 From left: Eric Misch, Lorenzo Vasquez, Louis Costilla Jr., Joseph Rickard (Photo: supplied)
Toledo Police Detective Gary Burks was assigned to investigate the crime. After three months, however, the case was labeled “inactive.”
In December 1992, Detectives Robert Leiter and James Anderson were assigned to reopen the case after a call was made to Crime Stoppers which led to an interview with a woman named Lisa Earl. Earl said that members of a gang called the “Bishops” hung out at her house on Yates Street. After interviewing Earl, the detectives interviewed John Urbina, Michelle Parkhurst, and Joey Hall.
Urbina, a former resident of Chicago, was the founder of the Bishops, whose members included Parkhurst and Hall. Some of the gang members carried wooden clubs fashioned from limbs of a pine tree.
Urbina claimed that one night that summer, some of his friends showed up at his house bragging about beating up a Black man and stealing his wallet. Though Urbina would later testify this event occurred between 12:00 and 2:00 a.m. the morning of Huggins's murder, he originally told police it was in July. He only amended his statement after the detectives informed him Huggins was killed in August. Urbina said that among those who were bragging was 16-year-old Eric Misch.
Parkhurst, who was 18, had been living with Earl that summer. She told the detectives that she was hanging out at the house when a group of gang members came to the house around 12:00 or 1:00 a.m. They had “paint or blood” on them and were bragging about beating up a Black man. She did not name Misch as one of the boys in her statement.
Hall, who was 17, gave statements, most inconsistent, suggesting that he had witnessed the killing, but had not taken part.
On February 2, 1993, the detectives picked up Misch and, with the permission of his mother, took him to the police station. When they began questioning him about Huggins’s murder, Misch said he was not involved and knew nothing about it. Misch would later say that he began to cooperate after the detectives told him he would be in prison until he was 50 years old unless he gave a statement.
The detectives took Misch to the park where he was supposed to show them how the murder occurred. However, after he could not, police showed him the crime scene, tried to "reason” with him, and, as they later testified, gave him some “pre-thoughts” of what occurred and who was involved. Then, Misch was returned to the station. He eventually gave a recorded statement incriminating himself, as well as 24-year-old Joseph Rickard, 20-year-old Louis Costilla Jr., 16-year-old Ismael Vasquez, and Ismael’s 17-year-old brother, Lorenzo Vasquez. These were the same four that police believed were involved.
After he gave the statement, Misch was allowed to go home. Almost immediately, he recanted his statement. When the police called him the following day to talk about taking him to a grand jury, Misch said he would not testify and that his statement was false.
On February 5, Misch was arrested. The police also arrested Rickard, Costilla, and the Vasquez brothers. They were charged with aggravated murder and aggravated armed robbery.
In June 1993, Rickard and Costilla went to trial in Lucas County Court of Common Pleas. The prosecution portrayed the crime as one motivated by hatred for Black people and carried out by members of the Bishops gang.
Hall testified that he was about 30 feet away when Rickard, Costilla, and the Vasquez brothers attacked and beat Huggins. Hall did not implicate Misch.
Parkhurst testified that she was present when Rickard, Costilla, and the Vasquez brothers came into the home where she was partying. She said that Rickard had red spots on his hands, which he claimed was paint. She said that Costilla’s clothing was a “mess,” and that he appeared to have blood on him. Parkhurst claimed that Costilla bragged that they had “fucked up a nigger.”
Dr. Diane Scala-Barnett, a board-certified anatomic pathologist (who would become board-certified in forensic pathology the following year) and deputy coroner, testified that Huggins died of massive head injuries. Dr. Scala-Barnett testified that some of his wounds had “very fine linear abrasions” that were “consistent” with the grain of the wooden club that Knell had given to police.
Dr. Scala-Barnett said that Huggins had severe craniocerebral injuries. “When I say craniocerebral, the injuries involved [were] not only the skull, but also the brain inside,” she said. “Those injuries include extensive skull fracture, and we say eggshell fracture, meaning the skull looked like an eggshell after it has been cracked, all little tiny pieces of bone. In addition, there were fracture lacerations of the brain.”
Julie Mather-Saul, a forensic anthropologist in the Lucas County Coroner’s office, testified that she received the skull and pieces of bone after the autopsy, and attempted to reconstruct the skull. She said the force of the blow flattened and fractured Huggins’s skull to the extent that reconstruction was not possible. The skull was entered into evidence for the jury to view.
She said the damage was caused by a very strong blunt force.
Asked if a baseball bat could have caused the damage, she said, “That would be consistent with the injuries.” She also said, “It is conceivable that [the weapon] could have been smaller.”
On June 17, 1993, the jury convicted Ricard and Costilla of murder and acquitted them of robbery. Both were sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.
Misch went to trial in Lucas County Court of Common Pleas in December 1993.
The prosecution again portrayed the crime as one motivated by hatred for Black people and carried out by members of the Bishops gang.
Parkhurst and Urbina both testified for the prosecution. Hall was not called to testify.
Parkhurst implicated Misch at this trial. She now said that Misch and several other members of the gang were present in the home on Yates on the night of August 3, 1992. She said they left during the evening and returned at “maybe 12:00, 1:00 or 2:00, maybe later. I'm not really sure."
Parkhurst noted that when the Bishops members initially left the Yates home, they were carrying “like a stick. It's a long stick. Sometimes they have writings on them.”
When they returned, she said they were very excited, and Rickard “had little spots on him. They were like reddish brown.” She said she asked what happened, and Costilla told her they had "fucked up a nigger." Although she had not said so in her initial statement, Parkhurst now testified that Misch returned to the Yates home with the others.
Parkhurst said, “I recollect him being there the second time, but I don't – I don't know if he got out of the car with them or not. I don't remember.” She also said she did not know Misch to be a member of the Bishops and that she did not know his name until it was told to her by detectives.
Parkhurst testified that months after her initial statement and just prior to the trial, police had shown her a photographic lineup and asked her to identify anyone who looked familiar. She said she identified Misch and another person in the array. She said both looked familiar, but at that time she did not say they were at the house on the night of the crime.
During cross-examination, Parkhurst admitted she was not sure about the date of the crime. “I’m not really sure,” she said. “I didn't even know the date until Detective Leiter told me the date.”
The defense objected when Parkhurst mentioned the photographic lineup procedure, saying that the prosecution had failed to disclose it prior to the trial. The jury was excused for a brief hearing on a defense motion to suppress the identification.
Detective Leiter admitted that Parkhurst had pointed to two people, one of whom was Misch, saying they looked “very familiar.” The motion to suppress the procedure was denied.
Parkhurst then resumed the witness stand and testified that she didn’t say Misch was there, but that he looked familiar to her.
Parkhurst’s account of what happened differed from her initial statement. She said that they told her they saw three Black people – not just Huggins – walking in the park and “beat the shit out of them.”
Asked if that was typical behavior when they saw Black people, Parkhurst testified: “They had no love for – they would get out of the car and basically try to kick the living daylights out of them.”
Urbina testified that on August 4, 1992 – his mother's birthday – he went to Cedar Point, Ohio, with his wife, nephew, and others, including Hall, and returned home around 11:30 p.m. He said that in the early morning of August 5, 1992, between midnight and 2:00 a.m., he had a conversation with Costilla, Ismael and Lorenzo Vasquez, and Misch, during which they bragged about beating up a Black man.
During cross-examination, Urbina admitted that when he first gave a statement to Detective Anderson in January 1993, he never mentioned a trip to Cedar Point and instead said he was at his mother’s house all day.
Rosemary Knell testified that after the crime, Rickard had been to her home and that he left a wooden club. Knell had turned the club over to the police. It was entered into evidence and described as a club similar to the one that had used to beat Huggins.
Dr. Diane Scala-Barnett and Mather-Saul again testified about the autopsy and extent of injuries to Huggins.
Detectives Leiter and Anderson recounted obtaining the confession from Misch and denied threatening him. They said Misch told them that the gang members were in the park, they saw Huggins, and they decided to rob him. Misch said he approached Huggins and asked him for the time, and, as Huggins turned to walk away, Costilla and Rickard attacked him. The Vasquez brothers also took part, according to Misch’s statement.
The recording of the statement was played for the jury.
Misch’s mother, his girlfriend, and a family friend testified for the defense that there were bi-racial members of the family, that Misch had Black friends, and that he had no animosity toward Black people.
Misch testified and denied that he was involved or knew about the crime. He admitted he was a member of the gang. He said that about a month before the crime, he began spending almost all of his time with his girlfriend. He said Urbina and other gang members were angry because he was not spending time with the gang.
He admitted he said that Huggins had a fade haircut, which was wrong. In fact, Huggins had Jeri curls. Asked why he said that, Misch said, “Cause most [Black] people I know have fades.”
He said that when he pointed to the wrong area for the location of the crime, Detective Anderson tried to correct him and point him the area where Huggins’s body had been found.
He said his confession was false and the result of threats by the detectives. He said they had fed him information that helped form his statement.
“[T]hey said if I didn’t say I was there that they was going to lock me up until I was 50, and I was getting scared, and I didn’t want to go to jail for something I know I didn’t do,” Misch testified.
His attorney, Paul Geller, asked, “Do you know anything other than what the detectives told you about the Wilson Park murder?”
“No, I do not,” Misch said.
On December 9, 1993, the jury convicted Misch of aggravated murder and aggravated robbery. He was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.
On January 26, 1994, Lorenzo and Ismael Vasquez entered Alford pleas to murder, which allowed them to maintain their innocence while conceding that the prosecution had sufficient evidence to obtain convictions at trial. Both were sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.
In March 1994, the Sixth District Ohio Court of Appeals upheld the convictions of Rickard and Costilla. In 1995, the same court upheld Misch’s conviction.
In 2010, Misch wrote to the Wrongful Conviction Project (WCP) of the Office of the Ohio Public Defender. From 2011 through 2018, his legal team, headed by Joanna Sanchez, the head of the WCP, filed at least seven public record requests to the Toledo Police Department and two public record requests to the Lucas County Prosecutor’s Office. Little was turned over beyond the initial incident report and supplemental reports beginning in December 1992 after Detectives Leiter and Anderson took over the case.
In 2016, Parkhurst recanted her testimony in an affidavit provided to the WCP. “In my testimony at Eric Misch's trial, I said that I thought Eric, or a person that looked similar to Eric, returned with them,” she said. “However, I have no idea if Eric was there that night. I don't remember Eric being there.”
She said that when she was interviewed by police in January 1993, “the detectives told me that they knew I was involved in the murder. They said that Joey Hall, Louie Costilla, and John Urbina were their suspects. They never mentioned Eric Misch's name,” she said. “Initially, I said I did not know anything about it. The detectives told me it would be in my best interest if I cooperated. They said if I did not, I could go to jail for being an accessory. They also mentioned that I was having a baby, implying that if I did not do what they said, my child might be taken away from me. At the time, I was pregnant with my son, and I had already lost custody of my other son.”
She added, “I decided to agree with whatever they were saying and to tell them what they wanted to hear so they would not take away my son or send me to prison. I was scared.”
She said that the prosecution put her up in a hotel and later an apartment during 1993. “They paid for the rent and utilities for many months. Once the last trial was over, I was kicked out,” she said.
In September 2018, the WCP, in asking the police department once again for records, noted, “What we are seeking – but have never been provided – are the records of the police investigation from August 4, 1992 through December 1992.”
In response, the department turned over 114 pages of records, including previously undisclosed reports of an interview with Huggins’s cousin that implicated alternative suspects. Also included were Crime Stoppers reports that mentioned other suspects.
On August 1, 2019, Sanchez and attorneys Katherine Sato and Nicholas Allen filed a motion for a new trial for Misch based on these reports. WCP also sought DNA testing of the evidence. While the motion for a new trial was pending, a judge granted the motion for DNA testing.
On May 18, 2015, Lorenzo Vasquez was released on parole. On April 20,2020, Rickard was released on parole. Costilla was released on parole on April 21, 2020, and on April 23, 2020, Misch was released on parole. Ismael Vasquez was released on parole on June 19, 2020. He was re-incarcerated on September 25, 2020, due to a parole violation.
That same year, the Lucas County Prosecutor’s Office began cataloging evidence to be submitted to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) for DNA testing. Physical and biological evidence was found at the Lucas County Coroner’s Office, in the Court of Common Pleas evidence lockers, and in the Toledo police evidence room. In the police evidence room were two sealed bags with investigative files. All the materials were sent to the BCI.
In September 2021, during a meeting of WCP attorneys, the county prosecutors, and BCI officials, references were made to information that was previously undisclosed. In October 2021, Misch’s lawyers inspected the files.
What they found were records of Detective Burks’s investigation including information about Huggins’s final days and hours which implicated his girlfriend’s family in his murder.
DNA testing of a bloody broken bottle found at the scene of the murder isolated two unidentified male profiles. One of the profiles was subsequently identified as a man who was a friend of Huggins. The analyst who did the testing said that the other profile “was likely Vernon Huggins.”
An amended motion for a new trial was filed in February 2024 outlining the previously undisclosed evidence as well as the results of the DNA testing.
In August 2023, a hearing was held on the motion during which WCP presented the conclusions of Dr. Hayley Cleary, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and Public Policy at Virginia Commonwealth University who was an expert on interrogations of juveniles. Dr. Cleary said that the confession was unreliable because of numerous factors, including that the police had fed Misch information. She noted that several times during Misch’s interrogation, he changed his answers in response to leading questions from the detectives.
In a 40-page ruling issued on May 31, 2024, Judge Gary Cook vacated Misch’s conviction and granted him a new trial.
The judge, referring to the discovery of the undisclosed records, noted, “On September 28, 2021, a bombshell dropped in this case.”
The judge summarized the evidence as containing several leads – with verifying information – indicating that family members of Huggins’s girlfriend were responsible for his murder. The suspects were “entirely unassociated” with Misch or any members of the Bishops. Additionally, Detective Burks’s files contained a lead that Huggins was seen with an individual named Lee Jeffries on the night of his murder. Jeffries was convicted of a separate homicide committed on the same night that Huggins was killed.
The previously undisclosed evidence pointed to “a tumultuous relationship between Vernon Huggins and his girlfriend,” the judge said. There were statements from individuals who saw Huggins in the early morning hours of August 4, 1992, indicating he was confronted by four Black males accusing Huggins of ripping off “my cousin Emma,” who was Huggins’s girlfriend.
“There is also evidence that the men who confronted Mr. Huggins carried a wooden chair leg similar to the alleged murder weapon,” the judge noted. The files also revealed “those closest to Mr. Huggins immediately suspected his girlfriend’s family was involved in his death.”
Additionally, the files contained a report of an interview with Huggins’s uncle, who said he talked to Huggins between 2:30 a.m. and 3 a.m. – after the time the prosecution contended he had been murdered by the Bishops. The uncle said Huggins was asking for money. He said he gave Huggins $60, and when Huggins left, he followed him. Shortly thereafter, three Black men confronted Huggins and accused him of ripping off his girlfriend. Huggins fled back to the uncle’s apartment and refused to come out.
The judge noted that although the files had not been disclosed to the prosecution, the prosecution “bears the responsibility for its suppression.”
“Taken together, the previously-suppressed evidence indicates a general failure by Detective Burks to definitively eliminate other suspects with logical motives to harm Huggins based on Crime Stopper [sic] tips akin to that which ultimately led Detectives Anderson and Leiter to Misch,” the judge ruled.
On November 25, 2024, the prosecution dismissed the case.
On December 16, 2024, Common Pleas Court Judge Joseph McNamara granted defense motions to vacate the convictions of Rickard, Costilla, and the Vasquez brothers.
On January 3, 2025, the prosecution requested that the convictions of Rickard, Costilla, and the Vasquez brothers be dismissed. The motion was granted. Ismael Vasquez, who was the only remaining defendant in the case in prison, was released.
– Maurice Possley
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