Information in this story came from 30 hours of interviews, a review of more than 1,500 pages of police records and court documents, video- and audio-recorded interrogations and in-person reporting.
Phrases that appear inside quotation marks represent a subject’s exact words as heard by the reporter, written in a transcript, quoted in a police report or captured on a recording. Dialogue shown in italics reflects people’s statements as recalled or summarized in interviews, news stories or police or court records. When people’s thoughts are described, they conveyed those thoughts in police statements, court testimony or interviews.
Reporter Gina Barton attended the trial and sentencing hearing of Marshawn Curtis for the rape of Joslyn Phillips in Lansing, Michigan. Barton reviewed transcripts of those court proceedings, as well as transcripts of pretrial hearings in the Phillips case and others in which Curtis was named as a defendant…