"Students help free wrongfully convicted man," is the title of the CBS News program, "48 Hours Mystery" segemtn on Anthony Graves. Richard Schlesinger reports; the segment is produced by Lourdes Aguiar, Jenna Jackson and Jennifer Simpson Ashmawy. In addition to the video, you can also read the transcript of the report.
Here's the beginning:
Before the early morning hours of Aug. 18, 1992, the police in Somerville, Texas found six bodies in the burned rubble of what used to be the Davis home.
"This was such a horrific event in that town and continues to be an event that really haunts the people of Somerville..." Texas Monthly reporter Pam Colloff told "48 Hours Mystery." "This was a family that almost everyone in town knew, liked, respected."
The victims: A grandmother, her daughter, and four grandchildren who were staying with them.
Colloff is still moved by the fact that the family never had a chance.
"There was Bobbie Davis, the grandmother to the four children who was bludgeoned and then stabbed to death," Colloff explained. "There was 16-year-old Nicole, her daughter, who was a high school student and athlete, who was bludgeoned and shot. And then there were the four grandchildren. They were 9-year-old Denitra, 6-year-old Brittany, 5-year-old Lea'Erin and 4-year-old Jason."
Glenda Rutledge is Lea'Erin and Brittany's mother.
"And my daughters, "Rutledge sighed, "were exotically beautiful. Beautiful...They were my legacy..." she continued in tears. "I was so looking forward to the chance to get it right... You know, to raise strong, sure, confident, successful women. You know, I wanted to do that so bad."
Rutledge's ex-husband, Keith Davis, lost almost his entire family that night.
"I mean these were little babies, and - and my mother, who... you know, who we adored, who was the center of our life," he said.
He was convinced it was a random crime.
"I just couldn't imagine someone from that area harming anyone in my family, 'cause we had never...we didn't have any enemies, we hadn't been in any trouble," said Davis.
Roy Rueter lived and worked not from the murders. Five days after the crimes, he remembers hearing there was a break in the case.
"I could hear the radio and the news would always come up..." he recalled. "And - it was early in the morning and they came up and they said, you know, arrest had been made...and they said uh - Anthony Charles Graves, age 27."
Anthony Graves was one of Rueter's best friends. Graves had worked for him for a while at his machine shop and the two became so close that Graves had even been in Rueter's wedding party.
"And it just it just freaked me out," he told "48 Hours Mystery" correspondent Richard Schlesinger. "But my immediate thing was, yeah, right. No way. And what - you know, what - what could possibly be going on here, you know?"
"You didn't believe it?" Schlesinger asked Rueter.
"Well of course not. Absolutely not."
Rueter knew Anthony Graves as a gentle man, a father of three. He was now hearing his friend was a murderer - of women and children.
"In my heart, my convictions were that's impossible," he said. "Anthony would never do that. Anthony would never - hurt or raise a hand to a woman. And especially not a child, especially the way he loved his children."
And when Graves was arrested, he seemed equally stunned.
Earlier coverage begins with a preview of the 48 Hours report. All coverage is in the Anthony Graves index.
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