Private investigator David Wells went door to door in South Dallas, inquiring whether Jolly was the type of man who'd slaughter a family. "Everybody said no," Wells says. Photo by Mark Graham

The fact is that Dark's case against Nick Jolly was already hopelessly flawed and headed for certain defeat in court long before he decided he had a problem with his main witness. For one thing, Arch McColl, the Ivy League lawyer with the fancy downtown address, was doing what the police and the DA wouldn't do: He was out there in Rochester Park day after day, just like David Wells, walking up and down the street button-holing people.

"No, normally that's not something I do," McColl says. "But the court only allows $500 for investigation, and I was sure that had already been spent by the court-appointed lawyer. So we were dependent on our own resourcefulness. The first priority was to get to know people who knew him."

McColl's gumshoe efforts were productive. One by one, day by day, with Phyllis Jolly's help, he came up with witnesses who had seen Nick Jolly the night of the murder. They saw him shambling home drunk after an evening of drinking beer and cognac on the street with his friends, two hours before the murder took place, and falling asleep on a bed in his mother's house at New Jack City, miles from the crime scene.

Vickie Goodson signed a sworn statement and passed a lie detector test affirming that her son had spent the night at her apartment. Other witnesses saw him in the morning when he reluctantly dragged himself out of bed with a whopping hangover to drive his younger brother to school in his aunt's car.

McColl found witnesses who said they had heard Helena give police information on the night of the murder that was in conflict with the story that appeared in later police reports. He found witnesses who said they had heard her say the shootings that night "didn't go down right."

McColl took all of his witnesses to the polygraph expert. They all passed.

Phyllis Jolly laughs when she recalls how obsessively McColl worked on Nick's case. "I'd look out my window, and there he was, walking up and down my street, talking to people. He'd call me all the time. Sometimes I had to say, 'Arch, just relax a little bit and calm down.'"

In the meantime, McColl was giving close scrutiny to the state's own evidence in the case, and he was finding significant problems with Helena Ceaser's version of the story — or what the police said was her story.

By the time Dallas police detective Jesus Trevino took his oath at the first major pretrial hearing on September 2, 1997, the story he told the court was that Helena and her brother James had instantly and clearly recognized Nick Jolly as one of the shooters.

"As far as their faces, which appeared distorted through the stocking, no," he testified. "But as far as knowing the person and their behavior, their build, their mannerism, their voice, there was no doubt in their mind."

Under cross-examination by McColl, Trevino testified that there had been no discrepancies in Helena's reports and statements to police. But in fact, Trevino was giving the court a much stronger case for a positive ID of Nick Jolly than seemed to emerge from the first reports filed by the police themselves.

In the initial police report from the scene, Trevino and his partner had carefully noted for the record that "unknown suspects forced their way into the residence." The impression that no one knew or admitted knowing who the robbers were mirrored what Helena had said in her initial 911 call, according to a transcript of that 3:51 a.m. conversation:

Helena: "Do y'all got an ambulance and police on the way, 'cause my brother and them is dead. I think they's dead."

911 operator: "OK, where is this at, ma'am?"

Helena: "2521 St. Clair."

911: "What happened?"

Helena: "These dudes, they just broke up in our house."

911: "Shot 'em or what?"

Helena: "Huh?"

911: "They shot 'em or what?"

Helena: "See they pulled us out of the bed. They put a gun to my baby's head. My baby, I, we, we ran, and my brother and them tried to, my brother and my boyfriend tried to...stop 'em, and they shot both of 'em. I don't know if they dead or not. I'm scared to go back in the house."

911: "Ma'am, we'll get somebody out there, ma'am."

Helena: "Thank you ma'am."

Larry Baraka, Garrett's attorney, was especially tough on this point: If Helena and her brother were certain at the scene who had just shot their mother, their brother, and the father of Helena's baby, why would the detectives have described the attackers as "unknown suspects" in their report that night? And why wouldn't Helena Ceaser have named Jolly and Garrett in the 911 call?

James Ceaser, whom the police initially had painted as an ID witness against Jolly and Garrett, seemed to fade further from the official case with every passing day, amid rumors on the street that he had changed his story several times about where he was that night, what he saw, and when and how he had escaped.

The DA had not one shred of physical evidence to tie Nick Jolly to the scene. Extensive fingerprint searching and crime-scene investigation had failed to turn up a single print, a hair, a shoe-print, anything to put Jolly at the killing. The DA, meanwhile, was dragging his feet, refusing to obey court orders to allow McColl to see several key pieces of forensic evidence police had gathered, all of which McColl suspected would help to prove his client's innocence.

It was a trash case. Helena Ceaser's word was worthless. Arch McColl would blow her off the stand in about 15 minutes. He would summon a raft of objective alibi witnesses who had passed polygraph tests, all of whom would put Nick Jolly miles from the murder scene that night. There would be no physical evidence.

Robert Dark didn't have a case. He says his case fell apart because Helena Ceaser wouldn't testify. His case might have been a little better if she didn't testify. It wasn't a case. It was a joke.

But no one would admit it. McColl made two serious runs at getting Nick out of jail before his trial. By September 15, less than a month after the murders took place, McColl had prepared a "presentation to the Dallas grand jury" outlining all of the major flaws and discrepancies in the state's case. But McColl, as the defense attorney, was not allowed to enter the grand jury room and had to depend on Dark to present his booklet of affidavits and arguments to the grand jurors.

"I'm not sure they ever saw it," McColl says.

Later McColl argued all the way to the appeals court for a reduction in Nick's bail below the prohibitive level of $500,000, where it had been set. His argument, based on a body of evidence that had grown even stronger in Jolly's favor, was that Jolly was not likely to make his own strong case bad by running. But Dark would not back down from his insistence that the case against Jolly was viable, and Jolly stayed in jail.

The motion for bail reduction was filed in October 1997, but many long months dragged by before the appeals court finally turned down the request. During that time, Nick's frequent collect calls from the jail pay phone to speak to his aunt, his brother, his girlfriend, and his 7-year-old nephew became less and less frequent.

"We had phone bills like $600 and $800 a month," Phyllis says. "But I wrote to Nick and said, if it's the money, please don't worry about it. We just have to hear from you. We have to hear from you."

At the other end of the living room of Phyllis Jolly's house, listening to her tell the story of the months when he didn't call, Nick drops his head and shakes it slowly back and forth. "It just got to where it was so bad in there, talking to people outside just made it worse."

Ultimately, the case against him fell apart under its own weight. Robert Dark claims it fell apart because Helena Ceaser failed to show up for key appointments and even for court hearings. She says that's a lie: She told Channel 4 she was ready to testify any day Dark wanted her to.

Whatever the details may be, until the case against him collapsed, Nick Jolly had to lie on that bunk in the 30-man tank in the North Tower of Lew Sterrett for the first 14 months of his adult life after high school and wonder what in the hell had happened to him.

"That's the question I sleep on every night," he says. "I wonder, Why me? She's been knowing me since grade school. Her brother who got killed, him and me were friends. We had never had no confrontations or nothing. We were just friends."

Pacing around his aunt's living room, gesturing broadly with his hands, Nick Jolly says, "When you're a fresh high school graduate, you're just starting to get your thoughts together, your frame of life. And I'm lying up there thinking about it. It seems like the justice system works against every young male minority. They can just take you and do whatever they want to with you."

Just in case Nick Jolly foolishly thought his nightmare ended the day they finally sent him home, the police came around and paid him a little visit a day later. They hauled him out of a friend's car and told him he was under arrest for those pesky traffic violations they'd arrested him on in the first place.

Holding a wrist out tentatively, he shows the scar where they clamped the cuffs down hard on him. "They said, 'We just let you out for a little bit, Jolly. Now we're taking you back where you belong.'"

As soon as he got before a judge, the judge agreed that 14 months in jail probably could be considered more than enough time already served for his traffic violations, and he was sent home again. But the lesson was clear. Whether the case against him was ever good or not, whether he was guilty or innocent, none of that mattered. Now, by beating it, he had pissed off the system.

"I honestly think the Dallas Police Department wants to get me so bad, they would have someone plant something on me," he says. "They got me so scared, if someone tried to break in my house, I'd be afraid to call the police, because they might come and take me to jail. That's why I just stay at home and try to keep to myself."

"I can't get a job. I went to a plant the other day with a friend. They hired him and not me. Later that evening, my name came up on the news again."

"I got the big picture now. The system is dirty. It's corrupt. The Dallas Police Department is dirty, and I honestly think they want to pull me down to their level. But I'm a strong man. Just because the system is corrupt, I'm not going to let it corrupt me."

"I just want people to know how I feel. I feel like I'm an animal, trapped inside a cage. I'm free, but I'm not free."