Joseph White, right, was convicted in 1989 of murdering Helen Wilson. The Nebraska Attoreney General's Office Now says Bruce Smith, left, was the real killer.
(Courtesy Nebraska Attorney General/Joseph White)
More PhotosGonzalez hadn't heard the name Helen Wilson in the four years since her elderly downstairs neighbor had been raped and murdered, until the day police swept into the basement of McCormick's seafood restaurant in Denver and led Gonzalez out in handcuffs.
She'd waived extradition from Colorado, saying recently that she figured she could quickly clear up the misunderstanding and go home. But when she got back to Beatrice, Gonzalez discovered several suspects were already in custody, and they were telling police she was involved in Wilson's murder.
Gonzalez, then 29, says she had never even met some of her co-defendants. They, like her, were people at the margins, drifters, some with drug problems, others suffering from mental illness.
For months, Gonzalez says, the police hounded her and called her a liar. She met with a police psychologist, who suggested the murder was so horrific that she simply blocked it out, and offered to work with her to help her remember. When Gonzalez protested that she didn't know one of her co-defendants, the psychologist, Wayne Price, told her, "You apparently don't want to."
"The odds are that at this time, it looks like you were in [there] but did in fact block it," Price said. "And if you can help you out by remembering, it will help you."
"Yeah," Gonzalez sighed.
Now, she says, she was being given 24 hours to decide, either plead to a lesser charge or go to trial for first-degree murder and face the possibility of the death penalty. She says the police kept telling her she would be the first woman to be executed in state history. The police deny threatening her, and her lawyer said he could not recall.
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