MICHAEL RAY GRAHAM, JR.
A Woman He Had Never Met Sparked a Chain Reaction of Lies that Nearly Cost Him His Life

 “After I’d been on death row a couple of months, Janet Burrell wrote me a letter and admitted that she’d lied. ‘I fell in love with you at the trial,’ she said, ‘I want you to be with me when you get out...You ought to be clear very soon, and you ought to be very proud of me.’

I wrote her back and said, ‘All I want you to do is just tell the truth, and we’ll see what happens when I get out.’ But I was thinking, ‘You crazy woman, you put me in here.’”—Michael Ray Graham, Jr., convicted of first-degree murder and freed after fourteen years on death row. All charges against him and his co-defendant Albert Burrell were dismissed.1

The Crime
August 31, 1986, Downsville, Louisiana
Delton Frost, age sixty-five, and his invalid wife Callie, age sixty, were among the hundred or so residents of the rural community of Downsville, Louisiana, located in Union Parish, in the north central sector of the state. (In Louisiana, the administrative divisions within the state are referred to as parishes, i.e. counties.)  The Frosts lived in a two-room house with a tin roof and wooden screen door, the house where Delton grew up. The nearest neighbor was a quarter mile down the road.
Delton and Callie Frost could not read or write. For income, they relied on their social security benefits and Delton’s earnings from the homegrown tomatoes and watermelons he sold at a roadside stand. Callie was partially paralyzed. Delton had to carry her to the car when the couple drove in to town to buy supplies and cash their monthly social security checks.2

A child of the Depression, Delton Frost did not trust banks and kept his money in a suitcase under the bed, where he could guard it even in his sleep.

On Labor Day afternoon, Monday, September 1, 1986, A. T. McLemore who owned land adjoining the Frosts, stopped by to borrow a funnel to put fluid in his bush hog. Delton did not come out, as he usually did. McLemore borrowed the funnel, and came back a second time to get water when his tractor overheated, and a third time to bring some corn for the hogs he and Delton jointly owned. He tooted his horn, and still, Delton still did not come out. When McLemore saw that the hogs had not been fed since the day before, he knew something was wrong. He drove to the home of Delton’s neighbor, James Bearden, and Bearden phoned the Union Parish Sheriff. (The small community of Downsville had no police force.)

Sheriff’s deputies found Delton Frost on the floor, just inside the front door, dead, shot in the head, slightly above and behind the right ear, and Callie Frost dead in her chair, shot in the face, below her left eye. Ballistic tests would confirm that the murder weapon was a .22-calliber firearm, probably a rifle. An examination of the premises indicated the killer had fired only two shots, shooting into the home from the outside through a window. On the front porch and on the floor inside, under Delton Frost’s body, there was broken glass from the front door. Sheriff’s investigators speculated that after murdering the Frosts, the killer had broken in, and that Delton Frost was then pulled from the chair tipped over beside his body. The suitcase containing the Frost’s lifesavings was gone, as was Delton Frost’s .22 rifle. Delton’s wallet, containing his driver’s license, social security card, and six one-dollar bills was found on the bed, under a jumble of clothes and other articles, which had apparently been dumped out of the paper sacks on the top of the heap.3

New sheriff Larry Averitt had never conducted a homicide investigation and had very little formal education in the law enforcement field. He had taken a few criminal justice courses at Northeast Louisiana University seventeen years before and had completed orientation training in conjunction with serving as a deputy in a neighboring parish and, later, as a state trooper—the position Averitt held for the nine years prior to his becoming sheriff. The Union Parish Sheriff’s office typically employed fifteen to twenty people. When Larry Averitt took office in the summer of 1984, he replaced all but three of the previous sheriff’s deputies and staff, primarily with friends and acquaintances from his state trooper days.4

The deputies who responded to the Frost murders had problems using the sheriff’s office camera and succeeded in making only one viable photograph of the crime scene.5 The single footprint discovered in the Frost’s yard was rendered useless, when the deputy attempting to make a mold flattened it with plaster.

The coroner concluded the Frosts were killed Sunday evening. Just before dark, neighbor James Bearden and a friend of his visiting from Georgia had stopped by the house. Delton had come down from the porch to speak with them. Bearden and his friend never got out of Bearden’s truck. Delton had company, his nephew Michael Rogers and another young man with long dark hair, whom Bearden did not recognize.6

Michael Rogers, however, was no stranger to Bearden. Rogers had lived with the couple until shortly before the murders. Rumor had it that Rogers had asked his uncle to loan him some money, and Delton Frost had turned him down. Rogers had previously been arrested for aggravated assault and found guilty of disturbing the peace and drawing a shotgun.7

When questioned by police, Rogers admitted that he had stopped by the house on the evening of August 31, but that his girlfriend Naomi Ruth Toney was with him, not another man. Rogers insisted they only stayed a few minutes.

Police interviewed Rogers and his girlfriend on three separate occasions, in a series of interrogation sessions lasting over ten hours, but there was no concrete evidence linking them to the crime.

Neighbor Willie Wilson had passed by the Frosts’ home between ten and eleven on the night of the murder and saw a white car parked in front of the house, probably a Buick or Pontiac; Wilson only glimpsed the car from the rear. Michael Rogers drove a blue Datsun pickup truck.

The Two-week Road Trip That Took Michael Graham to Death Row
“My boss told me my job would be waiting for me when I got back. It’s still waiting, I guess.”
In the summer of 1986, Michael Graham lived in Ocean View, Virginia, with his mother and stepfather, Elizabeth and Doug Lam, and his two younger half-brothers. Michael, age twenty-two, had moved back home, lured by employment opportunities in nearby Virginia Beach, where tourist development was booming. He quickly found work as a house framer for Dick Kelly Enterprises, a local contractor. His girlfriend and infant son were in Richmond. Michael hoped to be able to afford his own apartment before long and was eager to bring his girlfriend and son Brian to live with him.8

Michael doted on his half-brothers, Chris, who was seven, and Bobby, who was only four. Doug Lam had been the primary father figure in Michael’s life. Michael got along well with Doug and called him, “Dad.” Michael’s natural father was a truck driver. He and Michael’s mother Elizabeth divorced shortly after Michael was born. When Michael was nine, his father phoned Elizabeth from a truck stop and said he wanted to meet his son. Michael’s first memory of his father stems from that truck-stop visit—“I was in awe of him. My real father, that was my real father.” After that, Michael Graham, Senior, made an effort to get in touch whenever he passed through. When Michael was seventeen, his father offered him a job at a detail shop he had just opened in conjunction with the mechanic business he then managed. Michael quit school, and joined his father working full time, helping him get the new arm of his business launched…