At about 11:30 p.m., on July 8, 1981, three men forced their way into a home in Tampa, Florida. One of the men was armed with a shotgun. There were five people inside the home: the homeowner, Daniel; his wife and their 12-year-old daughter; and Daniel’s friend, Martin, and his 38-year-old wife. All five were bound with neckties and robbed of $60 in cash. While the man with the shotgun smoked cigarettes and kept the shotgun pointed at the victims, the two other men ransacked the home.
Daniel’s daughter and Martin’s wife were forced out of the home and into the trunk of the attackers’ car, a gold Buick. The car then sped off.
The three people inside the house managed to untie themselves. They were able to record the license plate number of the Buick and contacted the police.
Meanwhile, the robbers drove the Buick to a wooded area, where they took the woman and the girl out of the trunk. One of the assailants forced the woman to the front of the car and raped her.
A second assailant took the 12-year-old girl to the back of the car and raped her. This second assailant then raped the woman as well.
Both victims were left tied to trees. They were able to free themselves, went to a nearby house, and contacted the police. Both were taken to a hospital, where rape kits were collected.
Martin’s wife told the police that her first attacker did not ejaculate. She said the second attacker did ejaculate. The woman and the girl told the police that the third assailant remained in the car during the rapes.
Police traced the license plate number to a resident of St. Petersburg. The St. Petersburg police were contacted and they assembled a photographic lineup that included a picture of the owner of the Buick. The police showed the lineups to the rape victims while they were in the hospital. Neither victim was able to make an identification from the photographs. Two of the robbery victims in the home made tentative identifications of the car’s owner, but they were not positive.
On July 9, 1981, another photographic array was assembled. This array included a photograph of the car’s owner and also photographs of 28-year-old Douglas James and 19-year-old Alan Crotzer, both of whom were known to associate with the Buick’s owner. Police had learned that the owner of the car had been incarcerated on the day of the crime and that James had borrowed the car. The photographic arrays were shown to the victims. The adult rape victim made a positive identification of Crotzer. One of the robbery victims also identified James.
The next day, the victims were shown more photographs. This time, the array also included the picture of Douglas James’s 22-year-old brother, Corlenzo. Three of the victims, including both rape victims, identified Corlenzo James as the attacker who had remained in the car during the rapes.
Although the woman rape victim had described the man with the shotgun as being 6 feet tall and 130 pounds, she identified Crotzer as the man that carried the shotgun and the man who had raped both victims. At the time, Crotzer was 5 feet 5 inches tall and 135 pounds.
All three were arrested on July 10, 1981. Douglas James and Crotzer were charged with sexual assault, kidnapping, assault, burglary, robbery, and child sex assault. Corlenzo James was charged with kidnapping, assault, burglary, and robbery. Corlenzo was also charged with the shotgun robbery of a Trailways bus on July 5.
In early April 1982, Corlenzo James pled guilty to robbery and burglary. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Days later, after Crotzer’s motion for a separate trial was denied, he and Douglas James went to trial in Hillsborough County Circuit Court.
All five victims made in-court identifications of Crotzer and Douglas James. Crotzer was specifically identified as the perpetrator who wielded the shotgun and raped both victims.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) had tested samples from the rape kits collected. Semen was identified on the adult rape victim’s vaginal swabs, underwear, and clothing. A lab analyst testified at trial that the blood group markers of semen from the crime scene contained the markers of both Crotzer and the adult victim.
An FDLE analyst also testified that two hairs recovered from the adult victim’s rape kit could have come from Crotzer and Corlenzo James.
Douglas James testified and claimed that he and the older woman had consensual sex. Crotzer testified that he was not involved. He testified that he had been with his girlfriend on the night of the crime and during the evening they were with friends and members of his girlfriend's family.
On April 22, 1982, the jury convicted Douglas James and Crotzer of sexual battery, kidnapping, aggravated assault, burglary, robbery, and attempted robbery. They were sentenced to 130 years in prison.
In 2002, Crotzer wrote a letter to the Innocence Project in New York City. He said he had filed a motion for DNA testing and wanted help. Although Crotzer’s pro se motion was denied, his case caught the attention of Sam Roberts, an Innocence Project volunteer, and attorney David Menschel, then a recent graduate of Yale Law School.
Roberts began searching for the physical evidence in the case. After the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office said they didn’t have any of the evidence, Roberts located some slides made from the rape kit swabs in the FDLE offices. Roberts and Menschel approached Hillsborough County Prosecutor Michael Sinacore, who agreed to send the slides to a private DNA testing company in Maryland.
When that company was unable to get a result, Menschel and Roberts went to Florida to try to interview Corlenzo and Douglas James. Corlenzo said that he and Douglas were involved and that Crotzer was not with them. However, Corlenzo refused to sign an affidavit. Michael James admitted that he and Corlenzo were there and that Corlenzo was the man with the shotgun. Michael named a childhood friend as the third man.
Sinacore agreed to a request to send the six slides to a DNA testing company in England in August 2003. This firm was unable to get any results.
In 2004, the slides were sent to Forensic Science Associates (FSA), a private California DNA testing laboratory. In February 2005, Menschel and attorneys Martin McClain and Jenny Greenberg filed a motion to vacate Crotzer’s convictions based on FSA’s report that excluded Crotzer as the source of the biological evidence on the slides.
On January 23, 2006, Crotzer’s conviction was vacated, the charges were dismissed, and he was released.
In 2008, Florida Governor Charlie Crist pardoned Crotzer for two other unrelated crimes–a 1979 conviction on charges related to a robbery and a 1991 conviction for selling drugs in prison.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 07-28-2026
