes. And she didn’t call 911. Why? Many brushed it off as simple rudeness, but Melinda began to suspect something more.
As it turned out, Tonya was living with a man named Earl Mann. In 2002, Mann was sent to prison for rape, and it was he who had insisted on not letting 6-year-old Brooke inside. That night, he had come home with deep scratches on his back, just before Brooke came. Melinda couldn’t convince the judge to order a DNA test for Earl Mann.
But in a twist of fate, Mann ended up in the same prison as Clarence Elkins.It took months to wait for the right moment, but Clarence eventually saw Mann drop a cigarette on the ground and walk away. Clarence picked up a cigarette and hid it between the pages of a book. He later sent the cigarette to his lawyer. It was a risky move, but it was his last hope.
The cigarette was sent for DNA testing, and it turned out that Mann was likely the source of the biological evidence found at the crime scene. But they needed a more accurate test. When the district attorney ignored the DNA results, Ohio state attorney general held a press conference to draw attention to the gross injustice and negligence of the district attorney.
In 2005, when Mann became a suspect in the murder case, a police officer pointed out something that happened in 1999, just four months before Clarence’s trial: during an arrest, a drunk Mann asked why they hadn’t arrested him for the robbery and murder of his neighbor. This information had been sent to the detectives working on the murder case back then, but for some reason, it was never acted on.
Clarence Elkins was freed on December 15, 2006, after spending almost 8 years in prison. But Melinda wasn’t done yet. She was determined to put the real killer behind bars. She was now waiting for Earl Mann to stand trial.
In 2008, Earl Mann was convicted of the murder and rape of his neighbor. He was sentenced to at least 55 years in prison.
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