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September 2, 2010

1994 shooting victim’s family upset about Goudy release

By Christina M. Wright The Herald Bulletin

ANDERSON, Ind. — Dismay flooded Kendra Graves on Thursday, after reading that the man who had been convicted of murdering her brother 16 years ago had been released from prison.

“I just feel like, where’s the justice?” she said, sitting with a picture of her brother Thursday.

Graves and Vonka Boulware, the girlfriend of Marvin McCloud at the time of his murder, said they were slammed with the news of Walter Goudy’s release when they picked up a Thursday newspaper. Now, they said, they must cope with knowing that the man they believe gunned down their beloved “Mad Money” is walking free.

“There’s going to be all kinds of emotions today and I just don’t have anything to tell them,” Boulware said, pondering what she would tell her 18-year-old daughter who is McCloud’s only daughter.

Graves and Boulware said they are still convinced that Goudy killed McCloud. Both attended the entire trial in 1995, and cannot understand why the conviction was overturned, they said.

The U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Goudy’s conviction in May, finding that a lower appeals court failed to implement federal standards correctly. The court ruled that Goudy received an unfair trial when the prosecutor failed to tender select witness statements to Goudy’s attorney.

“If this case was overturned on a technicality, that just makes me very upset because that’s careless,” Graves said. “There should have been no room for mistakes.”

Graves vowed Thursday that she would call Special Prosecutor Barry Brown every day until Goudy is retried.

“They’re probably having a barbecue right now,” Boulware said of the Goudy family celebrating his release this Labor Day weekend. “We have to have rest-in-peace barbecues and in-memory-of barbecues.”

Boulware has a complete scrapbook of the man she says “left me in the bed, kissed me goodnight and told me he loved me.”

“And I never saw him again,” she said.

The scrapbook includes pictures of McCloud, his children and the cars he loved. Among the two cars pictured is the gold Cadillac for which McCloud was reportedly killed.

According to police records, Goudy and three other men conspired to steal the gold rims, but ended up shooting into the car.

“The funny thing is — the type of person my brother was — if he knew they were coming for his car, he would have gotten out and given it to them,” Graves said. “Because it’s just material.”

Graves and McCloud described McCloud as a giving 21-year-old man with four children that he always wanted to be with.

“People in Anderson respected my brother,” Graves said. “If someone asked for a dollar, he’d give it to him. That’s just how he was.”

Moreover, the women said, McCloud had already escaped one tragedy. Graves said her brother survived a 1974 fire that killed his two brothers. He wore the scars, literally, across his face, but never let the stares affect his mood.

“He didn’t deserve what they did,” Boulware said. “He was born into tragedy; he didn’t have to die in tragedy, too.”

Contact Christina M. Wright, 640-4883, christina.wright@heraldbulletin.com.

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