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Innocent Until Interrogated: The True Story of the Buddhist Temple Massacre and the Tucson Four
On a sweltering August morning, a woman walked into a Buddhist temple near Phoenix and discovered the most horrific crime in Arizona history. Nine Buddhist temple members—six of them monks committed to lives of non-violence—lay dead in a pool of blood, shot execution style. The massive manhunt that followed turned up no leads until a tip from a psychiatric patient led to the arrest of five suspects. Each initially denied their involvement in the crime, yet one by one, under intense interrogation, they confessed.
Soon after, all five men recanted, saying their confessions had been coerced. One was freed after providing an alibi, but the remaining suspects—dubbed “The Tucson Four” by the media—remained in custody even though no physical evidence linked them to the crime.
Seven weeks later, investigators discovered—almost by chance—physical evidence that implicated two entirely new suspects. The Tucson Four were finally freed on November 22 after two teenage boys confessed to the crime, yet troubling questions remained. Why were confessions forced out of innocent suspects? Why and how did legal authorities build a case without evidence? And, ultimately, how did so much go so wrong?
In this first book-length treatment of the Buddhist Temple Massacre, Gary L. Stuart explores the unspeakable crime, the inexplicable confessions, and the troubling behavior of police officials. Stuart’s impeccable research for the book included a review of the complete legal records of the case, an examination of all the physical evidence, a survey of three years of print and broadcast news, and more than fifty personal interviews related to the case. Like In Cold Blood , and The Executioner’s Song, Innocent Until Interrogated is a riveting read that provides not only a striking account of the crime and the investigation but also a disturbing look at the American justice system at its very worst.
Soon after, all five men recanted, saying their confessions had been coerced. One was freed after providing an alibi, but the remaining suspects—dubbed “The Tucson Four” by the media—remained in custody even though no physical evidence linked them to the crime.
Seven weeks later, investigators discovered—almost by chance—physical evidence that implicated two entirely new suspects. The Tucson Four were finally freed on November 22 after two teenage boys confessed to the crime, yet troubling questions remained. Why were confessions forced out of innocent suspects? Why and how did legal authorities build a case without evidence? And, ultimately, how did so much go so wrong?
In this first book-length treatment of the Buddhist Temple Massacre, Gary L. Stuart explores the unspeakable crime, the inexplicable confessions, and the troubling behavior of police officials. Stuart’s impeccable research for the book included a review of the complete legal records of the case, an examination of all the physical evidence, a survey of three years of print and broadcast news, and more than fifty personal interviews related to the case. Like In Cold Blood , and The Executioner’s Song, Innocent Until Interrogated is a riveting read that provides not only a striking account of the crime and the investigation but also a disturbing look at the American justice system at its very worst.
340 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 26, 2016
Impecible!
So I picked up this book from the Library shelf thinking it was going to be an indepth analysis of Interrogations gone bad.
Stuart instead focuses on a particular case of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Arizona. He presents the case honestly, taking the reader through the twists and turns of the Buddhist Temple Massacre. He then highlights some of the false confessions of this particular Sheriff's Office. It is quite mindblowing... And mostly to the effect that we (as a population) allow faulty/unfair techniques to be used to simply "close" a case instead of finding the truth. It's rather disgusting.
Stuart only adds little tidbits in his Epilouge on suggestions of how to fix the problems this country faces with interrogations.. I think he could have dedicated an entire section or chapter on discussing this - or give references for further study/consideration.
I would love to see this book updated, becasue Stuart makes some predictions that actually end up partially becoming true in respect to the one of the men found guilty of this crime. The case was re-tried and I would love to read Stuart's analysis on the new parts of this case.
Great read, fantastically written.
So I picked up this book from the Library shelf thinking it was going to be an indepth analysis of Interrogations gone bad.
Stuart instead focuses on a particular case of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Arizona. He presents the case honestly, taking the reader through the twists and turns of the Buddhist Temple Massacre. He then highlights some of the false confessions of this particular Sheriff's Office. It is quite mindblowing... And mostly to the effect that we (as a population) allow faulty/unfair techniques to be used to simply "close" a case instead of finding the truth. It's rather disgusting.
Stuart only adds little tidbits in his Epilouge on suggestions of how to fix the problems this country faces with interrogations.. I think he could have dedicated an entire section or chapter on discussing this - or give references for further study/consideration.
I would love to see this book updated, becasue Stuart makes some predictions that actually end up partially becoming true in respect to the one of the men found guilty of this crime. The case was re-tried and I would love to read Stuart's analysis on the new parts of this case.
Great read, fantastically written.
July 13, 2011
An excellent and indepth look at the botched mass murder investigation that sent five innocent men (actually, six, as the reader later discovers) to jail after police harangued false confessions from most of them. I remember when the Buddhist Temple murders occurred. You couldn't live in Phoenix and not be aware that nine innocent people had been gunned down in their place of worship. A Tucson man, who called police from the mental hospital where he was a patient, claimed to have been involved and turned in the names of his supposed cohorts. That man lied. And despite the fact that police picked him up their key witness from an asylum and he got several details wrong, they clung to the notion that they'd bagged the bad guys. What they bagged were a bunch of innocent young men who knew nothing about the murders because they hadn't been there. Yet they were so traumatized and mentally exhausted after long hours of interrogation (we're talking nine to twelve hours of interrogation with no food or sleep) that several falsely confessed. (They later recanted but were not believed.) They did not understand their Miranda rights, and police downplayed the importance of those rights. In one case, a man asked for a lawyer and was not given one. In the meantime, in the saddest twist of an all-around tragedy, one of the real perpetrators was out murdering another person. All that time, the police had the actual murder weapon in their possesion but were too busy interrogating the Tucson Four to run a check on the gun.
This was an amazing, frustrating, terrifying book. If you've ever wondered why innocent people confess to crimes they didn't commit, or if you don't believe the innocent falsely confess, you need to read this book. Well-written, well researched, absolutely horrifying, this is true crime at its best.
This was an amazing, frustrating, terrifying book. If you've ever wondered why innocent people confess to crimes they didn't commit, or if you don't believe the innocent falsely confess, you need to read this book. Well-written, well researched, absolutely horrifying, this is true crime at its best.
April 5, 2020
Wow, a masterclass in false confessions. This book really gives an insider look into why and how false confessions are extracted. The public believes confessions are always accurate—why would you lie about killing nine people?—and it's hard to understand why a sane person might confess to something they didn't do if they weren't physically tortured into doing so. I have watched the docu-series on Netflix, listened to the podcasts, etc etc, but it wasn't until after reading this book that I really understood how I, too, would be vulnerable to giving a false confession.
In 1991, nine people were murdered at the Wat Promkunaram Buddhist temple in Waddell (Phoenix suburb), Arizona. It was the first mass murder in Arizona since its statehood. Based on a call from a delusional man in Tucson, five Tucson men were taken in for interrogation/custody (? it was ambiguous and later part of a lawsuit against Maricopa Police) and four of them ended up giving false confessions. The real killers, two teen boys from the Phoenix area, remained free on the streets for several more months while police focused on making five fake stories line up with the crime scene—wasted time that allowed one of the boys to kill again AND a separate false confession by a sixth innocent person to be extracted related to that murder. In the end, the "Tucson Four" plus the other man who had confessed to the later murder were released and signed settlement deals with Maricopa County.
It was during this chaos that Joe Arpaio, a retired DEA agent unknown at the time but perhaps the nation's most notorious sheriff nowadays, ran for the position of sheriff on the platform that he would impose stricter oversight, training, and guidelines for interrogations.
The book also goes into the prosecution's and the defense's courtroom strategies—both teens confessed: Alessandro Garcia cut a plea deal but Johnathan Doody had a jury trial to determine if his role in the murders qualified for premeditated first-degree murder (and the likely death penalty) or just felony murder (being present while someone is murdered during the event of a felony crime and thus would likely spare him from the death penalty). At the time the book was published, both boys were sentenced to life in prison, not the death penalty. Doody has since had two retrials (his first trial was overturned on the basis of a coerced confession, his second trial ended in a deadlocked jury, and his third upheld the sentencing of his first trial—9 life sentences).
In my opinion, Garcia is cruel, cold, and crass.... the very picture of someone who likes the thrill of killing and rush of attention and power. He boasted in an interview that he could write a handbook on how to get away with murder, and if he hadn't been caught "there would have been a lot more murders." I believe Doody's confession that they were playing a kind of ROTC game gone awry, with Garcia leading the way to eliminate all witnesses and Doody's shotgun grazing, but not killing, anyone.
What a shame.
In 1991, nine people were murdered at the Wat Promkunaram Buddhist temple in Waddell (Phoenix suburb), Arizona. It was the first mass murder in Arizona since its statehood. Based on a call from a delusional man in Tucson, five Tucson men were taken in for interrogation/custody (? it was ambiguous and later part of a lawsuit against Maricopa Police) and four of them ended up giving false confessions. The real killers, two teen boys from the Phoenix area, remained free on the streets for several more months while police focused on making five fake stories line up with the crime scene—wasted time that allowed one of the boys to kill again AND a separate false confession by a sixth innocent person to be extracted related to that murder. In the end, the "Tucson Four" plus the other man who had confessed to the later murder were released and signed settlement deals with Maricopa County.
It was during this chaos that Joe Arpaio, a retired DEA agent unknown at the time but perhaps the nation's most notorious sheriff nowadays, ran for the position of sheriff on the platform that he would impose stricter oversight, training, and guidelines for interrogations.
The book also goes into the prosecution's and the defense's courtroom strategies—both teens confessed: Alessandro Garcia cut a plea deal but Johnathan Doody had a jury trial to determine if his role in the murders qualified for premeditated first-degree murder (and the likely death penalty) or just felony murder (being present while someone is murdered during the event of a felony crime and thus would likely spare him from the death penalty). At the time the book was published, both boys were sentenced to life in prison, not the death penalty. Doody has since had two retrials (his first trial was overturned on the basis of a coerced confession, his second trial ended in a deadlocked jury, and his third upheld the sentencing of his first trial—9 life sentences).
In my opinion, Garcia is cruel, cold, and crass.... the very picture of someone who likes the thrill of killing and rush of attention and power. He boasted in an interview that he could write a handbook on how to get away with murder, and if he hadn't been caught "there would have been a lot more murders." I believe Doody's confession that they were playing a kind of ROTC game gone awry, with Garcia leading the way to eliminate all witnesses and Doody's shotgun grazing, but not killing, anyone.
What a shame.
June 22, 2019
Well researched. The presentation leads to chronological confusion in several chapters.
Depressing to think that this is the best law enforcement and legal system available to humanity.
Depressing to think that this is the best law enforcement and legal system available to humanity.
September 13, 2013
In the immediate aftermath of Arizona's worst mass murder, the killing of nine people at a Buddhist temple not far from Phoenix, the county sheriff forms a team to solve the killings, but a month later, they haven't turned up any solid lead. And then a call comes in from someone claiming to have inside knowledge about the case. The fact that when they picked up this informer he was staying in a mental institution and that the various stories he told were wildly inconsistent, but at this point the police were desparate for anything that looked promising. So when the informer finally got around to naming specific people they were all rounded up. There's no physical evidence against any of them, but after being subjected to round the clock interrogations, threats, and warnings that if they didn't confess they'd wind up on death row, four of them confessed to the crime.
The cops' case comes apart, though, when they finally get around to running ballistic tests on a rifle that they'd picked up early in the investigation and realize that it's the murder weapon. That leads them to a completely different group of people, one of them still in posession of some of the things that were stolen from the temple, and whose footprints match some found at the crime scene. Clearly, these are the real culprits.
But why would the original suspects, who it becomes obvious had nothing to do with the crime, have confessed to it? Which is the story of this book. Reading it will give you a healthy suspicion of any criminal case that's built solely on confessions, without any supporting evidence.
The cops' case comes apart, though, when they finally get around to running ballistic tests on a rifle that they'd picked up early in the investigation and realize that it's the murder weapon. That leads them to a completely different group of people, one of them still in posession of some of the things that were stolen from the temple, and whose footprints match some found at the crime scene. Clearly, these are the real culprits.
But why would the original suspects, who it becomes obvious had nothing to do with the crime, have confessed to it? Which is the story of this book. Reading it will give you a healthy suspicion of any criminal case that's built solely on confessions, without any supporting evidence.
January 1, 2017
When this happened, I was in WI visiting family. It was big news, even bigger in Phoenix, when I got back. I was excited to see a book written about it, as I followed the case as it unfolded in the papers. At the time, I remember thinking how could the MCSO (Maricopa County Sheriff's Office) keep the Tucson four in jail without any evidence. I kept waiting for some evidence to show itself. Along with half the population of Phoenix, I was glad when D.A. Rick Romley finally let them free. The book brings up the small Buddah statue, that was found at one of the Tucson's suspect's homes, but it doesn't relate the intensity of this "find." My rememberance of this was that, MCSO truly thought they had uncovered the Holy Grail of evidence with this statue. Statue is really a loose term, it was more like a carnival novelity that you throw in a junk drawer after getting it. MCSO, thus then the media, went on about this "statue" as great evidence, "the smoking gun", for a long time. The author, Gary Stuart, does a wonderful job of researching this extreme mess, and making it understandable for us. This book should be a must read for all police officers interrogating suspects. "Innocent, until proven guilty" should be a quote on all Captain's walls, reminding them, that their quest is not only to catch the bad guy, it is to catch the right guy. Coerced confessions-police induced confessions-allow the criminal to escape, and in this case, kill again, while punishing innocent people.
April 22, 2012
The first part of this book was a little slow. I get why the writer had to put in so much of the dialogue from the transcripts, but after I while I felt like I was just reading the transcripts and not a narrative. Really interesting and important story about the dangers of group think and the danger of false confessions.
August 22, 2013
This book was thorough and very well written, but quite sickening when you read about the actions of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (and it's still going on.) Reading this book now just happened to be particularly timely because Johnathan Doody's retrial is going on now.
November 24, 2010
Intense account focuses on the false accusations and arrests prior to the discovery of the true murderers.
February 7, 2018
Interesting look at three cases involving the murders of 13 people, 9 suspects, and at least 6 false confessions.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews