What Is the Worth of a Life That Was Stolen?

By Betty Jean Grant

Betty Jean Grant

On a cold December night in Buffalo, in 1976, a murder happened on Fillmore Ave. What makes this murder so unique is that we are still talking about it, almost 50 years later. The fact that the man, who was white, was killed in the ‘hood’ and lived just a few yards from a public housing project, was not a common occurrence around the time of the murder, since most of the white residents on the Eastside of Buffalo had abandoned the city years ago. And yet, because the man was white, there was an opinion among some in city government and in law enforcement that this case must be resolved as quickly as possible to allay fear among the remaining white populace and assure that they were safe if they continued living in Buffalo, especially on the Eastside of the city.

So, what the officials in the Buffalo Police Dept decided to do was to survey or round up all the young, black ‘troublemakers’ to see if light could shed on which ones of them could have committed this terrible crime. They con ducted door to door dragnets and sting operations and surveyed the recent media news footage to see if they saw any person or persons who might have committed this terrible crime. Among the crowd gathered near the Golden Nugget Tavern to talk to the news media were five young men who, due to their troublemaking status and previous arrests for petty and serious crimes, were already known to the police.

The Buffalo Police Com missioner, Thomas Blair and the Department’s Homicide Bureau, headed by Chief Leo Donovan, rounded up these five, 16-year-old boys, took them downtown, interviewed them for hours on end, without giving them food or allowing them to sleep. The interrogators lied and said that each of the others had confessed to the crime and had implicated themselves. And, so, without an eyewitness to the crime, no murder weapon found, no recovered money the victim possessed, no confession and with multiple credible alibis, the four innocent young men were brought to trial. The fifth boy, who had just turned 16, took a plea deal and falsely con demned the other four to a murder they did not commit. For his testimony against his friends, this young man was told to join the army, which he did and never come back to Buffalo.

Three of the four remaining young men were convicted and wound up serving 20 to 30 years in prison. The lone, accused youth had a private attorney, a smart, young law yer named James A.W. McLeod, who used the argument that there was not enough or no evidence to convict his client. He was correct as his client was found not guilty of murder by an all- white jury. This writer believes, like most people, that if Judge McLeod’s client had gone to court first, his verdict of Not Guilty would have acquit ted the three boys, who had county public defenders assigned as trial lawyers and who went to prison for decades, followed by a sentence of lifetime parole.

Let us remember that the murdered man, Mr. William Crawford, was beaten to death with an object unknown to the police. His wallet, filled with cash was never found, plus there was no blood on the any of the clothes the five young men had worn that night. What the police did have was a set of keys found under the victim’s body when they took him to the morgue. The police department surmised that the keys belonged to either the killer(s) or the victim, but the set of keys opened none of those doors to Mr. Crawford’s or the teen aged, suspects’ houses. What is known; however, is that the neighbor of Mr. Crawford, who was in the bar with him and left with him to walk him home, called the bar, the next morning to ask if he left his keys there.

So, the man who lived next door to the victim, was drinking with him and who left with him to escort him home and was the last person to see him alive, lost his keys while a set of keys was found under the body; was never a suspect; was never arrested or questioned about why he left Mr. Crawford alone while he went inside his house just next door. The final insult the Erie County DA, Edward Cosgrove and his cousin, Timothy Drury, the county’s Lead Prosecutor, and the lead police committed was allow ing this neighbor to take the Stand and testify that he had seen the five teenagers in the bar, ‘eyeing’ Mr. Craw ford’s wallet the night he was murdered; an allegation the patrons and staff at the tavern vigorously refuted. Prosecutor Tim Drury went on to be elected judge and the Hon. Timothy Drury recently retired from State Supreme Court. He also gave testimony at the trials in Rochester, N.Y.

A few months after the trial was completed, the neighbor to the murdered victim moved out of Buffalo, to a quiet rural town some miles from Buffa lo. This gentleman died a few years ago in a nursing home outside of Buffalo. I will for ever believe he is forever a member of the ‘One Who Got Away’ club.

In 2020, two of the three members of the Buffalo 5, John Henry Walker Jr. and Darryl Boyd had their conviction vacated in State Supreme Court, thanks to local defense lawyer, Paul Cambria. Unfortunately, the third member of the Buffalo 5, Darren Gibson, who spent 32 years—ten extra years after he was eligible for parole— because he refused to confess to a crime he did not commit, died in 2008 of a massive heart attack less than a year after he was paroled. The fourth member of the Buffalo 5, Floyd Martin (James McLeod’s client), was the only one found not guilty and therefore avoided a long prison stay and the miscarriage of justice, died of natural causes, a few years ago.

The fifth and final mem ber of the Buffalo 5, Tyrone Woodruff, the one who turned state evidence, the one who lied on his friends and even falsely implicated him self to stay out of prison, par tially redeemed himself when he returned to Buffalo and testified at the trial that over turned the conviction of John Walker, Jr. and Darryl Boyd. Not only that, Mr. Woodruff also returned to Buffalo to testify at the trial that the lawyers of Walker and Boyd filed against the city of Buffalo Police Department and Erie County District Attorney’s office for either with holding from their attorneys, nineteen pieces of evidence, including documents, such as the set of keys, photographs taken at the scene of the murder and other material that could possibly have changed the verdict in the murder conviction case.

In Autumn, 2024, the City of Buffalo awarded the two plaintiffs of a lawsuit filed against Buffalo and its homicide department, for the illegal and criminal part they played that led to the false arrest, incarceration, conviction, and detention, for crimes they knew or should had known, based on evidence, to be innocent of the murder of Mr. William Crawford. The city of Buffalo settled the case for 4.5 million dollars for each of the plain tiffs. Erie County and the Dis trict Attorney’s Office were presented with a jury verdict that the County of Erie and the DA office was complicit in the wrongful convictions of Walker and Boyd. In April 2025, a jury awarded John Walker 28 million dollars. In November 2025, a jury award ed the Estate of Darryl Boyd $80,000,000. Darryl Boyd died from a form of terminal cancer before he got a chance to spend any of the money awarded by the city and six months before the verdict came in, regarding his lawsuit against Erie County.

Twenty eight million dol lars and eighty million dol lars, respectively, is a huge sum of money for the county to pay, that is true; but how can it compare to innocent young boys being arrested and dragged to prison for decades, simply because the Buffalo Police Department and the Erie District Attorney Office wanted a murder quickly solved before the remaining, good, white citizens started leaving the city at a faster pace than they were already doing? A spokesperson for The Erie County Attorney’s law dept., Attorney Jeremy Toth, stated that they will appeal the verdict in both cases. The Erie County Executive, Mark Polancarz, supports the Appeal of the verdict and questioned whether the jurors who awarded those amounts knew that “ We (Erie County) just don’t have that kind of money just laying around.”

I am a friend and supporter of the now, Men of the Buf falo 5. This writer has been supporting them and writing about their case at least since 2009. What the law enforce ment community did to those five young men was criminal. They deserve to be com pensated to the full extent of their pain and suffering, especially when the young men were framed and then prosecuted by Buffalo and Erie County Finest! If we can find a couple of one hundred million dollars to appease a billionaire sports mogul, who does not need the payout, surely, we can award John Walker and the Estate of Darryl Boyd the settlement they so rightfully deserve.

The human, legal and civil rights of the members of the Buffalo 5 were co-opted and compromised. No amount of money can ever give them back what was so cruelly stolen from them.