Man Arrested and Charged for 2000 Killing After DA Disavows Previous Conviction

When Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk earlier this month disavowed the conviction of a man named Paul Garrett for the 2000 murder of a Nashville sex worker, they didn't just say that police and prosecutors 20 years ago got the wrong guy. A report from the office's Conviction Review Unit also made clear that at least some police officers and prosecutors have believed for some time that they knew who Velma Tharpe's real killer was. 

This morning that man was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in Tharpe's death. His name is Calvin Atchison.

There was never any physical evidence or witness testimony that pointed to Garrett as the killer, but the CRU's report details false testimony from a police detective and negligence on the part of prosecutors, under then-DA Torry Johnson, that led to Garrett pleading guilty to avoid a life sentence. 

Atchison is innocent until proven guilty, of course. And according to the CRU, the story of Garrett's apparent wrongful conviction only emphasizes the dangers of tunnel vision in an investigation. But Atchison is not a new suspect. On the contrary, the CRU's report reveals that authorities have had physical evidence tying him to Tharpe's murder since 2004, the year after Garrett was sent to prison. In December of that year, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation alerted police and the DA's office that the agency had found a match in the national Combined DNA Index System for the DNA taken from Tharpe’s body. That match was Atchison. In her report, CRU director Sunny Eaton says that the original DA's office file on the case, “There is a yellow sticky note on this letter saying ‘someone should look into this’ but nothing indicating anyone did so.’”

Seven years later, in an internal report on the case prompted by the work of MNPD Cold Case Unit detectives, then-Assistant District Attorney Kathy Morante wrote that she believed "that Atchison probably did murder Tharpe" and that Det. Mike Roland and Sgt. Pat Postiglione "would like to see Atchison charged."