When strip club owner Terry Stephenson was shot and killed outside his East Ponce de Leon Avenue establishment last September, Joey Celestin and Bill Nichols were one mile away. They had the biometric hand prints to prove it.
The co-workers at Atlanta Kitchen had finished lunch at Pin Ups just a few moments before Stephenson, en route to depositing $61,000, was ambushed and robbed in the parking lot. Witnesses described the shooter as a short, stout man with dreadlocks wearing blue jeans and a red shirt and driving a black sedan.
Neither Celestin or Nichols look like the man seen by witnesses. Celestin, who was behind the wheel that day, drove a blue Dodge Charger. About the only match was Nichols' red shirt (he wore shorts, not blue jeans), yet Celestin was later fingered as the shooter by police.
Court documents reveal an investigation that immediately focused on two men who, it turned out, had rock-solid alibis. They weren't even in the wrong place at the wrong time, as Celestin and Nichols had signed in at work -- using Atlanta Kitchen's biometric system -- at the same time the shooting occurred.
DeKalb police spokeswoman Mekka Parish said, per county policy, she is prohibited from commenting on pending litigation.
Meanwhile, the investigation into Stephenson's slaying remains "active," said Parish, who didn't elaborate.
Celestin and Nichols, arrested one day after the shooting, spent three weeks in jail before they were released for insufficient evidence. But the damage to their lives was done.
Celestin lost his job, his apartment and the Dodge Charger. This week his attorney, Dave Krugler, filed a notice of claim to DeKalb officials declaring his intent to seek damages for Celestin's "unlawful, unconstitutional arrest, imprisonment and incarceration."
"I was extremely happy to be released but I was not the same," Celestin, 29, said. He described those three weeks under arrest as some sort of Bizarro world where everything he knew to be true was contradicted by police. And they had evidence to back it up. Or so they told Celestin.
Interrogators, for instance, informed Celestin that Nichols had implicated him in the shooting.
"Mr. Nichols absolutely never implicated Mr. Celestin in any way, said Krugler.
Nichols could not be reached for comment.
His arrest warrant stated that Nichols "admitted to being there but not participating." But that was not an admission of any crime; rather, as revealed in the probable cause hearing for the then-suspects, Nichols simply admitted to being at Pin Ups -- not to any involvement in the shooting.
During that same hearing a detective in the case was asked whether Celestin and Nichols' statements were consistent.
"So to speak, yes sir," answered the detective.
As detailed by detectives questioned in the probable cause hearing, investigators built their case largely on the testimony of dancer Carla Bailey, who was in the club at the time of the shooting. Stephenson was gunned down just outside the club's main entrance.
Two other witnesses, sitting just inside that entrance, described seeing a man wearing a red shirt. By all accounts, the only person wearing a red shirt inside the club was Nichols.
But that precludes the possibility Stephenson was ambushed by a shooter waiting outside the club, which had no security cameras in its parking lot.
Footage from a grocery store surveillance camera adjacent to Pin Ups showed Celestin and Nichols leaving the strip club more than five minutes before the shooting. A witness located by Celestin's attorneys -- and not interviewed by police -- testified he was certain the hold-up occurred at 1 p.m. and said he observed a black Cadillac DeVille speeding out the entrance moments after the shooting. The first 911 call was also recorded at 1 p.m.
Testimony from the probable cause hearing revealed there was no gunpowder found on or near the suspects or on Celestin's vehicle.
"There was no probable cause to arrest or charge Mr. Celestin for these heinous crimes," Krugler said in a letter to DeKalb officials.
Celestin was arrested in his Cherokee County home by roughly 10 officers from the DeKalb fugitive squad and Canton police. He was just sitting down to dinner with his two sons, 5 and 8, and wife.
"I was in the bathroom when I heard screaming," Celestin told the AJC. His wife asked what was happening.
"You have a murderer living with you," she was told, according to Celestin.
The next day, as Celestin was being interrogated, his family was evicted from their apartment because of the criminal charges.
"They'll see. They have wrong guy," Celestin told himself, speaking to police without an attorney present.
Then he learned of Nichols' alleged confession. Celestin said he also was told police had video of him shooting Stephenson and fleeing with a duffel bag containing the $61,000.
"I begged them to show me the tape," Celestin said. "I begged for them to keep looking."
Celestin said he lost 30 pounds while incarcerated.
"I didn't see how I could be set up," he said. "I don't have any enemies. And no one at the club knew me well enough. It was like some TV scenario. Mentally, I was gone."
Even when they were released, Celestin and Nichols were not cleared by DeKalb police.
"New information has come up and detectives are looking into it, but these new developments do not mean the detectives cannot revisit charges against these two individuals in the future," Parish told the AJC last September.
That statement has left a "cloud of suspicion and fear around Mr. Celestin that have followed him wherever he goes," Krugler said.
Parish, DeKalb police's spokeswoman, would not comment.
With the accusations still hounding him, Celestin moved his family to Florida, where he continues to look for work.
"I still wonder how my kids are dealing with this," he told the AJC. "Everyone was telling them their father was a murderer. What do they really think?"
Celestin wants an investigation into those involved in the Pin Ups investigation, Krugler said, along with an "unequivocal statement" exonerating his client, who also seeks financial compensation.
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