He Spent 37 Years In Prison For A Crime He Didn’t Commit—Then A DNA Breakthrough Finally Revealed The Truth

“Nothing can make up for the time that I lost in prison.” For nearly four decades, Robert DuBoise waited for the world to catch up with the truth he had known all along. He was innocent. In 1983, 19-year-old Barbara Grams was brutally violated and fatally wounded in Tampa, Florida. DuBoise was a teenager himself at the time, trying to help his family survive and build a life of his own. However, a flawed investigation pulled him into a case that consumed not only his formative years but also much of the life that followed. Tampa Bay 28/YouTube A questionable bite mark became evidence, a jailhouse informant became a witness, and a teenager who had trusted police enough to cooperate with them found himself convicted of a crime he did not commit. DNA evidence would expose the truth in 2020. Freedom would come, alongside a $14 million settlement. But nothing could pay for the life he had lost. Insolito - True Crime/YouTube DuBoise grew up in a financially strained household in Tampa as the second youngest of five siblings. His parents often depended on government assistance and food from church pantries to make ends meet. That environment taught him about responsibility from an early age. His father, who had been paralyzed after an accident involving a meat freezer, taught him how to repair things. DuBoise carried those lessons with him, and it landed him work at an auto-upholstery shop. Amid helping his family and working, however, DuBoise had some early run-ins with the law. Insolito - True Crime/YouTube He was booked for offenses including possession of a stolen bicycle and entry into an unlocked property. As a teenager, these records seemed like little more than youthful mistakes. Years later, though, they became something else entirely. They became part of the background prosecutors used to portray him in a more damaging light. Insolito - True Crime/YouTube Barbara Grams worked at the Hot Potato Restaurant in the Tampa Bay Center mall. Those who knew her described her as sociable and generous. On the night of August 18, however, her acquaintances saw and heard from her for the last time. Grams ended her shift shortly after 9 p.m. and began walking home, but she never made it. The following morning, a dentist arriving at his office near Hutto’s Corner discovered her body. Grams had been beaten severely around the face. Blood and hair were found on nearby pieces of lumber, which investigators considered possible weapons. Medical examiner Dr. Lee Miller determined blunt-force trauma to the head as her cause of passing. Then he noticed something else. A semicircular mark on Grams’ left cheek. Miller believed it could be a bite. FOX 13 Tampa Bay/YouTube That small mark would soon become one of the most important pieces of evidence in the entire case. And eventually, it would point investigators toward Robert DuBoise. FOX 13 Tampa Bay/YouTube Miller contacted Richard Powell, a local dentist who was listed as a forensic odontologist. He examined a photograph of the bite mark and suggested it might have been made by someone with a missing or displaced upper tooth. Richard Souviron, a prominent forensic odontologist from Coral Gables, was then brought into the investigation. He advised detectives to collect dental impressions from potential suspects and compare them with the injury. At the time, bite-mark analysis carried the appearance of science. But the science was nowhere near as certain as investigators treated it. The technique had not been subjected to the rigorous standards common today. It could not reliably establish who had committed a crime. It could not even establish with certainty that the mark was made by a human. That uncertainty, however, did not stop the investigation. Detectives began looking for someone whose teeth could be made to fit the theory. And soon, they found a name. Insolito - True Crime/YouTube Detective Philip Saladino spoke with a woman who worked at a convenience store near the crime scene. She did not know Grams, but when asked about local men she considered troublesome, she gave three first names: Ray. Robert. Bo. Robert’s previous convictions made him stand out, and before long, police were knocking on his door. He, however, had nothing to hide. Insolito - True Crime/YouTube He was willing to cooperate, convinced that the investigators were simply doing their jobs — and that once they examined the evidence, they would realize they had the wrong person. He allowed Saladino to make a mold of his teeth on September 25 and walked away believing he had done his part. But the investigation did not move away from him. It moved closer. In the days that followed, Saladino appeared to be everywhere DuBoise had been. He interrogated people at the upholstery shop, and even asked questions at Journey’s End, the bar where DuBoise played pool. DuBoise tried calling Saladino to find out what was happening but was brushed off. FOX 13 Tampa Bay/YouTube Then came the conclusion that changed his life forever. A dentist told detectives that DuBoise's teeth matched the mark on Grams' face, despite the absence of the missing/displaced tooth they had been looking for. Julian Dahl/Pexels (Not the actual image) On Friday, October 21, DuBoise accepted an invitation from Joanne “Josie” Suarez to go bar-hopping. He had met her earlier that year after she nearly ran him over in a bar parking lot. She was four years older than him, dressed like someone from television and still recovering from a violent car crash that had left her scarred. DuBoise nevertheless liked her. To Suarez, though, he was little more than a “lowl**e” acquaintance. Earlier that evening, DuBoise had rented one of the Peter Pan Motel’s rickety rooms off Hillsborough Avenue. He hoped Suarez would return with him after they finished drinking. Instead, the night ended with police at his door. Before that happened, officers had approached Suarez. “Your pal ki**ed someone,” she later remembered them saying. “You need to help us bring him in.” RDNE Stock project/Pexels (Not the actual image), ai-assisted image When police knocked on DuBoise’s door at 2 a.m., he had no idea why they were disturbing him. The officers told him that his mother was in trouble and asked him to come with them. Worried about her, DuBoise agreed. RDNE Stock project/Pexels (Not the actual image) At the station, he was taken into a sergeant’s office, where an officer began chatting casually about fishing. DuBoise barely listened. He was confused, and his thoughts remained fixed on his mother. Then, without warning, the officer changed the subject. “Why did you do it?” he asked. “Why’d I do what?” DuBoise replied. “Why’d you k*ll her?” RDNE Stock project/Pexels (Not the actual image) DuBoise insisted that he had no idea what the officer was talking about, but the questioning only grew more aggressive. According to his later testimony, officers held him down, shackled his wrists and ankles, and took him to jail. Insolito - True Crime/YouTube The prosecution still needed more than a disputed bite mark to secure its case against DuBoise. It found what it needed inside the Hillsborough County Jail. His name was Claude Butler. Butler was facing felony charges for armed kidnapping, armed robbery, probation violations, and attacking a law enforcement officer. Under Florida law at the time, the kidnapping and robbery charges alone could have sent him to prison for life. He knew that helping investigators could improve his own situation. When an opportunity arose in DuBoise’s case, Butler took it. He told police that DuBoise had confessed to him behind bars. FOX 13 Tampa Bay/YouTube According to Butler, DuBoise said that he had been riding around with his brother, Victor, and their friend Raymond Garcia when the three men abducted Grams, robbed her, and violated her. He claimed that DuBoise admitted watching while another man attacked Grams and said that someone had struck her with a piece of wood. Butler denied receiving anything in exchange for his testimony. What happened to his own criminal case, though, told a different story. In 1984, Butler pleaded guilty to his charges and received a five-year sentence, despite having initially faced the possibility of life in prison. Then, in June 1985, prosecutors filed a motion asking the court to reduce his sentence to time served. Thirteen months after entering jail, Butler walked free. DuBoise’s own freedom was the price. Florida Police Department DuBoise’s trial began in February 1985, after he had spent more than a year in jail. Defense attorneys opened by arguing that no physical evidence connected him to the crime. Hairs recovered from Grams’ body did not match DuBoise. No fingerprint placed him behind the dental office. No eyewitness had seen him with the victim. The bite mark itself was also questionable. Souviron’s testimony nevertheless carried weight, particularly because of his role in the prosecution of Ted Bundy. He claimed that DuBoise’s teeth had left the mark on Grams’ cheek “to a reasonable degree of certainty.” During cross-examination, he acknowledged that he had previously told police chiefs: “If you tell me that is the guy that did it, I will go into court and say that that is the guy that did it.” He, however, argued that the statement had been taken out of context. The jurors agreed. Butler then took the stand. He described DuBoise as a close friend, even though DuBoise maintained they were not. The defense argued that a few testimonies and disputed bite-mark evidence were not enough to convict him. The jury disagreed. The verdict was guilty of first-degree homicide and attempted non-consensual contact. Florida Police Department The jury recommended life imprisonment for DuBoise Judge Harry Lee Coe III, however, rejected the recommendation and sentenced DuBoise to face the electric chair. He described his actions as “atrocious and cruel” and called him “wicked” and “evil.” At Florida State Prison, DuBoise’s world shrank to an isolated cell and the mechanical sounds of heavy doors opening and closing. Every day carried the same knowledge. One day, he might be executed. DuBoise, however, had not surrendered his belief that he would eventually be saved. Three years later, that hope finally gave way to a measure of relief when the Florida Supreme Court overturned his original sentence, ruling that the judge had improperly disregarded the jury’s recommendation. His punishment was reduced to life imprisonment plus 15 years. FOX 13 Tampa Bay/YouTube DuBoise learned how to survive prison. He repaired air conditioners, radios, electrical fixtures, and other equipment. His mechanical skills gave him something to do — and earned him a measure of respect. But as he got used to his life, he never stopped fighting for his release. He sent letters to newspapers, politicians, television programs, and legal organizations, explaining the flaws in his conviction and asking anyone willing to listen to examine the evidence for years. Then, in 2006, he requested DNA testing, taking matters into his own hands. By then, the method had transformed criminal investigations and helped expose wrongful convictions across the country. DuBoise hoped for it to help him too. However, he received devastating news: The evidence had been destroyed in 1990. More than a decade later, someone looked again. FOX 13 Tampa Bay/YouTube The Innocence Project took up DuBoise's case in 2018. The Hillsborough County Conviction Review Unit, established under State Attorney Andrew Warren, also got involved. The review cast doubt on both major pillars of the prosecution’s case. The bite-mark theory had faced growing skepticism, with a later examination by forensic odontologist Adam Freeman concluding that the injury on Grams’ face was not a human bite mark at all. Butler’s incentives for cooperating with prosecutors also raised serious concerns. Then, in August 2020, Teresa Hall, the supervising attorney for the Conviction Review Unit, searched through the medical examiner’s files. She found three slides containing samples from Grams’ case — the evidence that DuBoise had once been told was destroyed. She wasted no time sending them for testing. 10 Tampa Bay News/YouTube The results showed that the male genetic profile found in the biological material did not belong to DuBoise. It also excluded his brother and friend Raymond Garcia. “There is not one shred of evidence that DuBoise committed the crime,” Warren said, calling the conclusion unequivocal. The findings subsequently pointed investigators toward Amos Robinson and Abron Scott, two men already serving life sentences for a separate 1983 homicide, as the actual perpetrators. For DuBoise, meanwhile, the moment he had spent decades hoping for had finally arrived. He walked out of prison on August 27, 2020. His mother and sister were waiting to take him home — as though he were still a teenager, rather than a 55-year-old man. “I never lost faith that today would come,” DuBoise said outside the jail. Insolito - True Crime/YouTube DuBoise was left to make choices that most people gradually navigate over adulthood — where to live, how to build a career, and whether to seek a spouse and have children. For all its joy, his release was proving bittersweet. “I can never regain the life I could have made for myself,” he said. Despite the composure he had maintained since leaving prison, DuBoise made clear that he had not let go of his anger. “Just because I have a good attitude does not mean I’m not mad about what was done to me.” Spectrum News/YouTube In October 2021, DuBoise sued the City of Tampa, the police officers involved in his arrest, and the forensic expert whose bite-mark testimony helped convict him. He alleged that officials had relied on evidence they knew, or should have known, was unreliable. Securing compensation, however, proved difficult under Florida’s rules. Because DuBoise had been booked for other offenses, he was ineligible for the state's statutory financial redress program. So once again, he had to fight for what he was owed. After more than two years of litigation, Tampa's City Council unanimously approved a $14 million settlement in February 2024. The payment was divided into three installments: $9 million in 2024, $3 million in 2025, and $2 million in 2026. Spectrum News/YouTube To an ordinary person, the amount might seem enormous. But DuBoise knew it could never give him back the years he had lost — the birthdays and holidays he had missed, or the life he might have built outside prison. So he said: “I’m grateful that with this settlement this case is done and I can move on with my life. “But money, a house, nothing can make up for the time that I lost in prison.”