Norris Evans (Jack of Spades, New York)

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Speaker 6 Our card this week is Norris Evans, the Jack of Spades from New York. In the spring of 1975, Norris was living in Rochester raising four young kids.

Speaker 6 But one night, someone entered her home and brutally attacked her, nearly decapitating her while her children were upstairs.

Speaker 6 Now, more than 50 years later, those same children are reopening old wounds, hoping that her killer or killers will be brought to justice. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck.

Speaker 6 It was 11:24 p.m.

Speaker 6 on a Friday night, May 23rd, 1975, when a man who refused to give his name called Rochester, New York Police Dispatch to tell them that there was some kind of family trouble at 5 Crone Street.

Speaker 6 Then he hung up quickly without saying much else. Rochester investigator Seth Carr shared reports with us, which show that within 16 minutes, an officer was pulling up at the corner duplex.

Speaker 3 When he got to the location, he notes that it's dark, there's no activity, knocks on the door, doesn't get a response.

Speaker 3 He made a mental note or recalled that there were people on a porch across the street, but everything seemed in order. He didn't find a complainant or any victim.

Speaker 6 The officer stayed for a few minutes, even shined his flashlight in the windows, but he didn't see or hear anything alarming. So he got back in his patrol car and left.

Speaker 6 But less than an hour later, police got a second call, about the same address. This caller wasn't anonymous, though.
It was a man named Tom who lived in the other half of the duplex.

Speaker 6 He said that his neighbor, 26-year-old Lewis Evans, had just shown up and asked him to make the call because his wife was next door and she'd been hurt.

Speaker 6 The same officer who had originally been dispatched to 5 Crohn Street returned. And this time, it wasn't quiet and dark.
Lewis was outside visibly distraught, standing with neighbors.

Speaker 6 And when the officer walked in the front door, he saw what all the commotion was about. The house was a mess, like it had been ransacked.

Speaker 6 Drawers rifled through, belongings scattered, bones in the kitchen and living room were ripped from their wall connections.

Speaker 6 And in the middle of it all, in the living room, was Lewis's wife, 27-year-old Nora Sevens.

Speaker 6 She was lying face down in a pool of blood next to the couch with her arms stretched overhead and clearly beyond saving.

Speaker 6 She was naked from the waist down, wearing only a blouse, and her ankles were tied with what looked like a white rag, maybe a cloth diaper.

Speaker 6 As horrific as this scene was, there was some relief because four children lived in the house too. Lewis's two sons from a previous marriage and the two that he and Norris shared.

Speaker 6 But they were all safe. Although there is some confusion today about where it is they were.

Speaker 6 One report from the medical examiner said that Norris's nearly two and a half year old son, Daryl, and her three-month-old daughter, Tamara, were downstairs in the living room.

Speaker 6 But Detective Carr told our reporter Nina Schultzman that he believes the children were upstairs when officers arrived.

Speaker 3 The way I'm reading it is that the kids are all upstairs. At least when the police get there, they're upstairs.

Speaker 6 Are they asleep?

Speaker 3 Dead, I can't answer. I don't know.

Speaker 6 That's kind of a running theme in this case. A lot has been lost to time.
Records have gaps, and memories have gotten fuzzier. But one thing was clear early on.
This attack on Norris was brutal.

Speaker 6 When the medical examiner turned her over, he saw that her throat had been slashed so deeply she was nearly decapitated.

Speaker 6 And she had two stab wounds in her abdomen, two in her chest, and another in her back.

Speaker 6 And in addition to the injuries on her upper body, they also noticed a groove on her thigh, like something had been tied tightly around her leg.

Speaker 6 Apparently made by a rag and steel wire, both found at the scene. There were actually a bunch of rags bloodied and scattered near her body.

Speaker 6 By her head was a long-toothed metal comb and the likely murder weapon, an eight-inch kitchen knife was near her feet. So were her underwear.

Speaker 3 I would walk into that crime scene from what I'm looking at and think, man, she might be a victim of a sexual assault.

Speaker 6 That's actually what Lewis told police his first thought was when he found his wife. But in a later autopsy report, the medical examiner didn't document any injuries consistent with a sexual assault.

Speaker 6 She also didn't have any defensive wounds. And that may help explain why, even with everything that happened inside that unit, no one heard anything.

Speaker 6 Not the teenagers who were hanging out across the street, the same ones that the officer said he saw when he stopped by around 11:40, ones who told police that they'd been out there since 9:30.

Speaker 6 And even Tom, the neighbor that Lewis went to for help, who shared a wall with the Evans, hadn't heard a thing.

Speaker 3 They basically said they didn't hear anything. Eventually, they were alerted because Mr.
Evans is knocking on the door. So he answers the door and he's just, you know, hysterical about what he saw.

Speaker 6 Lewis had still been emotional when police got there. He was upset.
And when they asked him to sit in the back of a patrol car to give a statement, he got combative, even threatened to slap them.

Speaker 6 So they had to end up cuffing him. His story was that he had just come home from his shift at a local plant and he walked in and found Norris there on the floor, already dead.

Speaker 6 He said when he saw the phone line had been ripped from the wall, he ran next door to get help. Lewis was able to confirm for them that the knife used in the attack was theirs.

Speaker 6 He recognized it from a chip on the blade. So whoever did this didn't bring or at least didn't use their own weapon.
And according to Lewis, they didn't leave empty-handed.

Speaker 6 He said that the $1,100 in cash that he kept in a metal lockbox in the living room was gone.

Speaker 3 That would indicate that it could be a burglary, but it also could just be staged.

Speaker 3 You have to look at the possibility that the suspect and the victim are known to each other or even close to each other.

Speaker 3 But you have to kind of keep all options on the table, especially from the beginning.

Speaker 6 And when looking at those closest to Norris and who may have had motive to harm her, they needn't look any further than the man they had in the back of their patrol car.

Speaker 6 To those who knew her, Norris, affectionately known as Snookie, did not have enemies.

Speaker 3 She wasn't living a lifestyle that put herself at a high risk for being victimized. So she's a housewife who is brutally murdered in her home with her four kids upstairs.

Speaker 3 That is a really shocking and disturbing crime.

Speaker 6 But the home where she was a housewife may have been where the danger lay.

Speaker 6 See, family told police Norris wanted out of the marriage, that Lewis was controlling and Norris seemed afraid of him and depressed.

Speaker 3 I don't recall if he was aware or not that she was considering leaving him.

Speaker 6 Aware or not, police learned that Lewis already had a girlfriend on the side, a 19-year-old named Gail, who he'd been seeing since November of 1974.

Speaker 6 Gail told investigators that he used to talk about leaving his wife, but that had kind of stopped recently.

Speaker 6 She said they normally saw each other a few times a week, sometimes at his place, but usually at hers after work. And they spoke even more frequently.

Speaker 6 In fact, the very night Norris was murdered, Gail said Lewis called her three times from the plant, once at around six, at eight, and then again at 10.

Speaker 6 She remembered hearing machines in the background, and that's how she knew where he was.

Speaker 6 And he stopped by her house after he got off at around 12:30 Saturday morning.

Speaker 6 Seems like a great alibi, except at least part of it, the part about him coming by, is impossible, as our reporter Nina pointed out, because that was the exact time he had found his wife's body.

Speaker 6 She's telling police, he came to my house at this time.

Speaker 3 Right, she's trying to alibi him. Yeah.

Speaker 6 And he's not even trying to alibi himself in that manner for that time period. He's like, No, I left work, I came home.
Right.

Speaker 6 The part about him being at work, though, that was true. Police verified it through his employer, Rochester Products.
He was there from 3.45 p.m. Friday to 12.08 a.m.

Speaker 6 Saturday, which his time card confirmed. Coworkers even remembered crossing paths with him, and some said that he was playing cards at around 11.30.

Speaker 3 So technically he's on the clock during these hours minus his lunch break. And then they went through and they interviewed all these different people at the place that he worked.

Speaker 3 And they had all these different sightings of him at different times and different locations of the plant.

Speaker 6 As As police interviewed people close to the couple, that Friday began to take shape.

Speaker 6 That afternoon, before Lewis left for work, his half-brother Leroy Barnes and his cousin Jesse Martin came over to help him work on his car until he had to leave for work.

Speaker 6 Family said that the three of them were inseparable, so it wasn't unusual for them to be at the house, I mean, all the time.

Speaker 6 From there, detectives were able to track much of Norris's evening with the kids. Lewis's friend Napoleon, known as Mississippi, said that he and his girlfriend stopped by at around 5 p.m.

Speaker 6 so Norris could co-sign a car loan for him. They stayed about a half an hour.
And then after that, Norris spoke to her sister on the phone and hung out with a friend.

Speaker 6 A passerby last saw Norris at around 7.45 p.m. sitting on her porch while the kids played outside.

Speaker 3 That eliminates anything occurring before the husband went to work, right?

Speaker 6 But there was wiggle room. Employees said someone could slip away for up to an hour without being missed.

Speaker 6 Rochester Products was less than a 15-minute drive from where the house was, and Norris had told a friend that Lewis sometimes came home during breaks to grab a meal.

Speaker 6 And while he was there on Friday, his foreman noticed something odd. He actually thought Lewis went out of his way to be seen, like during that card game at 11:30,

Speaker 6 which just so happened to be about the exact time that the medical examiner estimated Norris had died. He put her time of death between 11:30 p.m.
Friday and 12:30 a.m. Saturday.

Speaker 6 Also, the same time that someone was calling police, anonymously trying to get them to the duplex, presumably to find Norris's body. It was all feeling just a bit too contrived.

Speaker 6 Even if Lewis didn't do it, that didn't mean he wasn't involved. And if he was going to get help murdering his wife, police felt pretty sure they knew who would help him.

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Speaker 6 Lewis, Leroy, and Jesse were the three amigos. So naturally, police wanted to know where they were from 11.30 to 12.30.
And could one of them have made the anonymous call?

Speaker 6 Lewis's cousin, Jesse, told police that he went home after leaving the Evans house that afternoon and stayed there all night, but only his wife could back that up.

Speaker 6 As for Leroy, he was out at nightclubs and multiple witnesses had eyes on him during the critical window of time.

Speaker 6 All three men denied involvement and police ended up with nothing tying them to the scene. Evidence technicians did lift 14 fingerprints from around the house, including from the back door jamb.

Speaker 6 Now, nothing in the file explicitly says that these were compared against these three men, but investigators go on to use these prints to rule out other people, which suggests to me that those comparisons were made.

Speaker 6 And of course, if any of those 14 prints were theirs, it wouldn't have proved anything since Lewis lived there and the other two men were frequent visitors.

Speaker 6 So, Focused on this critical window of time and unknown prints in hand, they widened their scope and looked at other potential suspects, including other people close to Lewis.

Speaker 6 One of them was Napoleon. He and Lewis were close and by his own admission, he'd been inside the Evans house within hours of the murder.

Speaker 6 So when police noticed fresh bruises and scratches on him, it wasn't just a red flag. I mean, it was a full-blown siren.
But Napoleon swore that he hadn't hurt Norris.

Speaker 6 He said the injuries were from wrestling with a guy at a garage where he'd been hanging out. Weird alibi, but it checked out.
Multiple people backed this up. And he also passed a polygraph.

Speaker 6 Like with the other men, there's no mention of his prints being compared, but his would also have plenty of legitimate reasons to be there, ones that are not connected to the murder.

Speaker 6 So, investigators cast an even wider net, looking beyond Lewis's circle to people like Tom, the neighbor who made that second call to police. His movements that night raised eyebrows.

Speaker 6 He claimed that that he was in and out of his place all evening, working a shift at a local bus station. Sort of.

Speaker 3 I mean, he's going to work, but then he's coming home and he's not at work and he's like, because it's law and then he's back at work.

Speaker 6 Tom and his wife had even lived in the Evans unit before Lewis and Norris, so he knew the layout well.

Speaker 6 Still, he fully cooperated with the investigation, gave police his fingerprints, took a polygraph, and passed it. So then detectives also explored whether this could have started as a break-in.

Speaker 6 Burglaries weren't unusual in this area, though none had been this violent. One early lead was a guy named Calvin Burts.

Speaker 6 He was 19 and suspected of at least a dozen burglaries or robberies across the city.

Speaker 6 His MO was mostly targeting women, usually late at night, but his fingerprints already on file from previous arrests didn't match any in the Evans house, and there wasn't anything tying him to the scene or to Norris.

Speaker 6 And then there was George Johnson, one of the teens on the porch across the street. He said he was there from 8.30 to a little after 11 p.m.

Speaker 6 and his friends back him up, but no one could say where he went after. And George had a troubling history, drug use, robbery confessions, and a role in an assault where a man was stabbed.

Speaker 6 One friend said that the voice on the anonymous call could have been his. However, another didn't think so.

Speaker 6 Plus, George ended up agreeing to take a polygraph, though it's unclear if he actually went through with that. But his prints didn't match either.

Speaker 3 I think they were covering all their bases. I think that they were definitely interested in it being a family member, whether it's Lewis or another family member of his.

Speaker 3 But they also weren't tunnel visioned. There were some burglaries in the area.
They were, you know, going and interviewing suspects in those burglaries to...

Speaker 3 try and figure out if they could be involved or not involved in this.

Speaker 6 Investigators tried interviewing the Evans kids, but they were so little. Lewis's sons were only five and six, and they couldn't offer any details.

Speaker 6 Although some relatives told police that Daryl, the toddler, blamed his daddy Lewis and Uncle Leroy for hurting his mom.

Speaker 6 The two men shared a lawyer and when police circled back to them and to Jesse, all of them refused polygraphs.

Speaker 6 Try as they might to look for alternate suspects, all roads kept leading them back to Lewis.

Speaker 6 Even when they attempted to focus on the cash that Lewis claimed was missing, they were chasing smoke because some of Norris's loved ones doubted it was even real.

Speaker 6 They said that Lewis didn't keep that much money laying around.

Speaker 6 And if Norris had known about the cash, which he claimed was just sitting in plain sight, they believed that she would have taken it and left him.

Speaker 6 Money was one of the only things that was stopping her. But now she was dead and Lewis wasn't out money.
He was about to gain some.

Speaker 6 Detectives learned Norris had taken out a life insurance policy in 1971 before even marrying Lewis. Her mother was a beneficiary until 1973 when it changed to Lewis.

Speaker 6 Though mom didn't know that because after the murder, both Lewis and Norris's mother tried to collect the policy proceeds, about $17,000.

Speaker 6 And this is when her mom found out about the change and she alleged that the beneficiary change was forged. Now, the insurance company eventually punted that to the courts.

Speaker 6 But in the meantime, Lewis was doing A-okay because he got $12,000 from a policy he'd taken out just eight days before Norris was killed.

Speaker 6 Now, technically, this policy insured his own life, but it heavily covered Norris with a decreasing term benefit that paid the most if she died soon and then dropped to nothing over time.

Speaker 6 It also covered the kids. Even though there was no trouble getting this one paid out, investigators thought Norris's mother was onto something.

Speaker 6 They spent the next year digging into the paperwork because even though the new policy was on Lewis, Norris had to sign off on it. And they weren't convinced she had.

Speaker 6 So in January 1977, they brought Gail back in. By then, she and Lewis were living together.
And this time, she admitted the obvious.

Speaker 6 She'd lied about Lewis stopping by the morning Norris was found, although it's not clear if he'd asked her to do that or she just took it upon herself.

Speaker 6 But then in this interview, she dropped the real bombshell. She had forged Norris's signature.

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Speaker 6 Gail says she forged the signature months before the murder in March of 1975 to use Norris's health insurance to get treated for, let's call it a sensitive medical issue.

Speaker 6 She said Lewis had her practice signing Norris's name to make sure she got it right.

Speaker 3 She pretended to be Lewis's wife so that she could get that taken care of with insurance.

Speaker 6 A handwriting expert concluded the signature on the second policy was Gail's, not Norris's.

Speaker 3 They confronted her with that, and then she conceded well yeah maybe she did do that she stated that she believes that she may have forged norris name on the policy but does not recall doing so

Speaker 6 memory loss aside at least gail was talking lewis who was also at the station angrily waiting for gail to finish wouldn't answer any questions but he did make some statements

Speaker 3 i think he's saying it sarcastically but mr evans then shouted i killed my wife i shot her

Speaker 6 of course Norris hadn't been shot. So whatever that was, a bad joke, a burst of rage, it wasn't a confession, but it was strange.

Speaker 3 They advised them, we're just trying to figure out who, who killed your wife?

Speaker 6 Lewis basically told them not to bother. And while they didn't listen, leads did dry up and the investigation stalled out for decades.

Speaker 6 All the while, Norris's kids, Daryl and Tamara, were growing up without her. Their mother was a mystery.
I mean, practically a ghost. Here's Daryl Evans.

Speaker 8 Nobody ever told me. They never sat me down and told me, this is your mom.
This is what she did.

Speaker 6 What little Daryl did know came from his older half-brothers.

Speaker 3 They didn't say that.

Speaker 8 Best mom I ever had. They've stated that.
Like she's

Speaker 8 the only mom that'll take us, bike riding or take us for walks. And yeah, they share that.
That's the best mom you ever had. Very good woman.

Speaker 6 At first, Tamara lived with her paternal grandmother, but eventually, both she and Daryl ended up with Lewis and Gail, along with Gail's son, Lewis's other kids, and a daughter that the couple shared.

Speaker 6 It was a full house, but not the happiest. Lewis was gone a lot, and Gail pitted the kids against each other.
Daryl said there wasn't much affection for him or Tamara.

Speaker 8 I didn't get any hugs or kisses growing up. She didn't either.
Nobody done that for her.

Speaker 6 Still, Tamara told our reporter Nina that when she was little, Lewis was her hero. Although that ultimately changed for reasons she didn't want to get into.

Speaker 6 Daryl's relationship with Lewis wasn't exactly warm and fuzzy, but it wasn't bad either.

Speaker 8 I was his earpiece. We didn't spend too much time together, but the time we did spend together was just me and him.
And he would tell me stories about his life and things that he did.

Speaker 6 Did any of those stories include your mom?

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 8 Very, very few.

Speaker 6 Lewis never talked about how Norris died. Tamara heard that story elsewhere.
Whispers from both sides of the family.

Speaker 6 And they all said the same thing, that at Lewis's request, people close to him killed their mother. Tamara calls it the worst kept secret in her family.
Once, Daryl asked Lewis about it. Point blank.

Speaker 8 He said, I don't know what happened. And we both teared up.
And so at that point, I thought, maybe, you know, this dude didn't have nothing to do with it.

Speaker 6 Did he seem offended when you asked him that?

Speaker 8 No, not at all.

Speaker 6 Did he seem surprised?

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 8 And I believe I asked him, did he have any idea who could have did it? And that's when he told me she had a cousin that was on drugs real bad.

Speaker 6 That was the theory he gave you.

Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 6 He didn't say, I think it was like a robber or random. His specific thing, cousin who was on drugs.

Speaker 8 and i think like he's not a dummy i think he knew that there was no forced entry so it had to be somebody that she let in but then you know later on i'm thinking man you control your women they have to do everything you say how you say when you say she's not gonna open the door for anybody i don't care if it was her mama she's not gonna open the door unless you okay it so that went through my head too she's not open a door for her cousin especially on drugs

Speaker 6 daryl tried to give him the benefit benefit of the doubt. Still, it always bothered him and Tamara.
They wanted answers and justice for their mom, but they didn't know how to get it.

Speaker 6 And then one day, Tamara turned to social media.

Speaker 8 My sister, Tamara, went online and they had this Facebook group in Rochester. Do you remember when?

Speaker 8 And she stated about the situation with my mom. And she said, a couple of people say, yeah, I remember that.

Speaker 8 And then this Arthur crime writer reached out to her and then eventually to me and then he said i'll get the police report and he got the police report and sent it to us finally they could read about the investigation themselves it's too simple i mean a fifth grader can read this and tell you this the conclusion things just add up and then one plus one is two all day

Speaker 6 Something else also clicked once they had all the facts. Lewis had always explained away some money that he and Leroy and Jesse came into by saying it was a settlement from a car accident.

Speaker 6 But now, Daryl believes that the money actually came from Norris's life insurance. And if that's true, well, why share your wife's life insurance money with your half-brother and your cousin?

Speaker 6 It didn't make a lot of sense to them. So adults now, and with questions compounding, Daryl and Tamara confronted Lewis and Gail.

Speaker 6 Gail eventually admitted to them that she'd forged Norris's signature, but only on that medical record. And no one confessed to murder.

Speaker 8 I was asking them questions about what I read in the police report. I told him I had the police report and this is what I see.
And then I was asking him questions and he would, of course, deny him.

Speaker 8 And then I would insult him like you lying to me. And that was the end of our communication.

Speaker 6 Lewis never confessed to Daryl or Tamara. But you probably know the old adage, three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.

Speaker 6 But there were still two other people alive and well right after Norris's murder. And according to one relative, Leroy had done some talking over the years.

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Speaker 6 As the siblings kept digging, a relative told Tamara something that she had never told anyone. That at some point, Leroy had confessed to her, said Lewis made him and Jesse kill Norris.

Speaker 6 But later, Leroy recanted. Now, unfortunately, by the time Tamara heard this, it was too late to go ask Leroy because he had died years earlier.

Speaker 6 But it wasn't too late for Rochester Police and Investigator Carr to take a fresh look.

Speaker 3 February of 2020, Tamara reaches out to our office. She's looking for an update.
I basically become her point of contact. Then we go from there.

Speaker 3 The case was not active at the time of her call, but her call prompted me to look at it.

Speaker 3 It's one of the most interesting cases I've investigated because of the theories surrounding it and because of the family dynamics and having like certain family members that are suspicious of Lewis.

Speaker 6 Investigating a decades-old murder isn't easy, but Carr added a few new pieces to the case file.

Speaker 6 Like a vague memory from Lewis's oldest son who recalled Uncle Leroy possibly telling him to go upstairs into the attic that night. Carr also spoke to that relative that Leroy allegedly confessed to.

Speaker 3 When I talked to her, she confirmed that story. She said that Leroy made a comment to her years ago that Lewis made him and Jesse do that to Norris.

Speaker 3 She said this disturbed her, said, why would you do such a thing like that? And then Leroy eventually recanted and said he made it up.

Speaker 6 In January 2022, Carr and a colleague paid Jesse a visit. He invited them in, but he wouldn't go to the station with them.

Speaker 3 We interviewed him on his terms, which was standing there basically in his foyer with his wife standing there next to us.

Speaker 6 This wasn't the same woman who'd backed up his alibi in 1975. She had passed away by that point.

Speaker 6 But it's worth noting that one of the differences in Carr's investigation is that he doesn't think the alibis hold much weight anymore.

Speaker 6 Because in his mind, the 1130 to 1230 estimate for Norris's death is almost certainly wrong.

Speaker 6 I mean, we know that the house was quiet when the officers stopped by Friday night from 1140 to 1145, and Norris was dead by the time police were called back on Saturday at 12.33 a.m.

Speaker 6 More importantly.

Speaker 3 That's just like not really.

Speaker 3 something that I would think the medical examiner could scientifically say. So I feel like that might have been influenced by the information that they had that there was a 911 call at 1130.

Speaker 3 So I sort of feel like maybe there was a lot of weight put into that that, hey, this must have happened around 11.30 because we had this 911 call.

Speaker 3 There's not a single soul that indicates that there was a problem at 1130 other than this mysterious 911 call.

Speaker 6 So he thinks the murder likely happened earlier. at a time when the men's alibis weren't as solid.
And he was excited to get in front of the two who were still living, Jesse and Lewis.

Speaker 6 And while Jesse was willing to talk, his story was odd.

Speaker 3 He allegedly never even had conversations with Lewis about, hey, what happened to your wife? Who killed her?

Speaker 3 Then later he says, well, Lewis and him were always tried to figure out what happened, but they never could. It's like in one breath, he's saying, like,

Speaker 3 I never even had conversations with Lewis about this. And then in another breath, he's saying, well, Lewis and I always tried to figure out what happened, but we never could figure it out.

Speaker 6 That conversation with Jesse was confusing and unhelpful. In the end, police still thought Lewis was their best shot at getting answers, and he was their next stop.

Speaker 6 You go to his house, and he does invite you in, right? He's like, come in.

Speaker 3 Yep.

Speaker 6 And then what happens?

Speaker 3 He answers every question with, I have nothing to add, nothing to take away.

Speaker 6 And Carr is not exaggerating. Here is part of that interview.

Speaker 3 Okay, remember from that time, I have nothing to add, and I have nothing to take away.

Speaker 9 So, if I can say something, the guys that investigated us, it was 45 years ago. So we were kids at that time, and we don't have the information.

Speaker 9 So I think it's good to have a conversation with somebody that was actually there instead of just reading a report so we kind of get a flavor or feel for what you remember at the time that that occurred.

Speaker 9 You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 I have nothing to add, nothing to take away. And like you said, it's 40-something years.
I can't tell you what I did last week.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Okay.

Speaker 3 All right.

Speaker 9 Well, do you support the fact that the police department's investigating the death of your ex-wife?

Speaker 3 I have nothing to add. Okay.
Nothing to take away.

Speaker 9 Do you want the person that killed your ex-wife to come to justice or do you want an arrest to be made?

Speaker 3 I have nothing to add and nothing to take away.

Speaker 9 That's a very interesting remark, what I just asked you.

Speaker 9 I don't know what your relationship was like with her, but she got killed and you would think that for somebody in her life would want to see that the person that did it was prosecuted, you know, for doing it.

Speaker 9 You don't agree with that?

Speaker 3 I have nothing to add

Speaker 3 and nothing to take away. Some people said you did it.

Speaker 3 I have nothing to add and nothing to take away.

Speaker 3 So you don't deny that?

Speaker 3 I have nothing to add and nothing to take away. So the people that say you did it, they're right.

Speaker 3 I have nothing to add and nothing to take away.

Speaker 9 Okay.

Speaker 6 So overall, attempts to talk to Lewis were unproductive.

Speaker 3 I've never seen anything like it, to be honest with you. I've seen people say, I want a lawyer or I don't want to answer your questions.
That's fine.

Speaker 3 I've never had anybody say like, yeah, you can ask me anything you want. You can come over and interview me and then proceed to have this recited answer to every question that's asked.

Speaker 6 By the way, at some point, Lewis changed his name. He goes by his middle name now, Andrew.

Speaker 6 And when Nina spoke with him, he claimed that his name was never Lewis, which doesn't line up with his old yearbook or the police reports or any official paperwork from back then.

Speaker 6 So for consistency's sake, we're going to keep calling him Lewis. Anyway, Lewis is still in Rochester, married to Gail.

Speaker 6 He wasn't home when Nina stopped by, but he called her back after she left her card and a note, and he gave her pretty much the same treatment he gave police.

Speaker 10 I was hoping to talk with you about the murder of Norris Evans.

Speaker 3 No, I don't have nothing to add to that.

Speaker 10 Nothing to add to

Speaker 10 what? I mean, it's a new conversation. You and I haven't spoken before.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I don't have nothing to add to that.

Speaker 10 Can I come back over to your house and talk to you for just a few minutes?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 Nope.

Speaker 10 Can I ask you a few questions over the phone?

Speaker 3 Nope. You can ask.
I won't listen.

Speaker 10 Well, I have a whole list of questions that I'd love to ask, but seeing as I don't think I have much time with you here, I'll just jump to the most important one. Did you orchestrate her murder?

Speaker 3 Okay, anything else? What else?

Speaker 10 Again, I have an entire list of questions. I have a lot of questions for you.

Speaker 3 Yeah, not for me. You barking up the wrong tree, man.

Speaker 10 You were married to her, weren't you?

Speaker 3 I will not talk to you again. Have a good day.

Speaker 6 Nina left her card at Jesse's house, too, and he got back to her about a week later. But he just said that he couldn't remember much from that time and he claimed to know nothing about the murder.

Speaker 6 Eventually, his wife got on the phone and blamed Jesse's memory issues on illness and said that they'd been harassed online about the case.

Speaker 6 We weren't able to reach Napoleon, Lewis's friend who was at their house earlier that day, but Carr interviewed him and he doesn't believe that Napoleon was involved.

Speaker 6 Norris's children though, they kind of have lingering doubts. In family conversations, his name kept coming up.
Like that account he gave police in 1975 just never sat right with them.

Speaker 6 And it's not clear if investigators ever verified it. Norris was a stay-at-home mom with no income.
So why would anyone ask her to co-sign a loan?

Speaker 6 So if that wasn't why Napoleon stopped by, they wondered, well, then why did he?

Speaker 6 Daryl and Tamaro also said that Lewis would have never let that happen.

Speaker 8 He don't allow that. He wouldn't allow that, his wife to do something like that for a friend.

Speaker 3 Carr says that he isn't locked on a single theory the suspect could be among all this paperwork in all likelihood it probably is but you know there could be a suspect out there that's just not even documented in this in any of this that we just never linked to this which theory do you think is most likely if i was to had to gamble that's the more probable scenario that there's some sort of family secret here and somebody in that circle knows what happened.

Speaker 3 That's where I'm at. I mean, you have the insurance policy, so, and you have the girlfriend on the side, and that becomes your new wife, and you collect the money.

Speaker 6 But it's not just about who had motive. It's about what the crime scene says.

Speaker 3 I think she's murdered, and it's staged to look like a robbery.

Speaker 6 Carr believes that Norris was killed before the anonymous phone call was placed. The fact that no one nearby reported hearing a commotion suggests that she was caught off guard and killed quickly.

Speaker 6 And he noticed something interesting in the crime scene photos. The binding around Norris's ankles looks loose, like she could have wriggled out of it.

Speaker 3 From looking at the photos, I think there's a strong possibility that the binding around her ankles or her legs is put on post-mortem, that she's dead already, and they put that on.

Speaker 6 If that's true, the bindings weren't to restrain. They were to sell a story.
And if the scene was staged after the fact, a random robbery isn't very likely.

Speaker 6 All of this is what led many to believe that the answers lie close to home, including some of Lewis's own family. None more firmly than his and Norris' children who no longer speak to him.

Speaker 6 I have to ask this. Is there a world in which they are not responsible for this?

Speaker 3 They did do it.

Speaker 8 No, there's no way in the world.

Speaker 6 There's no world for it.

Speaker 8 There's no way in this world.

Speaker 6 But belief and proof are not the same thing. And this brutal murder is still unsolved more than 50 years later.
Those fingerprints lifted from the scene have been run through modern databases.

Speaker 6 Some still have not been identified. Those could be nothing.

Speaker 6 It was a duplex that others had lived in before, and a lot of people had legitimate reasons to be in that house, including some of the main suspects.

Speaker 6 As for DNA testing, evidence just wasn't stored in a manner that gives police the opportunity to conduct additional testing.

Speaker 6 Now, future advances in forensic science might change that, but investigators don't think that this case is going to be solved in a lab.

Speaker 3 We need either a confession from the perpetrator or cooperation from the people that have first-hand knowledge. And I think there are people that have first-hand knowledge.

Speaker 3 I think there's people that have real knowledge of what occurred that weren't directly involved and could provide us with that information.

Speaker 3 If that information was provided to us, that could tilt the scales in this case. The person that committed this crime could actually be held accountable and they should be held accountable.

Speaker 3 And it's unfortunate and sad that they've gotten away with it for 50 years, but it's never too late to come forward and share the information you have.

Speaker 6 If you know anything about the murder of Norris Evans, please call the Rochester Police Department's Major Crime Unit at 585-428-7157, or you can email them at majorcrimes at cityofrochester.gov.

Speaker 6 If you want to remain anonymous, you can also call Crime Stoppers at 585-423-9300 or submit a tip online.

Speaker 6 The deck is an audio chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com.

Speaker 6 I think Chuck would approve.

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