'Dream Team' Gathers Evidence

The key witness in the case against Crosley Green years ago was Green's own sister Sheila. She told the jury that her brother had confessed to her that he had killed Chip Flynn.

At the time of the trial, Sheila Green had just been convicted of drug charges and was facing a long prison sentence. "I submit to you that Crosley Green's sister at the time would have said Santa Claus committed the murder if that's what the prosecutors told her to say," says Paul Ciolino.

When Ciolino's team of detectives found Sheila Green, she talked with Paul Ciolino and Joe Moura, but refused to make a videotaped statement. So Ciolino appealed to her family. Shirley Green, Sheila's older sister, persuaded Sheila to allow the detectives to videotape her admission.

In August, Sheila Green admitted, in a videotaped statement, she had lied at her brother's 1990 trial.

At the same time, the detectives followed up on another thread. Years ago, Flynn's friend, Tim Curtis, told police that Crosley Green matched the police sketch of the assailant, and that he had heard rumors that Green was the killer. Curtis, who knew him casually, is now a successful auto shop owner who does work for the sheriff's department. Ciolino and his partners did not expect any help from him.

But they were surprised. Curtis told the investigators that he lied years ago - not because he was pressured but because he wanted to help convict the man he believed killed Flynn. At the time, he says, he thought Crosley Green was guilty. Now, though, he has changed his mind.

But even four recanting witnesses weren't enough. The detectives began to look at the physical evidence.

In 1990, the sheriff's investigators had searched Flynn's 1982 Chevy pickup truck; they vacuumed it; they powdered it for prints - and they found nothing: no hair, no fibers, no blood, no fingerprints, no physical evidence to connect Green to the crime.

There was something else, too, a fact that had been overlooked at the trial. The truck was a manual shift; Green couldn't drive a stick shift, Ciolino says.

Even if Crosley Green had been a skilled driver, he would have had problems driving this truck, says Curtis, who used to own the truck and sold it to Flynn. "You cannot get in that truck and take off without it stalling," he says.

Hallock had told police that Croley Green not only drove the truck and shifted the gears, but also held a gun on his victims. But Flynn's father says that Hallock told him that she, not Crosley Green shifted the gears on the drive to the orange grove.

Says Ciolino: "Crosley Green, who allegedly abducts [these] people in this truck, drives this truck, shifts this truck, turns the lights on in the truck, is touching the glass on the truck, is touching the right fender, touching the left fender; there is no fingerprints, there is no footprints."

"Unless Crosley Green is Casper the ghost in disguise, then he couldn't have committed this crime," he declares.

Curtis is also troubled by this lack of evidence: "You had to grab the truck literally to climb up in it. It wasn't like an automobile. You had to open the door and climb up in it. You couldn't do it without putting your hands on the truck. Impossible."

The detectives began to raise questions about Hallock's story. "How could you come out of this truck with your hands tied behind your back firing a weapon," Ciolino asked, while looking over the truck.

Rob Parker, Green's defense attorney, wonders how Hallock was able to identify Crosley Green when the scene of the crime was pitch dark, and she looked at him for less than 30 seconds.

Immediately after the crime, Hallock told police that although she didn't remember much about the assailant, she knew that he had Jheri-curled hair. At the time, Crosley Green had a buzz cut.

One juror now says that at the trial, Hallock's testimony sounded like "a made-up story." But Alma Jean Blouse had voted to convict even though she admits now that she had doubts. She felt pressured, she says.

"The word 'black man' was used in this case at least 60 or 70 times during the trial," Ciolino says. "Black man this. Black man that, Black man this. And all they were interested in communicating to jury was: 'This is your worst enemy'"

Kim Hallock testified that Crosley Green was the man who shot Chip Flynn.

"For the last 10 years, I've had to live with the memories and nightmares of that horrific evening," she wrote. "The fact is there are only two surviving witnesses, myself and Crosley, and I'm sure deep down inside Crosley knows he is right where he deserves to be."

After three months of work, the detectives decided to offer a $25,000 reward for information leading to the real killer of Flynn.

State Attoney Norman Wolfinger, who ran the office that prosecuted Crosley Green, succeeded with his request for an independent state investigation of the case.

"They're not doing it because they're nice people," Ciolino says. "They're doing it because they were shamed into doing it, because this evidence is so outrageous and so corrupt that they had to do it to keep the faith of the public. They had no choice."

But what would be a dream for Ciolino, Green and Webb - a new trial - would be a nightmare for Flynn's parents, Peggy and Charlie, who are convinced Crosley Green is the killer. "There's only one side shown," Charlie says. "And that's Crosley Green's. And it's like there's no victim when you only have one side."

But Ciolino and his four colleagues are still digging. "I want this guy out," he told a Florida reporter. "He deserves to be free."

Eight months after 48 Hours first aired its report in November, the state of Florida is still conducting its own investigation that officials describe as very time consuming. They have tested new items and are awaiting results of DNA evidence but so far none of the results connect Crosley Green to the murder of Chip Flynn. At the same time, after almost a decade, Crosley Green remains on death row.

To review how the case evolved, read Impossible Mission.

Produced by David Kohn;