MEDIA COURTHOUSE >> The criminal record of a 16-year-old boy executed in 1931 for the stabbing death of a 34-year-old matron at the Glen Mills School for Boys has been expunged after 86 years.
The May 10 order from Delaware County Court of Common Pleas Judge John Capuzzi vacates Alexander McClay Williams’ criminal record while keeping the court file and Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts docket intact, said attorney Robert Keller, who filed the expungement petition on behalf of Williams’ family.
“We wanted the criminal record expunged and at the same time we wanted the court file and docket to remain so that we have a historical record of the case,” said Keller. “We want the public to be aware of the trial and for them to be able to view the timeline from the date of conviction and the time of arrest, and how quickly he was put to death.”
Keller said he helped draft the order with Delaware County District Attorney Jack Whelan and was gratified that Capuzzi agreed to sign it. Whelan said he was willing to work with Keller to reach the goal of expunging whatever he legally could, but said he had no comment on the guilt or innocence of Williams.
“I think it was a fair way to try to address the issue the attorney and family had raised,” he said.
Susie Carter, Williams’ sister and sole surviving relative, said she was not satisfied with a mere expungement, however, which does not address the issue of guilt in the same way an exoneration would.
“He was not guilty,” she said. “They should have exonerated him.”
Williams, an African American, was accused of killing Vida Robare on the afternoon of Oct. 3, 1930. The victim, who was white, was discovered by her ex-husband, Fred Robare, at about 5 p.m. in the second-floor bedroom of her on-site cottage.
The victim had been stabbed 47 times with an icepick. She also suffered a fractured skull and broken ribs. The crime appeared to be one of passion.
None of the 600 students at the school was initially suspected of carrying out the attack. A bloody handprint was left at the scene, but apparently never compared with the adults and students at the school, as originally proposed. Other suspects, including Robare’s husband, were not investigated.
William H. Ridley, the first African-American lawyer in the county, was assigned the case, but Keller said he was hamstrung. Ridley had just two months to mount a defense and the trial lasted just two days, said Keller. The all-white jury deliberated for four hours before convicting and Williams was executed June 8, 1931, about six weeks shy of his 17th birthday.
Ridley’s great-grandson, Sam Lemon, who holds a doctorate in education from the University of Pennsylvania, spent 30 years researching the case and wrote a book about it titled “The Case That Shocked the County.”
Lemon said Thursday that Capuzzi’s order will be included in the book, which he hopes to publish by the end of the month. But that is likely not the end of the story, Lemon said.
“I think it’s a good start,” he said. “It seems more to me like a clerical or administrative issue than a legal issue, kind of akin to taking somebody’s name off the voter rolls after they’re dead.”
Lemon said his ultimate goal is to take the matter up with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which has the authority to hear even old, inactive cases, and have the conviction reversed.
“I feel very strongly that this kid was executed for a crime he did not commit,” he said. “And I think that there has to be something more than taking that conviction off the books on a county level.”
Carter and Lemon pointed to glaring inconsistencies with the prosecution’s case, as well as the seemingly unscrupulous manner in which a confession was wrought.
Lemon said Williams confessed while undergoing his third interrogation by police, during which no parent or attorney was present. He said two forensic psychologists had looked at the case and concluded the boy probably had some mental issues, but no history of violence. Williams was likely so confused and manipulated by his jailers that he did not know what he was saying, Lemon said.
About a dozen boys were unaccounted for at various points between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. that day, according to Lemon. Among them was Williams, who was supposed to have killed Robare during a 20-minute period.
Lemon said that in that time, Williams was supposed to have taken about 15 actions, including going to and from the crime scene; attempting to break into a storage locker; going into Robare’s room and attacking her; dropping his hat in a massive pool of blood; taking her keys and throwing them in a pond; hiding the icepick in a hole in the wall; washing the blood from his hands and hat; and then returning to the area of the school where he was working without a drop of blood on him.
“The only way he could have done this crime is if he could stop time,” said Lemon, adding that this was not a place where the “inmates,” as they were referred to, could roam freely.
“They used him as a scapegoat for somebody,” said Carter. “No way could he struggle with a woman and not have blood on him everywhere.”
Carter, now 87 years old, was just a baby when Williams was executed. Though she never knew him, Carter said she saw the grief his death caused their mother and vowed to continue working for his full exoneration.
“Whatever it takes,” she said. “I may not be alive to see it, but whatever it takes.”
Lemon said Thursday that there have been some recent cases where a miscarriage of justice was corrected posthumously, such as the 2014 exoneration of George Stinney Jr., a 14-year-old African-American who was wrongly executed in 1944 for the murders of 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and 7-year-old Mary Emma Thames.
Stinney, thought to be the youngest person executed in the United States in the 1900s, shares eerily similar circumstances with Williams and other young black males who were railroaded into confessing to crimes they did not commit in the civil rights and pre-civil rights era, said Lemon. There seems to be some interest in reversing those convictions now, he said.
“In order for our criminal justice to work, for the judicial system to work – and the symbol of justice is the scales – there has to be balance on both sides,” he said. “There has to be the same accountability for defendants as there is for people on the other side; attorneys and law enforcement and judges. You can’t have one side kind of doing whatever they want and this kind of draconian approach to punishment on the other side.”
Lemon said he was glad the record from Williams’ case was ordered preserved, as it is a historical document that can inform future generations, but also because it is the only remaining piece of evidence if a petition is ever brought before the state Supreme Court.
Keller said he has spoken with Lemon about that option, but is not hopeful it will come to any more fruitful ends than what they were able to achieve through the county courthouse.
“I think what Sam would like is some sort of a retrial,” he said. “But because all of the evidence has been destroyed … there’s nothing that can be done to bring this case back. We just have a cold transcript and we have the timeline for the procedural history, but there’s nothing left for this case to reach any further goal than I was able to obtain for the family.”
In a perfect world, the family could use a time machine to go back and retry the case as it should have been done originally, said Keller, but due to the gulf of time and lack of any remaining evidence or records, this is likely as far as it can go.
Lemon and Whelan also brought up the possibility of seeking a pardon from Gov. Tom Wolf, though Lemon noted that process can take years. Lemon said he would also like to locate the boy’s grave, an unmarked plot somewhere in Greenhill Cemetery.
Lemon thanked the Williams family, the Delaware County Bar Association and local news outlets for helping shed light on the case to gain at least some measure of justice.
“It shows that if you can get somebody’s ear, there is a way of getting a story told,” he said.
