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Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language, along with references

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Speaker 1: to sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.

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Speaker 2: There's all these times where Driscol almost gets there. He says, Hey,

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Speaker 2: I think I should call my friend Charlie. It's my friend.

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Speaker 2: He's a lawyer, and Hannd says, oh, well, you could

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Speaker 2: if you want to. I'm not here to stop you,

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Speaker 2: but I don't think Charlie's going to help you. I

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Speaker 2: think we're going to help you. I remember almost like

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Speaker 2: grabbing my hand, just being like, Larry, what are you doing?

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Speaker 2: Call Charlie.

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Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor

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Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the host of the historical

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Speaker 1: true crime podcast Tenfold More Wicked and the co host

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Speaker 1: of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right. I've traveled

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Speaker 1: around the world interviewing people for the show, and they

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Speaker 1: are all excellent writers. They've had so many great true

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Speaker 1: crime stories, and now we want to tell you those

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Speaker 1: stories with details that have never been published. Tenfold Where

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Speaker 1: Wicked presents Wicked Words is about the choices that writers make,

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Speaker 1: good and bad. It's a deep dive into the stories

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Speaker 1: behind the stories The Marshall Project is a fantastic nonprofit

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Speaker 1: news organization, and my friend Maurice Schama is one of

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Speaker 1: its best reporters. He hosts a podcast called Smokescreen Just

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Speaker 1: Say You're Sorry. It tells the story of a brutal

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Speaker 1: murder of a woman who was disparaged by the police

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Speaker 1: to secure a suspect. And that's just the beginning of

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Speaker 1: the questionable techniques used by the investigators as well as

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Speaker 1: the Texas Rangers.

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Speaker 3: So let's first.

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Speaker 1: Talk about the construction of this piece, because to say

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Speaker 1: it's an article or a podcast tied to it as

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Speaker 1: too simplistic. Tell me what you created in your piece,

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Speaker 1: which is called Anatomy of a murder confession, kind of

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Speaker 1: describe for listeners what you're doing before we talk about

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Speaker 1: the actual story, which is unbelievable.

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Speaker 2: Sure, I mean, I am primarily a writer, but I

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Speaker 2: know that writing isn't the only way that people take

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Speaker 2: in information. And this is primarily a story about memory

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Speaker 2: and how faulty our memories can be and the risks

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Speaker 2: that come with kind of exploiting the faultiness of our

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Speaker 2: memories in the criminal justice system. And I wanted the

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Speaker 2: writing to try to capture that, but I also knew

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Speaker 2: that there were other ways to capture it too, and

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Speaker 2: the Marshall Projects we created a kind of multimedia experience

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Speaker 2: where you're reading an article, but you're also looking at

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Speaker 2: visuals where, for example, it's a van on a street

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Speaker 2: corner and the van flips through multiple different iterations to

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Speaker 2: mimic the way that someone's memory of that van changed

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Speaker 2: over time. Right, it looked one way and then ten

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Speaker 2: years later it looked a different way.

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Speaker 1: Tell me the purpose of the Marshall Project, because you know,

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Speaker 1: people who are listening to our show are used to

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Speaker 1: hearing from people who are independent authors with publishing houses

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Speaker 1: or at the New Yorker, so this feels different. Would

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Speaker 1: you consider the Marshal Project to be like an advocacy

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Speaker 1: program and you're a journalist within it, because I always

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Speaker 1: think of the Marshall Project as people who are really

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Speaker 1: digging into wrongful convictions, which seems like advocacy to me.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very good question. I mean, there's always

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Speaker 2: been an element of journalism that advocates for kind of

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Speaker 2: a better world in a general sense, you know, whether

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Speaker 2: that's a more transparent society, a society with more equality,

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Speaker 2: fewer disparities of race and gender, but we do really

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Speaker 2: see ourselves as journalists. First. The Martial Project was founded

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Speaker 2: by a former editor in chief of The New York Times,

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Speaker 2: a guy named Bill Keller, with a former hedge fund manager,

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Speaker 2: Neil Barski, who was just really amped up about the

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Speaker 2: injustices and the criminal justice system. And the mission statement

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Speaker 2: is very broad. It's to create a sense of urgency

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Speaker 2: around that system and to tell stories that help the

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Speaker 2: public kind of understand what the problems are in the

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Speaker 2: system and potential solutions. We're not advocates in the sense

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Speaker 2: of taking positions on individual policies or candidates. We don't

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Speaker 2: advocate for any particular thing, but we advocate for the

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Speaker 2: things that I think all journalists do to an extent,

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Speaker 2: which is more justice in the world and more equality

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Speaker 2: and more transparency. To that end, I think we're in

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Speaker 2: line with a certain generation of investigative journalism outlets like

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Speaker 2: Pro Publica or the Texas Tribune that really see the

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Speaker 2: kind of public service mission as the number one thing

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Speaker 2: before entertaining people, before telling a story, you know, we

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Speaker 2: want people to understand the system, and then we think, Okay,

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Speaker 2: what stories are going to help people understand the system better.

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Speaker 2: And that's really I think. How I came to this

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Speaker 2: story and how I felt like this story was sort

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Speaker 2: of special is that, on the one hand, it's a

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Speaker 2: twisty true crime narrative with lots of exciting surprises in it,

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Speaker 2: but on the other hand, it features all kinds of

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Speaker 2: lessons about the reality of wrongful convictions in the United States,

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Speaker 2: false confessions, how it is that psychology works in the

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Speaker 2: way that the tech actives do their work. And then finally,

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Speaker 2: I'll say that I do a lot of stories on

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Speaker 2: wrongful convictions and some people who go to prison, but

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Speaker 2: I and my colleagues also probably the majority of our

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Speaker 2: work is on people who are guilty, and the questions

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Speaker 2: are not did they do it? The questions are should

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Speaker 2: prison conditions be this awful? Or should police, let's say,

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Speaker 2: send a canine to maul someone who was selling drugs

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Speaker 2: on the corner. You know, the questions can get very

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Speaker 2: complex and rich beyond the question of isn't innocent person

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Speaker 2: in prison?

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Speaker 1: When you and I initially talked about this, you asked

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Speaker 1: me where should we start? Should we start with the victim,

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Speaker 1: which in this case is Bobby Sue Hill or do

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Speaker 1: we start from the point of view of someone who's

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Speaker 1: arguably another victim in this case, which would be the suspect. Right, So,

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Speaker 1: when we're talking about this case, where does it make

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Speaker 1: the most sense to start? Can we talk about where

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Speaker 1: we are and the time period.

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Speaker 2: This starts in two thousand and five. Many of us

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Speaker 2: listening probably where we're alive at the time, and we're

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Speaker 2: in a small town called Alito, Texas, aled which is

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Speaker 2: in a rural county called Parker County. It's about an

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Speaker 2: hour west of Fort Worth, the Dallas Fort Worth metro area,

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Speaker 2: and it's where you know, the suburbs give way to

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Speaker 2: vast rolling fields. There are a lot of peach farms

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Speaker 2: out there. It's a really kind of lovely, beautiful area.

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Speaker 2: And within Alito, this one part of this county, there's

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Speaker 2: a rural area that has a road in the trees

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Speaker 2: where there's a lot of really large houses. It's very beautiful.

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Speaker 2: Somebody wants to describe it to me as if you

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Speaker 2: live in Fort Worth and want a mansion but can't

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Speaker 2: afford a mansion, this is the street you go live

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Speaker 2: in out in the country where the property is cheap

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Speaker 2: and you can have a mansion. So imagine a bunch

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Speaker 2: of houses that are really spread out and really really

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Speaker 2: big and pretty. In March two thousand and five, there

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Speaker 2: are two teenage boys who are hiking around. I imagine

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Speaker 2: it's a day they have off from school, and they

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Speaker 2: are in this creek bed and they find a pair

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Speaker 2: of trash bags and they see what looks like an

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Speaker 2: ear coming out of one of the trash bags, and

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Speaker 2: they realize, oh my god, this is a body. So

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Speaker 2: they sprint. I imagine the kind of panic that would

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Speaker 2: set in if this were me as a high school kid.

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Speaker 2: They sprint to a house nearby. They call nine one

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Speaker 2: Pint one. The Parker County Sheriff's Office descends on the

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Speaker 2: area and basically has the body of a woman. They

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Speaker 2: figure out, They put out alerts to other law enforcement,

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Speaker 2: and eventually it goes on the local news in the

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Speaker 2: region that this woman has been found and they can't

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Speaker 2: identify her, but she has a pair of tattoos that

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Speaker 2: are very specific on her shoulders, and a member of

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Speaker 2: her family calls in and says, that's Bobby Sue Hill,

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Speaker 2: and so now they know who she is and they

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Speaker 2: start to investigate. You know, who is this woman and

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Speaker 2: what circumstances could possibly have led her to be so

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Speaker 2: brutally raped and murdered and strangled and left you for

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Speaker 2: dead out here in this creek. My own investigation as

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Speaker 2: a reporter kind of mirrored. I remember feeling like, oh,

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Speaker 2: this is what I'm doing is similar to what the

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Speaker 2: sheriff's deputies were doing at the very outset, which is

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Speaker 2: just the question of who is this woman and her

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Speaker 2: family shared with those officers and then eventually with me

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Speaker 2: some detail, and it is a really sort of tragic

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Speaker 2: story that I've spent a lot of time trying to

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Speaker 2: put together because I felt like earlier versions of the

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Speaker 2: story that appeared in local newspapers and police records in

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Speaker 2: the courts really limited her and put her in this

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Speaker 2: very specific box where it was easy to it really

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Speaker 2: almost degraded her memory. So Bobby Souhill was a young

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Speaker 2: woman from the Fort Worth area. She fell in love

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Speaker 2: with her high school sweetheart, who was from an immigrant

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Speaker 2: family from Southeast Asia, and she dropped out of high

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Speaker 2: school to marry him. They had five kids together, and

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Speaker 2: there was also a sort of dark strain in her

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Speaker 2: family history. She had a cousin who had done sex

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Speaker 2: work and had died of AIDS years earlier. My understanding

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Speaker 2: is that she had a really contentious relationship with her

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Speaker 2: own mother, and sex work was sort of accepted almost

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Speaker 2: in the family, and so she falls into with her husband,

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Speaker 2: even though they have five kids. They fall into using

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Speaker 2: drugs together, harder and harder drugs, and then tragically he

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Speaker 2: dies in a car accident and she's left. She's in

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Speaker 2: her twenties, she has five kids, and she descends into

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Speaker 2: drug use and sex work. In fort Worth, her five

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Speaker 2: kids moved in with the husband who had died his family,

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Speaker 2: and she is living with a boyfriend in a in

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Speaker 2: these like derelict motels on the outskirts of downtown fort Worth.

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Speaker 2: Fort Worth has this street called East Lancaster that runs

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Speaker 2: off of downtown that is just famous. I mean, I

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Speaker 2: have friends who grew up in Fort Worth who say,

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Speaker 2: that's where the sex workers are, that's where the drugs are,

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Speaker 2: that's where there's all those little motels and shelters for

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Speaker 2: unhoused people, and that's where she is. And her cousins

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Speaker 2: were described going and driving down the street looking for Bobby,

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Speaker 2: finding her, trying to convince her to come home. Eventually,

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Speaker 2: she calls her oldest daughter, who's in I think middle

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Speaker 2: or high school at this point, and basically says like,

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Speaker 2: I'd like to come back and live with you all.

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Speaker 2: I think the most tragic element of this is that

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Speaker 2: I found another cousin of hers who is now in

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Speaker 2: prison himself, sort of speaking of this dark thread in

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Speaker 2: the family, and he said basically that she felt like

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Speaker 2: a failure as a mother, and she kind of drowned

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Speaker 2: that sense of failure in drugs. One version of this

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Speaker 2: is she abandoned her children, but another version is she

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Speaker 2: didn't feel like she could be a proper mother to them.

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Speaker 2: She didn't feel like she'd had the right kind of

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Speaker 2: mother in herself. But then we know that she was

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Speaker 2: about to try to go back and live with them,

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Speaker 2: and about to try to pick herself up and get

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Speaker 2: out of this lifestyle, and instead they have to identify

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Speaker 2: her body. It took a lot of work to kind

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Speaker 2: of get that story, but I felt like it was

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Speaker 2: really necessary to understand the full scope of the tragedy

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Speaker 2: that is this case.

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Speaker 1: What was the other reporting like on her life story

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Speaker 1: in contrast to all of the deep research you clearly

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Speaker 1: did on her life story.

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Speaker 2: Oh, it was half a sentence. It was sex worker

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Speaker 2: found in the court records. There was a little bit

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Speaker 2: of a sense that the detectives were almost disparaging her

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Speaker 2: in order to solve the case. And you can debate

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Speaker 2: whether this was okay for them to do, but they

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Speaker 2: would talk to suspects and say, well, you know, she

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Speaker 2: wasn't the daughter of a senator, so like, go ahead, basically,

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Speaker 2: go ahead and confess because you're not going to get

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Speaker 2: a harsh punishment because no one cared about this woman.

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Speaker 2: And so the family members I reached just said they

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Speaker 2: were imbevalent because on the one hand, they were displeased

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Speaker 2: with elements of my reporting, which we'll get into. It's

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Speaker 2: very complex, But on the other hand, they wanted the

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Speaker 2: world to know that there was so much more to

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Speaker 2: this person, that she loved her kids, that she had

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Speaker 2: this incredible sense of humor, that she really was an

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Speaker 2: incredible mother to these young kids before she kind of

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Speaker 2: got in her own head and fell off the track.

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Speaker 1: So in two thousand and five, Bobby Sue Hill is saying,

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Speaker 1: I am ready to get my life together. I'd like

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Speaker 1: to come back. What happens next that changes everything?

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Speaker 2: So her body's found. And there's a question immediately for

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Speaker 2: law enforcement, which is how did a woman who was

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Speaker 2: last seen on the streets of East Lancaster in downtown

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Speaker 2: Fort Worth end up in a ditch an hour away

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Speaker 2: in a rural area. Pretty soon, through just you know,

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Speaker 2: running the different investigative leads in downtown Fort Worth, they

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Speaker 2: find a man who was her boyfriend at the time.

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Speaker 2: They often refer to him as a pimp. I have

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Speaker 2: wrestled with whether that word is fair. It seems like

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Speaker 2: she was doing sex work. He was also using drugs

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Speaker 2: and the mowing lawns to try to make ends meet,

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Speaker 2: and they were living together, and he was protecting her,

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Speaker 2: you know, from John's in certain scenarios. I interviewed him myself,

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Speaker 2: and the story that he says to investigators is I

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Speaker 2: was with Bobby when she was abducted. I saw her

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Speaker 2: be abducted. There was a John who came. He was

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Speaker 2: driving a white van, and you know, he stopped at

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Speaker 2: this little intersection. He drove back and forth a few times.

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Speaker 2: There was something a little bit uneasy or sketchy about it.

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Speaker 2: I didn't feel totally trustworthy, but she said, no, it's okay,

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Speaker 2: I'm going to go do this job, and so she

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Speaker 2: disappears into the van. He follows the van as it

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Speaker 2: drives over to a side street, and then at some

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Speaker 2: point after a few minutes, you know, standing there, the boyfriend,

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Speaker 2: his name is Michael Hardin, and he sees a face

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Speaker 2: pop up in the window of a man whose eyes

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Speaker 2: got wide, and recognizes him the protector boyfriend figure from

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Speaker 2: the previous interaction, and kind of flips out and throws

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Speaker 2: the van into gear and speeds off with it. And

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Speaker 2: he doesn't see Bobby Sue Hill's face, so for all

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Speaker 2: he knows, she's already been killed in the van. At

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Speaker 2: this point, we don't have an exact time of death

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Speaker 2: to know when it happened, but that is the story

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Speaker 2: that he tells to investigators. Investigators do what they do.

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Speaker 2: They set him up with a sketch artist who draws

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Speaker 2: an image of that face.

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Speaker 1: So the police believe him, Michael the boyfriend who is

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Speaker 1: also her protector. I mean, this does not seem like

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Speaker 1: a credible witness to me. How do we know he's

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Speaker 1: not involved?

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Speaker 2: My sense is that they decided that they believed him,

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Speaker 2: that his story was broadly corroborated. Although this was a

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Speaker 2: whole universe of people whose memories were tainted by drug use,

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Speaker 2: And in my own investigation of the case, the one

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Speaker 2: kind of point in his favor, so to speak, is

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Speaker 2: that a his story has remained remarkably consistent in certain ways,

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Speaker 2: but B it is impossible to imagine how or why

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Speaker 2: if he was involved, she would have ended up in

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Speaker 2: this ditch an hour west, in this small town that

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Speaker 2: people in East Lancaster wouldn't necessarily know. That said, it

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Speaker 2: is entirely possible that he's lying, and in fact, later

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Speaker 2: on in this case, an investigator who's looking into it

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Speaker 2: finds an ant and asks the aunt when was the

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Speaker 2: last time you spoke to her? And she gives a date,

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Speaker 2: and it's in fact after the date that he gave

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Speaker 2: that she was abducted. So it's also possible that his

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Speaker 2: story isn't exactly wrong, but that she wanted to get

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Speaker 2: away from him, and she did get away, and then

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Speaker 2: her death had nothing to do with this white van

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Speaker 2: and this man that he saw drive off with her.

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Speaker 2: Everything is an option still, and I think a claim

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Speaker 2: that a lot of lawyers working on the case now

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Speaker 2: have made to me is that basically this case was

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Speaker 2: never going to be an easy one to solve, and

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Speaker 2: I think her family acknowledged that too. This was a

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Speaker 2: murder committed in a scenario where people are looking out

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Speaker 2: for themselves. There's a culture of being opposed to snitching.

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Speaker 2: So it's yes reasonable to assume that the boyfriend could

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Speaker 2: have been involved, reasonable to assume that his entire story

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Speaker 2: is just faulty, reasonable to assume he made it up

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Speaker 2: to protect someone else. When I interviewed him and kind

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Speaker 2: of got into this world, I mean, I tracked him

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Speaker 2: down to one of these derelict motels in Fort Worth.

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Speaker 2: I mean, everything was just so depressing and desperate in

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Speaker 2: terms of the circumstances that it sort of felt like

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Speaker 2: there was a whole universe of things I didn't know

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Speaker 2: in terms of who's protecting whom with what story.

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Speaker 1: So Michael sits down with a sketch artist in two

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Speaker 1: thousand and five, once his girlfriend is discovered in her

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Speaker 1: bodies discovered, he sits down and he works with the

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Speaker 1: sketch artist. What does this man look like? Who's in

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Speaker 1: this white van?

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Speaker 2: So according to Harden, to Michael Hard and the boyfriend,

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Speaker 2: the man in the white van has a big, bushy mustache.

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Speaker 2: She's kind of got a bit of a receiving heroline.

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Speaker 2: If you learn a less look at this photo in passing,

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Speaker 2: you might think this is a Latino man. You might

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Speaker 2: think that he's you know, of Mexican heritage, although you know,

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Speaker 2: sketches are an art as much as the science. But

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Speaker 2: this is all to say that the sketch does not

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Speaker 2: lead to any suspects, to any matches. And around this time,

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Speaker 2: I should say there is a suspect that emerges because

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Speaker 2: he reports that his white van was stolen in a

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Speaker 2: nearby town. A man named Tim Dawson basically calls a

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Speaker 2: police and says a sex worker stole my white van.

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Speaker 2: Threads of that sound similar to this case, right, So

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Speaker 2: they bring him in. They ask him about the details.

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Speaker 2: He claims that he was with a sex worker and

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Speaker 2: she stole his van, but he claims to have no

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Speaker 2: knowledge of Bobby sou Hill know nothing about this case.

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Speaker 2: Added to the mysteriousness, he lives in Weatherford, Texas, which

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Speaker 2: is the county seat of Parker County, which is just

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Speaker 2: a stone's throw from Aledo, so he also lives somewhat

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Speaker 2: near the place her body was found. He's been arrested

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Speaker 2: in the past for various violence, but he basically has

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Speaker 2: no knowledge, and then don't press him, or at least

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Speaker 2: at a certain point, they just give up on pressing

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Speaker 2: him because he says, I know nothing about this, and

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Speaker 2: you know, his connection is circumstantial, circumstantially fairly strong. But

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Speaker 2: you know, they kind of reach a barrier in the

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Speaker 2: investigation and at that point the case goes entirely cold.

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Speaker 2: So to situate this in history, over the last twenty years,

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Speaker 2: the number of cold cases has been going up because

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Speaker 2: the number of homicides that are solved has been going down,

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Speaker 2: and this case just kind of enters that ocean of

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Speaker 2: unsolved cold cases out there that Texas law enforcement hopes

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Speaker 2: to solve someday but is not exactly prioritizing.

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Speaker 1: Why is that that's such an odd statistic. You would

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Speaker 1: think with more advances in forensic science that you would

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Speaker 1: be solving more cases instead of fewer.

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Speaker 2: I think a distrust of the police sometimes makes it

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Speaker 2: hard for them to actually solve it. So you look

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Speaker 2: at a case like this, I imagine many of those

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Speaker 2: people in Fort Worth who were around Bobby sou Hill

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Speaker 2: and her boyfriend at the time don't trust the police

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Speaker 2: and are so less likely to talk to them about

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Speaker 2: what they saw and heard. For all of the advances

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Speaker 2: in forensics, genealogy, etc. These are expensive and time intensive processes.

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Speaker 2: You know, anyone case takes a lot of effort to solve,

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Speaker 2: and as law enforcement officers have told me that their

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Speaker 2: departments are just generally cash strapped and just kind of

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Speaker 2: honestly have to jump to the next one every day.

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Speaker 2: So if there's a new murder, they have to start

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Speaker 2: solving that one, and so cases are allowed to go cold.

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Speaker 2: But to combat that problem, and this is where the

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Speaker 2: next element of our story comes in, the Texas Rangers

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Speaker 2: decided to create a basically unsolved crime cold case unit. Now,

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Speaker 2: the Texas Rangers, or the one percent of listeners who've

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Speaker 2: never heard of them, are this two hundred year old

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Speaker 2: law enforcement agency in Texas that have kind of almost

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Speaker 2: mythicual ties to the early history of Texas. They existed

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Speaker 2: even before Texas was a state. They are associated with

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Speaker 2: all kinds of atrocities in the eighteen nineteen hundreds, but

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Speaker 2: by the early Tiefouans are treated as this elite almost

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Speaker 2: like FBI meet CIA element of the Texas Department of

377
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Speaker 2: Public Safety, which is our statewide law enforcement body, and

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Speaker 2: typically the best of the best among the highway patrol

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Speaker 2: troopers are elevated to the position of being a Texas Ranger.

380
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Speaker 2: There's one hundred and sixty in change across the state

381
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Speaker 2: and in the early two thousands, they decide to create

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Speaker 2: a unsolved Crimes cold case unit that they say is

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Speaker 2: going to use the best of the new forensic tools

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Speaker 2: that we have to try to solve cases. Around twenty

385
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Speaker 2: thirteen twenty fourteen, there's a small break in the case

386
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Speaker 2: of Bobby Zoue Hill. There was a cigarette butt that

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Speaker 2: was found near her body in the ditch in Parker County,

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Speaker 2: and there's a DNA hit on the cigarette butt that

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Speaker 2: it matches a woman. That woman is brought in for questioning.

390
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Speaker 2: She is. From the audio, it's clear horrified by Bobby

391
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Speaker 2: Sue Hill's death and claims I know nothing about it.

392
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Speaker 2: She says, I had this one boyfriend who tried to

393
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Speaker 2: strangled me this one time. They go and interview him.

394
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Speaker 2: He says, I don't know nothing about nothing. You know, again,

395
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Speaker 2: you talk about distrust of the police, and there's really

396
00:20:08,400 --> 00:20:11,679
Speaker 2: nothing to pin anything on him or her beyond just

397
00:20:11,680 --> 00:20:13,879
Speaker 2: that tiny bit of DNA and a cigarette butt, which,

398
00:20:14,000 --> 00:20:17,200
Speaker 2: to be fair, they could have thrown into the same

399
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Speaker 2: ditch a week or a year later, and the connection

400
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Speaker 2: to the body is not particularly tight. Around that time, though,

401
00:20:24,119 --> 00:20:26,440
Speaker 2: the Texas Rangers have really amped up their cold case

402
00:20:26,520 --> 00:20:29,919
Speaker 2: unit and a Texas Ranger named James Holland comes into

403
00:20:29,960 --> 00:20:33,000
Speaker 2: the picture to try to solve this case again. He

404
00:20:33,040 --> 00:20:35,240
Speaker 2: looks at the file and he says, well, this cigarette

405
00:20:35,240 --> 00:20:37,920
Speaker 2: butt has gone nowhere, but why don't we try Tim

406
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Speaker 2: Dawson again. Remember he's the one who had described having

407
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Speaker 2: his white van stolen and basically Holland at this point

408
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Speaker 2: he's been a Texas Ranger for five to ten years.

409
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Speaker 2: I think he became one in two thousand and eight.

410
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Speaker 2: He's developing this reputation for being really really good at interrogations,

411
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Speaker 2: for being the guy who walks into the room and

412
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Speaker 2: spends the hours and gets the confession every time. So

413
00:21:00,320 --> 00:21:02,119
Speaker 2: he starts to try to solve the case again, and

414
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Speaker 2: he goes back to Tim Dawson and they spend a

415
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Speaker 2: few hours together. Dawson continues to say I have no

416
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Speaker 2: knowledge of any of this. This is in fact the

417
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Speaker 2: interview where Holland says, well, Bobby Souhill wasn't exactly a

418
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Speaker 2: debutante caream of society, so go ahead and confess and

419
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Speaker 2: no one o't care. And I interviewed Tim Dawson and

420
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Speaker 2: he told me that when a microphone was not going,

421
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Speaker 2: he said to Holland, well, if you won't care about

422
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Speaker 2: closing this case so bad, I didn't do it. You

423
00:21:27,720 --> 00:21:29,800
Speaker 2: didn't do it, so like, why don't you take the

424
00:21:29,800 --> 00:21:32,840
Speaker 2: friggin charge? You know, basically just fitting in his face

425
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Speaker 2: in a way, and Holland gives up. But this is

426
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Speaker 2: where things get really strange. Holland then goes back to

427
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Speaker 2: Michael Hart and the boyfriend and he interviews him again,

428
00:21:43,760 --> 00:21:47,399
Speaker 2: and he starts to use these techniques that are meant

429
00:21:47,440 --> 00:21:51,399
Speaker 2: to get hardened to really remember things that at this

430
00:21:51,440 --> 00:21:53,679
Speaker 2: point have happened ten years in the past. And so

431
00:21:54,680 --> 00:21:57,080
Speaker 2: there's really interesting language where he says, you know, let's

432
00:21:57,160 --> 00:22:01,400
Speaker 2: run through the events and backwards chronology, and let's imagine

433
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Speaker 2: your high up on a telephone pole looking down at

434
00:22:04,440 --> 00:22:07,000
Speaker 2: the scene. You know, these are tools that I did

435
00:22:07,040 --> 00:22:09,440
Speaker 2: a lot of research on them to understand how accepted

436
00:22:09,480 --> 00:22:11,800
Speaker 2: they are, and elements of them are very accepted by

437
00:22:11,880 --> 00:22:15,320
Speaker 2: psychologists at being good at kind of relaxing your brain

438
00:22:15,359 --> 00:22:17,680
Speaker 2: into a state where you can pick up some memories

439
00:22:17,680 --> 00:22:21,119
Speaker 2: that you maybe didn't realize we're in there. But it

440
00:22:21,200 --> 00:22:25,760
Speaker 2: also raises a risk of confabulation, of kind of inventing

441
00:22:25,800 --> 00:22:28,520
Speaker 2: something and then having that become your memory. And then

442
00:22:28,880 --> 00:22:30,840
Speaker 2: Hollin says, well, we want to try this other thing,

443
00:22:30,960 --> 00:22:32,119
Speaker 2: which is to hypnotize you.

444
00:22:46,480 --> 00:22:47,320
Speaker 3: What year are we.

445
00:22:47,359 --> 00:22:51,560
Speaker 1: In when we have James Holland, the Texas Ranger is

446
00:22:51,600 --> 00:22:55,040
Speaker 1: now talking to Michael the boyfriend, trying to figure out

447
00:22:55,160 --> 00:22:57,960
Speaker 1: what happened, and sort of it sounds like he's trying

448
00:22:58,000 --> 00:23:00,720
Speaker 1: to do some memory tricks with him to take them

449
00:23:00,720 --> 00:23:01,399
Speaker 1: back in time.

450
00:23:02,320 --> 00:23:05,280
Speaker 2: And this is in late twenty fourteen. At this point,

451
00:23:05,400 --> 00:23:08,399
Speaker 2: the Texas Rangers have been using hypnosis to try to

452
00:23:08,400 --> 00:23:12,640
Speaker 2: solve crimes for twenty thirty years. At this point, psychologists

453
00:23:12,880 --> 00:23:17,919
Speaker 2: researchers are basically screaming, this is really risky. So hypnosis,

454
00:23:18,000 --> 00:23:19,840
Speaker 2: I mean it sounds like we all think of sort

455
00:23:19,840 --> 00:23:22,720
Speaker 2: of a party trick or getting you to quit smoking

456
00:23:22,920 --> 00:23:27,120
Speaker 2: with a hypnotist. In the context of law enforcement, it's

457
00:23:27,240 --> 00:23:30,879
Speaker 2: really about relaxing the witness or if it's in the

458
00:23:30,880 --> 00:23:33,960
Speaker 2: case maybe a sexual assault, the victim and getting them

459
00:23:34,119 --> 00:23:37,520
Speaker 2: into the sort of hyper relaxed state where they are

460
00:23:37,560 --> 00:23:41,439
Speaker 2: just really really focused, laser focused on the sort of

461
00:23:41,440 --> 00:23:44,600
Speaker 2: pictures in their heads from the past. Right. So there's

462
00:23:44,640 --> 00:23:49,080
Speaker 2: this video of a Texas Ranger hypnotist coming in to

463
00:23:49,160 --> 00:23:53,600
Speaker 2: Michael the boyfriend and counting down from a high number

464
00:23:54,080 --> 00:23:56,960
Speaker 2: and imagining, you know, you're on a beach, and there's

465
00:23:56,960 --> 00:23:59,479
Speaker 2: stuff about like going through a doorway and grains of

466
00:23:59,520 --> 00:24:03,000
Speaker 2: sand and this sort of weird language that is meant

467
00:24:03,000 --> 00:24:04,840
Speaker 2: to get him into this relaxed state. And the audio

468
00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:07,680
Speaker 2: is a little bit unsatisfying because at a certain point

469
00:24:07,760 --> 00:24:10,320
Speaker 2: Michael is just mumbling and you imagine, you know, you're

470
00:24:10,359 --> 00:24:13,120
Speaker 2: super relaxed and you're kind of mumbling your memories. Now,

471
00:24:13,480 --> 00:24:16,679
Speaker 2: why is this risky? What researchers have told me is

472
00:24:16,720 --> 00:24:19,320
Speaker 2: that when you're in that really relaxed state, you're also

473
00:24:19,400 --> 00:24:23,280
Speaker 2: kind of suggestible. So the Texas Ranger may do his

474
00:24:23,359 --> 00:24:27,560
Speaker 2: best not to give you new information, but if you're

475
00:24:27,560 --> 00:24:30,239
Speaker 2: not careful, you may just kind of invent something in

476
00:24:30,280 --> 00:24:32,959
Speaker 2: your mind. You know, we all if you just imagine

477
00:24:33,119 --> 00:24:35,520
Speaker 2: you've got a memory, if you just try to like

478
00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:37,960
Speaker 2: hypothesize like, oh was the T shirt red or was

479
00:24:38,000 --> 00:24:39,760
Speaker 2: it green, and you kind of go with red. And

480
00:24:39,800 --> 00:24:42,720
Speaker 2: then the more time you spend on that, the more

481
00:24:42,960 --> 00:24:44,600
Speaker 2: you know, the red T shirt gets kind of locked

482
00:24:44,640 --> 00:24:48,040
Speaker 2: into your memory and suddenly you remember it definitively as

483
00:24:48,040 --> 00:24:50,840
Speaker 2: a red T shirt. And so the problem isn't just

484
00:24:50,840 --> 00:24:53,520
Speaker 2: that you have potentially false memories, it's that you become

485
00:24:53,560 --> 00:24:56,560
Speaker 2: more confident in your false memories. So he comes out

486
00:24:56,600 --> 00:24:59,200
Speaker 2: of hypnosis. He gets back in the room with Texas

487
00:24:59,280 --> 00:25:04,160
Speaker 2: Ranger James Hu and a new forensic sketch artist. So

488
00:25:04,520 --> 00:25:07,200
Speaker 2: remember in two thousand and five he had spoken to one,

489
00:25:07,880 --> 00:25:11,280
Speaker 2: and now he is back again with the sketch artist,

490
00:25:11,400 --> 00:25:14,000
Speaker 2: a new sketch artist, and describes the face of a man,

491
00:25:14,400 --> 00:25:17,280
Speaker 2: and we have basically an entirely new face. It looks

492
00:25:17,440 --> 00:25:19,840
Speaker 2: nothing like the two thousand and five face. If you

493
00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:21,320
Speaker 2: had thought the two thousand and five face sort of

494
00:25:21,320 --> 00:25:23,879
Speaker 2: looked like a Latino man, this new man is pretty

495
00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:27,920
Speaker 2: definitely looks like a white man, middle aged, flat top haircut,

496
00:25:28,040 --> 00:25:30,639
Speaker 2: the bushy mustache has disappeared, and you now have what

497
00:25:30,680 --> 00:25:33,399
Speaker 2: looks like a little bit of five o'clock shadow. The

498
00:25:33,440 --> 00:25:36,840
Speaker 2: face is definitely more gaunt in a way, just like

499
00:25:36,920 --> 00:25:40,600
Speaker 2: Hollywood cheeks, a little bit. In addition the and this

500
00:25:40,720 --> 00:25:43,200
Speaker 2: is I think where I was really particularly fascinated as well,

501
00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:47,640
Speaker 2: the van changes. So in two thousand and five we

502
00:25:47,640 --> 00:25:50,399
Speaker 2: were talking about a mini van. Michael said, yeah, the

503
00:25:50,400 --> 00:25:52,600
Speaker 2: guy drove a minivan and had a bunch of windows

504
00:25:52,640 --> 00:25:56,560
Speaker 2: on the sides. It had a very long pointed sort

505
00:25:56,600 --> 00:26:00,400
Speaker 2: of nose, like the front hood was very long. Image

506
00:26:00,400 --> 00:26:03,920
Speaker 2: in your head. Right nine years later, following the hypnosis,

507
00:26:03,960 --> 00:26:07,000
Speaker 2: following all these memory tricks that the Texas Rangers are using,

508
00:26:07,160 --> 00:26:11,560
Speaker 2: he says, actually it was a big workvan. So the

509
00:26:11,600 --> 00:26:14,200
Speaker 2: color hasn't changed. It's still white, but it's now a big,

510
00:26:14,240 --> 00:26:16,439
Speaker 2: boxy workvan, one of those ones that has like no

511
00:26:16,520 --> 00:26:19,760
Speaker 2: windows on the sides and a very squish front hood.

512
00:26:20,359 --> 00:26:24,280
Speaker 2: So two different, entirely different white vans. Now. Part of

513
00:26:24,320 --> 00:26:26,840
Speaker 2: the reporting and research of this was looking at the

514
00:26:26,880 --> 00:26:31,359
Speaker 2: materials and then also going to researchers who have done

515
00:26:31,359 --> 00:26:36,160
Speaker 2: studies of human memory and eyewitness identification and confessions, et cetera,

516
00:26:36,760 --> 00:26:39,679
Speaker 2: and asked them like, what do you make of this?

517
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:43,320
Speaker 2: And basically they said, well, knowing nothing about this case,

518
00:26:43,359 --> 00:26:45,080
Speaker 2: I can just tell you that memory never gets better

519
00:26:45,119 --> 00:26:48,000
Speaker 2: over time. It only gets worse. There's no way that

520
00:26:48,040 --> 00:26:50,920
Speaker 2: this man, nine years after the crime, produced a more

521
00:26:50,960 --> 00:26:53,520
Speaker 2: accurate representation of what happened than he did in the

522
00:26:53,560 --> 00:26:57,800
Speaker 2: immediate aftermath. So treat the new sketch and the new

523
00:26:57,960 --> 00:27:03,840
Speaker 2: van with tremendous skepticism. The Texas Rangers, instead of being skeptical,

524
00:27:04,400 --> 00:27:07,720
Speaker 2: take one more step. They take that face and remember

525
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:11,399
Speaker 2: ten years have past. They use aging technology. So you

526
00:27:11,400 --> 00:27:13,400
Speaker 2: know how when you look at them in the old days,

527
00:27:13,440 --> 00:27:14,600
Speaker 2: that was on a milk cart and you'd have the

528
00:27:14,600 --> 00:27:17,360
Speaker 2: missing child and they would run it through some computer

529
00:27:17,440 --> 00:27:20,680
Speaker 2: program to imagine what the kid looked like. Five years later,

530
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:24,480
Speaker 2: they do something similar with the face of the perpetrator

531
00:27:24,520 --> 00:27:27,960
Speaker 2: in this case, where they age the suspects face. And

532
00:27:28,119 --> 00:27:31,439
Speaker 2: this is a flyer that goes out to other law

533
00:27:31,520 --> 00:27:34,359
Speaker 2: enforcement and eventually to the media and to the public,

534
00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:38,520
Speaker 2: and so in newspapers in the Greater Fort Worth area

535
00:27:38,800 --> 00:27:42,720
Speaker 2: you have these images of the hypnosis induced sketch and

536
00:27:42,800 --> 00:27:46,720
Speaker 2: hypnosis induced van that are now there for the public

537
00:27:46,720 --> 00:27:47,159
Speaker 2: to see.

538
00:27:47,359 --> 00:27:48,960
Speaker 1: One of the things that I'd like you to talk

539
00:27:49,000 --> 00:27:52,600
Speaker 1: about now would be one of the top reasons we

540
00:27:52,800 --> 00:27:57,719
Speaker 1: know that people are wrongfully convicted is witness misidentification. Going

541
00:27:57,800 --> 00:28:01,320
Speaker 1: back to the idea that he first had a sketch

542
00:28:01,359 --> 00:28:06,399
Speaker 1: of someone who was Latino. Also, cross racial misidentification is

543
00:28:06,440 --> 00:28:09,960
Speaker 1: pretty common too, even at the onset when they have

544
00:28:10,000 --> 00:28:13,360
Speaker 1: a sketch artist in two thousand and five talking to Michael,

545
00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:17,880
Speaker 1: how reliable do we think that would have been? Even

546
00:28:17,960 --> 00:28:20,840
Speaker 1: at the time someone who's going through like a trauma,

547
00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:23,800
Speaker 1: his girlfriend has taken away in this van, he sees

548
00:28:23,840 --> 00:28:25,159
Speaker 1: this guy for a second.

549
00:28:25,520 --> 00:28:27,600
Speaker 3: It's still valuable to have a sketch.

550
00:28:27,720 --> 00:28:31,040
Speaker 1: But is it also not dangerous to have a sketch

551
00:28:31,080 --> 00:28:36,040
Speaker 1: of someone who is sort of a generic sketch of

552
00:28:36,240 --> 00:28:37,600
Speaker 1: someone of a different race.

553
00:28:38,560 --> 00:28:42,120
Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely. There is a long history in this country

554
00:28:42,280 --> 00:28:46,719
Speaker 2: of tragedies in which someone commits a crime and someone

555
00:28:46,760 --> 00:28:49,320
Speaker 2: else goes to prison because either a witness or in

556
00:28:49,320 --> 00:28:52,520
Speaker 2: some cases, even more tragically, the victim themselves if it's

557
00:28:52,520 --> 00:28:57,600
Speaker 2: a sexual assault, misidentifies who did it. And typically you

558
00:28:57,680 --> 00:29:01,440
Speaker 2: see this in the realm of lineup identifications, right where

559
00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:04,440
Speaker 2: let's say you have a white woman who was sexually

560
00:29:04,440 --> 00:29:06,840
Speaker 2: assaulted and it was a black man who did it,

561
00:29:06,920 --> 00:29:09,240
Speaker 2: and the police bring in a lineup of, you know,

562
00:29:09,400 --> 00:29:12,920
Speaker 2: five black men from the same neighborhood we just know,

563
00:29:13,120 --> 00:29:15,560
Speaker 2: and this is not really to detegrate the victims in

564
00:29:15,600 --> 00:29:18,200
Speaker 2: these cases. We just know that human memory is faulty

565
00:29:18,360 --> 00:29:21,600
Speaker 2: and that that is a problem that the criminal justice system,

566
00:29:21,920 --> 00:29:25,479
Speaker 2: you know, has to confront and well meeting investigators are

567
00:29:25,480 --> 00:29:28,040
Speaker 2: doing their best to deal with it. But in earlier

568
00:29:28,080 --> 00:29:30,720
Speaker 2: eras where the science was not as robust, or where

569
00:29:31,120 --> 00:29:34,680
Speaker 2: police were putting, you know, getting convictions over getting the

570
00:29:34,720 --> 00:29:37,959
Speaker 2: accurate truth, you just had a lot of scenarios where

571
00:29:38,360 --> 00:29:40,520
Speaker 2: the victim or a witness pick someone out of the

572
00:29:40,520 --> 00:29:42,840
Speaker 2: lineup and then they become the lead suspect and then

573
00:29:42,880 --> 00:29:46,920
Speaker 2: they are coerced in whatever way to be convicted, to

574
00:29:46,920 --> 00:29:49,520
Speaker 2: be wrongly convicted of the crime, and sometimes spend years

575
00:29:49,560 --> 00:29:50,920
Speaker 2: or decades in prison for it.

576
00:29:51,640 --> 00:29:54,640
Speaker 1: So let's go back to this brand new sketch of

577
00:29:54,680 --> 00:29:58,760
Speaker 1: the white man, middle aged, flat top haircut. First, does

578
00:29:58,800 --> 00:30:01,200
Speaker 1: this look like Tim Dawson, I'm assuming not the guy

579
00:30:01,240 --> 00:30:02,440
Speaker 1: who originally owned a van.

580
00:30:03,200 --> 00:30:06,920
Speaker 2: You know, I'm gonna pause and say that this was

581
00:30:06,920 --> 00:30:08,960
Speaker 2: a moment where I had to just check humbly my

582
00:30:09,040 --> 00:30:12,120
Speaker 2: own subjectiveness, because like it, does it look like him?

583
00:30:12,160 --> 00:30:14,960
Speaker 2: Doesn't not? But does it really? Know? I mean, the

584
00:30:15,200 --> 00:30:18,840
Speaker 2: sketch is so generic and Tim Dawson also just kind

585
00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:20,800
Speaker 2: of looks like a middle aged white guy. I will

586
00:30:20,800 --> 00:30:22,920
Speaker 2: say Tim Dawson looks nothing like the two thousand and

587
00:30:23,000 --> 00:30:26,400
Speaker 2: five sketch at all, but the twenty fifteenth sketch like

588
00:30:26,520 --> 00:30:28,760
Speaker 2: he doesn't not look like him. Tell me I really

589
00:30:28,760 --> 00:30:30,600
Speaker 2: want to be careful of in this is to not

590
00:30:30,880 --> 00:30:33,720
Speaker 2: just sort of cast undue suspicion on Tim Dawson. I

591
00:30:33,720 --> 00:30:36,320
Speaker 2: don't call him him having a solid alibi, but the

592
00:30:36,640 --> 00:30:40,160
Speaker 2: links to the crime were still very circumstantial, unlimited, so

593
00:30:40,200 --> 00:30:42,400
Speaker 2: there's no reason to think that he secretly did it

594
00:30:42,440 --> 00:30:45,200
Speaker 2: and is out there. But this sketch goes out there,

595
00:30:45,240 --> 00:30:48,160
Speaker 2: and this is where the story takes what I described

596
00:30:48,200 --> 00:30:50,520
Speaker 2: as like a very small town turn. It goes out

597
00:30:50,560 --> 00:30:53,440
Speaker 2: in a newspaper called the Weatherford Democrat. And there's a

598
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:57,320
Speaker 2: man named Jean Burkes who runs a pawn shop in Weatherford.

599
00:30:57,560 --> 00:30:59,560
Speaker 2: There's a guy who comes into his pawn shop frequently

600
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:03,160
Speaker 2: named Larry Driscoll. Jean knows Larry not only because he

601
00:31:03,200 --> 00:31:05,520
Speaker 2: comes into the pawn shop to buy things or sell things,

602
00:31:05,520 --> 00:31:08,920
Speaker 2: but also because he is the handyman for Jean's neighbor.

603
00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:11,040
Speaker 2: So you imagine Jean goes out to pick up the newspaper,

604
00:31:11,080 --> 00:31:13,760
Speaker 2: and he frequently sees Larry Driscoll mowing his neighbor's lawn.

605
00:31:13,920 --> 00:31:17,640
Speaker 2: They wave, they know each other. Weatherford's got fewer than

606
00:31:17,760 --> 00:31:20,040
Speaker 2: fifty thousand people in it. It's a small place where

607
00:31:20,040 --> 00:31:23,720
Speaker 2: everyone knows everyone. And Jean Burks told me that he

608
00:31:24,200 --> 00:31:27,040
Speaker 2: gets the Weatherford Democrat and he just sits in his

609
00:31:27,120 --> 00:31:29,280
Speaker 2: pawn shop all day on the counter, and he keeps

610
00:31:29,280 --> 00:31:30,840
Speaker 2: looking at it, and he keeps thinking that kind of

611
00:31:30,840 --> 00:31:33,520
Speaker 2: looks familiar, and then eventually it snaps in his mind

612
00:31:33,520 --> 00:31:35,680
Speaker 2: and he goes, that kind of looks like Larry. And again,

613
00:31:35,800 --> 00:31:38,560
Speaker 2: as I said before, doesn't look like Larry. Well, it's subjective,

614
00:31:38,680 --> 00:31:41,680
Speaker 2: like doesn't not, But it's like two white men in

615
00:31:41,720 --> 00:31:45,600
Speaker 2: their forties and fifties, like it's pretty pretty blurry. He

616
00:31:46,040 --> 00:31:47,800
Speaker 2: shows it to his wife. Does you think that looks

617
00:31:47,800 --> 00:31:50,800
Speaker 2: like Larr Driscoll? She goes in, not really. He shows

618
00:31:50,800 --> 00:31:53,000
Speaker 2: it to other people in the pawn shop. They're like, ah, maybe,

619
00:31:53,440 --> 00:31:57,080
Speaker 2: but it's enough that Jean calls to the Texas Rangers.

620
00:31:57,240 --> 00:32:00,680
Speaker 2: Jean himself also struck me as a someone who maybe

621
00:32:01,280 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 2: maybe reads them and watches a lot of true crime

622
00:32:03,720 --> 00:32:06,560
Speaker 2: and has a kind of let me just say, like

623
00:32:06,600 --> 00:32:09,120
Speaker 2: has a certain confidence about his ability to like do

624
00:32:09,160 --> 00:32:12,600
Speaker 2: the polices work for them. So he googles Larry's house

625
00:32:12,840 --> 00:32:15,040
Speaker 2: where the body was found and discovers that they're like

626
00:32:15,120 --> 00:32:17,920
Speaker 2: less than a mile from each other and thinks it's like, oh, well,

627
00:32:17,960 --> 00:32:20,719
Speaker 2: that's compelling. So he calls the Texas Rangers. He gets

628
00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:23,120
Speaker 2: through to James Holland and he says, you know, I

629
00:32:23,120 --> 00:32:25,000
Speaker 2: think this kind of looks like Larry driscoll And. So

630
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:28,480
Speaker 2: the Texas Ranger, James Holland, looks into driscoll and finds

631
00:32:28,480 --> 00:32:30,880
Speaker 2: out that yes, he lives near the crime scene, and

632
00:32:31,160 --> 00:32:34,120
Speaker 2: his day job is actually that he works in addition

633
00:32:34,160 --> 00:32:37,600
Speaker 2: to being a handyman for the local jail, and so

634
00:32:37,960 --> 00:32:41,400
Speaker 2: the jail will like send inmates out to do like roadwork,

635
00:32:41,600 --> 00:32:44,880
Speaker 2: you know, mow medians in the highway whatever, and he

636
00:32:44,920 --> 00:32:49,000
Speaker 2: oversees that so he's actually a licensed jailer. Holland drives

637
00:32:49,120 --> 00:32:54,280
Speaker 2: over to this barn where Larry is working, and basically

638
00:32:54,280 --> 00:32:56,440
Speaker 2: he just approaches Larry driscoll and says, I want to

639
00:32:56,440 --> 00:32:58,160
Speaker 2: talk to you. We think you might be able to

640
00:32:58,160 --> 00:33:01,320
Speaker 2: help us solve the crime. And this is the beginning

641
00:33:01,520 --> 00:33:06,959
Speaker 2: of two very dramatic days of interrogation in which Larry

642
00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:09,960
Speaker 2: is pulled from saying I know nothing about this to

643
00:33:10,480 --> 00:33:13,440
Speaker 2: a full confession to the murder of Bobbysuit Hill. And

644
00:33:13,800 --> 00:33:17,000
Speaker 2: a huge part of my reporting is understanding how that

645
00:33:17,160 --> 00:33:20,760
Speaker 2: happened and is there any reason to believe Larry's confession.

646
00:33:21,360 --> 00:33:21,719
Speaker 3: Wow.

647
00:33:21,920 --> 00:33:24,400
Speaker 1: And that's another thing that we know is a very

648
00:33:24,520 --> 00:33:29,120
Speaker 1: large portion of people who have been wrongfully convicted are

649
00:33:29,200 --> 00:33:32,520
Speaker 1: there because of false confessions. And I think that oftentimes

650
00:33:32,560 --> 00:33:35,320
Speaker 1: people I encounter say, well, they wouldn't confess if they

651
00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:39,200
Speaker 1: weren't guilty, which is bullshit. People confess when they are innocent.

652
00:33:39,280 --> 00:33:41,560
Speaker 1: They do, especially when they don't call on attorney.

653
00:33:41,960 --> 00:33:44,680
Speaker 2: I agree that it's bullshit. I also, I think, came

654
00:33:44,720 --> 00:33:47,680
Speaker 2: into this story knowing that that was a common sentiment

655
00:33:47,800 --> 00:33:51,479
Speaker 2: and having a real empathy for that sentiment, because, like

656
00:33:51,800 --> 00:33:55,000
Speaker 2: I get it intuitively, it feels so weird because all

657
00:33:55,000 --> 00:33:57,160
Speaker 2: of us cannot imagine that we would confess to a

658
00:33:57,160 --> 00:33:59,400
Speaker 2: crime we didn't commit. And I think actually Larry Driscoll

659
00:33:59,400 --> 00:34:01,360
Speaker 2: would have said, I would have never confessed to a

660
00:34:01,400 --> 00:34:03,280
Speaker 2: crime that I didn't commit until I was in the

661
00:34:03,320 --> 00:34:05,880
Speaker 2: room with this ranger and going through this process, and

662
00:34:05,960 --> 00:34:08,280
Speaker 2: so part of why I wanted to tell this story

663
00:34:08,280 --> 00:34:10,040
Speaker 2: and go deep into it was that I thought it

664
00:34:10,080 --> 00:34:14,319
Speaker 2: was just an incredibly valuable case study or illustration of

665
00:34:14,400 --> 00:34:17,239
Speaker 2: what these tactics look like when they're being used in

666
00:34:17,280 --> 00:34:19,480
Speaker 2: their full manipulative power.

667
00:34:19,920 --> 00:34:23,640
Speaker 1: When Larry Driscoll is being interrogated by the Texas Ranger

668
00:34:23,719 --> 00:34:25,000
Speaker 1: James Holland.

669
00:34:25,200 --> 00:34:28,120
Speaker 3: Based on the sketch based on.

670
00:34:28,600 --> 00:34:32,440
Speaker 1: This armchair detective who says, this guy lived very close

671
00:34:32,480 --> 00:34:35,919
Speaker 1: to where Bobby Sue Hill's body was found, and that's

672
00:34:35,920 --> 00:34:41,040
Speaker 1: about it. What techniques is Holland using to be able

673
00:34:41,080 --> 00:34:43,799
Speaker 1: to elicit a confession out of somebody who I'm going

674
00:34:43,840 --> 00:34:46,360
Speaker 1: to assume you're going to tell me was actually innocent.

675
00:34:46,640 --> 00:34:49,520
Speaker 2: It's really fascinating. The way that I came into the story,

676
00:34:49,719 --> 00:34:52,520
Speaker 2: just for context, is that I was told about this

677
00:34:52,600 --> 00:34:55,240
Speaker 2: case by the Innocence Project of Texas. I had gotten

678
00:34:55,239 --> 00:34:58,000
Speaker 2: to know the lead lawyer there who had taken on

679
00:34:58,040 --> 00:35:00,040
Speaker 2: Larry Driscoll's case and fully believed in his wa in

680
00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:02,600
Speaker 2: a sense. As a result of talking to him about it,

681
00:35:02,600 --> 00:35:05,160
Speaker 2: I sent Larry a letter. Larry sent me back a letter.

682
00:35:05,160 --> 00:35:07,080
Speaker 2: Eventually I go out to the prison where he is

683
00:35:07,280 --> 00:35:10,640
Speaker 2: and interview him length about this and the way that

684
00:35:10,680 --> 00:35:13,960
Speaker 2: he tells the story, the Texas ranger approached him in

685
00:35:13,960 --> 00:35:16,200
Speaker 2: the barn and said, we think you may be able

686
00:35:16,200 --> 00:35:18,799
Speaker 2: to help us, and then that turns into we think

687
00:35:18,840 --> 00:35:23,680
Speaker 2: you may have witnessed something, and Larry at this point says, well, sure,

688
00:35:23,680 --> 00:35:25,719
Speaker 2: if it's possible I witness something and didn't realize it.

689
00:35:25,800 --> 00:35:29,200
Speaker 2: And the story at first is, you know, maybe you

690
00:35:29,280 --> 00:35:33,160
Speaker 2: were in the area and picked up this woman and

691
00:35:33,600 --> 00:35:35,400
Speaker 2: one of the last people to see her alive, and

692
00:35:35,440 --> 00:35:38,200
Speaker 2: so we need your help, and Larry racks his brain

693
00:35:38,400 --> 00:35:40,560
Speaker 2: and says, well, I don't really remember ever being in

694
00:35:40,560 --> 00:35:43,279
Speaker 2: that area. And this is the point at which the

695
00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:45,840
Speaker 2: first crucial technique starts to show up, and that is

696
00:35:46,200 --> 00:35:50,240
Speaker 2: deception or lies. So it's entirely legal for law enforcement

697
00:35:50,280 --> 00:35:52,680
Speaker 2: to lie to suspects in the interrogation room, and law

698
00:35:52,760 --> 00:35:54,759
Speaker 2: enforcement says, we need to do this basically to catch

699
00:35:54,800 --> 00:35:58,839
Speaker 2: the guilty. And the lie at first is, well, there's

700
00:35:58,880 --> 00:36:03,440
Speaker 2: a record that the local police have you around the

701
00:36:03,440 --> 00:36:05,960
Speaker 2: time and place of the crime, that you were in

702
00:36:06,000 --> 00:36:09,120
Speaker 2: a white van driving around and you were on a

703
00:36:09,160 --> 00:36:11,680
Speaker 2: list of men that was known to sex workers, or

704
00:36:11,719 --> 00:36:13,640
Speaker 2: at least your license plate was on there. Maybe they

705
00:36:13,680 --> 00:36:16,200
Speaker 2: made a mistake. Maybe you're not that guy, but help

706
00:36:16,280 --> 00:36:18,600
Speaker 2: us out here. Why would you be on that list?

707
00:36:19,000 --> 00:36:20,880
Speaker 2: And so Larry starts thinking, well, why would I be

708
00:36:20,960 --> 00:36:23,160
Speaker 2: on that list? And he starts racking his brain, like

709
00:36:23,160 --> 00:36:26,120
Speaker 2: when have I been in that area? And keep in mind,

710
00:36:26,160 --> 00:36:28,440
Speaker 2: this is all lies. It's bs. There's no record of

711
00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:30,839
Speaker 2: him being in that time and place, but the lie

712
00:36:30,920 --> 00:36:34,840
Speaker 2: is enough to get Larry sort of imagining. Okay, I

713
00:36:34,880 --> 00:36:37,160
Speaker 2: guess there was this one time when my dad had

714
00:36:37,160 --> 00:36:39,880
Speaker 2: fallen on hard times and was in a Salvation Army

715
00:36:40,080 --> 00:36:42,399
Speaker 2: shelter around that area, and I went to visit him,

716
00:36:42,880 --> 00:36:45,359
Speaker 2: and then, you know, I guess I was doing some

717
00:36:45,440 --> 00:36:47,400
Speaker 2: contract work, and I guess I bid on some jobs

718
00:36:47,400 --> 00:36:49,920
Speaker 2: and some houses near there, but I think I was

719
00:36:49,920 --> 00:36:52,560
Speaker 2: always driving a blue truck, not a white van. Right.

720
00:36:52,640 --> 00:36:55,080
Speaker 2: So you see this process of him racking his brain,

721
00:36:55,680 --> 00:36:59,360
Speaker 2: and the more he then produces, the more Holland the

722
00:36:59,400 --> 00:37:02,080
Speaker 2: Texas Range thinks, oh wait a minute, this guy was

723
00:37:02,160 --> 00:37:04,400
Speaker 2: lying to me before. He knows more than he's letting on,

724
00:37:04,480 --> 00:37:06,520
Speaker 2: and I'm starting to pull the truth out of him. Right,

725
00:37:06,560 --> 00:37:08,680
Speaker 2: So there's this dance that starts to go on, and

726
00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:11,239
Speaker 2: lies are the way that Holland starts to kind of

727
00:37:11,280 --> 00:37:13,880
Speaker 2: pull it out, but over time he starts to ratchet

728
00:37:13,960 --> 00:37:15,960
Speaker 2: up the pressure and he says, well, we think you

729
00:37:15,960 --> 00:37:18,320
Speaker 2: can help us solve this crime, but we want to

730
00:37:18,360 --> 00:37:21,560
Speaker 2: be absolutely sure that you know you're telling us the

731
00:37:21,560 --> 00:37:24,200
Speaker 2: full truth. So would you be willing to take voluntarily

732
00:37:24,239 --> 00:37:27,239
Speaker 2: a polygraph? At this point, Larry says, well, you know,

733
00:37:27,680 --> 00:37:29,200
Speaker 2: maybe I need a lawyer. Do you think I might

734
00:37:29,239 --> 00:37:31,840
Speaker 2: need a lawyer? He doesn't explicitly ask for one, so

735
00:37:31,880 --> 00:37:34,920
Speaker 2: it's just vague enough that the ranger says, well, we

736
00:37:34,920 --> 00:37:36,520
Speaker 2: don't think a lawyer is going to help you. You

737
00:37:36,600 --> 00:37:38,640
Speaker 2: just need to help us, you know, search your memory

738
00:37:38,760 --> 00:37:40,839
Speaker 2: and take the polygraph. You know, I'm sure you're going

739
00:37:40,880 --> 00:37:43,239
Speaker 2: to ace it, but let's just do the polygraph to

740
00:37:43,239 --> 00:37:46,000
Speaker 2: be sure, and Larry says all right. So he takes

741
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:47,759
Speaker 2: it and one of the questions is did you cause

742
00:37:47,800 --> 00:37:49,880
Speaker 2: the death of this woman, Bobby Sue Hill? And he

743
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:53,400
Speaker 2: says no, and then the polygrapher says, uh, oh, this

744
00:37:53,480 --> 00:37:56,760
Speaker 2: is a lie, and Larry's like, how is that possible?

745
00:37:56,800 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 2: I don't think I killed anybody. I have no memory

746
00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:01,920
Speaker 2: of killing Anyone says, well, you know, sometimes your body

747
00:38:01,960 --> 00:38:05,400
Speaker 2: remembers things that your brain doesn't remember. In reality, we

748
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:09,560
Speaker 2: know that polygraph tests are notoriously unreliable. They're not admissible

749
00:38:09,560 --> 00:38:10,000
Speaker 2: in court.

750
00:38:10,120 --> 00:38:12,080
Speaker 3: They're intimidating, though, and that's the point.

751
00:38:12,400 --> 00:38:16,000
Speaker 2: That's absolutely it. It's intimidating. And so suddenly Larry starts to think,

752
00:38:16,040 --> 00:38:19,040
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Like there's these little moments in his

753
00:38:19,080 --> 00:38:21,120
Speaker 2: mind where he thinks, is it possible I killed this

754
00:38:21,239 --> 00:38:24,640
Speaker 2: moment and just don't remember it. I can't imagine that.

755
00:38:25,040 --> 00:38:28,440
Speaker 2: I try to imagine just the experience of trying to

756
00:38:28,520 --> 00:38:30,360
Speaker 2: reckon with the idea that you could have killed somebody,

757
00:38:30,360 --> 00:38:32,319
Speaker 2: that you're a murderer and don't remember it. That would

758
00:38:32,320 --> 00:38:35,719
Speaker 2: be very head spinning and really destabilizing. It's important to

759
00:38:35,760 --> 00:38:38,719
Speaker 2: remember that the Texas Rangers are considered the elite of

760
00:38:38,760 --> 00:38:41,400
Speaker 2: the elite, and Larry Driscolls lived in Texas most of

761
00:38:41,480 --> 00:38:44,560
Speaker 2: his life. He knows this. And another suspect once said

762
00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:46,359
Speaker 2: to me, well, if a Texas Ranger said I did it,

763
00:38:46,440 --> 00:38:48,560
Speaker 2: I guess I must have done it, because they get

764
00:38:48,600 --> 00:38:50,879
Speaker 2: their man and they're always right. And so Driscoll's also

765
00:38:50,920 --> 00:38:55,000
Speaker 2: got the prestige of the Texas Rangers, sort of tainting

766
00:38:55,280 --> 00:38:59,520
Speaker 2: the picture here, and eventually Hollin moves into a couple

767
00:38:59,560 --> 00:39:03,640
Speaker 2: more attachs. One is hypothetical language, so he says, well,

768
00:39:03,800 --> 00:39:06,880
Speaker 2: let's just say hypothetically. You know, we're shooting the shit here,

769
00:39:07,400 --> 00:39:10,680
Speaker 2: we're bullshitting. Let's just say you did do it. What

770
00:39:10,760 --> 00:39:13,360
Speaker 2: would have happened? You know, how would this have gone down?

771
00:39:13,520 --> 00:39:16,400
Speaker 2: You know, you're in the van, and this story emerges

772
00:39:16,600 --> 00:39:19,960
Speaker 2: that Holland is advancing that tries to sort of let

773
00:39:20,040 --> 00:39:23,400
Speaker 2: Larry off the hook, which is to say, hey, maybe

774
00:39:23,680 --> 00:39:25,719
Speaker 2: you got she got in the van. You were going

775
00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:27,880
Speaker 2: to pay her for a good time. And then this

776
00:39:28,000 --> 00:39:32,320
Speaker 2: black man, her boyfriend, Michael Harden, shows up at the window,

777
00:39:32,400 --> 00:39:34,480
Speaker 2: and you get scared and you freak out, and you

778
00:39:34,520 --> 00:39:38,080
Speaker 2: go into a kind of military mode. And Larry's a veteran,

779
00:39:38,120 --> 00:39:40,360
Speaker 2: so he thinks this will appeal to him. You snap

780
00:39:40,440 --> 00:39:43,799
Speaker 2: into a kind of I don't know, big PTSD trauma thing,

781
00:39:44,000 --> 00:39:46,120
Speaker 2: and you kill her and you freak out, and then

782
00:39:46,120 --> 00:39:48,440
Speaker 2: you go dump the body by your house. And he

783
00:39:48,520 --> 00:39:52,040
Speaker 2: kind of is throwing these little possibilities at Larry, and

784
00:39:52,120 --> 00:39:54,520
Speaker 2: Larry keeps being like, I guess that's possible, but I

785
00:39:54,520 --> 00:39:57,920
Speaker 2: don't remember any of this. But over time, the hours

786
00:39:57,960 --> 00:40:01,480
Speaker 2: pile up the exhaustion piles up, the sense of hopelessness,

787
00:40:01,480 --> 00:40:03,120
Speaker 2: and that you're never getting out of this room until

788
00:40:03,160 --> 00:40:06,760
Speaker 2: you confess. All that piles up, and eventually Larry gives

789
00:40:06,760 --> 00:40:09,880
Speaker 2: in and says, sure, okay, but still I don't remember it.

790
00:40:10,200 --> 00:40:12,920
Speaker 2: So he confesses, but it's a very weak confession.

791
00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:14,839
Speaker 3: I think about this my dad and I.

792
00:40:14,880 --> 00:40:16,480
Speaker 1: You know what, My dad was a criminal law professor

793
00:40:16,520 --> 00:40:18,880
Speaker 1: at UT for decades and we would talk about this

794
00:40:18,920 --> 00:40:22,400
Speaker 1: all the time, and he would say he wished I

795
00:40:22,400 --> 00:40:25,480
Speaker 1: think it was three things he would say. I wish

796
00:40:25,520 --> 00:40:27,960
Speaker 1: that everyone knew you had a right to an attorney.

797
00:40:28,200 --> 00:40:30,640
Speaker 1: He would tell my friends and me, if you ever

798
00:40:30,640 --> 00:40:33,160
Speaker 1: get stopped by the police, you need to call an attorney.

799
00:40:33,280 --> 00:40:37,480
Speaker 1: Innocent people call attorneys. He said, I wish people knew

800
00:40:37,760 --> 00:40:40,200
Speaker 1: that police could lie to get information out of you,

801
00:40:40,239 --> 00:40:42,440
Speaker 1: to not believe everything that the police are saying, if

802
00:40:42,440 --> 00:40:44,680
Speaker 1: this is something that's serious and they're bringing you down,

803
00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:47,440
Speaker 1: and that there are people who can help you, that

804
00:40:47,640 --> 00:40:50,439
Speaker 1: all is not lost. That you know the criminal justice

805
00:40:50,440 --> 00:40:54,040
Speaker 1: system can work, but you have a right to an attorney,

806
00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:57,480
Speaker 1: and you need that that Innocent people do talk to attorneys,

807
00:40:57,520 --> 00:40:59,320
Speaker 1: which I thought was always great advice.

808
00:40:59,520 --> 00:41:01,120
Speaker 2: It is going to advice, and it's advice that I

809
00:41:01,120 --> 00:41:03,480
Speaker 2: had heard many times and was rattling around in my

810
00:41:03,560 --> 00:41:06,440
Speaker 2: brain as I listened to these tapes. So I got

811
00:41:06,840 --> 00:41:10,680
Speaker 2: something like, I don't know, six seven hours of interrogation

812
00:41:10,760 --> 00:41:13,319
Speaker 2: audio of Holland and Driscoll together, and there's all these

813
00:41:13,320 --> 00:41:16,080
Speaker 2: times where Driscoll almost gets there. He says, Hey, I

814
00:41:16,120 --> 00:41:19,000
Speaker 2: think I should call my friend Charlie. And Holland says, well, wait,

815
00:41:19,040 --> 00:41:21,399
Speaker 2: who's Charlie? And Driscoll says, oh, he's my friend. He's

816
00:41:21,400 --> 00:41:23,680
Speaker 2: a lawyer. And Holland says, oh, well you could if

817
00:41:23,719 --> 00:41:25,239
Speaker 2: you want to. I'm not here to stop you, but

818
00:41:25,320 --> 00:41:26,719
Speaker 2: I don't think Charlie's going to help you. I think

819
00:41:26,760 --> 00:41:29,560
Speaker 2: we're going to help you. And I'm listening to this

820
00:41:29,680 --> 00:41:32,239
Speaker 2: years later, and just I remember almost like grabbing my hand,

821
00:41:32,320 --> 00:41:35,000
Speaker 2: just being like, Larry, what are you doing? Call Charlie?

822
00:41:35,480 --> 00:41:38,000
Speaker 2: And granted, I also think it's worth noting here that

823
00:41:38,320 --> 00:41:40,799
Speaker 2: at no point in my reporting has it ever come

824
00:41:40,840 --> 00:41:44,960
Speaker 2: off that Texas Ranger Holland thought he was coercing an

825
00:41:44,960 --> 00:41:48,239
Speaker 2: innocent person into a false confession. I think that he

826
00:41:49,160 --> 00:41:52,840
Speaker 2: had convinced himself that Larry Driscoll had committed this murder.

827
00:41:52,880 --> 00:41:56,040
Speaker 2: And it was a problem of if anything tunnel vision

828
00:41:56,280 --> 00:42:00,360
Speaker 2: of you know, shutting off the little question marks in

829
00:42:00,400 --> 00:42:02,200
Speaker 2: your brain that are like, wait, this isn't adding up

830
00:42:02,239 --> 00:42:04,000
Speaker 2: and just saying, well, like, look i've got this guy.

831
00:42:04,080 --> 00:42:07,160
Speaker 2: Look he keeps offering new memories. Look now he's even

832
00:42:07,160 --> 00:42:09,719
Speaker 2: willing to go down this road and talk hypothetically. And

833
00:42:09,760 --> 00:42:13,640
Speaker 2: eventually Larry breaks and confesses, and then you know, he's

834
00:42:13,719 --> 00:42:17,640
Speaker 2: arrested and his life transforms. He goes from overseeing jail

835
00:42:17,680 --> 00:42:21,000
Speaker 2: inmates to being a jail inmate. He sits in prison

836
00:42:21,160 --> 00:42:25,560
Speaker 2: for two plus years and is confronted with this problem

837
00:42:25,719 --> 00:42:28,319
Speaker 2: of I want to go to trial, but I just

838
00:42:28,360 --> 00:42:31,560
Speaker 2: don't think a jury's ever going to believe me that

839
00:42:31,600 --> 00:42:33,279
Speaker 2: I confessed to a crime I didn't commit. In the

840
00:42:33,280 --> 00:42:35,239
Speaker 2: same way that you and I talked about how most

841
00:42:35,239 --> 00:42:38,520
Speaker 2: people think that's impossible. Larry Jesscholl was confronting you know,

842
00:42:38,600 --> 00:42:42,440
Speaker 2: this jury in rural Parker County of his peers, who

843
00:42:42,719 --> 00:42:45,360
Speaker 2: he just thought, we're never going to believe that he

844
00:42:45,560 --> 00:42:48,440
Speaker 2: falsely confessed to this crime. So he ends up taking

845
00:42:48,600 --> 00:42:53,040
Speaker 2: a no contest plea, which means that he's not exactly

846
00:42:53,080 --> 00:42:55,640
Speaker 2: acknowledging guilt, but he is acknowledging the strength of the

847
00:42:55,640 --> 00:42:58,600
Speaker 2: case against him, and he takes a fifteen year sentence

848
00:42:58,680 --> 00:42:59,400
Speaker 2: and goes to prison.

849
00:43:00,000 --> 00:43:03,120
Speaker 1: Does Michael Harden look at him and say, Yeah, that's him.

850
00:43:03,320 --> 00:43:05,640
Speaker 1: That's the guy with the wide eyes that I saw

851
00:43:05,719 --> 00:43:07,840
Speaker 1: looking at me before he took off with my girlfriend

852
00:43:07,920 --> 00:43:08,359
Speaker 1: in the van.

853
00:43:08,960 --> 00:43:12,000
Speaker 2: Well. First of all, and shockingly to me, the cops

854
00:43:12,040 --> 00:43:14,760
Speaker 2: never go to him with a picture of Larry Driscoll. Yeah, okay,

855
00:43:14,880 --> 00:43:18,000
Speaker 2: after he's hypnotized, and he was actually in jail at

856
00:43:18,000 --> 00:43:20,080
Speaker 2: this point on like a low level drug charge, after

857
00:43:20,080 --> 00:43:21,960
Speaker 2: the hypnos succession, all that they get the sketch, they

858
00:43:21,960 --> 00:43:24,120
Speaker 2: never go back to him and check the picture of

859
00:43:24,160 --> 00:43:27,120
Speaker 2: Larry Driscoll with him. I did it though, so that

860
00:43:27,200 --> 00:43:29,600
Speaker 2: all was twenty fifteen. I'm coming into this case to

861
00:43:29,640 --> 00:43:32,320
Speaker 2: report twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, and I do find

862
00:43:32,680 --> 00:43:35,680
Speaker 2: Hardin at this little motel. He was very hard to find.

863
00:43:35,880 --> 00:43:37,560
Speaker 2: But once I found him, I pulled up on my

864
00:43:37,600 --> 00:43:39,840
Speaker 2: phone a picture of Larry Driscoll and I said, what

865
00:43:39,880 --> 00:43:42,120
Speaker 2: do you think this is him? And just stared at

866
00:43:42,160 --> 00:43:47,120
Speaker 2: it for a while, and he just goes maybe nah,

867
00:43:47,160 --> 00:43:49,640
Speaker 2: Like he just hems and haws and hedges because and

868
00:43:49,840 --> 00:43:52,400
Speaker 2: I feel for him, you know, yeah, this is the

869
00:43:52,400 --> 00:43:55,640
Speaker 2: man you saw for like two seconds fifteen years ago.

870
00:43:56,280 --> 00:43:58,280
Speaker 2: Since then, you've been asked to give a sketch twice,

871
00:43:58,360 --> 00:44:03,160
Speaker 2: You've been hypnotized, different race, different race. You've been in

872
00:44:03,200 --> 00:44:06,000
Speaker 2: and out of jail, You've had your own troubles in life.

873
00:44:06,040 --> 00:44:08,640
Speaker 2: You've seen what this is. To quote one psychologist, You've

874
00:44:08,680 --> 00:44:12,200
Speaker 2: seen thousands of faces in the interim. So you know,

875
00:44:12,360 --> 00:44:15,399
Speaker 2: does it look like him? It doesn't not, but it's

876
00:44:15,440 --> 00:44:16,480
Speaker 2: hardly a dead ringer.

877
00:44:17,080 --> 00:44:22,120
Speaker 1: So Larry Driscoll has taken fifteen years and he settles

878
00:44:22,160 --> 00:44:23,320
Speaker 1: in where is he Huntsville?

879
00:44:23,360 --> 00:44:25,040
Speaker 3: He settles into prison life.

880
00:44:25,360 --> 00:44:28,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's in a tiny town called Woodville, about an

881
00:44:28,360 --> 00:44:30,640
Speaker 2: hour from Huntsville, where it's just like, it's not a prison.

882
00:44:30,640 --> 00:44:32,640
Speaker 2: I'd ever this was really sad to me. I went

883
00:44:32,680 --> 00:44:35,040
Speaker 2: to prison to interview him, and I talked to the

884
00:44:35,080 --> 00:44:37,760
Speaker 2: warden and she said she I was the first journalist

885
00:44:37,800 --> 00:44:39,880
Speaker 2: she could ever remember coming to interview a prisoner like

886
00:44:39,920 --> 00:44:41,799
Speaker 2: it gives you a taste of just how cut off

887
00:44:41,800 --> 00:44:45,080
Speaker 2: these places are. So yeah, he settles into his time,

888
00:44:45,680 --> 00:44:49,640
Speaker 2: but he also starts writing letters to the Annison's Project

889
00:44:49,719 --> 00:44:53,839
Speaker 2: of Texas. Eventually, his case makes it to the desk

890
00:44:53,960 --> 00:44:56,799
Speaker 2: of an law student actually in Fort Worth, a woman

891
00:44:56,880 --> 00:44:59,400
Speaker 2: named Ashley Fletcher, who's really a kind of under some

892
00:44:59,680 --> 00:45:03,360
Speaker 2: hero of this story. Ashley's in law school like you know,

893
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:06,600
Speaker 2: any other law student. She signs up for the Innocence

894
00:45:06,600 --> 00:45:08,800
Speaker 2: Project clinic, and one of the jobs they give the

895
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:11,480
Speaker 2: law students is to just sift through cases that come

896
00:45:11,520 --> 00:45:15,000
Speaker 2: into them as like a first you know, past screening

897
00:45:15,080 --> 00:45:17,319
Speaker 2: before the lawyers look at it. This case kind of

898
00:45:17,320 --> 00:45:20,560
Speaker 2: sticks out a little bit because Larry has access to

899
00:45:20,680 --> 00:45:24,400
Speaker 2: and sends her a full transcript of his interrogation of

900
00:45:24,440 --> 00:45:27,360
Speaker 2: his exchange with Holland, and she describes to me just

901
00:45:27,400 --> 00:45:29,360
Speaker 2: sort of like hunkering down on her couch for hours

902
00:45:29,360 --> 00:45:32,560
Speaker 2: and reading it and just being horrified and sort of

903
00:45:32,800 --> 00:45:35,760
Speaker 2: going to her law professor, who also runs the Innocent

904
00:45:35,800 --> 00:45:38,600
Speaker 2: Productor of Texas, and the way he describes the story,

905
00:45:38,600 --> 00:45:41,640
Speaker 2: he's like, she seemed traumatized by what she'd read, you

906
00:45:41,680 --> 00:45:44,600
Speaker 2: know that there was just she was horrified by this confession.

907
00:45:44,640 --> 00:45:46,280
Speaker 2: And then I read it. I listened to the tapes

908
00:45:46,560 --> 00:45:49,000
Speaker 2: and it felt like Innocent Product Lawyers has spent the

909
00:45:49,080 --> 00:45:52,000
Speaker 2: last ten twenty years working on false confession cases and

910
00:45:52,040 --> 00:45:55,480
Speaker 2: finding what are all the tricks and tools that cops

911
00:45:55,600 --> 00:45:57,919
Speaker 2: can use to coerce one and this was just chock

912
00:45:58,000 --> 00:46:01,440
Speaker 2: full of all the worst practices. So Larry has been

913
00:46:01,440 --> 00:46:04,840
Speaker 2: working with the Nsons Project of Texas and late twenty

914
00:46:04,880 --> 00:46:08,120
Speaker 2: twenty two there was the shocking development in the case

915
00:46:08,360 --> 00:46:10,920
Speaker 2: where Larry had been in prison for so long that

916
00:46:10,960 --> 00:46:13,320
Speaker 2: he was actually eligible for parole, and in a rare

917
00:46:13,600 --> 00:46:17,759
Speaker 2: moment of surprise, the parole board basically bought into his

918
00:46:18,480 --> 00:46:21,840
Speaker 2: claims of innocence enough to say, you're not dangerous to anybody,

919
00:46:21,920 --> 00:46:24,160
Speaker 2: you can go home on parole. Wow, he gets out,

920
00:46:24,200 --> 00:46:26,120
Speaker 2: but he's still living, you know, with the ankle monitor,

921
00:46:26,280 --> 00:46:29,080
Speaker 2: his movements are very restricted and so he's still trying

922
00:46:29,080 --> 00:46:32,359
Speaker 2: to clear his name. Meanwhile, James Holland, the Texas Ranger,

923
00:46:32,440 --> 00:46:35,000
Speaker 2: has gone on to fame and success. He took all

924
00:46:35,080 --> 00:46:38,800
Speaker 2: confessions from a famous serial killer in California named Samuel Little.

925
00:46:38,840 --> 00:46:40,760
Speaker 2: It's a name that may be familiar to some listeners.

926
00:46:41,040 --> 00:46:43,880
Speaker 2: Where the case stands now is that the innocentce Project

927
00:46:43,880 --> 00:46:47,359
Speaker 2: of Texas is trying to retest all the DNA from

928
00:46:47,360 --> 00:46:49,880
Speaker 2: the case, some of which hadn't been tested or hadn't

929
00:46:49,880 --> 00:46:53,920
Speaker 2: been tested with the current level of scientific advancement in

930
00:46:54,000 --> 00:46:56,200
Speaker 2: terms of what's possible with DNA right where you can

931
00:46:56,200 --> 00:46:59,400
Speaker 2: take very small amounts and kind of zoom in and

932
00:46:59,400 --> 00:47:02,160
Speaker 2: blow them up and connect them to people. So I

933
00:47:02,160 --> 00:47:06,080
Speaker 2: think the silver bullet hope for Larry and his lawyers

934
00:47:06,239 --> 00:47:08,960
Speaker 2: is that some DNA is going to match, you know,

935
00:47:09,239 --> 00:47:12,719
Speaker 2: some known perpetrator who is killing women at this time

936
00:47:12,760 --> 00:47:16,480
Speaker 2: and place. But in lieu of that, it is hard

937
00:47:16,520 --> 00:47:21,240
Speaker 2: to imagine what it would take to get the right person.

938
00:47:21,840 --> 00:47:25,520
Speaker 2: And so part of the tragedy here is that the

939
00:47:25,640 --> 00:47:28,799
Speaker 2: law enforcement process was just so messed up that it

940
00:47:28,840 --> 00:47:32,280
Speaker 2: almost like clouds our ability to get the actual truth.

941
00:47:32,640 --> 00:47:36,120
Speaker 1: What does Bobby Sue Hill's family think? Do they think

942
00:47:36,160 --> 00:47:38,680
Speaker 1: that Larry is the one who killed her or do

943
00:47:38,719 --> 00:47:40,160
Speaker 1: they believe he was innocent.

944
00:47:40,760 --> 00:47:44,120
Speaker 2: So Bobby Sowell has a large family. She had five kids,

945
00:47:44,160 --> 00:47:46,880
Speaker 2: she had a brother, She had lots of aunts and

946
00:47:46,960 --> 00:47:50,120
Speaker 2: uncles and cousins, and I've only reached a few of them.

947
00:47:50,280 --> 00:47:52,920
Speaker 2: Many of them declined to talk to me at the outset,

948
00:47:53,160 --> 00:47:54,759
Speaker 2: and then many of them also declined to talk to

949
00:47:54,840 --> 00:47:57,120
Speaker 2: me after my article came out. And I think that's

950
00:47:57,320 --> 00:47:59,880
Speaker 2: largely because the few who did talk to me have

951
00:48:00,160 --> 00:48:02,520
Speaker 2: reason to doubt at this point that Larry your'schol did it.

952
00:48:02,560 --> 00:48:04,680
Speaker 2: They believe in his guilt. They've gone on this horrible

953
00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:07,880
Speaker 2: journey where, you know, Bobby Sue Hill is murdered, and

954
00:48:07,920 --> 00:48:10,560
Speaker 2: then the case goes cold, and they basically think this

955
00:48:10,600 --> 00:48:12,759
Speaker 2: is never going to get solved, no one cares. And

956
00:48:12,800 --> 00:48:15,879
Speaker 2: then the Texas Rangers come along in twenty fifteen and

957
00:48:16,600 --> 00:48:18,520
Speaker 2: say we've got the guy. We found him, and this

958
00:48:18,600 --> 00:48:21,040
Speaker 2: is shocking to the family. This is how they describe

959
00:48:21,040 --> 00:48:22,480
Speaker 2: it to me. I mean, they just never thought this

960
00:48:22,600 --> 00:48:25,040
Speaker 2: was going to get solved. So here comes the solution.

961
00:48:25,400 --> 00:48:28,680
Speaker 2: And so then eight years later, the Innocence Project of

962
00:48:28,719 --> 00:48:31,880
Speaker 2: Texas is showing up, a journalist me is showing up saying,

963
00:48:32,120 --> 00:48:34,520
Speaker 2: you know, there's some real flaws in this that you

964
00:48:34,520 --> 00:48:36,120
Speaker 2: know you should be aware of. And it was really

965
00:48:36,280 --> 00:48:38,400
Speaker 2: sort of tricky for me in terms of the ethics

966
00:48:38,440 --> 00:48:42,879
Speaker 2: and just the human morality of how to approach this

967
00:48:43,200 --> 00:48:46,560
Speaker 2: with the family to say, you're entitled to your privacy,

968
00:48:46,880 --> 00:48:48,160
Speaker 2: you don't need to talk to me if you don't

969
00:48:48,160 --> 00:48:51,160
Speaker 2: want to. I want to give readers a sense of

970
00:48:51,160 --> 00:48:54,640
Speaker 2: who Bobby Sue Hill was beyond the two sentences about

971
00:48:54,640 --> 00:48:57,319
Speaker 2: her being a sex worker in these old articles. Some

972
00:48:57,360 --> 00:48:59,400
Speaker 2: family members said, yes, okay, we want to tell you

973
00:48:59,400 --> 00:49:01,680
Speaker 2: all about her, But there's whole long way of saying

974
00:49:01,719 --> 00:49:05,400
Speaker 2: that they still, at least publicly believe in Larry's guilt,

975
00:49:05,600 --> 00:49:09,080
Speaker 2: and if that is starting to change, I don't know yet. Lastly,

976
00:49:09,120 --> 00:49:12,960
Speaker 2: I'll say that because I spoke with so few of them,

977
00:49:13,800 --> 00:49:16,799
Speaker 2: I wanted to understand what it is they're confronting, and

978
00:49:16,880 --> 00:49:20,280
Speaker 2: so I saw there's a really interesting organization called Healing

979
00:49:20,480 --> 00:49:25,279
Speaker 2: Justice that works therapeutically with families who have lost a

980
00:49:25,320 --> 00:49:27,839
Speaker 2: loved one to murder, but the case ends up being

981
00:49:27,840 --> 00:49:30,600
Speaker 2: a wrongful conviction. That's a very unique and rough and

982
00:49:30,880 --> 00:49:34,120
Speaker 2: complex experience for people, and so I ended up interviewing

983
00:49:34,239 --> 00:49:36,760
Speaker 2: this organization and some of the families they've been working

984
00:49:36,800 --> 00:49:39,880
Speaker 2: with about what that's like, because it's this double trauma.

985
00:49:40,040 --> 00:49:43,160
Speaker 2: You lose your loved one, then you think you have

986
00:49:43,239 --> 00:49:45,279
Speaker 2: the answer, and then the answer gets ripped away again

987
00:49:45,360 --> 00:49:47,880
Speaker 2: and you're back to square one. And so the ultimate

988
00:49:47,920 --> 00:49:50,560
Speaker 2: tragedy of this case to me is that law enforcement

989
00:49:50,600 --> 00:49:53,600
Speaker 2: handled it in such a way that her family now

990
00:49:53,640 --> 00:49:56,520
Speaker 2: has to lose the promise of a solution and go

991
00:49:56,600 --> 00:49:58,879
Speaker 2: back to not knowing who killed her, and also whether

992
00:49:58,920 --> 00:50:01,440
Speaker 2: that person may still be out there.

993
00:50:01,920 --> 00:50:05,520
Speaker 1: Is there a suspicion that this person is a serial killer?

994
00:50:05,760 --> 00:50:07,840
Speaker 1: Is there anything else sort of connected? I know that

995
00:50:07,840 --> 00:50:10,600
Speaker 1: we've mentioned a few things, but do profilers do you

996
00:50:10,680 --> 00:50:14,759
Speaker 1: think think this is indicative of someone who has done

997
00:50:14,760 --> 00:50:17,480
Speaker 1: this before or has done this since.

998
00:50:18,280 --> 00:50:21,640
Speaker 2: Yes. And the reason for that is not that any

999
00:50:22,080 --> 00:50:25,400
Speaker 2: elite profiler has come into the case. But Texas Ranger

1000
00:50:25,440 --> 00:50:29,920
Speaker 2: Holland himself indicated in his reports suspicion that while he

1001
00:50:30,040 --> 00:50:32,320
Speaker 2: in his case, he thought Larry committed these other crimes.

1002
00:50:32,320 --> 00:50:36,560
Speaker 2: But there were two other women around this time. There

1003
00:50:36,600 --> 00:50:38,920
Speaker 2: was one other woman who was a sex worker who

1004
00:50:39,000 --> 00:50:41,759
Speaker 2: is found dead in a creek similar to the one

1005
00:50:41,800 --> 00:50:44,880
Speaker 2: that Bobbysoo has found in but actually in Fort Worth itself,

1006
00:50:45,880 --> 00:50:49,759
Speaker 2: but same rough time, same rough m And then there's

1007
00:50:49,800 --> 00:50:53,160
Speaker 2: a woman who told police at the time. Yeah, there

1008
00:50:53,200 --> 00:50:56,200
Speaker 2: was this guy who took me in his van and

1009
00:50:56,280 --> 00:50:59,680
Speaker 2: he started driving on the highway in the direction of

1010
00:51:00,080 --> 00:51:03,280
Speaker 2: you know, Whetherford Alito, the places where Bobby Sujoe was found,

1011
00:51:03,520 --> 00:51:07,319
Speaker 2: and he basically pulled a knife on me and was

1012
00:51:07,360 --> 00:51:10,600
Speaker 2: like trying to basically rape me and coerce me, and

1013
00:51:10,880 --> 00:51:13,440
Speaker 2: at one inner I think as like a stoplight or

1014
00:51:13,480 --> 00:51:16,240
Speaker 2: an exit off the highway, I managed to like basically

1015
00:51:16,280 --> 00:51:17,960
Speaker 2: push the door open and get out of the van

1016
00:51:18,040 --> 00:51:20,879
Speaker 2: and escape. She described that man. But you know, again,

1017
00:51:20,880 --> 00:51:23,080
Speaker 2: there weren't a lot of like really specific details that

1018
00:51:23,120 --> 00:51:25,000
Speaker 2: you could tie to anyone. She said he wore like

1019
00:51:25,040 --> 00:51:27,040
Speaker 2: a tie, like he was almost like a like a

1020
00:51:27,080 --> 00:51:30,120
Speaker 2: cleaned up businessman type. So in theory, you know, this

1021
00:51:30,160 --> 00:51:32,960
Speaker 2: could lead somewhere. Maybe there was like a known serial

1022
00:51:33,040 --> 00:51:35,160
Speaker 2: killer who was wearing a tie or something. Yeah, there

1023
00:51:35,200 --> 00:51:38,480
Speaker 2: are these little threads out there that you kind of

1024
00:51:38,520 --> 00:51:40,719
Speaker 2: see long in the reports. Law enforcement sort of gave

1025
00:51:40,800 --> 00:51:43,040
Speaker 2: up on because they just couldn't get any further with it.

1026
00:51:43,440 --> 00:51:45,360
Speaker 2: And then the more time passes, as we know with

1027
00:51:45,440 --> 00:51:48,480
Speaker 2: cold cases, the harder it is to find these witnesses. Again,

1028
00:51:49,200 --> 00:51:51,400
Speaker 2: you know, this woman, it's hard to know where she

1029
00:51:51,560 --> 00:51:53,960
Speaker 2: is now or how to find her. Sometimes people weren't

1030
00:51:53,960 --> 00:51:56,319
Speaker 2: even using their real names. Yeah, I think there is

1031
00:51:56,360 --> 00:51:59,120
Speaker 2: still some hope for solving who killed Bobby Sue Hill,

1032
00:51:59,600 --> 00:52:01,440
Speaker 2: But you know, you know, as with any of these cases,

1033
00:52:01,440 --> 00:52:03,759
Speaker 2: the more time goes by, the harder a lift it is,

1034
00:52:03,760 --> 00:52:05,759
Speaker 2: and the more time and effort and resources it takes

1035
00:52:05,800 --> 00:52:06,400
Speaker 2: to solve.

1036
00:52:06,800 --> 00:52:10,160
Speaker 1: This case as a conclusion, seems to me to have

1037
00:52:10,280 --> 00:52:13,720
Speaker 1: all of the pitfalls a wrongful conviction. Right, You've got

1038
00:52:14,000 --> 00:52:19,080
Speaker 1: cross racial misidentification, you've got a false confession, you've got

1039
00:52:19,440 --> 00:52:23,359
Speaker 1: you know, bad science, hypnosis, and a polygraph on top

1040
00:52:23,440 --> 00:52:25,520
Speaker 1: of it. It's like every check mark you can think

1041
00:52:25,600 --> 00:52:30,080
Speaker 1: of of a wrongful conviction. What is the big message

1042
00:52:30,320 --> 00:52:33,600
Speaker 1: that you want listeners and readers to take away from

1043
00:52:33,680 --> 00:52:34,240
Speaker 1: this story?

1044
00:52:35,040 --> 00:52:36,160
Speaker 2: Well, what is call a lawyer?

1045
00:52:36,320 --> 00:52:38,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's my message too, if.

1046
00:52:38,400 --> 00:52:40,839
Speaker 2: You're ever picked up. I mean, this is the news

1047
00:52:40,880 --> 00:52:43,440
Speaker 2: you can use element of this case. It's like, call

1048
00:52:43,480 --> 00:52:46,080
Speaker 2: a lawyer, you know, don't be like Larry driscoll. But

1049
00:52:46,160 --> 00:52:50,200
Speaker 2: I also think a big takeaway is that in this era,

1050
00:52:50,400 --> 00:52:53,080
Speaker 2: you know, there's more and more cold cases, there's increasingly

1051
00:52:53,280 --> 00:52:57,319
Speaker 2: sort of an industry of profilers of well meaning law

1052
00:52:57,440 --> 00:53:01,160
Speaker 2: enforcement across the country who are trying to solve these

1053
00:53:01,200 --> 00:53:05,400
Speaker 2: old cases. And I think that there's sometimes an incentive

1054
00:53:05,400 --> 00:53:07,359
Speaker 2: with these old cases to do the sort of hail

1055
00:53:07,440 --> 00:53:10,640
Speaker 2: Mary pass and to take really big risks with some

1056
00:53:10,719 --> 00:53:13,000
Speaker 2: of the tools that we use to try to solve them.

1057
00:53:13,440 --> 00:53:16,560
Speaker 2: And so those tools include, you know, the hypnosis, the

1058
00:53:16,600 --> 00:53:21,080
Speaker 2: sketch art, the course of interrogation techniques. And I think

1059
00:53:21,120 --> 00:53:22,719
Speaker 2: a big lesson here is that we need to just

1060
00:53:22,960 --> 00:53:26,200
Speaker 2: take care on risk, you know, be careful about you know,

1061
00:53:26,440 --> 00:53:29,400
Speaker 2: just throwing all of these tools at the wall and

1062
00:53:29,440 --> 00:53:33,200
Speaker 2: seeing what sticks, because some of these tools are manipulative

1063
00:53:33,239 --> 00:53:36,160
Speaker 2: and problematic in the sense that they can lead to

1064
00:53:36,200 --> 00:53:38,160
Speaker 2: the wrong person. And so we have to kind of

1065
00:53:38,200 --> 00:53:41,080
Speaker 2: reckon with like how much risk as a society we

1066
00:53:41,120 --> 00:53:42,960
Speaker 2: are we willing to take on some of these hail

1067
00:53:43,000 --> 00:53:47,000
Speaker 2: Mary cold cases, to not do things that risk putting

1068
00:53:47,080 --> 00:53:49,319
Speaker 2: innocent people in prison and just getting closure for the

1069
00:53:49,320 --> 00:53:51,080
Speaker 2: sake of closure without getting the truth.

1070
00:54:01,920 --> 00:54:04,840
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the

1071
00:54:04,880 --> 00:54:07,960
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That

1072
00:54:08,080 --> 00:54:11,520
Speaker 1: Is Wicked, and American Sherlock. This has been an exactly

1073
00:54:11,640 --> 00:54:16,200
Speaker 1: right production. Our senior producer is Alexis Mmerosi. Our associate

1074
00:54:16,239 --> 00:54:21,160
Speaker 1: producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed by John Bradley.

1075
00:54:21,360 --> 00:54:25,360
Speaker 1: Curtis Heath is our composer, artwork by Nick Toga. Executive

1076
00:54:25,440 --> 00:54:29,840
Speaker 1: produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer. Follow

1077
00:54:29,880 --> 00:54:33,760
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Speaker 1: true crime authors for Wicked Words