Wilson-Defending Key Ferguson “Witness 40” is Mentally Ill, Has History of Fraud and Race-Baiting
“Witness 40”: Exposing A Fraud In Ferguson
TSG probe unmasks grand jury witness who spun fabricated tale
By William Bastone, Andrew Goldberg and Joseph Jesselli - The Smoking Gun
DECEMBER 15—The grand jury witness who testified that she saw Michael Brown pummel a cop before charging at him “like a football player, head down,” is a troubled, bipolar Missouri woman with a criminal past who has a history of making racist remarks and once insinuated herself into another high-profile St. Louis criminal case with claims that police eventually dismissed as a “complete fabrication,” The Smoking Gun has learned.
In interviews with police, FBI agents, and federal and state prosecutors—as well as during two separate appearances before the grand jury that ultimately declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson—the purported eyewitness delivered a preposterous and perjurious account of the fatal encounter in Ferguson.
Referred to only as “Witness 40” in grand jury material, the woman concocted a story that is now baked into the narrative of the Ferguson grand jury, a panel before which she had no business appearing.
While the “hands-up” account of Dorian Johnson is often cited by those who demanded Wilson’s indictment, “Witness 40“‘s testimony about seeing Brown batter Wilson and then rush the cop like a defensive end has repeatedly been pointed to by Wilson supporters as directly corroborative of the officer’s version of the August 9 confrontation. The “Witness 40” testimony, as Fox News sees it, is proof that the 18-year-old Brown’s killing was justified, and that the Ferguson grand jury got it right.
However, unlike Johnson, “Witness 40”—a 45-year-old St. Louis resident named S***** M******—was nowhere near Canfield Drive on the Saturday afternoon Brown was shot to death.
Though prosecutors have sought to cloak the identity of grand jury witnesses, a TSG investigation has identified M****** as “Witness 40.” A careful analysis of information contained in the unredacted portions of “Witness 40“‘s grand jury testimony helped reporters identify M****** and then conclusively match up details of her life with those of “Witness 40.”
TSG examined criminal, civil, matrimonial, and bankruptcy court records, as well as online postings and comments to unmask M***** as “Witness 40,” the fabulist whose grand jury testimony and law enforcement interviews are deserving of multi-count perjury indictments.
M****** did not reply to an e-mail seeking comment about her testimony. Messages sent yesterday to her three Facebook pages also went unanswered. Also, a message left on a phone number linked to M****** was not returned.
Since the identities of grand jurors—as well as details of their deliberations—remain secret, there is no way of knowing what impact M****** testimony had on members of the panel, which subsequently declined to vote indictments against Wilson. That decision touched off looting and arson in Ferguson, about 30 miles from the apartment the divorced M****** shares with her three daughters.
Explaining why she was in Ferguson in the first place (30 miles north of her home), at first she claimed to have been popping in on an old high school acquaintance she hadn’t seen in over twenty-five years. But on November 3rd:
When S***** M****** returned to the Ferguson grand jury on November 3, she brought a spiral notebook purportedly containing her handwritten journal entries for some dates in August, including the Saturday Michael Brown was shot.
Before testifying about the content of her notebook scribblings, M****** admitted that she had not driven to Ferguson in search of an African-American pal she had last seen in 1988. Instead, M****** offered a substitute explanation that was, remarkably, an even bigger lie.
M******, again under oath, explained to grand jurors that she was something of an amateur urban anthropologist. Every couple of weeks, M****** testified, she likes to “go into all the African-American neighborhoods.” During these weekend sojourns—apparently conducted when her ex has the kids—M****** said she will “go in and have coffee and I will strike up a conversation with an African-American and I will try to talk to them because I’m trying to understand more.”
In another entry dated Aug. 9, the day of Brown’s shooting - she wrote this gem:
“Well Im gonna take my random drive to Florisant. Need to understand the Black race better so I stop calling Blacks N*****s and Start calling them People.”
Why did this not raise a million red flags?
Why is Molotov known for the explosive cocktail, when his M.O. was actually more like the prosecutor’s in this show trial? Let’s call it a “Molotov” Grand Jury or “Molotov” Due Process.
