PHOENIX — Newly released federal court audio raises more questions about what led U.S. Marshals to make a major mistake and falsely arrest a 66-year-old woman at gunpoint outside her Phoenix home.
The 14-minute audio recording of the woman’s initial appearance in Arizona federal court revealed new information at the center of Penny McCarthy’s wild case of mistaken identity.
Federal agents insisted McCarthy was wanted Oklahoma fugitive Carole Anne Rozak, 70, when they arrested and detained her in March. The U.S. Marshals Service later admitted it made a mistake days after ABC15’s Investigation.
“I'm terrified that they're going to arrest me again. And because my stuff's now in the system under the name Carole, I'm going to wind up back in prison,” McCarthy said in a recent interview more than two months since her false arrest.
During her initial court hearing recently obtained by ABC15, the federal prosecutor admitted to the judge the evidence he had at the time from U.S. Marshals in Oklahoma was, “not sufficient to go forward with a hearing.”
The hearing happened a day after McCarthy’s arrest back in March, and she spent a night in federal prison in Florence.
Who is Carole Anne Rozak?
An Arizona federal judge later dismissed the case against McCarthy and canceled her pending identity hearing.
Federal agents claimed McCarthy was Rozak, a now 70-year-old woman, who was wanted on an outstanding parole violation warrant from 1999 out of Oklahoma. Rozak served prison time for all non-violent crimes. But according to federal court records, she failed to report to any federal probation officer after she was released from federal custody in Harris County, Texas.
McCarthy provided extensive documentation to ABC15 she was not Rozak, the Oklahoma wanted fugitive.
Initial court hearing provides new details
Just minutes into McCarthy’s initial court appearance, the federal magistrate judge asked the prosecutor, "I'd like to know why, um, this person was arrested as Ms. Rozak?"
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Rapp responded, “That's a fair question. Um, and one I had ... is that I've been provided some documents, um, some open-source documents that suggest that the person that they found was Carole Anne Rozak.”
ABC15 also shared the newly released court audio with McCarthy, who was also in the courtroom at the time.
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“It was obvious that it was a cluster and that everybody knew … somebody messed up bad,” McCarthy told ABC15 after listening back to the audio recording.
The federal prosecutor said her arrest was strictly based on information from the probation office in Tulsa, Oklahoma including “Facebook postings” … “information from the pre-sentence report that was generated in 1999” … and … “some aliases.”
“I want to see what you arrested me with, other than my Facebook picture and the fact that at one point in time, my last name was Burns,” McCarthy told ABC15.
Federal officials wouldn’t provide more information about the open-source documents mentioned in court or what exactly linked McCarthy to Rozak.
“The United States Marshals Service does not discuss specific investigative techniques or tools used to apprehend wanted persons,” a USMS spokesperson said.
Fingerprint analysis in question
The judge also asked critical questions about McCarthy’s fingerprints.
“Let me just clarify regarding the fingerprints … her fingerprints have been taken? And did they match, um, Ms. Rozak or they’re still pending?” the federal judge said in court.
As we’ve previously reported, McCarthy was fingerprinted when federal officers first took her into custody in Arizona.
The U.S. Marshal Service in Oklahoma, where the cold case investigation that led to McCarthy’s arrest was conducted, originally said there was some kind of “glitch” that appeared, at first, to show McCarthy’s digital fingerprints matched.
The federal prosecutor told a different story during her initial court appearance a day after McCarthy’s arrest, according to the audio recording.
“They're still pending. Uh, the Marshal that I just talked to within the last 45 minutes is who's, not qualified to make that assessment, looked at them,” Rapp said.
“Yet it was qualified enough to put me in prison for,” McCarthy told ABC15 in a separate interview.
At her initial court appearance, the judge released McCarthy pending an identity hearing where she was going to have to prove she wasn’t Rozak. The case was dismissed before that hearing ever happened.
A full fingerprint analysis confirmed what Penny knew all along. Her fingerprints were not a match to Rozak’s and federal agents arrested and detained the wrong person.
“It should be embarrassing for every level,” she said.
The U.S. Marshals Service has denied multiple requests for an on-camera interview with ABC15.
The agency said in a recent statement, “USMS continues to conduct a thorough review of actions taken by Deputy US Marshals regarding the fugitive investigation of Carole Anne Rozak and subsequent mistaken arrest of Penny McCarthy.”
The U.S. Marshals Service previously said a preliminary review found federal officials followed proper procedures in “good-faith reliance on the outstanding warrant” and “regrets any inconvenience caused by the mistaken identification of Ms. McCarthy.”
ABC15 will continue to push for answers and accountability.
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