In boasting of rising homicide-conviction rates two years ago, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley took a swipe at how the Boston Police Department used to operate: Conley said that, unlike the days when detectives “worked backward” from a suspect, his team now “builds from the evidence,” and thus brings better cases to trial. He reiterated the point last year, warning of a return to the bad old days after BPD Commissioner Ed Davis replaced the head of the homicide unit, Daniel Coleman. “I’m not willing to prosecute cases that have not been thoroughly investigated,” Conley railed.The process of working backward, trying to fit the facts of a case around a convenient suspect, may have played a role in the wrongful conviction of Stephan Cowans. It may also have been at work in the earlier pursuit of the only other person questioned as a suspect in the Gregory Gallagher shooting — a man arrested, interrogated, and accused, but ultimately spared Cowans’s ordeal.
Bernard LaBranche’s name first surfaced in connection with the investigation a week after the shooting, when an anonymous caller to the department’s hotline claimed that the small-time criminal LaBranche had shot Gallagher.
It was one of many tips that came to the department after the incident, but, in some ways, LaBranche seemed to be a legitimate suspect. Physically, he fit witnesses’ descriptions. (That included a light goatee, as Gallagher had described at first, although later he dropped the mention of a goatee when describing the shooter.) And while he did not live in the immediate area of the shooting incident — and was known to hang out far away, on Wilcox Street in Mattapan — LaBranche did have a lengthy record of arrests throughout the Boston area, including busts in Dorchester, West Roxbury, East Boston, Braintree, Quincy, and Brookline — mostly for shoplifting, drugs, and driving with a suspended license.
The hotline tip was forwarded to Paul Farrahar, chief of the BPD’s homicide unit, who sent it along to Herbert Spellman, the detective leading the investigation. That same day, June 6, 1997, Robert Foilb, supervisor of the department’s fingerprint unit, printed out LaBranche’s fingerprints from the BPD’s computer file and left them for Rosemary McLaughlin, along with a note: “Rosie, Suspect from School St. J.P. from Sgt. Spellman.”
LaBranche’s fingerprints do not match either of the prints from the glass, according to a forensic fingerprint examiner who reviewed them for the Phoenix. But there is no record among the case-file documents seen by the Phoenix that suggest whether McLaughlin, or any other fingerprint examiner, reached a conclusion about a possible match to LaBranche.
Nevertheless, the next day, June 7, detectives showed a photo array including LaBranche to witnesses; he was the first suspect to get that treatment. But none of those eyewitnesses — Bonnie Lacy, her son Bryant McEwen, nor Gallagher himself — picked him out; in fact, all three said that the shooter looked a little like one of the other photos.
Still, Spellman and the other detectives pressed forward. On the morning of June 11, two homicide detectives interviewed LaBranche at his girlfriend’s house. LaBranche claimed that, on the day of the Gallagher shooting, he picked up his girlfriend at work, and at 5:15 pm they arrived at the house of his mother, who was babysitting their son. They all remained there, and played cards with LaBranche’s brother until 10 pm. LaBranche’s girlfriend was also interviewed and confirmed his story.
Despite this alibi, Spellman arrested LaBranche later that day, on outstanding warrants for violating parole on two older cases. LaBranche was brought to the homicide unit, where he was given his Miranda rights and told that he was suspected of shooting Gallagher.
This continued interest in LaBranche, without any evidence, leads one defense attorney who has worked on the case to wonder whether the fingerprint unit did initially tell Spellman that his prints matched those from the crime scene.
But it’s also possible that detectives were just working the case backward, trying to find a case to fit their suspect. And when it failed to develop, they cut LaBranche loose. That same day — and, still on June 11 — Spellman and Gallagher held a press conference renewing their plea to the public to assist in identifying the shooter.
Not long after, the police turned to Stephan Cowans. Detectives later said that they first received Cowans’s name on June 10. Cowans was arrested and given his Miranda rights on the 18th; unlike with LaBranche, detectives followed through on the charges against him.
