May 20, 2008 6:41 pm US/Central
Dotson Rape Accuser, Cathleen Crowell Webb, Dies
Gary Dotson Became First Man Ever Exonerated By DNA
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
The woman who admitted to lying about being kidnapped and raped as a 16-year-old girl and getting a man sent to a lengthy prison sentence has died in New Hampshire.
Cathleen Crowell Webb died last Thursday at the age of 46. She had suffered from cancer.
Gary Dotson, the man she accused, later became the first person ever to be exonerated by DNA evidence.
As a 16-year-old student at Homewood-Flossmoor High School, Crowell Webb –- then just known as Cathleen Crowell -- alleged that Dotson had kidnapped and sexually assaulted her on July 15, 1977. Based on her testimony, Dotson was sentenced to 20 to 25 years in prison two years later. The Illinois Appellate Court upheld the ruling two years after that.
But in 1985, Crowell Webb admitted she had fabricated the rape story.
"Ms. Crowell Webb explained that she had not been raped, but instead had engaged in consensual sex with her boyfriend and panicked, thinking she might have become pregnant," Northwestern University Law Professor Lawrence C. Marshall, who was also Dotson's attorney, said in 2002. "That would have infuriated her foster parents, so she concocted the rape story to cover for herself in the event she did become pregnant."
Webb admitted to tearing her own clothing and cutting her skin with a bottle, Marshall said.
"I was disheveled only because I had done it to myself. And I started crying possibly realizing what my lie was, what was going to happen," Webb said.
But at the time, the court concluded that Webb's recantation was not credible and refused to release him. So Gov. James Thompson presided over a televised clemency hearing for Dotson in May 1985, ultimately deciding to commute his sentence so he would be released on parole immediately rather than pardoning him.
"She was a very sweet, sincere young lady. The story just got out of hand," said Rob Warden of the Center on Wrongful Prosecutions.
Warden was one of Dotson's attorneys.
"I really came to admire her and understand that she, in a sense, had been a victim too. And she tried to do the right thing, ultimately," Warden said.
Three years later, Dotson asked for a DNA test to prove he was not the one whose semen was found on Crowell Webb's underwear. On Aug. 15, 1988, authorities announced the test had determined the semen did not belong to Dotson, and a year later, the Cook County state's attorney's office dropped its charges against him.
Dotson was the first person ever to be exonerated thanks to DNA.
He's had a few minor scrapes with the law over the years. After spending time in the west, he's now back in the Chicago area, living in the southwest suburbs again.
Webb co-wrote the book
Forgive Me about the case around the same time she recanted her claim against Dotson. After an embarrassing series of media interviews, she retreated to her sanctuary in New England.
In New Hampshire, Crowell Webb taught at a Christian school and worked at a golf club, and her two sons went to the West Point U.S. Military Academy, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
CBS 2's Mike Parker contributed to this report.
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