George Whitmore Jr.

Whitmore died on October 8, 2012 in Wildwood, New Jersey at the age of 68.

Whitmore's lawyers proceeded to appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, but each court of appeal upheld the guilty verdict. In December 1972, after Whitmore had exhausted his appeals, journalist Selwyn Rabb, who had covered Whitmore's travails for the New York World Telegram and Sun, obtained dramatic new evidence — an affidavit from Borrero's sister-in-law, Celeste Viruet. The affidavit said, before Borrero identified Whitmore, police had shown Celeste an array of photos of other possible suspects — and she had identified positively another man as her assailant. By this time, Brooklyn had a new district attorney, Eugene Gold, who confirmed the accuracy of the affidavit. On April 10, 1973, a Supreme Court judge vacated Whitmore's conviction, officially exonerating him. Whitmore received no compensation for his wrongful imprisonment.

Kings County Supreme Court Justice Hyman Barshay later dismissed the indictment against Whitmore in the Edmonds case. The Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court also ruled the failure to admit the Wylie-Hoffert confession in the Borrero trial was a "prejudicial error" and Whitmore faced his third trial on the case. In June 1967 he was found guilty and again sentenced from five to ten years.

In March 1966, Whitmore was tried for the second time for the attack on Elba Borrero, who maintained he was her aggressor. Defense counsel Stanley J. Reiben tried to cast doubt on his client's confession to the assault on the grounds it was obtained in the same manner as the repudiated Wylie-Hoffert confession. The presiding judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Aaron F. Goldstein, ruled the Wylie-Hoffert confession inadmissible and Whitmore was found guilty and sentenced to between five and ten years in prison.

In March 1965, New York Supreme Court Judge David Malbin quashed Whitmore's conviction for the attack on Borrero on the grounds that members of the jury were racially biased and had discussed the Wylie-Hoffert murders, which they were instructed not to.

Prosecutors insisted Whitmore should face retrial for the Borrero mugging and still be tried for the murder of Minnie Edmonds. The trial for the Edmonds murder began in April 1965. There was no physical evidence linking Whitmore to the crime and the prosecution had to rely mainly on his confession — now much-maligned given the fact that someone else now stood accused of the double murders to which Whitmore had also originally confessed. On the stand, Whitmore stood by his story that the confessions were obtained as a result of beatings and claimed that he did not even realize that he was being charged with murder until the indictments. Police detectives denied the allegations. When the jury was unable to reach a verdict, a mistrial was declared. Four days later, Hogan formally dismissed the Wylie-Hoffert indictment pending against Whitmore.

On December 1, 1965, Richard Robles was found guilty of the murders of Emily Hoffert and Janice Wylie and sentenced to life in prison, the New York Legislature having, just months before, abolished the death penalty, except in the cases of the killing of police officers, prison guards, and murders committed while escaping jail.

The actions of the police department led Whitmore to be improperly accused of this and other crimes, including the murder of Minnie Edmonds and the attempted rape and assault of Elba Borrero. Whitmore was wrongfully incarcerated for 1,216 days — from his arrest on April 24, 1964, until his release on bond on July 13, 1966, and from the revocation of his bond on February 28, 1972 until his exoneration on April 10, 1973. This was after what author T.J. English called, in his book The Savage City, "a numbing cycle of trials, convictions, convictions overturned, retrials, and appeals", Whitmore was cleared of all charges and released. Whitmore's treatment by the authorities was cited as an example that led the U.S. Supreme Court to issue the guidelines known as the Miranda rights, with the Supreme Court calling Mr. Whitmore's case "the most conspicuous example" of police coercion in the country when it issued its 1966 ruling establishing a set of protections for suspects, including the right to remain silent, in Miranda v. Arizona.

The third conviction was obtained in part as a result of police and district attorney's office's suppression of the existence of an eyewitness to the assault on Borrero. As noted by Circuit Judge Mulligan, in dissent, "Appellant urges here, as he did in the district court, that it was not until the Spring (March–May) 1969 post-trial evidentiary hearing that counsel for Whitmore ever learned that there was an eyewitness to the assault on Mrs. Borrero. It was then ascertained that Detective Aidala who was in charge of the Minnie Edmonds' murder investigation and took over the Borrero case because of a possible similarity of modus operandi, kept a notebook which indicated that Celeste Viruet, the sister-in-law of the victim, had seen her being grabbed in the early morning of April 23, 1964 while looking out of her apartment window. Counsel for Whitmore in all three Borrero trials have submitted affidavits denying that they ever knew of or were advised of the existence of Celeste Viruet, the silent witness in the window. Celeste Viruet was never called by the State in any of the trials nor has she ever appeared in any evidentiary or other proceeding relating to Whitmore. The State makes no contention that defense counsel was ever specifically advised of the existence of this witness." The description provided by the "hidden" witness of the alleged attacker materially differed from Whitmore's actual physical appearance. No punishment attached to the District Attorney's office for this suppression of evidence.

George Whitmore Jr. (May 26, 1944 – October 8, 2012) was an African American man who was charged but later cleared of the infamous Career Girls Murders of 1963. "The Supreme Court cited Mr. Whitmore’s case as “the most conspicuous example” of police coercion when it issued its 1966 ruling in Miranda v. Arizona, establishing a set of protections for suspects, like the right to remain silent."