After 45 years in prison, jury told of alternate suspect
CLEVELAND — For the second time in 47 years, Isaiah Andrews’ defense attorney told a Cuyahoga County jury that they should find him not guilty of aggravated murder in the 1974 killing of his wife.
The jurors who will decide Andrews’ fate this time learned in opening statements on Friday what the jury that convicted Andrews in 1974 never knew: that Cleveland police detectives suspected, investigated and arrested another man in the killing of Regina Andrews before they turned their sights on her husband as a suspect.
Andrews spent 44 years in prison before his conviction was overturned in 2020 after attorneys working for the Ohio Innocence Project discovered that the state withheld reports from the police department’s investigation into their initial suspect, Willie Watts, who has since died.
Andrews, now 85 years old, sat in his wheelchair with a winter cap, black leather jacket, black gloves and a knitted blanket draped over his legs as defense attorney Marcus Sidoti told jurors that Watts was his wife’s true killer.
Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Kristen Karkutt admitted to jurors during her opening statements that Andrews was never told about the investigation into Watts. The prosecutor’s office spent years fighting to keep Andrews behind bars in part by arguing that his attorneys never proved that point.
Karkutt said detectives in 1974 and an FBI agent who has reviewed the case in recent years have ruled out Watts as a suspect in the killing. Karkutt said there’s no physical evidence that ties Isaiah Andrews to the killing, but statements from two women who described suspicious behavior would be enough to prove that Isaiah Andrews killed his wife.
The trial will feature testimony from two witnesses from the original trial who are still alive. The rest, including the police detectives and two women who said they saw Andrews acting suspiciously around the time detectives thought Regina Andrews was killed, have died and cannot take the stand.
Instead, prosecutors will call members of their office to take the stand and read transcripts of the witnesses’ testimony from the first trial.
Sidoti told jurors that because the information was hidden for more than four decades, most of the key witnesses who never had to answer questions about Watts — including the police detectives and Watts himself — have died. Prosecutors no longer have any of the physical evidence from the case, so there is no chance for DNA testing.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’malley’s office asked Visiting Judge Timothy J. Mcginty to impose a gag order on the case after Sidoti and Andrews made statements to reporters after a court hearing earlier this week. The office also took the extraordinary step of asking Mcginty to dismiss the entire jury pool and start the trial over for fears that their comments that Andrews is innocent and the prosecutor’s office pursuit of a new trial was “gross and disgusting” tainted the jury pool.
Mcginty rejected the motion to dismiss the jury pool, but granted O’malley’s office request for a gag order.
The trial is expected to wrap up early next week.
Identification of Watts
In his opening statements, Sidoti spent nearly an hour going over the previously undisclosed Cleveland police report detailing detectives’ investigation into Watts.
Isaiah and Regina Andrews married in August 1974, after the two had dated for about a month, prosecutors said. They lived in a room at the Colonial Hotel on Euclid Avenue near University Circle until the apartment they had rented was ready to move in.
A man who drove to Forest Hills Park to eat hot tamales found Regina Andrews’ body in the woods late in the afternoon on Sept. 18, 1974. She had been stabbed several times in the neck. Her nightgown was pushed up around her neck, and there were several copies of The Plain Dealer from several weeks earlier near her body.
Several hotel linens, including a bed sheet, two pillows and towels, were also underneath and around her body. The linens were stamped with the names of three different hotels, including the Howard Johnson Inn. Detectives went to the hotel and spoke to the manager, who said he was missing linens from a room that Watts had rented the previous day.
Detectives learned Watts had been released from the Cuyahoga County Jail the day before the killing, and his mother lived 1,200 feet from Forest Hills Park. They went to the house to try to talk to Watts. When they showed up, other police officers were already there because Watts’ mother reported that her son had broken into her house the night before.
Police wanted to speak to Watts about the murder. He came to his mother’s house that night with several friends and his girlfriend’s mother, who said they were with him from late Sept. 17 until 10:30 a.m. Sept. 18. On Sept. 19, after the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office did an autopsy, the detectives estimated that Regina Andrews died between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m., so detectives released Watts.
A turn to Andrews
Police then turned their investigation onto Isaiah Andrews.
Isaiah Andrews called his mother-in-law the evening of Sept. 18, 1974 and told her his wife was missing. Her family then came to the hotel and reported her missing to police. Later that night, police took the family to the morgue, and Regina Andrews’ brother identified her body.
Detectives went back to repeatedly interview two women from the hotel who gave statements earlier that they saw nothing suspicious. One woman eventually told police she saw Andrews tell his wife the night before her death that he was going to kill her.
The other woman said she saw Isaiah Andrews shut the door to their room, turn on loud music, then emerge several minutes later carrying a large, heavy bag out of the room that he threw in his trunk. The bag was heavy enough that the car rocked when he tossed it in the trunk, the woman said.
Police searched Andrews’ room, his car and the trunk. They found no traces of blood or any other evidence that tied him to the killing.
A copy of the report shows handwritten notes in the margins that say that a fingerprint found on a newspaper did not match Isaiah Andrews. The note is scribbled over, and another note beside it says that test results were insufficient.
Sidoti again pointed out that jurors will not be able to hear from the detectives what those notes mean, who wrote them and why.
Another handwritten note from police, which Sidoti showed jurors, showed that police later changed Regina Andrews’ death to between 9 a.m. and noon on Sept. 18, 1974. Prosecutors changed the time of death after they indicted Isaiah Andrews on a murder charge, writing in court records that Isaiah Andrews killed his wife “between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.,” the filing says.
Sidoti pointed out that Watts’ alibi that covered his whereabouts until 10:30 a.m., so detectives had no accounting of where Watts was when they said that Isaiah Andrews killed his wife.
“They let the murderer go because they messed up on the time of death,” Sidoti said.
A ‘unique’ trial
Attorneys made several references to the fact Andrews had previously been in court for the killing, but they did not say that he won a new trial after spending more than four decades in prison.
Karkutt said in her opening that the jury will hear the testimony given “in a prior court proceeding.”
Sidoti told jurors that the trial will be one of the most unique of his lifetime. He referred back to the jury selection on Thursday where he asked about the concepts of justice and fairness, and most of the jurors said they agreed that police should be transparent in their investigations.