Richman’s Deposition

By: LaTasha C. Williams, Contributing Writer

Reid’s appellate attorney, Kevin Mincey, Esq. and I flew to Tennessee on March 13, 2006 where we met Mr. Richman at a hotel located miles outside of the city where he says he now lives and has called home for the last ten and a half years. Mr. Mincey had made arrangements before we left Philadelphia for a court stenographer in Tennessee to meet us at the hotel.

When we arrived at the hotel, Mr. Richman was already there, sitting on a chair waiting for us with his laptop in tow. Mr. Mincey began questioning after the stenographer arrived and swore him in.

I videotaped the meeting while the stenographer took transcriptions. I even prompted Mr. Mincey to ask a couple of questions of Mr. Richman for clarity. The Caucasian man with the stocky build seemed anxious to tell us all about what he alleges he witnessed on the morning of his friend’s murder.

The well-prepared eyewitness was eager to share with us what he had downloaded on his laptop, which was a graphic illustration of houses, storefronts and apartment buildings along a stretch of Seventeenth Street, ending at South Street where Bob was accosted, shot and lay gravely wounded.

Speaking in a deliberate manner and convincing tone, Mr. Richman pointed out for us the apartment building where he says he and Bob were living at the time of the shooting. He also pointed out his perch from a hidden vantage point in its relation to where all six males and his friend Bob had been positioned at the time of the shooting.

Telling the story fluidly, Mr. Richman was graphic in his recall of the morning of the shooting. He revealed that despite being drunk, that he was sure that he had heard the doorbell ring and got up to answer it, “because I just knew it must have been Bob,” he said.

According to Mr. Richman, he first went to where Bob slept to see if he was there. After finding his bed empty and hearing voices coming from outside, he says that he then went to a window to peer out and that was when he noticed six young guys strolling down the street in two groups of three.

He subsequently went outside and stood on a perch that’s attached to his apartment building to see if he could locate his roommate. Craning his neck around the building’s edge to look down the street, Mr. Richman says that he could not help but to notice that the six teenaged-looking guys were no longer walking in two groups of threes.

Instead, Mr. Richman says that the composition had changed to three guys at the corner of Seventeenth and Bainbridge Streets (which is the opposite end of the block from where he would later spy his friend Bob with a lone mugger).

Continuing, Mr. Richman says that he saw two guys strolling along, midway in the block at Seventeenth and Kater Streets (Reid and Carlton Bennett), and says that they were walking in the direction of Bainbridge Street, which according to him is where the other three fellas (identified in court records as brothers Tyrone Mackey and Richard King; along with Dajuan Bennett) had been stationed.

The two at Seventeenth and Kater Streets (Reid and Carlton Bennett) trailed the three at Seventeenth and Bainbridge Streets by approximately forty-five-feet, which in turn placed Reid and Carlton Bennett about twenty-five feet ahead of where Bob stood with the lone mugger, according to Mr. Richman. In a reference to seeing Bob hemmed up like that, Mr. Richman says, “having been the victim of a street crime myself, I knew that Bob was in trouble and I froze.”

In addition, Mr. Richman also told me that he vividly recalls when the two males who had been walking together (Reid and Carlton Bennett) suddenly broke their stride to stop and turn around to face in the direction to where the attacker had his friend Bob hemmed up.

Mr. Richman says that he heard one of the two scream out, “No, don’t!” moments after turning around. Absent the quote “No, don’t!” Reid had recounted the same scenario in a letter to my mother (writer) when he wrote to her his version of the events.

While perched and frozen in fear, Mr. Richman says the next sound that he heard was that of a single gunshot, which was then followed by someone hollering, “run!” He says that all six males obeyed the command and took off running. While what Mr. Richman says he did next might be disconcerting to some, it may not be to persons, who like himself have been victims of a violent street crime or some other type of traumatic event.

Instead of calling the police, Mr. Richman says that he “flew” back inside and went back to bed. (Acute Stress Disorder, perhaps?) He says that he did not awaken until Bob’s cousin phoned him hours later to tell him about “what happened to Bob.”

On the same day of Bob’s murder, Mr. Richman says that he moved out of the apartment that they had been sharing to another section of the city where he remained for three weeks before taking a hiatus from Philly altogether. He returned to Philadelphia in September 1992 and remained there for three months before his next move, which was to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, he says. Mr. Richman added that he lived there for two years before moving permanently down South.

Sickened over the tragic event, Mr. Richman says that during his travels, he did not follow Bob’s case as it wound its way through the justice system. He would recall, however, that it was on a visit back to Philly when he ran into a mutual friend of his and Bob’s and inquired about the case.

Mr. Richman says that the friend told him that a single male had turned himself in and pleaded guilty. Upon hearing the news, Mr. Richman says that he thought to himself: “Justice has been done.” He maintains that over the past fifteen and a half years that he’d, had no idea that a total of three people instead of one person had been tried and convicted for Bob’s murder.

Further, Mr. Richman says that he learned of Reid and Carlton Bennett’s miscarriage of justice when he stumbled across this web site while looking for something else. He says that he was shocked by the revelation and wanted to do whatever he could to help right the wrong, hence his February 6, 2006 message to The Giovanni Reid Support Team via this web site.