Fallout from claims against ex-Philly detective Nordo grows with more lawsuits, suspects freed from prison
Author: Mensah M. Dean,
Exonerated: James Frazier
The Philip Nordo fallout may be mounting for the City of Philadelphia.
As the ex-homicide detective sits in jail awaiting trial on charges that for years he raped, assaulted, stalked, and intimidated male witnesses, more lawsuits have landed against him and the city.
In one filed Thursday, James Frazier says that after he rebuffed Nordo’s sexual advances, the detective coerced him into signing a false confession, and he served nearly seven years of a life sentence for a 2012 double murder in which he had no role. Two weeks ago, Frazier was freed from prison after the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office said there was “insufficient credible evidence” to prove his guilt.
Frazier’s suit came one day after a civil claim from another man who was released from state prison in January after serving nine years of a 15-to-30-year sentence for third-degree murder. The lawsuit by Jamal Simmons, who says Nordo and other officers coerced witnesses to make false statements implicating him in a 2009 slaying, seeks $25 million from the city.
A 20-year veteran officer with a decade as an often-prodigious homicide investigator, Nordo, 52, was fired in 2017, and prosecutors launched a grand jury inquiry into his work. But it wasn’t until February that they charged him and detailed their allegations: that the detective had sexually targeted young men he encountered during the course of investigations, and intimidated them into silence.
They contend Nordo sexually abused men in interrogation rooms and prison visiting rooms, and went so far as to ask prisoners about gay inmates who might soon be released and whom he might volunteer to transport.
He is being held without bail in Northampton County Prison. Through his attorney, Michael T. van der Veen, Nordo has denied the charges.
“He screams his innocence — that is our defense,” van der Veen said in a telephone interview last week.