OKLAHOMA CITY - Disgraced Oklahoma City police chemist Joyce Gilchrist doctored trial evidence and may have destroyed hair samples that could have exonerated a man now on death row, according to a confidential police memo.
The memo said Gilchrist not only altered her own case notes, but there is compelling circumstantial evidence that she either intentionally lost or destroyed crime-scene hairs used to convict Curtis Edward McCarty of murder so the evidence could not be retested.
The Oklahoma City Police Department memo, written by then-Deputy Chief Bill Citty to then-Chief M.T. Berry, is dated Sept. 21, 2001, and details 14 days of deliberations and testimony heard by a department review board.
The board, consisting of two police chemists and three high-ranking officials, recommended Gilchrist be fired. Four days later, she was.
Citty and Berry declined to comment on the board's findings. Gilchrist, who has sued various city officials for wrongful termination, has long said she is innocent, but declines interviews. Her attorney did not return calls.
Her dismissal followed disclosures she helped send at least two innocent men to prison during her 21-year tenure as a forensic chemist and prosecution witness in hundreds of cases. Those men were released after DNA testing proved they were not guilty.
Since she was fired, two secret criminal investigations - one by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, the other by the FBI - have produced no charges.
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