On January 3, 1996, 62-year-old William Beason was found stabbed to death in his apartment in Rochester, New York. Beason, who was also known as Solomon Israel and was a member of Rochester’s contingent in the Million Man March, was lying on his back in his bed. He had 19 stab wounds to his neck and chest and defensive wounds on his left hand.
Police found a bloodstained knife, a bloodstained towel, and several bloody tissues in a clothes hamper in Beason’s bathroom. Police concluded the murder occurred on New Year’s Day. Beason rented rooms to boarders. Police said several rooms on the second floor had been ransacked.
A few days after Beason’s body was discovered, 34-year-old Douglas Warney, a man with a history of mental health issues, an eighth-grade education with an IQ of 68, and advanced AIDS, called the police claiming that he had information about a homicide. He said he knew Beason because he had cleaned Beason’s house and shoveled snow from his driveway before the murder.
During 12 hours of police interrogation, Warney gave varying accounts, according to the police. Initially, he said he was shoveling snow at Beason’s home when Warney’s cousin, Brian Szymkowski, broke down the door because Beason owed money to Szymkowski. Warney said he heard screaming and when he went inside, Szymkowski had killed Beason.
As the questioning continued, Warney said that he had helped Szymkowski kill Beason. Ultimately, he said that he alone had killed Beason and that Szymkowski was not involved.
Police said that Warney provided details that only the killer could know—that Beason was wearing a nightgown, that he had been cooking chicken, and that the killer had cut himself with a knife and wiped it with a tissue in the bathroom. According to the confession, Warney needed money to buy drugs, so he robbed Beason of money and jewelry and then killed him.
After Warney signed the confession and while he was being booked, an officer who was not involved with the investigation asked Warney how he was doing. Warney replied, “Not good…I got a body.”
On January 6, 1996, Warney was charged with capital murder.
Warney went to trial in February 1997 in Monroe County Supreme Court. The prosecution presented the confession. The defense challenged it as riddled with inconsistencies.
His cousin, Szymkowski was in a medical facility at the time of the murder. Warney said he killed Beason in the kitchen, although evidence showed the murder occurred in the bedroom and there was no blood in the kitchen. He said he tossed his bloody clothes in a garbage can. The defense had dug the can—which had not been picked up—out of the snow and there were no bloody clothes. Warney claimed he cut his index finger during the attack, but forensic analysis of some of blood at the scene excluded Warney and Beason. Warney claimed he drove his brother’s brown Chevrolet to Beason’s house, but the car had not been registered since 1990. At his brother’s house, defense investigators had found an inoperable green car.
A forensic analyst from the Monroe County Public Safety Laboratory testified that blood and enzyme testing was conducted on the crime scene evidence. Beason was blood type O and Warney was found to be blood type A. The blood on the knife was consistent with Beason’s blood and enzyme types. Blood on the towel and tissues could not have come from either Beason or Warney. Blood was also found under the Beason’s fingernail scrapings, but there was an insufficient amount of material for testing.
A number of fingerprints were recovered from the scene, including one from the bloodstained knife. Latent print examiner Robert Garland initially reported that the print on the knife contained only three friction ridge characteristics and deemed it of “no value.” However, Garland told the jury that he was able to determine the pattern type, which he could use to exclude people. Based on his analysis, Beason and Szymkowski were excluded as the source of that print because they lacked the pattern type on any finger.
He testified that Warney could not be excluded as the source of the print because Warney had one finger containing the same pattern type, which had features consistent with the three features on the print on the knife.
Garland testified that three fingerprints were also recovered from a videotape box. Beason was identified as the source of two of the prints. Warney and Beason were excluded as the source of the third.
The defense presented evidence that Warney had a history of psychiatric problems. A few days before Beason’s murder, the police had taken Warney to a psychiatric hospital after he made dozens of false calls ordering pizzas and reporting fires and car accidents. He had checked out after one day.
On February 12, 1997, the jury convicted Warney of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
In 2004, the Innocence Project and attorney Donald M. Thompson began working on Warney’s case and filed a motion seeking DNA testing of blood from the fingernail clippings, the knife, the towel, and the tissues. The prosecution opposed the testing and the judge denied the motion in December 2004.
While the ruling was being appealed, the prosecution, without notifying Warney or the defense, arranged for DNA testing. The Monroe County Public Safety Laboratory conducted DNA testing on Beason’s left fingernail scraping, blood flecks from around the crime scene, bloodstains on the towel, and bloodstains on tissues in the bathroom.
Warney was excluded from this evidence. A DNA profile that was not Beason was submitted to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), the agency’s national database of DNA profiles of convicted offenders and DNA profiles from unsolved crimes.
The DNA profile was matched to Eldred Johnson, Jr., a New York state inmate already serving a life sentence for two robberies in which the victims were stabbed, but survived.
Latent print examiners compared the unidentified print on the video box to Johnson’s prints and concluded that he was the source of that print. When prosecutors interviewed Johnson, he admitted that he had acted alone in killing Beason and that he did not know Warney. He admitted that he had fatally stabbed his landlord, Doris Parmenter, and wounded her husband, Clifford, in Utica, New York, on December 16, 1995, and then fled to Rochester. There he met Beason, who Johnson said had solicited him for sex. Johnson said he stabbed Beason to death. During the struggle, Beason bit him on the finger. Johnson said he stole $30 to $35 and fled out a window.
On May 16, 2006, Warney’s conviction was vacated, the case was dismissed, and he was released from prison.
In May 2007, Warney filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Rochester. The lawsuit alleged that the prosecution knew of the exculpatory DNA testing report as much as two-and-a-half months before disclosing it to the defense.
As part of that litigation, Ron Smith, a fingerprint analysis expert, reviewed the print on the knife and concluded that Warney could be excluded as its source based on an “absence of feature correlation.” Smith said that Garland had tried to “bolster the fingerprint evidence in the eyes of the jury.”
In 2011, Warney settled the lawsuit for $3.75 million. In May 2012, Warney settled a claim with the New York Court of Claims for $400,000.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 03-12-2026
