After 19 years, Atlanta deaths remain unsolved
Questions remain about the suit Ravens star Ray Lewis wore on the tragic night of Super Bowl XXXIV.
Nineteen years since the last Super Bowl in Atlanta, a tragic mystery endures about what happened in the early morning after that classic game between the St. Louis Rams and Tennessee Titans.
It remains an unsolved case. Nobody was convicted of, or confessed to, the fatal stabbings of two men outside a nightclub in the Buckhead district. Only one person, Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Lewis, pleaded guilty to a crime related to their deaths, for obstructing justice.
Lewis, then a standout for the Ravens, didn’t play on Jan. 30, 2000. He came to Atlanta to party, dressing for the nightlife afterward in a cream-colored suit with a mock neck sweater and Stetson hat. That suit hasn’t been seen in public since the night Lewis’ limousine left the bloody crime scene, leading to a question that has haunted the families of the deceased: What happened to the suit Lewis wore that night?
“Why would it be gone?” said Greg Wilson, uncle of Jacinth Baker, one of the victims. “Why would that or anything else they had on them end up missing that night unless it was something that linked them to the murder?”
In seeking answers to those questions as the
Super Bowl returns to Atlanta, USA TODAY obtained court records from subsequent civil lawsuits against Lewis and a book by one of his former co-defendants. New details emerged about the suit that prosecutors alleged was stained with blood.
“Where’s it at?” Handsome Lollar, brother of Richard Lollar, the other stabbing victim, said last week. “Where’s that white suit that was all bloody?”
The court filing
The murder trial over the deaths of Lollar, 24, and Baker, 21, ended in June
2000 when a jury acquitted two of Lewis’ friends and former co-defendants. Nearly three years later, an attorney for Baker’s family filed a 46-page document in federal court in Georgia as part of the family’s civil suit against Lewis seeking damages for his wrongful death.
The purpose of the document was to persuade a judge to deny an attempt by Lewis to have their case thrown out. It mentioned Lewis’ missing suit on the
16th page, along with the names of his mother, his friend Kwame King and a woman who accompanied Lewis and sat next him in the limo. Her name was Jessica Larose Robertson of Houston.
“Two days after the incident, Defendant Lewis’ mother, Ms. Sunseria Keith, met with Ms. Robertson and Defendant King, to coordinate and fashion stories that were favorable to Defendant Lewis, regarding the incident,” the Baker family alleged in a document filed in May
2003 by their attorney, Richard Middleton of Savannah. “Ms. Keith instructed Ms. Robertson to destroy the suit Defendant Lewis had been wearing at the time of the incident. The suit that Defendant Lewis was wearing during the fight is still ‘missing’ and Defendant Lewis has never attempted to locate its whereabouts. Ms. Keith arranged to pay Ms. Robertson for her services in covering up for Defendant Lewis, and for Defendant King’s legal fees. During the days and weeks following the incident, Ms. Keith, with Ms. Robertson’s assistance, acted upon Defendant Lewis’ behalf, in embarking upon a campaign to contact, counsel and harass witnesses.”
Families of both victims had sued Lewis for damages, leading to the discovery of evidence, including the deposition testimony of Lewis, Robertson and King in 2001 and 2002, as well as documents from Robertson’s attorney in Atlanta and a draft copy of King’s legal fees.
Middleton, the Baker family attorney, cited that material in a list of exhibits supporting his assertions and court filings in May 2003.
USA TODAY asked Middleton for evidence that supports these assertions, but Middleton said he could not provide further information because the specifics of the case are “sealed by agreement.” In response to the family’s court filing in 2003, Lewis’ attorneys noted the evidence and didn’t refute it but said it was irrelevant to the summary judgment motion being considered.
“Plaintiff has brought forth a great deal of evidence that is immaterial to any issue currently before the Court,” his attorneys said in June 2003. “Evidence regarding what Mr. Lewis did days, weeks, and even months following the incident, information as to the actions of his mother, and the payment of legal fees in the criminal proceeding that arose from this case, among other assertions of material facts asserted by the Plaintiff, are irrelevant and immaterial to any legal issue pending before this Court … Mr. Lewis’ actions during the police investigation, the actions of Sunseria Keith and others while Mr. Lewis was in jail, should be disregarded.”
They likely would have contested the issue if it came up at trial. But a few months later, records show Baker’s family reached a confidential settlement. In
2004, the family of Lollar also reached an undisclosed settlement with Lewis, who said in his book in 2015 that he paid the families out of sympathy and love, not guilt.
He has proclaimed his innocence in the killings, said he didn’t witness them or know what happened to the suit.
USA TODAY made several attempts to reach Lewis, his mother, Robertson, King and attorneys involved in the case regarding the suit Lewis was wearing. They didn’t return messages left directly or through representatives.
Another book, by another key party in the case, claimed other clothes went missing from Lewis’ hotel suite that morning.
The bag and the dumpster
After initially being charged with murder, Lewis pleaded guilty to obstruction in a plea agreement that dropped his murder charge. The misdemeanor charge stemmed from a false statement he gave to police when he failed to give them the names of people he knew in the limo that night. Lewis also admitted to telling the people from the limo to “shut the F-up.”
As part of the deal, Lewis was punished with probation and agreed to testify in the case against his friends and former co-defendants, Reginald Oakley and Joseph Sweeting.
Both were acquitted of murder at trial, in large part because of unclear and unconvincing evidence in a case muddled by a dark, crowded melee outside a nightclub. What might have happened to Lewis’ suit is another story.
Before trial in 2000, Robertson was granted immunity by the prosecution, led by district attorney Paul Howard, who still holds that office in Atlanta. As part of her agreement, in March 2000, Robertson provided an investigator with several garment bags. Lewis testified in June 2000 he had told her to hold his clothing for him until he returned from Hawaii, where he had planned to go to the Pro Bowl. He also testified he left the suit in his hotel room that morning and had no reason not to turn it over. But the suit he was wearing that night was not among the clothes Robertson provided.
“Were you able to determine whether or not the suits that were displayed in these exhibits were the suits that you had on, the suit that you wore on that night?” Howard asked Lewis at trial.
“No, I haven’t seen the suit I wore that night,” Lewis replied then.
Based on other witness testimony at the time, the prosecution alleged Lewis’ bloodstained suit was discarded when Robertson and others drove from Lewis’ hotel that morning and stopped to dump a bag in the dumpster of a fastfood restaurant nearby. It’s not clear what was dumped.
Oakley, the acquitted co-defendant, said his own clothes from that night went missing while he was taking a shower at Lewis’ hotel suite shortly after the incident. He didn’t testify at trial but wrote about it in his book, “Memories of Murder,” whose scarce copies are listed for sale on Amazon.com this week at $174 each.
“I wrapped a towel around me and opened the bathroom door and yelled, ‘Yo, who took my clothes out of the bathroom?’ ” Oakley’s book said.
Oakley said King answered by saying he didn’t know and gave him a sweat suit to wear that was twice his size. Oakley wrote he later spotted Robertson getting out of the elevator at the hotel with luggage before she drove with others to the alleged dumpster stop.
In the 2003 court filing, the Baker family’s attorney said Lewis’ mother spoke with Robertson about the suit two days after the incident, not the morning after the killings when the alleged dumpster dump occurred. Something else was in that bag, according to the filing.
Lewis “told Ms. Robertson and Defendant (Carlos) Stafford (described as Robertson’s brother) to throw away a bag in his room that weighed about four pounds and made clanking noises,” the 2003 filing said. “The bag was subsequently placed in a fast-food dumpster.”
Lewis’ attorneys responded in 2003 by saying this particular assertion about Lewis directing these two to “throw away a bag” was “unsupported by the record.”
Nearly 20 years after that Super Bowl night, Lewis and the victims’ families propose completely different theories about what his clothing that night means to the unsolved case.
The families
Handsome Lollar, who was about 10 at the time of his brother’s death, sells a clothing line in his honor. It’s called “I Am Rich.” He despises Lewis.
“I don’t say his name,” Lollar said of Lewis. “(Expletive) that (expletive). That’s what I got to say. If you’re writing that story, can you put that first? (Expletive) Ray Lewis. Shop ‘I Am Rich.’ Can you put that in headlines, please, sir?”
Another Super Bowl in Atlanta doesn’t revive painful memories for the families because they said those memories never left. Based on the missing suit and other evidence, they allege Lewis was more involved than he admitted. They were especially insulted last year when Lewis was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, about 25 miles from where Lollar and Baker are buried in Akron.
In his 2015 book entitled “I Feel Like Going On,” Lewis wrote, “I must have been wearing a quarter-million dollars” that night with his suit, jewelry and mink coat.
“I was over the top,” he wrote. “Way, way over the top. I get that. I’m sorry. Frankly, I’m a little embarrassed about all that now, but this was the mentality, and I only mention it here because it became a part of the story.”
Lewis wrote his clothes that night “made myself a target” and showed he was “not looking for a fight.” “Point is, when you’re dressed like that, you’re off to the sidelines, and here were these gangbangers stepping to us from the shadows.”
In 2013, CNN asked Lewis’ defense attorney from 2000, Ed Garland, what happened to the suit.
“It went to the cleaners and was in the suits that were in his closet,” Garland said. “The prosecution didn’t do the things they needed to do to get access to the suit.” He said then he didn’t know that suit’s whereabouts.
No supporting evidence of the suit going to the cleaners was found in the court record, however. And the prosecution did attempt to access the suit by making a deal with Robertson to turn over his clothes. The suit wasn’t found among them.
Wilson, Baker’s uncle, notes that blood matching his nephew’s was found in the limo carrying Lewis and others. Howard, the prosecutor, noted Lewis’ blood was found on a bathrobe and pillow at his hotel. At trial, Lewis said the blood on the pillow came from a prior football head injury but didn’t know how blood got on the robe. Lewis also admitted to going to a sporting goods store the day before with Oakley and Sweeting, who purchased knives there.
In his defense, Lewis’ attorneys pointed to Baker as starting the fight by hitting Oakley on the head with a champagne bottle.
Lewis still expressed sympathy for the families in his book, describing the victims as “poor young men.” “Nobody’s been brought to justice, and they’re still gone and grieving,” he wrote. The families can agree with that.
“If we can keep it alive, some of the stuff will eventually come out,” said Cindy Lollar-Owens, Richard’s aunt. “If we can keep it alive, somebody is going to say something” about what happened.
In Atlanta, Lewis is scheduled to host a party this week to benefit his foundation, rekindling memories of the last time he partied on the scene of an Atlanta Super Bowl. Much has changed since then. The site of the slayings has been redeveloped, part of a renewed city with a new stadium for Sunday’s game between the Rams and Patriots. The address of the old Cobalt nightclub where Lewis went that night is now listed as a sushi restaurant. Howard, the district attorney, is still prosecuting crime but doesn’t want to talk about it.
USA TODAY submitted questions about the case to his office, including whether it still believes it put the right men on trial. Howard’s office didn’t reply with an answer.
Robertson never testified at the murder trial in 2000 even though she had been granted immunity from prosecution. USA TODAY reported then that Howard didn’t want to call her to the stand after another witness testified that Robertson told her she had burned a photo that would have helped police identify the occupants of the limo and what they were wearing.
“Anyone who engaged in those kinds of actions is not helpful,” Howard said then.