FRONTLINE: How Thompson almost chose 'Number Four' in the physical line up

Q: In the physcial line up, Detective Mike Gauldin said that you were between two people. He told us Number Four. And, you thought a little bit, you had them do that again. Do you remember any of that?

THOMPSON: I think any time when you have two people standing close together and they're the same height and they're the same body building, and maybe their hair is ... One of the things I remember was Ronald Cotton's hair was different than the photo that I had seen, which was also different from the man who had raped me. Ronald Cotton had poufed his hair out and made it more of an Afro look, so it did throw me. He wore brown ... the man that night had worn blue, and so those type of things to your mind's eye can be very confusing, particularly when you're frightened and you're tired.

I think my decision to a large degree was ... Ronald Cotton had a really distinct nose and the rapist's face was not very far from mine and his nose looked closer to what I had remembered that night, and there was an attitude about him that was very, almost arrogant and smug, and that played a big role in my decision.

Q: You had a picture in your mind of the man who had raped you. You'd also seen a photo you knew you had identified.

THOMPSON: When I walked in (into the physical line up) the man in my mind and the man in the picture and the man in front of me, there were certain similarities, certain characteristics that all blended together; and obviously the man in the picture that I'd had and the man in my mind and the man in front of me, there was the whole body, and I think that was the thing that to me, pulled it together. There was a body type. I mean, I remembered him being tall and slender and he wasn't a big man as far as a muscular build. There was a stand, he had a certain stand ... it was a sloppy, slouchy type of stand and ... that was to me what pulled it together to bring the three pictures that I was working with into one.