Star Witness
For Melinda Elkins, the years go by, but the pain and the questions linger.
She can’t stop asking herself, “Who could have been so cold-blooded as to want her mother dead?”
"I miss her, and I know she's not at rest,” she says.
It was a violent death. Judith Johnson, 58, and her 6-year-old granddaughter, Melinda's niece, were at her modest home outside Akron, Ohio, one night in June 1998.
Melinda's brother-in-law found the body the next morning. Judith Johnson had been beaten, strangled, and sexually assaulted.
The little girl was also assaulted, but she survived and lived to tell a shocking story – that the man who’d killed her grandmother was none other than her uncle, and Melinda’s husband, Clarence Elkins.
Within hours, police arrested Elkins and charged him with the murder.
Today, Elkins, 40, sits in prison for life, convicted largely on the word of his own niece. But there never was one shred of physical evidence linking him to this bloody crime. Correspondent Susan Spencer reports.
“I'm not a violent person. I did not do this crime. I'm totally and completely innocent," says Elkins.
The jury, however, disagreed. And Elkins, a steel press operator with no violent criminal record - now sits in prison. That's something his two sons, Clarence Jr, 19, and Brandon, 16, still have a hard time accepting.
"Not to have a dad in your teen years, you lose your childhood,” says Brandon. “That's what happened to me and Clarence, we lost our childhood."
“I can only imagine, I'm sure, they're struggling,” says Elkins. “And I missed a special time in their lives that I'll never get back."
For more than four years, Melinda Elkins has campaigned to convince the world of her husband's innocence.
With financial help from her in-laws - over $100,000 so far - Melinda hired Martin Yant, a private investigator, who has helped overturn seven convictions.
“It's one of the worst investigations I've ever seen,” says Yant. “An immense amount of evidence was overlooked inside as well as outside."
And, in this very bloody crime scene, he says some of that evidence might have provided the killer's fingerprints or DNA, if only police had bothered to test it.
But what little testing was done didn't implicate Elkins. "Even though he was arrested within a few hours they could finding nothing that would indicate that he was involved in this crime," says Yant.
To the contrary, lab reports obtained by 48 Hours show that two hairs found on Judith Johnson's buttocks definitely did not belong to Clarence Elkins.
“The little bit of evidence they did bring forth to the trial, it excluded me,” says Elkins. “It doesn't add up.”
Elkins said he had an alibi for that night – and that he had gone to several bars before going home. But at the trial, Melinda's 6-year-old niece, whom 48 Hours Investigates has agreed not to identify, was a powerful eyewitness.
The jury heard her desperate message left on a neighbor's answering machine: “I need somebody to get my mom for me. I'm all alone. Somebody killed my grandma."
By the time the child told her mother, Melinda's sister, April, what had happened, the attacker was no longer "somebody." It was Uncle Clarence.
"She knew who he was. She knows the sound of his voice,” says the child’s mother, April. “What was I supposed to do? I had to believe my daughter."
The witness said she ran by her grandmother’s couch, and saw a man standing over Judith Johnson, yelling at her. She said she thought it was her Uncle Clarence, and that they were fighting over money.
In court, the sweet curly haired little girl was absolutely sure it was Clarence Elkins, and absolutely convincing.
"Only thing I could think of was mistaken identity or persuaded by someone or coached,” says Elkins. “I don't know."
But other witnesses did provide a possible motive: saying Clarence was angry with his mother-in-law for constantly meddling in his rocky marriage.
“She told me one time that he threatened her with a gun, because they were having a physical argument, my sister and Clarence. And my mother wanted to call the police," recalls Melinda’s sister, April.
But Clarence denies any incident with the gun and involvement in this crime: “I'm totally and completely innocent of this crime that I've been charged with."
Roger Owen and Arneice Rice were on the jury that convicted Elkins.
“It was a very emotional decision. I mean, most of the jury was crying," says Owen. “But it all came back to the little girl.”
“Why would she be mistaken if it wasn't him,” adds Rice. “She knows him."
Prosecutor Mike Carroll remains sure to this day that the right man is behind bars.
"Trust me, based on the evidence and based on everything I know. He did it,” says Carroll. “There was hatred between Judy Johnson and Clarence Elkins."
But Elkins' attorney, Elizabeth Kelly, hopes to reopen this case with a new development that seems too good to be true.
The prosecution's star witness - Clarence Elkins' niece, now 10 years old - has recanted her original testimony, saying she was never sure to begin with that it was her Uncle Clarence who attacked her.
Melinda Elkins has no doubt in her mind that her husband is innocent of the murder of her mother, Judith Johnson. But a jury found him guilty, and Melinda needs new evidence to get a new trial.
“I’m angry. I’m very angry, and sad at the same time. Anybody could be arrested for anything, the way I see it now,” says Elkins. “How can they convict a person with DNA evidence that excludes him completely. It doesn’t add up.”
So, if Clarence Elkins didn't do it - who did? The Elkins team says they think they know.