Death Row Stories (2014–…): Season 1, Episode 6 - Kris Maharaj: Murder in Miami - full transcript
On this episode of Death Row Stories,
a millionaire is accused of brutal murders
in a downtown Miami hotel.
The crime scene was a bloody, bloody mess.
But after a death sentence, one man
fights to save his life.
- You go into Federal Court and say,
"My guy's innocent", - and they say,
- "Well, too bad, mate, that's got nothing
- to do with it."
And what he discovers will turn
the case upside down.
Anybody in the world would say,
"What? That's not allowed."
There were a series of questions
that should've been asked.
This case has more
evidence that was covered up
than any other case I
have ever seen in decades.
There's a body in the water.
He was butchered and murdered.
Many people proclaim their innocence.
- In this case,
there were a number of things - that stank.
This man is remorseless.
He needs to pay for it with his life.
The electric chair
flashed in front of my eyes.
Get a conviction at all costs,
let the truth fall where it may.
A double homicide was discovered
at the Dupont Plaza
Hotel in downtown Miami.
This was a very sensational crime.
How many times do you
have a double homicide in
a downtown Miami hotel?
The crime scene was a bloody, bloody mess.
The father was shot six times while he was
crawling, trying to escape.
The son was shot, "execution style."
So, this was a pretty shocking case.
The dead men were Derrick Moo Young,
a father of four,
and his youngest son,
Duane, who had just been
accepted to law school.
A few hours after the shootings,
a journalist
named Neville Butler
contacted police saying he'd seen his boss,
47-year-old Kris Maharaj, pull the trigger.
Our big break was when
we received a telephone call
that there was an individual
by the name of Neville Butler
that wanted to speak to us.
Butler described the crimes in painstaking
detail to Buhrmaster.
Kris opened the door
and came out with a gun
in hand, with a glove on.
And that's when I almost passed out.
When I asked Kris, "What on earth is this?"
He says, "keep out of this."
That's when he fired the first shot,
at his leg.
Moo Young dashed at him
and that's when Kris must have
let go four or five bullets.
- The television that was there, the
lamp and everything - had all been shot up.
- The screen of the television had
been destroyed - from the bullet.
He turned his attention now to the son,
he said, "Come with me."
And he took him up the stairs
and told him, "Kneel down, face the wall."
And then,
the next thing I heard was "boom".
He shot the boy in the back of his head.
Kris Maharaj was a wealthy
importer from England
who'd started a newspaper
business in Miami.
He was quickly charged with two counts
of first-degree murder
The maximum sentence? The death penalty.
It didn't look too good for Kris.
The lead detective, John Buhrmaster,
said that he had denied
ever being in room 1215
- while his fingerprints were all
over the place - so that was a lie.
Kris denied ever having a gun,
he clearly did have
a 9 mm pistol.
- The ballistics expert came in and said that's
the type of gun - that was used for this murder.
He had invested in property
and Derrick Moo Young
was supervising that property.
According to Kris,
Derrick had stolen $441,000,
had just embezzled it.
So, Kris had had a motive, he clearly hated
the Moo Youngs, and finally,
the icing on the cake
was their star witness,
Neville Butler.
Kris' case went to trial.
In court,
the defense presented no alibi witnesses,
and Kris never took the stand.
Ron Petrillo was the defense investigator
on the case.
I knew when I heard all of this going on,
coming out of the jury room,
what the final outcome was going to be.
The jury returned guilty
verdicts in less than
four hours.
And then when it went to the penalty phase,
judge gave him the death sentence.
During his ruling, the judge declared that,
"The coldness and calculated manner
in which the defendant
executed his heinous plan
cannot be overstated."
Kris would officially begin
his time on death row.
I said, "God knows I'm innocent.
"They will not kill me, they cannot."
Kris was from England, a country
that had abolished
the death penalty for murder in 1965.
With one of their citizens on death row,
the British government
asked Clive Stafford Smith
to investigate Kris' case.
Clive was a young, idealistic lawyer
who'd made a name for himself
fighting death penalty cases
on a pro bono basis.
By the time I got there in '94,
he'd been sentenced to death,
- he'd gone up to the Florida Supreme Court
- on appeal,
To the U.S. Supreme Court,
and come back down,
and so my first thought was,
"Oh, my goodness,
how did I let myself in for this?"
Despite his reluctance, Clive agreed
to meet with the man
he presumed was guilty.
- I never talk to people, when I first
meet them, - about "Did you do it?"
They don't know you, they don't trust you.
Though,
Kris was one of those quite rare people
who insisted on giving me an A to Z lecture
about the fact that he didn't do it.
And, you know,
I found that quite convincing, although,
I will say the evidence against him was
pretty strong at the time.
As a former cop,
Ron Petrillo also had doubts
about Kris' innocence
when he joined the case.
Initially,
I thought Kris just killed these guys.
But I'm looking to see
where the evidence takes me
and it didn't add up.
The deeper I got into the investigation,
it began to dawn on me
that Kris was innocent.
Ron was very,
very loyal to Kris and he carried on
after the case was over,
even though he wasn't
being paid or anything.
Ron and Clive noticed discrepancies
in the prosecution's story of the murders,
and set out
to look for answers.
I demanded to see the
files of the prosecutor
and of the police.
- I start going through it, and I'm sitting
there with some - extraordinarily bad coffee,
In the police headquarters
going through this
very carefully, tabbed file.
I discovered that Neville Butler,
the star witness,
failed his polygraph test.
- I discovered notes that showed that the
Police knew that - Kris had lost his gun
Before the murders ever took place.
This case has more
evidence that was covered up
than any other case
I've ever seen in decades.
Just a year before Kris Maharaj
was put on death row
for the murders of Derrick
and Duane Moo Young
in Florida,
he'd been living a life
of luxury in England.
Kris had come to England
when he was quite young,
worked incredibly hard,
and become a millionaire.
In England, Kris married and had four kids
while working his way
up from a truck driver
to a business magnate.
He was a very flamboyant millionaire
here in London.
He had got his Rolls-Royce,
and then,
he began to get into horse-racing.
Kris amassed the second biggest stable
of race horses in England
Only the Queen owned more.
Having emigrated from Trinidad,
Kris also mingled with
members of parliament,
gaining entrance into an upper crust,
lily-white society,
rarely available to immigrants of color.
Kris first met the men he'd been
accused of killing.
When he began importing
their fruit from Jamaica.
After years of doing business together,
Derrick Moo Young asked
Kris to invest in houses
he was building in Florida.
But according to Kris,
the Moo Youngs took his money,
and embezzled it.
They also incorporated as KDM Distributors,
a name eerily similar to Kris' company
and allegedly started drawing money
from Kris' accounts.
According to Kris,
Derrick had stolen property
worth $441,000.
So you could see why
Kris would be very angry.
He wanted to put an end to this.
Kris was used to settling
disputes with words,
not weapons.
He sued the Moo Youngs and told Clive
he expected to win.
But if Kris then had little reason to walk
into the Dupont hotel
with a loaded weapon,
why was there so much evidence
pointing to him as a suspect?
According to Kris,
he went to the Dupont at 9:30 a.m.
on the morning of the murders
to meet a potential business
partner for the newspaper
he'd started in Miami.
- Neville Butler, the man who would
claim to see Kris - commit the murders,
Set up the meeting.
But the man Kris was
supposed to meet was not there.
The two men waited for nearly an hour.
At 10:30, Kris drove 25 miles
to Fort Lauderdale
and attended meetings during the hours
when the murders took place
and he could prove it.
Kris had alibi witnesses
including an employee at his
newspaper named Tino Geddes.
Tino Geddes swore to me
that he had been with Kris,
gone on lunch, stayed by Kris.
The manager at a
restaurant Kris frequented,
also clearly remembered
seeing Kris at lunch.
I know I saw Kris the day of the murders
because there was a person who was sick,
and I needed to come in
and fill in for that person.
It doesn't seem like
there's any way possible
that he could've killed
people at 12 o'clock
and then been in for lunch
sometime between 12:00 and 2:00.
Five other witnesses would come forward
placing Kris with them
on the day of the murders.
I haven't any doubt at
all that I saw him that day.
So that was 12:00, 12:30, within that time.
Yet Neville told Miami
PD homicide detective,
John Buhrmaster
a convincing account of
seeing Maharaj commit
the murders in cold blood.
Someone had to be lying.
Butler was a home run for police.
Not only could he identify Maharaj,
he would go on to lead Detective Buhrmaster
to where he and Kris
planned to meet for dinner.
Kris would be taken for interrogation
and stark differences would
emerge about what was said
during that conversation.
John Buhrmaster said that Kris denied
ever being in room 1215
while his fingerprints
were all over the place.
Kris' fingerprints
would only be significant
if he denied being in the room to police.
Buhrmaster also said that
Kris denied ever having a gun.
He clearly did have a 9 mm pistol.
But if Buhrmaster thought Kris was
trying to hide something,
he never took a sworn statement
during the interrogation
to document that fact.
And a lie detector test
Kris took later that evening
would support Kris' version of events.
They had one of the top polygraph
examiners
in Florida do these tests.
Kris passed.
That was plain and simple.
Despite passing the lie detector and having
numerous alibi witnesses,
Kris was booked and held without bail.
It would be a year before
he'd get his day in court.
On the eve of trial,
Kris and his investigator,
Ron Petrillo
felt good about their chances.
Kris had seven or eight alibis.
I had located people and
gotten sworn statements
that put him squarely in Broward County
some 25 miles away
during the time that
these murders occurred.
But with his trial approaching,
Kris got word that one of his key alibis,
Tino Geddes,
was about to change his story.
Everything that Tino had said,
that he was with Kris,
that Kris was in Broward
County when murders took place,
it was all a lie, according to Tino.
Geddes was now going to testify
for the prosecution.
And no one, including Kris,
was prepared for the accusations
Geddes was about to make.
Kris Maharaj was facing the death penalty
for the murders of Derrick
and Duane Moo Young
when shortly before trial,
Tino Geddes, one of Kris'
key alibi witnesses
had a dramatic change of heart.
Tino Geddes worked for Kris
at a newspaper that Kris owned.
From day one, he swore to me
that he had been with Kris.
Now, Tino has changed his story,
on the day that the murders were committed,
he wasn't with Kris,
Kris wanted the Moo Youngs dead.
Tino was now claiming Kris' actions
in the murders
had been premeditated.
John Rattlesnakes was a
prosecutor on Kris' case.
Mr. Geddes told us that he,
in fact, had been
with Krishna Maharaj
- on several other occasions
when he'd tried to - kill the victims
And members of their family.
And that, in fact, that Krishna Maharaj
soul motive in life
- at that point in time was the death of
- Derrick Moo Young.
Tino'd said that Kris had done a dry run at
the Dupont Plaza Hotel with him
where he had prepared
to murder the Moo Youngs
And Kris was going to
burst through from room
404 to room 406 to do it.
I went to the Dupont Plaza Hotel,
- there's no door between 404 and 406, there
are all sorts of - reasons why Tino was lying.
The question was why.
Why do you think Geddes changed his story?
Tino Geddes had a DUI trial coming up,
and he was also being charged for smuggling
guns and ammunition.
He was smuggling a whole bunch of guns
into Jamaica
at a time when there were very,
very harsh sentencing.
My experience is the
vast majority of people,
when they face life in prison,
- are willing to say what the prosecution
wants them to - say about pretty much anything,
And probably about their grandmother.
In Tino Geddes' misfortune, the prosecution
sensed an opportunity
and flew to Jamaica to
help their new witness.
Paul Ridge and John Kastrenakes
went to testify on his
behalf and got him off.
With, I think,
just a fine instead of doing jail time.
And I thought, "Well, okay, they're
doing their job."
Until I found out they and
Tino went to a strip club.
- A lot of people would say, "Well,
what they do - on their own time
"is their own business."
But they are there on my dime as a taxpayer
testifying on behalf of
this man and they go to
a strip club with him?
Yeah,
I'd say that they got a little too close.
Kris' trial began on October 5, 1987.
Almost exactly one year
after the murders occurred.
It was presided over by Judge Howard Gross,
known to friends as "Mousey"
because of his small frame and large ears.
Kris' attorney was Eric Hendon
who'd helped other accused killers
avoid the death penalty.
During opening arguments,
the prosecution contended
that the Moo Youngs
were innocent businessmen
gunned down by Kris,
the cold-blooded killer.
Eric Hendon told the jury they would hear
fictional stories from the prosecution
worthy of a Hollywood drama.
But on the third day of trial,
the proceedings came to
a sudden halt.
- What happened on day three of the trial,
- if you can believe it,
Is that Howie the Mouse, doesn't show up
because he's been arrested
taking kickbacks in another case.
And he'd been caught by
law enforcement agents posing
as drug dealers of all people.
Mousey's removal was a golden opportunity
for Kris' lawyer, Eric Hendon
to call for a mistrial.
With the new trial,
Hendon would know the prosecution's
arguments ahead of time.
Without a new trial,
the judge replacing Mousey could face
deciding a death sentence
without hearing all the evidence.
"My advice to you is
not to ask for a mistrial."
And he said they would go on with the trial
because he felt he had made some headway
and they had a good jury.
Why would he do this?
Probably, the main motivation
was that he was on a set fee
and you're going to
have to start over and that
cuts into your fee.
Hendon would maintain he'd worked hard
on behalf of his client,
but letting the trial continue
seemed like an unusual choice
and the jury would go on to hear
six days of testimony,
all directed against Kris.
- Neville Butler testified about
the graphic details - of the murders
He said he'd watched Kris commit.
Tino Geddes told
prosecutors Kris had asked him
to fabricate an alibi.
And Detective John
Buhrmaster said Kris had tried to
cover up the crime
during his interrogation.
- When the case was finally turned over
- to the defense, Hendon's judgment would,
Again, come into question.
Eric said to me that if he
didn't call any witnesses,
he would have two shots at the jury
in closing argument.
I said to him,
"But you're not going to do that."
I've got all these witnesses.
"You're not going to do that.",
he didn't answer me.
Eric Hendon's defense case for Kris would
consist of only nine words.
Eric stood up and said, "Your honor,
the defense rests."
Eric didn't call a single witness. Nothing.
I thought Kris was going to rip the skin
off my forearm.
It's not often in a capital case you get
- six alibi witnesses putting your client
- somewhere else.
Why on earth did the
lawyer not put those on?
I have never wanted to
hit another human being,
physically attack
another human being like I did that day
with Eric Hendon.
The jury responded to Hendon's strategy
by returning guilty verdicts
for two first-degree murders.
They would also vote whether
to recommend the death penalty.
And with Florida being
the only remaining state
where a simple majority
is needed in sentencing,
the vote in favor of death
passed by a count of 7 to 5.
The judge who'd replaced Mousey agreed.
Kris would be sentenced
to die in the electric chair.
Kris fainted,
Kris hit the floor,
passed, passed out completely.
When Clive finally got the chance to appeal
Kris' case in 1995,
he immediately set out to
present all the alibi witnesses
who were never called at trial.
Yeah, I talked to the alibi witnesses,
they were very convincing.
And they said, "It's true, Kris was not at
the Dupont Plaza hotel
"at 12:00 noon that day
because he was with us
"out in Ft. Lauderdale."
But Kris' alibis fell on deaf ears
as the courts would only
consider whether Kris had
received a fair trial in 1987.
- It's actually very hard to win a case
on just saying - the facts are wrong.
Mostly,
it's all about what people disparagingly
called legal technicalities.
But Clive did have an opening.
If he could show Kris' attorney,
Eric Hendon,
had been ineffective in representing Kris,
he would open the door to a new trial
and new witnesses.
Ben Kuehne also worked
on Kris' appeals and would
cross-examine Hendon.
Eric Hendon was over his head at that time.
He needed help in a case of this magnitude.
And Kris just suffered the consequences
as a result of his lawyer's errors.
But Hendon needed to admit under oath
that he'd made mistakes.
- And when Ben asked him
why he didn't present - Kris' alibis,
Hendon told the court,
"It appeared to me as if
these were alibi witnesses
who had been sought out,
it seemed all too convenient."
In other words,
Hendon didn't believe any of Kris' alibis.
How is one lawyer going to be the judge
of the credibility of a witness
who could be the key
to a not guilty verdict?
That's not a decision for a lawyer to make.
Not with the stakes this high.
Hendon said he had a strategic reason
for not putting on the alibi.
He thought the alibi was too good.
Now, once a lawyer says that,
then it takes it out of the realm of
the lawyer's ineptitude
- and then becomes a strategic decision
- by the lawyer
That the courts won't second guess.
Ultimately, the court disagreed
with Clive and Ben,
refusing to find that Eric Hendon
had been ineffective.
Clive was still convinced Kris was innocent
and while preparing further appeals,
he came across
the prosecution's files
and discovered evidence
he felt police and prosecutors
apparently did not want Kris to have.
- I start going through it,
and I discovered - that the police knew
- that Kris had lost his gun before
the murders - ever took place,
I discovered that Kris
had actually told them
from the very beginning
he had been in room 1215,
so all those fingerprints,
there was a perfectly
innocent explanation.
Clive had also seen photographs
from the crime scene
of a briefcase belonging to the Moo Youngs.
The contents were something
Ron Petrillo had requested
to see before Kris' trial.
I went into the detective bureau,
Buhrmaster was too busy to see me,
and he sent
the young girl out,
and I opened the briefcase and it's empty.
And I said to her,
"Where are the contents?"
and she said that Detective Buhrmaster
told her to tell me
that he didn't find anything
of any evidentiary value
and returned the contents to the family.
Buhrmaster had said they had gotten rid of
the Moo Youngs' briefcase.
That wasn't true.
- Here, in the file were hundreds of
pages of notes - of the Moo Youngs.
There's all sorts of intriguing stuff,
it's like Christmas, really.
Far from being the, sort of,
innocent people making
$24,000 a year
that they were portrayed at trial,
the Moo Youngs, they were offering
loans around the Caribbean
to the tune of first $100 million,
then $250 million.
This is just extraordinary stuff.
- They didn't have a pot to
piss in or a windo - to throw it out.
Where were they coming
up with $100 million?
Shortly before their deaths, Derrick
and Duane Moo Young
also took out over a million dollars worth
of life insurance.
The company that issued those policies
found the timing suspicious
and hired an attorney to investigate.
Theoretically,
the Moo Youngs were engaged in
import-export business.
But the Moo Youngs'
headquarters which consisted
of a garage at the family home
only had left an old telex machine,
and no documents
whatsoever.
The more we learned about it,
it seemed that they were
either selling fictitious
goods entirely or they were
laundering the money.
But if the Moo Youngs were
involved in money laundering,
whose money were they laundering?
Those kinds of dollars
and narcotics often go
hand in hand in Miami,
particularly in the 1980s,
I think that's fair to say.
This was Miami in the '80s.
Do you know, I didn't really get that.
I didn't really understand
Miami in the '80s.
Say hello to my little friend!
Federal agents have seized 25,000 pounds
of cocaine.
In the early 1980s the
Moo Youngs were operating
in a city where drug smuggling
was bringing in an estimated
7 to 12 billion dollars a year.
The banks in Miami had more money
than all the other banks
in the country put together.
People were walking in and buying Mercedes
and Porsches for cash.
Miami could be described as the overseas
corporate headquarters
for money laundering for the Colombians.
With so much drug money at stake
cartel violence ballooned into
what would become known as
the cocaine wars.
And law enforcement
was quickly overwhelmed.
We had bank robberies,
kidnapping, extortion.
One of the guys shot
me through the fingers,
in the back of the arm.
- He was standing between my legs, I went
to kick him - and he shot me in the groin.
I figured he was going to kill me.
These drug dealers were the most violent,
desperate criminals
that we ever had in South Florida.
They'd see a pretty girl in a car,
- and they would rape and kill the girl
- and keep the car.
In 1980, Miami's homicide rate doubled
turning the city of sun and beaches
into the murder capital of the nation.
There have been so many murders throughout
greater Miami lately
- that a special refrigerated truck is
now being used - to store all the bodies.
It turned out that it
was a refrigerated truck
- that they had rented from Burger
King to hold - the overflow of bodies.
Clive was beginning to see the frame around
the picture of the murders.
- And he now wondered whether the
Moo Youngs - had found themselves
Caught in crosshairs of
Miami's cartel violence.
- Clive felt the road map to
Miami in the '80s - could be found
In the Moo Youngs' briefcase.
We'd figured out that the
Moo Youngs were laundering
money for the cartels.
They got greedy,
and they'd come up with this great plan
that they're going to skim
one percent of the money.
So, if you're ripping off
the Colombian drug cartels,
that's a slightly stronger motive
for you getting killed
than what was going on with Kris.
It totally re-framed the case.
Now, we have a huge alternative suspect.
A suspect that happened to be
staying in the room
directly across the hall from the murders.
Clive Stafford Smith had uncovered evidence
suggesting that before the
Moo Youngs were murdered
they may have been stealing money from
a Colombian drug cartel
and a photo Ron Portillo
had seen from the crime scene
would buttress Clive's theory.
When you look at the crime scene photos,
there were blood drops in the hall
and there was blood smear
on the door frame of 1214.
It begs the question, "Who was in 1214?"
Did you ultimately find out who it was?
Oh, yeah, I wound up bribing an employee,
and found out it was a guy named Mejia.
Jaime Vallejo Mejia
told police he was an importer-exporter
from Colombia.
- But the truth was Mejia would soon be busted
by the Drug - Enforcement Administration
For money laundering.
Detective Buhrmaster said,
"I chatted with him
for a few minutes,
"standing in the hallway,
and he didn't seem to
know anything."
This is the only other guy who's there,
the only other room
occupied on the twelfth floor.
We discover that Mejia
was wanted at the time
of Kris' trial
for conspiracy to take $14 million in cash
in a suitcase to Switzerland.
Former DEA agent, Dave Lorino had his own
opinion about Mejia.
- Jaime Mejia was involved in
the money laundering - business.
Not only was he working
for Escobar at the time,
but there was some money
being done for the Ochoa
organization as well.
Jaime told the police that he
ran an import-export company
and worked for U.S. insurance companies.
- That doesn't make any sense. People who sell
insurance don't - run an import-export business.
- And why was the blood on his
door if everything - that happened
Happened across the hall?
It doesn't add up.
- There were a series of questions that
should've been asked of him - that weren't asked.
Officers took a brief statement from
Jaime Mejia and let him go.
Would the jury at Kris' trial have found
an alternate explanation for the murders
if they had seen evidence
about the Moo Youngs
and Jaime Mejia?
- While preparing Kris' appeals, Clive pieced
together his own - theory of the scheme
That played out that day.
- And what happened was this in my mind,
- the Moo Youngs
Were laundering money for the cartels,
they started skimming money off the top,
they then got in trouble.
They were set up so that they would meet in
the Dupont Plaza Hotel
and Kris was meant to be there, too.
All three of them were meant to die.
It was then going to be
left as a murder-suicide
where you've got the
two guys you dislike killed
and you've got someone
else fingered for it.
Clearly, Neville Butler was there.
Somehow, Jaime Vallejo Mejia
must have been supervising it.
- But the courts weren't the least bit
- interested
In Clive's theoretical suspects
or the evidence he'd uncovered.
Innocence wasn't the issue.
One of the bizarre things
that I think most Americans
have no idea about
is that whether you are
innocent or not is not a legal issue.
- You go into a federal court on a habeas
petition and say, - "My guy's innocent."
- They say, "Too bad, mate,
that's got nothing - to do with it."
And the judge actually
said that in Kris' case.
- But Clive did manage to introduce
a document - into the proceedings
That the courts could not ignore.
A document showing Kris' death sentence
had been written by
someone other than Kris' judge.
I had seen a certain
amount of judicial corruption,
- and I find in the prosecution files,
orders sentencing - Kris to death
That were dated 13 days
before the sentencing hearing.
They were written by the prosecutor,
because it said JSK
and that's obviously John Kastranakes.
In allowing prosecutor John Kastrenakes
to write Kris' death sentence,
the Judge who replaced
Mousey had apparently decided to
impose the death penalty
before hearing Kris' character witnesses at
the sentencing phase of trial.
The judge asks the prosecutor,
"Would you prepare a
proposed sentencing order
imposing the death penalty?
"before the sentencing had been completed?"
Anybody in the world would say,
"What? That's not allowed."
The evidence was enough to vacate
Kris' death sentence.
He would no longer be scheduled
to die in the electric chair.
But Kris was far from a free man.
Clive and Ben would now argue for a more
lenient sentence for Kris
in front of a judge and
jury who could once again
sentence Kris to death.
This was not a trial
about innocence or guilt,
only the proper punishment
and Kris' wife would look on.
At the hearing,
the state brought back Kris'
familiar detractors,
Detective John Buhrmaster
and Neville Butler
who reconfirmed their original testimony.
What did you observe about him?
That he had a gun in one hand,
and a pillow in the other hand.
- The jury was not allowed to hear any of the new -
evidence Clive had discovered. But they did the listen to
24 character witnesses in support of Kris,
including Peter Bottomley,
Kris' friend from
the British parliament
who testified via satellite.
I like him, and I respect him.
I find him the kind of
person who I'm pleased to be
associated with.
Finally, after seven days of
emotional testimony,
- the jury would hand down a new
sentencing recommendation - for Kris.
The jury advises and recommends
to the court that it impose
a sentence of life imprisonment
without the possibility of parole for
the first 25 years.
The judge imposed a life sentence.
That saved Kris' life.
That, just meant he wasn't on
death row any more.
He's still going to die in prison.
Kris' appeals had gone
through the Florida courts
and the federal level
without so much as a
hearing about his innocence.
So the question remained,
"Why was there so much evidence that Kris
did not commit murders?"
As it turned out, one man had
an answer to that question,
a cop, who said he was
there the day of the murders
and knew all about them
because he helped cover them up.
Investigations will continue
in what is shaping up to be
the biggest police corruption scandal
in Miami's history.
While Miami police were
battling a crime wave
in the early 1980s,
a new enemy suddenly emerged.
Corruption within the ranks.
Particularly, in the early '80s,
Miami police rushed out
and made a lot of hirings without bothering
to look too deeply
at the peoples' backgrounds.
Already, 11 officers have been arrested
or relieved of duty this year.
They put in additional
background investigators.
And some of those people
were tied into the drug dealers.
The latest allegations go
beyond cocaine and cops
to charges now of first-degree murder.
We can just say that we are
trying to clean our own house.
Everybody that you thought you could trust,
you couldn't
trust any more in Miami.
As it turned out, one police officer
jailed for corruption
would hear about Kris' case
and tell Clive he knew what happened
because he was there.
I had started courting, that's probably
the only word for it
a witness who was within the police
who could tell the truth.
And this officer told me that the police
back in the 1980s
had a deal with the drug
dealers where they would
- protect the murderers who were going
around killing people - in these drug cases.
- They would frame someone else
for the crime - if anyone got onto it.
This officer told me, "Yeah,
yeah, Kris was framed.
"It was my former partner who did it,
"and he told me he'd done it."
It took Clive a full year to convince
the former cop,
who asked to be called Fred,
to go on the record,
and in a sworn statement,
Fred declared, "I was formerly
a police officer in Miami.
- I was persuaded by another prisoner
to tell what I know - about Kris Maharaj
To his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith.
I do not expect to benefit from doing this.
I know the particulars of the Maharaj case.
Indeed, I visited the scene of
the crime when it happened.
I know that Mr. Maharaj
was framed because officers
investigating the double murder
told me flat out they
were going to do this.
I have a moral duty to help
free a man who had been framed
and imprisoned for 26 years
and spent many of those years on death row.
He could have be executed
or something he did not do."
While Fred may believe the
cops in Kris' case were on the take,
he has never identified
the individuals involved.
No evidence has ever
been presented in court
to substantiate his claim.
But, recently,
some of Clive's suspicions about
who killed the Moo Youngs
- were confirmed when he sent someone
to Colombia - to speak with the man
Who had been in the room across the hall
from the murders.
Jaime Vallejo Mejia was flanked by
four men with guns
when he confirmed the
Moo Youngs had run afoul
of Pablo Escobar's drug smuggling operation
in the 1980s,
and that he had said the Moo Youngs
had to be dealt with.
I visit Kris every week.
I don't tell people about Kris' case.
I don't discuss Kris'
case because if I tell them,
they will think I'm crazy.
He's not losing his hopes,
and, you know, that's good.
She is a blessing sent by God.
You cannot have a better husband.
Even now, that he's in prison
there's nothing he really can do for me.
But he has a lot of hope.
In 2008, Clive and Ben Kuehne submitted
a clemency appeal
to the governor of Florida
- documenting the actions of
police and prosecutors - in the case
And presenting the new
evidence they had found.
- And there was a very strong case for clemency, I
mean, Kris had - been in prison for over 20 years
Which is a long time to serve for anything.
I bet.
The victims' family showed up en masse.
- And it was Charlie Crist who
was the governor - at the time,
And he instantly denied clemency.
By now, Kris is 70 years old.
He's in bad health, his poor wife Marita
has stuck by him.
I've been representing
Kris now for 18 years.
And I've failed to get him justice.
The most culpable
character in Kris' scenario
is the justice system.
Because it's just not
interested in justice.
As we develop more and
more evidence to prove that,
a, he's innocent and,
b, had an unfair trial,
a millionaire is accused of brutal murders
in a downtown Miami hotel.
The crime scene was a bloody, bloody mess.
But after a death sentence, one man
fights to save his life.
- You go into Federal Court and say,
"My guy's innocent", - and they say,
- "Well, too bad, mate, that's got nothing
- to do with it."
And what he discovers will turn
the case upside down.
Anybody in the world would say,
"What? That's not allowed."
There were a series of questions
that should've been asked.
This case has more
evidence that was covered up
than any other case I
have ever seen in decades.
There's a body in the water.
He was butchered and murdered.
Many people proclaim their innocence.
- In this case,
there were a number of things - that stank.
This man is remorseless.
He needs to pay for it with his life.
The electric chair
flashed in front of my eyes.
Get a conviction at all costs,
let the truth fall where it may.
A double homicide was discovered
at the Dupont Plaza
Hotel in downtown Miami.
This was a very sensational crime.
How many times do you
have a double homicide in
a downtown Miami hotel?
The crime scene was a bloody, bloody mess.
The father was shot six times while he was
crawling, trying to escape.
The son was shot, "execution style."
So, this was a pretty shocking case.
The dead men were Derrick Moo Young,
a father of four,
and his youngest son,
Duane, who had just been
accepted to law school.
A few hours after the shootings,
a journalist
named Neville Butler
contacted police saying he'd seen his boss,
47-year-old Kris Maharaj, pull the trigger.
Our big break was when
we received a telephone call
that there was an individual
by the name of Neville Butler
that wanted to speak to us.
Butler described the crimes in painstaking
detail to Buhrmaster.
Kris opened the door
and came out with a gun
in hand, with a glove on.
And that's when I almost passed out.
When I asked Kris, "What on earth is this?"
He says, "keep out of this."
That's when he fired the first shot,
at his leg.
Moo Young dashed at him
and that's when Kris must have
let go four or five bullets.
- The television that was there, the
lamp and everything - had all been shot up.
- The screen of the television had
been destroyed - from the bullet.
He turned his attention now to the son,
he said, "Come with me."
And he took him up the stairs
and told him, "Kneel down, face the wall."
And then,
the next thing I heard was "boom".
He shot the boy in the back of his head.
Kris Maharaj was a wealthy
importer from England
who'd started a newspaper
business in Miami.
He was quickly charged with two counts
of first-degree murder
The maximum sentence? The death penalty.
It didn't look too good for Kris.
The lead detective, John Buhrmaster,
said that he had denied
ever being in room 1215
- while his fingerprints were all
over the place - so that was a lie.
Kris denied ever having a gun,
he clearly did have
a 9 mm pistol.
- The ballistics expert came in and said that's
the type of gun - that was used for this murder.
He had invested in property
and Derrick Moo Young
was supervising that property.
According to Kris,
Derrick had stolen $441,000,
had just embezzled it.
So, Kris had had a motive, he clearly hated
the Moo Youngs, and finally,
the icing on the cake
was their star witness,
Neville Butler.
Kris' case went to trial.
In court,
the defense presented no alibi witnesses,
and Kris never took the stand.
Ron Petrillo was the defense investigator
on the case.
I knew when I heard all of this going on,
coming out of the jury room,
what the final outcome was going to be.
The jury returned guilty
verdicts in less than
four hours.
And then when it went to the penalty phase,
judge gave him the death sentence.
During his ruling, the judge declared that,
"The coldness and calculated manner
in which the defendant
executed his heinous plan
cannot be overstated."
Kris would officially begin
his time on death row.
I said, "God knows I'm innocent.
"They will not kill me, they cannot."
Kris was from England, a country
that had abolished
the death penalty for murder in 1965.
With one of their citizens on death row,
the British government
asked Clive Stafford Smith
to investigate Kris' case.
Clive was a young, idealistic lawyer
who'd made a name for himself
fighting death penalty cases
on a pro bono basis.
By the time I got there in '94,
he'd been sentenced to death,
- he'd gone up to the Florida Supreme Court
- on appeal,
To the U.S. Supreme Court,
and come back down,
and so my first thought was,
"Oh, my goodness,
how did I let myself in for this?"
Despite his reluctance, Clive agreed
to meet with the man
he presumed was guilty.
- I never talk to people, when I first
meet them, - about "Did you do it?"
They don't know you, they don't trust you.
Though,
Kris was one of those quite rare people
who insisted on giving me an A to Z lecture
about the fact that he didn't do it.
And, you know,
I found that quite convincing, although,
I will say the evidence against him was
pretty strong at the time.
As a former cop,
Ron Petrillo also had doubts
about Kris' innocence
when he joined the case.
Initially,
I thought Kris just killed these guys.
But I'm looking to see
where the evidence takes me
and it didn't add up.
The deeper I got into the investigation,
it began to dawn on me
that Kris was innocent.
Ron was very,
very loyal to Kris and he carried on
after the case was over,
even though he wasn't
being paid or anything.
Ron and Clive noticed discrepancies
in the prosecution's story of the murders,
and set out
to look for answers.
I demanded to see the
files of the prosecutor
and of the police.
- I start going through it, and I'm sitting
there with some - extraordinarily bad coffee,
In the police headquarters
going through this
very carefully, tabbed file.
I discovered that Neville Butler,
the star witness,
failed his polygraph test.
- I discovered notes that showed that the
Police knew that - Kris had lost his gun
Before the murders ever took place.
This case has more
evidence that was covered up
than any other case
I've ever seen in decades.
Just a year before Kris Maharaj
was put on death row
for the murders of Derrick
and Duane Moo Young
in Florida,
he'd been living a life
of luxury in England.
Kris had come to England
when he was quite young,
worked incredibly hard,
and become a millionaire.
In England, Kris married and had four kids
while working his way
up from a truck driver
to a business magnate.
He was a very flamboyant millionaire
here in London.
He had got his Rolls-Royce,
and then,
he began to get into horse-racing.
Kris amassed the second biggest stable
of race horses in England
Only the Queen owned more.
Having emigrated from Trinidad,
Kris also mingled with
members of parliament,
gaining entrance into an upper crust,
lily-white society,
rarely available to immigrants of color.
Kris first met the men he'd been
accused of killing.
When he began importing
their fruit from Jamaica.
After years of doing business together,
Derrick Moo Young asked
Kris to invest in houses
he was building in Florida.
But according to Kris,
the Moo Youngs took his money,
and embezzled it.
They also incorporated as KDM Distributors,
a name eerily similar to Kris' company
and allegedly started drawing money
from Kris' accounts.
According to Kris,
Derrick had stolen property
worth $441,000.
So you could see why
Kris would be very angry.
He wanted to put an end to this.
Kris was used to settling
disputes with words,
not weapons.
He sued the Moo Youngs and told Clive
he expected to win.
But if Kris then had little reason to walk
into the Dupont hotel
with a loaded weapon,
why was there so much evidence
pointing to him as a suspect?
According to Kris,
he went to the Dupont at 9:30 a.m.
on the morning of the murders
to meet a potential business
partner for the newspaper
he'd started in Miami.
- Neville Butler, the man who would
claim to see Kris - commit the murders,
Set up the meeting.
But the man Kris was
supposed to meet was not there.
The two men waited for nearly an hour.
At 10:30, Kris drove 25 miles
to Fort Lauderdale
and attended meetings during the hours
when the murders took place
and he could prove it.
Kris had alibi witnesses
including an employee at his
newspaper named Tino Geddes.
Tino Geddes swore to me
that he had been with Kris,
gone on lunch, stayed by Kris.
The manager at a
restaurant Kris frequented,
also clearly remembered
seeing Kris at lunch.
I know I saw Kris the day of the murders
because there was a person who was sick,
and I needed to come in
and fill in for that person.
It doesn't seem like
there's any way possible
that he could've killed
people at 12 o'clock
and then been in for lunch
sometime between 12:00 and 2:00.
Five other witnesses would come forward
placing Kris with them
on the day of the murders.
I haven't any doubt at
all that I saw him that day.
So that was 12:00, 12:30, within that time.
Yet Neville told Miami
PD homicide detective,
John Buhrmaster
a convincing account of
seeing Maharaj commit
the murders in cold blood.
Someone had to be lying.
Butler was a home run for police.
Not only could he identify Maharaj,
he would go on to lead Detective Buhrmaster
to where he and Kris
planned to meet for dinner.
Kris would be taken for interrogation
and stark differences would
emerge about what was said
during that conversation.
John Buhrmaster said that Kris denied
ever being in room 1215
while his fingerprints
were all over the place.
Kris' fingerprints
would only be significant
if he denied being in the room to police.
Buhrmaster also said that
Kris denied ever having a gun.
He clearly did have a 9 mm pistol.
But if Buhrmaster thought Kris was
trying to hide something,
he never took a sworn statement
during the interrogation
to document that fact.
And a lie detector test
Kris took later that evening
would support Kris' version of events.
They had one of the top polygraph
examiners
in Florida do these tests.
Kris passed.
That was plain and simple.
Despite passing the lie detector and having
numerous alibi witnesses,
Kris was booked and held without bail.
It would be a year before
he'd get his day in court.
On the eve of trial,
Kris and his investigator,
Ron Petrillo
felt good about their chances.
Kris had seven or eight alibis.
I had located people and
gotten sworn statements
that put him squarely in Broward County
some 25 miles away
during the time that
these murders occurred.
But with his trial approaching,
Kris got word that one of his key alibis,
Tino Geddes,
was about to change his story.
Everything that Tino had said,
that he was with Kris,
that Kris was in Broward
County when murders took place,
it was all a lie, according to Tino.
Geddes was now going to testify
for the prosecution.
And no one, including Kris,
was prepared for the accusations
Geddes was about to make.
Kris Maharaj was facing the death penalty
for the murders of Derrick
and Duane Moo Young
when shortly before trial,
Tino Geddes, one of Kris'
key alibi witnesses
had a dramatic change of heart.
Tino Geddes worked for Kris
at a newspaper that Kris owned.
From day one, he swore to me
that he had been with Kris.
Now, Tino has changed his story,
on the day that the murders were committed,
he wasn't with Kris,
Kris wanted the Moo Youngs dead.
Tino was now claiming Kris' actions
in the murders
had been premeditated.
John Rattlesnakes was a
prosecutor on Kris' case.
Mr. Geddes told us that he,
in fact, had been
with Krishna Maharaj
- on several other occasions
when he'd tried to - kill the victims
And members of their family.
And that, in fact, that Krishna Maharaj
soul motive in life
- at that point in time was the death of
- Derrick Moo Young.
Tino'd said that Kris had done a dry run at
the Dupont Plaza Hotel with him
where he had prepared
to murder the Moo Youngs
And Kris was going to
burst through from room
404 to room 406 to do it.
I went to the Dupont Plaza Hotel,
- there's no door between 404 and 406, there
are all sorts of - reasons why Tino was lying.
The question was why.
Why do you think Geddes changed his story?
Tino Geddes had a DUI trial coming up,
and he was also being charged for smuggling
guns and ammunition.
He was smuggling a whole bunch of guns
into Jamaica
at a time when there were very,
very harsh sentencing.
My experience is the
vast majority of people,
when they face life in prison,
- are willing to say what the prosecution
wants them to - say about pretty much anything,
And probably about their grandmother.
In Tino Geddes' misfortune, the prosecution
sensed an opportunity
and flew to Jamaica to
help their new witness.
Paul Ridge and John Kastrenakes
went to testify on his
behalf and got him off.
With, I think,
just a fine instead of doing jail time.
And I thought, "Well, okay, they're
doing their job."
Until I found out they and
Tino went to a strip club.
- A lot of people would say, "Well,
what they do - on their own time
"is their own business."
But they are there on my dime as a taxpayer
testifying on behalf of
this man and they go to
a strip club with him?
Yeah,
I'd say that they got a little too close.
Kris' trial began on October 5, 1987.
Almost exactly one year
after the murders occurred.
It was presided over by Judge Howard Gross,
known to friends as "Mousey"
because of his small frame and large ears.
Kris' attorney was Eric Hendon
who'd helped other accused killers
avoid the death penalty.
During opening arguments,
the prosecution contended
that the Moo Youngs
were innocent businessmen
gunned down by Kris,
the cold-blooded killer.
Eric Hendon told the jury they would hear
fictional stories from the prosecution
worthy of a Hollywood drama.
But on the third day of trial,
the proceedings came to
a sudden halt.
- What happened on day three of the trial,
- if you can believe it,
Is that Howie the Mouse, doesn't show up
because he's been arrested
taking kickbacks in another case.
And he'd been caught by
law enforcement agents posing
as drug dealers of all people.
Mousey's removal was a golden opportunity
for Kris' lawyer, Eric Hendon
to call for a mistrial.
With the new trial,
Hendon would know the prosecution's
arguments ahead of time.
Without a new trial,
the judge replacing Mousey could face
deciding a death sentence
without hearing all the evidence.
"My advice to you is
not to ask for a mistrial."
And he said they would go on with the trial
because he felt he had made some headway
and they had a good jury.
Why would he do this?
Probably, the main motivation
was that he was on a set fee
and you're going to
have to start over and that
cuts into your fee.
Hendon would maintain he'd worked hard
on behalf of his client,
but letting the trial continue
seemed like an unusual choice
and the jury would go on to hear
six days of testimony,
all directed against Kris.
- Neville Butler testified about
the graphic details - of the murders
He said he'd watched Kris commit.
Tino Geddes told
prosecutors Kris had asked him
to fabricate an alibi.
And Detective John
Buhrmaster said Kris had tried to
cover up the crime
during his interrogation.
- When the case was finally turned over
- to the defense, Hendon's judgment would,
Again, come into question.
Eric said to me that if he
didn't call any witnesses,
he would have two shots at the jury
in closing argument.
I said to him,
"But you're not going to do that."
I've got all these witnesses.
"You're not going to do that.",
he didn't answer me.
Eric Hendon's defense case for Kris would
consist of only nine words.
Eric stood up and said, "Your honor,
the defense rests."
Eric didn't call a single witness. Nothing.
I thought Kris was going to rip the skin
off my forearm.
It's not often in a capital case you get
- six alibi witnesses putting your client
- somewhere else.
Why on earth did the
lawyer not put those on?
I have never wanted to
hit another human being,
physically attack
another human being like I did that day
with Eric Hendon.
The jury responded to Hendon's strategy
by returning guilty verdicts
for two first-degree murders.
They would also vote whether
to recommend the death penalty.
And with Florida being
the only remaining state
where a simple majority
is needed in sentencing,
the vote in favor of death
passed by a count of 7 to 5.
The judge who'd replaced Mousey agreed.
Kris would be sentenced
to die in the electric chair.
Kris fainted,
Kris hit the floor,
passed, passed out completely.
When Clive finally got the chance to appeal
Kris' case in 1995,
he immediately set out to
present all the alibi witnesses
who were never called at trial.
Yeah, I talked to the alibi witnesses,
they were very convincing.
And they said, "It's true, Kris was not at
the Dupont Plaza hotel
"at 12:00 noon that day
because he was with us
"out in Ft. Lauderdale."
But Kris' alibis fell on deaf ears
as the courts would only
consider whether Kris had
received a fair trial in 1987.
- It's actually very hard to win a case
on just saying - the facts are wrong.
Mostly,
it's all about what people disparagingly
called legal technicalities.
But Clive did have an opening.
If he could show Kris' attorney,
Eric Hendon,
had been ineffective in representing Kris,
he would open the door to a new trial
and new witnesses.
Ben Kuehne also worked
on Kris' appeals and would
cross-examine Hendon.
Eric Hendon was over his head at that time.
He needed help in a case of this magnitude.
And Kris just suffered the consequences
as a result of his lawyer's errors.
But Hendon needed to admit under oath
that he'd made mistakes.
- And when Ben asked him
why he didn't present - Kris' alibis,
Hendon told the court,
"It appeared to me as if
these were alibi witnesses
who had been sought out,
it seemed all too convenient."
In other words,
Hendon didn't believe any of Kris' alibis.
How is one lawyer going to be the judge
of the credibility of a witness
who could be the key
to a not guilty verdict?
That's not a decision for a lawyer to make.
Not with the stakes this high.
Hendon said he had a strategic reason
for not putting on the alibi.
He thought the alibi was too good.
Now, once a lawyer says that,
then it takes it out of the realm of
the lawyer's ineptitude
- and then becomes a strategic decision
- by the lawyer
That the courts won't second guess.
Ultimately, the court disagreed
with Clive and Ben,
refusing to find that Eric Hendon
had been ineffective.
Clive was still convinced Kris was innocent
and while preparing further appeals,
he came across
the prosecution's files
and discovered evidence
he felt police and prosecutors
apparently did not want Kris to have.
- I start going through it,
and I discovered - that the police knew
- that Kris had lost his gun before
the murders - ever took place,
I discovered that Kris
had actually told them
from the very beginning
he had been in room 1215,
so all those fingerprints,
there was a perfectly
innocent explanation.
Clive had also seen photographs
from the crime scene
of a briefcase belonging to the Moo Youngs.
The contents were something
Ron Petrillo had requested
to see before Kris' trial.
I went into the detective bureau,
Buhrmaster was too busy to see me,
and he sent
the young girl out,
and I opened the briefcase and it's empty.
And I said to her,
"Where are the contents?"
and she said that Detective Buhrmaster
told her to tell me
that he didn't find anything
of any evidentiary value
and returned the contents to the family.
Buhrmaster had said they had gotten rid of
the Moo Youngs' briefcase.
That wasn't true.
- Here, in the file were hundreds of
pages of notes - of the Moo Youngs.
There's all sorts of intriguing stuff,
it's like Christmas, really.
Far from being the, sort of,
innocent people making
$24,000 a year
that they were portrayed at trial,
the Moo Youngs, they were offering
loans around the Caribbean
to the tune of first $100 million,
then $250 million.
This is just extraordinary stuff.
- They didn't have a pot to
piss in or a windo - to throw it out.
Where were they coming
up with $100 million?
Shortly before their deaths, Derrick
and Duane Moo Young
also took out over a million dollars worth
of life insurance.
The company that issued those policies
found the timing suspicious
and hired an attorney to investigate.
Theoretically,
the Moo Youngs were engaged in
import-export business.
But the Moo Youngs'
headquarters which consisted
of a garage at the family home
only had left an old telex machine,
and no documents
whatsoever.
The more we learned about it,
it seemed that they were
either selling fictitious
goods entirely or they were
laundering the money.
But if the Moo Youngs were
involved in money laundering,
whose money were they laundering?
Those kinds of dollars
and narcotics often go
hand in hand in Miami,
particularly in the 1980s,
I think that's fair to say.
This was Miami in the '80s.
Do you know, I didn't really get that.
I didn't really understand
Miami in the '80s.
Say hello to my little friend!
Federal agents have seized 25,000 pounds
of cocaine.
In the early 1980s the
Moo Youngs were operating
in a city where drug smuggling
was bringing in an estimated
7 to 12 billion dollars a year.
The banks in Miami had more money
than all the other banks
in the country put together.
People were walking in and buying Mercedes
and Porsches for cash.
Miami could be described as the overseas
corporate headquarters
for money laundering for the Colombians.
With so much drug money at stake
cartel violence ballooned into
what would become known as
the cocaine wars.
And law enforcement
was quickly overwhelmed.
We had bank robberies,
kidnapping, extortion.
One of the guys shot
me through the fingers,
in the back of the arm.
- He was standing between my legs, I went
to kick him - and he shot me in the groin.
I figured he was going to kill me.
These drug dealers were the most violent,
desperate criminals
that we ever had in South Florida.
They'd see a pretty girl in a car,
- and they would rape and kill the girl
- and keep the car.
In 1980, Miami's homicide rate doubled
turning the city of sun and beaches
into the murder capital of the nation.
There have been so many murders throughout
greater Miami lately
- that a special refrigerated truck is
now being used - to store all the bodies.
It turned out that it
was a refrigerated truck
- that they had rented from Burger
King to hold - the overflow of bodies.
Clive was beginning to see the frame around
the picture of the murders.
- And he now wondered whether the
Moo Youngs - had found themselves
Caught in crosshairs of
Miami's cartel violence.
- Clive felt the road map to
Miami in the '80s - could be found
In the Moo Youngs' briefcase.
We'd figured out that the
Moo Youngs were laundering
money for the cartels.
They got greedy,
and they'd come up with this great plan
that they're going to skim
one percent of the money.
So, if you're ripping off
the Colombian drug cartels,
that's a slightly stronger motive
for you getting killed
than what was going on with Kris.
It totally re-framed the case.
Now, we have a huge alternative suspect.
A suspect that happened to be
staying in the room
directly across the hall from the murders.
Clive Stafford Smith had uncovered evidence
suggesting that before the
Moo Youngs were murdered
they may have been stealing money from
a Colombian drug cartel
and a photo Ron Portillo
had seen from the crime scene
would buttress Clive's theory.
When you look at the crime scene photos,
there were blood drops in the hall
and there was blood smear
on the door frame of 1214.
It begs the question, "Who was in 1214?"
Did you ultimately find out who it was?
Oh, yeah, I wound up bribing an employee,
and found out it was a guy named Mejia.
Jaime Vallejo Mejia
told police he was an importer-exporter
from Colombia.
- But the truth was Mejia would soon be busted
by the Drug - Enforcement Administration
For money laundering.
Detective Buhrmaster said,
"I chatted with him
for a few minutes,
"standing in the hallway,
and he didn't seem to
know anything."
This is the only other guy who's there,
the only other room
occupied on the twelfth floor.
We discover that Mejia
was wanted at the time
of Kris' trial
for conspiracy to take $14 million in cash
in a suitcase to Switzerland.
Former DEA agent, Dave Lorino had his own
opinion about Mejia.
- Jaime Mejia was involved in
the money laundering - business.
Not only was he working
for Escobar at the time,
but there was some money
being done for the Ochoa
organization as well.
Jaime told the police that he
ran an import-export company
and worked for U.S. insurance companies.
- That doesn't make any sense. People who sell
insurance don't - run an import-export business.
- And why was the blood on his
door if everything - that happened
Happened across the hall?
It doesn't add up.
- There were a series of questions that
should've been asked of him - that weren't asked.
Officers took a brief statement from
Jaime Mejia and let him go.
Would the jury at Kris' trial have found
an alternate explanation for the murders
if they had seen evidence
about the Moo Youngs
and Jaime Mejia?
- While preparing Kris' appeals, Clive pieced
together his own - theory of the scheme
That played out that day.
- And what happened was this in my mind,
- the Moo Youngs
Were laundering money for the cartels,
they started skimming money off the top,
they then got in trouble.
They were set up so that they would meet in
the Dupont Plaza Hotel
and Kris was meant to be there, too.
All three of them were meant to die.
It was then going to be
left as a murder-suicide
where you've got the
two guys you dislike killed
and you've got someone
else fingered for it.
Clearly, Neville Butler was there.
Somehow, Jaime Vallejo Mejia
must have been supervising it.
- But the courts weren't the least bit
- interested
In Clive's theoretical suspects
or the evidence he'd uncovered.
Innocence wasn't the issue.
One of the bizarre things
that I think most Americans
have no idea about
is that whether you are
innocent or not is not a legal issue.
- You go into a federal court on a habeas
petition and say, - "My guy's innocent."
- They say, "Too bad, mate,
that's got nothing - to do with it."
And the judge actually
said that in Kris' case.
- But Clive did manage to introduce
a document - into the proceedings
That the courts could not ignore.
A document showing Kris' death sentence
had been written by
someone other than Kris' judge.
I had seen a certain
amount of judicial corruption,
- and I find in the prosecution files,
orders sentencing - Kris to death
That were dated 13 days
before the sentencing hearing.
They were written by the prosecutor,
because it said JSK
and that's obviously John Kastranakes.
In allowing prosecutor John Kastrenakes
to write Kris' death sentence,
the Judge who replaced
Mousey had apparently decided to
impose the death penalty
before hearing Kris' character witnesses at
the sentencing phase of trial.
The judge asks the prosecutor,
"Would you prepare a
proposed sentencing order
imposing the death penalty?
"before the sentencing had been completed?"
Anybody in the world would say,
"What? That's not allowed."
The evidence was enough to vacate
Kris' death sentence.
He would no longer be scheduled
to die in the electric chair.
But Kris was far from a free man.
Clive and Ben would now argue for a more
lenient sentence for Kris
in front of a judge and
jury who could once again
sentence Kris to death.
This was not a trial
about innocence or guilt,
only the proper punishment
and Kris' wife would look on.
At the hearing,
the state brought back Kris'
familiar detractors,
Detective John Buhrmaster
and Neville Butler
who reconfirmed their original testimony.
What did you observe about him?
That he had a gun in one hand,
and a pillow in the other hand.
- The jury was not allowed to hear any of the new -
evidence Clive had discovered. But they did the listen to
24 character witnesses in support of Kris,
including Peter Bottomley,
Kris' friend from
the British parliament
who testified via satellite.
I like him, and I respect him.
I find him the kind of
person who I'm pleased to be
associated with.
Finally, after seven days of
emotional testimony,
- the jury would hand down a new
sentencing recommendation - for Kris.
The jury advises and recommends
to the court that it impose
a sentence of life imprisonment
without the possibility of parole for
the first 25 years.
The judge imposed a life sentence.
That saved Kris' life.
That, just meant he wasn't on
death row any more.
He's still going to die in prison.
Kris' appeals had gone
through the Florida courts
and the federal level
without so much as a
hearing about his innocence.
So the question remained,
"Why was there so much evidence that Kris
did not commit murders?"
As it turned out, one man had
an answer to that question,
a cop, who said he was
there the day of the murders
and knew all about them
because he helped cover them up.
Investigations will continue
in what is shaping up to be
the biggest police corruption scandal
in Miami's history.
While Miami police were
battling a crime wave
in the early 1980s,
a new enemy suddenly emerged.
Corruption within the ranks.
Particularly, in the early '80s,
Miami police rushed out
and made a lot of hirings without bothering
to look too deeply
at the peoples' backgrounds.
Already, 11 officers have been arrested
or relieved of duty this year.
They put in additional
background investigators.
And some of those people
were tied into the drug dealers.
The latest allegations go
beyond cocaine and cops
to charges now of first-degree murder.
We can just say that we are
trying to clean our own house.
Everybody that you thought you could trust,
you couldn't
trust any more in Miami.
As it turned out, one police officer
jailed for corruption
would hear about Kris' case
and tell Clive he knew what happened
because he was there.
I had started courting, that's probably
the only word for it
a witness who was within the police
who could tell the truth.
And this officer told me that the police
back in the 1980s
had a deal with the drug
dealers where they would
- protect the murderers who were going
around killing people - in these drug cases.
- They would frame someone else
for the crime - if anyone got onto it.
This officer told me, "Yeah,
yeah, Kris was framed.
"It was my former partner who did it,
"and he told me he'd done it."
It took Clive a full year to convince
the former cop,
who asked to be called Fred,
to go on the record,
and in a sworn statement,
Fred declared, "I was formerly
a police officer in Miami.
- I was persuaded by another prisoner
to tell what I know - about Kris Maharaj
To his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith.
I do not expect to benefit from doing this.
I know the particulars of the Maharaj case.
Indeed, I visited the scene of
the crime when it happened.
I know that Mr. Maharaj
was framed because officers
investigating the double murder
told me flat out they
were going to do this.
I have a moral duty to help
free a man who had been framed
and imprisoned for 26 years
and spent many of those years on death row.
He could have be executed
or something he did not do."
While Fred may believe the
cops in Kris' case were on the take,
he has never identified
the individuals involved.
No evidence has ever
been presented in court
to substantiate his claim.
But, recently,
some of Clive's suspicions about
who killed the Moo Youngs
- were confirmed when he sent someone
to Colombia - to speak with the man
Who had been in the room across the hall
from the murders.
Jaime Vallejo Mejia was flanked by
four men with guns
when he confirmed the
Moo Youngs had run afoul
of Pablo Escobar's drug smuggling operation
in the 1980s,
and that he had said the Moo Youngs
had to be dealt with.
I visit Kris every week.
I don't tell people about Kris' case.
I don't discuss Kris'
case because if I tell them,
they will think I'm crazy.
He's not losing his hopes,
and, you know, that's good.
She is a blessing sent by God.
You cannot have a better husband.
Even now, that he's in prison
there's nothing he really can do for me.
But he has a lot of hope.
In 2008, Clive and Ben Kuehne submitted
a clemency appeal
to the governor of Florida
- documenting the actions of
police and prosecutors - in the case
And presenting the new
evidence they had found.
- And there was a very strong case for clemency, I
mean, Kris had - been in prison for over 20 years
Which is a long time to serve for anything.
I bet.
The victims' family showed up en masse.
- And it was Charlie Crist who
was the governor - at the time,
And he instantly denied clemency.
By now, Kris is 70 years old.
He's in bad health, his poor wife Marita
has stuck by him.
I've been representing
Kris now for 18 years.
And I've failed to get him justice.
The most culpable
character in Kris' scenario
is the justice system.
Because it's just not
interested in justice.
As we develop more and
more evidence to prove that,
a, he's innocent and,
b, had an unfair trial,