Steve Neavling
Mark Craighead, who was exonerated of murder in 2022, is interviewed on the podcast ML Soul of Detroit.
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter M.L. Elrick’s popular podcast is shining a spotlight on “The Closer,” Metro Times’s two-part series about a Detroit detective who terrorized young Black men and elicited false confessions and witness statements for two decades.
The nearly 90-minute episode on ML Soul of Detroit explores the series with Mark Craighead, who was exonerated in 2022 after spending more than seven years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, detective Barbara Simon was known as “the closer” because of her knack for gaining confessions and witness statements. Her method of confining young Black men to small rooms at police headquarters for hours without a warrant, making false promises, and lying about evidence that didn’t exist led to the false imprisonment of at least five men.
Many more innocent people are still behind bars because of her tactics, activists and lawyers say.
On the podcast, Craighead described Simon’s interrogation of him as “unbearable.” He was locked in a small room for hours without access to an attorney. When he refused to incriminate himself, he was held in a vermin-infested jail cell.
“I was tired, dirty. I had a migraine,” Craighead said. “Everything was going wrong. I was terrified.”
The podcast provides new details about Craighead’s case and Simon’s handling of suspects and witnesses.
Craighead also described how difficult it was to get out of prison, despite having evidence that he didn’t murder his friend.
“I had to pick myself up spiritually, and I had to pick myself up physically because it’s a challenge. All these movies you see about prison, it’s pretty much true,” Craighead explained. “It’s a fight for the fittest.”
After the series was published, neither the Detroit Police Department nor the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office has shown a willingness to investigate the cases of men who are still in prison after they said they falsely confessed because Simon had used illegal, terrorizing tactics during the interrogations.
Craighead was among four Black men who have been exonerated after evidence showed they didn’t commit murder. In each of those cases, Simon was accused of investigative misconduct. A fifth man was freed from jail after DNA evidence showed he couldn’t have committed the crime.
All five men have sued the city.
Despite dozens of other inmates saying they too are innocent, judges and prosecutors have kept them in prison.
In response to the Metro Times series last week, Detroit police commissioners called on the department to conduct a comprehensive investigation of all the cases handled by Simon. But police declined, saying that task belongs the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy responded that she doesn’t have enough information to investigate the cases.
“This is just a nightmare for everybody,” Elrick said on the podcast. “First of all, Detroit police don’t have enough resources, and now you’re asking them to reinvestigate cases and investigate their own. It’s going to undermine confidence in the Detroit Police Department. It’s going to undermine confidence in the prosecutor’s office. It’s going to lead to lawsuits. … There really is no incentive whatsoever for the people who need to clean this mess up to clean it up — except for it’s the right thing to do. And that’s the problem.”
Elrick, a longtime investigative reporter, shared the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting with fellow Detroit Free Press reporter Jim Schaefer in 2009. The Pulitzer committee praised them for uncovering “a pattern of lies by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick that included denial of a sexual relationship with his female chief of staff, prompting an investigation of perjury that eventually led to jail terms for the two officials.”
ML Soul of Detroit airs weekly on Tuesday. More information is available at mlsoulofdetroit.com.
