Tag: hit and run

Nicole Walker’s Killer Works the System
(“Journey to Justice,” Forensic Files)

Before launching into this week’s post, I should mention that Filmrise, the company that uploads Forensic Files to YouTube, has begun changing the URLs for most of the episodes.

I’ve been updating older blog posts with the correct links. In the meantime, if you end up clicking on a broken one, know that the episode is still available on YouTube — you just have to search for it by name.

And speaking of missing links, Kenneth Pierce is definitely a criminal with compromised humanity.

Drunk history. The Florida resident, whose story was told in the Forensic Files episode “Journey to Justice,” started out as a teenage vandal, when he and his buddies slashed tires for fun. By middle age, he had a criminal résumé with 20 misdemeanors and felonies, including two hit and runs.

Not one to learn from his mistakes, Pierce topped off his record at age 53 by plowing his pickup truck into a group of children ages 6 to 12, then fleeing the scene.

Pierce was charged with vehicular homicide and received 60 years for that crime, which killed one girl and put another one in the hospital for two months.

Surprising epilogue. So, at last, it seemed like the end of the road for Kenneth Pierce — the state of Florida would forever cut off his access to any wheeled vehicle except maybe a laundry cart.

But Forensic Files tacked a note onto the HLN closing credits saying that Pierce was released from prison in 2017.

But why and how?

I got in touch with the Broward State Attorney’s Office for some answers. But first, here’s a recap of “Journey to Justice,” along with extra information from internet research.

Water hazard. On June 23, 1992, after a rainstorm in Dania Beach, a small city near Fort Lauderdale, a group of neighborhood children were headed home on a stretch of Southwest 33rd Street without a sidewalk.

They waded through a large puddle between the street and a parking lot on block 4600, according to Forensic Files. (Earlier media accounts said that the kids were “playing” in the 75-foot-long puddle, but that’s still no excuse for what happened next.)

A Chevrolet Silverado suddenly swerved toward the kids. While pushing his 10-year-old sister, Gina, out of the truck’s path, 12-year-old Joel Mansey noticed the letters “F” and “O” on its grille, according to court papers.

The vehicle struck Nicole Walker, 6, Brooke Mansey, 9, and Michelle Vitello, 10.

Tragedy in an instant. Neighbors heard the thud and ran outside. One of them, Lydia Jones, described the scene to a South Florida Sun-Sentinel reporter:

“[The] girls were lying face up in the water. I went to Michelle first. She was going in and out of consciousness and I gave her CPR. I could see her leg was broken. Brooke got up and ran inside to her mom. Little Nicole, we just lost her pulse.”

Nicole Walker, 6, who was blind in one eye, died of multiple injuries at Memorial Hospital in Hollywood that night. Brooke Mansey had been carrying Nicole, and the Silverado hit Nicole directly in her back.

Let’s grille him. Brooke sustained a fractured shoulder and Michelle had so many injuries she needed a body cast.

After seeing Nicole Walker in the hospital, sheriff’s detective Bruce Babcock vowed he’d spend “the rest of my career looking for the guy,” the Miami Herald reported.

Fortunately, a bystander who worked at a body shop had chased the vehicle. He identified it as a 1989 or 1990 Silverado with regular street tires, according to court papers. Someone found a piece of the death vehicle’s grille in the shallow part of the puddle.

Hiding in plain sight. With the community now on high alert about the hit and run, an anonymous caller told police of seeing a parked Silverado matching the metallic blue one that killed Nicole Walker.

Police found it parked in Kathryn and Kenneth Pierce’s driveway in Davie, Florida. Someone had partially blocked the Silverado from view by surrounding it with other vehicles and a washing machine. Detective Baron Philipson stayed with the Silverado for 23 hours to make sure no one tampered with it before police obtained a search warrant, the Sun-Sentinel reported.

Still, no one could connect the car with the hit and run right away.

Lucky chips. Detectives noted that the tires differed from the ones that made impressions at the crime scene. The truck had an intact grille, although blue ties held it into place. Someone had wiped away any fingerprints inside the vehicle.

A neighbor told police that Kenneth Pierce had removed the camper top from the Silverado, which belonged to Kathryn Pierce, after the accident. Kenneth had asked for help repairing damage to the grille of the vehicle. Apparently, he changed the tires as well.

Investigators determined that colored chips found on the injured children’s clothing matched the paint on the Silverado. They concluded that the piece of grille found at the scene also came from Pierce’s vehicle.

Pathological reoffender. In October 1992, when the authorities finally arrested Pierce, it probably didn’t come as a shock to anyone in law enforcement. Pierce was out on parole for lying in an attempt to get a driver’s license (his aliases included Jay Carl Mishler and Jay Carl Mitchell); his own had been revoked.

His aforementioned legal record also included looting parked cars as a juvenile in the 1950s in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, leaving the scene of an accident in 1965 and then again in 1975, a 1977 no-contest plea for a DUI hit, then a cocaine-smuggling charge in Baltimore in 1985, and a DUI in Key West, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal.

Pierce’s words were as sloppy as his driving. He told one friend that he only clipped a garbage can and another that he hit a dog on the night his car mowed down the children. A cell mate would later tell authorities that Pierce told him he heard a scream but didn’t stop at the scene because he didn’t have a valid license.

Son ensnared. It later came out that Pierce bragged that authorities wouldn’t be able to connect the Silverado to the accident.

And Kenneth Pierce didn’t seem to mind dragging his loved ones into his problems. He enlisted his son, a 27-year-old construction worker named Trent, to help replace the grille after the accident — making Trent guilty of altering evidence.

When police first came to arrest Trent, he slipped through a window, but they snagged him anyway and put him in Broward County Jail along with his dad. Trent eventually pleaded no contest in return for probation and community service.

Toon time. Kenneth Pierce went to trial in April 1993.

The prosecution showed off a forensic animation presentation, purported to accurately re-create the car’s slam into the girls. Media accounts made a big deal of the “state of the art” science, but I tend to believe it was basically a high-tech cartoon. There’s no proof it replicated the accident exactly.

The physical and circumstantial evidence against Pierce seemed more sturdy — and there was a ton of it, thanks to his own loose lips as well as the remnants of the Silverado on the victims’ clothing and at the crime scene.

Vehicular murder weapon. Pierce’s court-appointed lawyer, Bo Hitchcock, managed to find some witnesses who said the car that hit the children was green, not blue, and newer than Pierce’s vehicle, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

That was about all the ammo Pierce’s side had.

In March 1993, one hour into deliberations, jury members went outside to study dents in the Silverado. After a total of 4½ hours, they convicted Kenneth Pierce of vehicular homicide, leaving the scene of a fatal accident, tampering with evidence, and violation of parole.

Keep him forever. Brooke Mansey and Michelle Vitello, who were in the courtroom, “cried, smiled, and giggled,” according to the Sun-Sentinel.

The judge gave Pierce 60 years. His wife, Kathryn, left the courtroom “crying hysterically,” the newspaper reported.

Under a habitual offender rule, he would have to serve two-thirds of his sentence before consideration for parole, at age 94. Broward County prosecuting attorney Kenneth Padowitz noted that the sentence would end the “revolving door” approach to justice that allowed Pierce to serially reoffend.

“Nicole can rest now,” Suzanne Walker, the little girl’s mother, said, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “Mom got her baby justice.”

In free fall. But for Suzanne Walker, the anguish caused by her daughter’s death triggered self-destructive behavior that ultimately landed her in legal woes of her own.

She began drinking heavily and using crack cocaine, and stole $2,000 from the local Griffin Little League — she was the group’s treasurer — to fund her drug habit, according to the Sun-Sentinel.

Suzanne Walker admitted her guilt to a DUI charge from 1994, pledged to reimburse the Little League, and entered a residential drug problem. She received probation for her offenses in 1995.

Just two years later, her daughter’s killer would test her emotional strength again.

Not again — and again. As the result of an appeal Pierce filed in 1997, a court ruled that his 60-year sentence had been miscalculated. Pierce’s lawyers pushed for a new sentence of just 15 years. The judge gave him 40. He would have to serve 85 percent (34 years) before parole consideration, according to the Sun-Sentinel. “Pierce, 57, will likely spend the rest of his life in prison,” the newspaper noted.

But Pierce somehow finagled another sentencing go-round in 2000. Pierce claimed that prison had changed him for the better, begged for a chance to reunite with his family, and finally apologized to the Walkers (“I’m sorry for all the problems I’ve caused this family and the children”). The unimpressed judge declined to reduce the 40-year term.

In 2012, Pierce got a shot at parole because of a clerical error, but Circuit Judge Lisa Porter put the kibosh on it and sent him back to his cell. Upon hearing the news, Suzanne Walker cried with joy and said she was “ecstatic,” and Brooke Mansey and her mother, Sherry, also in the courtroom, expressed gratitude, according to CBS-TV Miami reporting.

Guess who got out. Not everyone was on Team Nicole that day, however. “He never gets a fair deal,” a woman identifying herself as Pierce’s daughter, Tammy, told CBS-TV. “He’s a good father and he’s a good man.”

Tammy got her way on May 1, 2017, when the justice system let Pierce back on the streets.

So, how did a man who repeatedly proved himself a menace to society serve only 24 years — instead of at least 34 (85 percent of the 40-year sentence)?

Extra-credit opportunities. Apparently, the guidelines for keeping an offender in prison are more complicated than they sound.

“Prisoners can get credit for all kinds of things,” an attorney who worked on the Pierce case told ForensicFilesNow.com. “Nothing surprises me.”(See also Ron Gillette.)

In an e-mail to ForensicFilesNow.com, Broward State Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Paula McMahon confirmed that, contrary to old media reports, the judge actually sentenced Pierce before the 85 percent rule went into effect.

Bad influence on progeny. The state placed Pierce under “conditional release supervision” through 2033, and the Department of Corrections website listed his most recent home as on Oak Garden Lane in Hollywood, Florida.

He has since died, according to Suzanne Walker (thanks much for writing in with the tip).

Sadly, it looks as though the legal problems of Kenneth Pierce’s son continued. A felony-records website lists a “Trent Pierce” as under “probation felony supervision” as recently as 2017.

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube