What to know about our six-part Marcus Yates murder investigation, ‘The Wrong Man’

In summer 1988, two men started blasting guns at each other in a tiny Southwest Philadelphia candy store, killing 5-year-old Marcus Yates and wounding his brother and another boy.

His killing enraged the city and put intense pressure on the police department to find the killers. Detectives locked up two men — Michael Gaynor and Ike Johnson — who were later convicted of murder and sentenced to life without parole.

Decades later, Marcus’ mother met with both men, believing she could find peace only by forgiving them. She came away aghast, realizing the police account of the crime wasn’t at all what she had been led to believe.

The Inquirer investigated and discovered Gaynor was indeed the wrong man. Through dogged reporting, The Inquirer found the right man — a man new to Philadelphia that summer and known only by his street name, Harbor. The Inquirer has detailed all of this in a six-part series, The Wrong Man: A Story of Deception and Redemption.

Over the years, Inquirer reporter Barbara Laker had written follow-up stories on the high-profile crime and the Yates family. In late spring, she learned that Marcus’ mother, Rochelle Yates-Whittington, decided that to find peace, she needed to forgive the two men convicted of killing her son. She met both men — Michael Gaynor and Ike Johnson — by prison video. She came away in shock, learning that Gaynor hadn’t been in the store at the time of the shooting and likely was innocent. Laker later met with Gaynor, now 57, in prison, spent time with him, and decided to investigate the case. She obtained 21 witness statements, read thousands of pages of court transcripts, police records, and decades of news stories, and interviewed more than four dozen people.

In summer 1988, the city was reeling from a crack cocaine epidemic and a surge in violence against children. Police were pressured to quickly find Marcus’ killers. On the surface, Gaynor seemed like a possible suspect: He lived around the corner from the candy store and was a low-level crack dealer. He was from Jamaica, and police had been informed that both shooters were Jamaican.

After the candy store shootout, police impounded cars nearby, including Gaynor’s 1988 Nissan 300ZX. Gaynor, in a move that defies logic if he were guilty of murdering a child, called police to find out where he could retrieve it. Detective Paul Worrell, lead investigator on the case, told Gaynor to come to Police Headquarters, known as the Roundhouse. Worrell took Gaynor into an interrogation room, placed him in handcuffs, sat him in a chair bolted to the floor, and accused him of killing the 5-year-old boy, according to Gaynor. Worrell put a plastic bag over his head, Gaynor said, held it tight, and told him he had to admit to the killing. Gaynor told him he’d talk, but wouldn’t confess to a crime he didn’t commit. In fact, witnesses had told police the other shooter was a man known on the street as Harbor.

No one seemed to know Harbor’s real name. He had recently moved to Philadelphia from New York. One witness, Stanfordson “Stan” Xavier, told police he had met Harbor when they were both locked up at Rikers Island in New York. Xavier was driving near the candy store when he recognized Harbor on the street and called him over.

It’s unclear how much effort police put into tracking Harbor down. Worrell, when asked during the murder trial why police hadn’t tried to find him, replied: “I had investigated that name early on in the investigation, in the fall of 1988. …That name was a nickname. That name has never been attached to any human being that is in my capability to find nor within the New York Police Department’s capability to find. Our determination was that that person did not exist.”

Finding Harbor was challenging because no one Laker talked to at first knew his real name, not even Xavier. She eventually identified people in New York and Jamaica who may have heard of him. Cold-calling one person after another, she found a woman who knew people in the same circle as Harbor. She agreed to contact them and found a woman who had visited Harbor while he was in Rikers Island. His real name was Paul Jacobs. Laker then confirmed his identity through prison records from the time. Laker was told Jacobs may have been killed in Los Angeles, so she confirmed his identity through a county medical examiner’s report that listed his cause of death as homicide, the accompanying death record that confirmed his known spouse’s name, and subsequent interviews with a relative and a family friend.

It depends. He and his family could retain a lawyer who could file a Post Conviction Relief Act petition to the court to vacate his conviction and grant a new trial.

But first, Gaynor’s lawyer would need to obtain the Philadelphia Police Department’s homicide investigation file, commonly called “the H file,” to learn if police and prosecutors had information favorable to Gaynor that wasn’t turned over to the defense and that would likely have resulted in jurors’ reaching a different verdict.

The H file, if complete, documents all the steps that detectives took in the course of their investigation, including all leads police obtained, efforts made to identify the suspects, all interviews and interrogations conducted by each detective who worked the case, and the results of any forensic testing.

For example, the file would outline what, if anything, detectives did to try to find Harbor.

If Gaynor files a PCRA petition with the court, a judge would hold hearings. If the judge decides to vacate Gaynor’s case, it would be up to the District Attorney’s Office to retry the case, or not.

The DA’s Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) could also open an inquiry into Gaynor’s case, and obtain and analyze the H file. If the CIU found exculpatory evidence that had not been shared with Gaynor’s defense lawyers 36 years ago, the office would inform Gaynor and his current lawyer, who in turn could file a petition to try to vacate the conviction.