Speaker 1: When Amanda Bussy was seventeen, her home life was spinning
Speaker 1: out of control. Her father was abusive to her and
Speaker 1: her siblings, and her mother had just died in a
Speaker 1: car wreck. So when Larry D Clue asked her to
Speaker 1: run away with him, she jumps at the chance, even
Speaker 1: though he was nearly twice her age. In my mind,
Speaker 1: he was kind of like a superhero, you know. He
Speaker 1: took me away from all the abuse and stuff. But
Speaker 1: soon after she moved in with Larry, she started to
Speaker 1: notice suspicious behavior. One night, after they went to bed,
Speaker 1: I remember being woke up by someone banging on the
Speaker 1: window and they wanted Larry to go hunting with them. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it didn't make no damn sense to me. He
Speaker 1: didn't come back until eleven o'clock that morning. Not long
Speaker 1: after that, she and Larry were out driving with Larry's niece, Melissa.
Speaker 1: Melissa starts to jumping up and down. This is where
Speaker 1: it happened. This is where it happened, Uncle Larry. I'm like,
Speaker 1: what the heck, what are you talking about? What's the matter?
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't know what the heck was going on.
Speaker 1: That's when I realized something happened. Amanda didn't put the
Speaker 1: pieces together until a few years later, when, to her surprise,
Speaker 1: she was arrested for the brutal murder of a local woman.
Speaker 1: My name is Amanda Bussy. I was convicted for a
Speaker 1: second degree murder. I've been incarcerated for almost twenty years
Speaker 1: from Lava for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie
Speaker 1: Freeling today, Amanda Bussy. Amanda Bussy was born in February twelfth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty and Sullivan, Missouri, to Lisa and Kenny See.
Speaker 1: She's the oldest of their five kids. Although they grew
Speaker 1: up poor in rural Missouri, Amanda remembers there were some
Speaker 1: good times, like my Christmas. We know, my dad would
Speaker 1: take us out and he'd throw us in the snow.
Speaker 1: We'd all just laugh, you know. He put us on
Speaker 1: the sled and push us down the hill, or he'd
Speaker 1: go down with us whenever he was younger. We were
Speaker 1: very close during our adolescence. This is Amanda's aunt, Mary Paine.
Speaker 1: She's Amanda's mom's sister and actually two years younger than Amanda.
Speaker 1: The two of them grew up more like siblings than
Speaker 1: aunt and niece. We would go to church together on Sundays.
Speaker 1: We would walk home together after school. Or my dad
Speaker 1: had a furniture store, so her mother, my sister worked
Speaker 1: in the store with my dad sometimes, so we would
Speaker 1: walk to the furniture store and there was a back room,
Speaker 1: so we would choreograph dances and perform them for our family.
Speaker 1: We always would go on adventures in the woods, making treehouses,
Speaker 1: creating time capsules. We were both heavily involved in music,
Speaker 1: so we were inquired together a lot. She loved to
Speaker 1: get up in church and sing. She really connected to
Speaker 1: music and used that as an outlet. I believe that
Speaker 1: is an outlet for what was happening in Amanda's home life,
Speaker 1: which was challenging for a young girl. It was. It
Speaker 1: was a pretty hard life. You know. My mom was
Speaker 1: sick grown up. She had congestive heart failure and thyroid problems,
Speaker 1: and she just kept gaining weight, gaining weight, you know,
Speaker 1: and eventually she just wasn't able to get around and
Speaker 1: do much with herself. She couldn't do things like cutting
Speaker 1: her toe nails and shaving her legs and you know,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Her mother eventually had to stop working
Speaker 1: at the furniture store because of her condition, and Amanda
Speaker 1: stepped into the role of a parent. It was like
Speaker 1: trying to help mom do everything for her and then
Speaker 1: happened to do for the other kids, getting them ready
Speaker 1: for school, cooking dinner. Amanda's father, Kenny, worked various jobs,
Speaker 1: but she doesn't remember any of them lasting long. My dad,
Speaker 1: he just he quit working and then he just starts
Speaker 1: selling his drugs. He'd go from this place to that place,
Speaker 1: and eventually he just whenever he was home, they'd be
Speaker 1: all We'd have house full of people, you know. The
Speaker 1: busy home became a revolving door of people buying and
Speaker 1: selling drugs, particularly meth. It was rumored that Kenny controlled
Speaker 1: the local drug trade and ruled with violence and intimidation.
Speaker 1: We started realizing, hey, you know, dad not who we
Speaker 1: thought he was, you know, and whenever he start coming
Speaker 1: down off of drugs, you know, he start hitting us
Speaker 1: and stuff. It took me a while to figure out
Speaker 1: that things at her house weren't very good. This is
Speaker 1: Mary again. When I was there, I would notice there
Speaker 1: were sometimes strange people there. My nieces would tell me,
Speaker 1: you know, about their dad being abusive toward them. It
Speaker 1: just wasn't a good environment. Which is why Mary's parents
Speaker 1: wouldn't allow her to stay at Amanda's often. My parents
Speaker 1: knew that her father was selling drugs, and they tried
Speaker 1: to be a good influence on my sister and her husband.
Speaker 1: They tried to minimize anything that they were aware of.
Speaker 1: They tried to correct, but a lot was hidden from them.
Speaker 1: At one point, Amanda's sisters were so distraught they tried
Speaker 1: to run away, but that only made their situation worse.
Speaker 1: Their dad figured out where they were and he beat
Speaker 1: them so horribly. Whenever he found them, he punched one
Speaker 1: of them in the face and broke their nose. I
Speaker 1: don't understand how someone could do that to their child.
Speaker 1: I think that that person has to be completely void
Speaker 1: of soul or you know, I just don't understand. That's
Speaker 1: I can't comprehend it. But Kenny's abuse towards his family,
Speaker 1: particularly Amanda, went far beyond a punch in the face.
Speaker 1: When Amanda was around thirteen, her father started sexually abusing her,
Speaker 1: and so did his friends who would often come by
Speaker 1: to buy drugs. You know, someone wouldn't us stay in there,
Speaker 1: or they'd sneak into the room to end up having sex.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just it's we shouldn't have been taken
Speaker 1: an advantage like that. Were any of your other siblings
Speaker 1: being abused, I can't say for sure. For sure, I
Speaker 1: would see little little things like dag paying I'm more
Speaker 1: attention or something, and then I tried to take away
Speaker 1: that attention. I kind of went out of my way
Speaker 1: from my brothers and sisters a lot because I didn't
Speaker 1: want them. I didn't want my dad getting to them
Speaker 1: like that. You know, even though Mary was also a
Speaker 1: child when all of this was happening, she tried her
Speaker 1: best to stand up for her family. About fifth grade,
Speaker 1: I started going to my school counselor and telling them,
Speaker 1: somebody needs to do something because my nieces are being
Speaker 1: sexually abused, they're being physically abused, and you know, in
Speaker 1: fifth grader words, right. I was worried about backlash from
Speaker 1: their parents, but my parents protected me very well, and
Speaker 1: I had a wonderful home life, and I just couldn't
Speaker 1: even understand or fathom really what was happening to them.
Speaker 1: I don't think she's ever even told me half of
Speaker 1: the stuff that actually happened, but I've heard from her
Speaker 1: sisters things that have happened to them as well. So
Speaker 1: I just know that the sexual and physical abuse was rampant.
Speaker 1: Amanda felt utterly alone and helpless. This is SEP's getting
Speaker 1: worse and worse. And of course, you know, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't remember stuff like that when I'm a kid,
Speaker 1: had all am I supposed to know, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like, I don't know the truth about a
Speaker 1: lot in my life. Let you know, I questioned all
Speaker 1: my life that, you know, why mom would have why
Speaker 1: mom didn't do anything up. My mom knew something was
Speaker 1: going on. She did ask me one time, and I
Speaker 1: was honest with her about it, and she kicked my
Speaker 1: dad out. But it didn't last. It was like for
Speaker 1: two weeks, and then I found out that my mom
Speaker 1: was just as scared as my dad as I was.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff that I didn't know until
Speaker 1: I got older. You know, See, your mom was being
Speaker 1: abused by your dad too. No, yeah, absolutely. The abuse
Speaker 1: that Amanda and her siblings were suffering was reported to
Speaker 1: the Department of Family Services by their schools, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't much help. There was a point in time in
Speaker 1: life where where we had to go see the shrinks
Speaker 1: and stuff, and they made us play with dolls, tell
Speaker 1: us where we was touched, and stuff that I remember
Speaker 1: growing up. I remember Family Services being called a few
Speaker 1: times by Kenny. I don't know what for. I was
Speaker 1: too young, but we knew better not to say nothing
Speaker 1: like drugs and nothing about the drugs in the house.
Speaker 1: We knew better than that. You know, there was consequences
Speaker 1: if we was said anything like that, like my mom's
Speaker 1: like do you want to go to DFS? You know,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. The counselors could only do so much
Speaker 1: because once they were in the counselor's office, they would
Speaker 1: not tell them what was going on. It was just
Speaker 1: me saying it. You know. They felt scared. They were afraid.
Speaker 1: They were too afraid. We had to grow up fast.
Speaker 1: You know. It just took a toll one us a lot.
Speaker 1: By ninth grade, Amanda had dropped out of school, and
Speaker 1: then when she was seventeen, her mother died suddenly in
Speaker 1: a car wreck. After my mom passed away in ninety seven,
Speaker 1: when everything went downhill, it's just one thing after another
Speaker 1: and this is a really really bad year. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: tell me about that. After your mom passes, you know,
Speaker 1: everything goes to hell. I know this is when Larry
Speaker 1: came into your life. So tell me a bit about that.
Speaker 1: So to me, I mean, at first, like I I
Speaker 1: thought I had a good relationship, Larry was he was
Speaker 1: nice to me. Larry de Clue was thirty two, fifteen
Speaker 1: years older than Amanda and a drug associate of her father's.
Speaker 1: He was at the house one time when he saw
Speaker 1: Kenny physically assaulting her. You know, I was in my
Speaker 1: dad's room and my dad started, you know, personnel against
Speaker 1: me and had me against the door, and Larry walks
Speaker 1: passed and he's seeing me push some dad off of me.
Speaker 1: Larry and Kenny then went outside and had a talk.
Speaker 1: Larry come back and and he had asked me if
Speaker 1: I just if I wanted to run away with him,
Speaker 1: if I just wanted to leave with him, And I
Speaker 1: was all for it, you know, I was. I was
Speaker 1: just ready to go at that point. I was ready
Speaker 1: to get out the house, just tired of everything. And
Speaker 1: I ended up leaving with him. In my mind, he
Speaker 1: was kind of like a superhero, you know. He took
Speaker 1: me away from all the abuse and stuff. So I
Speaker 1: loved I thought I loved him. I didn't know any better,
Speaker 1: you know, But Mary saw Larry declue very differently. To me,
Speaker 1: he is the most frightening person I've ever met in
Speaker 1: my life. I was young and I just could just
Speaker 1: looking at him just as eyes. He had crazy eyes,
Speaker 1: and he had this aura around him that was frightening.
Speaker 1: And I think that when he came into the picture,
Speaker 1: I think that things took a horrible turn. About a
Speaker 1: year after they met, Amanda and Larry got married and
Speaker 1: had their first child, Larry Junior. After this, Larry became abusive.
Speaker 1: It was so bad, like I couldn't even go into
Speaker 1: Walmart to get divers without him accusing me of going
Speaker 1: inside to meet somebody to do something with them, and
Speaker 1: then I would risk, you know, getting beat on and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, you know. And it wasn't just Amanda.
Speaker 1: Larry was abusing. I remember it was a time after
Speaker 1: I had had little Larry, when he was a baby.
Speaker 1: Larry was holding the baby, and you know, the baby
Speaker 1: he wouldn't stop crying. He wouldn't stop crying. And I
Speaker 1: turned the corner coming into the living room and I
Speaker 1: seen Larry like kind of throw him hard on the couch.
Speaker 1: And that's when I freaked out real bad, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my God, what are you doing? And and then
Speaker 1: he grasped me by the hair and he bashes my
Speaker 1: head into the ground and he said, you still see
Speaker 1: bing I went to Grandma's a few times that he
Speaker 1: came right behind me, and there was there was no leaving,
Speaker 1: you know. He was going to make sure of that.
Speaker 1: Amanda was stuck back in a familiar pattern with no escape.
Speaker 1: He threatened to bury her. He threatened at one point
Speaker 1: to kill her and bury her and cement and build
Speaker 1: a house on top of it so no one would
Speaker 1: ever find her body. This episode is underwritten by AIG,
Speaker 1: a leading global insurance company. AIG is committed to corporate
Speaker 1: social responsibility and to making a positive difference in the
Speaker 1: lives of its employees and in the communities where they
Speaker 1: work and live. In light of the compelling need for
Speaker 1: pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of AIG's commitment
Speaker 1: to criminal and social justice reform, the AIG pro Bono
Speaker 1: Program provides free legal services and other support to underrepresented
Speaker 1: communities and individuals. In November of nineteen ninety seven, Diane
Speaker 1: Coleman went out for the day as she usually did.
Speaker 1: The thirty two year old suffered from schizophrenia and lived
Speaker 1: at a care facility near Sullivan, where Amanda's family lived.
Speaker 1: Diane was allowed to come and go from the facility
Speaker 1: as she pleased, and she usually left in the morning
Speaker 1: and returned at night. But on November eleventh, nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: Diane never returned to the care center. Days later, her
Speaker 1: body was found floating in the nearby Merrimec River. An
Speaker 1: autopsy revealed that she had been brutally beaten to death
Speaker 1: by different blunt objects. Investigators ruled her death a homicide.
Speaker 1: This evening would later become significant to Amanda, but she
Speaker 1: only remembers it because of what happened at home that night.
Speaker 1: I remember being woke up by someone banging on the window,
Speaker 1: and they wanted Larry to go hunt and with them.
Speaker 1: Larry left and ended up staying out all night. He
Speaker 1: didn't come home until eleven the next morning. Amanda thought
Speaker 1: that was strange. They usually went everywhere together, so it
Speaker 1: just didn't make no damn sense to me, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, there's just certain things that wasn't adding up.
Speaker 1: Ten days later, seventeen year old Jeremy Payne was brought
Speaker 1: into the police station and questioned about his knowledge of
Speaker 1: Diane's murder. Jeremy knew Diane through his father, who was
Speaker 1: in a relationship with her. In a taped confession, Jeremy
Speaker 1: said that he, Amanda's father, Kenny, and two young women
Speaker 1: named Angela Cody and Melissa O'Brien were all complicit in
Speaker 1: Diane's murder. According to Jeremy, they were all riding in
Speaker 1: a van when they accidentally hit a woman on the
Speaker 1: side of the road. They got out to see what happened.
Speaker 1: Then the group beat her, raped her, and left her
Speaker 1: in the woods. Amanda knew both Melissa and Angela. Melissa
Speaker 1: was Larry's niece. Once she heard the news of Jeremy's confession,
Speaker 1: Amanda recalled something that happened not too long after Diane's
Speaker 1: body was found. She, Larry, and Melissa were all out
Speaker 1: driving together. They were on Highway end near the Merrimac River,
Speaker 1: and Melissa starts to jumping up and down. This is
Speaker 1: where it happened. This is where it happened. Uncle Larry.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what the heck, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: What's the matter? You know? And we just keep on going,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know what the heck was going on.
Speaker 1: That's when I realized something happened. I didn't know what happened.
Speaker 1: Something happened, However, Larry wasn't part of Jeremy's story, and
Speaker 1: he was not arrested for the murder with the others.
Speaker 1: Jeremy Payne was convicted and sentenced to life without parole
Speaker 1: based on his confession. The charges against Amanda's father were dropped,
Speaker 1: and Melissa and Angela both took community deals. The following year,
Speaker 1: Amanda and Larry had another child, named Felicia. Amanda tried
Speaker 1: to be the best mom she could be despite her
Speaker 1: harrowing home life with Larry. By the end of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine, Amanda's thirteen year old brother, Kenny Junior, also
Speaker 1: known as Buddy, moved in with her and Larry. He
Speaker 1: didn't want to live with her father anymore, and Amanda
Speaker 1: knew he had nowhere else to go. One day, Amanda
Speaker 1: returned home after running some errands. She had left Buddy
Speaker 1: to watch over the kids, including Larry's niece Adrian. I
Speaker 1: remember I picked up Adrian and she would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I can tell something was wrong, mind you.
Speaker 1: She's three years old as the time. Okay, so I'm like,
Speaker 1: listen at her, baby, and then she'd kind of touch
Speaker 1: herself down there and she say it hurts, man. So
Speaker 1: Amanda also picked her up and I started to take
Speaker 1: her her britches off on the couch, and then she
Speaker 1: just started crying. I'm like, what the heck, man? I thought, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: maybe she fell and she heard herself, you know, but
Speaker 1: she was rubbed the roll down there, and I looked
Speaker 1: looked at her. I'm like, honey, I said, what happened.
Speaker 1: You to tell Aunt Mandy what happened baby? And when
Speaker 1: she said Buddy, Buddy, and I mean, right then and there,
Speaker 1: I knew Buddy had sexually assaulted three year old Adrian.
Speaker 1: Amanda then realized, my dad gotta say him too, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't know, so I had to make one of
Speaker 1: the hardest decisions there in my life, you know, to
Speaker 1: kick my brother out no, and he had nowhere to go.
Speaker 1: Amanda also reported Buddy too authorities, but that decision would
Speaker 1: lead to consequences she could never have imagined. In January
Speaker 1: of two thousand, Buddy was facing charges in juvenile court
Speaker 1: for the molestation of Larry's niece, and while police were
Speaker 1: questioning him, about it, he dropped a bombshell, not about
Speaker 1: the molestation, but about the night of Diane Coleman's murder.
Speaker 1: He told the police that he would tell the police
Speaker 1: what really happened in the murder if they would essentially
Speaker 1: drop the charges or lesson the charges against him. This
Speaker 1: is Anne Garrity rather, she's the director of the Willow Project,
Speaker 1: which focuses on the wrongful convictions of women and girls.
Speaker 1: And so, since he had been living with Amanda and
Speaker 1: Larry and they kicked him out when they learned this
Speaker 1: about the abuse and turned him over to the police,
Speaker 1: he said that they were the ones who had in
Speaker 1: fact committed the crime. So then the story he told
Speaker 1: was that he was asleep at his grandmother's house and
Speaker 1: that Amanda and the people who Jeremy had said, we're
Speaker 1: in the car came to pick him up to take
Speaker 1: him to like a birthday celebration late at night. Remember,
Speaker 1: Jeremy is the young man who first confessed to Diane's
Speaker 1: murder and was serving a life without parole sentence. In
Speaker 1: the story he told police, Melissa O'Brien, Angela Cody, himself,
Speaker 1: and Kenny Bussey were all present that night Jeremy never
Speaker 1: mentioned Buddy, Larry, or Amanda, but now Buddy was telling
Speaker 1: police that he was actually in the car, that Larry
Speaker 1: and Amanda were there too, and that his dad Kenny
Speaker 1: was not. He went on to say that they gave
Speaker 1: him LSD and he fell asleep. That was his story.
Speaker 1: So then the next thing he said was that he
Speaker 1: woke up and no one else was in the van,
Speaker 1: and he got out of the van to see what
Speaker 1: was going on, and he saw a woman lying in
Speaker 1: the road, and he saw the rest of the people
Speaker 1: from the car standing around her and beating her with objects.
Speaker 1: He says that they told him to do the same,
Speaker 1: and he ran back to the van and did not,
Speaker 1: but he saw Amanda specifically hit the woman with multiple objects.
Speaker 1: Buddy also said he saw Larry hit the woman multiple times,
Speaker 1: and even though Jeremy Paine had pinpointed Kenny as a
Speaker 1: fellow perpetrator, Buddy claims his father was not involved. So
Speaker 1: this is where the situation comes and where he perhaps
Speaker 1: is trying to protect his father as well. That also
Speaker 1: probably had to do with his fear of his father
Speaker 1: having also been horrifically abused by his father. So in
Speaker 1: all of these things are so convoluted by the threats
Speaker 1: and the intimidation and the violence going on. In the
Speaker 1: spring of two thousand, Larry d Clue was arrested and
Speaker 1: charged with first degree murder. Amanda was also arrested, but
Speaker 1: was released due to lack of evidence. Around this time,
Speaker 1: Amanda also found out she was never actually married to Larry.
Speaker 1: He never finalized the papers. She also learned a shocking
Speaker 1: truth about the man she'd once seen as a superhero
Speaker 1: whisking her away from her abusive father. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: later and then I found out my dad had sold
Speaker 1: me to Larry for drugs. With Larry finally out of
Speaker 1: her life, Amanda tried to move forward. She entered into
Speaker 1: another relationship and had her third child, Katie. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: police still had Amanda in their sights. Soon after Buddy's
Speaker 1: conversation with police and Larry's arrest, Buddy recanted his statements,
Speaker 1: but police would not accept that, and he was then
Speaker 1: threatened with perjury. He didn't come forward him he said
Speaker 1: a dead man, him lie, and he wrote a statement saying,
Speaker 1: please tell my sister may Andy that I'm sorry for lying, honor.
Speaker 1: I just tried to clear my dad's name, And in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three, based on her brother's initial statements alone,
Speaker 1: Amanda was arrested for the murder of Diane Coleman. What
Speaker 1: was that like for you? It was devastating because that
Speaker 1: was my favorite brother and that I helped. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't understand why he was lying, and I knew,
Speaker 1: and it just it was everything hit me at once.
Speaker 1: I'm like, why would he do that? You know, why
Speaker 1: why something happened to where he's saying something like that.
Speaker 1: But I love him, and I know that he was
Speaker 1: youngest and they scared him into saying whatever they wanted
Speaker 1: him to say. And I know that from the beginning.
Speaker 1: Amanda has maintained her innocence and because of that, she
Speaker 1: opted to go to trial. You know, I just I
Speaker 1: knew God wasn't gonna let me go down for something
Speaker 1: that I didn't do. They couldn't. They couldn't possibly hang
Speaker 1: me up for something I did do. They had nothing
Speaker 1: on me, you know, And this is where my mind
Speaker 1: was set. Amanda's defense attorney was public defender David Bruns,
Speaker 1: and Garrity rather remembers reading the transcript of the trial
Speaker 1: and to be honest, I was a little alarmed when
Speaker 1: I saw that the defense put on by the public
Speaker 1: defender lasted three minutes in length, which obviously seems grossly inadequate.
Speaker 1: But Anne dug deeper and saw that Bruns actually did
Speaker 1: the best job he could give in the circumstances. There
Speaker 1: really isn't a defense that can be put on effectively
Speaker 1: when someone is completely, factually innocent and in fact wasn't
Speaker 1: even at the crime scene, nor knows anything about the
Speaker 1: crime scene. You know, since three years had passed at
Speaker 1: the time she was implicated, and almost six years by
Speaker 1: the time she went to trial, you know, who of
Speaker 1: us could remember on any given day what we were
Speaker 1: doing and who we were with six years prior to
Speaker 1: that moment, right, there are no witnesses who will say
Speaker 1: she wasn't there, So there really isn't a good defense
Speaker 1: that can even be put on. Bruns and Amanda were
Speaker 1: convinced the prosecution's case was extremely weak. Bruns said all
Speaker 1: the prosecution had was the testimony of Buddy, who by
Speaker 1: then was seventeen. But Buddy recanted again, this time on
Speaker 1: the witness stand under cross examination by the defense, so
Speaker 1: he did a good job of asking him questions that
Speaker 1: I believe poked holes and everything he said. The evidence
Speaker 1: was so poor and the public defender poked so many
Speaker 1: holes in the testimony of Buddy. It almost seemed like
Speaker 1: a foregone conclusion that she would be declared innocent. But
Speaker 1: that's not what happened. Do you know how long the
Speaker 1: jury deliberated for less than two hours? Wow? Wow. On
Speaker 1: May twenty seventh, two thousand and four, Amanda was found
Speaker 1: guilty and convicted of second degree murder. She was sentenced
Speaker 1: to twenty five years in prison. I was devastated. Hey,
Speaker 1: I didn't know what you know. I was mad at
Speaker 1: everybody around me, like what, how could they do this?
Speaker 1: At the time of Amanda's conviction, she had three children,
Speaker 1: Larry Junior and Felicia went with Larry's family, but she
Speaker 1: made the difficult decision to put her youngest child, Katie,
Speaker 1: up for adoption. During the first years of her sentence,
Speaker 1: Amanda didn't communicate much with her family, But in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: when Amanda got her geed her sisters and Mary traveled
Speaker 1: to the prison for the ceremony, and I was chosen
Speaker 1: to give the see the speaker for everybody, kind of
Speaker 1: like Valle Victorian, and they kind of surprised me when
Speaker 1: they came up there after all these years, you know,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of like my whole life just
Speaker 1: last before my eyes, you know, because we have all
Speaker 1: kids fected. And then just a couple of years later,
Speaker 1: Amanda got some more good news the Willow Project was
Speaker 1: going to take on her case. Well, the very first
Speaker 1: thing I thought was that someone actually believed me, believed
Speaker 1: in me, and was there to help me. I thought
Speaker 1: that the case had all the same sort of issues
Speaker 1: as other cases that I had read about where people
Speaker 1: were wrongfully convicted, no forensic evidence, and the only evidence
Speaker 1: that was presented at trial was the testimony of an
Speaker 1: incentivized informant, and that was literally the only evidence against her,
Speaker 1: several years after the murder, when no one had ever
Speaker 1: implicated her before or indicated any involvement on her part
Speaker 1: up to that point. So all of those things led
Speaker 1: me to believe that her case was at least problematic,
Speaker 1: if not that she was literally innocent. Amanda has run
Speaker 1: out of appeal opportunities, so Anne and the Willow Project
Speaker 1: are diligently working on finding new evidence to get her
Speaker 1: case back in court. In the meantime, Amanda is now
Speaker 1: nearing the end of her twenty five year prison sentence.
Speaker 1: She was granted parole and will be released in early
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. Amanda plans to live with Mary, who
Speaker 1: is thrilled to have her best friend and niece back
Speaker 1: in her life. I want people to know that she
Speaker 1: as a good person. She wanted to be a good
Speaker 1: mother and be there for her children. I want them
Speaker 1: to know that she's innocent of this crime that she
Speaker 1: has given her life for, and she's a victim of
Speaker 1: evil people and terrible circumstances. Amanda can't know for sure
Speaker 1: who killed Diane Coleman. She just knows that she didn't.
Speaker 1: And to this day, Mary blames everything Buddy did and
Speaker 1: everything that happened to Amanda on their father, Kenny, who
Speaker 1: I also think is one of the most evil people
Speaker 1: I've ever bet. I just can't stress enough how he
Speaker 1: ruined He really ruined their lives. He stole their lives
Speaker 1: from them. I fully hold him accountable for that. Although
Speaker 1: her time in prison will be coming to an end,
Speaker 1: Amanda knows she has a long road of healing ahead
Speaker 1: of her. One thing that helps is putting her feelings
Speaker 1: down on paper. I have a poem that I wrote,
Speaker 1: wouldn't be okay if then I read it? Please? I
Speaker 1: wrote it and twenty twelve called There's no life without hope.
Speaker 1: Imagine being said, teams, trying so hard not to be bad,
Speaker 1: and putting your trust into that number one man that
Speaker 1: you love so dear, that man you call Dad. Then
Speaker 1: one night everything went wrong. Scared and alone, trying your
Speaker 1: best just to hold on, getting locked up for first
Speaker 1: to read murder, asking him, Daddy, why did you hurt her?
Speaker 1: Telling myself I'm going to get out because in God
Speaker 1: I had no doubt. How can they give me twenty
Speaker 1: five years? I couldn't see that far, my eyes filled
Speaker 1: with tears, begging my daddy please tell the truth. But
Speaker 1: he would and I had no proof. Imagine how hard
Speaker 1: it was to trust anyone else. Oh, I could see
Speaker 1: they were out for themselves. There. I was on my knees,
Speaker 1: asking God, how can this be? Where's the justice in
Speaker 1: this crime? My dad's out there, I'm doing us time.
Speaker 1: Finally I see it. My eyes are now open, and
Speaker 1: God said, child, you can't stop hoping. God put an
Speaker 1: angel into my life. She's helped hill the pain and
Speaker 1: get through the strife. You've helped me get past all
Speaker 1: the hurtful flinches, and most of all, you've taken away
Speaker 1: these senses. You know who you are, and I thank
Speaker 1: you so much, the one person in this world I
Speaker 1: know I can trust. To find out more about the
Speaker 1: Willow Project and how to help support wrongfully convicted women
Speaker 1: like Amanda, go to Willow Project stl dot org. Next time,
Speaker 1: Unwrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling tala La lay Edwards. He's saying, no,
Speaker 1: something happened. You should the baby or something, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: shack the baby. What are you talking about here? Like
Speaker 1: tej Man, Look how big you are. Like if I
Speaker 1: was a kid and you are over here like shaking me,
Speaker 1: I would be in the same position. Derekson, I'm like, what.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please
Speaker 1: support your local innocence organizations and go to the links
Speaker 1: in our bio to see how you can help. I'd
Speaker 1: like to thank our executive producers Jason Flam and Kevin Wurdis,
Speaker 1: as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, producer Lila Robinson,
Speaker 1: and story editor Sonja Paul. The show is edited and
Speaker 1: mixed by Annie Chelsey, with additional production by Jeff Cleburne
Speaker 1: and Connor Hall. The music in this production is by
Speaker 1: three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to
Speaker 1: follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as
Speaker 1: well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms,
Speaker 1: you can also follow me on both Instagram and Twitter
Speaker 1: at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a
Speaker 1: production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal
Speaker 1: Company Number one