Houston’s Police Chief, Art Acevedo, recently received cheers from protestors, “We will march as a department with everybody in this community.  I will march until I can’t stand no more.”

Charles Mamou has lived on Death Row for over twenty years for a case built by the Houston Police Department and prosecuted by Harris County, Texas.  Mamou is out of appeals, and despite what that means for a man on death row, the Houston Police Department is not interested in addressing any mishandling of his case.    A few short months ago, I was ‘dismissed’ by the Houston Police Department when I tried to obtain answers.  I was told by Ms. Wilker at HPD that what I was looking for was ‘irrelevant’ and the ‘window of opportunity’ to obtain the information was ‘closed’. 

I tried to explain to Ms. Wilker during our several conversations that it was relevant and what I was looking for, rape kit results, were significant because the prosecutor told the jury Charles Mamou sexually assaulted the victim.  Ms. Wilker wouldn’t acknowledge the importance of the information. 

I was able to obtain the rape kit results without the help of HPD or the Harris County District Attorney’s office.  As it turns out, the results revealed the D.A. knew prior to trial that while they were accusing Mamou of sexual assault, there was no semen found.   They also learned before the trial and from those results that trace evidence existed in the case.  They never told Mamou, and they didn’t tell him a few months ago when I was requesting their help in the matter.  Again, HPD’s position, according to Ms. Wilker, the rape kit results are irrelevant and the window of opportunity to obtain that information is closed. 

Legally, Mamou’s case has been rubber-stamped and through the Texas process – he will be executed in the near future.  But this is what people should know when the execution takes place.  I didn’t just go to HPD looking for rape kit results.  There is a lot more the jury never knew in the Mamou case in addition to a rape kit and the results from it.

In 2019, twenty years after Mamou’s death sentence began, the case file states ‘biological evidence’ was signed out on two different occasions.  Mamou, who has always maintained his innocence, is going to be executed so it seems reasonable he should know why biological evidence was being signed out in his case.  Coincidentally or not, the employee who signed for both items has been written about on several occasions in the Houston Chronicle for issues related to mishandling of evidence.  The employee also worked in the HPD lab back in 1998 when the crime occurred, and it appears someone that looks strikingly like that employee is in Mamou evidence photographs from the time.   For all those reason, I also inquired at HPD as to why the evidence was signed out. 

I was told by HPD to ask the District Attorney’s office and the HPD Property Room, which I did.   The District Attorney’s office told me they had not requested any evidence to be tested, the file was not active.  The Property Room told me to go to Homicide and ask the investigator working the case.  Homicide told me no one was working the case.  My question came full circle back to HPD, and I was told by Ms. Wilker in a phone conversation that the evidence was signed out and in the possession of Mary K. Childs-Henry at one time, but it was ‘now back where it belonged’.  Not satisfied, I asked if she considered the matter closed – she responded she did.

After that phone call, I wrote to Internal Affairs and copied Chief Art Acevedo, hoping to address why evidence in the Mamou case would be signed for if there was no detective working the case and the District Attorney did not request it.  HPD responded via a letter dated December 17, 2019.  “The incident described by you does not support an allegation of misconduct on the part of a member of the Houston Police Department.  There is no allegation described by you that would initiate an investigation.”  It went on to say, “The District Attorney is the only person that can authorize any type of evidence to be released for any reason.”

And so – no one needs to explain why biological evidence in a capital murder case gets signed out. 

It doesn’t end with an undisclosed rape kit, or undisclosed trace evidence or having to not account for removing evidence in a capital murder that resulted in a death sentence.

The case was built from the ground up on a one-time suspect telling police that Mamou confessed to him.   HPD investigators were aware when they were recording that suspect’s statement that what he was describing couldn’t have taken place the way described.  The witness, Terrence Dodson, said Mamou confessed to him in a one phone call ‘confession’ from Louisiana on the previous day, Tuesday morning ‘before day’.  The police didn’t stop him at that point. At the very time he was making this statement, police were taking a statement in another room from a man who said Mamou was in Houston, Texas, on Tuesday morning, and that man drove Mamou to the bus stop on Tuesday in the afternoon, around 1:30. 

That wasn’t all.  Police knew Mamou was in Houston on Tuesday because the man who was recording the statement, Det. Novak, had actually spoken to the woman whose apartment Mamou had slept in on Monday night and that detective also obtained a warrant in Houston on Tuesday morning as police tried to arrest Mamou at that apartment located in Houston.  They missed Mamou, who was later dropped off at the bus stop by the witness in the other room at HPD.  The HPD interviewer, Novak, also notarized the statement of the man in the next room who said he drove Mamou to the bus stop.  Novak was also the one who spoke to the woman whose apartment Mamou slept at and where he was located on Tuesday morning.

If that wasn’t enough, the ‘star’ witness also clearly told police Mamou was planning on taking a bus from Louisiana to Houston on Tuesday and had asked the witness to pick him up at the bus station.  Again – detectives knew Mamou was not in Louisaina on Tuesday morning and they also knew he actually took a bus from Houston to Louisiana on Tuesday – the exact opposite of what the witness was describing.

That witness’ testimony later changed at trial, and he described a confession that took place over days, over the phone and in person, even though Mamou never  saw that man again after Monday morning.  Mamou never saw the interview, and was unaware of the discrepancies until last year.

There is more. 

Investigators, when they went to the apartment that Tuesday morning to talk to the resident there,  Howard Scott, they wrote down every single one of the phone calls on his caller I.D. from the night of the crime.  That information was never shared with Mamou, but would have discredited two of the state’s witnesses who testified they were in bed sleeping and not using their phones.  Howard Scott said his phone simply stopped ringing between 11 and 12 when he went to bed. When asked on the stand if it was because it was unplugged, he said no.   It was because it simply stopped ringing. 

An HPD investigator faxed the phone records to the District Attorney during the trial and before that testimony.  The District Attorney didn’t pull his witness to the side during his testimony or in any way indicate the witness was lying.  There was also at least one phone call that went out of the apartment that night according to the caller I.D. of Yellow Cab. 

Included in the fax HPD sent to the D.A. were the phone calls placed to the apartment by another suspect, Samuel Johnson.   Samuel Johnson also testified he was in bed sleeping and had not contacted anyone or made any calls to Howard Scott – whose caller ID said he did.  Again, the District Attorney did not ask his witness to tell the truth, or ask for an opportunity to speak to his witness on the side and explain to him that he needed to tell the truth on the stand. 

What’s  even more important about Samuel Johnson’s phone call – it was made from a cell phone.  In 1998, it would be common for people to use their landline for phone calls from their residence and a cell phone if they were not at home.  Unfortunately, those phone records were never shared with Mamou, and he didn’t know they existed until recently.  The opportunity to trace that phone call is gone.

There is more about that Tuesday and the police talking to Howard and Robin Scott.  Police drove them both to HPD to get their statements. Robin Scott’s statement from that day is in the file, Howard Scott’s is not  – even though it is well documented that Howard Scott was taken to HPD on Tuesday, December 8, 1998, for a statement.  In addition, Detective Novak testified he took a written statement from Scott when he went to HPD that day, and Howard himself has since told an investigator that HPD would not let him and his wife leave the police department that day until their statements matched.

As if that wasn’t enough.   Detective Novak reopened an investigation into an unsolved murder in Houston from months earlier during the trial. What’s found in that file, isn’t much, but there is a witness statement in there that describes an individual in a bar, even describes how he was dressed, who left the bar with the victim. He also describes someone coming in a short time later saying the victim had been shot.  That statement  was never shared with the jury. Rather – the ‘man in the bar’, Joseph Melancon, testified at Mamou’s trial.  His testimony did not match any of his earlier recorded accounts, but the jury didn’t know that, and Mamou got accused of the unsolved crime.  The jury never heard the witness statement describing Melancon leaving with the victim, nor did they get to hear any defense from Mamou.  Mamou was not charged with that crime, although he is listed as charged.   The jury got to see the dead man’s autopsy photos and hear from his grieving family members though.

That is what took place in the hands of Harris County and the Houston Police Department.   If you try to inquire with them regarding what took place, you may be told what you want to know is “irrelevant” and “the window of opportunity is closed”, but I would be happy to share with you what I have. 

When Charles Mamou gets executed, his parents will most likely be offered the opportunity to watch, but it won’t be on camera for the world to see. 

Chief Acevedo and the Harris County prosecutors always have the power to do the right thing and the window of opportunity is never closed.  It is more open now than it has ever been.  

“Compassion takes courage,” Mamou wrote me recently.  Will the powers that be have the courage to do the right thing – or keep insisting some window is closed?

All posts and details of this case, including phone records that were not shared with the defense, a letter from the ‘key witness’ stating he didn’t know anything, and how Mamou was even accused of an unsolved murder during his trial can be found here.  Anyone with information regarding this case can contact me at kimberleycarter@verizon.net. There is also a facebook page dedicated to sharing the truth. Share his story.

TO CONTACT CHARLES MAMOU:
Charles Mamou #999333
Polunsky Unit 12-CD-53
3872 South FM 350
Livingston, TX 77351
Mamou can also be contacted through JPay via email, but please include your mailing address if you contact him this way, as he can only respond through the mail.