Speaker 1: Hey, girlfriend, it's Anna here giving you a quick heads
Speaker 1: up on what to expect in this episode. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk about the night of the murder a lot
Speaker 1: and in detail, and I want to warn you that
Speaker 1: there's going to be some mentions of domestic abuse, sexual assault,
Speaker 1: and suicide. But we'll also get the chance to dive
Speaker 1: into the weeds of the police investigation to learn more
Speaker 1: about the case against Kelly and the holes in it.
Speaker 1: If you feel impacted by some of the themes in
Speaker 1: this show, you can reach out to No More. There
Speaker 1: are domestic violence charity with a lot of great resources
Speaker 1: to help.
Speaker 2: You or your loved ones.
Speaker 1: You can search No More dot org and we've also
Speaker 1: put a link to their website in the episode description. Plus,
Speaker 1: as always, there'll be more than a few swear words
Speaker 1: for Kelly Harnett's brother, Ronnie. July seventh, twenty ten, was
Speaker 1: a totally normal day.
Speaker 3: I was on my way back from work and I
Speaker 3: had are you know how they in a union square
Speaker 3: and things like that they have the village Voice or whatever,
Speaker 3: so their newspaper.
Speaker 1: He picks it up and sits down, leaving through like
Speaker 1: he would any other time, and there printed in black
Speaker 1: and white is a headline that reads something like, please
Speaker 1: arrest two individuals after a murder.
Speaker 2: In a story of Queens.
Speaker 3: I was looking at people next to me. I said,
Speaker 3: you believe this in our neighborhood? And I showed them
Speaker 3: and they looked at it and they just shook their heads.
Speaker 3: They were like, what's this world coming to?
Speaker 1: Ronnie doesn't think any more of it other than what
Speaker 1: a shame it is that the place he once knew
Speaker 1: as a safe family neighborhood seems to be going to
Speaker 1: the dogs.
Speaker 4: So I go home.
Speaker 3: My mother's like, yeah, you might want to sit down.
Speaker 3: I was like, am I just telling me what's going on?
Speaker 3: And I never a billion years did crossed my mind
Speaker 3: what I read? You know. So she's like, Kelly, she
Speaker 3: got arrested, and I said, for what she said, for murder,
Speaker 3: shocking is an understatement. I started getting dizzy. I started
Speaker 3: seeing stars and I was like, WHOA. But I knew,
Speaker 3: I said, I know my sister, she didn't do this.
Speaker 3: I know she didn't do it.
Speaker 1: I'm Annisonfield and from the teams at novel and iHeart Podcasts,
Speaker 1: this is the girlfriend's jailhouse lawyer. Yes, episode three, he
Speaker 1: said she said. It's around four am on July seventh,
Speaker 1: twenty ten, when Kelly Hannette first arrives at the one
Speaker 1: hundred and fourteenth Precinct. She's immediately processed as a suspect
Speaker 1: in the murder of Reuben Angel Vargas.
Speaker 5: They took all of my clothes from me, including my
Speaker 5: bride under her. They put me in a white paper suit.
Speaker 2: Kelly can't believe what's happening to her.
Speaker 1: She's just witnessed her boyfriend Tommy Donovan kill a man
Speaker 1: right in front of her before threatening that she would
Speaker 1: be next, but no one seems to be treating her
Speaker 1: like the victim.
Speaker 5: She is.
Speaker 2: Sitting in her cell.
Speaker 1: Feeling like the world is against her. Kelly decides to
Speaker 1: do something reckless, something that will warp and color every
Speaker 1: memory she tells me from this time. Somehow she's managed
Speaker 1: to smuggle in a huge amount of xanax, and she
Speaker 1: knows she needs to get rid of them.
Speaker 2: Before they're discovered by the police.
Speaker 1: But she also just wants to escape this situation somehow,
Speaker 1: And right there in the palm of her hand, she
Speaker 1: sees a solution.
Speaker 4: Down the hair they go and there was a lot
Speaker 4: and I didn't care if it was a suicide attempt.
Speaker 2: Or what the hell it was.
Speaker 4: Whatever happens happens, because it sounds like my life just
Speaker 4: got ripped from under me because of something that I
Speaker 4: didn't even do.
Speaker 6: I was like, look if I die, I die.
Speaker 1: From there, things just get worse for Kelly. Not only
Speaker 1: is she now really high in police custody, but she's
Speaker 1: also withdrawing. She tells the police she needs her methodone.
Speaker 1: She's on that huge one hundred and seventy milligram daily dose,
Speaker 1: but she's been without it for days because Tommy wouldn't
Speaker 1: let her go to the clinic. Kelly's hoping now she's
Speaker 1: in official police custody that they'll give her what she needs,
Speaker 1: but they refuse. On top of this, Kelly suffers from
Speaker 1: what's called grand mal seizures, she says. She asks repeatedly
Speaker 1: for her seizure medication, which is in police possession, but
Speaker 1: they say they'll only give it to her if she
Speaker 1: writes a statement. She has multiple seizures while in custody.
Speaker 2: She also gets her period.
Speaker 1: She asks the cops for some sanitary but they refuse
Speaker 1: those two They leave her bleeding into her white paper
Speaker 1: suit it soaks right through and is visible to anyone
Speaker 1: who sees her. And because she hasn't got anything on underneath,
Speaker 1: every time she goes to the bathroom, she has to
Speaker 1: strip down completely naked.
Speaker 2: Kelly says.
Speaker 1: Male staff gather around to watch, making comments about her body.
Speaker 5: I'm bleeding everywhere, but you're talking about my breasts and
Speaker 5: calling your friends in because it's a free show.
Speaker 2: Discusting pigs.
Speaker 5: I have absolutely no no respect for them. I'm sorry,
Speaker 5: but they were disgusting to me. I didn't even fucking
Speaker 5: commit this crime. How dare you? How fucking dare you?
Speaker 1: It should be clear to anyone that Kelly is in
Speaker 1: no fit state to give a reliable account of what's happened,
Speaker 1: and yet four hours after her arrest, cops take down
Speaker 1: an oral statement. Here's a quick reminder of how Kelly
Speaker 1: described the knight of the murder.
Speaker 2: Back in episode one.
Speaker 1: Kelly and Tommy met Angel and they decided to drink
Speaker 1: together while Tommy went off to buy the three of
Speaker 1: them beers. Kelly says Angels sexually assaulted her. When Tommy returned,
Speaker 1: Kelly told him what happened. Tommy then attacked and choked Angel.
Speaker 1: Kelly tried to get him to stop, but Tommy pushed
Speaker 1: her away and threatened that she would be next. After that,
Speaker 1: Tommy forced Kelly to hand over her shoelace. He then
Speaker 1: attempted to use it to strangle Angel, but it snapped. Next,
Speaker 1: Kelly witnessed Tommy put his belt around Angel's neck and
Speaker 1: finally kill him. That's what Kelly said to me in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, but it's not what she told the
Speaker 1: police back in twenty ten.
Speaker 4: I was woken up frantically by my boyfriend Tommy Danovan,
Speaker 4: stating we got to get out of here now, and
Speaker 4: then they put in.
Speaker 1: Kelly is reading from her original oral statement, which was
Speaker 1: taken at around eight am on July seventh. In it,
Speaker 1: Kelly says that she didn't witness the crime at all. Instead,
Speaker 1: she's woken up by Tommy, who tells her that he'd
Speaker 1: seen a guy who'd stolen his shoes the previous day
Speaker 1: and choked him unconscious.
Speaker 6: He then tells her start packing your crap up.
Speaker 1: Kelly starts gathering her things, and while she's doing that,
Speaker 1: Kelly says, Tommy takes her shoelace out of her sneaker
Speaker 1: and takes it over to the guy who's on the ground.
Speaker 4: A male Hispanic wearing a dark collared shirt was lying
Speaker 4: down moving in that Tommy grabbed him from behind around
Speaker 4: the neck and choked him again for proximately ten seconds.
Speaker 4: Kelly states that Tommy told her to kick said mail
Speaker 4: Hispanic and that she didn't. Kelly states that Tommy let
Speaker 4: said male Hispanic go and he fell to the ground lifeless.
Speaker 4: You're doing okay, Yeah, it was just the part that
Speaker 4: started because you know, the beginning is what I told
Speaker 4: the detectives, because I was just afraid, you know, there
Speaker 4: was no truth to it. But the part that got
Speaker 4: me was when it became truthful that he had the
Speaker 4: mail and that he fell lifeless.
Speaker 6: That that gets me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, you know, because no matter what he tried,
Speaker 1: meaning the sexual assault.
Speaker 6: That's still a life.
Speaker 4: At the end of the day, he's still someone's brother,
Speaker 4: he's someone's son, possibly father.
Speaker 2: You know, so.
Speaker 6: Terrible.
Speaker 1: In a written statement she gives about an hour or
Speaker 1: so later, at about nine thirty am, Kelly sounds like
Speaker 1: she's really grappling with the horrors of the previous night.
Speaker 1: It honestly does read like she's high in a disjointed
Speaker 1: stream of consciousness, where she veers from talking about her
Speaker 1: mum's back injury, to her college scholarships to how religious
Speaker 1: she is. Kelly writes about how putrid she feels about
Speaker 1: all of this, and how going down for Tommy's stupidity
Speaker 1: is such an awful feeling. I take all of that
Speaker 1: into account, and I really do feel for the Kelly
Speaker 1: of twenty ten. But I can't pretend that all the
Speaker 1: inconsistencies between the story Kelly told me and the story
Speaker 1: in these statements don't give me pause, especially this one
Speaker 1: detail she's never told me before that Tommy ordered her
Speaker 1: to kick Angel. In the statements from twenty ten, she
Speaker 1: says she didn't do it, so I don't really understand
Speaker 1: why she left it out when she told me her
Speaker 1: version years later. For the first time, I'm grappling with
Speaker 1: the possibility that Kelly isn't being fully open with me.
Speaker 1: We both have stories to tell here, but I do
Speaker 1: have this fear that they're not the same one.
Speaker 2: Before I can go.
Speaker 1: Any further, I need to understand more about what happened
Speaker 1: that night, this time from Tommy's perspective. Can I just
Speaker 1: read you this statement from Tommy?
Speaker 2: There's some stuff that's really horrible.
Speaker 1: I'm sack with my producer Jake in our midtown airbnb.
Speaker 1: Tommy Donovan's statement in front of us. It's one of
Speaker 1: a few that he gave that day. One is an
Speaker 1: oral statement taken according to the police documents, at around
Speaker 1: four thirty pm on July seventh, the day of the murder.
Speaker 1: It looks like it was typed up the next day
Speaker 1: on the eighth. With all of this confusion swirling around
Speaker 1: in my mind, I want to look at what Tommy
Speaker 1: had to say about what happened in the part that night.
Speaker 1: Believe me when I say that I am not predisposed
Speaker 1: to trust this man, but I'm working with what I've got,
Speaker 1: and what immediately stands out to me is the weird
Speaker 1: and colorful context Tommy seems to add to that night
Speaker 1: in the park. So this is obviously written from the
Speaker 1: perspective of the cop noting it down. Mister Donovan informed
Speaker 1: me that over the past few nights they had had
Speaker 1: problems with perverse trying to watch them having sex, and
Speaker 1: that they had even named them nightcrawlers. Yeah, mister Donovan.
Speaker 1: It goes on to talk about how Tommy and Kelly
Speaker 1: were attempting to fall around on a makeshift bed under
Speaker 1: health skatebridge. When Kelly noticed one of these night crawlers,
Speaker 1: she stormed up and slapped him around the face, which
Speaker 1: then prompted Tommy to chase him seventy feet across the park.
Speaker 1: On the way back, he spotted a Hispanic man sitting
Speaker 1: on a park bench, who said, that's not right that
Speaker 1: they try to watch you sit and have a beer.
Speaker 1: So can we just stop there for a minute because
Speaker 1: it feels very made up.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's like somebody trying to write like a bad
Speaker 7: script of what this kind of moment could be like.
Speaker 7: And I'm like really trying to keep in mind that
Speaker 7: this is what he's saying, hours after all this just happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think Kelly also told me about how she
Speaker 1: had to translate between Tommy and Angel, who spoke Spanish,
Speaker 1: but there's no language barrier problem in this retellinger. Mister
Speaker 1: Donovan states that he accepted the man's offer and took
Speaker 1: a Morello beer. Kelly then walked over and the man
Speaker 1: offered her a beer as well, which he accepted. Mister
Speaker 1: Donovan informed me that the three of them had a
Speaker 1: beer or two each while discussing different types of beers
Speaker 1: and agreeing on how Morello is much better than Corona.
Speaker 2: I don't have a lot to say about that, but
Speaker 2: it's weird.
Speaker 7: The only other thing I was thinking is like, it's
Speaker 7: really hard for me to wrap my mind around whether
Speaker 7: the fact that there is so much detail makes it
Speaker 7: more or less plausible.
Speaker 1: Mister Donovan further states that the man they had just
Speaker 1: met introduced himself as Angel and was now asking him
Speaker 1: to run to the bodega and buy some more beer,
Speaker 1: and had stated, don't worry about it, I have money
Speaker 1: and you can take my bike. Mister Donovan states that
Speaker 1: he jumped on Angel's bike and quickly rode up to
Speaker 1: the bodega, where he purchased six Loco beers.
Speaker 2: So that's where the loko comes in.
Speaker 1: He then quickly rode by Tommy Stateman then says that
Speaker 1: when he returned, Kelly and Angel were in the same
Speaker 1: spot he had left the men.
Speaker 2: He says he asked Kelly if she was okay.
Speaker 1: She stated that she was fine, and they went on
Speaker 1: to drink the beers they bought while chatting about various topics.
Speaker 1: Mister Donovan states that after a while, according to Tommy's statement,
Speaker 1: he and Kelly decided they wanted to get back to
Speaker 1: falling around under the bridge, but Angel wouldn't leave them alone.
Speaker 1: He's begging them not to go and offering to buy
Speaker 1: more drinks and food, eventually following them to their makeshift bed.
Speaker 1: So Tommy told Kelly to pretend she was sleeping while
Speaker 1: he went to pee on the woodchip pile nearby. While
Speaker 1: he was peeing, he heard Kelly's voice and she sounded upset.
Speaker 1: He stopped peeing in midstream and walked back over to Kelly.
Speaker 1: Once there, Kelly informed him that Angel had just offered
Speaker 1: her money for sex, and he had stated to her,
Speaker 1: I want to.
Speaker 2: Lick your pussy. I'm good at it.
Speaker 1: Kelly further stated that Angel had said to her, I
Speaker 1: have money and a job. I can take care of you.
Speaker 1: Kelly informed him that Angel had just grabbed her crotch
Speaker 1: and was visibly upset, just a warning that. The next
Speaker 1: section talks about the murder itself. Mister Donovan states that
Speaker 1: he became very angry, walked over to him, and pushed
Speaker 1: him the two of them. The statement then goes on
Speaker 1: to say that tom and Angel started wrestling on the
Speaker 1: ground throwing and not landing punches. Eventually, Tommy gets Angel
Speaker 1: into a chokehold with his right arm, but it wasn't working.
Speaker 1: It doesn't specify where Kelly is, but it must be
Speaker 1: right next to them, as it then says, Tommy tells
Speaker 1: Kelly to kick Angel, then to kick him harder, which
Speaker 1: it says she does numerous times in the groin.
Speaker 2: This is where it gets kind of crazy.
Speaker 1: Mister Donovan further stated that he then told Kelly to
Speaker 1: give him her shoe string. He stated that she removed
Speaker 1: her shoe string from her shoe and wrapped it around
Speaker 1: his neck, pulling it tight and handing it to him.
Speaker 1: He then choked him with it until he became limp
Speaker 1: Once Angel was unconscious, and again this is coming from
Speaker 1: Tommy's typed up oral statement, Tommy told Kelly that they
Speaker 1: needed to get the hell out of there and started
Speaker 1: gathering up his things. Then he walked away, and when
Speaker 1: he looked back, he saw that Kelly was on top
Speaker 1: of Angel, strangling him to death. He ran over and
Speaker 1: yelled at her to go, and on their way out
Speaker 1: of the park, Donovan.
Speaker 2: Says he noticed Kelly took Angel's wallet and cash.
Speaker 1: Mister Donovan stated that he did not want to get
Speaker 1: arrested for robbery. Really small concern there, so he grabbed
Speaker 1: the wallet from her, threw it on the rocks, and
Speaker 1: put the money in his pocket. They both then crossed
Speaker 1: the street towards the water, where they were immediately stopped
Speaker 1: by the police, resulting in them getting arrested.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's digest all of that properly, because it was
Speaker 1: a lot. The inconsistencies between Kelly and Tommy's twenty ten
Speaker 1: statements ranged from from minor to glaring. Both Tommy and
Speaker 1: Kelly's statements mentioned the shoelace, although he says she handed
Speaker 1: it over and she says he took it from her,
Speaker 1: and both of them mentioned Tommy telling Kelly to kick Angel,
Speaker 1: although they again differ on whether Kelly actually did or
Speaker 1: didn't do it. Kelly says she was woken by Tommy
Speaker 1: after he admitted choking out Angel, but Tommy says Kelly
Speaker 1: was not only awake for the attack, but that she
Speaker 1: physically put her own shoelace around Angel's neck, pulled it tight,
Speaker 1: and handed it to Tommy. Tommy also says that while
Speaker 1: he choked Angel, it was only to the point of unconsciousness.
Speaker 1: Then he walked away, and when he looked back, he
Speaker 1: saw that Kelly was on top of Angel, strangling him
Speaker 1: to death. And then there's the differences in Kelly's accounts,
Speaker 1: which I understand thinking about the mindset that twenty ten
Speaker 1: Kelly was in, traumatized, scared, not to mention high, I
Speaker 1: can tote get why she would lie to the police
Speaker 1: to protect herself, why she'd want to distance herself from
Speaker 1: terrible crime. But I'm also confused about what the truth is, sure,
Speaker 1: but also why Kelly isn't opening up to me. Could
Speaker 1: I ask you some questions about Donovan's statement.
Speaker 6: Sure, I've been reading through it.
Speaker 2: There are a couple of.
Speaker 1: Things that stood out to me that seemed to be
Speaker 1: kind of parallels. Some stuff that came up in your
Speaker 1: original statement that seemed to match and haven't come up
Speaker 1: in our previous conversations, one of them being he asked
Speaker 1: you to kick Ruben, Ruben being Reuben Angel Vargas the victim,
Speaker 1: and then in his original statement you do that. In
Speaker 1: your original statement, you also say that he asked you
Speaker 1: to but you didn't do it. And then since we've
Speaker 1: spoken and that hasn't been any mention of the kicking,
Speaker 1: and so I just want to figure.
Speaker 6: Out, Oh, okay, clarification, Yeah, okay.
Speaker 4: So I remember the detective kept saying to me now
Speaker 4: just right, that he told you to kick the victim,
Speaker 4: and that you did.
Speaker 6: Like nobody kicked him, not even my co defendant. What
Speaker 6: really happened. When I was speaking to the Spanish man.
Speaker 4: The decendent, he told both of us that he got
Speaker 4: thrown out of the house because he was drinking too
Speaker 4: much and that his brother beat him up and threw
Speaker 4: him out.
Speaker 2: So when you beat.
Speaker 6: Someone up, clearly there's going to be bruising.
Speaker 4: So they wanted to implicate me, just for me to
Speaker 4: take the blame on doing something, and he yelled at
Speaker 4: me to the point where I wrote the words just
Speaker 4: for them to stop. I remember thinking, this is how
Speaker 4: confessions come about.
Speaker 2: I think Kelly means false confessions here.
Speaker 6: The fact that I'm writing he told me to kick him.
Speaker 6: That was a lie. That was a complete lie.
Speaker 4: But I felt like since the word kick is in there,
Speaker 4: they'll lay off a little bit, and they did.
Speaker 1: The reason I ask about the kicking is because to me,
Speaker 1: if somebody did what is said in Tommy's statement, kicking
Speaker 1: someone to get them away is not at all a
Speaker 1: bad things. And so I'm just saying like, if that
Speaker 1: had happened, No, no, I would be not share the
Speaker 1: fuck enough, you.
Speaker 6: Know, No, No, I get it. This is what I'm
Speaker 6: trying to say. If I kicked him one hundred percent,
Speaker 6: I would tell you I kicked him. But if I
Speaker 6: didn't kick him, I didn't kick him. I almost wish
Speaker 6: I kicked him at this point.
Speaker 4: I didn't kick him. You know why, I was too
Speaker 4: fucking scared to kick him. I was not going back there.
Speaker 4: You have to think of the domestic violence aspect and
Speaker 4: not the truth finding aspect. The domestic violence aspect of
Speaker 4: the matter is that I was afraid of Tommy.
Speaker 6: You think I'm gonna.
Speaker 4: Be busy trying to kick him in when I'm trying
Speaker 4: to figure out how the hell am I going to
Speaker 4: get out of this one?
Speaker 2: Well, I live to see.
Speaker 6: The next minute, of course. No, I'm not gonna worry
Speaker 6: about going to kick someone.
Speaker 4: I adopted what they stated just to write it, so
Speaker 4: they leave me the fuck alone.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to be really honest here about a
Speaker 1: couple of things. Number one is that I'm not proud
Speaker 1: of the take that you just heard, then I nearly
Speaker 1: didn't include it. Number two is that I feel so
Speaker 1: fucking out of my depth right now. In all the
Speaker 1: years I've spent making this show, speaking to countless survivors
Speaker 1: of domestic and gendered violence, I've never upset someone like that.
Speaker 1: But then I've never dealt with someone as complicated as Kelly,
Speaker 1: and I have absolutely no idea where to go from here.
Speaker 1: I spend a lot of time running back that conversation
Speaker 1: between me and Kelly in my head, when she spoke
Speaker 1: about hoping that the police would leave her the fuck alone.
Speaker 1: I can't help but feel like she was also talking
Speaker 1: to me, which feels like shit. The last thing I
Speaker 1: want Kelly to feel is attacked or judged, because for me,
Speaker 1: so much of this job of interviewing people, of getting
Speaker 1: them to share their experiences with me, it's a relationship
Speaker 1: one based around mutual respects and trust, one that I
Speaker 1: honestly tend to find pretty easy to build. I'm struggling
Speaker 1: to build that mutual trust with Kelly. Sometimes I feel
Speaker 1: like she's telling me exactly what I want to hear,
Speaker 1: and in other times I can feel like she's keeping
Speaker 1: me at arm's length. I'm going to go out on
Speaker 1: a limb here and say that I do not in
Speaker 1: any way believe the part of Tommy's statement where he
Speaker 1: says Kelly physically strangled Angel. I think this was nothing
Speaker 1: more than him trying to shift some of the blame
Speaker 1: for his crime. But I can't ignore the fact that
Speaker 1: it is possible that Kelly could have kicked Angel. It's
Speaker 1: mentioned in both statements, so I feel like I have
Speaker 1: to at least consider it. But even if she did
Speaker 1: kick Angel, for me, it would just be another sign
Speaker 1: of the terrible situation she was in and of the
Speaker 1: power Tommy had over her, not proof that she killed anyone.
Speaker 1: I do think Kelly has a point about the police
Speaker 1: pushing her to write what they wanted, because when I
Speaker 1: start looking into things a little deeper, it does feel
Speaker 1: like there's something funny going on in these statements. This
Speaker 1: next section gets into the weeds a little bit, but
Speaker 1: stay with me. Remember how I said Tommy gave multiple
Speaker 1: statements to the police. Well, one of them is a
Speaker 1: handwritten statement, which was made at about six pm on
Speaker 1: July seventh. In that statement, he isn't as certain about
Speaker 1: the details. He says he couldn't remember if Kelly said
Speaker 1: Angel tried to touch her or did touch her.
Speaker 2: But in the officer's typed up.
Speaker 1: Version you've just heard me and producer Jake reading, that
Speaker 1: uncertainty is nowhere to be found. Also in the typed version,
Speaker 1: it says Kelly kicked Angel on Tommy's orders and then
Speaker 1: robbed Angel's dead body for good measure, But in the
Speaker 1: written version by Tommy himself, there's no mention of the
Speaker 1: kicking or of the robbery, which seems like a pretty
Speaker 1: big omission to me.
Speaker 2: Two pretty big emissions.
Speaker 1: I know these might seem like small detail, but I
Speaker 1: do think it's worth examining how statements can become, let's
Speaker 1: just say, refined by police who are trying to build
Speaker 1: an air tight case. The more I look into it,
Speaker 1: the more confused I become. The awkward truth is, you
Speaker 1: either believe Kelly's story now or you don't. For me,
Speaker 1: it comes down to that trust again. I can't ignore
Speaker 1: the possibility, However uncomfortable it is to face that Kelly
Speaker 1: could be hiding things, things she doesn't want to say
Speaker 1: because she thinks it makes her look bad, less like
Speaker 1: a victim, more like a villain. Maybe, because she doesn't
Speaker 1: trust that I'm able to understand. Doesn't think I can
Speaker 1: extend my compassion to someone who's done a bad thing
Speaker 1: in the name of survival, even though that's at the
Speaker 1: heart of what I'm trying to do with this series.
Speaker 1: But I can't say I really blame her after the
Speaker 1: way our last conversation went down, I feel like this
Speaker 1: story is exposing all of my blind spots. I don't
Speaker 1: know how to tell Kelly's story. I don't know who
Speaker 1: she is in the story. Who's the victim?
Speaker 7: I think everybody's the victim, Like they're all the victim.
Speaker 7: You could put everybody in a different role, you could
Speaker 7: like make it whatever you want it to be.
Speaker 2: But yeah, everyone's a victim. Everyone's a villain. How do
Speaker 2: you like that?
Speaker 7: iHeart end of series?
Speaker 2: End of series.
Speaker 1: Wraps, and not just yet. I'm not going to throw
Speaker 1: in the towel that easy. So let's go back to
Speaker 1: July twenty ten. Kelly's not sure exactly how long she'd
Speaker 1: been at the one hundred and fourteenth Precinct for things
Speaker 1: must be hazy as she comes down from the fistful
Speaker 1: of xanax she swallowed when she first arrived.
Speaker 2: But she has a rough idea.
Speaker 5: I figured out how long I was there by touching
Speaker 5: my legs and judging by the length of the hair
Speaker 5: on my legs, because I shave every single day, and
Speaker 5: I could tell I was like, I've been here for
Speaker 5: a little bit over two days now.
Speaker 1: Using leg hair as plock hands is honestly ingenious, and
Speaker 1: Kelly's probably about right because according to New York law, generally,
Speaker 1: you're only allowed to hold someone for up to seventy
Speaker 1: two hours before you either charge them or release them. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: for Kelly, it's the former. Kelly's taken to be formally
Speaker 1: charged in Queen's cord. She's still in that bloodstained paper suit.
Speaker 2: Paper.
Speaker 5: Nothing more than paper, not even shoes, and my own
Speaker 5: blood coming everywhere.
Speaker 2: She's being arraigned alongside Tommy.
Speaker 5: The first thing I noticed, which is unbelievable and the
Speaker 5: one fourteenth persons should be absolutely ashamed of themselves, is
Speaker 5: that he was wearing his own clothes.
Speaker 6: The admitted murderer.
Speaker 5: Had his own clothes on while they took me the
Speaker 5: female's clothes.
Speaker 2: How dare they?
Speaker 1: Tommy is brought up to the stand next to Kelly.
Speaker 1: They're out side by side. She takes a moment to
Speaker 1: look him up and down, and that's when she realizes something.
Speaker 5: Not only did he get to keep his own clothes,
Speaker 5: he had his belt on.
Speaker 1: The belt that, according to Kelly, Tommy used to strangle
Speaker 1: Angel to death.
Speaker 5: They let him in with the weapon that killed someone,
Speaker 5: that took someone's life.
Speaker 1: Kelly's fuming, and I get it. The indignity she's suffered
Speaker 1: for the past few days in the police precinct would
Speaker 1: be hard for anyone to bear. And for the record,
Speaker 1: I find it supremely fucked up how differently Kelly says
Speaker 1: she and Tommy are being treated. It isn't right under
Speaker 1: any circumstances. Whether or not you believe that Kelly kicked Angel.
Speaker 5: I swear on my mother's ashes, I really did not
Speaker 5: kick that man. May I go to hell for all
Speaker 5: of it tearing me.
Speaker 2: I did not kick that man.
Speaker 5: But even if I did, he admittedly strangled him. Why
Speaker 5: wouldn't you take his clothing? Even if I kicked him?
Speaker 6: What if that had to do with my bra and pennies?
Speaker 5: It's such a violation of every civil rate, like you
Speaker 5: treating me less than a human being.
Speaker 2: That's what they put me through.
Speaker 5: This is the justice system.
Speaker 6: In God, we trust.
Speaker 5: No, you know you don't trust in God. If you
Speaker 5: do that to people, there is no God there.
Speaker 1: Once Kelly and Tommy are arraigned, they're taken out of
Speaker 1: the courtroom and walk towards a jail transfer bus, one
Speaker 1: that is hauntingly familiar to Kelly. When Kelly was a
Speaker 1: little girl, she and her brother Ronnie used to play
Speaker 1: around at their aunt's house.
Speaker 4: She lived the house right there where you turned and
Speaker 4: went to the bridge to go to Rikers.
Speaker 2: As in Rikers Island jail.
Speaker 6: And I would be playing in the front.
Speaker 4: The Rikers Island buses used to pierced by all the
Speaker 4: time and then curve right into where Rikers is.
Speaker 1: As the buses crept past the two children, the passenger's
Speaker 1: eyes turned to them.
Speaker 4: They would be watching Ronnie and I and I would
Speaker 4: see those buses pass all.
Speaker 6: The time, and I was like, what's those buses? Why
Speaker 6: do they have cages?
Speaker 1: Now decades on, Kelly's an adult stepping onto one of
Speaker 1: those buses, it.
Speaker 2: Was all men and just me.
Speaker 5: And tell me it was on the bus and all
Speaker 5: the men were calling me a dirty bitch. Not that
Speaker 5: I look dirty, because I take showers every day, but
Speaker 5: because of my female.
Speaker 2: Issue, the bloodstained paper suit.
Speaker 5: Dirty bitch, smelly bitch, you smell like fish, just and
Speaker 5: that I'm just waiting for time me to say something
Speaker 5: he never did.
Speaker 1: The bus winds through the city, passing the same garden
Speaker 1: Kelly and her brother Ronnie played in as children, except
Speaker 1: now it's Kelly who's looking out through a caged window
Speaker 1: on her way to Rikers Island jail.
Speaker 4: Rikers had seriously dangerous people and it scared the hell
Speaker 4: out of me.
Speaker 1: Next time, on The Girlfriend's Jailhouse Lawyer, Kelly fights to
Speaker 1: prove her innocence and to survive life in Rikers.
Speaker 5: Well, this was the survival of the fittest.
Speaker 2: Only the strong survive. Our sisterhood called ourselves. The showdies.
Speaker 2: I'm not guilty.
Speaker 6: I plan on taking this to trial.
Speaker 3: Don't go to child, Please, don't go to child.
Speaker 6: She goes Harnett.
Speaker 2: You guys, start finding your case.
Speaker 6: If you're king the love of my life? Oh God,
Speaker 6: how are n it?
Speaker 2: Jelhouse Lawyer.
Speaker 1: The Girlfriend's Jelhouse Lawyer is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: For more from Novel, visit novel Dot Audio. The show
Speaker 1: is hosted by me Anna Sinfield and is written and
Speaker 1: produced by me and Lee Meyer, with additional production from
Speaker 1: Jako Taivich and Michael Jino. Our assistant producer is Madeline Parr.
Speaker 1: The editors are Georgia Moody and me Annasinfield. Production management
Speaker 1: from Shari Houston, Joe Savage and Charlotte Wolfe. Our fact
Speaker 1: checker is Daniel Suleiman. Sound design, mixing and scoring by
Speaker 1: Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander. Music supervision by me Alis Infield,
Speaker 1: Lee Meyer and Nicholas Alexander. Original music composed by Nicholas Alexander,
Speaker 1: Daniel Kempson and Louisa Gerstein. Story development by Nell Gray
Speaker 1: Andrews and Willard Foxton. Creative director of Novel, Max O'Brien
Speaker 1: and Craig Strachan are executive producers for Novel, and Katrina
Speaker 1: Norvell and Nicki Eator are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts,
Speaker 1: and the marketing lead is Alison Cantor. Thanks also to
Speaker 1: Carry Lieberman and the whole team at WME