Dateline: Graduation Night – Who were Thomas and Raymond Highers and what happened to them? Disturbing details from the true crime episode, explored

Dateline, the true crime series, features the case of Raymond and Tommy, the two Detroit brothers who were sentenced to prison for the 1987 Robert Karey murder. After 25 years in 2013, a surprising turn of events led to their acquittal, when all of the charges were dropped. This breakthrough came through a Facebook post, which encouraged new witnesses to come forward, casting serious doubts on the original conviction.

Despite Prosecutor Kym Worthy's belief that the brothers were guilty, she moved to dismiss the charges, citing that after decades, the case could no longer be properly reconstructed. She remarked,

“Sadly, in this case, justice was not done.”

Dateline features the eventful true crime story in its episode titled Graduation Night. Read on to know who Thomas and Raymond are, and what happened with them as shown on the Dateline episode.

Who were Thomas and Raymond Highers, and what happened to them, as shown on Dateline?

Thomas and Raymond Highers were two brothers from Detroit, Michigan, who spent 25 years in prison for a crime they did not commit—the 1987 murder of Robert Karey, a known marijuana dealer. In 2013, a Facebook post led to some new revelations in the case, when the case seemed too forgotten to be reconstructed and seek justice.

At the time of the murder, Thomas was 23 years old and Raymond was 22 years old. They were young with no criminal records, knew Karey casually, and helped him sell marijuana sometimes. They always denied any involvement in his murder.

On June 26, 1987, Robert Karey was shot to death at his Detroit home. His roommate heard gunshots and saw two men flee, but couldn’t identify them. Thomas Culberson, the security guard who witnessed the two men, later claimed that they were white and picked up Raymond's photograph from a lineup. Moreover, another witness, Jamie, claimed that he overheard Thomas Highers talking about robbing Karey because the brothers owed Karey money. Based on this circumstantial evidence and testimony, the brothers were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Here are the details of the 1987 murder, as shown on Dateline

In 2009, the attorney Kevin Zieleniewski came across the case on Facebook and recalled that his former roommate from 1987 law school, who then was at Karey's house, had told him the real shooters were black men, not the Highers brothers, who are white. This led to new witnesses, including John Hielscher and James Gianunzio, testifying in court that they saw Black men with guns at Karey's house on the night of the murder.

Based on the accounts by the new witnesses, the court granted a retrial, and in 2013, all the charges against the two brothers were dropped, freeing the brothers after 25 years. They were each awarded $1.2 million in 2019 as compensation for their wrongful imprisonment.

In their late 40s, the Highers brothers celebrated their long-awaited freedom with family, with Tommy calling it “a new chapter” in their lives.

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"Words can't describe this," Tommy told ABCNews.com. "It's a new chapter in our lives. We always felt that this day would come. You really have to."

However, this didn't last long, and Thomas was jailed again in 2018 for domestic abuse and later died in 2021 at age 56. Raymond died in 2024 at age 57. The causes of death were not made public, but both left behind families who mourned them, as shown on Dateline.

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