Speaker 1: Previously on Death and Deceit in Alliance, which was the.
Speaker 2: First time to get it in the name of Joe Wills hair.
Speaker 3: For she was there for no, she was sitting on
Speaker 3: the couch to begin with, and she jumps.
Speaker 4: Out and ons over in the slang glass door.
Speaker 1: Yes, two blocks away from the house, to call that
Speaker 1: detectives did find a print on the handle, nosh.
Speaker 5: I did not do this.
Speaker 6: And although you thought that the evidence proved that, I
Speaker 6: know in my heart and saw, I did not do this.
Speaker 4: And I wouldn't wish this on anyone.
Speaker 1: This is Death and Deceit and Alliance a real time
Speaker 1: investigation into whether David Thorne killed Yvonne Lane. I'm Maggie Freeling.
Speaker 1: David Thorne has now been incarcerated for the murder of
Speaker 1: Yvonne Lane for nearly a third of his life after
Speaker 1: being convicted of the nineteen ninety nine murder of his
Speaker 1: ex girlfriend Yvonne Lane. He's now forty eight years old.
Speaker 7: You, I mean he's even today.
Speaker 1: Do you sometimes feel like this isn't real?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Because this is a life withinside of a life, because
Speaker 8: this is only existing, it's not really living.
Speaker 1: He figures his best chance to get out of prison
Speaker 1: is to help figure out who really killed Yvonne, which
Speaker 1: is tough to do behind bars. But he does have
Speaker 1: allies on the outside who support him in different ways. Sue,
Speaker 1: for example, we met her in the previous episode.
Speaker 7: Had a brother just watch that. I have David's dog
Speaker 7: and I had to lock in in the cage or you'd.
Speaker 4: Be hearing what.
Speaker 7: Wait?
Speaker 1: So how is he David's dog? Did he have him
Speaker 1: in prison?
Speaker 7: It was a prison program to be part of it,
Speaker 7: because you've got to.
Speaker 9: Like about parl certain so he would just kind of
Speaker 9: putty up to the guys who haven't dodged on the
Speaker 9: dog program so that he can hang out with the dogs.
Speaker 1: Sue is David's wife and longtime advocate and knows more
Speaker 1: about the case than anyone. Sue felt like the system
Speaker 1: did David wrong. In her gut. She just didn't believe
Speaker 1: he hired a hitman, let alone a teenage one for
Speaker 1: three hundred dollars.
Speaker 7: Something's missing. I can't I can't understand. There's got to
Speaker 7: be more.
Speaker 1: And when she started doing her own digging, she did
Speaker 1: find more. So when you first came on the case,
Speaker 1: what was the first things that you.
Speaker 7: I said, Okay, well, I need to talk to Joe.
Speaker 3: So I wrote Joe a letter, but I didn't put
Speaker 3: a return address because I thought, if this guy's of killer,
Speaker 3: I don't want him to know where I live.
Speaker 7: And so I didn't get a response. And then the
Speaker 7: second letter I wrote I was real vague and I
Speaker 7: didn't put my last name.
Speaker 3: But I had a po box by then, and he
Speaker 3: wrote me back and said the typical will you send
Speaker 3: me a picture?
Speaker 7: You know, I'd like to get to know you, and
Speaker 7: I'm like, oh, brother, it's a child.
Speaker 3: But but I finally wrote him and just put it
Speaker 3: on the table.
Speaker 1: She told him that she'd gotten documents and there was
Speaker 1: something wrong. She wondered if he'd been wrongly convicted.
Speaker 7: It doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 3: So I gave him my phone number and he called me,
Speaker 3: and that was on New Year's Eve, two thousand.
Speaker 1: The tape is super hard to hear. I give Sue
Speaker 1: a pass for two thousand's era recording. It's only half
Speaker 1: an hour long, and then it cuts off as soon
Speaker 1: as Sue answers. Joe pretty much got to the point.
Speaker 10: But you're saying, you're saying that you're changing your statement,
Speaker 10: that you did not do this March and David did
Speaker 10: not He had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 1: Just a few months after he testified at trial, Joe
Speaker 1: had recanted his confession. Joe said that he and David
Speaker 1: absolutely had nothing to do with Yvonne's murder. So Sue
Speaker 1: asked the obvious question, why would he say he did
Speaker 1: something he didn't do, like murder someone. He's hard to
Speaker 1: hear here. What he said is the police told Joe
Speaker 1: that David was filing for immunity. Joe tells Sue that
Speaker 1: the police told him David was in the room next
Speaker 1: door giving him up asking for immunity. In other words,
Speaker 1: they said that David was making a deal and it
Speaker 1: involved blaming Joe.
Speaker 10: So, oh, I see, so you said what they wanted
Speaker 10: you to say to get back at him.
Speaker 7: Kind of, Oh, okay, pretty.
Speaker 4: Much what they story.
Speaker 10: But they had nothing on you if you didn't do it,
Speaker 10: did they probably?
Speaker 4: He thought, And they told me in story, they told
Speaker 4: me a doublable for me to tell about the same
Speaker 4: they did so eight floryers, great courts.
Speaker 3: He said that they put him in a room and
Speaker 3: they changed him to the wall by his arm, and
Speaker 3: they spit on him. And they told him that they
Speaker 3: wanted him to confess because David was in the next
Speaker 3: room implicating him, and they were going to put him
Speaker 3: in the electric chair and so forth.
Speaker 1: Joe said his lawyers told him it was in his
Speaker 1: best interest to take a plea to avoid the death
Speaker 1: penalty considering the alleged statement David was making against him.
Speaker 1: This phone call was soon was actually the first time
Speaker 1: Joe was hearing that David in fact did not make
Speaker 1: any statements to police nor implicate Joe in the murder.
Speaker 1: And this wasn't the first time Joe was telling someone
Speaker 1: he didn't kill Yvonne. Actually, his minister and youth leader,
Speaker 1: wrote in an affid David that when she first went
Speaker 1: to visit him after his arraignment, he was crying and
Speaker 1: told her he didn't do it.
Speaker 7: Who do you think did this.
Speaker 4: Career?
Speaker 7: I don't know, but you don't believe it's David.
Speaker 4: I love life, Carol.
Speaker 1: After speaking with Joe, Sue knew she opened a can
Speaker 1: of worms, but she wasn't deterred. In his first interview
Speaker 1: with her, Joe put himself out the scene.
Speaker 10: So from the day, from the moment you walked in
Speaker 10: that door, what is your story. Then you walked into
Speaker 10: Why did you go there? You just went to fair
Speaker 10: You walk there from the hotel.
Speaker 4: Now, I've worked with a dads the semantic to it.
Speaker 1: Joe still said that he walked from the hotel to
Speaker 1: go see Yvonne and invite her to a hotel party.
Speaker 1: This was one of the many stories Joe would tell.
Speaker 1: And when he walked in, Yvonne was dead.
Speaker 10: And then what did you think when you fell a
Speaker 10: land there?
Speaker 7: He didn't think.
Speaker 4: You mean they knock out?
Speaker 10: How did you have to step in the blood? How
Speaker 10: did you happen to step in the blood?
Speaker 4: Were heard clear?
Speaker 1: So Joe put himself at the scene, but he said
Speaker 1: he didn't do it, and that's possible. Sue found out
Speaker 1: something about the defense.
Speaker 3: I discovered after trial that they had contacted somebody and
Speaker 3: not used him. They contacted somebody, and I believe it
Speaker 3: was New Milton, Ohio or somewhere in southwestern Ohio. And
Speaker 3: he had examined Joe's pants and Joe's knife quote unquote,
Speaker 3: and he said that there was no blood evidence on them,
Speaker 3: and he would expect to find blood evidence even if
Speaker 3: they'd been in the elements for a period of time.
Speaker 3: He said, there is no evidence at all of any
Speaker 3: blood on either of these items.
Speaker 1: No blood evidence whatsoever on the pants or knife that
Speaker 1: was allegedly used in this incredibly brutal, violent, virtually decapitating murder.
Speaker 1: But for some reason, the defense didn't call the expert
Speaker 1: to the stand that would have been pretty important for
Speaker 1: a jury to hear. Sue was able to get her
Speaker 1: own expert to examine the crime scene photos and form
Speaker 1: his own opinion.
Speaker 11: Bred Turvy, a nationally known criminal forensics expert, picked apart
Speaker 11: what he calls a botched.
Speaker 1: Case, said Joe could not have cut Yvon's neck on
Speaker 1: the couch. For one, where Joe would have been sitting
Speaker 1: was covered in blood.
Speaker 7: There's where he supposedly is sitting while he does this.
Speaker 10: There's blood spatter all over the skirt of the couch,
Speaker 10: so there's unless of blood transferred through his entire body.
Speaker 7: There is no way anybody was sitting in that spot.
Speaker 1: This is what Turvy told Channel five News he believed
Speaker 1: happened and how the blood got on the couch. He
Speaker 1: said that the heavy bloodspurs on the sliding glass doors
Speaker 1: suggested Yvon was standing at the doors facing the puppies.
Speaker 1: Outside when her throat was slit from behind.
Speaker 11: Expert Brett Turvey says the killers struck while the victim
Speaker 11: was standing here by the sliding glass doors, slice it
Speaker 11: from behind.
Speaker 6: She begins to spur blood, pumping blood violently out of
Speaker 6: her neck.
Speaker 11: The killer supported the victim on the way down, then
Speaker 11: pulled her across the floor.
Speaker 6: And there's dragon and smear marks in the blood. She's
Speaker 6: being assisted from the sliding glass door to the area
Speaker 6: between a couch and the television.
Speaker 1: Based on the photos, it appears there was also a
Speaker 1: dragmark on the floor like the killer may have dragged
Speaker 1: Yvonne after slicing her throat, touching her bloody body. And
Speaker 1: again it was incredibly bloody, and Joe had no blood
Speaker 1: on his clothes.
Speaker 7: She said that Joe's statement did not match the evidence.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not saying Turvey's account is the right one,
Speaker 1: but if someone like him had testified, it certainly could
Speaker 1: have left reasonable doubt that Joe did this. But David's
Speaker 1: team never called a rebuttal witness. And then there's the motive.
Speaker 1: Prosecutors said David didn't want to pay child support at
Speaker 1: the time of the murder. David said he was making
Speaker 1: about fourteen dollars an hour at a high end car shop,
Speaker 1: which in nineteen ninety nine was pretty good money around
Speaker 1: twenty six dollars today. And since he was working on cars,
Speaker 1: he says he also went to swap meets and sold
Speaker 1: expensive parts for cash. He tells me one part could
Speaker 1: pay a month of child support, which again was three
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty one dollars. And again that motive, to
Speaker 1: me is a bit off, not to mention paying three
Speaker 1: hundred dollars for a teen hit man. It just seems
Speaker 1: so weak to me. When Sue first started on the case,
Speaker 1: it was twenty two years ago. She was young and
Speaker 1: passionate and put in a ton of legwork. One of
Speaker 1: the first people she spoke with was Linda McLaughlin, Eric
Speaker 1: Cameron's mother. Remember, Eric is the father of three of
Speaker 1: Yvonne's children. He's the reason David and yvon broke up.
Speaker 1: Yvonn couldn't quit Eric even when he was in jail.
Speaker 1: You talked to Linda at length about, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: her involvement.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I suspected everybody.
Speaker 1: Linda was taking care of Eric and Yvonne's special needs son. Actually,
Speaker 1: she basically raised him from the time he was born.
Speaker 7: Yvonne gave her Vinnie went from the hospital. Is what
Speaker 7: I understand.
Speaker 3: Bennie needs special care, and I think she kept him
Speaker 3: until he was poor because she took Yvonne took him
Speaker 3: back just before the murder, which made me go, hmmm, right.
Speaker 1: Because Linda wanted him right. But Yvonne had recently taken
Speaker 1: Vinnie back from Linda, and that was causing tension between
Speaker 1: the two. Sue thought, could this be a motive. Linda
Speaker 1: passed away some years ago, so we weren't able to
Speaker 1: speak with her, but luckily Sue recorded her conversation and
Speaker 1: asked Linda straight up, I.
Speaker 7: Understood special permission something reny from you. Would that make
Speaker 7: you go I just want to kill her?
Speaker 11: No?
Speaker 7: No, and I had no power.
Speaker 2: I can take you on how you walk to Jeryl, Well,
Speaker 2: we're kind when I wanted to punch her out, but
Speaker 2: as far as killing that, that ever even went through
Speaker 2: my mind. I loved Benny. I don't worry as much
Speaker 2: as I love my kid and still there. But I
Speaker 2: understood to a certain degree why she was doing what
Speaker 2: she was doing.
Speaker 1: Sue is also suspicious about Linda's boyfriend at the time,
Speaker 1: and his name is Jeremy. Remember Vinny was supposed to
Speaker 1: have said he saw a Jimmy, Josh or Jeremy kill Mommy.
Speaker 1: The name was hard to make out. Well, he certainly
Speaker 1: would have known a Jeremy who was virtually his grandfather.
Speaker 1: Sue put the question to Linda, does she think or
Speaker 1: know anything about Jeremy killing Yvonne.
Speaker 2: I don't see Jeremy doing anything like that.
Speaker 7: Would he do it for you? You're a She took
Speaker 7: the book me.
Speaker 2: I don't think Jeremy had that and and to do
Speaker 2: something like that, and I'm only part of it, you
Speaker 2: got to fall. Yeah, what a good name because he
Speaker 2: did me beat me up. He beat me up a
Speaker 2: few times there.
Speaker 1: Sue says she knew Jeremy was violent and the police
Speaker 1: should have looked at him.
Speaker 7: I remember that time I came here half and I
Speaker 7: asked her just work that night? And he felt, oh
Speaker 7: I why I can't talk? Her heart had affect fact.
Speaker 1: But if the police considered Jeremy a suspect, there is
Speaker 1: no record of any conversation with him. I also want
Speaker 1: to note that when I spoke to Preston, one of
Speaker 1: Yvonne's kids, who is now a grown man. He pointed
Speaker 1: something out to me.
Speaker 7: When I went to there that night, I was going
Speaker 7: the way.
Speaker 1: Vinnie had already been put to bed that night in
Speaker 1: his diaper and slept in a crib on the ground floor.
Speaker 1: He couldn't out alone yet when Tanya came in the house,
Speaker 1: he was out of the crib and fully dressed when
Speaker 1: police arrived.
Speaker 7: So that somebody got him dressed. So who would know
Speaker 7: where Vincent's clothes were?
Speaker 1: What do you think about that?
Speaker 8: I mean, well, not many people could just grab them.
Speaker 8: So that's that if she didn't know you, he can
Speaker 8: treat it out. You can't just pick him out as
Speaker 8: a total stranger.
Speaker 1: So to Preston, it seems likely the person who murdered
Speaker 1: his mom was someone who knew Vinnie, was able to
Speaker 1: hold him, dress him, and took care of him. Someone
Speaker 1: like Vinnie's grandmother or her boyfriend Jeremy, or maybe a
Speaker 1: friendly neighbor.
Speaker 12: And there's a guy that she used to hang out
Speaker 12: with flied around the corner from her out named Jim,
Speaker 12: and I interviewed Jim, and she was.
Speaker 1: Character Jim lived directly behind Yvonne, and as Sue mentioned,
Speaker 1: Yvonn would often hang out with Jim. Jim's never been
Speaker 1: formally accused in this case, so I'm only going to
Speaker 1: use his first name.
Speaker 7: I went to interview him just as a neighbor and
Speaker 7: a witness, and I thought something's not right here.
Speaker 1: Remember there's a neighbor across the street who said she
Speaker 1: saw Yvonne on the night of March thirty first, the
Speaker 1: night she was killed. The neighbor said Yvonne was outside
Speaker 1: around five thirty pm crushing soda cans, talking to a
Speaker 1: forty year old white man about five foot seven in
Speaker 1: a plaid shirt with curly, graying hair. Turns out this
Speaker 1: was Jim. And we know this because it's documented in
Speaker 1: police reports that Jim himself told officers he talked to
Speaker 1: Yvonne around that time in her driveway, just as the
Speaker 1: neighbor described.
Speaker 12: He was seeing my neighbor standing at her front door.
Speaker 12: She's got a bunch of cans popcns dumped on the
Speaker 12: ground on our sidewalk. Why outside her door, smashing with
Speaker 12: her feet, and the neighbors saw her doing it. She
Speaker 12: never finished smashing them. They were still laying there when
Speaker 12: they found their body.
Speaker 9: And I wouldn't you go finish that yeah, but he
Speaker 9: was standing outside her front door with her, and he
Speaker 9: told them in a police handwritten note that it was
Speaker 9: he was there to see the puppies because he might
Speaker 9: want a puppy.
Speaker 1: Jim told officers he went to Yvonne's to see the puppies.
Speaker 1: They were on the deck, visible to anyone who could
Speaker 1: see the house.
Speaker 3: And I thought, oh, I'd never even you know, And
Speaker 3: then I started putting the Jimmy stuff together.
Speaker 1: Josh, Jimmy or Jeremy. From what we know, Jim the neighbor,
Speaker 1: was the last person to see Vonn alive. That was
Speaker 1: about five thirty pm. The coroner said Yvonne could have
Speaker 1: been killed as early as seven pm, just ninety minutes later.
Speaker 7: So if you're at the door at five thirty, she's
Speaker 7: bead at seven. In that hour and a half, he
Speaker 7: had to see the puppies, have a conversation. You don't
Speaker 7: walk in and go okay, there's.
Speaker 1: Puppy by Jim told the officers that that night, March
Speaker 1: thirty first, he worked from ten pm to six am.
Speaker 1: This would have given him plenty of time to commit
Speaker 1: the crime. Get to work by ten pm, So Jim,
Speaker 1: like Joe, placed himself at Yvonne's house at five thirty
Speaker 1: pm the night of the murder. When police questioned what
Speaker 1: he did after he was seen in Yvonne's driveway, he
Speaker 1: said he went on a bike ride, something that's just
Speaker 1: impossible to verify. But then it looks like police stopped
Speaker 1: following up on Jim, the last known person to see
Speaker 1: Yvonne alive. Jim was not called to testify, and there's
Speaker 1: no formal interview with him in the case file. All
Speaker 1: there is is one officer's third person mention of what
Speaker 1: Jim told police the day her body was discovered, that
Speaker 1: he was there about five thirty pm, and then a
Speaker 1: second neighbor told police they saw a guy leaving Yvonne's
Speaker 1: house before she was discovered that morning. He gave police
Speaker 1: his statement well before David's trial, but that report was
Speaker 1: never given to David's defense team, and that could be
Speaker 1: a bombshell.
Speaker 5: So Frankly, when I was reading first about Joe, I
Speaker 5: was like, yeah, I think David might have done that.
Speaker 7: I think he might have.
Speaker 5: But then as I I then when I made the
Speaker 5: report and the George Hale story is like, no, something's
Speaker 5: missing here, and why didn't the prosecution turn this over
Speaker 5: and what is going on here?
Speaker 4: What's up with that?
Speaker 5: And why it wasn't further investigated. So it makes her
Speaker 5: feel like there's more to the story.
Speaker 1: Coming up on Deaf and Deceit and Alliance.
Speaker 5: This man was in a house with a dead body
Speaker 5: and was either cleaning up for the killer or was
Speaker 5: the killer that a guy came out with.
Speaker 7: A trash bag.
Speaker 12: That's all I see.
Speaker 5: You know, just glance why that report wasn't provided to
Speaker 5: the defense, Like, what's up with that?
Speaker 11: Did you find somebody you recommended? I did point out somebody,
Speaker 11: Ail says. Detectives told him later the picture he pointed
Speaker 11: out was that of an Alliance police officer.
Speaker 5: That is the one key part of this case set
Speaker 5: just never sat right with me, like the fact that
Speaker 5: it was never turned over to the defense is shocking.
Speaker 1: Death and Deceit and Alliance is produced and reported by
Speaker 1: me Maggie Freeling, with editorial consulting from Amber Hunt. Aaron
Speaker 1: Case is our legal researcher. Our executive producer is Steve Fishman.
Speaker 1: Our engineer and production coordinator is Austin Smith. Eric axel
Speaker 1: Rod is our assistant producer.
Speaker 3: M HM