“We don’t need to do anything that formal, Bryan. These men are officers of the court, just
like you and I. You should just take the files,” Chapman said, apparently sensing that this
suggestion had provoked Tate and Ikner.
“Well, there could be files that have inadvertently been missed or documents that dropped
out. I’m just trying to document that what we receive is what you give us—same number of
pages, same file folder headings, et cetera. I’m not questioning anyone’s integrity.”
“The hell you ain’t.” Tate was direct. He looked at Chapman. “We can sign something
confirming what we give him. I think we may need a record of that more than he does.”
Chapman nodded. We got the files and left Monroeville with a lot of excitement about what
we might find in the hundreds of pages of records we’d received. Back in Montgomery, we
eagerly started reviewing them, and not just the files from the police and prosecutors. With
our discovery order from the court, we were able to collect records from Taylor Hardin, the
mental health facility where Myers was sent after he first refused to testify. We got the ABI
file from Simon Benson, the only black ABI agent in South Alabama, as he had proudly told
us. We got Monroeville city police department records and other city files. We even got
Escambia County records and exhibits on the Vickie Pittman murder. The files were
astonishing.
We might have been influenced by the pain of Mozelle and Onzelle or drawn in by the
elaborate conspiracies that Ralph Myers had described, but we soon started asking questions
about some of the law enforcement officers whose names kept coming up around the Pittman
murder. We even decided to talk to the FBI about some of what we had learned.
It wasn’t long after that when the bomb threats started.
elle
(Elle)
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