On This Day: 18-year-old girl found murdered, leading to trial of the Norfolk Four

NORFOLK, Va. (WWBT) – On this day in history, July 8, 1997, 18-year-old Michelle Moore-Bosko was found dead by her husband after being raped, stabbed, and strangled.

Four sailors later confessed to the crime despite any evidence linking them to it, and they became known as the Norfolk Four. Three of them were given life sentences, the other sentenced to 8.5 years in prison.

Years later, a fifth man named Omar Ballard confessed to the crime, saying he acted alone. But it would take years before the Norfolk Four would be released from prison and pardoned.

Mary Kelly Tate, the director of the Institute for Actual Innocence at the University of Richmond School of Law, delves into why the Norfolk Four would confess to a crime they didn’t commit in NBC12′s history podcast How We Got Here:

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