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The Case of Jimmy Dennis
📻 Episode #97
🎙️ Hosted by Jason Flom
📅 Oct 09, 2019
About This Episode
On October 22, 1991, when 17-year-old Chedell Williams and a friend went to Fern Rock subway station in North Philadelphia, two men approached them and demanded Chedell’s earrings. She refused and ran, and one of the men chased her to nearby 10th Street and Nedro Avenue, where he snatched the earrings, and shot her in…
The Case
On October 22, 1991, when 17-year-old Chedell Williams and a friend went to Fern Rock subway station in North Philadelphia, two men approached them and demanded Chedell’s earrings. She refused and ran, and one of the men chased her to nearby 10th Street and Nedro Avenue, where he snatched the earrings, and shot her in the throat. Her friend was left unharmed. The two men were joined by a third man who was waiting in a 1978 Chevy Malibu. Chedell died at a hospital less than an hour later. The pressure was on the police and prosecutors to solve the crime, when some local “stick-up boys” named 21-year-old, burgeoning R&B vocalist Jimmy Dennis as a potential culprit. Hearing of this, Jimmy went to the police to confront the rumors, maintaining that he was on a bus miles away at the time of the murder with eyewitnesses to corroborate his claim. No forensic evidence tying Jimmy to the crime was ever developed, and evidence and eyewitness accounts that proved his innocence were suppressed. In this emotional interview, we hear the story of a promising musical career curtailed and a 25-year-long battle with a wrongful conviction from death row.
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom
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In Their Own Words — transcript excerpts
Short excerpts from the episode's official published transcript, with timestamps — listen from these moments, or read the full transcript via the podcast's own platforms.
00:07:12“Speaker 7: In any gang life or anything like that. I wasn't, Speaker 7: you know, in any type kind of gangs. Speaker 7: Really gangs in Philadelphia like that at that time, you Speaker 7: know what I mean. Speaker 4: So this was just people in the. Speaker 7: Neighborhood didn't like me, you know what I mean. I”
00:27:19“Speaker 7: frame me, whatever the case may be. So for me, Speaker 7: I once read this book by Victor E. Frankel called Speaker 7: A Man Search for Mean And in this book he Speaker 7: had this quote by Nietzsche. It said, he who, he Speaker 7: who has a why, I can bear with almost anyhow.”
00:47:26“Speaker 7: I made sure that there's a locator on my phone Speaker 7: at all times where I'm at you know, when I Speaker 7: first came home, I was literally calling the lawyers, like Speaker 7: every hour on the hour, calling other people, just so Speaker 7: my whereabouts are always known.”
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Also on the podcast: #15 Dennis Maher · #232 Dennis and Lee Horton · #311 Dennis and Lee Horton