Wrongful Conviction With Jason Flom

In the late 80’s and early 90’s, Stefon Morant and Scott Lewis were selling drugs for organized crime figure Frank Parise. When Frank was set to go away on a weapon’s charge, he asked Scott to take over the drug dealing arm of his criminal enterprise, but Scott wasn’t trying to go deeper into illegal activity. When he refused, Frank tapped a detective he had on the payroll, Vincent Raucci. On October 11th, 1990, former New Haven, CT alderman Ricardo Turner and his lover Lamont Fields were shot dead in their bed, and Raucci knew just who to pin it on. How would he make it stick? By extracting a false confession from Scott’s good friend Stefon - one he would never sign. His refusal to participate in Scott’s railroading sealed him to the same fate. Stefon was in the Carolinas at the time of the murders, but that didn’t matter. Raucci put the screws to another character in the New Haven drug game, Ovil Ruiz, who would name Scott and Stefon in his false confession in exchange for leniency in his own legal troubles

On April 2nd, 1993, 22 year old Andrew Ascher and Becky George sat in his parked car by her brother’s apartment building on Silent Road in Rockford, IL, when a black man in a blue ski mask approached the vehicle, announcing a stick up. While Becky frantically fished in her purse for some money, the armed robber shot Andrew twice. Both of the bullets and their casings were retrieved from the crime scene and during the autopsy. Meanwhile, across town, Patrick Pursley celebrated his son’s birthday in the apartment he shared with his girlfriend Samantha Crabtree. Over 2 months later, as the police came up empty on Andrew’s murder, an acquaintance of Patrick and Samantha’s, Marvin Windham, traded false information with the police through Crime Stoppers that implicated Patrick in exchange for leniency in his own legal matters, as well as a $2,650 reward. It was also revealed at trial that Windham had a long time crush on Samantha. Police obtained a search warrant, retrieved a Taurus 9mm from their apartment, and in

At 1:15 AM on November 2nd, 1987, an Ada, Oklahoma woman felt a gun at the back of her head as she unlocked her door. She was robbed, burglarized, and raped by an otherwise nondescript black assailant who had a gold tooth. While filming a Crime Stoppers video about the incident, Detective Jeff Crosby approached bystander Perry Lott. Noticing his gold tooth, Perry was brought in for questioning and a line up despite his alibi. With all the other men in the line up wearing foil to simulate a gold tooth, Perry was identified as the attacker. In absence of any other evidence beyond the eyewitness identification, Mr Lott was convicted and sentenced to 300 years in prison. After 25 years of appeals and parole hearings, the Innocence Project was able to test the 1987 rape kit for Perry’s DNA, ultimately excluding him as the perpetrator. This interview was recorded at an art gallery opening for Rob Will, another innocent man currently on death row in Texas and features Perry Lott and Eric Cullen, the private investig

Coming of age in Honduras, Clemente “Shorty” Aguirre was faced with a choice: join MS13 or die. He moved to Nicaragua with his grandmother instead, but with no economic prospects, he chose to come to the United States as an undocumented immigrant. Life was calm for a while, as he worked as a cook and lived in a trailer park, where he had found a place in a nice community of friends. Then, on June 17th, 2004, after a long night out, Shorty dropped by a neighboring trailer shared by his friends Cheryl Williams, part-time by her daughter Samantha, and her mother Carol Bareis. They were known for always having a stockpile of beer, and Shorty was going to ask them for an early morning nightcap, when he discovered Cheryl and Carol had been stabbed and were lying in pools of their own blood. Not thinking clearly in that dramatic moment, he inserted himself into the crime scene, while he checked their bodies for signs of life. Realizing that they were gone and that making a call to the police would certainly get him

On December 16th, 1981, Linda Mae Craig was found beaten, raped, and stabbed to death in a church parking lot about a mile and a half away from where her car was discovered. A few days later, Nick Yarris, a troubled young man linked with petty crimes and substance abuse, was pulled over for a traffic violation in a stolen car and got into an altercation with the arresting officer that included an accidental discharge of the officer’s service pistol. This incident spiraled into a laundry list of charges. Yarris had seen the news about Linda Mae Craig, and in a desperate attempt to save himself, he tried to trade false information about her attacker to garner leniency. When authorities got wind of his trickery, they turned the charges on Nick. The prosecution manipulated several eyewitness testimonies, hid or destroyed the case history, and employed misleading serology in order to obtain his wrongful conviction. However, between his first day in prison to exoneration by the biological evidence that put him ther

In part 2 of the Nick Yarris story, we pick up where we left off with Nick turning himself in after his unintentional escape from death row. It’s about 3 years and 2 months after Linda Mae Craig was found beaten, raped, and stabbed to death in a church parking lot in Chichester, PA. As you’ve already heard Nick recount, he had an altercation with a police officer during a traffic stop that led to an accidental discharge of the officer’s gun, followed by a laundry list of trumped up charges. In a turn of events that he would come to sincerely regret, Nick tried to exchange false information about Linda Mae Craig’s attacker for his own freedom. When caught in his lie, the state fixed a case against him that would lead to an almost 22 year stint on death row. Eventually, the same biological evidence that was used to convict him became the evidence that would set him free and win him $4 million in his civil suit against Delaware County, Pennsylvania. In the 2nd half of this interview, Nick Yarris tells us about h

This is an updated episode from season 8 with 22 minutes of new content. In 1985, Derek and Nancy Haysom were found brutally stabbed to death in their Bedford County, VA home - both nearly decapitated. When their daughter Elizabeth Haysom became a prime suspect, she and her boyfriend, Jens Soering, the son of a German diplomat, fled the country. The authorities finally caught up with them in London, and if extradited and found guilty, Elizabeth would face the electric chair. Under the illusion that his father’s diplomatic status would protect him from facing the death penalty in Virginia, Jens sacrificed himself for Elizabeth and gave a false confession that was riddled with inconsistencies. Upon learning of his misunderstanding and before being extradited to the US for trial, Jens fought and won a landmark judgment (Soering v UK) in the European Court of Human Rights, protecting himself from facing the death penalty upon his deliverance to Virginia. At Jens’ trial, prosecutor Jim Updike told the jury that So

At 2 AM, on June 18th, 2014, Daniel Holtzclaw finished up his shift as an Oklahoma City police officer and made his way home in his all black cruiser. He saw a car swerving and pulled over 57-year-old daycare provider Jannie Ligons. About 3 hours later, Ms Ligons would claim that Officer Holtzclaw forced her to perform oral sodomy through the fly of his uniform pants from the back seat of his squad car. Her mouth swab would come up empty for Daniel’s DNA, as would a search of his uniform for hers, but nonetheless, an investigation would be launched into Daniel Holtzclaw’s field contacts with at risk African American women, soliciting stories of sexual impropriety. 21 accusers made allegations, and a media circus ensued, bolstering a grim and growing narrative of law enforcement officers abusing their authority. 8 of those 21 claims were immediately dismissed by investigators, and they still moved forward with the 13 other questionable or otherwise ill-fitting claims. Through the misconstruing of DNA evidence,

Bobbie Jean Johnson was given up for adoption at birth, survived abuse in foster care, and ran away into the sex trade of New Orleans as a teenager. In 1977, a New Orleans antiquities dealer, Arthur Samson, was shot in the stomach and stabbed approximately 100 times inside his shop at 1130 St Charles Ave. His store was ransacked, and the safe was missing about $2,000. A month later police stopped 2 men and Bobbie Jean Johnson for a traffic violation in a stolen car. At the time Johnson was not a suspect, but police were on the lookout for a .32 caliber revolver. They found one in Bobbie Jean’s purse. She endured a violent interrogation that resulted in a tape recorded false confession, riddled with inconsistencies. One of the men that had been in the car with Johnson told police that he had slipped the gun into her purse while they were being pulled over, but his statement was both ignored by the prosecution and hidden from the defense. To make matters worse, her trial lawyer, Thomas Baumler, had been describ

Stacey Stites and Police Officer Jimmy Fennell were engaged, but Stacey was having an affair with Rodney Reed. On April 23rd, 1996, Stacey’s lifeless body was discovered, lying face up next to a dirt road near Bastrop, TX. Jimmy Fennell was a prime suspect until 3 spermatozoa found in Stacey’s body were matched to Rodney Reed. The state alleged that Rodney did not know Ms. Stites, intercepted her on her 3AM drive to work, raped and strangled her, and left her on the side of that dirt road, while abandoning the truck in a high school parking lot. With no other evidence of Rodney found in the truck, on the body, or at the scene; the state’s forensic experts incorrectly asserting that intact spermatozoa could not survive passed 24 hours; and Stacey’s whereabouts being known for the 24 hours prior to 3AM; Rodney Reed was found guilty and sentenced to death in 1998. The state’s forensic experts have since disavowed their testimony, and Rodney Reed continues to maintain that the presence of his semen was a result o

Although Valentino Dixon has never played golf, he wouldn’t have survived 27 years in prison–for a crime he did not commit–without it. A few years into his sentence of 39 years to life, Valentino returned to his childhood passion of art to help him cope. He began sketching landscapes of golf courses with color pencils. His breathtakingly detailed sketches led to a profile in *Golf Digest *magazine. That article in Golf Digest, helped bring other media attention to Valentino’s case and prompted students at Georgetown to help appeal his sentence. On September 19, 2018, Valentino Dixon was released after the court determined that he, in fact, was not responsible for the murder of 17-year-old Torriano Jackson on a Buffalo street corner in 1991. In this compelling interview, Valentino shares how his art served as a shield in prison, protecting his mind and comforting his soul. https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association wit

On the night of April 19, 1989, a 28-year-old female jogger was brutally attacked and raped in New York’s Central Park. She was found unconscious with her skull fractured, and 75 percent of her blood drained from her body. Five teens from Harlem—all between the ages of 14 and 16-years-old—were tried and convicted of the crime in one of the most frenzied cases in the city’s history. The woman was dubbed the “Central Park jogger” and the accused teens became known collectively as the “Central Park Five.” One of those boys, Dr. Yusef Salaam, was just 15 years old when he was tried as a juvenile and convicted of rape and assault. He was sentenced to five to ten years in prison. In early 2002, Matias Reyes, a convicted murderer and rapist, admitted that he alone was responsible for the attack on the Central Park jogger. Reyes had already committed another rape near Central Park days earlier in 1989, using the same modus operandi. Although the police had Reyes’s name on file, they failed to connect Reyes to the rap

This is an updated episode that originally aired on September 17, 2018. Amanda Knox was convicted of the murder of a 21-year-old British exchange student, Meredith Kercher, who died from knife wounds in the apartment she shared with Amanda in Perugia, Italy in 2007. Amanda and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were both found guilty of killing Kercher, receiving 26- and 25-year prison sentences, respectively. Their convictions were subsequently overturned in 2011, and she was released from prison after serving four years. In early 2014, the Italian Supreme Court ruled that they should both stand trial again, and she and Sollecito were re-convicted. Finally, in March 2015, the Italian Supreme Court overturned both murder convictions, ending their eight-year ordeal. Amanda Knox is currently a *New York Times *bestselling author, the host of the Scarlet Letter Reports on Broadly/Vice, and the host of The Truth About True Crime, a Sundance AMC podcast series. https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-j

Raymond Santana served 7 years in prison after being falsely accused of the rape and brutal beating of the Central Park Jogger in 1989. Raymond was just 14 years old when he was arrested for the attack on Trisha Meili in New York City’s Central Park. Despite a lack of evidence, the prosecution pursued his conviction of rape and assault. He was finally exonerated in 2002 when serial rapist and murderer Matias Reyes confessed from prison that he was the one who attacked Meili. Raymond is now an activist, clothing designer, and public speaker, and is featured in the hit Netflix series When They See Us. https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On October 22, 1991, when 17-year-old Chedell Williams and a friend went to Fern Rock subway station in North Philadelphia, two men approached them and demanded Chedell’s earrings. She refused and ran, and one of the men chased her to nearby 10th Street and Nedro Avenue, where he snatched the earrings, and shot her in the throat. Her friend was left unharmed. The two men were joined by a third man who was waiting in a 1978 Chevy Malibu. Chedell died at a hospital less than an hour later. The pressure was on the police and prosecutors to solve the crime, when some local “stick-up boys” named 21-year-old, burgeoning R&B vocalist Jimmy Dennis as a potential culprit. Hearing of this, Jimmy went to the police to confront the rumors, maintaining that he was on a bus miles away at the time of the murder with eyewitnesses to corroborate his claim. No forensic evidence tying Jimmy to the crime was ever developed, and evidence and eyewitness accounts that proved his innocence were suppressed. In this emotional inte

This special edition of Wrongful Conviction features Jason Flom’s exclusive interview with Brendan Dassey from behind bars—the only interview ever conducted with Brendan. The case against Brendan, and his uncle Steven Avery, is the subject of Netflix’s hit series Making a Murderer. In 2006, 16 year old Wisconsin special education student Brendan Dassey gave a videotaped confession to the murder and sexual assault of a young woman named Teresa Halbach. That confession – extracted from Brendan after four interrogations over a 48 hour period – has been widely recognized as false and coerced due to Brendan’s inability to describe the crime accurately without being told the "right" answers by his interrogators. In fact, Brendan recanted his confession immediately, and no evidence connects him to Halbach’s disappearance. Nonetheless, he was convicted based on that confession and sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole before 2048. In 2016, two courts threw out Brendan's confession and overturned his c

In the late 80’s and early 90’s, the US found itself wrapped up in the “Satanic Panic” - a general state of fear revolving around Satanism and satanic ritual, real or imagined. On May 5th, 1993, three 8-year-old boys—Steven Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers—were reported missing. Their lifeless bodies were found the following day in a Robin Hood Hills creek, naked and hogtied. Christopher Byers had suffered lacerations, and his genitals had been mutilated. Details of the bizarre and brutal scene in Robin Hood Hills brought Satanic Panic to a fever pitch in the largely conservative Christian city of West Memphis, AK. Coming off their first film success with Brother’s Keeper, documentarians Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky were tapped by HBO documentaries to head down to get the story. Joe Berlinger sits with Jason Flom and recalls his experience of the case, the moments that inspired his fight for criminal justice reform, and the films and events that have helped shape public opinion of wrongful con

On December 5th, 1997, two armed and disguised men robbed a beauty salon and its patrons in Norfolk, VA. On December 19th, Messiah Johnson was misidentified as the culprit and arrested. In the absence of any physical evidence and in spite of his corroborated alibi, Messiah Johnson was convicted on 26 counts of armed robbery, abduction, and related gun charges, and he was sentenced to 132 years in prison. He was pardoned by Governor Terry McAuliffe in 2018. Messiah is a graphic designer and still lives in Virginia, as he continues to fight to clear his name. You can find him on Instagram @messiahaladar johnson. If you’d like to show him support, please visit: https://www.gofundme.com/rc8d4-welcome-home-messiah-johnson https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On December 9th, 1981, Stephen DeSantis and Gary Masse, disguised as telephone repair men, gained entry to the suburban home of Sacramento coin collector Ed Davies. They hogtied Ed and his wife Grace, ransacked the house, and came up with 6 suitcases full of silver before murdering the older couple. There had been a string of robberies connected to area coin shops, and Ed Davies was a customer at the coin store where law student Gloria Killian had worked. When an anonymous tip sent police in search of DeSantis and Masse, Joanne Masse named Gloria as the mastermind to her husband’s crimes, an assertion that was repeated through the anonymous tip line. However, without sufficient evidence the charges against Gloria were dropped. Upon being convicted, Gary Masse offered his testimony, naming Gloria as the mastermind of his criminal enterprise, in exchange for sentencing leniency and other perks. This deal was concealed from the defense and the jury. In absence of corroborating evidence, Gloria Killian was senten

On March 18, 2001, Jamie Penich—an American exchange student in South Korea—was brutally murdered in her motel room after a night of partying with friends from the program. Kenzi Snider, a 19-year-old student from Marshall University in West Virginia, was one of the friends Penich was with. One year later, in February 2002, FBI agents contacted Kenzi out of the blue. She was back in school in West Virginia. She met with three agents on three consecutive days for several hours, and the sessions were grueling. When it was done, she had confessed. She murdered her friend, she said, in the context of a drunken sexual encounter, but later said she had been coerced into making the confession and accused investigators of framing her to protect two American soldiers who she claimed killed Penich. Kenzi was promptly arrested, incarcerated in a local jail for ten months, and extradited to Korea to stand trial. There, she then spent another six months in jail. Then a panel of judges found her not guilty. The prosecutor