More than seven years after DNA testing freed two men from prison, clearing them in the 1994 slaying of Antwinica Bridgeman, prosecutors have not filed new charges in the case despite a genetic match between semen found on her underwear and a man who lived nearby.
Last week, a federal judge’s opinion on the two men’s civil lawsuits against city and county authorities revealed previously unreported details about the man, including his name — Clarence Neal — and that he had pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a woman in 2001 as well as being “implicated in several other rapes.”
Judge Martha Pacold’s opinion also disclosed that the Cook County state’s attorney’s office sent investigators in 2017 to interview Neal. The opinion describes how Neal made several conflicting statements when they asked him if he had a sexual history with Bridgeman.
Nevest Coleman and Derrell “Darryl” Fulton, who spent 23 years behind bars after being arrested in Bridgeman’s slaying, are suing the Chicago Police Department, Cook County, several officers and a prosecutor. Attorneys for the defendants asked the judge to resolve most of the complaints in their favor, but Pacold ruled that the bulk of the cases can move forward toward trial.
Her opinion, reached in late March, was unsealed Wednesday, Aug. 20, with some material redacted.
While the suits continue to work their way through the civil court system, the lack of new criminal charges has drawn criticism from Coleman and his lawyer, who say justice is being left undone.
Bridgeman disappeared in April 1994 after celebrating her 20th birthday and was found dead more than two weeks later. Coleman and Fulton were convicted in 1997 and freed after two decades when DNA testing did not find a match with either of them, or with Bridgeman’s boyfriend.
Instead, the DNA matched the man later identified as Neal, according to court records.
The Cook County state’s attorney’s office declined to comment, and a spokesperson for the Chicago Law Department said “the City does not, and cannot comment on ongoing litigation.” Efforts to reach Neal for comment were unsuccessful.
Attorneys for police and the county have argued that Coleman and Fulton are guilty and said the state’s attorney declined to fight their certificates of innocence because of “scarce resources.”
“The (Cook County state’s attorney’s office) also rejected the suggestion that the real killer is Neal, instead concluding Neal likely had a sexual encounter with the victim before the murder took place,” attorneys for police officers who are defendants in the cases wrote in a 2021 court filing. “Nonetheless … (the office) concluded it would be impossible to overcome their burden of proof on a retrial ‘in this day and age’ given the presence of Neal’s DNA on the victim’s underwear, combined with the confessions being contested.”
More Top Picks Best Gym Machines For Abs
Russell Ainsworth, an attorney who represents Coleman in his civil lawsuit, called the case “a travesty,” saying it was inconceivable that the DNA of the person or people responsible for her death would not be found on her body.
The Tribune has reported extensively on Coleman, Fulton and Bridgeman.
On the night Bridgeman disappeared, she had gone to a friend’s home in the 900 block of West Garfield Boulevard to celebrate her 20th birthday. It was April 11, 1994, and she was wearing a Chicago Bulls jacket.
A small group of friends, including Coleman, toasted Bridgeman, who went by “Mikey.” As the party wound down, Bridgeman and Coleman walked a teenage girl home, then continued on their own.
At the time, Coleman worked for the White Sox as a respected member of the groundskeeping crew at the new Comiskey Park. Coleman was also affiliated with the Gangster Disciples and couldn’t walk Bridgeman, who lived on 53rd Street, past the intersection of 55th and South Peoria streets because of an ongoing conflict with a rival gang.
In a 2017 interview, Coleman told the Tribune he watched as Bridgeman walked away alone.
That was the last time anyone reported seeing her alive.
More than two weeks after the party, Coleman’s mother, Cecelia, asked him to find the source of a stench at their greystone, also in the 900 block of West Garfield, records show.
That led Coleman and a friend outside to check out the basement, which was in an abandoned part of the building known to attract squatters. They couldn’t open the door, so they looked through a window, records show.
“Oh my God, there is a body,” Coleman said, according to the friend’s statement to prosecutors. Coleman told his mother, and she called police.
In the basement, officers found Bridgeman in a grisly state, wearing the clothes from the party but partially disrobed, with a piece of concrete in her mouth. She had been impaled with a pipe, though officials later determined she suffocated on the concrete.
Police focused on Coleman after they learned he had been with her on the night she disappeared. They narrowed in on Fulton after Bridgeman’s boyfriend at the time said Fulton and a cousin of Fulton’s had previously harassed her.
A group of Chicago cops with a history of alleged misconduct obtained confessions from Coleman and Fulton, which led to their convictions.
The case re-emerged after Fulton wrote a letter to prosecutors years later seeking a review of the case and more testing.
A forensic report dated May 31, 2017, states that Coleman, Fulton, Fulton’s cousin and Bridgeman’s boyfriend were all excluded as the source of semen collected from her underwear. The testing did match the man later publicly identified as Neal, according to the report.
In an August 2017 Cook County criminal court hearing, prosecutors acknowledged “serious issues have been raised in this case based on new DNA findings” that could merit “some form of relief” for Coleman and Fulton but argued that the presence of another man’s semen didn’t prove Coleman and Fulton were innocent of the crime.
The state’s attorney’s office, then led by Kim Foxx, sent investigators to interview Neal after the DNA testing, according to the federal judge’s opinion.
“Initially, Neal told investigators that he had known A.B. for only about a month, had seen her only in passing, and never spoke to her,” the opinion states. “He denied having any sort of sexual relationship with her. However, he later said that ‘if anything happened,’ he had stuck his hand down (Bridgeman’s) pants or vice versa.”
Neal later changed his story to say he may have had a “quickie” with Bridgeman, according to the opinion. The opinion also cites a later deposition in which Neal said Bridgeman had “never removed her clothes during this encounter and had only performed oral sex on him.”
The identity of the person who killed Bridgeman is a key issue in the lawsuits brought by Coleman and Fulton. Fulton sued the city and county in December 2017, shortly after being freed. Coleman filed his lawsuit in February 2018.
In their suits, the two men assert their innocence in Bridgeman’s death and allege they were framed.
The judge’s opinion on the defendants’ motions for summary judgment clears the way for the cases to go to trial or potentially be settled after years of delay.
As for Bridgeman’s slaying, attorney Stuart Chanen, who has represented other clients in wrongful conviction cases, said the length of time and tangled history make it challenging to bring new charges. It’s also hard for prosecutors to convict another suspect beyond a reasonable doubt when they are already on record pointing the finger at two other defendants, he said.
“The problem is, it’s still 30 years later from the rape and murder,” Chanen said.
Coleman, one of the wrongly convicted men, told the Tribune he is disappointed by the lack of new movement in the case.
More Top Picks Best Foot And Calf Massagers With Heat
“That’s what I don’t get. You were so quick to get me but you’re taking your time (now),” Coleman said in an interview. “That I don’t understand.”