We get some crazy voicemails here at Folio Weekly, but this one has left us wondering whether to shut down the phone system entirely and move to Wichita. If you care to listen and have a good five minutes to squander, Click here.
Last week word spread quickly that Public Defender Matt Shirk had hired an investigator with a past. The news came with a link to an L.A. Times story printed in 1996 about how Rosalie Hernandez, married to the scion of one of Tampa’s founding Ybor City families, had left her husband, her $375,000 home, her Mercedes 300 and her four daughters for serial killer Oscar Ray Bolin.
Once word was out that Shirk hired a woman married to a serial killer, Shirk cancelled his contract with Bolin. He said he didn’t realize her past. The same day, Folio Weekly’s Susan Cooper Eastman had a free-wheeling telephone conversation with Bolin from Bolin’s Jacksonville home. Bolin said she didn’t talk to the media, but then she laughed, joked, and got serious about explaining her work in an interview that ran roughly 45 minutes. Here are some quotations from that conversation.
“I stand by my reputation. My marriage is irrelevant to what I do. It’s disappointing and unnerving, but I stand by my reputation.”
“I am helping people.”
“My agenda is to assist a lawyer in getting life instead of the death penalty.”
“I was making half what I make in other jurisdictions. But it is what it is. I will trudge forward. This only enhances my quest to work with the fabulous lawyers who support me.”
“What better forum is there to fight for the underdog than the Public Defender’s Office? I still believe that the Public Defender will call me into complex cases.”
“I’ve been married 14 years [to Oscar Ray Bolin] in October. That’s personal. Quite frankly, it is no one’s business what I’m doing. I’m not hurting anybody.”
“People say I am a bad mother because what I did doesn’t conform to what other people do. I had great drive. I lived in a half-million-dollar house. But people don’t know what does on inside. It’s not anybody’s business. How is my life so interesting? Why don’t people ask about what I do in my professional life. I can tell amazing things I’ve done, really. There was a man on Death Row who told me where the body of the victim could be found. He negotiated a plea deal. I’ve worked on over 800 cases. Nobody has more exposure and more access than me, and every day I have more.”
“[Twenty-one] percent of people on Death Row are from Duval County. Do you think they got there because their cases could not be mitigated? You can’t do mitigation if you aren’t given the resources to do a life history investigation. It can take lots of money. It is the nature of the animal that we spent lots of money convicting a person, and we need to spend lots of money trying to save their lives. (more…)
“I felt like I was going in to see Hannibal Lector.”
– What local death penalty mitigation specialist Rosalie Bolin told the LA Times she was thinking the first time she went to see the man who would later become her husband, Death Row inmate Oscar Ray Bolin – a man convicted of the brutal rape and murders of three women.
Rosalie Bolin, who was recently hired by 4th District Public Defender Matt Shirk, eventually gave up her $375,000 home, her Mercedes 300, her marriage to prominent criminal defense attorney Victor Martinez and her four children in order to marry Bolin. She quit the Hillsborough County’s public defender’s office under pressure, after jail officials suggested she’d had sex with Bolin in his cell. For a link to the eye-opening LA Times story, click here.
To read how the Florida Times-Union completely soft-shoes the hire and glosses over Rosalie Bolin’s past, click here.
– Anne Schindler