Wrongful conviction case to air on TV
‘People Magazine Investigates’ to examine proceedings against Willie ‘Timmy’ Donald
A man wrongfully convicted of a 1992 Gary murder and robbery will be the subject of a national TV show.
Willie “Timmy” Donald, now 54, was convicted and sentenced to 60 years in connection with the February 1992 death of Bernard Jimenez, 30, in Gary’s Glen Park section. He was released in 2016 after 24 years in prison.
The show “People Magazine Investigates” will examine Donald’s case. Police believed Jimenez’s slaying was part of a handful of robberies in the neighborhood that night.
Police alleged a gunman robbed four women near or inside their Gary homes on Feb. 27, 1992, while Jimenez, his fiancé Kimberly Belinsky, and her three children were out shopping and visiting a relative.
They returned about 9:15 p.m. and were confronted outside their front door at 4660 Massachusetts St., Gary, by the man who fatally shot the 30-year-old Jimenez as he struggled to protect his family.
Donald had no previous criminal conviction. He said he was car shopping with his sister and her fiancé that night. Belinsky and another woman robbed later picked Donald from a photo lineup.
The latter woman had doubts and recanted her identification years later.
A third woman did not select Donald’s photo. Several witnesses said the assailant had an “acnescarred face”, which Donald didn’t have.
A female victim later told police she saw her assailant walking down her street days later. At that same time, Donald was at his job, working as a Gary stock clerk at Goldblatt’s department store.
A Lake Superior judge and magistrate ruled in 2016 that Gary Police had withheld that information from prosecutors, his defense lawyer and Donald for his trial, according to the TV program and local media reports. A junior detective on the case had discovered it after the trial and disclosed it to Donald’s appeals lawyer, according to the show and newspaper reports.
Donald’s case was examined by the Northwestern University’s Medill Innocence Project. He filed a federal lawsuit against Gary Police in 2017, which is still pending.
The show airs Monday at 8 p.m. on the Investigation Discovery channel, or will be streaming on the discovery+ app.