On the night of November 14, 1985, 24-year-old Byron Halsey went out for drinks instead of staying home with 7-year-old Tina Urquhart and her 8-year-old brother, Tyrone. At the time, Halsey was living with the children and their mother, Margaret Urquhart, in a rooming house in Plainfield, New Jersey. He was helping to support the family and raising the children as if they were his own.
Halsey and Clifton Hall, who lived in the apartment across the hall, went out to buy alcohol. The children were left alone; Margaret had gone out at 6:30 p.m. to play bingo and then to her job as a nurse’s aide in Edison, New Jersey.
Halsey would later say he arrived home and the children were not there. He called Urquhart and several other relatives, looking for the children. In the morning, the children were found dead in the basement of the building by the building superintendent.
Both children had been sexually assaulted. Tyrone had been stabbed with scissors and five nails had been driven into his head with a brick. Tina had been beaten and strangled after she was raped.
Halsey, who had gone to work at 4 a.m., returned home after Margaret told him the children’s bodies had been found. When he arrived, the police immediately took him in for questioning.
By then, officers had already talked to Hall. Officers would later say that Hall appeared nervous and asked, “Am I going to be locked up?” The police identified a blood-smeared smock found in the basement as belonging to Hall’s wife. Hall claimed he was home by 10 p.m. His wife contradicted that statement, saying he didn’t come home until 3 a.m. Hall, who had a prior conviction for attempted sexual assault, was not investigated any further.
At the police station, Halsey, who had a sixth-grade education and severe learning disabilities, initially told detectives Frank Pfeiffer and Raymond Lynch that Margaret left to play bingo and then went straight to work, leaving him alone with the children. Halsey said that after Margaret left, he went next door to smoke marijuana with Hall. As he left the apartment, he locked the doors and warned the children not to let anyone in.
After Halsey and Hall smoked marijuana, they left to go drinking at various bars. However, they separated when Hall went home prior to Halsey, who stayed out and continued drinking. Halsey said that when he arrived home at about 1 a.m., the apartment door was open, the lights and stove were on, and the children were missing.
Pfeiffer obtained a search warrant to take Halsey’s clothes and take his fingernail scrapings. Pfeiffer asked Halsey if he would take a polygraph examination, and Halsey agreed to do so. Lynch arranged for a polygraph examiner, Peter Brannon, to administer the polygraph. Meanwhile, Halsey fell asleep at the police station as he waited for the detectives and Brannon to arrive.
When they arrived, Brannon interviewed Halsey and concluded that he was too sleep-deprived to take the test. After Halsey had spent over 12 hours at the police station, officers took him to his apartment to get clothes and then took him to his half-sister’s apartment to sleep. They told him that they would pick him up the next morning to administer the polygraph test.
At 7 a.m. on November 16, Pfeiffer picked up Halsey and drove him to the prosecutor’s office in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, Halsey signed a statement agreeing that the results of the polygraph test could be admitted into evidence at a criminal trial. The agreement waived any opportunity for the side opposing the use of the polygraph results to introduce expert witnesses at trial to challenge the results, but it did permit questions relating to the polygraph examiner’s qualifications and methods.
Halsey ate breakfast and then took the polygraph administered by Brannon. After the examination ended, Pfeiffer drove Halsey to the police station. There, at about 3:40 p.m., Halsey was told that he had failed the polygraph examination. At about 6 p.m., Pfeiffer emerged from the interview room and reported that Halsey had confessed.
Lynch and Pfeiffer then both went back into the interview room. Six hours later, Halsey signed a statement admitting to the crime. During his interrogation, Halsey gave incorrect answers regarding key facts of the crime, including the location of the bodies and the manner of death. Pfeiffer would later testify that many of Halsey’s were “gibberish” and that he seemed to be in a trance. The interrogation was not electronically recorded.
On November 17, 1985, Halsey was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated sexual assault, child abuse, and possession of a weapon for unlawful purpose.
Jury selection for Halsey’s trial began on January 13, 1988, in Union County Superior Court. Seven weeks later, on March 2, the jury was sworn in and heard opening statements. The prosecution sought the death penalty.
Hall testified that Halsey came to his apartment at about 9 p.m. on the evening of November 14. He said they shared a joint and each had a bottle of liquor. He testified that Halsey accompanied him as Hall drove his mother’s friends to various locations. Along the way, they stopped so Halsey could buy a bottle of wine. Hall said that they returned home and went to their apartments.
Hall said he fell asleep watching television but was awakened at about 3 a.m. on November 15, 1985, when he heard a door closing downstairs. He said he then heard Halsey’s door being opened, so he went there to ask for a cigarette. He said Halsey was on the telephone, quarreling with Margaret. Hall said he heard Halsey say, “If you don’t care about your damn kids, I don’t either.” Hall said Halsey appeared to be “very high.”
Pfeiffer read the five-page statement that Halsey had signed. During cross-examination by Halsey’s attorney, Joan Van Pelt, an attorney from the Union County Public Defender’s Office, Pfeiffer admitted that he did not write down all of Halsey’s answers. Pfeiffer said Halsey first said he used a crowbar, then a hammer, and then a chair to drive the nails into the boy’s head, before saying that he used a brick. And although the confession said four nails were driven into the boy’s head, a fifth nail was discovered during the autopsy, which was performed after the confession was obtained.
Pfeiffer and Lynch testified that they did not feed any information to Halsey and that the confession was not fabricated.
Brannon testified that Halsey had shown deception when he denied committing the crime.
An FBI agent testified that semen was found on both children. He said that the testing identified Halsey’s blood type. A forensic geologist testified that material found on the nails was consistent with having come from the brick recovered at the scene.
On March 18, 1988, after five days of deliberation, the jury convicted Halsey of two counts of felony murder and one count of aggravated sexual assault. He was given two life sentences plus 20 years. The jury had also acquitted Halsey of multiple charges, including the aggravated sexual assault of the boy. When the jury announced that Halsey had been acquitted of some charges, meaning he would not be eligible for the death penalty, spectators in the courtroom jeered.
In 1991, Halsey’s conviction and sentence were upheld by the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court.
Beginning in 1993, Halsey repeatedly requested–and was denied–access to post-conviction DNA testing. In July 2002, New Jersey's law granting post-conviction access to DNA testing took effect.
In 2006, the Innocence Project secured testing of evidence from the crime scene in Halsey's case. Testing was conducted in state labs and at Orchid Cellmark, a private DNA testing laboratory. Semen and cigarette butts from the crime scene were subjected to DNA testing. The tests excluded Halsey and identified a male DNA profile.
When the profile was submitted to the New Jersey state DNA database, it was associated with the DNA profile of Hall. By that time, Hall was in prison for three separate sex crimes in Plainfield in 1991 and 1992.
In May of 2007, the Innocence Project joined with the Union County District Attorney’s Office in filing a motion to vacate Halsey’s conviction. The motion noted that the exclusion not only showed that Halsey did not commit the crime, but also that the detectives had fabricated the confession.
On May 15, 2007, Halsey’s convictions were vacated and he was granted a new trial. Halsey was released on bond.
On July 9, 2007, prosecutors dismissed the case.
Hall was indicted for the murders. His attorney said that Hall would admit that he acted alone in committing the crime. Hall died of kidney failure while awaiting trial.
In February 2013, a federal judge dismissed a civil-rights lawsuit brought by Halsey against the city of Plainfield and Pfeiffer and Lynch, ruling there was no proof the officers committed misconduct.
In April 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed the dismissal and sent the case back for trial, saying: “Except when an innocent defendant is executed, we hardly can conceive of a worse miscarriage of justice.”
In July 2015, the lawsuit was settled for $12.5 million.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 07-28-2026
