 Paul Clark embraces his family upon release (Photo: Akeel and Valentine law firm)
Vasilije, a tailor, was found clenching a hook knife in one hand. He had been shot twice in the chest.
Minutes before, Vasilije had been in Ted’s Bar, which was on the corner of John R and Edgevale Streets. He was seen leaving with a Black woman who was a known sex worker. One witness, Roger Estelle, who lived on Edgevale across the street from the shooting, told police he heard an argument, and when he looked out, he saw a Black man demanding money from Vasilije. Then, he heard two gunshots and the man fled. Estelle said he did not know who the gunman was.
On March 3, 1987, Estelle gave police another statement in which he implicated a man named Winton Miller as the gunman.
In April 1987, police interviewed Edward Davis, who also lived on Edgevale Street. He admitted that he had witnessed the shooting, but he said he did not know who the gunman was. He did say that he thought the gunman was someone who hung out with Estelle.
Police tracked down Estelle in prison where he was serving time for an unrelated conviction. For the first time, Estelle said that the gunman was Paul Clark Jr., who was 19 at the time of the shooting. He claimed he was lying in bed when he heard the gunshots, jumped up, and looked out the window to see Clark running away from Vasilije’s body.
On August 22, 1987, police arrested Clark. On September 3, 1987, he was put into a lineup, and Davis was brought in. However, Davis said, “I don’t see anybody.”
At a preliminary hearing the very next day, however, Davis took the witness stand and identified Clark as the gunman. Clark was charged with first-degree murder and possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony.
On November 17, 1987, Clark went to trial in Wayne County Circuit Court. It lasted two days.
Nikola Caran, an employee of Ted’s Bar, testified that Vasilije had been a regular customer for many years. Caran said that on the night of the murder, Vasilije left the bar at about 9 p.m., and immediately afterward, a Black woman followed him. And after that, a Black man who Caran did not recognize followed the woman.
Davis testified that he was driving home, and when he turned from John R Street onto Edgevale Street, he had to slow down because someone was crossing the street. He said it was Clark, and that Clark was close enough to touch. Davis said he saw Clark stand next to a tree as Vasilije and a Black woman approached, walking toward John R Street, in the direction of a party store on the corner next to Ted’s Bar.
Davis said that he pulled up in front of his house, which was almost directly across the street. He said that as Vasilije and the woman reached the tree, Clark came out and confronted Vasilije. The woman kept on walking.
Clark asked Vasilije to hand over his money. “So the white guy pushed him and told him, ‘Go on. Leave me alone,’” Davis said.
When Vasilije refused, Clark “pushed him back. When he pushed him back, I heard a shot go off,” Davis said. “Then after one shot go off, another one went off. Then, when the next shot went off, the…white guy fell.”
Davis said Clark ran away. He said he went into his house to get his lunch to take to work on the midnight shift. He admitted he did not call police, but said paramedics and police were there very quickly.
Davis said he recognized Clark in part because he “walks like with a limp, a bowleg or whatever.”
Davis said that he did not identify Clark at the lineup because he was afraid that Clark could see him through the glass, even though a police officer assured him that was impossible. “I was just like afraid because it looked like [Clark] was looking right at me,” Davis said.
Davis said he identified Clark at the preliminary hearing a day later because he realized he was involved in the case. “When I first went there [for the lineup], I didn’t want to get involved,” Davis said. “But after I got in court, I was involved. I felt afraid when I first went in, but I ain’t afraid no more [in court] because I’m involved already.”
When Estelle testified, he gave another version. In this telling, he said that instead of lying in bed and hearing gunshots, he was standing by a window facing the street. He said he saw Clark and another man try to rob Vasilije. He said that he could not see their faces, but he knew Clark because he ran with a bowlegged limp. He admitted he had first denied knowing who shot Vasilije, and that he had falsely implicated Winton Miller. He said a few days after the shooting, he told his mother, Connie, who also lived in the house, that Clark was the gunman, but she told him to keep quiet.
Connie Estelle testified that she had told Roger to keep quiet. She also said that she knew that in the winter of 1986, Clark had his leg in a cast and that after the cast was removed in the spring of 1986, he sometimes walked with a cane.
During the trial, Clark was asked to walk in front of the jury and did not display any sort of limp or bowlegged walk.
On November 18, 1987, the jury convicted Clark of first-degree murder and possession of a weapon used in the commission of a felony. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder conviction and a consecutive two-year prison term on the weapons conviction.
His convictions were upheld on appeal.
In January 2021, the Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School filed a motion for relief from judgment based on evidence that Vasilije had been killed by another man, identified as Alex Scott. The motion said that the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) was continuing to investigate the case, and asked that the motion be put on hold until the investigation was complete.
The motion said that in 2019 and 2020, the clinic had obtained new evidence including mugshots of Scott that had been discovered by the CIU. The mugshots of Scott, which were taken shortly after the Vasilije murder, showed he had “a fresh, deep gash in his face,” which “is important because witness testimony indicated that Vasilije struggled with his murderer, and Vasilije was found with a knife clutched in his hand.”
The motion also included an affidavit from Dwight Hill, who said that years later while in prison, he heard Scott confess to killing Vasilije.
The motion said that on May 2, 1987, less than three months after Vasilije was murdered, Scott attempted to rob two men who had solicited sex workers near Ted’s Bar. When one of the men, 25-year-old Edward Krawicki, resisted, he was fatally shot in the face. The other man with Krawicki fled and subsequently identified Scott as the gunman.
On July 24, 1987, Scott had pled guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison.
In response to the clinic’s request, the CIU found a mugshot of Scott from March 28, 1987, when Scott was arrested for illegal possession of a firearm a block away from where Vasilije was killed. That mugshot showed a fresh cut on his left cheek. Mugshots of Scott from November 1984 and December 1985, prior to Vasilije’s murder, show no such wound or scar.
The motion asserted that the police and prosecution should have disclosed the evidence of Scott’s involvement in a robbery/murder near Ted’s Bar involving men soliciting sex workers, which was similar to what had happened with Vasilije.
In October 2023, an evidentiary hearing was held before Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Mark Slavens. At the hearing, Clark’s attorneys, Elizabeth Cole and David Moran, director of the clinic, presented the mugshots and called Hill to the witness stand.
Hill testified that he had been convicted of second-degree murder and was in the same prison with Scott and Clark. He recounted how on one occasion, Scott described how he had attempted to rob a man near Ted’s Bar, but got his face slashed when the man resisted and cut him with a knife. “He said, ‘This is how I got the scar,’ and he pointed…to that scar that he had on his face,” Hill testified.
“And he said he then shot the…guy, I don’t know how many times, but he said he turned around and ran,” Hill said.
Hill said Clark, with whom he had grown up and been friends, came to the prison a few months later. “When I saw Paul, I was, like, very disappointed, you know, because Paul doesn’t – we don’t know Paul to ever commit crimes,” Hill said. “He was [an] athletic guy, you know, he played sports and played the girls. So when I saw Paul, I was very shocked and surprised.”
Hill said he asked Clark what he was in for and “he said for something he didn’t do. Well, we hear that a lot, too. Everybody is innocent, but then he started telling us what he was accused of.” Hill said it sounded like the crime that Scott had recounted during which he got slashed in the face. He said he told Clark and said he would sign an affidavit attesting to Scott’s statement. However, Hill said that after he signed it, he recanted the affidavit because Scott began threatening him, saying “snitches get stitches.”
Hill said he subsequently signed another affidavit in 2016 after he didn’t see Scott in the prison anymore. “I felt like I should have [come] forward the first time and I deeply regretted it,” Hill said. “I mean that stayed with me and, you know, it was like tearing at my heart all of the time until…when I seen Paul again, I told him, ‘Man, I’m ready to come forward’…because he shouldn’t be in prison. He’s innocent.”
Clark testified and denied involvement in Vasilije’s murder. He said he was at home watching television at the time of the crime.
In December 2023, the Innocence Clinic filed a post-hearing memorandum in support of the motion for relief from judgment.
“New evidence presented at this hearing — the mugshots, supported by testimony from a witness to one of Scott’s numerous confessions and a preliminary exam transcript from Scott’s other homicide describing a practically identical robbery-turned-murder — warrants a new trial because if a jury heard this evidence, there is a reasonable probability of a different outcome in Mr. Clark’s case,” the memorandum said. “This Court should therefore order a new trial.”
On April 4, 2024, Judge Slavens vacated Clark’s convictions and ordered a new trial. The judge ruled that the prosecution had failed to disclose the evidence relating to the murder committed by Scott as well as the mugshots showing the gash on his face. Judge Slavens said the failure “inadvertently occurred.”
"The Highland Park police were aware of, or should have been aware of, the similarities between (Clark's) case and Alex Scott's," Judge Slavens ruled. “There is a significant possibility the defendant may actually be innocent."
On May 24, 2024, Clark was released, and required to wear an ankle bracelet. He had spent 36 years, six months and seven days in prison since the date of his conviction.
On July 23, 2024, the prosecution dismissed the charges.
– Maurice Possley
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