WHAT'S DONE IN THE DARK | Part IV: Trials & Tribulations

Editor's Note: This is the final installment of a four-part investigative feature series looking back on the 1989 murder of Rev. Francis Craven in northern Tuscaloosa County. Thank you for following along with this project and be on the lookout for potential side projects relating to this series.

"As sure as God made black and white, what's done in the dark will be brought to the light"

- Johnny Cash, "God's Gonna Cut You Down"

TUSCALOOSA, AL — Convicted murderer David Leitner had been a smoker for years but told reporters in the months after his second conviction for the murder of Father Francis Craven that the unhealthy habit had intensified.

Leitner's isolated cell in Holman Prison likely had that lingering aroma of an ashtray as his lunch tray was lazily thrust through the bars on Sept. 4, 1996 ... just like the day before and the day before that.

It was about 2:10 p.m. on a cloudy Wednesday in Escambia County. About this time, National Weather Service reports from the day show that rain was moving into the area.

For the outside world, "Macarena" by Los Del Rio was the top song on the radio and later that night, Alanis Morrissette and The Smashing Pumpkins would both win awards at 13th annual MTV Video Music Awards.

Apart from those pop-culture high-points, though, it was a rather gloomy and unceremonious day in Escambia County — on the Alabama side, of course.

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A spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) later told the Associated Press that Leitner, serving a life sentence for the brutal 1989 murder of Father Francis Craven, was spending his time in a one-person cell in the state prison after he "attempted homosexual conduct in prison."

Leitner's final appeal had been rejected three days before the previous Christmas by the Alabama Supreme Court and his wife, 89-year-old Vivian Hudson Young, had died just weeks before in the same small Alabama town where Leitner had once lived and now found himself incarcerated — in a massive prison less than 10 miles from the little house on Pensacola Avenue he had shared with Vivian and Gregory Scott Little just a few years before.

Escambia County Probate Court documents were later given to the Tuscaloosa News by Leitner that showed he had indeed adopted Little in April 1990, making the young man the sole heir to the estate of Leitner and his octogenarian wife.

None of them were originally from the area but had their final years together in that house after quietly leaving Guntersville in the weeks after Father Craven's murder.

As Patch reported in Part III of this series, this time as a relocated "family" in Atmore was short-lived, with Leitner and his "adopted son and lover" Little regularly quarreling outside to the point that neighbors became acutely aware of the simmering tensions that were beginning to boil over.

A few years after the trio's move to Atmore and upon returning to Leitner's cell to retrieve the lunch tray roughly 30 minutes later, the corrections officer found the convicted murderer suspended from the bars of his cell with a bed sheet around his neck.

Leitner was pronounced dead shortly thereafter at the age of 59.

While he left a suicide letter, ADOC didn't share its contents in full. Still, that didn't stop newspaper coverage from across the region insisting that he had maintained his innocence, even on the page, until his final breath.

"I remember when he hanged himself and I wasn't really surprised," former Tuscaloosa News columnist and reporter Robert DeWitt told Patch years later after interviewing Leitner during the most chaotic points of the case. "I couldn't see him holding up in prison and his personality just seemed so mild."

Indeed, Leitner had threatened to take his own life on multiple occasions over the decades, including once in the Tuscaloosa County Jail awaiting trial and another time about a year and a half after the murder, which became a telling piece of evidence in the courtroom.

During his first yearlong stay in the county jail ahead of trial, Leitner said he was beaten by other inmates. The assault, he claimed, resulted in two broken ribs and injuries to his chest.

He also said he deliberately bashed his head to the point that it took a dozen stitches to sew up the injury — all so he could remain in solitary confinement rather than go back in with the general population and endure more physical abuse.

"I am guilty of being a bisexual," Leitner told reporters. "I am not guilty of killing my friend."

Court records obtained by Patch show that on June 16, 1990, Leitner attempted suicide in an unspecified incident and was hospitalized at the Greenlawn Hospital in Atmore. He is then said to have told Atmore Police Corporal Rusty Harrison that he had been treated at the "Veterans Hospital" in Tuscaloosa for mental problems — a notion corroborated by reporting in Part III of this series.

Leitner told the officer that if he could just talk to his doctor at the hospital and get some stuff off his chest, the doctor would surely tell him what to do about it.

It's at this point that he also was documented as asking to be taken to the VA Medical Center in Tuscaloosa but it was the information he would offer up to Atmore police during this conversation that would later be used toward his conviction.

"In my heart I still do believe that he was innocent of that murder," Mobile defense attorney Lee Stamp told the Associated Press after hearing of Leitner's death. "I tried that case twice and how the jury could believe the only witness against him is beyond me."

A Night In The Rectory

Steven Conrey was supposedly videotaped sitting on the other side of a small interview table from Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's deputy and homicide investigator Dennis Levins in the late winter of 1989 as he recounted a night in Guntersville where the details were either burned into his memory or somehow told to him off-camera by police verbatim and rehearsed for the sake of the camera.

Conrey had been picked up in the small city in the days and weeks after the murder and was one of the first witnesses to offer up any background following the search warrant at the St. Williams Rectory immediately after Craven's battered and burned body was found on a dirt road in northern Tuscaloosa County.

An official inventory of the contents of the rectory closet was videotaped and listed in evidence as the following:

• A dog collar.
• A heavy dog "choke" leash.
• Pieces of rope of different lengths and diameters arranged on a dowel.
• Rubber mattress protectors or cover.
• Handcuffs and a key.
• Electrical cord.
• A can opener.
• Cloth diapers.
• Diaper pins.
• Baby powder.
• Disposable nipples for baby bottles.
• Rubber pants.
• Baby formula.
• Masks of a gorilla with fangs.
• Several spiral-bound notebooks.

Conrey would've had no way of knowing any of this when he was interviewed by Levins in the city jail in Guntersville and the story he offered up gave investigators serious pause. It may have even fed into Levins' initial theory of a vagrant being the killer of the amiable priest — and for good reason.

Like so many mentioned in this story and those we left out who were named in court filings, Conrey was described by Levins and others as a "drifter" who regularly passed through Marshall County.

It was around 1987 or 1988, he told Levins, when he came looking for a handout at St. Williams Catholic Church and first met Father Francis Craven.

As Patch previously reported in Part II of this series, this became a key piece of testimony later used at trial as Conrey described being asked by the priest to "assist" in acting out his fantasies, soliciting the vagrant as the "dominator."

The narrative reads as such, without editorialization or interpretation. Edits have only been made for the sake of professional style or clarity.

"[Conrey] restrained Craven with various ropes, first in a recliner chair and later in his bed in the rectory. At the time, Craven was acting the role of the dominated victim in his self-initiated scenario. He had dressed himself in cloth diapers and rubber pants. Conrey stated he was not a homosexual, and that he performed these acts because Craven offered him money, liquor and a room for the night and Conrey stated that he did it 'for his [Craven's] pleasure' because of Craven's self-professed desire to place himself under someone else's control as a result of being in control of and responsible for so many other people during his normal week.

Conrey further stated that he spent the night watching television and drinking the liquor Craven gave him, while watching over Craven, who, by his own desire, slept in spread-eagle position in rubber pants, restraints and a diaper.

During periodic intervals, he would check on Craven to make sure the restraints did not cause him to bleed because Craven had insisted that they be tied tightly. Conrey also gave testimony about certain other events which transpired before he left the rectory the next day, which do not lend themselves to the description here, and which will be apparent from the video as being the behavior of the character described in the journals.

Finally, Conrey volunteered information that Craven had, while restrained, talked about some person or persons who lived in Tuscaloosa, that he went to visit in this context and with whom he "partied."

The testimony of this witness explicitly documents the type behavior and sexual deviancies related in the journals; further, the testimony of this witness is crucial because Conrey is the only witness that the defense has been able to locate to date that can provide a first-hand account of Craven's 'double life' as related in the journals."

The Trials of David Leitner

At a press conference in front of Birmingham's L&N Cafe at Riverchase Galleria on Nov. 1, 1991, David Leitner announced the results of a sodium amytal test conducted at Brookwood Hospital that he insisted showed he did not kill Father Francis Craven.

"My interview revealed no evidence that Mr. Leitner was involved in Father Craven's murder," Dr. William Grant's report stated. "What evidence there was cuts strongly against any such involvement on his part."

For those unfamiliar with the complicated chemical compound, it has been considered a kind of "truth serum" by some criminal psychologists that can aid in certain cases. In the report by Grant, the drug was said to "reduce conscious control and guardedness" over what is being said by the person under its effects.

"I passed the polygraph," Leitner told reporters. "I took the truth serum to verify my polygraph test."

This is a good place to point out a concept that was explained to me by a current investigator who spoke to Patch on background about the validity of polygraph tests and truth serums as they relate to gathering facts that can then be used in court.

For example, the investigator explained that a polygraph test, by itself, can only tell its administrator certain things relating to physiological responses consistent with deception.

While inadmissible in court, this can still prove useful when the findings work in concert with other factors and evidence to narrow down suspects in a complex case.

Nevertheless, Leitner insisted upon the results of these tests as validating his innocence, while at the same time alleging to have documented proof that Greg Little had failed his polygraph test.

Leitner also challenged his estranged adopted son and much younger former lover to take a sodium amytal test, which Little never did.

"I don't mind taking it again as long as they make Mr. Little take it, too," Leitner told reporters at the Galleria. "I think it's time people started asking Gregory Scott Little some questions."

Leitner also lamented the lack of interaction with state investigators and the attorney general's office, who he insisted had not interviewed him ahead of trial and despite what he claimed was a "mountain of evidence" proving his innocence.

"I think it's time that the state gets off my back and finds Father Craven's killer," Leitner said.

David Leitner insisted he'd be "vindicated" if and when his case made it to trial and very much played the role of victim when he said he was "praying for his persecutors."

Roughly a year after Leitner was released on $100,000 bond following his arrest, newly appointed Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court Judge Robert Harwood received the case and Assistant Alabama Attorney General Don Valeska was asked to prosecute it.

Tuscaloosa County District Attorney Charley Freeman had requested Valeska take over at the urging of Father Craven's family, who raised concerns about Freeman's involvement in the previous prosecution of Jerry Wayne Taylor. As we reported in the second part of this series, Taylor was charged with murder before his public defender team was able to prove his innocence.

In total, 103 witnesses were subpoenaed for the first trial, with 29 taking the stand to testify.

Guntersville resident Helen Taylor was one of the first state witnesses to take the stand at trial and said Father Craven was a "beautiful person with a sweet tooth and more love for children than concern for his own health."

This was corroborated by stories of young children in the parish being chastised by their parents for offering him sweets and candy, before demanding — as children do — that the priest indulge in the treats while in their presence.

Helen Taylor also mentioned a potluck supper at the church roughly a week before the murder, alleging that Leitner was seated at a table and pointed at Craven — who was carrying a plate full of food.

He allegedly told her "See that man over there, he doesn't have long to live."

Leitner confirmed he said this but claimed it was taken out of context, saying that he did so out of concern over Craven's diabetes and poor eating habits.

Athens resident Joan Bacon, Craven's sister, was a member of St. Williams Catholic Church in Guntersville and also corroborated the strange comment made that day by Leitner.

Joan and her husband, Sam, had moved to Athens about a decade before the trial. Sam Bacon had converted to Catholicism, she said, and Father Craven was his godfather.

So, Joan told reporters that when her brother was reassigned to the Guntersville parish after his lamentable second stay in Tuscaloosa, her husband wanted to move to the area.

"I tried to explain to [Sam] that he wouldn't be at the Athens parish forever but now I'm so glad we came because we needed to be here to help push this [conviction] through," Joan said following Leitner's first trial.

Joan later said she had met Leitner through another priest before her brother was killed.

"My brother would not introduce me to him," she told reporters. "But I remember meeting him and thinking he was a kook just by the way he talked and acted. And I knew he did [the murder]."

In the courtroom, Leitner's defense team immediately set out to poke holes in the prosecution's case, with Mobile defense attorney Michael Smith on two occasions laughing loud enough for the jury to hear.

Leitner also reportedly rolled his eyes on numerous occasions, along with making animated, almost cartoonish, expressions to his attorneys with each new revelation made from the stand.

Even members of the jury would later say it was obvious that Leitner was trying to work the crowd, judge and jurors. Those same jurors also appeared far more sympathetic to Greg Little.

For example, at one point during the legal proceedings, Leitner grinned and laughed when presented with a photo of himself and an underage boy from Guntersville not connected to the case.

Both Leitner and the young boy were nude in the photo, which was also shown to the jury.

In Leitner's opinion, though, the jarring evidence was irrelevant to the charges against him and, instead, he was the victim. Still, Leitner's cavalier attitude was said to have bothered several jurors, who expressed their belief in his guilt during anonymous media interviews following the conclusion of the first trial.

At one point during the trial, Leitner also tried to play on the sympathies of the jury as he openly admitted that his father had "disowned" him and had tried to have him committed for psychiatric treatment on numerous occasions before Craven's murder. While on the stand, he also presented a thick billfold and pulled out a plastic card qualifying him for VA privileges.

"I was honorably discharged from the Army on a disability," he said, even though service records show he was discharged from the Navy in 1957 for "failure to adapt."

"[My] father put me in Bryce Hospital while my wife was divorcing me," Leitner said on the stand. "He thought it would keep her from getting everything I owned."

He went on to say that when he was released from Bryce Hospital and arrived back to New Hope, where he lived with his first wife, Leitner found that "the locks had been changed on my house, all my clothes were gone and thousands of dollars of my antique furniture. Nothing was left. The only thing she left leaning up in my closet was a large picture of her and her first husband."

To say the least, it was a performative trial complete with theatrical courtroom outbursts.

Indeed, the first time defense attorney Michael Smith laughed aloud came when state prosecutor Randy McNeill alleged that a boot print found at the murder scene was Leitner's after claiming the boot was German-made.

McNeill had insisted that Leitner had once served in Europe with the armed forces — despite an extensive search of service records showing that Leitner's brief time in the service was spent as an electrician's mate in Okinawa, Japan, ahead of his stay in a Naval hospital in Corona, California and before his unceremonious discharge and return to Huntsville.

Years later, former Homicide Investigator Joe Pearson, who testified at both trials, reflected on his own trip to Europe during this time and how he couldn't get the image out of his head of that odd European shoe print from the scene.

"The large footprints down there were a real unusual pattern," he told Patch reflecting on the original crime scene. "At first, we thought they were hiking boots but I went on a trip to Germany later. When I get something on my mind it's all I'll think about. So, I went into a shoe store and I found a pair of Italian penny loafers that had lugs on the bottom. Then I found out about [Leitner's trip to Europe] and I thought that’s probably how he got those shoes was during that trip."

Leitner's defense attorney also was seen laughing for a second time when Greg Little was on the stand and said that Leitner had killed Craven believing that he and Little had been in a romantic relationship — as if the idea was too absurd to conceive this far into the high-strangeness of such a complex case.

Little testified that there was no relationship and he had no reason to believe Craven was gay but still drew laughs from Leitner's defense table as to why he decided to confess about his role in the murder a year and a half later. As Patch reported in Part III of this series, Little testified that he had started having nightmares and, after finding a girlfriend in Pensacola and subsequently provoking the jealous ire of Leitner, he finally decided to tell the police what he knew.

"The investigators who cracked the case told me that Little had a girlfriend," Pearson told Patch years later. "He had decided to try that and liked it and told her one night what happened and she said 'hey, if you don’t tell I’m going to,' and that’s when he contacted the police. She had also gotten in some trouble and I think she bartered that knowledge with police in exchange for her freedom or leniency on an unrelated charge."

Ahead of the defense's cross-examination of Little, Stamp was reported to have patted Leitner on the shoulder and said "I'll eat [Little] alive."

Still, before Little made his way to the stand, reporter Doris Flora of the Tuscaloosa News wrote that much of his interviews and other evidence relating to his testimony up to that point had been "curtailed" by Judge Harwood in late 1991 when he issued what is believed to have been Tuscaloosa County's very first "gag order" — barring both sides from speaking publicly about the trial until the jury began deliberations.

Defense attorney Leon Stamp ultimately sought to undermine the prosecution's case by bringing up the fact that the "journals" — the spiral notebooks recovered from the St. Williams rectory — had not been entered into evidence for consideration by the jury.

The Tuscaloosa News also reported at the time that the "journals" were purportedly in the form of "letters," despite being considered little more than erotic fiction by the investigators who first laid eyes on the sexually explicit writings.

There were 13 of these unsigned "letters" in total and Stamp insisted they cast light on potential suspects other than Leitner.

TPD officer Joe Pearson, who was one of the first homicide investigators on the scene, was called to testify about serving that initial search warrant at the St. Williams rectory and was asked by Stamp if there was rope recovered from the locked closet.

Pearson responded by saying "yes" but went on to say it was thicker than the rope found on Craven's body.

Stamp also asked Pearson about suspects identified by two young residents in the area who said they saw the priest's van on Jan. 7, 1989. Pearson testified that three additional men, including Jerry Wayne Taylor, were checked and eliminated as suspects and that was about the extent of his testimony that day.

Little took the stand to the biggest media fanfare of the trial and related the same story he had told investigators — one where he and Leitner had led Father Craven over 60 miles west of Birmingham in two vehicles to a secluded dirt road, before Leitner confronted Craven with his jealous suspicions and killed him.

When Little took the stand to testify, he looked different than the previous times he had appeared in court, with his hair cut short and sporting a clean-shaven face.

As was the case with his initial statements to police and his alleged struggles with various lie detector tests, details of Little's story were the point of focus when he was cross-examined by Leitner's defense team.

If you had asked Lee Stamp at the time, he surely would've told you this seemed to shed some serious doubt on a narrative that had been widely publicized in the media to insinuate Leitner's guilt in the court of public opinion.

"I don't know... I don't remember... I can't recall ..." the Tuscaloosa News reported as Little's answers when questioned about various details of the homicide and the scene where it occurred.

"I thought [Little] was worse than he had been in any of the prior hearings," Stamp said after Little took the stand. "It is truly amazing that the state's star witness is a burglar, car thief and drug addict. He has admitted lying under oath. I think that's powerful."

After the day of testimony concluded, Alabama Assistant Attorney General Don Valeska denied that the defense attorney had made any progress whatsoever discrediting Little's testimony.

"Little did exactly what I thought he would do," Valeska told reporters. "With his background and education, he did as well as we had expected. Anytime you have an eyewitness, the jury wants to see and hear from him."

Once the temporary gag order was lifted at trial, Leitner's defense attorney insisted his client would testify once the defense had a chance to make its case.

"It will not be hard for [Leitner] to remember things when he is telling the truth," Lee Stamp told reporters.

It should be noted here that Doris Flora of the Tuscaloosa News was in the courtroom during a brief recess from Little's lengthy testimony and cross-examination and made a key observation — one that even changed the mind of her colleague Robert DeWitt, who believed up to that point that Little was a more likely suspect.

She wrote that the young man seemed visibly shaken by recounting the murder and told state prosecutors how difficult it was to do so.

"It's just so hard," he reportedly told prosecutors through tears during the recess.

Little's apparent sincerity also wasn't lost on the jury, despite the 12 men and women not being in the room to see the young man's show of emotion.

Leitner took the stand that Friday and testified that neither he nor Little were in Tuscaloosa County on the day of Craven's murder.

Instead, Leitner described himself as bisexual and testified he was still having sexual relations with his 85-year-old blind wife, "Vivian Young Leitner." He did admit under cross-examination by the state that he and Little had been involved in a sexual relationship "at first," but claimed those feelings changed and evolved in the years after he had picked up Little from the streets of Atlanta.

As a result, Leitner said he "became more fatherly" after he legally adopted Little in the spring of 1990 — just months after Father Craven's murder.

Under questioning from Assistant Attorney General Don Valeska, though, Leitner was accused of lying and hiding his homosexual relationship with Little from those in the community.

It was a courtroom argument that underscored cultural norms of the day and very much, to Leitner's point, suggested he could have been indicted for the "crime" of homosexuality as opposed to focusing on the merits of the evidence against him.

"That is not something you paint on your forehead," Valeska told the jury, "unless you are a gay activist."

Taking the stand for Leitner's defense team were Guntersville native Lynn Hallmark and Jay Baas of Atmore, who said they had been Leitner's male sexual partners.

More importantly, both men testified that Leitner had previously blamed Little for the murder of Craven in private conversation with them.

As previously mentioned in Part III of this series, Atmore resident Matt Wimberly testified Leitner told him Little was the one who struck the priest over the head before "they" burned the priest's body — implying both men had been involved in disposing of the body, which was contrary to Little's story that it had been Leitner who dragged Craven to the spot to be burned.

Pearson said footprints at the scene contradict this notion, with the much larger set being the footprints of the person who would have dragged Craven's body to the burn pile.

Nevertheless, Leitner denied statements presented by the three men at trial and seemed to be stubbornly working against his defense as his attorneys tried to implicate Little for his role in the murder.

Leitner, who was never mentioned once as having any kind of sexual relationship with Craven, also said he knew little of the priest's private life.

"His sex life was his own," Leitner testified, going on to say that his primary concern during this time was Little's alleged drug problem. Indeed, as Patch reported in Part III of this series, it was the tumultuous couple's spats over Little's drug use and Leitner's subsequent obsession over Little after he left that first drew the attention of the law.

Still, Atmore Police Sgt. Rusty Harrison told jurors during the first trial that Leitner had told him during an interview over Little's issues before the murder, "All my troubles started when that goddamn priest started giving presents to my boy."

Leitner was also under oath when he denied seeing the priest the day of the murder, going on to say that he and Little went to his trailer on Guntersville Lake, left a key with a next-door neighbor, then took his rent check to the landlord.

No, the landlord and neighbor never testified. Instead, the Tuscaloosa News reported that while several checks written by Leitner were admitted as evidence, the aforementioned rent check was not included.

As for Leitner's story, he testified that he and Little went to the post office in New Hope that day, where Leitner still had a P.O. box. The two men then drove to Huntsville, where they took the elderly Gladys Leitner shopping.

Leither described his mother's mental condition at that time as "in lullaby land," and neither of his parents — who both attended court proceedings — were called to testify.

Vivian Young, Leitner's legally blind, octogenarian wife, was also deemed incompetent to stand trial due to being previously diagnosed with an organic brain disease.

Nevertheless, Leitner claimed that after the two men left Huntsville and made the short drive home to Guntersville, Leitner said he took a nap before he, Little and Vivian got dressed and went to St. Williams Catholic Church for the 5 p.m. mass.

After nearly a full week of proceedings, Leitner's defense attorney insisted to the jury the "state's entire theory in this case" was wrong — before alluding to the killer being a "man in his early 30s, with long scraggly hair and a beard."

This fits the initial profile that saw Jerry Wayne Taylor charged with murder, which was based partly on the testimony of two men who testified during Taylor's preliminary hearing.

"Gregory Scott Little used to prostitute his body," Stamp said in one of the more culturally insensitive arguments made during the bombastic courtroom battle. "Now he is prostituting the truth. Gregory Scott Little never saw this murder."

Valeska's closing argument levied the same accusations at Leitner, claiming he presented a well-cultivated facade to cover up a jealous, volatile and violent personality.

"[Leitner] is very good at doing one thing lying, lying lying," Valeska told the jury. "He is very good at it, as he has done it all his life."

Valeska made it a point, however, to hammer Leitner's accused homosexuality, going on to mention a letter Father Craven supposedly wrote on Leitner's behalf as he and Vivian Young tried to adopt another youth. News reports said they had wanted a daughter.

Pearson also remembered Valeska's courtroom flare years later.

He told Patch that Valeska had a Red Man-brand chewing tobacco handkerchief he would pull out of his pocket to wipe his brow — working the red piece of cloth like a Spanish matador to keep the attention of those on the jury focused on him and, most importantly, what he was saying.

He then asked the jury, with this knowledge, did they believe that "Father Craven would have written this letter exposing another child" to such a household?

"It is about as rotten a lie as you can get," Valeska said, going on to say Leitner viewed himself as "Big Daddy cruising the streets of Atlanta ... wanting to satisfy himself."

After closing arguments, it took the jury— seven women and five men — four hours and 20 minutes to return a verdict of guilty on the murder charge.

Upon receiving the verdict, Leitner was incredulous and reportedly left the courtroom shaking his head. In the courtroom, though, Leitner had a verbal exchange with former Homicide Investigator Joe Pearson — the Tuscaloosa Police officer who had testified against him

"You have the wrong man," Leitner shouted at the young officer.

"Don't talk to him Joe," a state investigator was reported to have told Pearson.

Pearson remembered this fiery exchange years later sitting at his dining room table in an interview with Patch. To this day, he insists on Leitner's sole guilt in the murder.

But he offered up another heated verbal alteration with the convicted killer.

"It was after it was over with," Pearson recalled. "They took [Leitner] off in a side room to wait on a transport vehicle. I walked in there and I had my fiancée at the time, she was sitting in that room and they didn’t let him know that. I went busting in there and the deputy was behind me a few steps. I don’t think [Leitner] was cuffed and he stood up and looked at me and said “you know I didn’t do this” and I told him 'You need to sit your ass down or you're going to get hurt.' I'm sure I could have handled it differently but, well, you know how that kind of thing goes."

Nonetheless, the conviction came roughly three years after Father Craven was buried in Birmingham and his three sisters reportedly had tears in their eyes when gathered to speak to reporters.

"For three and a half years, we've been fighting to get that man off the streets," Joan Bacon told the media gathered around her. "And I don't know if I could have lived with a 'not guilty' verdict. I need to go home (to Athens) and rest and get myself back together. And now, I have to say goodbye to my brother, but I will not forget him."

After Leitner's conviction, Valeska made it a point to present Craven's sister with a cross he found before the trial started.

"I found this and put it in my pocket for good luck and now I want you to have it," he reportedly told her. "There is never a good reason to murder, but this was a senseless murder. Father Craven and Greg Little told the truth and Leitner killed him anyway."

Another Chance

After a little more than a year behind bars following his first conviction, Leitner saw the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals rule that the "journals" recovered during the search warrant at the rectory should have been admitted as evidence during Leitner's murder trial.

The court then remanded the case back to Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court for yet another trial in the killing of Father Francis Craven.

The appellate ruling stated: "While the journal excerpt did not exactly describe the events surrounding Craven's death, some of the descriptions of various forms of humiliation, bondage and sadomasochism are very similar. Craven's body was found in the woods with his hands and feet bound. There was an electric cord around Craven's neck that was connected to a dog leash. While the details of the sexual fantasies described in the journal are not identical to the state in which Craven's body was found, a jury might find a compelling parallel between the events described in the journal and the state of Craven's body when it was discovered. It is possible that, given access to the journal excerpt, the jury could reasonably infer that the killing was the result of a sadomasochistic sexual adventure that went wrong when the sadist carried the event to the ultimate conclusion of murder."

Indeed, Leitner's appeal on the omission of evidence proved successful but his pleas for consideration to be spared the possibility of double jeopardy fell on less sympathetic ears as his case returned to trial.

Former investigator Dennis Levins had taken medical retirement from the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office in June 1992. He was the senior investigator on the murder and, by all accounts, had given the case his all before being reassigned from homicide and later convincing Tuscaloosa County Sheriff Beasor Walker to give him the murder case to work on in his spare time.

It should be noted here that Little did not testify in the second trial, where Leitner was reported to have pulled escapades such as walking with a cane to imply a medical infirmity. Never mind that he was lampooned for being seen in the courthouse parking lot walking upright and at a brisk pace with the cane under his arm.

Nevertheless, at the second trial, Levins described the murder scene where Craven's burned body was found, with his testimony reportedly raising discrepancies in Little's prior testimony.

Defense attorney Michael Smith also asked Levins if any of the writings in the journals were relevant to the murder before Levins read some sentences from one of the writings, described as "The Troy letter," which was mentioned in Part II of this series.

Despite the defense fighting so hard for the admission of the legal pads at trial, it was reported that the state surprised the courtroom when the writings were offered up to the jury by prosecutors and introduced as evidence to the jury — later described as a tactic to discredit the story pushed by Leitner's defense that was claiming there were overlooked suspects mentioned in the writings.

The Tuscaloosa News reported that Judge Harwood allowed Levins to read from three of the legal pads recovered during the search warrant. And with the slain priest's family in the courtroom, the Marine combat veteran and seasoned investigator then read aloud of Craven's purported sexual fantasies. He read directly from the text in the notepads and no other direct quotes were admitted as evidence.

Newspaper reports from the case insist, though, that the introduction of new evidence in the "journals/letters," saw the prosecution rest on the merits of the case it had already presented that previously resulted in a conviction following the first trial.

Indeed, Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Randy McNeill was one of three prosecutors on the case and said the state introduced the legal pads to let the jury know "the journals have nothing to do with the murder."

Instead, prosecutors hedged their bets partly on the testimony of ABI Investigator Tom Taylor, who said on the stand that Little gave details of the murder that were never disclosed to the news media — details only the killer would have known.

Taylor and Alabama Bureau of Investigation Lt. Greg Cole both testified Leitner first contacted them saying he had heard about the priest's "journals" and wanted to know if his adopted son's name was included.

Taylor also said Leitner told him he suspected Craven was a homosexual but that Little told him he wasn't, before mentioning that Leitner said Little told him Craven had never made any sexual advances toward him.

Nevertheless, on three very important separate occasions, Taylor claimed Leitner told him he thought the murderer was an "irate father," with Leitner saying in one instance that "if he'd thought that Father Craven was diddling Greg, he'd take a baseball bat and bash his head in."

This story then evolved to Taylor bringing up a later interview with Leitner behind bars in Montgomery when the accused murderer said he told state investigators it was "significant that Father Craven had been hit in the head with a lead pipe."

Taylor testified that he'd asked Leitner where he'd heard that detail, to which Leitner responded by saying he'd gleaned that from what Taylor had already told him.

Taylor said he was quick to remind Leitner that he'd never offered up such information. To this end, the journals were mentioned in contemporary media coverage in the immediate aftermath of the murder but the detail of a lead pipe being the murder weapon became public knowledge only after Little had told his story on the stand.

"Leitner began to tremble," Taylor testified. "He became pale, trembled, put his face in his hands, said he was sick and might need an attorney."

Another relevant piece of evidence from the second trial came from Tuscaloosa County Medical Examiner Dr. Kenneth Warner, who ruled after an autopsy that the cause of death for Craven was multiple force trauma to the head.

On the stand for a second time, Warner pointed out that Little testified Leitner struck the priest on the top of the head before Warner pointed out that there was no such injury to the top of the head that was consistent with the testimony.

Rather, Warner said in his second testimony that there was a laceration noted on Craven's forehead. He also said both jaws were broken on one side before going on to say there was a non-survivable injury to the base of the skull. Warner said this implied that the later, definitely fatal injury, could have been caused by either a decisive downstroke of a metal pipe or a slow-moving wheel of a GMC van — effectively deviating little from his initial assessment.

Closing arguments mirrored the first trial and were a mere formality considering it took the jury half the day to reach a verdict after his first trial.

In the late spring of 1994, it took a new group of 12 men and women a little more than two hours to return a guilty verdict at his second trial and a few days later, Judge Harwood once again handed down a life sentence for David Leitner.

Epilogue

David Thomas Leitner was buried in a pauper's grave at Holman Prison after his remaining next-of-kin, reportedly living in Mississippi, declined to claim his body.

Thirty-four years after the murder of Father Francis Craven, the most relevant players who would have known what happened that January afternoon on Old Bull Slough Road are all gone, with some questions still lingering and unlikely to ever be answered.

Joe Pearson is at peace with how the saga of the investigation and courtroom battles came to pass, despite the myriad twists and turns. In his eyes, justice was served and the right man was convicted.

And to his credit, he never bought into the whirling cultural conspiracies around him, despite becoming collateral damage in a case where many felt like they had their man early on.

Sitting at his dining room table in the present day, Pearson described Leitner as "Jekyll and Hyde" and said Leitner's stunts at his second trial, pretending to have a physical infirmity, was an example of his ability to deceive those around him.

He also remembered how angry Father Craven's family was at first with homicide investigators before they later realized the complex case the metro unit had been tasked with. It became a relationship that lasted for many years.

"It’s been so much time now I haven’t heard anything from them, but others I have written letters with multiple times on cases," Pearson said, before offering advice to up-and-coming investigators to always be slow to jump to conclusions and treat people with respect.

But this reporter's nagging questions persist, namely what the group was doing in Tuscaloosa County on the day of the murder — a question no one can seem to answer.

Pearson has a theory, though. It's one that's as sound as any other up to this point and might finally tie up the remaining loose ends of the case that continue to leave this reporter wondering.

"The only thing I could ever put together, when you go through the gate down there, there was, at that time, only a cabin down in the woods and there was a guy staying there renting it from the owner who worked in the gas well business. He was from Colorado and wasn’t even here when it happened. I knew the man who owned it when I was a kid and we would come up by boat. I didn't even know this road was here and I had been living three or four miles down the road for three years.

"After we got Leitner identified, he had been in Bryce maybe more than once and we thought [the owner] was a generous enough guy and big into the Knights of Columbus," Pearson added. "So, I'm thinking [Leitner] may have been brought up here for a field trip or something. ... think about that considering there’s plenty of places between here and Birmingham you could get rid of a body."

As mentioned at multiple turns in this series, though, this is just a theory and it's unlikely we'll ever truly know why Craven met his end on, of all places, a secluded dirt road in Tuscaloosa County.

Pearson was also quick to point out the fact that had some of the minor details of the murder gone differently, there may have never been anyone convicted.

"I guess if Leitner hadn't needed Little to drive his truck, he probably would have killed him, too," Pearson told Patch. "If criminals were really smart, we’d never catch one. But if Leitner had beat Little to death and left him and the van and set it on fire at the scene, I’m not sure we would have caught him."

Nevertheless, this lengthy case study examining the evolution of criminal investigations and the judicial system shows the entire saga to be arguably the most complex murder case in Tuscaloosa County history, complete with twists and turns, heroes and villains, and questions that will remain a mystery.

For Pearson, though, it taught him as much about himself as it did about crime-fighting.

"I learned a whole lot from that case," Pearson told Patch. "I always worked things the opposite way than most and would always want to prove this guy didn’t do it. But the most important thing I learned, though, is to keep your mind open the whole time."

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