Speaker 1: Tom Rhodes loves sports.
Speaker 2: I wrestled. I just wrestled year round.
Speaker 3: I get on the I have a freestyle team and
Speaker 3: wrestled the Olympic style and a thousand years ago won
Speaker 3: the state freestyle championship and second Greco Roman.
Speaker 1: What way class were you were you wrestled?
Speaker 3: I was one seventy five for that tournament and I
Speaker 3: didn't cut any weight at all.
Speaker 1: Tom didn't have to work out. He worked on a farm.
Speaker 3: I just decided I'm going to go in there farm
Speaker 3: strong and farm strong.
Speaker 1: I like that. I met Tom at the Annual Innocence
Speaker 1: Network Conference in April twenty twenty four. You look like
Speaker 1: you could be a sportscaster. I was like someone cut
Speaker 1: of prison was such a nice st No, he does, Yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: I had one viable tooth in my head when I
Speaker 3: when I left prison, and the rest of them needed
Speaker 3: a lot of work, and so I had no choice.
Speaker 2: But I had a lot of work done.
Speaker 1: Well, now you have your sportscaster.
Speaker 3: Looks I'm hoping to land something after talking to you.
Speaker 2: My name is Tom Rhodes, and.
Speaker 3: I was wrongly incarcerated for eight nine hundred and thirty
Speaker 3: two days about twenty four and a half years.
Speaker 1: From Love of for Good This is Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 1: Maggie Freeling today Tom Rhodes. Tom Rhodes was born in
Speaker 1: June nineteen fifty nine to Lois and Daniel Rhodes.
Speaker 3: My parents farmed and my mom worked for the bank
Speaker 3: in the little town of Dunk, Iowa.
Speaker 1: Tom is the oldest of four kids. He was twelve
Speaker 1: when his sister was born.
Speaker 3: Kind of kind of grew up in a work hard,
Speaker 3: play hard environment.
Speaker 1: There was always work to be done on the farm.
Speaker 1: Tom's brother Ron says, they were constantly on the go.
Speaker 4: You know, Dad would holler up in the morning, boys,
Speaker 4: time to get up, and you know we were expected
Speaker 4: to be downstairs and you know, ten or fifteen minutes.
Speaker 4: So we were moving equipment from farm to farm or
Speaker 4: out fixing.
Speaker 2: Equipment between livestock and raising cattle.
Speaker 4: And harvesting or planting.
Speaker 2: But really wonderful life.
Speaker 4: Actually, Tom probably had the hardest of everyone because it
Speaker 4: was less automated when he was younger, so it was
Speaker 4: a lot more physical labor. And he was he was,
Speaker 4: like I'd say, probably my dad's right hand man.
Speaker 1: So are you getting emotional right now?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I just I guess just thinking back to the way
Speaker 4: our lives were, Just thinking back about, you know, how
Speaker 4: we all kind of worked together, and how good my
Speaker 4: parents were, you know, to of us all.
Speaker 1: Where did life take you?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I graduated from Webster City High School in nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 3: and I graduated from westmar University with the sociology, psychology,
Speaker 3: and a business minor.
Speaker 1: Tom wanted to be a wrestling coach and teacher. That
Speaker 1: was my plan, but his plans changed.
Speaker 3: And I ended up going into agrisales in the seed
Speaker 3: and fertiliz in industry.
Speaker 1: Still Tom thrived. He was good at sales.
Speaker 4: He's just got a really charismatic personality. He's very outgoing,
Speaker 4: he's fun he's funny. He just has a way like
Speaker 4: of just you know, making you feel at ease.
Speaker 1: But before his success as a big time sales VP,
Speaker 1: Tom was just a college kid who one day saw
Speaker 1: a pretty girl.
Speaker 2: I met Jane at college my junior year.
Speaker 1: It was nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 3: And she was a farm girl from Northwest Aisle and
Speaker 3: five seven, blue eyes.
Speaker 1: With long blonde hair, just really pretty. Tom was smitten.
Speaker 3: She had a kind of a down home country girl flavor.
Speaker 1: Not even a year after they met, Tom and Jane
Speaker 1: were married in nineteen eighty So you met Jane and
Speaker 1: you guys were like had over heels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: It was kind of a quick romance and we loved
Speaker 3: each other and each other's families.
Speaker 2: It was a good bit.
Speaker 3: I think that we had so much in common from
Speaker 3: like a work ethic and you know, be good to
Speaker 3: family and love one another. It was just we were
Speaker 3: raised the same way. I really think that was the
Speaker 3: essence of it.
Speaker 4: They were always like joking around with one another, like
Speaker 4: he would tease.
Speaker 1: Her Tom's brother Ron.
Speaker 4: Again, she was just probably the sweetest huh person. You
Speaker 4: just sense that she loved you and she cared about you.
Speaker 1: It sounds like she was more than just your brother's wife.
Speaker 1: You really felt like she was part of your family.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, she was just an amazing person. She had
Speaker 4: such a great spirit about her when you were around her.
Speaker 4: That's what I would say about Jane.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty two, they had their first son, Eric,
Speaker 1: and their second son, Jason. In nineteen eighty seven. Tom
Speaker 1: and Jane and the boys moved all around for Tom's
Speaker 1: work in agricultural sales, but Eventually they landed in Mankato,
Speaker 1: Minnesota in the early nineties.
Speaker 3: The kids really flourished in the school district there, and
Speaker 3: Jason and Eric were both in sports football, did a
Speaker 3: little wrestling and basketball, and so I tried to coach
Speaker 3: and be a part of things, whether it be assistant
Speaker 3: coach or whatever I could do to step up.
Speaker 2: To be there.
Speaker 1: For a couple of years in the early nineties, Tom
Speaker 1: and Jane landed on hard times.
Speaker 3: We went through a little bit of a rough patch
Speaker 3: communication wise. I don't think things were as good as
Speaker 3: they could.
Speaker 1: They were also struggling financially.
Speaker 4: People go through difficult times and marriages. I've been married
Speaker 4: for eighteen years, and I'm sure that they had difficult times,
Speaker 4: But it wasn't like I ever felt like they if
Speaker 4: they felt like they didn't love one another or whatever.
Speaker 4: I feel like they were both the type of people
Speaker 4: that would come together and say, hey, well, what are
Speaker 4: we going to do about this? What's best for the boys,
Speaker 4: I think is what they would be thinking in that
Speaker 4: scenario if they had or went through trouble. It was
Speaker 4: never in front of us or the family and anything
Speaker 4: like that. And I just never felt that Tom knowing
Speaker 4: his love for Jane and for the boys, I never
Speaker 4: felt that he would have intentionally hurt her or done
Speaker 4: anything harmful.
Speaker 1: By nineteen ninety six, things were on the up. Jane
Speaker 1: got a job with good pay and benefits.
Speaker 3: I was doing well my job and getting bigger bonus checks.
Speaker 3: And we sold our first house and bought a house
Speaker 3: that was completely redone with a great room build on
Speaker 3: a new basement underneath of it that had had a fire,
Speaker 3: and it was kind of our dream place.
Speaker 1: Tom was VP at the seed company. I mentioned earlier.
Speaker 3: We were doing better than we had and.
Speaker 2: Our life was and.
Speaker 3: We were happy and felt like we were also enjoying
Speaker 3: the success of our careers.
Speaker 1: They had finally made it. I mean, y'all had a boat,
Speaker 1: you must have been doing well.
Speaker 3: We we had had a couple of different boats, but
Speaker 3: we mainly had had jet skis and done that and
Speaker 3: tubed and wakeboarded behind the bigger jet skis and stuff
Speaker 3: we we did. We did a lot of stuff on
Speaker 3: the water. Ever since we moved to Minnesota, we kind
Speaker 3: of lived on the water.
Speaker 4: I went up to vacation with them in northern Minnesota
Speaker 4: and the family basically my parents and Tom's family had
Speaker 4: rented a house on a lake, and I went up
Speaker 4: there for two or three days and spent time with
Speaker 4: them boating and fishing, and they just had a good time.
Speaker 4: You know, they just were down to earth but like
Speaker 4: to have fun. And you know, we were growing up,
Speaker 4: we didn't do a lot of vacationing and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: But you know, one summer I remember vividly kind of
Speaker 4: going and just just having a blast, Tom teaching me
Speaker 4: how to ski, and just everybody having fun together and
Speaker 4: being a family doing doing the family stuff.
Speaker 1: Tom and Jane loved being out on the water, and
Speaker 1: when the boys were asleep.
Speaker 2: Jane and I would have a drink or two and
Speaker 2: go out.
Speaker 1: On the night of August second, the family was on
Speaker 1: another vacation.
Speaker 3: We had let the boys always play in the pool
Speaker 3: at the end, and that night they just were out
Speaker 3: from all the you know, vacationing and stuff.
Speaker 2: Just tired out.
Speaker 1: So Tom and Jane left the boys in their hotel
Speaker 1: and took the boat out on Green Lake for a
Speaker 1: moonlight ride.
Speaker 2: We were just relaxing and talking. It was so peaceful,
Speaker 2: and we were discussing about you know, getting back and
Speaker 2: getting the boys started in school, and you know, the
Speaker 2: sports season was going to be kicking off for football,
Speaker 2: so it was a lot of fun things to look
Speaker 2: forward to.
Speaker 1: It was getting late, so they decided to call it
Speaker 1: a night.
Speaker 2: And we went north and that's when she fell out.
Speaker 1: Tom says he saw Jane lean forward. She seemed to
Speaker 1: have dropped something.
Speaker 3: Later we found out was an ear ring, and she
Speaker 3: went to pick something up. I thought she was just
Speaker 3: turning to set down beside me. The moon was to
Speaker 3: the right. I looked, glanced the right to navigate, look back,
Speaker 3: and saw her shoes going over.
Speaker 1: Tom says he was frantic.
Speaker 3: I was in emergency mode trying to save Jane and
Speaker 3: was looking. I looked so hard, I swear I thought
Speaker 3: I saw her, and and so I jumped out and
Speaker 3: didn't find anything, and quickly learned that I had jumped
Speaker 3: off the back of the boat with the point facing
Speaker 3: south and pushed the boat away from me. And I
Speaker 3: had almost I was so exhausted from what had.
Speaker 2: Happened and searching in the water.
Speaker 3: I almost did make it back to the boat myself,
Speaker 3: but he did and then I I know I did circles.
Speaker 2: I don't know if.
Speaker 3: I zigzag too but I tried to cover the area
Speaker 3: because I thought she had to be there and if
Speaker 3: she was unconscious, I could maybe find her floater.
Speaker 6: I need CPR, so I thought I could savor but
Speaker 6: I didn't find her.
Speaker 1: Tom eventually beached the boat and ran into a restaurant
Speaker 1: for help.
Speaker 3: The night clerk let me in and I was drans
Speaker 3: from head to toe, exhausted, trying to talk and almost
Speaker 3: throwing up all at the same time.
Speaker 1: Soon law enforcement showed up and helped in the search.
Speaker 1: They also questioned Tom about the night, but he had
Speaker 1: other things on his mind.
Speaker 3: I kept telling him, I want to go back out
Speaker 3: and search for my wife. I want to go back
Speaker 3: out on my boat. You guys have got my boat
Speaker 3: in the other boat. I want to go be back
Speaker 3: and be part.
Speaker 2: Of a search. And they wouldn't let me.
Speaker 3: So that was probably the most difficult thing, other than
Speaker 3: telling the boys obviously they're boys.
Speaker 1: Still talked in bed.
Speaker 2: That was the hardest thing.
Speaker 3: I mean to, you know, look into my son's beautiful blue.
Speaker 2: Eyes and I have to see that kind of pain.
Speaker 1: The next morning, some fishermen came across a body in
Speaker 1: the water. It was Jane.
Speaker 2: I'd have done anything.
Speaker 5: Did not have to don't have to tell them that
Speaker 5: about their losing their mom.
Speaker 7: Tavas is my partner Dan dan Her telling hey, Todd, Dan.
Speaker 6: How good are you.
Speaker 1: Almost two weeks after Jane's body was found, police brought
Speaker 1: Tom into the Candy O High Share station for questioning.
Speaker 3: This has been the hardest thing in while life, be
Speaker 3: losing my wife for sixteen years.
Speaker 1: And police had questioned Tom the night Jane fell into
Speaker 1: the water, and now, following a few days of investigation,
Speaker 1: they wanted to go over that night again.
Speaker 7: He said, you're not under arrest anything like. We asked
Speaker 7: you to come down here to talk to us about
Speaker 7: the accident because that night it was confusing. There's a
Speaker 7: lot of things going on.
Speaker 1: And they also had a report from the medical examiner.
Speaker 7: The body's brought down to doctor McGee. Do you ever
Speaker 7: hear of him? Okay, he's a forensic pathologist in Ramsey County.
Speaker 6: All right.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 8: At the beginning of the case, at the beginning of
Speaker 8: the investigation, the medical examiner didn't really have any medical
Speaker 8: evidence to support the idea that Tom was guilty of
Speaker 8: premeditated murder.
Speaker 1: This is Jim Mayer, legal director at the Great North Innocence.
Speaker 8: Project, but he had suspicions.
Speaker 1: Suspicions influenced by the theories of the police.
Speaker 7: When you when you went out there that evening with
Speaker 7: your wife, did you have any intentions to harm her?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 7: Absolutely, no way. Okay, how did those And I'm hoping
Speaker 7: you can help me out here if you could really
Speaker 7: think how that marked gotten on her face?
Speaker 1: The first doctor to look at Jane's body found bruising
Speaker 1: on her face, head, and a cut to the right
Speaker 1: side of her mouth. Then the forensic pathologist who performed
Speaker 1: the autopsy, doctor Michael McGee, found hemorrhaging beneath the facial injuries.
Speaker 1: Her death was initially ruled undetermined, so the police kept digging.
Speaker 8: Was there trouble in the marriage?
Speaker 7: Did you guys ever talk about a divorce? Was there
Speaker 7: an ever period in your marriage caught?
Speaker 8: Did the family have debts? Was there life insurance involved?
Speaker 7: Did you have any type of insurance like on your
Speaker 7: morgine if somebody passes away that helps.
Speaker 1: Pay the war each Remember Tom and Jane had struggled
Speaker 1: financially for a few years right before this, so they
Speaker 1: found that, you.
Speaker 8: Know, these are all totally commonplace things, but they just
Speaker 8: they weaved all of that stuff together into a story
Speaker 8: of a man who is desperate and wanted to get
Speaker 8: out of his marriage but couldn't afford it and wanted
Speaker 8: the life insurance money.
Speaker 1: Police had also found out about the rocky years in
Speaker 1: their relationship.
Speaker 7: Just funny.
Speaker 2: You know what we.
Speaker 7: Learned, Tom, is that there were some rough spots in
Speaker 7: your marriage. Okay, and there were, but those rules were
Speaker 7: long behind us.
Speaker 5: I haven't haven't had any problems recently.
Speaker 1: On top of everything, police also said Tom was quote
Speaker 1: not grieving properly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, imagine that. That's quite a bold statement. How do
Speaker 3: you tell if someone's had a loss how they should grieve.
Speaker 3: I think that's a personal thing. And I totally a
Speaker 3: grieved with my family, with my sons and took care
Speaker 3: of them and and did my best. And I kept
Speaker 3: a relationship with Deane's family inform them. As things were
Speaker 3: unfolding with the legal system as well.
Speaker 1: As the months passed with all these new suspicions being
Speaker 1: brought up by the police, the pathologist, doctor Michael McGee,
Speaker 1: decided to give his initial report on Jane's death a
Speaker 1: second look to see if he could figure out what
Speaker 1: had happened to.
Speaker 8: Jane becoming his own version of a detective.
Speaker 1: Marriage troubles, debts, alleged suspicious grieving behavior.
Speaker 8: What you end up having is a medical examiner who,
Speaker 8: in his initial review concludes that the medical findings don't
Speaker 8: support homicide, looking into what the detectives are looking at,
Speaker 8: and then reverse himself and decide, yes, now the medical
Speaker 8: findings support homicide.
Speaker 1: Doctor Michael McGee changed his findings from undetermined to homicide.
Speaker 1: After more than a year of investigation, police had their
Speaker 1: prime suspect in sight, and on December ninth, nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: a grand jury indicted Thomas Rhodes for murder.
Speaker 4: We didn't know how to respond. We didn't know, you know,
Speaker 4: how to help him.
Speaker 1: This is Tom's brother Ron again.
Speaker 4: And it was I think it was so hard that
Speaker 4: time in our life, thinking back to the way it
Speaker 4: affected us as a family, the way it affected Tom
Speaker 4: and his family, his young family, the way it affected
Speaker 4: my mom and dad. They were very scared. One Tom
Speaker 4: was indicted just because you know, he had always tried
Speaker 4: to cooperate and we just never thought that, you know,
Speaker 4: my brother would do anything to hurt Jane intentionally.
Speaker 1: Tom went to trial the following year, in July nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight. He had the support of Ron and his
Speaker 1: parents and many family and friends who believed Tom wouldn't
Speaker 1: have committed such a crime, but the trial prosecutor, John
Speaker 1: Doherty said otherwise. He said Tom and Jane had a
Speaker 1: lot of recent debt from their new lifestyle, the house,
Speaker 1: the boat, in a new car. Docerty also brought up
Speaker 1: their previous marriage troubles. He said Tom wanted a divorce
Speaker 1: but didn't want to pay child support, so he planned
Speaker 1: to get rid of Jane and make it look accidental.
Speaker 1: That way, he could cash in on her life insurance
Speaker 1: policy and have his boys a win win. But these
Speaker 1: were all theories, so the prosecution needed an expert to
Speaker 1: make their whole case legitimate.
Speaker 8: The prosecution's case was largely built around the testimony of
Speaker 8: doctor Michael McGee. That was really the lynchpin of the
Speaker 8: state's case. What doctor McGee testified to was that he
Speaker 8: could tell from the condition of Jane's body that there
Speaker 8: had been a struggle on the boat.
Speaker 1: Remember, there was bruising, hemorrhaging, and a cut on Jane's face.
Speaker 1: Doctor McGee the injuries were the results of a fight
Speaker 1: between Tom and.
Speaker 8: Jane, and he also testified that he knew he could
Speaker 8: tell from the condition of Jane's body that she had
Speaker 8: been struck multiple times by the boat after she had
Speaker 8: fallen into the water. That was very powerful evidence for
Speaker 8: the jury to hear.
Speaker 1: And doctor McGhee wasn't done.
Speaker 8: He brought out a clay model and displayed it on
Speaker 8: a table for the jury to look at, and this
Speaker 8: clay model showed awful discoloration all over Jane's face and head.
Speaker 1: Doctor McGee used a life size clay model of Jane's
Speaker 1: head depicting a severely bruised face to show that her
Speaker 1: injuries couldn't have been accidental.
Speaker 8: And anyone who would look at this model would be
Speaker 8: horrified to think about what must have happened to this person.
Speaker 1: Tom couldn't believe the things he was being accused of
Speaker 1: doing to Jane, grabbing her by the neck, pushing her over,
Speaker 1: and running her over multiple times with the boat.
Speaker 3: I knew it was a lie, but my attorney wasn't
Speaker 3: prepared to handle doctor McGee.
Speaker 1: Tom's defense attorney was Michael College. Although Tom says that
Speaker 1: College did a poor job on Cross, he did have
Speaker 1: a qualified expert he called doctor Lindsay Thomas to refute
Speaker 1: doctor McGee.
Speaker 3: Doctor Lindsay Thomas pretty much went against McGee one hundred
Speaker 3: percent and.
Speaker 2: Refuted everything that they had said.
Speaker 1: Doctor Lindsay Thomas testified that Jane's face indeed had internal
Speaker 1: hemorrhaging on both sides, but not because of multiple intentional
Speaker 1: blows with the boat. She said, it was because the
Speaker 1: blood from the forehead injury dreamed into her face and
Speaker 1: settled there.
Speaker 8: Anyone who knows about drowning victims and forensic pathology will
Speaker 8: tell you where you have a drowning victim who has
Speaker 8: been floating face down for thirteen hours or however long
Speaker 8: it was, you're going to have the pooling of blood
Speaker 8: and certain areas. And so this doesn't reflect that she
Speaker 8: was beaten all over her face and head. What it
Speaker 8: reflects was that blood, by virtue of gravity, will pool
Speaker 8: in a certain area when a body that is no
Speaker 8: longer circulating blood stays in a certain position for a
Speaker 8: period of time.
Speaker 1: And that's not new science. In nineteen ninety six, that
Speaker 1: should have been known.
Speaker 8: Absolutely, absolutely should have been known.
Speaker 1: After two weeks of trial, the jury was sent to deliberate.
Speaker 3: I was really, really concerned, but I also believe that
Speaker 3: you couldn't be convicted if you're innocent. I thought that
Speaker 3: there was enough that they could see through doctor McGhee
Speaker 3: and hopefully believe, you know, doctor Thomas, what was wrong.
Speaker 1: On July twenty ninth, nineteen ninety eight, Thomas Rhodes was
Speaker 1: convicted a first degree premeditated murder and sentenced to mandatory
Speaker 1: life in prison. How did Tom's conviction affect you all?
Speaker 4: Just heartbreaking, you know, first of all to lose my
Speaker 4: sister in law. Yeah, I think that was just the
Speaker 4: hardest thing. She was such a good mob, such a
Speaker 4: good person, and seeing that together and they're boys, and
Speaker 4: just it was just a heartache for I mean that
Speaker 4: it was sore.
Speaker 1: When Tom Rhodes got to prison in his late thirties,
Speaker 1: he says he was completely out of his element.
Speaker 3: I was raised by really compassionate people and kindness.
Speaker 2: That's kind of seeing this weakness.
Speaker 3: So you have to fight, you have to stand up
Speaker 3: for yourself, you have to do whatever, and so I
Speaker 3: just fought and didn't wait always.
Speaker 1: Tom felt like he was becoming a shell of who
Speaker 1: he was. But when Ron and his parents visited, he
Speaker 1: was reminded.
Speaker 4: So he just tell us, Hey, when you get in here,
Speaker 4: you can give me a hug. Please give me a hug.
Speaker 4: You just Tom would just want a hug and wanted
Speaker 4: to have a little bit of contact with us and
Speaker 4: tell us that he loved us and how much he
Speaker 4: appreciated us, you know, coming there.
Speaker 1: Ron says, particularly his parents.
Speaker 4: They were troopers, I mean driving you know, five six
Speaker 4: hours one way, you know, and over years and years
Speaker 4: they did that to support Tom and be there for
Speaker 4: all of us. Really, if I could make a trip,
Speaker 4: they would help pay for the expenses to make sure
Speaker 4: that we could go visit Tom. And you know, it
Speaker 4: was just it was hard. It was hard to see
Speaker 4: him in those circumstances. But he always had such a
Speaker 4: a great spirit about him when we'd go visit him
Speaker 4: or when we talked to him on the phone, that
Speaker 4: I'm like, how could this guy be going through everything
Speaker 4: he's gone through and still had this a type of
Speaker 4: attitude and the spirit. That was probably the thing that
Speaker 4: you know, made us want to go visit him, even
Speaker 4: though it wasn't a very fun place to visit.
Speaker 1: But Tom was putting on a face. He says, he
Speaker 1: didn't want his family, especially the boys worrying about him.
Speaker 3: I actually had two instances where I was wanting to check.
Speaker 9: Out, just couldn't couldn't take it anymore, and was severely
Speaker 9: depressed by it all.
Speaker 2: For sure.
Speaker 3: I put a canteen bag rope over electrical conduit in
Speaker 3: my cell and still water and tried and woke up.
Speaker 3: The sharpness of the metal above the conduit cut it,
Speaker 3: and I woke up unconscious with what remained of my
Speaker 3: a tamthrope around my neck near the toilet in myself.
Speaker 1: Your boys know that.
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: They're gonna know now.
Speaker 3: I'm not proud proud of that fact, and I don't
Speaker 3: want them to think that I, you know, was taking
Speaker 3: the cower's way out. I was just in a dark
Speaker 3: place and was missing them and my family so much.
Speaker 1: But Tom decided he wasn't going to let depression win.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about the dog program. That
Speaker 1: was something you credited to kind of saving you in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I worked as a mental health mentor, and after your
Speaker 3: seg free there a year, I had the opportunity to
Speaker 3: get in the dog program. I mainly worked with large
Speaker 3: male pit bulls and some small pit bulls.
Speaker 2: Yeah, mine too.
Speaker 3: You know, seventy eighty pound big pit bulls were just
Speaker 3: so wonderful for my soul. While I was helping them
Speaker 3: become adopted, I was enjoying the pleasure of training them,
Speaker 3: and they got good homes and I got to have
Speaker 3: a dog and myself.
Speaker 6: So yeah, beat that.
Speaker 2: That's good medicine.
Speaker 1: Tom also started fighting again, but this time for his innocence.
Speaker 8: Tom wrote to us a long time ago, more than
Speaker 8: a decade ago, asking for our assistance.
Speaker 1: Jim says when he and the Great North Innocence Project
Speaker 1: started looking at Tom's case, something big stood out.
Speaker 8: Doctor Lindsay Thomas, who was a medical examiner forensic pathologist
Speaker 8: who testified at Tom's trial, was always convinced and remains
Speaker 8: convinced to this day that Tom was innocent and that
Speaker 8: the testimony against him at his trial, the forensic testimony,
Speaker 8: was totally off base, and so she was a big
Speaker 8: champion of Tom's from the beginning and convincing us that
Speaker 8: his case was worth the look and something we needed
Speaker 8: to be involved in.
Speaker 1: But they had a big challenge the.
Speaker 8: Way Minnesota law works in these cases. Once it's been
Speaker 8: over two years since your conviction's final you can't even
Speaker 8: get into court to present your new evidence unless you
Speaker 8: can satisfy the court that it proves your innocence by
Speaker 8: clear and convincing evidence. Now, how are you going to
Speaker 8: do that? In Tom's case, where it's an entirely circumstantial case,
Speaker 8: How can he prove that negative that he didn't cause
Speaker 8: Jane's death. I challenge you to come up with the
Speaker 8: evidence it's going to prove it. He's not going to
Speaker 8: have DNA evidence. He's not going to show that somebody
Speaker 8: else did it. The point is that no crime occurred
Speaker 8: at all.
Speaker 1: The years passed and Tom filed multiple post conviction reliefs,
Speaker 1: all were denied. Tom's father passed in twenty fourteen, and
Speaker 1: within a year his mom got really sick.
Speaker 4: The nursing home didn't want us to take her out
Speaker 4: to go visit Tom, and they said no. She has
Speaker 4: a hard time swallowing food and different things. She was
Speaker 4: so frail. She weighed about ninety pounds. She just felt
Speaker 4: like skin and bones. But she was determined that she
Speaker 4: wanted to go see my brother.
Speaker 1: So Ron took his mom to see Tom.
Speaker 4: It was the last time he ever saw my mom.
Speaker 1: Both of Tom's parents died while he was still in prison.
Speaker 4: Was super hard. Knowing, you know, how hard they fought
Speaker 4: to free Tom, and how amazing they were at supporting
Speaker 4: all of our family and just you know, being so
Speaker 4: strong to help us get through things was tragic.
Speaker 10: Yeah, all right, hello everyone, My name's Keith Ellison. I'm
Speaker 10: the Attorney General for the state of Minnesota.
Speaker 1: Finally, in twenty twenty one, the Minnesota Conviction Review Unit
Speaker 1: was established as a partnership between the Great North Innocence
Speaker 1: Project and the Minnesota Attorney General's Office.
Speaker 10: Every criminal case has room for error because the justice
Speaker 10: system is run by human beings, and human beings make mistakes,
Speaker 10: do the wrong thing, and don't always get it right.
Speaker 1: Tom's case was selected to be reinvestigated.
Speaker 8: We ended up with nine expert opinions. Nine of them
Speaker 8: all said doctor McGee was wrong. They would never call
Speaker 8: this a homicide. We got the who's who of forensic
Speaker 8: pathologists with specific expertise in drowning. We came forward with
Speaker 8: new evidence from new studies from recent years about the
Speaker 8: physical findings you would expect to see in accidental drowning victims,
Speaker 8: which mapped on perfectly to what you saw in Jane's case.
Speaker 1: They all concluded that she was not struck multiple times
Speaker 1: with the boat. They found she was likely knocked out
Speaker 1: by a single blow when she fell out of the boat,
Speaker 1: or when the boat unintentionally hit her as Tom searched
Speaker 1: for her, an accidental drowning. Like Tom said, Jim says
Speaker 1: that doctor McGee wasn't using science when he made his
Speaker 1: homicide determination. He was working backwards from the police suspicions
Speaker 1: to make his findings fit.
Speaker 8: Totally unmoored from the way medical examiners should be doing
Speaker 8: their job.
Speaker 1: And McGee has a reputation, now, am I correct?
Speaker 8: He does. A federal judge had actually found that McGee
Speaker 8: had given misleading testimony in that case and noted the
Speaker 8: fact that doctor McGee had a troubling pattern of providing
Speaker 8: false or inaccurate testimony in court. And I'll even say,
Speaker 8: for our organization, Great North Inistan's project, we are not
Speaker 8: a large organization, but we've gotten three convictions vacated where
Speaker 8: doctor McGee was the medical examiner who did the autopsy
Speaker 8: and testified in their cases.
Speaker 1: The investigation also uncovered a Brady violation. The prosecution withheld
Speaker 1: a memo of a conversation with doctor McGee in which
Speaker 1: he admits he's unsure if Jane was struck once or
Speaker 1: multiple times.
Speaker 8: This was totally different from what the state ends up
Speaker 8: arguing at trial, which is this is premeditated murder because
Speaker 8: we know she was struck multiple times.
Speaker 1: Totally inconsistent with what doctor McGee had said earlier. After
Speaker 1: twenty five years in prison, on January thirteenth, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: a district court judge vacated Thomas Rhodes's murder conviction. However,
Speaker 1: Tom is still a convicted felon. He agreed to an
Speaker 1: Alfred plea for a lesser manslaughter conviction for driving with negligence.
Speaker 1: The Alfred plea allowed Tom to maintain his innocence but
Speaker 1: get out of prison right away, and at his age,
Speaker 1: missing so much of his children's and now grandchildren's.
Speaker 8: Life, he did what anyone in his situation would do
Speaker 8: and he took the deal that was offered to him.
Speaker 1: And that's why it still comes up on the record.
Speaker 8: That will still come up on a record because it's
Speaker 8: a felony conviction. Right for now, to working on that,
Speaker 8: we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: Sneaky Tom was the first person released under the partnership
Speaker 1: with the Minnesota Conviction Review Unit and the Great North
Speaker 1: Innocence Project.
Speaker 4: Was unbelievable to see him finally be able to walk
Speaker 4: through those doors. Sorry to be a little sappy here,
Speaker 4: it's a lot thinking back of all the things that
Speaker 4: our family went through, all the things that Tom went through.
Speaker 4: It's just it's hard. It's hard to relive that.
Speaker 2: It was awesome. It was surreal. I just I couldn't
Speaker 2: believe it. I was very emotional.
Speaker 8: All of us were.
Speaker 1: Jim, you've just been crying over there.
Speaker 8: Yeah, don't look at me like is he sweating or
Speaker 8: is it tears? This guy gets every time. He's the
Speaker 8: worst tissues.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize I was going to get this emotional.
Speaker 3: Jim and the people at the Innisen's Project had been
Speaker 3: there for me in ways I could have never imagined.
Speaker 1: While Tom was in prison, he took up art to
Speaker 1: help survive.
Speaker 3: I had about two hundred and fifty paintings. I painted
Speaker 3: places like the favorite road in the country, to where
Speaker 3: we mushroom hunted as a little boy, to things I
Speaker 3: did with my sons and and our life animals, a
Speaker 3: lot of animal art.
Speaker 1: Jim and folks of the Great North Innocence Project thought
Speaker 1: since Tom has struggled to find it job with his
Speaker 1: felony conviction.
Speaker 3: And unlike the greedy person they portrayed, did not spend
Speaker 3: any money from my house, from any of my assets.
Speaker 3: I put it in a trust for my son's education.
Speaker 3: Make sure that they got an education, and we're taken
Speaker 3: care of.
Speaker 1: Why not get Tom's art out of storage and sell it.
Speaker 3: They helped me put a business together called Thomas D. Galleries,
Speaker 3: and I'm selling prints and originals and I'm been taking
Speaker 3: pictures of some animals and looking forward to maybe doing
Speaker 3: some commissions of people's pets and stuff as well.
Speaker 1: Tom struggles with PTSD from his time in prison, but
Speaker 1: after almost two years of freedom, he's feeling better adjusted.
Speaker 3: I can really enjoy this freedom where I went through
Speaker 3: a lot this last for the first year. But I
Speaker 3: just want to credit, you know, people that have been
Speaker 3: there for me, like the Great North Innisance Project, my son's,
Speaker 3: my friends, and I have six grandkids and I'm just
Speaker 3: loving that I can have a relationship with them outside
Speaker 3: of a prison visit room.
Speaker 1: And Tom is especially just loving being free.
Speaker 3: One of my biggest toys is just being able to
Speaker 3: hop in my truck, my old truck, and just go
Speaker 3: someplace when I want to, you know, not having limitations.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling.
Speaker 1: Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the
Speaker 1: links in the episode description to see how you can help.
Speaker 1: And please consider checking out Tom's gallery Thomas D. Galleries
Speaker 1: to support him in his transition to freedom. Go to
Speaker 1: Thomas D. Galleries dot com or check out the link
Speaker 1: in our episode description. This episode was written by me
Speaker 1: Maggie Freeling, with story editing and sound designed by senior
Speaker 1: producer Rebecca Ibata. Our producer is Kathleen Fink. Our researcher
Speaker 1: is Shelby Sorels, with mixing by Josh Allen and additional
Speaker 1: production help by Jeff Cliburn and Connor Hall. Executive producers
Speaker 1: are Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wortis. The music
Speaker 1: is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Make
Speaker 1: sure to follow us on all social media platforms at
Speaker 1: Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also
Speaker 1: follow me on all platforms at Maggie Freeling Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 1: with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava for Good
Speaker 1: Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One. And a
Speaker 1: note on programming, We're taking Monday off next week and
Speaker 1: re airing an interview between Jason Flamm and Keith Washington
Speaker 1: in honor of Veterans Day.