Speaker 1: Previously on Death and Deceit in Alliance.
Speaker 2: Why is you know so many cops you never asked
Speaker 2: about that?
Speaker 1: I wondered about it.
Speaker 3: She was possibly seeing a police officer to live in.
Speaker 1: He was a.
Speaker 4: Hot mess, anger and rage very people scared me.
Speaker 5: He scared me, and supposedly she told Linda McLaughlin's mother
Speaker 5: that the youngest child maybe this policeman's son.
Speaker 4: You know, in terms of the police force. My god,
Speaker 4: I had eight or nine names of officers who were
Speaker 4: potential sexual partners.
Speaker 3: This drug guy was putting her up to it so
Speaker 3: if he gets caught, he can black me out with
Speaker 3: the cops.
Speaker 4: Given what we know about Yvonne is, I'm pretty sure
Speaker 4: people didn't want a lot of that stuff flying out.
Speaker 1: This is Death and Deceit in Alliance, A real time
Speaker 1: investigation into whether David Thorne killed Yvonne Lane. I'm Maggie Freeling.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety four, Jason Baldwin, along with two friends,
Speaker 1: Damien Eccles and Jesse miss Kelly, were convicted of murdering
Speaker 1: three little boys in West Memphis, Arkansas.
Speaker 6: After they were convicted of murdering three boy scouts, hog
Speaker 6: tied and left in a Ditch.
Speaker 1: But Jesse, Jason, and Damien all proclaimed their innocence.
Speaker 3: I got kidnapped at the ages sixteen by stay to Arkansas,
Speaker 3: and you know, spent eighteen years in prison for something
Speaker 3: I didn't.
Speaker 1: Do, and decades later that would lead to why I'm
Speaker 1: sitting here, you know, to.
Speaker 3: Start, I wanted to know how you founded proclaimed justice,
Speaker 3: what it is, how you both met.
Speaker 1: Gave me the origin story.
Speaker 6: Well, mean to take it to you.
Speaker 3: The tag team, Yeah and all like real life.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: At first, John heard about Jason, Damien, and Jesse back
Speaker 1: when the crime happened.
Speaker 5: So in you're from Arkansas, which I am, and I'm
Speaker 5: about their age.
Speaker 7: I'm a little bit older than.
Speaker 5: Jason, a couple years older, and of course you hear
Speaker 5: about this case and it's all.
Speaker 6: Over the state.
Speaker 1: Jason was a kid then doing life for a crime
Speaker 1: he says he did not commit, and I kind.
Speaker 8: Of started.
Speaker 6: Wondering about it, and that just kind of took me
Speaker 6: down this.
Speaker 5: Rabbit hole of these guys are innocent, and so I
Speaker 5: advocated for them from a far just.
Speaker 1: Through This is Jason. He and his co defendants, Damien
Speaker 1: and Jesse, had been featured in a nineteen ninety six
Speaker 1: documentary on HBO called Paradise Lost, which raised doubts about
Speaker 1: their convictions. This is the one that Metallica did the
Speaker 1: soundtrack for and put the West Memphis Three case on
Speaker 1: the map. People all over the country were demanding justice
Speaker 1: for the trio.
Speaker 3: Arkansas officials would just say, you know, hey, those people
Speaker 3: who are saying that about the case are from New York,
Speaker 3: are from California, are from New Zealand. You know, foreigners.
Speaker 3: They're outsiders. They don't know this case like we do.
Speaker 3: And so they kept putting that lie out there to
Speaker 3: the Arkansas and so John Cardon, who is an Arkanson,
Speaker 3: and he was like, no, I've looked at this case.
Speaker 3: I believe that these kids are innocent.
Speaker 1: And from then John was on the case. In twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: after eighteen years in prison, Jason, Jesse, and Damien were
Speaker 1: released on an Alfred plea.
Speaker 6: Today, the West Memphis Three walked free.
Speaker 1: And Alfred plea allowed them to profess their innocence while
Speaker 1: technically pleading guilty. So despite being free, the three are
Speaker 1: still officially convicted murderers, which, among other things like being
Speaker 1: a felon forever, means they couldn't sue the state for
Speaker 1: a wrongful conviction. Jason didn't receive a multimillion dollar settlement
Speaker 1: as other wrongfully convicted have, but Jason had something else.
Speaker 1: When he was in prison, musicians like Metallica and Eddie
Speaker 1: Vedder from Pearl Jam supported his cause, and when Jason
Speaker 1: got out.
Speaker 3: Eddie veddered and whisked me away to live up in
Speaker 3: his castle in Seattle and John.
Speaker 1: Shortly after arriving in Seattle, John went up to visit John.
Speaker 3: He was like, Hey, the best things I've experienced in
Speaker 3: my life was you know, Marry and my wife, seeing
Speaker 3: my son born, and seeing you guys well free go home.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: And I want to continue doing that for other annocent
Speaker 3: people in prison, you know. And I would like to
Speaker 3: take that journey with you. And I was like, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, I promise the guys I left behind I
Speaker 3: wouldn't forget them, and this is a way for me
Speaker 3: to keep that promise.
Speaker 1: So they started Proclaimed Justice, a nonprofit dedicated to writing
Speaker 1: wrongful convictions. They got to work in twenty thirteen. They
Speaker 1: started with the people they knew from prison and focused
Speaker 1: on death row prisoners. Jason's co defendant, Damien had been
Speaker 1: on death row.
Speaker 3: They said, Damien, you were on death row in arkansastware
Speaker 3: crime you didn't commit. Were you the only innocent person
Speaker 3: on death row? And he said no, Tim Tim Howard,
Speaker 3: and so John was like, we need a free TAM.
Speaker 3: I'm like, ks, we need a free cam and they did.
Speaker 1: On December fourteenth, twenty seventeen, after twenty years in prison
Speaker 1: and fifteen on death row, Proclaimed Justice freed Tim Howard.
Speaker 9: Released last Wednesday after twenty years behind bars, most of
Speaker 9: that time on death row.
Speaker 1: Proclaimed Justice helped free Tim Howard, and short of a
Speaker 1: year later they also secured the freedom of Daniel Viagis
Speaker 1: from El Paso, Texas.
Speaker 2: You find the defendant, Daniel Rigez not guilty of that.
Speaker 1: I wanted to know what it requires for them to
Speaker 1: take a case.
Speaker 3: No, we're very selective in our case. Is we want
Speaker 3: to take everybody's case. It's not humanly possible, and so
Speaker 3: we had you know, we have a very limited resources
Speaker 3: and we had to make sure those resources are successful.
Speaker 1: The team itself is pretty small in terms of investigators.
Speaker 1: It's John and Danny Waxler, a lifelong private investigator and
Speaker 1: a friend of John's from high school. John told me
Speaker 1: that they have to be beyond certain that the person
Speaker 1: they're working for is innocent before they officially take a case.
Speaker 1: In fact, there have been a few cases they told
Speaker 1: me about that they started working on feeling good and
Speaker 1: then during their investigation they discovered the person's guilt. Another
Speaker 1: key factor in deciding whether to take a case is
Speaker 1: that they have to believe the defendant. You're going to
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time work looking for them, often
Speaker 1: for free, so credibility is key, and they take their
Speaker 1: time to make sure they have it right.
Speaker 3: We're working on several cases all the time, and the
Speaker 3: way our case work is we may work on a
Speaker 3: case for a few years before we even officially take
Speaker 3: a case.
Speaker 1: And I thought they were the perfect people to evaluate
Speaker 1: a case like David's. And I was super excited when
Speaker 1: they agreed to look at the files, even if it
Speaker 1: didn't mean they were as of yet committed to a
Speaker 1: full investigation, it was a start. This is John Harden.
Speaker 5: So I started like I usually do, just you know,
Speaker 5: started really with the trial transcripts after no one whole story,
Speaker 5: and I'm not too far along in those, but already
Speaker 5: a bunch of questions and.
Speaker 1: If you remember from episode one, John sent me a
Speaker 1: recording of him and Danny looking at the files and
Speaker 1: talking about their initial reaction just from reading the trial transcripts. Anyway,
Speaker 1: they started with the key evidence, you.
Speaker 5: Know, right off the bat. A couple of things that
Speaker 5: raised my eyebrows are the knife in the pants. How
Speaker 5: did Joe lead them to the circumstances? Was it confirmed
Speaker 5: to be the murder weapon with any kind of forensic
Speaker 5: or biological testing or anything like that. And if it
Speaker 5: was the murder weapon and Joe did lead them there.
Speaker 6: Then that's a big fucking deal. So just kind of
Speaker 6: on its space.
Speaker 5: You're sitting there thinking, okay, plausible, but fucking three hundred
Speaker 5: dollars to murder of woman in cold blood?
Speaker 1: They question how much sense this makes.
Speaker 7: I'm under the strong impression that Joseph was the fourth
Speaker 7: friend of David Thorn that the cops.
Speaker 6: Had gone to.
Speaker 1: If you remember, I spoke with one of those friends,
Speaker 1: Josh McComb, who said the police tried to get him
Speaker 1: and a few of David's other friends to confess before
Speaker 1: they found Joe. Remember, David had a rock solid alibi.
Speaker 1: He couldn't have done the murder, so the search was
Speaker 1: on for an accomplice.
Speaker 7: There's a full blown declaration that they went after three friends.
Speaker 7: I mean it's in record that there were three other
Speaker 7: associates or friends of David's that they approached first. Yeah,
Speaker 7: and tried to coerce or push them into testifying against David.
Speaker 5: So do you think that they like very quickly zeroed
Speaker 5: in on David and then started, Okay, the other thing
Speaker 5: off the bat was and I'll look forward to this
Speaker 5: Rose Moore girl. It sounds like that's how they broke
Speaker 5: the case, according to them, with even knowing Joe was involved.
Speaker 1: Remember, Rose and her boyfriend Chris were the first people
Speaker 1: to bring the cops attention to Joe. Rose told the
Speaker 1: police they were at the mall and they bumped into
Speaker 1: Joe where he showed them the knife and.
Speaker 5: He says that he was over an alliance to kill
Speaker 5: a woman. And so that's what led them to Joe,
Speaker 5: according to.
Speaker 6: The state, So she's kind of a big deal. How
Speaker 6: did I've thought about that? You know, what if let's
Speaker 6: just say Joe.
Speaker 7: Hit this, Yeah, because there are things that make you say, well,
Speaker 7: ants a knife and familiarity.
Speaker 6: Why is he staying at a freaking hotel? In town
Speaker 6: that night and.
Speaker 1: With Joe, who was basically penniless in the hotel, just
Speaker 1: going to a party, like he later said after he recounted,
Speaker 1: or was he actually there to Killy Vaughan like the
Speaker 1: state claims.
Speaker 7: The guys waffled on new statements.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 7: So if you if we acknowledge that he's been dishonest,
Speaker 7: and he is the entire reason that David Thorn is
Speaker 7: sitting in jail right now.
Speaker 1: Well, and don't forget this crucial and confusing detail, but there.
Speaker 6: Was no there were no there was no blood on
Speaker 6: that knife.
Speaker 5: I think there was a partial print on the knife
Speaker 5: that didn't match anybody, didn't match David, didn't match Joe.
Speaker 7: The reason David Thorn is sitting in jail right now
Speaker 7: is someone that you acknowledge as a fucking liar.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's nothing else I forgot we were recording.
Speaker 6: Excuse my language. Now, it doesn't matter, man, this is
Speaker 6: just us talking. How we call.
Speaker 5: Joe's got some explaining to do. I mean, it's not
Speaker 5: cut and dry that he's lying, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: there's some real questions that I'm going to have to
Speaker 5: get some satisfactory answers to.
Speaker 1: After looking at the files, the guys decided there was
Speaker 1: enough for them to want to do boots on the
Speaker 1: groundwork in Ohio to try and figure out if David
Speaker 1: is telling the truth about his innocence, and if so,
Speaker 1: who did kill Yvonne Lane. Now it's worth noting that
Speaker 1: this is the hardest thing investigators can do find the killer,
Speaker 1: and in most innocence cases, even successful ones, rarely is
Speaker 1: there enough evidence to prove someone else did the crime.
Speaker 1: It's violations of due process, like withholding evidence or cops
Speaker 1: lying that lead to overturning a conviction most times. But
Speaker 1: with David's case, remember it was dead in the water.
Speaker 1: He appealed and lost. They had to have new evidence
Speaker 1: or the real killer. In late January, we met up
Speaker 1: in snowy, Ohio and wasted no time.
Speaker 8: The snow's pretty on the ground up here.
Speaker 1: We set out to find Rose and Chris. It's just me,
Speaker 1: Johnny and Danny. Jason usually stays back and works from
Speaker 1: the office in Austin.
Speaker 8: Twenty two miles.
Speaker 2: I hope it's the way of Starbucks.
Speaker 1: John starts every morning with chair. Anyway. At trial, Joe's
Speaker 1: testimony was the main evidence against David. It was his
Speaker 1: statement that David hired him to kill Vaughn that convicted David.
Speaker 1: The evidence that led the police to Joe was Rose
Speaker 1: Moore and Chris Campbell and just as a reminder, a
Speaker 1: week before Joe's arrest, the police received a tip. The
Speaker 1: tip came from a woman who worked at an apartment
Speaker 1: complex an alliance, stating that one of her tenants had
Speaker 1: information in the Yvonne Lane murder. A resident at the
Speaker 1: apartment had said that her daughter, Rose Moore, had the information.
Speaker 1: The police spoke with Rose on July twelfth, two days
Speaker 1: before Joe was picked up, over three months after the murder.
Speaker 1: Twenty three year old Rose told officers that she and
Speaker 1: her boyfriend Chris Campbell were in the food court at
Speaker 1: the Carnation Mall when they bumped into Joe Wilkes. Chris
Speaker 1: knew Joe from high school and they started talking. That's
Speaker 1: when eighteen year old Joe allegedly told them he was
Speaker 1: an alliance to do a job. He was hired to
Speaker 1: kill a woman. Here's John the PI for me.
Speaker 5: She's the first person on record that mentions Joe.
Speaker 6: That's the significance of her to me.
Speaker 1: She's not, but there are discrepancies in Rose's account key ones,
Speaker 1: and Rose's testimony will evolve. Initially told police Joe was
Speaker 1: in a white outfit white pants with some dark but
Speaker 1: by trial she put him in black hands, the ones
Speaker 1: that were allegedly found in the woods. She also initially
Speaker 1: told police Joe's knife was an eight inch knife in
Speaker 1: a sheath. By trial this changed to the folding knife
Speaker 1: Joe allegedly bought and which was found in the sewer
Speaker 1: drain near Yvonne's house. And Rose also said that Joe
Speaker 1: allegedly wrote his phone number on a business card for
Speaker 1: Chris to contact him in the future. Now remember this
Speaker 1: was presented at trial to prove that Joe was there
Speaker 1: with Rose and Chris. But Sue, David's wife, actually met
Speaker 1: with Rose and confronted her about the encounter and this card.
Speaker 7: But if Sue is credible, when I have no reason
Speaker 7: to doubt that.
Speaker 6: The whole I wrote his name and number down.
Speaker 7: And according to Sue, when Sue confronted her with a
Speaker 7: cop be of that business carded phone number was page
Speaker 7: your number. She said he didn't write this.
Speaker 2: Joe didn't write this. You did.
Speaker 7: And in Sue's mind.
Speaker 6: At least Rose acknowledged that she did write that.
Speaker 1: So did Sue misunderstand or did Rose make up that
Speaker 1: Joe wrote it? Was she lying for the prosecution about
Speaker 1: the encounter with Joe? If her story changed? Why? And
Speaker 1: I'll be honest, the handwriting does not look like Joe's
Speaker 1: a shaky, twitchy, semi illiterate kid. We wanted to get
Speaker 1: to the bottom of it.
Speaker 3: Morning.
Speaker 6: How are you as I Haarley? We were looking for
Speaker 6: Rose Moore?
Speaker 2: Does she live here?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 8: We are we're investigators. We worked for an innocents project.
Speaker 8: She was involved in a case twenty years ago out
Speaker 8: the Waynes.
Speaker 2: Heard nothing about it. But yeah, my two boys and
Speaker 2: there the dentists.
Speaker 6: They're at the dentist. Will she be back this morning?
Speaker 2: Okay, I can tect her. Let you know what time? Yeah,
Speaker 2: would you mind I give your vone number if you
Speaker 2: want to talk.
Speaker 3: To Yeah, let's do that.
Speaker 7: Do you think she'd mind talking to us?
Speaker 2: A few parties might have a phone off or she's
Speaker 2: off with Are you her husband? Yeah?
Speaker 8: Yeah, we just uh, I mean we know that she
Speaker 8: was sort of just pushed into the case.
Speaker 6: You know, there's no fault to wrong, but we're just
Speaker 6: trying to.
Speaker 2: Piece it all together.
Speaker 8: And yeah, all right, Well we'll text her and then
Speaker 8: see when she's available today and visit with her for
Speaker 8: a little bit.
Speaker 2: There's no school today, so we're here to.
Speaker 6: Okay, okay, very good.
Speaker 1: I like John's approach, low key, conversational, neighborly, no pressure. Still,
Speaker 1: who knows if it works. After John texted the number,
Speaker 1: we waited.
Speaker 5: We'll stick around Alliance for a little bit longer to
Speaker 5: see if Froze text back. So I don't want to
Speaker 5: once we head out of Alliance, we need to be
Speaker 5: going the rest.
Speaker 2: Of the day.
Speaker 1: We had a ton of other people to track down,
Speaker 1: but didn't want to miss Rose.
Speaker 5: We're just gonna kill a little bit of time to
Speaker 5: give Rose some time to reply.
Speaker 1: I feel like we should pay a wait outside.
Speaker 6: Her house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just see what you pulled in?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I mean we got to wait somewhere.
Speaker 7: So I was just thinking that it's eight thirty. Most
Speaker 7: Dennis Officers don't open until eight. If she had two
Speaker 7: kids there, yeah, I figure she'll be there a little bit,
Speaker 7: maybe at least an hour or for she's available.
Speaker 6: Could take a run at Chris Campbell and come back
Speaker 6: over here. He's in Canton.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we drove to Canton, about a half hour away. Now,
Speaker 1: Chris was Rose's boyfriend at the time. Chris's testimony was
Speaker 1: relatively consistent with his statement to the police, particularly that
Speaker 1: it took him a minute to recognize Joe because he
Speaker 1: was in all new clothes, which for Joe, a kid
Speaker 1: who was usually houseless, was unusual. But his statement contradicted
Speaker 1: Rose in at least one important detail. Chris also said
Speaker 1: that Joe told him he was in town to do
Speaker 1: a job to kill a girl. Remember, Rose said that
Speaker 1: Joe said some guy paid him to do it, but
Speaker 1: Chris said that Joe told them he was killing her
Speaker 1: for his as in Joe's girlfriend, because his girlfriend didn't
Speaker 1: like the girl. It's unclear who his girlfriend was at
Speaker 1: the time. We knocked on a few doors looking for
Speaker 1: Chris and we had no luck. Seems like he moves
Speaker 1: around a lot. And then we finally found someone.
Speaker 6: Hello, Hi, good morning. We're looking for Chris Campbell.
Speaker 3: Does he live here.
Speaker 2: No, he don't live here anymore.
Speaker 8: Okay, and you don't have any Okay, you don't do
Speaker 8: you know him? Know where he would live currently? No?
Speaker 2: He left me and wait with some other girl and oh,
Speaker 2: so you didn't do me?
Speaker 8: Okay, yeah, I did live here?
Speaker 7: Any other thing anymore?
Speaker 1: Okay, Now I want to explain something before we go
Speaker 1: any further. You'll notice in all of the interviews it's
Speaker 1: not me conducting them as I normally would. It's Danny
Speaker 1: and John, the two private investigators. And there's a reason
Speaker 1: for this because the sole purpose of this investigation and
Speaker 1: this podcast is to find out if David is telling
Speaker 1: the truth, and if so, get David back in court,
Speaker 1: which would give him a shot at overturning his conviction,
Speaker 1: and we could potentially find who really killed Levonne. But
Speaker 1: we have to take precautions. If I'm part of the interviews,
Speaker 1: that could be seen as witness tampering. I'm not a
Speaker 1: licensed private investigator like John and Danny. So although it's
Speaker 1: incredibly unusual and uncomfortable for me, I don't want to
Speaker 1: mess anything up, so I stay back and let them
Speaker 1: handle the interviews.
Speaker 2: How long how long has he been gone? It's been
Speaker 2: a mother two weeks or so.
Speaker 7: Do you know who she is or where we might
Speaker 7: could find him?
Speaker 2: H was he driving?
Speaker 6: These days?
Speaker 1: Chris would be harder to find than we thought. We
Speaker 1: missed him at his house by two weeks. He's transient,
Speaker 1: hopping from girlfriend to girlfriend, kind of like Joe was.
Speaker 1: And what Joe says about Chris brings up the possibility
Speaker 1: that Chris could have been lying.
Speaker 7: Been cool I because of a few reasons, and told
Speaker 7: almost factill fight when I was in naked JGF.
Speaker 10: And on top of that, I he knew that I
Speaker 10: was pretty much racist and made very big for that.
Speaker 1: This is Joe talking to Sue in their first phone call.
Speaker 1: Joe is white and Chris is black, and Joe was
Speaker 1: by his own account racist, so the two didn't get along.
Speaker 1: According to Joe, Joe also got expelled because of a
Speaker 1: fight with Chris, So maybe that meant there was motivation
Speaker 1: for Chris to lie, kind of like revenge. And if
Speaker 1: there was motive for Chris, there could have been motive
Speaker 1: for Rose, who was his girlfriend at the time. Rose
Speaker 1: told police Chris told her not to say anything, and
Speaker 1: she told police and her tape statement that she's afraid
Speaker 1: of Chris.
Speaker 10: Why you haven't come forward toil enough?
Speaker 7: Because I've been scared for my life because Chris Campbell
Speaker 7: told me if I said anything, and he would come
Speaker 7: after me, and that's why I've been scared, because I
Speaker 7: don't want to die.
Speaker 11: I tasted my children to raise.
Speaker 1: Police records say the couple ultimately broke up because of
Speaker 1: domestic violence problems. So maybe Rose was scared of him,
Speaker 1: maybe scared enough to say whatever he wanted her to.
Speaker 1: People do things when they're scared, like sometimes lie. We wondered,
Speaker 1: was it possible she lied to protect Chris in some way?
Speaker 1: We hoped that since so much time had passed, she'd
Speaker 1: be willing to open up whatever Rose will say. Sue
Speaker 1: is convinced Chris would tell us the truth. Twenty two
Speaker 1: years later, Sue insists that Chris told her he made
Speaker 1: up the conversation with Joe, although she says he wouldn't
Speaker 1: sign an f David. As we set out to find
Speaker 1: another address for Chris, John got a text back from Rose.
Speaker 1: John asked if we could come by after the dentist,
Speaker 1: and she responded, quote, no, I'm not interested in talking.
Speaker 1: I gave my testimony in court many years ago. Nothing
Speaker 1: has changed.
Speaker 5: How can we take another I mean, I'll tell her
Speaker 5: that I completely understand.
Speaker 2: We just, you know, let's just play it off. Maybe
Speaker 2: play it off.
Speaker 6: That there's some new efforming.
Speaker 1: John texted back and never received a reply. But we're
Speaker 1: nothing if not persistent. Investigative work takes a lot of patience,
Speaker 1: a lot of waiting. You get hopeful, and then your
Speaker 1: hopes are dashed, and then every now and then you
Speaker 1: get lucky. Something comes together, something works out.
Speaker 6: I'm ready for ready, let's go see what old Chris
Speaker 6: Campbell's up to.
Speaker 1: We knocked on a few other doors, found an ex wife,
Speaker 1: and got a new address. We left to go wait
Speaker 1: for Chris to get off work.
Speaker 2: Image. I got a spooky attic.
Speaker 6: You think it's haunted. I think there's bones up there.
Speaker 1: About twenty minutes of waiting, we spotted someone and they
Speaker 1: matched Chris's description, walking towards the address we had for him.
Speaker 6: He just walked his ass all the way from Harrison.
Speaker 6: That's funny.
Speaker 8: I just looked up out on the corner of my
Speaker 8: eye and there's.
Speaker 2: A dude walking.
Speaker 1: We really almost just missed that. He must have been
Speaker 1: walking near us for a while.
Speaker 6: You have oz on, I have eyes. If he crosses
Speaker 6: the road, I think he's crossing. Well, he may just
Speaker 6: be walking around that.
Speaker 7: I think he's crossing.
Speaker 6: He's right by their house.
Speaker 1: Right now, there he is, he's crossing.
Speaker 6: That's him, you see, Yes, I see that's him. Maybe. Probably.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna go with probably right now, I'm about to
Speaker 5: go with likely.
Speaker 3: Now I'm going definitely.
Speaker 1: The man we were watching walked into Chris's house.
Speaker 6: Well I think we let him settle. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 6: hot ass walk fuck yeah. Man.
Speaker 1: After about another twenty minutes, Danny and John decided to
Speaker 1: go not.
Speaker 6: Hi, Chris, how you doing Chris?
Speaker 2: Chris?
Speaker 7: I'm Danny wax for This is John Harden.
Speaker 2: I was hoping I could have a minute to talk
Speaker 2: to you.
Speaker 3: All right, who are you?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 6: We work for an innocence project.
Speaker 1: They do their normal spiel.
Speaker 7: What has happened is is there's been a resurgence of
Speaker 7: attention on the case, but we feel like we've got
Speaker 7: a new path. We feel like both of these guys
Speaker 7: are innocent, but part of that is going and figuring
Speaker 7: out who really was responsible.
Speaker 1: At this point, I was still waiting in the car,
Speaker 1: watching from the road. I had no idea if Chris
Speaker 1: was going to flip out at them or slam the
Speaker 1: door in their faces. But he did neither of those things.
Speaker 1: He actually invited them in.
Speaker 7: You knew Joe and what was your relationship with Joe?
Speaker 2: Like, man, I think I was the only friend.
Speaker 6: Really, yeah, or in the neighborhood or.
Speaker 2: School together. We were in masonry together. What was he
Speaker 2: like when we haven't met him.
Speaker 7: We've heard that he's at a lower level mentally cognitively, so,
Speaker 7: but we don't know that.
Speaker 2: We haven't spoken to him. So did you ever think of.
Speaker 6: Joe as a racist?
Speaker 2: What? No?
Speaker 7: No, okay, okay, because he's we That's why we feel
Speaker 7: like he's.
Speaker 6: He would be let off a cliff.
Speaker 7: If he if someone he looked up to told him
Speaker 7: to jump off the cliff. So when one of his
Speaker 7: narratives was you and him hated each other because he was,
Speaker 7: he's verbatim.
Speaker 2: This is what he said.
Speaker 7: I was pretty much a racist and he knew it.
Speaker 6: You're either are You're not right?
Speaker 9: We're like, pretty much, that's not something you're on the
Speaker 9: fence on. Right, And now that we know you were
Speaker 9: his only freaking friend at the time, it didn't matter
Speaker 9: if you were purple.
Speaker 3: He needed a friend, right.
Speaker 6: Wow, it's so crazy.
Speaker 1: So that motive we'd conjured for Chris to lie was
Speaker 1: blown right out of the water. But maybe Chris was
Speaker 1: an informant and was given a deal to lie. There
Speaker 1: were some things that made us think this. For one,
Speaker 1: Chris was arrested July sixteenth for drug possession, just two
Speaker 1: days after Joe was brought in for questioning. Chris was
Speaker 1: held until after trial and then released four time served.
Speaker 6: So did you think it was weird?
Speaker 2: The right after.
Speaker 7: I think it was the fourteenth of July, him and
Speaker 7: David Dorn And then two days later they arrest you
Speaker 7: in the park for putting your hand in your pocket.
Speaker 2: Do you remember that?
Speaker 6: It wasn't that odd?
Speaker 7: It was odd to us because all we see are
Speaker 7: the documents, and then they tried to keep you in jail,
Speaker 7: and then when the trial is over and they're convicted,
Speaker 7: they give you time served and you're done.
Speaker 2: What do you think that was about. I think they
Speaker 2: wanted to take Joe down. M I knew Joe, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean.
Speaker 10: So, and from their knowledge, I was the last one
Speaker 10: to talk to Joe.
Speaker 2: He could have murder happened, you know what I mean.
Speaker 10: And I do remember that detective too. I can't remember
Speaker 10: his name, but he kept saying, you owe me a favor.
Speaker 10: You owed me a favorite LIKEE gone.
Speaker 1: This was odd, and sitting in the car listening to everything,
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but think Chris had to have gotten
Speaker 1: a deal, and if that was the case, the prosecution
Speaker 1: was required to disclose that and they didn't, so that
Speaker 1: would be huge for David's case.
Speaker 8: Did they ever like lean on you to say something
Speaker 8: like they need your help and they'll do something for
Speaker 8: you and give you something.
Speaker 2: And they God, that's what it was. But that's the
Speaker 2: only thing I have that is the truth.
Speaker 8: So the police never leaned on you to tell them
Speaker 8: something that wasn't true. Did they ask you to do that?
Speaker 8: Did they ask you to fill some holes for them
Speaker 8: with things that you didn't think were right.
Speaker 1: No, So they put to bed as best they could
Speaker 1: that Chris got a deal. We have no reason to
Speaker 1: doubt his original statement, though they did want to ask
Speaker 1: why Chris and Rose's statements didn't exactly match up.
Speaker 7: Rose said, some guy had hired Joe to kill Yvonne.
Speaker 7: But you had said in your initial thing that Joe
Speaker 7: told you his girlfriend, his own girlfriend had sent him
Speaker 7: to do the job.
Speaker 6: That was a big.
Speaker 7: Variance, right, There's a big difference between some guy paid
Speaker 7: me off to. In your view, what Joe had said
Speaker 7: was that his girlfriend had sent him to do the job.
Speaker 7: His own girlfriend.
Speaker 6: Yeah, does that ring a bell or.
Speaker 10: I remember that conversation.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So he was saying that maybe the dude's girlfriend
Speaker 8: hired him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, Yeah, you didn't have a girlfriend. It was
Speaker 2: a dude's girlfriend.
Speaker 1: Chris didn't waiver. He said the same thing he told
Speaker 1: police in his original statements, that Joe said a girlfriend
Speaker 1: put him up to the murder. It was never clear
Speaker 1: to Chris whose girlfriend, but he did know that Joe
Speaker 1: didn't have a girlfriend. Chris also told Danny and John
Speaker 1: that what Joe told him at the mall just didn't
Speaker 1: make sense.
Speaker 10: I can't physically say that he didn't. Yeah, tell you
Speaker 10: what I know. I can tell you what he told me,
Speaker 10: But I can also tell you what I do. I
Speaker 10: don't believe that he walked from exactly ma All on
Speaker 10: Stage Street.
Speaker 7: Yeah, in a white jogging suit, all the way down like.
Speaker 8: Four point two miles and a well lit street.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Remember it's a highway. And Joe would like be covered
Speaker 1: in blood.
Speaker 11: And then a knife he showed me, and then the
Speaker 11: knife and Day showed me.
Speaker 2: It didn't match up.
Speaker 1: Remember Rose originally said it was an eight inch knife
Speaker 1: in a sheath, and by the time of trial, the
Speaker 1: police were showing Rose and Chris a folding pocket knife.
Speaker 10: I remember then in fact, that took me to Kmar too.
Speaker 2: At them all. It was like, we showed me the
Speaker 2: night and I showed him.
Speaker 8: It was a folding knife.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it a matter of fact, I said, Joe, who
Speaker 10: are you gonna kill with that?
Speaker 1: Chris said the knife was a folding knife, like his
Speaker 1: original statement. So if Chris said he told the truth,
Speaker 1: could that maybe mean he mixed up his days?
Speaker 7: How sure are you that it was that same day,
Speaker 7: the day before she was actually killed, because.
Speaker 11: That night we talked to him, and then then the
Speaker 11: very next morning Rose heard about it and immediately he said, well,
Speaker 11: we're not dinner one, I'm calling the cop. So the
Speaker 11: next day, yeah, that she brought it and I was like.
Speaker 2: No, can do that? You know what I mean?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, that's all I just came about because
Speaker 2: she called.
Speaker 1: They asked him to walk through the night.
Speaker 10: Okay, So as we walked in there, I seen him
Speaker 10: in the in the food cory.
Speaker 7: And what did he come up to you?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 10: Okay, so what he was doing here, and that's what
Speaker 10: he said, Yeah, the job to do blah blah blah.
Speaker 7: Did he say what the job to do was?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 10: Oh yeah, I told we talked about everything that he
Speaker 10: liked squirrel.
Speaker 2: At first, I didn't believe him.
Speaker 7: Like, yeah, right, that's not something your buddy typically comes
Speaker 7: out of his mouth.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Everything Chris said to us matched his original story. And
Speaker 1: even though Chris was adamant Joe told him he was
Speaker 1: there to kill a girl, and even though a girl
Speaker 1: did in fact get murdered that night, Chris said he
Speaker 1: still doesn't believe Joe is the killer.
Speaker 10: Joe loves kids, Yeah, and Joe wouldn't do that, not
Speaker 10: in front of no kids anyway.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And it's like it doesn't add up. It doesn't make.
Speaker 8: You think so I probably got coached by the cops.
Speaker 7: Think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was already scared to begin with. Yeah, she
Speaker 2: was already scared.
Speaker 11: Yeah, and uh, we broke up after that after she
Speaker 11: called the cops and yeah, we don't even know for
Speaker 11: sure and.
Speaker 4: Grow yeah yeah like ship clue.
Speaker 10: Yeah, after she called the cop or whatever I say,
Speaker 10: I didn't talked to her friend either.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, Chris said, Rose was coached, but he doesn't
Speaker 1: know for sure, and we don't know either. We don't
Speaker 1: know why some of the details of their stories differ,
Speaker 1: why the knives are different, and why Chris said that
Speaker 1: the killing was to be done for a girlfriend but
Speaker 1: Rose didn't. Now it occurred to me that Chris could
Speaker 1: be inclined to stick with his original story just to
Speaker 1: avoid any kind of perjury charge. I mean, the guy
Speaker 1: is well versed with the law considering all his run ins,
Speaker 1: and he's certainly not stupid. But both he and Rose
Speaker 1: are sticking to their original stories, so that leaves us
Speaker 1: with Joe. But there were other good suspects to look
Speaker 1: at as well. Something always bothered me about Vinnie being
Speaker 1: out of his crib and dressed. Preston said, only someone
Speaker 1: he trusted could dress him. Maybe someone like the psychic's
Speaker 1: main person of interest coming up on death and deceit
Speaker 1: and alliance.
Speaker 6: Somebody was in that house. Then it was a It
Speaker 6: sounded to me like a woman's voice.
Speaker 1: I really don't want to say anything.
Speaker 2: Why's that? Because I'm tired of being dragged in the
Speaker 2: middle of it.
Speaker 6: If you're not in the middle, oh, I have been for.
Speaker 2: The last twenty two years. How did you tell you
Speaker 2: to fight me here?
Speaker 8: So you remember seeing him? My boyfriend my ex husband now,
Speaker 8: but my boyfriend at the time.
Speaker 1: We saw him there that night.
Speaker 8: If Joe's giving her permission so to speak to talk
Speaker 8: with us, you would think Joe's not worried about what
Speaker 8: she's going to tell us.
Speaker 1: I truly, honestly believe he didn't do it.
Speaker 7: I know David wanted him to, and I was under
Speaker 7: the impression that Dave was.
Speaker 1: Going to pay him to death and deceit. And Alliance
Speaker 1: is produced and supported by me Maggie Freeling, with editorial
Speaker 1: consulting from Amber Hunt. Aaron Case is our legal researcher.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Steve Fishman. Our engineer and production
Speaker 1: coordinator is Austin Smith. Eric Axelrod is our assistant producer.