Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions.
Speaker 2: I'm Laura and I writer and I'm Steve Drewson.
Speaker 1: Today we bring you back to Ada, Oklahoma for the
Speaker 1: second half of our story about Tommy Ward and Carl Fontano.
Speaker 1: When we left off last week, Tommy and Carl were
Speaker 1: sitting on death row after police turned Tommy's bad dream
Speaker 1: into a murder confession. This week, we'll tell you about
Speaker 1: some serious twists in the case, from the discovery of
Speaker 1: the victim's body to the revelation of hidden evidence that
Speaker 1: turned this case upside down. We'll update you on everything
Speaker 1: that's happened since the twenty eighteen Netflix series The Innocent
Speaker 1: Man told Tommy and Carl's story. There's been some very
Speaker 1: good news for one of them and a lot of
Speaker 1: hope for the other. Steve. For those listeners who missed
Speaker 1: last week's episode, let's tell them what happened.
Speaker 2: In Ada, Oklahoma. Denise Harroway, a twenty four year old woman,
Speaker 2: goes missing. She vanishes. The police bring Tommy Ward in
Speaker 2: for questioning, and.
Speaker 1: It got ugly fast. Tommy told the police about this
Speaker 1: nightmare he'd had about Denise's disappearance, and over a nine
Speaker 1: hour interrogation, police turned that dream into a confession. They
Speaker 1: even hauled in Tommy's friend, Carl Fontano and got him
Speaker 1: to confess too. But here's the thing. These confessions were
Speaker 1: riddled with errors. They named a third perpetrator who had
Speaker 1: a rock solid alibi. They repeated the stories that police
Speaker 1: fed to Tommy and Carl without adding anything new. These
Speaker 1: confessions were obviously obviously false.
Speaker 2: Now going into trial, the prosecutors have two confessions that
Speaker 2: are at odds with the objectively noble facts of the cry.
Speaker 1: But they thought they had an ace in the hole.
Speaker 2: And that ace in the hole was a single fact
Speaker 2: that both Tommy and Carl had told to police officers,
Speaker 2: a description of a blouse that Denise Harrowy was wearing
Speaker 2: at the time that she was abducted. A blouse that
Speaker 2: it turned out was missing from Denise's wardrobe, A blouse
Speaker 2: which even the police did not know about at the
Speaker 2: time they interviewed Tommy and Carl.
Speaker 1: But based on this one detail in their confessions, Tommy
Speaker 1: and Carl were convicted of murder. And remember, her bodies
Speaker 1: still hadn't been found when they were convicted.
Speaker 2: No body, no bones, no motive, nothing but a description
Speaker 2: of Denise Harroway's blouse, and they are on death row
Speaker 2: because of that. That's where we pick up the story.
Speaker 1: Three months after Tommy and Carl were convicted, a wake
Speaker 1: up call arrived in the case that was built on
Speaker 1: a dream. On January twenty firstnineteen eighty six, a man
Speaker 1: was walking through a field in Gurdy, Oklahoma, when he
Speaker 1: found a skull under some brush. Police found more human
Speaker 1: remains spread across the field, and dental records confirmed a match. Finally,
Speaker 1: they'd found Denise Harroway. This discovery produced a new round
Speaker 1: of problems with Tommy and Carl's confessions. Denise had been
Speaker 1: found unclothed, twenty miles away from where Tammy and Carl
Speaker 1: had said they'd left her. Her body hadn't been burned
Speaker 1: at all, despite the fact that Karl had said they'd
Speaker 1: set her on fire, and the medical examiner confirmed even
Speaker 1: though Tommy and Carl had said Denise had been stabbed
Speaker 1: that never happened. She had actually been shot in the head.
Speaker 2: It's like they're describing completely different crimes from what happened
Speaker 2: to Denise Harroway.
Speaker 1: Both Tommy and Carl's convictions were reversed on appeal, but
Speaker 1: not because Denise's body had been found. It was because
Speaker 1: the judge ruled they shouldn't have been tried together. Prosecutors
Speaker 1: went ahead and tried both Tommy and Carl again, this
Speaker 1: time separately, but using the same evidence as before.
Speaker 3: When the second trial come up, before they had found
Speaker 3: her remains and everything they found that crime scene had
Speaker 3: proved Tommy's confession wrong. Nothing was right about it.
Speaker 1: That's Tommy Ward's brother, Melvin. He's been advocating for Tommy's
Speaker 1: innocence for over thirty years.
Speaker 3: Our hearts was a high. I mean, how can you
Speaker 3: ignore You know that she was shot back of the head,
Speaker 3: and here you got two boys saying it was she
Speaker 3: was sad. She was never stad even in corners before
Speaker 3: states ad.
Speaker 1: But believe it or not, the second trials were deja
Speaker 1: vu all over again, just like before. The prosecutors relied
Speaker 1: on the fact that Tommy and Carl had both said
Speaker 1: Denise was wearing a blue flowered, ruffled blouse. The police
Speaker 1: hadn't known anything about the blouse before the interrogation. The
Speaker 1: prosecutors insisted that fact couldn't have been fed.
Speaker 2: Imagine you're a prosecutor and you have to stand up
Speaker 2: and of a jury and present them with a confession.
Speaker 2: They can't tell you what happened to denise, who did it,
Speaker 2: or even where the crime occurred. That's what these prosecutors
Speaker 2: had to do. But they did it well enough, well
Speaker 2: enough to convict both Tommy and Carl a second time.
Speaker 1: When Tommy heard the verdict, he began to sob uncontrollably.
Speaker 1: You're all liars, he shouted at the prosecutors. I'm being
Speaker 1: punished for something I didn't do.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I still have a hard time. I
Speaker 3: actually thought it would be a hung jury the second one.
Speaker 3: Confessions are hard to get by. You know, people still
Speaker 3: believe that, you know, why did you confess if you.
Speaker 2: Didn't do it?
Speaker 3: So their confessions were similar, but they also was off.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm not a lawyer by any means, but
Speaker 3: I could not say how twelve adult jurors could just
Speaker 3: ignore all the other evidence.
Speaker 4: That's what they did had to have.
Speaker 3: Tommy was totally convicted on his confession. Them confession sunk.
Speaker 1: Them this time around. Tommy Ward and Carl Fontano were
Speaker 1: ultimately sentenced to life in prison.
Speaker 3: That's been thirty five years ago plus thirty five years later,
Speaker 3: Tom's still waiting to get out.
Speaker 1: Tommy and Carl went off to prison to serve their
Speaker 1: life sentences. Years passed and their appeals were denied one
Speaker 1: after another.
Speaker 3: Tommy was a kid that he'd take his strays for instance,
Speaker 3: And what I mean by astrays, I don't meet just
Speaker 3: stray dogs. Like one time he found a hawk that
Speaker 3: had a broken wing. He took that hawk and nursed
Speaker 3: it back to help and let it go. Men and
Speaker 3: a wife would would for years went and saw him.
Speaker 3: You know, every two three weeks. Mama religiously go see him.
Speaker 3: Even today, he calls me every week almost in prison.
Speaker 3: He got into cabentry, and the way I understand it,
Speaker 3: he's very good at it. He built a prefab homes
Speaker 3: there and everybody that knows Tommy, everywhere he's at, even
Speaker 3: in prison, everybody likes him.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: He's a good Christian man. He's honest, and you know
Speaker 3: he just just not any aim to do what they
Speaker 3: claimed he did.
Speaker 1: Tommy had befriended Carl Fontaneau when Carl had no family
Speaker 1: or home. He wasn't much different from those other strays
Speaker 1: Tommy took in in prison while Tommy worked carpentry jobs,
Speaker 1: Carl pursued a different kind of woodworking. He taught himself
Speaker 1: the lonely skill of building picture frames out of toothpicks
Speaker 1: and glue, even though he didn't have any photos of
Speaker 1: loved ones to go in them. While Tommy and Carl
Speaker 1: sat in an Oklahoma prison, words started spreading about this
Speaker 1: mysterious case that was built on a dream. Two books
Speaker 1: were written about it, one in nineteen eighty seven and
Speaker 1: a second in two thousand and six.
Speaker 2: This was a case that captured the imagination of an
Speaker 2: investigative reporter named Robert Mayer, who wrote a classic wrongful
Speaker 2: conviction book entitled Dreams of Ada. And then none other
Speaker 2: than John Grisham wrote a book about this case.
Speaker 1: This is the only non fiction book Grisham ever wrote, and,
Speaker 1: like he told us in the last episode, even he
Speaker 1: couldn't make up a story like this.
Speaker 2: Eventually, Grisham's book The Innocent Man would be turned into
Speaker 2: a Netflix series, which was released in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3: Finally, somebody was taking notice as starting to believe in
Speaker 3: Tommy's story. I mean, it's even gone so far where
Speaker 3: I get on vicebook. People on the other side of
Speaker 3: the world, I mean Ukrainian and in Price's Italy, you know,
Speaker 3: wishing Tommy well and believing in his innocent It's just
Speaker 3: pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: While journalists were telling Tommy and Carl's stories, the two
Speaker 1: men sat behind bars for decades. Both still insisted on
Speaker 1: their innocence. They needed post conviction lawyers to take their case,
Speaker 1: but any new legal team would face a problem. No
Speaker 1: DNA evidence existed that could prove Tommy and Karl's innocence.
Speaker 1: How on earth would any lawyers go about exonerating them.
Speaker 1: It was a case, turns out, that was made for
Speaker 1: the organization that Steve and I are lucky enough to
Speaker 1: co direct, the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University
Speaker 1: Pritzker School of Law.
Speaker 4: The purpose of the Center on Wrongful Convictions is to
Speaker 4: identify and rectify wrongful convictions and other serious miscarriages of justice.
Speaker 1: Here's the co founder of our center, renowned journalist Rob Worden.
Speaker 4: We thought that it was important to have an organization
Speaker 4: that would investigate cases in which there was no DNA
Speaker 4: but there was other persuasive evidence of actual innocence. Now,
Speaker 4: these cases are much harder to prove than DNA, but
Speaker 4: they are no less compelling. The Center on Wrongful Convictions
Speaker 4: was a first innocence project in the country that was
Speaker 4: taking non DNA cases as well as DNA cases.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and six, when the Center had been
Speaker 1: around for about seven years, Rob heard about Tommy Ward's
Speaker 1: case and he couldn't forget what he learned.
Speaker 4: We wouldn't even have had a wrongful conviction movement were
Speaker 4: it not initially for vibrant investigative reporting. John Grisham and
Speaker 4: I had a conversation about the Tommy Ward case when
Speaker 4: he was in Chicago. The thing that was so striking
Speaker 4: about the Ward font No case was that the dreams
Speaker 4: conflicted with known physical facts of the crime. So we
Speaker 4: have this evidence that the dream confessions are false and
Speaker 4: that quite clearly the ideas here were implanted in the
Speaker 4: minds of both Tommy and Carl by the police. The
Speaker 4: case probably never should have been brought. It still has
Speaker 4: immensely powerful evidence of actual innocence, and that's why the
Speaker 4: Center on Ronical Convictions got involved, and we've been involved
Speaker 4: in it for the ensuing a dozen or thirteen years,
Speaker 4: still fighting.
Speaker 1: Now here's one thing that fascinated Rob about the case
Speaker 1: and about Ada, Oklahoma. Turns out Tommy Ward wasn't the
Speaker 1: only innocent man from Ada who was convicted of murder
Speaker 1: based on a dream confession.
Speaker 4: Ron Williamson was a minor league baseball player who had
Speaker 4: been sentenced to death based on a dream that he
Speaker 4: described to police about the crime. He was exonerated by DNA.
Speaker 4: So this was an intriguing situation for me.
Speaker 2: Of the twelve known dream confessions in the history of
Speaker 2: false confessions, we have two of them coming from Ada, Oklahoma,
Speaker 2: this small, fineteen thousand person town. What are the chances
Speaker 2: of that It's like a cancer cluster. What's going on
Speaker 2: here is that these interrogators were hell bent on solving
Speaker 2: high profile murders and they were converting dreams into confessions.
Speaker 2: This was part and parcel of their arsenal of tactics
Speaker 2: to break suspects down and get them to confess, and
Speaker 2: they were getting false confessions.
Speaker 1: If that other dream confession was false, if Ron Williamson
Speaker 1: had been exonerated, maybe Tommy and Carl could be exonerated too.
Speaker 1: Our colleagues at the Center on Wrongful Convictions partnered with
Speaker 1: Oklahoma attorney Mark Barrett to represent Tommy Ward, Carl fontane
Speaker 1: also got new representation. Together, both legal teams dug into
Speaker 1: the case of Denise Harroway's disappearance, and what did they find.
Speaker 1: Not DNA, but they did find evidence of innocence that
Speaker 1: was equally compelling. A whole box of investigative reports that
Speaker 1: had not been disclosed to Tommy or Carl's defense, eight
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty pages of secret evidence, and the contents
Speaker 1: of those reports talk about a dream come true.
Speaker 2: The discovery of this box is a development that occurred
Speaker 2: after all the books, after the Netflix series, and it's
Speaker 2: a development that blows this case wide open.
Speaker 4: The prosecution, that turns out, as we now have learned,
Speaker 4: had concealed a huge body of exculpatory evidence, including evidence
Speaker 4: corroborating Tommy Ward's alibi that he had been at a
Speaker 4: party with a bunch of people at the exact time
Speaker 4: of the abduction and couldn't.
Speaker 1: Have been involved in that box. There was also a
Speaker 1: full recantation from Carl Fontaneau which he wrote just days
Speaker 1: after he confessed. There were police reports showing that the
Speaker 1: the only witness who put Tommy Ward at mcinally's that night,
Speaker 1: James Moyer, had completely changed his descriptions several times of
Speaker 1: whoever it was he saw, But what about that blouse
Speaker 1: with the blue flowers and lazy collar. That magical proof
Speaker 1: that Tommy and Karl must be guilty because their interrogators
Speaker 1: didn't know what Denise was wearing.
Speaker 2: In that box, the lawyers found a draft missing person's
Speaker 2: report written by the police but never actually circulated to
Speaker 2: either the public or to defense counsel in this case.
Speaker 2: That report described the blouse that Denise was wearing on
Speaker 2: the day she was abducted. It said that Denise Harvey
Speaker 2: was wearing a blouse with blue flowers and lace around
Speaker 2: the neckline, and that report was dated one day after
Speaker 2: Denise's disappearance. That's months before the interrogations, so the police
Speaker 2: knew what Denise was wearing before they interrogated both Tommy
Speaker 2: and Carl.
Speaker 1: And there was more in the box. Lawyers also found
Speaker 1: an undated report of an interview with Denise's sister, which
Speaker 1: is probably where police got the information for the missing
Speaker 1: person's bulletin. In it, she described Denise as wearing a
Speaker 1: button down blouse with small blue flowers that had lace
Speaker 1: around the collar and elastic on the sleeves. These are
Speaker 1: the same details, the same words that ended up in
Speaker 1: Tommy and Carl's confessions. Not to play on stereotypes, but
Speaker 1: what are the odds that these two rough and tumbled
Speaker 1: dudes from rural Oklahoma would have described a woman's lacey
Speaker 1: blouse using exactly the same words as Denise's sister.
Speaker 2: This eviscerates the state's case. The one fact, the blouse fact,
Speaker 2: that put these men on death row. We now know
Speaker 2: that the police knew about it before they interrogated Tommy
Speaker 2: and Carl. We now know that Denise's sister told them
Speaker 2: about it shortly after she disappeared. Now we know it
Speaker 2: must have been fed to them by the same police
Speaker 2: officers who fed so many other facts to them. The
Speaker 2: anchor that police claimed was the basis of conviction in
Speaker 2: both Trial on and Trial two. You gotta pull that
Speaker 2: anchor up, because remember, there's nothing else in this case,
Speaker 2: there's no other evidence.
Speaker 1: It was the one unanswerable fact, and.
Speaker 2: Now it's answerable. The confessions no longer convict Tommy and Carl.
Speaker 3: The detectives said they did not know the description of
Speaker 3: their shirt until after Tommy's and Carl's confession. Well, we
Speaker 3: kind of have personal that that's not true. These detectives
Speaker 3: got both of them to mension Odell Tipsworth's name in there.
Speaker 3: They added the description of the shirt in there. It
Speaker 3: was just as much these detectives confession as it was
Speaker 3: Tommy and Carl's. I guess that's the best way of
Speaker 3: saying that.
Speaker 1: So much for the prosecution's ace in the hole. Police
Speaker 1: had known all along what Denise was wearing when she disappeared.
Speaker 1: Tommy and Carl were in a I.
Speaker 3: Don't know, I don't understand law or anything, but here
Speaker 3: you have a blatant miscarriage to justice because it's their
Speaker 3: job to hand over all the evidence to, you know,
Speaker 3: the defense, but the prosecuting attorney did not do that.
Speaker 3: That's a violation of their riots.
Speaker 4: When you put this all together, there is just no
Speaker 4: question that Tommy Ward and Carl Fontineau are absolutely innocent
Speaker 4: of this crime and have been the victims of one
Speaker 4: of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in the history
Speaker 4: of the United States.
Speaker 2: The confessions of Tommy Ward and Carl Fontineau are worthless.
Speaker 2: There is nothing holding this case together at all.
Speaker 1: Based on these new discoveries, both Tommy and Carl filed
Speaker 1: petitions for relief Tommy and state court and Carl in
Speaker 1: federal court. Carl's judge was the first to act. In
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, he threw out Carl Fontineau's conviction. After thirty
Speaker 1: four years behind bars, Carl was released unbond. He's finally free.
Speaker 4: I'm absolutely delighted that Carl Fontineau has been released. Of course,
Speaker 4: the damage that's been done to him can never be undone.
Speaker 4: Nobody can ever make this right for Carl. But at
Speaker 4: least he is no longer in prison.
Speaker 2: And when he was released, he was welcomed with open
Speaker 2: arms by a new community, a new family, the community
Speaker 2: of Exoneries from the state of Oklahoma. But justice in
Speaker 2: this case won't be complete until Tommy Ward is free.
Speaker 3: We're very happy for Carl, and Tommy's very happy for Carl.
Speaker 3: Of course, it shows hope for Tommy because a lot
Speaker 3: of the things that the federal judge had come out
Speaker 3: with it also falls under Tommy's case.
Speaker 1: As of this recording, Tommy's still waiting behind bars for
Speaker 1: his judge to decide whether he can walk free too.
Speaker 1: Tommy's been waiting for that decision thirty five years, and God,
Speaker 1: we hope it's the right one.
Speaker 3: I would guess Tommy would be dreaming about freedom now.
Speaker 1: In this case that's started with a nightmare. There are
Speaker 1: new things to hope for now, doors opening, chains being removed,
Speaker 1: family embracing you and taking you home. These are the
Speaker 1: things that all wrongfully convicted people hope for until finally,
Speaker 1: one day those dreams come true.
Speaker 3: I have more hope for Tommy now than I've had
Speaker 3: in a long time. After thirty five years of knowing
Speaker 3: that your little brothers in prison for something he didn't do.
Speaker 3: You want him out. We want him out bad, and
Speaker 3: he deserves to be out. If there's any justice in
Speaker 3: this world, he'll be out one of these days.
Speaker 1: Fifteen years after author John Grisham started researching this case,
Speaker 1: he still speaks with Tommy Ward all the time and
Speaker 1: remains a strong advocate for Tommy's freedom.
Speaker 5: Tommy prays for me, will not pray for him. I
Speaker 5: will say, Tommy, relax, I'm okay, worry about you, sip.
Speaker 5: That's not the kind of guy is. He has a
Speaker 5: long prayer list and he keeps a lot of people
Speaker 5: on that list. And Tommy would probably go to work
Speaker 5: helping people when he got out when he gets out.
Speaker 5: This is an innocent man. Get him out of prison,
Speaker 5: that's what should happen.
Speaker 3: Hello, this is a collect call from Tommy, an inmate
Speaker 3: at Dick Connor Correctional Center.
Speaker 1: You may start the conversation now. Hello, Hey Tommy, This
Speaker 1: is Laura.
Speaker 2: And this is Steve Tommy.
Speaker 1: Hi Tommy, how are you doing?
Speaker 6: Okay? The same my prayers that s been coming to
Speaker 6: an end?
Speaker 2: Sim We sure hope.
Speaker 1: So can you tell us how you u your time
Speaker 1: these days?
Speaker 6: Well, I'm been trying to keep busy, you know. I
Speaker 6: do a lot of the hobby crams for you know,
Speaker 6: like Christmas presence or Birthday presence and kind of case.
Speaker 6: They're busy doing that.
Speaker 2: You've had so many ups and downs over the past
Speaker 2: decades that you've been locked up. Do you allow yourself
Speaker 2: to think about what you're going to want to do
Speaker 2: when you get out.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I like woodwork, and I'd like to open up
Speaker 6: my own wood shop. And I always thought of, you
Speaker 6: know a lot of elderly people were I could go
Speaker 6: in and maybe lower their cabinets for them and the
Speaker 6: housers and stuff like that, you know, make it like
Speaker 6: wheelchair accessible where they can stay at home longer instead
Speaker 6: of having to go to a nursing home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was pretty meaningful work to do. Do you
Speaker 1: get letters from people who have watched your story on
Speaker 1: TV or who read the books?
Speaker 6: Oh? Yeah, it's a lesson to hear from everybody that
Speaker 6: has written to me. Someone is to after the cares.
Speaker 1: A lot of people care, Tommy, and just from talking
Speaker 1: to you now, I can see that you deserve every
Speaker 1: one of those blessings and a whole lot more. Tommy
Speaker 1: Ward is now sixty years old. Will he finally be
Speaker 1: able to reclaim what's left of his life as an
Speaker 1: exonerated man? We hope so, Tommy, We support you all
Speaker 1: the way. Your dream of freedom is our dream. Too.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of Lava for
Speaker 1: Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one Special
Speaker 1: thanks to our executive producers Jason Flamm and Kevin Wardis.
Speaker 1: Our production team is headed by senior producer and Pope
Speaker 1: a Lot with producers Joshi Hammer and Jess Shane. Our
Speaker 1: show is mixed by Genie Montalvo. John Colbert is our
Speaker 1: intrepid intern. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph. You
Speaker 1: can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura and
Speaker 1: I Wrider, and you can follow me.
Speaker 2: On Twitter at Sdrizzen.
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit Wrongful Conviction podcast
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