Barbara Simon, a woman who now looks like your friendly neighborhood substitute teacher with her silver-rimmed glasses and a mound of curls, carries a shadowed past far removed from alphabet lessons and story time. For two decades, she was “The Closer,” a homicide investigator for the Detroit Police Department, renowned for her almost magical ability to extract confessions in murder cases. She was credited with solving hundreds of these gruesome crimes, a real force to be reckoned with on the police force. But this reputation, once a badge of honor, has now been tarnished, turning her into a figure central to a disturbing pattern of injustice.
The unsettling truth is that at least six murder convictions she helped secure have been overturned. The courts found that the confessions and eyewitness statements she obtained were tainted by misconduct, ranging from coercion to outright falsification. This wasn’t some minor oversight; it led to innocent Black men spending years, even decades, behind bars. Their lives were stolen, their families torn apart, all while Simon continued her lauded career. The human cost of her alleged tactics, first brought to light by the Detroit Metro Times in 2024, is immeasurable, leaving deep and lasting emotional scars on those wrongly imprisoned. And while these injustices have led to millions of dollars in settlements paid by Detroit taxpayers, neither the city nor the police department has ever officially acknowledged any wrongdoing by Simon. Despite the mounting evidence, she’s never faced a single charge, and the police department never disciplined her for these claims. Yet, many of her former cases are now under scrutiny, and more exonerations are expected, a grim testament to the systemic issues her actions represent.
One of the men whose life was irrevocably altered by Simon is Mark Craighead. In 2000, he found himself in an interrogation room with Simon, dragged there by Detroit police who claimed it was about an old, unsolved case. Craighead had been questioned twice before for the murder of his close friend, Chole Pruett, consistently maintaining his innocence and providing an alibi: he was at work in a locked warehouse 20 miles away. He vividly recalls being held overnight in a roach and mouse-infested jail cell, his pleas to call his wife or an attorney ignored. When he finally met Simon, her words were chilling. She allegedly told him his wife would find a new husband and his kids would call someone else “daddy” if he didn’t confess, threatening him with a life sentence. She then forced him into a polygraph test, which he was told he failed. Simon allegedly used this “failure” and a nonexistent witness statement to paint a picture of inescapable guilt, pushing him to confess. But then, she switched tactics, suggesting there “must have been a reason” for the shooting, offering him a narrative of an accidental fight where a gun “just went off.” She promised her help in reducing charges, getting an attorney, and securing bond – if he just told her what she wanted to hear. Faced with what felt like an impossible choice, Craighead, seeing no other way out, signed a confession written by Simon. He was convicted of manslaughter, a conviction he fought tirelessly even after his parole in 2009. His perseverance eventually paid off in 2021 when a judge vacated his conviction, citing Simon’s “history of falsifying confessions and lying under oath.” This groundbreaking decision, affirmed by the Michigan Court of Appeals, finally led to Craighead’s exoneration, exposing a disturbing pattern in Simon’s interrogation methods.
The repercussions of Simon’s actions extended to Justly Johnson and Kendrick Scott, who each endured nearly two decades behind bars for a murder they didn’t commit, a case Simon had investigated. They were arrested for the brutal killing of Lisa Kindred in 1999, based on eyewitness testimony that was later recanted. Johnson poignantly remembers the pressure on the Detroit police to close a high-profile case, regardless of who was truly guilty. “Somebody in that neighborhood was going to prison,” he recalled, “They didn’t care who it was.” Their lives were, in his words, “destroyed.” Despite numerous appeals, their breakthrough came 12 years later when Charmous Skinner Jr., Kindred’s son, who was eight at the time of the murder and right beside his mother, testified that Johnson and Scott were not the killers. This crucial new evidence led to their exoneration in 2018. Johnson’s affidavit details how Simon allegedly told him she was under immense pressure to close the case, even claiming that “the mayor was on her boss, and her boss was on them (homicide investigators) and they were going to charge me with the murder whether I was innocent or not.” She even allegedly threatened him with conviction for killing a white woman, storming out of the room. In a 2020 deposition regarding the Kindred case, Simon claimed no memory of it and denied any involvement in interrogating the recanting witnesses, stating, “I did my job. I did the best that I could.”
The systemic nature of the problems exposed by Simon’s career runs deeper than one individual. Imran Syed, a law professor and co-director of the Michigan Innocence Clinic, calls Simon “the poster child” of Detroit police misconduct during the 1990s and 2000s, but emphasizes that she wasn’t alone. He describes a culture where her tactics were not just tolerated but perhaps even encouraged. This problematic culture was even the subject of a Department of Justice investigation, which found that the Detroit Police Department’s homicide section in the 1990s was notorious for unlawfully arresting people across entire neighborhoods, even those simply believed to have information about a murder. This meant that when a high-profile murder occurred, police were “happy to violate the rights of every single person in that community,” often arresting any “random young Black man who was in the vicinity.” This institutional failing led to Detroit averaging over 500 homicides annually during that decade, with police making arrests in more than three cases for every actual homicide, yet solving fewer than half of them. Fortunately, with increased public awareness and accountability, the Detroit Police Department has undergone reforms, including federal oversight from 2003 to 2014, aimed at curbing unlawful practices. Additionally, a state law passed in 2013 now requires video and audio recordings of statements from those arrested for major crimes, a crucial step towards preventing future injustices.
The cost of these past injustices has also been borne by Detroit taxpayers, with millions of dollars in settlements paid to the wrongly accused. Johnson and Scott, for instance, each received $8 million. Attorney Wolfgang Mueller, who represented Johnson, Scott, and Craighead, believes that while the new police leadership seems more accountable, the hefty settlement payments and the “black eye” given to good cops are also playing a role in driving change. The grim reality is that Simon’s interrogations often took place in the dilapidated old police headquarters at 1300 Beaubien Street, where witnesses and suspects were often held for hours or even days without probable cause in squalid conditions. David Moran, co-founder of the Michigan Innocence Clinic, worries about the sheer number of potentially “bogus” or “tainted” cases Simon handled over her long career. The Michigan Court of Appeals noted “striking” similarities in her interrogation methods across multiple cases, further highlighting her consistent patterns. George Calicut Jr. is another victim of this pattern. He initially admitted to stealing a cell phone in 1999 but later signed a false confession, allegedly drafted by Simon, claiming he killed a woman for “$5 and a cell phone.” Despite a lack of eyewitnesses or physical evidence, and unperformed DNA testing, he was convicted. Simon allegedly promised to reduce his charge to manslaughter if he cooperated and warned him against contacting a lawyer, threatening him with a first-degree murder charge if he did. It took nearly 30 years and DNA evidence excluding him from the scene for Calicut to be freed last month. Lamarr Monson’s case offers another chilling example of Simon’s tactics. Convicted in 1997 based on a false confession he claims Simon coerced, he endured 20 years in prison. Monson described Simon as “aggressive” and “mean,” twisting his words and inserting information about stabbing a girl, despite medical examiner testimony that the child was likely beaten. He recounts her shutting down and leaving the room when he asked for a lawyer or to use the phone, only to return and resume her questioning, actively “piecing together what she wanted things to look like.” Years later, Moran, Monson’s attorney, discovered fingerprints in dried blood on a toilet tank lid from the crime scene, which matched another man who had confessed to his ex-girlfriend. Monson was released, settling his case with the city for $8.5 million. He, along with others, yearns for Simon to be held accountable for targeting “young Black men in particular.” Just weeks after Calicut’s release, Roy Blackmon, also convicted based on a statement obtained by Simon, was freed when witnesses recanted, stating Simon had coerced them by threatening accessory to murder charges if they didn’t implicate Blackmon. These men, Johnson, Scott, Craighead, Monson, and Calicut, are now trying to rebuild their shattered lives. For them, justice won’t be complete until Barbara Simon answers for the profound harm she inflicted. While these men pray for her, some find forgiveness difficult, believing she needs to be punished for the decades of pain she caused. Meanwhile, Barbara Simon, now working as a substitute teacher for young children, her previous role as a special agent for the Michigan Attorney General’s Child Support Division seemingly uneventful, ironically remains untroubled by the legal system that she so profoundly misused.