Decades old cases are prosecuted without any new evidence and with critical fact witnesses missing or dead, increasing likelihood of wrongful convictions
By: Houston Criminal Lawyer John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
Roy McCaleb was murdered in Harris County on September 22, 1985. The Houston Chronicle reported that McCaleb’s wife, Carolyn Sue Krizan-Wilson, told the police that a gloved man entered their Galena Park home, raped her, and then shot her husband as he lay sleeping. She said the intruder was the same man who had raped her ten days earlier and he had somehow tracked her down in order to do it again. According to the newspaper, Krizan-Wilson did not report the earlier sexual assault to the police although her son at the time was in the Houston Police Department’s Training Academy. Krizan-Wilson, however, did make an “outcry” to a fellow employee shortly after the first rape occurred. She would later say she was too “embarrassed” to report the first rape.
Law enforcement interest settled on Krizan-Wilson early in the McCaleb murder investigation for several reasons: first, there was no sign of forcible entry into the McCaleb’s east Houston residence; second, she didn’t stay at the hospital long enough to undergo a rape examination; third, she was the primary beneficiary of McCaleb’s estate and insurance policy; fourth, she refused to take a polygraph examination; and, fifth, she was married to another man at the time she married McCaleb and had left him taking a $4,000 tax refund check with her.
Realizing that she had become the police’s only suspect in her husband’s murder, Krizan-Wilson hired local attorney Clarence Thompson to represent her. Thompson hired a private investigator named Rafael Gonzales to investigate the case. The attorney also hired a forensic examiner named Floyd McDonald to process the vehicle in which the first rape of Krizan-Wilson occurred. The vehicle has never been examined or processed by the police department.
Detective Robert Parish was one of the homicide investigators who worked the McCaleb case. He simply could not develop sufficient evidence to arrest Krizan-Wilson. He and other investigators met with an assistant district attorney in the Harris County District Attorney’s office. They unanimously agreed “they just didn’t have enough evidence to go forward with a winnable case.” That was a significant decision in 1985. Johnny Holmes was the county’s district attorney at the time. He, and his entire staff, including his successor Charles “Chuck” Rosenthal, were as pro-prosecution as they come, especially in murder cases. In fact, as legend has it, the Holmes crowd once successfully prosecuted a ham sandwich for theft of the cheese.
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