A Nightmare of Mistaken Identity : Honors Graduate Jailed for Week Until Alibi Proves True

Veleda Andromeda Douglas, a soft-spoken nutrition major from Howard University in Washington, D.C., packed her bags this summer after graduation and headed to West Covina on a Greyhound bus with dreams of a medical career.

Two days after her arrival, the 22-year-old honors student entered a nightmarish world of mistaken identity that kept her locked behind the bars of a Los Angeles County jail for one week.

Grand theft charges were dismissed Aug. 1 when police conceded that she was not really the woman who signed her name as Phanta Jane Bridgeworth on numerous bogus checks tied to an international fraud ring operated by Nigerians, which Southland authorities have been investigating for the last three years.

She Was Taking Exams

Douglas’ story of fear and confusion did not end until police called Howard University six days after her arrest and discovered that she had been busy taking final exams while some of the crimes were being committed.

“Prison was not even in my vocabulary,” Douglas said in a telephone interview from her father’s home in Las Vegas. “They treat you like you’re nothing. . . . It just scared me to death that I was going to be living with people who had committed murder.”

Pasadena deputy public defender Phil Lipson, who fought for Douglas’ release, said officers were remiss in not confirming her identity sooner.

“The whole incident outrages me and leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth for the criminal justice system,” he said, noting that Douglas had no criminal record. “There was a presumption that she was guilty and it was up to her to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was not.”

But Pasadena Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Court, who filed the complaint against Douglas, said police presented him with enough information to justify at least a preliminary hearing on the charges.

Mistakes ‘Inevitable’

“It’s inevitable that some mistakes are going to be made,” Court said. “I don’t think there’s time to be perfect. . . . Given the same circumstances again, we probably would file the case with what we knew at that precise moment.”

Douglas was arrested at a West Covina apartment July 17 by San Marino police officers who said that her braided hair, multiple earrings and light brown skin matched the description of a woman who is suspected of cashing about $25,000 in fraudulent checks in Pasadena and San Marino.

A telephone call made by Megan Abiodun Brice, a Nigerian national who is awaiting trial in Pasadena Municipal Court in connection with the alleged fraud scheme, was traced to the apartment unit, according to Sgt. Paul Butler of the San Marino Police Department.

Douglas was staying at the apartment with a Nigerian friend, who also was arrested but later released when police determined that he was not a suspect.

Although Douglas produced a Howard University identification card with a photograph, a diploma from her May graduation and a bus ticket showing that she had arrived just two days before, Butler said he was convinced that he had arrested the right suspect.

That evening, an employee at a San Marino bank where some of the bogus checks had been cashed selected Douglas’ picture from a photo line-up of six black women and exclaimed, “That’s her, you’ve got her!” according to Butler’s police report.

“Normally, we don’t go out trying to prove their alibi; we go out trying to prove the crime,” Butler said in an interview. “So many things pointed to her that made me think I had the right person when I arrested her.”

After spending the night of July 17 at the Covina Police Department, Douglas was booked at Sybil Brand Institute for Women. A Pasadena Municipal Court judge granted a request by San Marino officers to increase the customary $1,500 bail for grand theft to $100,000, an amount Douglas could not raise.

Having waived her right to have an attorney present during questioning, Douglas was not assigned a public defender until her arraignment July 22 in Pasadena Municipal Court.

Lipson, who took over the case July 23, said the arraignment was handled properly and that none of Douglas’ rights were violated during her time in jail.

Investigation of Alibi

Still, he said, officers should have investigated her alibi and analyzed a handwriting sample taken the day after her arrest before any charges were filed.

“All the time they could be checking these things out, she’s sitting in jail,” Lipson said. “To me, that’s wrong.”

But Butler said that given the evidence, he acted properly. “I can sleep nights knowing I did what I had to do and I did it right,” he said. “If I had not arrested her when I did I would look back and be critical of myself for not doing what I should have done.”

Douglas, who hopes to become a registered dietitian this fall and eventually enter medical school, said she was frightened and bewildered by her first experience behind bars.

“One of the most degrading things was being chained up like some kind of cattle on the way to court,” she recalled, adding that she was never physically mistreated. “I did not know how easy I had it before I went to jail.”

Her father, Fred Douglas, who flew to Los Angeles on July 23, said that he never doubted his daughter’s innocence. He said he felt it was useless to fly here the weekend after her arrest and that he got the first available flight the next week.

Handcuffed in Court

“The killing part about it was when she came in court with handcuffs on,” her father said. “I couldn’t stand that. It was the first time I cried since I was 12.”

Mpho Tutu, a close friend from Howard University, agreed there was no way Douglas could have committed the crime.

“She couldn’t have been there because she was busy graduating,” said Tutu, 22, the daughter of South African Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel laureate. “It’s all so silly.”

But for local police officers, convinced that they had a break in a sophisticated fraud ring operated by Nigerian nationals, there was little doubt that Douglas was the suspect they wanted.

“We’re talking about major fraud,” Butler said. “If you let one of those people out of jail, you’ll never see them again.”

Detective Gary Derenia of the Los Angeles Police Department said that several hundred Nigerians in Los Angeles County probably are involved in the scheme, and that he has arrested 50 to 100 Nigerians on fraud charges since 1984.

Schemes Cost Millions

A national conference held two years ago in Atlanta concluded that the credit schemes and fraudulent checks had cost several hundred million dollars in this country alone.

“It’s a big problem,” Derenia said. “They’re just eating up the banks, the credit cards and the insurance companies.”

The woman who signed her checks as Phanta Jane Bridgeworth, for example, had opened accounts at two San Marino banks in April with several out-of-state checks. After waiting several months for the banks to remove the automatic hold placed on newly deposited checks, the woman then deposited checks that were bogus, officers said.

Before bank officials could determine that the new checks had bounced, the woman, who is still at large, had withdrawn about $10,600 at the beginning of June from Lloyds Bank of California and Gibraltar Savings & Loan Assn., mostly through automatic teller transactions.

Pasadena police, who also want to file charges against the woman, say that the suspect bounced checks totaling nearly $15,000 from eight other banks in the area.

Names Similar

Butler, who found three bank employees who positively identified Douglas as the woman who cashed the checks, said his investigation into the fraud ring also turned up the names “Douglas” and “Veleta” (as distinguished from her first name “Veleda”) used in connection with mail drops in San Bernardino and Las Vegas.

Butler said he did not begin to doubt that Douglas was the suspect he wanted until several more bank employees indicated that they were only about 70% or 80% positive they could identify her.

When Douglas’ father flew in from Las Vegas, Butler decided to call Howard University, where officials verified that she had been a student there until her graduation in May.

At a hearing on July 24, Lipson was prepared to introduce a handwriting analysis concluding that Douglas had not signed the bogus checks. After Butler agreed with Lipson that she was not the suspect police were looking for, Douglas was released.

“It was a matter of a lot of similarities--and a lot of mistakes, if you will,” Butler said. “If it happened all over again, she would probably still have been arrested and still have been in jail. . . . But I probably would have made that phone call (to Howard University) a bit sooner.”

Request ‘Outrageous’

However, before the case could be formally dismissed, Pasadena Deputy Dist. Atty. Bert Schneirow requested at a hearing Aug. 1 that Douglas agree that her arrest was justified.

Lipson, who called the request “very outrageous,” said that Douglas refused to make such a statement. Schneirow could not be reached for comment.

Pasadena Municipal Court Judge Elvira Mitchell agreed at the Aug. 1 hearing to dismiss the case, but said that officers did have “sufficient, probable cause” to arrest Douglas.

“Seven days is a long time to have someone in jail before a decision is made,” Mitchell said. “(But) I would be remiss if I said there wasn’t enough evidence for filing a complaint.”

For Douglas, who said she would consider filing a lawsuit, the week in jail was like a misshapen piece in a jigsaw puzzle.

“It’s just sitting there,” she said. “It has no place.”