Word: dotson
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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After serving six years for kidnaping and rape, Gary Dotson, 28, seemed suddenly to be a technicality away from freedom when Cathleen Crowell Webb, his alleged victim, came forward to confess that she had made up the story. But last week, after listening to Webb recant her testimony in a Cook County court, Judge Richard Samuels upheld the original jury verdict and ordered Dotson returned to prison. As a stunned Dotson was taken away once more, Webb sobbed, "He's wrong! Gary Dotson is innocent...
Webb's original testimony was critical to Dotson's conviction. The other evidence offered in the 1979 trial was inconclusive. The doctor who examined her on the night of the alleged attack could not say without a doubt that she had been raped, though she certainly had suffered bruises and lacerations. A hair found on her body and semen on her underwear might have belonged to Dotson, but the results of those tests were also uncertain...
...hearing that she had claimed she was raped because she feared she was pregnant after having sex with her boyfriend (she was not). To make her tale believable, she said, she had torn her clothes and inflicted the cuts and bruises. When her description of her assailant led to Dotson's arrest, she said, she stuck...
...Gary Dotson was a young landscape worker in a Chicago suburb when Cathleen Crowell, then 16, told police in 1977 that she had been abducted, beaten and raped. Based on her testimony, Dotson was convicted and sentenced to 25 to 50 years in jail. He has spent the past six years in an Illinois state penitentiary. But last week Crowell confessed that she had made up the story. Awaiting a hearing that could result in his release this week, Dotson, now 28, found reason to praise his false accuser. Said he: "I just want to thank her for showing that...
Crowell says that she panicked after having sex with a boyfriend. Fearing that she might be pregnant (she was not), she decided to avoid disgrace by claiming she had been raped. When her description of her imaginary assailant resulted in Dotson's arrest, she went through with the lie; a jury deliberated only 96 minutes before convicting him. But Crowell, now a wife and mother in New Hampshire, could not forget the sight of the innocent man weeping as he was taken away, and she finally told her minister about the hoax...