Woman maintains she was at Wilson's apartment

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BY JOE DUGGAN and CATHARINE HUDDLE / Lincoln Journal Star

Debra Shelden signed the paperwork for her application Tuesday.

Soon, she will ask the Nebraska Board of Pardons to erase her conviction for aiding and abetting the 1985 murder of Helen Wilson of Beatrice.

Shelden is one of six put away for the killing. All six are out now, and all six will likely have their records wiped clean.

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Debra Shelden and her husband, Clifford, stand outside their apartment in Lincoln on Tuesday. Shelden claims she and five others were all were in Helen Wilson's apartment the night she was murdered.(Jacob Hannah)

Debra Shelden and her husband, Clifford, stand outside their apartment in Lincoln on Tuesday. Shelden claims she and five others were all were in Helen Wilson's apartment the night she was murdered.(Jacob Hannah)

Related Media

The story so far: the Helen Wilson murder case

See the Journal Star's coverage of the 1985 Helen Wilson murder case, including evidence released to the media. (Katie Nieland, JournalStar.com)...

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But only five say they’re innocent.

Shelden — then, and now — claims they all were in Wilson’s apartment that February night.

“I still think that I was guilty because I was there,” she said this week in her first media interview.

But recent tests say the only DNA recovered from Wilson’s apartment, besides that of the victim, came from a man who died in Oklahoma in 1992. Investigators who recently reopened the case now believe Bruce Allen Smith raped and murdered the 68-year-old widow. And they believe he acted alone.

Tests conducted on forensic evidence from the 23-year-old crime scene showed that neither of two men convicted in the case sexually assaulted Wilson. Those two, Shelden and three others served a total of nearly 70 years in prison.

Shelden said she’s glad they caught the man who killed her great-aunt. But she’d never heard of Smith — and had no idea what he looked like until she recently saw his picture in the newspaper.

“I know I didn’t see him in the apartment that night,” she said.

Maybe someone made a mistake on the tests, she said from her northwest Lincoln apartment, where she spends her days watching her grandchildren.

Or maybe someone’s hiding the truth.

The only story that makes sense to her is the one she told in court 19 years ago.

Recollections from dreams, nightmares

Shelden testified at the November 1989 first-degree murder trial of Joseph “Lobo” White that she, White, Thomas Winslow, JoAnn Taylor, Kathy Gonzalez and James Dean were in the downtown Beatrice apartment on that cold February night.

She saw White and Winslow rape her great-aunt, she testified. She saw JoAnn Taylor hold a pillow over the woman’s face.

But she also testified that many of her recollections came to her in dreams and nightmares. She had frequent nightmares after she and her husband, Clifford, moved into Helen Wilson’s apartment about four months after the murder, she said.

“Can you separate for me, Mrs. Shelden, the facts that you recall from your dreams from the facts that you remember from the case or are they identical?” White’s attorney, Toney Redman, asked during the trial.

“They are identical,” Shelden answered.

Nineteen years later, Shelden said she still has trouble separating dream from memory, but remains steadfast that she and the others were in Wilson’s apartment that night.

‘We believe she was brainwashed’

Members of the law enforcement task force that reopened the case flatly disagree. No physical evidence shows she or her co-defendants were there. And some of the other defendants have since said they lied to help the prosecution and avoid possible death sentences.

Still, is it possible Bruce Smith was with them?

“My answer is unequivocally, absolutely, positively no way on earth,” said Corey O’Brien, an assistant attorney general and member of the task force.

He offered several reasons.

* Everything about the crime scene indicated sexual assault was the motive, not money, as Shelden and others testified. Rapists don’t take along spectators, especially female spectators.

* A detailed FBI criminal profile said the crime was the work of a single male. Bruce Smith fit many aspects of the profile.

* A reliable witness said Bruce Smith was dropped off a block from Wilson’s apartment building the night of the murder.

* About $1,300 in cash was recovered from Wilson’s purse, which was in plain view. Six people with money as their motive would have found and taken the cash.

* And most importantly, none of the six ever implicated Bruce Smith during multiple interrogations. Why would they take the rap if he were there?

“This is the first guy you’re going to throw under the bus if you’re getting pointed at for murder,” O’Brien said Wednesday.

But O’Brien knows Shelden still believes she was in her great-aunt’s apartment.

“Honestly, we believe she was brainwashed into believing that she was there,” he said.

Stories change

In a videotape of an April 1989 interview at the Gage County Sheriff’s Office in Beatrice, Debra Shelden is dressed in a bright orange jail jumpsuit and her dark hair is long and loose. She seems eager to answer the deputies’ questions, shrugging occasionally, rubbing her nose and giggling nervously at times.

Today, Shelden is 50. She still wears glasses and her hair is long, but now it’s shot with gray.

On the videotape, Deputy Burdette “Burt” Searcey reminds Shelden that when he talked with her two months after Wilson’s death, she denied any involvement. She was scared, she said, and she’d been told by Tom Winslow to keep her mouth shut.

Four years later, she would talk to Searcey and Deputy Gerald Lamkin in detail about the night her great-aunt was killed.

No one in the group, she told them, knew she was related to Wilson. JoAnn Taylor knocked on Wilson’s door, Shelden said, while she stood behind Taylor and White in the hallway.

But on Tuesday, Shelden described herself as the “get-in goat,” taken along so the widow would open the door.

In April 1989, she gave graphic details about how White and Winslow raped the elderly woman.

On Tuesday, she said she remembers seeing them on top of Wilson but that she saw no evidence of an actual sexual assault.

Is a lie easier than the truth?

White, the only one of the six to maintain his innocence, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Shelden, Taylor, Dean and Gonzalez testified for the prosecution in exchange for lesser sentences. Thomas Winslow said he couldn’t remember being present, but he pleaded no contest to avoid a possible death sentence.

Shelden spent just more than 4½ years in prison after pleading guilty to aiding and abetting second-degree murder.

“We did time that we shouldn’t have done because we didn’t do it,” she said this week.

Maybe Bruce Smith was there after the others left, she said. Maybe he slipped in during the assault and she’s blocked it out.

She can’t explain it, but she wants people to know she was not under the influence. Despite what’s been said, she never has done drugs. She’s never been a drinker.

“I think it’s a very unfortunate psychological defense mechanism,” said Jerry Soucie, an attorney with the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy who helped obtain the DNA tests that exonerated the six.

It’s easier for Shelden to believe she told the truth because it helps justify the time she spent in prison, he said Wednesday. More importantly, it justifies the time others spent in prison because of her testimony.

“Acknowledging the mistake you made may be more severe than sticking with what you said,” he added.

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning has said he hopes the state will pardon all six.

Shelden doesn’t know if she’ll get a pardon because she’s still insisting she was involved.

“I hope so,” she said Wednesday. “Because I didn’t do anything and I wasn’t in on the planning.

“If I don’t, it don’t matter. I’ve been the criminal, had a felony record, since 1989.”

Reach Joe Duggan at 473-7239 or jduggan@journalstar.com. Reach Catharine Huddle at 473-7222 or chuddle@journalstar.com.