Gerald Goines, the former Houston narcotics officer who instigated a January 2019 drug raid that killed a middle-aged couple he falsely accused of selling heroin, was shot in the face after he and his colleagues broke into the house where Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas lived and died. When an internal investigator interviewed him at the hospital after the raid, Goines could not speak because his jaw was wired shut. Instead, prosecutors explained during Goines' murder trial this week, he wrote down his answers.
Sgt. Richard Bass asked Goines the name of the confidential informant who, according to the search warrant affidavit that Goines filed the day of the raid, had bought heroin from a middle-aged white man at 7815 Harding Street the evening before. "There was no confidential informant," Goines wrote. "I made the purchase by myself." There was an obvious problem with that backup explanation: At the time of the purported heroin purchase, Bass told the jury, Goines was eating dinner at Taste of Texas, a restaurant more than 20 miles away.
