Milique Wagner was exhausted and bleary-eyed after three days under the glare of fluorescent lights in the Philadelphia Police Homicide Unit — but he says he still remembers the conversation with the detective, Philip Nordo, in vivid detail.
He'd already signed the papers Nordo put in front of him, and called his girlfriend to come pick him up. Nordo had been questioning Wagner about the fatal shooting of 29-year-old Braheem King on Feb. 10, 2010, insisting that Wagner was involved, and demanding information. But now the detective was about to let him go.
There was just one thing Nordo wanted to discuss first, Wagner said.
"He says ... he has a porn ring from out in New Jersey," Wagner said. "Would (I) ever consider doing guy-on-guy porn?" He described the detective's tone as sneaky, slick. "It was like he was fishing, just to see what I would say."
Wagner was deeply confused. He would have years of idle time to try to make sense of what Nordo had done. He was convicted of killing King, a man he said he did not know, in collusion with two codefendants he said he'd never met — even though the prosecution's star witness recanted on the stand and admitted that he was the killer. Wagner and his codefendants all are serving life in prison with no chance of parole.
On Friday, Nordo, 56, was sentenced to 24 1/2 to 49 years in state prison for rape, official oppression, and other charges connected to his abuse of informants and suspects he encountered in the course of his work as a Philadelphia homicide detective. A jury found him guilty in May, after hearing from three men who said Nordo had sexually assaulted them. One testified that Nordo raped him in a Chinatown hotel room.
"I don't think it's enough," Wagner said, "if you compare that to the time that he put people in jail for."
Now the question for Wagner — and scores of other men Nordo helped lock up — is what that means for their cases.
The 20-year Philadelphia police veteran, who spent seven years in homicide, is "radioactive," according to District Attorney Larry Krasner. His office's Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) has committed to reviewing all of Nordo's cases, and sharing all relevant police files with defense lawyers. It's the first time the DA's Office has revisited a detective's entire body of work.
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"This is someone who we now know was profoundly corrupt and was willing to turn things any which way to get what he wanted," Krasner said. "So we have to essentially disregard anything that he did. We have to regard it as being suspect. And then we have to look at what evidence remains. Sometimes, that evidence is compelling."
That review identified about 100 cases potentially involving Nordo, according to CIU supervisor Michael Garmisa.
He said the CIU declined to pursue more than half of the cases, but agreed that at least a dozen should be vacated. So far, five of those have led to full exonerations and two to plea deals. In the case of Marvin Hill — who described an encounter with Nordo almost identical to Wagner's — Judge Barbara McDermott upheld her guilty verdict, rejecting the DA's analysis of video evidence that concluded Hill could not have committed the murder. Judges have postponed decisions on other cases, demanding additional evidence.
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The DA's Office did not respond to questions about its position on Wagner's case.
Wagner was 21 years old when he was arrested for King's murder — a high school dropout still reeling from the traumas of his childhood in North Philadelphia.
He suffered from migraines, a result of being hit by a car when he was just 3, and was pummeled by loss: his mother, from cancer, when he was 9; then his best friend, gunned down on the street in broad daylight, when he was 19. Wagner's grandmother took him in, along with his sister, but he said he struggled to cope, self-medicating with marijuana, opioids, and cough syrup.
Wagner said he was trying to buy weed when police arrested him.
"I didn't try to run. ... I put my hands up. I didn't have any weapons or anything, so how can I be involved in this case?" he said. "That's what I'm trying to figure out."
It was a complex prosecution that merged Wagner's case with the cases against the two codefendants, Reafeal Fields and Kelvin Bryant — who were also charged with the murder of Michael Smith, 24. The jury would hear evidence of both killings in a single trial.
The linchpin of the case was a statement Nordo helped obtain, from a man named Amin Payne.
Payne's statement placed him with Wagner and Bryant at the home of Bryant's mother, just before King's murder. It said that Payne was heat-sealing bags of drugs inside while Wagner and Bryant were out front — and that, when Payne went outside, he saw the two shoot and kill King. Payne also reviewed surveillance video of Smith's murder at Nordo's request, and identified Fields and Bryant as Smith's killers. He even said Bryant confessed to committing both murders over disputed drug turf, saying: "I killed the one. I might as well get the rest."
Nordo also helped take a statement from a second witness — Bryant's stepfather, James Herman Adams Sr. — backing up Payne's story.
But at the trial both of those witnesses recanted.
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Adams testified he'd been high on crack and held overnight until he gave in and signed a statement. He said a detective gave him $20 and let him go. He said he'd never met Wagner, and hadn't even been home when the crime took place. "I was scared and nervous. I felt intimidated. They were going to lock me up if I didn't tell them what they wanted to hear."
And Payne testified not only that his statement was fabricated but that he was the one who killed King.
"When you said these gentlemen did it, I told you that I did it," he told the prosecutor from the witness stand. "You don't want to listen. I told y'all about the shootings, the murders that I committed, and you want to sit here and blame these people. For what, I don't know."
Payne, now in prison, declined an interview request.
Adams, in an interview, reiterated his testimony. And Bryant's mother, Debra Sumbler, said Payne and Wagner were never at her home. Sumbler said she did witness King's murder, though. She said Payne did it.
"I was looking out the window and I seen that with my own eyes," Sumbler said. "I heard the shot and I seen him running."
Wagner said he met his supposed co-conspirators, Fields and Bryant, for the first time in jail. Fields and Bryant confirmed that. All three maintain that they were wrongly convicted.
"Everybody's in-court statements was different than the out-of-court statements taken by Nordo," Bryant said. He said the prosecution's story about him running a drug organization was all a lie.
In court, during his sentencing, he denied killing King, whom he described as a friend. But he admitted to killing Smith — saying he fired the shots in anger after Smith had been harassing him.
Fields' position is, perhaps, even more unusual.
He has maintained that alibi witnesses could place him shoveling snow blocks away from Smith's murder. Fields alleged that he was falsely implicated when witnesses mistook him for his brother — who, he suggested, may have been involved with Smith's murder. He said Nordo coerced informants to support those initial errant IDs.
"I was wrongfully convicted of a crime that I didn't commit, all because of a dirty detective named Philip Nordo, and the corrupt and broken system," he said.
The men have been in prison for more than a decade.
Wagner said his most likely path forward may now be a plea agreement that would make him eligible for parole. He'd like to fight to clear his name — but, he said, he has little faith he'll receive a fair shot in court.
"I know how corrupt the system can be," he said, "and I don't want to take that chance with my freedom again."
Staff writer Chris Palmer contributed to this article.
