Cathleen Crowell Webb Dies at 46
By Kevin Robinson in News on May 21, 2008 11:00AM
Cathleen Crowell Webb, who shocked Chicago in 1977 by charging that Gary Dotson had kidnapped and raped her, died of cancer in New Hampshire yesterday. Crowell Webb, then a 16 year old student at Homewood-Flossmoor High School, alleged that Dotson had kidnapped and sexually assaulted her on July 15.
Crowell Webb, then just Cathleen Crowell, concocted the story to cover up what she feared was a pregnancy from consensual sex with her boyfriend. "Ms. Crowell Webb explained that she had not been raped, but instead had engaged in consensual sex with her boyfriend and panicked, thinking she might have become pregnant," Northwestern University Law Professor Lawrence C. Marshall, who was also Dotson's attorney, said in 2002. "That would have infuriated her foster parents, so she concocted the rape story to cover for herself in the event she did become pregnant."
Based on her testimony, Dotson was sentenced to 20–25 years in prison two years later. In 1985, Crowell Webb told a New Hampshire pastor that she felt guilty because she had sent an innocent man to prison. The pastor first contacted the Cook County State's Attorneys office, but had no luck. He then contacted the media, and the subsequent public outcry led a judge to release Dotson on $100K bond, pending a new hearing. A week later that same judge ruled that Crowell Webb's recantation was even less credible than her original testimony, and sent Dotson back to prison.
In May 1985, then-Governor Jim Thompson commuted Dotson's sentence to time served, making him eligible for parole. Dotson had several other run-ins with the law along the way, and his parole was revoked twice, first on a domestic violence charge in 1987, and again in February because he had been late calling his parole officer. In August of 1988 a DNA test exonerated Dotson, conclusively proving that he had not committed the rape. Gary Dotson is the first person to be cleared as a result of DNA testing. He moved out west for awhile, but now lives in the south suburbs. Crowell Webb taught at a Christian academy in New Hampshire, and her two sons graduated from West Point. In 1985 she co-authored the book Forgive Me.