Darrel Parker’s wrongful conviction began with a nine-hour interrogation in December 1955 and ended, officially, 57 years later, when the state of Nebraska paid him $500,000 and publicly apologized for sending him to prison for the murder of his wife, Nancy. Parker had been coerced into a false confession, convicted of first-degree murder in 1956, and sentenced to life. He served nearly 14 years before winning parole in 1970. He was pardoned in 1991 and formally declared innocent in 2012, after the real killer’s taped confession finally became public.
The Murder and the First Suspect
On December 14, 1955, Nancy Parker, a 22-year-old dietitian, was found bound, sexually assaulted, and strangled with a cord in the Lincoln, Nebraska home she shared with her husband. Darrel Parker, then 23 and Lincoln’s first city forester, discovered her body when he came home for lunch and called police.1Lincoln Journal Star. A Killer Confesses to ’55 Lincoln Murder
Investigators first questioned Wesley Peery, a man with an extensive criminal record whose car had been seen near the house that day and who had earlier been hired by the park department to build a fence around the Parker property. After brief questioning, police let Peery go and turned their attention to Nancy’s husband.2Chicago Tribune. Did He Kill Her?
The Nine-Hour Interrogation
After Nancy’s funeral in Des Moines, police called Parker back to Lincoln. He was taken to a state police headquarters and placed in a small, windowless room with John Reid, a Chicago polygraph examiner already known nationally for his interrogation work.2Chicago Tribune. Did He Kill Her? Parker was grieving and had been taking sedatives.
Reid hooked Parker to a polygraph. Each time Parker denied killing his wife, Reid told him the machine said he was lying, whatever the needles actually showed. Over nine hours, Reid fed him a story: that Nancy had been unfaithful, had refused him physical intimacy, and that he had killed her in a rage to take “what was rightfully his.”3The New Yorker. The Interview4Ohio State Bar Association. Yes, Innocent People Do Confess Denied food and worn down, Parker signed a confession. He recanted the next day.
NPR later described the session as “one of the first cases John Reid made his name on.”5NPR. Beyond Good Cop/Bad Cop: A Look at Real-Life Interrogations
Trial and Life Sentence
Eight days after Nancy’s death, Parker was charged with murder. At the 1956 trial, defense attorney Max Toll argued that Reid had coerced the confession and had put Parker into something like a “hypnotic trance,” and that police had “force-fed” him the details of the crime. The prosecution leaned on the signed confession and on a chemist’s testimony about the contents of the victim’s stomach.2Chicago Tribune. Did He Kill Her?
The jury convicted Parker of first-degree murder on June 2, 1956. He was sentenced to life in prison.6Cornell Law Institute. Sigler v. Parker, 396 U.S. 482
Appeals, Sigler v. Parker, and Parole
Parker kept fighting from prison. The Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed his conviction in Parker v. State, 164 Neb. 614, and later denied post-conviction relief, finding no “real miscarriage of justice.”7Cornell Law Institute. Sigler v. Parker, 396 U.S. 482
The federal courts saw it differently. In 1969, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that Parker’s confessions had been obtained under “extreme duress” and were involuntary, reversing the conviction.8Chicago Tribune. Did He Kill Her? Nebraska appealed. In Sigler v. Parker, 396 U.S. 482, decided January 26, 1970, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the Eighth Circuit’s judgment on procedural grounds, holding that the state was entitled to a new, error-free voluntariness hearing under Jackson v. Denno.6Cornell Law Institute. Sigler v. Parker, 396 U.S. 482
Rather than face another round of hearings and a possible retrial, Nebraska offered Parker parole if he would drop his legal challenges. He took the deal and walked out in 1970 after nearly 14 years inside.3The New Yorker. The Interview Parole ended the imprisonment, but it left the conviction on his record.
The Real Killer Confesses
What actually happened in the Parker house did not surface until decades later. Wesley Peery, by then on death row for the 1975 murder of Marianne Mitzner in a Havelock coin shop, gave a series of taped interviews to his defense attorneys, Stanley Cohen and Toney Redman, between 1978 and 1980. He claimed responsibility for 13 murders across multiple states between 1943 and 1975.1Lincoln Journal Star. A Killer Confesses to ’55 Lincoln Murder
One of them was Nancy Parker’s. Peery described the weather that day, how he got in, and what he said to her: “I put the gun on her and I said, ‘This is a robbery.'” He drew diagrams of the house with furniture in the right places, recalled specific birthmarks on the victim, and listed what he had stolen, including a brown suitcase, a watch, and books of S&H Green Stamps. His attorneys checked the account against court records and found it consistent, and they said he supplied a critical detail that had never been made public.9Los Angeles Times. Wrongly Convicted Man Seeks Pardon After Inmate Confesses
Peery had made Cohen and Redman sign a nondisclosure agreement. The tapes were originally intended for a book whose proceeds would go to his sisters, and nothing could come out while he was alive. The attorneys kept the agreement. “Even though he was a murderer, that doesn’t mean my word isn’t any good,” Cohen said.9Los Angeles Times. Wrongly Convicted Man Seeks Pardon After Inmate Confesses
Peery died of a heart attack in prison in July 1988 at age 56. His death released Cohen and Redman from the NDA, and they took the tapes and transcripts to Richard Bruckner, Parker’s longtime attorney. Redman was a distant cousin of Parker.9Los Angeles Times. Wrongly Convicted Man Seeks Pardon After Inmate Confesses
The confession did not immediately convince everyone. Bill Kreifer of the Lincoln Journal and former Lincoln chief of detectives Gene Masters called Peery an “egomaniacal liar” and suggested he could have picked up details from Parker himself during their overlapping time in the Nebraska State Penitentiary. In December 1988, the Nebraska Board of Pardons refused even to hold a hearing on the case; Secretary of State Allen J. Beermann said the board was “not empowered to take testimony and weigh evidence.”8Chicago Tribune. Did He Kill Her?
Pardon, Apology, and $500,000
Parker eventually secured a full pardon from the state of Nebraska in 1991.10Forejustice. Darrel Parker A pardon, though, is not a finding of innocence, and it did not give him a path to sue.
That path opened in 2009, when Nebraska passed Legislative Bill 260, the Nebraska Claims for Wrongful Conviction and Imprisonment Act. The law let wrongfully convicted people sue the state for up to $500,000 if they could prove innocence and wrongful conviction by clear and convincing evidence.11Vote Smart. Legislative Bill 260
In the summer of 2011, Lincoln attorney Herb Friedman filed a claim on Parker’s behalf.12Lincoln Journal Star. With Fight for Innocence Behind Him, Darrel Parker Looks Forward Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning chose not to contest it. On September 7, 2012, Bruning apologized publicly and announced the state would pay the full $500,000. “It became crystal clear that Mr. Parker is innocent,” Bruning said. “Today, we are righting the wrong done to Darrel Parker more than fifty years ago.”13Innocence Project. Wrongfully Convicted Nebraska Man Is Compensated After 57 Years
Parker got an initial $50,000 within weeks. The remaining $450,000 needed legislative approval because it exceeded the cap for direct state payments, and the legislature approved it through Legislative Bill 536, which the governor signed on May 25, 2013.14Nebraska Legislature. Legislative Bill 536 His legal team took 40 percent plus expenses.12Lincoln Journal Star. With Fight for Innocence Behind Him, Darrel Parker Looks Forward
Parker was 80 at his exoneration. “I tell people, ‘Now, I can die in peace,'” he said.13Innocence Project. Wrongfully Convicted Nebraska Man Is Compensated After 57 Years
What the Case Changed
Parker’s interrogation is now a fixture in the literature on false confessions. John Reid formalized his method in the 1962 textbook Criminal Interrogation and Confessions, which became the standard training manual for American police, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Miranda v. Arizona decision was in part a response to the psychological tactics it described.5NPR. Beyond Good Cop/Bad Cop: A Look at Real-Life Interrogations
Research on post-conviction DNA exonerations has found that more than a quarter of people cleared by DNA had given false confessions. Psychologist Saul Kassin and others have pushed for mandatory videotaping of interrogations, time limits on questioning, and bans on police lying to suspects. Some U.S. agencies have looked to the PEACE model, an interview-based approach adopted in the United Kingdom in 1990 after its own false-confession scandals.3The New Yorker. The Interview
The 2009 Nebraska compensation law that eventually paid Parker was not passed for him; it grew out of a more recent false-confession case in the state. His claim was the one that showed most clearly what the law was for.