Shortly after noon, on May 31, 1991, a man knocked on the door of a house on South Owasso Avenue in Tulsa, Oklahoma, asking if there was any yard work that needed to be done. When an 11-year-old girl answered the door and said no one else was home, the man pushed inside and raped her.
The girl was taken to a hospital, where a rape kit was taken. She described her attacker as having red hair and being five feet, four inches tall.
On November 8, 1991, 28-year-old Timothy Durham, who had red hair, was arrested after he was implicated in a call to Crime Stoppers. On November 21, 1991, Durham was charged with first-degree rape, rape by instrumentation, forcible sodomy, lewd molestation, kidnapping, first-degree burglary, and attempted robbery.
Durham went to trial in Tulsa County District Court in March 1993. The victim identified him as her attacker.
Carol English Cox, a Tulsa Police Crime Laboratory analyst, testified that she had compared hairs from the crime scene to Durham’s hair. She said she found similar colors in both and that it was a color that she had seen in “less than five percent” of hair samples that she had examined. She said she had not found “any pubic hairs as light as these before.” She also said the features she observed were “a match.” She also said the hairs were “very, very similar.” She also said that the hairs found at the scene of the crime and Durham’s hair both had an unusual straightening trait that she had seen only one other time.
Dr. Robert Giles, the scientific director of GeneScreen laboratory in Dallas, Texas, testified that he conducted DNA testing on the swimsuit the victim was wearing at the time of the attack. Dr. Giles said he found a faint dot on his genetic board, which was the same as one of Durham’s genetic markers. Dr. Giles said that while at least one man in 10 had these genetic markers, it was a small enough group that he could state that Durham belonged in the suspect pool.
The defense called 11 witnesses who testified that at the time of the crime, Durham was in Dallas, Texas, with his father at a three-day skeet shooting competition. The defense also presented evidence that Durham had made and signed for purchases while he was there. A handwriting expert testified that the handwriting was Durham’s.
The prosecution contended that Durham had enough time to rape the victim and then drive 260 miles to Dallas to attend the competition.
The jury began deliberating on Friday, March 12, 1993. At about 12:30 a.m. on March 13, the jury convicted Durham on all charges. Two hours later, the jury recommended consecutive prison terms totaling 3,220 years.
In February 1996, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the convictions but reduced his sentence to 3,120 years.
Later that year, Durham wrote to the Innocence Project and asked for help in obtaining DNA testing of the evidence, which was then sent to Forensic Science Associates, the laboratory of Dr. Edward Blake. In August 1996, Blake reported that Durham was excluded as the source of semen found on the victim’s swim suit.
Blake reported that Durham did not share the genotype found in the semen that Giles had reported at trial. He also said that Durham was excluded at several other genetic loci in multiple tests. GeneScreen’s DNA test result was a false positive that arose from misinterpretation caused by the laboratory’s failure to completely separate male from female DNA during extraction of the stain, Blake said.
Blake said that the victim’s genetic markers, when combined with those of the true rapist, produced a genotype that was similar to Durham. GeneScreen mistook this mixed profile for a single source result, falsely incriminating Durham, Blake reported.
In November 1996, Innocence Project attorney Barry Scheck and local counsel Richard and Sharisse O’Carroll filed a motion seeking a new trial. The motion said that Durham had been excluded by four of the five markers tested. “An exclusion by any one of these markers would be sufficient to demonstrate that Mr. Durham was not the source” of the biological evidence, the motion said.
The motion also asserted that a convicted rapist named Jess Garrison was likely the true perpetrator. In December 1991, after Durham was charged in the case, Garrison took his own life, the motion said.
On January 2, 1997, Durham’s convictions were vacated and he was granted a new trial. He was released pending a retrial.
On December 9, 1997, at the request of Tulsa County District Attorney Bill LaFortune, Judge Bill Beasley dismissed the case.
Durham was later awarded $50,000 in compensation from the state of Oklahoma.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 01-28-2026
