Content advisory: discussion includes sexual assault and the 1975 murder of 3‑year‑old Christopher Harper in Richmond, Virginia. Host Catie Beck speaks with Innocence Project co‑founder Peter Neufeld about Marvin Grimm’s coerced confession, later DNA testing and his 2024 exoneration.
RICHMOND, Va. — In the latest episode of "Untold — A WTVR Podcast," host Catie Beck talks with Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project who served as lead counsel for Marvin Grimm, a Richmond man who spent decades in prison for a crime he did not commit.
Grimm was exonerated in 2024 in the 1975 murder of Christopher Harper, who was 3 at the time. Grimm initially confessed to the crime, but later said he only did so after a 10-hour police interrogation during which he said officers threatened him with the death penalty.
Neufeld, a New Yorker, said he got involved in the early 1990s after Grimm sent a letter seeking help.
"Marvin, on his own, tried to get DNA testing done in the 1980s, but the Virginia courts said there's no legal right to DNA testing in Virginia, so he couldn't get it," Neufeld said. "The Innocence Project was founded in 1992; he wrote to us the very first year we came into existence. So we worked on his case for more than 30 years."
Neufeld and his colleagues worked to change the law, and once that happened, it opened the door for DNA evidence to clear Grimm's name.
Investigators initially said Harper had been sexually assaulted before being killed and that hairs collected from Grimm's U.S. Navy pea coat and car were consistent with hairs found on the victim. That turned out not to be true.
"When DNA testing was done 45 years later, none of the hairs came from the child; they came from six different people — just shed hairs found in a car," Neufeld said. "When they examined the slides and swabs that a pathologist had said contained semen, they found there was no semen, and the white substance in the child's mouth was most likely phlegm, so the narrative of the crime was false."
"So, for all these reasons, the attorney general acknowledged that Marvin Grimm was innocent," Neufeld said. "He went to prison at 21 and was not exonerated until after he turned 70 — he lost most of his adult life for something he didn't do."
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