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By Brian Ross and David Scott March 8 — Mother’s intuition woke Florence Thompson in the early morning hours of Nov. 23, 1999. Her eldest son, 23-year-old Maurice, had not returned from taking his 19-year-old brother Craig back to college. So Thompson dressed and set out to find them, following the route they had taken on Interstate 95 north to Florida Atlantic University. When she saw flashing lights from emergency vehicles on the highway, Thompson faced her worst fears. “My heart was racing, I was praying, ‘Dear God, don’t let it be them.” But it was. Both her sons had been killed in a head-on collision on the highway. One of the two cars involved had been traveling, inexplicably, against traffic with its headlights off.
“How is that possible?” Thompson says she asked a trooper on the scene. “They were in the northbound lane and they were going to Boca [Raton],” a point north of the accident site. “And he just said all he knew was they were going the wrong way,” Thompson remembers. FHP Admits ‘Mistakes’ The Florida Highway Patrol reversed that conclusion one month later. The case has raised suspicion that the FHP may have tried to cover up the true cause of the crash in order to protect an FBI agent. And an ABCNEWS investigation has found that the patrol knew or had reason to know — within days if not hours — that Farrall had caused the deadly crash after a night of drinking with another agent. The FHP and the FBI deny any effort to protect the agent or cover up the true cause of the crash. The FHP’s Capt. David Brierton says it was all an honest mistake. “There was no cover-up. This was a misinterpretation of physical evidence,” he says. What the patrol calls simple “mistakes” in the crash investigation are interpreted differently by criminologist Geoffrey Alpert of the University of South Carolina. “Law enforcement officers will give the benefit of the doubt to other law enforcement officers in any situation,” says Alpert. “I think the troopers misinterpreted the evidence because they wanted to blame the other people and not the law enforcement officer.” That view may be supported by what one of the patrol’s traffic homicide investigators on the scene that night later told supervisors during an internal inquiry into the case. Cpl. Kevin Roy recalls, “I might have been a little quick to think the agent was going northbound instead of southbound because of what the troopers told me and I guess I just wanted to believe it.” Investigation Questioned The patrol insists there was no special treatment for the agent, but the night of the accident, the troopers never tested Farrall for alcohol or drugs. The FHP later learned that Farrall had a blood-alcohol content of .17, more then twice the legal limit, only because the hospital that treated Farrall checked his blood and a hospital worker leaked the hospital test results to the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel newspaper. The handling of another key piece of evidence has raised questions about the patrol’s investigation. A tape of several 911 calls was publicly released by the patrol after the accident. But the only call in which the caller provides a description of the vehicle going the wrong way was withheld. Now being made public for the first time on 20/20 Wednesday, the caller describes the wrong-way car as “black” in color. Thompson’s sons drove a light beige KIA. Farrall drove a dark green Honda that looks almost black under the highway lights. But for an entire month following the crash, the patrol did not publicly correct its mistaken determination of the cause. And Thompson was made to suffer the injury of losing her sons and the insult of their being wrongfully blamed for weeks after the crash. On Dec. 23, the patrol finally apologized to the dead men’s family, announcing that Farrall had been driving against highway traffic on the night of the crash. Maj. Richard Carpenter of the FHP said: “It’s been determined from the physical evidence that the Farrall vehicle was in fact going the wrong way on the interstate at the time of the collision.” Suspicion of FBI Cover-Up When the patrol did begin to focus on Agent Farrall, it found the FBI less than forthcoming. Farrall had been moved inside North Broward Medical Center under an assumed name. When patrol investigators inquired, hospital personnel told them no such patient existed. A tip led investigators to the room where Farrall was recovering, but FBI agents standing guard at his door turned them away. “It was interpreted by our investigators that there was some interference,” the FHP’s Brierton told ABCNEWS. Later, under subpoena, two FBI agents, including the second-in-charge at the Miami office, testified that they knew the night of the crash that Farrall had been drinking. Yet these agents failed to inform patrol authorities. “There’s no excuse for that. That’s very critical information that he knew, and should have been passed on to the investigating body,” says Alpert. Farrall now faces vehicular homicide charges in Florida state criminal court in a trial set to begin in late March. Through his attorney, Bruce Udolf, Farrall entered an innocent plea. He maintains he was traveling in the correct direction the night of the accident. In court, Udolf told the judge, “We intend to prove that the charges in this case are based on a very sloppy and mistaken investigation.” Lawyers for the family of the men killed in the crash fear that the defense can establish enough reasonable doubt to help the agent win acquittal by pointing to the flaws in the patrol’s investigation. For Florence Thompson, that would be a final bitter pill to swallow. Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has ordered the state Department of Law Enforcement to investigate the Florida Highway Patrol’s handling of the case.
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Before the fatal collision, Maurice Williams and Craig Chambers had been riding in the Kia.
(Broward TV)
Maurice Williams (Family photo)
Craig Chambers (Family photo)
