The Box Man and the Story They Buried: How Tennessee Convicted a Disabled Man and concealed his disability
by DK Sale
Three years ago, I began speaking with Ray Long, a Black inmate serving a life sentence in Tennessee’s BCCX prison. Too long, in some ways, for what needed to be found. Yet just long enough for a terrible truth to come into full view: a mentally and physically disabled man convicted not only through the concealment of his own condition but by a rogue detective whose so-called “gift from God” would later be exposed as a pattern of corruption—leaving a trail of destroyed lives across Nashville.
Ray is 48 years old now. He has spent nearly half his life behind bars—a man with serious disabilities, struggling to remember, to explain, to be heard. His story is not just one of personal tragedy, but of a system that refused to listen, manipulated by those who knew exactly what they were doing.
It is also the story of his parents, Carolyn and Ray Sr., who tried to speak for him twenty years ago—and were silenced.
How They Hid the Truth
On the night of the murders, Ray was home with his parents. They could have testified to that fact—and to his condition—but detectives refused to take their statements. Later, through a combination of coercive interrogation and a court-appointed attorney’s failure to act, they were kept off the stand entirely through murky legal reasoning that remains unclear to this day.
At the time, Ray had already met the full criteria for disability. He wore a metal brace on his left leg, dragging his foot when he walked—a permanent injury from when a stray bullet shattered his femur while walking with his mother. Tennessee’s TennCare program was paying for his therapy. Medical documentation from both state and federal doctors confirmed Ray was physically incapable of committing the crime.
Letter from SSI admin approving Ray’s disability
The homicides took place the night of December 23, 2003.
Excerpt from a submission by Ray’s Social Security attorney Anna Price Meuler
Summation of prognosis by one of Rays doctors.
That evidence never made it to the jury.
Instead, the state pretended Ray was able-bodied, able-minded—and dangerous. Their case relied almost entirely on the testimony of a single felon, Joseph Whitfield, who claimed to have seen Ray kick down a door, run down three flights of stairs, sprint 100 yards, and hop a fence—all feats Ray could not have performed.
The prosecution withheld critical evidence: promises made to Whitfield, threats to other witnesses, and Ray’s disability records.
The Detectives and the Frame
The case began inside the Nashville Metro Police Department’s elite Murder Squad, where Detectives Roy Dunaway and Charles Freeman took charge.
When Ray was first accused of kicking down Fallon Glaze’s door, he rolled up his pant leg and showed them the brace. It should have ended there.
Instead, the detectives stepped aside and revised the accusation: Ray hadn’t kicked the door, they now claimed—he had “shouldered” it open.
From that moment forward, Ray’s disability disappeared from the official record.
- No recording of the interview.
- No mention of the brace in reports.
- No physical evidence entered at trial.
Ray walked into court with two different shoes—his dress shoe wouldn’t fit over the brace. None of it mattered. The wall was already up.
The Witness Who Wasn’t
Weeks after the murders, with no evidence tying Ray to the crime, detectives produced a witness: Joseph Whitfield, allegedly found through Crime Stoppers. But records show the call didn’t go through the anonymous tip line—it went directly to the detectives’ desk.
Whitfield claimed he was with Ray that night. He described sneaking through a hole in a fence, watching Ray “shoulder” the door open, and running with him across a gulch to a getaway car.
But the story collapsed under scrutiny.
When Detective Freeman first visited the scene, he reported no hole in the fence. By trial, a video surfaced showing torn fencing—perfectly matching Whitfield’s tale, but conveniently filmed nearly a year after the crime.
I’ve been to that gulch. I could barely walk it without slipping. Ray, dragging his foot with a brace, could not have sprinted across it. Not then. Not ever.
Whitfield never mentioned the limp. Never mentioned the brace. Never mentioned that Ray, when asked if he had ever tried to run, said: I never have. Not since they shattered my leg. Not after I died twice on the table during surgery.
Because Whitfield wasn’t a witness. He was a placeholder in a collapsing theory. Like in other cases involving Dunaway, when DNA ruined the state’s version of events, a new “witness” would conveniently emerge.
In Paul Garrett’s wrongful conviction, a jailhouse snitch claimed Garrett said he wore a condom—explaining why his DNA wasn’t at the scene. But when asked how the body was hidden, the snitch got it wrong. Entirely made up. Twenty years later, Garrett was exonerated when the real killer’s DNA was matched and he was arrested.
What They Didn’t Want Found
The second victim found with Fallon Glaze was a man recently paroled for a drive-by shooting. The detectives concealed that fact. They also concealed that the murder weapon was found months later—not near Ray, but in the same neighborhood where the earlier shooting took place. It was in the possession of a felon with no connection to Ray.
When Ray’s first attorney, public defender Amy Hartwell, told him about the discovery, Ray thought he’d be freed.
Instead, Hartwell said, “It doesn’t work like that.” Then, just as quickly, she was off the case—because the Public Defender’s office had previously represented the man found with the gun.
Ray’s new attorney, Ed Ryan—a former cop and prosecutor—barely spoke to him. Ryan advised Ray not to testify. Ray, struggling with speech and anxiety, agreed—only because he believed his mother, father, and others would be called to testify in his place.
They weren’t.
Carolyn Long, who once nursed Ray through his injury. Who loved Fallon like a daughter. Who sat at home with Ray the night it happened, listening to his coughing fit and wondering if she’d need to take him to the ER again.
Ray Sr., who remembered Ray waking up the next morning and limping off to do Christmas shopping for Fallon and the family.
Jarvis, Ray’s friend, who was with him when he heard the news and watched him break down.
And above all, the medical experts who could have said, under oath, that Ray could not have done what the state alleged.
Instead, the defense rested. No witnesses. No testimony. No one ever heard Ray speak—not in his own words.
The Box Man
At the center of it all was Detective Roy Dunaway. Later removed from duty, he resurfaced with a podcast branding himself The Box Man—a name for his interrogation room, which he claimed was blessed with divine power to make suspects confess.
In truth, Dunaway’s method was simpler: fabricate statements, exploit hearsay loopholes, and manipulate vulnerable suspects until their words could be weaponized in court.
Reading Ray’s so-called statements, the deception is clear. Ray’s real speech—slow, halting, unsure—is missing. What’s in the reports is clean, composed, and perfectly aligned with the state’s theory.
When Ray showed them his brace, the cameras were off.
When his parents tried to speak, they were shut out.
When medical records could have proved the truth, they were buried.
Hope, Rising
For a long time, Ray didn’t even tell me about his disability records.
He was scared, he said. Scared he’d “get lost in the weeds.” I was frustrated. I even yelled at him once—something I regret deeply.
That night, he told me what the other inmates called him: Hop Along.
That was the key.
Ray’s story isn’t just about a bad trial. It’s about an invisible wall built around him since childhood—a wall even Ray had come to believe he couldn’t break through.
But the cracks are widening.
Ray’s memory is strengthening. His communication is improving. The records are coming out.
The truth, long buried, is rising.
There’s much more to come—a full reckoning detailed in the upcoming book and documentary series The Box Man.
Because the question isn’t just how Ray Long was convicted.
It’s who needed him to be.
Copyright 2025 David Kirkpatrick Sale.
David Kirkpatrick Sale
At Risk Films
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