On May 8, 1985, a 27-year-old woman, identified as S.B., decided to have lunch at her apartment in the Woodlake Apartments in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. However, when she arrived, a man was in the process of burglarizing the apartment. The man attacked her. During a struggle, he stabbed her in the arm with a meat fork. He then sexually assaulted S.B. and fled.
The woman called the police and was taken to a hospital, where a rape kit was taken. The woman told police she believed she had seen her attacker at some point at the 800-unit apartment complex in the northwest part of the city. She said her attacker was a tall man with long blond hair and a large nose who was wearing a tan shirt.
While police were still on the scene, they saw 24-year-old Jeffrey Pierce, who was doing landscaping work at the complex. They brought S.B. to the scene,where she viewed Pierce and said he was not her attacker.
At the time of the crime, police were still investigating the July 28, 1964 murder of Judy Weichert, who had been attacked while jogging about 10 miles northwest of the Woodlake Apartments. She had been raped and stabbed multiple times. She lived long enough to describe her attacker as a big man with long stringy dishwater blond hair and a big nose.
Pierce was 6 feet 2 inches tall, and had long dishwater blond hair. Police were told, incorrectly, that a week after the attack on S.B., Pierce, who was married and had newborn twin sons, had quit his job at Can-Do Enterprises, the company that was doing the landscaping at the apartments on the day S.B. was attacked.
On February 21, 1986, the police created a photographic lineup containing a photograph of Pierce wearing a tan shirt. S.B. viewed the lineup and identified Pierce as her attacker. On March 1, 1986, Pierce was arrested. Police searched his home and confiscated some of his clothing.
At the time of Pierce’s arrest, the police said he was a suspect in Weichert’s murder because of his physical description and because he had a rare blood type that had been identified in the rape kit taken before Weichert died.
Pierce was charged with first-degree rape, burglary, forcible oral sodomy, forcible anal sodomy and assault with a dangerous weapon.
Pierce went to trial in Oklahoma County District Court in October 1986. S.B. identified him as her attacker. “I didn’t think I was going to get out of that room alive,” S.B. told the jury. “I will never forget his face.”
A police officer was allowed to testify that Pierce was a suspect in Weichert’s murder, although Pierce had not been charged with that crime.
Joyce Gilchrist, a forensic chemist at the Oklahoma City Police crime laboratory, testified that hairs collected from the victim’s apartment, where the rape took place, shared unique characteristics with Pierce’s hair. She testified that she had identified a total of 33 scalp and pubic hair samples recovered from the scene as “microscopically consistent” with hairs taken from Pierce.
The prosecution contended that a T-shirt and jeans recovered from Pierce’s home resembled the clothing S.B. said her attacker was wearing.
Two of Pierce’s co-workers at Can-Do Enterprises testified that they had lunch together with Pierce at the time of the attack. They said he was never out of their sight that day for more than 15 minutes. The defense presented evidence that Pierce never wore a belt, which contradicted the victim’s testimony that her attacker was wearing a belt.
On October 13, 1986, the jury convicted Pierce of all the charges. On December 19,1986, Oklahoma County District Judge James Blevins sentenced Pierce to 65 years in prison. Pierce was never charged with Weichert’s murder after forensic testing excluded him from that crime.
His convictions were upheld on appeal.
Years later, in 2000, the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System received a $250,000 state grant to conduct DNA testing on cases of conviction that occurred when DNA testing was not available. Pierce’s case was one of the first cases selected for testing. The evidence in his case was sent to Serological Research Institute, a DNA laboratory in California. In April 2001, the laboratory reported that Pierce had been excluded as the source of the evidence.
A month later, the Daily Oklahoman newspaper reported for the first time the results of an FBI examination of Gilchrist’s forensic work. The report said that Gilchrist had given testimony that went beyond the limits of science in at least six cases from 1982 to 1991, including Pierce’s case. The FBI recommended that all of Gilchrist’s cases in which she testified about hairs or fibers be re-examined. By that time, Gilchrist was on paid leave, although she maintained her testimony was accurate.
On May 7, 2001, following the filing of a motion for a new trial, Pierce’s convictions were vacated, the case was dismissed, and he was released. He had served nearly 15 years in prison.
In September 2001, Gilchrist was fired. Ultimately 11 other defendants in Oklahoma and Nebraska who had been convicted based on Gilchrist’s false testimony were exonerated. Months later, the DNA profile from S.B.’s rape was identified as that of a man who was in an Oklahoma prison for a crime committed after the rape. He was not charged with the crime because the statute of limitations had expired.
In 2006, Pierce filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Oklahoma City, Gilchrist and other officials involved in his prosecution. During the litigation, his lawyers learned that Gilchrist had disregarded her own findings that Pierce’s blood contained a particular enzyme, PGM-2-1, which precluded him as the source of the sperm found in the rape kit. Oklahoma City settled the lawsuit in 2007 for $4 million.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 03-02-2026
