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Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions.

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Speaker 2: I'm Laura and I writer and I'm Steve Drewson.

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Speaker 1: Today we bring you back to Ada, Oklahoma for the

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Speaker 1: second half of our story about Tommy Ward and Carl Fontano.

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Speaker 1: When we left off last week, Tommy and Carl were

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Speaker 1: sitting on death row after police turned Tommy's bad dream

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Speaker 1: into a murder confession. This week, we'll tell you about

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Speaker 1: some serious twists in the case, from the discovery of

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Speaker 1: the victim's body to the revelation of hidden evidence that

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Speaker 1: turned this case upside down. We'll update you on everything

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Speaker 1: that's happened since the twenty eighteen Netflix series The Innocent

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Speaker 1: Man told Tommy and Carl's story. There's been some very

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Speaker 1: good news for one of them and a lot of

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Speaker 1: hope for the other. Steve. For those listeners who missed

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Speaker 1: last week's episode, let's tell them what happened.

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Speaker 2: In Ada, Oklahoma. Denise Harroway, a twenty four year old woman,

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Speaker 2: goes missing. She vanishes. The police bring Tommy Ward in

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Speaker 2: for questioning, and.

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Speaker 1: It got ugly fast. Tommy told the police about this

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Speaker 1: nightmare he'd had about Denise's disappearance, and over a nine

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Speaker 1: hour interrogation, police turned that dream into a confession. They

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Speaker 1: even hauled in Tommy's friend, Carl Fontano and got him

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Speaker 1: to confess too. But here's the thing. These confessions were

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Speaker 1: riddled with errors. They named a third perpetrator who had

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Speaker 1: a rock solid alibi. They repeated the stories that police

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Speaker 1: fed to Tommy and Carl without adding anything new. These

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Speaker 1: confessions were obviously obviously false.

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Speaker 2: Now going into trial, the prosecutors have two confessions that

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Speaker 2: are at odds with the objectively noble facts of the cry.

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Speaker 1: But they thought they had an ace in the hole.

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Speaker 2: And that ace in the hole was a single fact

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Speaker 2: that both Tommy and Carl had told to police officers,

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Speaker 2: a description of a blouse that Denise Harrowy was wearing

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Speaker 2: at the time that she was abducted. A blouse that

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Speaker 2: it turned out was missing from Denise's wardrobe, A blouse

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Speaker 2: which even the police did not know about at the

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Speaker 2: time they interviewed Tommy and Carl.

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Speaker 1: But based on this one detail in their confessions, Tommy

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Speaker 1: and Carl were convicted of murder. And remember, her bodies

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Speaker 1: still hadn't been found when they were convicted.

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Speaker 2: No body, no bones, no motive, nothing but a description

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Speaker 2: of Denise Harroway's blouse, and they are on death row

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Speaker 2: because of that. That's where we pick up the story.

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Speaker 1: Three months after Tommy and Carl were convicted, a wake

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Speaker 1: up call arrived in the case that was built on

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Speaker 1: a dream. On January twenty firstnineteen eighty six, a man

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Speaker 1: was walking through a field in Gurdy, Oklahoma, when he

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Speaker 1: found a skull under some brush. Police found more human

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Speaker 1: remains spread across the field, and dental records confirmed a match. Finally,

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Speaker 1: they'd found Denise Harroway. This discovery produced a new round

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Speaker 1: of problems with Tommy and Carl's confessions. Denise had been

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Speaker 1: found unclothed, twenty miles away from where Tammy and Carl

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Speaker 1: had said they'd left her. Her body hadn't been burned

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Speaker 1: at all, despite the fact that Karl had said they'd

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Speaker 1: set her on fire, and the medical examiner confirmed even

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Speaker 1: though Tommy and Carl had said Denise had been stabbed

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Speaker 1: that never happened. She had actually been shot in the head.

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Speaker 2: It's like they're describing completely different crimes from what happened

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Speaker 2: to Denise Harroway.

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Speaker 1: Both Tommy and Carl's convictions were reversed on appeal, but

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Speaker 1: not because Denise's body had been found. It was because

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Speaker 1: the judge ruled they shouldn't have been tried together. Prosecutors

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Speaker 1: went ahead and tried both Tommy and Carl again, this

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Speaker 1: time separately, but using the same evidence as before.

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Speaker 3: When the second trial come up, before they had found

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Speaker 3: her remains and everything they found that crime scene had

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Speaker 3: proved Tommy's confession wrong. Nothing was right about it.

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Speaker 1: That's Tommy Ward's brother, Melvin. He's been advocating for Tommy's

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Speaker 1: innocence for over thirty years.

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Speaker 3: Our hearts was a high. I mean, how can you

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Speaker 3: ignore You know that she was shot back of the head,

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Speaker 3: and here you got two boys saying it was she

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Speaker 3: was sad. She was never stad even in corners before

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Speaker 3: states ad.

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Speaker 1: But believe it or not, the second trials were deja

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Speaker 1: vu all over again, just like before. The prosecutors relied

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Speaker 1: on the fact that Tommy and Carl had both said

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Speaker 1: Denise was wearing a blue flowered, ruffled blouse. The police

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Speaker 1: hadn't known anything about the blouse before the interrogation. The

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Speaker 1: prosecutors insisted that fact couldn't have been fed.

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Speaker 2: Imagine you're a prosecutor and you have to stand up

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Speaker 2: and of a jury and present them with a confession.

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Speaker 2: They can't tell you what happened to denise, who did it,

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Speaker 2: or even where the crime occurred. That's what these prosecutors

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Speaker 2: had to do. But they did it well enough, well

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Speaker 2: enough to convict both Tommy and Carl a second time.

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Speaker 1: When Tommy heard the verdict, he began to sob uncontrollably.

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Speaker 1: You're all liars, he shouted at the prosecutors. I'm being

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Speaker 1: punished for something I didn't do.

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Speaker 3: I don't know. I still have a hard time. I

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Speaker 3: actually thought it would be a hung jury the second one.

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Speaker 3: Confessions are hard to get by. You know, people still

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Speaker 3: believe that, you know, why did you confess if you.

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Speaker 2: Didn't do it?

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Speaker 3: So their confessions were similar, but they also was off.

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Speaker 3: You know, I'm not a lawyer by any means, but

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Speaker 3: I could not say how twelve adult jurors could just

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Speaker 3: ignore all the other evidence.

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Speaker 4: That's what they did had to have.

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Speaker 3: Tommy was totally convicted on his confession. Them confession sunk.

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Speaker 1: Them this time around. Tommy Ward and Carl Fontano were

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Speaker 1: ultimately sentenced to life in prison.

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Speaker 3: That's been thirty five years ago plus thirty five years later,

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Speaker 3: Tom's still waiting to get out.

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Speaker 1: Tommy and Carl went off to prison to serve their

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Speaker 1: life sentences. Years passed and their appeals were denied one

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Speaker 1: after another.

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Speaker 3: Tommy was a kid that he'd take his strays for instance,

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Speaker 3: And what I mean by astrays, I don't meet just

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Speaker 3: stray dogs. Like one time he found a hawk that

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Speaker 3: had a broken wing. He took that hawk and nursed

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Speaker 3: it back to help and let it go. Men and

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Speaker 3: a wife would would for years went and saw him.

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Speaker 3: You know, every two three weeks. Mama religiously go see him.

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Speaker 3: Even today, he calls me every week almost in prison.

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Speaker 3: He got into cabentry, and the way I understand it,

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Speaker 3: he's very good at it. He built a prefab homes

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Speaker 3: there and everybody that knows Tommy, everywhere he's at, even

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Speaker 3: in prison, everybody likes him.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 3: He's a good Christian man. He's honest, and you know

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Speaker 3: he just just not any aim to do what they

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Speaker 3: claimed he did.

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Speaker 1: Tommy had befriended Carl Fontaneau when Carl had no family

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Speaker 1: or home. He wasn't much different from those other strays

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Speaker 1: Tommy took in in prison while Tommy worked carpentry jobs,

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Speaker 1: Carl pursued a different kind of woodworking. He taught himself

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Speaker 1: the lonely skill of building picture frames out of toothpicks

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Speaker 1: and glue, even though he didn't have any photos of

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Speaker 1: loved ones to go in them. While Tommy and Carl

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Speaker 1: sat in an Oklahoma prison, words started spreading about this

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Speaker 1: mysterious case that was built on a dream. Two books

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Speaker 1: were written about it, one in nineteen eighty seven and

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Speaker 1: a second in two thousand and six.

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Speaker 2: This was a case that captured the imagination of an

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Speaker 2: investigative reporter named Robert Mayer, who wrote a classic wrongful

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Speaker 2: conviction book entitled Dreams of Ada. And then none other

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Speaker 2: than John Grisham wrote a book about this case.

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Speaker 1: This is the only non fiction book Grisham ever wrote, and,

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Speaker 1: like he told us in the last episode, even he

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Speaker 1: couldn't make up a story like this.

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Speaker 2: Eventually, Grisham's book The Innocent Man would be turned into

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Speaker 2: a Netflix series, which was released in twenty eighteen.

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Speaker 3: Finally, somebody was taking notice as starting to believe in

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Speaker 3: Tommy's story. I mean, it's even gone so far where

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Speaker 3: I get on vicebook. People on the other side of

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Speaker 3: the world, I mean Ukrainian and in Price's Italy, you know,

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Speaker 3: wishing Tommy well and believing in his innocent It's just

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Speaker 3: pretty amazing.

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Speaker 1: While journalists were telling Tommy and Carl's stories, the two

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Speaker 1: men sat behind bars for decades. Both still insisted on

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Speaker 1: their innocence. They needed post conviction lawyers to take their case,

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Speaker 1: but any new legal team would face a problem. No

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Speaker 1: DNA evidence existed that could prove Tommy and Karl's innocence.

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Speaker 1: How on earth would any lawyers go about exonerating them.

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Speaker 1: It was a case, turns out, that was made for

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Speaker 1: the organization that Steve and I are lucky enough to

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Speaker 1: co direct, the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University

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Speaker 1: Pritzker School of Law.

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Speaker 4: The purpose of the Center on Wrongful Convictions is to

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Speaker 4: identify and rectify wrongful convictions and other serious miscarriages of justice.

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Speaker 1: Here's the co founder of our center, renowned journalist Rob Worden.

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Speaker 4: We thought that it was important to have an organization

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Speaker 4: that would investigate cases in which there was no DNA

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Speaker 4: but there was other persuasive evidence of actual innocence. Now,

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Speaker 4: these cases are much harder to prove than DNA, but

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Speaker 4: they are no less compelling. The Center on Wrongful Convictions

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Speaker 4: was a first innocence project in the country that was

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Speaker 4: taking non DNA cases as well as DNA cases.

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Speaker 1: In two thousand and six, when the Center had been

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Speaker 1: around for about seven years, Rob heard about Tommy Ward's

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Speaker 1: case and he couldn't forget what he learned.

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Speaker 4: We wouldn't even have had a wrongful conviction movement were

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Speaker 4: it not initially for vibrant investigative reporting. John Grisham and

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Speaker 4: I had a conversation about the Tommy Ward case when

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Speaker 4: he was in Chicago. The thing that was so striking

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Speaker 4: about the Ward font No case was that the dreams

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Speaker 4: conflicted with known physical facts of the crime. So we

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Speaker 4: have this evidence that the dream confessions are false and

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Speaker 4: that quite clearly the ideas here were implanted in the

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Speaker 4: minds of both Tommy and Carl by the police. The

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Speaker 4: case probably never should have been brought. It still has

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Speaker 4: immensely powerful evidence of actual innocence, and that's why the

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Speaker 4: Center on Ronical Convictions got involved, and we've been involved

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Speaker 4: in it for the ensuing a dozen or thirteen years,

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Speaker 4: still fighting.

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Speaker 1: Now here's one thing that fascinated Rob about the case

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Speaker 1: and about Ada, Oklahoma. Turns out Tommy Ward wasn't the

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Speaker 1: only innocent man from Ada who was convicted of murder

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Speaker 1: based on a dream confession.

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Speaker 4: Ron Williamson was a minor league baseball player who had

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Speaker 4: been sentenced to death based on a dream that he

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Speaker 4: described to police about the crime. He was exonerated by DNA.

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Speaker 4: So this was an intriguing situation for me.

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Speaker 2: Of the twelve known dream confessions in the history of

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Speaker 2: false confessions, we have two of them coming from Ada, Oklahoma,

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Speaker 2: this small, fineteen thousand person town. What are the chances

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Speaker 2: of that It's like a cancer cluster. What's going on

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Speaker 2: here is that these interrogators were hell bent on solving

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Speaker 2: high profile murders and they were converting dreams into confessions.

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Speaker 2: This was part and parcel of their arsenal of tactics

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Speaker 2: to break suspects down and get them to confess, and

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Speaker 2: they were getting false confessions.

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Speaker 1: If that other dream confession was false, if Ron Williamson

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Speaker 1: had been exonerated, maybe Tommy and Carl could be exonerated too.

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Speaker 1: Our colleagues at the Center on Wrongful Convictions partnered with

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Speaker 1: Oklahoma attorney Mark Barrett to represent Tommy Ward, Carl fontane

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Speaker 1: also got new representation. Together, both legal teams dug into

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Speaker 1: the case of Denise Harroway's disappearance, and what did they find.

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Speaker 1: Not DNA, but they did find evidence of innocence that

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Speaker 1: was equally compelling. A whole box of investigative reports that

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Speaker 1: had not been disclosed to Tommy or Carl's defense, eight

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Speaker 1: hundred and sixty pages of secret evidence, and the contents

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Speaker 1: of those reports talk about a dream come true.

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Speaker 2: The discovery of this box is a development that occurred

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Speaker 2: after all the books, after the Netflix series, and it's

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Speaker 2: a development that blows this case wide open.

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Speaker 4: The prosecution, that turns out, as we now have learned,

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Speaker 4: had concealed a huge body of exculpatory evidence, including evidence

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Speaker 4: corroborating Tommy Ward's alibi that he had been at a

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Speaker 4: party with a bunch of people at the exact time

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Speaker 4: of the abduction and couldn't.

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Speaker 1: Have been involved in that box. There was also a

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Speaker 1: full recantation from Carl Fontaneau which he wrote just days

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Speaker 1: after he confessed. There were police reports showing that the

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Speaker 1: the only witness who put Tommy Ward at mcinally's that night,

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Speaker 1: James Moyer, had completely changed his descriptions several times of

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Speaker 1: whoever it was he saw, But what about that blouse

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Speaker 1: with the blue flowers and lazy collar. That magical proof

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Speaker 1: that Tommy and Karl must be guilty because their interrogators

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Speaker 1: didn't know what Denise was wearing.

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Speaker 2: In that box, the lawyers found a draft missing person's

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Speaker 2: report written by the police but never actually circulated to

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Speaker 2: either the public or to defense counsel in this case.

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Speaker 2: That report described the blouse that Denise was wearing on

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Speaker 2: the day she was abducted. It said that Denise Harvey

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Speaker 2: was wearing a blouse with blue flowers and lace around

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Speaker 2: the neckline, and that report was dated one day after

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Speaker 2: Denise's disappearance. That's months before the interrogations, so the police

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Speaker 2: knew what Denise was wearing before they interrogated both Tommy

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Speaker 2: and Carl.

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Speaker 1: And there was more in the box. Lawyers also found

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Speaker 1: an undated report of an interview with Denise's sister, which

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Speaker 1: is probably where police got the information for the missing

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Speaker 1: person's bulletin. In it, she described Denise as wearing a

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Speaker 1: button down blouse with small blue flowers that had lace

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Speaker 1: around the collar and elastic on the sleeves. These are

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Speaker 1: the same details, the same words that ended up in

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Speaker 1: Tommy and Carl's confessions. Not to play on stereotypes, but

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Speaker 1: what are the odds that these two rough and tumbled

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Speaker 1: dudes from rural Oklahoma would have described a woman's lacey

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Speaker 1: blouse using exactly the same words as Denise's sister.

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Speaker 2: This eviscerates the state's case. The one fact, the blouse fact,

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Speaker 2: that put these men on death row. We now know

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Speaker 2: that the police knew about it before they interrogated Tommy

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Speaker 2: and Carl. We now know that Denise's sister told them

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Speaker 2: about it shortly after she disappeared. Now we know it

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Speaker 2: must have been fed to them by the same police

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Speaker 2: officers who fed so many other facts to them. The

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Speaker 2: anchor that police claimed was the basis of conviction in

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Speaker 2: both Trial on and Trial two. You gotta pull that

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Speaker 2: anchor up, because remember, there's nothing else in this case,

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Speaker 2: there's no other evidence.

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Speaker 1: It was the one unanswerable fact, and.

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Speaker 2: Now it's answerable. The confessions no longer convict Tommy and Carl.

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Speaker 3: The detectives said they did not know the description of

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Speaker 3: their shirt until after Tommy's and Carl's confession. Well, we

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Speaker 3: kind of have personal that that's not true. These detectives

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Speaker 3: got both of them to mension Odell Tipsworth's name in there.

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Speaker 3: They added the description of the shirt in there. It

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Speaker 3: was just as much these detectives confession as it was

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Speaker 3: Tommy and Carl's. I guess that's the best way of

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Speaker 3: saying that.

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Speaker 1: So much for the prosecution's ace in the hole. Police

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Speaker 1: had known all along what Denise was wearing when she disappeared.

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Speaker 1: Tommy and Carl were in a I.

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Speaker 3: Don't know, I don't understand law or anything, but here

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Speaker 3: you have a blatant miscarriage to justice because it's their

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Speaker 3: job to hand over all the evidence to, you know,

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Speaker 3: the defense, but the prosecuting attorney did not do that.

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Speaker 3: That's a violation of their riots.

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Speaker 4: When you put this all together, there is just no

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Speaker 4: question that Tommy Ward and Carl Fontineau are absolutely innocent

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Speaker 4: of this crime and have been the victims of one

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Speaker 4: of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in the history

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Speaker 4: of the United States.

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Speaker 2: The confessions of Tommy Ward and Carl Fontineau are worthless.

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Speaker 2: There is nothing holding this case together at all.

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Speaker 1: Based on these new discoveries, both Tommy and Carl filed

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Speaker 1: petitions for relief Tommy and state court and Carl in

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Speaker 1: federal court. Carl's judge was the first to act. In

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Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, he threw out Carl Fontineau's conviction. After thirty

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Speaker 1: four years behind bars, Carl was released unbond. He's finally free.

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Speaker 4: I'm absolutely delighted that Carl Fontineau has been released. Of course,

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Speaker 4: the damage that's been done to him can never be undone.

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Speaker 4: Nobody can ever make this right for Carl. But at

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Speaker 4: least he is no longer in prison.

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Speaker 2: And when he was released, he was welcomed with open

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Speaker 2: arms by a new community, a new family, the community

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Speaker 2: of Exoneries from the state of Oklahoma. But justice in

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Speaker 2: this case won't be complete until Tommy Ward is free.

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Speaker 3: We're very happy for Carl, and Tommy's very happy for Carl.

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Speaker 3: Of course, it shows hope for Tommy because a lot

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Speaker 3: of the things that the federal judge had come out

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Speaker 3: with it also falls under Tommy's case.

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Speaker 1: As of this recording, Tommy's still waiting behind bars for

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Speaker 1: his judge to decide whether he can walk free too.

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Speaker 1: Tommy's been waiting for that decision thirty five years, and God,

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Speaker 1: we hope it's the right one.

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Speaker 3: I would guess Tommy would be dreaming about freedom now.

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Speaker 1: In this case that's started with a nightmare. There are

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Speaker 1: new things to hope for now, doors opening, chains being removed,

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Speaker 1: family embracing you and taking you home. These are the

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Speaker 1: things that all wrongfully convicted people hope for until finally,

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Speaker 1: one day those dreams come true.

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Speaker 3: I have more hope for Tommy now than I've had

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Speaker 3: in a long time. After thirty five years of knowing

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Speaker 3: that your little brothers in prison for something he didn't do.

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Speaker 3: You want him out. We want him out bad, and

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Speaker 3: he deserves to be out. If there's any justice in

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Speaker 3: this world, he'll be out one of these days.

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Speaker 1: Fifteen years after author John Grisham started researching this case,

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Speaker 1: he still speaks with Tommy Ward all the time and

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Speaker 1: remains a strong advocate for Tommy's freedom.

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Speaker 5: Tommy prays for me, will not pray for him. I

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Speaker 5: will say, Tommy, relax, I'm okay, worry about you, sip.

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Speaker 5: That's not the kind of guy is. He has a

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Speaker 5: long prayer list and he keeps a lot of people

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Speaker 5: on that list. And Tommy would probably go to work

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Speaker 5: helping people when he got out when he gets out.

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Speaker 5: This is an innocent man. Get him out of prison,

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Speaker 5: that's what should happen.

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Speaker 3: Hello, this is a collect call from Tommy, an inmate

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Speaker 3: at Dick Connor Correctional Center.

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Speaker 1: You may start the conversation now. Hello, Hey Tommy, This

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Speaker 1: is Laura.

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Speaker 2: And this is Steve Tommy.

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Speaker 1: Hi Tommy, how are you doing?

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Speaker 6: Okay? The same my prayers that s been coming to

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Speaker 6: an end?

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Speaker 2: Sim We sure hope.

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Speaker 1: So can you tell us how you u your time

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Speaker 1: these days?

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Speaker 6: Well, I'm been trying to keep busy, you know. I

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Speaker 6: do a lot of the hobby crams for you know,

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Speaker 6: like Christmas presence or Birthday presence and kind of case.

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Speaker 6: They're busy doing that.

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Speaker 2: You've had so many ups and downs over the past

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Speaker 2: decades that you've been locked up. Do you allow yourself

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Speaker 2: to think about what you're going to want to do

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Speaker 2: when you get out.

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Speaker 6: Yeah. I like woodwork, and I'd like to open up

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Speaker 6: my own wood shop. And I always thought of, you

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Speaker 6: know a lot of elderly people were I could go

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Speaker 6: in and maybe lower their cabinets for them and the

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Speaker 6: housers and stuff like that, you know, make it like

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Speaker 6: wheelchair accessible where they can stay at home longer instead

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Speaker 6: of having to go to a nursing home.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that was pretty meaningful work to do. Do you

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Speaker 1: get letters from people who have watched your story on

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Speaker 1: TV or who read the books?

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Speaker 6: Oh? Yeah, it's a lesson to hear from everybody that

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Speaker 6: has written to me. Someone is to after the cares.

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Speaker 1: A lot of people care, Tommy, and just from talking

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Speaker 1: to you now, I can see that you deserve every

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Speaker 1: one of those blessings and a whole lot more. Tommy

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Speaker 1: Ward is now sixty years old. Will he finally be

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Speaker 1: able to reclaim what's left of his life as an

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Speaker 1: exonerated man? We hope so, Tommy, We support you all

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Speaker 1: the way. Your dream of freedom is our dream. Too.

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Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of Lava for

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Speaker 1: Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one Special

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Speaker 1: thanks to our executive producers Jason Flamm and Kevin Wardis.

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Speaker 1: Our production team is headed by senior producer and Pope

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Speaker 1: a Lot with producers Joshi Hammer and Jess Shane. Our

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Speaker 1: show is mixed by Genie Montalvo. John Colbert is our

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Speaker 1: intrepid intern. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph. You

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Speaker 1: can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura and

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Speaker 1: I Wrider, and you can follow me.

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Speaker 2: On Twitter at Sdrizzen.

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Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit Wrongful Conviction podcast

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Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram

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Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and

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Speaker 1: on Twitter at wrong Conviction