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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "In 2017, a judge granted Pursley a new trial based on developments involving the firearms evidence. After spending approximately 23 years in prison, Pursley was released while awaiting retrial. The retrial exposed how much the case had changed. The defense emphasized that no eyewitness identified Pursley as the shooter, that no DNA connected him to the crime and that the firearms evidence once touted as conclusive could no longer be presented with the certainty jurors heard in 1994. According to images shown in court, markings on the test shell casing fired from Pursley’s gun and the markings of the casing found near Ascher’s body didn’t match. They were glaringly different. In other words, Judge Joe McGraw had not choice but to conclude that Patrick Pursley was right all along. His gun was not used to kill Andy Ascher. In January 2019, Pursley’s bench trial was over. McGraw found him not guilty. An unsolved murder Two years later, Pursley was granted a certificate of innocence, formally recognizing that he had been wrongfully convicted."
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STORY: "The Andy Ascher murder: Inside the wrongful conviction of Patrick Pursley," by Jim Hagerty, published by WTVO, on September 2, 2026. (Jim Hagerty has been reporting news in the Rockford region for two decades. Before landing at WTVO/WQRF, Jim was a reporter at the Rockford Register Star, an editor and staff writer at The Rock River Times, and the publisher of the local news website, Rockford Advocate. Jim also had a stint as a reporter at Rockford’s CBS affiliate and appeared in the docuseries, “Convicting a Murderer.” He is a graduate of Northern Michigan University in Marquette.)
GIST: For nearly 25 years, Patrick Pursley sat in prison for a murder he insisted he did not commit.
A Winnebago County jury convicted Pursley in 1994 of fatally shooting 22-year-old Andy Ascher during what prosecutors described as a botched robbery in Rockford. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The case appeared straightforward. Police had a suspect, a gun and testimony from a state firearms expert who told jurors the murder bullets and shell casings matched a Taurus 9mm pistol recovered from Pursley’s apartment.
More than two decades later, that evidence would unravel.
Pursley was granted a new trial, acquitted in 2019 and later awarded a certificate of innocence. I
In 2024, Rockford agreed to pay $5 million to settle his wrongful-conviction lawsuit.
The case remains one of the most significant wrongful convictions in Illinois history and has become a cautionary tale about the power of forensic evidence presented with certainty that later could not be supported.
The murder
On the night of April 2, 1993, Andy Ascher and his girlfriend, Becky George, were sitting in a vehicle outside her brother’s condominium on Silent Wood Trail in Rockford.
According to court records, a masked gunman opened the driver’s side door and announced a robbery.
“This is a stickup,” George recalled the gunman saying when she testified at Pursely’s second trial.
George attempted to hand over money from her purse. Before any money was taken, the gunman fired two shots into Ascher’s head and fled on foot. Ascher died from his injuries.
Investigators recovered two 9mm shell casings and bullets from the scene. George could not identify the shooter. She described a man wearing dark clothing and a blue ski mask.
Building a case
The investigation intensified after police received a Crime Stoppers tip from Marvin Windham, who alleged that Pursley had admitted involvement in the killing.
Police soon focused on Pursley and searched the apartment he shared with his girlfriend, Samantha Crabtree. During that search, officers recovered two guns, including a Taurus 9mm semiautomatic handgun that belonged to Crabtree.
Crabtree then became a central witness.
Police said she told investigators that she and Pursley had been driving around on the night of the murder, that Pursley left her vehicle near Silent Wood Trail, that she heard gunshots and that he returned carrying the Taurus pistol.
Her statement, combined with the recovered firearm, formed the backbone of the prosecution’s case.
The evidence that mattered most
At trial, prosecutors presented Illinois State Police firearms examiner Daniel Gunnell as a key witness.
Gunnell testified that bullets and shell casings recovered from the Ascher murder scene matched the Taurus pistol seized from Pursley’s apartment. According to court records and later summaries of the case, Gunnell concluded the evidence matched that firearm “to the exclusion of all other firearms.”
The testimony carried extraordinary weight because nothing else tied Pursley to the murder. No finger prints, certainly no DNA. And, Becky George could not identify him as the gunman only that the man who shot her boyfriend “sounded” like a black man.
The prosecution’s case depended heavily on Crabtree’s testimony and the state’s assertion that science had conclusively linked Pursley’s gun to the murder.
Jurors convicted Pursley, and he was sentenced to natural life in prison. The jury didn’t buy Crabtree when she recanted her statement to police, saying investigators coerced her into naming her then-boyfriend as the killer.
A fight from prison
Pursley never stopped claiming he was innocent. His post-conviction motions were all denied though.
Still, he continued challenging the firearms evidence, arguing that the scientific conclusions presented to jurors were wrong. Pursley repeatedly contacted innocence organizations seeking help and maintained that faulty ballistics testimony had led to his conviction. His message was simple: His gun was not the one used to kill Andy Ascher.
The turning point came in 2007.
Steven Drizin, then legal-director of Northwester University’s Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth, agreed to take the case. Drizin, who later appeared in “Making a Murderer,” assembled a team that included attorneys from Jenner & Block and began pursuing modern analysis of the firearms evidence that had secured Pursley’s conviction.
Re-examining the ballistics evidence
The defense sought testing using the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, a computerized database that allows digital comparison of firearms evidence.
The effort sparked years of litigation.
After initially being denied access to testing, Pursley’s legal team won an appellate court ruling ordering new testing of spent shell casings found at the murder scene. Eventually, images of test fires from the Taurus handgun and evidence from the scene were entered into National Integrated Ballistic Information Network system.
The results did not produce the definitive match jurors had been told existed during the 1994 trial.
Further review of the forensic evidence raised broader questions about whether the original testimony could support the certainty expressed by Gunnell when he testified that the Taurus matched the murder evidence to the exclusion of every other firearm. Over time, the scientific foundation of the prosecution’s case deteriorated.
The conviction collapses
In 2017, a judge granted Pursley a new trial based on developments involving the firearms evidence. After spending approximately 23 years in prison, Pursley was released while awaiting retrial.
The retrial exposed how much the case had changed. The defense emphasized that no eyewitness identified Pursley as the shooter, that no DNA connected him to the crime and that the firearms evidence once touted as conclusive could no longer be presented with the certainty jurors heard in 1994.
According to images shown in court, markings on the test shell casing fired from Pursley’s gun and the markings of the casing found near Ascher’s body didn’t match. They were glaringly different. In other words, Judge Joe McGraw had not choice but to conclude that Patrick Pursley was right all along. His gun was not used to kill Andy Ascher.
In January 2019, Pursley’s bench trial was over. McGraw found him not guilty.
An unsolved murder
Two years later, Pursley was granted a certificate of innocence, formally recognizing that he had been wrongfully convicted.
The city of Rockford ultimately agreed to pay Pursley $5 million to settle a federal wrongful-conviction lawsuit.
Pursley alleged law-enforcement officials and forensic personnel had played roles in his wrongful conviction.
Today, Andy Ascher’s murder remains unsolved.
Look for an inside look at Pursley’s case on an upcoming episode of “The Thread with Jim Hagerty.”
Today, Andy Ascher’s murder remains unsolved.
Look for an inside look at Pursley’s case on an upcoming episode of “The Thread with Jim Hagerty.”
The entire post can be read at:
https://www.mystateline.com/news/the-andy-ascher-murder-inside-the-wrongful-conviction-of-patrick-pursley/
https://www.mystateline.com/news/the-andy-ascher-murder-inside-the-wrongful-conviction-of-patrick-pursley/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;